"In what?" asked Aline.
"In the defense of our worlds," said Jen. "Your scimitar design looks better than anything we have, without getting too big."
"Fighters, marines, and all?" I asked.
"We don’t have fighters as such," said Jess, "but space police do use small ships, and have long been asking for something with serious firepower."
"Ours always had their own versions of military fighters, usually old ones. I've no idea what it's like back in our home space now, but we don’t need space police at the moment, not having any trading going on. We have several levels of fighters now, and the top level did ok in the battle, but the older smaller fighters are basically death traps. We have a redesign in progress, for a fighter which can launch from a Scimitar. BigMother has bigger tubes now, so the Excalibur long range fighter can launch internally. But the Scimitars are smaller ships."
"Would your fighters work as a police ship?" asked Lea.
"Probably. The torpedo launcher by itself will seriously hurt a trade ship if you hold the fire button down. But again, we have problems as far as power generation is concerned to give them enough shielding to survive both Ralnor guns, and the missiles all three powers use." I paused for a moment, thinking. "When we replace our current fighters, there will be a lot of old ones your people could use as police craft. A lot of them are technically obsolete, and we don’t even give them to our pilots anymore, using them more like turrets. Most of them would still make good police craft though. Add it to the list of things to trade with."
Jen nodded, and I thought she'd done exactly that, using her PC. I went on.
"A direct hit from a capital ship big gun would be fatal for them, and even a near miss by a missile will take down their shields. But if they don’t get used for system defense, they should be safe enough. The scimitar though, while offensively good, is defensively weak still. An average pilot wouldn’t survive."
The girls looked at Thorn.
He sighed.
"Do you have specs for the crystals?"
"No, but ping Jane. She can provide you with everything we have on them. Scimitar specs as well."
His eyes glazed over.
"Do you seriously want a ship with marines on it as well?" I asked Jen.
"I call it an optional extra. But having an assault ship and dropships on hand, gives the ship an interdictor role, where boarding is an option. As a frontier jump point addition to a fleet, it would enable boarding ships to be a great deal easier. We don’t have carriers at the moment, and none of our capital ships have room for marines or more than shuttles. It’s a hole I've long wanted to get filled. We have troops who can be retrained, and I gather you have troops who are capable of doing the training."
It wasn’t a question.
"Yes. I don’t have many anymore, but they are the best. Put even a few of them on a ship with your troops, and the assault courses will turn them into space marines fairly quickly."
Aline was grinning.
"BA would like that I think. Come to think of it, so would I."
Jen gave her a speculative look, which caused the other women to smile.
"She doesn’t look like much," I said.
"Speak for yourself!" Aline interrupted, banging a fist against my arm, and getting smiles from the women.
Aline is Australian Japanese, and the smallest of my team. Even in uniform she didn’t look too imposing. Looks in this case were definitely deceiving.
"She was a sergeant when I first met her, and now she's a second lieutenant. My team are rank top heavy now, but even the Master Sergeants are capable of training already effective troops as space marines. Ping Annabelle Smith to work something out. Hobbs might be interested in taking on a training role. They're both two star generals. Hobbs has always worked only with elite troops, so his remaining teams might be very effective training yours, and we may have instructors I don’t know about with nothing to do. But ask them. And actually, we don’t need to do it on ships. Haven has all the necessary now. And that includes pilot training simulators. If we need more of anything, Jane can get it built. Do you have pilots capable of flying fighters?"
"A few," said Jen. "Mainly shuttle and small ship pilots who push the limits too far. I'm sure a lot of them would volunteer immediately if asked." She frowned for a moment. "From both ends of our space. And it might be well past time we started looking at building a fighter force to cope with pirates and traders, instead of wasting our big ships, which we need at the frontier systems. I'll talk to both sets of brass about it tomorrow."
"And talk to my generals about troops, and Space Commodore Lacey about training pilots."
"I will." I could see she was serious. "But I still want a Scimitar to be my own ship."
"I can build you one," said Thorn. "Jane sent me the specs, and while different, the magic is the same."
"You can really build ships using magic?" asked Aline.
"He can," said Jen. "In fact, over the last eighty years, he's been making a fairly big ship graveyard from ships retired after long use."
"The power augmentation of the crystal is the difficult part," Thorn went on, as if no-one had interrupted him. "There are no specs, and nothing to base how it works on. In theory, I can do several things. If some of them exist on your old Earth now, I can probably move them here. But finding them is the hard part, unless you have a way?"
"Kali pointed me to the ones we did find. But I've no idea where any others might be. From what I've read about Atlantean times, there should be at least a dozen more. And if we get Jane to do some research, we can probably have a rough idea. But not likely close enough to find without going there, and unless something major changed when the time line shifted, there is no going down to the surface of Earth. Not with any expectation of surviving."
"The other option is to copy one, and hope it works."
"You can do that?"
