Yesterday's Spacemage

By Timothy Ellis

The Spacemage Chronicle, Book One

Copyright © 2017, 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

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

Acknowledgements

A Message to my
Readers

Also by Timothy
Ellis

One

When you're sixteen years old, and it’s the
most important day of your life, the one thing you are not prepared for is
dying.

I mean, why would you be? Who would even
see it coming? Not me.

I'd been waiting for this day for two long
years. More like all my life, but officially two years. At the age of fourteen,
all boys are put through a two year apprenticeship, aimed at finding out what
they have an aptitude for, if the Master's like them enough to want to spend
more years training them, and what each boy actually likes, and wants to do.
You spend a set time with each, and you do what they tell you to do. Liking it
isn’t part of the tasks, but that is what it's supposed to reveal. Among other
things.

On your sixteenth birthday, each boy gets
to choose. Which is why it's called the Day of Choice.

Everyone in the family dresses up, and at
exactly midday, meet with friends and their families at the town hall. There
the Masters gather, cast their evaluations into the choice box, from which the
Mayor draws each one, and announces it.

The choice box is divided up into slots,
each one for a life choice, and specifically ordered, so each announcement is
always drawn in the same order, from lowest to highest. The assumption is a boy
destined for a higher calling, will always get a yes to each of the lower ones.
On this basis, the one thing every boy dreads is four no's in a row, because at
that point, everything stops.

So one of two things happens normally. The
boy waits until he gets four no's, and makes a choice from the yes's. Or he
waits for all of them to be announced, suffering dread with each no, and still
having reached the end, chooses what he really wants to do. Of course, we all
hope for the latter. The majority though, suffer from limited choice.

On some days, more than one boy goes
through this. And dare I call it an ordeal, because this is your whole future
on the line here. In this case, you go in order of birth time, so whoever goes
last has the longest to wait.

And believe me, the waiting is a killer!
Fortunately, today there's only me.

You don’t sleep the night before. You can't
eat the morning meal. Your mouth goes dry no matter how much you drink. And
drinking too much has side effects. Your mother fusses over your clothes, and
you feel like puking. You can't concentrate, and become clumsy. So we get told,
and so it was.

The walk to the town hall at least eases
the physical symptoms, but this is your future about to be decided. And here's
the irony.

It's decided by the Masters, in spite of
the choice being made by the boy. Because the Masters are the ones who make the
offers. No offer, no choice. And it does happen sometimes. You get a boy who's
not really capable of doing anything right, or one with a really bad attitude,
or who is just plain mean or even evil, and no-one wants to train them. These
boys leave the town, and rarely ever come back.

I had no worries on this count though. I'm
serious and withdrawn until you get to know me, and when you do, you get the
full force of my sense of humour. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, since a
very serious Master hates having a wisecracking boy to train, but all the same,
I don’t consider myself a wisecracker. I'm not even sure I'm funny, although
people do laugh. But I digress.

Arriving at the town hall means meeting and
greeting everyone, thankfully informally. A quick hand shake with those
offering hands, nods to others, and the inevitable hugs from elderly female
relatives.

At the appointed hour, you stand in the
center of the Master's circle, facing the Mayor, and they all decide your fate.
While making you think it's actually your choice.

So there I stood.

Mother gives me a smile. Father is looking
serious to hide his nervousness. The sisters are waiting for me to be left with
options they can laugh at.

The midday bells ring out. No-one moves.
There is no sound. Until after the twelfth bell.

The Mayor takes the box around the circle,
each evaluation is slotted in, and he comes back around to his place, and faces
me.

"Young Thorn," he says,
supposedly to me, but its theater for everyone. "Are you ready to make
your choice?"

"I am," I croaked, causing my
sisters to laugh, before they were quickly silenced by many looks.

"Let us begin."

The first ones are always farming. Basic
farm hand, animal farmer, crop farmer, hunter, mechanic.

Each evaluation comes out deliberately, and
one by one, is flourished, and read out. There is no hurry, only a slow
presentation. The timing for the whole ceremony, never varies by more than a
minute or two.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. No surprise
there. Farming work is a no brainer, animals like me, and I can get the job
done. Bored out of my brain, but doable.

The next ones are all town related. General
maintenance, builder, utilities, administration, town constables. Yes, yes,
yes, yes, and yes. Being a constable was interesting, but I’d hate it. The rest
was more boredom.

After this, you get introduced to the
military, with a period of training first. And this is where most boys bomb
out. If they can't get fit enough, won't take commands, won't take serious
discipline imposed on them, or simply can't handle being a soldier; well these
get the first no. The problem is, this no is quickly followed by four more,
regardless of how you actually did in them. I did manage to make it in the
fitness department, just. And the rest of it was a matter of figuring out the
smart way of doing it, so I wasn’t expecting a no here. Yes.

Training is followed by administration,
mechanicals, weapons, and tactics. And my personal favourite, wargames, which
you only get into if you're good at tactics. Admin bores me, but I can get the
job done. I'm not all that mechanical minded, but like farming, I can do basic
repairs, and while under threat of live fire. I was most disappointed to find I
wasn’t all that good with weapons. But in tactics I excelled, allowing me to win
more often than I lost, simply by out-thinking the opponent. Wargames though.
Introduce some strategy to tactics, and I was almost unbeatable.

The first yes had me breathing again, not
having been aware I'd stopped. And it was followed by yes, yes, yes, yes, and
yes. The weapons yes was a surprise, I have to admit it. Presumably I was
better than I thought I was, or had beaten the averages some way.

At this point, I started noting some
surprised looks. People who should have known me better, wondering how I'd
managed to get so far.

And the truth is, those who get past
training, usually get their first no's here. Those who get a yes on training,
but no's in all the rest, still make good foot soldiers, and usually choose to
be. Those with a yes or two in the next four, will choose the one they liked
the most. It being very rare for someone who yes's on training, to actually
choose something before. The Masters have a lot to do with this. We get told if
we are soldier material or not, and so we mostly know if the training is going
to be a yes or no. The only reason you get the yes, without any other yes's, is
because they still want you to be a soldier. Sometimes there is potential there,
which many years later, becomes a valuable skill, and the Masters can recognize
such a thing in a trainee, even if they're crap at normal military stuff. A lot
of good solid sergeants are made this way.

And now we come to the big ones. Every boy
is tested for magical ability. You either have it, or you don’t. If you didn't,
you were sent back for more military training. If you did, the first yes is
guaranteed. If you actually like magic, this is what you've been waiting for.

Yes. Of course I knew this, but it shocked
everyone except my closest family.

Having demonstrated magical ability, you
receive training in the healing arts, the making arts, the movement arts, and
lastly, Battle Magic. I found I could certainly heal, could make something
small just by thinking it, could move small objects from place to place, or
make them disappear completely, and once, even moved myself a short distance.

But Battle Magic is something else again,
using parts of all of them, and going way beyond. I surprised my Master by
forming an effective shield against both physical and magical attack, almost as
soon as being instructed how.

Yes, yes, yes. No real surprise, I'd
demonstrated enough to show I could become good at any of them, given enough
time.

The Mayor hesitated, uncertainty on his
face, his eyes seeking the Magicians approval to read the last one. The Battle
Mage reluctantly nodded. The crowd became puzzled, and so was I.

I was expecting a no. Although I was good
at what they'd taught me, I'd lost my temper with another student once, and
force punched him clear over the compound wall. It showed I could put a lot
more force in my punch than even I knew I could, but he'd needed a healer, and
a week in bed. I'd spent two days using my 'punch' to demolish an old wall in
the town, as a way of punishing my temper. I’d been convinced right then, I'd
never be accepted as a Battle Mage.

So I didn’t know how to interpret the
tension now evident in the Masters. The Mayor looked back at me.

"Young Thorn. Only a dozen times
before has any boy made it to this point without a no along the way. Only once
before, and never in our town, has a boy not received a no. Most magicians have
a skill in one direction only. Those who can do more, tend to be strong in one,
and weak in the others, so they're only given a yes for the one they're strong
in. Good Battle Mages usually have no's among the mundane work, simply because
magic is wasted on the mundane, and the mundane task cannot hold a mage's
focus, so the boy does badly, without knowing why. A Mage who is good at
healing, making, and moving, usually fails at tactics and strategy, so has
already had several mundane no's, even though they may now get four yes, but a
final no. This happens rarely, and the boy gets to choose where to specialize.
Do you wish to specialize in one of these three branches of magic, young
Thorn?"

Everyone looked at him, dumbfounded. I'd
never heard of someone being asked to choose before the last evaluation was
given. There was a slight look of desperation on his face now, and sweat began
dripping down his cheek.

I had no understanding of what was going
on, and no-one else appeared to either. Except the Mages now all looked
resigned, and were quickly followed by the military, as understanding caught up.
I wish I knew what they obviously did.

Everyone looked from him to me.

"You want me to choose now?" I
stammered.

"Yes lad."

"Why?"

"Because every choice has
consequences, even when you have no idea of them. You have not had a no. If we
don't hear the last evaluation, you will become the second ever to receive all
yes, which will mark you for greatness."

"But will limit me to only one branch
of magic."

"Yes. Perhaps this is not an issue for
you?"

He sounded hopeful. I sighed. My first no.
But it was mine, not theirs, and it didn’t count. I wanted to be a Battle Mage.

"I have to know," I responded,
looking him in the eye.

"So be it, young Thorn. You have
chosen."

This was definitely odd. Being told you'd
chosen was a formality, after you made a formal choice. I hadn't reached that
stage yet, even though I'd indicated I wanted to be able to choose to be a
Battle Mage.

He swept a look around the room, and I
followed his eyes where I could. No-one had any idea what was going on it
seemed. His eyes lingered by the door, on a hooded figure I hadn't known was
standing there. There was no visible face. The hood nodded.

The Mayor plucked out the last evaluation,
looked at it, made brief eye contact with the Battle Mage, and opened his
mouth.

"Yes."

The room went crazy, and so I missed the
entrance of the second hooded man. Both of them moved to the circle of Masters,
and to my alarm, they all rose, and backed away, pulling their chairs with
them. The crowd was forced to back away behind them, jubilation turning to
alarm.

I was left standing to face the two hooded
men.

"Your name is Thorn," said the
shorter man.

"You will bend your knee, and swear
allegiance to the great King above all," said the slightly taller, without
waiting for my answer to the first question.

"What?" I asked, not
understanding anything.

"Jump away and run," said the
voice of the Battle Mage in my head. "Go now."

"You chose to be a Battle Mage,"
said short. "You are only the second boy to receive all yes. Do you know
who the first was?"

"How would I?"

"Your king was the first," said
tall. "You will swear allegiance to him now. He will be your master from
now on."

"What?" I said. "I chose to
be a Battle Mage for this town. I don’t know this king you speak of."

"He knows you. From the moment you
showed magical talent in more than one of the arts, he has been watching
you."

"Spying on me?"

"A king does not spy. He watches. And
you better start showing some respect lad, or else."

I couldn't help it. My temper was fraying
rapidly. Nothing had prepared me for this sort of confrontation. Maybe not
quite true. I'd been bullied before, and found I hated bullies. They pushed a
button I couldn’t stop being pressed. It was why I’d expected the last to be
no. And here I was, having that button pressed again.

"Or else what?"

"You defy your king?"

Short sounded outraged.

"What?" I asked. "I don’t
know what's going on here."

"Kneel or die," yelled Short.
"Do it now."

My eyes went to the town Battle Mage. He
looked angry, but his stance was deliberately open. It was obvious he was
showing he was not about to use any magic to help me, in case he brought the
wrath of the king down on the town.

I raised my eyebrows in his direction. He
nodded.

But I wasn’t given time to summon the
energy to jump myself away. Masters could move themselves in seconds. I
couldn’t.

Tall threw his arm forward, and lightning
surged at me. I responded with a shield, and was immediately surrounded by it.
But it wasn’t powerful enough, so I reached down inside me as I’d been taught,
and summoned forth raw power to boost my shielding. I took the blow without flinching,
and stood there, feet planted solidly.

"What?" roared Short.

And he sent a white ball at me.

I deflected it with a thought. Behind the
magic, I knew I couldn’t hold very long, and began on the jump. Shields are
easy, just call it into being, and it's there. Jumps require a destination you
know well. You needed to focus on the place, check it for a clear place to move
to, lest you jump into a solid object, or worse a person, and then move
yourself. Only I’d never done this behind a shield before.

"Use our magic Thorn," said the
Battle Mage in my head. "Jump as far away as you can."

I could feel the flow of energy to me,
reinforcing my shield as the two hooded mages seemed to throw everything they
had at me. With a thought, I used the shield as a way of using the energy being
thrown at me, and as my shield grew stronger, I siphoned enough out of it to
power my jump.

Both attacking mages now had their hoods
back, and their faces revealed a combination of surprise and horror.

The jump to a secluded glade I knew of
formed in my mind, it was empty, and I prepared to move myself.

Things happened at once.

My mother yelled out my name, causing me to
look in her direction, breaking my concentration.

The Mages threw every last method of attack
they knew at me.

A man wearing a crown on his head appeared
beside them, and threw the largest white ball I’d ever seen into my shields.

I instructed myself to jump.

Everything went white.

Two

They told me I was fished out of the water
by a boat's crew, after having popped to the surface almost in front of them. I
was out cold, and they couldn’t revive me.

I woke up in a white room, with a lot of
metal stuff in it making a lot of light, and with several people dressed in white,
doing things beyond my comprehension. I'd never seen anything like this before,
and understandably, I completely freaked. I'd have thought aliens, only they
were people like me. This was made worse by one of them coming towards me
making noises I didn’t understand. There was a sudden pain in my arm, and
everything went black this time.

When I woke again, I could understand them.
As far as I could later gather, while I slept, they'd used an experimental
teaching gizmo, designed for young kids, to train my brain with basic concepts,
including language. At that point, I could make out what they were saying, but
understood very little of it. However enough took a hold for me to understand I
was in a place of healing, and these were the local healers.

They kept me there for a week. I'd woken up
in pain across most of my body, and especially in my head. They tested me many
different ways to find out why, and while over the week most of my body stopped
hurting, the pain in my head remained. In the end, they gave me a series of
small round things in different colours to swallow, until they found something
which removed the pain. At least for a while. I learned a new word, migraine,
and discovered no-one knew what caused them. Nor did anyone seem to care about
finding out, beyond the basic tests already done.

They asked me questions I couldn't answer.
Where was I from? How did I get into the water? Since I had no reference to
where I was, where I was from couldn’t be answered. I had no idea how I came to
be in the water, so there was no answer to give. At one point I mentally yelled
at them to stop asking me stupid questions, and shortly after, they did. They
told me I had something called amnesia, and I might or might not get my
memories back. For now though, they recommended I re-learn anything I found I
didn’t know, and my memory would fix itself. Or not. It was a relief for the
questions to stop, and I said nothing to encourage them to start up again.

When they took me somewhere to live, the
only reason I didn’t give in to stark terror at what the city I was in looked
like, what the people wore, moved around in, and were buying and selling, was I
was fascinated at the same time.

Being moved long distances in a noisy box
seemed incredible. And no matter how hard the big woman next to me tried to
explain anything, I had no context with which to make any sense of it.

I spent the next two years in a large house
with other kids who had no parents. They put a teevee in my room, and I spent
every hour I could watching it, in between lessons, and the daily migraine pain.
If I thought my last two years had been mainly boring, these two were much more
so, because I didn’t actually do much except sit, and absorb information. Of
the two, teevee was more entertaining than lessons, although its reliability
was less so. Neither told me what I most wanted to know.

There were two things I really wanted to
find out, and I learned the skills I needed to find the information I wanted.
Between teevee and net, I found I could access most of it.

The first was obviously, where the hell was
I?

The second, was why there was no magic
here.

Of these two, I found the latter bothered
me the most.

It took me over a year to put the pieces
together of both. A sort of friend introduced me to someone who did Reiki
healing. She showed me how to make the healing energy flow, and was amazed at
how powerful I was. It was my first access to magic since I got here. It wasn't
anywhere near what I’d had, even in my largely untrained state, as something
about where I was dampened it. But knowing it was there somewhere, and I had to
figure out how to access it, made me all the more determined to find a way.

I read everything I could find with even a
hint of magic in it. Almost all of it was made up, and most of that was based
on clueless. What wasn’t made up was worse, since it didn’t actually work, just
fooled the wielder into doing something stupid. I went looking for anyone with
natural magical ability, and found all the magic entertainers to be fakes.

Oddly, those claiming spiritual powers
turned out to be accessing a crude form of magic, while having no idea what
they were really doing, attributing things to a higher power. More often than
not, they were accessing a lower power pretending to be a higher power. Once I
figured it out, I stayed well clear of them.

The made up stuff in books turned out to
hold the clues I needed, especially when cross referenced with some of the
spiritual stuff. I laughed at the whole concept of wand waving, hand waving,
and spells. The magic I knew came from the deep parts of the being, focused
with a clear mind, and cast with intent. You didn’t need a poem to do good
magic, just a very clear idea of what you wanted. But I guess, when you have no
magic, you invent ways to entertain using it.

Useless as it was, there were gems in the
rubbish. Early learning tended to use movements and objects to start you off,
but if you needed a wand by the end of training, they gave you a no. Force
punching was a little different, since an actual punch clarified the intent
perfectly. But you were expected to not to need them either. What I found, was
the physical punch put an extra erg into the damage done. Hence my spurning
anything relying on objects and actions.

The concept of yin-yang provided me with my
first break through.

When I finally understood the concept of
time, I found the day was exactly as I knew it to be. Which meant I hadn't
moved very far from where the town hall had been. This suggested I'd been found
exactly where the town hall was, or maybe the glade I'd been aiming for, and it
was underwater for some reason.

An article on the net suggested the seas
had risen a long way thousands of years earlier, and much of the land had been
flooded back then. After some searching, I found an underwater map of the
oceans of the world, the world itself being something I'd learned about some
months earlier, and at first sat there gaping at how big it actually was. My
world had been no more than a half day's ride outside my village. To find it
was so big, was mind boggling. The underwater one showed the depths of the
water. And on it, I recognized the shape of the coastline not far from our
town.

The implication was staggering.

I'd jumped through time!

How far was almost impossible to determine.
But this is where yin-yang came into my thinking. I was looking at what was
known of the past, through information gleaned from the very rock of the world
itself, and came across a reference to the age of the planet. It was suggested
the planet was some four and a half billion years old. But the interesting
thing was, it had another four point five to go before it died. This meant it
was about in the middle of its life. Yin-yang is balanced at the middle. The
early part of existence is yin, the latter half is yang.

So if the world had just entered its yang
phase, the yang magic would not have yet had a chance to manifest. And if I'd
jumped across the changeover from yin to yang, hence no magic.

But did no magic apply to me? It meant the
magic I was taught was yin magic. But I’d also been taught magic was magic. You
had it, or you didn’t, and the application was unique to each person. So magic
had changed in nature, and in theory, all I needed to do was change the way I
accessed it. People now had no access, because it hadn't yet formed. Mine was
there, it was active, and all I needed was the key to using it now.

I taught myself how to meditate, followed
the exercises and recommendations to clear my mind, and when I’d not had a
single thought for ten minutes one afternoon, I sought the magic at the core of
my being. It was there, but it felt blocked. No matter how I tried, there was a
barrier of some sort between me, and the magical energy.

Magic isn’t real.

The thought popped in there, and I pondered
it. Yes, all the made up stuff was based on this. Magic wasn’t real. So the
simple belief of millions, if not billions of people, was in itself a tangible
blockage.

So all I needed was different intent.

"The belief of others does not and
never will affect my magic," I said out loud.

And immediately I felt the surge of energy
I’d first experienced on my first day of magic training. With my eyes still
closed, I focused on the room. I 'felt' the teevee, and 'pressed' in the on-off
switch. The teevee came on. I did it again, and it went off. The urge to keep doing
it, was overwhelming. I grinned to myself.

Over the next few weeks I practiced alone,
gaining strength and power, range and control. I quickly learned not to do
magic around other people. They didn’t appreciate it, even when it was supposed
to help them. But when I was alone, I repaired broken crockery and ornaments,
made small things I needed but could not afford to buy, and got into trouble
when someone demanded to know where things came from, and they assumed I'd
stolen them.

Bullies learned to stay away from me, as
there was no satisfaction in hitting someone who showed no pain from being hit.
I practiced holding shields as long as I could, as often as I could, trying to
build them up. This world was much more randomly dangerous than the one I'd grown
up in, and I set out to protect myself as best I could.

Shielding exercises led to hiding ones. I
figured out how to change the shields so I couldn’t be seen, and immediately
learned the steam in the girl's bathroom still revealed an invisible shape. No-one
knew what the vague shape had been, but the scream still shocked me to the
core, and left me shaken and subdued for days.

A sports accident caused me to limp for a
week, and I began short distance movement magic again, progressively moving
further and further with each jump. By the time I could walk without limping
again, people had noticed I'd started arriving at places early, when I was
usually a bit late. Not being seen doing the jump, was the main constraint
against using them, and often it was impossible. But I did quickly find places
to jump from and to, which rarely saw traffic. At least once, I was accused of
using a broom closet for hanky-panky purposes. I wished.

I learned all I could, practiced everything
regularly, attempted to stay partially fit, but as much as I tried, my form
became a bit rounder than a warrior's ought to be. There was a time limit on
how long I could stay here, as once you reached eighteen, they kicked you out
to find your own way, and once they did, I'd need to find a way to make a
living.

Joining the military was an option, but
Battle Mage wasn’t something offered here. Everything else was a letdown, to my
mind. What I saw of boot camp on teevee, put me right off. I'd been through it
once, but this version was so much worse.

Being bored for the rest of my life, was a
definite possibility. The skills I'd learned before arriving here, were useful
for many things, albeit needing some upgrading. I'd picked up the tech fairly
easily, but things were done differently here.

Life went on. I dated girls every now and
then, without any real success at relationships.

Until one day, on my eighteenth birthday, which
had been determined by medical means, mere hours before I was due to officially
leave to find my own way in the world, I meditated, focusing on the mountain
top I’d been taken to as a young teen. It had a distinctive peak, required
three days walk to get to it, and another three to return home. A grand
adventure at that age, usually done just before turning fourteen. Now it was a
link I hoped was still there.

In my mind, I saw the place where we
camped, but it looked different somehow. The actual peak looked the same from
off to one side, but the camp area had changed.

I concentrated on the spot, and willed
myself to move there.

There wasn’t where I thought it was, being
a considerable way below where I materialized. I began to fall immediately. I
had seconds to concentrate on an air cushion to stop me splatting myself on the
rocks below, and achieved enough of one, so I only hit hard enough to woof the
air out of my lungs, but without braking anything.

"Who's there?" yelled a voice.

I wasn’t yet able to move, let alone speak,
but I could see, and a strangely dressed man, even by the standards of here and
now, came around a rock, pointing some sort of fantasy ray gun at me.

He looked at me for a long moment, and shot
me.

Three

The room I woke up in appeared to be a big
metal box with a door in one side. It was packed full of randomly abandoned
stuff, suggesting I was in some sort of storage area. I was sitting up against
a round metal thing going floor to ceiling, hands behind my back, and unable to
be moved apart, or very far from the metal.

I was quite surprised to find I didn’t have
any holes in me.

I was beginning to think getting out of bed
on my birthdays was a really bad idea. Two years ago they'd tried to kill me.
Last year I’d been in a fight with the school bully, and had to use some of my
military training to put him down before he did some real hurt to me. I’d tried
force punching him, but at that time, I hadn't worked out here and now magic,
so it hadn't worked. The punch had broken a rib though, and I'd nursed a very
sore wrist for days after. And this year, I get shot, and locked up in a
storage room, who knows where?

Actually, where wasn’t the really strange
thing. The room was metal. I'd never seen a metal room before. I’d heard of
them on ships, but never seen one. Was I on a ship? If so, how had they moved
me so far, so fast? And without anyone asking questions about it. Even
stranger, every teevee ship I’d seen constantly moved in the water. There was
no sense of movement here at all.

Where wasn’t going to be solved sitting
here like a trussed chicken. My hands and legs were bound with plastic strips,
and my hands were behind me, and also tied to the metal round thing.

I moved myself enough so I could see the
tie holding me there, and concentrated on a small chunk of it. It vanished,
going to wherever it was the things I made vanish, went to. Finding out where,
was something we were supposed to do in training, but I'd never made it that
far. It was on my list of things to do.

With my body being able to move more, I
twisted myself around so I could see my hands, and did the same thing. The tie
dropped away. I repeated it on the one around my ankles. And stood up.

Or rather tried to. I'd made it partly
upright before my legs gave way, and I dropped back down again. For several
minutes, I rubbed my legs, flowing healing into them, and again stood. This
time I made it, although I felt weak and wobbly. Whatever they'd shot me with,
seemed to affect the body more than just knocking you out.

If nothing else, I wanted me one of those.
I needed to make sure I could shield myself from it, assuming one was likely to
be fired at me again. Now I knew something like it existed, I could throw a
shield up to protect myself, but without trying it, I wouldn’t know if what I
did would be effective or not. A knock out gun wasn’t a physical attack in the
context I knew of, and it wasn’t a magical attack either. Although technically,
now I was thinking about it, it had to use some form of energy, and energy
could be considered magical, so maybe I was fine. Note to self, avoid finding
out the hard way.

The door was locked. Or I assumed it was
locked, since I couldn’t move it. Locks were something I’d had to learn about,
since we hadn't had anything like it at home, or even the need for one. This
door had what I assumed was a lock, although it looked nothing like what I'd
seen and used before.

I took a moment to get the square of lock
area fixed in my mind, and concentrated on vanishing a cube. The lock vanished,
and by bending down, I could now see out into a passageway. It was also metal.
And deserted. There was a faint hum in the background, but otherwise no noise
at all.

The door pulled inwards, and I stepped out.
The passageway was as filthy as the storage room had been.

Left or right? Right went towards the faint
hum, so I assumed this was towards the ship's engines, assuming as I was, I was
on a ship. I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d be.

I turned left, and tried to creep quietly
along, stepping over any obvious debris, to avoid making any loud noises.

The room next door also had a locked door,
and I removed the lock with a thought, and pushed the door open.

Inside, the room was somewhat cleaner, and
contained a bed.

On the bed was a girl. She ignored my
entry, and continued ignoring me as I went over to her. I leaned down to speak
softly to her, but suddenly froze.

She hadn't been ignoring me. She was dead.
I’d seen dead before during my military training, and this was it. There was a
cover over most of her, and I drew it back to see what killed her. Underneath I
found she was naked, with huge bruises over a lot of her body.

I turned away, dropping the cover, and
threw up in the corner.

It wasn’t long before I recovered, and the
only bad thing about making the mess vanish, was the clean spot in the corner
was now very obvious.

I went back to the bed, and looked at the
girl again. She'd been very pretty. There was no smell, and when I touched her
shoulder, it was still warmish. She hadn't been dead long.

I left her as she was, and returned to the
passageway. But my temper was now aroused. I wanted to find who'd killed her,
and do the same to them. Which was of course, probably a really stupid thing to
do, but hey, I'd been shot, kidnapped, tied up, and found out what they did to
captives. It would make you mad too.

I channeled some calming energy, as I’d been
taught. A warrior goes into battle calm, using his head as much as his sword,
shield, war machine, and magic. I was calm. Furious, but calm.

I continued along to the left, looking into
rooms, most of which were not locked, until I heard voices. I understood
nothing they said, and I had to rack my brains to remember how to access
translation magic. On the battlefield, being able to understand what your enemy
was yelling made the difference between blundering around, and being prepared.
I hadn't expected to need to use it so soon, and paused until the intent
manifested, and the end of a sentence was actually understood.

I crept up to the side of the door through
which the voices were coming, and peeked inside.

The sight beyond the two people in there,
made me look again.

This wasn’t a ship on the sea.

We were in space!

Four

"I'm not telling the boss she's
dead," said the one on the left. "You did it, you tell him."

"Do we have to tell him?"

"Dumbo! We went there to prove we
could, and the instruction was bring back one of each sex for assessment on
their worth as slaves. And you buggered the girl, and killed her. How do you
intend telling him why we only have one prisoner?"

"We could say she died trying to
escape."

"You think the boss will believe that?"

"He will if we kill the other one
too."

"Are you nuts? We didn’t get told to
bring back two bodies."

"But if both of them are dead, there's
no reason for anyone to doubt we had to shoot them to prevent them
escaping."

"But you didn't shoot her."

"A minor detail which can be fixed.
I'll shoot the other one at the same time."

"I think not," said a voice,
making the two turn suddenly towards me.

It took me a moment to understand it'd been
my voice. By the time I figured it out, both of them were raising guns in my
direction. Being seated slowed them down, but they were fast enough all the
same.

My left hand formed a fist and jerked at
the one on the left. The force punch took him in the chest, and smashed him
into the console. There was a snapping noise as his back and one arm broke, and
the top half of his body continued onto the console itself.

The right one got a shot off at me, but it
bounced off my shield. I concentrated on his gun, and removed it.

He screamed, as blood started gushing from
the stump of his arm. In my haste, I'd removed his hand as well as the gun,
well above the wrist. He tried to stem the loss of blood, but the artery had
been severed without being cauterized, as if I'd used a sword and cut it off, and
he bled out while I stood there gaping at him.

I obviously needed some practice. I'd hoped
to keep at least one of them alive for answers. And for flying the ship. Now I
had to hope there was someone else on board. Someone still alive.

The ship flew on. I stood there, not
knowing what to do next, and the ship continued flying. Obviously some sort of
auto-pilot had control. There was nothing I could see which told me where we
were going. And no way of stopping us going there. And while I dithered, we
were getting further away from where I wanted to be.

The pool of blood eventually stopped
spreading. Movement behind me made me turn suddenly, shield back up, and fists
clenched, but it was only a metallic spider like robot, about as big as a large
dog. It stopped when it registered I was in its way. I stepped back to see what
it would do, and it walked into what I now knew was the bridge of a space ship.
I'd seen plenty of entertainment about them, and this was definitely a bridge.
Even if no-one making the entertainment had any idea space ships were real.

Three more followed it, and between them,
they lifted the two bodies, and carried them out. Blood dripped a trail down
the passageway, but this was quickly removed by a lot of smaller robots, and any
evidence of death vanished.

I decided to follow them, and this was
where things became really weird. The little robots were cleaning off the blood
on the deck, but only the blood on the deck. They ignored all the other crud,
resulting in a nice clean trail through an otherwise filthy environment. As I
followed them, I pondered why anyone would limit cleaning robots to just dead
bodies and blood.

By the time we reached what looked like a
hospital room, and the cold storage room on the other side of it, I could think
of only one group who'd constantly want blood removed.

Slavers.

Five

Knowing you're on a slaver ship, isn’t
actually useful information. Sure, at some point I was going to need to deal
with whoever met the ship, presumably also slavers. I could hope the ship would
be intercepted by some sort of police force, but there was a chance they'd
simply destroy the ship, and ask questions later, which wasn’t much use for me.
Having almost died twice in two years, I wasn’t looking forward to the next
time.

The girl was also in the cold store, so it
contained three bodies. I shut the door on them.

I spent the next few hours searching the
whole ship, but I was now completely alone. I sat in a now clean bridge seat,
and pondered what to do.

I knew nothing about spaceships. Nothing
around me was in any way intuitive, or even helpfully labeled. There was no way
I was going to be flying this ship. Which meant, I was going to wherever it was
going.

The next problem was, I didn’t know where
it was going, or how long it was going to take to get there. Or who would be
there to meet the ship. Or how they would react to three dead bodies on board.

Or more importantly, how whoever met the
ship was going to react to finding me on board, with three dead bodies,
especially since two of them were my handiwork, and I couldn’t prove the other
one wasn’t.

My stomach rumbled, pointing out a more
immediate problem. I’d found what looked like a kitchen, but on first
inspection, I wasn’t at all sure how food was prepared, and exactly what was
food.

The ship wasn’t all that big, so
remembering where each room was, hadn't been hard.

The kitchen at least, was clean. I hunted
around until I found bottles of what I assumed was water, and did in fact turn
out to be water. I downed one, threw it in what I assumed was the trash hopper,
and started in on another one.

Behind another door, I found a stack of
sealed oblong containers, which had labels indicating they contained food. It
was about the size of a buffet tray. I ripped one open, and if it was food, it
was highly processed, and almost unrecognizable.

Adapting to processed food had been one of
the easy things to do, accounting for not a small amount of the rounding of my
midriff area. Deserts especially I'd been delighted to discover, and it had
taken a medical specialist to persuade me to limit my intake.

Kitchen technology had been a little more
difficult, but net time provided understanding and instructions. The tech here
was different, but I took a guess the glass door with the handle on it, with an
inside just a tad bigger than the food container, was something akin to a
microwave oven.

