"If he survives, they will want him back. We shall need to talk about ransoms."
And that was probably what all this was about. Send in a suicide mission led by someone the enemy won't want to kill, and they take back all the information needed about combat capabilities, and whatever the sensors could detect. And this time, it also included our ability to appear without using a jump point. Which either meant we had true invisibility, or we had point to point jumping. Knowing we had either would make them all the more focused on taking it.
I sighed, concentrated on a doorway, opened a rift to my ready room door, and stepped through.
Forty Eight
This wasn’t my ready room.
It wasn’t even a room.
It was just a patch of light, somewhere in the dark. In the middle of the light sat a table with four chairs. I sighed, went to the nearest chair, pulled it out, and sat.
Nothing happened.
I sat there, pondering things. The alone time was good, even if I didn’t know where I was. Decisions made, I rose and prepared to leave.
Which was when the other three chairs suddenly filled. I looked around the three, sighed, and sat again.
"Haven't I earned a rest?" I demanded.
"You've had it," said Kali.
"Would you have preferred to cease to exist?" asked Ganesha.
"In some ways yes. I did the impossible for you. What more do you want?"
I regretted asking it immediately. Now I might get an answer.
"We ask nothing of you," said Kali. "But we know who you are."
"Who am I then?"
"The one who can."
"Can what?"
"Do the impossible," said One.
"You want me to keep doing it? Is that it?"
"No, young Jon," said Ganesha, laughing quietly.
"All now is possible," said Kali. "We just want you to do what must be done."
"Why?"
"You keep asking that question," said One. "Do you think the more you say it, the more likely you will get an answer?"
"One can hope."
"Don’t hope," said Ganesha.
"Do," said Kali.
"Why?"
The three of them sat there grinning at me.
And suddenly, they were gone.
A chick with four arms, a man with a trunk for a nose, and the avatar of the galaxy's largest nebulae, walk into a bar. It explodes for no adequately explored reason. The three of them walk out again without having had a drink.
Try as I might, I couldn't make that work as a joke. I sighed.
"Could have bloody well shifted me home!" I yelled.
The chuckle made me feel even more pissed off than I already did. I concentrated on opening a rift from a space in front of me to my ready room door, rose, and stepped through. Only as I was doing so, I remembered I hadn't checked what was on the other side. Again.
For a split second I stood on the ceiling of the ready room, and began to fall. My suit shifted into full protection mode, and I tried to twist as I went down, but ended up falling solidly on my left side.
"Not funny!" I yelled.
Forty Nine
I limped back out to my chair, and sat down.
Grace gave me a look of wonder, but decided not to say anything. Annabelle was grinning, but she turned serious when I shot a glance in her direction. She and Hobbs went back to monitoring the activity on the station.
"That was a long transition back," said Syrinx. "We saw you leave a half hour ago. Did you go somewhere else?"
"Yes and no."
They waited for me to elaborate, but I didn’t. Jane came in, and sat, turning to look at me.
"Report," I said.
"All quiet on the station. Gunbus is docked next to the freighter the Keerah used. We still have an active rift between deck zero and the station, which is how I came back."
Now they tell me.
"Everything moveable is being transferred to Gunbus. The ship appears to be a bog standard freighter of an older here human design, so they either took it from some unfortunate trader, or copied it. However it does have a very nice armoury on board, and a lot of the equipment they used to make their defenses with. All going to Gunbus."
"The jump point?"
"All quiet."
"The white?"
"Awake, and wanting to talk to whoever is in charge."
"I'll bet."
She looked at me, a frown appearing on her face.
"Are you okay Jon?"
"No."
Even I heard the finality in my voice. I made an effort to get a grip. Truth be told, I had no idea why I was sinking into such a black mood.
"Thorn!" I said, out loud.
"What?" he said in my head.
"We need to talk."
Of course, I should have known we wouldn’t get the chance to.
Thorn appeared, and cut me off from saying anything more.
"The Keerah have attacked the trading station we have on the other end of this space."
"Of course they have."
"You knew?"
"No, but this day just keeps getting worse, so it was inevitable."
I turned to Annabelle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thorn vanish again.
"Recall the troops."
She nodded, and started giving orders.
"Lacey."
"Sir?"
"Recall. Land on the flight deck, and prepare to launch again as soon as BigMother arrives at a new destination."
"On way."
His fighters were not all that far away, in real terms. By the time the troops were all on board again, and Gunbus was docked, Lacey himself flew in the back of the ship and settled down right at the front. The squadrons formed up behind him.
We did it all again. With a few changes this time. I opened the rift myself, with Jane showing me where on the navmap we needed to be. I took my time, I changed the rift so I could see out of it before the ship moved, and moved the rift so we came out a safe distance away, but pointed at the station. I left the rift open.
