Today's Spacemage

By Timothy Ellis

The Spacemage Chronicle, Book Two.

Copyright © 2018 by Timothy Ellis

This book is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places and events are fictional and have no relationship to any
real person, place or event. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is
purely co-incidental.

The author is Australian. In Australia, we
colour things slightly differently, so you may notice some of the spelling is
different. Please don't be alarmed.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the
written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation
embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contents

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

Twenty Nine

Thirty

Thirty One

Thirty Two

Thirty Three

Thirty Four

Thirty Five

Thirty Six

Thirty Seven

Thirty Eight

Thirty Nine

Forty

Forty One

Forty Two

Forty Three

Forty Four

Forty Five

Forty Six

Forty Seven

Forty Eight

Forty Nine

Fifty

Fifty One

Fifty Two

Fifty Three

Fifty four

Fifty Five

Fifty Six

Fifty Seven

Fifty Eight

Fifty Nine

Sixty

Sixty One

Sixty Two

Sixty Three

Acknowledgements

A Message to my
Readers

Also by Timothy
Ellis

One

The ward chimed at the back of my mind.

For a moment I wondered what it was, before
memory supplied the answer. It'd been a while after all, and I'd forgotten
quite a lot I did when I first arrived back here.

I shifted my magic sight from the coral
reef I'd been watching, while lying on a beach lounge, sipping a cold drink.

Half a world away was the monument to a
lost civilization I'd erected in my first month here. There were people around
it. Three of them to be exact, and I knew all three. A little way away, was a
shuttle. I'd long since stopped waiting for one, so there wasn’t a ward in
place to alert me to one coming down.

I frowned. Jess and Lea were in a military
uniform, and Tasha was back in her Marine uniform. Something had changed.

I added hearing to remote viewing,
something I'd only succeeded in doing recently. I could not only see the whales
out in the ocean now, I could hear their songs as well.

The glass case containing my first pad,
shattered as Jess hit it with her gun butt. I'd left it there in case I died
before anyone came back to this backwater planet, in the middle of nowhere. On
the pad was my recollection of my journey to the stars, and why I came back.
The monument contained a power source to keep the pad charged, able to
magically keep going almost indefinitely.

Jess removed it from its little pedestal,
and turned it on. There was only a single file on it, and she pressed the icon
to bring it up. She started flipping madly.

"What is it?" asked Lea.

"Thorn's story of his time with
us."

"Flip to the last page,"
suggested Tasha.

Jess did.

"What the fuck?" she exclaimed.

"What?" asked the other two
together.

"He's said he expects to be dead
before this is found."

"I hope he didn’t do something
stupid," said Tasha, looking worried.

"What kind of stupid?" asked Lea.

Jess and Tasha exchanged looks.

"What would you do, if you were the
only person on the planet, with no-one else on it, and no hope of rescue?"

"Finally get some peace and
quiet?" laughed Lea.

The other two looked at each other again,
obviously debating spelling it out or not. I was laughing. She'd been spot on,
and the other two didn’t know it. The planet wasn’t without noise, but it was
peaceful and quiet without other people. Especially on your own private island,
with its own private beach, and no predators to bother you.

I sighed. I guess I’d have to put them out
of their misery. But first, I needed clothes. By the time I’d padded up the hot
white sand, hunted out the clothes I'd previously worn on the ship, and was
ready to move, they were arguing about what to do next.

I shifted myself to stand behind them.

"Hi."

The three of them jumped, and turned to
face me.

"Don't do that!" yelled Jess.

"Hi," said Lea.

Tasha said nothing, but enveloped me in a
hug which left me gasping for breath. Eventually she let go, and stepped back,
smiling coyly.

We stood there for a full minute.

"So not dead," said Lea.

"Apparently not," said Jess.

Tasha was grinning. The other two were not,
their frowns getting bigger as they tried to work something out. I waited for
it.

"What the hell have you done to
yourself Thorn?" asked Lea. "You look older."

"I am older. It's been a long
time."

"It's been two months," exclaimed
Jess. "You look years older."

"Five. It's been five years."

"It has not," said Lea.

"Has for me."

"You didn't?" asked Tasha.

"Didn’t what?" asked Lea.

I nodded to Tasha.

"I assume it didn’t go well?"

"Not really. But it could have been
worse."

"What didn’t go well?" yelled
Lea.

I paused, trying to figure how to put it.

"I figured the civilization here
vanished because of something I did while I was on the ship."

"So?" asked Jess.

"So the only thing I could think of,
was vanishing missiles in space, and where they went. And perhaps when they
went."

"You're not making sense Thorn,"
said Lea.

Tasha winced. She'd worked it out.

"One of the things we were supposed to
learn after the day of choosing, was where things we made vanish, went to. It
was different for everyone, and it was part of learning magic properly to find
your stash of things."

"Did you find yours?" asked
Tasha.

"Yes, and no."

"Pick one," said Jess.

"No, as in I didn’t find anything to
be sure. But yes, in so far as the only thing different about this planet, is a
rather large crater up in the hills behind us."

"The missiles?" asked Tasha.

"I assume so. After I vanished them,
they came here, and exploded."

Tasha winced again.

"And you think you wiped out the
civilization here with the missiles?" asked Jess.

"Presumably they went back in time, as
well as crossing space."

"So what did you do?" asked Lea.

"You didn’t?" asked Tasha again.

I nodded. She winced again.

"What?" demanded Jess.

"I tried going back in time."

Jess and Lea were shocked. Tasha nodded.

"But you only managed five years
back?" she suggested.

"Yes. And I wasn’t able to come
forward again. Or figure out what was wrong with my intent going back. All I
knew was, I'd not gone very far back, since the stars hadn't changed at all.
Five years wasn’t much of a time jump. I figure the problem was at least a
thousand years ago. So I lived it the long way, which is how I know it was five
years. Hence looking older, because I am."

"How did you avoid meeting
yourself?" asked Tasha, grinning. "Or didn’t you?"

I smiled at her.

"No, I didn’t. As soon as I realized I
was stuck back then, I went looking at those parts of the planet I hadn't looked
at with my sight. There's this nice tropical island I didn’t know about, so I
made a home there."

"Hence your tan," laughed Tasha.

"I guess so. Anyway, I wasn’t here, or
anywhere I’d see myself, and to make sure, I put an invisible shroud over the
island to be sure."

"So, you're what, twenty three
now?"

"About that, yes."

"Good."

Tasha looked happy about something, but I
turned to Jess instead.

"What made you come back?"

I really hadn't expected to ever see them
again.

"You remember that pretend war the military
were spouting at us?"

"Vaguely. The aliens beyond the
frontier?"

"Yes."

"What of it?"

"It happened a month ago."

Two

"Seriously?"

"Yes Thorn," said Lea.

"What happened?"

"The aliens hit our fleet unexpectedly,"
explained Jess. "They took the military station there, and what remained
of our fleet fell back to the next jump point. We’ve been managing to hold
there, but they take out one of our ships for every one of theirs we take out.
The attrition rate was too high. Is too high."

"And?"

"They drafted every ship with a gun or
launcher on it, including us."

"I wondered why the uniforms. What
made you go back?"

"You remember the Major?"

"Yes. Vaguely."

"He survived the courier being
wrecked, and was later placed in charge of recruiting draftees. This time when
he caught up with us, he had an offer we couldn’t refuse. Or at least, Jen
couldn’t refuse."

The mind boggled, and for a moment, my
eyelids fluttered with surprise.

"What?"

"They put her in charge of the
civilian fleet. She's still under the admiral in charge, but more or less
independent."

I couldn't picture it.

"I'll take your word for that."

Lea laughed.

"So what are you doing here?"

"We need you Thorn," blurted Lea.
"It's really bad, and we're running out of ships."

"We need something they won't be able
to counter," added Jess.

"I missed you," added Tasha.

I laughed. Mainly at Tasha being so out of
step with the other two. But as what they were asking sank in, I stopped
laughing, and started frowning.

"No."

Tasha nodded, as if she'd expected it.

"Why not?" demanded Jess.

I thought for a moment, not about her
question, and four lounge chairs materialized next to us, in a circle. The pad
shifted back to the monument, and the glass fragments vanished, replaced by new
glass panels.

Tasha smiled, and sat immediately. I sat
next to her. She opened her mouth, and an occasional table appeared next to
each chair, with a drink on it.

"How?" said Lea, and stopped.

Jess sighed, and both of them sat.

"You're a lot more powerful now than
when we last saw you, aren’t you Thorn?"

Jess sounded resigned now.

"Yes. I've had a lot of time to
practice."

Grass grew up around our feet, changing
dirt into a lush green meadow.

"Is there anything you can't do
now?" asked Tasha.

"Sure. I'm not even a master yet. With
no teacher, it's taking me much longer to learn things."

"Is Jen your reason for not coming
back with us?" asked Jess.

"Partly."

"She's changed," said Lea.

"She no longer has the stick up her
arse," added Tasha.

I winced. It was a mental image I didn’t
need, and they had no idea just how dangerous it was suggesting it to me.
Things happened just because I thought of them. Five years hadn't been enough
time to master my thoughts enough, to be safe around other people.

"Sorry. I remember the last time you
had an odd thought pop in."

"That's part of it. I'm dangerous to
be around."

"We'll risk it," said Lea.

I shook my head, but said nothing.

"Jen's changed," repeated Jess.
"She's had a taste of real command now, and what we've seen over the last month
would change anyone."

"I will not be a weapon for her to
wield."

"It won't be like that."

"Even if it's not her, someone will
want to wield me as a weapon, once they see what I can do."

"They already know part of what you
can do," said Tasha.

I looked at her, nodding for her to
continue.

"The Major put the basics together,
and went looking for answers. He heard enough off beat stories from everywhere
we went, to understand you were different enough to be useful. He doesn’t
understand what you are, but he knows you're powerful enough to jump ships
across systems, and to destroy ships without using technology."

"So?"

"He reported to his superiors, and Jen
was told to come get you."

"So why isn’t she here?"

"You left because of her," said
Jess. "She figured we had the best chance of getting you back without
her."

"I left for several reasons, and she
was the lesser of them. Had I stayed, there would have been a point where I
refused an order, and she'd react badly to it. We came very close to it, as it
was. She was beginning to see me as a threat to her command of the ship."

"We made her admit that," said
Lea. "She's past it now."

"She freely admits she screwed
up," added Jess.

"Not much point telling me that. It
has to come from her."

"You'll talk to her then?"

I thought about it.

"Yes."

"We'll go get her then."

"You can't send her a message to say
come down?"

"We only have one shuttle left, so it
has to go back to the ship, before she can come down. Unless you want to come
up to the ship with us?"

She looked at my face, and hers fell.

"We'll be back as fast as we
can."

She and Lea rose, and walked off to the
shuttle. Tasha made no move to get up, and made a point of sipping her drink.
We watched the shuttle take off, and head upwards. Tasha turned back to look at
me.

"I really missed you!"

Three

There was something in the way she looked
at me I found faintly disturbing. Or was it unexpected? I rose, and offered her
my hand.

"Let's go somewhere more
comfortable."

She took my hand, and we shifted to my island.
On the sand next to my lounge, another appeared. I waved her towards it, and
renewed our drinks. Before she sat, she looked at the house behind us.

"Nice. Your second life home?"

"No. But something similar from the
same place. Smaller."

"What did you do when you first got
here?"

I filled her in on the last few pages of
the testament on the pad.

"So you rebuilt your first life house,
and dug out the village? Where was it?"

"Over near the monument. I put the
monument where I landed, which was in the middle of where I thought the city
should be. But my first life home was further down the hills, near the sea, but
not where the city's port was. So it isn’t visible from the monument."

"And you didn’t go back after you
jumped back in time?"

"No. I built everything I need just
here. The old house was too primitive."

She gave me a look.

"Didn’t you get lonely?"

"Sometimes."

"Me too."

"Isn't a war enough to keep you too
busy to get lonely?"

"Not really. Being close to death
brings home what's important in life."

I shot her a glance.

"You…"

"No, I wasn’t," she laughed.
"Well not more than minor wounds. But the ship was substantially damaged
in the last attack, and for a moment there, I thought we weren’t going to make
it. You don’t need to be badly injured, to start thinking about mortality, and
what's missing in your life."

I looked up, and threw my sight up to the
ship. The shuttle hadn't docked yet, and I looked at it properly. I could see
the shuttle had seen better days.

I was shocked to see the ship. There were
gaping holes in a dozen places, although the inner hull hadn't been breached.
The ship's unique design had worked in its favour. The hull was dented just
about everywhere. I looked all around it, seeing more than half the turrets and
launchers either destroyed, or badly damaged. Inside the ship, there was
evidence of burnt out junction boxes, and jury rigged cables. The magazines
were empty.

I looked at Tasha. She nodded.

"Most of our remaining ships look like
ours. We took a beating Thorn. I'm not sure why we're still here."

She seemed to be thinking for a moment, I
saw her reach a decision, and she rose.

"Show me your house Thorn."

She held out her hand, I took it, and led
her across the sand to the front door. It didn’t take long to show her around.
The last stop was the bedroom.

She looked in, nodded to herself, and
pulled me in after her. She turned me around, and pushed me down on the bed.

"I'm glad you grew up," she said.
"We're the same age now. Makes things different."

I was still trying to figure out how, when
she started unzipping her uniform.

Four

The shuttle touched down further along the
beach.

Tasha and I were in the water, and watched
it come down. I'd created a bikini for her to wear, and a pair of light shorts
for myself. We waded out as Jen walked up the beach towards us. Lea and Jess
followed on behind her.

I was shocked at how Jen looked. I beat her
to the first word.

"You look like shit Jen."

"And you look older."

We glared at each other for a moment. Her
next move stunned me.

She smiled, and hugged me. It was a fast
hug, but her hugging a man, meant she had changed.

"It's good to see you Thorn. You look
good. All grown up. Nice tan."

Tasha grinned, and Lea saw it, and gave us
both a very speculative look.

"Hard not to get tanned here."

I noticed she wasn’t all that comfortable
with the amount of skin on show, so I put clothes back on both of us.

"Hey," said Tasha. "Give me
some warning when you do that!"

I grinned at her. She didn’t know it yet,
but she was now wearing underwear over her bikini, since I wasn’t about to let
Lea find her underwear on my bed, if she went inside.

Lea nudged Jess.

More chairs appeared, and I waved everyone
into them. The two beach lounges changed into living room lounges. Drinks
appeared for everyone.

"You are more powerful," said
Jen. "We need you."

"So I gather."

"I need you."

"Why?"

She paused, as if she hadn't expected me to
question that. I waited for her.

"I apologize for what I said when you
left. I was out of line."

"You were almost out of your
mind," said Lea.

"And she isn’t now?" I added.

"No," they all said together.

I looked at them all, and turned back to
Jen.

"You look worse than when I last saw
you."

"Physically yes. Mentally yes.
Emotionally no."

"Explain."

"The ship has almost been destroyed
twice. None of us escaped doing at least a bit of time in medical. None of us
have slept properly in a month. I'm in charge, and it's been a heavy load.
We’ve seen a lot of good people killed, and they were under my orders when they
died. I'm dealing, but it's hard."

"What happened to the most promising
junior officer in the fleet?"

"She died a quick death. What you see
is what came through it all."

"Did you lose anyone?"

"Crew?"

I nodded.

"Miraculously, no."

"So where do I fit in?"

"How do you want to fit in?"

"No Jen. I'm not playing that game.
You tell me."

She sighed.

"Thorn, we need you. Especially now we
find you so much more powerful. The captain fights the ship. The XO runs the
ship. If you want to be an admiral, I'll take your orders. This is a war, and I
know you have better strategy talent than I do. And in a battle, you'll have to
call the shots in order the ship does the right thing to back up what you're
doing. Not just the ship, but the fleet. Hell, I'll just be the pilot, if that’s
what it takes to convince you."

Admiral Thorn. I gave it a few seconds to
percolate. No, I didn't need that sort of ego stroke.

"Jen?"

"Thorn?"

"Go back to the ship, and put a
swimsuit on."

She opened her mouth to protest, thought
about it, and closed her mouth. She nodded, rose, and started walking to the
shuttle. Ten paces away, she stopped, and looked back.

"I don’t have a swimsuit."

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Everyone
joined in, except Jen, who obviously didn’t know what to do. I made an effort
to stop.

"Get on the shuttle. I'll move it to
the ship. Tell everyone they're on leave, and they're coming down here. If they
have a swimsuit, or beach clothes, bring them. If not, I'll make them
something. But everyone is going to spend the next couple of days on this
beach."

Jen looked like she'd rather be alone
somewhere else.

"There are four beaches on this
island, and none of them are more than an hour's walk away. If you want alone
time, you can have it. At this time of the year, there's no rain, so we sleep
on the beach."

"Bugs?" asked Lea.

"None. I moved them all to another
island the first week I was here."

"Should have guessed that."

I grinned at her, and looked back at Jen.
She nodded, and continued on to the shuttle. When the hatch closed, I shifted
it to the hanger on the ship.

A half hour later, the shuttle was back.
Another hour, and everyone was in swimwear, and most of them were in the water.

Five

Several of the marines turned out to be
really good at barbeque. I gave them what they needed to cook with, arranged
for fish and meat to cook, sent Lea and Tasha off to pick vegetables from my
garden and store, and left them to organize themselves. Predictably, Jen went
for a walk on her own.

Close up, the ship was a wreck. Inside and
out. After finding where I'd used to live untouched, except for where a wall
needed patching, I put a bubble of air around myself, and popped out to walk
the hull.

I’d done this a couple of times already.
Make a bubble, jump with the bubble into space, and spend ten minutes looking
down on the planet. Jump back. Ten being as long as the air lasted in the size
of bubble I was using. It was enough. The bubble also kept out the cold,
although I’d had to add the intent the first time I tried.

It took me a while to find a place to put
the ship. I found a narrow ravine, a bit less than the width of the ship, and
moved it to sit across it. This allowed access to most of the hull.

I stood on a hill overlooking the ship. It
was the first time I'd seen how big it really was. I used my sight to closely
look at the hull in one of the holed sections, and after it, one of the dented
sections. I pondered what to do, and decided to start again. I removed one of
the damaged hull plates, established it as an ongoing task, and set the intent
to remove all the hull plates, except the ones holding the ship up. The removed
metal was piled nearby. I set a warning ding in place for near to the last plate,
so I’d be back to end the removal intent.

I watched the ship being slowly stripped
naked for a short time, and went back to the beach. Jen wasn’t there, so I cast
around until I found her, and jumped again.

"Don’t do that!" she yelled at
me.

"Sorry. I've been alone too long. We
need to talk."

"Now?"

"Now is good. Sit. Please."

She gave me a long look, and sat on the
sand, looking out over the water. I sat next to her, but gave her a lot of
space.

"How long do we have?"

"For what?"

"Before we have to be back at the
fleet."

"I told them two weeks travel, plus
however long it took to convince you to come."

"So just over a week?"

"Yes. They were calling in the last of
the reserves, and sending the most battered ships out to the other frontier
choke points, so those ships could take over holding the line."

"Will they hold that long?"

"So far, so good. But who knows what
tomorrow will bring." She turned, and looked at me. "Why?"

"The ship will take a few days to
fix."

"That's why you wanted everyone off
it?"

"Yes. But it was bloody obvious you
lot needed a couple of days off."

"We can't afford any days off."

"So I'm making you."

She sighed, and nodded.

"How do we fix you?" I asked her.

"I don’t need fixing!"

"Yes, you do. You can fool them, and
you can fool the shrinks, but you can't fool me."

She looked at me. I tried not to wince.

"Tell me."

"I want that bastard dead." The
rapist. "I know you cut his junk off, but it's not enough. He's still out
there, still an Admiral, still making my life a hell."

"And?"

"That bloody mouth. Him too." The
auctioneer. "He's talking again already. Needs to use a keyboard, but it's
still the same smug voice coming out of the speaker. Bastard is doing war
recruitment for the government now. Community service, my arse."

"And?"

She looked stricken for a moment.

"The mongrel who killed my
parents."

"Do you know who it is?"

"Oh yes. We had a detective sift
through everything, and give me a name. But the name is useless. He's the
government's black ops hitman. Untouchable."

"No-one is untouchable."

"He actually is."

"We'll see about that. Send all the
info on him to my pad. Is there still a contract out on you?"

"No."

"We can fix that."

"What?"

"Nothing. Head back, the food should
be ready soon. I need to check on the ship first."

We both rose.

"Thorn?"

"Yes"

"Can you really do anything?"

"Jen, I've had five years to regret
not doing it. What do you think?"

She smiled, and started walking back up the
beach.

I jumped to the ship. The panels were
coming off in good order. But it was too slow. And underneath, there was far
more damage than I’d bargained for. Reluctantly, I stopped the plate removal
process.

I sat there on a rock, and thought about
what I wanted. I thought about it really hard. I chose somewhere to manifest
the thought. For the first time ever, it didn’t just appear. But I understood
this one needed time.

I arrived back on the beach, as the meat
was just being taken off the grill.

Six

It turned out the marines didn’t want to
sleep on the beach. I thought of calling them something, but didn’t.

We sat around a beach fire, trading
stories. The older marines had the most interesting ones. While they talked,
and drank, I built a row of bedrooms behind the dunes. Once they were done, I
excused myself, and went to bed.

Tasha turned up shortly after. I'd watched
her go in the door of the first beach bedroom, and lock the door, before
climbing out the back window. I don’t think she was fooling anyone. She wanted
more of what we'd done earlier in the day, and needless to say, not a lot of
sleep happened.

The following morning, I set up for
breakfast, and left the makings there, while I jumped to where my project was
happening. There was still nothing there, so I jumped over to the ship, and put
all the hull plates back on. Just for the time it took, I filled each hole
roughly, and applied a hull like metal surface over the top of the whole ship.
It would never survive combat, probably wasn’t even space-worthy, but then, I
don’t think the ship was space-worthy when it got here. At least it now looked
like a ship, and not a junk pile.

Tasha was still asleep when I returned, so
I didn’t wake her. I found Lea outside, stirring the embers of the fire. She
grinned at me.

"Say thank you."

"What for?"

"Tasha."

"Why?"

"I told you there was something else I
was going to organize for you. Don’t you remember?"

"Vaguely. What's it to do with
Tasha?"

"She's it."

"She's what?"

"I'm the reason she moved into your
part of the ship. I knew you two would hit it off."

"Huh?"

"Buy a vowel Thorn, will ya? You were
lonely. We all preferred girls. You needed someone who'd like you for you. I
thought she would. Took a bit longer, but then, I wasn’t expecting you to leave
so abruptly."

"Oh."

"Talking of which, Jess and I were
really pissed off at you for not saying goodbye."

"I did."

"Over the bloody coms. And gone the
next second. I thought we were friends?"

"I couldn’t handle it. It was go, or
not go. And it wasn’t going to be not go. Nor was I going to let you talk me
out of it."

"Jen was out of line."

"I know. It didn’t change anything.
I'm dangerous to be around. I needed space, with no-one around me."

"Are you…"

"Still dangerous? Yes. If anything,
I'm even more so. But I know myself a lot better now, and maybe that’s
enough."

"And maybe Tasha can fill the
hole?"

"Maybe."

We sat there, watching the marines form up
on the beach, and begin their version of PT. After the routines ended, they did
a run around the island, and ate as much as they did the night before.

I was exhausted, just watching them.

Tasha and I went for a walk up the beach,
over the point, and along the next beach. I asked her what she knew of Jen's
hitman. She took me through what she knew. The bit which caught my attention
was, he took private missions when the government weren't looking. I outlined a
course of action, and Tasha grinned at me. She had homework to do now, and left
me to return to the house.

I went back to the ship, moved the shuttle
back into its hanger, and set my intent for it to become brand spanking new. In
an instant, the shuttle was brand spanking new. For a moment I wondered why I
hadn't thought of this yesterday. Admittedly though, the shuttle had not been
in all that bad condition.

Which is not what you could say for the
other two in the hanger, which looked like a giant had crushed them in its
fist. They were beyond fixable, or at least I thought they were. I moved all
the junk outside. Concentrating on the one remaining shuttle, I copied it three
times.

I’d long since stopped having any physical
reaction to doing heavy magic. Here on the planet of my birth, I was fully
connected to it, and its sun. I commanded more power than I’d ever had, and a
lot more than I needed here.

All the same, I was still learning.

I returned to the beach for lunch, topping
up the food stocks before anyone asked how I was doing it. I’d had five years
after all. Scattered around the planet was everything I needed. Various crops
supplied vegetables, the makings of bread, and beer. The herds of food animals,
more or less unchanged from my childhood days, were known. Jump, cleanly kill,
jump back. I couldn’t do bacon, but there was always plenty of good meat. And
the marines seemed to be eating a lot of it. I'd never found coffee beans, so
no coffee. But did I mention beer?

As I finishing my lunch, there was a sort
of ding in the back of my mind, indicating some magic I’d set going had now
completed. I asked Jess if she wanted to go for a walk. She did, and as soon as
we were out of sight, I jumped us both to where my project was now complete.

Jess stood there gaping, for quite a while.

"How?" she gasped.

"Magic."

She hit me.

The ship was sitting comfortably on the
ground. This put the main airlocks well above us, so I created a set of stairs
going up to the people airlock. She followed me up, and in, looked around, and
stalked further in. I had to run to catch up.

I found her in the main engine room, just
standing there gawking.

"The ship looks brand new."

"It is."

"What?"

"It is brand new."

"It's not our ship?"

"Yes and no."

"Choose one."

"Yes, this is your ship, as it was,
after we finished putting it together like this. No, it's not the ship you
arrived in."

"Where's our ship?"

"Here. The old ship is on the other
side of the continent."

She closed her eyes, and shook her head a
few times from side to side.

"But…"

"Nothing. Your job this afternoon is
checking to make sure everything is perfect, and nothing is missing. Before I
even tell anyone else, I want to know it will space the way it's supposed
to."

"And you'll be doing?"

"Moving all the stuff over."

"Fine."

She started opening doors, and pulling
tools. She paused for a moment, as if wondering why the tools were there at
all, but she obviously decided not to ask.

I made myself comfortable in the captain's
chair on the main bridge, and moved the shuttles over first. In the main hold I
found a container of gold ingots, and various other rare elements needed for
making things. I moved them over, but into my own cargo space. Most of it was
the remains of what I'd accumulated last time I’d been on the ship. There were
no other trade goods on board.

The afternoon passed quickly, as I
methodically checked every room, space, and cranny of the old ship, and moved
everything to the new one. If it was loose, it was moved.

"As far as I can tell, this ship is
ready to fly. Only way to know for sure is to do it."

I checked I had the cutlery draw in my
kitchen set up right, and moved one of the shuttles back to the beach.

I waved Jess into the nearest seat, and she
sat.

The ship moved. One second on land, the
next in space, back where the original had been in orbit.

I pointed Jess to the helm controls. She
grinned, and took the ship for a short test drive. While she was testing everything
she could think of, I moved the old ship to the same spot this one had been,
and moved the junk heap next to it. There was no point leaving it in a
vulnerable position, especially since what came next, might use that area from
underneath it. The rocks around the ravine contained a lot of the building raw
materials, which is why I'd chosen it to start with.

Jess put the ship back into a stable orbit,
and I started up one last magic task. The first missile materialized in the
main magazine, and as I watched, so did the second, and the third.

"All done."

I looked at her. She was grinning.

"You like?"

"Damn right I do. She should
outperform the old ship by a long way. I have no idea why, but it should."

"Ready for dinner?"

She nodded, and held out a hand. I took it,
and moved us back to the beach.

"Where the hell have you two
been?" yelled Tasha.

Seven

The following morning, I let them do their
PT as normal, allowed them to finish breakfast at their own pace, before
announcing last swim time would end midmorning.

There were no stragglers getting to the
shuttle on time, and I moved it to the shuttle bay, rather than flying up.

Saying goodbye to my house had been more
difficult than I’d expected. I locked it up, and warded it with protections, in
case anyone came, and decided to break in. Most likely not, but the pirates had
been interested in the planet. Even though the ringleaders were not around now,
an odd ship might want somewhere to hide out.

I brought very little with me other than
clothes, mainly my current pad and reading tablet, and basic needs. In the two
backpacks I’d brought here to begin with.

I was out the hatch first, and walking to
my end of the ship, so I wouldn’t need to hear all the exclamations of surprise
about how good the ship looked now. I wasn’t surprised when Tasha followed me.
Outside my stateroom, I waited to see what she'd do.

Her stuff was next door. Without even
looking at me, she marched straight into my room, went to the clothes hangers,
and hung her bikini up, pushing it to one end. It was all she'd had to bring
up. Her eyes met mine, and she pointed to the other end. I smiled, nodded, and
hung up what clothes I had where indicated. By the time I was heading out, she
was heading in with everything she had aboard.

I walked the distance to the main bridge,
and found Jen doing system tests. She looked at me, and her eyebrows went up.

"Get us moving. Take ten or so to get
the feel of the ship, then tell everyone to sit, and buckle up."

I could see the need to ask how I’d fixed
the ship so well burning within her, but she kept a lid on it.

The ship left orbit.

"Ten minutes to buckle up,
people."

Her voice sounded through the ship. There
was no hint of any of the turmoil still inside her, and I could now see why
no-one else had known about it.

"Where would you be normally going
from here?" I asked her.

"Didn’t Tasha tell you?" I shook
my head, even though she had. "Nearest military depot. We need
missiles."

"No, you don’t."

She opened her mouth to contradict me, but
decided to check the magazine displays instead.

"No we don’t," she confirmed.
"So where are we going? Straight back to the front?"

"No, we're going to the depot
anyway."

"Why?"

"I hear it has good fishing."

She closed her eyes, and sat there for a
moment. The moment was interrupted when Sasha came in, and took a seat next to
Jen, but at her own console. I raised an eyebrow at Jen.

"XO."

Which made sense. Sasha was the next down
officer, who didn’t have a real job on the ship. Jess was engineering, so it
couldn’t be her. Lea wasn’t a command officer. Sasha was technically a marine,
but she also commanded. Hence, XO.

"Show me the map of systems between
here and the depot."

Jen brought it up on a screen.

"Now the system with the depot, with
an indication of where the station is, and how far it can see a ship
coming."

Another screen, and this time showing the
planets in a system diagram, a dot where the station was, and a ring around the
station showing where ships appeared on its sensors. Yes, I had learned a thing
or to. Reading enough books will give you an education. Even if most of it is
useless entertainment.

"Transfer both to my screens
please."

She nodded. I made my way back to my
bridge, where I found Tasha at her part of the console.

"You did a great job of repairing the
weapon systems. There were some minor adjustments necessary, but nothing major.
All launchers and turrets are operational."

"Good. Prepare to jump."

A confused look appeared on her face, but
she buckled up anyway.

"All hands sit and buckle up,"
came Sasha's voice over the coms.

I gave them another minute, concentrated
hard on the two screens of information, flicked my sight ahead to make sure
where we were going was empty space, focused my intent, and moved the ship.

"What the fuck?" echoed in from
the main bridge.

Tasha looked at me accusingly, but her grin
removed it almost immediately.

"Are we at our destination?"

"Did you get it organized?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Thorn?" said Jen, over the coms.

"Yes Jen?"

There was a pause.

"Are you okay?"

"I am."

Another pause.

"Should I ask how you did it?"

"Would you understand the
answer?"

Tasha was laughing.

"Probably not. I assume we're docking
here?"

"Yes. I told you, we're going fishing.
I'll be along when it's time to check the other side of the airlock
hatch."

The com clicked off without further
comment.

"You enjoyed that, didn’t you?"

I grinned at her.

"What did you do?"

"I linked up all the suns between
where we were, and where we are now, and used their energy to power the
jump."

"I'm sorry I asked."

"Lunch?"

Eight

"So what's the play?" asked
Sasha.

I nodded to Tasha.

"Ordinarily, being on our way back to
the war, we'd stop here to refill the magazines with missiles. The depot is on
the military station, but being a civilian ship, we can't dock there. So we have
to deal with the office over here. Normally the captain and weapons officer
would go. But we are a might paranoid, so we’ll all go."

Jen looked at me suddenly. I smiled at her.

"You said fishing. Am I the
bait?"

"Is that a problem?"

She thought about it, obviously not happy,
and eventually shook her head.

"Recon mode?" asked Sasha.

"Hostile recon," answered Tasha.

Jen looked at both of them. Tasha answered
the unasked question.

"We split into five groups. Biggest
protects the officers and specialists in the middle, one takes point, one
trails behind, and the other two take the sides as best they can."

Jen cast an eye my way.

"Yes, I'll be with you."

She still wasn't happy. Tasha went on.

"If Thorn vanishes at any point, the
op is aborted, and we fall back to the ship like we walked into an
ambush."

"I assume we will have?" asked
the sergeant.

"Most likely," I confirmed.
"Just be prepared for more than one hostile."

"Always am!" he laughed.

"Anything anyone wants to add?"
asked Sasha.

There was a moment's silence, during which
she made contact with everyone.

"Gear up then."

The marines all left. Jen left with them.
Jess and Lea stayed put.

"What do we do?" asked Jess.

"You keep the ship ready to leave at a
moment's notice."

"And me?" asked Lea.

I handed her my tablet. A list was showing.

"You get to download me some new
books."

"Gee thanks."

Lea'd be surprised at some of the things on
the list. And truly, some of it I didn’t know if I’d ever read. But I'd been
thinking about things, and it was time I stopped being so detached from
reality. Now I was back, knowing how some things worked, would be a good idea. And
also at the back of my mind, was the germ of an idea. The kind you don't
actually know what it is, because it needs watering and feeding first.

The dock outside the airlock was clear.
Customs had cleared us to dock without putting in an appearance, on the basis
we were on military business, and not trading. No-one seemed to be taking any
interest in us. Jess opened up, and the sergeant and the point and sides teams
left first.

As the main party stepped out, I put a
shield in front of us, and made it spherical all around us when we were clear
of the ship. Sasha was in the lead, Jen behind her, and me behind her. Tasha
and two others covered our side and rear. We were all armed with side arms, and
each group had a marine carrying a heavy rifle. All of them fired a slug which
would tear a person up, but not hurt the station.

I didn’t bother using my sight. I had no
visual reference to look for, and the man I was looking for was a pro. There
would be no warning.

And there wasn’t. We had to cross the main
square in the middle of the station, or take a very long detour. Since it
suited my purposes, we crossed the square.

The shot hit my shield directly in line
with Jen's head. She flinched, hands reached for guns, and I sent a force punch
up the line of the shot. Without even looking, I moved myself to the only place
the shot could have come from.

The upper level corridor looked out over
the square. A man was out cold on the floor, a rifle still in one hand. Down
below, the whole team had formed up into a defensive formation, and begun to
move back towards the ship.

