Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4)

by Timothy Ellis

  They still hesitated, so I placed truth magic on them both.

  “We didn’t think,” said right, looking horrified he’d said it.

  “Obviously. I gather you want me to be a judge like my uncle was?”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  “You do know I’m Imperium military?”

  “Of course,” said left. “What a waste! Being a judge like Thorn was, is a higher rank than any you’ll ever attain in the military.”

  “And rank matters?”

  “Of course,” said right. “Even Thorn knew that.”

  “You might be surprised to know that Thorn didn’t care about rank one little bit. In fact, a lot of graves over there were high ranked people.”

  They looked, in spite of themselves, and right even shivered.

  “That’s not what the records show,” said left.

  “The records were obviously written by people who didn’t know Thorn.”

  Both of them looked at each other, looking equally uncomfortable.

  “Here’s how it is. I’m Imperium military. I will be Imperium military until I retire. I will not be a judge. I will not be at anyone’s beck and call. Do you understand that?”

  My voice was low and hard.

  “Yes,” they both whispered.

  “As I’ve already said, I will look at cases where the judge was unable to legally overturn a conviction because of a lack of evidence where the conviction is obviously wrong. But I will look at them in my own time, of which I have very little. I’m not going to be a level of backstop for court systems incapable of delivering true justice. If the system is that broken, sending me those cases will just highlight the need for fixing the system. Do you get my meaning?”

  “Yes.”

  Left spluttered it, but right was still whispering.

  “Anything you want from me will be on my timetable, and without a deadline. Anyone attempting to circumvent that will wish they hadn't.”

  Both of them nodded.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m fighting a particularly nasty war. I had a really bad day yesterday. You picked a really bad time to piss me off. I’m not a grunt soldier, but an officer with significant responsibilities. You impinge on them at your peril. Make sure you tell people that.”

  “It shall be done,” said left.

  “I am not Thorn. I will never be Thorn. And until I’m a civilian again, no-one is going to drag me into civilian matters. Now go tell people that, and let’s forget this ever happened.”

  They vanished. And not exactly back to where they’d come from either. I’d offset them enough they’d fall on their arses again.

  I tracked Hubaisha down to where her avatar was that moment, and moved myself there. She was surprised to see me, but didn’t ask why. I told her what I’d just done, and she grinned. By the time I left ten minutes later, she was monitoring all court cases on the dockets throughout both societies, looking for anything needing my special attention. But only so I had advance warning, and a choice to deal with it or not. She also took full instructions for outfitting the new station, and to let me know when it was ready.

  “Welcome back,” said the voice of Leanne, as I appeared back in my ready room.

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  Strangely, I now felt better.

  Thirty Three

  I didn’t even get time to sit.

  “Is there something you feel you need to tell me?” asked Jane, who’d popped up on the desk just as I got to it.

  I ignored her until I was sitting. She frowned at me.

  “Hint please?”

  “Your home system?”

  “What about it?”

  “It has an extra few items in it that were not there this time yesterday.”

  “You noticed.”

  “I did. Let’s have it.”

  “The station was abandoned, and I appropriated it as requested. I moved it to my system, and Hubaisha is going to turn it into a live fire training facility. I figured we wanted it out of the way of anyone’s eyes, and with trainees rifting in, where it was didn’t really matter. Problem with that?”

  “No. A more fuller report than a brief text message would have been better.”

  “Maybe, but the admiral was lucky to get even that last night. I was seriously fatigued moving tens of thousands of dinosaurs around.”

  “You gave them what they gave the locals. Was that justified?”

  “Morally? No. Ethically? No. Karmically? Well they deserved it. The alternative was either destroying them in space, or leaving them to rot in an irradiated zone. Missiles were quicker and less like torture.”

  “I’m glad you realize that. And it’s probably good you’re talking to me like that, and not anyone higher than me.”

  “Yesterday was a really bad day. I’m only just starting to come out of the dark place I was in.”

  “Starting? Is that where you just came back from?”

  “Yeah. Their senior judgeships in the Democratic Union and Naranja seemed to think me being in the military was a waste, and thought they were convincing me to become a judge like Thorn instead. I took them to a hot dry place, and disabused them of the notion.”

  She flinched.

  “Actually,” she said, “I need to warn you about that. Haven government is setting up a judiciary of their own at the moment, now people are moving down to the planet. It puts them outside of direct AI observation, which means crime can now happen there with a more normal level chance of not being caught. Everyone now knows what Thorn was doing as a judge, and his skills as one, and you are being considered as a call-in judge for capital cases.”

  I laid my arms on the desk in front of me, lowered my head down to touch the surface, and bashed my forehead against it three time. Then I sighed really loudly.

  “That’s about what I thought, although you didn’t need to hurt yourself getting it across to me.”

  I didn’t actually hurt at all. The dark sun was doing more than I thought it was.

