Yesterday's Spacemage

by Timothy Ellis

  "Where's the ordnance depot?"

  The map shifted several levels down the station, and highlighted most of the middle of two levels. Alongside was the small dockyard, and its half dozen docks.

  I closed my eyes, and shifted my sight.

  "What the…? Oh. Same principle?"

  "Yes."

  On the screen, it was like a cam was rolling down the middle of a wide corridor, but with a lens which allowed her to see the signage on each side row.

  "Stop. Turn left."

  I turned left.

  "Stop. That one on the left."

  The crate was huge.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. That’s the biggest this ship can handle."

  I concentrated, drawing on the ship's power. The crate vanished.

  "THORN YOU PILLOCK! Tell me when you're about to do that."

  Lea sounded a mite upset. Tasha looked confused, until she saw the empty space over on the station. Her eyes widened. I began moving my sight again, to the end of the row, and up the other side, and down the next.

  "That one."

  "DOING IT AGAIN!" I yelled as loud as I could, and moved the next crate, which was smaller. Tasha grinned this time.

  "Any idea where the small ones are?" I asked her.

  "Two rows down again?"

  Her guess proved to be accurate. I bellowed once again, and the third crate appeared down in the main cargo hold.

  "How many did we want of each?"

  She told me, and I concentrated again. This time I was slightly dizzy when I finished. Tasha looked confused again.

  "Missiles?" I asked.

  It took us longer to find the missiles we wanted, and after bellowing to keep clear of the magazines, much longer for me to swap them one by one. I wasn’t game to try doing more than one at a time, in case something went wrong.

  "Done!" I yelled finally, and turned back to Tasha. "You'd better go tell Jess and Lea where the new turrets go, so they can program the bots to install them once we're clear of anyone who might think it odd us arming up by ourselves."

  "And you'll be doing?"

  "Sleep. It may not have looked it, but that was hard work."

  She gave me another long look as I walked out, not all too steady on my feet. My right temple was throbbing by the time I reached my bed. I diverted to my pack for a tablet, took it with a water bottle I kept there for the purpose, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  Forty Six

  The wonder was, we unloaded our cargo, and loaded another one. The local military tried several more times to board us, including attempting to use the cargo loading system. When that failed, they spacewalked a platoon to every airlock we had. It didn’t work any better for them, and actually cost lives this time.

  By the time we were ready to undock, even Jen was looking worried. Everyone strapped in wherever they could, with Tasha and several others with me. Her console was dark. When I glanced at it, she shrugged. We still only had missiles, and the one thing we didn’t want to do was fire them here.

  When Jen requested undocking clearance, the same Major as before appeared on the screen. He repeated the order for the three girls to surrender themselves. Jen didn’t even dignify it with an answer, flipping back to the station controller's channel. Needless to say, we didn’t get our clearance.

  "Ok Thorn. You know what to do."

  I concentrated for a moment, and the station docking clamps vanished.

  Jen had the thrusters pushing us away within seconds, and the ship moved away from the station at a speed not normally allowed. As soon as she could do so safely, she stopped, twirled the ship, and began thrusting out-system.

  "Isn't this the wrong way?" asked Sasha.

  "Yes," said Jen, "but there are a number of routing options from here, and I'm not showing this lot where we're really going."

  "Why not?" I asked. "If we lead them to the pirates, we won't need to do anything ourselves."

  "You'd think so," said Jess. "But no. Somewhere up the chain of command is someone in league with them, and as soon as we opened fire, the navy would start protecting them outright, on the basis it was a legit station."

  "Oh. So we do it the hard way?"

  "That’s why we're here," said Sasha.

  "Going to be harder than we thought," muttered Jen.

  "Oh shit!" exclaimed Lea.

  One of the screens changed view, and I could see a tactical view of the system now, or at least, that portion we could see with our scanners. Every navy ship had now changed course, and was coming towards, or after, us.

  Everyone watched in silence for a while. After a bit, I noticed the ships were not boosting at the same rates, and shortly after, realized they were aiming to have as many ships as possible converge on us about half way to the jump point. I had no idea how many missile launchers and turrets they mounted, but I did a rough guess, and did the math.

  "You okay Thorn?" asked Tasha.

  "Sorry, what?"

  "You've gone white."

  I probably had.

  The courier came up behind us, and the Major was suddenly on the screen again. He implored us to stop and be boarded, but Jen didn't even bother answering him, instead pushing as much power into the engines as she could, and opening a gap. The courier matched our speed, and more, slipping back into position behind us.

  "Should be we preparing for boarding?" asked Sasha.

  "No," responded Jen. "We're not stopping for anything."

  "And if they fire on us?" asked someone over the coms.

  "We'll deal with it."

  No pressure. I still didn’t like the math. There were enough ships converging on us to throw hundreds of missiles per salvo, and maybe more. And keep throwing them the whole way to the jump point. I started to worry about how much energy I could draw on.

  "Jess?"

  "Yes Thorn?"

  "I think I'm going to need a lot more."

  "How much more?"

  "As much as you can get me."

  "On it."

