"You could have just asked."
"Yes, but seeing is believing. Tell me, did you see the two cute guys who were also changing at the same time I was?"
"What guys?"
"I didn’t think so. One of them checked you out, but you didn't even notice."
"I was enjoying the show."
She laughed.
"Good. So how come you haven’t hit on any of us?"
"You told me not to."
"Since when has that ever stopped a man?"
"Most men maybe. But as you may have noticed, I'm not the lean mean tailor's dummy women prefer to be hit on by." She actually looked surprised. "I learned a while back, if girls say no, it's better to accept it first off, rather than play stupid games I'm not equipped to play anyway."
"Who says?"
"Everyone I've hit on."
"They said it like that?"
Surprise was now looking shocked.
"Not as such. They didn’t need to say anything. It was obvious."
"Where did you learn about girls?"
"I didn’t. At fourteen I went into a two year training program, designed to find out what you were good at. It also had the side effect of keeping us away from girls. At sixteen, I had to flee for my life, and found myself in a different sort of society. I lived in a house for teens without parents, and while I did learn some things about girls, they usually involved embarrassment and punishment. At eighteen, I was kidnapped by slavers."
Her mouth was hanging open. She closed it and smiled.
"I'll see what I can do in the way of some educational material for you. It sounds like you missed out on a lot."
She paused.
"Are you a virgin?"
"Are you ready to order?"
Thirty Four.
By the time I'd finished choking, and my face was no longer red, we'd ordered.
"So let me get this straight. According to Jen, you come from a planet without space travel, has never had space travel, and has no concept of where the planet is in the cosmos. Right?"
"Yes."
"So you don’t know the name we know it by, or the system's name, or which system it jumps to?"
"Yes."
"Just that it was two weeks travel to get to the pirate station."
"Yes."
"That's not as bad as it sounds."
"How so?"
"There are not a lot of planets within our space, which haven’t reached into space yet. Especially with people looking just like us."
"There are planets with people not like us?"
"Of course. There are all sorts of alien species out there. Why do you think we have a military? The jump points out into alien space are all guarded, and we don’t let any of them into our space."
"Why not?"
Dishes were placed in front of us, and I idly picked up a fork, and tasted. I looked across at Leanne, saw the look on her face as well, and talk stopped. It didn't begin again until the plates were cleaned.
"You were saying?"
"What about?"
"Finding my home being easy?"
"Not necessarily easy as such, but known space is exactly that. Known. Pre-space flight civilizations are quarantined. No-one allowed in. So all we need to do is find one within two weeks travel of that station."
"And find a way in."
"With your talents, that may be the easy part."
"My talents?"
She laughed.
"Let me do some research. It shouldn’t be too difficult."
"What do you consider the hard part will be?"
Our main courses landed in front of us. Once again, talk stopped, and eating took over.
"That was wonderful."
"The food wasn’t up to standard on your last voyage?"
"Hardly. Even Jen's food isn’t up to this standard."
"Why does she choose?"
"It's her ship."
"It's your stomach."
She laughed.
"So you’re saying I should just order in what I want to eat?"
"Why not?"
"Why not indeed. What are your food stocks like?"
"Gold class. Let's just say, I obtained the box by accident, and it turned out to be the best."
"Only a box? I'll order you a pallet when we get back to the ship. I need to order food anyway, given our guests ate into our reserves."
"I can get my own."
"Not unless you wish to create a demarcation issue. I'm cargo master on this ship, and I do the ordering."
I held my hands up in mock surrender. She'd just contradicted herself, but I wasn’t going to say so.
"Keep them there," said a male voice.
We looked around in shock, to find a man standing next to our table, pointing a gun at us from within his coat, so only we could see it. He slid into the unused chair between us, and the gun slid under the table, pointed at me.
"Don’t say anything. Listen, do what you’re told, and neither of you get hurt."
"What do you want?" I ground out.
He nudged me with the gun.
"A bounty was issued for the babe here ten minutes ago. My luck I was walking past here so soon after, and spotted her."
I saw immediately where he thought this was going. Hands still up, I had a look inside his gun. Not knowing what to do to make it useless, I made all the inner workings disappear.
"In a moment, I'm going to put a collar on the table. You babe, are going to put it on, and the two of us will walk out of here as if nothing was going on."
His backup gun, in a boot holster, was now in my backpack, along with his wallet.
"I think not."
My voice was calm, cool, and totally confident. His head jerked to look at me, and there was a faint click as he pulled the trigger on his gun, without any effect.
"Now let me tell you what is going to happen."
He tried to rise, I clamped some force onto his shoulders, and pushed him back into his seat. His eyes widened.
"You are going to hand me the gun under the table, take out the remote device, and put it on the table in front of the babe. You will take out the collar next, and put it on. You will set the remote to allow you to stand quietly outside the doors of the restaurant, and you will wait there until we finish our dessert. Understood?"