I took down another one, pulled the door,
pushed it in, and closed the door. There was an immediate hum, and a few
seconds later, a ding. I pulled the door, pulled the container out, and took it
to a table, where I sat in front of it. This time, the top wrapping came away
easily, taking the sides with it, and leaving just a tray, revealing a meal.

I went back looking for eating utensils. My
conversion to these had been the subject of much mirth at the home's dinner
table, and it had taken more than a few meals, and laughter from everyone else,
to adapt. Even now, I tend to cut everything up into bite sizes, and then use
the fork as a scoop for the whole meal.

I dug into one end of the food, which
tasted like chicken, with four kinds of veg. The other end turned out to look
like, and taste like, an apple crumble.

I finished the meal and the water, and
trashed the remains. Pulling another water, I went back to the bedrooms,
looking for one worth trying to sleep in.

The first was the biggest, and sometime since
I'd poked my nose in here before, the room had been cleaned, and the bed made.
But black satin sheets were definitely not my thing.

The second bedroom was a bit smaller, and
was more tastefully sheeted with white. Boring, but ok. I poked my nose into the
Ensuite, found the facilities also recently cleaned, figured out how to use
them by trial and error, used them, and flopped down on the bed.

I woke some six hours later with a
throbbing head, and it was at this point, I realized I didn't have my backpack,
which was sitting on my bed back at the home, waiting for my return. In it,
were my migraine meds.

I made my way to the medical bay, and sat there
for a while, trying to concentrate. One of the things I'd discovered early on,
was meds are expensive. They were also not given away lightly. After a day in
major pain, and no tablet to ease it, I'd snuck into the room storing the
home's meds in the middle of the night, and borrowed the bottle. I spent all
night trying, and failed to duplicate the tablets. The bottle was easy, meds
are not. However, I solved this the next night, by taking a walk to the nearest
med store. I stood outside in a dark place, and both bottle and tablets
duplicated precisely into my hand.

The thing to remember about creating
anything, is you need the raw materials at hand. The closer they are, the
easier it is. When you copy something, you don't need to know what's in it. Just
have access to everything needed. Your intent allows the copy to take place. So
outside the med store, I first copied a tablet, and took it immediately, with a
corresponding reduction in head pain shortly after. I upped the intent to the
full bottle. I also linked the intent to the med store for future duplications.
After that, I was able to create a new bottle from my room, anytime I wanted.

There is a downside to this of course. The
ingredients for the tablets were coming from somewhere inside the store. Which
meant, most likely, they were either coming from actual tablets, or being
leeched out of anything which had what was needed. I hadn't focused the intent
to this level, so didn’t know what was happening. Although over time though,
the med store did take on a certain reputation for some meds not working
properly. I wonder why?

I could have just moved actual bottles from
the store to my hand, but that would have been actual stealing. I was creating
from what was available, not stealing. I even managed to convince myself.

I had a feeling I was too far away to do it
now, especially with a full on migraine. I concentrated on just a tablet, and
just using what was within this room, and it materialized in my hand. I took it
immediately, and waited to see if it had the right effect.

One of the downsides of creating something
you actually eat, is the only way to be sure about it, is to eat it.
Consequently, this is not recommended for all but experienced magic creators.
But needs drive, and I was my own guinea pig. Getting it wrong, could kill you.
But I'd done this enough times, I was either going to get a tablet which
worked, or more likely, not get one at all. It worked.

As the pain receded, I created a whole
bottle. And with nothing to put it in, I made a new backpack as well. I’d done
several over the previous two years, so this one was easy.

Head feeling much better, I took myself
back to bed.

As sleep was coming on, I idly wondered
what had happened to the backpack I’d left behind, and what people had thought
about me disappearing without it.

Six

Weeks went by.

I found a routine which worked. Eating,
sleeping, gazing at the stars, and practicing magic. Not necessarily in that
order.

The food was filling, if mostly the same.
If there was a breakfast menu, I never found it. Sleep was easy, as was staying
clean. The ship seemed to have unlimited water, but perhaps one person wasn’t
stressing the system very much.

I spent long hours gazing out the various
windows. In my early teen years, I’d done a lot of stargazing, but during the
last two, there hadn't been much to see. Too much light in a city. Now though,
I saw the galaxy in its wondrous majesty, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

There was however an urgency to figuring
out how to survive getting wherever the ship was going. I'd go to bed with the
intent of waking the moment any ship came close, something docked, or the ship
docked. My worst nightmare was being woken up by slavers, and marched into a
cell. Or the same cell, only by police. I had both nightmares, but they turned
out not to be real.

Magic is like anything. The more you
practice, the better at it you get. Also the more you do, and the more you
stretch your limits, the stronger you become. Within the limits of your power
of course. My training had been cut short, so the one thing I didn’t know was
how much power I really had. After choosing, it was one of the things you
normally found out. Masters liked to know such things, even if it left the
student exhausted for a week. So, me, clueless. Or put it another way, I'd need
to find out the hard way. When something I tried to do failed dismally.

Although, the fact I had the last five yes
votes, showed to some extend my potential power. No-one had multiples in the
last lot without more than normal power. And let's face it, I'd jumped through
time, and even with a power assist from others, I couldn’t have done it if I
didn’t have a lot of it.

The ship needed cleaning, so I cleaned it.
Magically. Dust, dirt, grime, marks, debris, all vanished section by section,
at first in small amounts, but over the weeks, in bigger and bigger amounts,
until the final room cleared with one application of intent.

An interesting side effect of doing so much
work, was my migraines decreased in intensity. As soon as I stopped, they went
back to normal. Interesting, if not particularly useful. Once I tried to make
something really complicated, on the theory doing so might actually cure my
migraine, but it only made it worse. More pondering required. Part of said
pondering suggested a key part or material wasn’t on the ship, and the stress
of trying to create the uncreatable, had the reverse of the desired effect.
Pondering also scared me to death, when I realized if I tried to create
something, and hull material was used to do it, I might find myself with a hull
breach, and die shortly after.

So I limited my magic to doing things,
rather than creating things. The most obvious were strengthening shields, and
practicing being invisible. For the first, I found one of the ray guns, played
around with settings until I found which did which, again without danger to the
hull, and in the process put some nice big holes in walls. These were quickly
patched, and although I wondered where the material came for, I never found
where. I practiced shielding, and aiming the gun at my shield, but in such a
way it wouldn’t hit my body. All the same, I received several nasty burns, and
had to spend time doing healing work on myself. Burns were easy though. The
first weeks of healing magic had you spend time with the smithies, who always
managed to burn themselves. Good healers were well received by them.

Eventually I was confident even the highest
strength setting on the gun would bounce off my shields, and would do so, even
if I didn’t know the pulse was coming at me. Of course, I wouldn’t know for
sure, until one hit home by surprise, but I thought I had the shielding set
right. I continued to practice it every day.

I'd never been truly alone before, and the
silence on the ship was at first quite daunting. Village life allowed you a few
stolen hours alone, but there was always sisters, cousins, adults, and classes
to intrude on good honest alone time. In the home, solitude was harder to find.
Too many kids in too little space. Making alone time became a challenge.

But actually being alone for weeks on end?
It had never happened to me before. I had to learn new skills. When your life
is full of people, and suddenly there are none, and dead bodies don't count, you're
suddenly confronted with yourself as your only companion. It's times like these
when you discover if you truly like your own company or not, and I found I
wasn’t all that happy with mine.

Who are you really? It only takes a few
days before solitude raises such a simple question. But it’s a very difficult
one to answer. Easier perhaps when asked later in life, but I sincerely hoped I
was still early on in mine. I knew what I could do. I knew what I’d done, a lot
of which had landed me in a lot of trouble. I'd watched the other kids, wondered
at how they did some things so easily, and wondered why they found other things
so hard.

And magic. I'd rediscovered it, but in
doing so, had set myself apart. Girls looked at me strangely, and I didn’t see
in their faces what I saw when they looked at other boys. I wasn’t sure what it
was, just they didn't feel the same way about me.

And then I was alone. Just me to talk to.
Just me to fill in the silence. Not that I tried to all the time, since
stargazing really doesn’t need words.

It took time, but I learned to be alone, to
like it, and find it comfortable.

And suddenly, being alone ended.

Seven

I awoke abruptly.

The internal alarm told me something had
changed. When my feet hit the deck, I could feel the absence of the slight
vibration which indicated the engines were on. So the ship had stopped.

I dressed hurriedly, drew my backpack on,
and headed for the bridge. I'd added water to my pack in case I needed to hide
out somewhere for a while, but I hadn't been able to add food. However they made
food for ships, it didn’t last if you failed to eat it, and it wasn’t edible if
you didn’t cook it first. Eating might be a challenge in the near future, but
for now, avoiding trouble was my main aim.

Before reaching the bridge, I slid a shield
around myself, and added invisibility. My other alarm for someone having come
onboard, hadn't activated yet, but I was taking no chances. The bridge was
empty, but the view outside was not.

Nearby, a small ship was moving towards. In
the distance though, what I assumed was a space station caught my attention,
and held it. It was huge, and far away. But it was also close by. Getting my
head around the contradiction was interrupted by the ship passing out of my
view range, and shortly after, metal on metal sounds, which I assumed were
docking noises. The alarm went off in my head shortly after.

I left the bridge immediately, since anyone
who came through, would presumably be coming here first, and there was not
anywhere there to safely remain concealed. Even if you couldn’t be seen, you
could still be bumped into, or stepped on.

There were two sets of boot falls coming
towards me, and I headed away from them, taking the long way to the airlock.
Exclamations of surprise echoed through the ship. The boot falls split up.

The airlock was open, and I walked into
what seemed to be the main cabin of a small ship. No-one was there, and I
peeked into both the front area, where I assumed a pilot would sit, and with
no-one there either, peeked into the rear area. I saw plenty of equipment I
knew nothing about, monitors displaying stuff I didn’t understand, and again,
no-one else.

The main cabin was like what I’d seen on teevee,
inside airplanes. This one wasn’t very big, but there were a dozen seats. Two
up front, and two sets of boot falls, seemed to indicate none of these seats
were occupied. I sat in one of the middle rows, up against the wall, and
waited. There was a belt on the seat, presumably for safety purposes, but I’d
have to hope it wasn’t needed, since buckling it, or including it within my
invisibility zone, would be a dead giveaway something was wrong. As it was, I
was lucky the belt was hanging down on both sides of the seat, and I very
carefully made sure it remained visible.

Shouts echoed in through the airlock, and I
assumed one of them had found the three bodies. I waited, not moving,
concentrating on breathing without noise.

Eventually, both of them arrived back at
the airlock, compared notes, especially wondering why three bodies instead of
two or four, although they provided their own scenario for how they died, which
didn’t include someone else being involved.

But then they speculated on why the ship
was spotlessly clean, and I had to suppress a shiver. I'd goofed, and almost
given myself away. One of them speculated about the cleaning bots resetting to
default settings once there was no actual person to give them orders, and
they'd cleaned up properly once the bodies were stored. It sounded feasible to
me, and all I could do was hope it made sense to anyone else they told.

One of them came inside, walked into the
front section without even a glance around, and after he settled into his seat,
the airlock closed, and the engines came on. I could see nothing except the
cabin I was in, and all I could do was wait.

I didn’t need to wait very long.
Conversation came from up front, which I assumed was docking related, sounding
as it did, similar to teevee plane landing pilot stuff. Obviously our
destination was the station. Similar clunking noises to before, only much louder
this time, and the airlock opened again, the pilot swept through and out, and I
sat there wondering how long I should wait before trying to leave.

What made me move, was the thought the ship
might be in constant use, and people needing the seats might come in at any
moment. I rose soundlessly, gripped one strap of the backpack with my left
hand, and stepped as quietly as I could to the airlock.

Outside, I could see no-one, but a lot of
noise was coming from somewhere. The airlock opened into a long tube, so I
carefully walked along it. At the end, I found another open airlock, again with
no-one around. This one opened into a fairly standard looking passageway, the
sort you’d find in almost any building. It was wide enough for six people to
walk side by side without touching each other in the process. The walls seemed
to be covered in advertising, although I had little understanding of what.

As I walked along, more tubes could be
seen, so I assumed I was in a small ship docking area, and each one fed into
this passageway, which presumably led into the station proper. I was lucky
no-one else appeared from any of them, and no-one was coming towards either.

It took five minutes' walk to reach the
end. There I found people, of the type I really didn’t want to be seen by. They
were large, obviously armed, and just as obviously guarding the entrance to the
passageway.

There was enough noise coming through, I no
longer needed to worry about being heard, as long as I didn’t hit anything
which made noise. The doors were open, fortunately, and I simply walked
straight through. Neither of the gorillas on guard so much as glanced my way.
It was the first real confirmation my invisibility was actually working.

I found myself in yet another passageway,
this time with people going both ways along it, and followed it, carefully
stepping around people, until I found myself looking out into a large open
area, several levels below. The noise of many thousands of people all seemingly
bellowing at once, in a number of different languages, assaulted my ears. I’d
been to shopping centers before, some of them really big, but this was as if
every single shopping area in the city I’d been living in, had been squashed up
together in one place. I had no real understanding of how big it was, or even
how to measure it. It was huge. It’s the only word which fits.

The most obvious thing was once I was down
there, staying invisible was going to be impossible. I'd be bumped, stepped on,
or run over before I’d taken my second step. I waited there, letting people
come and go behind me, studying as much as I could see. I set part of my
focusing intent on language translation, and let what I could hear wash over
me, filtering out all the raucous music trying to drown the voices out. Some of
it was the language the two slavers had spoken. Several variations of it became
apparent, but several others were completely different. I waited until most of
what I heard could be understood, and it became apparent the area below me was
mostly about food.

Which was when my stomach growled, and
someone cast a glance in my direction. Sufficiently off beat to look, but not
enough to stop and investigate. I paid more attention to the movement around
me.

There was a large plant off to one side, so
I moved over to it. With some deft timing, I dropped the invisibility as I
walked around the plant, hidden by it so those who might see me, didn’t see the
shift, but anyone looking from below, simply saw me step up to the rail as if
looking for something. I made an effort to appear to be looking, finding, and
stepped back into the passageway, and followed several people until I found
steps leading down.

At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped and
watched people going past, paying attention to their dress. The last thing I
needed was to stand out, but while different, I found what I was wearing to be
neutral enough I shouldn’t appear to be too different. Or not different enough
to be worthy of serious attention. A lot of people carried bags of all sorts,
including some worn on the back like mine, and while it appeared to be safe, I
tightened my grip on the strap, just to be sure no-one could pull it off me
suddenly.

My first challenge was food. I wandered
around looking at the offerings, which varied from delightfully smelling, to
absolutely disgusting. People ate as they walked, or sat in general areas. All
much the same as the shopping centers I was used to.

What I didn’t have though, was money to buy
food with. I sat at a table nearby a number of food vendors, pulled a bottle of
water out of my backpack, and sat there sipping it. I concentrated on observing
transactions, trying to look like I was deciding on what to purchase to eat.

What I was doing though, was looking for a
way of stealing money, where no-one would know it was gone. At least until they
tried to use it next time. The first thing I noticed was no-one was using any
kind of electronic currency. Definitely a good break for me. Stealing something
which usually required some form of identification, was easy, but usually
pointless. But paper money was just as easy to steal, for me anyway, and
immediately usable.

I spotted a large man spending money, and
watched him shove the unused notes into a back pocket. I concentrated on his
pocket as he walked away, and the notes moved from his pocket to mine. Over the
next fifteen minutes, I repeated this a dozen times, moving wallets, billfolds,
and cash rolls, to my backpack.

Since I’d been pushing my luck about
someone discovering immediately their money had vanished, and making a noise
about it, I decide to move. I concentrated my intent on the most common
language I’d been hearing people use, and set it to default what I spoke.

First I went up to one of the vendors,
pulled the notes from my pocket, passed over one with a number bigger than the
food cost, and received a wrapped something, which looked like meat inside some
sort of bread. I took back a small amount of change, and stepped away, ripping
off the top of the wrapping like I’d seen others doing, and began walking away.
The food was tasty, and I stopped at another set of tables to sit and finish
it.

The next requirement was relieving myself,
and needing a little privacy. I continued on, until I found the first set of
convenience rooms. A few seconds to determine men's from women's, and I sought
a stall where I could be unobserved for a short time. After using the
facilities, I dug my ill-gotten gains out of my backpack, hid some of the
larger notes in my shoes, and made up a bill fold with the rest. The wallets
I'd have to dump. Using my magic sight, I cast around the room on the other
side of the door for a bin, and transferred what I didn’t want into it.

So far so good. I exited the cubicle,
washed my hands, took a grip on the backpack again, and walked out.

And walked straight into someone passing
just outside the door, and bounced back into the door closing behind me.

When I had my balance again, I saw four
long lines of people going past.

They were chained together.

For a moment, all I could think of was
there but for the grace, went I.

The last one on the line next to me, turned
to look at me as she went past.

She was amazingly beautiful, but clad in
rags, and like the rest, shackled hand and foot, with some sort of collar
around her neck.

Her eyes raked mine, as if begging me to
help her.

And then she was gone.

Eight

Okay, I admit it.

I turned immediately to follow her. Yes. My
head had turned to follow a pretty face, a damsel in distress, someone
apparently needing rescuing.

Stupid. Yes. Very. I did it anyway, and
there was no single thought on the subject at all. By the time my brain caught
up with my feet, I was at the very least committed to finding out more about
her, if I could.

I wasn’t totally stupid about it. I
followed a fair way behind. I bought food twice more, and did some serious
magical shoplifting. There were a range of items most people were carrying, and
I slowly added them to my backpack, as conditions allowed. I only took
something where there were so many on show, one going missing would never be
noticed, without doing a full count first.

One of the last was a mid-level pad, which
seemed to be the local equivalent of computer. Well away from the store it came
from, it took a bit of blind de-packaging inside my backpack, before the pad
could be pulled out. I turned it on using the only obvious button, and it
started asking for information. I gave it what I could, and ignored the rest.
It smoothly connected to the station net, and began downloading updates.

I slid it into a pocket, and let it update
itself as I continued to follow the shackled lines. After a while, it appeared
the prisoners were being displayed around the station, rather than going
anywhere in particular. So while trailing behind them, I had a good
introduction to many of the areas. We'd left food behind some time ago, and now
we left electronics behind as well. I made note of clothing stores worth
visiting at some later time.

At one point the pad buzzed, and I pulled
it out. The updates were complete, and a full map of the station was showing,
with the level I was on highlighted. I scrolled it around, since not even a
single level could display all at once, and my eyes stopped on one large area
labelled 'Slave Auctions'.

So now I knew where we'd end up. Given how
long it'd taken to get this far, I made an estimate of how long it would still
take to get there, and how long it would take me, taking what I thought was a
short cut. This gave me some time for clothes shopping.

I turned, and headed back the way I'd come,
stopping at the nearest of the noted stores, and going in. When I came out a
half hour later, I was wearing new clothes in current, if plain, fashion. I’d
taken the opportunity while changing to move items to my person, instead of in
my backpack. The most noticeable was the pouch for the pad, normally worn in
either a hip pouch off a belt, or a thigh pouch attached to a gun holster. As I
didn’t have a gun, and didn’t want a gun, I’d gone for the hip belt option.

The backpack was now bigger, as I'd needed
extra space for my original clothes, which I decided to keep. It was also
somewhat heavier now, so I added a no-weight command to the enlargement intent.
After I managed to pull the pack down from the ceiling, I modified it to be
neutral weight instead. I also changed its colour slightly, to also be more
neutral here.

While hunting the racks, I’d made a pass
through women's wear, and magically copied a generic loose fitting dress, of
about the size I thought she could wear. She was in rags, and I did this on the
off chance she'd need something better in a hurry. I was guessing, but days in
the laundry doing everyone's as punishment, meant I did have an appreciation
for dress sizes. It was sitting on top of the backpack now, so it could be
pulled out rapidly if need be.

Satisfied with my own change in appearance,
I hurried through my shortcut, taking every opportunity to relieve people of
their excess cash without taking any risks, and arrived at the entrance to the
slave auctions area, nicely in time for the slave strings to pass me by again.

This time I paid attention to the shackles,
and the collars, which I found to be much more interesting and important. Each
collar enclosed the neck tightly, with a large bulge on the front. I'd need to
find out what they were really for, before I tried to do anything with one.

The girl made eye contact with me again as
she went past, and I thought I saw recognition on her face. On the other hand
though, she was looking at everyone, desperately looking for someone to save
her. Or at least, that’s what I thought she was doing.

Oh. And she wasn’t a girl really. With more
time to check her out, she seemed to be a number of years older than I was,
which made her a woman, not a girl. It also highlighted the fact I was a boy,
and not a man. Which also highlighted how desperate she obviously was. And how
stupid I was being.

I followed the strings along, and at long
last, they disappeared into a closed off area, behind a stage. The lights for
the stage came on, and a time was displayed for when the auction would begin. I
took a seat, and waited, noting the seating area was rapidly filling up.

While I waited, I checked out the station's
descriptions of the auction process. Very flashy ads showed me how they were
conducted. I went looking for any reference to the collars, and found they had
two purposes. The lower setting on the control wand the purchaser received,
jolted the wearer with enough of a shock to drop them. It was usually used as a
punishment. The second level had options, which determined how far away the
collar could get, before it blew the head off the wearer.

Charming. It explained why I’d only seen
two expressions on the shackled. Resignation, and desperation. I made a mental
note if ever threatened with one of those collars, I would do everything I
could to avoid whoever tried to put one on me. Up to and including killing
them.

It was something of a self-revelation to
find I would be prepared to kill. And then I wondered why, when soldiers and
battle mages were expected to kill, and I'd wanted to be a battle mage. Two
years in a non-violent place had obviously changed the way I looked at things.
But then, I had already killed, so where had this surprise come from?

I had defended myself, and I'd over done
it. So it was different, since I hadn't intended to kill. But now I realized if
they came for me, I’d need to kill. And killing here would drop me in deep
shit, given at best, the local police were themselves a form of pirate. There
would be no help from any quarter, and any help offered would most likely have
ulterior motives attached, and thus be suspect.

I did have one advantage though. I’d seen
no sign of any form of magic here, which hopefully meant battle magic would
surprise them. I wished I knew some. I'd taken on three mages by myself and
survived, two armed thugs and survived, but nothing like serious numbers of
hostiles all at once.

I suddenly wondered what the hell I thought
I was doing.

Save the girl, obviously. But then what? I
needed a plan. Buying her would obviously be the easiest way. But for how much?
I looked for the day's auction lots, and found the list. Her face was the last
one, and my heart sank at what the expected opening bid should be. I focused on
my backpack, and asked it for a total of how much money was in it.

It turned out I’d been more successful than
I thought, and could indeed open the bidding, and take it a short distance. It
was a lot of money though. The good thing was, all payments had to be made in
cash. The bad was, you needed to have your bid's worth of cash on you, and if
after purchase it was found you didn’t have enough, you were in serious
trouble, and likely to be the next item on offer after they re-auctioned your
purchase.

I needed to double check with my eyes, so I
sought out the nearest facilities, and shut myself in a cubicle again. I sorted
the notes from highest to lowest, and counted them three times to be sure of
the exact total.

I rechecked on what the opening bid was
expected to be, in case there was an expected successful bid amount listed, but
there wasn’t. I had enough to bid a couple of times, depending on how fast the
bidding went up. The main problem I saw was how beautiful she looked, even in
rags, which would drive her price up. Hopefully her lack of resignation would
be seen as a sign of a troublemaker, and keep her price down.

And then I saw the list of attributes under
each entry, showing skills and reasons to bid higher.

She was a pilot!

Nine

There is always a reason for why we do
things, even if we're clueless about it. Sometimes we find out, sometimes we
don’t.

A pretty girl was something I desired, but
didn’t actually need, and wasn’t really any use here and now.

But a pilot on the other hand, would get me
off this station, and back to somewhere more civilized. Maybe even back home.

By the time I returned to the auction area,
the seats were all taken, and a good sized crowd had gathered around them. I
managed to worm my way through to the back of the seats, where I would be able
to be seen by the auctioneer.

With a fanfare, the man himself appeared,
and made a show of introducing himself. He played to the crowd, obviously
knowing a lot of the bidders personally.

Lot one was a man, and he was paraded
around for all to see, what remained of his shirt coming off when the bidding
began to flag. I paid little attention.

I was focusing my magic sight on the
collar. I studied it from the outside all around, and when I felt sure I had
the whole shape in my mind properly, I looked inside. The detonator was
obviously in the front section, and the explosive went all the way around. For
what it could do, there wasn’t all that much of it, but obviously it was
enough.

As the lots were sold, I pondered the best
way to remove it. I could just break the detonator section, but I had the
horrible thought this might just make it explode anyway. In fact, any tampering
at all might make it go off.

I was going to have to remove it
completely, the same way I’d removed the gun. Only this time, I couldn’t afford
to take more than the collar, or like the hand vanishing had killed the pirate,
it would kill her. Still with plenty of time, I cast my sight into the rooms
behind, looking for where they kept their electronics. And found a room full of
boxes, with one of them open, and showing a handful of collars sitting in
special recesses, which kept them apart.

I concentrated on making one of them
vanish. It did, but some of the packing around it did as well. The next one
vanished with less packing, and the third one vanished, leaving an empty hole.
I did a fourth and fifth, just to be sure.

A rise in the volume around me signaled the
first of the women being brought out. Instead of rags, she'd obviously been
cleaned up, and was now wearing a semi-translucent shirt and skirt, which
emphasized figure, without quite showing everything she had. Predictably, both
were torn off her at key times in the bidding, to get it moving upward again.

This proved to be the pattern, and
explained why so many onlookers were present. All of the women ended up naked,
and after purchase, were led away naked. Only a handful of the purchasers
immediately clothed their purchase, although in all but one case, it was only
with enough to cover the basics.

At last, she was led out. The crowd actually
went silent. She stood in the required place defiantly, and raked the crowd
with a look which showed her total contempt of every single person there. The
auctioneer made a slight cough, and she turned her look on him. He tapped a
control wand on his lectern, finger paused over one of the buttons, and her
face shattered, defiance gone in an instant.

The crowd returned to its normal volume, as
the auctioneer called for a first bid.

Someone seated at the front held up a hand,
and shouted a number.

It was a full fifty percent higher than the
stated opening bid should be. It had shock value, and for a moment, no-one else
bid.

I took the opportunity to raise my arm, and
flap at the auctioneer. He didn’t see me, but one of his minions did, and
called it out. Those who could, turned to see who was bidding, and laughter
ensured.

The girl took her horrified look away from
the first bidder, and looked at me. The look faltered as hope flickered for an
instant, and died as a third bidder entered the contest. Her eyes shot to him,
and the horrified looked intensified.

The first bidder responded, the auctioneer
looked at me and I nodded, and the third bidder upped it again.

Now I was out. But I continued bidding for
another three rounds, and when looked at for the fourth, I shook my head. Any
hope she had left, died visibly.

The death of hope is the worst of all
things which can happen to you. I felt her pain, and real pain slashed across
my temples, and faded to a headache.

Two other bidders took over when I dropped
out, with the second one dropping out as well, a few bids later.

Her top was ripped off her, baring her
upper body, and the bidding intensified again. I could see real hatred working
on her face now, and the auctioneer had to remind her of her place again.

I stared at her, willing her to look back
at me. But she only had eyes for those bidding, and it faltered again, as the
first bidder retained the highest bid, and another one didn’t come.

Predictably, her skirt was ripped away at
this point, leaving her stark naked, and forced to turn on the spot, the crowed
saw everything she had. The way the crowd reacted, almost broke her. If lust
was a liquid, everyone would have drowned.

She cast her eyes everywhere, looking for
some form of hope, and suddenly our eyes met.

I mimed pulling the collar off her and
swishing it away, and followed it by mouthing the words 'prepare to run', and
looked towards the exit behind me.

The pilot side of her must have kicked in,
as she made no sign of having understood me, but her bearing changed slightly
as her muscles tensed.

The auctioneer misinterpreted her movement,
and tapped his wand again. She let her head fall forward, and now he couldn’t
see the collar. She remained that way, apparently finally broken, as he started
on the final bangs of the gavel, trying hard to get one more bid. I could see
one of her eyes fixed on me.

I waited.

As he was about to bang the gavel one last
time, I removed her collar and shackles, mouthed 'run', and turned away,
heading for the exit, my expression like someone who'd failed at an important
mission for someone else.

Behind me, the gavel missed its mark, and
banged the auctioneer's other hand. His curse was overlaid by 'stop her' from
several minions, and at the door, I turned to find her half way up the isle
coming towards me. Behind her, a guard was raising a gun.

I sighed.

The gun vanished, as did three more in
successive seconds, as I removed the others I could see, dropping them into my
backpack, in case of need later.

Someone in the isle moved to stop her, and
I force punched hard enough to knock him down into a dozen people behind him. I
did it again just before she reached the end of the isle, so she had a path to
take towards the exit.

I waited for her outside the door, and as
she came level, I began to run with her, wrapping an invisibility cloak around
both of us.

She didn’t look at me, just ran as hard as
she could. I had trouble keeping up. My head was on fire, and she was faster
than I was.

"Don’t get ahead of me," I
squeaked at her.

She collided with someone, who bounced off
her, and it slowed her enough for me to catch up. Her eyes caught mine.

"They can't see us," I croaked.

Her eyes suggested she didn’t believe, but
she nodded, and kept on running. I began wheezing quietly, my body not used to
this level of exercise.

As a male convenience sign became visible,
I took her arm.

She flinched.

"Stop," I said. "In
there." I pointed in the door.

She pulled the door open, went in, and I
followed. Inside, there was luckily no-one there, and I dropped the
invisibility. I pulled open a stall door, and pointed in as I pulled my
backpack off. She hesitated, but saw me pulling cloth, and went in. I threw the
dress to her, and shut the door.

It wasn’t for me, but in case someone came
in.

I concentrated on the type of footwear I’d
seen a lot of women wearing, guessed her size, and a pair of shoes appeared. I
pushed them under the door.

"Backpack," she barked at me.

"Huh?"

"A dress is not enough. I need to look
completely different."

I paused, not wanting to lose contact with mine,
especially with what was in it. I put it down, concentrated, and another just
like it appeared next to it. I handed in the copy. She came out, sliding it onto
her back.

For a moment she looked puzzled as she
looked at my backpack going back on my back, but whatever was in her mind was
quickly replaced.

The next look she gave me would have
curdled milk.

"Let's get something straight. I owe
you for helping me escape, and I'll pay my debt. But if you ever touch me again,
I'll kill you!"

My mouth fell open, I let it swing for a
moment, and closed it again.

"Understood."

"We need to hurry."

"Why?"

"Because the next sale after me was
going to be my ship."

Ten

We hurried, hopefully looking like brother
and sister late for some family do. We were mainly walking side by side, but in
reality, I was following her, and trying hard to keep up. My head ached, and I
regretted not taking a tablet when I'd had the chance.

The problem with the tablets is they can't
be taken too often, without serious side effects to a situation like this one.
I needed to be functional in order to stay alive, not dropping from mind
altering tablet caused fatigue. One a day was my normal, and the time for today
was approaching, but something about what I’d done had brought it on early. I
just didn’t know what.

It could be stress warping the energy flow.
I mulled it over as we walked.

No-one paid us any attention, not even a
pair of station police, who must by now be on the lookout for us. Of course, they
might be so sure they knew where we were going, there was no need to look.

I had no idea where we were now, as she'd
led me into a part of the station I hadn't been to before. But all the same, I
recognized docking tubes as we went passed some of them. These were much
further spaced apart, so I guessed this was a larger ship docking area.

I wondered what sort of ship hers was.

I didn’t get to wonder long, as she broke
her own no touch rule, by dragging me to a stop against a wall, before a
corner. There was no-one else around us, so stopping wasn’t suspicious. Yet. She
peeked around the corner.

"You look," she muttered.
"Fast. Don’t be seen."

We changed places, and I looked around the
corner for a few seconds.

They had known exactly where we were going.
There were a full twenty men there, all brandishing guns. The airlock behind
them was closed, so just walking through them was out.

She looked me in the eyes.

"I don’t know how you do what you
do," she whispered, "but can you get us through them?"

"Through them is easy. Getting in the
airlock without them seeing it open is difficult. And what happens if they
changed the lock code, which I assume it has been."

She looked annoyed, as if she hadn't
thought of it.

"Can you pick a lock?"

"I can remove a lock. Maybe put it
back after if I have something to copy. But the main problem is them seeing us
open the door, and following us in."

"Can you take them?"

"I can try."

"Don’t try. Do it."

There was command in her voice. The sort
I'd heard a lot when I did my military training. Questions for later.

I nodded to her, held my hand up to stop
her following me, and stepped around the corner, invisibility in place. No-one
moved, as I walked into the center of the docking area, which was a good sized
space. I stopped, pondering how to do this.

