As I zoomed it in further, the jump point network, as known by someone, started appearing, along with the crosses which indicated jump points blocked, and more than a few which had been diverted and I hadn't known about, especially on the newcomer spine. There was something about that which bothered me, but for now, I didn’t need the diversion, so I put it aside for when I had time to ponder it.
A small zoom in again, and the location of the existing dinosaur fleets showed up, and the fact they were moving around our closed cluster on all sides.
I sighed. That was a lot of fighting someone had to do, and it was only going to get harder the longer they were allowed to rampage through Trixone space. That wouldn’t have bothered me all that long ago, and in fact, an enemy to occupy the plants was exactly what the center of the galaxy needed at this point.
But now I knew about civilian Trixone, and all the species they lived in harmony with, albeit technically being overlords, but just looking at traders told you it wasn’t much different here to the Imperium in the way people interacted with each other.
And that was a big problem.
“Leanne?”
“Bud?”
“Is Admiral Jedburgh available for a quick meeting?”
There was a short pause.
“He is. He said give him five to get to an office.”
I suddenly realized I was still in shorts, and shifted back into uniform. The admiral popped up on my desk a few minutes later.
“You needed something, Commander?”
“A little clarification, sir.”
“How little?”
“I understand my orders, but I believe your people call it looking for a needle in a haystack. I could use some direction in how to start.”
“Good. I was wondering when you were going to ask. Do you see any starting points?”
“Only the fleets we know about, and the ones which will appear as the network expands, or they enter the network somewhere. But if I follow my orders to the letter, all I can do is follow the trail they represent until I find a planet with Rawtenuga civilians on it, and then try to pick up the direction they come from, by using their traders to follow.
I paused, but he said nothing.
“But if I do that, the fleets I leave behind me will continue to cause havoc, and there is nothing here to stop them destroying more planets like the last one we found.”
“True. What is it you want to do?”
“Find all the fleets in Trixone space, destroy most of them before they can do any more damage, and rift the last couple back where we know some of them come from, and after I block up the jump points behind them, see if one of the fleets will lead me to their homeworld, or at least an outpost.”
“But?”
“They are drawing significant resources from the military Trixone, which might otherwise be sent our way. And if we remove their reason, they all keep coming at us again.”
“We have no knowledge of their movements before the Rawtenuga showed up, and it is very possible all the fleets heading in your direction now were already going that way towards some of their no-go areas. If we remove the threat, they might just resume their assaults on already well defended clusters. And if we do remove the threat, we make substantially more friends to help try and get the military plants to stop attacking us.”
“You can’t know that, sir.”
“No, but the diplomats say we are making inroads into opinion in other plant systems, just by demonstrating what trade is available both ways. The Ralnor have products some of the rats want, for example. But to get them, they need peace.” He shook his head for a moment. “Never ceases to amaze me, but the pursuit of profit always rears its ugly head wherever you go, and it’s not just a human thing.”
He paused, and appeared to be thinking, so I didn’t interrupt him.
“Commander, your plan is approved subject to one condition. You will attempt to find out if the Trixone systems outside the closed cluster actually want our help or not. If we are asked, it makes the political side of this easier to handle.”
“And if they don’t, or it takes a while to find out?”
“You’re authorized to remove the fleets currently trying to bypass the closed cluster, any way you choose. If you get the right request, just keep on going. If we don’t get asked to help, let me know and I’ll pass it on to the Imperium council. But either way, we want where the Rawtenuga are coming from found, and blocked. That is your primary goal. How you achieve it is part of you learning how to run a mission.”
“And if I need more help?”
“Ask for it. I’m well aware of how fast you’ve been promoted, and how little real experience you have, but we’re still spread too thin, and you’re the only unit we can spare at the moment. You’re not expendable either, in case that crossed your mind. And we don’t want you taking a year doing the job. But consider this a taste of what’s to come for you as a senior officer, and a test of if you should be promoted further.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll get us moving in the morning.”
“See that you do, Commander.”
He vanished.
Thirty Seven
Jane popped up with someone else.
He was an older man, wearing civvies, with the sort of beard Jill’s people called a goatee. His was mainly white now. His face was one I liked on sight.
“I noticed you were working, Bud,” said Jane, “so decided to give you the bad news straight away. This is John Slice, who owns the Apricot Mapping Service. I told you I was going to get that system surveyed, and he’s reported in already. John, tell Bud what you told me.”
“This system is useless. No other jump points, the planet looks like it was mined out possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago, and the asteroid fields are just rubbish. There is nothing here worth mining. Sorry. I know that wasn’t the news you wanted.”
“No matter,” I said. “We’ll find somewhere. Might mean combing the known navmap, but I’m sure an AI will kindly volunteer for that small task.”
