“I’d rather they didn’t.”
Fourteen
Another clearing further down the hill had more knights in it.
Willow had led the way at a brisk clip, making more questions impossible. I pondered why Arthur and his people had been here, but came up empty. He’d never told us what his people were doing in their wanderings. We knew they helped whoever was in trouble when they could, and had put their lives on the line when we’d met them. But other than that, we still knew very little about them.
Mind you, they’d solved some very real problems in advance for me now, making it a lot easier for me. Had they not been here, we’d be communicating in sign language until Sim worked their language out. All the same, one had to wonder how they’d picked up a language Arthur would have assumed they would never come into contact with, given how far away our original space was from here. Which also made me wonder if Arthur had had forewarning I’d be coming here. Anything was possible.
The other knights varied a bit in height, all being taller than even Gor was, and were wearing the identical armour. Faces were revealed, and they were a mix of male and female looking, but all with a body you would call male. Then again, there was nothing at the groin level with any of them which indicated male either. Definitely a mystery. Hair colour varied as much as I was used to, but there wasn’t enough showing because of their helmets to tell if some wore it long or short. Or even which sex wore it long or short.
Willow introduced me, and I introduced Sim and Gor as being my officers. She hadn't bothered introducing anyone else, so I’d assumed she was the only officer, and so didn’t introduce anyone else. Which was handy because other than the names of the characters they looked like, most of which I didn’t remember anyway, they had no names.
More knights joined us, coming in from several directions. They looked surprised to see us, but didn’t ask any questions. Finally, Willow did so, asking the obvious.
“Are you from the crashed ship?”
“Yes. Although it was two ships. We collided in orbit, and couldn’t recover before the gravity well pulled us down.”
“Is this all of you? All who survived I mean?”
“Yes and no.”
This gained some smiles.
“Explain.”
It sounded like an order, but the smile seemed to indicate it wasn’t.
“We’re missing one crew member, so I don’t know if he’s alive or not. But if you go to the crash site, you’ll find we have droids working on repairs.”
“Droids?”
“Robots.”
“Ah. We have some of them as well. From the damage done to the mountain, I’d guess both ships were really large. Are you saying the ten of you are your whole crew?”
“Pretty much. Although not the normal crew. Today was something different, and I left most of my regular crew behind. But if you’re asking about crew numbers in general, most of our ships have only a dozen crew, with only the largest of them having more. We don’t need them, such is our level of automation.”
“Interesting. Arthur’s ship didn’t have a large crew either, but he told us stories of ships carrying thousands.”
“We used to be that way, until a war came along where larger crews just meant you lost more people at one stroke. We downsized crew sizes until only command and control needed people, and everything else was done by droids and computer systems.”
She looked as if she was going to say something more, and changed her mind.
“You think you can repair your ship?”
“I don’t know yet. We have two smaller ones which were extensively damaged, but they should be repairable. The main ship is heavily damaged, but for now, we’re proceeding on the basis it can be repaired enough to get us home.”
“Assuming you can get past the ships in orbit?”
“Yes. I’m not sure what is in orbit though. Our arrival was a bit unexpected. But when the time comes, we can find out, and make plans based on what is there.”
“I’ll ask you to explain that sometime, but not now. Did any of these plant things survive the crash?”
“Not as far as we could tell. They leave a trail in the earth when they move, and there was no indication of them at our part of the crash site.”
“What are they?”
“They’re called the Trixone. Just a big moving plant, with a very nasty stinger in the flower head, which kills most animals from a single touch. They own about a third of the core galaxy, and recently launched a massive attack on the rest. The Keerah were caught napping and are being pushed back. The Ralnor asked for our help, and we managed to stop most of their advances.”
“The Ralnor we don’t know. The Keerah are tigers, no?”
“Yes. You know them?”
“We had contact a few centuries ago. We removed ourselves from their space.”
“So you have ships?”
“Not any more. We found this planet, decided it would make an ideal home, and haven’t bothered with space flight since. Being attacked is something new. What do they want?”
“The Trixone consider all animals as food. They are very intelligent, but we don’t know if this is individual or a kind of group or hive intelligence. Our Imperator has had talks with them, but wasn’t successful in convincing them to stop fighting us. Their attitude was basically, ‘why should they listen to their food’.”
“So where did the ones we just fought come from?”
“Probably from a ship in orbit. Most likely they set down in one of these glades, far enough away we wouldn’t know they were coming, and were heading towards the crash site to see if any of their people survived.”
“As we were. You said people. You consider them people?”
“Pretty much. They’re a sentient being, even if they are a plant. We’d prefer to co-exist with them if possible, the same as we do with every being we meet.”
“Do you mean co-exist? Or is that your way of saying conquer?”
“The Imperium doesn’t conquer. Of course I don’t expect you to believe that until we prove it to you. But having met you, our main aim is trading with you on a long term basis. We can connect you to a lot of other planets, allowing you to trade what you have excess of for what you need, or desire.”