Normally, I punched straight ahead. I could
do that here, but twenty punches was going to take too long. So I needed twenty
shots at once. I gathered as much power as I could muster, held the locations
of all twenty men in my mind, and threw all I could into a twenty sided punch.

Fifteen of them went down, and didn’t get
up. The rest staggered, two more going belatedly down, while the remaining
three kept their feet, and looked around for what hit them.

I hit them again, one by one. They went
down.

"Go!" I yelled.

She came running around the corner, and
beat me to the airlock. By the time I’d managed a slow stride to get there,
she'd punched in her code, and the door was opening. I sighed, and followed her
in.

I was completely done in. I needed rest.
No. I had to rest.

There was no rest. If anything, we’d just
managed to complete the easy part.

Eleven

Her fist hit the close button as soon as we
were in, and the hatch stopped opening, and started closing again. She waited
for it to lock shut, and changed the code herself.

She took off running towards a set of
stairs close by, and was at the top and disappearing, before I was even half
way up. Running was now beyond me.

At the top, I simply sank into a sitting
position on the top step, and shucked my pack. Water and tablets came out, a
tablet went down, and I emptied the water bottle.

"Where the hell are you?" came
down from above.

I put my tablet bottle away, hoisted my
pack, and started up the next level of stairs. Two more up, I came to the top,
and turned towards where her voice was still coming.

I was wheezing quietly, and my sight was
blurring a little. Bad signs, when combined with throbbing temples. If I didn’t
stop soon, I’d be throwing up as well.

"In here!" bellowed her voice.

I shambled in as fast as I could, and
stopped. Obviously the bridge, it was huge in comparison to the last one. She
was in one of the chairs in the middle. She waved me to one next to her. I removed
my backpack, let it thunk to the floor, sank into the chair with a sigh of
relief, and found it was quite comfortable.

"Can you cut metal?" she barked
at me.

"Possibly. What needs cutting?"

I wasn’t about to tell her I was done in.

"The docking clamps on the station
side. Ours are disengaged, but I can't ask them to set us loose. They're
already trying to cut into the airlock."

"I don’t know what a docking clamp is.
Can you show me?"

A screen on one side lit up, showing an
image of a ship docked to a station, from the perspective of being in space
between them. She pointed to the ship side couplings.

"Those are the ships. Don’t touch
those." She pointed again. "Those are the stations. Cut them or
remove them without damaging the ship." The finger moved again. "Them
too. The facilities hoses are better cut than yanked loose."

I gulped, staring at the image. She didn’t
want much.

The floor began to vibrate slightly as the
engines came up. She hit a switch, and the ship image on the other side of the
bridge showed a shield around all but the front of the ship.

And suddenly, I felt much better. I reached
out to the energy of the shield, and let it flow through my being. The migraine
halved in intensity, my fatigue fell away, and I began to concentrate my intent
on the image. My sight expanded to encompass the front of the ship, and the
station next to it. The clamps were there, and suddenly they weren't. The hoses
vanished as well.

"Go," I said.

The ship immediately backed away from the
station. Stuff popped up on the central screen, overlaying the receding station
view. I sat back, feeling the ship with my senses.

It was the weirdest feeling. It was like my
body had expanded to be the size of the ship. I explored it, following the
shield energy to the engines, and back to the power plants. Barely being used
as they were, the energy coursed through me.

For a moment I was back in the moment
before I transported myself away from the mages attacking me, the feeling being
similar to all the energy I was using to make the move happen. Only this was an
order of magnitude greater.

"What a rush," I murmured, and
she shot me a look.

"Feeling better?" she asked,
sounding sarcastic.

"Yes."

"Good. Because any minute now, someone
is going to start throwing things at us."

Twelve

"Damn them!"

"What?"

"They took everything from my cargo
hold."

She popped up a schematic of this deck.

"Check the first stateroom to see if
my stuff is still there."

It wasn’t a request. I shifted my
awareness, and looked inside.

"Nothing there."

"FUCK EM!"

The ship jerked around, and started back
towards the station.

"What are you going to do?"

She was already doing it. The main screen
was now showing a list of things for sale, lots of them tagged for auction on
station if not bought first.

"There. Can you find that pallet of
stuff?"

"What do you think I am?"

"I don’t care what you are. Can you do
it or not?"

This was something I’d never done. First I
needed to focus on the list, then jump from the list to where it was, view it,
and what now?

"Where do you want it?"

"First stateroom."

I checked it again, and moved it.

"Put the pallets on either side in the
cargo hold. I suspect they're my food stocks."

"Where in the ship? I need a plan
showing the deck and the position."

They popped up. I moved both pallets.

"These next."

She'd highlighted a series of containers.

"Let me guess, your cargo?"

"As far as I can tell, yes. Try and
stack them neatly."

I looked at her open mouthed for a moment,
and closed it.

I drew more on the energy in the shields,
and one by one, the cargo hold began to fill up.

"Hey, don’t do that?"

"What?"

"Drain my shields is what. We're going
to need them in about a minute."

"Why a minute?"

The ship had turned again, and was now
moving away from the station. A view popped up showing what was behind us.

The station's police force had finally
reacted to the ship leaving, and three ships were now coming around from behind
the station.

"Now what?" I asked her, looking
worried.

"Now they throw things at us. How much
do you know about ships?"

"Nothing."

"Figures."

"What should I know?"

"How to blow up missiles before they
hit us would be useful."

"I'm open to suggestions."

I should have been careful with word
selection. I received a blast of verbiage about missiles, none of which I
understood, but once again gave me an impression of someone military in origin.

"Just show me where one might be
vulnerable."

A missile spec popped up. She jabbed at it
with a finger.

"Poke a hole in this wall, and it
should blow up."

I thought about it for a moment. It seemed
easy enough.

"Where do I draw power from, if not
the shields?"

"Why do you need power?"

"I could do it if it was sitting on
the deck here. Just holding sight of a missile in space would take all I had.
Doing something inside it is going to take more. Doing it more than once is
going to take a lot more."

She looked at me, with a 'not understanding
this' look on her face.

"How far can you shine a light into
the distance?"

She nodded.

"Yes, as far as the power source will
let you. It’s the same with what I can do. The more complex you make it, the
more energy it requires."

She was already pressing buttons.

"Use this. It’s a secondary power
plant used by the container loading system. I hope it's enough."

It was enough. I let go of the shields, and
the indicators began to rise immediately. The generator wasn’t anything like as
powerful, but I drew on it without any resistance, since it wasn’t being used
for anything else.

"Launch."

I concentrated on the icon showing the
missile, and shifted my awareness to the missile itself, going inside, seeking
the wall, and vanishing it.

The missile exploded.

"Keep going!"

There were twenty three more.

Thirteen

The last three hit us, but the shields
held. The problem was it took me too long to do each, one at a time. And they
were far enough apart, each explosion had no impact on the others.

"Can you punch a hole in each
ship?"

"In theory. Where is softest?"

"Bridge windows. Maybe the airlocks.
They'll be looking to board us, so there'll be someone on the bridge, and
someone at the main airlock."

I cast my sight at the nearest ship, and
observed the bridge windows. Inside, there were two figures. In doing so, I
became aware of the ship's own shielding.

I grinned.

"Whatever you thought of, get it done
before the next salvo launches."

The main docking airlock was beneath the
bridge. There were six people there.

I gathered all the energy I could from the
other ship's shields, and as if I was standing next to the hull, I punched
twice. The ship staggered, debris came pouring out of the two holes, and it
continued on its way, now off on a direction away from us.

"Do it again, fast."

I did it again, fast. And a third time. The
last ship launched its missiles a second time, but these were easy for me to
deal with.

"Show me how to turn the engines
off," I asked her.

"How much of the bridges are
left?"

"Not a lot of actual damage, but I
can't tell if the controls still work."

Schematics came up. She pointed at a control
panel.

"That bank of switches in the engine
room. Turning them off will shut down main power. Why do you want to?"

I grinned at her.

"Aren't they pirates?"

"Yes. What has that to do with
it?"

"How would you like their firepower?
And their engines?"

"What the hell are you talking
about?"

I didn’t answer her immediately, but took a
few moments toggling switches. All three ships stopped accelerating, and
remained ballistic.

I looked at her.

"This ship has no defenses.
Right?"

"Right."

"It's a standard sort of trader
ship?"

"Yes."

"You could never afford to upgrade
it?"

"I was working on that."

"So we have three perfectly good ships
out there. Why don’t we take them, and use them to upgrade?"

"You're crazy!"

"No I'm not. Admittedly I know nothing
about ships at all, but I should be able to position the ships against your
hull wherever you want them put, and join all four in a way they could be made
to work together."

She thought about it. And sighed.

"Damn it. I didn’t want any of this.
But you're right. It's too good an opportunity to pass up. What do you
need?"

"Something which shows me where to
place each ship. Step one is mount them in the right place. If you can show me
where, I think I can make them secure."

"And step two?"

"Will be up to you. I can probably put
the holes to connect things in, given time, but only you can connect the
systems of the ships together."

"I could probably jury rig something
to fire the missiles. But anything else is beyond me."

"Do you know anyone who could
help?"

"Yes."

She went silent, and her face went hard.

"Who?"

"Not now. Let's get these prizes, and
work out how to do the next steps later. How close do you need to be?"

"No idea. Closer the better?"

"Figures. Well we have one thing going
for us at the moment."

"What?"

"These three were obviously the only
armed ships docked here. Nothing else is coming after us. At least for now.
Shut up, and let me work."

I sat there, using my sight to examine the
three ships. They were almost identical, a lot of the differences now determined
by how I’d damaged each one. There was no life on any of them now, and no air.
For the time it took, and to see if I could, I patched the holes.

By the time we'd matched course and speed
with the nearest ship, she had a diagram on a screen showing how she'd mount
the three ships on her own. The result was going to almost double the mass of
her ship, and I could see she'd tried hard to keep the engines aligned, and all
the missile turrets free to fire.

"Drop the shields."

She did so.

I summoned all the energy I could from my
remaining generator, wondering if turning off the power on the ships had been a
good idea or not. I reached out as if to grab the ship in my hand, and gently
pulled it towards us. It moved, but not enough, and with not enough control.

"Careful!" she yelled at me.
"We can't take a collision. Kiss it onto us, or don’t do it."

I didn’t have enough power for the control
I needed. I searched around for more, and found the shield generator. The power
there was hardly being used, and I focused on what it was doing. Ahead of the
ship was a minor shield, designed to stop anything from hitting the hull as the
ship moved forward. I carefully left enough energy to power it, but used
everything else the generator had.

My energy hand carefully moved the ship
into position over our hull, and brought it down, until the two hulls were
almost touching. Instead of allowing them to touch, I imagined the two hulls
forming a single one, and it was done. A wave of fatigue rolled over me, but I
ignored it.

I grinned at her. She gave me a look back
which suggested I was some sort of alien. Maybe I was.

Twice more we did this, matching course and
speed, me moving the ship close in, and merging hulls. The second one had me
reeling after the hull merge, but I recovered a bit while we closed on the
third.

The last hull merge went as well as the
previous two, with one exception.

I passed out.

Fourteen

I woke up on a bed. I was desperate to use
the facilities, my head was throbbing badly, and I had no idea where I was.

First things first. The bathroom was en-suite.
It was clean, had towels and soap set up, and I took the opportunity to relieve
myself, and then shower. I sniffed my clothes before putting them back on, and
they seemed ok. But I'd need to do something about changes in the near future.

My backpack was on a desk in a corner of
the bedroom, my pad sitting next to it. I thumbed it on, and a ship layout
became visible. I was apparently in the third stateroom, which predictably was
the smallest. The ship apparently only needed a crew of three, most of it being
either engines, and what they needed, or cargo space.

There was one bottle of water left in my
pack, so I opened it, and emptied half of it in one go. Carrying the bottle, I
stepped out the door, and the pad directed me a short way to the kitchen.

She looked up as I entered. There was food
for two on the table, so I sat at the other position. The dress was gone, and
in its place was black leather, with a blood red shirt under the jacket.

"Ship told me you were in the
shower," she said.

"How long was I asleep?"

"About thirty hours."

I looked at her stunned for a moment.

"You put me to bed?"

"Hell no. I had the cleaner bots do
it. Fortunately all my stuff was in the pallets you liberated, so we had sheets
and everything, but the bots just dumped you on top of the bed."

She indicated the food, and resumed her own
eating. I started in on what was a very tasty, something.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Hiding inside the rings of one of the
outer gas giants. You did a good job of joining the ships, but until we get
them cross connected, the ship is unbalanced. I've had the repair bots cutting
holes and running cables. Job should be done shortly, and then we should be
able to fly a lot faster, not to mention a lot more stable. In the meantime, I
had the pallets unpacked, and things put back where they're supposed to be.
Hence, food."

"Did you get some sleep
yourself?"

"I've had two six hour naps during
your thirty. Is sleeping that long normal for you?"

It suddenly occurred to me why my head was
throbbing. I’d missed a tablet. I concentrated for a moment, the bottle of
tablets appeared in front of me, I shook a tablet out, washed it down, and
moved the bottle back to my backpack.

"How the hell do you do that?" she
demanded.

I looked at her, and waggled my eyebrows at
her. Her frown deepened.

"Magic."

She opened her mouth to bullshit me, but
closed it again.

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"Wow. I didn't think there was any
such thing."

"There isn’t."

Her eyes narrowed at me.

"There isn’t now," I corrected.
"I'm not from here."

"Where from?"

"It's a long story."

"We have time. But before you start,
we better properly introduce ourselves. I'm Jenna."

"Thorn."

"Just Thorn?"

"Just Jenna?"

"Quite. Okay Thorn, how the hell did
you do all that shit?"

"The short version goes like this. I
was born way in the past, and I don’t know how far back, when magic was
relatively common, and the idea of flying among the stars would have had you
locked up as being a lunatic. I tested out as good at most things, including
the military and magic. But before I had more than basic training at anything,
I was forced to flee. In getting away using magic, there was too much energy
hitting me, and I found myself in this time instead."

"So you’re an untrained natural
talent?"

"You could put it that way. Enough
training to know how to think things out, and try them. I wanted to be a Battle
Mage, but never had the training."

"I’d call you a battle mage now, after
what you did. You never had training for any of that?"

"The whole concept of space ships and
missiles wasn’t even a rational thought process where and when I was born. But
it seems in moving to technology, we lost our magic. It took me a year to get
it back after the jump, and I'm still figuring things out."

"Well I'm glad you did. How do you get
to the station?"

"Same way you did I suspect. I made a
mistake trying something out, and was captured by a slaver. He knocked me out somehow
by shooting me, and I woke up on a ship. They'd already killed someone, and I accidentally
killed them trying to keep them from killing me. The ship was set to come here,
and since I know nothing at all about ships, all I could do was wait until it
got somewhere. After weeks, it docked at the station, and I snuck off. I was
just in the process of working out this new place, when I quite literally
bumped into someone in the string you were on, and saw you."

"And you figured I’d be grateful if
you saved me?"

"At first I wasn’t thinking. I was
following some sort of guidance to start with. When I found out you were a
pilot, it made sense to try. I was hoping to buy you. But we both know how that
went."

"Where did… No, don’t tell me. I
assume you have funds now, which didn’t get spent?"

"Ah, yeah."

"Well I thank you for rescuing me, but
we need to get some things straight."

"Such as?"

"This is my ship. I'm the owner and
the captain. At best, you're temporary crew. I call the shots. You do what I
tell you to."

"Technically I could make a claim to
owning a bit less than half the mass now. That would make us partners."

"Fuck!"

I grinned at her. She didn't grin back.

"No. The ship is mine, but actions and
mass cuts you some slack. I'll want more magic from you in the future, but I
won't ask you to do menial ship work. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Don't ever touch me. There isn’t
going to be any thank you for saving me sex, so don’t even think about it. I
owe you bigtime, and as I said, I'll pay up appropriately. But we are not
friends, not lovers, and if you’re not actually crew, you're also not a
passenger either."

She stopped, and looked at me.

"What do you want?"

"Take me home."

"Where is it?"

"Well, that is the problem. I don’t
know. It's two weeks travel from the station."

She sighed.

"Could be anywhere then. Fine, I'll
take you home. When we figure out where it is. In the meantime, your primary
task is keeping us from being captured by slavers again."

"I can do that. But we need to work on
a power source for me, if I'm going to do anything like any of that
again."

"Which brings me to our first
mission."

"Mission?"

"We need to rescue my engineer. I
can't integrate four ships. I'm a pilot. We need someone with actual
shipbuilding skills. We need my engineer."

"Can I assume he was sold at the same
auction as you were?"

"Yes, she was."

Fifteen

Whoever thought of bolting four different
ships together to make one bigger one, obviously knew nothing about space
ships.

Oh yeah, that was me.

I spent the next few hours turning hull
joins into hatchways, and adding stairs so you could climb from the main ship
into each of the new ones. Fortunately, the gravity was aligned the same way,
or it would have been dangerous moving between them.

I also made proper airtight cross junctions
for all the wiring going both ways. By the time I was finished, each of the
weapons systems could be used from the main bridge, and two of the three other
ships could add their engine power.

The third ship was the middle one, and for
the time being, I was going to use it solely to power my magic. The bots
cleaned out the main cabin, and I moved in there. The idea was, I used that
ship as home, so as not to get in Jenna's way.

She gave me a quick course in basic ship
functions. Turning on and off lights for example, and what a few of the
displays on the bridge meant. I was almost as clueless when she finished as
when she started, but I wasn’t going to tell her.

The hardest change for her to make, was
linking the two bridges, so she could pop up information on my screens when I
needed it. She'd tried hard to show me how to access it myself, but she could
see my eye's glazing over. In the end, she ran a link line from her secondary
screen to my main screen, so what she showed me wouldn’t interrupt her flying
the ship.

I was tempted to ask her why I was being
banished, but the more I thought about it, the more I really didn’t want to get
an answer just yet.

I also wasn’t asking about the no
saved-me-sex comment. On the one hand, I was annoyed she felt the need to go
there, obviously thinking it was my primary motivation. Aside from the pretty
girl thing, sex hadn't entered my mind at all, let alone as a motivation. And
on the other hand, having it out in the open now, I was also annoyed it wasn’t
going to happen. Go figure.

With the ship flyable, and we hoped
fightable, Jenna brought us out of our hiding place, and headed once more
out-system. We'd lost nearly two days, and this was both good and bad. The good
was being unpredictable. The bad was not being out of the system before the
pirates could mount a blockade, and in Jenna's engineer being so much further
away from us.

Banished to my own little world, I sat my
bridge, watching our progress, practicing accessing the ships available energy
reserves, and trying to come up with ideas for getting us past the next
obstacle.

Jenna had painted a picture of the ship
threading a needle, being shot at by who knows how many ships. She explained
the needle thing to me, but I still didn’t understand it. Space was big. Why
you needed to do needle work, was quite beyond me.

Info popped up on the main screen, showing
me ships in the distance. Six of them, and all at the same place.

"We need to go through the middle of
them," Jenna said over the com link. "Can you make us invisible,
without compromising our shields?"

"I can try. When do you want it?"

"Now. Any chance you can deactivate
our ship ID as well?"

"Why?"

"They can see our ship ID now. Ship ID
but no visible ship, isn’t likely to fool them long, especially since you
already used this back on the station." There was a pause. "And we
need to disable the other three as well. At the moment we're appearing to be a
small fleet very close together. That’s not good, especially since three of
them are pirate."

"Show me the specification for the
ID."

It popped onto the screen. I looked at it
for a moment.

"Should be just a matter of pulling
out the central chip. Why can't you do it?"

"Because it's embedded in the central
beam, which braces the hull. No-one can get to the ship ID."

"Ah. Ok."

I concentrated for a moment, and the chip
dropped into my hand.

"How's that?"

There was a silence. I wondered what her
face was doing.

"Whatever you did, did it. Do the
other three. I hope you didn't break it?"

"Oh, now you tell me."

I ginned, which she couldn’t see, and
listened to her swearing.

"Is it important?" I went on.

"Yes. Without one, honest systems
treat you like a pirate."

"So when we're not hiding, it needs to
be on?"

"Yes."

"Fine, tell me when."

There was another silence, during which I
pulled the other three chips. I enclosed each one in a small box, with the ship
of origin labeled on it. I did the same for Jenna's. The last thing she'd be
wanting was me getting them mixed up when the time came for hers to go back in.

"You didn't break it, did you?"

"No. The chip is in my hand, in a
small box to keep it safe. I can put it back anytime you want."

"Do you like living?"

"I think so. Why?"

"Because if you joke like that again,
you'll find out what not living is all about. Got it?"

"Note to self. Jenna doesn't have a
sense of humour."

"Of course I bloody do! Just not about
my ship and crew. Are we invisible yet?"

I concentrated, drawing power from my ship.
I threw my sight outside the ship, and looked back at us.

"Nothing to see here."

"Good. We need to keep it that way
until after the jump, and maybe longer, depending on what's on the other
side."

"Roger that."

I slumped down in my chair, and waited for
something to happen.

Sixteen

Being invisible wasn’t enough apparently.
We'd sailed straight passed the six ships, threaded the needle as Jenna said, and
something odd happened.

The stars shifted. Not all of them, but
enough to cause me to blink in confusion. The system information on the main
screen vanished for a moment, and something quite different came up to replace
it.

"What was that?" I asked.

"We jumped."

"Jumped?"

"Think of a solar system as being a
big bubble. Where two bubbles rub against each other, we can jump from one to
the other instantaneously. We just did that. Heads up, two more pirates
here."

She'd showed me the dots which indicated ships,
and as I looked at it, a third one appeared.

"Damnit! One of them followed us
through."

Missiles launched from the new one, and
seconds later, from the others.

"Do your thing!"

I did my thing. I gathered all the energy I
could, reached out for the nearest missile, and turned it back. I quickly did
the same for each of them, with the exception of the last one, which impacted
our shields before I had time to deal with it. One by one, in fast order, they
impacted the ship which fired them, and suddenly there was nothing but debris.

"You need to speed that up."

I sighed. Maybe so, but she could have said
thanks first.

For something to do as we sped away, I cast
my sight around the debris field.

"There are pallets of stuff intact in
the debris field. Want any of it?"

"Sure, but I'm not stopping. Put
anything you can grab in the main secondary hold for now, and I’ll sort it when
I get a chance."

"Will do."

I reached out, and began moving whatever
looked intact. It kept me occupied for an hour, before I suddenly found myself
out of range. At which time Jenna told me to put the ship ID chip back in,
which I did. She double checked it was working, and showing the correct ID.

Feeling hungry, I went off to my kitchen. The
pirates who'd crewed this ship had lived very nicely. Comfortable beds, good
food, and even a nice wine cellar. Jenna had everything moveable from the other
ships, moved into mine. I was well stocked for living here indefinitely.

For some reason, it was a thought which
left me cold.

I chose something to eat, ate it, and
trashed the remains. I was barely at the door before a cleaner bot appeared to
remove any mess I'd made.

I found Jenna in the cargo hold, scanning
labels on pallets. She passed the pad over to me, which showed a list of what
I'd salvaged from space. It was a long list.

She pointed to one item.

"That one is money for the ship, and
all we need to do is return it to the nearest post office."

"Post office?"

"It’s a shipment of small parcels,
assigned to some ship the pirates must have hit. There is a post office on
every station, and they see to it everything is sent to where it needs to go.
Most of it is insured against loss or destruction, so when we hand it in, the
insurance value will be paid to the ship. The codes on some of the items show
them to be high value."

"So why not sell it all
ourselves?"

"I'm not a pirate!"

She was very forceful about it.

"Fine."

I held up both hands palm towards her in a
sign of submission.

"Privateer laws apply to salvage. We
can pick up anything floating in space. If the packaging is intact, along with
the destination, it needs to be sent on its way again. Sometimes there will be
a bounty placed on its recovery, often not. The post office is good for those
bounties."

"And if there's no label?"

"If it's open, or the label is gone,
so no ownership can be ascertained, we get to keep it, or sell it."

"Hmmm."

"No!"

"No?"

"No. You will not remove labels, or
open anything which isn’t."

I looked her in the eyes, and she was
deadly serious. Spoilsport. Still, I could see the benefits of seeming to be a
legit and honest trader. The problem was, I couldn’t see any attraction to
being one myself.

So far, I'd seen no reason why anyone
should be honest out here. I guessed there must be honest people around
somewhere. Jenna appeared to be one of them.

"Is this your normal stance? Or do you
just need brownie points where we next dock?"

"Both. I need to be able to explain
why this ship doesn’t conform to specs anymore for one thing."

"I’d have thought that was easy."

"How so?"

"Tell the truth. You were captured by
pirates, and after escaping, you found they'd modified your ship. On the way
out of their system, you found a debris field, and stopped to collect as much
as you could."

"I guess that works. I sure as hell
can't tell anyone you're a magician. No-one would believe it anyway."

"And anyone who did, would immediately
be a threat to me."

"As far as I can see, you’re the
threat. You represent a wild card in a poker deck. If you keep on the way you
are, word is going to get around, and people are going to become interested in
you."

"All the more reason to get me home as
soon as possible."

"All in good time."

We spent the next few hours moving pallets
around, dividing them up into what needed to be offloaded to continue to their
destinations, what was worth keeping for the ship, and what would be sold.

After, she taught me something new about
computers, and had me practicing a new skill.

I was pretty sure getting caught doing
this, was going to be bad for the both of us.

Seventeen

By the time we arrived at the next station,
I'd been staving off boredom by reading a selection of novels Jenna had on
board. Most of them did nothing for me, being romances of one description or
another, but a few kept me occupied. I made a note to find my own reading
material.

The station orbited a planet this time, and
I had my first view of what a planet looked like from space. It was pretty
mesmerizing, at least until the novelty wore off.

Before docking was granted, Jenna was
bombarded with questions. Her ship was listed as missing, and she had to
explain what happened. As with me, it turned out she'd done something stupid,
by taking a route too close to known pirate space, and been boarded, and
captured. She introduced me as someone also escaping slavers, who'd helped her
escape, and retake her ship. The modification explanation was accepted without
question.

They turned their attention to me. All I
could tell them was space travel wasn’t known on my world, and I’d been stunned
on the ground, and woke up in space. I had no idea where my planet was, or how
it was referenced, or even if it was known here.

Not having identification proved to be an
issue. Jenna had none as well, but her identifiers were known, and she just had
to supply them for checking. I was going to have to supply them all before
being allowed on the station.

Jenna provided the location of the pirate
station, and this was promised to be passed on to authorities. But the person
saying this didn’t look as if it was likely to be actioned. I wondered why. If
ever a hole in the ground needed filling in, it was that station. Presumably
someone was tasked with rooting out slavery and piracy, but maybe that someone
wasn’t here. Hence as far as anyone here was concerned, it was somebody else's
problem.

My problem became worse as soon as we
docked. Jenna was quickly checked against her records, in spite of having
already sent all this already. It didn’t take long, and she had a new identity
card. And then all the attention turned to me.

Standing there on the dock, ringed by
security officers who all but had their hands on their guns, some bean counter
began interrogating me.

No, I had no idea what my home planet was
called. We hadn't really called it anything interesting, and our word for it
was translatable as 'dirt'. Not very useful as a galactic name.

No, I didn’t know where my home planet was.
The best I could do was something over two weeks away from here. Or two weeks
from the pirate slaver station. No, I didn’t know the direction. No, I had no
idea how to determine it from a ship computer. And in any case, even if I did
now, I didn’t then.

No, I hadn't the foggiest idea where I was
now. Eyebrows went up alarmingly at this one. No, I haven’t even asked Jenna
where we were headed. Why not? It meant nothing to me, since I had no reference
to fit anything together.

And hey, I really don’t give a shit anyway!
This is a ride for me, until Jenna gets me home.

I offered to stay on the ship if they would
stop asking me stupid questions. Fingers twitched over gun butts. It didn’t
really matter, I had a shield around me, but they didn’t know that.

The questions continued, this time about
local stuff, apparently I should have known about simply from the news feed coming
in. I looked at Jenna, as if to say, 'did we get a news feed?', and she nodded.
I shook my head in a 'now you tell me' motion. I repeated not knowing about it,
or caring if I had. The end of Jenna's mouth twitched. Maybe she did have a
sense of humour after all.

The bean counter finally gave up. They
covered my hands in black shit, and took prints of both of them. I peered into
a scanner, and they took images of both eyes. And lastly, I was stuck with a
needle, they drew blood, and told me it was a dna sample. I opened my mouth to
ask what the hell that was when it was home, and was preempted with the
information it was for a unique genetic code, and if I didn’t know what a
genetic code was, I should look it up.

A gizmo on top of a portable podium, spat
out an identity card for me, I was told to present my pad, and it dinged as a
file transferred to it, which turned out to be both local laws, and those for
the local area of space this system belonged to. I read the first page, and my
eyes glazed over. The other side of Jenna's mouth twitched.

I was formally welcomed to the station,
advised to obey all local laws, and hoped I would enjoy my stay here. The whole
lot of them left.

My hands were still black.

Eighteen

"So you want to open a bank account with
us, young sir?"

"I'm told I should."

"Excellent. Do you have funds to
deposit?"

I dumped a large wad of notes in front of
her. Her mouth went serious.

"Where did you obtain these
notes?"

I noticed there was no mention of how I
obtained them, just where.

"I escaped from a slaver on a pirate
station. I managed to liberate some compensation for my captivity as I left. Is
there a problem?"

"I guess not. We don’t see this stuff
very often, but we are allowed to take it. You realize of course, the exchange
rate won't be in your favour at all."

I'd been warned this would be the case. All
the same, it was still a healthy amount to open an account with.

"Give me the best you can. It's all I
have for now, and all I'm likely to have for some time, since my captain isn’t
going to pay me until we reach our next station."

I was lying, but it felt like a good sob
story was needed here. I would be getting a share of what I’d salvaged, but
no-one needed to know it.

"And it's not going to be much
either," I added, "since I'm just basic crew with no qualifications
at all."

She nodded, as if she could see I was, and
started sorting the notes. Each type went into a machine which checked them for
whatever they checked them for, and spat them out counted. When they were all
done, she fed the amounts into her computer, and it spat out a piece of paper.
She handed it over to me, pointing at the bottom figure.

"That’s what you get in local
currency, which is usable through this whole sector of space without needing to
be converted. Is this acceptable?"

"It'll have to be."

"ID card please."

I handed it over, she pushed it into a
slot, pushed some buttons, and gave it back to me. She pushed a small box
towards me.

"Thumb print please."

I looked at it, and looked up at her.

"No black shit?"

She laughed.

"Heavens no. Banks pride themselves in
using the latest tech, which means no black shit, as you call it. Just stick
your right thumb anywhere on the reader."

I did.

"Thank you," she said, pulling it
away from me. "Everything seems to be in order. Pad please."

I put my pad down in front of me. It dinged
as a file transferred to it.

"Your banking interface is now on your
pad. You can pay for anything on the station using a thumb print, and the bill
will be transferred into the banking system, and come to us for processing.
Faster than you can get to another station, or down planet, your thumb print
will be distributed through the banking network. As a spacer though, you have
options for taking your funds with you."

"I assumed I'd need to withdraw
cash."

"It's one option. Lots do, but not an
efficient way, especially with the amount you have in your account. You can
simply leave it in your account, and draw on it anywhere you go, but if for
some reason coms between systems are interrupted for any time, where you go
next may not have an accurate total for you."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Enough for us to provide another
option. We can issue you another card, which you can transfer your funds to
before you leave the station. At your next port, you simply transfer some or
all of these funds back into your account. Hence the interface on your pad.
It's quick and easy. Would you like the card now?"

"Yes please."

She busied herself for a few moments, and a
card popped out of a slot I hadn't noticed. She passed it over.

"A warning. This is like cash. While
it's tied directly to your account, if you lose it, it's gone. Anyone can tie
it to their account, and transfer the funds off it, and no-one is going to
question it. A lot of large transactions get paid this way. We issue these
cards all the time, and in fact, you can get as many as you want, loaded with
specific amounts. Once you hand them to someone else, or you lose it, or it's
taken from you, there is no way of getting the funds back. Do you understand
this?"

"I do."

I'd never had one before, but I'd been
taught all about bank card systems. This was different, but not too different.
The loss part I’d found out from Jenna, who'd lost a great deal when she was
captured.

I placed the card next to my pad, and it
beeped.

"Your pad just synced with the card,
which currently has nothing on it. Once you have some privacy, try the transfer
options. There is some security for while you walk around with a card, as long
as you set it on your pad. It stops anyone else syncing with your card, as long
as your card and pad are within the distance of a small room of each other. If
you have any questions, come back and ask me."

