By the time I reached the bridge, with Serena right behind me, the other captains were already on the console, and the squadron leaders were beginning to pop up as well.
I told Tamsin where we were going.
And when we needed to get there.
Smiles appeared on a lot of faces.
Thirty
The Rawtenuga fleet never knew we were there.
We were sitting well above the jump point waiting for them to jump in. One big grid. I’d checked what the dinosaurs were using for a formation, and with no opposition expected, they were jumping a half section at a time, by slowing down the lower half of their formation enough, and altering course to jump rapidly at almost full speed behind the top half. It was really good formation flying.
I’d had plenty of time to put rifts in front of my own formation, so each enemy ship received basically the same fire pattern. I even turned the firing over to Tamsin, and the AIs.
Eight ships came through.
Eight ships turned into dust.
Eight ships came through.
Eight ships turned into dust.
Eight ships came through.
Eight ships turned into dust.
Eight ships came through.
Eight ships turned into dust.
The dust continued moving, with the majority continuing down the jump lane, but four clouds went off in the direction our fire had been going.
No-one spoke.
I nodded to Tamsin, and we started jumping again.
Thirty One
The titan sent shuttles down to the planet.
I waited patiently, watching the tactical display.
“Interesting,” said Leanne.
“Do tell,” said Mel. “Don’t keep us in suspense like this.”
“The shuttles are checking every land mass, except for the one they nuked.”
“Can’t handle that much radiation themselves?” asked Fina.
“Apparently not,” said Leanne.
“Positions,” I said.
We’d been here for two hours. I’d had the pilots practicing moving on to the rift areas in the cargo bays, pretending a jump had happened, and moving off to allow the next group to arrive behind them, instead of on top of them. In their combat suits. No-one said a thing the whole time, but I could tell everyone was fed up with the wait.
Even the captains were going. My team vanished from the console. The squadron leaders hadn't been there, having been at the head of their squadrons on the cargo decks.
This time everyone was going to press triggers themselves. Except me.
The dinosaurs had reoccupied the station, but not in significant numbers. We were outnumbered, but going in with righteous indignation, and vengeful intensions. The only thing which mattered was not allowing them to blow the station up. The squadrons were going to key areas to ensure that, and in enough numbers so no one squadron could be easily overrun, or get themselves into serious trouble.
Yes, we could have taken the station ourselves, before they arrived, but it would have given away we were here before I wanted it to happen. And besides, it was going to keep everyone busy, and let them vent their outrage in an offensive attack, instead of a defensive holding action.
Only three of us were not suited up. Haynes and Gitte were going in with their people. Haynes to the engineering spaces, and Gitte to operations control. I had no doubt they could shield themselves from anything the dinosaurs could throw at them, or try to eat them with. The other two mages we had now, weren’t yet strong enough to do without a combat suit. Both were going to follow one who could.
I wasn’t going in. My objective was neutralizing the fleet.
Tamsin was in control of the station. She’d had plenty of time to break in, and the power had never been turned off, so she controlled everything now. I could have let her space the dinosaurs after they made it habitable again, by closing what the last lot had opened, and re-aired, but where was the fun in that?
The first lander launched from the titan, and headed down towards the planet, and I waited until I was sure it was not heading anywhere near the ruined continent.
“Go.”
Ship AIs activated magic jumps, and the squadrons started appearing inside the station. Some of them surprised groups of dinosaurs, and others appeared where there were none. All were soon in close quarter combat. Meson pulses started chewing up dinosaurs and station walls, ceilings, and decking.
I stopped paying any attention.
Already connected to the local sun, I had the magic I needed now all prepared. The easiest, I activated first. On the planet, all the dinosaurs on the ground or in the shuttle vanished, and appeared in the middle of the area with the worst of the radiation. Those on the lander joined them. The shuttles moved inside the lander, and I didn’t really care what sort of damage this caused. The lander itself moved up near where the fleet waited.
My staff appeared in my hand. I rested it on the deck by my foot, and concentrated on the magic I wanted now. Energy flowed from the sun, and in a blink, the titan had no life on it at all, the battleships had no life on them at all, and every living thing appeared spread across the irradiated continent. I’d still managed to make sure they were all in the radiation zones, and in some places, they were packed together so close, most of them couldn’t move.
All of them were standing upright. They were all alive, and none of them were hurt in any way except immediately receiving a severe dose of radiation poisoning. Or so I hoped for a moment. For now, I had no idea if that was a problem for them, and didn’t really care one way or another. It wouldn’t matter.
The lander moved inside the titan.
The shuttles on the station moved inside the titan.
The thirty two battleships vanished.
The titan vanished.
I felt a wave of fatigue sweep over me, and then felt it be countered by what I was still taking from the suns. I let go of the local sun, and now I felt tired, but still functional. The energy from the dark sun was enough to keep me going for a while at least.