The fighters launched the moment BigMother stopped, and headed for the jump point. This time Thorn let them get there under their own steam.
Jane popped up the station tactical again, and the tigers seemed to have had an identical plan, because they were all in the same places.
"Jack?"
"Yes boss?"
"Did they coat the ceiling with their hull coating?"
"Not that I recall seeing."
A set of no's sounded from around him.
"Slight change in plans then. Take a set of meson streamers to the deck above the administration area. Cut a hole in the floor, and drop in on them."
"Roger that!"
I looked at Syrinx.
"You want me to do the team rifts?"
I nodded, she concentrated, the rifts appeared one by one, and the teams deployed. I looked over to Tanith.
"Comnavsats. On it."
I smiled, and looked around to Jane.
"Launching Gunbus."
I sat back, feeling like I was right in not really being needed, and just let them all get on with it. The Keerah fleet was smaller here, but still enough to wash over the defense fleet if given the chance. And they were not making any moves, which suggested they had no intention of attacking here either. Once again, this was recon, not making war.
"Thorn. My ready room please."
I rose, and strode in. Angel followed me, but took the top of a lounge chair instead of my lap. I guess she could tell my mood wasn’t conducive to cat oriented pleasure.
Thorn appeared a couple of minutes later. I waved him to a chair opposite my desk.
"Now we're going to have that talk."
Fifty
"What's to talk about?" he asked.
"Don't come the raw prawn with me. It should be obvious."
I could see him debating asking what a prawn was, and why raw was a problem. He chose not to.
"You w
ant tips on how to use the power of your staff?"
"Eventually yes. Now though, we need to talk about defending your space, if you truly are going to stop doing it."
"Not immediately, but if the Keerah were to attack at both ends simultaneously, I’d be hard pressed to deal with both effectively. One of the attacks would most likely cause some damage before I could deal with it."
"Hasn't it always been like that?"
"Not really, no. Before the timeline shift, we were on reasonably good terms with the Keerah, although without any proper diplomatic treaties in place. Never needed them. I bloodied their noses a few times, the local commander and I came to an understanding, and thereafter, they left us alone."
"And after the time line shift?"
"They lost all memory of why they'd been leaving us alone. I turned back two uncoordinated attacks several days before you met them, after which they seemed to lose interest in us." He paused, and I waited. "Okay, I did some editing in the minds of some key Keerah leaders in the border systems."
None of that made any sense. I said so. The last eighty years should have been very different.
"No. Nothing really changed for them. I kept my people's time line intact. A considerable challenge I might add. And the Keerah around us seemed to adapt to the fact we hadn't changed. The only real change has happened since they met you. It's as if they now find all humans to be a threat."
"You could have prevented that."
"I know. I chose not to. There are other benefits to this course of action."
"Such as?"
"Bringing all humans under a single defensive and trading structure, so we can go into the future as…"
"A rival to the three main powers?"
"Not my intention, but I guess things could be interpreted that way. But I've seen what happens when human societies stand alone in this future."
"How?"
"Seers. We have several very good ones, and the first few days after the time line shift saw some very dire situations appearing."
"Because of me?"
"No. Because you walked away. Or because you stayed isolationist, protecting only your own people."
I had a mental image of me walking through space, heading away from everything.
I sighed. I knew where this was going, and while I didn’t want to go there, I didn't see any way of avoiding it. The only way this could have been avoided, was to have stayed in bed when Jane enticed me up against my instincts, or when Aline motivated me to go exploring.
But it did finally explain why we'd done that set of insane missions into fiction books. Thorn had seen what happened if I effectively stayed in bed, the highers had seen it because he'd seen it, and they took steps to get me out of bed.
Sometimes it just is better if you stay in bed!
"Hence the politicians?"
Diplomacy was not my thing. I'd never really needed it. An admiral can override a politician in a military situation, and things had been mainly military for two years now. Even when it wasn’t, I had other people doing the diplomacy thing.
"Yes."
I sighed. One of the benefits of spending most of your youth playing computer games based on building a society, building an exploration fleet, colonizing other worlds, designing and building fleets, and building an empire, was the next step inevitably involved meeting other empires, and the diplomacy involved. I'd always hated the diplomacy parts of those games. But this was a logical progression, and I was at least used to it. At a game level anyway. I wasn’t at all sure the politicians were going to cope with me all that well.
"Well you better get them here then."
"Now?"
"No time like the present."
He fixed a gaze on me for a few moments, nodded, and closed his eyes.
"I hate it when you do that!" yelled Shanto, after appearing near the door.
"Me too," said Tranallo, over by the lounge chairs.
I waved both of them to sit, assuming Thorn would provide another desk chair. He did. They sat. I looked over to a wall, and Jane put up the station tactical. The red dots were going out, or were ceasing to move.
"How well do your peoples get on?" I asked all three of them.