"Copying is one of the easier forms of magic. The specs for Scimitar simply give me understanding of the details, but the magic simply copies the whole ship. Less than a day, and a ship simply appears where I want it to. Same with the stations already in progress, except being substantially larger, and taking a lot longer. Your diplomatic hub should be there in a couple more days."
He grinned at my disbelieving look.
Sixty One
"You did want the station two jumps back from where Redoubt is?"
"Yes. If it needs moving, it can be moved."
"The rifts will all move from Redoubt to the new station as soon as the magic tells me it's done, and I check to make sure I didn’t miss anything important."
"Like life support?" laughed Tasha.
The rest of us laughed with her, but Thorn ignored the interruption.
"The one on this end will join our three stations, so yours and mine will be the only direct link. Redoubt and Haven will get links on your new one, as well as one for Karn."
He looked at me seriously.
"There won't be much in the way of interior fittings. Do I give Jane a list of what will be there, or what won't be there?"
"Both," said Aline.
"Jane will mostly likely clone a new avatar for the new station. So the new AI will arrange any internal building and remodeling needed. Each embassy will be unique, and need specifications for building. And likely merchants will want to arrange their own fit-outs for premises."
"What's the new station going to be called?"
"Terminus."
"You mean Hunter's Terminus," corrected Aline.
I frowned.
"Doesn’t have to be. I'm not sure I can claim ownership to a station built by Thorn."
"You don’t need to," he said. "It's yours. Everything needed to build it is coming from the asteroid belt in that system. So whoever owns the system, owns the station. And I gather you own the whole pocket of space."
"I doubt that. Technically, whatever government structure we end up with will own the space."
"But if
your king," said Aline, "won't you own it?"
"I am NOT going to be king!" I exclaimed, fairly forcefully.
Aline cringed, then laughed. The rest were as well.
"I see you have the same problem I had," said Thorn.
"You were offered kingship too?"
"I was. Turned them down flat. Best decision I made that year. It would never have happened, but it was offered."
"At least you weren't already a Duke. Seems my people expect me to upgrade now."
"Not expect," said Aline. "More a not understanding of why you were only a duke before. A lot of people thought you should have been a king from the beginning."
I shuddered.
"Being a duke was bad enough. I want none of that rubbish now. I will grant people I turned into a half decent admiral, but I'm no ruler. And never want to be."
"My thoughts exactly," said Thorn. "I didn't want to be a judge either, but I have a skill set society won't allow me not to use, so I do the judge thing when called upon. In your situation, given what happened, I can readily understand why people want you to continue. None of the other governments were as effective in dealing with the Darkness as you were."
I gave him a long silent look. The others took my cue and remained silent.
"How much do you know about what happened?"
"We all know a lot. When I brought my people here, I also brought a hermit oracle as well. She could see what most other seers could not, and it ostracized her from her own people. I provided her with a home here, on her own island. Ever since then, she helped us keep up to date with what your people were doing, and at times, what the other human societies were doing. As the Darkness War approached, and we watched your preparations for it, we started accumulating as much information as we could. After the time line change, her daughter helped me regather all the same data so we could compare before and after. Jane has all of it now."
"Wait. Her daughter helped after?"
"The time line shift killed her. Her husband had already died, and her daughter was ready to take her place, and I think she just let go of living, where the rest of us fought to stay alive."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I expected all of us involved in the decision to change the time line to cease to exist, and I knew it would have wide implications, but it never occurred to me others might die as a result of it. Cease to exist is one thing, but actually dying. Damn! If her family need anything I can provide, let Jane know, and it will be provided."
"They are already well provided for. Health checks would be good. Also, the daughter having a PC would make our communications faster."
"Done. Tell Carter when they're arriving on Haven. And seriously, until we can upgrade your own medical facilities, you're welcome to send anyone along."
"I can probably copy them, but it might be safer if you build them. Health is one area where magic shouldn’t be a short cut."
"Just tell Jane what you want."
"I will."
"You said you monitored the change before and after?" asked Aline. "Can you tell us what changed?"
He paused.
"Your end? Or our end?"
"Both."
Aline and I had said it together, so we high fived as well.
"Too much happened to do more than a brief summary. But at your end, the first of your Explorer ships meant to explore up the arm from Earth was destroyed as it undocked."
"I knew that part," I said.
"What you maybe don't know is it wasn’t put down to sabotage, but to design faults. The entire program was set back twenty years redesigning the ships. When they eventually built the second one, it went up arm, and the third went down the arm. There was never a third ship to check further out from the spine, as you called it, and so at this point in time, while most of the arm has been spread along, your people never went more than three jumps out from it. And expansion stopped well before what you knew as the Australian sector."
"What did that do to population size?"
"Interestingly, population changed from about one hundred and twenty five billion, down to around one hundred billion. But spread over a lot less planets."
"That’s about how many went to Gaia."
"Interesting, isn’t it."
I nodded.
"Technology?"