I grinned, and he grinned along with me, while Jane frowned. When she didn’t say anything at all, I slowly lost my grin, and started getting worried. Slice though, found it even funnier. Finally she shook her head slowly a few times, and turned to Slice.
“Thanks for your help, John. I owe you one. Can you do me a small favour, and remove the comnavsats from the system before you leave it. Whatever civilization was there in the past, and what died there recently, we’ll leave them in peace.”
“I concur,” he said, and vanished.
Jane turned to me.
“You had the right idea, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it straight away. There is a system I know of which is basically one gigantic asteroid field, and we can mine there all we want without anyone ever knowing.”
“How does that come about?”
“It’s not on your navmap, but it is on mine. We called it War when we found it. The last time we visited it, one of the post time line shift Explorer ships had broken its back on the huge asteroid just inside the jump point, accounting for why it went missing a long time ago. Since we didn’t want anyone ending up the same way again, I removed the system from the map. There is only one system on the other side, and it’s lethal if you stay in there very long, which is another reason for not letting anyone through.”
“Is there enough resources in there for more than one shipyard?”
“More than enough for every shipyard in the Imperium, the Ralnor, and the Keerah combined, probably.”
“Are you going to share it with everyone?”
“Do you want to?”
“Not really. Are you sharing it with me?”
“Yes. But I was wondering if your skills might make the mining easier?”
“You want me to magic the gathering of resources?”
“If it can be done.”
“Oh, it can be done. Has been done. By Thorn. But I’ve never done it before. Let me think about i
t. At the least we’ll need a rift into the system from both of ours. And buttons. Lots of buttons.”
“Buttons?”
I explained it to her, and she vanished with a grin on her face. Whatever had been bothering her before, she’d apparently moved past it.
It was getting late, but I wasn’t yet ready for bed. Instead, I sat there thinking about the dead system. True to his word, the system dropped off the live navmap as each comnavsat was collected, and finally Slice’s ship jumped out.
I pondered a dead system which was no use to anyone, and decided I disagreed. It gave me some thoughts, and I sent new instructions to Hubaisha. She popped up immediately as I was starting to rise, and sat back down.
“I found out why this morning happened.”
“Oh? Why?”
“You can blame the Imperium News Service. They did a small piece announcing your promotion to grand mage. The Democratic Union media saw it, reinterpreted it as ‘Thorn’s heir takes on his mantle’, and made a big deal out of it. I traced the footprint back to some politicians who are making a noise about the court system not performing well enough since Thorn’s death.”
I sighed. It made sense that was what had happened. I needed to stop being in the news.
“Who’s the head of the Imperium news service?”
“Amy Allen. She’s a personal friend of the Imperator.”
Of course she was.
“Is she asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Have the station AI wake her, and get me a channel.”
It took a few minutes. When she popped up, it was head only, and she looked half asleep.
“What’s the emergency?” she asked.
“Do you know who I am?”
She took a moment to focus her eyes.
“Yes. Bud. The new grand master mage.”
“Are you familiar with where Thorn used to take people who annoyed him?”
She shuddered.
“A desert, wasn’t it?”
“Do you want to go there?”
She shuddered again.
“No. Why are you threatening me?”
“I’m not. I had a really bad day yesterday. Because you reported my mage promotion, I had to take two senior judges to that desert this morning, and explain a few things they didn’t want to hear to them. I’m an Imperium officer. I am NOT news. Do you understand that?”
“The only person who can talk to me like that is the Imperator.”
“Then I won’t talk to you any further. But if my name turns up in another news report about anything, I will ensure you have a very tanned skin, and require a stay in a care unit for dehydration. And if the Imperator pulls you back, I’ll keep sending you there when he isn’t looking.”
“They told me you were a sensible person. Now I see you’re still a kid.”
“No. I’m a powerful mage doing important war work, and you’re making my life harder than it needs to be. I’m not being childish. I’m seriously pissed off. And if you know anything about mages, you don’t deliberately piss us off.”
“I’ll be telling the Imperator you said all that.”
“Fine. I’ll expect his call. But consider this. It is a considerable asset to have a mage master owe you a favour. I don’t want to see my name in the news ever again. I am prepared to pay that back in the future should you need the services of a mage.”
She thought about it.
“I honestly can’t think of any reason why I would need a mage, but if I manage to piss off another one, maybe I’ll need a more powerful one to call on.”
“Exactly. But choose when you call wisely. Do we have an arrangement?”
“We do.”
She vanished.
Now I was ready for bed.
I found Serena waiting for me.
She was wearing three fig leaves, and a huge grin.
Thirty Eight
We did get asked for help.
