Tomorrow's Spacemage

by Timothy Ellis

  "Just as long as it's not got a volcano on it. Or under it."

  We both laughed.

  "Done."

  "Hold on, I've not agreed to anything."

  "Bounce it off the girls. There's plenty of time."

  "When are we going home?"

  "When I know things are heading in the right direction, and I know I won't need to take major magical action."

  "So sometime next year."

  Sixty Five

  We jumped home a week later.

  The translators were installed, and communications were now available across both civilizations. Access was still limited, but there were issues to work out. Both fleets had left several ships for patrolling the border area, as much for keeping traders in line as anything else, and the rest had headed out to the new jump points I’d given them. None of them led towards my own people's space.

  Laws had been passed officially making slavery illegal, and at my suggestion, clarifying the word to include indentured servitude. More laws restricted the use of guns, and heavily restricted the use of explosives. There was some unrest, but both police forces successfully dealt with it all, without using guns.

  A group of high military officers were executed by the kingdom, the day before we left. The king had obviously taken my comment seriously. I took it as a sign things were on track.

  As soon as the ship appeared over the villages below, the girls started looking for changes.

  I managed to hide how worried I was about the possibility of them ceasing to exist. I was risking a lot by deliberately changing things, and I'd known how dangerous it was for them. The object of the exercise, as well as getting rid of slavery and guns, had been no more wars. No wars meant a lot of people wouldn’t have died, and a lot of resources not lost. How this impacted the time line was unpredictable.

  Tasha left her chair, and came over to me. She gave me a big hug, her standing and me sitting, and whispered in my ear.

  "See. Nothing to worry about after all."

  Maybe I hadn't hid it as well as I thought. She pecked me on the lips, and went to see if she could help. I waited for them to finish.

  "I think you did it," announced Jen a while later, after the four of them had compared notes. "All the major changes you wanted are there, and a few you probably didn’t expect."

  I raised an eyebrow. Jess caught my eye, grinning.

  "The kingdom has changed from absolute to constitutional. So the military coup never happened. But the system of kings evolved under the influence of their democratic cousins. The big surprise is your friend the new marshal, is the current king."

  "The current prime minister remains the same," added Lea. "And as far as I can tell, our lives have mainly happened as we remember them. With a few changes. There was a recent slavery problem, Jen's issues in the military still happened, and her parents were still killed. There wasn't a war, but the piracy problem still existed. We were recalled into the military the second time, but it was in case meeting a new species went badly, but apparently it didn’t. So we were released again."

  "There have been no riots of any kind for centuries," added Jess.

  "You are still listed as a Judge with both governments," said Tasha, "and all the recent events seem to have happened with only minor modifications."

  "How did the marshal become king, if there were no military rulers?"

  I was quite curious about this, being perhaps the largest change.

  "The previous king was corrupt," said Lea, "and they came very close to a military coup again. You killed the king instead of the grand marshal, and put his son on the throne, who at the time, was a junior admiral. Apparently there was an attempt to reintroduce inquisitors as well, and you dealt with them too."

  "What do people think about magic now?"

  The girls laughed.

  "The official line," said Lea, "is still magic doesn’t exist. It's no longer a forbidden topic in the kingdom, but it's not something discussed very much. The media have picked up on some of what you've been doing, and speculation is rife, but no-one knows anything for sure. Other than those who do know for sure, but aren't saying anything."

  "One interesting thing," added Tasha. "Both languages are taught in all primary schools now, and a high proportion of the people speak both. More interestingly, I think, is they retained two languages, rather than evolving a common one. So you didn't manage to get them to merge, but they became almost as close."

  I noticed Jen had left the bridge, but she returned quickly with a tray. On it were five champagne flutes. We each took one.

  "Success," she toasted, and clinked flutes, and drank.

  Sixty Six

  We slept in our own beds on my island that night.

  At first I’d been unable to sleep, so I checked a few things out.

  Over on another land mass, all the ships I’d been hoarding there, were still there. Which gave the indication the change in the time line, hadn't affected this planet at all, even if why some of those ships existed, hadn't actually happened. It was an anomaly, but one I could accept.

  The volcano was still erupting.

