As soon as I could escape, I opened a rift to the bridge of Gunbus, stepped through and sat, and just said out loud, "I want to go home for fuck's sake." The surprise was, the ship shuddered violently, when I’d expected nothing to happen.
Looking out the front view, I could see I was on an island, but nothing was visible to show me which one it was. It didn’t matter. I'd moved somewhere else. Home was Gaia, but obviously I wasn’t powerful enough to cross the galactic void. Most likely I was on my new island, but not on the landing field, and pointing away from the house.
Without thinking any further, I headed down to the barrack's mess, and pulled the first bottle of alcohol out I could find.
I climbed into the bottle, ignoring the taste. I vaguely remember opening several others.
Very late the following afternoon, I came too on the carpet in my briefs and socks, and promptly vomited over everything close by, including myself. My brain was exploding, and my bladder threatening to.
It took most of the distance to the fresher to get to my feet, and it was a while before I came out, considering most bodily functions required attention. Leaving my briefs on the floor in the fresher, I staggered out into the main shower area, couldn’t find the PC toggle to turn the water on, and completed the stagger to the spa. Getting in proved to be too hard, and I fell in instead. Luckily, there was water in it.
I went under, surfacing with water in my lungs, and coughed and choked for a while. After which I just sat there for I don’t know how long, head throbbing, vision hazed.
"Jon!"
It sounded like Jane's voice.
"Huh?"
"Are you okay?"
"No."
"Can you get to the care units?"
"No, I don’t think so."
"Try."
"Can you come get me?"
"No. The only droids on board are cleaners. Nothing big enough to carry you. You have to get there on your own."
"Swell."
I dragged myself up and out of the spa, landing heavily on the bathroom tiles, on my left side. I dragged myself up, and staggered out. The stairs were too much for me, and I ended up crawling up them. Eventually I reached the medical bay, and made the supreme effort to climb into a care unit. It sealed me in automatically, and I passed out.
It was the following morning before I woke again, finding the care unit open, and the only thing I had on was my belt, and damp socks. My head felt normal, and my mind was clear again. Getting out proved I was still feeling weak. I peeled off the damp socks, and left them on the floor.
Up in my suite, I took a long hot shower, put on new briefs and socks, shifted into jeans and a red t-shirt, and sat down at the dining table for long enough to realize if I wanted something to eat I’d need to get it myself, and I wasn’t hungry anyway.
"Jane?"
"Yes Jon?"
"Where am I?"
"Better come and see for yourself."
On the bridge, I pulled up the nav map, and thumped down into my seat in surprise.
Gunbus was on my island. My island on Gold Coast. Gold Coast planet in the Gold Coast system. Gold Coast system in the Australian sector.
"Jane?"
"Jon?"
"What happened?"
"You tell me and we'll both know."
"You don’t know?"
"No. We didn’t rift here though."
"We didn't?"
"No. The ship didn’t actually move. It's like space did. We were parked on BigMother, and then we were parked here."
"What the fuck?"
"You said 'I want to go home for fuck's sake.' And suddenly we were here."
"How far?"
"How far have we moved? About forty thousand light years. Give or take."
My lower jaw floundered around for a while, until my brain caught up and closed my mouth again.
"Thorn?"
"Doubtful. He and his people took over one of the restaurants on Terminus."
"Thirteen?"
"No sign of him still."
"How then?"
"Could have been you."
"What?"
"You've been opening huge rifts recently, going a long way, and drawing heavily on the sceptre. Could be what Tanith does moving himself and things is available to you as well, and you unconsciously tapped into it. It did sound like you wanted to escape."
"Why here?"
"You really want to know?"
"Sure."
"I doubt it. But, I advised David and the others not to drop what they did on you by surprise. They ignored me."
"Drop what?"
"Making you the Imperator."
"That was real? I thought I dreamed it."
"Very real."
"Fuck."
I shifted into uniform, and there was the starburst on each shoulder. I shifted into 'slinky red', and the starbursts remained. I shifted back into jeans and t-shirt. No starbursts.
The sigh was a long one.
The human spine was showing on the nav map now. At least as we'd known it. There were no comnavsats anywhere to tell what was going on.
"Any life here?"
"No intelligent life. Other than the two of us."
"So no intelligent life then."
"Ha, ha."
"Make a note to ask Thorn if he can put comnavsats back for us. Although technically, if I can move a ship this far, we could send a cloak suited ship here, to put them all back over the next few months. If we decide to make contact with the sectors anytime in the future, we'd then have the spine covered again. Keep a permanent rift open somewhere, and we have live data anywhere we are."
"Sounds like a plan."
I sat there in silence for a while.
"Jon?"
"Jane?"
"Are we going back?"
I sighed.
"I guess we do. Problem is, how?"
"Should be as simple as how we got here?"
"As in, 'park us back where we started from on BigMother?'"
"Worth a try."
"Park us back where we started from on BigMother."
Nothing happened.