  I sat back up, and looked at her.

  “What’s the official Imperium line?”

  “There isn’t one. The Imperator of course gets dragged into civilian matters on a regular basis, because he is on the council, as much as he hates that, and as often as he has someone else attend for him. No-one else I know of in the military so far is also attending to civilian matters. Unless you count Chief Burnside, which I’m not, but probably should be.”

  I shook my head, and sighed again.

  “Yeah, I get that,” she went on. “But look at it their way. When actual observation is not available, a human lie detector is the next best thing. And you’re it.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m available. Or even interested. Thorn did it out of a sense of service. I’m serving another way. And look what it did to him. He left everything and everyone he loved behind except his wife, in order to get away from the demands on him for his last days. No-one should be forced to do that.”

  “I get you. Others won’t.”

  “Well, until I get formal orders, my attitude is I won’t be at anyone’s beck and call. Hubaisha is going to monitor court dockets for anything I need to look at, and I’ll consider requests made far enough in advance, but anyone who expects me to jump because they think being a judge is more important than what I am doing, is going to have a very bad day. Even if they turn out to be right.”

  “Noted. And I’ll pass that on. It may come down to the military loans you out every now and then. You do a day in a court room once a month or something, when things are quiet.”

  “And that will be when?”

  “No idea, but we can phrase it that way when people suggest it. And they will.”

  “As long as they know that no-one at all is going to enjoy the experience except the innocent.”

  “It might take a day in court to prove that to them.”

  “Maybe. But better if I never have to.”

  “You will sometime. A grand m
aster mage is like a four star admiral or general in a way. Part of their job is political. In your case, it’s more civilian, but it’s the same.”

  “Fine. Remind me of that when I’m a four star admiral.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve never seen this side of you before. It’s a bit scary.”

  “I had a really bad day yesterday. I made decisions I didn’t want to make. I’ll deal with them. What I don’t need is civilians rocking my boat in the middle of it.”

  “On that note, you can stand your people down after lunch. They should get some simulator time, some space time, and then do what they want for the afternoon, including going home if they want to.”

  “Who signed off on that?”

  “I did. You have a mission to start, but not in the condition I see you in now. And if it was as bad as you say it was, a lot of your people will be the same. They can take some time to wind down, including getting psych help if they need it. We now have a whole department in Haven medical devoted to helping people deal with stressful situations. It doesn’t go on their records if all they need is a chat. Pass that on.”

  “Leanne?”

  “Boss?”

  “Pass that along, please.”

  “Already did. Advised the AIs for the captains and squadron leaders the moment Jane said it.”

  “Good.”

  I waited for Jane to either leave, or say something else.

  “Anything else about your system you want to tell me?”

  “You mean the waste dumps I’ve been leaving there? Had to go somewhere.”

  “Yes, and since no-one officially owns any of that debris, I guess it doesn’t matter where it is, although I’m sure Bob would prefer it in Haven.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “No. But only as long as you tell me the rest.”

  She knew. She always knew.

  “I saved some intact Rawtenuga battleships. Hubaisha is going to convert them for human or AI use. I was thinking my home system could use its own militia force, and I’m the only one with funds and access to raw materials to get the work done. Let alone hire crews. If necessary, and we find they convert in a useful way, they could provide a reserve force in case of need one day. Something no-one will expect to drop in and save someone’s arse at the last minute.”

  “I can see the advantages of that. I’ll ask the Imperator, and if he agrees, we’ll keep it just between us. It’s not widely known Thorn collected a small armada of ships, but only really had a handful operational at any time. You’d know that better than anyone since I assume you own them now, and some of them are now running cargo to your home base with your name on them.”

  “Not my decision, and it can be changed if anyone objects.”

  “No-one has expressed any reservations so far. Jon runs a fairly major fleet of freighters himself, but he can afford to. So do I for that matter, but they’re all ferries and limos. I gather you can afford to as well?”

  “Thorn left me well off. He wasn’t military and never did understand technology. There’s a lot I can do that he never realized needed doing. And sooner or later my people will form a proper government, and start asking for tax. That will feed them funds for what our society needs.”

  “That’s pretty well the way Jon is running things now. The tax he pays is keeping the new Haven nation afloat. That will change in time, but it will take time.”

  “Longer for my people I suspect. Thorn was supporting them in ways no-one ever thought about. Even him being a judge was partly to keep medical technology up to date for our people, without which we’d have lost a few more mages after the time line shift. Stupid thing was, he could have just bought it all outright. Which does bring up an issue.”

  “What?”

  “Hubaisha currently has a decent, if small, shipyard going down on the planet on an uninhabitable continent. She’ll be moving the new ships down there for work. Any chance you can hide the movements?”

  “Yes. You know I hid the line of comnavsats behind Rogue. Hiding ships is not difficult. Anything else?”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Hubaisha will need access to specs for things like mosquito and torpedo launchers, and our latest missiles. We’ll also need the crystals, or a version large enough for such large ships. And jump drives.”

