“You’re importing idiots?”
“Undoubtedly. Those mutineers we threw back are a confirmation.”
True.
“The magic won’t care. The rift isn’t even strictly necessary, but it makes the working of the magic easier.”
“Well, do it whatever way works best.”
I concentrated, and two rift outlines formed, about a kilometer apart.
“Done. Now where do you want those buttons installed?”
“Be seated again, and I’ll take us back there.”
She returned to the cockpit, and we started jumping again. I reviewed a number of images I’d taken with my PC. It was a quite spectacular system, if deadly for the unwary pilot. Although prudence would always have you travelling above the plane of the asteroids. All the same, if the Rawtenuga ever jumped one of their titans in through that jump point, there would an almighty crash, and whoever bet on the asteroid to win would get a good payout. Maybe not. No-one would bet on the titan.
That asteroid did make an imposing sight though, as did the images I took. I sent them to Aisha for turning into artwork, which I thought might be useful for decorating the blank walls in my various sitting rooms. It was at a least a start towards putting my own stamp on where I lived. Stark ship was boring after all. But that was a problem by design. My station living area though was exactly the same, and was begging for something. I wasn’t sure these were it, but it wasn’t going to cost me anything to find out, and even if it did, I wouldn’t notice it.
The Lightning docked to an airlock in a section of the shipyard I hadn’t even known existed. Although I should have. It was the storage area for all the raw resources the shipyard used to feed the fabricators. It was an interesting process. The storage bins were open to space, and when I say bin, I mean huge warehouse. Salvage droids were bringing asteroids of small to medium size right above each bin, applying enough gravity to them to make them shatter, and releasing the dirt into the bin, where more gravity generators kept it in place.
Each bin was primarily for a different type of dirt, or containing specific concentrations of needed elements. More salvage droids would hover over the bin, gravity would pull an amount to the sled, and it would take it off to be fed to an extractor, a group of which fed a fabricator.
We found Bob waiting in an office nearby, with a wall of buttons, each of which was numbered, and labeled with a name. One had ‘gold’ on the label. What little I knew of electronics included the snippet that gold was still used in computers. Not the refined gold used for jewellery, but still gold, which needed to be removed from the dirt it was hiding in. That was one area I could do something to make it easier.
“Let me understand this,” said Bob. “Each button will be linked to the storage bin where we keep that element now, and when we press it, the magic will fill the space with only that element, sourced from an asteroid field on the other side of the galaxy?”
“That’s the theory,” I said, giving him a smile. “Do you have a plan of where connects to which button?”
“I do.”
He popped up a screen showing the locations of each bin, with a number on it. They were scattered around the shipyard somewhat, depending on where the fabricators were located.
I concentrated on the magic to join up the buttons, which were a size for a full palm press to activate, and far enough apart not to hit another one by mistake, to the bins, and with a firm press, to fill the bin with what was wanted from the War system asteroids, through the rift specifically to that system. I felt the local sun kick in, and executed the magic.
Nothing of course happened to indicate I’d done anything. I looked at Bob.
“When are you going to do it?”
“Just did. If you care to try filling an empty bay, let’s see what happens.”
He went up to the wall of buttons, popped up a screen of a small but definitely empty bin, and put his hand against the one labelled ‘gold’. Nothing happened.
“Firm press. It needs to be deliberate to activate the magic.”
He pressed firmly, and suddenly the bin was full. He pulled up another screen, checked on what the sensors said the concentrations were, and looked at me with disbelief.
“Pure gold dust?” he exclaimed. “That’s impossible.”
“May I remind you about the Imperium viewpoint on that matter, Bob?” laughed Jane.
“No, don’t bother. But now I have another problem.”
“What?” I asked.
“Now I need security to make sure no-one raids the bins!”
Both of us laughed, and after a moment, he did too. He checked a few more, and they all worked, and all had what was wanted in almost pure form.
Jane led us back to the Lightning, and took us over to another much smaller shipyard. It too had an area of bins, with just as many of them, but much smaller. I repeated the magic for the rift to my own system, we filled up all the bins, and left. Once clear, I opened a rift into high orbit above my ground based shipyard, and gently pushed the yard through. Almost immediately, a freighter left the surface on its way to the shipyard, and one of the Rawtenuga battleships started moving towards the single bay large enough to take it. Interestingly, a salvage droid started pulling one of the truncated hulks towards the cruiser sized bay.
Jane took Bob back to his station, me back to nearby my base, and then took herself off on whatever else she had to do. I hadn't jumped myself to the bridge of Judge, but to the Rawtenuga titan I’d appropriated. I repeated the whole process there, after I’d created the bins and the buttons, and a third rift into War, which came out half way around the system, where I thought it would never be found if anyone went there again.
I was back in time for lunch, where Aisha showed everyone the hardcopy images of the asteroid field I’d taken, before putting them in my living room for me to decide where to put them on walls. But I knew damned well it would be Serena who decided what went where, including the option of the recycler.
