Serena woke me up, and I hadn't even felt myself nodding off.
“Bud!”
I jerked up from having my head on my arms, and looked over at her, bleary eyed.
“What?”
“We’re docked back at base. Do you want to go straight to bed, or are you eating with us first?”
“Eating. But give me a moment.”
I pulled myself up, and went into the fresher, where I splashed water all over my face until I was feeling almost normal. But I could feel fatigue lurking there, waiting to drag me under again.
The squadron leaders ate with their pilots, and the captains ate with me. And everyone was in high spirits but me. I felt nothing. I’d had a plan for the day, it had gone off flawlessly, and if I’d expended a bit too much magic, well it had been worth it. But I was way too tired to do much more than eat mechanically.
As dessert was being delivered, Jill threw something to the walls, so we could all see it whichever direction we were facing.
“The scenes you’re seeing right now are a series of actions conducted by Navy Mage Squadron One and the First Bomber Wing, across a section of the galaxy being attacked by the dinosaur like Rawtenuga. Details are not being released, but we understand several hundred ships were destroyed without the loss of any of our own. Well done to all the pilots and crews involved. In other news…”
And it snapped off without us finding out what the other news was.
I continued eating while everyone talked about the news item, speculating on how the media got hold of the actual feed footage. Although Jill’s suggestion that Admiral Jedburgh released it deliberately, was probably close to the mark. I gathered myself to go to bed, when Serena stopped me with a hand on my arm, and I noticed they’d stopped talking, and were all looking at me.
“Bud?”
“Serena?”
“Where did you move all the dinosaurs to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play games, Bud, please. You’re totally gutted. You moved half the ships into suns to hide the fact you were moving the Rawtenuga to a planet. Don’t try to deny it.”
I looked at them.
“What makes you think that?”
“Because we know you,” said Loren. “And we saw what dropping beings into a sun did to you last time.”
“You went up a level,” said Gitte. “Didn’t you. You can move an entire ship’s crew in an instant now, but doing it hundreds of times for the ships, and then doing the tens of thousands on those titans, was still a lot more magic than you should have been doing.”
I said nothing.
“Bud?” asked Jill.
“What?”
“Fess up.”
“Okay, I admit it. I put all the dinosaurs on a continent where they should at least be able to live out a normal dinosaur life. No tech, no way off, but alive and with food to eat.”
“Doesn’t that feel better?” asked Mel. “Getting that off your chest?”
“I guess.”
“Go to bed, Bud,” said Serena. “Or we’ll need to carry you there.”
I gave them all one last nod, and went to bed.
Forty Two
“ALL PILOTS DON COMBAT SUITS AND REPORT TO THE CARGO BAY.”
I’d had seven hours sleep, but being bounced out of bed at two in the morning wasn’t my idea of a good way or time to start the morning. The status boards were showing us already sliding back from our station base, but not why. Since I was still in my uniform, I jumped myself straight to the bridge.
“Report.”
I started to sit without waiting for an answer.
“You remember that planet which went quiet,” said Leanne. “Well, a trader just reported in with the fact it’s waging a war against the dinosaurs, and slowly losing, even though they were dropped off by shuttles.”
“And?”
“That would be sixty four platoons of we don’t know how many troops, or what concentration they landed in anywhere.”
“What do we know?”
“The planet belongs to white rats, and they want our help on the ground if we can offer it.”
“Not much of a war with that few troops on the ground. Why do they need us?”
“The rats have no troops. Just regular police forces. One on one, the dinosaurs have bigger teeth, and I bet the rat claws probably don’t even make a dent in dinosaur hide. Not to mention troop level weaponry. But we have some surprises for the dinos.”
That we did. We were jumping already, and I didn’t have much time for orders, but I gave them anyway.
There was no fleet in orbit, and Leanne launched two comnavsats to cover the whole planet, so we could figure out where we were most needed. By the time we had a good idea of what was going on, the pilots were finally formed up and ready to rift down. Fina and Dorm had already left their bridges to join them.
“I want a dragon or a wyvern with each squadron if possible. So they’ll need to go down one at a time. If the cats want to split up around the squadrons, they can.”
Tamsin nodded. Metunga’s face vanished as well.
“Can we go down with our squadrons?” asked Woof.
“If you want.”
They all vanished.
I can’t say I was surprised. What did surprise me was they stayed to ask. Serena was actually looking directly at me, instead of through her mirror.
“You want to go down too?” I asked her.
“Not really. But I was wondering if you were.”
“Not unless something goes really pear shaped.” As if to demonstrate why, I suddenly yawned. She grinned, and the two AIs kept their faces straight. “And someone will have to use magic to bring them all back.”
“Haynes and Gitte can probably do that.”
“One at a time?”
“Let’s just see. They might be able to manage a squadron at a time now.”
“They’re welcome to try. As long as those they try are up for it.”
Leanne chuckled, and suddenly stopped, looking surprised at herself.
