Only Mel and Loren were still here, the rest being out in two groups, as jump points were being closed. There were several dinosaur fleets inside the closed area still, but we had time to deal with them. Or someone did if we continued being on Diplomat detail. They would of course run into Trixone fleets within a day anyway.
I walked back to see the admiral, with my calm back in place. After the greeting, which I’d thanked him for, he waved me to the other side of his desk.
“Well commander, I guess you’re wondering what’s next for your squadron.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right. Your current orders will continue for a day or two more. There are two civilian vessels going to join Diplomat later this afternoon. Both belong to the Imperator. One will have a full cargo of trade items we’ve already established are wanted by the locals, and will be picking up a load of, shall we say, private orders. The deal is already done, so the ship just needs to unload and load up again. But that in itself will be a test, since we know Trixone stations don’t have our freight transfer facilities. It’s also a test of whether the locals will deliver what they agreed to, but none of that is your concern.”
“Are we expecting any trouble?”
“Possibly. Which is why the ship is also bringing you a hundred security droids with suit belts to make them look a cross section of Imperium species, but all uniformed as security guards for the shipment. After the ship leaves, they’ll stay with you, to augment the ones already doing security on Diplomat.”
I hadn't known there were any.
“And the other ship?”
“A liner, carrying a good cross section of the Imperium’s shipping bigwigs, and major independent traders. Or at least, their representatives. They’ll be spending time on the station, figuring out if trading with the Trixone and their vassals is something worth doing. I expect them to be there for a few days at least. Where that leads is anyone’s guess at the moment, but for now, your squadron are security for our people.”
I nodded without saying anything.
“Once the trading has ended and all three ships have returned to Haven space, you’ll be getting replacement squadrons. All of them will be flying Excalibur fives, but none of them will have any experience at all.”
“How does that happen?” I blurted.
It made no sense. All of our recruits were experienced fighter pilots, and just needed additional training. That didn’t mean they were inexperienced squadrons when they went live.
“You’ll see. When you get them, you’ll understand what we’re sending you. It was Eagle’s idea, by the way.”
“Where are the fives coming from?”
As far as I knew, there were still a lot of squadrons still flying fours.
“Corona has started producing them under license. They have no use for fighters, but have the excess industrial capacity we need. We’re paying with food, I understand, and especially alcohol. Their society doesn’t produce anything requiring a person to coax the process of development along by tasting it regularly, so there are a lot of gaps in what they have, which we can supply.”
It made sense. Corona wasn’t joining the Imperium, but as a trading partner, had a lot to offer. The promised upgrades to holographics were coming from there as well. And I already knew we’d received some of them, since Judge had much better console hollos than any previous ship I’d had.
“The big cats and the Lufaflufs are building them too. So production is ramping up to meet our demand. Part of the tradeoff Eagle made to get his wing transferred to the Galactica carrier fleet, was your squadrons would be receiving fives until you were fully supplied, before his wing received any more.”
Which told me Eagle expected to be fighting more conventional fighter battles now, where the fours were not at a disadvantage. I had my doubts, but the new carrier fleet was certainly capable of dealing with the sort of fighter numbers the Keerah and Ralnor were having to deal with. While having enough firepower to take the fleets as well using rift tactics. Those Galactica class ships had dreadnaught firepower, as well as being designed to carry fighters. They were of course, quite larger than our actual dreadnaughts, and the only ships the Imperium had on par with the size of everyone else’s battleships.
“Once you have a full carrier force again, we’re giving you a mission. Any guesses as to what?”
“Clean up the Rawtenuga fleets still inside the area being separated today?”
“That’s just the start of it.”
He paused, and looked me straight in the eyes.
“We want you to find where the Rawtenuga are coming from, and stop them.”
He looked steadily at me for another moment.
“Permanently.”
Nineteen
I returned to Judge feeling a bit overwhelmed.
It was one thing to be promoted to the junior commander level and actually now be a squadron leader in rank as well as position, but to then give me an independent mission which an admiral should be overseeing, seemed to indicate either the top brass had too high expectations of me, or they had no-one else to send.
Although, it was true that if I failed, it wouldn’t impact on the Imperium very much at all. Not unless peace was attained with the Trixone, and whatever was signed included us defending some of their territory. And I couldn’t see a peace coming any time soon, or anyone agreeing to defend someone not an Imperium member or significant trading partner. The irony I’d already done just that was not lost on me.
Of course, trading was the name of the game at the moment, but it remained to be seen if the locals could be trusted, if there were in fact markets going both ways, and if the actual shipping part of it was even feasible.
Serena was curious about our orders, but I told her I’d tell everyone at dinner that night. I spent some time looking at the map she’d been watching change, which was still undergoing jump point changes even now. I was actually surprised as to how much area was being quarantined. But the orders had been to cut out an area based on trading in the cluster.