Oddly though, she loved them.
Forty Five
We took that walk on the station.
What had been on Diplomat was now many times larger, and only half the retail and office space was ours. The rest had businesses representing what we’d seen on the Trixone station. The docks had been divided into three sections. Military, Imperium civilian, and locals. The station having originally been a Trixone one, had all the right docking for their ships, which was why our docking was separate. Since the docking clamps didn’t match, there was very little risk of ships going to the wrong docks.
Tamsin filled me in on the currency situation. Apparently Jane had bought a significant amount of the local station’s currency using an exchange rate worked out by one of the diplomatic teams. Everyone on the station was using the Imperium credit for transactions, with the local merchants able to withdraw local currency when they wanted it.
Serena had found a number of items she wanted to purchase, but had held off until I’d been able to see them. She must have been thinking of decorating quarters as well, since they were all forms of artwork or decoration. We agreed on about half of her choices, and bought all of them anyway.
We were just moving off towards another store Serena wanted me to see, when Tamsin stopped us, and we moved to a relatively quiet spot just up the hallway.
“Just a heads up. There’s a rescue mission in progress, with the Claymore Task Force jumping to save a pre-space flight civilization. A comnavsat picked up their distress call a few minutes ago, immediately after being positioned. Shouldn’t be a problem for them, as it’s just a Trixone recon fleet. Eagle Wing went with them, without their carriers, as the extra firepower wasn’t considered needed.”
She broke off as Serena grabbed my arm suddenly. We all turned to her.
“It’s a trap!”
She swayed as if about to fall over, and I grabbed her.
“You have to go now. Jump to a Lightning, and GO! We’ll follow you.”
I took her at her wo
rd. In a blink I was on one of Judge’s Lightnings. I rushed to the cockpit, yelling commands to Aisha. Leanne had the navmap up showing where I needed to go. I felt the line of suns light up in my mind, and jumped the ship.
I was a second too late.
Ships had debris spraying away from them, where hits had gone right through the hulls.
My staff appeared in my hand, and time stopped with the need to know what was going on. It happened without me even thinking about it.
Shade was missing the entire bridge section of her upper hull. Bludgeon was in even worse shape, with most of her engines just gone. Both carriers had fared better, but neither of them were going to be landing fighters any time soon. Theirs had launched, but dozens of them had been destroyed at the same time the capital ships had been hit. All the other capital ships were in a similar state. There was a pattern to the damage, which I’d figure out when I had time.
Eagle’s Excalibur was gone, as was something like a third of his command.
I looked round to see what could do something like this.
And found the trap.
Just emerging from the atmosphere were thousands of fighters, and they were grouped up for whatever target they’d been firing at. They explained all the fighters being destroyed in one instant, as well as the corvettes. But not the damage to the big ships.
I looked further, and found the front end of thirty battleships also just coming up out of the atmosphere. Each of them had had a target, and some of them appeared to be grouped towards the biggest ships.
They’d all fired once, at the same time.
It was about as perfect a trap as was possible to build. I didn’t know how they’d sprung it so well, or why they’d done it at all, but those questions would find answers at some point.
I found Eagle. He was tumbling away in space, with a full protection space suit on. Focused on him, I found more than two hundred people in the wreckage of their fighters, or tumbling like Eagle, the momentum of the blasts carrying them away from their damaged ships after being blown out into space.
The last I found was Dreamwalker. His suit was gone, and he was in space in his underwear and the remains of the suit used to give him sight, which had obviously shifted as a last resort to save him, and was almost completed shredded. A mage was nearby, with a shield around her.
The first problem was saving these people. The planet didn’t appear to be inhabited, and there was not enough of anything to suggest it was habitable. So I started looking at the ships, looking for one with a large space which didn’t look life support compromised, and still had functioning power systems. The best of them was one of the destroyers, which had been lightly hit, and still had its entire habitation deck intact. Moving them just required intent.
Which was when I realized there was something else I needed to do first.
The tree battleships were going to fire again within a few seconds. The plant fighters only had small guns to fire with until their big guns recharged, but some of our fighters still left wouldn’t take much more fire to destroy, and given what had just occurred, mosquito missiles might not fire in enough numbers to ensure missiles about to be fired wouldn’t hit anyone.
I had to protect everyone first.
The staff ground into the deck, and time restarted.
I jumped the Lightning to be between the planet and the ships, and extended a giant mirror shield across the entire fleet, and further, so no Trixone ship could hit an Imperium one again. Small gun fire rippled out from the fighters immediately, as they continued to come towards the crippled ships.
The pilots and crew in space vanished with a thought, reappearing spread along the length of the destroyer’s available spaces. A second thought moved Dreamwalker straight into a care unit, and activated it.
The battleships fired again, and the shield started bouncing fighter fire back towards them. By the time the battleship pulses hit the shield, the remaining Excaliburs capable of jumping had vanished. Nineteen relatively intact fighters didn’t though, so I moved them to join where the others had jumped to, while moving the pilots to the destroyer, which had also jumped further away.
