But it wasn’t only hull plates. It was struts, and bracers, and all manner of framework, which held the hull in place. Not to mention bolts, adhesive, sealant, and all sorts of other things. The latter Jess had on hand for repair work, and it was just a matter of copying it.
Did I say just a matter? Oddly, this was true. But all we had on hand was raw rock, and everything had to come from it.
Twice I blacked out the whole ship, drawing enough energy to access what was needed from asteroids who knows how far away. On the second of those, I had an unscheduled sleep session as a result. Jen started moving the ship regularly after these, but even then, sometimes the elements we needed were far away, and gathering them simply took most of the energy we had on hand.
The one thing we didn’t have was a scanner which could tell us where elements could be found. So it was hit and miss, and move on.
As the hull plates materialized, the bots assembled the new outer hull. As copying got ahead of the installations, I also copied the bots, allowing the work to speed up.
The existing turrets were installed as they went, leaving one of each for me to copy when we needed one. It was the turrets more than the hull which strained me and the power levels. Hulls are made of basic ore. But electronics need gold and higher elements, and it was those which really tested me.
Once I figured this out, I started pulling gold out of the asteroid field specifically, filling containers created for the purpose. Jess supplied a list of, and examples of, the other elements we needed, and these too were collected individually. With everything we needed, except for base ores, the work accelerated. As we ran low, I'd stop copying, and start sourcing again.
At the end of a week, the main work was done. Gone was the strange amalgam of five ships, several of which I’d had to move, which was a real pain, as I had to undo all the modifications, and make the inner hull tight, before carefully separating the two original hulls. In its place, was the shape of a very standard model of large freighter.
It had a few more turrets and launchers visible than most, but Jess assured me this wasn’t unusual. Besides, the majority of our armament was hidden in the new tween spaces, so anyone taking us on was going to get a shock. Or more of a shock, depending on what I was doing at the time.
Jess mixed up a small quantity of paint in the colour they wanted the hull to be in, and I spent the next day 'painting'.
The final touch was the change in the ship ID, which Jen had prepared before leaving the last station. We had a legit ID, for a ship of the same model, which had left the local space a few years before, and not returned. She had some sort of cover story in mind, but I wasn’t interested in hearing it. I did the work with the ID, and left the rest to her.
With the ship ready to go, Jen put us on course for the next jump point, taking a circular route around the system, using the asteroid fields along the orbit for cover. I spent time extending the cargo areas into the unused tween hulls area, and once done, took the opportunity to continue harvesting gold and other precious elements while we remained adjacent to the asteroid field.
Jen interrupted me unexpectedly, coming into my bridge, and sitting so she could look at me.
"Can you make the ship disappear?"
I opened my mouth to say she knew I could, but closed it again without saying anything. The ship was a lot bigger now. I'd have to try to find out. She nodded, and did something on the console. A set of screens popped up a few minutes later, showing the ship from all angles. She nodded at me again.
I concentrated, drawing energy and focusing my intent on the ship not being visible to either sight or scanners. At first, all I managed was sweat dripping down my face, but as I built up the energy, the image of the ship faded. The lights flickered, and I let go, the ship reappearing again immediately.
"I was afraid of that," said Jen.
I could see the disappointment in her eyes, even if she didn’t express it. I needed more energy. There had to be a way of doing this.
"I'll leave you to ponder it," she said quietly, and left.
I went back to leeching the asteroid field, casting around for any source of energy I could use. Space of course had nothing but the solar wind, and chunks of rock. Nothing useful.
Wind. There was something about the solar wind.
Solar. Sun. Could I?
I fiddled with the console until a screen popped up showing the system's sun in the distance. On this orbit, it was nothing but a small ball in size, a really long way away. More of a large dot than a ball.
But there was power there.
I reached out for it.
Forty Nine
We fell into a new routine. One without station stops. The days passed, and we crossed system after system the slow way, by avoiding the trade lanes, and all other ships.
When we had to jump, I cloaked the ship well out of range of any ship scanner. The transition was the hardest to get right, and took me a couple of goes to setup the intent properly. But we lucked out, and no-one saw us. The shift in energy flow in the instant of the jump became flawless, using the ship generators at first to cover that instant of being nowhere.
Each time I did it, it became easier to do, and used less energy. At the same time, my range for drawing energy continued to increase.
By the time we reached the frontier, I could tap into the system sun from anywhere. The distance still limited how much energy I could draw on, so jump points tended to have me at my weakest, but there was more than enough for the cloak, and a good level of force wall as well. The ship generators became a backup supply.
Jen took us cautiously past the fleet guarding the jump point, supposedly from some alien threat, and we jumped out. There was nothing there. Jen turned us around.
"Drop the cloak please Thorn."
I did as she asked, but replaced it with a full force wall.
We jumped back.