“We desire to be left alone. Will you give us that?”
“We can ensure it. And trading does not imply needing to leave your planet, or have others visit it.”
She looked at me as if trying to determine if I was lying or not.
“Time will tell.”
“It usually does. I take it you were heading for the crash site then?”
“Yes. My patrol swings past this area periodically, so we were nearest when the crash occurred, although not close enough to get there before now.”
“You still patrol even when your city is being bombarded?”
“It’s a minor inconvenience, and we have other concerns. However, it sounds like it’s going to become a major inconvenience.”
“Very likely. If what’s in orbit was a scout fleet, you can expect an assault fleet within a few days. Unfortunately, I don’t know where this planet is, so I can’t tell how fast they’ll come.”
“But you feel sure they will come?”
“No doubts at all. And when they do, what’s hitting your city shield now will be just like a light rain, and at the same time, they’ll swamp your walls with soldiers. We’ve seen it happen a lot in the last few weeks.”
“Can your people help us?”
“We would if I knew where we are, and could call for help. Maybe you can help with that?”
“We have star maps.”
“Could be enough. At the very least, if we can figure out where this system is in relation to our own space, and we can get one of our ships operational, we can send it for help.”
“You said send it, not take it.”
“I did.”
“I think we need you to meet our king.”
Fifteen
The Trixone had begun hitting our defenses while we were on the beach.
A day relaxing had been good for all of us I think, but there was no escaping reality, and while eating that evening, I replayed the highlights of the day. The plants hadn't really learned much. They came through a fleet at a time as they’d done from the beginning, with the only variation being they sent a fleets worth of fighters through between the fleets themselves.
Each jump point was at least one system away from our actual space, except for the one now being called Keerah’s Folly. We had at least two battlestations on each jump point, and they took care of the big ships without much difficulty. A lot of the fighters made it past, but the titan and any local ships took care of them without them being much of a threat. Capital ship missiles made short work of killing a fighter after all, and we had plenty of smaller ones to throw at them in groups.
Chris had done a good job of teaching the other titan drivers how to fight fighters. He’d hated it, but while Claymore was in the shipyard, Jon had made sure he’d passed on everything the fighter pilots had learned that was usable by a capital ship. And it showed, although the big ships didn’t really need to do more than sit there and fire all their small caliber stuff.
I wasn’t even sure where Chris was at the moment. Jon had a number of task forces out on recon in both Ralnor and Keerah space, keeping the Wayward fleet busy, while he himself was moving all over the core finding fleets to move to the front lines. Keerah’s Folly now had a Keerah fleet at each jump point I noticed, as well as the titans. Which presumably meant the diplomatic efforts had made some progress. I sure was glad I had no part in any of that.
Amy was putting out a war status report now, updated every few hours. It seemed her efforts to build an Imperium news service were getting somewhere as well, and she’d attracted newsies from all the Imperium members, who were each doing local information vids. Amy was presenting these herself as the main anchor.
Nut curled up in my arms that night, but it took me a while to go to sleep, wondering what Chris was doing, and wishing he was here with me. It really did figure, though. I finally find someone who gets me, and there’s a bloody war on, keeping us apart, and threatening to end it before it could really begin. In the end I did get to sleep.
In the morning, Nut went off for a playdate on the butler driven cat train, and I walked through to Redoubt for my meeting with Tanith.
“I’m not sure what you think I can do for you,” he said, as I sat opposite him in one of the small offices near the CCC.
“As far as I know, you’re the only mage who can throw a ship into the next system.”
“Not on my own. I can do across a system with a shuttle, but anything bigger or further needs help from the Imperator and his staff.”
“That’s not what I need.”
“What do you need?”
“Someone who understands the process, and who can figure out where the test jump drive went wrong.”
“So you think it works, but the magic was wrong?”
“Seems pretty obvious to me.”
“Well, you might be right, but I’ve never worked with objects imbued with magic before.”
“Very few have as far as I can gather, which I admit isn’t much. But I don’t think that’s the point anymore. We saw a ship jump using a magic device. We know it at least half works. Given that fact, surely it’s a matter of tweaking the magic to get it working correctly?”
“Maybe. I’d need access to the mages who worked on it.”
“Being organized now.”
“Even then, they may not know what they did.”
“Why not?”
He sighed.
“Pangbornd is known as a one man band.”
“You know him?”
“Know of him. I actually know very few of my people. The time line shift seems to have wiped out my generation, and as far as I can ascertain on the quiet, even the older generations are not the people I knew. And their skill sets are very different now to what I was taught. I’ve tried to update my knowledge of who is doing what these days, but the Imperator keeps me pretty busy.”
“He keeps all of us busy. One way or another. Can you at least touch base with the development team and see if you can push them in the direction of fixing the damn thing?”
“I can try. Why is it important?”