I ignored training in the morning, and headed straight to my ready room, where I opened a channel to the Trixone station, and asked for Red Flower. It turned out it was looking for me. A dozen systems had been screaming for help, even from us, and even more so when one of them went silent. It sent me their locations, and I matched them up to known locations of Rawtenuga fleets.
By the time I’d finished checking on each location, training was ending.
The planet which went silent had a fleet heading away from it already, so it was likely too late to help them. The one in the most danger had a titan approaching it.
“Get the captains in their chairs, please Tamsin.”
“Confirmed.”
One by one they popped up on the console, and by then, we were already jumping.
“What’s up?” asked Jill.
“We’re going to have a long day. There are eleven planets screaming for help, and we’re going to try to help all of them. Gitte and Haynes, you’ll be doing the firing rifts. I’m going to make about half of each fleet vanish, but then we take what’s left the normal way, so we leave debris behind. I’ll salvage hulls and large stuff after if there are any, but I want sites left in space showing there was a battle. Work out which group you each do, and hit them at the same time when I tell you.”
“Where are the vanished going?” asked Gitte.
“Where do you think?”
There was a silence and several frowns. They were wrong, but it didn’t matter. The action matched my mood from the other day, and the fact we were going to leave only rubble left of the rest made what they thought was happening the easier death.
Tamsin was watching me, and I gave her the nod.
“All pilots to their ships. This is not a drill.”
We emerged from the last jump well above the Rawtenuga fleet. The titan was in the middle of two groups of sixteen battleships, before and after it. As I looked at them now, it was like the first time I really saw the formation for what it was. Four across, four deep, putting a lot of firepower pointing forward, while at the same time leaving no approach vector uncovered by multiple battleship guns, which could shift aim in less than a second because of the gimbal they were mounted on.
I also noticed something else. If you turned the ships on their side, the front of the ship looked like two dinosaur jaws about to close on their lunch. I shook my head, and reined in my imagination.
I prepared the magic I needed in my mind, connected to the local sun, and moved all the crews to a viable continent on the dead planet. I suddenly remembered I’d put some on my penal planet, and so I moved the remaining ones of them as well.
Power flooded through me, as moving something that far away, even through rifts, lit up every sun between here and my home system sun in my mind. It wasn’t many because of the active rifts, but I hadn’t asked for energy from them. It was like I’d moved up another level, where now I didn’t need to connect to a sun, they connected as soon as the magic needed them. Or maybe I’d just done it enough times, any magic I did now had it as a base intent to seek enough energy to perform the magic from the local sun.
And suddenly Thorn’s abilities finally made total sense to me. He hadn't needed to form the magic and connect to suns to do it. It was all implicit in what he wanted done, and hadn’t needed explicit thought. And now I’d moved to that level as well.
I concentrated again. The titan transport vanished, appearing in the dead system. The rear sixteen battleships also vanished and appeared nearby the titan. It seemed a pity to destroy the remaining sixteen, but this was a trading lane, and there were traders due through here in the near future. And I was very sure Jane would be checking on each battle at some point. We needed to leave something behind.
“Two wall formations please.”
The thirteen capital ships jumped, rearranging the formation into two smaller walls, and then the fighters jumped out to fill the walls in. It was classic overkill, but that’s what the whole idea was. Shoot from a distance where they didn’t know we were there, and leave sm
all debris behind. The ships seemed to be blissfully unaware they were about to die, still on course for the planet, but only by momentum.
That was an interesting part of the moving dinosaur magic I hadn't considered either. The drives on the ships had all shut down, leaving them just ballistic. When I moved them, they remained exactly where I put them, while the ones not moved kept going at the same speed. Somewhere in the magic intent was shutting the ships down, without me consciously specifying it.
“Fire.”
Less than a minute later, all sixteen ships were little more than rubble. A lot of torpedoes missed, and I moved them to near the debris fields back home, again shut down without me thinking it, where Hubaisha could recycle them.
“Home jump.”
The fighters vanished, and I looked over at Tamsin.
“Half hour break for everyone, then we do it again. If anyone wants breakfast, they should be quick.”
She sent the news on to her fellow AIs for passing on to their squadron leaders. I rose, and stalked into my ready room. I’d barely sat when Serena poked her head in the door.
“You okay?”
“Do I look not okay?”
“You’re doing a lot of killing. I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. I’ve got it all under control. Trust me.”
“I do.”
She pulled her head back out, and the door shut. And then promptly opened as a butler droid came in. It was carrying a tray, and when the lid came off, I saw my own breakfast.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” said Hubaisha, through the droid.
“You decided to do that formally now?”
“Cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, so why not? And I took your other advice as well. Aisha it is, from now on.”
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 16