I sent the rifle back to the ship's armoury,
slotting it into a spare rack, and waited for the man to recover. As his eyes
flickered open, I reached down, grabbed him by his clothes, and hauled him to
his feet.

I put a bubble around us, and jumped us
outside.

His eyes went really wide when he saw where
he was. He didn’t panic, and I could see the wheels going around in his head,
as he began to formulate a plan to save himself.

I let him go, pulled out my pad, and showed
him the image on it.

"Recognize this?"

"Should I?"

His voice was cold and hard, and the eyes
were dead, and back to normal size.

"Let me tell you what's going to
happen. When I have what I want, I'm going back to my ship. I'm leaving your
body here."

His eyes widened slightly this time.

"You can have a quick death by my
hand, or you can experience the full on asphyxiation and freezing, of a death
in space without a space suit on. Your choice."

"You wouldn’t."

"I already have. We have about five
minutes air. When it's gone, I leave."

"Who are they to you?"

The image showed a wrecked vehicle, and the
faces of two people.

"Parents of a friend of mine. The one
you just tried to shoot."

"Did shoot. I never miss."

"You did this time. You did this
too?"

"What if I did?"

"You'll tell me who hired you."

"My reputation is built on not telling
anyone anything."

"Your reputation ended when you took
that shot. Now all that matters is the method of your death. Do you want a fast
clean one, or a slow lingering one?"

"You're serious?"

I looked him in the eyes. He seemed to sag
a bit.

"Who paid for the hit on the old
couple?"

"I don’t know a name."

My finger slid the image across, and it was
replaced by a face. There was no reaction from him, so I kept bringing up
faces. After four of them, there was a flicker of recognition.

"This one?"

I could feel the quality of the air
deteriorating rapidly now, and it was beginning to get cold, since I hadn't
built heat into the intent this time. He could feel it too.

After staring at me for what seemed an age,
but was only seconds, he nodded.

"Say it."

"He paid me to kill the old
couple."

"Thankyou."

I put my hand over his heart, and force
punched him so hard, his ribs broke, the heart was crushed, and a hole appeared
right through him. The light went out of his eyes, and I jumped back to the
ship, leaving his lifeless body floating in space.

Jess and Lea were waiting on the bridge.

"And?" asked Jess.

"We were right."

Nine

"When did you write that last part
about maybe being dead before anyone found the pad?"

I looked at Tasha, both of us sitting on my
bridge, as the ship headed out to beyond station sensor range.

"About half an hour before I time
jumped. Which as it turned out, was only a few days before you arrived back."

"You didn't think you'd be coming
back, did you?"

"Not really. There was so much which
could have gone wrong, and simply killed me. The first time, I nearly drowned.
Anything could have happened to kill me. I might even have jumped straight into
the sun."

"How could you do that?"

"Several novels I read had a lot in
them about orbital mechanics, and the way solar systems moved. One of them
suggested the suns move as well, and the planets revolve around them as it
moves ahead. So if that was true, and I failed to take the movement into
account, I could jump into the middle of the deep dark, or into the sun, or
into the middle of the planet."

Her mouth had fallen open.

"It wasn’t just a jump through time,
it's also across space. To make an accurate time jump, you also need to make an
accurate space jump."

"So how did you get here safely the
first time?"

"Absolutely no bloody idea."

She laughed, but was serious again quickly.

"So it was a fluke?"

"Fluke, dumb luck, higher power
intervening? Who knows? All I know now, is the intent has to be perfect, or
something bad could happen."

"How far back were you aiming?"

"I think that’s how I screwed it up.
I'd had two separate ideas running around in my head while thinking about doing
it. The first was I only needed to go back less than two years, and do
something which told my younger self not to vanish missiles. Maybe write a
novel, and make sure I read it. Minor change to the time line, and undoes the
damage missiles might have caused."

"And the other?"

"I needed to go back to the moment I
left my first life, and correct whatever damage was done there. Maybe by making
sure wherever the missiles were going to explode, was clear of people. Or maybe
I needed to contain the explosions."

"But didn’t you say the crater was in
a different place to where the city was, or your first life village?"

"Yes, but how do we know one of those
missiles I vanished wasn’t a nuke?"

She sat there for a moment.

"Fuck."

"Yes. I may have destroyed everything
without even knowing it. I think I could contain a nuke, and even bury it so
the fallout didn’t kill anyone, but it would mean the people would need to move,
to be safe in the long term."

"So what happened?"

"The two thought processes didn’t
quite separate when I did the intent for the jump, and instead of doing either,
I jumped back five years. Could have been five hundred for all I knew, but for
the stars being in pretty much the same places. I didn’t know exactly how long
it was until I showed up a couple of months ago."

"So we could have found you as an old
man? Or just your skull, and a few bones?"

She shuddered.

"Fraid so. I was very lucky it was
only five years. The best magic is simple unambiguous magic. It works because
there isn’t much which can go wrong about it. Copying something is simple,
because copy is a simple concept. Make something from scratch is much more
difficult, because you need to know everything about it. Maybe not everything,
as part of making is also copying, but the intent behind making is a whole
order of difficulty level different. Jumping in space has relatively simple
variables, because time isn’t one of them, since it flows as it normally has.
If the jump takes a second, the time part of it was a second, and you don’t
need to know that, to do it. But changing the time factor is a whole other much
more complicated thing. If even one of the factors isn’t known, and especially
not known to not be known, almost anything could happen."

Her eyes had glazed over.

"But it did answer one question."

"Which?"

"Five years ago, there was no
civilization here either. So my idea of going back and telling my younger self
to not vanish missiles, wouldn’t have worked, because there was nothing there
to go back to. It likely means I'd have to go back to the moment I left, in
order to fix whatever I did. And at the moment, I have no idea of when that was."

"So not possible?"

"Yeah. But to answer your original
question, even if everything had gone right, I didn’t expect to make it back
here. I'd have been home, and I'd have lived out my life as the local battle
mage, and died back then."

"Out of range," said Jen, over
the coms.

Navmap and inner system chart popped up
like last time. I concentrated, and we jumped.

Ten

"That’s them," said Jen. "I
remember the ship."

The ship Jess had been a slave on, was
docked at the station we were heading for. The unanswered question for now was,
were both father and son on board, or not.

"How did they get out of being
arrested for slavery?" asked Lea.

"Good lawyer," said Tasha.
"And Thorn's actions."

"Thorn? What did he do?"

I sighed.

"After I got Jess out, I went back and
arranged to free the rest of the slaves."

"Yes," added Tasha. "So when
authorities caught up with them, there was no proof of slaves ever being on
their ship, and the accusations didn’t stick."

"They'll stick this time," I
muttered.

I moved myself back to my room to be alone,
and used my sight to look through the slaver ship. Both men were on board. But
it wasn’t them which made me really angry. Walking around the ship were three
girls wearing collars.

I was done with being subtle.

Girl one. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on
shoulder. Jump back.

Girl two. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on
shoulder. Jump back.

Girl Three. Vanish collar. Jump. Hand on
shoulder. Jump back.

"What the hell?" said Sasha.

"Look after these three will you. I'm
not done."

I located the son, and jumped in behind
him, slammed my fist down on his shoulder, wrapped us in a bubble, and jumped
outside the nearest airlock. I pushed him up against the hatch, and glued him
to it, making sure the glue went through his clothes so his skin was solid to
the metal. I didn't want him pulling his clothes off, and drifting off.

"You didn't learn anything, did
you?"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Death. Be nice."

"Fuck off!"

"Fine."

I went back to my room, taking the bubble
with me.

Fifteen minutes later, I snatched the
father the same way, and put him up next to his now frozen son.

He took one look at the solid figure next
to him, and fainted. I waited a couple of minutes for him to come out of it.

"What did you do?" he yelled,
already shivering.

It wasn’t that cold yet, so maybe the
shivering was fright.

"The penalty for being a slaver is
death. Your lawyer got you off. This time the judge cares."

"You can't do this, I want my lawyer.
He'll talk sense into you."

I'm not sure he understood what was going
on.

"Where do I find your lawyer?"

"Cabin ten."

"I'll be right back. Don’t go
away."

I left him with the bubble, tagged the
lawyer, and put him up against the hatch next to his client.

"What the fuck is going on here?"

A book I'd read provided me with a mental
image, and I decided to run with it.

"I'm Judge Thorn. Your client is on
trial for slavery. The punishment is death. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty."

He didn’t even blink, or think. Just an
automatic not guilty.

"There were three girls on your ship a
short time ago. How do you explain the slave collars on them?"

"What do you mean were?"

"Shut up Nigel!

"A plea of guilty has been entered by
the client, against the wishes of his lawyer."

"The hell he did!"

"Is there an explanation
forthcoming?"

"I have the right to do whatever I
like."

"Shut the fuck up Nigel!"

"Is your right in the name of being
born rich?"

"Only someone who's poor would ask
something like that."

"Jeez Nigel."

"So owning other people is some sort
of status symbol for you?"

"Of course it is. How stupid are
you?"

The lawyer simply groaned. I turned to him.

"It’s a good question."

"What is?"

"How stupid are you?"

"Don’t call me stupid. Who the hell do
you think you are?"

"I told your client's son already. He
didn’t believe me. Death. What makes you defend a slaver, instead of protecting
the slaves from people like him?"

"Huh?"

I took a moment to refresh the air in the
bubble. This was taking longer than I’d thought.

"Slavery. You obviously support
it?"

"Me personally?"

"Of course you personally."

"I don’t do anything personally. It's
business. Who pays most gets my services."

"So you'd sue your client if I offered
you more?"

Their eyes met. Nigel didn’t like what he
saw.

"It's business!" exclaimed the
lawyer.

"No mitigating factors presented.
Sentence will now be pronounced."

They were both shivering now.

"You can't do this."

"Nigel, for fucks sake show a little
dignity for once in your life."

I think the lawyer understood.

"I will not be treated this way!"

I didn’t even bother with the sentence. I
shifted back to the main bridge, taking the bubble with me.

The three girls were now in ship suits. I
raised my eyebrows at Lea, who was fussing around them. She nodded back. I gave
each of them a card with funds sufficient to take them where they wanted to go.

"Jen, stop us here. We don’t need to dock,
or stay here much longer."

She nodded, and the ship slowed. I took the
hand of the nearest girl, joined it with the one next to her, and also the
third. I moved the four of us into the empty ladies room in the main departure
lounge, and let go of their hands.

"You're free," I told them.
"Go home, or go where you need to. There is enough on the card to get you
anywhere. Stay away from slavers from now on."

They looked shaken, but I waved them out
the door, and moved myself again.

The captain almost had a heart attack when
I appeared on his bridge right in front of him.

"How?" he stammered.
"Who?"

"You are hereby informed if slaves are
discovered on any ship owned by this company ever again, the entire fleet will
be scrapped, with the crews aboard. Do you understand?"

"Slaves?"

"You cannot be that clueless. People
walking around with collars around their necks."

"Indentured workers."

"Slaves."

He flinched.

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"It's none of my business. The owners
and board can do whatever they like on their own ships."

"Not any more. Now it's your business,
and your life depends on it."

"My life?"

"The penalty for slavery, or turning a
blind eye to it, is death, and destruction of the ship."

"I need to get the owner and his son
to come and talk to you."

"Fine. You'll find them with their
lawyer, at one of the side airlocks."

He sent a crewman off to find them. I
waited. In the distance, there was a scream.

The captain went white.

"Who did you say you were?"

"Death."

I moved back to my bridge, and sat.

"Next!" I yelled.

Eleven

I sat through the entire recording session.

It was a typical 'come join the military'
display of all their toys. Even I’d seen some of the early version ads, playing
on monitors as I walked around stations, back when we were traders. This was
something again. Now they were serious about suckering poor saps into
volunteering to be alien fodder.

When the recruitment session was done, they
started in on the government's financial drive, getting people to invest in the
war, so they could build new ships. The main theme was fear. Failure to build
enough ships would mean the aliens will kill everyone.

He made all of it sound convincing.

Invisible as I was, sitting behind the technicians,
I had a running commentary between takes, of how the war was going, and how
much they hated the man being recorded.

Mouth with a mic, had bounced back from the
damage I'd inflicted on his vocal chords. He had everything he wanted to say
pre-recorded, and just needed to select it on a small keyboard above his wrist.
One of the techs had even told the other about how he'd used the studio to make
all his sentences out of old recordings of himself. At which point I found out
this was his day job, and selling slaves was his hobby.

Fingers moving rapidly, he appeared now to
be renegotiating his salary package, with someone who turned out to be his
agent.

"They say that fuckwit used to auction
off slaves," said one tech to the other.

"How can that be?"

"He was caught in the act
apparently."

"So why isn’t he in prison?"

"Government cut a deal with him. Too
damn useful to the war effort, apparently."

"Someone shot him once."

"Why's he still alive?"

"Whoever it was missed. Hit him in the
shoulder."

"Wasn’t that his war wound?"

"So he says."

There was silence for a short time, the
recorded voice droning on out in the studio.

"You know what I’d like?"

"What?

"To see someone shove that keyboard
down his throat, and pull it out of his arse."

His fellow tech laughed, and both of them
seemed to enjoy the suggestion.

I rose, clothed myself in a black cloak,
the hood covering my head and face, and made my right hand look skeletal. It
reached towards mouth with a mic.

His keyboard tore off his arm, flew up to
his head, and rammed solidly into his mouth, breaking teeth. I pushed it all
the way in, and pulled it down through his body, ripping its way out through
his pants, and dropping bloody to the floor.

Both techs were on their feet now, surprise
slowly becoming terror. The now lifeless body toppled forwards, causing the
agent to shriek, before turning and running from the room.

One of the techs threw up all over the
recording gear.

The other one looked at me, seeing me for
the first time. As he began to faint, I moved back to my bridge. My sight saw
him react in abject terror instead, running from the room, screaming something
almost incomprehensible about having seen death. The other one was out cold on
the floor.

"Is that you Thorn?" asked Tasha.

I’d forgotten to change back, so I removed
the cloak.

"I can't say I like that other
look."

"You're not meant to."

"Job done?"

"Job done."

"Did you make a mess?"

"Afraid so."

"Good," said Jen from the
doorway.

Eleven

"Thorn?"

"Yes Tasha?"

"If we hadn't turned up when we did,
would you have stayed there for the rest of your life?"

I pondered this for a while. She waited for
me.

"Maybe."

"Seriously? Alone on a planet your
whole life?"

"If it meant keeping everyone else
safe, yes."

"You don’t believe you’re a real
threat, do you?"

I imagined her naked, with yellow tassels
over her nipples, and a red heart between her legs as she sat. She saw me
looking, and looked down. Her eyes went wide.

"That’s what an errant thought can
do."

She nodded slowly. When nothing happened,
she made a point of pointing to herself. I put her clothes back on her.

"So you worry that someone who makes
you angry, might end up dressed in yellow tassels, and a red heart?"

I chuckled quietly, and she joined in.

"No, I worry about killing everyone in
an eye blink, before I realize I thought it."

"But is that likely to happen?"

"Did I tell you why meat is so
plentiful back on that planet?"

"No. Is this relevant?"

"Yes. I was hunting one day. Jump in,
kill with a thought, hand on carcass, jump out. Only one day, I jumped in on
top of a rock, twisted my ankle, and fell over."

"Relevance?"

"I said the word 'fuck' really
loudly."

She looked at me until understanding hit
her. She fell off her chair laughing. I looked at her down on the deck.

"Now I'm very careful of when I say
that, and make sure I'm not actually thinking it when I do say it."

She kept on laughing, so I left her there,
and took myself off to the kitchen for a drink.

She was back in her seat when I returned,
and the next set of system and station charts were up on the screen. This time
though, the target was in space.

Lea walked in before I could move us,
standing there in full marine combat gear. She nodded to Tasha, who left.

The destination was six jumps away, towards
the frontier, where we needed to go anyway. I cast my sight out, expecting to
not reach as far, and was surprised to see the ship quite clearly. Inside, I
found twelve people with slave collars on.

I sighed. Slavery was supposed to have been
wiped out again, but apparently not. Maybe this indentured worker thing had
been a loophole, and all the remaining slavers were using it to be legal.

Well, they had one problem.

Me.

"Jen?"

"Thorn?"

"Stop us. But be prepared to avoid a
collision."

"Wait. What?"

I moved us.

The ship was coming towards us at a slow
speed, and appeared to be badly beaten up. But it was all outside appearance.
The inside was quite pristine. I wondered if they were pretending to be war
survivors.

Tasha came back in, wearing full marine
combat gear. She tossed a heavy rifle to Lea, and they started towards me.

"Wait."

I moved to the main lounge.

"Slaves coming in."

I moved over to the other ship, and one by
one, took off collars, and jumped the slaves back. The collars I left in a neat
little pile on one of the sleep pallets. As I left the last one, I noticed
there were thirteen pallets. Teeth clenched, I jumped back to the medical
facility instead.

In one of the morgue storage trays, I found
a corpse without a head, and a good part of the upper chest missing as well.

Tasha looked concerned when she saw my
face, after jumping back there to get them.

"Are you getting angry Thorn?"

"I am angry."

"Be afraid," murmured Lea,
"be very afraid."

"I'm not," snapped Tasha.

"No, they should be."

I cut them off, by jumping us to the bridge
of the other ship.

Twelve

I force punched the bridge crew all at
once, and they slumped in their seats. Tasha went over to the main controls,
and stopped the ship. She quickly slaved the ship to Jen's control, and sent over
the crew and passenger list.

I looked out the front view, and saw
nothing.

"They didn't stop," said Lea.
"Jen had to get us out of their way, and is now behind us."

"Is the man who bought you here?"

"No."

"Go find him. Try not to shoot anyone.
Don't shoot him!"

"Spoilsport."

They both left. I pulled the captain out of
his seat, dropped him on the deck, and sat in his chair. There had to be a
stock of collars on board, and I set about finding it. It took a while, but I
found them in main engineering. Which meant the engineering officer was in on
the slavery. There was no-one there, but the engineer turned out to be in her
cabin. I punched her too, and she slumped off onto the deck.

I sat there for a while, waiting for
something to happen. Finally, a message came into my pad. It had a series of
images of people. The note with it, said 'bad guys'. There were thirteen of
them.

Fifteen people came back. Nine of them were
walking with their hands raised. Two were dragging two others. One of them had
blood all over his face. I looked at Lea.

"You said not to shoot anyone."

I could see she hadn't shot anyone.
Apparently I should have told her not to hit anyone either. It didn’t matter.

"The prisoners will kneel before
me," I announced.

Tasha brandished her rifle, pointing to the
place, and the prisoners shuffled over there, and knelt in a line. Lea slapped
the two lying on the deck awake, and they were soon kneeling as well. The
bridge crew were stirring by now, and Tasha soon had them sitting up against a
wall. The captain had been too groggy to protest.

I'd already decided to keep going with the
Judge thing.

"Court is now in session. Judge Thorn
presiding." I looked at Lea. "Read the charges."

"Slavery. Torture. Deprivation of
liberty. Rape."

"All of them?"

"All of them."

"How do you plead?"

The one with blood on his face was the only
one to answer.

"I don’t recognize the validity of
this court. Who are you?"

"Guilty plea has been entered."

"What? I said no such thing? Do you
even know who I am?"

"You are a slaver, and a rapist.
Nothing more. Is there any plea of mitigation?"

"I am not a slaver."

I shifted the twelve collars into a pile
beside my chair, and added another one from engineering.

"And these are?"

I waved a hand towards them so he couldn’t
miss seeing them.

"Control collars for indentured
servants."

"Is that what we're calling slaves
these days?"

"It's perfectly legal."

"Not in this court. In due course,
those who allowed this travesty to exist, will also be judged."

"You can't judge me. Or any of us."

"The sentence is death. Method of
execution will be your own collars."

The collars vanished, and appeared around
the neck of each of them. There were various levels of shock and outrage. I
looked at Tasha.

"Did you search them?"

"No weapons."

"What about control boxes?"

"Oh. No, didn’t check."

"Fine."

I vanished all their clothes, leaving
thirteen naked men kneeling there. As a shock factor, it worked quite nicely.
Also, no control boxes left on any of them. I nodded to Lea.

"Any last message for these
rapists?"

I emphasized the last word. She nodded, and
went up to the one with the bloody face.

A military issue boot shot forward, and
kicked the man solidly in the groin. He went over backwards, and lay on his
side, clutching himself. The others moved restlessly.

"Don't move!" I bellowed.

They went rigid, hands moving to protect
their manhood, but stayed upright. Several of them were white faced.

Lea was looking at me. I nodded. One by
one, she kicked all of them in the same place. Most of them were incapable of
cupping themselves afterwards, due to broken fingers as well.

"Who are you?" croaked the
bloodied one.

"Death."

I moved all thirteen of them out into
space, with a good swing on it, so they kept on moving away from the ship. One
by one, the collars exploded, as they moved out of range of the remaining
control boxes. I didn’t watch closely, but I think the collars beat
asphyxiation and freezing to death. Although, it was probably a close thing
with all three.

The captain was sitting there with an
expression of disbelief. When the rest of his crew popped onto the bridge one
by one, the last being a still out engineer, his head slumped against his
chest.

I looked at Lea, nodded, and she woke those
still out.

"Court is still in session. All those
here are charged with knowingly condoning slavery and rape. How do you
plead?"

I looked directly at the captain. He
flinched.

"Not guilty," said a crewman.

"Convince me."

"Six of us protested the first group
of slaves coming on board. We were told to shut up and ignore it, or our
contracts would be cancelled with full penalties. None of us could afford the
penalties."

"Can you prove that?"

"It was logged with the captain."

I shot a glance at Lea, and she was already
moving to a console. A few moments later, she nodded to me.

"The six of you will rise."

They unsteadily got to their feet, and
stood there looking frightened.

"You are found not guilty. You will
move through this ship telling those who remain to pack their things, in
preparation for leaving the ship at the next station."

I turned to the captain.

"You will release these people from
their contracts, and supply them with documentation to that effect."

He nodded, but didn’t move.

"Now!"

He flinched, but rose, moved to a console,
and started pulling up and noting civilian crew files. Lea watched everything
he did, and made sure he knew she was watching.

My eyes moved to the engineer.

"How do you plead?"

"I'm not pleading. This so called
court is a joke."

"No-one is laughing."

"You have no authority."

"I am authority. Do you deny stocking
collars to go on slaves?

She remained silent and defiant.

"Do you deny being responsible for the
death of the person down in the morgue?"

"Of course I deny it. I was nowhere
near the control device when it was triggered."

"But you put the collar on each of
them. Didn’t you?"

She was silent again, but her defiance was
slipping. I looked around the bridge. One of them caught my eye.

"Yes?"

"I saw her put the collars on all the
slaves. I failed to protest, knowing it would only bring her wrath down on me.
I accept what punishment you give me."

"Thank you." My eyes went to Lea
again, and she nodded. "You may also leave this bridge, and prepare to
leave the ship."

The crewman gave me a half bow, and almost
ran out. I looked around at the ones left.

"Anyone else have a defense?"

Silence.

"You are all found guilty, and
sentenced to live the remainder of your days on a penal colony of my choice.
With the exception of you." I looked at the engineer. "You are
sentenced to death."

"I don’t think…"

I moved her outside the ship, without a
bubble. There were gasps as she vanished.

I linked up suns all the way back to my
home system, chose a place, and one by one, moved the remaining crew members to
an island. I left the captain to last, waiting until he was finished with crew
documents, had the nod from Lea, and without giving him any warning, moved him
to the island as well.

I took a quick look to see if they made it,
and they had. The lot of them hadn't moved, just staring around them, not
believing what had just happened.

"Where are they?" asked Lea.

"On an island. It has a rather nasty
predator, so I doubt they'll last very long. Maybe I'll be wrong."

Tasha shot me a look, but didn’t say
anything.

"Let's be leaving. It's been a long day,
and I could use some sleep."

They linked hands with me, and I took us
back to our ship. Sasha and two marines were waiting, and I moved them over, so
Sasha could take command.

Tasha and I had a much needed dinner
together, and while both ships headed for the station under their own power, we
went to bed.

Thirteen

"You've changed," said Tasha,
propped up on one arm, looking at me lying beside her.

I'd slept the entire night through, and
woken refreshed. She'd been looking at me when I opened my eyes.

"What makes you say that?"

"When we left you on the planet, you
were all about not killing people. Now you're executing them in job lots,
apparently without a second thought. What changed?"

"Several things. Mostly I had the
expectation our efforts on the pirate station would bring about real change.
But nothing happened, except they found a loophole to use."

"I can understand you not liking that,
but…"

"It doesn’t account for the change in
me?"

"Yes."

"I read a book."

"Really?"

She was chuckling.

"I downloaded about a thousand, across
a wide range of subjects, thinking no matter what my whim was, there would be
something to read to satisfy it. It wasn’t as if the funds mattered at the
time, I had plenty, and the decision to leave wasn’t a sudden one. I had time
to prepare. Over five years, I read most of them. One of them was really old,
and really interesting."

"Do tell."

"It was about karma."

"The what you put out comes back to
you stuff?"

"Sort of. Karma is really complicated,
but understanding it helps you with managing your own actions."

"How is karma helping you to kill a
lot of people?"

"One of the misunderstood aspects of
society is 'the greater good'. Once I understood it, I could see it working in
my first and second lives, and especially here."

"I don’t get you."

"Most people think greater good is
doing things which enhance the lives of the many."

"It's not?"

"Yes, it is. But the trouble with it
is, people narrow the definition to enhancing those people they think should be
enhanced, and is usually the rich and powerful. Which is not what it means at
all. But there is a flip side to it. The greater good also includes stopping
what is bad. Slavery is one of the really bad things. When governments fail to
act, someone has to. Even if they get labeled a vigilante. Being one is not
karmically bad, as long as you're working to help those oppressed, and only
stop the perpetrators."

"Sounds like an awfully fine line to
walk."

"It is. As you accumulate good karma
helping the oppressed, you also accumulate bad karma by doing bad things to bad
people. As long as at the end of the day, you accumulated more good than bad,
you're ok."

"So your day yesterday should have
been badly on the negative side."

"No actually. Failing to act, is
worse. It also accumulates bad karma. Which is why I let those seven go. Six of
them protested, and risked comeback on themselves in doing so. The seventh had
the thoughts to do so, but was too afraid of voicing it. But the thoughts were
enough, and when it counted, he came forward. They all redeemed themselves in
some way karmically, and so earned their freedom."

"Way too complicated for me."

"I had five years to think about
it."

"Where did Judge Thorn come
from?"

"A novel. He was government rather
than vigilante, but he roamed the world, bringing justice to the oppressed, and
down trodden."

"Is that what you're doing?"

"For now. Jen isn’t going to have any
peace until her ghosts are laid to rest. And besides, I've always hated
bullies. Now I can give them back what they give out."

"One left then?"

"One left, yes."

"Do we know where he is?"

"Unfortunately, no. He'll have to wait
until the war is fixed."

"Are you two rabbits going to stay in
there all day?"

Lea sounded highly amused.

We hurried through a shower and dressing,
and bolted down breakfast. I left Tasha on her way to my bridge, and walked
around to the main bridge.

All eyes turned to me as I walked in.

"What?"

"Nice of you to join us, this fine
day."

Sasha sounded a bit sarcastic. I ignored
her.

"Where are we headed next?" asked
Jen.

"The war. We've one target left, but
unless you've found where he is overnight, we should check in at the
warfront."

Jen shook her head, frowning.

"What are we doing with the other
ship?" asked Jess.

"Oh. Have it follow us out to the
scanner line. Let me know when we get there."

I could see they were curious about what
happened once we got there, but I left them with their curiosity unsated. I was
tempted to go back to bed now the vitally important 'where are we going now'
business was sorted, but thought better of it.

The run out was routine, and I checked to
see what books Lea had been able to get for me. She hadn't let me down, and the
tablet now had several thousand more books on it. Not all of them were novels.
I’d included a lot of history, art, philosophy, ship functions, and general
interest stuff. The idea being, to progressively update myself to this new kind
of society I was living in. For example, understanding their history might lead
me to understand why this society couldn’t function without the covert use of
slaves.

Once we were out of range of the station, I
told Jen to remove the slave of the controls. We kept on going, leaving the
other ship behind.

I concentrated, linking suns, assembling as
much energy as I could, and dropped it neatly next to the old damaged one.

"What the hell did you just do?"
asked Jess, over the coms.

"Parked it somewhere safe."

Fourteen

"Battlestations!"

I'd jumped us just outside the scanner
range of the jump point the fleet were defending. Sasha made the call as soon
as our scanner lit up the battle going on at the jump point.

I'd been given a lesson in battle HUD
understanding, which helped me see one of our ships vanish from the display.

"Thorn! What do we do?"

Jen seemed anxious.

"Don’t panic!"

"I'll show you fucking panic."

I don’t think she'd meant that to come
through the coms, but I grinned anyway. She pushed the ship up to top speed,
indicating what she thought was needed.

I looked at the whole battle from above it.
Nine large ships had jumped in, although they seemed to be in several sizes and
variations. I didn’t know enough to understand what they were, or how much of a
threat they were. They were just 'the enemy', and were holding their formation,
which was one long line.

Arrayed in a very wavy line in front, were
twelve smaller ships, five I recognized as armed freighters, and two which were
larger than the enemy ships. Both sides were all popping off at each other,
with missiles and lasers, although it was obvious the enemy guns were different
to ours.

"Thorn?"

"Wait! I'm trying to find where to put
us."

"Try faster!"

The command was back in Jen's voice, and it
was good to hear it.

I shifted my gaze to the middle enemy ship,
and looked it all over. Lots of turrets and launchers, but mainly around the
front and sides, and all pointing forward. I shifted to the next one. The
design was different, but the overall picture was the same. Designed to fight
pointing at the enemy.

"Standby to jump. I'm putting us up
the arse of the middle ship. Fire everything at the one target, and only shift
target if it's neutralized. Go for maximum damage rather than outright kills.
If we need to get out of there, tell me to jump."

"What will you be doing?" asked
Sasha.

"Protecting the rest of the fleet.
After we do enough damage to get their attention, I'll start dealing with them
directly. Show me where the jump point is."

A detailed map of the area around the jump
point popped up. I needed to know, so I didn’t jump us into the point itself.
Finding ourselves in the next system, on the enemy side, might prove
embarrassing.

I looked over at Tasha. It was her mind and
fingers who would fire our weapons. She looked like a block of ice, but did
notice me looking.

"Minimum distance for maximum
hitting?"

Instead of telling me, she added two marks to
the map I was already looking at.

"Blue is minimum. Red is where I'd
prefer. Missiles need arming distance. I'd rather make sure they did."

"About to jump. Tell me now if you’re
not ready."

"Go!" yelled Jen.

The ship jumped, and the view forward was
suddenly the arse end of a ship. I could feel the vibration through the ship of
launchers and turrets doing their thing.

But my sight was viewing the battle from
the other side, watching missiles and laser shot coming towards our ships.

I erected a force wall across the front of
all our ships, allowing their missiles and shot to go through, but stopping
everything the enemy were throwing. Hits were coming thick and fast, exploding
on contact, but the wall was holding with little effort.

The rear end of the ship in front of us
exploded, and for a moment, I was seeing in two places at once, and throwing up
a second wall around us, as bits of ship began to bite into our ship shields
too much, too fast. My sight focused on the bigger battle again, while I felt
more than saw, us turn to face the ship to the left.

"Ammo?" muttered Tasha.

I found myself looking into a magazine as
well, watching the auto-loaders bringing missiles out of the magazines, and
setting them up for launching. Gaps were appearing where missiles were already
gone. We weren't in any danger of running out any time soon, but she had a
point. I reached out to the nearest asteroid field, and set the intent to make
a missile to replace each missile taken out of the magazine. A moment later,
the first one appeared in an empty slot, and I let the process go.

No longer taking any damage, our fleet had
straightened up their line, and were firing everything they could. The enemy
ships were now taking more damage than before. But two of them were moving now.

"Thorn!" yelled Jen. "Move
us back, before we get flanked on both sides."

I looked at Tasha, and pointed a finger
upward. She saw the movement, looked at me, and nodded.

The ship jumped, and turned at the same time.
We were now above the enemy fleet, still to the rear of them, and pointed
directly at them. I adjusted the wall to cover more arc around us.

"Fucking idiot," said Jess.

I could hear Jen talking to someone,
presumably over in our fleet. I was finding holding two views at the same time,
not so much tiring, as a bit like being cross-eyed. It was hard to keep both
perspectives right in my head. Which of course, was the wrong approach.

Calling myself an idiot under my breath, I
moved my sight to a midpoint between the two, and higher up again, so the
entire battlefield was in a single viewpoint for me.

The idiot wasn't me, but the captain of one
of the two bigger ships, which was about to cross my wall line. The moment he
did, he'd start taking fire again, and the ship was already badly damaged.

Better safe than sorry, I took my eye off
the battle for a moment, looking into the ship's engine room. Inside one of the
black boxes inside the control system, I broke something. Nothing happened, so
I broke a few more. Red lights began popping up, and the engineers started
turning things off. I went back to looking at the battle, the ship now dead in
space. They had life support and gravity, but very little else.

Three of the enemy ships were now badly
damaged. Two were still circling back, and coming up after us.

"Thorn," I heard Lea say,
"stop playing with your food, and get it done!"

Fifteen

"What's your rush?"

"Are you even paying attention to
what's coming for us?"

"Not really, no. Why? Are we in
trouble?"

Silence. I grinned. Tasha hadn't even
noticed. She was in the zone, fingers dancing, mind and weapons acting as one.
I really should get her something bigger to fire.

I shook my head, and concentrated again.
Two ships were coming towards us, and maybe they were getting too close. Before
doing something about them, I checked the rest. Which was when I noticed the
fire coming from our side, no longer had any missiles. Presumably the fleet
were out of them.

Four of the enemy ships were now disabled,
and out of the fight. The remaining six started moving ahead, as if seeing
their enemy out of missiles meant they now had the advantage.

I moved my sight to be in front of the ship
I’d crippled, took hold of the force wall, and punched it forward.

Six ships simply crumbled to dust as the
wall went through them. The last two, broke off attacking us, and headed for
the jump point. I checked the damage on each of them, and punched the one with
the least damage. It disintegrated.

Before Jen could shift us onto an intercept
course for the last ship, I jumped us well away.

"What did you do that for?" she
yelled.

I ignored her. The battle was effectively
over, the enemy withdrawing. What was left was four badly damaged ships, which
I now looked inside of.

On the bridge of the first ship, I found
people who looked much like us. Same shape, different but similar clothes, but
their skin was variations of a burnt orange colour. As far as species go, we
might have been cousins.

So much for aliens.

All four ships were lifeless, having either
lost life support, or with too many holes to escape explosive decompression.