As a security measure, it was a bit
half-arsed in my opinion. It meant anyone could steal the card, but they
couldn’t access it until you were a short distance away. But it did stop the
syncing of cards as people walked by. On the other hand, for those like me, it
meant cards used less space than cash did. I'd need to check all the fine print
about them though. If the pad sync being lost sounded an alarm, stealing cards
was going to be problematical.

"I will. Thanks."

"One last thing. It’s a good idea to
leave some funds in your account all the time. As a general rule, arriving at a
station or planet with an empty account, especially with a pending update flag
on it, is frowned upon."

"More so than arriving without any
form of ID?"

She laughed again. It was a nice sound.

"Probably not. But zero balances throw
up all sorts of blocks, and the first thing you have to do is prove you can pay
for things, before they let you on the station. The process is tedious. When
you show your ID as you come off your ship the first time, a status of your
account is presented to the immigration officer. They won't know how much is in
it, but they will be told if it's enough to pay usual bills while on-station,
or on-planet. If your account is healthy enough for any sort of expenditure,
they get a different status code, and this one makes them happy. The suggested
amounts are in the interface, and the first time you do a transfer to the card,
it will prompt you to consider leaving an appropriate amount. Or alternately,
transfer to your account before you leave the ship."

"I'll take your advice. The last thing
I need is a repeat of today's inquisition."

She laughed again.

Nineteen

"You want me to do what?"

"Get me access to the security
database."

"And how would I do that? Remember, I
know very little about computers."

"You could use that magical sight of
yours to observe a username and password I could then use."

"If I don’t die of boredom first,
waiting for it to happen."

"Well I need to find where certain
ships are at the moment. I know the ships my crew are on now, but I don’t know
where they are. But station security's trade information about who is where,
and heading in what direction. The sector military get it all as well. So what
I need is in the database here."

"How do you know your crew are still
on the ships?"

"I don’t. And wont until we catch up
with them. But as soon as the last of the sales is made, I want to be out of
here, and heading after my engineer."

"Let me look."

She nodded.

I cast my sight into the security office,
which I’d walked past earlier. There was plenty of activity going on, but no-one
was needing to type in passwords. I concentrated on the computer itself, but
other than its own workings, there was no data stored there. Nor was there in
the entire office. I followed the cables leading down into the bowels of the
station, where I found a small room. Inside it was a computer, and a set of
storage devices.

I looked Jenna in the eye, and winked at
her. She frowned, but I followed up with a grin.

"What?"

I drew on some ship power. A computer, desk
and all, and a set of storage devices, appeared in an empty corner of the room.

"Tell me you didn’t steal their
computer system?"

"Hell no. I copied it. At least it
should be a copy. Only one way to find out, and that’s look at the data."

She did just that. It took her a while to
find the access she needed, but once she did, ship movement data filled the
screen.

"Too much data!"

"You prefer not enough?"

She shot me one of her menacing looks, but
I just grinned at her. The data changed as she started sorting through it. At
last she looked happy.

"Do you have anything else to do
here?"

"Not me. I can go for another walk if
you need me too."

My last several walks had been very
lucrative. Lifting bank cards had proved to be really easy, and there was no
alarm if one left the proximity of a synced pad. Back on the ship, my pad had
displayed a list of what was on all of them. There were going to be some really
unhappy people on this station soon.

"No, you better stay here. The last
few pallets are not selling, so I'm going to leave them with a broker I know.
Be prepared to leave in about an hour."

She walked out in a hurry.

Back in my own space, I transferred most of
what was in my account to my empty card, and marked it so I’d know which one it
was. In the future I was going to need to be consistent with what I transferred
onto each station to use, and it had to match the transactions on my account
reasonably closely. I might have become a thief, but only a stupid thief puts
more in their authority accessible account than it should legitimately have in
it.

I'd made quite a few legitimate thumbed
transactions just for practice, and to buy a few things. I'd invested in enough
clothing to keep me going for the immediate future, eaten at some expensive
restaurants in my new flash clothes, just for the thrill of it, and traded in
my pad on a new top of the line one. The store copied everything from old to
new without question, and showed me the old one was wiped clean. Mostly I
bought things, which someone just escaped from slavers might do to get back to
normal. It also meant I now had legitimately bought things, which no-one could
accuse me of stealing.

Once some sales of our cargo started
happening, Jenna had done the same. It turned out not all of her things had
been recovered. She'd also bought a new pad, and done the bank thing as well,
in order to get it synced, and get a new bank card. I didn’t know what else
she'd bought, but I’d seen her returning once, quite well laden down.

Once shopping had stopped being a buzz, I'd
gone wandering. The book shop drew me straight in. I found a huge area of book
shelves, covered in hard books, all sorted by what sort of content they had.
I’d picked one off at random, and found two prices. One was for the hard
version, and the other for the electronic version. I replaced the book, and
went looking for a shop person.

It turned out the reading interface for the
pad was free. It came with a sample, which I found didn’t read very well. The
girl handed me a larger tablet with one hand, and thumb print reader with the
other. Before thumbing, I tried the free book on the tablet, and found it to be
a much better read. I double checked the one she'd handed me was the top of the
range, and she merely smiled at me, and offered the thumb device again. I
thumbed it.

I'd spent several hours in there, reading
the first few pages of all sorts of books, and ended up with several dozen to
get me started. Several of them were promising enough for me to get the sequels
straight away. Before I left, I was informed the tablet would access their
stores wherever I went, and I should be able to buy new books almost anywhere.
The tablet would automatically find book stores, even if they were not the same
chain, and I could browse from the ship as soon as I had a station connection,
which I learned was often well out into the system, if the ship was coming in
on a standard traffic lane. I thanked her for the information and help, and
started reading the first book while I had a nice dessert at a café nearby,
before returning to the ship.

Banking over, I continued reading, until my
pad beeped at me. Another payment had gone into my account, presumably my share
of the cargo sales. I transferred it to my primary card, leaving the same
amount as I had before in the account.

Jenna didn’t even bother checking if I was
actually aboard, before the ship undocked, and headed out into space. I made a
note to make sure if she said don’t go off the ship, I didn’t. I had no
illusions she would wait for me, if she wanted to be somewhere else.

I had no idea where we were going.

Twenty

"So explain the dynamics of running a
ship to me."

"Seriously?"

"Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I assumed ships had to move cargo in
order to be able to pay crew and consumables. I know there were docking fees. I
assumed you had to refuel as well."

"Docking fees cover the removal of
waste, topping up of water, and if needed, replenishing air supplies. Plus rent
of the dock area, and the costs of moving freight in and out. In the overall
scheme of things, docking fees are petty cash."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Which reminds me, before we dock
next, we need to merge the waste systems, so your waste doesn’t eventually fill
up the system. It's something I forgot to tell you to do. The air and water
need merging as well. I'll dig the specs out for you."

More work. At least it gave me something to
do. She went on.

"The ship isn’t refueled. The power
plants don’t need fuel, and are rated for fifty years. The ship is a little
over ten, so power isn’t a worry in the short term. Long term, I need to make
sure the cost of replacing them is covered. To that end, I keep a separate ship
account, which gets a percentage of what I make each trip, and is something I
can only dip into in an emergency. The cargo you picked up, saved this from
being an emergency. And most of it sold well, so I'm back in business, and not
owing anything."

"You own the ship?"

"Yes. I inherited it from my parents a
few years ago. Buying it was one of the last major things they did. It was
supposed to be their freedom from planet life. Now it's mine."

She didn’t venture what had happened to
them, and I didn’t ask.

"There are three main costs to running
a trader ship of this size, but only two apply to me. The major one for most
independents, is the loan repayments for financing the ship. Next is crew
salaries and bonuses, with food and incidentals for comfortable living, and lastly
the price of cargo if you buy it yourself. Normally I don’t take the risk. Most
stations have shippers and brokers needing cargo moved just about everywhere,
so you get paid the shipping rate depending on where to, and how far it is
away. Often there are bonuses for getting there ahead of schedule, and some
fast ships clean up on these. With the extra speed we now have, I'll have a
better chance of claiming some of them."

"Did you get a cargo this time?"

"No. I didn’t want to get tied to
anywhere, in case we get where we're going, and need to leave immediately
again. I can cover docking fees for a while if I have to, since your salvage
paid better than hauling a standard cargo. For now, there's no crew expenses,
and there's enough food for both of us for a few months."

"What's the likelihood of more
salvage?"

"I don’t know. If we have to defend
ourselves again, maybe pretty good."

"What if I empty the cargo bay before
I destroy the ship?"

She looked at me. It was a long hard look.

"Are you turning pirate
yourself?"

"Not that I was aware of. But if we
need to destroy a pirate, or anyone else attacking us, why settle for just what
doesn’t get destroyed with the ship?"

She shook her head, and unexpectedly
nodded.

"If you decide to become a pirate,
tell me so I can set you loose somewhere. I will not be involved in piracy.
Over the top privateering on the other hand, I can live with. In fact, if this
becomes a regular thing, I might register with the privateer's guild, and
legitimize us. Maybe the bounty hunter's guild as well, which would allow us to
attack anyone with a bounty showing, and be legitimate about it. A lot of
salvage operators work that way too, taking bounties, being very careful about
how they make a kill, and salvaging what's left. It's high risk, but pays well.
Let's see what happens. I would prefer not to get into any shooting situations
again. We have a finite number of missiles, and those things are expensive to
replace. I know you hit hard, but I can't rely on you completely. And if we
don’t expend some missiles, people are going to ask awkward questions."

"Maybe we need some guns on the ship
as well. Something which doesn’t need ordnance replacement?"

She grunted.

"Now you’re talking extra power plants
just to run guns. And a crew member to operate them, or intelligent turrets.
More expense."

"But it would provide easy answers to
how we survive all the time."

"True. I'll think about it. It's not
something I want to do."

"What you want, and reality, might not
have much to do with each other."

"Ain't that the truth. I'll roll with
the punches, but I make no promises. First thing is to find my engineer. After
that, my cargo officer. Then we look for your home planet. Everything else is a
distraction. If we can salvage useful stuff to keep us alive, we’ll do
it."

"What if we can't find my home?"

"You better learn to like it out here
in the deep dark."

Twenty One

I jumped myself into an empty room on the
ship Jenna said her crewmate was on. I’d made sure it was empty before jumping,
and immediately wrapped invisibility around me once I was there.

This was much more fun than getting sewage
lines to meet up, cleaning out all the cargo bays magically, or even reading
books. On the way in, I’d spent a lot of time choosing and downloading more
reading material, but it was something which kept me occupied, rather than
enthused. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to like it out here in the deep dark.
The stars and whatnot were losing their appeal, the longer I stared out at
them.

The ship Jenna was looking for was easy
enough to find. It was docked where she expected it to be, and publically
listed. As soon as we picked up the system coms, we knew we were in the right
place, and we kept checking regularly to make sure the ship didn’t leave before
we arrived. After docking, I'd done the tourist walk around the station, but
only as cover for getting a look at the docking area, which proved to have
private security, and no way in, even if invisible. It was a productive walk
for me all the same. Jenna supplied me with a plan of the ship in question,
which revealed it to be a luxury cruise ship for one of the bigger
corporations.

It raised several unasked questions. Why
would a corporate ship be buying slaves? And why would they be stupid enough to
send such a known ship into pirate space? Which in itself led to other
questions. But Jenna wasn’t talking, so I wasn’t asking.

I’d selected this room not only for being
empty, but for having an open door. I went through it quickly, the layout of
the ship on my pad held in front of me. I passed a few crewmembers, but it was
obvious they couldn’t see me. It wasn’t the best place to start hunting for a
single person, but getting in and out unnoticed was the aim.

I also had an image of the girl I was
looking for. It was of her and Jenna, faces together, and smiling for the image
taker. Pretty face, but next to Jenna's, very ordinary looking.

The further I went into the ship, the more
people there were. They were mostly crew, but some were obvious passengers. It
was easy to tell. The crew were polite and deferential. The others were
obnoxious, self-important, and totally up themselves. And suddenly I could see
this ship going to a slave auction. Having determined the type of people in
charge, I carefully removed any bank cards they had, and felt better for doing
so.

The slaves themselves, and there were a lot
of them it seemed, all wore see through clothes. Men and women. They all wore
the same collar, but it was different from the basic one Jenna had worn. I took
the time to investigate several of them. The main difference appeared to be
levels of pain infliction.

This became apparent when I looked into
what I thought was the most likely room to find my target. Jenna was guessing, but
one of the larger crew areas was the most likely she thought to be a slave
dorm. Now I was wondering about the guess, since it proved to be spot on.

The girl was lying on the floor, writhing
in agony, while a man in a suit stood over her, holding a remote. She was
naked. He was the image of a corporate high flyer, who enjoyed giving pain. I'd
seen enough of them on the teevee over the last two years to recognize the
type. And the smile on his face gave away his love of inflicting pain.

The collar was the only thing keeping this
girl from killing him. Not really a girl, the same as Jenna wasn’t a girl, she
had the body of a female weightlifter, and without the collar, she looked like
she could take any man apart without even trying. Her body still had a feminine
look, but it was quite obvious she could bench press me without raising a
sweat. And yet, she was the one naked on the floor, obviously in agony.

This was slavery, in its naked state. And
seeing her like this made me so angry, I almost killed him right there and
then.

But I didn’t. In and out unseen was the go.

First I had to stop this. I peeked inside
the remote control, found a simple switch, and removed a tiny bit of it. The
writhing stopped immediately.

"Fuck it!"

He was genuinely upset. I added a tiny
whiff of smoke, to give the impression the remote had fried itself. He shook
it, nose wrinkling, and forced it into a pocket.

"Get up," he snarled.

With a great deal of effort, she managed to
rise, and stood there swaying slightly.

He hit her.

It wasn’t a gentle tap, which was all he
needed to knock her down again. She went down like a brick, and stayed there.

I stood there with my jaw hanging open.
Closing it made a slight sound as my teeth came together, and I had to stop
myself from grinding. His face I was committing to memory. Next time we met,
he'd wish we hadn't.

But what to do. He made no move to leave
the room, which was otherwise empty of people, although there were sleeping
mats for a dozen. He just stood there, looking down at her, a sneer on his
face. She was out for the count, and he was happy with himself.

He deserved as much pain as she'd given
her. More. But I couldn’t do anything which would reveal someone else was
there. And suddenly, I had an idea. I reached out with my sight, looking for
something special, found it nearby, and moved just a small amount into his
stomach area.

The effect was immediate, and he clenched
his middle with both hands, jaws now clenched, sweat showing at his temples,
and he shot out the door so fast, he hit the side of it as he went. There was
no sound, even though the collision should have hurt. His footsteps vanished
rapidly.

I knelt down next to the girl, and felt for
a pulse. It was strong, but she was definitely out cold. I drew the invisibility
around her as well, and vanished her collar. I placed both hands on her
shoulders, reached out for this ship's power plants, pulled strongly making the
lights dim, and moved us back to where Jenna was waiting.

"What the fuck happened?"

Twenty Two

"Some motherfucker king hit her when I
disabled the remote he was torturing her with."

"Is he still alive?"

"Yes, but I moved some industrial acid
into his guts, so he isn’t going to be feeling well for a while."

"Will it kill him?"

"Maybe, but probably not."

"Help me get her up."

Between the two of us, we pulled her up
onto her feet, and one each side, dragged her to the small medical bay. Jenna
pushed some buttons, and the medical unit slid open, swiveled, and tilted. We
leaned the unconscious girl back first into it, Jenna pressed another button,
and it tilted back to horizontal, swiveled back to its original position, and
closed up.

"Leave!"

I left. Jenna's distress was obvious, and
there was nothing I could do further.

Well there was, but not on this ship.

I went back. This time I jumped into the engineering
spaces. I’d spent enough time connecting sewage pipes to be able to recognize
them. I concentrated, using the power of the ship, causing raw sewage to bulk
up. I added pressure to it, and kept applying it until the pipes ruptured all
the way to the dock.

I jumped back, before any of it came near
me.

"I'm going for a walk!" I shouted
towards Jenna, but didn’t wait for a response.

Out on the main concourse, I casually
walked around until I came to an obvious disaster area. There were gawkers
everywhere, and I joined them. The ship was being evacuated, and as I watched,
a medical team came rushing out with a wheelie bed, on which was someone who
was groaning loudly. I tried really hard to keep a grin off my face.

People streamed out of the ship, and I looked
at each one, trying to identify the slaves. Slavery was illegal in this system,
I'd checked, but what you did on your own ship was your own business. At least
until you left your ship.

The last group out, with six security
guards around them, were definitely the slaves. Their collars had been removed,
they'd hastily donned more appropriate clothing, but there was no fight left in
them. And there was nothing I could do, without giving myself away.

What looked like a ship's officer and the
senior civilian, were arguing loudly with someone in a station uniform. I moved
so I could listen in, and it turned out the station person was laying the law
down about substandard maintenance, and what was going to happen to fix it. And
more importantly, how much it was likely to cost. The suit was red faced and
swearing every other word, while the officer was calmly determining what was
needed to be done.

Station calm verses suit temper. Calm won.
The officer dragged a still yelling suit off towards an elevator, giving orders
into his pad. The groups of people clumped about on the dock, now headed after
them, the slave group being last.

And finally I saw my opportunity. I walked
fast ahead of the slave group, and positioned myself next to the elevator
doors. As a set of doors opened, I popped in, and immediately went invisible,
shorting out the camera at the same time. Some pressure on the open doors
button kept the elevator where it was.

One of the guards peered in, saw an empty
car, and told the slaves to enter. They did so, cowering at the back, and the
guards followed, standing across the front, their backs to the slaves. For a
moment I wondered why, but they had no fight left in them, and once the doors
opened again, they wanted to be able to deal with anyone they found outside. In
fact, one of them waved several other people off, while another punched the
doors closed button. They remained open.

I force punched each of them in the head,
and pushed them out of the elevator. Before they were even on the deck, I
released the door control, punched the close button, and pressed the next level
down. The doors closed, we went down a short way, and the doors opened.

The slaves stood there, looking at each
other.

One of them seemed to get a grip on
himself, and he turned to the others.

"Run you idiots!"

He ran. The others took a little longer to
realize no-one was going to hurt them, and one by one, they left the elevator.
I rode it down another level, stepped out, and went looking for a drink.

I had no idea if any of them would remain
free, but at least I'd given them a chance.

Twenty Three

On the way out-system, I did some research
on shipping companies.

I quickly found there were hundreds of
major companies all vying for the same freight, as well as thousands of
independents. And this was just the local area of space. The larger companies apparently
had ships all over, where smaller ones specialized in specific areas of space,
and the independents went wherever they could get the work.

The larger companies tended towards fixed
routes, the smaller ones tried to fill in the gaps, or join other planets into
those routes, and the independents went wherever the freight available sent
them.

Which seemed to be in contrast to the
amount of freight available here, and a decidedly lacking number of freight
movers. All the material readily available suggested there were too many
freighters, and not enough freight, but this didn’t seem to be the case, at
least here. I thought of asking Jenna, but one look at her face told me to get
lost, and stay there.

Anyway, the reason for the research was to
identify who the bad outfits were. The ones with not so good reputations. The
ones who broke the rules, but managed to get away with it more often than not.
In other words, the ones an honest thief could rob, and feel good about doing
it. Or at the least, not suffer Jenna's wrath afterwards.

That Jenna had a wrath level, I didn’t
doubt for a second. And I also didn’t doubt the need to avoid being anywhere
near her when it went off. Underneath that drop dead gorgeous exterior, was an
ice cold metal skeleton, and if her velvet glove ever hit you, the metal
underneath would do serious damage. No doubts at all. I’d seen drill sergeants who
looked the same, and would’ve stepped well clear of her if they saw her.

She was worried about her crew mate. I
understood. She didn’t need to take it out on me though. I was on her side. I
stopped and pondered that. Yes, I was on her side. Anyone who took slaves was
also on my shit list. And I wasn’t at all sure if I saw someone torturing a
slave again, I’d be able to stop myself from killing them on the spot.

I dragged my thought processes back to the
task in hand. I’d spent enough time on this ship already, to know it well
enough to move things around inside, with only minimal checking. To test this,
I created a pallet sized metal box in the main cargo hold, and moved it
straight into my own personal cargo hold, specifically to the number one pallet
position. It could hold up to twelve standard containers two high, and had
individual positions for thirty six pallets. I'd already committed the layout
to memory.

Rather than using my sight, I took the time
to walk there, and confirmed the imitation pallet was in the correct place. I
ducked out the hatch, and did the same with a container sized version. Poking
my head in, I could see it was also sitting correctly. With a thought, I
crushed both into a solid ball, and moved them to a store room for later use.

As a pirate ship, the cargo capacity was
pitiful, but it was also fitted out as a slaver. So fast, armed, and able to
take the choice cargos, and enslave the crews. There was something wrong with
this picture, but I couldn’t pick it. Something to ponder when staring at the
deep dark next.

My next stop was my own bridge, where I sat
watching the displays, looking for a likely target. There were a number of
ships heading out-system the same as we were. Most of them were a lot bigger
than us. All of them were slower.

I watched as we overtook the first one. The
closest we came was five kilometers. Which defined my next test. Was I able to
look into a ship as far away as this was? I drew on power, and opened my sight,
starting with the bridge. It was a lot larger than any I'd seen so far, with
more people on it, making me wonder what all of them actually did. Not that I
really cared. I started moving from room to room, pausing to watch a nice
looking lady in the shower, but forcing myself to find the cargo bays. I found
a small one first, obviously used for boxes rather than pallets, and started
reading labels.

Time for a distance test. The label on the
box said it contained gold class meals. I reached for it, and a blink later, it
was sitting in the middle of my bridge. I stripped the fastening off the top,
and took out one of the meal trays. It was almost identical to the ones I’d
first encountered after being taken. I grinned to myself, placed the tray back
in the box, and moved it to my kitchen.

Now for something harder. I sat once more,
concentrated my sight until I found the main cargo hold, and began looking at
these labels. Nearest the airlock, the containers were all standard freight, labeled
with the sender, the shipper, and with a destination I had no idea if we were
going to, but suspected not.

I worked my way down the container rows,
until half way back, I started finding labels indicating no sender or receiver.
Each stated what and how much was in the container, most of them full of the
same items. Here it seemed, was the crew's investment cargo, which they'd paid
for themselves, and were hoping to make a profit on at their next port. Much of
it was bulk food, indicating to me the planet we were heading away from was a
food producer, and their next stop was not.

I gathered power, and was about to move a
container to see if I could do it, when I remembered I hadn't checked if the
ship was on my naughty list or not. I let the power go, and pulled up my list,
comparing the details showing on my main screen, which I vaguely remembered
Jenna had called heads up display, or HUD, which was supposed to show me
everything of note in the system. Mental note for a dead time, I needed to do
some playing with the buttons for the screen, and learn it better.

For now though, this ship wasn’t on my
naughty list. I sighed, and went back to watching the lady in the shower. By
the time she was dried and clothed, I was aware holding the sight was taking
more and more effort, so I released it, and sat there looking at the deep dark
instead.

I sighed. So now as well as being a thief,
I was a peeping Thorn. It wasn't new of course. I'd peeked at lots of girls
once I’d found my magic again, but this was the first time I’d used it to while
away time.

"Hi," said a voice I’d never
heard before, from the doorway.

I was so startled, I fell out of my chair.

Twenty Four

"Sorry, did I disturb you?"

I picked myself up guiltily, and stood there
facing her. She was wearing the same sort of clothes Jenna did while on ship,
so either her clothes and stuff had been in the pallets with Jenna's, or Jenna
had been shopping for her in anticipation of freeing her.

"Not really. Just doing some in depth
navel gazing."

"Anything interesting?"

"Pondering what I'm becoming."

"Ouch. I tried that once. Never
again."

She sounded like she should be smiling, but
there was no smile on her face. I guess slavery did that to you.

"My first time."

She limped over, and extended her hand. I
took it, expecting it to be crushed, but her grip was limp. I let go, waved her
to a chair, and sat myself.

"I'm Jessica. Jen said you got me out.
Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"She's had a lot to say about you, but
not a lot of it makes any sense."

"Do you want it to make any
sense?"

"Probably. I'm too out of it with pain
killers at the moment to understand much of anything. Give me a day or two to
catch up. But I gather you tried to buy Jen, and when the bids went too high,
you succeeded in springing her, and was the main reason you both made it
away."

I nodded. She looked at me speculatively.

"She says you do magic?"

"Yes. Where I came from, it was quite
common."

"And you magically jumped me off that
terrible ship?"

"Yes. I'm sorry he hit you after I
broke his remote."

"Not your fault. No-one but someone
who knew that bastard could have predicted his reaction. Jen says you might
have killed him?"

"It's possible. But I was trying to
make him sick enough to want to leave in a hurry, which worked. I couldn’t do
anything until you were alone. Never having done it before, it's hard to know
if it was enough, or too much."

"His sort have so much luck, I bet
he's already up and barking orders again."

"I didn’t look, and I doubt Jenna
thought to, since she was so worried about you."

"She didn’t. Why didn't you?"

"Don’t know how."

"Checking hospital admissions is
easy."

"I'm still adapting to this new world
I've fallen into. How to do a lot of things is still on my to-do list."

"Ask me if you need help. I owe you.
Don’t ask Jen though."

"I worked that out already. What's her
problem?"

"Jen? Men."

I laughed. A flicker of a smile turned up
one end of her mouth, but it was only a flicker.

"That much is obvious. The look of
contempt she gave everyone at the auction, standing there naked in front of
them, still gives me the shivers."

"Her problem goes a lot further back
than that. I know she's as grateful as I am for being rescued, but the damage
to her goes too deep. It’s no surprise she banished you to here. In fact, I'm
mildly surprised she didn’t leave you behind."

"She told me not to leave the ship. I
didn’t. When we left, I noticed she made no attempt to check if I was aboard or
not."

I paused, waited. Her look said ask the
question.

"Who broke her?"

"Interesting question. That bastard
was in the process of breaking me, but that isn’t what you’re referring to, is
it?"

"No. I get the impression she'd rather
die than be some man's play thing. Which means she was broken by someone else,
and not recently. I mean if looks could kill, everyone back at that auction
would have dropped dead."

"She used to be able to do that even
before. Her bark is almost lethal, but her looks were legendary."

"Can I ask what happened?"

"I can't tell you much."

I made an intuitive leap.

"She was military, wasn’t she?"

"We both were. She was the most
promising junior command officer in the fleet. Half the time she didn’t need to
even say anything to crew. One look, and it got done. She was fast track
towards her own command."

"And?"

"The captain raped her. And worse than
that, he got away with it. Higher ranks ignored it, and covered it up. Her
attempt to bring charges was held against her. She was transferred to dead end
duty."

I sighed.

"She resigned, and went home to her parents.
Two months later, some drunk idiot killed them in a freak accident. When the
paperwork was sorted, she flew the ship they'd left her to where I was, and
talked me into resigning the service, and crewing for her. I've been with her
ever since."

Something unexpected popped in.

"Was the idiot linked to the captain
at all?"

She looked shocked, and stared at me for a
good minute.

"FUCK!"

I waited.

"It never occurred to us, but it's
very possible. Why the hell didn't that occur to us? Damnit to hell! I knew at
the time there was something hinky about the accident, but it never occurred to
either of us it was a hit. It was just a random event, at a very bad time."

I kept waiting.

"DON'T tell Jen. She's not ready for
that kind of revelation."

"I won't."

"Good. I'll tell her at the right
time, once we have Leanne back." She noticed my eyebrow go up.
"Leanne was, is, our cargo handler. Ship this size is supposed to have at
least one."

"Ex-military as well?"

"Yes. We couldn’t trust anyone we
didn’t already know."

"Which is why she's having such a hard
time with me? Apart from being male?"

"Most likely. Trust is earned, and in
her case, it usually takes years."

"I'll be gone before then. I
hope."

"Gone? Where?"

"My deal with Jenna is she takes me
home. For now though, we don’t know where it is."

"And for now, you're too useful."

"Hopefully."

"We need guns. If we get boarded ever
again, I want to be able to shoot them."

"Why didn’t you have guns?"

"Never thought we'd need them. We
trade. We're always on the move, and we stay away from the military."

"So how did you get taken by
slavers?"

"Still don’t know. We should have been
on a safe route. They took us as we down jumped. Never had a chance to run.
Never saw it coming."

"So they knew you were coming?"

She went totally still.

"Say the rest of it."

Her voice sounded like metal grating on
metal.

"Someone set you up."

Her whole body shook.

"FUCK! Fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck!"

Her fist bounced off the chair arm as she
said it.

I waited.

She eventually managed to get a grip.

"Guns. We need guns."

I made one appear in her lap. She stared at
it for a moment, picked it up, extended her arm, and sighted along it. She
wasn't pointing it at me.

"How many do we have?"

"I don’t recall, but we did relieve a
few people on our way off the slaver station."

"It’s a start. If I show you what I
want, can you make it?"

"Stealing's quicker."

For the first time, I saw her smile.

Twenty Five

"So you are a thief. Is that what you
were pondering when I came in?"

"Becoming a thief. I'm not sure yet if
this is a temporary thing, or a career choice. Mostly it's been a need for
funds, and stealing proved to be really easy for me. I don’t steal everything,
if it makes you feel better."

"But you could steal us heavy weapons
if I showed you where they were?"

"Probably."

"What else?"

"Actually, I was working on that
before you interrupted my naval gazing. Any ships out there you don’t
like?"

She pointed straight at one of the icons
showing ahead of us. No hesitation at all.

"That one is owned by the bastard who
bought me. His son was the one who was torturing me."

I looked, and smiled at her.

"It's on my naughty list."

I explained how I’d made it.

"What were you planning?"

"My little cargo bay can handle a
dozen containers. When we caught up with a ship on my list, I was going to
check them for saleable cargos, and relieve them of an even dozen."

"Won't they notice?"

"No way of telling. If I take them
from the rear of the hold, they might not until they take out everything in
front. Or someone might check them regularly and notice immediately."

"Doubtful. Leanne never bothered.
Containers and pallets in, accounted for, checked off, and job done. At the
other end, all in reverse order. In the middle, she did what we all tend to
do."

"What's that?"

"Anything which relieves the
boredom."

I chuckled.

"What sort of range do you have?"

"No idea. I took a pallet of food off
a ship earlier, from five kilometers away."

She whistled.

"That’s about as close as we ever get.
It'll be a while before we're close enough. Can I ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"Have you any idea how stupid joining
up four ships is?"

I laughed.

"Nope. I know nothing about ships.
Although I do know a lot more about sewage systems now."

The smile flickered on again, but only for
a second.

"You do know this was impossible,
don’t you? Even a shipyard wouldn’t attempt it."

"We told the station the pirates did
it."

"Yeah, maybe they would. You want to
know the stupidest thing about it?"

"What?"

"It worked. You positioned them
exactly right. I couldn't have done it better myself. The whole thing needs
balancing and tweaking, which is going to keep me busy for weeks, but it will
work. I don’t get why only two of the engines are working though?"

"The power plant for this ship is
supplying me the energy I need to do what I do."

"Ah. Sometime we need to talk about
that."

She gave me a speculative look.

"If I find some bolt on automatic gun
turrets, can you add them where I tell you to?"

"Only one way to find out."

"I think I'm going to like you."

I grinned at her.

"What's not to like?"

"You're not female."

"Ah. That."

"You have any food handy?"

I waved her towards the kitchen. She came
back with one of the gold class meals, a bottle of white wine, and a single
glass. A tap on one end of the console turned it off, and she laid her meal
down on top. I watched her eat as if she hadn't eaten ever before.

I hadn't yet figured out how to bring a
cooked meal to me. It made me get up off the chair and move, making me realize
how long I’d been sitting there. I came back with a snack, and a beer.

"Are you old enough for that?"

"The beer?"

"Yes."

"Where I was when taken, I'd just
turned legal. I've no idea if I am here or not. And don’t care."

"Don’t get drunk. Jen will toss you
out an airlock."

I raised the bottle, and saluted her. She
went back to eating.

After we were both finished, we sat there
in silence, watching the HUD show us creeping up behind her selected target.

At ten kilometers, I closed my eyes, drew
on my power source, and cast my sight at the ship. I could feel it was a bit
too far, but I was able to see inside the hull.

"Can you show me what you’re
seeing?"

I jerked back abruptly, and looked at her.

"Sorry. Did that hurt?"

"No. Just wasn’t expecting it."

"Any chance I can see what you
do?"

I had no idea.

"Tell me how you'd do it."

She thought about it.

"You can copy things I hear?"

"Yes."

"So copy what you see there, to a
screen here."

I blinked at her rapidly. It could work.

"Which screen?"

She quickly cleared one of the side
screens, leaving it on, but displaying nothing.

I concentrated. My sight cleared inside the
ship, and I added the intent to copy the visual to the screen.

"Nice," she said softly.
"Find the main cargo hold. Down two levels, and it's most of that
deck."