Immediately we were targeted by the full fleet, and told to stop while the ship was scanned for life forms. This took them nearly ten minutes, after which someone started demanding an account of the ship's whereabouts for the last few years.
Jen had all the answers, and the com system delivered them in a deep male voice. Quite a lot of the answers were not what they wanted to hear, given where the ship had been was basically a trade secret, but eventually Jen talked her way out of being boarded. She dropped some names, which appeared to help. I of course had no idea who they were, and didn’t want to.
They scanned us again to make sure there were no aliens of any kind on board, and finally let us go. The system had a military support base, but we stayed clear of it. The only inhabited planet had only enough people on it to grow food supplies for the military, and we stayed clear of its station as well.
In the next system, we docked at the main civilian station, and offered up a container of my gold dust for trade, to make it look like we needed local currency, and had been successful in trading beyond the frontier, where our currency should have been useless. The gold sold very quickly, and Jen opened a new ship account with a very healthy deposit.
I found it strange she'd been able to. Whoever had owned the ship we'd stolen the ID of, must have had accounts in the ship's name at some point, and the credentials Jen provided would have been all wrong for them. Even if they closed them before heading out into the galaxy, the records should still have been there. Lea laughed at me when I asked her about it. The answer of course was obvious. The ship crew had never had accounts for the ship or crew, being paranoid enough to only use cards. Jen had chosen the ID very carefully indeed.
Some of our marines donned civvies, and put on a drinking show in a local bar, so the word of our 'return' could spread. Sasha had given them a stern talk about not behaving like marines, since they were supposed to be normal crew. I had my doubts they could pull it off, but apparently they did.
It was a dangerous game Jen was playing, since recognition of them not being part of the crew who left, would blow our
cover wide open. But to not put in an appearance would be suspicious.
With our cover now established, we moved on.
Fifty
Back in the trading game, progress was slowed back to normal. Couple of days between stations, two or three days on station. I amused myself in space by collecting rare elements, and on stations by collecting bank cards. The rare elements proved the more lucrative, and so some of my time in space was spent learning how to shape and package them the way people expected to buy them. I was soon very good at producing ingots.
Lea proved to be equally good at choosing where to sell what. I left it all up to her, and simply watched my finances grow with each stop. She started checking ahead for what minerals the next stop was in desperate need of, and I made a point of collecting as much as we could on the way.
Tasha joined me on my bridge for each jump, or flyby of a ship which might cause us trouble. Now we were legitimate again, nothing troubled us at all. It was all very boring.
Boring became one of my ponder subjects. If I was bored now, what was I going to do when I finally managed to get home? Did I really even want to go back there now? Why not find some nice out of the way place with all the mod cons, and settle down to live the high life? There was plenty to read after all. But then, I could read just as easily here.
On the other hand though, I had a bad feeling about where we were heading. Hitting the pirate station was all very well and good, but poking an ant hill deliberately, usually ended badly, in any time period. The only valid option once the ants were enraged, was to run. And it was still the only sensible option. As powerful as I was, the alternative to running was wholesale carnage. And I wasn’t ready to go there. Yet. Or not yet. Or ever.
But if I stayed, I could see the path leading to armageddon. Jen saw revenge. The others were happy to oblige her. Revenge never ended well. Not in any book I’d read so far. Even if you survived, the cost was prohibitive.
But there was also doing the right thing. Slavery was an evil which needed to be stopped. We knew where it was being carried out, and only we had the willingness to do something about it. That made us the heroes.
Or did it? I read a book a while ago which suggested there was not a lot of difference between the hero and the anti-hero. The anti-hero was the one who did the right thing, for the wrong reasons. Which made me wonder about Jen and the path she'd started flying on.
But, I had to wonder about my own motivations. So I’d been kidnapped by slavers, but turned the tables on them. Did that give me the right to attack them wherever I found them? Why not just sneak in, find the ship I rode in on, and steal the map from it. It sounded simple, put like that.
Chances are though, the ship wouldn’t be there, and we'd need to look in the station database. Which might or might not yield what I needed to go home.
But did I really want to go home? And which home was home? Here on this ship? The space-less society I'd jumped myself to? Or the place I grew up? I wasn’t sure anymore.
But. Always another but. I sighed, and looked at the butt sitting next to me.
"What?" asked Tasha.
I sighed again.
"Philosophical ponderings. Don't get me started."
She laughed. I liked her laugh. It sparked a thought.
"What happens to you marines now?"
"You mean now we're officially dead?"
"Yes. Leaving the military so unexpectedly must be causing problems for you all."
"Not as much as you may think. It was a bit of a shock at first, but we still have a job to do. Afterwards, we'll decide what to do next. I've already decided I'll crew this ship as weapons officer. A few of the others will likely stay as marines, in case of hostile boarders or problems while docked. What about you?"