On a whim, I shifted them one at a time,
parking them next to the other two. Off to one side, I made a hole, and moved
all the bodies into it, lining them up carefully, and with dignity. After
filling in the hole, I created a monument to the unknown alien warriors.

I kept the force walls up until the last
enemy ship jumped. Tasha was slumped over her console, so I legged it into the
kitchen, and brought us both back water. She took hers mechanically, and drank
most of it in one go.

"Thanks. Are we finished here?"

"For the moment. Battle anyway. Now
the interrogation starts."

She laughed, but I had a pretty good idea
of what was coming. Expecting to have been summoned before now, we collected
another water each, and walked around to the main bridge.

Jen was giving orders. We quietly took
seats, and waited.

Whoever she was giving them to, wasn’t
happy about getting them, but wasn’t contradicting them either. Someone behind him
was repeating them. When I checked my overview sight again, I saw our ship
moving into position near the jump point, and the others forming up around us.
One ship was heading away, and when I checked it I could see why. It was
limping badly, and needed a shipyard urgently. I saw one spot where the hull
was leaking air, and sealed it.

There was talk about how far away supply
ships were, and when the next reinforcements were due. The stocks of missiles
were less than a day away, so I didn’t see the point in making missiles for
everyone else. Not at least while I was here.

The com screen vanished, and Jen turned her
gaze on me.

"What were you doing?"

Her voice was calm, but I could see she
wasn’t happy about something.

"In the first instance, putting us where
we could be a threat, and protecting the ships we had left."

"And in the second?"

"Assessing the enemy."

"Why?"

My mouth fell open, and I had to push it
back with my hand.

"Why what?"

"All you had to do was destroy them
all in the first few seconds. Why didn't you?"

"Have you even seen your enemy?"

"Of course. We've been fighting these
ships for weeks."

"Not the ships. The aliens
themselves."

"No. How would we? None of their ships
has been taken before."

"They haven’t tried to
communicate?"

"Not as far as I know."

So I wasn’t even going to ask if anyone had
tried to contact them. I was so far behind the eight ball, especially with my
lack of history awareness, but it really felt like something was really wrong
here.

"Well, without communications, we learnt
a lot about them today. Because I took the time."

"What?"

Everyone was here now, and watching
quietly. I suspect none of them were game to interrupt us.

"When presented with a defense they
couldn’t penetrate, they kept on trying to. When presented with an enemy out of
missiles, they went on the offensive, knowing the defense was still there. And
only when their losses were extreme, did they retreat."

"And what does that tell you?"

"No idea yet. I only just got
here."

Jen swore under her breath.

"Why did you let that last ship
go?"

I looked around. They all wanted to know. I
sighed, and shook my head.

"What happens when you send out a
force, and nothing comes back?"

"What?" asked Lea.

"They either cower in fear of the
unknown, or they send a much bigger force to find out what happened to the
first force."

None of them seemed to grasp it.

"This is an enemy who doesn’t give
ground, and isn’t fazed by something they don’t understand. If they were all
destroyed, they'd be back with a fleet double or triple the size. Are you ready
for that?"

Reluctantly, Jen shook her head.

"What happens when you let one
go?" I paused. "No-one? Now they know we have a defense they can't
penetrate, and a new weapon which is beyond anything they've seen before. It
has to give them pause. The pause gives us the chance to regroup. And possibly
do some recon."

"Let me guess," said Lea.
"You read another book."

It broke the tension, and there were some
chuckles. Whatever answer I had, never happened.

"WHO THE FUCK GAVE YOU THE AUTHORITY
TO GIVE ORDERS TO MY FLEET?"

Jen went rigid. The rest of us turned to
face the active com screen.

It was him.

Sixteen

Give Jen her due, she got her shit together
so fast, no-one noticed her initial reaction except me. She turned to face him.

"Someone had to," she said, with her
command voice.

"Someone had to, SIR!"

"I'm not calling a rapist sir. I’ll go
as far as calling you a pig, if you like."

Someone started clapping.

I stopped when everyone looked at me. There
were shocked looks on the bridge of the other ship. He, was going red.

"You're relieved of command,
Commander."

"I'm not in your command, for you to
relieve."

"Everyone here is. When the previous
Admiral died with his ship, they sent me out to save the situation."

"And a bang up job you were doing
too."

I thought he was going to lose it, but he
noticed me instead. I hadn't really been paying attention, which was possibly
why I was clapping when no-one else was. I'd been looking for his quarters, and
found both them, and his secret viewing room. All the vids Jess and I had seen
before were there, plus a few I'd not seen before. I copied the new ones, made
eye contact with Jess, and gave her a nod towards the door. She quickly left.

His attention now on me, I thought I should
at least listen to him.

"We've been looking for you for a long
time mister. They tell me you wield some impressive new tech, and it saved the
day here today. Where the fuck have you been since the war started?"

"Not here. And in fact, until a few
days ago, I didn’t even know there was a war on."

"Well consider yourself drafted. Get
your arse over to my ship immediately."

There was a long silence, while he waited
for me to rise, and leave to find a shuttle. I didn’t move. Eventually, I felt
the need to break the silence.

"I think not."

"You what?"

"You heard me."

"GET YOUR ARSE OVER HERE, NOW!"

"Stop playing with him Thorn,"
said Jess from the doorway.

She held up one of the vids, and nodded to
me.

"What are you waiting for? An armed
escort?"

"I'm contemplating where to hold
court."

"Court? What are you gabbling
about?" He turned to someone out of vid range. "Get a squad of
marines over there, and get him over here, with whatever tech he possesses."

There was an 'Aye sir' from the background.

I rose to my feet, and walked to the front
of the bridge. I raised my right hand to neck level, and held thumb and first
finger about two fingers width apart.

He started
to choke. I raised my hand further, and he rose up off the deck, hanging in midair.
I looked around what I could see of the bridge over there.

"Who's the next in command over
there?"

"I am," said the man standing
behind the slowly choking him.

"Rank?"

"Captain."

"So it's your ship?"

"Yes."

"Good. Is your XO there as well?"

"Yes."

He sounded confused now.

"Your XO will be in command for a
while. I have something else for you to do."

"You do? Who are you?"

"Judge Thorn. This pirate, slaver, and
rapist, won't be commanding anything anymore."

I paused for effect, but no-one said
anything.

"Court is now in session," I
boomed.

Him, the
Captain, and I, along with Jen, Jess, and Lea, all vanished.

Seventeen

In the middle of a desert, there stood a
lone building.

Over the door, was a sign saying
'Courthouse'. Inside, was a single room, modeled on descriptions of courtrooms
from a number of novels I’d read.

I sat at a raised dais, made of solid
elaborate woodwork, towards which almost everyone there faced.

To my left, he was seated in a chair
behind a railing, tied to the chair, and gagged. His uniform had been replaced
by a bright orange jumpsuit. He didn’t look happy, but at least he could
breath, and some of the red had left his face.

Out in front, were two desks. Jess sat
behind one of them. Behind her, in a general seating area, sat Jen and Lea. The
other desk was empty. Along the wall opposite from the side he was on,
sat the captains of the fleet ships. They were within a jury box, and looking
very confused.

"Court will come to order, Judge Thorn
presiding."

I hadn't bothered with extra people, so
announced myself, myself. There was a stir from the jury box.

"Ah, sir?" said the captain I'd
just been talking to, now jury foreperson. "Where are we? And what's going
on?"

"This is a courtroom. You're all here
to decide the guilt for your fellow officer, over there in the accused's box."

"Guilt sir? What if he's
innocent?"

"He's not innocent. He doesn’t even
get to plead, since he'll only lie. You will be shown proof."

"Proof sir? Of what?"

"The charges will be read shortly.
This is a special case. This man must be judged by a group of his peers,
because his superiors have refused to take any action at all, and most of his
victims were under his command."

Give him credit, he was rock steady, having
been thrown a curve ball he could never have seen coming. I turned to Jess.

"Will the prosecutor please read the
charges."

Jess rose.

"The guilty is charged with forty six
counts of rape, colluding with pirates to commit piracy, colluding with slavers
to commit slavery, and treason."

Most of the jury were looking astonished,
several with mouths hanging open. The guilty was glaring at everyone, and
trying really hard to talk. However, in addition to gagging him, I'd also muted
him, so he couldn’t make any sound at all.

"Present your evidence."

Jess walked over to a computer, the big
screen of which was directly in front of the jury on the opposite wall. She
plugged her pad into it.

"This first recording comes from a
pirate station, where the guilty is addressing pirates."

She touched her pad, and the scene in the
ballroom played, where he talked about pirates banding together to take over
areas of space. The recording ended, and Jess put a message up instead.

"This message was recovered from the
guilty's own computer. As you can see, it gives detailed information of the
movement of a ship, and those aboard. It even recommends where the ship be
seized, and how. Followed by an insistence the crew are sold as slaves."

The jury were now studying the guilty, and
they didn’t look happy.

"Call your first witness."

"I call the captain of the seized ship
to the stand."

Jen rose, and walked over to the witness
box. She sat.

"Do you swear to tell the complete
truth?"

"I do."

"State your name and rank for the
court."

She did. I noticed she had a last name, but
like all names, I lost it as soon as it was said. She was also a full Commander
now.

"Please describe the way your ship was
attacked, and the events which followed."

Her description was graphic, and in
complete agreement with the message on the screen. She went on to describe
being stripped, made to wear rags, paraded around the station, and finally
auctioned as a slave.

"Jen, I'm sorry to ask, but what do
you remember about your rape?"

She told the jury what she could remember,
how she'd determined she had been raped, and the way her superiors had reacted.
She held her head up high, looked every single one of the jurists in the eye, and
gave them every detail she could remember.

"Thank you Commander, you may step
down."

She returned to her seat, looking a little
lighter on her feet now, as if getting it all out had released a burden. I
looked at her face, and a lot of the darkness was now gone. I looked over to
Jess.

"Call your next witness."

"Your honour, the next witness is the
guilty, via a recording taken from his own files."

"Proceed."

The rape of a junior officer was seen by
all, from the beginning when she arrived in his stateroom, until she
left in a state of confusion. The jury saw for themselves, what Jen had already
described, but being done to someone else.

"If I may, your honour?" asked
the jury foreman.

"You may," I responded.

"How do we know this is a genuine
recording, and taken from the Admiral's own files?"

"The court permits you to verify the
recording. Off the Admiral's quarters is a small viewing room."

"The Admiral's private sitting
room?"

"Must be. I'll put you in the guilty's
stateroom aboard your ship. Verify as much as you want, but be quick about it. When
you exit the viewing room, you'll be brought back here. Do you wish to
proceed?"

He looked surprised, but collected himself
rapidly.

"Yes, your honour."

I moved him. At the same time, I started
watching him with my sight, showing what I saw on the screen. The rest of the
jury saw him find the door, enter, find the exact recording, and play it on the
equipment there. He covered his shock and disgust well. He took another one at
random, fast forwarded for a bit, and watched another rape in progress. He took
two more, with the same results.

A very angry man went over to the coms
panel, called security, ordered them to pack the entire contents of the room, strip
it down to the framework to make sure nothing was hidden away, and to store it all
in sealed boxes, in one of the cells, with access to it by no-one, once the
door was locked. He waited until they arrived, gave a brief rundown of the
contents for the security chief, and left the room. I brought him back. He took
his seat, without looking at the guilty.

I looked at him.

"The evidence presented has been
confirmed as authentic, and all evidence is being secured as we speak."

"Thankyou." I looked at Jess.
"Call your next witness."

"I am unable to do so."

"Explain."

"The junior lieutenant we saw being
raped on the screen, committed suicide when no-one took her seriously."

I looked at the jury, most of whom were now
in shock.

"I'm adding murder to the charges."

The guilty was now looking at me with an
expression of extreme hatred. I looked dispassionately back at him, just for a
moment, before looking back at Jess.

"Any more evidence to present?"

"The prosecution enters the contents
of the guilty's staterooms into evidence."

"So ordered."

"The prosecution rests, your
honour."

"Does the accused have any defense?"

All eyes turned to him. I removed
his gag, and unmuted his voice.

"This fucking court has no
jurisdiction over me, and I demand you release me immediately."

I muted him before he could go on, and
stuck the gag in his mouth again. He looked furious, and struggled to get free.
I tightened his bonds.

"The defense has rested. The jury will
now consider their verdicts."

The jury looked at each other in amazement,
but a low conversation started. The rest of us waited in silence for a full
fifteen minutes. Finally, they stopped talking, and sat back in their chairs.
The foreman rose.

"Do you have a verdict on each
count?"

"We do, your honour."

"What say you on forty six counts of
rape?"

"Guilty."

He went
crazy in his chair, trying to talk, and get free. No-one noticed except me. All
eyes were on the foreman. His eyes were on me.

"What say you on the count of
colluding with pirates?"

"Guilty."

"What say you on the count of
colluding with slavers?"

"Guilty."

"What say you on the count of
treason?"

"Guilty."

"What say you on the count of
murder?"

"Guilty of the lesser charge of
secondary murder. It doesn’t matter anyway, since the penalty for treason by a
military officer, is death by firing squad."

"Were all verdicts unanimous?"

"Yes, your honour."

"Do you have a recommended
sentence?"

"Death by firing squad."

"Thank you for your service."

He sat, looking relieved. I looked at him.

"You have been found guilty by a jury
of your peers, and the penalty is death. It is the judgment of this court, that
a firing squad is not appropriate. You are sentenced to have a wooden stake
inserted into your body to simulate rape, and for it to continue to be inserted
until you are dead. Sentence will be carried out immediately."

The room vanished, and we were all standing
in the middle of a desert. The guilty was still bound and gagged, but he was
standing now, and between his legs, but not touching him, was a sharpened
wooden stake, seemingly solidly in the ground.

I could see several of the ship captains
debating with themselves if they should watch or not. In the end, they all did.
But I could see their distaste clearly on their faces.

He made a
huge effort to move, but found he was unable to. His eyes were almost bugging
out of his head.

I gave him the finger, and the stake impaled
him like a snake striking. He silently screamed, shuddered, blood flowed, and he
died. The stake emerged from the top of his head, his body slumping, now held
up by the stake. It was quicker than I’d have liked, but this was an execution,
not torture. His death was horrific, but not prolonged. A hole opened up
beneath him, and he slid in feet first. It sealed up after him. A single headstone
appeared to mark the grave. I'd thought about the inscription a lot during the
trial.

Here lies a serial rapist, forgotten for
all time.

I walked over to the jury foreperson.

"The entire trial was recorded, as is
what I'm saying now. Jess will give you a copy to send up the chain of command.
The officers who covered up rape in their command, who punished those who made
the accusations, and who failed to pursue justice for the victims, are hereby
put on notice their behavior is found to be abhorrent, and should they come to
my notice, or such actions occur again, they will also face the court."

He nodded.

I looked around at everyone.

"This trial is at an end. Justice has
been served. The guilty punished. You will all now be returned to your ships.
Thank you for your service."

I gave them a short head bow, and was
surprised when they all returned it.

I put everyone back where they were
supposed to be.

Eighteen

Very little had changed when we returned.
Not away long enough for the supply ships to arrive, or the enemy to make
another attack, all was quiet. Repairs were underway on all ships but ours.
Sasha had the bridge, and Tasha was still manning the weapons console.

"Nice interlude?" asked Tasha, as
I went past on my way to the kitchen.

"Not really. I don’t want to talk
about it now. Ask Lea if you want a rundown."

"You killed him though?"

"Yes."

The finality in my word, shut her up.

I pulled a beer out, and drank the whole
thing. Cold, wet, and compared to the beer I’d been making for myself, very
bland. When I realized it was empty, I pulled out another one, and sipped at
this one. In the lounge room, I sat uncomfortably.

His death
had crossed a line. I'd done it deliberately, but the line was there, and it
carried consequences to cross it. I sat there brooding. A lot of different
emotions took turns in being primary.

Sometime later, Tasha entered, and sat in
the chair next to me. She took my hand in hers, and just sat there, holding it.
More time later, she broke the silence.

"Jen's locked in her stateroom. Jess
is pumping iron. Lea won't say anything. What happened?"

"I held an old style drumhead trial,
only a little more elaborate than upending a drum, and sitting on it to
dispense justice."

"What do you know about them?"

"We attended one during military
training. It ended with the accused put against a tree, and filled full of
arrows. Supposed to be a lesson for us, I guess. And I've read about them, both
during my second life, and also from books here."

"Why do it?"

"For Jen. She needed to have someone
believe her. Just killing him wouldn’t have begun healing her wounds. It needed
people she could respect, validating what she went through, and deciding the
monster's fate. While I didn’t follow their recommendation, Jen can now get on
with healing."

"Where does it leave you, my
love?"

"With a lot more enemies than if I’d
followed my initial inclination."

"Which was?"

"I was going to confront him, and make
him walk out an airlock, as if he was committing suicide. No-one would have
doubted it. No muss, no fuss, no blood."

"What changed your mind?"

"Jen's reaction to hearing his voice.
I knew then she'd never heal if I just made it look like he killed
himself."

"So what new enemies have you
made?"

"Whoever is above him in the military
chain of command, who protected him. Possibly family as well. Might even have
been political. I know almost nothing, so have no way of telling. Someone
protected him, and that person will come after me somehow."

"Go after them first."

"There's a little matter of a war to
end."

"Easy things first huh?"

She was quietly laughing. At me or with me,
was the question, but I wasn’t asking it.

"Can I have a word Thorn?" came
from Jen, at the doorway.

"I'll get us some food," said
Tasha, who rose and left.

Jen came in, and sat where Tasha had been.
She studied my face.

"You look as emotionally conflicted as
I feel."

"You look like shit."

"I feel like shit. Tomorrow I'll make
an effort to fake not looking it."

I smiled at the weak joke.

"Thorn? Why did you do all that? For
me? After I hounded you into being alone for five years? You made some very
powerful enemies today. Why do it when you didn’t have to?"

"You needed it."

She choked up. I waited. Tasha put her head
around the corner, and I gave her a slight head wag. She vanished again.

"You did it because I needed it?"

"What other reason is there?"

"But why make enemies when you don’t
need to?"

"You're my friend Jen. You get what
you need."

"I don’t deserve a friend like
you."

"You don’t get a say in it."

She smiled.

"What now?"

"Now we deal with this war. If
something else comes along, we'll deal with that as well."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Dinner is served," said Tasha.

She put a tray down next to each of us,
left, and returned with her own. As we ate, I had Jen fill me in on what had
been happening here.

"So the situation when I left weeks
ago to come get you," she finished up, "was we still had five armed
freighters here. And two more military ships. Two of each were destroyed while
we were away, one of them being the ship lost as we arrived. The last three freighters
left while we were in court, needing a shipyard. So the remainder of the fleet
is military, and we're reserve on detached command. The next admiral to arrive
will also probably try to enforce us returning fully to the military. How do
you want to handle it?"

"Without killing someone I hope."

Nineteen

A zombie him dug his way out of his
grave, and chased me across a desert. The stake left a line behind him as he
shambled along, arms outstretched.

I woke suddenly, disoriented, and very
afraid. And very sure I'd missed something very important.

"Shit Thorn!"

"Huh?"

"There's a layer of dirt over the
whole room!"

I threw back the cover, and dust rose in a
cloud. The dirt was under the covers as well. Tasha leapt off the bed, skidded
on the loose surface, and went down. I inserted a large pillow under her, to
break her fall. It stirred up yet more dust, and soon both of us were coughing.

We retreated into the bathroom. Tasha
showered, while I removed the mess. I quickly showered after her, and we went
for an early breakfast. Tasha went back to her weapons board, and I sought out
Jess.

Predictably, Jess was arms deep in
something mechanically messy.

"Want to go look at alien tech?"

"Hell yes! Just wait while I get
cleaned up."

I blinked, and she was all cleaned up.

She blinked rapidly, looked herself over as
best she could, and looked at me.

"I guess I'm ready."

Without even touching her this time, I
moved us to stand on a small hill above the ship graveyard I was gathering.
From up here they didn't look particularly large. But the four new ships were
significantly bigger than the original one. In particular, much longer and
leaner.

"Is that where they went? I had
wondered. Why here?"

"No-one knows where this is. And I
didn’t want some military type blowing them up out of spite."

"Why not?"

"Does it bother you neither side is
talking to the other, or even trying to?"

"No. Why should it?"

"That's what bothers me the most.
No-one is even bothered by it. Just how long has hostilities been going on, do
you know?"

"I've no idea. Centuries at least.
Maybe longer."

I looked at her with my mouth hanging open.
The whole concept of a war lasting for centuries, and for so long no-one was
even aware of how long, was mind boggling.

Maybe this was the reason for me being
here. To stop it once and for all. Only that implied some higher power was
responsible for me being here. And I wasn’t quite ready to give such a notion a
look in. It meant my time jump was arranged, and not accidental. I pushed away
the whole line of thought.

"I was wondering if these could be
repaired."

She looked at me sharply, but there was a
grin on her face.

"Shall we see? Engine room of your
choice please."

We moved, after I looked to make sure where
we were moving to.

To me, it all looked the same as on the
ship we were on, but Jess flip flopped from 'what a load of crap', to 'what a
great idea' as she looked things over. But to me, it was machinery, and it
worked, which was all I needed to know.

I left her there, and jumped back to the
flagship. There were gasps of shock when I materialized in front of the command
chair, although the captain himself was merely annoyed.

"What do you want Thorn?"

"Would you care to look over one of
the alien hulks?"

"I would," interrupted a bearded
man, at one of the consoles.

"Of course you would," said the
captain. "And I would too. XO?"

"Sir?"

"I'm off the ship for a while. You
have the bridge."

"Aye sir. Wait. Off the ship?"

The captain actually smiled at him, and I
gave it a few seconds, and jumped us to where Jess was. She didn’t even notice
our arrival, until slapped on the shoulder by beard. The two exchanged
greetings, and I gathered he was also an engineer.

The captain and I began walking in what we
hoped was the direction to the bridge.

"I'm sorry captain, I never did get
your name."

"Bentley. And I'm sorry to admit, I
had no idea what was going on. If I had, Admiral or no, I'd have taken steps to
make sure it couldn’t happen again. In fact, I already have. I can't agree with
your methods, but the evidence was damning, and he deserved to die. I'd have
preferred the firing squad though."

"Perhaps so, but I took the
responsibility for condemning him, and I did the execution myself. Why put a
squad through the agony of not knowing if your shot killed him or not?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way. It
would bother me if I was one of those shooting. It doesn’t bother you?"

"It bothers me a great deal captain,
but I'm not going to ask someone else to do, what is mine to do. That's the
road to becoming a tyrant."

"True enough. Who else is looking at
this heap of junk?"

"You've seen them."

"Can we get some weapon techs over
here as well?"

I thought of Tasha, and she was suddenly
standing beside us.

"FUCK!"

She hit me solidly on the arm.

"Ouch!"

"Don’t do that!"

"I didn't. I just thought about you
for a second, and you jumped here."

"Well don’t think about me then."
I looked at her. "Fine, but get control of that. Why am I here, wherever
here is?"

"Alien ship. Alien guns. Alien
missiles. Weapons officer."

She didn’t say a thing, just whacked me on
the other arm, and shot off down the passageway.

Bentley was wearing a bemused expression on
his face.

"Girlfriend. I think."

"Ah. Can we be a bit more deliberate
about getting some of my crew here?"

"Sure. Let's find somewhere bigger to
bring them to."

We set off again.

"Captain, can you do a truly objective
assessment?"

"I’d like to think I can. Why?"

"I want to know which is the better
fighting ship. Yours, or this one. Assuming both are in top condition, which of
cause, neither of them are. Can you do that?"

"Which ship would I prefer to take
into battle? I can do that. Why?"

"Do we have a better ship than yours
is?"

"Not at the moment. The next class of
ship is still in the development phase. And most of the older ships died first.
The two we have left here are, were, the most modern we had. Both need a
shipyard. In fact, until you turned up, I thought we were gone."

"How was Admiral Rapist as a
commander?"

He gave me a curious look.

"Do you not remember names? Or in your
mind, his is already forgotten?"

"Both."

"He was too aggressive in some ways,
but too timid in others."

"Let me guess. He parked you too far
away from the jump point?"

"How'd you guess that?"

"I didn’t guess. Strategy and tactics
were my skills during basic training. It was obvious the fleet was totally out
of position for jump point defense. As demonstrated by where it is now, pretty
well right on top of it, with all ships aligned so they're not in each other's
line of fire if something comes through."

"It's why neither of us didn’t fight
the orders, even though given by a junior. The Commander knows her stuff, and
I've become too complacent with sub-standard Admirals. In normal circumstances,
I’d have taken a piece off her for insubordination. But she was giving the
right orders, and both of us senior captains hadn't. Admittedly, we had no coms
when she gave them, but had we not had an admiral on board, I’d have accepted
her orders as suggestions and acted on them."

"Wake up call, huh?"

"Yeah. This looks like a good
place."

It looked like some sort of unused
storeroom, so we walked into the middle.

"Ready?"

"No."

I jumped us back to his ship. He started
barking commands immediately, causing his people to jump almost out of their
skins. Several minutes later, a dozen people were standing next to him. A blink
later we were all standing in the store room. He issued instructions, and
people streamed out, and headed in both directions. We followed them at a more
leisurely pace, finally finding the bridge.

One of Bentley's crew was already at work
there.

"Sir?"

"Report."

"I can't read the language sir. A few
things are pretty obvious, given the displays. But read it? No chance. We need
a linguist."

"Do you recall there being a linguist
on the ship?"

"No sir."

"I think I can help," I
interjected.

"Be my guest."

There had to be a coms unit of some kind,
probably even a whole console. I focused my intent on ship coms, and commanded
the captain's log to play. Immediately, a deep male voice began talking, and
the crewman jumped. At the same time, one of the screens was showing some form
of writing.

I concentrated my magic on the spoken
words. I frowned as some of it sounded vaguely familiar. In my mind, bits of it
began to translate, the same way it had when I'd been overlooking the eating
section of the pirate station. After a few minutes, all of it was
understandable. I kept the magic going until the written words were also
readable. Once they were, I extended the intent to all words, written and
spoken, on the ship.

"I can read it!" exclaimed the
crewman.

Bentley looked at me with an 'is there
anything you can't do' expression on his face.

"When do you want your
assessment?" he asked.

"When you’re done."

"Where will you be?"

"Back in my living space."

"How do we get back?"

"Say 'ready to come back Thorn'. But
take your time. This ship should have food if you need it. From the look of the
bodies, they most likely eat much of what we do. No idea about taste
though."

"Bodies?"

"The crew died when the hull was
punctured in too many places. I buried them."

"What did they look like?"

"Us. Except for having burnt orange
skin. Didn’t you know?"

"No-one did, until now. We've never
managed to take a ship before. They've been quite obsessive about destroying
their own wreckage and crew remains. If we had samples, the high command and
the government haven’t told anyone."

"You have a good pathologist on
board?"

"Not as such. The ship's doc is
trained, but hasn’t ever done an autopsy by herself, as far as I know."

"I'll send her a body then."

"Make her day I expect."

He was grinning.

I nodded to him, and jumped to his ship,
found the medical area, which was full of people, all with injuries, found the
morgue section, and transferred a random alien body to the metal bed there. A
passing nurse saw me, and came in.

"What are you doing here?" She
looked past me. "And what the hell is that?"

"Alien body. Get your doc to do a full
autopsy as soon as crew treatment is complete. The captain will want a full
report when he returns."

"When will that be?"

"Could be anytime."

I smiled, and jumped out.

Twenty

Two days, and two lonely nights, later, a
fast courier arrived.

The supply ships had been and gone. Several
replacement military ships had arrived, undamaged ones from one of the other
blockade points. None of the people examining the alien ships had so far wanted
to return.

"Thorn, you better join us on the main
bridge," said Jen, through coms.

We'd had several long chats over the last
couple of days, and she was doing a lot better now. Her face was back to
looking gorgeous, instead of a permanent hurricane.

Her tone made me jump there, instead of
walking.

"What do we have?"

"Trouble," said Lea,
enigmatically.

"How so?"

"They sent a two stripe Admiral,"
said Jen.

"Do you know who it is?"

"Oh yes. It’s the one I appealed to,
and who signed my transfer papers instead."

"Oh. So it's have some fun time
then?"

I grinned at them, but they weren't
interested in humour. The marine at coms waved at Jen.

"Flagship XO is on the horn, Jen. You
want it?"

She waved it onto the main screen.

"Commander?" asked Jen, smiling.
"Problem?"

"Do you know where Captain Bentley
is?"

"No. Why?"

"The new Admiral is expecting him to
meet him at the airlock when he comes aboard."

"When is this supposed to
happen?"

"Five minutes."

I started chuckling. No-one joined in. Jen
looked at me, saw me smiling as well as chuckling, and turned back to the
screen.

"He won't be here."

"What do I do?"

"Do you want to be fleet command, or
should I be? Captain Townsend should be, but his coms system is still down
while they do core repairs. So it's you or me until he's back online. Technically
you do outrank me in terms of time in service, being assigned to a more senior
ship, and you're in the senior service."

"I'll happily defer to you Commander."

"I accept Commander."

He looked relieved. I wondered how long
he'd actually been a full commander. Longer than Jen obviously, but her
promotion was very recent. Maybe his was as well.

"What do I tell the Admiral?"

"You tell him Captain Bentley, and
some of the crew, are currently examining captured enemy ships for anything
which will allow us to fight them more effectively. He'll return when he's
satisfied there is no more to learn."

"The Admiral will want to talk to
him."

"The Admiral is going to be frustrated
for a while. Stop asking questions, and get to the airlock. If you’re not there
to render boarding honours, I wouldn’t want to be you."

He nodded, and the com screen closed.

"Ah to be a fly on the wall for that
meeting," said Lea, finally letting her grin out.

"I can arrange that."

One of the screens changed to show an
airlock with crewmembers lined up on both sides of the hatch. The commander
arrived breathless, and took his place opposite the airlock. The lock began to
cycle, and the notes of some sort of honour greeting sounded through the coms.

A large man emerged, two wide stripes on
his cuffs, and the expectation of absolute obedience on his lined face,
underneath the thinning grey hair.

He stood there while the notes ended, and
he and the Commander saluted. Neither looked happy. In fact, the only person
who did, was me.

"Where's your captain,
Commander?"

"Not on the ship sir."

"Where is he?"

"He and some of the crew are off
assessing a captured enemy ship."

"We don’t have any captured
ships."

"We do now sir."

"Why wasn’t this reported?"

"Sir? I don’t know sir. We found out
several days ago. I assumed the Captain had reported it."

"Don’t use that word around me ever
again."

"Sir? What word sir?"

"Assumed. You give me facts or
nothing. Clear?"

"Yes sir. This way to the bridge sir.
The current fleet command is on another ship."

The Admiral looked like he was about to
explode, but thought better of it. He waved the commander away, and followed
him. A lot of luggage came in the hatch behind him, but headed off a different
way.

I let the sight on screen end. But kept
looking inside his baggage.

Twenty One

Jen started counting down from ten.

At two, the coms marine startled, looked to
Jen, who nodded, and at zero, the Admiral's face was showing on the main screen.

"Commander."

The pause was long, and the look on his
face, was not the one you wanted to see on an Admiral.

"Who put you in charge?"

There was a definite emphasis on the 'you'.

"Just temporary Admiral," said
Jen. "Only until Captain Bentley gets back."

"And when will that be?"

"Expected him yesterday, truth be
told. The captured ships must be more interesting than he thought."

I'd found what I wanted, looked at Lea, and
jerked my head towards the door. She rose immediately, and left. He noticed the
movement, and his eyes centered on me.

"What's a civilian doing on your
bridge Commander?"

"This is Thorn, Admiral."

"Ah, the self-proclaimed Judge
Thorn."

His voice had lightened now, his face
amused. But it was transitory, and his face returned to its normal state. He
looked around the bridge.

"Marines, arrest that man."

I raised an eyebrow at him, and smiled
serenely. No-one moved to obey his order. My pad dinged to let me know
something important had arrived, and I glanced at it. Lea had sent what I needed,
and since she'd found it immediately, it must have been easy to find. As my
smile broadened, she returned to her seat, and gave me a wink.

"Commander, you have a murderer on
your bridge. You will order your marines to arrest him immediately."

"I will do no such thing
Admiral."

I could see his temper about to explode, so
decided to cut this short.

"If I may, Admiral?"

Cut off from exploding at someone, he took
a moment to change gears.

"You have a suggestion to make Thorn?
Like surrendering yourself?"

"Alas no Admiral. I merely inform you
that tomorrow morning, you will be tried for treason, in front of a jury of
your ship captains."

He snorted, and began to laugh. No-one
laughed with him.

"You try me? Not going to
happen."

"Admiral, you look tired, after your
long journey here. Perhaps some fresh air might help you to sleep, in
preparation for your ordeal tomorrow."

Suddenly he did look tired.

"Perhaps you're right. It has been a
long journey, and I do need rest." He turned to the XO. "Commander,
please have someone escort me to my stateroom."

He turned back to me, but whatever he
intended to say, he thought better of saying it. He shambled off the bridge,
with a crewman following after him. The XO look worriedly at Jen for a moment,
and closed the coms down.

I popped my sight back up on the same
screen, and we watched the Admiral walk the corridors until he came to a hatch.

"No Admiral, that’s the airlock, not
your stateroom."

"Just need a little fresh air. Won't
be long."

The hatch came open, he jumped in, and
closed it behind him.

"Admiral? Please come out.
Admiral?"

The last was a shout with a lot of
desperation in it.

The outer door opened.

Explosive decompression pulled all the air
out of the airlock, and pushed the Admiral out with it.

"Ah, fresh air at last."

He took one last breath of vacuum, smiled,
and his body exploded.

Twenty Two

"Where the hell am I?"

"What can you see Admiral?"

"Nothing at all. Dirt. Sand. Dust.
Where the hell am I?"

"In a desert. Isn't it obvious?"

"How the hell did I get here?"

"You didn’t."

"What the fuck are you talking
about?"

"You're dead."

"I am not dead."

"A crewman watched you walk out an
airlock. The lock cam recorded your body exploding. Everyone thinks you just
killed yourself, instead of facing trial tomorrow. Obviously guilty
reaction."

"Like hell I did."

"You did. You walked out an airlock
into space. Except it wasn’t your body which exploded."

"I didn't explode!"

"No, obviously not. But I have access
to some recently dead bodies, so I replaced you with one of those, and blew it
up to make it look like explosive decompression. The exploded remains of a body
floating away from the ship are never going to be looked at, where a frozen
body would be recovered, and found not to be yours. We can't have them thinking
you're still alive, can we?"

"You're mad!"

"Perhaps so. But I'm the one who
decides if you really live or die."