“It was worth a chuckle,” I told her.
The squadrons went down. Vid feeds popped up, and we began watching what they were seeing. These were quickly augmented by overview feeds supplied by drones Leanne sent down.
The first thing I noticed was after the dragons and wyvern had shifted, they all picked up a new gun which suited their size, which had gone down with them. The first few shots from all of them went wide, but they’d never used them before. The first dinosaur to be hit by the single pulse the gun fired, simply became a spray of red all over the area.
Dinosaurs who saw the first one hit, stopped in place in shock for long enough for another dozen to go the same way. And then all of them turned away from whatever rats nest they were attempting to enter, and sought cover from what was coming at them.
The standard meson blaster punched a nice sized hole through them, but it was taking either very well placed hits, or a number of them to take each beast down. A head shot was the best, but they moved their heads so fast getting one to hit was difficult. The body was much easier, but we had no idea where anything vital inside was, so it was hit and hit again until it went down.
Things were not totally our way. Rawtenuga who found good cover were able to start hitting pilots who didn’t have any. It gave us an indication of their heavy weapon hitting power, and I had Tamsin throw suit integrity levels up on a screen, with the normal colour coding.
“Pay attention to your combat suit integrity levels,” I bellowed into the general channel.
A number of vids showed other pilots diving for cover, and their vids showed some actual diving going on. Several of them lost another percent of integrity from what they hit when they landed, or what they bounced off.
A suit suddenly went red, and dropping like a stone, I yanked, and the pilot landed heavily face down on Judge’s cargo deck, still with jaws embedded in the torso.
“A little help, please,” sai
d the struggling pilot, who was quite unable to get out of the suit.
A cargo droid ambled over, ripped the jaws out, leaving extra-large teeth behind, and had to force the back open. The pilot levered himself out. He looked around, obviously discovering he wasn’t on the right ship, and before he could go anywhere, I shifted him to the bridge. He looked around, saw Serena and I, and the screens we were watching, and immediately took a seat.
Over the next half hour, we collected more pilots on the bridge, as combat suits failed, and I had to get them out of there. All of them found the alternative to being in the fight just as compelling as being in it. We saw one combat suit walk into an ambush, and I moved it to the other side of the dinosaur about to bite it, and instead the dino took a metal fist to the side of the head. It went down, but was only dazed. Someone else shot it.
Tamsin expanded one of the screens, and we all watched a dinosaur being chased by a dragon, and finally being eaten in a single bite. The crowd on my bridge cheered.
“Someone isn’t going to need breakfast,” said a female voice, and we all laughed.
“Do we have a count of how many Rawtenuga landed?” I asked Tamsin.
“Not yet. But it was a lot more than sixty four platoons.”
“Hello,” said Serena. “Did a squadron just move?”
“Looked like it,” said the guy I’d saved first.
Which meant one of my mages was stepping up a level.
Forty Three
Mopping up the last of them took hours.
The last dozen had thrown up a fairly solid fortification, and had resisted all attempts to get to them. I’d had to bring a number of cats back with too much damage, after demonstrating their cat suit could run on all fours as well as they could, but even leaping cats were still a good target to dug in dinos.
Of course, we didn’t even have a decent colonel on the ground, and no-one could even claim to be half-trained. In the end, I’d simply removed the fortification, and in spite of being surprised their cover had vanished, the remaining dinosaurs charged the nearest combat suits. It was soon over, given by then they were facing a seriously outnumbered situation.
Haynes and Gitte jumped about a third of those still on the surface back to their ships, and I did the rest, as most of them were from Judge. The gallery vanished without being told to. I also put a dino body on the cargo deck, where a cargo droid pulled it away for storage and examination. We’d had nothing from Haven about the one I’d sent them, and we really needed to know where the best place to hit them was. Leanne tasked a doc droid to figure that out. The mess being left as it was moved was then cleaned by little cleaner droids.
“I think we can skip training,” I said generally, without getting a laugh. “But normal breakfast time for everyone.”
Tamsin nodded.
“Did we suffer any actual injuries?”
“No, but several of the ones you brought back need additional armbands to replace the ones teeth shredded after getting through the outer suit.”
“Job well done then.”
“Have we heard from the rats?”
Serena started laughing.
“What’s up chuckles?” said Jill, now back on the console.
“I think the rats have coms problems.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Edna.
A screen popped up everyone could see, with the message ‘Leader come down’ spelled out in rats across what was obviously a sporting field of some sort. It was of course in their language, but we read it in ours just the same. The message ended in an arrow, with a single rat standing a short way off the end of it.
“Oh,” said Edna.
Woof started laughing, and everyone joined except me, as I was busy standing, and Serena who saw me standing, and also stood.
“Shall we?” she said.
“Let’s shall.”
We appeared in front of the single rat, and the word spelling ones all started to disperse.