"That's part of what I've been pondering. I've known three homes now. One I can't find, and one I can't get to. Although if I keep getting stronger, I may figure out a way."
"Why not stay here?"
"I’d get bored too quickly I think." She laughed. "I'm bored now, or at least was before we started talking."
"There's plenty to do and learn."
"Not really. I don’t have the background in the tech to understand it. I probably know less about ships and space than a four year old does."
"You can learn."
"Well that's the thing. I don't want to. I find I have absolutely no motivation for learning anything. Names, places, things, gadgets, gizmos, whatever. I really don’t care. Where we are makes no difference to me at all. What you all do all day is none of my business."
"What does motivate you?"
"Magic. It's the only thing I wanted to do from the moment they found I had some ability. All I wanted to be was a battle mage in the local militia. I wasn’t all that good with swords, but once I learned strategy, I was unbeatable. At least by my fellow students."
"Swords? Where do you come from?"
"Not where, when."
"When?"
She was looking at me with a very confused look on her face, and I suddenly realized, Jen hadn't told them everything about me. And now I thought about it, I wasn’t sure how much I’d told her.
"It's a long story."
"The good ones always are, and as you pointed out, things are boring, and we have plenty of time."
Fifty One
"He's here," said Jen, in a low menacing monotone, which left absolutely no doubt about who she was talking about.
We'd jumped into the pirate system, been challenged by two picket ships, and talked our way in with the promise of lots of gold. They had no idea who we really were.
With the station now in range of our scanners, Jen had highlighted a single ship docked to it. As I listened to the others discussing this unexpected event, I gathered the ship in question was his civilian ship, and not a military ship. The latter would have been awkward, to say the least.
I stayed out of the talk, sitting there alone on my own bridge, Tasha having left to join the discussion in person.
I cast my sight to his ship. There was only one person aboard, and he was lounging around apparently doing nothing. After some searching, I found the computer room, and copied the database. I didn't expect anything incriminating to be there though, so went looking for his stateroom. It was of course the largest of the accommodation areas, and much larger than the largest one on this ship. Not only large, but opulently fitted out in the manner you would expect a king to live in. Which was interesting, because he wasn’t one, just a lowly junior admiral. The ship said money though, so maybe his family had it.
I peeked behind every door, and into every drawer. Nothing. Not exactly nothing. Uniforms, silk pajamas, business suits. What you’d expect. I was looking for what you wouldn’t expect.
Having failed to find anything interesting, I pulled back my sight, and looked down from above, only with the ceiling missing. And there it was. A side room, outfitted as an entertainment room. Behind a door, row after row of storage chips. Each one had a name on it. A girl's name. One of them was labeled 'Jenna'.
I copied all of them to our database room, and messaged Jess to meet me there immediately. Rather than waste time walking, or even running, I jumped myself, and was standing there with the 'Jenna' chip in my hand when Jess arrived. I held it up so she could see the name, and her eyes widened.
She took it from me, and plugged it in to her pad, setting it down on a table. It interfaced with the intelligence computer screen, and gave us an image we could both view easily.
He was younger than I’d thought, perhaps five years older than Jen was, and about as perfectly handsome as it was possible to be. This made him young for an admiral, and surprising someone who looked like him needed to be a predator. His looks alone should have been attracting more women than he could possibly handle.
And yet, there were the drinks being very carefully prepared, a little extra something in one of them. Jen arrived as if summoned, looking as if she expected to be reprimanded about somethi
ng. He bade her sit, offered her the drink with a smile which he obviously expected to make her feel comfortable, and which she obviously felt she couldn’t refuse. He small talked while she sipped enough for whatever med it was to take effect. Before she passed out, she realized something was wrong and tried to stand, but his fist slammed into her gut, folding her up in a heap on the floor.
Jess was biting her fist, as we watched him pick her up, and move her from the office into his stateroom. He ran his hands over every part of her, and started removing her uniform. When she was naked, he repeated running his hands all over her.
A groan came from Jess, and I looked at her. There was blood in her mouth where her teeth had pieced the skin of a finger. She hadn't noticed it. Her other hand was a fist as well, but it was at her side, and shaking violently.
The man removed his own uniform, setting it aside neatly, and we watched him rape her three times, once each in different orifices.
When he was done, he moved into the shower, and we heard him singing as he washed himself. He emerged toweling himself off, and redressed in his uniform. His pad was lying close at hand, and he took images of Jen's naked body, posing her how he wanted, getting shots of every part of her, both long and close up.
When he'd had enough, he roughly washed her, and redressed her, before moving her back to the chair she started in. He waved something under her nose, and she started to recover.
Before she had her wits about her, he made a joke about how tired she was, and he'd reschedule her talk. She stood unsteadily, saluted, and left.
"Fucking bastard!" ground out Jess, in a low tone.
She looked me in the eyes, and saw something there she didn’t expect.
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