I went down two levels. The first level
down went through a bedroom, and I paused for a moment, looking at a couple
having sex. There was a gasp beside me, and I moved down without further
comment. The next deck down was indeed the main cargo hold, and appeared to
have hundreds of containers stacked three high.

I went directly to the back, and started in
on the top level labels. Most of it made little sense to me.

"Wow. It's like a hole bored though
the container in front of it, allowing us to read something which otherwise couldn’t
be. Go back."

I nearly lost the connection, but did as
she said.

"Nice. That one please."

I concentrated harder, felt more power
flowing through me, and moved the container into my little cargo bay.

She popped up a view of the bay, and there
it was, perfectly positioned.

"Not bad for a first try."

I chuckled.

"I was actually practicing earlier,
moving a mockup between the main cargo bay and that one."

"Ah. Next label."

She had me take another eleven containers.
By the time I was done, I was sweating, but my head wasn’t in any pain. I
brought myself back, and found her looking at me intently.

"Can you do more than one at a
time?"

"No idea. Why?"

"Because I want to stick it to
them."

"You want more?"

"I want every cargo bay on this ship
full of their cargo."

"Jenna said she wouldn’t have anything
to do with piracy."

"Yes, I heard that speech a while
back. Maybe this is a once of, but let's do it while we can. I'll take the heat
for it. Those bastards owe me. And since I can now take what they owe, I want
it. I want it bad. Let's see the next lot of labels."

After, she hit a button.

"Jen, slow us down a bit will you? I
want to stay less than ten kilometers from the nearest ship for a bit."

"What the hell are you two up
to?"

"Tell you later."

"Will I like it?"

"Probably not."

There was a groan, and the com shut off.
The level of trust between these two was showing.

We looked at every container and pallet on
the ship, Jessica making a map indicating if she wanted each one or not. She
showed me a block of twelve containers two high, and suggested one of the other
small cargo bays to move them to. I concentrated, drew power, and moved all
twelve as if they were one. Which they basically were, given they were all
touching.

An hour later and I was drenched in sweat,
and very close to exhaustion. Every nook and cranny on this combined ship was
stuffed full, and yet, we'd taken less than ten percent of the other ship's
load.

"Probably just as well that was all we
could take."

I looked at her expectantly.

"The power plant you're using is red
lining. If you take any more from it, it'll probably melt down."

The smile was firmly on her face this time.

She told Jenna to push us back up to
cruising speed, as if we'd been having problems. She looked back at me.

"One last thing before you go get some
rest."

I waited.

"If you ever use that sight thing to
look in on Jen, and she finds out, she'll kill you."

Twenty Six

"What the bloody hell is that?"

Jenna was pointing at a line on the ship's
main account.

"Rent."

"Rent?"

"Rent."

She looked at me, waiting.

"Cargo hold rent."

She sighed, removed the display, and left.

I sighed in relief when she was gone. She
hadn't liked the fact we'd ripped off a ship full of cargo, especially without
her knowing. She'd ripped us both new ones.

We were so far behind the ship Leanne was
thought to be on, it was long gone from the next system Jenna had expected to
find it in. We'd taken the opportunity to dock, and offload our cargo, which
sold rapidly, and at very good prices. I'd downloaded a new set of books, found
a local dessert I really loved and bought it in bulk, and otherwise stayed out
of Jenna's way, until Jessica messaged me to say it was safe for me to return.

Before we undocked, a huge payment hit my
account, and I worked out it was a full fifty percent of the cargo sales. I
checked, and Jessica had the other half.

I'd calculated ten percent of my share, and
transferred it to the ship account, before transferring most of the balance to
my legit card.

Hence rent. I understood why she wanted
nothing to do with it, but I also understood the ship needed funds to operate
with. She now knew I understood both. I learned later, Jessica had followed my
lead.

Jessica had been working on the ship
rebalance, as she called it, from well before I woke up after the cargo move.
I'd woken to find my power source was gone, my head aching, and found her doing
some serious maintenance on it. The power source, not my head. She assured me
it would be working much better than before, well before I needed it again. A
doctor had once said the same thing about my head, but I think I actually
believed Jessica. The tablet helped my head, but I felt in withdrawal from the
power. Perhaps I was.

The days had passed, and I always found her
working happily doing something in one of the engine rooms. A few times she'd
had me make replacement parts. And once she had me look inside a sealed box, so
she could see if it really was broken or not. It turned out to be something
easily fixable by me, but not by anyone else. And seeing we didn’t have a spare
for it, it turned out I was useful.

A day out of where we offloaded the cargo,
she dropped a heavy spanner unexpectedly, and her swearing made me jump.

"Sorry."

"No problem. I've heard worse."

"You know what the worst thing about
being a slave is?"

"No, what?"

"Everything."

I nodded sagely, and waited for her to go
on.

"Not enough food. No exercise.
Repeated torture. Constant humiliation."

"I get the picture."

"That’s not my point. The worst thing
is they all collude to make you weak. I mean physically weak. I've used that
spanner hundreds of times, and never dropped it before. I'm as weak as a bloody
kitten."

"How can I help?"

"That’s what I like about you. The
average male would be suggesting I use a gym regularly, and offering to buy me
the membership. Not you. You ask what I need. It's very female."

"No need to get insulting!"

We both laughed. Now the ice was well and
truly broken, I found she laughed often. I asked the obvious question.

"Why isn’t there a gym on the
ship?"

"Never needed one. The normal routine
was three or four days in space, three or four days on a station. I run the
cargo bay loop on board, and have gym memberships on stations. It worked nicely
to keep me in shape."

"And now?"

"I can't leave the ship. As an escaped
slave, especially given how prominent the shithead who bought me is, going out
on a station would be stupidity of a high order, since they undoubtedly have a
bounty out on me."

"What about Jenna?"

"The slaver probably has a bounty out
on her too, but their reach isn’t as great as the complete fuckwit who'll be
wanting me back. And if you hadn't noticed, when she does leave the ship, she
is armed."

I hadn't noticed.

"So. Back to how can I help?"

"I guess I need a gym on the ship
somewhere."

"Show me what you need, and I'll try
and make it for you."

"Thanks. I will when I get this mess
fixed."

"Thank me when it all works. If it
doesn’t, we'll go to plan B."

"Plan B?"

"We steal it!" we both said
together, and laughed.

I left her to it.

Sometime later, I was doing my ritual star
gazing, when the HUD beeped at me. I saw a set of schematics, and a ship plan
with a room ringed. I checked the room to see what was in it, and how big it
really was, and found it empty.

An hour later, the room was full. Most of
the time had been spent doing a lot of searches to see how each …thing…
actually worked, before I could try to make one. When I say searches, I mean
following the links Jessica had listed for each thing she wanted. I’d never
have figured out how to find them on my own.

My power source was back up by now, and
feeling even more powerful than before, I methodically worked through the list.
Not so much as a single drop of sweat as a result, and not even a throb in the
temple.

I sent word to try things out, and settled
down again with a new book. Just as the hero was about to go out the airlock in
only his boxers, Jessica came running in, pulled me out of my chair, raised my
arm not holding my tablet, and high fived me vigorously. She hugged me next,
dropped me back into my chair, and was gone.

I sat there in shock for several minutes,
rose, and came back from the kitchen with a beer.

I really needed a drink.

Twenty Seven

Two systems later, after having extracted
ship movement data each time, and done some real freight haulage to each, we
down jumped into the system we expected to find our next target in.

"Shut down your engines, and prepare
to be boarded."

The voice was male, with substantial
command in it. The HUD feed I was getting from the main bridge highlighted a
ship ahead of us. It was much the same shape as the pirate ships we'd
encountered before, but a lot bigger.

Information on the ship popped up, and I
could see it was both a privateer, and a bounty hunter.

"Over my dead body," responded
Jenna.

"I can arrange that," said the
voice. "The bounty is for dead or alive, with the same payment for
either."

There was a pause.

"So I see is the bounty on you."

"Stop your engines, or we do this the
easy way."

"No, we do this the hard way."

The hard edge in Jenna's voice should have
made him pause. But the arrogance in his, meant he probably wasn’t even
listening.

Missiles launched, and I started turning
them around, although several simply exploded. I was on the last one, when
Jessica burst in.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The last missile hit our shields, as I lost
concentration.

"Huh?"

"Stop mucking around. Just project a
shield in front of us, and then punch it at them after each launch."

"Takes more energy to do."

"You have more. I linked every power
generator on this ship, and the unused ones on the other two, all together into
the one you were drawing from."

Which explained the extra.

"If the shield hits the ship, the hull
won't survive it."

"Do we care?"

"How much bounty is there on these
bozos?"

"Not as much as on us. But it's
healthy."

"And the ship is worth?"

Her eyes shone.

"What's your play?"

The remainder of the first set of missiles
had hit the shields of the other ship, but they'd held.

The next set of missiles appeared, making
me wonder if they'd even wondered for a second what happened to the original
ones, and this time I formed a wall of energy in front of them, and then
hammered it forward at them. They all exploded. I let the wall dissolve.

I looked Jessica in the eyes, and grinned
at her. On the seat in front of her, a double holster belt appeared, with a gun
on each side. A second one appeared next to it. She looked down at the guns,
looked up at me, and reached for the first one.

"It could be risky."

"Risk is my middle name."

I buckled on the other belt. Jessica pulled
all four guns out, checked they were charged, and ready to fire.

"Are we killing, or stunning?"

"STUNNING!" came through the
coms.

She re-pulled each gun, and changed the
setting.

"You know how to use these?"

"Point and click."

"Not quite, but close enough. Do you
need them?"

"If we want them alive, yes. Dead, no.
Dead is easier."

"Let's do it."

I waited until the next salvo was launched,
and wiped them away, hardly even thinking about it. Now we could go, giving
Jenna the biggest window before the next lot.

"Jen?"

"Yes Jess?"

"Stick around. We're going to board
them."

"So I lose my missile
protection?"

"We'll try and be quicker than that,
but perhaps."

"Great. Have fun."

The last sounded like it came through
clenched teeth.

I cast my sight across to the other ship,
which was now chasing us. Six on the bridge. Two in engineering. Fourteen in
two shuttles, preparing to launch.

I looked at the shuttles, found they had a
single airlock, and turned the outer door into hull on each. Just to be sure, I
merged the landing legs with the deck.

"Shuttles neutralized," I said.
"Engineering or bridge first?"

"Shut down the power first."

I stood behind her so my right arm was
clear of her side, pulled a gun out with my right hand, waited for her to pull
both, and put my left hand on her shoulder. An instant later a shield formed
around us.

"Jumping," I said.

I chose a spot in the engineering section
behind the two people, and jumped us there.

Jessica's guns spat four times, and both
went down. I looked at her.

"I'm an engineer, not a bloody
marine." She started shutting things off. "Go take the bridge."

I chose a spot, and jumped. Several people
were shouting at the others.

The moment I appeared, I started shooting.
The pilot went down first, followed by the captain. Someone was fast to react,
and she put two shots into my shield before she went down, with a surprised
look on her face. The other three managed five hits on my shield between them,
and went down one by one.

I thought for a moment about what to do
with them, grinned, and one by one, dumped three of them into empty space on
each shuttle.

Jessica appeared behind me, puffing like
she'd run the whole way. She probably had. She looked around at the empty bridge,
nodded to me, and sat in the captain's chair. She studied it, and pressed a
button.

"Ship taken Jen."

"Casualties?"

"None. I think."

"You think?"

"Thorn did most of the work. There are
two sleepy heads in engineering, but no-one else on the bridge."

"Thorn?"

"I put them in their shuttles. I
forgot about the other two though." I concentrated for a moment.
"Okay, all in the shuttles. They can't get out. The shuttles can't
lift."

"Better check the shuttles for
weapons."

I looked around both shuttles, found a
small armoury full of them in both, and moved everything back to the room Jessica
wanted to use as one. Just to be sure, I checked each person one by one, and
removed an assortment of small guns hidden on them.

"Done."

"Jess, do you remember how to slave
ship systems?"

"Eggs."

"Fine. Do it, and both of you come
back."

The command in her voice said don’t dally.
But now the shooting had stopped, and given how far away we were from the
station, there seemed no reason to hurry.

I watched Jessica set up the ship slaving.
None of it made any sense, but there did appear to be some level of order to
it.

"Jessica?"

She looked up at me.

"We should discuss what you’re doing
sometime. It might be useful if I can do that remotely one day."

Her eyes went wide for a moment.

"Indeed!"

She paused, looking like she was thinking
about something.

"Call me Jess."

Twenty Eight

Jess and I walked the whole ship, taking
our time, looking for anything worth looting. Knowing Jenna would disapprove,
we left the private cabins and the twenty person barracks alone. Everything of
any value in the cargo holds was transferred over. I knew Jess was with me on
this, as more than half of the suggestions came from her.

Jenna informed us the salvage claim had
been registered with the bounty hunter guild, along with notification of
bringing in the crew. Since the bounty was just for the crew, claiming the ship
was a separate process.

Regardless of the success of the claim or
not, I intended to get some benefit through the cargo, which we could always
claim had never been there. We were leaving enough behind to show they had
some, as not having any would have looked suspicious.

By the time we returned, Jenna had news.

"The bounty has been approved, and
their security division will pick up the marks as soon as we dock. Apparently
the bounty on record is just the tip of the iceberg. This ship has been preying
on this area of space for a long time, and no-one was prepared to take them on.
Even the system government is happy to see them taken out."

She looked at me.

"Before we dock the ship, you'll have
to return the shuttles back to the way they were."

I nodded.

"When did we become official bounty
hunters?"

"Two stations ago. I figured this was
going to happen sometime, and wanted to be official when we survived it. It
also provides us the database of bounties, so I’d know if destroy was a better
option, or not. No point destroying, when we can make a profit off it. If they
hadn't surprised us like that, I'd have told you to try and take them. But it
took me too long to get the details on them."

She looked at both of us.

"Nicely done. I wish boarding
operations were always that easy."

"Thorn's our secret weapon."

Even Jenna smiled at that.

Jess and I returned to the other ship as we
closed on the station, once more armed, and just before we docked, I returned
the shuttles back to how they'd been. Peeking inside, I found all of them
sitting where they could, looking unhappy. Silently unhappy.

Jenna docked us first. When the airlock
opened, there were a dozen large men there, all armed, and a big wheeled cage.
Next to them was someone in station uniform.

Uniform waved the others in, and the leader
motioned for us to lead the way. There was some confusion when we headed
towards the shuttle bay, but they followed along behind us. Most of them had
backpacks.

At the first shuttle, the leader opened an
external panel, plugged something in, and held a pad to his mouth. He informed
those on the ship they were under arrest, pursuant to a bounty warrant with a large
number, and they'd be required to exit the ship one by one, starting with the
captain. If they resisted, or refused to come out, they would be stunned.

One of the men opened the external hatch,
and four of them entered the ship. While the first one forced the inner hatch,
the other three stood waiting with guns raised.

The rest was an anti-climax. They came out
one by one from both shuttles, were shackled, attached to a line, like I’d seen
slaves before, and the whole group was led back to the cage, and put inside.
They all left, except for the uniform.

"You're ship is docking at the next
bay that way." He pointed. "I understand you claimed this one, so I'm
assuming it will be yours. Station management is pleased with you, so docking
fees are waived for the next week. If you sell the ship, they'll apply to the
new owners from the date of sale. If you keep the ship, they'll apply to the
next time it docks. For now, I suggest you lock the ship up, and wait for the
decision. The station management thanks you, and good luck."

He left, we locked up the ship, and walked
around to the next docking bay. For the first time, I was able to see a ship
coming in to dock, from the station perspective. It was quite scary, seeing
something so big, coming so close. But there was no doubt about Jenna's skill
as a pilot. The ship kissed the station so lightly, it was as if there was no
connection.

Jess was laughing at me.

"What?"

"The ship doesn’t actually touch the
station. It just looks like it does. Both ship and station have docking clamps
which latch each other in a grab motion. The station then attaches various
pipes to the ship, and the airlocks extend to form a soft connection around a
hard ramp."

"Airlocks?"

"Sure. The main people airlock is up
here. The front cargo bay airlock connects to a pure cargo level below us, and
where ships have side cargo airlocks, station arms adjust to fit to them as
well."

"Fascinating."

She laughed again.

"You're proving you're new to
space."

"I am."

Her laugh got louder.

The airlock opened, and Jenna poked her
head out.

"Back in here, now."

"Why?"

"Don’t ask Jess. Move."

We moved, and Jenna closed the hatch behind
us.

"Problem?"

"Media on the way." Jess winced.
"Someone leaked about the bounty being collected, and every news service
on this station will be wanting interviews."

She led us back into the ship.

As we walked, I pondered this. The last
thing escaped slaves wanted was their faces plastered on every screen for
multiple sectors. And I needed to keep a low profile as well, in case awkward
questions were asked.

The girls tossed for who did the cargo
work, and Jess started listing what we were selling on the station sales
system. Jenna and I went to the room now being used as our intelligence
computer room, and I concentrated for a bit, copied the station data drives to
a waiting table, Jenna plugged them in to our growing computer, and started her
search for her remaining crew mate.

The salvage decision came in the following
day, in our favour. In the meantime, the possessions of the ex-crew were
collected by authorities with me attending, and I'd done several station trips,
without using the airlock to leave and return by.

With the ship now ours, we gathered to
figure out what to do with it.

"We sell it," said Jenna.

"We bolt it on," said Jess.

I said nothing.

The girls looked at each other. Then looked
at me.

"What?"

"If I tell you where," said Jess,
"can you attach the ship the same as you did the others?"

"Sure."

"Why do we want to?" asked Jenna.

"I would have thought that was
obvious."

"Jess, nothing about the situation we
find ourselves in is obvious."

"Maybe so. But the ship will double
our missile capacity, both firing and storage, add a good deal to our cargo
capacity, and gives us extra living space if we ever need it. Not to mention
the extra speed we can manage with another set of engines."

"Priority on speed."

"Of course."

Jenna sighed.

"Fine. As soon as the cargo is sold or
brokered, we move out. I'll take us off the normal routes so we can do the
connection unobserved."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

They both looked at me.

"If there's a shipyard here, why not
purchase whatever bots they use for hull work, and internal work like changing
the cargo system? When we turn up at another system with both ships combined,
we can point to how it was done."

"Good thinking," said Jenna.

"I'm on it," added Jess.

Twenty Nine

The hardest part of the whole plan, was
buying the two sets of bots. Together they cost much more than the ship had
available to spend. Jess and I both transferred most of the cost of them to the
ship's account, easy come, easy go, and we lost a few hours waiting for them to
be delivered.

In the meantime, Jenna piloted our prize
out beyond the range of curious eyes, and flew back in a shuttle. Her own ship
had a shuttle bay, but had never had an actual shuttle. Now she had two.

Bots on board, we left the station, and
moved to where the prize was.

Using a lot more power than last time, I
carefully repeated the joining process, under Jess's supervision. It fit nicely
on the underside this time, along the center axis, its top to our bottom. This
preserved the gravity all in one direction once again.

Once the merge of hulls was done, I copied
the hull bots three times, and all four sets went out to make all four ship
merges look like a bot job. Once they were finished, Jenna put us back on
course for where she thought Leanne was now.

Jess concentrated on getting the new set of
engines mixed and balanced, with me supplying the joining cables, and relevant
holes. It kept both of us occupied for the best part of a day, minus breaks for
sleep and meals. I found the whole process both interesting, and boring at the
same time.

With the ship going faster with the extra
engines, Jess had me copy the internal builder bots three times, and I watched
her set up the needed parameters for merging all the major cargo bays into one
system. To do it, she had to first create a single set of specs which defined
the whole ship. Before the bots could begin, the relevant holes in hulls had to
be made, since the bots were only designed for working with internal walling,
and not hull material. Jess made sure I was very, very, precise with the holes.

With the bots working away to Jess's
satisfaction, and Jenna haunting her bridge, I retreated to my space for sleep,
and found too much noise going on to be able to. I dozed between major bangs,
rose and ate, and started reading again.

We returned to something like our normal
routine, and the days, and stations, went past in a blur. The only highlight
was the testing of the new cargo system, which needed a little fine tuning
after a couple of containers on the move, gouged some large holes, in the wrong
places. Still, given the botch up job in the first place, and not totally
accurate ship plans, the system moved containers and pallets around very
efficiently in the end. It gave us a considerably higher cargo capacity now,
and at the next station, finding plenty of freight heading to our next
destination, we deliberately filled all of it.

In one of my star gazing sessions, I'd
pondered the way Jenna was going about saving her crew mate. Instead of narrow
focusing, and speeding after her, she was trading her way around. It slowed us
down, especially time on stations, but it did give us a legitimacy which would
lose us in the movement of ships all doing the same thing.

Unless of course someone was actively
looking for us, and paying off those with the information of where we were, and
heading. Jenna wasn’t talking, but us being tagged by the bounty hunters convinced
me someone was actively tracking us.

I made sure I was awake for each new jump
now, expecting to be attacked every time. We weren’t, but I sure would rather
be wrong my way, than be in bed asleep when the missiles started hitting.

So I was sitting in my chair, on my bridge,
for the last jump to the next destination. The jump went fine, nothing attacked
us or challenged us, but the unexpected came from Jenna.

"Damnit!"

"What do you see?" asked Jess.

"The ship Leanne is on is not only in
this system, but heading out already."

"Problem?" I asked.

"Yes."

I waited.

"Bloody ship is coming towards
us."

I didn’t see the problem. And said so.

"Can you jump on board while both
ships are moving towards each other?"

Thirty

In theory, jumping while moving, to something
also moving, was possible. I'd never heard of it being done though. Nor could I
think of a situation for a battle mage on the ground, to need to do it.

Actually, that’s not quite true. If a mage
was on a piece of ground, which broke off on a bad slope, and threatened to
kill the mage, I'm pretty sure a jump would be attempted. But the other end
would be somewhere safe, and definitely not moving.

And even that wasn’t true, because in
theory, a mage might try to rescue someone in that scenario, where the mage
jumps to a moving person, and jumps both of them to safety. But in both jumps,
one end is stable.

Still, it suggested a both ends moving jump
was possible.

And then I remembered. I’d already done it.
With containers and pallets. But with one key difference. I was in one place,
moving something else, from a moving object, to another moving object, but
where I was moving with it. So it was still a jump from movement to stable,
even if both were moving. It was also with something which didn’t die if you
got it wrong.

The girls were looking at me.

"In theory, yes."

They waited for me to go on.

"In practice, I don’t think so."

"Why not?" asked Jess. "We
already did it."

Which was true. We had. My jaw fell open
for a moment. When we boarded the bounty hunter ship, we'd done just that. And
I hadn't even thought about how dangerous it was. But actually, it wasn’t the
same, since the Bounty Hunter ship hadn't been moving at the time. We hadn't
given them enough time to need to move, so they'd just thrown things at us from
a distance.

This was different. The rate of change of
the range between the ships was high, as they came toward each other very fast.
Did I really want to risk my life betting on if I could do it or not?

"He's going white," said Jenna,
matter of factly.

"We made a mistake," said Jess.

"Which one?"

"We gave him time to think."

Both of them chuckled, looking at my face.
On Jenna, it made a huge difference to her normal expression. They could be
right though, and I was just over thinking it.

"Okay," I said. "It's
possible. But think it through."

"No," interrupted Jenna.
"Let's not. As soon as you’re in range, jump over, grab Leanne, jump
back."

"What if someone else is there?"

"So?"

"They'll see us vanish."

"No-one will believe them."

"All the same…"

"No. Keep it simple."

"Too simple might get someone
killed," said Jess. "Why don’t we create a diversion?"

"How?" I asked.

Jess grinned.

"If a key component in the main
engines was to stop working unexpectedly, depriving them of most power for a
few minutes, you could get in and out without anyone seeing."

"Show me."

Jess pulled up specs for the ship in
question, rapidly scrolled and zoomed in, and pointed.

"This. It’s a small black box,
regulating power through a key junction. They get replaced regularly, since if
it fails, the result is chaos until you replace it. You replace it by first
switching to the primary backup. But the design is flawed. If the unit fails,
the primary backup is unable to work, until the main unit is replaced. Which is
why it's always replaced long before it could possibly fail."

"How long will it take to
replace?"

"Usually a five minute job. In the
dark, with possibly no gravity, longer."

"No gravity?"

"The junction supplies the gravity
plating. While in theory, the plates will take a while after power loss to drop
far enough people start floating around, but I’d give you maybe two minutes
before it starts. Give or take."

Jess grinned again. I wasn’t quite sure why
the horrified expression on my face was funny for her.

"Man up Thorn. Pull something in the
black box, wait for the ship to stop, jump in next to Leanne, jump both of you
out again. Easy."

"That’s easy for you to say."

"Of course it is. Nothing is
impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it themselves."

I didn’t bother to reply. Instead, I turned
away from both of them, and walked back to my bridge.

"I think we finally spooked the poor
bugger," I heard behind me.

No, not spooked. Terrified!

Okay, so here's my thing. I had a handle on
the jumps, since I had done similar before. I just needed to be very careful
about it. But I was a ground boy. I needed gravity to feel safe. The thought of
floating around with no control was terrifying.

The urge to get a drink, and generate some
courage, was almost overwhelming. Instead, I sat and star gazed, trying not to
think.

Jess came in a half hour later.

"Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to
you."

"It's ok. You'd think I’d have a
handle on all this by now, but the learning curve keeps going up."

"What's the problem?"

"No gravity."

"You know, I forget you're not a
spacer. Anyone who decides on a life in space is first put through zero gee
training. If you puke, you usually choose another calling. If you don’t, the
training continues. So those who live in space, are prepared for sudden loss of
gravity. Often from a very early age. It's easy to forget you never had any of
the training."

"Is it too late now?"

"Probably. Nobody mucks around with
the gravity plating. Testing is done in space suits outside airlocks, usually
station ones, or at the least, when the ship is stopped. Jenna is not going to
stop us now, and if she did like the idea of you going out the airlock, it
would be a one way trip."

"Does she hate me that much?"

"Nothing to do with you. But I think
she sees someone else whenever she looks at any man."

"Understandable."

"Perhaps. I'm not sure I heard the
whole story. Any normal person would be more detached from the past by
now."

"Not when men strip your clothes off,
display you naked to hundreds of people, mainly men, and then sell you. I'd
call it a solid reason for a relapse."

"Maybe so. But they did the same to me
too, and I'm bouncing back from it."

I suddenly looked her in the eyes.

"Did they rape you? On that
ship?"

"No, but it was getting closer all the
time. It was why I was being tortured when you saved me. We had to give
ourselves willingly. It was the end of the process of breaking us."

"What about Leanne?"

Jess looked concerned for a moment.

"I don’t know. She's strong, but in a
different way to Jen and me. I think we'll either find her dead, beaten to a
pulp, or silently enduring. She's waiting for us. She'll have no idea how long
it will take us, but she knows one of us will have escaped, freed the other,
and be coming for her next."

"You were that close?"

"All for one, one for all."

My eyes glazed over. She mentioned
something about checking the medical facilities, since we had five of them now,
and I didn’t notice her leave.

One good thing about the conversation, the
terror was gone. I practiced looking into various parts of several ships we
passed, including into small parts in power junctions. They were quite complex
inside, mainly very small circuitry. It was probably doable, and if I was
quick, there didn’t need to be any gravity complications.

Neither ship had any room looking like a
slave barracks. But I was getting quicker with moving my sight around a big
ship.

"You're going to need to see
this."

I turned to find Jess holding out an image.
On it were three girls, all dressed in ship garb. The one I didn’t know was
obviously Leanne. Now I had someone to look for. I nodded, and she left.

At ten kilometers distance, I sighed, took
a big breath in, and started searching the target ship. I found Leanne very
quickly, lying on a pallet in a small room packed with pallets. She wasn’t
alone. I fixed the location firmly in my mind, and went searching for the
junction box. It was where Jess had said, as was the black box unit.

"About to jump, back shortly."

"Go," said Jenna.

The chip I’d selected came out easily, and
appeared in my hand. I dropped it onto the console without looking at it. My
sight immediately moved through the ship, presumably as it lost speed, and my
intent wasn’t fixed enough to hold there. The lights went out, and suddenly I
had a hard time seeing where I was looking. Instead, I shifted it back to the
spot next to Leanne. She was standing now, in almost darkness, but was the only
one. I wondered if the others were asleep, but didn’t have the time now to
look.

I jumped myself, appearing behind Leanne.

"I'm…"

She twirled, and hit me.

Thirty One

"Don’t move," said a voice.

I was looking directly into my own gun.

"Leanne, I'm here to rescue you."

"How do you know my name?"

"Jenna and Jess sent me."

"Sent you? How?"

"We don’t have time for questions.
Take my hand, and let's get out of here."

The gun wobbled about a bit, still pointing
at my head. I moved it from her hand to my holster. Behind her outstretched
hand, her face changed to disbelief.

"How did you do that?"

"No time. How long was I out?"

"Less than a minute."

"The gravity could fail any second
now. We have to go."

"Go where?"

"Jenna's ship is close by."

"Jen is here?"

I sighed, pulled the gun, and shot her.

"Don’t leave us here," said a
voice.

"Please?" said another.

I looked around. There were fourteen other
people here, although only three were awake.

"No time," I muttered to myself.

No time to even think, so I just acted. I
shot each of those still asleep, as fast as I could, so they wouldn’t wake up
any time soon.

"Pull everyone to the middle of the
room," I instructed the three still awake. "I need them all touching
each other." I went over and grabbed the nearest by the arm, and pulled.
"Faster. The gravity is about to fail."

"How do you know?"

"Because I sabotaged the ship.
Faster!"

In thirty seconds, we had all of them in
the middle. I could feel it as we steadily lost our feeling of weight. Steps
started becoming longer, and we had seconds now before we started bouncing
around the room uncontrollably. Or at least, that was my fear.

There were no shields active now, so I
couldn’t use them to power the jump. Power was out throughout the ship, so
there was nothing for me to use. I searched around until I found the generators
themselves. The power was there, just not getting to the rest of the ship. I
drew upon it.

I made sure everyone was touching, removed
their collars one by one, formed the intent to move all the people connected by
touch to me and each other, decided to move us all to the common room on the
new ship, checked it quickly to make sure there was enough empty floor space,
and jumped.

I quickly disengaged myself from the mass
of people, walked over to the room com panel, and pressed the button.

"I'm back. New ship common room.
Fifteen people. Jess, I need help. Some of them need medical attention, and I
had to stun most of them to control the jump."

"Why did it take so long?" asked
Jenna.

"Leanne hit me."

"Should have seen that coming,"
laughed Jess.

"Oops," said Jenna. "What
about Leanne? How is she?"

"I had to stun her to shut her
up."

"Should have seen that coming
too."

Jess was still laughing.

"Did they make us at all?" I
asked.

"Not as far as I can see,"
answered Jenna. "We never went closer than seven kilometers from them, and
you were fast enough I didn’t need to make any course change. It was just as
well I slowed us down a bit to give you the extra time, but I don’t think it
was noticeable. Why fifteen?"

"There were fifteen slaves in the
room. I couldn’t leave them all behind."

Not when someone pleaded with you. I could
easily have left them there, but then, I really think I’d have had nightmares
about it for the rest of my life.

"I guess not. Bed them down where you
are." There was a pause. "Thorn, does that ship have a shuttle?"

Looking took only a few seconds.

"Yes. Several. Why?"

"Can you move one to one of our
shuttle bays?"

I saw where she was going. We'd be needing
to explain how fifteen slaves escaped. An extra shuttle would do it.

I drew a lot of energy, since we were now
well over ten kilometers away, grabbed a hold of the closest one, and moved it.
My vision faded for a moment, and I had to push against the nearest wall to
hold me up. Drawing even more energy from my source pool made me feel better
immediately.

Jess arrived shortly after, and together
with the other three, who were standing there looking at me with dumb-founded
expressions on their faces, we moved everyone either to a bed, or to the
medical facilities. Leanne we moved to her own stateroom. Moving fifteen naked
people should have been awkward, but I really didn’t notice. My brain was
sluggish, and sleep was what I needed.

The last thing I wanted was to be there
when Leanne woke up. Jess could see it in my face, so she let me go. What I
needed was food and drink, before a long sleep.

The first throb in a temple started as I
drifted off.

Thirty Two

I woke a few hours later to an established
migraine, took a tablet, and went back to sleep. By the time I woke again, we
were nearly to the station.

My head was clear, but the rest of me
needed a shower. The necessary done, I was finishing up a meal in my kitchen,
when Leanne's voice made me jump so hard, my knees bashed the underside of the
table, and my drink crashed to the floor.

She laughed, and sat down opposite me.

"I'm told I owe you an apology. Two
now."

Her grin was infectious. She was wearing
the same ship outfit the other girls wore.

"Not really. You had no way of knowing
who I was."

"All the same, I reacted far more
violently than I usually do. I'm sorry I hit you. And thank you for the
rescue."