  “The jump drives are not yet available to anyone but Imperium military. But I’ll convince Jon your new fleet can be an off the books auxiliary unit. Or maybe black ops. Either he’ll supply them to you on the basis your fleet goes where it gets told to when the need arises, or we’ll set a price for you to buy them. They won’t be cheap. You’ll probably have to do crystals yourself, or get your own mages involved in creating them. The launchers are Imperium tech being supplied to Imperium members, so there is no problem there.”

  “Didn’t my freighter ships converted to be ferries get jump drives?”

  “Yes, but they’re all now being used to move millions of people who are not paying for the trip. Eventually you’ll get them back for your own uses, but I didn’t have enough of my own ferries for the commitments we made to move people. I’m essentially renting your ships for the price of leaving the jump drive on them after. It’s also going to be a long time before you get them back. The freighters resupplying your current base had the jump drive supplied as part of the freight contract.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “If you want to convert a few of those dinosaur ships to be ferries, I’ll gladly use them. I don’t have enough ships for the number of people I need to move. One of those battleship hulls could move entire populations in one go, although admittedly, getting everyone on board would take a huge amount of time. But if I borrow a rift mage, we could fill them up faster. Anyway, just one of those ships would help.”

  “Okay. You can have a prototype and see if it works or not. Oh. I told Hubaisha to rip one of the Rawtenuga ships apart, and reverse engineer everything she could. Haven shipyard will get the results of that.”

  “That will help Jon with his decisions. And frankly, Bob and his people don’t have the time, so someone else doing it is a good thing. Are you planning on building a proper space shipyard?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, the Imperium needs all the ships we can build. If you can afford it, I’ll have Bob quickly scale up the bays we used for the Explorer upgrades, tack them onto the needed shipyard modules for a new yard, and send them to Hubaisha. She can probably build the first one on the ground and assemble it in space, and then do what Bob did originally, which is build a second bay, and the first bay builds a ship, while the second bay builds a new bay. The new bay builds a new bay, while the other one builds a ship. In your case, the bays get used to upgrade the ships you appropriated. Takes longer to do ships, but after a while, you have a big shipyard turning out what is needed.”

  “Get Bob to send all that to Hubaisha as well. She’s probably going to have to clone herself a shipyard manager, as it will turn into a full time job.”

  “You do realize this will be fantastically expensive?”

  “Why so?”

  “You can’t just appropriate the resources the way Jon did. He owned the systems of Hunter’s Run, so there was no issue then. He’s doing it now out of sheer necessity, but that will come to an end when our new government decides to end it, and make the Imperium pay its way. Your people might not notice now, but some time someone will, and then there will be serious accusations of ripping off governmental resources for private benefit.”

  “No doubt. Especially if I piss off politicians and civic bigwigs by not doing what they want. Still, that won’t be all that difficult for either of us to solve.”

  “How so?”

  “We find a system with the right resources which no-one is claiming, and isn’t ever going to be claimed. We cut it off from entry by anyone without a jump drive, and we use it for what we need.”

  Her mouth was hanging
open.

  “And you know of any systems like that?”

  “The one we found yesterday might be useful. The locals are dead, and the system is cut off. The planet was marginal, and now the main continent is irradiated and stripped bare by bombardment. All it needs is a proper survey, and then move the existing mining operations there, with a rift linking the systems up.”

  “We’d need another one, if you go the full shipyard route. The added bonus would be when you sell a new ship to the Imperium, we won’t need to pay as much for it. There are issues though. If we start claiming and mining systems, corporates will want to do the same thing. So it requires thinking about. Tell you what. You can have the system you just discovered. I’ll get the Apricot Mapping Service to survey it at our cost, to make sure there are no unknown jump points, and to check if what you need is there. That solves your problem immediately, and Jon can bring the issue up for the council to discuss. They need to deal with the real issue of shipbuilding anyway, as Jon is paying for everything himself, even if he is using Haven resources as his own.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It is, and no-one has wanted to get that ball rolling. In our case, we have several systems in our space which could be turned over to the Imperium as resource assets. I’ll talk to Jon.”

  She looked at me for a few moments.

  “You do realize,” she went on, “that when you finally make Commander, you might be assigned a Chaos class you actually make yourself, and when you make captain, it might be one of your own built Rogues you get.”

  She was grinning.

  “That’s a long time off.”

  “Perhaps. But it should be an incentive to build a shipyard capable of building whatever it is you want to fly in the future.”

  She had a point.

  Thirty Four

  “Hubaisha?”

  There was no answer.

  “I know your listening.”

  “Damn,” she said, popping up in front of me.

  Jane had gone, and left me thinking. Since I was technically stood down for the rest of the day, I could do some thinking about what we’d just discussed. Now I needed to action a few things.