Tamsin must have seen me frowning, and popped up another map, this time showing actual trade routes for the area, as the station knew about them. It provided some context to what my two mages were doing.
Before the squadron returned, the two trader ships jumped in. Both of them appeared about fifteen minutes out from the station, to give ample warning of their approach. Red Flower connected me into the docking chat with both ships, and it sounded pretty normal to me, as if we were anywhere in the Imperium, or even pre-Imperium on my home station. Docking was docking, basically. They were given adjoining docks to Diplomat.
The trader turned out to be Hurndalls Stallion, which made sense, as it was a cruiser hull, including the original guns, but internally modified to carry cargo, with only a family of three running the ship. It was also the only trader I knew of which had a jump drive. The big question for me was if the Hurndalls were going to expose their ten year old daughter Suzy to the denizens of this end of the galaxy, or not.
The liner was named Midnight Rose, and was something between the length of a destroyer and cruiser, but more of a long cylinder shape, which maximized the number of cabins with views of space. Although I had no doubt the internal ones had screens which showed the views outside.
I told Leanne to send the gig over to the liner for appearances sake, and after telling Serena she had the ship again, and getting a pout in return, I jumped myself to the bridge of the liner. There I found a Jane clone in civilian merchant captain uniform.
Now I understood why the Imperium had not gone for the four rings of a post captain for Fleet Captain rank, and used the eagle instead. Merchant senior captains used them, and it was better they were never confused. I looked up merchant uniforms, and the normal was the four rings on the end of the sleeve of a jacket, or the four cloth bars across epaulettes. Jane’s uniform included the jacket, which was black over a white shirt, with black pants. The stripes were gold. Interestingly, t
his Jane was not showing the cleavage the comnavsat freighter captain Jane had been.
Turned out she’d been running this ship for several years now, moving people around as necessary, and even before Imperium days, doing cruises of Australian sector system planets. The bridge itself was nothing short of antique, having been done out, as she assured me was quite accurate, like water sailing ships long before the age of steam. So instead of a console, there was a large wooden wheel to steer the ship with, and a set of levers which changed the attitude of the ship, and her speed.
She was the only one of her class left. Not many had been built, and the only other one the Imperator had owned had gone to the other galaxy laden with refugees. This one had been in the shipyard for repairs when the exodus had happened, and for the last couple of months, had been cruising around my end of space.
Of course, none of this décor was even necessary given she was an AI, but she took great delight in telling me on some cruises she allowed passengers to come onto the bridge, and see the ship as something from a bygone era. At such times she had other ‘people’ manning the bridge so it looked like the ship had a full crew. The actual crew were all either butlers, maid droids I’d never heard of, or herself using a security droid with a belt.
I stayed with her until the ship was actually docked, and then followed her into a rift which led directly to the side of the main airlock in the nose of the ship. There were a lot of people waiting for the airlock to open, and even more walking towards us in the distance down the middle of the ship.
The inner door opened, followed by the outer one, and a ramp pushed out and into the station to allow easy access for everyone. Jane moved to the bottom of the ramp, with me following a step behind, and greeted Red Flower and an entourage of a mixture of species. The customs formalities were quickly dispensed with, and people started down the ramp. Jane went back onto the ship.
I followed Red Flower and the customs group around to where Stallion was just docking. This time I saw the ramp extending from the other side. Two people walked down it. A smaller third remained at the top of the ramp, with several people minding her, who I knew were combat droids, not actual people. Suzy waved to me when she saw me, and I waved back.
Her parents, Richard and Mary, greeted me with congratulations on both my promotions, and then had to explain my elevation to grand master had been on the Imperium news. So much for a low profile. I put that aside, and introduced them to Red Flower, and the customs procedures took longer this time. One of the rats produced their equivalent of a pad, and it did some sort of sync with Richard’s, before transferring the manifest across to the rat’s. A second manifest went the other way.
I stayed long enough to see unloading begin. The ship had standard containers, but the station couldn’t handle them. So large cargo droids opened and emptied the first container, and carried the pallets down to the dock, placing them in marked out areas. There were plenty of onlookers to the process, and a lot of them were eagerly watching the droids make light work of the job. I could see us getting orders soon for just the droids.
The pallets on the dock were removed by large insects, using mechanical moving devices. They made the work look back breaking, but didn’t seem to mind. All the mechanical part did was raise the pallet off the ground, putting wheels capable of moving on disturbed dirt under the load, but did nothing to reduce its weight, so it was muscle power doing all the moving. Interesting from a learning something new perspective, but rather boring.
I went back to Midnight Rose, rifted myself back to Judge, and Leanne sent the gig back. Serena was now watching cam feeds of the station areas where our people had reached. I felt pretty certain a lot of those were the security droids I’d been told about, and presumably they would monitor as much as they could, and pretend to return to the liner, before changing appearance and heading out again.
It wasn’t perfect coverage, but it made someone getting into serious trouble less likely to go unobserved by our AIs.