"You're welcome."

"Jess told me a whole heap of things
about you. If I hadn't seen what you did with the gun, I wouldn’t have believed
a word of it."

"Belief is not necessary."

"Plenty would disagree with you."

"If you don’t mind, it's too soon
after getting up for this sort of discussion."

The cleaner bots having cleaned up the
mess, I rose and brought back another drink.

Leanne was watching me closely. So I paid
more attention to her.

"No."

"No what?"

"No, you’re not getting thank you for
saving me sex."

I face-palmed.

"Why do you all think I expect
that?"

She laughed.

"Sorry, just messing with you. Jess
told me to."

I shook my head, and said nothing.

"Just your luck to rescue three girls
in a row, who all like girls."

Well, and so a few things were suddenly
explained.

"You could try the others you know.
Well, the girls anyway."

"No thanks. I have no plans for seeing
any of them again."

"They do want to thank you."

"I'll think about it."

"I want to thank you."

"You just did."

"No, I mean with a proper reward. And
yes, I know you want to go home, and as the one who has the most time on her
hands on this ship, I'll dedicate myself to finding it, but I mean a proper
reward above that. Just give me time to work something out."

"You don’t need to."

"Want. Not need. Want. They've been
raping me for weeks. All of us in fact. Several of the group are going to need
serious therapy when they get somewhere safe."

"I'm sorry it took us so long to find
you."

"I understand. It was always going to
be a waiting game. Jen and Jess were always going to escape somehow. I never
doubted it. They have skill sets I don’t have, so for me it was always about
enduring until someone showed up. I'm really glad you did. I'm just sorry I
made it harder for you."

"We've done that. Forget it. How are
the others going to get to safety?"

"We have our story already, how the
power cut out, and we stole a shuttle to escape. Jen took us aboard as you went
past, and the station has already been notified escaped slaves are on their
way. She told me to ask you to look at the docking bay before we dock, just in
case the reception isn’t what we want. What did she mean by that?"

"I have magical sight, which can see
at a distance."

"Jess said something like that. Can
you give me a demo?"

I led her to my bridge, and bid her watch
the screen Jess had used. An image of Jenna in her captain's chair appeared. I
let it fade immediately.

"Oops. I didn’t know she'd be there. I
was going to show you an empty bridge. Don’t tell her I did that please."

She laughed.

"I won't. So is there any limit to
what you can see?"

"Range seems to be about fifteen
kilometers at the moment, but it depends on what sort of power I can
borrow."

"So you looked at me before the
rescue?"

"Yes. I had to know where you were, so
I could jump in close."

"So you saw me naked."

I blushed. She laughed harder.

"Only sort of. I was concentrating on
a very fast rescue. I really didn't get a chance to look properly. And don’t
worry, I won't be doing any looking here on the ship. The others would kill
me."

"Hey, no need to be so defensive. I'm
not Jen or Jess. They're both very private people. Being naked for them is
humiliation taken to the nth degree. I'm not them. I was always more of a party
animal, and while I prefer girls, I've never been shy about being seen. So if
you want to peek at me in the shower, go right ahead."

My jaw dropped open for a moment.

"Don’t kid."

"I'm not. I get a kick out of being
seen. It was a major factor in helping me cope. I didn’t feel humiliated being
naked, and being looked at gave me a thrill, not put me in fear of them. Being
raped wasn't pleasant, but I didn't fight them, so they didn’t hurt me. I just
pretended to be a blow up doll."

My mouth was open. I closed it.

"I'll make sure if I'm not showering
alone, I do it in another stateroom. The others will toss you out an airlock if
you view them."

"I know. They were very serious about
it."

"Well if you feel the need to look,
look at me. You can look all you like, just don’t touch."

I blushed again. And resolved not to. Look
or touch. I changed the subject.

"How do the others get to safety? What
happens after you all get your ID's."

"We don’t know yet. The main problem
is funds. If we had some, they'd all take a passenger ship back to their home worlds.
We don’t. And while Jen is sympathetic, she doesn’t want to be a taxi service
for people she didn’t invite on board."

"Ouch."

"Not your fault. If I hadn't forced
you to stun me, I’d have talked you into taking everyone as well."

"How much will they need?"

Leanne gave me a set of numbers, since
she'd already researched costs for tickets. I rounded the number up to a nice
whole number, and set about making fourteen cards with double it on each.
Leanne sat there waiting for me to finish, astonishment on her face.

I passed her the fourteen cards.

"Give each of them one of these.
Hopefully it's enough to get them home."

"How can you afford to do this?"

"Easy come, easy go."

"Do I even want to know?"

"Probably not. But once we hit the
station, I'll top back up again fairly quickly."

"Can I watch?"

The grin was back on her face.

Thirty Three

The reception committee was larger than
expected, but showed no signs of danger. There were no guns evident, or cages
on wheels nearby.

As the only one without a bounty on me, I
greeted the immigration officials when the hatch opened. I repeated the cover
story, and was quite prepared to show them the shuttle they escaped in. I
wasn’t asked to.

Leanne and the others had their identity
verified, gave statements to be passed on to law enforcement about their slave
taking captors, and were welcomed back to civilized society with new ID cards.

Leanne announced she was staying with the
ship as crew, and the others would be taking passage back to their home worlds.
None of the officers asked about how they would fund this. I gathered this was
none of their business, or at least, something best not made official. Refugees
with no funds could start asking for handouts after all.

Officialdom done, we all trooped back
aboard, and closed the hatch.

Jess was waiting for us, holding two gun
belts. Leanne and I buckled them on. While technically Leanne might be a target
here, she was less likely to be than Jenna or Jess, at least for now. The guns
were just for show, in case anyone thought we might be an easy take down.

One by one, the others hugged me. They were
dressed in identical ship suits, which I assumed Jenna had in store somewhere. It
was awkward, but they were genuine in thanks for their rescue. They all had
contact details for Leanne, and promised to keep in touch. I guess captivity,
and living naked with a group of strangers for a long period, creates a bond
which lasts after the group breaks up. If it was me, I'm not sure I’d want to
keep in touch. But Leanne wasn’t me.

We left as a group, taking the fast route
to the passenger departure lounges, where each of them bought a ticket home. We
stayed with them, until the last one boarded a ship, most of the day later.

On the way back to the ship, I spotted a
man abusing a station worker. I quietly pointed him out to Leanne, and took his
wallet, moving it into the ever present backpack I always wore on station.

Back aboard, with the hatch closed, I took
it out, and showed it to her. It had five cards inside, and I handed all five
to Leanne without checking their value.

"Here. You'll need some funds
yourself."

She waved them past her pad, which had been
with her things Jenna and Jess had replaced in her room, and her eyes widened
at the amounts.

"I can't take all this."

"Sure you can. You're owed. I figure
this is the way the cosmos provides for some people after treating them really
badly."

"The cosmos has you robbing the rich
to give to the poor?"

"When you put it that way, geez I hope
not. For now, I rob the rich to support me, and now you. Let's not make this
anymore than it needs to be. I'm not a crusader. I'm just using the only skills
I have to get by."

"Will you escort me to the bank?"

"Surely, I will."

She took my arm, and we walked that way
across the station to the banking section. I waited outside while she went in.
She was grinning when she came out.

"Let's go shopping."

I'd never been shopping with a girl before.
In one store, I sat in a chair outside the changing room, as she went in, and came
out in different outfits, looked at herself in a full length mirror, and asked
how she looked. While my impression of Jenna and Jess was they preferred ship
wear, or at least clothes which didn’t emphasize their female attributes too
much, Leanne on the other hand was totally girlie. She went for dresses, skirts
and tops, and looked sensational in all of them.

At one point, she pulled her dress off on
her way back in, before she was even in the door, revealing nothing on
underneath. I wasn’t the only one to get an eye full, and when she came out
next, it was with a big grin on her face.

I guess if she was showing, I was watching.
A short time later, the door twitched open, and I had a vision of breasts for a
few seconds. Teasing minx. I had to tell myself forcefully not to get excited
about it. She was a tease, nothing more. Enjoy the show, but nothing.

Eventually she chose a set of outfits, paid
for them, and had them delivered to the ship. As I followed along behind her, I
sighed. At least that was over.

Or not, as she turned into another store,
dedicated to female underwear. My foot paused in midair on the threshold, and I
froze up right there. She must have noticed I hadn't followed her in, as she
came back, and quite literally pulled me in.

By the time she led me out again, I’d seen
her parade a dozen sets of lingerie in front of me, some of which left nothing
to the imagination. By this time I was really glad I was wearing tight pants,
which fortunately didn’t bulge much, since there was no stretch in the fabric.
Otherwise I’d have been really embarrassed. As a tease, this was brilliant. But
since it was actually a wind up, all she ended up doing was frustrating the
hell out of me.

I think she saw this in my face towards the
end, as she selected, paid, and arranged delivery quickly, after having drawn
things out before.

She bought a number of things in various
stores, replacing things she too had found were missing, all being delivered to
the ship. This included a new pad, which presumably hadn't been taken because
it was so old.

Finally, she led me into a restaurant. We
were seated before she said anything.

"Did you enjoy the show?"

Her expression was wicked.

"Sure. But I prefer a tease I know is
going somewhere."

"I saw that on your face. So you would
have wanted it to go somewhere?"

I sighed, and nodded.

"I'll take that as a compliment. Sorry
though, but I needed to know something about you."

"What?"

"The three of us were talking earlier,
and the girls told me you hadn't made a pass at either of them. It made us
wonder what you were attracted to. But from the look of your pants at one
point, I could see you are attracted to girls. Had to be sure. Sorry."

"You could have just asked."

"Yes, but seeing is believing. Tell
me, did you see the two cute guys who were also changing at the same time I
was?"

"What guys?"

"I didn’t think so. One of them
checked you out, but you didn't even notice."

"I was enjoying the show."

She laughed.

"Good. So how come you haven’t hit on
any of us?"

"You told me not to."

"Since when has that ever stopped a
man?"

"Most men maybe. But as you may have
noticed, I'm not the lean mean tailor's dummy women prefer to be hit on
by." She actually looked surprised. "I learned a while back, if girls
say no, it's better to accept it first off, rather than play stupid games I'm
not equipped to play anyway."

"Who says?"

"Everyone I've hit on."

"They said it like that?"

Surprise was now looking shocked.

"Not as such. They didn’t need to say
anything. It was obvious."

"Where did you learn about
girls?"

"I didn’t. At fourteen I went into a
two year training program, designed to find out what you were good at. It also
had the side effect of keeping us away from girls. At sixteen, I had to flee
for my life, and found myself in a different sort of society. I lived in a
house for teens without parents, and while I did learn some things about girls,
they usually involved embarrassment and punishment. At eighteen, I was
kidnapped by slavers."

Her mouth was hanging open. She closed it
and smiled.

"I'll see what I can do in the way of
some educational material for you. It sounds like you missed out on a
lot."

She paused.

"Are you a virgin?"

"Are you ready to order?"

Thirty Four.

By the time I'd finished choking, and my
face was no longer red, we'd ordered.

"So let me get this straight.
According to Jen, you come from a planet without space travel, has never had
space travel, and has no concept of where the planet is in the cosmos.
Right?"

"Yes."

"So you don’t know the name we know it
by, or the system's name, or which system it jumps to?"

"Yes."

"Just that it was two weeks travel to
get to the pirate station."

"Yes."

"That's not as bad as it sounds."

"How so?"

"There are not a lot of planets within
our space, which haven’t reached into space yet. Especially with people looking
just like us."

"There are planets with people not
like us?"

"Of course. There are all sorts of
alien species out there. Why do you think we have a military? The jump points
out into alien space are all guarded, and we don’t let any of them into our
space."

"Why not?"

Dishes were placed in front of us, and I
idly picked up a fork, and tasted. I looked across at Leanne, saw the look on
her face as well, and talk stopped. It didn't begin again until the plates were
cleaned.

"You were saying?"

"What about?"

"Finding my home being easy?"

"Not necessarily easy as such, but
known space is exactly that. Known. Pre-space flight civilizations are
quarantined. No-one allowed in. So all we need to do is find one within two
weeks travel of that station."

"And find a way in."

"With your talents, that may be the
easy part."

"My talents?"

She laughed.

"Let me do some research. It shouldn’t
be too difficult."

"What do you consider the hard part
will be?"

Our main courses landed in front of us. Once
again, talk stopped, and eating took over.

"That was wonderful."

"The food wasn’t up to standard on
your last voyage?"

"Hardly. Even Jen's food isn’t up to
this standard."

"Why does she choose?"

"It's her ship."

"It's your stomach."

She laughed.

"So you’re saying I should just order
in what I want to eat?"

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed. What are your food
stocks like?"

"Gold class. Let's just say, I
obtained the box by accident, and it turned out to be the best."

"Only a box? I'll order you a pallet
when we get back to the ship. I need to order food anyway, given our guests ate
into our reserves."

"I can get my own."

"Not unless you wish to create a
demarcation issue. I'm cargo master on this ship, and I do the ordering."

I held my hands up in mock surrender. She'd
just contradicted herself, but I wasn’t going to say so.

"Keep them there," said a male
voice.

We looked around in shock, to find a man
standing next to our table, pointing a gun at us from within his coat, so only
we could see it. He slid into the unused chair between us, and the gun slid
under the table, pointed at me.

"Don’t say anything. Listen, do what
you’re told, and neither of you get hurt."

"What do you want?" I ground out.

He nudged me with the gun.

"A bounty was issued for the babe here
ten minutes ago. My luck I was walking past here so soon after, and spotted
her."

I saw immediately where he thought this was
going. Hands still up, I had a look inside his gun. Not knowing what to do to
make it useless, I made all the inner workings disappear.

"In a moment, I'm going to put a
collar on the table. You babe, are going to put it on, and the two of us will
walk out of here as if nothing was going on."

His backup gun, in a boot holster, was now
in my backpack, along with his wallet.

"I think not."

My voice was calm, cool, and totally
confident. His head jerked to look at me, and there was a faint click as he
pulled the trigger on his gun, without any effect.

"Now let me tell you what is going to
happen."

He tried to rise, I clamped some force onto
his shoulders, and pushed him back into his seat. His eyes widened.

"You are going to hand me the gun
under the table, take out the remote device, and put it on the table in front
of the babe. You will take out the collar next, and put it on. You will set the
remote to allow you to stand quietly outside the doors of the restaurant, and
you will wait there until we finish our dessert. Understood?"

He nodded, but did nothing.

I concentrated for a moment, and he started
going red in the face. Abruptly, the remote was out, adjusted, and placed in
front of Leanne. The collar followed, and was quickly clicked into place around
his neck. He looked at me, clearly unable to breath. I released him.

He took in a couple of quick breaths, rose,
walked calmly to the doors, and stood just outside where he could be seen by
Leanne.

"Wow! My hero!"

"Stop it. We need to finish eating,
and get you back to the ship, before a real threat turns up."

"What are you going to do with
him?"

"Deliver him to station security."

"Is that wise?"

"Why not?"

"Raises questions about how you
overpowered him. Ones we'd rather not answer."

Put it that way, and she was right.

"Let me think about it."

Our desserts arrived. The waiter departed,
but Leanne was looking me in the eyes.

"Do you really think I'm a babe?"

She was fluttering her eyelids.

I dug into my dessert.

Thirty Five

One moment he was there, the next he was
gone. There was no sign of him as we walked out, after Leanne thumbed for the
whole meal. She'd insisted, and I’d learned a long time ago not to fight an
insisting babe. Admittedly, it wasn’t about who was paying for dinner, but the
principle holds once you learn it. And besides, it didn’t matter who paid, she
was using stolen funds, I’d stolen. So it amounted to the same anyway.

"How did he get away?"

"Must have had a partner with another
control unit." I paused a moment. "Saves us the trouble anyway. Let's
get back to the ship before anything else happens."

A shot hit my shields, which were
protecting both of us. I pushed Leanne back into the restaurant, and dashed for
the men's room. Inside, I checked to see if anyone was there, which there
wasn’t, and jumped us back to the main lounge on the ship.

"The men's room?"

"It was closest."

"Why do you bother walking, when you
can do that?"

"Too risky most of the time. If
someone sees me, or I get caught on surveillance, I'm in big trouble."

"We're already in big trouble."

"True."

I’d been thinking about exactly how much
trouble I would be in, if I kept on doing magic in public. Pirates would be the
least of my worries. I was also worried about forming a habit of always doing
magic. I'd heard some stories early on in training, about mages who did
everything magically, and either burned out young, or went mad. On the other
hand, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t mad already.

"Where have you two been?"

Jenna seemed put out, but as far as I knew,
the ship couldn’t possibly have been unloaded yet, let alone the next load be
aboard.

"Shopping and dining Jen. Why? Did you
want to come?"

"Tell me you didn’t get into
trouble."

"We didn’t get into trouble."

Leanne said it with a straight face, and
then spoiled it by giggling. Jenna looked at me.

"Someone picked Leanne out by chance,
and tried to collect. Apparently the bounty on her was posted not long ago."

"Is he still alive?"

"Yes. I managed to subdue him without
much fuss, but he escaped his own collar. Outside, presumably he shot at us, so
I took us back in, and jumped us here."

She looked at both of us, and sighed.

"No more going out onto this station.
It's not safe for either of you. Come on. Jess wants to talk to us all."

She led the way towards the main lounge
room, but the dock buzzer rang before we arrived. I went back to answer it.
Before opening the hatch, I took a peek outside.

The hatch opened to the right button, and
the delivery man outside pushed a trolley inside, and stacked a set of boxes on
the internal trolley, off to one side. I thumbed the delivery charge, and shut
the hatch after him. Instead of wheeling the trolley to the living area, I
concentrated on the boxes for a moment, drew some power, and moved them
directly to the floor in Leanne's stateroom.

I found the girls all relaxing in what I
assumed was their favorite easy chair. An extra one had been pulled in to form
a rough ring. Each had a small table next to it, and on each was a tall flute
glass, the liquid inside bubbling.

Jenna waved me to the chair, and picked up
her glass. I sat, and was the last one to pick a glass up.

"To freedom."

She leaned forward in her chair, almost out
of it, and the others followed her, me slightly behind them. Our glasses
clinked, and we all leaned back into our chairs and sipped. The liquid was
divine. I upended the glass, and drained it dry.

The girls looked at me in shock.

"You're supposed to sip it
silly," said Leanne. "Ah, bugger it."

She downed hers as well. The others
followed, and after putting their glasses down, they all giggled. I looked at
them, wondering what the joke was.

"Champagne," said Jenna.
"Used for celebrations and toasts. And getting sloshed on in high society.
I ordered a few bottles before we arrived."

"How few was a few?" asked Jess.

"Whole carton."

They laughed outright this time. She
reached down beside her chair, and pulled up the almost empty bottle, filled
her own glass, poured the rest into Jess's, tossed the bottle behind her, and
pulled out another, already opened bottle. She refilled the rest of the
glasses, and sat back down.

"Sip this time!" said Leanne, and
chuckled again.

I sipped as ordered, and put the glass down
again. All eyes went to Jess.

"I thought we better discuss
priorities."

"What's to discuss?" asked
Leanne. "I have a rough idea where Thorn's planet is, and as we trade the
next couple of legs back in that direction, I'll figure out which is the most
likely system."

"That is one priority," said
Jess. "But there are other ones, which might be higher priority."

"What are they?" I asked.

"We all have bounties on us now,"
said Jenna. "Even you Thorn. I checked. They don’t know who you are, but
they do know you're with us. And they have an image of you, so it's no longer
safe for any of us to move freely on stations."

"I can manage it if I have to."

"Only at some risk."

"And we don’t want you taking the risk
anymore," added Jess.

"It's an option if we have to."

"Last resort perhaps," said
Jenna. "I don’t plan on us getting there."

I liked her optimism. The command was back
in her voice. I liked that as well.

"So what else is there to do?"
asked Leanne.

Jess coughed, and our eyes went back to
her.

"As I see it, we have two tasks before
us. Or rather one task, with two sides to it."

She looked at Jenna with a sad face.

"I'm sorry luv, but there's no easy
way to say this."

"Spit it out."

Jess looked at me. I took the hint. It was
obviously the right time. I sighed, and took a breath in. My gaze went to
Jenna.

"As I understand it, you were raped by
a superior…"

Jenna hissed a breath in, and shot daggers
at Jess.

"…and forced into quitting a promising
career. Two months later, your parents die in a freak accident, and you inherit
a trader ship. Said ship is subsequently ambushed by pirates, and you get sold
into slavery."

"What's your point?"

"I had the impression from Jess, you
thought these were isolated events."

"Yes."

Her teeth were grinding.

"What I see is a progression of events
designed to remove you from the military, and then remove you permanently. I’d
venture to say your auction was rigged, you'd have been beaten into submission,
raped for as long as you remained good sport, and then an accident would have
killed you. End of someone's problem."

The look she gave me made me raise a shield
without thinking about it.

"I agree," said Jess. "Thorn
dropped it on me when we were talking, and it shocked me to the core. But I've
had time to think about it now. It all fits together. Too damned well."

"So you're saying my parents were
murdered?"

"I'm sorry luv, but yes."

She sat there for a long time, and we sat
there with her, letting her process it all.

"Motherfuckers are going to pay!"

Thirty Six

"So what's the plan boss?"

I was surprised it was Leanne who said it.
But the three of them had almost identical looks on their faces. My eyes
settled back on Jenna.

"Three pronged attack vector."

Jess laughed at my face.

"How much military training did you
get Thorn?"

"The basics. At least the basics for
what you’d consider the middle ages. I had the discipline drilled into me, but
the rest of it is probably a tad out of date. I wanted to be a battle mage. But
the sort of battles they fought are nothing compared to what I've seen
now."

"Thorn," asked Jenna, "do
you accept my military authority?"

"You're the captain. So sure."

"No-one knows this yet, but we four
just formed a mercenary unit, and we have a war to fight. I need a battle mage.
No, I need a space mage. Are you my spacemage Thorn?"

I hesitated. I wanted to go home, not fight
a technological war. But here's the thing. We are brought to where we're
needed, to what needs to be done. My skills had transferred. It wasn’t as if I
was just a useless unwanted kid any more.

"We need you," said Leanne and
Jess together.

"I'm in," I said, with more
confidence in my voice than I actually felt.

"What are the prongs?" asked
Leanne.

"Pirates, the bastards who bought us,
and whoever planned all this."

"Priorities?" asked Jess.

Jenna thought.

"To get to all our buyers, we need to
visit the pirate station again, and steal their records. No point in leaving
the slaver operation intact afterwards. So to do that, we need more than just
the four of us."

"Sasha?" asked Jess.

"I thought so, but she might not want
to leave her post."

"She will when we lay the whole story
in front of her."

"We have to get there first, which
means a military encounter first."

"We need missiles as well, so two
birds with one stone."

"Show me how," I said, "and
I can make them if we're near the raw materials. Show me where, and I can steal
them. Show me where the records are, and I'll steal them as well."

I didn't say the other thought. Show me the
bastard who raped Jenna, and I’d string him up by his balls. The same went for
the bastard who was torturing Jess, if we ever met up with him again.

"We're going to need to get into at
least two sets of records."

Jenna was deadly serious now.

"Two?" asked Leanne.

"We need my former captain's records
to find out who was behind him. And we need the records on that station to find
out who was going to buy me. So I see four targets, and counting."

"Priorities?" repeated Jess.

"Sasha and missiles come first. I
selected our next destination to take us in that general direction anyway, so
as soon as we're loaded, we'll leave."

I must have looked confused.

"We're going to get attacked again.
There is no doubt on that now. We each carry bounties, and so does the ship.
There will be attempts to collect them. The magazines are not fully stocked.
And we don’t have anyone experienced in fusing and firing them. So we were
always going towards Sasha and the closest missile stores. I also checked on
what we have, and most of them are crap. I want military grade missiles, and
someone who knows how to fight with them."

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

Jenna looked at Leanne.

"Lea, time you took back your job, and
let Jess get on with hers. Get the rest of the cargo off as fast as you can,
and the new cargo bedded down in record time."

She looked around at all of us.

"I want to be out of here before some
nitwit decides to storm the ship. We're vulnerable while loading. Thorn and I
will take turns keeping watch, while you two get us ready to go."

We all rose, and Jess and Leanne hurried
off.

"Thorn, are you ready for a full on
war?"

"No. But I'm learning as fast as I
can."

Thirty Seven

Dock watch turned out to be as boring as it
sounded. There was some suspicious activity out beyond the dock itself, on both
levels, but nothing happened. For some reason whoever it was, wasn’t prepared
to assault the ship, and was waiting for us to emerge. We didn’t.

When the last container, pallet, and box
was loaded, we shut the main airlock, locked both, and prepared to leave. Jenna
had us in the queue long before loading was complete, and the time allocated
wasn’t long after we were ready to go.

Once in space, I talked to Leanne about
cargo salvage. She started moving containers around, to give me an empty space
to use should some become available.

Predictably, a ship was waiting for us on
the next down jump. They were good, or possibly pre-warned, because they had
missiles in space seconds after we appeared.

I was waiting for them, and responded the
same as last time, with a force wall, which caused them to explode. In the
interval between launches, I moved everything in their cargo bays into ours. I
tried something different for the next salvo, just making them vanish as if I'd
wiped them off a screen. The contents of their armoury was next, followed by their
personal side arms. The third salvo launched.

"Stop mucking around Thorn!"
yelled Jenna.

The echo came through the ship, which
showed me how loudly she'd bellowed it. I wiped away the missiles again.

"Almost done," I said into coms.

I parked their shuttle in the last
remaining space, emptied their food stores, found and emptied a wine storage
room, and stripped their staterooms of anything interesting.

The next salvo I turned back on them, and as
they hit, I formed a force wall, and rammed it into their ship so hard, it was
reduced to space dust.

"What took so long?

"Have Leanne do an inventory."

I could hear chuckling in the background.

"Do we claim them?" asked Jess.

"No," replied Jenna. "It's
time we instilled a little terror among pirates and hunters. We'll arrive at
our next destination, and not mention anything. Anyone checking will find only
dust. After a few more ships go missing, the next lot might think twice about
taking us on."

"I wouldn’t bet on it," I
muttered.

"Me either," said Jess.

"Thorn, you better show Leanne what
you did."

"On my way."

We spent several hours looking at my haul.
She entered the few containers, and all the pallets, into the cargo system. We
moved the food into our own stores, including several pallets of drinking
water, and another three pallets of beer. This restocked both the main kitchen,
my kitchen, and the one for the alternate accommodation. If need be, we didn’t
need food replacements now for six months or so.

The wine store was moved into an unused
room, and the environment set for optimal drinking in the future. Quite a few boxes
found their way directly to the kitchens for immediate use.

It turned out they'd considered themselves
a major fighting force, since their armoury had contained body armour, and
enough guns and explosives to start a small war. I had to create new racks for
a lot of it. They even had several tripod mounted heavy blasters. I kept a
selection aside for my own use, and moved them to my part of the ship, where I
again made racks to house them properly.

Once we were finished, we had drinks in my
lounge area.

"Leanne…" I started.

"Call me Lea. No need to be
formal."

"Lea," I grinned into her smile.
"Next time you better specify what space we have left, and where to put
things direct. Otherwise I might start putting things on top of things."

"What happens when you do that?"

"I'm not sure. And I don’t really want
to try to find out. In theory, a container appearing where another one already
is, will destroy both. Or the second will simply replace the first. Neither
sounds good."

"You'll work it out. But in the
meantime, I'll have a list ready of positions for each size."

"Thanks. Maybe you should be with me
for the next jump."

"You want some company?"

"Sure."

And I did. Lea was turning out to be very good
company. And I really didn’t want to be alone. The cosmos definitely has a
sense of humour. I finally find a girl I can get on with, and she prefers
girls. She must have seen something in my face.

"Are you lonely Thorn?"

I thought about it.

"Sometimes."

"I'll see what I can do about
it."

Thirty Eight

"Darlings! How wonderful to see you.
And look, you brought me a toy-boy!"

I cringed. I'd wondered why I'd been
invited to the main bridge this time, as we approached the next station. Now I
knew. Lea laughed, although the other two had the decency to keep a straight
face.

The voice belonged to an older woman, who
was extravagantly dressed, including a feather in her hair, and covered in
jewelry.

"When can I expect you at the salon
darlings?"

"I'm sorry Deirdre," said Lea,
"we can't leave the ship this time."

"But you must!"

"We're in a spot of trouble at the
moment," said Jenna. "Next time?"

"Bah! If you cannot come to the salon,
the salon will come to you. I must meet this toy-boy I see before me!"

She grinned, displaying a set of perfect
teeth. I suddenly had images of being eaten by a crocodile.

"We'll be docking in about an
hour," said Jenna.

"Excellent. We'll be waiting for
you."

The com screen went blank.

"Who was that?" a squeaky voice
asked.

The three of them laughed, even Jenna.

"An old friend of my parents,"
said Lea. "She's a force of nature, comes across like a stampeding
elephant, but has a heart of gold."

"Salon?" I asked.

"She calls it a salon. But it's really
just about everything a woman needs to pamper herself."

"Ah. So I get guard duty while you're
all being pampered?"

"Hell no!" exclaimed Jenna.

"She does cater to men too,"
added Lea.

"And we won't need to worry about
security either," added Jess. "You'll see."

And I did see. I peeked at the main people
lock area as the docking clamps were engaging, and saw what looked like an army
of people waiting. I say army, because a dozen of them were armed, and ringed
around the area, all facing outwards. Someone knew their stuff too, for as far
as I could see, there was no way anyone could assault the ship without taking
heavy losses. The main loading dock below was even more heavily protected.
Deirdre obviously had her own security force, or had one on tap.

When the hatch opened, Deirdre swept in,
and hugged each of us. She was followed by four stunning women pushing tables,
and four men pulling loaded trolleys.

"Ah, toy-boy darling, do you have a
name?"

"Thorn," I croaked, feeling
overwhelmed.

She waved over the shortest of the girls.

"This is Wei Lin. She will be
attending to your needs. Please show her to your stateroom."

Wei Lin gave me a smile, and took the
handles of her table in her hands. I shot a look at Lea, who was grinning, and
she waved me away. I hesitated, and they all grinned, and waved me away. I
turned and walked off, table and Wei Lin behind me. When I looked back, one of
the men and a trolley, was following along behind.

Arriving at my stateroom, I motioned Wei
Lin inside. The man pushed the trolley in after her, and to my relief, left. I
closed the door, and wondered what came next.

The table was pushed into a space where she
could walk all around it, with the trolley pushed to one side out of the way.
From it, she pulled large fluffy towels, several large bottles, and soap. She
looked at me, as if sizing me up from head to toe.

"Clothes off," she said, in a
gentle soothing voice.

My eyes opened wide, wondering what was
going on.

"Please remove clothes. We shower
before massage."

I reluctantly started to pull my clothes
off, but stopped when she started removing her own. Before I knew it, she was
standing in front of me stark naked. My eyes looked her over.

"You do not like me?"

"Yes," I stammered. "Very
much."

"Why that face you make?"

"I'm not sure what's happening
here."

"Shower and massage. You have aches?
Pain? We fix. Remove clothes, or they get wet."

I removed the rest of my clothes, thinking
about how surreal it was.

"Ah, you do like me after all."

I had to smile at that. She took my hand,
and led me into the bathroom.

"Make water comfortable."

She darted back into the bedroom, while I
turned on the water, returning with her arms full, some of which turned out to
be soap, and some sort of fluffy thing. She pushed me in, and closed the door
after herself.

"Turn."

I turned my front into the water, and she
started soaping my back. I felt the touch of her hands, the soap, and the
fluffy thing. They went down my back, and kept going. At my feet, she bid me
lift each foot in turn, and the whole foot was washed. Her hands came back up
the insides of my thighs, and I squirmed when they touched a part of me I
hadn't expected to be touched.

"Turn."

I did so, and she repeated the soap and
wash. I quickly understood the errant touch had been no such thing, as every
bit of me was methodically washed.

"Now you do me."

She handed me the soap and fluffy thing,
and I started on her shoulders and arms. Her skin was soft, and she leaned into
my touch. Down her back I went, before hesitating.

"All."

I kept going, down to her feet, which she
lifted one at a time, so I could do the undersides. I ran my hands up the
insides of her legs like she had, but stopped short at the top, and asked her to
turn. She did. I started at the neck, and worked my way down over her small
firm breasts, down to the tiny triangle of hair, and down her legs to her feet.
I stood back up, and she took the soap and the fluffy thing, put them on a
shelf, and led me out.

One of the fluffy towels was waiting, and
she dried me off, after which I dried her with another. She led me out to the
table.

"Lie."