The battleship pulses bouncing back mainly missed, but Trixone fighters took their own fire, and many of them fell out of formation.
For the moment, we had a stalemate.
“Spacemage to all Excaliburs. Remain where you are. Do not engage. I’ve got this.”
I didn’t wait for an acknowledgement, but as the battleships fired again, I reached across space, and jumped in thirty six Rawtenuga battleships, and hoped like hell Aisha had them ready.
The ships appeared without any momentum, at point blank range.
For a moment they sat there, and then every forward facing gun fired, the Trixone battleships disintegrated, and the debris started falling back towards the planet. Aisha could call herself a combat ship AI now. Her head popped up on the console.
“That worked!”
The fighters fired their cruiser guns again, and I flinched as the shield took the hits and bounced them. Fighters vanished as their own fire destroyed them, with their debris falling back into the ones behind on the way down.
“What’s your status?”
“Power is fine, but the crystals are not connected up properly yet, so I’ve got standard Rawtenuga shielding. All the guns are operational. But the engines are not functional.”
“I don’t need engines. Prepare to fire everything again.”
The battleships moved to the edge of the fighter cloud, and I gave them a push. Every gun they had started firing in all directions at once, as they plunged into both the formations of fighters, and the atmosphere of the planet.
I had a few moments to spare, and used them to check all the ships again. One by one, I stopped the movement of every big ship, checked the status of the crew, and moved any who were hurt or had their suits connected to ship life support.
In the time that took, more than half the plant fighters were destroyed, and my battleships came out the down side of them, now in freefall. A moment later they were back up and facing the other side of the remaining cloud, and I pushed them through again. The formations had been broken, and whoever was still in command of the plants, wasn’t getting any coordinated fire anymore.
Which was when something big and red appeared on the side I’d moved my ships from, and tore into the remaining fighters. I let mine continue on until a collision seemed inevitable in the middle, and jumped them to join the Excaliburs. The big red pilot had balls of steel and didn’t appear to flinch, and the ship kept flying through where mine had been a few seconds earlier.
The big red triangle revealed itself to be Rogue, and the super-dreadnaught quite literally disintegrated everything in its path. But gravity has its way, and as the last fighter vanished into dust, Rogue herself was going down faster than the pilot seemed to realize was safe.
I yanked, and as a rift formed ahead of the ship, it reappeared below the Excaliburs.
My staff vanished, and I finally sank into the chair.
Forty Six
I sat too soon.
“Tally-ho!” yelled Jill.
Navy Mage Squadron One appeared on the other side of the planet, about half their Excaliburs jumped out, and the lot vanished in a blink.
The Lightning moved. I found the remainder of the fleets which the battleships belonged to arrayed in front of me. I figured there’d been five normal fleets here, and the rest of the battleships had been brought in especially for the trap. There were only cruisers and destroyers here now.
I jumped again, to a spot right in the middle of their formations, and this time the staff appeared in my left hand. My right hand clenched.
Ships flashed into existence next to Trixone ones, punished them, and vanished. Some of the hits were terminal. I saw Rogue hit a cruiser, which just turned into dust.
No-one was staying long enough to get damaged too much, so I let them go. But I wasn’t going to let the Trixon
e adapt. So far we’d been lucky this fleet hadn’t been expecting to be jumped, and didn’t have their defensive grid fire system ready. But the guns were tracking in.
Time to give them a more important target.
My awareness surged beyond the limitations of the Lightning cockpit, and I force punched the nearest plant ship. The middle third of it vanished. I kept going, and within seconds all the remaining guns started tracking the Lightning. The shield went up before the first pulses reached me, and this time it was a normal shield.
It was all my captains needed to finish the job. The Trixone didn’t know where the biggest threat was, and by now had no-one able to co-ordinate them fast enough.
One by one they either died by my hand, or by the fire of Rogue, Judge, or one of the destroyers and their Excalibur walls. It took longer to clean up the smaller ships than it had to do the original battle on the other side of the planet.
My awareness returned to the cockpit I was sitting in, and Leanne popped up the navmap. There was a big grey dot on it now.
The dot identified itself as Redoubt.
I jumped immediately back to the other side, found an unoccupied docking area of the station, and moved all the people on the destroyer there. With a lot more care, I moved the care unit Dreamwalker was in to the main medical facility, putting it as close as I dared to the medical people there, who were preparing for any casualties to come in.
As I watched, the Eagle Wing and Claymore Excaliburs took their wounded bird’s under tow, and started towards the station. Those of the smaller capital ships still capable of moving, did the same. Those not moving I checked again for people. There were none aboard, and I figured they’d used rifts to Haven.
Rogue appeared over by Redoubt, where salvage droids were launching in large numbers. Navy Mage One reformed into an arrow head formation over the top of Redoubt, facing the planet, and their Excaliburs vanished back onto their ships.
Now my staff vanished again, and I let out a long sigh. Serena popped up on the console.
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 19