The rest of the squadron jumped back in shortly after I arrived back on the bridge, and being late afternoon by now, I invited everyone over for an early dinner.
Dinner turned into a celebration for my mage promotion, and instead of the normal mess table, we found a round table with room for fifteen, which had a carrousel in the middle. Butlers loaded it with an amazing array of food, with Chinese being prominent, and the carrousel revolved around allowing us to take what we wished. Some of the AIs were sitting at the normal table, and went back and forth, getting tastes of anything they hadn't tried. The butlers kept putting replacement plates down until we were all full. Then they removed everything and replaced them with a whole range of desserts. We found we were not as full as we thought.
Over coffee, liqueurs, and ports, some of them all in the same mug, I outlined our orders. They looked relieved the current posting was almost over, and we’d be venturing outside the known area on the hunt for trouble. Well, I didn’t put it that way, but I’m pretty sure most of them took it like that. I could see the anticipation on Woof’s face, and Metunga was showing fangs.
Finally, as I was getting ready to leave the table, Gitte gave me a funny look.
“So,” she said. “Mage Master is an equivalent rank to a lieutenant colonel, which makes me and Haynes lieutenant-colonel lieutenants. This morning, you were a lieutenant-colonel lieutenant commander. Now what are you?”
I had no answer to that.
“What do you think?” asked Jill, looking at both Gitte and Haynes.
“At least a colonel lieutenant commander,” said Haynes, keeping his face straight.
“No,” said Gitte. “My guess is a brigadier general lieutenant commander.”
I face palmed, and everyone laughed.
Twenty
Tamsin woke us up at five the next morning.
Dinner had stretched out, been followed by a spa, and then two antique entertainments. Some group called the Avengers went up against a big alien and lost. The universe suffered for five years, and then they broke all the laws of time, and completely messed up getting everything back to normal. In the process, two of the prettier women died, and because they’d lost their souls, never came back, and one of them fought with someone for the honour of who was saving whom, with the winner dying. One man went back in time and lived to a ripe old age with some woman who liked dancing, which meant there were two aspects of him living at the same time.
Basically, I had no clue what was really going on, but it was a rollicking good story.
It did however have a current day message. You could do everything right, and still lose. You could be so fixated on your truth that the whole universe opposes you, and still win. And emotion in battle had a way of screwing everything up. Twice a different single person had made an emotional decision, and the result was disaster. It brought back to me the problem of sleeping with a member of your crew, or squadron.
But as was also pointed out to me, sometimes self-sacrifice was the wrong move, and you wouldn’t be allowed to do it. And so if you were sleeping with crew, better you both go out together. So being on the same ship, and only a couple of arm lengths away, was a good way of ensuring whatever happened, did to both of you.
I’m not sure any of that was part of Jill’s intensions for showing us the entertainments. But I did tell her if she wanted to do that again, plan it so we got the origin story first, and things in sequence, instead of starting at the end first.
Also, fortunately, we all went to bed instead of debating all the things wrong with the ending, and how the time travel was, as Eagle might have said, bollocks. I don’t mind time travel being portrayed differently, and I’d read a lot of stories as a kid trying to understand what Thorn had told me he’d done. But when a writer establishes the rules for time travel, and then breaks them? It somewhat detracts from the enjoyment of the story, when it leaves unresolvable issues behind.
Leanne must have seen my face reacting, as she told me by ping that i
n the six hundred years odd years since those entertainments were first released, no-one had ever explained the paradoxes created, in any way adequately. I believed it.
Serena of course had loved the whole thing, and had then kept us both up into the small hours of the morning. I think watching girls beating up boys had turned her on. So an earlier than normal start was exactly the worse thing we needed.
We were already jumping when I made it to the bridge, Serena a few seconds behind me.
“What’s the panic?” I asked, as I buckled up.
“The Rawtenuga trashed a small Trixone fleet defending a planet,” said Leanne, “and are about to land troops. It’s inside our cluster, and the planet has asked for help.”
“Why didn’t I know that was coming?”
“They didn’t look like they were interested in the planet. But the Trixone must have had forces we didn’t see, as they suddenly appeared, and the dinosaurs took it as a challenge, and went after them.”
“How soon…”
We stopped jumping, with a planet below us, and thirty battleships between us and them. There was wreckage further out, and some dino escape pods moving around.
“My turn?” asked Gitte.
“By all means. In fact, Tamsin will divide us up, and you can both do the rifts. Probably a good idea to get some practice in.”
“Won’t that slow down the kills?” asked Woof.
“Sure, but we don’t really need to kill, just permanently disable.”
“Run that past me at a slow walk?” said Jill.
“Our orders are to protect the cluster. I could just rift these ships somewhere outside it, but they’d just keep coming at someone else. So we need to kill the ships, but it’s not necessary to kill the crews.”
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 8