I lay down on the table. I'd never had a
massage before, so had no idea what to expect. Her hands seemed to roam my
body, finding pain spots all over the place I didn’t know were there, until she
pushed or prodded it. She spent a long time on my head, as if she could sense
where my migraines pained me. At first each spot was more painful, but under
her tender ministrations, the pain eased, and ceased.

She was using some sort of oil, and I felt
slimy, although in a good way. When the pain knots, as she called them, were
soothed, she started moving her hands methodically up and down my body, and I
could feel the energies flowing each direction, strengthening each time.

And then something strange happened. I felt
her sit on my thighs, followed by her lying along my whole length. Before I
could ask why, she started rubbing her whole body along mine. I could feel her
nipples moving along my back, and lower. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but
it felt really good.

By this time I was at a level of relaxation
I'd never known before. And turned on like I'd never been either, since she
kept touching everywhere, and obviously more of me was showing than I thought
there was.

Finally she hopped off both me and the
table, and stood looking down at me.

"Turn."

I turned. Part of me was pointing at the
ceiling, but after having a good look, she paid no more attention. The massage
continued as it had before, finding and easing pain points, starting with my
temples, and moving all the way down to my feet. The energy moves came next,
and her hands were everywhere on the way up and down. And finally, she jumped
up onto the table, and once again lay down on top of me and used her body to
massage mine.

Only it wasn’t final. She stopped moving,
sitting around my hips, and laying across me, her face by mine, and kissed me.
It was long and passionate, tongues touched, and ended when she needed air. I
thought I was about to pass out.

She smiled at me, seemed to wiggle her hips
a bit, and suddenly I realized I was inside her. She raised herself up, pulled
my hands to her breasts, and guided them over her skin and nipples. When they
grew much larger, she moved my hands down to where she and I joined, and my
fingers went around me where I touched her.

She pushed my hands up over my head, and
left them there, while her body began moving in a way I didn’t think was
possible, but who can think when sensations you were completely unaware of
dominated your awareness, and suddenly I felt myself explode inside her. She
must have felt it to, because she lowered herself down onto me again, and we
lay there for a while, me still inside her.

She kissed me again, drew herself off me,
climbed down from the table, pulled me up and off, and we did the whole shower
thing again.

Dry once again, she pulled me to the bed.

With a grin, she started massaging me
again.

Thirty Nine

"How was it?" asked Lea, grinning,
the following day, not long after Wei Lin and the other girls had left.

"How was what?"

"Whatever you and Wei Lin got up to of
course."

"We had a nice chat."

"All night?"

"Most of it."

She looked at me with a shocked expression.
I looked back at her impassively. I wasn’t lying, since once we'd made it to
the bed, we had talked a lot. She'd turned out to be a very interesting person,
and we'd talked about a wide range of things. She was a very good teacher as
well.

"Pretty well."

Her expression changed to disbelief.

"No, you're having me on."

I grinned at her.

"Well, partly. We did do a lot of
talking, between, well, other things."

"Enjoyable things?"

"Very."

"Good."

We sat in silence for a while.

"How much do I owe you?" I
finally said, after failing to think of a more diplomatic way of putting it.

I'd assumed we had to pay for the visit,
since I'd seen net ads for similar services, back in what now seemed like a
previous life. I'd never been in a position to take advantage before either. I
was well aware of how negatively such services were viewed by many, but there
was no denying the benefits of the massage part of the service, and how
enjoyable the rest was. For those without a partner, especially those
constantly on the move, as I now seemed to be, the service was exactly what was
needed. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me, right now.

"Nothing. We all added extra to cover
yours, as a thank you for rescuing us. Don’t get me wrong, we all needed it
after what we've been through. One of the reasons we came here, and not
somewhere else, was Deidre. She knows what we've been through, and what the
body and mind needs to get past the trauma. Oh."

She looked at me for a moment.

"You won't see any of us much for the
next couple of days. Deidre has shrinks coming to see us. With what we have in
front of us now, it's important we get our heads sorted. We need to go into
battle without victim mentality and emotion clouding our judgement. Jenna
especially, since oddly enough with her not actually being sold, hers are the
worst mental scarring. Do you need a session?"

Her question threw me.

"No, I don’t think so."

"Okay. Think about it, and if you do,
let me know. Did you enjoy yourself last night?"

"I did. Thanks."

"Well that was thankyou sex from Jen
and Jess, albeit at second hand."

"She was very good with her second
hand."

"I bet she was. Mine was too."
She stopped to chuckle. "I don’t consider my debt to you paid yet. I've
something else in mind, but it has to wait until we get to another
system."

"Hint?"

"You'll like it, I promise you."

"That's not much of a hint."

"All the hint you're getting. Anyway,
my shrink will be here shortly, so see you in a couple of days."

She rose and walked to the door, where she
turned.

"Did you peek at me at all last
night?"

"Hell no!"

"Well you missed out."

She left, but her grin seemed to hang in
the air without her.

I spent most of the day observing the
unloading of our cargo, since no-one else was around to do it. The containers
and pallets were automated, but some of the boxes needed a personal touch when
someone came for them.

Early afternoon though, a man came up to
me.

"You're Thorn?"

I nodded.

"I'm John. Lea said you didn’t need to
talk to someone, but we thought I'd drop in on you, and find out for
sure."

"You're a shrink?"

"If you need the label, yes. My job is
looking for negative thought patterns, and helping people change them back to
positive ones."

"I think I'm fairly positive, thanks
all the same."

"What will you do when you confront
the men who raped Lea?"

"I'm not sure yet. Hang them up by
their balls probably."

He laughed.

"A negative thought process presented
positively."

"I'm pretty positive those bastards
won't be getting a pat on the head."

"How do you feel about Jenna's
rapist?"

"More of the same. Actually it’s the
murder of her parents which bugs me more."

"Why is that?"

"Because it wasn’t necessary. It was
ordered by someone who wanted to cause pain to Jenna, pain beyond just removing
her from his plans."

"How do you know it was a him?"

This brought me up short. But seed sown, I
considered why it could be a woman.

"You mean some scorned female having
revenge?"

"Yes."

"No. It all started with how good she
was at her job, unless I'm missing something. It tends to be men who get upset
when challenged by a woman."

Oddly, this seems to be universal. I'd seen
the behavior in both my second life home, and among the trainees in my first
life. Funny how third life seemed to sum up now. And yet, across time and
space, the patterns were the same.

"I wouldn't have thought you old
enough to know that sort of thing."

"Military is military, wherever and
whenever you are."

"Would you like to explain that?"

"It’s a long story."

"I have the time."

I told him my whole story, including some
of the events of my training years. I'm not sure he believed it all, but we
talked for the rest of the afternoon, interrupted occasionally by a box pickup.
By the time he left, he told me he was confident I had no lingering emotional
issues. He also told me to look, at least once, since the offer was there. I
laughed him out.

An hour or so later, Wei Lin turned up
again, much to my surprise. We had dinner together, and repeated a lot of the
night before. At one point, her pad beeped, so she padded naked across the room
to check it.

"Lea says you can peek now."

I sighed. I'd never met a girl who actually
wanted a male to look at her naked before. Wei dropped down beside me again,
and began a very specific massage.

"You better. I think she'll be
disappointed in you if you don’t. I don’t quite understand what she's wanting
you to do, but doing it is the best option."

"Ok. Keep doing what you're
doing."

I lay back, and even with hands and tongue
distracting me, cast my sight to Lea's stateroom.

It was empty.

I moved to the bathroom, and there in the
shower was a naked Lea, and another girl I didn’t know. They were entwined,
kissing each other passionately, and obviously enjoying each other's bodies. As
if she knew she was being watched, Lea dragged the other girl out, quickly
toweled them both dry, and threw her down on the bed. They re-entwined. I
quickly saw every bit of both girl's bodies, and what they were doing to each
other. As a straight male, there was something wrong about what they were
doing. But also as a straight male, what they were doing was very arousing.

As their lovemaking became more intense, I
stopped looking, and brought my awareness back to what Wei was doing. She
seemed to sense I was back.

"What were you doing?"

"It's a bit like watching a vid, only
there's no screen, and it's live."

"You can do that?"

"It's sort of a mind gift I was born
with."

"So you could actually see Lea and her
companion?"

"Yes."

"Did you like what you saw?"

"Two girls together doesn’t seem right
to me, but I guess yes."

"You liked it."

"How can you tell?"

"I stopped touching, and you didn’t
notice. But still, there's this."

"You better do something with it
then."

She did.

Later we talked about love in the abstract.

"Take love wherever it is offered my
young Thorn. You never know when it will be the last time."

She wasn’t that much older than me, but I
guess her experience was vastly beyond mine.

"Thank you for offering."

She giggled. I had the impression Lea had
organized tonight as well.

As it turned out, it was also for the next
night too.

Forty

Six ships ambushed us two jumps later.

They fired within seconds of us appearing.
I wondered why they were so far away though, since even I could figure out a
few seconds flying time would guarantee a kill, where being a minute away would
not. If I was staking out a jump point, and I knew when the target ship was
coming through, I'd be sitting as close as I could get and not jump, so the
target had no time to react.

Thinking back though, none of those hitting
us had been all that close. Or maybe it was missiles were not all that fast,
but this couldn’t be so, could it? My thoughts were interrupted.

"What the hell are they doing?"
yelled Jenna.

"Firing on us," I said, since
there seemed to be a need to state the obvious.

"They're military!" exclaimed
Jess.

I took a peek. The view on the bridge of
the first one was so surprising, I checked the rest.

"Were."

"What?"

"There seem to be two crews on board
each ship. The ones in uniforms are all dead."

"Pirates took a small squadron?"
asked Lea.

"How?" echoed Jess.

"What should I do?" I asked.

We had less than thirty seconds before the
first missiles hit us.

"Wipe the missiles as usual,"
said Jenna. "But how accurate can you be if you redirect them?"

"What do you want?"

I wiped away the missiles coming at us. If
she wanted something else, it wouldn't be with these ones. Not enough time
left.

"Missiles hitting airlocks. Rather
than destroying the ships, I'd like to leave them here for someone to find, so
everyone knows these military were taken."

"So damage them enough to kill
everyone on them, but leave them basically intact?"

"Yes."

I did one better. Over the next three
salvos, I used my force punch to hole each ship in key places, killing the
crews through explosive decompression, and sent a missile in to make it look
like it was missile damage. I had to wipe away more than half of them each
time, but as each ship took hits, the number coming at us decreased.

It took a lot longer to do, than it takes
to describe. And I was drawing on a lot of energy. But oddly, there was no sign
of a migraine beginning. It gave me some perspective on my force punch ability,
and made me wonder when I was first training, or losing my temper, I was
inadvertently drawing on some energy source I didn’t know was there. I'd been
knocking down walls with my raw ability after all, and no-one else I knew had
been tasked that way. Which at the time hadn't occurred to me, but now seemed to
indicate I'd had either more raw power than anyone else I was training with,
or, as seemed more likely now, I'd been drawing on some sort of energy source
even then. As unlikely as it seemed, given what I was using now wasn’t even a
mad dream back then. Or maybe enough magic users in one place created a magic
energy store of some kind, and I'd tapped it without knowing. I'd probably
never know for sure.

The resulting mess in space was far enough
from where ships jump in, so there was no need to do anything to warn future
ships. Jenna had us on course for the next station as soon as the last ship
stopped firing.

"Do we want cargos?" I asked.

"No," said Jenna, "leave
everything exactly as it is. If the pirates removed anything, I want it be
obvious it was them, to whoever finds them."

"How are we going to explain
this?" asked Jess.

"No need to. No other ship was in
range to see what happened. If we get asked, we jumped in to find six derelict
ships, and assumed someone else had reported them already. Close enough to the
truth, and our logs show we haven’t fired any missiles, if anyone looks. So it
can't have been us destroying them."

"Works for me," said Lea.

I was a little disappointed about not being
able to test Lea's new display. We'd been working on a cargo display which
showed me in real time, where the empty slots were, so I didn’t need to ask in
future. As I moved a container or pallet, even a box, the display would update,
and all I had to do was include the free spot to move to, as part of the intent
of the move. Next time.

As it turned out, what worked for Lea, didn’t
work at all. When we picked up the local news feed, it was led with a lot of
hype over a military squadron going missing, with calls for anyone knowing
their whereabouts to let the local military office know.

There was a quick debate, and Jenna sent
off a message telling them there were six derelict ships at the jump point we'd
come in from. But she made a point of not putting her name on the message, just
the ship's name. The obvious hope was the ship would be unknown to whoever
received the message, where Jenna's name was more likely to be. Jess saw the
confusion on my face, and explained Jenna's resignation had received a lot of
media hype at the time, especially since no reasons were given, and no
interviews happened to satisfy either the media or the public. Apparently, up
and coming junior officers didn’t just up and quit on a whim.

There was no such luck on remaining unknown.
The reply came directed at Jenna, including her rank when she quit the service,
and not the ship.

"Sons of bitches!" exclaimed
Jenna on reading it.

"What?" asked Jess.

"I'm listed as an active reserve
officer."

"How can they do that?" asked
Lea.

"It's in the Regs. Once an officer,
always an officer, and they can call you back as a reserve any time they want,
as long as there's a good reason for it. Its normal in wartime, but the last
time I checked, there wasn’t an active war. Just the usual border skirmishes."

"Do you know the reason?"

"I didn’t even get a bloody notification!"

"Better check the fine print on your
discharge," I suggested.

"The hell with them!" Jenna was
now showing her temper. "They don’t get to side line my career, discharge
me, and then call me back up. Not when it’s all mixed in with piracy, and
slavery."

The response she sent made it quite clear
Jenna considered herself to be a private citizen, and included mentioning she'd
had no notification of being called back, even as a reservist. She even
suggested exactly where they could go if they tried to recall her.

Like water off a duck's back, her whole
response was ignored. All they wanted was an officer's assessment of the
condition of the ships.

She told them they were, quote, shot up,
unquote, and if they wanted more details, they should go look for themselves.
They told her to go back and make a decent assessment. She told them precisely
which hell they could go to.

The rest of us sat watching the exchange of
messages, grinning, and making suggestions.

Eventually they gave up trying, and we
continued on towards the station. Sometime later, a military courier ship shot
past us.

Thinking it was the last of it, we all went
back to what we were doing before the jump.

It wasn’t the last of it.

Forty One

"There's military uniforms at the dock."

"How many?" asked Jenna.

"Thirteen. One seems to be an officer,
and is unarmed. The others are armed to the teeth."

"What's the insignia on the officer's
shoulders?"

I had no idea what it was, so I described
it.

"Major," said Jess. "For a
station like this, probably the CO for the local recruiting office."

I kept both my confusion and curiosity in
check. I'd never felt the need to look up anything to do with the military out
here. What had happened to Jenna was enough to put me off. A military which
condoned rape, was something to be avoided. But suddenly, lack of knowledge
left me struggling to understand what was happening.

Jenna continued docking, and no-one spoke
again until after the docking clamps engaged.

"We'd better all go to the airlock then,"
said Jenna. "Armed. There is no way in this cosmos I'm going back in, and
they're not going to try."

"I'll get the guns," said Jess.

Before she could move, I dropped a gun belt
in front of each of them, and my own on the seat next to me.

"Thanks Thorn. Meet us at the airlock
please."

"On my way."

I took a detour past the armoury. I
carefully selected three heavy weapons, one each for the girls, and placed them
at the wall beside the airlock. I was last to arrive of course, as a result.
No-one said anything though. They had the heavy guns in their arms, and were
making sure they were ready to fire.

Before opening the airlock, Jenna pressed a
button, and a view of outside came up on a screen.

"Not the local CO," she muttered.

"Explains the courier ship though,"
said Jess.

"You know him?" I asked.

"He's a troubleshooter," said
Jenna. "Works out of the regional naval office, even though he's not navy.
Interesting. They only send him when someone else has already failed."

There was silence for a full minute.

"Hadn't you better find out what he
wants?" I asked.

Jenna rounded on me.

"Don’t tell me what to do!"

She sighed, and her face eased into
something a little less ferocious.

"Thorn, they do not enter the ship,
and they do not take me with them. Understood?"

"How far do I go?"

"Don’t kill any of them."

"Don't kill, yes captain."

Her look said she wanted to yell at me, but
she said nothing, turning back to the airlock controls. The inner door slid
open, followed by the outer one. The three of them stepped forward to the line
of the outer door, but remained inside the ship. I followed, but stayed behind
them.

The man waiting outside stepped up close,
but stopped short of the bottom of the ramp, leaving plenty of room between him
and Jenna. The size of her gun might have had something to do with it.

"Lieutenant Commander…"

"I am not," grated Jenna,
"and have never been, a Lieutenant Commander. What game are you playing at
Major?"

"No games. I assure you. You were
promoted at the same time as you were recalled to duty."

"And when was this?"

He quoted a date, which meant nothing to
me. Another of those things I hadn't bothered with yet.

"Bullshit! You know where I was on
that date Major?"

"No, where?"

"On the slave block, about to be sold
to some corporate pig-shit, the government denies buy slaves. Someone in the
military organized it."

Give him some points, he looked totally confused,
and more than a little shocked.

"You can prove this?"

"Which part?"

"All of it."

For a moment I thought she was going to
shoot him. He did too, and he stepped back involuntarily. Not that the extra
distance would have helped if she had.

"Not. Yet. But we will."

"That’s a serious accusation."

"Only when I find the rat bastard it
gets aimed at. And by then, I'll have the proof to make it stick."

He opened his mouth to say something, but
closed it again. Jenna didn’t let him get the next word in.

"Tell me why I’ve not received
notification of either the rank change, or being recalled to duty? It should
have been a priority message, which I’d have received when I picked up my
emails the first time after it was sent. I didn’t receive anything."

He pulled out his pad, hit a key, and
started talking to someone quietly. His expression darkened as the conversation
went on. He put his pad away.

"I don’t understand this. There is no
evidence of the notification getting through to this end of space. And yet, my
orders included a copy of it."

"Someone didn’t want me getting the
notification it seems. Perhaps it was the same person who sold me to the
slavers?"

"Perhaps. It warrants investigation
anyway."

"You do that Major. Now if you don’t
mind, I have cargo to offload."

"Commander, I don’t think you
understand."

"I understand perfectly. Do you?"

"Of course I do. I was briefed
fully."

"So you understand a superior officer
raped me, had his superiors cover it up, and send me to a back of nowhere
command, where I’d never see a promotion again. I resigned my commission. I'm
out, and I will not, ever, have anything to do with any organization which
condones rape. I don’t care if I've been recalled. I will not be coming back.
Not even if Captain Rapist is brought up on charges, and flung out an airlock."

"He's now a junior Admiral."

"FUCK!"

"No need to use such language
Commander."

"I AM NOT A FUCKING COMMANDER!"

The man seemed to sway back slightly, as
the force of her statement washed over him. It wasn’t me either, although I’d
been half tempted to knock him over. The team at his back however, reacted to
the outburst by raising their guns. The major found his voice again.

"Are you refusing to be recalled to
active service?"

"Yes."

"What about your friends?"

"What about them?"

"Are they refusing as well?"

"Are you fucking tell me all three of
us are recalled?"

"Yes, of course."

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.

"For the record," said Jess, her
voice sounding like metal grating on metal, "neither of us received
notifications either. And you're not recalling us either."

"You all refuse?"

I wondered how this man reached Major, let
alone be some sort of troubleshooter. He seemed as thick as two short planks.

"Of course we all do," grated
Jenna.

"Then I'm afraid I must declare you to
be deserters, and have the marines here take you into custody."

"Deserters? How do you work that
out?"

"In times of war, refusal to be
recalled is an act of desertion."

"What war?"

"The brass think war is almost upon
us, and are actively preparing for it."

"So there is no war yet?"

"Not yet. But it will be soon."

"You got that right Major. There will
be a war soon, but not the one the high muckety mucks think there will
be."

"What war are you talking about?"

"The war on slavers and pirates,
Major. The one which should be being waged by the military, and isn’t. Since
you lot won't do anything, I will. I don’t have time for your make-believe war,
I have my own to fight."

"You're not making any sense
Commander. There is no piracy to speak of, and slavery was banned hundreds of
years ago, and the slavers wiped out."

The four of us glared at him. He looked at
us one by one, and saw the same expression each time.

"You are misinformed Major. There is a
pirate station not all that far from here. It regularly holds slave auctions. We've
been attacked by pirate ships a number of times now. You can't tell me there
are no pirates. I know better. And how do you explain six dead navy
ships?"

"I've not received a report yet."

"My money is on pirates. Care for a
wager?"

"Don’t be silly. Gambling is not
approved of in the military. You should know that. And stop trying to side
track me. If you won't come willingly, we'll have to take you by force."

"Oh, please try."

Everyone looked at me.

"Sorry, did I say that out loud?"

Jenna actually grinned at me. Just for a
moment, but it was a genuine grin. She looked back at the frowning Major.

"You heard him. You will not board
this ship, let alone take us anywhere."

"Sergeant. Arrest these people
please."

"Sir."

The sergeant started towards the ramp, the
Major stepping back to one side to give them room. At the bottom of the ramp,
the man walked smack into a force wall he couldn’t see, and went down hard.
Half of the men did likewise.

The Major looked appalled. Jenna had the
last word.

"Sorry Major. This time it's you with
the failed mission to report. Don’t try to board this ship, you'll only get
hurt. And I’d prefer no-one was hurt. Good day to you."

She slapped a button, and the outer door slid
shut. She turned to me.

"Can you put that magic wall around our
entire cargo dock? We need cargo to be offloaded, and into the station
distribution system, but not let anyone in. Same up here."

"No problem."

We stepped back out of the airlock, and the
inner door closed. Jenna brought up the screen again. The Major and his men
were still there, apparently testing the strength of the wall. Jenna looked at
me. I grinned.

On the screen, all of them began to move
backwards slowly, causing several to lose their balance and fall, where they
were simply pushed backwards until they could get up again. At the outer edge
of the dock area, they stopped moving.

"Good one Thorn, thanks. Can you hold
them off until we can leave?"

"No problems. As long as they don’t
start blowing the place up."

"What happens if they do?"

"Someone will get hurt. I set the wall
to bounce anything which hits it back the way it came."

"Ouch," said Jess.

"Thorn?"

"Yes Jenna?"

"You can call me Jen."

Forty Two

You have to salute the military mentality.
Or is it stupidity?

They came back.

By the time they left, the people level
docking bay was a ruin. Every nearby wall was scorched and holed, as was the
deck outside my force wall. As I found out later, three soldiers ended up in
intensive care, and none of them left without a scar of some kind.

The energy needed to hold the wall up
wasn't bothering me at all, and in fact at the time, I was actually asleep. The
magic to hold the walls continued without me needing to hold the intent all the
time.

The following day, unloading going
steadily, I not only copied the station database, but the local military office's
as well. The girls bypassed the security completely, and we had access to the
messages being sent about us.

"They think we've developed a new
version of a ship shield," said Jess.

"Well in a way we have," laughed
Lea.

"I was afraid of that," said Jen.
We all looked at her. "Another reason for them to come after us. They
think we’ve made a tech advance. We haven’t, but they don’t know that. If they
figure its Thorn doing magic, he'll disappear into a hole somewhere while they
try to figure out how he does what he does."

"Won't happen," I said happily.

"You can't say that Thorn. Seriously,
any action they take could potentially knock you out, and you wake up in a dark
room somewhere."

"I'll light it up."

"They'd like you to do that. Then want
you to tell them how."

"I wouldn’t be there long enough."

The three of them actually seemed to care.
I knew I was being flippant, but I was confident now, even without a major
source of energy, I could still escape anywhere. The worry perhaps would be how
many died trying to stop me, but why dwell on such things.

No, the real issue here was in escaping,
I’d reveal what I really was. And once they worked it out, they'd never stop
coming after me. Military mindset after all. Acquire a better weapon at all
costs. Better for me if it never happened.

"We'll cross that bridge if it ever
happens," I added. "And try hard to make sure it doesn’t."

"Got that right," said Jess.

There were no further incidents before we
undocked, but we had a shadow when we left. The Courier undocked a half hour
after us, and tried to look like it was going where we were, completely by
accident. Since it was a faster ship, it dawdling behind us was a dead
giveaway.

I whiled away the time by looking in on the
crew of the Courier. It wasn’t altogether wasted time. I was trying to add
sound to the display copy I could show my crew, but with no success. I had
magic sight, but so far, no magic hearing.

Lea sent me odd messages at times,
reminding me she was about to enter her shower alone, or was otherwise naked in
her room. I peeked the first time, but the memory of her with another woman was
too strong, and her looking around trying to detect if I was actually looking
or not, finally convinced me peeking on your crew was a really bad idea.

A couple on the Courier were at it as often
as they could, but even watching them palled. Which was the point where I gave
up on trying to hear as well, given what I suddenly realized I might actually
end up hearing. No. Not wanting to hear anything like that.

I went back to my books, and carefully made
sure they didn’t have sex scenes in them, before losing myself in words. Having
experienced the real thing now, had taken the edge off reading about it. Mind
you, if it didn't happen again any time soon, I could always change books.

That's actually not as pathetic as it
sounds. Between reading sessions, I mused about recent times, and decided I was
becoming an adult. Peeking at girls in the shower was a childish thing to do.
Real men did no such thing. Mind you, there was some voice of doubt in the
background, as I remembered some of the already read books.

Before we docked at the next station, I
informed Lea, in a serious voice, I wasn’t taking up her invitations. For a
moment she seemed disappointed, but the invitations stopped.

The jump into the next destination was
routine, but what showed on the navmap was anything but.

"Frying pan into the fire," said
Jen.

Forty Three

"And you brought us here
because?" I asked.

"Because this is where Sasha is,"
said Jen, somewhat defensively I thought.

"And she is?"

"The best," said Jess, and the
three of them laughed.

I could see I wasn’t going to get an
answer, so I shut up.

The system was full of navy ships. While
not outright challenging us, but obviously aware we were coming, it felt like
creeping in at home, hoping not to wake the guardians.

Around the only inhabited planet in this
system, were two stations, rather than the normal one. According to Jess, the
other one was military. We docked at the civilian one.

Once again, there were military waiting at
the airlock for us. But this time, the girls went out through the airlock with
grins on their faces, and I stood there watching hugs taking place. Jen waved
me down. She indicated the smallest person there.

"Thorn, this is Sasha. She's the
marine lieutenant for this lot. Sasha, this is Thorn. We owe him big time for
saving us from slavers."

A tiny hand shot out towards me, and I took
it in mine, and we shook.

"That’s high praise from Jen. You look
ordinary to me, but then, so do I. I'll take her word for it you're more than
you look."

I looked around at all the grins, and
figured I was talking to the most lethal person in this lethal looking group.
Her grip was firm, much more so than I expected just looking at her.

"Nice to meet you," I managed to
stammer, causing grins to become laughs.

"Where do we crash?"

"Lea will show you where," said
Jen. "The ship has had a few modifications since you last saw it. You get
a barracks to yourselves this trip."

"Lead on my lovely!"

I watched as they made their way up the
ramp, and into the ship. It was a mixed group, but two thirds were women. Ages
ranged from mid-twenties up to late thirties. The male sergeant even had grey
in his hair. Yet Sasha was clearly no older than Jen was. They were all loaded
down with very heavy looking bags, and yet the movement of them was clearly not
even a thought process, let alone a burden to them.

Jen waited until they were all aboard,
before turning to me.

"Same protection as last time Thorn. I
was expecting trouble, but it appears someone is paying attention, and didn’t
want two units to face off in the dock."

"How would they know such a thing would
happen?"

"Any good commander would. Marine
units are very loyal to each other, and in this case, Sasha is very loyal to
me. Even if a superior was to order them to confront us, the lieutenant is
going to know Sasha would support me. No-one is going to start that fight
without needing to."

"I don’t get it."

"Let me put it this way then. Sasha
and her unit are on leave for the next few weeks. Marines on leave tend to be
loose cannons. But Sasha is a much bigger cannon because her unit act as one
all the time, and they know it. If they trigger Sasha, there will be blood on
the deck. Fortunately, no-one local is stupid enough to try it, even if they
got the orders to try."

"She doesn’t look like much."

"Neither do you."

"Point."

I renewed the force walls like last time,
and nodded to her. She nodded back, and headed back inside the ship. I
followed, and slapped the button to close the airlock.

Back in my living area, I was surprised
when one of the marines walked in. Bags thunked to the deck, making a solid
metal on metal noise. She looked around, and finally her eyes settled on me.

"Got banished did ya?"

The grin behind the words took the sting
out of them.

"Something like that." I looked
from her to her bags, and back again. "You too?"

"Hell no. I like my own company, and
since we are officially on leave, and this piece of shit has more accommodation
than's being used, I figured I'd use it away from the others while I had the
chance."

I gave her a speculative look.

"And you came here anyway?"

"Don’t follow."

"There are two other sets of
accommodation not being used at all, yet you come here, where there is partial
usage."

She held up her hands palms out in front,
and let her grin loose.

"Got me there. The boss tells me we'll
be spending some time together in your bridge, so I might as well crash
nearby."

"Err…"

"I'm Tasha, gunnery specialist.
Apparently this tub has missiles now, and I get to play with them."

"Err…"

"We'll set up a proper weapons console
on your bridge."

"Err…"

"Jen doesn’t want it on her
bridge."

"Oh."

"So."

"Err…"

"Where do I bunk?"

"Wherever you want."

Her grin was strangely entrancing.

"I assume you have the captain's
digs?" I nodded. "Then show me the XO's."

I led her out. It was a strange thing. She
didn’t look strong enough to carry those bags. Until she'd picked them up that
is. The muscles in her arms changed as she did so. Actually, it wasn’t only the
arms. It was like every muscle in her body changed from attractive female into
obsessive body builder. It was a bit bewildering, and I tried to keep it off my
face, as I led her to the XO's cabin.

I waved her inside, and once again the bags
clunked down on the deck. She went back to being an attractive girl again. Her
eyes cast around, saw the door into the bathroom, walked over to it, and peered
inside.

"This'll do."

Before I knew it, her uniform was on the
floor, and with her back turned to me, her singlet and boxers came off as well.

My eyes followed her arse into the
bathroom. The water came on, and I fled the room, making sure the door was shut
after me.

There was a low chuckle from behind me.

Forty Four

"What's the plan boss?"

Sasha was looking at Jen. Actually,
everyone was. The marines were all in civvies now, and everyone was lounging in
the common area of their part of the ship. Civvies didn’t change the way they
looked. They were lethal looking, and probably would still look that way naked.
I shied away from that thought, and paid attention to Jen like the rest of
them.

"We have several objectives. The
primary objective is to find where Thorn came from, and deliver him home."

This wasn’t what they expected.

"In order to do so, we need to
backtrack him, and this means we need to find the pirate ship which took him,
and get access to its navigation logs. We know the station they dock at, and
we'll take the opportunity to burn out every pirate and slaver on that
miserable chunk of metal."

Now they were smiling. I looked around
their faces, and concluded mayhem and slaughter were exactly what marines liked
to do on vacation.

"What passes for a police force on the
station will no doubt object, so they'll have to be neutralized."

Teeth flashed.

"But first, we need to liberate some
armament for the ship, from the local ordnance depot."

She was looking at Tasha now.

"You're not stocked with
missiles?"

"We are," said Jess, "but we
could use some upgrades. The pirate crap we have on board wouldn’t cut it if we
had to take on a military ship."

"Is that likely?" asked Sasha.

"Possible," answered Jen.
"If that piece of shit who did me gets in our way, we might need to take
him out."

There was a stirring around the room.

"No problem," said Sasha.
"We thrashed this out, and determined if he was ever in our cross fire, he
wouldn’t survive it. What?"

She was looking at me, and my face must
have been showing my surprise. Lea laughed.

"Thorn doesn’t understand the politics
within the military," she said. My face changed, and not for having clarification.
"Don’t worry about it," she said to me. "It'll probably never
happen. That shithead never lets himself get into actual combat."

I nodded, still not understanding, but
accepting the level of commitment here. Jen looked at Tasha.

"I want you to show Thorn what sort of
automatic turrets we can mount, and where. Before we leave, we'll take one from
the depot."

Looks became puzzled.

"No, you don’t need to worry about it.
Thorn will handle it. Jess will do the installing. Tasha just needs to do a
console for all the weapons once they're online."

She looked around the room, and sighed.

"We have a secret weapon," she
said, and looked over to me. "Thorn, they'll all need a ship suit. You'll
find the basics in the nearest storeroom to here."

I cast around, and found what she meant.
Rolls of material, and everything needed to duplicate suits. I looked back at
her, eyes asking if she really wanted a demonstration. She nodded.

I looked at Sasha, eyes going head to foot,
measuring her, and for a moment she went rigid as if I was threatening her.
Jen's hand touched her arm, and she relaxed. The next instant, a ship suit
appeared in front of her, folded neatly. Unknown to anyone but me, three more
appeared on her bed. My eyes moved on, and one by one, in dead silence, I
repeated it for each of them. When I finished, no-one moved for several
minutes, all eyes on me.