He nodded, but did nothing.
I concentrated for a moment, and he started going red in the face. Abruptly, the remote was out, adjusted, and placed in front of Leanne. The collar followed, and was quickly clicked into place around his neck. He looked at me, clearly unable to breath. I released him.
He took in a couple of quick breaths, rose, walked calmly to the doors, and stood just outside where he could be seen by Leanne.
"Wow! My hero!"
"Stop it. We need to finish eating, and get you back to the ship, before a real threat turns up."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"Deliver him to station security."
"Is that wise?"
"Why not?"
"Raises questions about how you overpowered him. Ones we'd rather not answer."
Put it that way, and she was right.
"Let me think about it."
Our desserts arrived. The waiter departed, but Leanne was looking me in the eyes.
"Do you really think I'm a babe?"
She was fluttering her eyelids.
I dug into my dessert.
Thirty Five
One moment he was there, the next he was gone. There was no sign of him as we walked out, after Leanne thumbed for the whole meal. She'd insisted, and I’d learned a long time ago not to fight an insisting babe. Admittedly, it wasn’t about who was paying for dinner, but the principle holds once you learn it. And besides, it didn’t matter who paid, she was using stolen funds, I’d stolen. So it amounted to the same anyway.
"How did he get away?"
"Must have had a partner with another control unit." I paused a moment. "Saves us the trouble anyway
. Let's get back to the ship before anything else happens."
A shot hit my shields, which were protecting both of us. I pushed Leanne back into the restaurant, and dashed for the men's room. Inside, I checked to see if anyone was there, which there wasn’t, and jumped us back to the main lounge on the ship.
"The men's room?"
"It was closest."
"Why do you bother walking, when you can do that?"
"Too risky most of the time. If someone sees me, or I get caught on surveillance, I'm in big trouble."
"We're already in big trouble."
"True."
I’d been thinking about exactly how much trouble I would be in, if I kept on doing magic in public. Pirates would be the least of my worries. I was also worried about forming a habit of always doing magic. I'd heard some stories early on in training, about mages who did everything magically, and either burned out young, or went mad. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t mad already.
"Where have you two been?"
Jenna seemed put out, but as far as I knew, the ship couldn’t possibly have been unloaded yet, let alone the next load be aboard.
"Shopping and dining Jen. Why? Did you want to come?"
"Tell me you didn’t get into trouble."
"We didn’t get into trouble."
Leanne said it with a straight face, and then spoiled it by giggling. Jenna looked at me.
"Someone picked Leanne out by chance, and tried to collect. Apparently the bounty on her was posted not long ago."
"Is he still alive?"
"Yes. I managed to subdue him without much fuss, but he escaped his own collar. Outside, presumably he shot at us, so I took us back in, and jumped us here."
She looked at both of us, and sighed.
"No more going out onto this station. It's not safe for either of you. Come on. Jess wants to talk to us all."
She led the way towards the main lounge room, but the dock buzzer rang before we arrived. I went back to answer it. Before opening the hatch, I took a peek outside.
The hatch opened to the right button, and the delivery man outside pushed a trolley inside, and stacked a set of boxes on the internal trolley, off to one side. I thumbed the delivery charge, and shut the hatch after him. Instead of wheeling the trolley to the living area, I concentrated on the boxes for a moment, drew some power, and moved them directly to the floor in Leanne's stateroom.
I found the girls all relaxing in what I assumed was their favorite easy chair. An extra one had been pulled in to form a rough ring. Each had a small table next to it, and on each was a tall flute glass, the liquid inside bubbling.
Jenna waved me to the chair, and picked up her glass. I sat, and was the last one to pick a glass up.
"To freedom."
She leaned forward in her chair, almost out of it, and the others followed her, me slightly behind them. Our glasses clinked, and we all leaned back into our chairs and sipped. The liquid was divine. I upended the glass, and drained it dry.
The girls looked at me in shock.
"You're supposed to sip it silly," said Leanne. "Ah, bugger it."
She downed hers as well. The others followed, and after putting their glasses down, they all giggled. I looked at them, wondering what the joke was.
"Champagne," said Jenna. "Used for celebrations and toasts. And getting sloshed on in high society. I ordered a few bottles before we arrived."
"How few was a few?" asked Jess.
"Whole carton."
They laughed outright this time. She reached down beside her chair, and pulled up the almost empty bottle, filled her own glass, poured the rest into Jess's, tossed the bottle behind her, and pulled out another, already opened bottle. She refilled the rest of the glasses, and sat back down.
"Sip this time!" said Leanne, and chuckled again.
I sipped as ordered, and put the glass down again. All eyes went to Jess.
"I thought we better discuss priorities."
"What's to discuss?" asked Leanne. "I have a rough idea where Thorn's planet is, and as we trade the next couple of legs back in that direction, I'll figure out which is the most likely system."