"Live or die? What are you talking
about?"

"This is a desert. There is no water
for five day's walk in any direction. There is not even anything worth eating
for five days in any direction."

"So?"

"So I'm going to leave you here. You
can decide for yourself if you live or die."

"How do I decide that?"

"Confess your sins Admiral. Confess
how you supported rapists and other scum, and covered up their crimes for them.
Confess Admiral, and I'll give you enough water to survive long enough to find
more. A week's walk in any direction, is all you need, to live out the
remainder of your life."

"Take me back. Now."

"You’re dead Admiral. Suicide. Nothing
to go back to. Live or die Admiral, your choice. A simple confession is all it
takes."

"Over my dead body!"

"Already arranged Admiral. No-one can
walk out of this desert from here, without carrying enough water for the journey.
You're starting with none. All it takes is a little confession."

"Who the hell are you?"

I showed him my black cloak, and withered
hand shape. He backed away from me quickly, and fell over the grave stone he
hadn't realized was behind him.

His eyes read the inscription, and he began
crawling backwards away from me. I returned my appearance to normal.

"I'll be listening Admiral. All I need
is a confession. Water is your reward."

"Go to hell, you freak."

"Fine."

I left him there.

Twenty Three

"Where did you go?" asked Jen.

"Just a little chore to attend to.
Why?"

"Our XO friend has reported the death
of the Admiral, and we're being sent another replacement. Do me a favour, and
not kill the next one?"

"Who me?"

"Yes you. I know damn well you
suggested he kill himself. Are you doing that with anyone else?"

"Killing themselves?"

"Suggesting."

"First time. I was rather surprised it
worked."

I wondered for a moment if she thought I
was making Tasha sleep with me, but I dismissed it as not being Jen. If she
thought it, she'd accuse me of it straight out.

"Well don’t use it again on my
ship."

"Aye captain."

"Take your stupid grin off, and bring
Captain Bentley back."

I gave her a friendly nod, and jumped.

I found all of them gathered in what was
obviously a recreational room for the ship's crew.

"Ah, good, Thorn. I was about to call
for you. We're finished."

"I came to get you anyway captain. The
new Admiral arrived."

"Oh. Not too happy I wasn’t
there?"

"To put it mildly. But that isn't the
problem."

I had everyone's attention now.

"What is?"

"I told him I was putting him on trial
for treason tomorrow, and he walked himself out an airlock."

"Ouch!" said someone.

"So the fleet doesn’t have a
commander, and the Admiral was most unhappy to find Jen with the job."

"I'd better get back then. Will you do
the honours please?"

I cast my eyes around the room, mentally
including everyone, and in an instant, we were back on the flagship.

"Thank you Thorn. My people will have
an appraisal to you in the morning. But between you and me, if I was a ship
class down from where I am now, I'd be wanting one of those."

I nodded to him, and he left, presumably to
take his bridge back. There was a general dispersal, quickly leaving just Jess
and Tasha.

"You're getting good at moving people
around," said Tasha. "Didn’t even have to touch us this time. And
Bentley didn’t even blink this time. He must be getting used to being moved
that way, even if as many times as I explained it to him, he doesn’t actually
get it."

"What did you do to the Admiral,
Thorn?" asked Jess, and seemingly interrupting Tasha deliberately.

"Who me?"

They both groaned.

"Get us home," said Tasha.
"I need a shower, and a proper sleep."

A blink later, we were on my bridge. Both
the girls left in a hurry. I made myself comfortable, and thought about what to
do next.

Casting my sight to the other side of the
jump point proved easy enough, since I'd been there before. The jump point
itself was clear. In the distance, I could see moving dots. I refocused on them,
and found a half dozen of the same class of ship heading for the jump point. It
didn’t look enough of a force to jump through and attack us again, but more
likely was a defensive force to stop us jumping in.

Had our ships been in better shape, it's likely
we could have taken back the next system already. But it seemed neither side
had been prepared for what I’d done.

The station was still there, had a three
ship patrol nearby, and had shuttle activity going to and from the planet. The
planet itself was not much of a colony. It was located on good farming land,
judging by the amount of crops in evidence, and there were several mining
operations going on. As far as I could see, there were not more than a couple
of hundred enemy troops on the ground, and what I’d seen of our marine's
equipment, put ours at the advantage, even outnumbered.

Which made me wonder why we'd lost the
station and planet in the first place. The planet and the people on it, looked
like they'd just been abandoned. This led me to wondering if there were any
plans for taking them back. I hit the coms button.

"Jen?"

"Yes Thorn?"

"Does this fleet have any
troops?"

"Only us. Might be some odd squads on
each ship, but I doubt any of them have a full team."

"Any coming?"

"I'll find out. Why?"

"Just curious if there are any plans
to take back the next system. It's not overly well protected, with only several
hundred troops on the ground. I've not looked at the station yet, but I assume
if they had many more troops, they'd be on the ground."

"I'll find out," she repeated,
and the com clicked off.

The more I thought about this war, the
worse it made me feel. Something was definitely missing. What was obviously
missing on our side of the jump point, was decent ships.

I went back to the ship graveyard, and
spent the next few hours poking around the alien ships again. Other than damage
from the hull ruptures, the ships looked basically intact. It had been opening
the ships to space, which killed most of the crews. The hulls had holes, but
the insides were mostly fine. Where they weren't, one of the others was.

Regardless of what the assessment was, we
needed ships. I did some very specific intent changes to how I'd made Jen a new
ship, started the process of copying these ones, and took myself back to my
bridge.

"Jen wants you," said Tasha, and
for once, it was me who jumped out of my skin.

She laughed, and dragged a finger down in
the air, in the shape of a one.

Jen was on the main bridge.

"Are you visiting your beach every
chance you get?"

Now why hadn't I thought of that?

"No, back looking at alien
ships."

"Strangely fascinating are they?"

"No. Just pondering things."

"Well you were right."

"Was I. Good. What about?"

"There are no troops coming to take
back either the planet, or the station."

"That’s not good."

"Bentley was told he had a crack
marine unit, and all your new tech, and he was to use it the best he could,
until the new Admiral arrives."

I sighed.

"Any idea who they're sending?"

"No, but most likely it's someone from
one of the other block points."

"You mean someone expendable?"

"Probably."

"So there are no plans to retake the
next system?"

"No. We don’t have the ships. There
are two more cruisers coming, due tomorrow. And they're old ones, taken out of
mothballs, and given crews scraped up from anywhere close to them. But that’s
it."

"Remind me what a cruiser is?"

"Those alien ships are cruiser sized.
Bentley has a battlecruiser, next step up, and we have two of them. Three of
the others are cruisers, but the rest are destroyer and frigate sizes."
She saw my face. "Frigate is the smallest here. This ship is about midway
between destroyer and cruiser, both in terms of size, and firepower."

"So if six of their ships jump in
here?"

"We'll have the edge in terms of ship
mass and firepower, but not significantly. Depending on who they targeted, we
could lose all the smaller ships taking them out. Why?"

"There are six on the way to the jump
point, but I figured they were a defense force, not an attack."

"Probably true, but I'll warn Bentley all
the same. If I was them, I’d want double that force at least, and that’s not
taking into account you. So you’re probably right, it's just to keep us bottled
up if we come through, and maybe turn us back. With the way our ships are at
the moment, six of theirs nice and tight in to the jump point, would normally
take us down, or force us back with heavy casualties."

"Have the high command actually given
us any orders?"

"Hold here. That’s it. At least until
an Admiral turns up."

"Hmmm. Any idea what the enemy want
from the planet in the next system?"

"No. If you remember, we didn’t stop
there at all last time we were here."

"I wonder who does know?"

Jen didn’t have an answer for me.

Twenty Four

"As the senior officer here, I'm
taking command of this fleet. All captains will report to my ship the moment we
arrive."

The command had come through to all ships,
the moment the two replacement cruisers had come into scanner range. It hadn't
occurred to anyone to check who was commanding each of them. Jen's reaction
clued me in to something being wrong.

Bentley appeared on a screen.

"We have a problem," he said.

"How so?" I asked.

"Our new captain is senior to me, but
hasn’t been on a ship in a decade."

"How did he get command now?"
asked Jen.

"Probably knew in advance the ships
were coming out of mothballs," said Jess, "and made sure he was close
at hand to the person crewing them."

"Or maybe," added Lea, "he
was the person crewing them."

"Very likely," said Bentley.
"But if so, there's nothing we can do about it here. I'm appealing to the high
command, to prevent him taking command of the fleet. He doesn’t have modern
fleet handling experience, and he has no combat experience at all."

"Don’t they already know that?"

"Yes, but we don’t know what his
orders were. He could be exceeding them."

"Or he might not be," added Jen.
"Let's face it, the handling of this invasion by the higher ups has been a
joke, and there's no reason to expect any better now."

"When did you become a
pessimist?" asked Jess.

"Just being real. If it wasn’t for
Thorn, we'd all be dead a few days ago now. And the enemy would be pushing
towards the core worlds with almost no resistance. Why should we expect
anything different now?"

A loud ding went off in my mind. Did
someone actually want to be conquered? I didn’t say it though.

"Captain," I asked Bentley,
"What would you do with the new cruisers when they get here?"

"Swap their crews with the destroyers
and frigates. Put the two best destroyer captains on them, and mix up the crews
so all the inexperienced, or just plain bad crew, are put with experienced
people."

"Jen?"

"The same. There are some good people
on the destroyers ready for promotion. And two of the frigate captains could
move up."

"What do you expect the new bozo to
do?"

Bentley looked troubled. Neither he nor Jen
said anything.

"I'll say it then," said Tasha.
"He'll want Bentley's ship, or at least, its sister ship."

"Townsend won't like that anymore than
I would," said Bentley, "but he's not senior enough to stop it.
Technically I'm not either, but he's likely to go the path of least resistance."

I sighed.

"Let me see what I can do."

Bentley nodded, and cut the com.

I sat back, closed my eyes so no-one would
interrupt me, and cast my sight to the ships approaching. I found a young
commander in the captain's chair on one, and an older captain in the other. The
latter was bellowing orders, and his crew were not happy. I went looking for
personal files. It didn’t take long. I also found the files for the ship. When
I opened my eyes, I looked at Jess, and she rose and left with a smile on her
face.

This time I followed her. The first thing
she pulled up was the new captain's orders. He'd been told to place himself
under the command of the senior officer at the blockade point. Jess looked at
me, and we both sighed. His personal files revealed nothing more than an
obsessive belief in his own leadership, and a lot of anger at having been
passed over for ship command. The log of his XO was full of frustration about
having to suffer under a captain long past being put out to pasture. Of course,
he had been, but those higher up had been allowing him to serve out his time on
a desk, rather than beaching him abruptly.

Jess looked at me.

"What are you going to do?"

"Persuade him to do the right
thing."

"And if he doesn’t?"

"Persuade him to do the right
thing."

She looked at me funny, but didn’t say any
more. I let her continue to look through files, while I observed this wannabe
fleet commander. He seemed glued to the captain's chair, which didn’t suit my
purposes, so while as far away as it was, I made an attempt to get him to move
somewhere else.

At first, nothing happened. I tried
suggesting he needed a nap before his meeting with the captains, he was hungry
and needed food, thirsty, and even tried suggesting a ship inspection tour.
Nothing worked. Then his age twigged on me, and I suggested he needed the
facilities in a hurry.

He was out of his chair immediately,
bellowing to the XO he had the bridge until he returned, and he hurried out
towards his quarters.

Before going after him, I poked the short
range scanners, causing a small fault, enough to short the whole module out,
and cause them to stop displaying on the bridge. The XO received the report,
bellowed for repairs, and seemed to forget he even needed them.

With the captain now in his bathroom, I
jumped into his bedroom, and sat on his desk chair, waiting for him to come
out.

"How the hell did you get in
here?" I opened my mouth to respond, but he went straight on. "Who
the hell are you?"

"Judge Thorn."

"Never heard of you. Get out."

"Be nice Captain."

"Please get out."

The tone was sarcastic.

I moved us both to stand next to a head
stone.

"What? How…"

"Captain, this is a desert. If you
don’t want to remain here, shut up and listen."

He look angry, but he shut up.

"Are you exceeding your orders by
taking command of the fleet?"

"No. Of course not."

"I've seen your orders Captain."

"No-one's seen my orders."

"I have. They were to put yourself
under the command of whoever the senior officer was at the blockade point.
Correct?"

His head sagged, and he found something on
the ground more interesting to look at than me.

"I've not heard an answer
Captain."

"You’re not getting an answer."

"Fine. There is no food or water for
five days, in any direction. I'm going to leave you here. If you admit the
truth, I'll give you a day's water. If you write a resignation due to ill
health on your pad, and give it to me in the next few minutes, I'll leave you
four day's water."

"Why only four?"

"Motivation. It'll last you if you
drink it wisely, but you'll still be very thirsty before you find water. The
thirst will drive you the last part of the journey."

"You wouldn’t dare leave me
here."

I wrapped invisibility around me.

"COME BACK!" he screamed, and
began rapidly dictating to his pad.

I uncloaked as he finished, and with a sigh
of relief, he thrust the pad into my hands.

He'd gone one step further than I’d asked.
The resignation letter admitted he had a medical condition he'd been hiding
from his doctor, but he was actually resigning because his wife had begged him
not to leave, and as he'd reached the war, he'd realized he was too old to be
commanding a ship in a time of war, and his wife had been right. All he'd be
doing here, was getting his crew killed.

A quick check of his mail, told me this
wasn’t true. His wife was already dead, and he'd come to the war for one last
blaze of glory.

I looked him in the eyes, and saw the
conflict there. He didn't want to die, but his dead wife was calling him.

"You didn't tell the military she
passed, did you?"

"No. I wasn’t even there at the time,
too busy getting the ship ready. You call yourself a judge?"

"When I have to be. No-one else can do
what I can."

"What are you?"

"Spacemage."

"Some sort of magician?"

"Yes."

"And you judge people?"

"Yes."

"Well I'm guilty. Just a passed over
war horse, with delusions of grandeur, who never made it to the one thing he
ever wanted to do. Lead people into a war."

"Did it ever occur to you why you
never got the chance?"

"Always wondered about it. Never
known."

"Your motivation is all wrong."

"How so?"

"The best leaders also want to lead
them back out again."

He sighed, and hung his head again. I let
him think, waiting for him to speak again.

"So you're leaving me here to
die?"

"What do you want?"

"I want my bridge."

"What if it's not your bridge, but a
different one, a smaller one?"

"You'd put me on a destroyer, and give
that captain my ship?"

"Perhaps. All the captains here have
combat experience. You don’t."

He sighed again.

"Every time there was fighting at the
frontier, I was never there. By the time I made it back, the skirmish would be
over. I'll take the destroyer. Just make sure I get a good XO to keep me from
killing everyone doing something stupid."

I gave him back his pad.

"What will you do if I take you
back?"

"Cancel the captains meeting. Who's
fleet command now? I never even asked."

"Captain Bentley."

"I know of him. Solid leader. Got one
of the BC's, doesn’t he?"

"Yes. He's expecting you to take it from
him."

"But he has you to make sure it
doesn’t happen?"

"No. No-one has me."

"Don’t be so sure of that. With the
powers you have, the high command will want them."

"Maybe so, but for now, what will you
tell Bentley?"

"I'll ask him which ship he wants me to
transfer over to, and to give me a good solid XO."

"I'll be watching."

"I bet you will."

A blink of the eye later, he was back in
his bedroom, and I was standing behind Jen on her bridge. She looked around at
me, having seen the coms marine startle.

"Did you kill him?"

"Why does everyone assume I
will?"

"Because you always do."

"Not this time."

I hoped, I added to myself.

Twenty Five

The moving around of crews took an entire
day.

The two new cruisers were taken over by
competent crews, and everyone else shuffled downwards from them. I was glad I'd
not had to use the resignation plan, of which the pad was only the first part.
This way was much better, and I made sure Bentley gave him one of the better
destroyers, instead of busting him right down to a frigate, which is where the
commander captaining the second cruiser ended up, although he was delighted to
keep any command, including one of the frigates. He'd had no illusions about being
anything except a ferry commander.

During lunch, a magic completed alarm
dinged in the back of my mind. I left the chaos of moving people, which even my
own crew had been dragged into helping with, and jumped to the top of the hill
overlooking my ship building area.

A brand new alien ship was sitting there.
Behind it, was the shimmer of magic drawing an incredible amount of energy into
a small space, as the second ship prepared to be materialized.

I sat on a convenient rock, and watched the
shimmer, thinking things out. A sore bum convinced me sitting on a lounge chair
on my beach would be more comfortable, so I went there.

The more my brain concentrated on trying to
work out what the war was all about, the less useful was the thought processes.
So I lay back, drink in hand, and watched a pod of whales out in the ocean,
listening to their song in full magicphonic.

Free from being forced, my mind processed
what it needed to, and as the whales dived deep and moved away, it provided me
with what I needed. It wasn’t clarity, but it was the promise of clarity.

I chose a course of action, fixed the
intent in my mind, and set the magic going, rinsed and put my glass away, and
jumped back to my bridge.

"Nice arvo at the beach?" asked
Tasha, and I jumped again.

She did the finger thing. Second time she'd
got me.

"Lots to think about."

"Take me with you next time you
go."

"If you're not on duty, sure."

"Take me anyway."

She made eye contact with me, and held it
until I nodded. She was still seated, so I sat down next to her.

"You know how Jess can slave a ship
with another one, so it can be flown remotely?"

"Sure."

"Can you do the same with weapon
systems?"

"Probably. Why would you though? It'd
be better to have each of them run by a different person, on a single slave
link."

"Why?"

"Even if you lined the ships up to
fire at the same point in space, the guns would all be slightly differently
aligned. You'd spray around the point, more than hit the point. If the ships
were say line abreast, the turrets would all be aligned on a target
differently, and the miss factor would be huge. And they'd only be able to fire
on a single target."

"So?"

"So each ship is controlled by a
weapon's officer from the main ship, and they each fire independently."

"Or they each have a crew?"

She thought about it.

"Better with a crew, but we don’t have
spare crews. You building new ships?"

"One is already ready."

"What type?"

"Copy of the alien."

She looked dubious.

"What?"

"We'd need to connect up interfaces on
each ship, to bridge the difference in control language."

"Say that again, slowly?"

"Our consoles won't communicate with
those ships. They have their own language, and own computer code. We'd have to
build a converter, so our commands get executed in their languages."

"Can you do that?"

"Not on my own, no. Needs a computer
expert."

"Does the fleet have one?"

"I doubt it."

"Ask."

"Can't you magic it?"

"Creation is harder than
copying."

"And there's nothing to copy when it
has to be created."

I nodded. She asked Jen. Jen asked Bentley.
No.

"Does anyone know one who could build
this in a hurry?"

She said no, and asked Jen. Jen said no,
and asked Bentley. Bentley said yes.

"Who, and where do I find him?"

Twenty Six

The name on the door said 'Bill Oddie'.
Underneath, someone had scribbled, 'Oddbod Bill'. The door looked like someone
had given up trying to keep the graffiti away.

I knocked, and went in. I'd been expecting
a room totally cluttered with bits of computer equipment, screens all over the
place, and no-where to sit but in the middle of the mess.

I found a single screen, on a single desk, with
a well-dressed man behind it. His beard was wild, but the rest of him wasn’t.
Obviously I’d been reading too many novels.

"Call me Bill," came from behind
the monitor. "Who sent you?"

"Captain Bentley."

"Which one?"

"There's more than one?"

"Bentley is a common name in the
service. But only two captains I know of at the moment."

"Drives a battlecruiser?"

"Both do."

"Can I buy a vowel?"

"Do they call him 'Big Bill the
bastard' behind his back?"

"Not that I know of."

"Probably the other one then. Let me
just check something."

He typed away for a minute, with a lot of
clicking going on as well.

"Well, there you go. The other
one."

"Come again?"

"Big Bill died over a month ago in the
first attack. So unless it took you a month to get here, it's not going to be
him."

"Is any of this relevant?"

"Not really, but I like to know who
sends people to me. Certain people I tell to piss off, based on who sent
them."

"And the Bentleys?"

"Old Big Bill was a genuine bastard,
but if someone had to shout 'damn the missiles, full speed ahead', he's the one
I’d want doing it."

"Maybe he did."

"Could be right and all. So what you
want me for?"

"I need a computer interface built."

"Forget it. I need a real challenge to
get me away from this desk."

"I have an alien ship. The language is
different, the computer code different, and I need to be able to run the ship
remotely, for both navigation and weapons."

"You do not have an alien ship."

"I also have hard gold to pay you
with."

"How much hard gold?"

"More than you can carry."

"I can carry a lot. But you don’t have
an alien ship. I’d know."

"Want to bet?"

"I don’t bet."

"If I show you an alien ship
then?"

"Show me the ship, yeah, you got me.
But you do not have an alien ship in orbit around here. I’d know if there was a
panic going on."

"It's not in orbit."

"No way in the world you've got one on
the ground here."

"It's not here."

"Where then?"

I shifted us to the hill overlooking the
new ships. The shimmer had moved, and there were now two alien ships parked
there.

"Fuck, that’s alien. Let me see the
computer core."

I moved us straight there.

Twenty Seven

Within an hour, I had Tasha and Jess
working with him, along with a lot of screens, consoles, and other equipment.
An hour after that, they also had a copy of Bentley's ship's computer core. By
the end of the day, they had a dozen other people working with them.

Around ten that night, I called a halt, and
moved everyone to my beach. When I say called a halt, I mean I tried. Getting
Bill out of the alien core was going to be impossible, and most of the others
ignored me. They hadn't even eaten. Moving them was the only way.

I provided food and drink, and they each
found themselves a bed up the beach. Tasha kept me up well into the small
hours, but a ward dinged me awake as soon as the first person appeared on the
beach the next morning. Predictably, it was Bill.

I made sure he ate, and moved him back to
the alien core. The others followed as they emerged, and ate.

By the time they had a prototype ready to
go later that day, there was a third alien ship parked there. I'd gone back to
bed in the morning, and supplied lunch to people who had no idea what they were
eating, and didn’t care.

No-one saw the new ship materialize but me,
since I was up on the hill looking down. Well, my eyes were pointed down, but
my sight was in the next system past the blockade fleet.

It seemed the enemy had regrouped, and were
coming for another try. Eighteen ships this time, but only half were the same
as these ones, one was bigger than Bentley's ship, and the rest smaller than
these ones.

The problem was, they'd be here before my
building task was complete. Technically I didn’t need them. But…

An idea popped in there. Definitely one of
the things which make you go hmmmm. And then grin wildly. No-one was there to
see it. Probably just as well.

But I needed to be closer. I needed a ship,
and one which wouldn’t attract attention.

Shuttle. Yes, a shuttle would do the job
nicely. I jumped myself into the nearest alien shuttle bay, and inside the
nearest shuttle. After checking life support was working, and the hatches were
all closed, I sat in the pilot's chair, and moved to a place behind the
formation of alien ships. No-one seemed to notice.

Which triggered another thought. No-one
seemed to notice anything odd about what I did around them. I jumped people all
over the place, and they didn't seem to think anything odd had happened. And
yet, these people didn't have magic. Or any expectation of it. So why no
surprise? Something wasn’t right. And it could be me, but for now, I had other
matters to attend to.

In my mind, I gathered up the alien fleet,
and I not only threw it back through the jump point it had recently come
through, on the other side I threw it the distance of this solar system width
from jump point to jump point, up the system. Which put them at a ninety degree
angle away from the system plane, at least a day at full speed to get back to
the jump point, and another to get to ours.

And if need be, I could keep throwing them,
for as long as was needed.

For now, job done, and no-one dead, I
parked the shuttle back where I'd found it, and went looking for Tasha.

She and a few others were clustered around
a console, from which cables snaked into the core. Bill was still in the core,
apparently oblivious to everything else. It occurred to me his boss was
probably wondering where he was. It took jerking him by the shoulder to get his
attention, so I could ask him.

"No problem. This happens to me a lot.
Sudden call out, sometimes days on ships to get there, fix something, and days
back. I keep in touch, so I'm not off the grid. I told them I was working on
one of our recurrent problems, we can't actually fix properly, because of no
budget. Be another day yet before they wonder why I'm not back."

I left him to it. Tasha had finally noticed
I was there.

"When can we test this out for
real?"

"Tomorrow, I think."

"We'll be ready. Will the enemy give
us the time?"

"I already bought us the time."

"Thorn?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why do we even need ships? We have
you."

"Would you want to be responsible for
keeping the peace your whole life?"

"I guess not. All the same, there are
some who'll expect you to."

"I know. I'll deal with that in due
course."

"Make sure you include me this
time."

I could see she was serious. My heart went
fluttering for a short time, but the ding of magic completing tore my attention
away from her. Number four was sitting next to number three, and the shimmer had
moved again.

Twenty Eight

The following morning when we arrived back
from the beach, there were seven ships lined up, side by side. One of them was
considerably larger.

"Is that one of our
battlecruisers?" asked Tasha.

"It is. I figured we better have one
of our ships as well, for you to run the slaving of the others from."

"Good thinking. I'll get consoles set
up on its bridge for each of them."

"Get Jess to check it over. It would
be embarrassing to turn up at the jump point, and find the engines won't turn
on."

She laughed at me, and started organizing
people to stand in a group. When she nodded to me, I sent them to the bridge of
the battlecruiser.

Bill wasn’t one of them. He was exactly
where I thought he'd be.

"What are you working on?"

He didn't so much as look up from his
screen, and kept typing.

"Database retrieval interface. And
then a translator."

"How long for them?"

"Retrieval will be done by the time
those ships are ready to leave. The translator will take a few days
longer."

"What's your boss going to say?"

"I already told her the truth."

"Seriously? How did that go?"

"I told her the blockade fleet had
captured an alien ship, and they needed me to crack its computer systems. She
told me it was my best one yet, and asked how many days I needed."

"What did you say?"

"Two weeks."

"How did that go over?"

"She grumbled a bit. Usually I ask for
a week each time."

"A week each time what?"

"Each time I find something better to
do than what I'm doing. The thing is though, she knows only I can do what I do,
so she accepts the absences with good grace, knowing I'm still more productive
being there only half the time, than anyone else there doing double time."

"Should I go and ease her mind in this
case?"

"No need." He handed me his pad.
"Take a couple of images with the core behind me. She'll know I wasn’t
bullshitting this time, if I send them to her."

I stood well back, and took several images.
Before I gave it back to him, I took out my own, and took even more.

"When I get back, I'll find somewhere
on the battlecruiser for you to work."

"What about the cores?"

"I'll find you a big place to
work."

"Good. I need both these cores next to
each other. And can you arrange a better chair, a bigger screen, and a
fridge."

"Fridge?"

"Cold store."

"What do you want in it?"

A list followed. Oddly, none of it was
alcoholic. Back on the top of the hill, I took some images of the four damaged
alien ships. I thought I ought to check in with Tasha before I left again.

"Have you looked in the
staterooms?" she asked, as soon as I stood next to her.

"No. Why?"

"Go look."

I went and looked. All of them had personal
effects in them. I looked closer in the captain's stateroom, and found they
were Bentley's. Oops. I'd copied his ship a little too well. I went back to
Tasha.

"Can you organize all the personal
items to be boxed up and stored?"

"What do I look like to you? A maid
service?"

"I can arrange that."

She gave me a long speculative look.

"You would, wouldn’t you?"

"Not really. Isn't there a bot which
cleans out the room of a dead officer?"

"It's one function, yes."

"Did the bots get created with the
ship?"

"I guess so."

"Find out. I'll be back in a while.
Got to sort something out for Bill."

I jumped before she could respond.

Twenty Nine

Bill's boss had the office next door. She
was a hassled looking short blonde in fleet uniform, wearing Lieutenant
Commander insignia. Bob being a civilian left me surprised, but then, he was
undoubtedly a civilian consultant.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Judge Thorn."

"What's a civilian judge want with
me?"

"I have dual credentials, but was
called in without time to get into uniform."

The lie flowed off my tongue like the truth
would.

"Should have made the time. They don’t
like civvies walking around this building without security tags on."

"Yes, well, I came in a different
way."

"I'm going to have to check you out.
Sorry, but Regs you know."

"Of course."

She busied herself at her computer, and I
used my sight to see what she was doing. Of course, she didn’t find me, and
flipped back and forth through some of the judges. I made a mental note of what
was on their records. She looked up at me.

"How did you spell that?"

I spelt it for her, and as I did, I used
magic to insert a record for myself in her file. She looked down at the screen
again, and retyped her query. My record came up this time.

"Oh here you are. Oh sorry Colonel,
you should've told me your rank. Aren't you a bit young to be a Colonel?"

Her hand immediately went to her mouth, and
she looked shocked. I laughed.

"I guess I am. But like Bill Oddie, I
have a unique skill set."

"You're here about Bill? What's he
done?"

"Nothing bad. I believe you expressed
some doubts about him working on an alien ship?"

"Doubts?" She laughed. "Hell
no. It's his best excuse to be somewhere else yet."

I set my pad down in front of her, with the
first of the images showing. Her mouth fell open, and it remained that way as
she flipped the images.

"That's really an alien ship?" I
nodded. "What's Bill doing with it?"

"Interfacing the control systems with
ours, and his next task is an interpreter."

"Fine. So he's gainfully employed on
fleet work for the next two weeks?"

"He is."

"Makes a change, but at least I don’t
have to cover his arse this time. Who's the senior fleet officer, in case a
higher rank wants to know?"

"Captain Bentley, at the blockade
fleet. At least until the new Admiral arrives."

"New Admiral? What happened to the
last one?"

"Ones. We've been through two of
them."

"Your doing Judge?"

"Afraid so. I'm acting as an
Inquisitor into why the war is going so badly."

"Badly?"

"Perhaps I shouldn’t have said
anything."

"Perhaps not. I won't keep you
Colonel, but thanks for keeping me in the loop about what Bill's up to."

"No problem. I was going to be here
anyway. I'll see myself out."

Thirty

I left the room through the door, closing
it behind me, and seeing no-one, wrapped myself in invisibility.

The building proved to be huge, but I found
my way to the section of it devoted to justice. There I took notice of the
uniforms, and especially the insignia. In a bathroom stall, I copied the
uniform I needed, and changed, sending my normal clothes back to my room on the
ship.

Now able to walk the halls looking like I
belonged there, I went in search of where the Admirals hung out. I found them
in a conference room, and rather than jump in, sat myself down in a waiting
room nearby, and cast my sight in.

What I heard wasn’t all that encouraging.
One asked another when a third would be arriving at the blockade. I learned
he'd be there tomorrow, and with a quick check, found the courier would indeed
be.

There was discussion about the war, its
impact on politicians, and how far the aliens could be allowed to advance when
they broke through.

At which point, I was interrupted.

"Can I help you judge?"

The young lieutenant seemed a bit overawed
to find a judge sitting where I was.

"No thanks. I was just having a short
rest, before my next appointment."

"Where do you need to be sir?"

"Records."

"Three levels down, turn right, and
keep walking until the paint colour on the walls goes brown."

"Brown?"

"Yes sir."

A reason why, didn’t seem to be
forthcoming. I stirred myself, still looking in on the Admirals, nodded to the
lieutenant, and headed towards the elevators.

The wall colour did indeed go brown. I
found an empty office, sat behind the desk, and sent my sight looking for where
the storage devices were. When I found them, I copied the lot, dropping them in
a neat pile nearby our intelligence computer on Jen's ship. I concentrated on
finding each of the Admiral's offices, and also copied every storage device I
found there as well. Someone was going to be busy when I got back.

The Admirals seemed very sure the enemy
would be breaking through very soon. That wasn’t what bothered me. It was their
complete lack of concern about it, which turned me cold. I listened to them
preparing announcements for political leaders and the media, and the longer I
listened, the more worried I became.

I sent my sight through the building again,
looking for any sort of data storage, copying them as I went. The Generals had
their own computers, and they weren’t linked with the Admirals. The wet navy
and the police forces had their own as well. I copied all of it.

With footsteps stopping outside the door, I
went invisible again, and jumped to the police force area. I waited until a
clerk looked up the judges file, to find one to allocate a trial for, and
inserted a record for myself. I made sure to tag it with my being assigned to
the Admiralty, with the rank of Colonel. Now if I needed to be a civilian
judge, I was in the system.

The Admirals were now moving back to their
own offices, so I jumped back to Jen's ship, where I found Lea standing in the
doorway to our intelligence gathering computer.

"Thorn!" she exclaimed, looking
in.

"Yes?"

She jumped. And spun around.

"Don't do that!"

"Problem?"

"What do you think?"

I looked past her. The room was almost full
of stacked data devices.

"Have they been breeding in the
night?"

She hit me on the arm. Quite hard.

"Fine. I might have been a little
carried away."

"I can't deal with this. Our computer
can't deal with this. What is all this?"

"Military headquarters."

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
She started shaking her head from side to side.

"This is out of my league. We're going
to need a computer expert."

"Already have one."

I pulled the door shut, grinned at her, and
jumped.

Bill was still where I left him, and hadn't
noticed me arrive, so I jumped to the bridge of the battlecruiser. I'd never
really looked at it except through the coms to Bentley's, or jumping him back
and forth, but now being on one and looking around at it, it felt a lot bigger.

Tasha saw me arrive. Her eyes took in my
uniform and insignia, went wide for a moment, and she let her grin loose.

"Almost done."

"Good, but I need something
else."

"What?"

"We need a space to put two computer
cores, an extra-large monitor, a comfortable chair, and a fridge. And it also
needs to take our intelligence computer, and about ten times the storage
devices."

"Ten times? What've you been up
to?"

"Tell you later. Do we have a big
enough space with nothing in it?"

"Let me look."

She pulled up the ship specs, and began
flipping through sections of the ship. Finally she stopped, and pointed.

"There. It’s a secondary storage hold,
but it has all the necessary power connections. It's also empty."

I looked at it with my sight. It seemed to
be bigger than we needed. I looked at what Bill was working on, concentrated
for a moment, and copied the two cores across to the new computer room. Next, I
copied the contents of our intelligence room into an empty corner. I nodded to Tasha,
and jumped back behind Bill.

"Time to go Bill."

"Go? Go where?"

"The battlecruiser. What do you need from
here, which isn’t part of the two cores?"

"All this. And hold up a moment."

He typed madly for several minutes, and
finally sat back, turning to face me.

"Sorry, what did you want again?"

"Stand back please."

He reluctantly stood, and backed away. I concentrated
on his actual office, copied desk, chair, and screen to his new workplace, and
followed them with his entire setup here. Lastly, I moved us both to just
outside the doorway, opened the door, and showed him in.

His eyes widened, as he took in the expanse,
containing everything he'd been working on in a cramped space before, and more.
His eyes went to the intelligence mess.