“Was that you?” asked Hubaisha, popping up on the console.
“Yes.”
“They look intact.”
She was referring to the thirty two battleships I’d just sent her.
“They are.”
She whistled.
“What do you want to do with them?”
“Convert them for Imperium member use. We can use more ships.”
“Or we could convert them and use them as a local defense force. Or keep them for when a dark day needs a rescue force.”
“Or we could do one of those. Convert them for now. I’ll decide later. Are you reverse engineering one of the previous ones I sent you?”
“No. Do you want me to?”
“Yes. Full report to Haven shipyard. Losing one by taking it apart won’t cost anything now, so whatever we can learn which advances Imperium technology is worth obtaining. If you find any weaknesses, send me a report, and I’ll pass it on.”
“On it.”
“On what?” asked Jane, who’d just popped up as well.
Hubaisha vanished, causing Jane to frown.
“I sent Hubaisha an almost undamaged Rawtenuga battleship to take apart and reverse engineer.”
“Good thinking. How hard was that to do?”
“Required some special thinking.”
Which it had.
“Was that you?”
“Was what me?”
“A Rawtenuga titan just appeared in the Haven system, and scared the crap out of a million people.”
“Did it? Odd. I thought I opened the rift far enough away it wouldn’t cause any issues.”
It was a little white lie, and no-one would know the difference but me.
“Are you kidding? Every AI in the system knew it arrived the moment it did, and the media were short stroking the story as soon as they changed their shorts. The only reason we didn’t destroy it on sight was there were
no life signs on board. Give us some warning next time, for fuck’s sake.”
If there was a next time. I didn’t know if she was having a bad day, and I guess AIs were prone to them like everyone else, but I was too tired to cope with this.
“Hey! You asked for a titan transport. I sent you one. Next time include delivery instructions.”
A chuckle came from somewhere near her.
“He’s got you there,” said the Imperator.
“How did you manage that?” she asked, sounding like she’d regained control.
“A ran a rift around inside it, moving all living things down to the planet below.”
“What did the locals say about that?”
“Nothing. They’d been nuked a couple of days ago.”
She should have known that. I wondered why she didn’t.
“Exactly where did you send the dinosaurs?”
“To the worst radiation spots.”
She seemed lost for words, now.
“And whoever nuked the planet?” asked the Imperator, who was still not showing on the console.
“Dust.”
There was another silence.
“Carry on, Commander.”
Jane looked sideways for a moment, and then vanished.
“Are we still protecting what you can do?” asked Leanne.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
There was an implied why in her tone, but I ignored it.
“How are they doing on the station?”
“Mopping up already.”
“Good.”
I concentrated, and locked the jump points. No-one was going to disturb this system again. I had to increase the amount of energy I was taking from the dark sun to stay awake, but I waited patiently for the station action to end. Jill finally popped up on the console, still in her combat suit.
“Station taken. We’ve some damaged combat suits, but no casualties on our side. I’ve issued the order for the ships to dock, so we can walk back on board. All our mages appear to be quite tired, and I figured you might be as well. By the way, we didn’t find any sign of the locals. Station records say the place was vented, then the dinos cleaned it up in spacesuits. All the bodies went into the waste system. No clues as to why they left it open to space so long.”
“I don’t care. Docking approved. I want to be out of here as soon as possible now.”
Nodding inside a combat suit wasn’t easy to do, but she managed a partial one. And vanished. Judge jumped, appearing just off the station, and a few seconds later, slid into a dock. The airlock doors opened, and combat suits started walking back aboard. Just inside the cargo bay, the first of them stopped, and the pilot stepped out of the back, and sat hurriedly on the deck. He wasn’t the only one.
I waited for the last of them to leave the station, and linked up with the local sun again. Dinosaur bodies vanished from the station decks, and reappeared on the ground, everywhere there was a space big enough for one, but every single one right next to a live dinosaur. I looked down on them using my magic sight, and saw a lot of them freaking out, more than they had already been. Some of them were now lying down, maybe showing the first signs of sickness. But some of them were looking up. A few of them were shaking their fists at me, without knowing I could see them.
The airlock doors closed, and the ships backed away.
The station vanished, and reappeared in my home system, in orbit of my penal planet, positioned so it would never show up from my home world. Anyone with a navmap might spot it if they were looking. Hubaisha popped up on the console again, showing she was very aware, opened her mouth, but decided not to ask. She vanished again. The answer was yes anyway. Clean it up, and convert it for our use. With a thought, I changed an airlock to be a rift, and linked it to a grey square well away from where my ships on the ground at home were being refitted, large enough for the largest builder droid to pass through. I sent her the location of the rift.