"We don’t have a lot of contact," said Thorn. "Mainly trading through our station with those traders we trust to let through into our space. Except for me of course. I get called in, in my capacity as Judge, quite regularly. And Jen coordinated our military when needed, although that was mainly because I insisted on it. We've otherwise kept ourselves isolated, so we can develop as a society without too much contamination. And from a defense point of view, anyone has to go through both of them to get to us."
I looked at the other two. They looked at each other. Tranallo nodded to Shanto.
"Our societies met nearly three hundred years ago, and we've been trading partners since. While staying independent entities, we have been sharing technological advancements. When the Keerah discovered us about seventy five years ago, this became essential, as their technology is well beyond ours, and only Thorn here kept us from being overrun. Any disputes we had, were solved out of the necessity to keep Thorn happy."
He grinned at me. I declined to comment.
"What would you say the main differences are between you?" I asked.
"Besides skin colour you mean?" laughed Tranallo. "None really. Our styles of democracy differ a great deal, a lot of our people have an aversion for anything which even smells like magic, and we don’t trust our military to be about without a leash. Thorn here doesn’t spend as much time in our part of space, and when he does, he uses a lot more discretion than he did when our people first met him, and he toppled the then military government."
I looked at Thorn, and he shrugged.
"So where do you all stand on any level of unification?"
"Opposed," they all said at once.
Which figured.
"Let me rephrase that. If you stand alone, you all fall alone. How do you feel about that?"
"Not real good," said Shanto.
The other two nodded.
"Do you want my people's help?"
"Yes," they said together.
Which also figured.
"How come you never linked the Keerah threatened systems together using a rift?" I asked Thorn.
"Didn’t know it could be done, and never thought of anything like it." He gave me a look. "How did you know how to do it?"
"One of Syrinx's people's skills. Syrinx was the best at it, which is why she was sent to save me and my team."
"How did they know?"
"From what I've been told, both sets of magician societies were casting about how to save themselves from the oncoming Darkness, both had been skrying to observe those being affected by the advance of the Darkness, and both found me. Apparently they took a copy of my book pad. Each found something we were either doing, or in our fiction, they could use to escape their planets, without having been in space before. One of my books explained the concept of rifts, and the Sisters of Karn were able to make it work. Syrinx helped me do it myself, since she was drawing on the energy of the Sceptre to open very large rifts for this ship, for doing it herself was using everything she had. We both had a hand on the sceptre when she was opening one, and I found I could see what she was doing."
"What has this to do with us?" asked Shanto.
"I think I can link us all up.
Fifty One
They looked at me as if I was mad.
Even Thorn. I managed a smile.
"Here's my idea. You select a station somewhere in the middle of your combined space. Syrinx and I will connect it with a permanent rift to Thorn's station, and both the frontier stations. It will then be linked to one of mine. The connections will be two way, and we do them for both people traffic and cargo. The station you choose to be connected to mine and Thorn's will become a sort of hub at your end. We can trade with each other directly, without needing ships, and we can all send troops quickly
to where they might be needed."
"We'll figure out a way of moving cargo effectively," said Jane through room coms.
"Who was that?" asked Shanto.
"My AI. She monitors everything."
"AI?" asked Tranallo.
Thorn also looked confused.
"Artificial Intelligence. Effectively a computer come alive. Jane is my primary one, but we have others. All of my ships are AI controlled. As are my stations. They control most of my troops as well."
"An AI controls people?" asked Shanto, looking very surprised.
"No. Most of my troops are robotic. I brought most of the human troops I have, and they're on the station out there now. But if need be, I can have several thousand combat droids deployed through a rift in a very short amount of time. I'm not sure how effective they'll be against the Keerah, but they are expendable."
"Speak for yourself," said Jane, causing the others to laugh. "Station is taken by the way. General O'Neill is reporting in, and mopping up has begun."
"You took down the Keerah this fast?" asked Tranallo. "How?"
"Punched most of them in the nose," said Jane. "They may have better guns, but our armour is good enough to get us into fist fighting range, and they don’t wear head armour. Punch in the face with a metal covered fist, and down they go."
"That's amazing," said Shanto.
I ignored her.
"Jane, was there a white?"
"Yes."
"It survived?"
"Yes."
"Put them all on ice for now, until we figure out how to get them back to our space. They can go with the rest. But the two whites must be isolated from each other and their troops."
"Confirmed. Too many for our brig facilities. We may have to rig up a temporary jail on the cargo deck."
"Do it. Make sure none of them can escape. The one thing we don’t want is them getting usable intel back to their own people, before we get a chance to try some diplomacy with them."
"Confirmed. I'll use Gunbus to move them over."
"Gunbus?" asked Thorn.
"Personal Corvette," I answered. "Comes in handy for docking at stations when they can't handle a ship this big."
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