“We wanted to thank you, Admiral, before you left our system. Unfortunately, we’re left without the means to communicate with anyone at the moment, as the Rawtenuga bombarded our coms infrastructure and media sites from orbit. They did a pretty good job of it. We’d ask one further favour from you, if you would?”
“Certainly.”
“In the next system is another of our planets. If you would kindly tell them our situation, and ask them to bring relief supplies and temporary coms equipment. I’m sure they think us either destroyed, or subjugated.”
“And what if they are?”
He looked stricken for a moment, but managed to get it together.
“Act as you must or are allowed. If not them, then someone on a planet close to us.”
“We have your kind in the system where our current base is located. The message will be passed on, and if nothing else, we will see what you need delivered from there.”
“Thank you again. You are Imperium, are you not?”
“We are.”
“Give us a few days, and then we will welcome your diplomats. You came without any reason to, and we would learn more about your Imperium, and how knowing you might be made beneficial to both.”
“I will pass that message along as well.”
“May we offer you refreshments?”
“Some other time, perhaps. For now, we need to head back to our base.”
And besides, it’s early morning for us, and we didn’t get enough sleep. But I didn’t say that.
The rat bowed, as did those still remaining and listening in. I took it as the cue to leave, and jumped us back to the bridge.
“Bed?” asked Mel.
“Bed,” I confirmed.
The hollos all vanished, and Serena left as well. But I went into my ready room and sent a vid off for the admiral to see when he woke up. When I came out, we were over the planet the rat had suggested. The message was passed on, and we started jumping for home. I figured it would be twelve hours or so before help arrived, but the need for a faster response wasn’t critical enough for me to organize it.
All the same, when we docked back at base, I told the purple flower on duty on the other station what had happened, and requested the rats on the station be informed, in case they wanted to organize further relief to be sent. We were too far away for anything to be sent from here without a jump drive, but they presumably knew other closer planets which could help.
I was the last one into bed, and also the last one up again. A full four hours later, and having missed the regular breakfast hour, I dragged myself into the shower, and figured out I’d somehow turned off the dark sun connection. Most likely when I realized the sun energy was being drawn automatically now. Obviously a dark sun wasn’t part of that intent. I reconnected, drew just a small amount of energy, and immediately felt better.
I found everyone in the mess, apparently only just having started breakfast. I didn’t ask, but assumed everyone had slept late. The status boards hadn't included anything which needed my attention, so it hadn't mattered.
They were all full of this morning’s ground action, and I let them swap stories of how dinosaurs had reacted to things like seeing a dragon for the first time. It had everyone laughing, except me. Even though I felt better, the story made me wish there hadn't been any need to kill. But this was a war, and beings died in wars. The longer it went on, and the more everyone else seemed to take the deaths in their stride, the more it was weighing me down.
Which was when I realized I hadn't worn a gun in several days.
Forty Four
With no orders, I gave everyone down time on the station.
Going home wasn’t part of the options though. But recreation was something they needed. I was about to join Serena for a walk around the station just to see how it had been developing, when a Lightning jumped in nearby.
“Like to go for a drive, Commander?” asked Jane.
I had no doubt it was an order. A screen popped up showing me an empty seating area on her s
hip, so I pinged Serena to go without me, and jumped myself over. I found Jane in the cockpit, and the ship already jumping.
“Have a seat in the back, Bud. I’m going to show you the War system, and you can connect up the two rifts we need.”
I said nothing, but took a seat in the back as she suggested, but it wasn’t for long. A screen finally came on, showing me a vista of endless asteroids. Jane came back, and we both watched in silence for a full minute.
“That’s something,” she said finally. “Is it not?”
She didn’t wait for a response, and the view shifted to directly below the ship.
The biggest asteroid I’d ever seen was blocking the view in that direction.
“Is that the one the Explorer ship broke its back on?”
“The very one. BigMother almost collided with it the first time we came here. A pirate battleship did collide with it after we chased it into the system, but while we thought it destroyed, it turned up as the shield generator for the Darkness invasion. Hard lesson there. Never assume someone bought the farm, especially when they’re an enemy and fleeing. The highers were pissed when they found that one out.”
“You’ve had contact with highers yourself?”
“A number of times. Always with Jon and the twins though. Trust me, you don’t want their attention.”
Something she didn’t know, then.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Where do you want the rifts? And how big?”
“Big enough to magic everything we need to where we need it, and too small for a ship to go through. So as to where, anywhere here, although if it cleans up the jump point area first, that might be a good thing if we have to come back here anytime.”
“Other end?”
“Wherever is close enough to the Haven shipyard for the magic to work, but nowhere where someone stupid can blunder into it. Once Bob gets his civilian shipyard back in operation, I expect him to start selling a lot of shuttles and interplanetary ships. There are always idiots who fly where they’re not supposed to, and I’m pretty sure we’re importing them as we speak.”
Lieutenant Commander Spacemage (Imperium Spacemage Book 4) Page 18