  The villages were unchanged, and the people seemed to be settling in well. Only hours had passed for them, so the mages were still only beginning their work on extra facilities. I was going to be adding to their list very soon, as I wanted proper sewers, and fresh water supplies provided. Some of modern society was going to be incorporated as fast as we could do it, and the rest left to the people to decide what they wanted.

  I cast my sight out into space again. The other kingdoms were still there, and appeared to be flourishing. Interestingly though, none of the further three had space travel yet, although two of the three were being visited by space traders, and both appeared to have joined larger empires.

  Closer to home, it was only a matter of time now before the Keerah turned up. The patriarchy had joined them, and they were using their magic in subtle ways to help the empire. I set wards to announce their presence, several jump points away from where our joint space ended. There was no telling which direction they would come from, since their empire already flowed around our space in several directions. Upright walking tigers were going to be a shock to some, but several just as strange species had been met now, and the expectation of variations in species was part of media reports, fueled by governments who wanted their people prepared for more of them.

  All in all, I was content. A lot of people hadn't died, and all five kingdoms had thrived.

  I turned over, and went to sleep.

  Over the next few weeks, I discussed our military requirements with the girls, the mage masters, and the mayor. We had some soldiers, who'd stayed with the village, but retraining them was going to be a long term exercise. My main aim was to get a military presence in space. While no-one but a few pirates knew where our planet was, this would change at some point, possibly without any real warning. I wanted to have a block point set up before it happened.

  Within the month, I'd built two stations. One over the planet, for keeping traders from landing, while allowing us to trade, whenever this began. The other was at the single jump point into the area of space I was claiming, which novels often called a choke point.

  We had a formal ceremony, creating our new military, and appointing Jen as Admiral of the Fleet. The master battle mage was appointed Mage General. It was her task to defend us from space if need be. And his task to modernize our troops, and expand over the decades as our population grew.

  Jen's first action was to invite Sasha and her team to join us, and they formed the core of a marine unit for the choke point station. Between them, they started recruiting enough troops to be an effective space police force, and enough ship officers to man all the ships I'd promised Jen. The whole team were promoted, so new units could form under their supervision.

  Jess became head of space engineering, also based out on the choke point station, although she moved around a lot.

  Lea astoun
ded all of us by declaring herself the choke point station chief administrator, and set about recruiting enough people to run both stations.

  By the time we had enough people to run everything, the cat was out of the bag, and traders began to visit us. They were 'encouraged' to dock at the block point station straight after jumping in, given rules and regulations for their stay, and allowed to continue on.

  I set up magic to mine the various asteroid belts in the systems I'd claimed, and we rapidly became known as a source for a lot of the hard to find elements. We established a banking system, set up exchange rates, and started earning more than we were paying out.

  Tasha and I lived on my island, but we visited the villages and the stations on a regular basis. She took an interest in the ground forces training, and updated training regimens. The existing troops were progressively updated to modern ways of fighting, and then to using guns. She also learned the capabilities of available mages for a war use, and helped integrate modern fighting and battle magic. She steadfastly refused a commission.

  My judge duties continued. I had an office on the planet station for the odd occasion we needed a judge. And I was periodically called to act as a judge on other planets. It quickly become normal to call me in, when the truth was proving difficult to establish. The court systems changed, as they adapted to having a truth detector available, and lawyers stopped defending when their clients were proved to be guilty. Trials when I was there, became more about sentencing and mitigation circumstances, once guilt was established. The systems became less adversarial, and more about the sentence fitting the crime.

  Six months after returning from the past, Tasha and I were married. It was a big affair, with everyone from both villages, and quite a lot from the stations, attending. My father was my best man, the master battle mage acted as father of the bride, and Lea was bridesmaid. The Mayor conducted the ceremony.

  Both the prime minister and king attended. They and their support staff were amazed at how primitive the villages were, but also recognized how modern both the stations and our ships were, considering they were their designs. A tour around the planet in a shuttle revealed a number of unique natural features, and suddenly we had tourism options. It wasn’t long after a tour operator visited our space, and a 'wonders of the untamed galaxy' tour began, of many of the planets in our space, both habitable and not.

  We honeymooned at the best hotels in both capital cities, and mingled with the crowds, while Tasha shopped for both of us.