“In the short term, my gut tells me George is in a lot more trouble than probably he even knows. And if so, we’re going to need to find him as fast as we can. Jumping from system to system is going to be a damn sight faster than crossing each system the usual way. Hell, even moving from jump points in to where the habitable planets are likely to be, and then outward to the next jump point will speed things up immensely.”
“How do you know he’s even on a habitable world?”
“I don’t. He could be anywhere. But that’s not how our luck works.”
“How does it work?”
“You should know. The highers move us around however they want to.”
“Highers?”
“Kali or Ganesha type highers. Maybe Thirteen or One as well. Any of the highers could easily have overridden the jump spell once it went rogue, and dropped George somewhere he was needed. The oracle more or less confirmed it, but I’m assuming he’s on a planet, and not out in space somewhere.”
“Gut feel?”
“Yeah. Get used to it.”
He laughed.
I pushed him into thinking about how the jump magic might have gone, and we discussed how it should work. I’d had this discussion with Chris already, since it’d been his idea, and had managed to talk to George about it as well, adding my own credit worth to the discussion. George had then gone ahead with the mage team and Bob to build it. Tanith had some interesting insights, which made me wonder why he hadn't been included in the first place, but his comment about the mage master in charge could explain it. I wasn’t going to ask him, and at this point, it wasn’t really important.
Janet, the Redoubt AI, informed us the mage team was assembled in a conference room, and we joined them. I kept my face as straight as I could, given Amanda and the girls looked like they had all but driven them there at gunpoint. Normally their sidearms, like mine, were hidden by our suits, but they all had theirs showing.
Tanith didn’t even blink. He took charge of the room immediately he entered. I could see the other mages didn’t like him being there, but it didn’t take long for them to realize while he wasn’t a recognized master, he was seriously more powerful than the rest of them combined.
In no time at all, he’d extracted what the problem had been.
None of them had expected the jump drive to work at all, the expectation being no amount of ship power was going to move a ship as big as a Scimitar at all. It quickly became apparent although they could all move themselves and objects a fair distance, none of them thought moving any sized ship was possible. They’d been as stunned as everyone else when Scimitar had vanished clean off the nav map.
I think Amanda was quite ready to shoot them all. But Tanith steered the discussion to the theoretical, which bored the rest of us, and we finally left them to it with instructions to figure out what went wrong, and to take a solution to Bob to get another drive made.
Tanith gave me a quick double eyebrow raise as I left, so I assumed he had this under control. I pinged Bob to get another device ready, with Chaos having the extra crystal and power generators to run it. He pinged back he’d already done so, and was waiting on the magic. Bob was always a step ahead of everyone. Except Jon, and even then, sometimes he’d exceeded Jon’s expectations. If he had a secret up his sleeve, it wasn’t visible. Not to me anyway. Jane might know.
The girls and I had lunch at a restaurant on Haven. The wall screen had Amy’s latest update running, showing the plants had changed tactics now, were building up fleets on their side of the jump points, and using them to continually missile spam our side. What wasn’t so obvio
us was the mosquito missiles apparently blowing up nothing at all, but Chris had discovered they were sending our equivalent of a comnavsat through the jump points, and the AI’s controlling the mozzie launchers were obviously targeting every single one coming through with the missiles.
So far, each jump point had more than enough point defense to handle what was coming through. But anyone with half a brain could see eventually they’d mass so many fleets on their side we’d start missing missiles and start taking damage. In theory though, before we reached that point, Jon would turn up and do something with the jump point to stop the missiles coming through. In fact, I wasn’t sure why he hadn't already. But then, he was still moving fleets around as far as I knew, and wasn’t even showing on the navmap at all.
I wondered how long Jon could or would keep this up.
Sixteen
“As long as he can,” said Amanda.
“Why?” asked Alana. “He can throw their own missiles back at them. Why let them through at all?”
“High strategy,” said Aleesha, grinning.
“Huh?” said Agatha.
I thought I saw where they were going, but said nothing.
“Explain,” demanded Alison.
“It’s simple,” responded Amanda. “While they’re shooting at us, they’re tying up fleets which could be attacking somewhere else. The more they mass against us, the more time Jon has to get fleets in front of the main advances.”
“If we make it so they know it’s pointless to attack us,” went on Aleesha, “those fleets will move on to other targets. AMS is still working its way through Naranja space, so until they finish the sweep for unknown jump points, we can’t be sure the Trixone won’t find another backdoor.”
Chris had saved the Apricot Mapping Service once already, and while the Naranja leaders were probably hoping for some more systems, if there were any, the chances were good there would be another back door if there was. The AMS shouldn’t need saving if there was a next time though, as they were flying brand new ships. And the way the Trixone were going in their advance into Keerah space, which surrounded the core Imperium space, another backdoor was something we didn’t need. But we did need to ensure one wasn’t there.
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 7