"That is one priority," said Jess. "But there are other ones, which might be higher priority."
"What are they?" I asked.
"We all have bounties on us now," said Jenna. "Even you Thorn. I checked. They don’t know who you are, but they do know you're with us. And they have an image of you, so it's no longer safe for any of us to move freely on stations."
"I can manage it if I have to."
"Only at some risk."
"And we don’t want you taking the risk anymore," added Jess.
"It's an option if we have to."
"Last resort perhaps," said Jenna. "I don’t plan on us getting there."
I liked her optimism. The command was back in her voice. I liked that as well.
"So what else is there to do?" asked Leanne.
Jess coughed, and our eyes went back to her.
"As I see it, we have two tasks before us. Or rather one task, with two sides to it."
She looked at Jenna with a sad face.
"I'm sorry luv, but there's no easy way to say this."
"Spit it out."
Jess looked at me. I took the hint. It was obviously the right time. I sighed, and took a breath in. My gaze went to Jenna.
"As I understand it, you were raped by a superior…"
Jenna hissed a breath in, and shot daggers at Jess.
"…and forced into quitting a promising career. Two months later, your parents die in a freak accident, and you inherit a trader ship. Said ship is subsequently ambushed by pirates, and you get sold into slavery."
"What's your point?"
"I had the impression from Jess, you thought these were isolated events."
"Yes."
Her teeth were grinding.
"What I see is a progression of events designed to remove you from the military, and then remove you permanently. I’d venture to say your auction was rigged, you'd have been beaten into submission, raped for as long as you remained good sport, and then an accident would have killed you. End of someone's problem."
The look she gave me made me raise a shield without thinking about it.
"I agree," said Jess. "Thorn dropped it on me when we were talking, and it shocked me to the core. But I've had time to think about it now. It all fits together. Too damned well."
"So you're saying my parents were murdered?"
"I'm sorry luv, but yes."
She sat there for a long time, and we sat there with her, letting her process it all.
"Motherfuckers are going to pay!"
Thirty Six
"So what's the plan boss?"
I was surprised it was Leanne who said it. But the three of them had almost identical looks on their faces. My eyes settled back on Jenna.
"Three pronged attack vector."
Jess laughed at my face.
"How much military training did you get Thorn?"
"The basics. At least the basics for what you’d consider the middle ages. I had the discipline drilled into me, but the rest of it is probably a tad out of date. I wanted to be a battle mage. But the sort of battles they fought are nothing compared to what I've seen now."
"Thorn," asked Jenna, "do you accept my military authority?"
"You're the captain. So sure."
"No-one knows this yet, but we four just formed a mercenary unit, and we have a war to fight. I need a battle mage. No, I need a space mage. Are you my spacemage Thorn?"
I hesitated. I wanted to go home, not fight a technological war. But here's the thing. We are brought to where we're needed, to what needs to be done. My skills had transferred. It wasn’t as if I was just a useless unwanted kid any more.
"We need you," said Leanne and Jess together.
"I'm in," I said, with more confidence in my voice than I actually felt.
"What are the prongs?" asked Leanne.
"Pirates, the bastards who bought us, and whoever planned all this."
"Priorities?" asked Jess.
Jenna thought.
"To get to all our buyers, we need to visit the pirate station again, and steal their records. No point in leaving the slaver operation intact afterwards. So to do that, we need more than just the four of us."
"Sasha?" asked Jess.
"I thought so, but she might not want to leave her post."
"She will when we lay the whole story in front of her."
"We have to get there first, which means a military encounter first."
"We need missiles as well, so two birds with one stone."
"Show me how," I said, "and I can make them if we're near the raw materials. Show me where, and I can steal them. Show me where the records are, and I'll steal them as well."
I didn't say the other thought. Show me the bastard who raped Jenna, and I’d string him up by his balls. The same went for the bastard who was torturing Jess, if we ever met up with him again.
"We're going to need to get into at least two sets of records."
Jenna was deadly serious now.
"Two?" asked Leanne.
"We need my former captain's records to find out who was behind him. And we need the records on that station to find out who was going to buy me. So I see four targets, and counting."
"Priorities?" repeated Jess.
"Sasha and missiles come first. I selected our next destination to take us in that general direction anyway, so as soon as we're loaded, we'll leave."
I must have looked confused.
"We're going to get attacked again. There is no doubt on that now. We each carry bounties, and so does the ship. There will be attempts to collect them. The magazines are not fully stocked. And we don’t have anyone experienced in fusing and firing them. So we were always going towards Sasha and the closest missile stores. I also checked on what we have, and most of them are crap. I want military grade missiles, and someone who knows how to fight with them."
"Sounds like a plan," I said.
Jenna looked at Leanne.
Yesterday's Spacemage Page 13