"What's that lot?"

"Our intelligence gathering
resources."

He blinked rapidly.

"Really? Why's it here?"

"Because I need you to turn it into
something much bigger, with every device plugged in, so we can find out what
everyone we took these from is doing."

"Is that legal?"

"Probably not. But I don’t care. The
Admirals are behaving strangely, and I want to know what's going on. No-one
knows we have a copy of their stuff."

His eyes were gleaming.

"And no-on will know about it either.
Will they?"

His eyes met mine, and he slowly nodded.

"Yes judge."

"Let the bridge know when the new
intelligence computer is ready. How's the interface going?"

"Just finished."

"Upload it into the ship systems, and
tell Jess and Tasha. Do the Intel computer next. What do you need?"

He started listing all the likely things.
When my eyes showed no comprehension, he showed me one of them, and I did
hundreds of copies, right then and there. For the next few hours, my pad dinged
with requests for more, as he found he needed bigger and better than what we
already had.

Thirty One

We caused quite a stir jumping in behind
the blockade fleet. Several of the destroyer captains panicked, turning their
ships to face us as fast as they could.

"That better be you Thorn!" said
Jen through voice only coms, before her face popped up on a screen.

Bentley appeared on another screen, still
giving his captains orders to ignore what was behind them. Jen and I waited for
him to finish. Finally, he looked at me.

"Colonel? When did that happen?"

"Don’t mind me. I needed some
camouflage walking around headquarters. I've not had a chance to change
yet."

Jen was shaking her head from side to side,
but her grin was slowly slipping out all the same.

"Where did you get the ships
from?" he continued.

"I had them built."

"What about crews?" asked Jen.

"I'll be over to talk about that in a
moment. The alien cruisers are all slaved, with each ship having a weapons
console on this bridge."

Tasha waved from the first one.

"So all seven ships will act more or
less as a single ship. This ship needs a crew, but not a full one, so we won't
need to take more than a few volunteers."

"Will you bring us over there? Or are
we meeting somewhere else?"

I moved them both to stand in front of me.

"I don’t think I'm ever going to get
used to that," said Bentley. "But it saves a lot of time. Captain's
office?"

He waved towards a door, and I nodded. Both
of us followed him. He walked up to the desk in the small room off the bridge,
and waved me to the main chair behind it.

"Your ship, your chair."

I grinned at him, and we all sat. I looked
at Jen.

"The idea was, we all transfer over to
here, and form the core of a new crew."

She nodded, as if expecting me to say it.

"What about my ship?"

"I'll park it where it'll be
safe."

"Why not leave it here?" asked
Bentley. "I can find enough crew for it."

"There's a new Admiral arriving soon.
I'd just as soon not have an Admiral appropriate a civilian ship, and use it as
cannon fodder to keep the frigates alive."

"Damned right!" exclaimed Jen.

"Why would you let it happen?"
asked Bentley.

"We won't be here. As soon as we get
crew organized, I'm taking this little fleet into the next system."

"I don’t have orders for that."

"I know. This is a civilian fleet,
although we'll need some military crew. But as I said, volunteers only. I don’t
know what game the Admirals think they're playing, but they expect us to be
overrun shortly, and are planning on it. I don’t intend letting it
happen."

I looked Bentley in the eye.

"Captain, you'll stay here and be a
back stop, in case anything gets past us. The Admiral behind us will have the
same orders you have. And as far as I can gather, this one comes from one of
the other choke points, so should be solid. In any case, my aim is to push the
invaders out of the next system. Once we've done that, I'll let you know the
system is clear, and your fleet should move to this position in the next
system, where we'll be waiting for you."

"After that?"

"I'm working on it. But someone has to
go make contact at some point. Might as well be us."

Jen was nodding. Bentley thought about it,
and nodded as well.

"You're wearing the wrong insignia Colonel,"
he laughed. "You're doing better than a lot of Admirals I've known."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. You
tell him Jen."

"When the fighting starts, Thorn does
the real work. As such, he needs to be calling the action. So in a sense, he
does act as a fighting Admiral."

"A fighting Admiral?" laughed
Bentley. "Contradiction in terms!"

We all had a little chuckle over that, and
started talking crew. In the end, he agreed to supply three watches of officers
and spacers, to crew the ship under Jen's command, and all the marines from the
rest of the fleet.

It wasn’t much. We ended up with three
platoons of twenty each, under the command of Sasha. Not including Tasha, who'd
be running weapons for this ship.

The biggest burden on the fleet was weapons
officers. We pulled all the junior's from each ship, and also took some senior
sergeants with gunnery skills and the right attitude. Three of the four larger
ships also lost their second shift weapons officers, so each shift would have a
more senior officer in charge of them.

Bentley and Jen went back to their ships,
and the task of moving people and their stuff began. I took Tasha back to my
bridge on Jen's ship, and we both packed. It didn't take either of us very
long. Once back on the new battlecruiser, she was surprised when I led her into
the captain's stateroom.

Jen interrupted us over the coms, while christening
the new bed, and after hastily dressing again, I started moving the contents of
the various cargo holds, where I thought we needed what was there. This
included all the food and water, beer, and general kitchen stuff, from all over
the ship. Also the containers in the hold with gold, and other tradable stuff
in them.

By the time I’d finished moving things, the
crew were aboard via shuttles. The process of allocating sleeping arrangements,
and forming shifts was in progress, and I sat the center seat on the bridge,
letting everything flow around me.

At one point, I reminded Jen to make sure
Bill had somewhere to sleep, and someone showed him where it was.

Thirty Two

I waited until the courier was almost in
scanner range the next day, before the fleet formed up, and we went through the
jump point in formation.

We weren’t ready, but the alien ships could
shoot, fire missiles, and go where they were told to go. Each ship had magic in
place to replace missiles fired.

The crew of my new ship weren’t a cohesive
unit yet, but the basics were in place. Jen had taken the helm position without
any discussion. Sasha was in the XO's position, and I wondered why, since Jen
should be there, technically being the captain of the ship. But Jen was first
and foremost a pilot, so I guess she saw her best role in combat, being at the
helm. Jess was at the engineering station, and Lea was at coms. Tasha of
course, was at the ship's weapons console. Behind her and along one wall, was
the other six weapon consoles, and a supervisory chair overseeing them.

The fleet was in a three one three
formation. The battlecruiser was in the middle, with three alien ships in a
line above and below. I was mildly surprised to find we all jumped at the same
time, and it was the first time I made any connection with how big the jump
zone was.

In front of us, and already firing, were
the six ships I'd known were there. My force wall went up ahead of the fleet,
and as all ships began firing on the lead enemy, I concentrated on making sure
no missiles made it around the wall.

Missiles and pulses tore into the first
alien ship, as its shields went down. But before it took too much damage, Sasha
bellowed to switch target, and I changed the direction of all the missiles
still aimed at it. It wasn’t firing back anymore. The crew were mostly still
alive, and focused on staying that way.

One by one, we battered down the shields of
each ship, damaged it to the point where it stopped firing, and moved on to the
next.

When the firing stopped, I nodded to Lea, and
she opened a channel to all six ships, with Bill's new translator sending in
their language. I split my sight up, to check how many were actually receiving,
and found all of them were. I concentrated on the lead ship.

"Attention enemy ships. You've been
left alive so we can discuss a cease fire in this war. Please respond."

The lead ship exploded. I immediately moved
the remaining five to a point just in front of their other fleet, only now
coming into range of the jump point on the other side of the system. Ships made
violent course changes to avoid collisions, and one more of the moved ships
exploded, peppering the shields of their own ships with debris.

I gathered up all of them, and moved them
back to where I’d first moved them. Now twenty two strong, but I figured four
damaged ships would slow them down. I was wrong. They simply left them behind.

"That went well," said Jen,
rising from the helm position, and being replaced by someone else. "I told
you they routinely blew themselves up rather than being taken."

"So you did. It didn’t cost us
anything trying though."

"True. Onwards to the planet?"

"Yes. We'll see what they do
there."

Jen stood down the primary shift, and took
Sasha's place, as she went off to drill her troops. I was hoping not to have to
send them in, but at the least, they would need to secure the station.

Lea and Jess joined us.

"I thought of a name for this
ship," announced Lea.

"What?" asked Jen.

"Thorn's Chariot."

"I love it!" yelled Jess, and the
rest of the bridge crew turned to find out what the noise was about.

I didn’t see the need to name the ship. If
Jen's ship had a name, I still didn’t know it. Nor wanted to. Back home, some
people named their horses, but they were considered eccentric. I'd never had my
own horse, or anything else I’d have wanted to name. So never started the
practice. My second life hadn't changed this, although they named things a
great deal more.

"You don’t like it?" Lea asked
me.

"I don’t dislike it. But naming things
isn’t something my people did much."

"I thought 'chariot' might be appropriate,
given your origins."

"I guess. But there's no wheels on
this thing anywhere, and it’s a bit big for a horse to pull."

"He loves it," said Jen, and they
all laughed, so I joined in.

I still didn’t see the point, but these
three laughing at anything was a good thing, and I didn’t want to dull the
moment. I let the chuckles die down, before I raised the next issue I had.

"Do we have nav charts for beyond the
next jump point?"

"No," answered Jen. "But the
alien ships ought to have them. What are you after?"

"Their homeworld."

"Are you thinking what I think you're
thinking?" asked Jess.

"What's he thinking?" asked Lea.

"I figured as much," said Jen.

"What?" demanded Lea.

"He wants to go there," said Jess.

"What the hell for?"

"Because this war won't stop
itself."

"Thorn," said Jen, "we've
never had communication with them before. What makes you think they'll talk to
us?"

"We have to try."

"So you're going to their homeworld
with seven warships?" asked Jess.

"It should help make the point."

"What point?" asked Lea.

"That we can move through their space
at will, and there is nothing they can do to stop us."

"Won't they react badly?"

"Possibly. But I think I know how to
handle it."

"How?"

I tapped a finger against my nose.

Thirty Three

The planet was on the far side of the sun,
so I had the choice of moving us there, or taking the long way. In the end, it
was still needing time to forge the crew into a unit which had me decide to do
it the normal way. Tasha hadn't been happy with the way the other ships had
performed, and all of the weapon's officers had been drilled into exhaustion.

The whole basis of the war made no sense to
me. So I spent the time sitting in the center chair, ignoring what was going on
around me, as I tried to figure it out.

Our Admirals expected to lose more systems,
and weren't worried about it.

There had been no communication between the
sides, for as long as anyone remembered.

No-one knew what had started the war, or
why.

No-one had made any attempt to stop it.

The war had stopped on its own for a while,
and started up again without any known provocation.

None of this made any sense.

I noticed Lea sitting there looking bored,
and waved her over.

"Can you pull up a history of the war
for me, for as far back as records go?"

"Sure. What are you looking for?"

"An overview which makes some sort of
sense."

"Why?"

I looked at her. She looked serious. There
was no curiosity about the origins of the war at all in her.

"There are two ways to end a war. You
crush the enemy completely, and force them to end the war. Or you address the
issues which started it, and broker a treaty."

"Option one please."

"Why?"

"Because you can?"

I closed my eyes, and shook my head. She
really did think that way. But then, they all did, seemingly on both sides. I
really did need to know how far back this war reached. If it went all the way
back to first contact, there might not be anything to fix. But when was that?
And what happened? Or did it come after?

"Just get me an overview history
please."

"It'll take a while."

"We have a while."

She nodded, and went back to her console.

I started thinking of all the reasons why
two civilizations would go to war. Expansion was the obvious one, where one or
both wanted the systems the other had. On this side of it, there was no reason
for it. None of the systems I’d been to had any overt signs of overpopulation.
And the planet we were headed for was hardly even a colony. Of course I had no
way of knowing what state the enemy systems were in. I looked across to Lea.
She caught my eye immediately.

"You want the same from the enemy
database? Already on it."

I nodded to her, and went back to musing.
Which proved to be a frustrating exercise, with no real data.

I'd left when we arrived at the planet to
Jen and Sasha. Sasha would want her teams rested, and Jen would want her best
crew on the bridge. I didn’t really care. But as it happened, I did like the
sleep, and I preferred my sleep uninterrupted.

The planet, station, and its three
protectors, showed up on the scanners well after breakfast the next morning.
The three ships immediately changed course to intercept us, and there was no
attempt to communicate with us. I tried to contact them, but they ignored the
coms.

I thought for a moment, and turned to Jen.

"Your bridge Jen. I'll be back
shortly."

I stood, wrapped myself in invisible, and
jumped, without letting her ask the obvious question.

The bridge of the alien ship was familiar
to me now, and I stood to one side and in front of the captain, looking at him.
Surprisingly, all the bridge crew were male. I didn't know if this was normal
or not, as when I’d buried the dead crews, I'd not paid any attention to sexes
at the time. Just move and bury, and forget. Most of the time, one person in
uniform, with military grooming regulations, looks the same as the next.

"…they're not our ships?" asked
the captain.

"No transponder captain," said
the engineer. "They look like our ships, but don’t register as ours."

"Could they've been captured?"

"It's possible, but not likely. The transponders
are the first to be destroyed if the ship even looks like it might be taken.
Everyone knows that. We sign our life blood to the oath."

"What if the transponder was
destroyed, but the scuttling charges failed to go off?"

"Never happened before. I could
understand it happening maybe once, but six ships? No."

"Speculate then."

"We know we lost four. The ship which
escaped the ambush told us that. They left four hulks behind, and said the
remote detonators failed to work. But these can't be them."

"Why not?"

"They'd have needed a shipyard to get
them operational again. We know they don’t have a shipyard in range to repair
them, and get them back here now. It's not possible."

"Could they have taken a ship we
didn’t know about in one of the earlier battles? Fixed it up, and reverse
engineered it?"

"Not in this short a time. No,
something else is going on."

"Shouldn't we talk to them?"
asked the young man at the coms station.

"Get off my bridge!" growled the
captain, and the man leapt to his feet, and hurried out.

Another took his place.

"I'll get on it captain," said
the man at the XO position. "Recruit indoctrination must be
slipping."

The captain nodded, but said nothing. I
looked around the bridge more closely, and found every crewman had a sidearm.
Marines stood at each entrance to the bridge, heavy rifles held ready to shoot.
I cast my sight around. Half platoons of marines were at each airlock. Every
crewman everywhere, was wearing a sidearm. This was a ship for which any
boarding party would be met with extreme resistance. They assumed an enemy
would try.

The implication was a simple one. This was
a militaristic society. It explained nothing about why they were attacking us
though. I'd need to find someone further up the food chain.

I gathered the three ships, and moved them
to just ahead of their main fleet. And gathered all of them, and moved the lot
back to where the four damaged ships still were.

"What the hell was that?" yelled
the captain.

"We moved," said the helm.

"I can see that you idiot. How?"

"Unknown sir."

"Admiral on ship to ship
captain," said coms.

He didn’t wait for any command, but put the
Admiral up on a screen immediately.

"What happened?"

"We've no idea Admiral. The enemy made
it through the blockade force, and we were heading to engage them. Suddenly we
were here. I barely believe it happened, let alone know how."

"What force were you opposing?"

"One of their battlecruisers, and six
of our cruisers. And before you ask, we don’t know how they have six of ours,
but they didn't have the transponders on them. I don't believe they were our
ships taken. More likely they've had an almost destroyed one for a long time
now, and finally started making them."

"I should relieve you of your command
for stating such heresy!"

"Relieve me if you must Admiral, but
nothing I've seen today makes any sense at all. How is it you are here? You
should have passed us days ago."

The Admiral looked troubled for the first
time.

"That is the only reason I'm not
relieving you. We don’t have an answer either."

"Something has changed Admiral. Either
our enemy has new technology which confounds us, or they have a new ally who
does."

"Also heresy. But for once, heresy
might also be true. We need to step very carefully. If it's true, we may all
end up dead before we can prove it."

"What is there to prove? We were
there, and now we're here. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was
magic."

"That will get us all killed captain.
Keep your big mouth shut. There is no magic. There never has been any."

"Yes, I know. Any much more advanced
technology looks like magic, and there is no magic. Which brings us back to an
ally with a superior technology."

"We'll work along those lines. We may
still end up on the gibbet, but it's much safer than magic. Make sure your crew
understand the M word is not to be used at all. Anyone who does is to be shot
on sight. Understood?"

"Understood. What are your
orders?"

"You'll get formation orders shortly.
You join this fleet for now. As soon as the formation is restored, we start back
to where you're supposed to be."

"The enemy will be there in a few
short hours."

"Their seven ships will not be a match
for ours. That system has changed hands so many times over the centuries, one
more won't matter. See to your ship, captain."

The captain leapt to his feet, made a fist
with his right hand, and brought it up to in front of his face, fingers facing
inward. It quivered for a few moments. The Admiral returned what I assumed was
a salute. The screen vanished.

"We have formation instructions captain,"
said helm.

"Put our three ships in position, and
be ready to keep station on the flagship."

"Aye captain."

He sat back down again, obviously deep in
thought.

I’d seen enough for now, and jumped back.

"Enjoy yourself?" asked Tasha.

Thirty Four

The station assault didn’t go to plan.

There's a shock. Or not. I tried talking
Sasha out of doing it the way they always did, but no-one was listening.

The station itself had no defenses. But it
was defended. Exactly the same as the ships were, and in bigger numbers.

Our platoons went in different shuttle
airlocks, and each was met by a platoon of the enemy. The firefights were
brief, but nasty affairs. Our marines had much better armour, and marginally
better guns. The enemy fought to the last man, while we lost only a handful of
dead, and about a dozen walking wounded.

Which was where things started going
predictably pear shaped.

The troops further inside the station
started taking hostages, and they didn’t mind gunning people down to prove they
were serious.

As the first civilian died, I lost my
temper. The shooter moved outside the station in the blink of my eye. But
dozens of others all around the station died at almost the same time, and I
couldn’t keep up with them. Nor could I protect everyone.

As more civilians died, I rose to my feet.

"No more killing!" I bellowed,
and sent a non-lethal force punch through the entire station.

Everyone went down, including me. I dragged
myself up, and back into my chair. Jen was looking at me with a horrified expression
on her face, and Lea was running out.

I methodically worked my way through the
entire station. Our not wounded marines I brought back to the ship. Shooters
went out into space. Wounded went to the station medical facility. The
remaining enemy troops went into the station's detention cells, minus guns and
clothes.

When I’d accounted for everyone, I checked
the medical facilities. The few medical people had no hope of coping with
everyone, and they were on the floor with everyone else. Medical was something
we didn’t have people for, just automated pods. I thought for a moment, and
jumped.

There was a doctor and two nurses in the
flagship's medical section. I moved them straight to the station hospital, and
went to the com unit on the wall.

"This is Judge Thorn. All medical
personnel are to report to medical immediately to treat casualties. Don’t walk.
Run!"

I closed the whole ship com, and opened the
bridge one.

"Thorn to Captain."

"This is Bentley. What do you need
Thorn?"

A doctor rushed in, and I moved him while
he was still running.

"The station assault went bad, and the
enemy started killing civilians. We have a lot of casualties, and the station
hospital staff are all down. I need all medical staff off all the ships. If you
can get them to the bridge of each ship, I'll collect them."

"Being done already. Ours are coming
to you."

"Thanks. I'll return them when the
situation stabilizes."

"The Admiral will want a report."

I'd forgotten there was a new Admiral here
now.

"He'll get one."

The com closed.

The room rapidly filled.

"All here," said a doctor, and I
moved us all to the station medical.

Whoever was senior took one look at the
mass of wounded people, and started issuing tasks to people. I jumped to the
other battlecruiser, linked up all the medical uniforms, and jumped back with
them. Back and forth I went, until all the medical people were transferred.

The place had a look of order now. All the
operating theaters were now in use, and the more minor injuries were being
steadily treated.

Everyone was awake now, and a new problem
started to emerge. Civilians were angrily looking for the enemy troops now, and
as I looked in on them in the cells, the force wall I started putting in place
to protect them, fizzled out. I jumped there.

They were all dead.

Thirty Five

It got worse.

A distress message came up from the planet
below, just as I settled into a chair in the main command area. Civilians were
being rounded up, and shot.

I hardly noticed my right fist form, and
begin shaking. My focus was on the uniform of the enemy soldiers, and with a
single yank, I pulled every single one of them into space. I released them at
the top of the atmosphere, and let them fall back into it. They were dead
anyway I assumed, since they wouldn't let me take them alive. Ship scuttling
obviously wasn't the only imperative these people had towards capture. So
capture was pointless. I began to see why no-one tried.

I started moving wounded civilians from the
ground up to the station, and at the same time, made sure I hadn't missed any
enemy troops. I hadn't.

With the last transfer, I moved myself to
medical, and began copying supplies they were running short of. I was somewhat
surprised to find I could even copy blood packs.

I was even more surprised to see some of
our marines back over on the station and helping out. Casting around with my
sight, I found Sasha down in the detention cells area, supervising body
identification and storage. A fourth one of our shuttles was in the main
shuttle dock, explaining how they got here.

As the day wound down, I jumped back to the
bridge.

Jen was still in her seat. Lea rose from
hers, and handed me a glass. It looked suspiciously like alcohol, tasted like
it, and burned its way down like it. I handed her the glass back. She replaced
it with a water bottle. I downed it in one long gulp. Watered down hard alcohol
was still going to be hard alcohol though.

I looked at Jen.

"You're it. Clean up this bloody mess.
I'll be back when it's safe for you all."

She nodded. Tasha began to say something.

"No," I said to her. "Not
this time."

And I jumped back to my beach.

About thirty seconds later, half the
bedrooms at the back of the beach were debris, as I shouted my anger at the
sky.

I jumped again.

I stood on another beach, and force punched
the mountain behind it. The top half vanished into the sea beyond, and the
volcano I didn’t know was underneath, erupted. Lava, gas, and ash, all rained
down on me, and only a very fast shield stopped me from being seriously burned.
Okay, gas doesn’t rain as such, but it may as well have.

My anger left me.

I stood there on a patch of sand, watching
everything around me turn to ruin.

I stood there for a long time. Lava flowed
around me. The beach vanished under molten rock.

Finally, I jumped back to my own beach. The
volcano was visible in the distance.

I watched it until darkness fell.

The glow in the distance now matched my
anger.

Thirty Six

"Was it you who wanted the autopsy of
the orange skinned man?"

"Yes. I don’t remember getting a
report at all."

"You didn’t. I did one, but I thought
someone was winding me up, and simply filed it. Well I know better now."

"How so?"

"I've seen the bodies down in the
cells, and I've autopsied several of them. So I know they are the aliens."

"You sound skeptical all the
same."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because they're not aliens."

I had wondered.

"They look different."

"Skin, yes. We have a lot of skin
colour variation, but no-one has ever seen this orange colour before. But
that’s the only difference."

"Explain."

"Anatomically, they are identical to
us. They display the same variation of the state of various organs, but all the
organs we have, they have. There are no new ones, and they don’t lack any we have.
They are all in the same place. Their skin is also identical to ours, with the
exception of the colour."

"How do you account for the
colour?"

"The same as any colour variation. It
depends on sun exposure over a long period of time. In their case, I'd assume
their sun has a very different spectral frequency to any of ours."

"So they could be long lost
cousins?"

"Yes."

"Who want to kill us."

"Apparently."

"Are you sending in official
reports?"

"Now we have verified alien bodies,
yes I will. I hope I'm out of range of coms when they demand proof they are
indeed alien though."

"Put a number of them in long term
storage, just in case we need them later. I'll bury the rest. If you get any
grief over this, let me know who it comes from."

"I will."

"Don’t worry. If it becomes necessary
to defend your report, I'll take you there myself, and make them accept it."

"Do we have to travel that way?"

"Most likely. Takes too long any other
way. Why?"

"I'll take a vomit bag with me next
time."

I chuckled, and she joined in.

Once he'd selected bodies for storage, I chose
a lonely spot on the planet below, and buried the alien dead. Sasha did several
runs down to the planet in a shuttle, returning those who'd died, and those
wounded allowed to go home.

By the time I returned to the bridge, it
was more than two days after I’d left, having taken that long for me to calm
down enough to be safe around other people again. I’d gone to the station
first, to find out how things were there, and down on the planet.

There was a flag lounge not far from the
bridge, so I appeared there, and found a bottle of water, emptied it, and took
another. I walked onto the bridge, and took my seat as quietly as I could.

"Welcome back," said Jen,
smiling.

The smile faded as she took in my appearance.

"Is that sunburn?" asked Lea,
before Jen could.

"What did you do!" exclaimed
Tasha.

I looked around the three of them, which
actually had me taking in everyone on the bridge.

"Not sunburn, no. Good guess
though."

"What did you do?" asked Tasha,
insistently.

"What makes you think I did
anything?"

"Have you looked at yourself?"

As it happened, I hadn't. Seeing my own
face in the mirror, was something I hadn't been game to do. Replacing the
mirror would have been easy, but why go there in the first place, when you
didn’t have to. I shook my head.

"Is there any of your island
left?" asked Tasha, quieter this time.

"About half the bedrooms are
toast."

Most of them winced.

"And that was in the first thirty
seconds, so I moved."

"Where?" asked Jen, who was now
smiling.

"Anyone notice a small mountain island
in the distance off the beach?"

"Yes, of course," said Lea.

"So what did you do to it?" asked
Jen, obviously thinking she knew the answer.

"Well it's not a mountain anymore. Most
of the top half is now in the ocean beyond it."

Jen's face quickly changed to sum up the
general surprise.

"And the bottom half?" asked Lea,
her eye wide open.

"Is now a volcano."

"You blew up an island?" asked
Tasha, almost reverently.

"Yeah, I guess so."

There was a long pause, where no-one even
moved, let alone spoke.

"Everyone make a note," said Jen.
"Don’t piss off Thorn!"

Thirty Seven

"Ah, sir?"

It was the crewman on coms. Probably the
only person on the bridge actually doing his job.

"What?" asked Jen, snapping her
attention around to him.

He pointed at the HUD.

"Oh," I sighed. "Them. I
guess it has been enough time for them to get here."

"Sound battle…"

"Don’t bother," I interrupted
her.

I threw the alien fleet back to where four
of their ships still waited, obviously not repaired enough yet to bother
moving. Or maybe they couldn’t move at all, and were waiting for tugs.

"They must be getting very sick of
that happening," said Tasha.

"Not getting the message though,"
added Jen.

"No," I confirmed. "How long
before we can get moving again?"

"Waiting for Sasha. Another hour or
so, I guess."

Lea began walking towards the captain's
office, so I followed her in. Once seated, she looked at me intently."

"What?"

"Do you have your temper in check?"

"I think so. Why?"

"Because I don’t think you’re going to
like what I found."

"What did you find?"

"Evidence the high command is talking
to the aliens."

It stumped me for a moment, but I realized
it actually made sense. Of course they were. It was the only way they could
expect the aliens to break through the blockade. They had to know the strength
of the alien fleet, and how little our remaining fleet would slow them down.
But why?

"Why?"

"You're not angry?"

"Not yet. It makes sense of what I
already knew."

"Well it gets worse."

She stopped, waiting for me to say
something, but I just nodded her on.

"As far as I can tell from the alien
database, up until several hundred years ago, they were ruled by an absolute
monarchy. The last king decided to make peace with us, and was assassinated in
a military coup. The military have ruled as a dictatorship ever since. We on
the other hand, have always been a democracy."

She stopped, presumably checking me for my
emotional state. This was going to get old, really quickly, if it continued. I
nodded to her again.

"There's only pointers, no hard
evidence, but I think our military want a serious defeat, so they can blame it
on the politicians, and take over themselves."

I sighed.

"It makes sense, but only if they have
the means to push the aliens back again."

"Or they plan to make us all one
military ruled people."

"They can't be that stupid, can
they?"

"Why stupid?"

"If they let part of our territory be
conquered, there is no reason for the aliens to not want to complete the job.
Why do they need more military rulers, when they probably have too many
already? And if they are a military dictatorship, whoever the dictator is,
isn’t going to want to share power."

"So I need to find if they have
another fleet waiting somewhere?"

"That’s my guess."

"I'll see if Bill can set up a search
for me."

"Do that."

She smiled at me, rose, and left me alone.

"Motherfuckers!"

Thirty Eight

When I returned from the next island along
from the volcano, which now looked from above as if someone had branded it with
a huge cross, the last of our marines were back on the ship. The rest of our fleet
troops were remaining to act as a police force, until relieved by a proper
police force. But this would be several days away, at least. Sasha hadn't lost
anyone, but several of them were sporting bandages.

She settled into her chair, and studiously
avoided looking at me. Jen was looking at her.

"Say it."

Sasha sighed, and turned to look me in the
eyes.

"Sorry, you were right."

I nodded to her, and she concentrated on
her console. Jen grinned at me, and focused back on hers. Enough said. The old
ways were gone. I hoped. I sent my sight on a quick exploration of the whole
system. Other than ours, there were no ships of any kind I could find.

"Are we ready to move on?"

"Yes," said Jen, followed by
Sasha, and Tasha.

In a blink, we were at the next jump point.
I checked the other side, but there was nothing there.

"I'll be back with the rest of the
fleet."

"Have fun," suggested Tasha, and
I jumped back to the flagship's bridge.

"Ah, there you are Thorn," said
Bentley. "Admiral's still waiting for your report, and we don’t have any
of our medical staff back yet."

"Sorry about that. Where do I find the
Admiral?"

"In my office."

"Any reason for us to stay here?"

"Orders?"

"Any good reason?"

He laughed.

"No, but you better convince the
Admiral."

"Lead on."

I followed him to the office door, where he
knocked.

"Enter."

He pushed the door open, and I followed him
in.

The man behind the desk rose, came around
it, and offered his hand. We shook.

"Admiral Stewart, Thorn."

The one stripe admiral cast a quick glance
at Bentley, and returned to his desk chair, waving us into chairs as well.

"I see you’re still wearing the uniform
colonel. I'm also aware you're not a real colonel. But since I don’t happen to
want to go for a five day walk in a desert with no water, let's just ignore
that, shall we?"

He grinned at me, and I smiled back.
Bentley relaxed.

"So what went wrong?"

I explained what had happened at both the
station, and the colony. I didn’t say where I’d been for two days, just saying
it'd taken that long to stabilize the situation.

"So the marines did what marines do,
and the enemy did what they do. Could it have been handled better?"

"Yes. But only I could have done
it."

"And your marines hadn't shot anyone
in so long, they didn’t give you a look in?"

"More or less, yes."

"No surprises there. I've spent the
last two years routinely stopping mine from doing boarding operations on known
traders, sent to resupply us. We never get ships jump in from outside our
space, something to do with destroying everyone trying about one hundred and
fifty years ago, so they have nothing to do. Which is just as well, since if
they did board traders jumping in, we'd have a three front war going in a few
days."

Bentley was quietly chuckling.

"So, when do we get our medicos
back?"

"You can have some of them now, but
most of them will be needed for at least another week."

"Fine. And I presume you have orders
for me?"

"Only if you want to consider them
orders."

"How should I consider them?"

"As a minor position adjustment."

"How minor?"

"Right here, but in the next
system."

Bentley was laughing now. Stewart gave him
a look, and he made an effort, but didn’t manage to stop grinning.

"And what do I tell the high
command?"

"Why tell them anything? You'll still
be at the blockade point."

He smiled at that.

"Why indeed. Just a minor matter of
making sure our supply ships come a little further to find us."

"As you say, a minor matter. I see
your courier is still here. Can it handle your medical people, if I leave it at
the station?"

"Might take two trips, but yes."

"I'll do that then."

"When…"

"What the fuck?" wafted in the
closed door, from out on the bridge.

"I assume we're there already?"
asked the Admiral.

"Yes. The courier is a short hop away
from the station, and the rest of the fleet is in the same arc it was in, just
above the down jump lane. My fleet is between us and the jump point, so when we
jump through, you could probably close up the formation a bit closer in."

"I'll think about it."

"From what I've seen of the enemy's
tactics, hitting them seconds after they jump in, is your best defense."

"I agree Admiral," said Bentley.
"I studied their ships and guns. While our marines have the edge on
theirs, their ships and ship guns are slightly better than ours. Not to
mention, most of our ships are smaller."

"They have a battleship in the fleet
they're trying to get here."

"Trying?"

"Yes. It's an attack fleet, but I
won't let it get near enough for a fight."

"What about after you go through into
their space?"

"We'll see. When they see us heading
for their systems, they may follow us."

"And if not?"

"I'll throw them ahead of us. I can't
guarantee you won't see a fleet come through here, especially after we move
into systems with more than two jump points. But it won't be that fleet. If
necessary, I'll bounce them all the way to their homeworld."

"You’re going all the way there?"

"Someone has to. This war needs to
end."

"Good luck with that."

We said goodbyes, and I jumped back to my
ship.

Five minutes later, we jumped into the next
system.

Thirty Nine

I could have jumped us straight to their
homeworld.

We knew where it was, courtesy of their own
database. I even considered doing it. But there were some good reasons for not
doing it.

In the first place, I wanted to be careful
about not leaving warships behind us. In the second, I wanted to check each
planet as we moved, to see if orange was their only colour, or not. And I was
curious about how we'd be received as we moved deeper into their space.

So things quickly took on a rinse and
repeat cycle. Don’t laugh, I read books. Lots of them.

Jump into a new system. Sight around the
system looking for threats, and find the main colony. Jump to the colony, do an
orbit well away from stations and ship clusters, and check the planet for
anything interesting. Jump to the next jump point, pull the alien fleet into the
next system, but in the same ninety degree around a day away position, and go
through into the next system yourself.

As rinse and repeat cycles tend to do, it
became boring very quickly. Every planet had orange people on it. They all
fired missiles at us. The civilians ran in terror. The few military and police
ships fired at us. Capital ships were sent to join the main fleet, while
anything small was shifted to the ground.

Yes, I said boring. Nothing could get
through my force wall, so we were perfectly safe, and had no need to fire at
anyone. So while it might sound like it was anything but, being safe is boring.

Five systems in, and getting to the end of
main shift day, I found a small fleet coming towards us. Six ships, of the same
class as was guarding us. They were not far from the occupied planet in this
system, and I was about to jump there when I saw them come out from behind a
moon. I jumped us anyway, putting us in their path, pointing at them, while in
actual fact heading into orbit of the planet.

Civilian ships ran in all directions as
soon as we appeared, clearing the line of fire. All but one ship, which headed
up from the main plane of the system, and stopped where it would have a good
view of the battle to come below.

I told Jen to take us into orbit as normal,
where Lea would run a check on the planet details in the database, and upload
whatever the media channels were broadcasting.

In the meantime, force wall already up, I
looked in on the civilian ship above us.

"I tell you Clyde, this has been
coming for centuries."

"What has?"

"It’s the boogeyman story parents
scare their kids with, only updated into the technological age."