  I could feel Tasha's eyes on me, but neither of us said anything, and as the minutes passed, I could feel more and more power become available to me. There were clangs around the ship, as airtight bulkheads shut. A ship schematic popped up, showing only three areas of the ship which still had life support and gravity. The cargo remained where it was, but the normal gravity holding everything down was dialed way down.

  The two smaller engines died, and we lost a small amount of speed, resulting in the courier nearly hitting us. Speed wasn’t going to save us here anyway, since a third of the ships intercepting us were ahead of us. The power generators synced up with mine, along with the unused shield generators, and everything except the missile launchers.

  I breathed in power, and let it flow through me. There was an indrawn breath from behind me, and I noticed all the hairs on my arm were standing on end. I concentrated on my breathing, as for the next few hours, we kept on our course, and the ring of ships around us drew closer.

  "Limitations?" I finally asked into the silence.

  "Defense only," said Jen. "I know this is going to suck bigtime, but if we kill one of them, they'll never stop chasing us."

  I admired her optimism. The only way out of this if they started firing on us, was to cause a lot of damage, and if we did, they would as she said, never stop chasing us. But I couldn’t see an alternative. This number of ships coming after us wherever we went, was not a winning strategy. We'd pick up others everywhere as well, and the odds would just keep getting worse.

  I had to wonder if Jen had really thought it through properly.

  "Everyone brace for combat," said Jen, in a voice which gave no emotion away at all.

  Maybe that was why she was in command. Not so much for any tactical ability, since she was leaving the defense solely in my hands, but because she could project command presence, and supreme confidence in our ability to get out of this.

  As I said, no pressure.
r />   The first missiles launched, and within a minute, we had a ring of more than four hundred coming at us.

  "Fuck!"

  My head jerked to look at Tasha.

  "What?" asked Sasha.

  "Anyone know who's commanding this lot?"

  "Why?" asked Jess.

  "Because those missiles are not anywhere near full speed. And yes, there's the next lot, and they're going faster, but not full speed either."

  "So?" I asked.

  "They're timed to all hit us at once."

  This time I felt the blood drain away from my face.

  "Last chance to surrender," said the Major.

  Jen cancelled the channel fast enough to have not even bothered with thought. All eyes were on the now three salvos of missiles coming at us, and I prepared the force wall as far out as I could manage. I wished we had the turrets mounted to help me, but I also knew their limitations from a chat with Tasha earlier, and with this many missiles, the turrets would have been overwhelmed on their own, and only a small amount of help to me. The fourth salvo launched as the first of the missiles began hitting my wall.

  The strain immediately began to tell on me. The problem was I was holding a spherical wall around the ship, and it was being hit from almost every direction at the same time. But it wasn’t even, and so some areas were being hit harder than others.

  "Serious bloody overkill!" said someone, and I had to agree.

  Someone in the fleet wanted us dead, and had engineered the situation to allow the local commander to make sure of it. My intent faltered as my mind was side tracked, and the force wall contracted back towards the ship as the energy sustaining it began to lessen. I concentrated again, and held it. The last of the missiles exploded, and the ship flew beyond the debris field.

  More missiles launched, and it was obvious they were going to do the whole merging salvos thing again. I dropped the wall completely, and sat there trying to keep myself together. Something cold slipped into my left hand, and I lifted it to my mouth and swallowed. It was sweet, and I drained it completely. The container was taken from me before I dropped it.

  "Can you do that again Thorn?" asked Lea.

  "Probably."

  "How long can you keep it up?" asked Jen.

  "No idea."

  "Leave something in reserve to take out engines with."

  "I'll try."

  And I would. But I knew with absolute certitude, this wasn’t going to work. There were too many ships, too large, and carrying too many launchers. Added to that, a commander who wasn’t stupid. This was only going to end one way.

  I put up the wall again, and seconds later, missiles began to explode against it. There were more of them this time, and they were hitting closer together. The wall faltered, as the power reserves I was drawing on began to fail.

  I cast around for any option which didn’t involve destroying our attackers, especially since I no longer thought I had enough left to be able to. The missiles kept coming, and the wall kept shrinking.

  Finally, the wall failed, and missiles began hitting the ship's shields.

  "Thorn!" yelled Jen.

  I was losing all grasp of what was going on.

  "Jump us!" screamed someone, perhaps Jess, but I wasn’t sure.

  I reached out to every energy source I could find. Our engines died. It wasn’t enough. I took gravity and life support. Not enough. Where else?

  The courier was still close behind us. I took everything it had. Still not enough. I reached out and found as many of the nearest of the other ships as I could, and took everything from them.

  "Jump," I said to myself softly.

  The ship jumped.

  Everything went black.

  Forty Seven

  "Welcome back."

  It was Tasha's voice, but I was having trouble opening my eyes. I felt something at my lips, opened them a little, and felt water running into my mouth. I swallowed, and began to feel better. I was thirsty, so allowed the whole bottle to go down gulp by gulp.

  When I finally did manage to keep my eyes open, I saw more than just Tasha. Lea was also there, looking concerned, as were several of the marines. I lay there a moment, taking them in, while no-one spoke.