"Not as advanced. Although there has been more warfare, most of it was on planet rather than between planets. If you went back there now, you could conquer the entire arm with the few ships you have."
"Sounds like a plan," said Aline, grinning madly.
I face palmed, and the rest laughed.
"On our side, a lot of societies changed as whole sections of the populations simply ceased to exist, and a lot of tech and skills were lost with them. All three dominant races changed from being varying degrees of petty overlords, into militaristic fanatics. The Keerah now live for battle. The Ralnor want to impose control. The Trixone just want new things to eat. Where before they all made alliances with species who could benefit them, now they just conquer. The seers tell me several previous allies have now been gobbled up. In the Trixone case, literally."
"I thought the galaxy was pretty much under their sway already."
"It looks like that from an overview, but large chunks are still independent all over, particularly on the outer edges, and arms. Your old society is probably the only one which is safe from them, unless someone designs a true faster than light drive for deep space, or another magician figures out how to do rifts that far."
"You've seen what I did then?"
"Yes. Truly inspired idea I thought."
It had been, even if I had to admit it myself. Turning a jump point in on itself so nothing went in or out was something even the higher beings had never thought of.
"It is an option in the current environment as well."
"True. But only for those who want to be left alone."
"What the hell are you two going on about?" asked Lea.
"With what I know now, I can effectively close jump points."
"Could be useful," said Jen. "As a threat, and if need be, also a weapon."
I looked at her in shock. And now I could see the admiral in her.
A pulse came in, giving me a reason not to think about what had been said. The vid which played made me jump.
"What?" asked Aline.
"Amanda just sent me an Oi!"
"Ouch."
"What's an 'oi'?" asked Tasha.
A live feed came in, and I popped up a hollo everyone could see.
"What's this going to a tropical beach without us business?" demanded Amanda.
The rest of the team were standing behind her, all looking very pissed off.
"Prisoner transfer completed?" I asked, as innocently as I could.
"Bloody oath it is!" yelled BA.
I turned to Thorn and Tasha.
"You don’t happen to know of a beach anywhere around my team can disturb without disturbing others?"
"Of course," said Tasha. "More the merrier."
I turned back to the team.
"Did you lot bring your togs?"
"Huh?" blurted Amanda.
Sixty Two
Beach togs, as usual in my experience, turned out to be optional.
Thorn vanished, and Tasha led us out and down to the beach. The team appeared there, there were whoops of joy from the twins, suits shifted to belts, underwear went flying up the beach, and naked bodies rushed out into the water.
Thorn went purple again, his wife laughed really hard, his friends almost as hard, and he vanished again. The laughing stopped when they saw George was also fully naked, and Annabelle and I started laughing instead. I think Tasha was the one embarrassed this time, as the other three seemed to be admiring the female members of the team. The four of them looked at us.
"Mercenaries," I said. "Used to live in a single barracks on a military transport, with communal showering. Took me a while to adapt."
"But you didn’t see him turning
purple and vanishing," laughed Annabelle. "From what the girls told me, he was a sport, and just stripped off after them the first time."
Now I was starting to go purple. I flipped the blush switch off in my PC, and it vanished.
"What's Thorn's problem?"
"Probably me," said Jen.
The others laughed.
"Thorn was a typical teenager when we first met him," said Lea. "And just discovering what magic could be used for in a technological society. He'd tried being invisible in steamy bathrooms, and figured out why it doesn't work." The four of them laughed some more. "On ship, he discovered he could look into staterooms remotely, and I'm afraid I encouraged him."
"What happened to make him go purple?"
"Not what, but who. Jen threatened to throw him out an airlock if he remote viewed her or Jess. Not long after, he accidently watched a couple on another ship having sex, and before long, he refused to even look in on me when I goaded him to. I guess he stopped looking altogether, and since he's been with Tasha, he hasn’t looked at anyone else naked all this time."
"Are you coming in or not?" yelled Aline, standing there in hips high water.
Annabelle shrugged, her suit shifted, she shucked her underwear, and ran down the beach. Aline was still there, looking stern, so I shrugged as well, and was soon running naked down the beach as well. My rationale was I had to run, since the sand was actually damned hot.
"What the hell," I heard Jen say, and when I looked back once I was in the water, four naked old ladies were half way down the sand.
"Eyes front soldier," barked Aline, and she pulled me under while I was off balance.
Frolicking about in the water didn’t quite take my mind off things, but Aline tried hard enough. Even so, I was the first one to pad rapidly back up the beach, where I found no underwear at all, a pile of towels, and one of our underwear dispensers. I dialed up my normal briefs, slipped them on, and shifted my belt into a short pair of shorts.
Having seen all the sights before, I turned up the beach and began walking. Around the next headland I found another beach, and kept going. Being by myself was refreshing, even if it wasn’t going to last long. And it didn’t. The sun was coming down out over the ocean, with me only half way around, and Thorn appeared on the beach a short way away.
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