"Not following you. Our fleet is about
to destroy these invaders."

"Have you been listening to the news
lately?"

"No, why?"

"This fleet has turned up at four
other planets so far. They never fire a shot, never appear to take a hit, do an
orbit, and vanish. Until they turn up at the next planet."

"So?"

"I think this is them. Maybe they
finally invented the point to point jump drive? In any case, they're going to
fly through our fleet as if it wasn’t there, make our fleet vanish, and then
vanish themselves."

"Keep talking like that, and someone
is going to want to drug test you. Or put you on trial for heresy."

"You just watch."

"I will."

I pulled my focus back, grinning wildly, and
did exactly as the orange man had said. With just one difference. When we
jumped across the system to the next jump point, I moved the civilian ship as
well.

At which time I called an end to the day,
the shift changed, so we could all get a bit of relaxation, food, and sleep,
and we flew at a sedate speed for the night instead of jumping again. The
civilian ship, which should have turned and run back to the planet, actually
followed us. The military fleet began their trip down into the system, yet
again. It was quickly obvious they were still more interested in attacking into
our space, than in us.

The next day, we did it all again. The
numbers of ships attacking us rose as the day went on, as did the number of civilian
ships riding along to see what would happen. Warships started appearing at
other jump points, and I simply added them to the main fleet, which continued
to ignore us.

The working day ended one system away from
their homeworld, and we flew across the second half of the system instead of
jumping, while we all made sure we were rested for the next day.

Jumping through the next morning had more
than the usual level of expectation of what we might find. And find it we did.

"Well, that’s different," said Jen.

Forty

Out at the jump points, each system sun was
a spot in the distance, easy to miss sometimes. They varied a bit in size, but
in no way could you say they dominated space when you looked at them.

The enemy's home system was dominated by
its sun.

I’d seen many different colour schemes now,
as space kept changing how it looked as we moved across it. But within a
system, space was mainly dark, until you came close to the sun, which would
then blot out all else.

The overall colour of space ahead of us,
was, orange.

"What am I seeing?" I asked.

I didn’t get an answer, as missiles began
impacting my force wall at that point. A dozen ships had been waiting for us,
and they'd fired on us within a few seconds of us jumping in. They were not
particularly close though, so we'd had time to be distracted first. Or I had
anyway. No-one had reported the enemy ships, which was sloppy at best, but this
was basically a civilian ship. And besides, it was a sight to draw the
attention.

I did the usual sight sweep around the
system, mouth hanging open without me realizing it.

The sun was gigantic. And orange. I could
see it with the naked eye, but with my sight, it was put into proper
perspective. There was no inner system at all, it was all sun. The outer system
had three gas giants, each with its own set of moons, several of which were
planet sized. Around one of these I could see a number of large stations, and
yet another small fleet of warships.

"Orange giant," said Jen,
eventually answering my question.

Everyone was staring at the view screen. It
was a sight none of us had seen before.

"We know of a few red giants,"
she went on. "Several of the known jump points go to them, but there's
usually nothing much there."

"Giant?"

"Old stars which have depleted their
hydrogen, swell up into these huge suns, swallowing their inner planets as they
do so."

"Orange?"

"No idea. We'd need to ask an astrophysicist."

"Maybe
all the space dust in the system is calcium," suggested Lea.

No-one
laughed. I wouldn’t have laughed, even if I knew what she was talking about.
And I suddenly didn’t have time to even think about it.

The system protection fleet were on the
move now, all coming straight at us.

"Are they trying to ram us?"
asked Sasha.

"Looks like it," said Jess.
"Thorn?"

I sighed, and moved them all to join their main
fleet. The warships around their homeworld joined them.

And now I really didn’t understand this war
at all. The fleet I'd been assembling way up out of the way, was now
significantly big enough to have pushed all the way through our space, without
significant opposition. And yet, they hadn't used their forces that way. It was
if the mentality of both sides was border skirmish oriented, and not win at any
cost. The orange fleet could easily win at any cost, but hadn't ever tried.
Why?

"Moving us to the homeworld," I
said, just to prepare everyone.

The civilians came with us, nicely up out
of the way, and we popped into existence well away from their stations, in
orbit above their biggest city.

The planet below us seemed to ripple, as
missiles launched from all over it. I checked the civilians I'd brought with
us, and moved them sideways and up, so none of the missiles would accidently
hit them if they missed my force wall. I checked around for other civilian ships
in danger, and spent the next few minutes moving dozens of them as well.

Space around us was clear by the time the
first missiles started impacting my wall. But I wasn’t paying any attention to
them. One of the stations was a shipyard, and I was watching six ships back out
from it. Presumably these were new ships, not yet complete, but being rushed
into service anyway. I let them get well clear, lined up with us, and sent them
to join their fleet.

Looking at the fleet, I saw the four
damaged ones were still not moving, once again left behind. Inside I found the
crews were still there, but seemingly unable to get engines going again. I
pondered for a moment the wisdom of moving them to the shipyard, and they were
there before I actually made up my mind. Tugs launched minutes later, and began
to tow the ships in.

Lea was back at coms, and suddenly
stiffened. She looked over to me.

"We received a data burst from the
lead damaged ship. It was compressed and sent so fast, I doubt anyone else
picked it up."

"What did it say?"

"I don’t know who you are, or what you
are, but thank you."

I nodded. Maybe they weren't so different
from us after all. Perhaps the whole war mentality was just because the
military were also the political?

"Have we found the military headquarters
yet?"

"I found the palace. But there's
nothing much except 'stay in your homes', and 'obey the curfew', coming out
from it. Sounds like propaganda central, but nothing in the way of orders are
coming from there. Still looking."

"Fine. Let me know when you find the
high brass."

"You going to pay them a visit?"
asked Jen.

"Of course."

Forty One

Like we did, the military had their own
huge building.

I walked around it without anyone seeing
me, for quite some time. The signs were in a different language, they talked
the different language, but the conversations were much the same. Orange or
not, the buildings and people seemed interchangeable. The building itself was
slightly off, but construction techniques were not too far apart.

In an empty kitchen, I tasted their food
and drink. The food tasted just fine, the water tasted odd, but was still
drinkable, and the processed drinks were perfectly drinkable. If anything,
several of them had a market in our space.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed
these aliens were nothing more than based on a group of malcontents who split
off from our own ancestors, and found themselves marooned in this strange
system long enough to evolve a different skin colour.

Our ancestors. Actually no. That didn’t work.
My ancestors…no. The people who were from my second life, had not reached a
space travel level of tech. I'd always assumed they were descended from my
birth people, but what if they weren't? What if Jen and Jess's people were the
progenitors, and my second life people were an offshoot from them, who lost
their space tech, and were reinventing technology at a slower rate? The Orange
people could also have been an offshoot, who became marooned, but didn’t lose
their technology, and stayed isolated for as long as possible, with the border
being established only a few hundred years before.

This explained Orange, but not why my
second life people vanished without a trace after I left them. That conundrum
aside, all three groups of people did seem to must have a common origin. And
given the time it takes for skin colour drift, second life aside, even my first
life people might have been an offshoot of a common race. I had no way of
telling, because I’d no way of knowing how far my time jump had taken me.

The only thing I knew for sure was my birth
people were not the common ancestor. If they were, everyone would have magic,
and no-one did.

Unless we were all seeded by a higher
power.

I stopped walking abruptly, and someone
banged into me, both of us going down. I cast around for an empty room, and
jumped, before getting up. The person who'd walked into me freaked, and after
getting up, started running back the way he'd come. But my mind, while watching
where the collision occurred, wasn’t really processing it. There were other
things popping in.

No-one in my third life talked about magic
or higher beings, but observing them didn’t faze them at all. But the guy I'd
just banged into had freaked out and run. Such talk was commonplace where I
grew up. But in my second life, everyone considered it entertainment, and
didn’t give it any more credence than that. If anything, it was a joke, and not
something to be taken seriously.

I found it a lot easier to believe a higher
power might have been the common thread, seeding all three from the same
origins, and they spent thousands of years diverging. I still didn't have any
real explanation for my second life civilization, first of all existing, and
second for vanishing. Unless my people died out, the planet was reseeded much
later, and I had no idea what the hell I was thinking. I also didn’t want to go
there, because if my people died out, maybe it was because I killed them. I
shook the line of thought off. Madness lurked down there.

I brought my mind back to the here and now.

I needed to stop walking around invisibly,
and start doing it openly. I looked around for the records section, and jumped
into an empty storeroom. Still invisible, I walked the section, stood behind
some of those tapping away at computers, until I finally found someone in the
judicial database. As records flew by, I copied one, inserted my own name and image,
and duplicated it into the military judicial system as well. The rank names
were not the same, but I was now both a civilian and military Inquisitor.

I cast around for an office belonging to a
military officer, who was also an Inquisitor, and jumped to it. It was empty,
but the small bathroom off it, had a closet with spare uniforms.

A bathroom seemed to be a bathroom.
Everything was different, but recognizable all the same. After turning off the
invisibility, I copied one of the uniforms, changed into it, sent my Colonel
uniform to my stateroom bed, and changed my skin colour. The face in the mirror
was a bit of a shock, but it was still me.

With the area around the office empty, I
left through the door, and wandered the halls looking like I knew exactly where
I was going. People backed away from me as I came near them, never making eye
contact. No-one even attempted to talk to me. More than a few were afraid to
even be in the same room as me.

The one thing I didn’t find were flag
officers. The Admirals and Generals were not here.

Finally, I asked someone who looked like a
receptionist for one.

"They're all at the palace,
Inquisitor. The Grand Marshal requested their attendance, and they met early to
formulate responses."

"Responses to what?"

"Inquisitor, I beg you. Please don’t
ask me."

Her hand went to her mouth, her skin turned
a pale orange colour, and her terror was obvious.

I frowned at her, and she went paler again.
I realized I’d crossed a line, asking a subordinate to rat out her boss.

"No matter. I'll find out when I find
them."

"Yes Inquisitor."

She bowed to me, and stayed that way, until
well after I’d left.

Just how troubled I was must have showed on
my face, because everyone I passed froze and went silent, when they saw me
coming.

These people were terrified of their
Inquisitors.

Maybe what they needed, was a Judge.

Forty Two

"THORN!"

The ward I'd left on the bridge rattled my
brain, as Jen yelled for me. I found an empty room to leave from, and jumped
back.

"Bloody hell!" screeched Lea.

Jen and Jess started laughing. Sasha was
holding her grin in. But Tasha lost it completely.

I changed my skin colour back to normal,
which seemed to steady them. I moved to my stateroom, changed, and moved back.
Finally, I took my seat with as much dignity as I could manage.

Jen was pointing at the HUD. I’d been away
a long time, the day had gone past, and the enemy fleet was approaching.

"Did they stop firing missiles at us
from the planet?"

"No," answered Jen. "They
slowed down a while ago though. Must be running out, and trying to conserve
some for when the fleet arrives."

"How's your wall?" asked Jess.

"Fine. Thanks for asking."

She grinned. It was fine. Even with only a
partial awareness of it while on the ground, it was holding without degrading
at all. In fact, if anything, it felt more powerful than before. Could be the
larger sun was providing more power than normal. Not that it mattered at all.
Power wasn’t a problem anymore.

"Plan?" asked Jen.

"We're doing it."

"Staying right here?" asked
Sasha. "Doing nothing?"

"Yep."

"Was there a reason you brought
us?" asked Lea.

I caught Tasha's eye, she waggled her
eyebrows at me, and Lea caught it.

"Someone has to run the ship."

I knew immediately I should have thought of
something better to say. Lea opened her mouth to have a serious go at me, but
Jen shut her down.

"Get a grip Lea. This was always the
way it was going to work. Thorn wants to avoid casualties if at all possible.
We're here to end a war, not obliterate the enemy."

"Obliteration works for me,"
muttered Sasha.

Jen ignored her.

"By plan, I was asking if we were
staying right here, and let them test Thorn's force wall, or if Thorn was going
to throw them around again, or something different."

Her eyes went to me.

"Test the wall. At least to start
with. I'm done moving them around. If they really want to be suicidal, this
time I'll let them."

"What happened to no casualties?"
asked Lea.

"I'd still prefer it, but I think
they're all more terrified of their leaders here, than they are of dying. So we
might not be able to stop the dying part. And I really am done with keeping
them away. If they haven’t got the message by now, they never will."

"Are you going down to talk to the
leaders?" asked Tasha.

"Yes. I’d only just located them when
you called me back. I know they have a meeting with their grand marshal
shortly, and I intend to be there when they do."

I put the high officer's meeting up on a
screen, so I could watch it normally. They were bickering over what to tell
their grand marshal, or more importantly, what not to tell him. They all wore
sidearm holsters, but not sidearms, and were seated around a large oblong
table, with only the seat at the head of it empty.

"All men," said Lea, looking at
them.

"You noticed that did you?"

"Hard to miss."

"It's actually worse. This appears to
be a completely male dominated society. What few women are in crews, don’t lead
anyone."

"Don’t say it Lea," said Jen.
"Let's concentrate on staying alive here."

Lea closed her mouth again, and I could see
the frustration eating at her. But Jen was right. This wasn’t the time. Jen had
to be as annoyed about it as Lea was, but she had a handle on her emotions now.

The enemy fleet, and I no longer thought of
them as an alien fleet, just an enemy, closed in around us, making a sphere of
ships with us in the middle. Ordinarily, any fleet being surrounded like this
was going to be toast.

"Are they going to ask for our surrender?"
asked Sasha.

I brought up the sound in the meeting
below.

"We cannot ask for their
surrender."

"Why not?"

Four stripes stared down two stars.

"It would be heresy to do so."

"Shouldn’t we be finding out something
about them, after all this time at war?"

"That is heresy. Mind your words, or
the next thing is we'll have an Inquisitor walking through that door."

"How would one know?"

"You seriously think every word in
this room is not being monitored?"

"I thought our ranks were accorded the
privilege of not being monitored."

"You thought wrong. The only privilege
we have is more latitude in what we can say before the hammer falls on
us."

This seemed to bother the lesser ranks
quite a lot, while the older more senior men just looked resigned.

Further discussion was interrupted. A man
dressed in full dress uniform, covered with insignia and medals, walked in
through thrown open doors. The officers rose as one, and bowed towards him.

"Gentlemen."

He motioned they could sit, and they all
did. He remained standing.

"Numero Uno, I assume," said Jen.

"We have invaders over our city. What
are you doing about it?"

The admiral to his left touched a button
before him, and a screen lit up on the wall. It showed our small fleet
completely encircled by theirs.

"We are about to destroy them, Grand
Marshal. If you would please give the order."

"The order is given."

The senior Admiral pressed what looked like
a pad.

The fleet started firing everything they
had at us.

Forty Three

Tasha and I arrived back on the bridge
early the next morning, after spending the night at my beach house, in time to
see the first enemy ship try ramming the force wall. It simply dissolved into
dust as it touched the wall, the last section being carried in by momentum.

A quick check showed all the ships had run
out of missiles, and after firing guns all night, many of them couldn’t fire
anymore. The planet seemed to have run out of missiles as well.

Jen was the only one who looked like she
hadn't slept. I'd told everyone to get some sleep before we left, as nothing of
any interest was going to happen. I must admit though, the constant light show
of missiles and pulses hitting the wall, was mesmerizing, and it was difficult
believing it would still be happening after a good nap.

She was captain of course, and her
responsibility was ship and crew, so it was no surprise to see she'd been up
all night.

I looked in on the meeting below, and found
it still going. Their leader was not a happy person at all.

"I'll be down below for a bit. Maybe
other places as well. If anyone needs me, say my name loudly."

"Thorn!" yelled Lea, grinning.

"Like that yes."

I jumped to outside the meeting room door.
A guard stood on each side of the door, and both went down together, as I force
tapped them into the wall. The door opened without any problem, and I walked
in.

A babble of voices suddenly went silent,
and all eyes turned from the wall screen and each other, to watch me enter.

The marshal, who wasn’t looking quite so
grand after being here so long, was predictably the first to recover from the
shock.

"Who are you? What are you?" He
paused. "GUARDS!"

Two guards came in the other door, so I
force tapped them both as well. They went down without a sound. There were shock
murmurs around the table.

I stopped under their wall screen, so they
could see their own ships being destroyed while talking to me.

"My name is Judge Thorn. I'm a person
like you, except I live in what you call enemy space. I'm here to ask you to
tell your ships to stop committing suicide needlessly."

"What are you?"

"You would call me an
Inquisitor." More shock noises. "Only yours don’t have my skill set.
Stop your ships, please."

"Why should I?"

"Because the crews will die needless
deaths. Because when the last one is gone, you won't have a space fleet to
protect your space with. Because the only thing holding my people's fleet
outside your space, is my order."

"What are you talking about? Your
fleet is in orbit."

"My fleet yes. Those are my personal
ships. My people wait at the border, to hear if my mission has been a success
or not."

"And what's your mission?"

"Peace. I would see this war end. Once
and for all time."

The marshal laughed, and his minions laughed
with him.

"Who do you think you are, coming in
here, and thinking you can end policy?"

I showed them my grey cowl and bony hand
look.

"The reaper," exclaimed one of
the junior generals.

At the same moment, their battleship hit my
wall, and simply vanished into dust. The dual effect freaked a number of them
out, but didn’t faze their leader.

I removed the effect, and pondered the next
move. Their fleet admiral was now gone. Some dozen ships were also gone, and
the rest were likely to follow at any moment.

"You refuse to save your people?"

"They do my will."

"So you ordered them to suicide?"

"I did. All of them have failed me.
They all deserve to die."

"A guilty plea has been entered.
Sentence is stayed pending future action."

"What are you babbling about
creature?"

I looked up at the screen, focused my will
on the crews, and moved them temporarily to another island I knew. I followed
them with all the food and bedding on the ship, and left them their sidearms in
case they needed to defend themselves from predators. I wasn’t sure with this
island. I knew it was there, but not everything about it.

The ships destroyed themselves one by one
as we watched.

"Now marshal, your ships are gone.
Your crews are dead. Your space is defenseless. Shall we end this war?"

He laughed at me, like a stereotypical
madman tyrant does, when the hero thinks he has him at his mercy, but actually
doesn’t.

I sighed, and moved us all.

Forty Four

"This is a desert," I announced
to a group of very shocked officers. "There is no food or water for five
days in any direction. If you wish to live, stay right here."

"You are the reaper," said the
one who'd call me it before. He dropped to his knees, and bowed towards me.
"Please don’t kill us."

"If he doesn’t, I will!"
thundered the marshal.

He reached for his sidearm, stepping
towards the hapless junior general, and stopped when his hand couldn’t find his
holster, let alone the gun.

"What the hell is this?" he
bellowed, making everyone cringe except me.

He took another step towards the still
kneeling man, his hands coming up as if he wanted to strangle him.

"The prisoner will be
restrained."

A hole opened up below the marshal, and he
dropped straight in. The hole closed up immediately, leaving the man encased in
the ground, only his head above sand level. Just for good measure, I muted him
as well. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. His cheeks orange started
going darker.

I looked around the group. An arc of lounge
chairs appeared behind them.

"I was serious about there being peace.
Make yourselves comfortable. I'll be back before you need water. Don’t wander
off if you wish to live."

"Who are you?" said the senior
admiral.

"I told you. Judge Thorn. The guilty
will be punished. And there will be peace."

I left them there, and popped back to the
bridge. They were still on the monitor, the magic watching them having moved
with them. Lea passed me a bottle of water, and I gulped a few mouthfuls.

"What's next?" asked Tasha.

"Now I check on what our top brass are
doing."

"You won't like it," said Lea.

"Oh?"

"Bentley sent a report an hour ago,
from sources he has in headquarters. The military have issued an ultimatum to
the politicians over the war. A military coup is imminent."

"Sounds like they need a judge,"
laughed Jess.

"Indeed."

It took a few minutes for me to find the
top military, since I hadn't been where they were before. Next door to the
headquarters building, was the parliament. The long table there had uniforms on
one side, and suits on the other. The suits didn’t look happy.

I winked at Jess, and jumped.

Bentley spilled his beverage down the front
of his uniform, as I appeared in front of him while he was taking a sip.

"Damnit Thorn. Can't you give any
warning when you drop in?"

I grinned at him, as a crewman took the mug
away from him.

"I'm told all's well here?"

"Certainly is. No sign of the enemy at
all."

"Their fleet has been neutralized, as
far as I've seen. They might have another one."

"So might we. I've had some very
strange messages from home."

"So Lea said. Anything concrete?"

"No. But I've had it confirmed our
reports are not reaching the government, and they're being told we've been dead
for days."

"So someone is lying?"

"Apparently so. Are you going
there?"

"Do they need a judge?"

"I’d say so!" said a voice behind
us, and I looked around to see the admiral standing there. "What's the
situation with our enemy?"

"I was just saying. Main fleet is
destroyed, although crews survived. There is the possibility of another fleet I
haven't seen yet. The top military officers are already at a place I've
prepared for a peace summit."

"Did they go willingly?" asked
Bentley.

"No."

"Ours won't either," said the
admiral. "But I don’t spose that matters to you, does it?"

"Not really. There will be
peace."

"Don’t let us keep you then."

I nodded to them both, cleaned Bentley's
uniform for him, and jumped again.

Forty Five

I appeared in the center of the long table,
turned, and walked calmly along it, as people on both sides reacted with sounds
of shock, all the way through to falling backwards off their chairs. At the
end, I jumped down, and turned to face everyone.

The civilian in the middle was a grey
haired woman, and despite a man appearing from thin air in front of her, she
appeared to be calm, and in control of the situation. The General opposite her
on the other hand, was reaching for a gun. One which promptly vanished, along
with all the others in the room.

The woman looked at me, nodded to herself,
and told the general to sit back down. Those on the floor, picked themselves
up, and also sat. I waited for them.

"You would be the Judge Thorn I've
been hearing about?" she said.

"I would."

"Are you here to judge us young
man?"

"I'm here for several reasons. I judge
when I find the guilty."

"Are there any guilty here?"

"So I'm told."

"What would someone here be guilty
of?" asked a man further up the table.

"Lying about the war."

A hush fell, as civilians looked at
military, and back to me.

"We're told the war is going
badly," said the woman. "We're told if we don’t dramatically increase
spending on all things military, the war will soon be lost, and we will become
redundant, and probably even killed if the enemy get here, and find civilians
running things."

"And how have you been reacting to
this?"

"With skepticism. These officers are
trying to railroad us into spending billions on things which won't be available
to use for years, while at the same time they tell us the enemy could be here
in weeks. We're not as stupid as they seem to think. And they're not as
autonomous as they believe."

The general opposite her rose.

"I'm sorry to interrupt madam prime
minister, but you force my hand."

The doors on both ends exploded inwards,
and troops burst in. They were outfitted the same as Sasha's team, and included
heavy weapons. Exactly what they thought they were going to do with them is
anyone's guess. Maybe they thought the presence of them would be enough to
scare the civilians into giving up.

"Oh fuck this," said a voice, and
most of those at the table looked at me. "Sorry, did I say that out
loud?"

The troops vanished. I sent them, minus
their weapons and armour, to the same island with the strange predator, I’d
sent slaver ship crews to before.

"What the hell?" exclaimed the
general.

"Not quite."

I moved everyone left in the room, including
the table, and their chairs.

Eyes looking at me went wide in shock, as
they took in the desert behind me, and started looking around. The shock turned
to panic, when they saw lounge chairs with orange people in them. Said orange
people didn’t react any better, but at least they stayed seated.

In the midst of the reaction, I moved the
general over by the marshal, and dropped him into a hole as well.

"Help!" screamed the general,
causing all eyes to turn his way, and thus returning order to the group.

He screamed even louder when he found an
orange face next to his, silently screaming as well. I muted the general to
give us some quiet to talk.

"Would everyone please move away from
the table."

Most of them backed away in a hurry, and I
waited patiently for the others. When there was enough room, I changed the
table into a triangle shape, cut out in the middle. Along the third side, I
copied in enough chairs for the orange contingent, and an extra higher one at
one of the points, so I could sit with orange on my left, civilians on my
right, and our military opposite me.

The ground underneath table and chairs
turned to glass. Bottles of water appeared in each chair position, appropriate
for the person who would be there. I turned to the lounge chairs, and gestured
them to move to where I wanted them. They almost ran to the table, and seized
the bottles before even sitting down. I waved the prime minister to my right,
and the next senior officers to the middle opposite me. More water appeared on
the table. A tent like structure appeared over the table, giving us some relief
from the sun, but not the heat.

When everyone was seated, had addressed
their thirst, and settled, I addressed them.

"Court is now in session, Judge Thorn
presiding."

Forty Six

The marshal's head moved to the center of
the table, so all could see him. He rose out of the ground, but still encased
in hard sand.

"For the duration of proceedings here,
all will hear everything said in their own language. If you are called upon to
speak, speak as you normally would, and everyone will understand you."

"And if we're not called to
speak?" asked an admiral across from me.

"You risk gaining my attention."

He sat back, worry now on his face.

"The first order of business is the
Grand Marshal here. He is accused of the deliberate murder of his own troops,
in ordering them to commit suicide attacking a force already proved to be
impossible to reach. He has already pleaded guilty."

"That's not what he said,"
interrupted an orange admiral.

"It's what I heard," I countered.

I looked down the line of orange faces.

"Who gave the actual order for ships
to ram the fleet over your planet?"

I was looking at the least ranked general
at the end of the row as I spoke. He gulped, but could not stop himself
answering.

"The marshal did."

"Who passed the order to the fleet
admiral?"

I added compulsion for the guilty person to
speak up.

"I did," said the senior admiral.
"But I had no choice."

"Why not?"

"The marshal routinely shoots any
officer who doesn't follow orders."

"How long ago was the last senior
officer shot this way?"

"Only a few months ago. He complained
we were not ready to renew the war."

"The Admiral was dead before he even
finished his protest," added another admiral, halfway down the table.

"So you serve in fear?"

Most of them nodded, but no-one actually
said it.

"How long has this been going
on?"

I put more compulsion into the words. This
was something I wanted to know.

"Since forever, Inquisitor. Marshals
have always behaved thus, as did the kings before them."

"And you joined the military knowing
this?"

"Joined Inquisitor? No-one joins the
military. You're tested and drafted. Ability decides where you end up."

I looked down the row, and they all nodded.
None of them seemed to be aware of the inherent contradiction.

"Who will be the next marshal?"

"I will," said the senior admiral.
"But I'm sorry to say, I won't be any different to him."

"Why not?"

"The Inquisitors won't allow anyone to
rule differently."

Ah. And there we had it. The rotten core
behind the power.

"Let's leave that for the moment. The
issue is the guilt of the accused."

I removed the mute from the marshal's
voice.

"Do you have anything to say in your
defense marshal?"

"GRAND MARSHAL, you jumped up…"

I muted him again.

"Wrong answer. Guilt is confirmed. The
sentence is death. Sentence will now be carried out."

The marshal dropped back into the ground,
which swallowed him. I looked over to the head stone a short way away, and a
second one appeared next to it. I added an inscription. Then I thought again,
removed it, and replacing it.

'Absolute power corrupted him. Now
forgotten forever.'

Forty Seven

I looked at the admiral next to me.

"You are also guilty Admiral. You all
are. With one exception, you're all convicted of killing your own people for no
purpose. How do you respond?"

"Which of us is not convicted?"

I pointed to a two star general, further
down the table.

"He brought up asking for the
surrender of what you all thought was a weaker opponent. He wanted to know more
about his enemy. Surrender would have saved lives. It was the correct approach.
It matters not it was rejected. He did at least ask, and I saw the cost."

"You were watching?" asked the
admiral. "How?"

"The same way my people are watching
all of you now."

"That wasn’t an answer,
Inquisitor."

"No. But the only answer is apparently
heresy. Let's not go there while the penalty for hearing it is still in
force."

"What would you have of us
Inquisitor?"

"Stop calling me Inquisitor, and call
me Judge." He nodded. "You have one last service to perform for your
people, before I pronounce sentence on you." I held a hand up to stop him
speaking. "But first, we have a second trial to complete."

"If I may have your indulgence for a
moment Judge?"

I nodded, he rose, and walked to the seat
of the two star I’d been talking about.

"Rise, and take my seat. I think we
need you to speak for us, here and now. Will you do so?"

"I will," said two star, rising,
and taking the empty seat next to me.

The admiral sat, and nodded to me. I nodded
back. The two star now promoted to marshal, looked humbled. Had he shown any
signs of elation, I'd have reconsidered. As it was, in my mind, he was now on a
sort of probation.

The still muted general appeared in the
middle of the table, and rose out of the ground so all could see him. Again, he
was encased in hard sand.

"The accused has plotted treason
against an elected government."

A number of the orange officers shook
visibly when they heard the word 'elected'. Treason didn’t seem to bother them.
I unmuted the general.

"You are guilty of treason,
threatening elected officials, plotting a military coup, and attempting to stop
a judge in the performance of his duties. The penalty for treason is death by
firing squad. Do you have anything to say before sentence is pronounced?"

The man looked defeated. For the first time
I didn't see defiance and arrogance in an accused.

"I did what had to be done. For too
long, our governments have been shorting the military, making us always fight a
defensive war, never allowing us to do our jobs properly."

"Why is there a war, general?"

"There's always been a war. We've
never been allowed to win it."

"And so you planned to seize power,
using lies and deception about the true situation?"

"What lies?" asked the prime
minister.

"The fleet at the blockade point was
never destroyed. In fact, it has been reinforced, and the system previously
lost has been retaken. The fleet now guards the original block point. The
admiral in charge seems competent."

"Your doing Judge?"

"My intervention did prevent the fleet
from being overrun, yes. I was also responsible for removing two renegade
admirals."

"That part we heard." She was
grinning now. "So our space is in no danger?"

"Not at the moment, other than the
other block points have had their best forces stripped to fight this war. But
that's a different situation, to be addressed later."

"So noted Judge."

"General. Frustration is no excuse for
treason. Anything else to say?"

"What else can I tell you?"

"Did you orchestrate the war starting
up again, by contacting the marshal?"

"Yes."

Just about everyone looked shocked at this
admission.

"Did you tell the marshal the
composition of our force at the block point?"

"Yes."

"Did you leave civilians behind when
you evacuated the system?"

"Yes."

"Did you know many of them would be
killed by any attempt to take back the system?"

"Yes. But I gave orders not to do
so."

"Do you have a fleet secreted away
somewhere?"

I could see him trying not to answer, but
the compulsion in my questions was too strong for him.

"Yes."

"Who else knows?"

"All of them here."

I looked across the line of admirals and
generals, and they all looked away. I looked next to the senior orange admiral.

"Do you also have a secret
fleet?"

"We do. We suspected allowing our
fleet into your space by more than a system, would ultimately prove to be a
trap. Once the trap was sprung, we'd have hit their secret fleet with
ours."

I nodded, and turned back to the general.

"Are you going to shoot me Judge? Or
just sink me into the ground like the marshal?"

"I'm not going to shoot you. But you
could take a long walk if you wished it."

"Are both my admirals out there
somewhere?"

"One of them is. The other is buried
over there."

I pointed in a direction he couldn’t see.

"Is he still alive? The one out
there?"

"No."

"Bury me then. At least I'll have
company."

"So ordered."

He sank into the ground. A grave stone
appeared next to the other two. I inscribed it.

'Treason has its own reward. Forgotten
for all time.'

Forty Eight

I waited for everyone to settle down before
going on.

"Court is ended. The peace conference
is now begun. Please state your name and position for the record."

"Record?" asked one of the
civilians.

"Record. Everything happening here is
being viewed and recorded on my ship. The recordings will be available to
anyone who wishes a copy, including the media."

"Shouldn’t these be closed
proceedings?" asked a general.

"No. Everything about the war has been
kept in the dark. The peace needs to be negotiated in the open."

"How long are we going to be here in
this heat?" asked the prime minister.

"As long as it takes."

"Can we at least get some air
conditioning and food?" she went on.

I thought about it for a moment. The tent
changed to a normal room, larger than the room I’d taken them from to allow for
the larger table, and room for a buffet and drink selection table along one
wall. The floor became polished wood, as were the walls. There was a door on
either side, leading outside. The air was comfortably cool. For me, anyway.

"Facilities?" muttered someone.

I thought more, and a facilities block
appeared beyond each doorway.

"Facilities for men that way." I
pointed. "Women that way." I pointed the other way. "Food and
drink will be here in a minute." I added lounge chairs at both ends of the
room. "While you refresh yourselves, you may use the lounge areas for
preliminary discussions."

They began rising, some of them stretching,
and I concentrated on copying food processors of both kinds, and providing both
tray style food for them, and the food already prepared for both groups back at
their own meeting room's kitchens.

"I should point out I've eaten food
from both sides now, and recommend you try all the food available. You never
know, something you eat and drink here, might make a start with trade
agreements."

I grinned around the room, but remained
seated where I was. A bottle of water materialized in front of me, and I drank.

So far, so good. No-one was attacking
anyone else. They were all suitably subdued by the court events, and were now
hot, hungry, and thirsty, all of which was now being changed. I wasn’t sure
this was a good idea, but I thought certainly the prime minister would be more
amenable to actually making peace work, if not uncomfortable to the point of
heat exhaustion.

"So young man," said the prime
minister beside me. "Do you really expect us to make a peace treaty here
and now?"

The newly promoted marshal was standing
beside her, which I thought was a promising start.

"Expect you to? No. Demand you do?
Yes."

"What gives you the authority to
demand anything of us?" she asked.

"Call me an interested third party if
you will. I see you both as long lost cousins, who have forgotten how to be
civil with each other. I have no dog in this hunt. But I also hold your very
lives in my hands."

"How?" asked the new marshal.

"What do you see out this door?"
I asked him, pointing to one of them.

"Desert."

"And which planet is this?"

He looked at the prime minister, and she
shook her head.

"I see your point. If you were to
simply go, we would run out of food and water quickly, and perish, since no-one
knows where we are but you. Five days did you say?"

"Yes. There is food and water here for
one day, but not for all of you for five."

"What do you really want of us?"
asked the prime minister.

"A declaration of peace, to be issued
jointly by each side at the same time, in both languages. An agreement to open
your borders to all for free trade. This includes the other choke points. I
assume you have genuine aliens beyond some of them, and I'd like to see some
attempt made to ensure peace with them, allowing their traders and ours to
trade as widely as they can."

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Your society has to change. I’ll deal
with the Inquisitors. You need to let your people decide what sort of civilian
government they want. If they actually vote for a military one, then okay, but a
military dictatorship is not going to be one of the options. I have other
suggestions for both of you, if you want to hear them?"

"You've been very vocal so far, why
stop now?"

The prime minister laughed, and the new
marshal joined in. I waited for them to settle down again.