  The sudden need for the facilities overrode everything, and I leapt out of bed, and ran. Relief in progress, I realized I was in my underwear. Could have been worse I guess. Once finished, I found an arm sticking in the doorway, holding a robe. Robe on, I walked back out.

  "How long was I asleep?"

  "Asleep?" said Lea. "You've been in a coma for two days!"

  "Coma? How do you know that?"

  "We only took you out of the auto-doc unit a few hours ago," said Tasha. "You scared the hell out of us!"

  "In more ways than one," added Lea.

  I sank down on the side of the bed.

  "What happened?"

  "You jumped us clear into the next system," said Tasha.

  "And collapsed," added Lea.

  "Where are we now?"

  "Same system. We lucked out, and there no ships where we appeared. At the moment we're well away from the trading lanes, and hiding in an asteroid field."

  "Err, why?"

  "Firstly to mount the turrets, but we realized there was more we needed to do, and it needed you to do most of it."

  I closed my eyes, and sighed.

  "What?"

  "You should hear the whole story from Jen."

  "Fine. I'll have a shower, eat something, and meet you all in the main lounge room, after."

  Lea grinned at me.

  "I'll get Jen to schedule it, and let you know when it is."

  "Fine. Can I have some privacy now?"

  I know I was sounding grouchy, but I wasn’t happy with nearly killing myself, and being greeted with 'hey we’ve got more for you to do'. They filed out. I showered, ate, drank rather a lot, and went back to bed, fully clothed. They left me alone.

  Finally I felt a shake to the shoulder, and woke up again. I followed Lea to where everyone was gathered, and sat in the indicated seat. Everyone applauded me, and I sat there trying very hard not to react badly. I think they saw the annoyance in my eyes, or someone did, and it died off.

  Jen had a smile on her face. I did a double take, and everyone laughed, including Jen.

  "Thorn," she said, "we owe you big time. You not only protected us from a serious miscalculation on my part, but you managed to get us clear away in such a way they think we're all dead."

  I felt my face shift into confusion mode.

  "What were you thinking before the jump?" asked Jess.

  "During the jump, only on finding enough energy to jump the ship. I've never done it with anything this big before." There were several shocked looks among the marines. "Before it, I'd been wishing we were on the other side of the jump point, or close enough to get there before we died."

  "Interesting," said Jen. "Because we came out in the down jump lane on the other side, as if we'd done a normal jump. Except we crossed more than a quarter of the total diameter of the system first. And what's more, it happened at exactly the time the missiles were going to hit us, leaving them thinking we'd been disintegrated."

  "How do you know that?"

  "News broadcast. In that last few moments before the missiles hit, they think we tried a desperate attempt to electromagnetic pulse the missiles using a new type of weapon, which was so powerful, it shut down most of the ships attacking us. The missiles detonated without their electronics telling them to, and all they found after was a dust field, and a wrecked courier ship with survivors. Every ship which launched missiles at us was dark, their crews in space suits, and running out of air, before the remaining ships could get to them, and help them restart their power generators. We are all officially dead now."

  "Good, I can go back to bed then."

  "Actually no," said Jess. "We need you to convert asteroids into hull plating."

  I was too tired to make the connection.

  "
Sorry, what?"

  "While you were out," said Jen, "we redesigned the outer shell of the ship. It will make us look a great deal bigger, and allow us to double the number of turrets we can fit. Plus give us a double hull, with places in between, where a lot of the turrets can hide until needed. By the time we're ready to leave, this ship will be close to a larger, and very common design of freighter, and we should be able to move around freely again."

  "But you need me to make hull plates, and duplicate more turrets?"

  "Yes."

  "Fine. In the morning."

  I started to rise.

  "We should get started now," said Jess.

  "Go for it. I'll see you in the morning."

  And with that, I left.

  Forty Eight

  I had to force Lea to tell me what had happened after the jump. I knew I took everything from the ship, so in theory, it should have down jumped dark, with not even basic life support functioning.

  Lea confirmed this was exactly what happened. Tasha had carried me to the medical bay in the dark. By the time she got me there, Jess had redirected the only power I hadn't taken, for shields, back into restarting the rest of the ship, and within minutes, they were off the trade lane, and running for a hiding place.

  I'd forgotten about the shields, but since we'd been taking missiles on them at the time, it was the one energy source I'd had to leave alone.

  I also had to force Lea into showing me the readouts from the auto-doc. I'd woken with a clear head, slept on and off through that day, meeting, food, more sleep, and woken the next morning, also with a clear head. No migraine in three days? Sure, when you're in a coma, you don’t feel pain. But I should have needed a tablet as soon as I woke, and I hadn't needed one. Then or since.

  The auto-doc didn’t supply any answers either. It hadn't administered anything for head pain, which suggested it hadn't detected any sort of head issue needing attention. I filed it away for further pondering.

  A frustrating morning followed. Making hull plates proved to be impossible for me, mainly I suspected because I knew nothing about them, or how they were made. What did appear was brittle, and broke up into pieces as soon as anyone, or anything, tried to lift it. In the end, Jess and some marines suited up, and with the help of the turret installer bots, removed a hull plate, bringing it inside so I could copy it. Why copying worked, and creating didn't, I could only guess at.