"Call the staff, and make an effort this time."
"Staff."
It appeared in my open right hand. I ground it into the deck.
"Park us back where we started from on BigMother."
There was the sound of metal screeching somewhere below us, and I could see we were back.
"Where are they?"
"Your living room on Haven."
I opened a rift to my office, and stepped through, where I opened the door, and stepped out.
"Where the fuck have you been?" bellowed Aline, and there was a babble of a lot of people asking me the same thing different ways.
Angel shot across the room, bit me on the leg, and meowed at me for a solid minute without repeating a tone, during which everyone else stopped talking, and abruptly stopped, waggled her rear paw at me, and shot off again, ending up at the top of one of her trees.
"Well?" asked Aline.
"Have you been drinking?" blurted Amanda.
Sixty
BigMother slid out of the rift on the other side of the Keerah jump point.
The ship suit was in cloak mode, and we were sufficiently far from the jump point to avoid collisions. Jane launched a comnavsat, while I put a rebounding rift across the jump lane. Anything jumping into Keerah, would now fail to reach there and reappear here. A freighter about to head through did exactly that. I didn’t wait to see what sort of chaos ensured.
Sticking with rifts, BigMother moved again, coming out well above the jump point in Keerah itself, and deploying another comnavsat. Arthur had been correct, as there was a full hundred warships, either in fixed defensive positions, or docked at the station not far away.
"Syrinx?"
"Yes?"
"Can you deal with the shuttles and smaller craft? Just open a rift to the other side in front of them. If any are stopped, drag the rift over them."
"I can do that. You want them well away from where you'll be dumping the big ones?"
"Better do that, yes. Go high."
"Will do. Now?"
"Yes. Everyone, don’t jog my elbow until I finish."
"Confirmed."
They knew what I was planning to do, but stating it again didn’t hurt. I needed all my concentration for this.
I chose a rift position behind the fleet formation closest to the jump point, opened it to the same place on the other side, and dragged it forward across them. I repeated it with the next closest fleet, and kept going until the area was clear of large ships. Last, I did the same with the station.
Some of the smaller ships had been swept up as well, but there was still a few shuttles left, taking Syrinx a few minutes more. I let her finish up.
I pondered what I was doing again. There'd been no consequences to my little side trip, at least at an upper level of things. Aline was still majorly pissed at me, and although Angel was too, she at least had slept with me as normal. Aline hadn't said more than a few choice swear words until this morning.
As far as anyone outside my inner circle was concerned, I’d been busy planning the next phase of our war with the Keerah, and hadn't been available for more interviews, let alone appearing on chat shows. David was told the truth, but hadn't told anyone else. Waiting for me when I got back was a ping saying 'sorry'.
Sorry didn’t cut it. He didn’t realize I wasn’t going to play his game though. Walter already had orders to attend the Imperium meetings on my behalf, and it would take a lot to get me to any of them. I knew Walter wouldn’t feel adequate to the task, but he was administration, and Imperium meetings would need an administrator, not a blood soaked ship driver. I knew Jane got it now, but David still didn’t. Nor did the rest of the leaders.
I'd done some more thinking between sleeps overnight, and figured the fastest way to shuck this whole Imperator business was to end the wars as fast as possible. So actually, nothing had changed except what was on my shoulders. The plan was in place, and only delayed a few days, which in the scheme of things had made no difference.
Jane had taken the opportunity to walk the Ralnor delegation through the entire Darkness War, without showing them the titans in firing mode. They'd been amazed at how fast the Darkness ships had come through at us, and how effective our fire had been, while also being totally horrified when confronted with a live Darkness. I wished I'd seen their faces.
Bringing my focus back to now, we could have come in here all guns blazing, but I didn’t want to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. That I would have to was inevitable, but I wanted to at least try not to first.
"Done," said Syrinx.
The whole area was now clear of ships, with the exception of freighters coming towards the jump point from where we thought the planet was.
"Everyone buckle up."
There was no sound. Everyone already was.
A rift formed in front of us, but this time I'd given us sight through it. I’d missed the planet by a fair margin, and moved the other end to be in high orbit, away from the traffic to and between stations. I nodded to Jane, and she goosed us through. The rift closed behind us.
Still cloaked, the suit changed to allow full engine thrust, and Jane began moving us into a synchronous orbit above the capital city. We were lucky, and it only took a few minutes. Jane continued scanning the planet below. We were looking for some key things, planet wide, but the first of these was where their government was.
"I'm in," said Jane, indicating she'd been able to gain access to the planet nets.
I had no doubt the military in the system would have decent enough firewalls, and would likely need a hard connection to crack, but civilian systems was another matter.
"Found them. Both the system governor and the highest military leader are both in a war bunker below their government building."
Specifications popped up on a screen.
"Phase two," I said, and everyone except Grace unbuckled, rose, and headed for the armoury.
I opened a titan sized rift back to Redoubt, at a slightly higher orbit, and all the captain hollos popped up on the console. Angel looked at them suspiciously, but decided to leave them alone.