"There is a system between both of
you, which has been continually fought over. It would make a good demilitarized
zone, and on the planet there is a whole unoccupied continent. It would make a
good place for either a central government should you decide you are one people
with wildly differing skin colours, or a place for future negotiations to
occur. Avoid the other continent for the time being, as too many people were
killed recently, and there will be a lot of resentment for orange skins for
some time to come, I'd expect."

The marshal looked confused.

"Did you say one people with differing
skin colours?"

"I did. We are all one people.
Everyone's skin is coloured according to the sun of where they and their
ancestors were born. But underneath, we are all the same."

"You have proof of that?"

"I do. I ordered the autopsies myself.
If you wish your doctors to confirm the findings, I can arrange for this to
happen. In fact, I’d be quite happy to bring doctors from both sides here, and
have them do side by side autopsies for you to observe."

I grinned at both of them, since they both
looked a little queasy at the thought of having to watch such a thing.

"I'll think about it," he said.
"You will make the relevant reports available to us?"

The prime minister's pad dinged, and she
pulled it out, looked for a moment, and looked at the marshal.

"The reports are on my pad. As soon as
we can arrange for communications between our equipment, you will have them."

She put the pad away, obviously not wanting
to read it now. I can't say I blamed her. There was a chime, and the marshal
looked surprised for a moment, pulled out something similar, and nodded. He put
it away as well.

"Report. Your people are efficient
Judge."

"They are. One of them will have a
translation system available for each of you soon, so you can communicate after
you leave here."

"And what will you do once you leave
here Judge, if I may ask?"

She really did look confused about
something.

"Go home."

"That’s it? Go home? You have us at
your mercy. I've never seen anyone with the power you command. Why are you not
declaring yourself king, and forcing peace on both our peoples, under your rule?"

"It's what any of my people would do
in your place," added the marshal.

I shook my head sadly.

"If you don’t understand that,
anything I say will still be meaningless after. Let's just say, need drives me
at the moment. Mainly the need to stop a war no-one understands, and which has
been eating at your societies for centuries at least. If force is what it takes
to stop it, so be it. But I'm not here to force you to do anything."

"Seems like it to me," she said.

The marshal nodded as well.

"You are free to do nothing. Eat,
drink, talk, not talk. You have freewill. If you do nothing, I will simply wait
a few days, go get whoever replaces you, and start again."

"Threatening our lives is not a
threat?"

"No. We're already well past the
threat stage. You are here. You can't leave unless I decide to move you. I
won't move you until we have peace, and a movement beyond peace. You can decide
to get the job done, or not. Either way, I'm the facilitator, nothing
more."

She looked at me with a very speculative
expression on her face.

"What if we vote you king?"

The marshal shot her an alarmed look.

"I'm not one of your people, so voting
me for anything is pointless. I'm going home, and my home is not in either of
your space. An absent king will not get the job done. Besides, no-one should
vote for someone with the power I have."

"Is this your home Judge?"

I started laughing.

Forty Nine

It'd turned into a very long day. For
everyone. One of the reasons I’d provided stimulant drinks. I was asking a
group of very tired people, to do the most important work of their lives. I'm
not sure some of them were up to it.

I watched them while they ate and drank,
discussing whatever in small groups, and went outside to use the facilities.
Most of them who did go out, came back in very quickly, driven inside by the
heat.

The prime minister and marshal together,
called them back to the table. Names and positions were given by everyone, and
discussion began. I left them to it.

I appeared back on the bridge, sank into my
chair, and held my hand out for the drink Lea promptly put in it. I took a long
drink of it, gagged, and spat it out. The liquid vanished before it hit the
deck.

Everyone was laughing, but I was too tired
to care.

"So, your majesty," started Jen.

"Don't go there!" I interrupted.
"I am not, and never will be, any sort of king."

"Didn't they pretty well hand it to
you?" asked Jess.

I shook my head. It wasn’t funny, and I was
too tired to deal with it.

"Has Bill hacked the planetary
databases yet?" I asked, to stop them continuing.

"Not yet," said Jen. "Do
you…"

She broke off as Bill appeared in front of
me, arms up and fingers moving madly. It took him a moment to realize anything
had changed, at which time he screamed, and fell over.

I winced, but Tasha lost it. I gave her the
look. The one which says show more respect for the bone weary, and the moved
without warning. She laughed harder.

Bill picked himself up, and looked at me.

"Did I miss a call or something?"

"No. Just past mucking about getting
people's attention."

"Oh good. It wasn’t me then. Did you
want something?"

Tasha sniggered quite loudly, but everyone
ignored her.

"When can we have access to the
databases on the planet?"

"By morning. Anything in particular
you need access to?"

"Inquisitor whereabouts."

It wasn’t what he'd expected to hear.

"O-kay. Any urgency?"

"The situation at the moment is
contained, but the real power here is the Inquisitors. They'll need
neutralizing before any society here can take on a more normal form."

"Is the leadership being missing at
the moment going to cause a problem?" asked Jess.

"Very likely. I'm assuming you've
reported the PM being at a peace conference to the parliament?" Lea
nodded. "Here though? Just as likely the Inquisitors are choosing new
leaders right now. I need to interrupt them as soon as possible."

"So," said Bill slowly,
"locations of all Inquisitors, and actions of said personages over the
back day."

"Yes."

"Fine. I'll get on with it." He
suddenly cringed. "I'll walk, if it's all the same to you?"

I kept a straight face while he turned and
walked out, but let a smile loose when he was gone.

"Thorn, are you really going to make
those people work all night?" asked Jen.

"That was the plan."

"Better change it."

"Why?"

"People make mistakes when they're
over tired. And you can't do the next part until tomorrow, so why hammer
them?"

"True."

I thought about it. And remembered
something else.

"Oh. There is definitely another fleet
out there on each side. Better ask Bentley if he can ferret out a location for
ours. And ask Bill to add it to his list as well. Someone will need to visit
each fleet when we locate them, and get them to stand down."

"We'll keep an eye on them. Go and
give those poor people some beds to sleep on. Then get some yourself."

My eyes went to Tasha, who had a grip on
herself again, and she nodded.

I moved us both back to the conference
room. The prime minister noticed us appear, and called a five minute break.
Fatigue was showing on her face now. She rose, and came over.

"Progress?" I asked.

"Some. We have an agreement in place
to end the war. That was the easy bit. We're negotiating details, in particular
the demilitarized system you suggested, trade possibilities, and how to word
the announcements."

"How long?"

"Too long. Can we go home to our beds
for a good sleep, and come back tomorrow?"

"No, but I'll create some basic
accommodation, so you can all sleep. Once I do, I'm off for some myself."

She nodded, looked at Tasha, and nodded
again.

"Good. I'll call a halt then, and we
can all get a good eight hours. The other side are almost dead where they
sit."

"Ah yes. We sort of had them up all their
last night, while they tried to destroy us."

"I prefer them this way actually.
Gives me an advantage in negotiating with them. But I'm not much better than
they are either. I was up most of the night trying to figure out what the
military were up to. Does this planet even have a night?"

"Not here. Its perpetual daylight,
which is why this is a desert."

"Well I'll announce eight hours for
sleep, and expect you to deliver us breakfast after."

She wasn’t asking. I nodded. She returned
my nod, and went back to the table. I led Tasha outside. Ten minutes later,
there were rows of bedrooms identical to the ones behind my beach.

Tasha was looking at the grave stones. I
took her hand, but neither of us spoke. I moved us to the beach, and we sat
there watching the sun go down. After, Tasha stirred herself.

"Where is that desert planet of yours,
Thorn?"

I pointed up into the night sky, above
where the sun had gone down.

"That bright dot there."

"But where is it?"

"Next orbit in. Not a lot lives there.
The side which always faces the sun is too hot. The other side is too cold. A
few areas on the joins can support life, but it's not particularly hospitable.
There's a lot of life in the oceans though."

"And where's your penal island?"

"Same place, but at the equator, almost
in the midpoint between hot and cold. More animal and plant life there,
including a nasty predator, but you could live on the beaches there, living on
fish, shellfish, and some of the plant life, in and out of the water."

She looked at me.

"Not books this time. I've spent a lot
of time watching that predator. It does eat fish, some shellfish, and some of
the plants in and out of the water. I even went there once, so I know the food
is edible.

"But if anyone escapes the island, it
gets worse wherever they go?"

"Pretty much."

She sighed, and so did I.

"You don’t think you’d be a good
king?"

"Who knows? Maybe I could be a good
king. Maybe you’d make a good queen. But that's not the issue."

"What is?"

"A mage should never be king. Or any
kind of leader."

"What makes you say that?"

"I met one once."

"A king?"

"A Mage King."

"How was he?"

"His minions tried to force me to bend
my knee to him. I had no idea what was going on, and they were forcing me to do
something immediately, without any explanation."

"And you hate bullies."

"Even then, yes. I didn't really have
time to wonder about it, but I did later on, and only a tyrant would force
people to do things without explanation or choice. Especially since it was
choosing day for me."

"Was he a tyrant?"

"When his minions failed to make me
kneel, and then failed to kill me, he turned up himself."

"And?"

"Tried to kill me himself. I've always
suspected if he hadn't turned up, there would have been no last second surge of
energy, I'd have jumped to the glade I wanted to get to, successfully, and my
life would have been totally different."

"And you’d never have met me."

"There's that."

I paused for a while, and she sat there
with me, cuddling my arm.

"I've seen what life under a mage king
is like. Sure they were different times, and life was a lot harder. But it
didn’t have to be that hard. I was too young to really know anything, but even
us boys being trained for the choosing knew why an army was needed, and why towns
had their own militia units. I heard rumours of clashes with other armies,
fighting sometimes weeks away from home. And more about bandits preying on
towns who let too many of their best go to war for the king."

"That doesn’t make the king a
tyrant."

"I've been wondering about that for
years now. He was a tyrant by any definition I've come across. And what I
remember, and him trying to kill me for not swearing allegiance to him then and
there, tells me he abused his power to get what he wanted, and to kill anyone
who opposed him."

"So if he was that powerful, why did
he need armies and fight normal wars?"

I sighed.

"It’s a great way of removing
troublemakers from your subjects ranks, and keeping the population of those
most likely to revolt against you down, without needing to demonstrate your
real power to the masses."

"Thorn?"

"Yes?"

"You’ve been reading too many
books."

Fifty

The inquisitors turned out to be a
secretive bunch.

Bill found no references to where any of
them were. All the same, the ones on the homeworld were easy to deal with.

Once the formal peace treaty was finalized
and signed, the neutral system agreement signed and sealed, and an open border
trade agreement also signed and sealed, I sent the prime minister and her
people home.

Before I did though, I took her and the
marshal aside, and demanded one last thing from them.

"Now you want to dictate to a
democracy?" asked the prime minister.

"Dictate, no. Put it this way. I
suspect those who made sure slaves could be legally kept as indentured workers,
are in fact slave owners, or are being lobbied or bribed by those who do own
them. I expect you to amend the legislation, and call the vote. If it gets
passed, no-one will need to meet me. If it doesn’t pass, those who vote against
it will go before the court."

She shuddered.

"The only reason I've not visited
those who ensured slaves could be kept, is I haven't had time yet. I'm prepared
to allow democracy to fix its own mistakes, but I won't wait forever."

"Understood. But I doubt you're going
to be happy on this."

"We'll see. Do your part, vote
properly, and you have nothing to worry about from me. Those who vote for
keeping slavery, will regret it. And I will be watching."

"I'll see it done, when the peace
settles down. You can rely on me to do my part."

"Thank you."

I turned my gaze on the marshal, and he
shifted uncomfortably.

"You have an easier job."

"I do? How is it easier?"

"Before your dictatorship is replaced
by a democratic government, you will abolish all forms of slavery and indentured
anything. You will also ensure whatever document, or set of laws your democracy
is based on, includes slavery as being a capital offence."

"And if whoever governs afterwards
reintroduces it?"

"They had better like a long walk in
the desert."

He shuddered this time.

"I know you both have a hard road
ahead. But the future starts here and now, and you will do your damndest to get
it started right. Or I'll find someone else to do it. If you find difficulty
with certain people or groups, let me know. I'm not going to fix everything for
you, and I'm not going to be at your beck and call, but genuine blockages on
the road ahead will be removed."

I looked at them both, and the three of us
shook on it. A moment later, and the prime minister and her civilian people,
were back where I took them from.

Tasha was back on the ship, as I hadn't
seen any need for her to come here, so I sent the new marshal over to the
headstones to wait for me, while I addressed the rest.

The building vanished from around us, the
table returned to its original shape, and it and the chairs all went back where
they came from. The facilities blocks vanished as well, followed by all the
bedrooms.

None of those remaining looked happy.

I can't say I blamed them. I had what I
wanted. Peace, the beginnings of trade, the location of both fleets, and the
guilty. All that remained was punishment.

"You did good work here. Unlike those
before you, your names are on what you accomplished here, and you will be
remembered."

"But we're not going home," said
the senior admiral from my side.

"No. You're going to a penal colony.
But unlike those I've sent there before, you go to a much better place to start
from, and with some information."

I paused and looked around. Some of them
looked tempted to run, but the desert was daunting enough to stop them.

"You're going to an island. It has a
temperate climate most of the time, some animal life, and plants you can eat.
You can eat the fish if you can catch them, and there is shellfish and edible
sea plants as well."

"What's the catch?" came from the
back of the group.

"There is a predator on the island.
Most likely those I've already sent there have fallen to it. But I gave them no
warning they were there, and I put them down in the middle of the island. I'm
putting you on a beach. The predator dislikes open areas, so to start with,
unless you wander into the wrong place, you should be safe enough. With some
discipline and hard work, you should be able to make somewhere safe to
live."

"Is this island on this planet?"

"Yes. So take it from me, the island
is a lot better than most of the rest of the planet. You can survive there, if
you work together. But here's another downside. As soon as you leave here, you
will no longer understand the other language. I'd urge you to learn the other
one, or evolve a common one. But it's up to you what you all do there."

They were silent. I gave them time to ask
any more questions, but none did.

I moved them to the only safe beach on the
entire island. At my feet was left a pile of pads, a few pieces of jewelry
which could be used as a weapon, and the non-cloth contents of their pockets.
The pads went to Bill's domain, and the rest into a box in my personal cargo
area.

The new marshal was standing looking at the
desert, with his back turned to where the group had been standing. He turned as
I came up to him, and I handed him the insignia of a grand marshal, copied from
the one in the ground under our feet. He reluctantly removed his own, and
replaced them.

He startled as I changed my skin colour and
uniform between eye blinks, and dropped the nice leather folio he was carrying.
He picked it up, and a moment later, we were in the meeting room I'd taken him
from.

The marshal's staff were called in, given
the bare facts of the change in leadership, and shown the agreements.

In short order, the announcements were
made, the secret fleet was recalled, and senior officers and civilians were
called in to operate as a committee to begin the process of elections.

No-one questioned the new marshal. No-one
so much as dared look at me, sitting in the background, overseeing everything.
With an Inquisitor apparently in agreement with everything being done,
everything must surely be in order, no matter how radical the notions being
actioned.

Updates came into my pad, showing me the
announcements put out by the prime minister, and the reactions to them, most of
which were positive. The secret fleet had been broken up, and ships dispatched
to both of the other block points, now being called border points. Plans for
diplomatic missions to go beyond them, were already in progress.

At one point, a flunkey approached me,
offered me the local version of a pad, and backed away again, all without
looking at me. The state run media was broadcasting all the news as it always
did, and reports were coming in of people being jubilant in the streets, as
well as people refusing to believe what they were hearing and seeing.

I sent the marshal the suggestion to have his
secret fleet broken up, and relocated to the other three block points they had,
and for them to be prepared to allow diplomatic missions to go out, and traders
to jump out and in.

Personally, I had the feeling the military
on both sides wasn’t going to be too happy about things. They might need
watching for a while. On that note, I advised both leaders to recall the
admiral in command of their secret fleets, supposedly for duty in newly
constituted high commands, but actually to be screened for early retirement.
The fact these leaders had gone along with secret fleets, showed them to be the
wrong people in command. With the fleets broken up, there shouldn’t be a
problem with the next in line trying to usurp the roles.

Further announcements were made about
ambassadors being chosen, and the assembly of diplomatic staff for embassies to
both home worlds, and the joint mission in the new neutral system.

A message came in from Bentley, saying he'd
been ordered out of the system, and back to the previous jump point. The orders
came from the prime minister, and not the high command, since there wasn’t one,
and he'd wanted to check I knew about them. I responded immediately confirming
the orders.

A follow-up message advised me the admiral
was being returned to his jump point squadron, and he'd been promoted to a junior
admiral himself, with command of his fleet. His orders were to show the flag,
act as a customs force, and to ensure traders coming in didn’t get into
trouble.

I suspected his fleet would end up spread
across a number of systems, acting more as a police force than military. It was
going to take time for both sides to accept the other, and in the meantime,
someone would have to break up any trouble started by people who'd lost out in
the war. I smiled when I realized the captain who'd always wanted combat, and
never seen it, still hadn't.

Later still, media broadcasts on both sides
showed reports of traders starting to head for the neutral system, and their
reactions to being able to trade out of known space. Most were excited about
the possibilities, but a few grumbled they were only going to make sure they
didn’t lose out to competitors. They fooled no-one.

Lunch was brought in at some point, but I
was losing track of the day. I needed some attention here, but I was also using
my sight to confirm what was going on elsewhere.

So I almost missed the inquisitor's
entrance.

Fifty One

Five of them marched in together, and
everything in the room stopped, with every head turning towards them.

One of them headed for the marshal, and the
others fanned out around the room, the last one remaining by the door. They
were all in military uniforms.

"You are all under arrest for a class
one heresy," said the leader.

"No, they're not," I said
quietly, while at the same time, removing their weapons.

The leader rounded on me, studied me for a
moment, and started to come at me. He stopped when he bounced off a force wall
a good way away. He picked himself up with as much dignity as he could manage.

"I don’t recognize you. Who are you?
And what are you doing with inquisitor insignia?"

The next instant, all five of them were
standing under the desert sun. I changed into my hooded look.

"The Reaper!" yelled one of the
others, and they all dropped to their knees.

I returned my appearance back to orange
normal, and held my hand out, palm up. Their pads appeared on my hand, one on
top of the other.

The one on top quickly revealed the
locations of all of them. These five were the only military ones on the
homeworld at the moment, but there were also three civilians.

I focused my intent on the other three, and
they appeared next to the others. As I found the locations of others on other
planets, and one on the secret fleet, I brought them here as well. Each one,
seeing their fellows on their knees, did likewise. They were all male.

"Are you all here?" I asked them,
when I thought I had all of them.

"Yes Reaper," said the original
leader.

I put a lot of command into my next order.

"Those who have killed will move to my
left. Those who haven’t, will move to my right."

Only two moved to my right. And if I had
the insignia right, both were juniors. I turned to them.

"You are going to a penal colony.
You'll find some of your military already there. Rank will have no meaning, so
I suggest you make yourselves useful, or one of two things will happen." I
paused, but neither said anything. "Those already there will kill you
rather than put up with whatever you inquisitors usually put people through. Or
the local predator will eat you when no-one bothers to protect you from them. Am
I clear?"

"Yes Reaper," they said together.

I moved them to an unoccupied part of the
same beach I sent the military to. They immediately removed their inquisitor
and rank insignia, and threw them out into the ocean. Several others started
walking towards them. But I brought my attention back to the rest.

My shifting back to my normal skin colour
and uniform, scared them all back onto their knees.

"My name is Judge Thorn, and all here
are found guilty of murder. The punishment is death. This is a desert. There is
no food or water for five days in any direction. If you stay here, you will
die. Choose a direction, and chance your fate."

"Just like that? We are
condemned?"

The speaker looked angry.

"You condemned yourselves. Being what
you are, and what you are being what holds your society back from civilian
government, you were already condemned. Your two juniors could live long
productive lives in the penal colony I sent them to. You however, you have all
killed, and admitted it. Punishment will fit the crime."

"What we did was no crime."

"We operate under ancient law,"
said another.

"We are the law," said a third.

"No longer. Here, today, my law is the
only one which counts. And under my law, you are guilty, and sentenced. Choose
a direction, and start walking. The longer you delay, the less chance you have
of surviving."

I shifted myself to invisible, to make them
think I was gone, leaving them to their fate. Their pads added to the pile in
Bill's domain, and the contents of their pockets added to the box. There were startled
exclamations from some, but resignation on the faces of others. One by one,
they turned away from everyone else, and began walking.

The leader of the first five was the last
to go. Once his back was turned, I dropped the invisibility, and moved back to
the meeting room.

I ignored the gasps of surprise when I
popped back in, ignored the muttered whisperings about my skin colour and
uniform, and resumed sitting where I'd been. The marshal made eye contact with
me, I nodded, and he went back to his discussions.

By the time I left, he'd disbanded the
office of inquisitors, both civilian and military. The heads of the office
staff had been brought before me, and incarcerated pending trials. Others
joined them. The rest of the inquisitorial staff were informed they no longer
had jobs, should pack up their desks, and go home.

I had no illusions about them. Among the
seemingly deskbound office staff, there would be a few genuine problems. But
these were the new marshal's concern.

My job here, for the moment, was done.

Fifty Two

Assassins came for both the marshal and the
prime minister over the next two days.

But both had decent security details, and
hadn't needed my help to survive. Neither had gone out in public, both using
their media services to full advantage. None of the assassins survived, so
there was no judge work for me.

Sasha was offered a promotion to go back to
the neutral system, and take charge of security for the station, and the
existing colony. When the new diplomatic site was built on the empty continent,
she was top of the list to take over as head of security for our side of the
mission.

With nothing more to do here, I moved the
six escort ships to park next to my other ones, and shifted us to just off
docking distance of the neutral system station. Jen docked us carefully, being
as the ship was a tad larger than the station was designed for.

The best restaurant on the station hosted
us for dinner that night, me paying, and we gave Sasha and her team a merry
send off. The actual goodbyes happened the next morning, and were a good deal
more emotional than I’d expected. Even the sergeant gave me a hug, before a
formal hand shake, and I was surprised to see Jen, Jess, and Lea, also hug the
male members of the team. Progress indeed.

Tasha was saddest of all of them. She'd
been with the team long enough to feel their loss, but she'd been adamant when
Sasha had offered her a promotion as well, and now she was watching her team
leave without her.

We still had military aboard, so Jen backed
us out as soon as all the team's gear was off the ship. A safe distance away,
and I jumped us next to Bentley's ship, which was back on the other side of the
jump point. The shuttles were loaded with people and gear, and moved to each
ship, returning crew to where they came from.

Next stop was the homeworld, where we said
goodbye to Bill. I put him back in his office, with a copy of everything he'd
built and done. Now his office looked like I'd thought it would. I'm not sure
he even noticed the move.

On an afterthought, I took a marker pen to
the outside of his door, scratched out the current graffiti, and wrote 'Bill
rocks alien tech'. Which was pretty true.

He was about to become a very rich person,
mainly off the royalties for the new translator modules he'd designed. Two
different versions for two variations of tech, being government ordered for
rushed manufacture. Every trader ship was going to need one. Every tourist
destination would as well, just to ensure people without pads could still
communicate.

But the royalties on the pad translator
alone were going to make him super rich, and this was already available for
download.

I poked my head around the door of his
boss, and made sure she knew he was back ahead of schedule. And warned her he
was likely to leave, since he'd soon have the money to fund his own company.
She wasn’t happy about it, but admitted it'd always been just a matter of time.

Back on the ship, I took us home, and we
spent the afternoon on the beach.

Tasha was quiet, so I gave her space. I could
tell leaving her team for good was a big deal for her, and just made sure she
knew I was there if she needed to talk.

The five of us watched the sun set, lying
on the sand. When it was dark, I let them listen to the whale song out in the
ocean. The volcano was still erupting, but the whale song accompaniment turned
it into art. I wondered if the whales knew that.

The sound of all our pads chiming at the
same time, destroyed the moment, so we called it a night, and went inside. We
all had the same message.

"You are invited to an end of the war
celebration…"

Tuxedos and ball gowns, oh joy. Mine had a
request attached. I did a check on times, and found us almost in sync with the
homeworld, which was very convenient. It gave us a good night's sleep, and time
tomorrow for the girls to shop for gowns.

Fifty Three

I'd only been in a ballroom once before,
but it didn't count.

Pirates are no fun. But end of the war
celebrations most certainly are. Even dressed up as we were. I wasn’t wearing
the standard monkey suit, having gone for a red shirt under the black suit, and
an emerald green bow-tie. I felt totally foolish, but you adapt, which is
easier when you see so many other people feeling just as foolish. Or maybe it
was just me, and I was broadcasting it. I tried not to.

Tasha dragged me out onto the dance floor,
and began teaching me how. I'd learnt a sort of solo expressionist style of
dancing in my second life, but this was more formal. It actually involved touching.
And a good deal of paranoia about not treading on her feet.

Jen and Jess, resplendent in contrasting
ball gowns, waltzed past us laughing. I wasn’t sure if they were laughing at
us, or just me, or laughing in general. Paranoia didn’t apply only to feet.

Lea and Sasha waltzed past after them, also
laughing, and I started to relax, as it obviously wasn't me. Maybe it was the
simple joy of dancing somewhere with no likelihood of being shot at. Or the
total lack of responsibility for anything in the moment. Whatever it was, it
was good to see the girls laughing, and genuinely happy.

Bentley and someone I assumed was his wife
waltzed by as well. They were smiling at each other, but Bentley took a moment
to nod my way. He was in dress uniform, with junior admiral insignia. I nodded
back, and they were gone. The momentary distraction was all I needed to step on
Tasha's foot again, and she stopped, looked towards the drinks table, and
pulled me that way by the hand.

Drinks being sipped, we moved to a quiet
spot, and watched the crowd. Tasha nodded to several people she knew, but
didn’t introduce us.

"You never learnt how to dance?"

"I did. Just not this kind. No-one
thought teaching parentless kids how to do upper class stuff like this, had any
point to it."

"So you can dance other ways?"

"The music needs to be a great deal
faster."

"We could ask."

"Hell no, don’t do that."

She laughed. Time passed, we danced again,
nibbles from passing waiters, new drinks, more dancing.

Finally, the band stopped, the prime minister
stepped up onto a rostrum, and took her place at a bank of microphones.

"The war is over!"

The crowd applauded, and she waited for
them to settle down.

"The war is over for good!"

The crowd applauded even more loudly, and
again she waited for them to settle down.

"I personally have learnt a lot over
this last week. I’d like to share some of it with you. For centuries, we've had
an on again off again war with aliens. Or so we thought. But then I met
someone, who explained what was really going on. I don’t know where he's from,
but he put it like this. Both sides of this war are long lost cousins. I didn't
believe it. I was standing there talking to one of them, and I still didn’t
believe it. He didn’t either. We received proof. From our own doctors. They are
our cousins."

The room was dead silent now.

"We live on different planets, and
have different coloured skins. Now I know they live on a planet where their
skin developed a very different colour. But underneath the skin, we are all the
same!"

Some clapping started, and it gathered some
momentum for a minute or so, and stopped.

"We made war out of fear. We developed
a military to keep us safe. We thought we were doing right. No. We were locking
ourselves in a box, and have been too afraid to come out."

She held up her glass.

"How many of you have been enjoying
this excellent wine? Hold up your glass."

Most of the room held up their glass, me
included.

"This was not our wine. Our past enemy
made this wine, and I had it brought back to show you what we've been missing
for centuries in the way of trade. At this very minute, a similar celebration
is happening, and they have been drinking our wine."

"Your doing?" whispered Tasha.

I nodded to her.

"Not many people know this, but war
drove many of our military leaders to treason." There were shocked
exclamations. "One of them committed unspeakable crimes as well as
treason, was tried in front of a group of ship captains, and executed. A second
covered up these crimes, and is also now dead. Instead of paying attention to
what happened to these two men, most of the rest of the military leadership
began a military coup."

Shocked looks, but silence.

"They are now exiled to a penal colony.
With them are a similar group of military and civilians from our ex-enemies,
and we have proof they were communicating with each other, and have been for a
long time."

She paused, and looked around the room, and
into the place where the cameras were located.

"We enter a new era, and from today,
we concentrate on trade, and getting along with our neighbors. Evidence of
other life beyond our space has been there for centuries. Instead of hiding
from it, and keeping it away, we will now embrace what we find out there, no
matter how different, or the same, we find it to be. We will no longer be
afraid!"

There was sporadic cheering, and more
applause, but the crowd seemed to be a bit confused. This wasn’t what they
expected.

"I'd like to introduce you to someone.
Thorn, will you join me please."

I groaned quietly, and Tasha kicked me
gently in the ankle. I took her hand in mine, and she escorted me through the
crowd, which opened to make way for us. I left her at the edge of the rostrum,
and stepped up onto it.

"Very few people have formally met
this man. Most of those who have, were guilty of some crime, and are no longer
in our society. During the last week of the war, he acted as both a civilian
judge, and as an admiral, even though he was neither. Yet he is the reason the
war is over. He took it upon himself to find out why we were fighting, and to
stop it."

She looked around the room, and then at me,
before looking back at the cameras.

"He succeeded, where every single
politician, admiral, and general has failed. He made peace happen. So you know
what I did? I offered to make him a king. He has a unique skill set, and had he
wanted to, he could have taken leadership from me, and set himself up as a
king. But what did he do? He refused. Not only did he refuse us, the military
dictatorship which has ruled our cousins for centuries, is gone, to be replaced
with civilian elections."

She looked at me again. She could see I
wasn’t very happy, but she grinned at me anyway.

"This man standing here isn’t used to
the limelight. He's not a politician, or career military. He is however, an
excellent judge. The cabinet, and what few senior military we have left, met
yesterday, and decided to make this formal. Mr. Thorn, you are confirmed as
Judge Thorn, with a roving bench, and Colonel Thorn, Military Justice
Office."

From a pocket, she removed a small box, and
handed it to me. She held out her other hand, and we shook. She motioned me to the
microphones.

"Thank you. No offense, but I hope to
never meet any of you face to face after tonight."

I stepped back, and the crowd laughed. She
was grinning as well, but stepped back to say more.

"Judge Thorn has no office. He needs
no office. He comes and goes as he wishes to. His only concern is the guilty.
Don’t be guilty."

She said it with a menace in her voice, but
spoiled it with an extra-large grin, which she threw all around the room. I
couldn’t help but grin with her. She continued when the crowd had settled down,
and I was standing with Tasha again. I idly slipped the box into a pocket,
unopened.

"There will be a campaign medal
presented to combatants soon. This will be awarded to military and civilians
who fought to keep us safe. It will also be awarded to the next of kin of those
who died to keep us safe."

She paused.

"And I sincerely hope we never have to
make another one. Thank you for coming, and please, enjoy the rest of the
evening."

Tasha must have seen my expression.

"What's wrong my love?"

"I never did find out why the war
started."

She laughed at me, and dragged me back out
onto the dance floor.

Fifty four

I woke slowly, like climbing up from a dark
abyss.

I wasn’t on the ship. That much was
obvious, even to a brain barely functioning.

My eyes wouldn't focus, so I wasn’t sure
where I was for several minutes.

I'd taken Sasha back to her command, and
Bentley back to his ship, at the end of the ball. The girls waited for me, and
I took us all back to the ship. We locked the ship up, and went to bed.

But bed wasn’t where I thought it was, and
Tasha wasn’t with me. My head throbbed, like one of the migraines I used to
have. There were still bottles of the tablets in my stateroom, so I moved a
tablet bottle to my hand, followed it with a bottle of water, and took a
tablet. By the time my eyes had focused, my head was settling down.

There was actually nothing to focus my eyes
on. The room was dark. I could feel the confines of a single size bed. But
nothing much else.

My mind went to needing a lit candle, and
one appeared on a small table next to the bed. The dim light showed a very
small room, with only the bed and table in it. There was a door, but it was
closed. No light showed around its edges, which meant it was designed to be
fully sealed.

So, where was I? And why?

The how was pretty easy to guess. Sleepy
gas introduced through the station air connection was the most likely. Knock us
out, cut out the airlock, take us at their leisure.

Bad move. Someone was going to regret this.
The next question was, why did they think they'd get away with it? Did they
actually think they had me contained?

Answer, yes. The how was easy when my sight
looked through the walls. They were lead lined. Someone thought lead would stop
me being able to do magic? I couldn’t stop myself chuckling for a moment.

So where was everyone else? My sight found
a passageway outside the door, and I randomly chose right. The next cell was
empty, as was the next five. The one after had Tasha in it. She was sitting
calmly on the bed, saying something over and over.

"Stay calm Thorn. Stay calm
Thorn."

I moved her to the beach outside my house.

"Thanks Thorn. Stay calm, will you
please?"

I wrote 'I'm perfectly calm' in the sand in
front of her.

"Good, stay that way. Get the others
out too, and come join us."

I brought my sight back, and continued
exploring. Several more empty cells along, I found Jen pounding on the door,
and swearing away at it. I waited until she hit the door next, and moved her to
the beach a short way away from Tasha. She promptly fell over, but a smile lit
up her face.

Two more down, I found Jess. She was doing
pushups next to the bed. I moved her, and she lost her rhythm, and ended up
face in the sand. Jen helped her up, but she and Tasha were laughing.

Predictably, Lea was several more along
again. She'd partly dismantled her bed, and was standing waiting for the door
to open, ready to brain whoever came in. I moved her to the beach, without the
improvised weapon, and reassembled her bed.

With nothing to see, I removed the candle,
and lay back. Comfortable wasn’t an option, but I did my best. If they thought
I couldn’t do magic behind lead, I wasn’t going to give them any warning they
were wrong. I really wanted light, and my reading tablet, but, it would give
the game away. So I zoned out, and let time pass. It remained to be seen if they
came for me first, or one of the girls. I’d hear the commotion if they found
them missing, at which point, they'd know.

With nothing better to do, I examined the
people airlock for the ship. They had in fact, cut the entire hatch out, both
inside and outside. The airlock was totally open now, which besides being
illegal, was incredibly stupid. If for any reason the ship undocked, the
station would decompress before the station side airlock doors could close.

Just for a moment, I was sorely tempted,
but I managed to control the thought before something bad happened.

Instead, I replaced the hatches, triggered
the station airlock to close, and moved the ship to my ship parking area.

Getting bored by the minute, I sent my
sight left, looking for an entrance. After a time, I found an elevator. It took
a while to follow the shaft to the surface, where I found a military base. A
largely deserted one.

So I was deep underground, as well as
behind lead. I had an inkling of where this was going. One of the girls had
actually warned me of this, but it being more than five years ago, I couldn’t
remember who. But I did recall the bit about a cell somewhere isolated.

I'd known all along this was likely to
happen, which was yet another reason for putting myself out of stupid's way.