  It was only then I realized the biggest single change I’d made had been social. In both capitals, all skin colours were represented, going from a deep brown, through pinky white, to varying shades of orange, showing the open border policy had worked brilliantly.

  We were all one people, and everyone treated each other the same.

  Epilogue

  Once again, I've updated this pad in the memorial monument, with my full chronicle of events.

  Once again, I'm leaving this record here, as a testament to anyone curious about what happens when you use great power badly.

  In all likelihood as you read this, I'm long dead now. I may or may not update this record. Perhaps not. What happens to me now, isn’t really relevant. I turned five kingdoms into five societies, and prepared them for their future. Now it's time for me to take a back seat, and stay out of the way of history.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever meet the man in red, as the Oracle predicted I would, but I'll keep an eye out every now and then.

  I'll leave it to you, to be the judge of if what I did, was good or bad, right or wrong.

  Things were, things are, and things happen.

  We make choices, and we live with them.

  I'll live with mine.

  But this time, I'm not alone. I have friends, and family.

  Thorn.

  On a planet still not named.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks goes to Kalen O'Donnell for the cover design for this book, and Egosoft for the ship image.

  A Message to my Readers

  I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book, although it wasn’t planned when I wrote Yesterday's Spacemage. This is book three of the trilogy, and I must admit, I've enjoying writing more of Thorn, and being in the head of a character who cares nothing for technology, and how things work in space.

  I started Yesterday's Spacemage with one and a bit books worth of ideas, and settled for just the one book. The premise was what would happen if you took a medieval magician, and thrust him into a space society. I wondered where it would go, and Thorn took me on a merry ride. Then you all demanded another book. I had ideas, but not enough for a trilogy. Judge Thorn was quite a surprise, but I ran with it as Thorn told me what to write. But for book three, while going back to the beginning was obvious, it meant actually building the world he came from. Hence book three has taken a lot longer to write, and still would have done so without my health problems.

  The interesting thing for me about this series, is it was never about an over powered character facing off with some other over powered opponent. It was always about the internal journey of a super hero, and what the true costs of using great power are. It was also never about the people around Thorn, which is why most of them have little development, and in a lot of cases, no names. This was Thorn's journey, and he's taken me on a good one, I think.

  It's taken longer to write this third installment than I would have liked, but as I said, this one required a lot more world building than the previous two, and I had to roll with the punches my health issues hit me with. While this is the end of this story, I won't say there won't be any more Thorn stories to come. There are a few ideas popping in now. But for now, my attention turns back to the long awaited next Jon Hunter book.

  If you have enjoyed this book, I hope you will take the time to leave a review. All reviews are greatly appreciated, as they help assist purchasing decisions by other readers.

  Sales and reviews help me to focus on my next project. Sales pay my bills, and my ability to continue writing is dependent on the sales of this book, my previous series, and what comes after.

  I thank you for your support, and hope you'll continue to read my next book.

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  Thank you.

  Timothy Ellis

  Also by Timothy Ellis

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  The Hunter Legacy Timeline

  Approx. 3100 years before Hero to the End

  Yesterday's Spacemage (chapter one)

  Tomorrow's Spacemage

  646 years before Hero to the End

  The Long Road to Gaia

  82 years before Hero to the End

  Yesterday's Spacemage

  Today's Spacemage

  Tomorrow's Spacemage

  2 Years before Hero to the End

  Hero at Large

  Hunted Hero Hunting

  Send in the Hero

  Make or Break the Hero

  Hail the Hero

  Burnside's Killer

  Hire a Hero

  Jane's Christmas

  Hero to the Rescue

  Hero at the Gates

  The Long Road to Gaia

  1 Year before Hero to the End

  Home is Where the Hero Is

  Hero in Darknessr />
  Hero to the End

  Here be a time line shift.

  100 years before Leader Jane (Gaia galaxy)

  First Comes Chaos (Rexan Discovery: Book 1) *Forthcoming*

  Immediately after Hero to the End (Gaia galaxy)

  Admiral Jane

  Queen Jane

  Snark's Quest

  Destiny Stone

  Talisman of Tomorrow

  Leader Jane

  Rexan Discovery: Book 2 *Forthcoming*

  Rexan Discovery: Book 3 *Forthcoming*

  Immediately after Hero to the End (Earth galaxy)

  Crossover *Forthcoming*