Jane had left with the others, but she could hear me anyway.
"De-cloak please Jane. Wayward fleet, let's do this. Titan fleet, standby."
Jane moved us away from the rift, at the same time shifting the ship suit back into a ship belt, making us visible to the planet below.
"Well now," said Jane. "That put a dog amongst the kittens."
I waited while the entire Wayward fleet came through, forming up into a line behind BigMother. There were no Keerah warships in orbit, but there did look like some cutter sized police units about. A few started towards us, before suddenly breaking off and heading for a station.
I rose, nodded to Grace meaning she had the ship, and headed down to the cargo bay. Once again I was going in unarmed. And this time it was through a wide rift in case I needed backup in a hurry. But Annabelle had very strict instructions.
The team were double lined up across the airlock, with Syrinx and Tanith behind them. A line of Jane's combat suits brought up the rear, since the team were not using them, in case we really needed backup. I didn't expect to, but this was not going to be a suck it and see mission. The i's were dotted, and the t's crossed.
I strode to the front of the first line.
"Vanish," I ordered, and the whole lot shifted into chameleon mode.
The rift I opened had one way vision. I could see into the room, but they could not see back through it. Nor did it have any border identifying where it was. I moved it to an open space big enough for the team if they came through, and up against a wall so it wouldn’t be accidently walked into.
I took a deep breath, and stepped through.
Sixty One
For a moment, I wasn’t noticed.
The room was large, about two thirds of it was taken up by two sunken pits, with each having what looked like a command chair in the middle at my level, with a walk way to my side from each chair. Two white and black tigers sat in the chairs, and swiveled back and forth to look at the screens and tiger minions below them. Their tails were twitching madly. All of them, not just the two whites.
To my left and right were doors, with two orange and black tigers standing guard at each. They were the only ones not moving. The rest seemed totally frantic.
On the other side of the room at the same level I was, were two sets of big screens. They were two dee, and both sets were showing my ships in orbit. They seemed to be bothering everyone.
The two seated above the others were barking commands, and getting very little back.
"Human!" yelled one of the door tigers, and it lowered itself to all fours and began running at me. The second one remained at the door, but one of the ones at the other door began running at me as well.
All heads turned towards the running guards, and followed their direction to settle on me. The room went silent.
The first guard didn’t reach me. One second it was sprinting, the next its head moved sideways with the face showing pain, and its body followed, hitting the floor hard and not moving.
The second one suffered the same fate a few seconds later.
I moved away from the wall, keeping to the middle of the two pits, stopping well away from the edges. Both seated whites were now facing me. The one on the left was wearing a very rich looking baldric with governor insignia. The right wore a plainer baldric with admiral insignia. From what I knew of Keerah ranks, these two ruled the system, and as the homeworld, they effectively ruled all of Keerah space.
The governor shot the admiral a look which suggested both 'do something', and 'clean out your desk'. The admiral did the tiger equivalent of a shrug. Both looked back at me.
"Well you've got a pair," said the governor, "even if they don’t show under all that fabric."
"I was
told you people liked an entrance."
"Pathetic entrance," sneered the admiral. "Your little fleet in orbit will die quickly when ours arrives."
"Arrives? What fleet would that be?"
He looked confused, and looked down at a subordinate. The minion pointed to one of the screens, which seemed to show nothing at the jump point except freighters going out. He turned back to me looking even more confused.
"How?"
"A little trick I learned not long ago. Your fleet is mostly fine, but on the other side of the jump point."
I was assuming some of them were now damaged trying to jump back in, and failing, causing collisions with the next rank. He looked down again, and another minion nodded to him.
"The fleet admiral has not responded to our messages. We have no way of knowing if they were received or not."
It meant they could give orders, but would never know if they were carried out, or what happened when they were.
"What do you want human?" asked the governor.
"Peace."
Both whites laughed.
"I'm serious. Before I leave we will have a cease fire in effect, and you will be ordering diplomats to talk peace with us."
"What makes you think you'll be leaving?" asked the admiral.
"You can't stop me."
They laughed again. I laughed along with them.
"Who are you human?" asked the governor. "Or are you this Admiral Hunter some incompetents allowed to take three systems from us on the frontier?"
"It's Imperator Hunter now, of The Hunter Imperium, which is an alliance of nine societies. I've had a promotion recently. And while on the subject, there was nothing wrong with your officers. They were beaten by superior tactics, and tech you have no counter to."
"You claim superiority to us?" blurted a tiger down in the admiral's pit.
The admiral looked annoyed for a brief moment, and then looked at me for an answer.
"In some ways. We're still working on reverse engineering your hull technology, but we can range at will through your space, and hit you so unexpectedly, your hull tech isn’t enough to save your ships. And while we're still behind you with gun tech, our point defenses beat your superior missile tech hands down. Or should I say paws down. We also have much bigger guns than you do, and more of them."
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