I let go the local sun again, this time now feeling majorly fatigued. But I waited until my team were back on their bridges.
“Are we leaving them there like that?” asked Loren.
“They should get what the locals received,” said Metunga.
“I agree,” said Woof.
I’d already made up my mind.
“Fire.”
Tamsin knew what I meant, and every ship fired every missile they could launch.
We bombarded that continent until there was nothing there capable of moving.
Gitte looked sick. Jill didn’t look happy. No-one said anything.
The missiles stopped launching, and with a nod to Tamsin, we started jumping back to our home base.
“You do realize that was technically a war crime,” said Edna.
The Imperator had done worse to three Trixone worlds. This was no different really, but they’d brought it on themselves by being unnecessarily brutal to the locals, and I realized I had no idea what the locals had even looked like.
“Karma’s a bitch,” said Jill, still looking unhappy.
Thirty Two
Oddly enough, I woke at my normal time the next morning.
The last thing I’d done before going to bed was send a report to Admiral Jedburgh. It was just a text message, as I wasn’t up to doing a vid by then.
“Cluster secured. Planet found to be dead outside cluster, and system isolated. Station appropriated as ordered for training on. Titan delivered as ordered. Bud.”
There was no response when I checked after waking, but before getting up. All my ships were docked again. We’d been resupplied, and replacement combat suits had been delivered, with the damaged ones taken away.
I felt fine, and hadn't had any bad dreams. But I was alone on the bed, and my mood hadn’t improved at all. When I asked, Leanne told me Serena was in her own quarters. I’d gone to bed first, so maybe she’d not wanted to wake me.
The running track was empty, and I did my normal ramping up the speed as the laps went past. Pilots joined me, but others were happy to be passed. I was still running when everyone else went on to the courses. While I ran, I thought about what I wanted the station turned into, and dictated a voice message to Hubaisha with instructions. The word ‘eggs’ came back, so I assumed she’d been eavesdropping, and had heard the suggestions I’d made.
In fact, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she was on the ship, and wasn’t letting anyone know, although hiding from Leanne would be difficult. Unless Leanne knew and wasn’t telling either. For a moment I wondered if she was running the butler droid which served me all the time. But I let that speculation go as a waste of time.
Breakfast was just food, shoveled in, and I was finished before I realized I was in my own private dining room, alone.
“Message for you, Bud,” said the voice of Leanne.
“WHAT!” I demanded. I blinked a few times at the volume of that. “Sorry. Not sure where that came from. Who’s it from?”
“The head judges of the Democratic Union and Naranja.”
“What do they want?”
“To know if you’ve had time to review those other cases.”
“I haven’t.”
“They seemed insistent.”
“They called?”
“Yes. I told them I was your aide.”
“Should have told them not to call again.”
“I tried to. They were not listening.”
“That figures. Did they want anything else?”
“A meeting with you. Today if possible.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said it was unlikely.”
“What did they say?”
“They expected you in an hour.”
“Did they now. When was that starting from?”
“About fifty minutes ago. I wasn’t going to interrupt you until you were about to officially start your day.”
“Fine. Find out exactly where they are. Use Hubaisha if you need to. I’ll be right up.”
/>
I was holding my anger in check, and this was doing nothing for my dark mood. Walking to the bridge was done slowly and deliberately. I cast a look around, saw the two AIs in their seats, who both ignored me, and walked on to my ready room.
Leanne popped up on the desk.
“Found them. They’re both in a meeting with other judges. Seems to be very high level.”
“What are they talking about?”
“You.”
“In what context?”
“Making you a judge for both societies.”
I sighed.
“Show me where they are.”
A map of the capital city of the Democratic Union popped up. It zoomed in on their highest court building, and showed me a conference room with a dozen blue dots in it and two red ones. I moved the map into PC storage.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
I didn’t wait for a response, but merely thought of where I wanted to be, and was suddenly there. I shifted into dress uniform, concentrated on the map, and moved the two people represented by the red dots to a spot a few meters away from me.
Both of them had been sitting, and now fell over backwards into the hot sand. Two very basic chairs appeared next to them. They saw my face, closed their mouths, rose, and sat.
“How often did anyone tell Thorn to attend a meeting?” I asked them.
“Never,” squeaked the man on the left.
“So what makes you think you can tell me when to be somewhere?”
Neither of them answered, and both of them were now holding one hand above their eyes, trying to shield them from the harsh sun. Both were already sweating profusely. This was of course, the middle of a desert, on my penal planet world. My suit was keeping me quite cool.
Thorn had brought me to this place once. It was where he buried people deserving death. The original grave stones were long gone, but you could almost tell from the terrain where each of them was. He’d also told me he brought people here when they needed a damned good scare. Some part of me had obviously remembered that.
“Well?”
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 13