I sighed. At the gravesite, I added several
things.

In the distance, the elevator shaft hummed.
I waited in the dark to find out who the stupidest person on the planet was.
The whine stopped, and the clomp of boots on the metal floor began. They came
progressively closer, as if the owner of the boots was in no real hurry.

Before they arrived outside the door,
bright light flooded the room. Eyes adjusted to the dark, were scrunched
tightly shut in order to not be blinded, and I had to make an effort to not do
something about the lights. I finally opened my eyes, and adjustment was swift.

The boots made it to the door, it opened,
and he walked in, pushing the door behind him. It thunked closed with a
satisfying echo. I knew him.

"Hello major. I ordered room service.
Did you see them at all? I'm starving."

It was the same major who'd tried to force
the girls back into military service, and failed. The first time.

"Cut the crap Thorn."

"So no breakfast?"

"Only if you co-operate."

"What with?"

"Undoing what you've done."

"Ah."

I let the word hang there in the air, to
see how he'd react. He didn’t, just waited for me to react. I finally gave in.

"And why would I?"

"Because we have your crew in the next
cells."

"And?"

"You really don’t want to find out."

"I really do."

"You have a day to agree to work with
us. If you don’t, one of your women friends will be shot."

"That's it? One will be shot? And
presumably for each day I refuse, you'll shoot another one?"

"Yes."

"And what will you do when they're all
dead?"

"Rough you up."

"And when that doesn’t work?"

"We'll bring random people here, and
kill them until you give in."

One track mind. Almost logical too. Except
logic has a fatal flaw. If the premise is garbage, the entire logic structure
is meaningless. I changed tack.

"On what basis do you shoot war
heroes?"

"Heroes? You're all traitors!"

"Are we now? We stopped a senseless
war. That makes us traitors?"

"Yes. Now are you going to agree to
work with us, or do I send in someone to rough the pretties up first?"

"You didn't learn anything, did you? I
really should send you to them, so they can beat the shit out of you, and prove
just who the 'pretty' is."

"You can't send anything anywhere. We
know what you are now. And your magic won't work in here."

I grinned at him.

"Major, you have never been more wrong
in your entire life. I find you guilty of treason, kidnapping, and threatening
death on others. Sentence is death. Do you have any last statement to
make?"

He laughed at me.

"The admiral said you’d be like
this."

"Which admiral?"

"You'll see."

"Good. You can watch each other
die."

"You are so pathetic, you know that?
Stripped of your powers, and you still think you can boss people around. Well
you’re wrong."

"No major. You’re wrong."

I moved him to next to the grave stones,
and used my sight to observe him. He looked around, with a growing sense of
terror on his face, until he saw the sign, with the shovel leaning up against
it. I was finally sick of saying the same thing all the time. Hence the sign.
I’d added to the message, just a bit.

'There is no food or water for five
days. Choose a direction, or dig your own grave with the shovel. If you choose
the hole, jump on in, and I'll fill it in when you’re dead. If you choose a
direction, or refuse to dig a hole, your body will rot where you fall. Choose
now.'

"You can't do this!" he yelled.

'I already did,' appeared in the sand at his feet.

I've never heard anyone scream quite like
that before, and I don’t want to again.

Fifty Five

By lunch time it was clear nothing was
going to happen any time soon. The admiral hadn't turned up, there was no sign
of food, and it was more than likely whatever happened next was dependent on
the major turning up to get it started.

I cast around looking for anyone above, and
did find several people in the main kitchen. They had food prepared, but it
didn’t look very inviting. I suggested to them they bring me lunch fit for an
admiral.

About half an hour later, the elevator came
down, footsteps hurried along, and the door opened. Two men brought in a tray
loaded with a selection of cold cuts of meat, salad, what looked like hot soup,
and fresh bread. One of them pulled a bottle out of a shoulder bag, and
uncorked a red wine. The other pulled out a goblet from his bag, and I was
presented with the goblet, wine bottle going on the table behind the food. They
bowed, and left, closing the door behind them. I gave them the impression the
other prisoners were all fed already.

The soup was delicious, the bread still
warm, the cold cuts and salad quite adequate, and the wine was a very bad idea.
I drank some of it with the food, but sent the bottle to Tasha.

"Come home Thorn," I heard her
say. "Nothing good will happen if you stay there."

The odd glass of alcohol wasn’t a problem
these days. Five years before, I'd had no real tolerance for alcohol, but after
years of drinking my own conjured beer, one glass was nothing. And it had been
a filling meal. I'm not sure it was up to admiral's standard, but it was good
enough all the same.

The afternoon started to wear thin, and I
gave up waiting with nothing to do, moving my pad and tablet to the bed, and a
brick of water bottles in the corner. Not one used to lounging around in sleep
wear, I shifted into my Colonel uniform, vanished the bed, copied a lounge
chair into the now available space, pulled a water out, and caught up with what
was going on. Which wasn’t much, so I put the pad away, and went back to where
I was in my reading.

An evening meal turned up without me
prodding them. And this was fit for an admiral. If they noticed the bed was
missing, neither of them said anything. They took away the lunch tray, failed
to mention the missing bottle, and again with the impression all prisoners had
been fed.

I finished my dinner in a leisurely manor,
and sent the tray back to the kitchen.

The walls on each side of the cell
vanished, as did the beds and tables inside. I copied the lounge chair, and set
both of them up so two people could converse in comfort, with a coffee table
between them. I figured I’d be visited shortly to remind me of the deadline for
joining them. The cell still looked stark and uninviting, so I added a nice
carpet to the floor, and hung some art I remembered liking on the walls.

Several hours later, the elevator started its
way down again. I set my tablet down on the table, and waited for whoever it
was to arrive. In due time, footsteps stopped outside the door, and it opened.
A man stepped through, and I slammed it shut behind him.

His eyes went wide as he took in the altered
cell.

"Welcome Colonel. Make yourself
comfortable."

"I'll stand."

"You'll sit."

He sat.

"I was expecting an admiral."

"He'll be along in the morning. He
expected it would take you all night to reach the inevitable decision."

"No, it was never going to take that
long."

"You're ready to join us now?"

"No. I have no intentions of joining
you."

"What about your crew? He will kill
them you know."

"He thinks he will."

"Take it from me, he will."

"Take it from me, he cant."

"Cant?"

"Cant."

"We have them in the cells further
along this level."

"You only think you do."

"The kitchen staff told me they were
all fed."

"So they think."

He looked around the room again.

"You're not powerless, are you?"

"No. Whoever thought lead would
contain me has been reading too many novels."

"Are you going to judge me?"

"Do you need judging?"

He sighed.

"Yes."

I copied paper and a pen in front of him on
the table.

"Please make a complete list of all
the people involved in this kidnapping. Names, ranks, and positions."

He tried to resist, but the compel I put
behind my words had him reaching for the pen. While he wrote, I asked him more
questions.

"What are you guilty of Colonel?"

"I authorized the plan for kidnapping
you all."

"Do really believe a military coup was
the best thing?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"There's a war to be won, and the
civilians won't give us the funds to build enough new ships and
divisions."

"What war?"

"The one with the orange devils."

"They're your cousins."

"They're aliens. They have to be
destroyed."

"Have you killed anyone?"

"No. But I've given the orders."

"Fine. Finish that list for me."

"Yes sir."

When he finished the list, which covered
several pages, he looked up at me.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Penal colony. You'll join some of
your superiors there."

"Do I get to say goodbye to my
wife?"

"You have your pad with you?"

"Yes."

"Use that. Be quick."

He was quick. As soon as the connection was
ended, I moved him to the center of the island. Without his pad.

Fifty Six

The admiral turned up first thing the next
morning.

But then, the cell was back the way it'd
been. I'd spent a comfortable night in a large soft bed, eaten a really good
breakfast, and set things back.

Knowing I'd be leaving soon, I checked the
rest of the place out for other prisoners, but found no-one. Higher floors
looked like they hadn't been used in years. Which is probably why this group
had chosen the place.

The list was on the prime minister's desk,
with the recommendation she have all of them arrested for treason, and brought
to a single location. I'd actually left them at the foot of her bed, and being
an early riser, she'd moved them to her desk. Her aide had already taken a
copy.

The admiral when he turned up, turned out
to be more senior than I’d expected. He wore three wide stripes. The Colonel's
list had ranked him simply as admiral, and his position as 'retaliation fleet
command', which made him the boss of the secret fleet. It explained why he'd
not been caught up with the high command already. And now I thought about it,
there hadn't been a three star admiral in the whole group. Now I knew why.

Once again, entry was quick, and the door
was closed behind him, and until he had it closed, he hadn't taken the time to
properly look at me. When he did, he found me in full uniform.

Before he could say anything, I moved us
both to the desert, not far from the graves and sign. I did a double-take when
I saw the sign, as it was lying flat on the ground. The shovel was nowhere to
be seen. However there was a slightly larger than shovel size of disturbed sand,
so I assumed the major had buried the shovel. There was no sign of him. A blink
later, and the sign was up again, and the shovel leaning against it.

"Shit!" exclaimed the admiral.

"Not around here, but I can organize
some if you want it."

"Smart arse."

Two lounge chairs appeared, and I waved him
into one. The sun was hot, and he was already wiping away sweat from his
balding head. He grunted, but sat all the same. He was surprised, but not yet
defeated. I wondered why.

"Whose idea was it to use lead?"

"Mine."

"You read a lot of super hero books
then?"

"My son did. But you're no hero."

"I never said I was."

"Could've fooled me. The way the PM
was going on about you. Might as well be wearing tights and cape."

"Not my style. Besides, I don’t do
rescues."

"You'll wish you did soon."

"But not today."

"The day is young. Why bring me
here?"

"It's become something of an office
for me."

"You like the heat?"

"Not as such. But a judge should be
under some discomfort while judging. Don’t you think?"

"No. The judges I know all like their
creature comforts. As do I."

"Maybe they need judging too."

"Am I being judged?"

"Should you be?"

I added as much compulsion to tell the
truth as I could. He fought it.

"Yes."

The word was drawn out.

"Have you killed anyone admiral?"

"Of course I have. I've sent men into
battle. There are always casualties."

"Ever sent a ship on a suicide
mission?"

"Yes."

"Ever killed someone yourself?"

He fought it again.

"Yes."

"Then you are guilty."

"Yes."

"Anything to say before I pronounce
sentence?"

He looked at his time piece. And smiled.

"You're too late to save your
friends."

"How so?"

"My instructions if I was not on the
elevator coming back up within five minutes, was to put a mini-nuke down the
elevator shaft. I assumed you would have killed me, like you did the major and
colonel, both of whom haven’t been seen since they visited you. It will have
gone off by now."

"If you thought I'd kill you, why come
down at all?"

"Your friend the PM forced me to
retire yesterday. I came home expecting to be head of the new high command, and
I get retired. Some thanks for a life of service. I figured I had a chance yet
to get back on top, if you agreed to join us, or if not, I'd go out with a
bang."

"A life spent in unnecessary killing."

"So you say."

"What of the men working above ground?
The cooks? Security guards?"

"Collateral damage."

I looked at him.

"If I gave you a big red button, which
if pressed, would destroy everything, would you press it?"

His face came alive.

"To have that sort of power? To end
everything with a single finger? YES! I would press it."

I wasn’t surprised. I looked at him, as he
slowly brought himself back to reality. But I was actually looking at the place
where we'd been held. There was nothing there now but a very large hole in the
ground. Emergency services vehicles were beginning to arrive, but they couldn’t
get close. There was nothing at all left of the entire base.

"That was more than a mini-nuke,
wasn’t it?"

"I asked for what would do the job. If
someone overestimated it, it's not my fault."

"Not your fault? For killing cooks and
guards?"

"And your friends."

"You didn’t kill my friends."

He sighed.

"When did you move them?"

"Minutes after I woke up
yesterday."

"Well, it's your fault those men are dead."

"You're a monster."

"Takes one to know one."

He had a point. And I was glad he was the
last one I had to deal with.

Fifty Seven

"About time," said Tasha as we
appeared on the beach.

The admiral went sprawling in the sand,
since I'd added the intent to the move, he fall face first into the sand on
arrival. He groaned, and tried to get up.

Jen arrived like a whirlwind, and kicked
him in the head so solidly, he was flipped over, and passed out.

"I was wondering why we'd not seen
this piece of shit."

I looked at her seriously, but the girls
were grinning.

"And he is?"

"The bastard of all bastards."

"Colourful, but not particularly
enlightening."

"Who do you think cuts all the
orders?"

"Any in particular your problem?"

"Friends sent on suicide missions. Friends
sent to hold a line with no retreat orders. Good people sacrificed on his alter
of military ambition."

"So he's a bad guy?"

She kicked him again.

I changed my mind about feeding him to the
sharks here. He was a shark. He'd probably eat them. Besides, I had no beef
with sharks, and poisoning them wasn’t fair on them.

I looked up the beach, and a shuttle
appeared. I made its engines vanish, removed the life support, and ensured it
was air tight. I looked at the admiral, still out, and moved him into the
pilot's seat. The seat restraints engaged around him, and I made sure they
couldn’t be removed.

I looked around at the girls.

"The sun looks good today," said
Jen.

I nodded, and the shuttle vanished. The
move command had included a push after the move, and the shuttle started moving
towards the center of the sun. I figured he'd come too, just in time to find he
didn’t have much air left, and with the entire view in front of him being hot
angry sun. He'd either run out of air first, or be vaporized by the sun. I
really didn’t care which.

"You were right," I said to
Tasha. "I should have come back yesterday."

"What happened?"

"He blew up the whole base we'd been
taken to. People died."

"You can't blame yourself for that, my
love."

She hugged me, and I hugged her back.

"Yes I can," I whispered.

She pushed me away, but held me at arm's
length.

"Then go fix it."

"How?"

"You know."

I did know.

"It's risky."

"I know. Worth it."

I stepped back from her, and looked at the
others. Jen smiled, and nodded.

"Be back soon."

I jumped.

Fifty Eight

I overshot by about half an hour.

Or at least it was that long I waited for
the admiral to arrive. He came in a convoy of a car and two trucks. I watched
him from a vantage point as he watched the first truck being unloaded.

I'd already located every person in the
area, and now I added the soldiers who were now wheeling a large box towards
the entrance. They vanished inside, and I followed them with my sight.

At the elevator, the box was opened, a much
smaller device was extracted from it, and laid on a small hand trolley. The
admiral stood over it, bent down, inserted a key, and tapped it with his finger
a few times. The key was removed, and he went to the open elevator doors.
Holding them open, he waited while the bomb was wheeled inside.

"Wait for me outside."

I startled. He'd told me he'd given orders
to drop a nuke down the shaft if he failed to return. The bastard had lied!

I watched him heading down the shaft, and
at the bottom, he wheeled it out, turned to the left, and took it into the
first cell he came to. Door closed, he started walking towards me.

Now I saw what he was planning. Had I
decided to work with them, we'd have left together, and the bomb would have
killed my friends. Or so he thought. If I’d told him no, or killed him, we'd
have all been killed. Or again, so he thought.

I looked at the device. I had no idea how
to disarm it. So my options were moving it, vanishing it, or leaving it alone.
Moving it could have all sorts of unknowable consequences. Leaving it would
destroy this base.

I was about to vanish it, when I suddenly
started shivering.

"Oh fuck me!"

What the hell was I doing? I’d almost sent
a nuke back to where my vanished stuff went, and maybe killed everyone I knew
in my first life. Maybe this was why my second life civilization had vanished?
Maybe up until now, the course of events had always led to this moment of
stupidity, and resulted in wiping away a whole civilization, and thousands of
years of history.

Fortunately there was no-one nearby to hear
me swear.

I brought my sight back, and started moving
everyone to an open field a good distance away. Last of all, I moved myself to
be between the men and the base, and put up a force wall in front of me. I
didn't have to wait long.

The bomb exploded, and the force of the
blast whipped around and over us, but leaving us untouched. Buildings and trees
around the now smoking hole were not so lucky, but as far as I could tell
sweeping my sight around the whole area, no-one had been hurt.

The men behind me were all stunned. A few
of them looked more surprised to still be alive. Some of them started running
towards the crater, and I moved myself before they came too near. There were
sirens in the distance.

I found a comfortable place to sit, and
watched the girls on the beach, until I showed up with the admiral. I winced
when Jen kicked him, as from this vantage point, it looked a lot more damaging
than I'd thought. I kept watching, and when the shuttle vanished, I shifted my
sight to space, and watched it melt some way short of the sun. No engines, so
no shields, so heat melts metal. I made a point of not looking at what happened
to the admiral, but with no life support, which included cooling, he must have
cooked inside the metal shell, long before it melted.

If he was lucky, he never woke up. Unlucky,
and his last moments must have hurt. I found myself hoping Jen had kicked him
hard enough he never woke up.

With nothing left to do, I jumped to the
prime minister's office. She wasn’t there, but one of her minions informed me
the people on the list were being rounded up. They were apparently being asked
if they preferred a trial and life captivity at hard labour, or if they would
much rather go to a penal colony. Would I be so kind as to check in later in
the day, to take the colony choosers away? I said I would.

A blink later, I was back on the beach.

"All saved?" asked Tasha.

"Yes."

"Something went wrong?" asked
Jen.

"Nearly. I almost sent the nuke I
feared I might have sent, back to my first life home."

"How big was the hole?" asked
Tasha. I described it for her. "It wasn’t a nuke then. Very high yield
explosive device, but not really a nuke."

"He called it a mini-nuke."

"Ah. Still not a nuke though. Not that
anyone blown up with it could tell the difference."

"The bastard lied to me."

"Why does that surprise you?"
asked Lea.

"It doesn’t. But he intended to kill
all of you, regardless of my decision."

"Sounds like him," said Jen.

"Is he gone now?" asked Jess.

"Yes. The shuttle melted."

"Good riddance," said Jen.

"Shall we celebrate for lunch?"
asked Tasha.

Fifty Nine

There were still several last loose threads
to deal with.

After lunch I jumped to the island I'd sent
the remaining crews, before their ships disintegrated on my force wall, over
their homeworld. I went with orange skin, and inquisitor insignia.

The island had very little going for it.
Beaches around the outside, low trees behind the dunes, and mainly grass and
small bushes inland. It was a windswept blob in the middle of the ocean, and
was nowhere near big enough for the number of people I’d dropped on it. They'd
made a good start on providing themselves with basic shelter, utilizing the
containers and pallets their food and water had been stored in.

I'd chosen a spot to appear in, nearby the
senior captain, where he'd see me appear. I recognized him as the one who'd
stood up to his admiral while I’d been watching once.

His shock rippled outward as he saw me
standing there all of a sudden, and all activity stopped. Some of them dropped
to their knees.

"Are you the one responsible for us
being here?" the captain asked me.

"Yes. And I apologize for how long
it's been too."

"Apologize? We should be thanking you
for us still being alive. I assume our ships are gone?"

"All of them. I was trying to get your
leaders to spare the rest of you, but they refused, so I moved all the crews
here."

"Moved us? If it wasn’t heresy to say
so, one would think you practiced magic."

"I do. And it's no longer heresy. Your
new marshal is changing things."

"New marshal?"

I explained what had happened, and the
changes now being made.

"The inquisitors are really
gone?"

"They are. Any remnants of them will
be picked up by the police forces on each planet."

"But you wear the uniform."

I shifted back to my judge uniform, and
changed my skin colour. There was a lot of exclamations of surprise, and even
more dropped to their knees.

"Now I understand. You were the one
who vanquished us."

"No, I kept throwing you away, so
you'd get the message there was no fair fight to be had."

"The admirals didn’t think that way,
and it was heresy to suggest it."

"I know. They’ve paid for it
too."

"Did you kill them?"

"Most of them went to a penal
colony."

"The marshal?"

"He is dead. As is the senior general
for my people."

"What becomes of us?"

"What do you want to happen?"

"Most of us want to go home."

"I understand you're all draftees? How
many will want to stay in the military?"

"Some. I'd like to help rebuild the
fleet. Did you actually leave any ships intact?"

"The so-called secret fleet remains,
but it's been broken up, and sent to each of the jump points out of your space.
The four ships we mauled when entering your space, are safely at your shipyard.
Both sides have about the same fleet size, and all of them are tasked to border
protection, with a neutral system between our spaces."

"Do we have any senior flag officers
left?"

"Only the secret fleet commander, but
he was going to be retired. I've not checked if he was or not. Both sides need
to rebuild their flag ranks with officers who care about their people."

"And if we get more of the same?"

"They'll be judged."

"By you?"

"Yes."

"What are our options?"

"Those who wish to remain in the
military should form one group. Those who wish to go home for civilian life,
should form another. Anyone you or your captains consider a threat to peace, or
the coming elections and civilian government, should be put in another
group."

"There are a few. The inquisitors
usually had at least one set of eyes on each ship, and I wouldn’t trust any of
them. Several of the captains joined the military voluntarily, and aspire to
flag rank. I think those should go to your penal colony."

"I'll go with your judgment, but be
warned. If I find you're doing the opposite, you'll end up there
yourself."

"Fair enough. Where can I tell those
going to the penal colony they're going?"

"The only ships available for anyone
to go too directly, are those ones in the shipyard. You can tell them they'll
be going there. Your military group will be going to command HQ for
reassignment. The rest to the other side of the building for retirement."

"Fine. I'll get on with it."

It took over an hour for him to talk to
everyone in small groups, starting with the captains, and for each group to
form in a different place. There were after all, thousands of people here.

The penal group were moved first, set down
not far inland from the main beach, since the beach itself didn’t have a large
enough unused area to put them.

The soon to be civilian group moved to a
courtyard outside the section of their HQ used for retirements. They'd need to
adapt to a group being released from the military early, instead.

The captain and his group I moved to
another courtyard, adjacent to the operations section, and flag offices.

This left one more group. I walked over to
them. There appeared to be some hundred people left, almost equally of men and
women.

One of them came forward.

"We'd like to stay."

"Here?"

"Yes."

"It'll be a hard life. There's not
much here."

"We know. But we don’t want to go
home, or to anywhere in our space. This island is so isolated, we hope we never
get disturbed being here."

"How will you eat once the food runs
out?"

"There's fresh water here in several
places, and plenty of fish. All we'd really ask for is some proper tools, and
fishing gear."

"Make a list, I'll see you get
them."

"Thank you."

"A warning though. This planet has no
seasons. It will always be like this. The penal colony is around the other side
of this world, on a bigger and better island. I don’t recommend you go there,
no matter how it gets here. One way takes you into the freezing cold, and the
other way takes you into the perpetually really hot. And that’s just around the
equator. Are you really sure you want to stay here?"

There was a chorus of yes behind him.

"Okay. I'll send you your list as soon
as I can. I'll also leave a ward here. If the island becomes uninhabitable, or
you desperately need something, call my name, and I’ll come."

"What's your name?"

"Thorn."

Sixty

Moving people seemed to be the theme of the
afternoon.

When I arrived at the parliament building,
I found all those on the treason list prepared by the colonel, had been rounded
up. Just to be sure, I tested each of them with a 'tell the truth' compulsion,
to ensure only the guilty were punished. I needn't have bothered though. The
Colonel had been accurate. And complete. One by one, I moved them all to the
penal main beach.

I had one of the PM's aides take me to a
sports store which catered to beach fishing. I sent ten copies of everything in
the section to the middle of the island. The variations of each thing would
provide enough for everyone to have something to use.

Next stop was a hardware store, where I
sent every type of tool they had, which didn’t require mains power, including
general tools like shovels, picks, bars, saws, and chisels. But they would
still need power generation to recharge batteries, so the next stop was
military.

I sent a copy of their aid relief
containers, which also included power generators similar to those used in small
ships. Not needing fuel, and rated for fifty years, I thought they'd be enough
for the small colony. I also sent several battery powered vehicles which could
lift pallets, and tow containers. The aid relief also included rapid build
housing modules, sufficient to build a colony hub, and more tents than they'd
likely need.

All in all, I hoped it was enough. I made a
note on my pad to check in on them periodically. I wasn’t at all sure leaving
them there was a good idea. There was no real day or night. No change of
seasons. Just a constant always like this. Anyway, they wanted to stay, so I’d
make sure they thrived. If not, I could always find them a better place.

Once back at the parliament, I asked for
summaries of the court cases of all the judges. Scattered as they were around
the planets, there were a lot of them, but I quickly found the ones I needed to
pay a visit to. Cases where slavery, rape, and crimes against people, had all
been dismissed, or too small a sentence had been given out.

I made a quick visit to each judge. I
introduced myself, with most of them going white at my name. Truth compulsion
soon sorted out those who were corrupt, and those who were simply misguided.
The former found themselves on a beach. The latter were warned I’d be watching
them from now on.

I wasn’t going to be, but I left wards in
each court room, which would tell when a trial was going the wrong way. It
would only take a few visits from me at sentencing time over the next week or
so, to make sure they did the correct thing in the future.

Lastly, before going home, I checked the
desert. The sign was broken up into little pieces. The shovel was beside one of
five new holes. The occupants of the holes had all killed themselves. I filled
them in, and left an unmarked gravestone on top. I hadn't seen anyone on my
previous visit, but then, I hadn't been looking either. But they must have been
there watching, while I was talking to the general. Something about it had made
them decide killing themselves was better.

I remade the sign, larger this time, with
both languages on it. And added intent so it couldn’t be pulled up or broken
apart again. The shovel was again leant up against it.

I cast my sight out, looking for those who'd
fallen. When I found a body, I created a grave, and put a blank marker on top.
Quite a few were still going.

One looked like he might actually make it.
He'd cleverly made himself a hat out of plants, which kept his face and neck shaded.
He obviously had some botanical knowledge, as he was carrying plants from which
he sucked the moisture stored in their leaves.

I looked along his path. He was still days
away from the nearest water, but he did have a chance of making it.

Another job for the next week. Checking for
the newly dead, and more burial details.

My last stop was where the city had once
been. Nothing but a monument, with a pad behind glass.

It was a somber note to arrive home on. I
had my peace, but the cost had been high. I’d been called a monster, and just
at this moment, I felt like one.

Tasha caught my mood, and kept things light
over dinner.

Sixty One

"Are you a god, Thorn?"

Tasha was lying next to me, propped up on
one arm, and gazing into my eyes.

"What? Why would you ask something
like that?"

"You have god like powers."

"Not really."

"What would you call them?"

It took me a moment.

"I'm a magician. Nothing more, nothing
less."

"So all magicians are this
powerful?"

"Well, no. But I knew some who
were."

"Who?"

"The Battlemage of our village was at
least as powerful. The mages who tried to kill me were too. And the king certainly
was."

"And yet, the untrained you escaped
them easily."

"I wouldn’t say easily. But I was good
at shielding, even back then."

"And now?"

"And now what?"

"Would any of them be able to
challenge you now?"

I thought about it.

"The king might. I really don’t know
how powerful he was, since he never had much chance to demonstrate it."

"But you escaped him easily."

"He wasn’t expecting someone to be
able to escape him at all. And I think he wanted me alive if at all
possible."

"You said he was trying to kill
you."

"He appeared to be. But maybe he was
only trying to collapse my shield. Anyway, he's so long dead as to not be an
issue."

"So you are a god."

I shook my head, and sighed.

"Not even close. Besides, there must
be magic out there in the galaxy somewhere, and where there is, there will be
someone, or something, who's far more powerful than me."

"What makes you say that?"

"I read books."

She laughed.

"And?"

"When you carry a big gun, there is
always someone with a bigger gun out there."

She looked down my length for a moment, and
grinned.

"Your gun is quite big enough for my
liking."

"Ha-ha."

"So what are you going to do
now?"

"I'm doing it."

"Lying in bed?"

"Partly."

She gave me a speculative look.

"Jen wants to get back to trading
tomorrow."

"Fine with me. Her ship is here. All
it needs is their stuff transferred, and the ship moved into orbit."

"Their stuff? So you're not going with
them?"

"No."

"Why not? I thought you liked it out
in space?"

"I do. But I'm too powerful out
there."

"Why does that matter?"

"They say all power corrupts, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"You really do read too much."

"Well it's true. Power is addictive.
The ability to control people with your power takes control of you the more you
use it."

"But you're wise enough to know when
to use it."

"Maybe. Maybe not. The wisdom about
power is in not using it."

"Huh?"

"The only way to ensure power doesn’t
corrupt you, is when you don’t feel any need to wield it."

"Explain."

"Power should only be used when it's
needed. Not because you want to. Not because someone else wants you to. Not
because you can. Especially not so you can benefit from it, or be recognized
for using it. The use of power has to be detached from ego, and desires. And
used for the best good."

"So you're a super hero."

"I told the admiral I wasn’t
one."

"Why not?"

"Because I've caused too much death to
be one."

"But everything you've done is for the
good of those who can't protect themselves. That's the definition of super
hero."

"You forget how I started out,
stealing things."

"So no-one is perfect."

"It's still a corruption of power.
There are still gold ingots on the ship, which are using power for my own
benefit."

"Super heroes still have to live. And
it's not like you took the gold from people, but from places it hadn't been
mined. So it was a form of mining."

"You can justify anything."

"Sure. But all up, you've done
good."

"Maybe so, more often than not. But
I'm being used by others too much. Sometimes without them asking to be sure,
but you watch, the requests will start coming faster, the longer I'm around.
And that’s something I can't let happen."

"Why not?"

"The problem is, power doesn’t only
corrupt the wielder. It also corrupts the wielder of the wielder, or those who
think they can order or manipulate the wielder."

"You mean the admiral?"

"Yes, but not just him. Given time,
the prime minister, and anyone who replaces her, will come to expect me to do
their bidding. It's already begun."

"How?"

"The request to move those on the list
who preferred the penal colony."

"But you moved them without
comment."

"Sure. It was the best thing for them.
But I did it because it was right, not because I was asked. Over time, a lot of
little asks become the expectation of doing a demand. And when someone demands
I do their bidding, or threatens other people to get me to do their bidding,
corruption takes over everything."

"Like the admiral did. But the PM
isn’t the admiral."

"Not now. But who knows in the future?
I can't take that risk."

"But you proved today you can fix
anything which went wrong."

"Can I? Can you see all
consequences?"

"Well no, but I don’t have to."

"Everyone should be looking for
consequences before they act."

"How was saving people this morning
generating consequences?"

"We don’t know what happens after.
They died, and there was the consequences of that. Then they didn’t die, and a
whole different set of consequences arise. And it's not even that simple. I
don’t know if what I did going back for them changed anything, as I may have
been there anyway, and they didn’t die at all. I only think I made a choice to
go back and save them, but there is no context to prove it one way or the
other. When you mess with time, the consequences are…"

I searched for the right word, but didn’t
find it. The only thing which did fit, was too childish to actually say.

"Are you talking about now, or back in
your first life?"

"Both."

"You've thought about going back
again, haven’t you?"

"Yes. I can't get rid of the thought I
caused the destruction of a whole civilization."

"Have you figured out how to go
back?"

"No."

"So no problem then."

"No problem. As long as I stay hidden
here, where those with ambitions can't find me."

"Someone will eventually. Pirates
did."

"Yes, but hopefully that will be a
long way off. Or by then, I’ll be able to hide the planet so they look, not
find, and go away thinking there is nothing here worth coming back for."

"Hide two planets you mean?"

She was grinning.

"I guess so."

She kissed me, and for a while we were too
busy with each other to say anything. Eventually, we rolled over, and I tried
to sleep.

"Goodnight my super hero!"

Sixty Two

I didn’t sleep well.

The whole super hero thing upset me at a
core level. I was no hero, by any definition. And while powerful, I wasn’t
super in any sense of the word. A god? Please. It was all just a bad nightmare.

The morning brought sadness. I took
everyone to the bridge of Jen's ship, we moved everything from Thorn's Chariot,
and said our goodbyes.

They knew we weren't coming with them,
without needing to ask. Jess gave me a bear hug, and Lea a lot gentler one.

Jen surprised me by hugging me for a long
time.

"Thanks Thorn, for everything."

"You're welcome."

"Promise to stay in touch?"

"Our pads work, so send to them."

"We will."

Unspoken was what to do if they really
needed me again. I'd placed wards on the ship, so if they did get into serious
trouble, I’d know about it well before any message could arrive. I think Jen
understood this. She knew I wouldn’t let them get into danger again, without
being there for them.

Tasha had also completed her hugs now.

They took their chairs, and Jen nodded to
me. I moved the ship into a very high orbit, Jen fired up the engines, and
tested all the systems. When she was satisfied, she nodded to me.

"Seeya," I said, and moved us
back to my beach.

High up in the sky was a small dot, which
moved away swiftly. We stood there watching until it was gone.

"Exactly how do our pads work, so far
away from the com systems?"

"Our pads work everywhere."

"Yes, but how?"

"Didn’t I tell you I did magic, my
love?"

She mock hit me on the arm, and laughed.

It was still early for lunch, so we left
our clothes at the top of the beach.

We ran hand in hand down into the water.

Sixty Three

Over the next few weeks, I finished the
work I’d set in motion, and updated this pad in the monument, with my second
journey out into space.

Once again, I'm leaving this record here,
to be found if anyone ever comes here again.

I still don’t know why cousins should have
always been at war with each other, and what started it.

I still have no idea what happened to the
advanced civilization I lived amongst for two years, or even why it vanished.
But I can't help thinking it must have been something I did. Or didn’t do.

Somehow, being Today's Spacemage, has
changed the past. I can't not do something, but the risk of trying is huge.

In all likelihood as you read this, I'm
long dead now. I may or may not update this record. Perhaps not. What happens
to me now, isn’t really relevant. I ended a pointless war, set two
civilizations on a better path, and that’s all that matters in the long run.

I'll leave it to you, to be the judge of if
what I did, was good or bad, right or wrong.

Things were, things are, and things happen.

We make choices, and we live with them.

I lived with mine.

But this time, I wasn't alone.

Thorn.

Last survivor of a planet which was never
named.

Thorn will return,

in

Tomorrow's Spacemage.

Acknowledgements

Thanks goes to Kalen O'Donnell for
the cover design for this book, and Egosoft for the ship image.

A Message to my Readers

I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book,
although it wasn’t planned when I wrote Yesterday's Spacemage. This is now book
2 of a trilogy, and I must admit, I'm enjoying writing more of Thorn, and being
in the head of a character who cares nothing for technology, and how things
work in space. Book 3 is coming, so there is more story to tell.

If you have enjoyed this book, I hope you
will take the time to leave a review. All reviews are greatly appreciated, as
they help assist purchasing decisions by other readers.

Sales and reviews help me to focus on my
next project. Sales pay my bills, and my ability to continue writing is
dependent on the sales of this book, my previous series, and what comes after.

I thank you for your support, and hope you'll
continue to read my next book.

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Thank you.

Timothy Ellis

Also by Timothy Ellis

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