Finally, Tasha rose, stripped off her
civvies, flicked out her folded ship suit, and stepped into it, zipping it up
enough, but leaving some cleavage showing. It fit her like a glove. She grinned
at me, and sat.

"How?" asked Sasha.

"Magic!" I answered, grinning.

Jen, Jess, and Lea were also grinning.

At that moment, there was a major rattle at
the back of my mind. I rose, crossed to the wall screen, and brought up the
loading dock.

Some sort of vehicle was overturned some
distance from my force wall, as if it had hit it at speed, and bounced several
times backwards, before crashing into a wall.

The area around it was littered with fallen
soldiers.

"Also magic?" asked Tasha, with a
glint in her eyes.

I nodded.

"I think we're going to like
you," said Sasha.

Forty Five

Some of Sasha's team went out to help with
the wounded. I changed the intent of the force wall so they could come and go
as they pleased, but no-one else could.

Jen looked a little stunned. Seemed she was
wrong. Not only were the orders being given, they were being followed. From one
of the soldiers outside, we learned there was significant pressure coming down
from above to bring us in.

Tasha followed me back to my bridge, and
began putting a weapons console together. The basic missile firing stuff was
already setup, but she took one look at it, made a rude noise, and began a new
one from scratch.

I remote viewed the outside of the ship,
putting it on Lea's screen. Tasha noticed after a while.

"I didn’t know you had any
cambots."

"We don’t."

"So what is that?"

"The outside of the ship."

"I can see that. How?"

"Remote viewing."

"I can see that. How?"

"Another form of magic. Tell me where
you'd mount auto-turrets as it shows on the screen."

It took a half hour, but we made a note of
where we could mount turrets, and how big they could be. Apparently they came
in sizes, because we had notes for three different ones, in a dozen places.

"How are we going to acquire them?"
she asked me.

"Pull up the military station layout
please."

She looked at me.

"You do know it’s classified to
military personnel only, don’t you?"

"I figured it. But we copied their
database while you lot were unpacking. You'll find the layout in our database
with all the other stations we've been to."

I received another long look, before she
did as I asked, and the main level layout was on another screen.

"Where's the ordnance depot?"

The map shifted several levels down the
station, and highlighted most of the middle of two levels. Alongside was the
small dockyard, and its half dozen docks.

I closed my eyes, and shifted my sight.

"What the…? Oh. Same principle?"

"Yes."

On the screen, it was like a cam was
rolling down the middle of a wide corridor, but with a lens which allowed her
to see the signage on each side row.

"Stop. Turn left."

I turned left.

"Stop. That one on the left."

The crate was huge.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. That’s the biggest this ship can
handle."

I concentrated, drawing on the ship's power.
The crate vanished.

"THORN YOU PILLOCK! Tell me when
you're about to do that."

Lea sounded a mite upset. Tasha looked
confused, until she saw the empty space over on the station. Her eyes widened.
I began moving my sight again, to the end of the row, and up the other side,
and down the next.

"That one."

"DOING IT AGAIN!" I yelled as
loud as I could, and moved the next crate, which was smaller. Tasha grinned
this time.

"Any idea where the small ones
are?" I asked her.

"Two rows down again?"

Her guess proved to be accurate. I bellowed
once again, and the third crate appeared down in the main cargo hold.

"How many did we want of each?"

She told me, and I concentrated again. This
time I was slightly dizzy when I finished. Tasha looked confused again.

"Missiles?" I asked.

It took us longer to find the missiles we
wanted, and after bellowing to keep clear of the magazines, much longer for me
to swap them one by one. I wasn’t game to try doing more than one at a time, in
case something went wrong.

"Done!" I yelled finally, and
turned back to Tasha. "You'd better go tell Jess and Lea where the new
turrets go, so they can program the bots to install them once we're clear of
anyone who might think it odd us arming up by ourselves."

"And you'll be doing?"

"Sleep. It may not have looked it, but
that was hard work."

She gave me another long look as I walked
out, not all too steady on my feet. My right temple was throbbing by the time I
reached my bed. I diverted to my pack for a tablet, took it with a water bottle
I kept there for the purpose, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Forty Six

The wonder was, we unloaded our cargo, and
loaded another one. The local military tried several more times to board us,
including attempting to use the cargo loading system. When that failed, they
spacewalked a platoon to every airlock we had. It didn’t work any better for
them, and actually cost lives this time.

By the time we were ready to undock, even
Jen was looking worried. Everyone strapped in wherever they could, with Tasha
and several others with me. Her console was dark. When I glanced at it, she
shrugged. We still only had missiles, and the one thing we didn’t want to do
was fire them here.

When Jen requested undocking clearance, the
same Major as before appeared on the screen. He repeated the order for the
three girls to surrender themselves. Jen didn’t even dignify it with an answer,
flipping back to the station controller's channel. Needless to say, we didn’t
get our clearance.

"Ok Thorn. You know what to do."

I concentrated for a moment, and the
station docking clamps vanished.

Jen had the thrusters pushing us away
within seconds, and the ship moved away from the station at a speed not
normally allowed. As soon as she could do so safely, she stopped, twirled the
ship, and began thrusting out-system.

"Isn't this the wrong way?" asked
Sasha.

"Yes," said Jen, "but there
are a number of routing options from here, and I'm not showing this lot where
we're really going."

"Why not?" I asked. "If we
lead them to the pirates, we won't need to do anything ourselves."

"You'd think so," said Jess.
"But no. Somewhere up the chain of command is someone in league with them,
and as soon as we opened fire, the navy would start protecting them outright,
on the basis it was a legit station."

"Oh. So we do it the hard way?"

"That’s why we're here," said
Sasha.

"Going to be harder than we
thought," muttered Jen.

"Oh shit!" exclaimed Lea.

One of the screens changed view, and I
could see a tactical view of the system now, or at least, that portion we could
see with our scanners. Every navy ship had now changed course, and was coming
towards, or after, us.

Everyone watched in silence for a while.
After a bit, I noticed the ships were not boosting at the same rates, and
shortly after, realized they were aiming to have as many ships as possible
converge on us about half way to the jump point. I had no idea how many missile
launchers and turrets they mounted, but I did a rough guess, and did the math.

"You okay Thorn?" asked Tasha.

"Sorry, what?"

"You've gone white."

I probably had.

The courier came up behind us, and the
Major was suddenly on the screen again. He implored us to stop and be boarded,
but Jen didn't even bother answering him, instead pushing as much power into
the engines as she could, and opening a gap. The courier matched our speed, and
more, slipping back into position behind us.

"Should be we preparing for
boarding?" asked Sasha.

"No," responded Jen. "We're
not stopping for anything."

"And if they fire on us?" asked someone
over the coms.

"We'll deal with it."

No pressure. I still didn’t like the math.
There were enough ships converging on us to throw hundreds of missiles per
salvo, and maybe more. And keep throwing them the whole way to the jump point.
I started to worry about how much energy I could draw on.

"Jess?"

"Yes Thorn?"

"I think I'm going to need a lot
more."

"How much more?"

"As much as you can get me."

"On it."

I could feel Tasha's eyes on me, but
neither of us said anything, and as the minutes passed, I could feel more and
more power become available to me. There were clangs around the ship, as
airtight bulkheads shut. A ship schematic popped up, showing only three areas
of the ship which still had life support and gravity. The cargo remained where
it was, but the normal gravity holding everything down was dialed way down.

The two smaller engines died, and we lost a
small amount of speed, resulting in the courier nearly hitting us. Speed wasn’t
going to save us here anyway, since a third of the ships intercepting us were
ahead of us. The power generators synced up with mine, along with the unused shield
generators, and everything except the missile launchers.

I breathed in power, and let it flow
through me. There was an indrawn breath from behind me, and I noticed all the
hairs on my arm were standing on end. I concentrated on my breathing, as for
the next few hours, we kept on our course, and the ring of ships around us drew
closer.

"Limitations?" I finally asked
into the silence.

"Defense only," said Jen. "I
know this is going to suck bigtime, but if we kill one of them, they'll never
stop chasing us."

I admired her optimism. The only way out of
this if they started firing on us, was to cause a lot of damage, and if we did,
they would as she said, never stop chasing us. But I couldn’t see an
alternative. This number of ships coming after us wherever we went, was not a
winning strategy. We'd pick up others everywhere as well, and the odds would
just keep getting worse.

I had to wonder if Jen had really thought
it through properly.

"Everyone brace for combat," said
Jen, in a voice which gave no emotion away at all.

Maybe that was why she was in command. Not
so much for any tactical ability, since she was leaving the defense solely in
my hands, but because she could project command presence, and supreme
confidence in our ability to get out of this.

As I said, no pressure.

The first missiles launched, and within a
minute, we had a ring of more than four hundred coming at us.

"Fuck!"

My head jerked to look at Tasha.

"What?" asked Sasha.

"Anyone know who's commanding this
lot?"

"Why?" asked Jess.

"Because those missiles are not
anywhere near full speed. And yes, there's the next lot, and they're going
faster, but not full speed either."

"So?" I asked.

"They're timed to all hit us at
once."

This time I felt the blood drain away from
my face.

"Last chance to surrender," said
the Major.

Jen cancelled the channel fast enough to
have not even bothered with thought. All eyes were on the now three salvos of
missiles coming at us, and I prepared the force wall as far out as I could
manage. I wished we had the turrets mounted to help me, but I also knew their
limitations from a chat with Tasha earlier, and with this many missiles, the
turrets would have been overwhelmed on their own, and only a small amount of
help to me. The fourth salvo launched as the first of the missiles began
hitting my wall.

The strain immediately began to tell on me.
The problem was I was holding a spherical wall around the ship, and it was
being hit from almost every direction at the same time. But it wasn’t even, and
so some areas were being hit harder than others.

"Serious bloody overkill!" said
someone, and I had to agree.

Someone in the fleet wanted us dead, and
had engineered the situation to allow the local commander to make sure of it.
My intent faltered as my mind was side tracked, and the force wall contracted
back towards the ship as the energy sustaining it began to lessen. I
concentrated again, and held it. The last of the missiles exploded, and the
ship flew beyond the debris field.

More missiles launched, and it was obvious
they were going to do the whole merging salvos thing again. I dropped the wall
completely, and sat there trying to keep myself together. Something cold
slipped into my left hand, and I lifted it to my mouth and swallowed. It was
sweet, and I drained it completely. The container was taken from me before I
dropped it.

"Can you do that again Thorn?"
asked Lea.

"Probably."

"How long can you keep it up?"
asked Jen.

"No idea."

"Leave something in reserve to take
out engines with."

"I'll try."

And I would. But I knew with absolute
certitude, this wasn’t going to work. There were too many ships, too large, and
carrying too many launchers. Added to that, a commander who wasn’t stupid. This
was only going to end one way.

I put up the wall again, and seconds later,
missiles began to explode against it. There were more of them this time, and
they were hitting closer together. The wall faltered, as the power reserves I
was drawing on began to fail.

I cast around for any option which didn’t
involve destroying our attackers, especially since I no longer thought I had
enough left to be able to. The missiles kept coming, and the wall kept
shrinking.

Finally, the wall failed, and missiles
began hitting the ship's shields.

"Thorn!" yelled Jen.

I was losing all grasp of what was going
on.

"Jump us!" screamed someone,
perhaps Jess, but I wasn’t sure.

I reached out to every energy source I
could find. Our engines died. It wasn’t enough. I took gravity and life
support. Not enough. Where else?

The courier was still close behind us. I
took everything it had. Still not enough. I reached out and found as many of the
nearest of the other ships as I could, and took everything from them.

"Jump," I said to myself softly.

The ship jumped.

Everything went black.

Forty Seven

"Welcome back."

It was Tasha's voice, but I was having
trouble opening my eyes. I felt something at my lips, opened them a little, and
felt water running into my mouth. I swallowed, and began to feel better. I was
thirsty, so allowed the whole bottle to go down gulp by gulp.

When I finally did manage to keep my eyes
open, I saw more than just Tasha. Lea was also there, looking concerned, as
were several of the marines. I lay there a moment, taking them in, while no-one
spoke.

The sudden need for the facilities overrode
everything, and I leapt out of bed, and ran. Relief in progress, I realized I
was in my underwear. Could have been worse I guess. Once finished, I found an
arm sticking in the doorway, holding a robe. Robe on, I walked back out.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Asleep?" said Lea. "You've
been in a coma for two days!"

"Coma? How do you know that?"

"We only took you out of the auto-doc
unit a few hours ago," said Tasha. "You scared the hell out of
us!"

"In more ways than one," added
Lea.

I sank down on the side of the bed.

"What happened?"

"You jumped us clear into the next
system," said Tasha.

"And collapsed," added Lea.

"Where are we now?"

"Same system. We lucked out, and there
no ships where we appeared. At the moment we're well away from the trading
lanes, and hiding in an asteroid field."

"Err, why?"

"Firstly to mount the turrets, but we
realized there was more we needed to do, and it needed you to do most of
it."

I closed my eyes, and sighed.

"What?"

"You should hear the whole story from
Jen."

"Fine. I'll have a shower, eat
something, and meet you all in the main lounge room, after."

Lea grinned at me.

"I'll get Jen to schedule it, and let
you know when it is."

"Fine. Can I have some privacy
now?"

I know I was sounding grouchy, but I wasn’t
happy with nearly killing myself, and being greeted with 'hey we’ve got more
for you to do'. They filed out. I showered, ate, drank rather a lot, and went
back to bed, fully clothed. They left me alone.

Finally I felt a shake to the shoulder, and
woke up again. I followed Lea to where everyone was gathered, and sat in the
indicated seat. Everyone applauded me, and I sat there trying very hard not to
react badly. I think they saw the annoyance in my eyes, or someone did, and it
died off.

Jen had a smile on her face. I did a double
take, and everyone laughed, including Jen.

"Thorn," she said, "we owe
you big time. You not only protected us from a serious miscalculation on my
part, but you managed to get us clear away in such a way they think we're all
dead."

I felt my face shift into confusion mode.

"What were you thinking before the
jump?" asked Jess.

"During the jump, only on finding
enough energy to jump the ship. I've never done it with anything this big
before." There were several shocked looks among the marines. "Before
it, I'd been wishing we were on the other side of the jump point, or close
enough to get there before we died."

"Interesting," said Jen.
"Because we came out in the down jump lane on the other side, as if we'd
done a normal jump. Except we crossed more than a quarter of the total diameter
of the system first. And what's more, it happened at exactly the time the
missiles were going to hit us, leaving them thinking we'd been
disintegrated."

"How do you know that?"

"News broadcast. In that last few
moments before the missiles hit, they think we tried a desperate attempt to electromagnetic
pulse the missiles using a new type of weapon, which was so powerful, it shut
down most of the ships attacking us. The missiles detonated without their
electronics telling them to, and all they found after was a dust field, and a
wrecked courier ship with survivors. Every ship which launched missiles at us
was dark, their crews in space suits, and running out of air, before the
remaining ships could get to them, and help them restart their power
generators. We are all officially dead now."

"Good, I can go back to bed
then."

"Actually no," said Jess.
"We need you to convert asteroids into hull plating."

I was too tired to make the connection.

"Sorry, what?"

"While you were out," said Jen,
"we redesigned the outer shell of the ship. It will make us look a great
deal bigger, and allow us to double the number of turrets we can fit. Plus give
us a double hull, with places in between, where a lot of the turrets can hide
until needed. By the time we're ready to leave, this ship will be close to a
larger, and very common design of freighter, and we should be able to move
around freely again."

"But you need me to make hull plates,
and duplicate more turrets?"

"Yes."

"Fine. In the morning."

I started to rise.

"We should get started now," said
Jess.

"Go for it. I'll see you in the
morning."

And with that, I left.

Forty Eight

I had to force Lea to tell me what had
happened after the jump. I knew I took everything from the ship, so in theory,
it should have down jumped dark, with not even basic life support functioning.

Lea confirmed this was exactly what
happened. Tasha had carried me to the medical bay in the dark. By the time she
got me there, Jess had redirected the only power I hadn't taken, for shields,
back into restarting the rest of the ship, and within minutes, they were off
the trade lane, and running for a hiding place.

I'd forgotten about the shields, but since
we'd been taking missiles on them at the time, it was the one energy source I'd
had to leave alone.

I also had to force Lea into showing me the
readouts from the auto-doc. I'd woken with a clear head, slept on and off
through that day, meeting, food, more sleep, and woken the next morning, also
with a clear head. No migraine in three days? Sure, when you're in a coma, you
don’t feel pain. But I should have needed a tablet as soon as I woke, and I
hadn't needed one. Then or since.

The auto-doc didn’t supply any answers
either. It hadn't administered anything for head pain, which suggested it
hadn't detected any sort of head issue needing attention. I filed it away for
further pondering.

A frustrating morning followed. Making hull
plates proved to be impossible for me, mainly I suspected because I knew
nothing about them, or how they were made. What did appear was brittle, and
broke up into pieces as soon as anyone, or anything, tried to lift it. In the
end, Jess and some marines suited up, and with the help of the turret installer
bots, removed a hull plate, bringing it inside so I could copy it. Why copying
worked, and creating didn't, I could only guess at.

But it wasn’t only hull plates. It was
struts, and bracers, and all manner of framework, which held the hull in place.
Not to mention bolts, adhesive, sealant, and all sorts of other things. The
latter Jess had on hand for repair work, and it was just a matter of copying
it.

Did I say just a matter? Oddly, this was
true. But all we had on hand was raw rock, and everything had to come from it.

Twice I blacked out the whole ship, drawing
enough energy to access what was needed from asteroids who knows how far away.
On the second of those, I had an unscheduled sleep session as a result. Jen
started moving the ship regularly after these, but even then, sometimes the
elements we needed were far away, and gathering them simply took most of the
energy we had on hand.

The one thing we didn’t have was a scanner
which could tell us where elements could be found. So it was hit and miss, and
move on.

As the hull plates materialized, the bots
assembled the new outer hull. As copying got ahead of the installations, I also
copied the bots, allowing the work to speed up.

The existing turrets were installed as they
went, leaving one of each for me to copy when we needed one. It was the turrets
more than the hull which strained me and the power levels. Hulls are made of
basic ore. But electronics need gold and higher elements, and it was those
which really tested me.

Once I figured this out, I started pulling
gold out of the asteroid field specifically, filling containers created for the
purpose. Jess supplied a list of, and examples of, the other elements we
needed, and these too were collected individually. With everything we needed,
except for base ores, the work accelerated. As we ran low, I'd stop copying,
and start sourcing again.

At the end of a week, the main work was
done. Gone was the strange amalgam of five ships, several of which I’d had to
move, which was a real pain, as I had to undo all the modifications, and make
the inner hull tight, before carefully separating the two original hulls. In
its place, was the shape of a very standard model of large freighter.

It had a few more turrets and launchers
visible than most, but Jess assured me this wasn’t unusual. Besides, the
majority of our armament was hidden in the new tween spaces, so anyone taking
us on was going to get a shock. Or more of a shock, depending on what I was
doing at the time.

Jess mixed up a small quantity of paint in
the colour they wanted the hull to be in, and I spent the next day 'painting'.

The final touch was the change in the ship
ID, which Jen had prepared before leaving the last station. We had a legit ID,
for a ship of the same model, which had left the local space a few years
before, and not returned. She had some sort of cover story in mind, but I
wasn’t interested in hearing it. I did the work with the ID, and left the rest
to her.

With the ship ready to go, Jen put us on
course for the next jump point, taking a circular route around the system,
using the asteroid fields along the orbit for cover. I spent time extending the
cargo areas into the unused tween hulls area, and once done, took the opportunity
to continue harvesting gold and other precious elements while we remained
adjacent to the asteroid field.

Jen interrupted me unexpectedly, coming
into my bridge, and sitting so she could look at me.

"Can you make the ship
disappear?"

I opened my mouth to say she knew I could,
but closed it again without saying anything. The ship was a lot bigger now. I'd
have to try to find out. She nodded, and did something on the console. A set of
screens popped up a few minutes later, showing the ship from all angles. She
nodded at me again.

I concentrated, drawing energy and focusing
my intent on the ship not being visible to either sight or scanners. At first,
all I managed was sweat dripping down my face, but as I built up the energy,
the image of the ship faded. The lights flickered, and I let go, the ship
reappearing again immediately.

"I was afraid of that," said Jen.

I could see the disappointment in her eyes,
even if she didn’t express it. I needed more energy. There had to be a way of
doing this.

"I'll leave you to ponder it,"
she said quietly, and left.

I went back to leeching the asteroid field,
casting around for any source of energy I could use. Space of course had
nothing but the solar wind, and chunks of rock. Nothing useful.

Wind. There was something about the solar
wind.

Solar. Sun. Could I?

I fiddled with the console until a screen
popped up showing the system's sun in the distance. On this orbit, it was
nothing but a small ball in size, a really long way away. More of a large dot
than a ball.

But there was power there.

I reached out for it.

Forty Nine

We fell into a new routine. One without
station stops. The days passed, and we crossed system after system the slow
way, by avoiding the trade lanes, and all other ships.

When we had to jump, I cloaked the ship
well out of range of any ship scanner. The transition was the hardest to get
right, and took me a couple of goes to setup the intent properly. But we lucked
out, and no-one saw us. The shift in energy flow in the instant of the jump
became flawless, using the ship generators at first to cover that instant of
being nowhere.

Each time I did it, it became easier to do,
and used less energy. At the same time, my range for drawing energy continued
to increase.

By the time we reached the frontier, I
could tap into the system sun from anywhere. The distance still limited how
much energy I could draw on, so jump points tended to have me at my weakest,
but there was more than enough for the cloak, and a good level of force wall as
well. The ship generators became a backup supply.

Jen took us cautiously past the fleet
guarding the jump point, supposedly from some alien threat, and we jumped out.
There was nothing there. Jen turned us around.

"Drop the cloak please Thorn."

I did as she asked, but replaced it with a
full force wall.

We jumped back.

Immediately we were targeted by the full
fleet, and told to stop while the ship was scanned for life forms. This took
them nearly ten minutes, after which someone started demanding an account of
the ship's whereabouts for the last few years.

Jen had all the answers, and the com system
delivered them in a deep male voice. Quite a lot of the answers were not what
they wanted to hear, given where the ship had been was basically a trade
secret, but eventually Jen talked her way out of being boarded. She dropped
some names, which appeared to help. I of course had no idea who they were, and
didn’t want to.

They scanned us again to make sure there
were no aliens of any kind on board, and finally let us go. The system had a
military support base, but we stayed clear of it. The only inhabited planet had
only enough people on it to grow food supplies for the military, and we stayed
clear of its station as well.

In the next system, we docked at the main
civilian station, and offered up a container of my gold dust for trade, to make
it look like we needed local currency, and had been successful in trading
beyond the frontier, where our currency should have been useless. The gold sold
very quickly, and Jen opened a new ship account with a very healthy deposit.

I found it strange she'd been able to.
Whoever had owned the ship we'd stolen the ID of, must have had accounts in the
ship's name at some point, and the credentials Jen provided would have been all
wrong for them. Even if they closed them before heading out into the galaxy,
the records should still have been there. Lea laughed at me when I asked her
about it. The answer of course was obvious. The ship crew had never had
accounts for the ship or crew, being paranoid enough to only use cards. Jen had
chosen the ID very carefully indeed.

Some of our marines donned civvies, and put
on a drinking show in a local bar, so the word of our 'return' could spread. Sasha
had given them a stern talk about not behaving like marines, since they were
supposed to be normal crew. I had my doubts they could pull it off, but
apparently they did.

It was a dangerous game Jen was playing,
since recognition of them not being part of the crew who left, would blow our
cover wide open. But to not put in an appearance would be suspicious.

With our cover now established, we moved
on.

Fifty

Back in the trading game, progress was
slowed back to normal. Couple of days between stations, two or three days on
station. I amused myself in space by collecting rare elements, and on stations
by collecting bank cards. The rare elements proved the more lucrative, and so
some of my time in space was spent learning how to shape and package them the
way people expected to buy them. I was soon very good at producing ingots.

Lea proved to be equally good at choosing
where to sell what. I left it all up to her, and simply watched my finances
grow with each stop. She started checking ahead for what minerals the next stop
was in desperate need of, and I made a point of collecting as much as we could
on the way.

Tasha joined me on my bridge for each jump,
or flyby of a ship which might cause us trouble. Now we were legitimate again,
nothing troubled us at all. It was all very boring.

Boring became one of my ponder subjects. If
I was bored now, what was I going to do when I finally managed to get home? Did
I really even want to go back there now? Why not find some nice out of the way
place with all the mod cons, and settle down to live the high life? There was
plenty to read after all. But then, I could read just as easily here.

On the other hand though, I had a bad
feeling about where we were heading. Hitting the pirate station was all very
well and good, but poking an ant hill deliberately, usually ended badly, in any
time period. The only valid option once the ants were enraged, was to run. And
it was still the only sensible option. As powerful as I was, the alternative to
running was wholesale carnage. And I wasn’t ready to go there. Yet. Or not yet.
Or ever.

But if I stayed, I could see the path
leading to armageddon. Jen saw revenge. The others were happy to oblige her.
Revenge never ended well. Not in any book I’d read so far. Even if you
survived, the cost was prohibitive.

But there was also doing the right thing.
Slavery was an evil which needed to be stopped. We knew where it was being
carried out, and only we had the willingness to do something about it. That
made us the heroes.

Or did it? I read a book a while ago which
suggested there was not a lot of difference between the hero and the anti-hero.
The anti-hero was the one who did the right thing, for the wrong reasons. Which
made me wonder about Jen and the path she'd started flying on.

But, I had to wonder about my own
motivations. So I’d been kidnapped by slavers, but turned the tables on them.
Did that give me the right to attack them wherever I found them? Why not just
sneak in, find the ship I rode in on, and steal the map from it. It sounded
simple, put like that.

Chances are though, the ship wouldn’t be
there, and we'd need to look in the station database. Which might or might not yield
what I needed to go home.

But did I really want to go home? And which
home was home? Here on this ship? The space-less society I'd jumped myself to?
Or the place I grew up? I wasn’t sure anymore.

But. Always another but. I sighed, and
looked at the butt sitting next to me.

"What?" asked Tasha.

I sighed again.

"Philosophical ponderings. Don't get
me started."

She laughed. I liked her laugh. It sparked
a thought.

"What happens to you marines
now?"

"You mean now we're officially
dead?"

"Yes. Leaving the military so
unexpectedly must be causing problems for you all."

"Not as much as you may think. It was
a bit of a shock at first, but we still have a job to do. Afterwards, we'll
decide what to do next. I've already decided I'll crew this ship as weapons
officer. A few of the others will likely stay as marines, in case of hostile
boarders or problems while docked. What about you?"

"That's part of what I've been
pondering. I've known three homes now. One I can't find, and one I can't get
to. Although if I keep getting stronger, I may figure out a way."

"Why not stay here?"

"I’d get bored too quickly I
think." She laughed. "I'm bored now, or at least was before we
started talking."

"There's plenty to do and learn."

"Not really. I don’t have the
background in the tech to understand it. I probably know less about ships and
space than a four year old does."

"You can learn."

"Well that's the thing. I don't want
to. I find I have absolutely no motivation for learning anything. Names,
places, things, gadgets, gizmos, whatever. I really don’t care. Where we are
makes no difference to me at all. What you all do all day is none of my
business."

"What does motivate you?"

"Magic. It's the only thing I wanted
to do from the moment they found I had some ability. All I wanted to be was a
battle mage in the local militia. I wasn’t all that good with swords, but once
I learned strategy, I was unbeatable. At least by my fellow students."

"Swords? Where do you come from?"

"Not where, when."

"When?"

She was looking at me with a very confused
look on her face, and I suddenly realized, Jen hadn't told them everything
about me. And now I thought about it, I wasn’t sure how much I’d told her.

"It's a long story."

"The good ones always are, and as you
pointed out, things are boring, and we have plenty of time."

Fifty One

"He's here," said Jen, in a low menacing
monotone, which left absolutely no doubt about who she was talking about.

We'd jumped into the pirate system, been
challenged by two picket ships, and talked our way in with the promise of lots
of gold. They had no idea who we really were.

With the station now in range of our
scanners, Jen had highlighted a single ship docked to it. As I listened to the
others discussing this unexpected event, I gathered the ship in question was
his civilian ship, and not a military ship. The latter would have been awkward,
to say the least.

I stayed out of the talk, sitting there
alone on my own bridge, Tasha having left to join the discussion in person.

I cast my sight to his ship. There
was only one person aboard, and he was lounging around apparently doing
nothing. After some searching, I found the computer room, and copied the
database. I didn't expect anything incriminating to be there though, so went
looking for his stateroom. It was of course the largest of the
accommodation areas, and much larger than the largest one on this ship. Not
only large, but opulently fitted out in the manner you would expect a king to
live in. Which was interesting, because he wasn’t one, just a lowly junior
admiral. The ship said money though, so maybe his family had it.

I peeked behind every door, and into every
drawer. Nothing. Not exactly nothing. Uniforms, silk pajamas, business suits.
What you’d expect. I was looking for what you wouldn’t expect.

Having failed to find anything interesting,
I pulled back my sight, and looked down from above, only with the ceiling
missing. And there it was. A side room, outfitted as an entertainment room.
Behind a door, row after row of storage chips. Each one had a name on it. A
girl's name. One of them was labeled 'Jenna'.

I copied all of them to our database room,
and messaged Jess to meet me there immediately. Rather than waste time walking,
or even running, I jumped myself, and was standing there with the 'Jenna' chip
in my hand when Jess arrived. I held it up so she could see the name, and her
eyes widened.

She took it from me, and plugged it in to
her pad, setting it down on a table. It interfaced with the intelligence
computer screen, and gave us an image we could both view easily.

He was younger than I’d thought, perhaps
five years older than Jen was, and about as perfectly handsome as it was
possible to be. This made him young for an admiral, and surprising someone who
looked like him needed to be a predator. His looks alone should have been
attracting more women than he could possibly handle.

And yet, there were the drinks being very
carefully prepared, a little extra something in one of them. Jen arrived as if
summoned, looking as if she expected to be reprimanded about something. He bade
her sit, offered her the drink with a smile which he obviously expected to make
her feel comfortable, and which she obviously felt she couldn’t refuse. He
small talked while she sipped enough for whatever med it was to take effect.
Before she passed out, she realized something was wrong and tried to stand, but
his fist slammed into her gut, folding her up in a heap on the floor.

Jess was biting her fist, as we watched him
pick her up, and move her from the office into his stateroom. He ran his hands
over every part of her, and started removing her uniform. When she was naked,
he repeated running his hands all over her.

A groan came from Jess, and I looked at
her. There was blood in her mouth where her teeth had pieced the skin of a
finger. She hadn't noticed it. Her other hand was a fist as well, but it was at
her side, and shaking violently.

The man removed his own uniform, setting it
aside neatly, and we watched him rape her three times, once each in different
orifices.

When he was done, he moved into the shower,
and we heard him singing as he washed himself. He emerged toweling himself off,
and redressed in his uniform. His pad was lying close at hand, and he took
images of Jen's naked body, posing her how he wanted, getting shots of every
part of her, both long and close up.

When he'd had enough, he roughly washed
her, and redressed her, before moving her back to the chair she started in. He
waved something under her nose, and she started to recover.

Before she had her wits about her, he made
a joke about how tired she was, and he'd reschedule her talk. She stood
unsteadily, saluted, and left.

"Fucking bastard!" ground out
Jess, in a low tone.

She looked me in the eyes, and saw
something there she didn’t expect.

"No Thorn. You can't. We have the
evidence we need now. He has to be publically exposed."

I said nothing. There really wasn’t
anything to say.

"You can't kill him," she finished.

I reluctantly nodded, but I was making no
promises. I'd seen a friend violated by someone who should have been completely
safe. There would be consequences. I was damn sure going to make sure of it.

"Don't tell Jen we saw that," she
whispered.

I sighed. Damned right I wouldn’t tell her.
I felt like just seeing it meant I’d also violated her, and if it wasn’t for
the fury raging through me, I’d have felt sick.

"What the hell are you two
doing?" asked Jen, over the coms, breaking the mood of the moment.

"Thorn's trying to locate him."

"Don’t bother. We know where he'll be
when we arrive."

"How?"

"We just received an invitation."

Fifty Two

The ballroom was in an area of the station
I hadn't visited last time. The invitation had said black tie, so all the men
were in tuxedos, and the women in long dresses. Bow ties and feathers. Nearly
eighty percent men, showing just how male dominant this group were.

Captain and first mate had been invited,
but it was Tasha and myself who attended. Tasha gave off command vibes, so
passed as a first officer. I was way too young to be captain, but as we mingled
and the tactless made jokes or outright asked, Tasha politely dropped a name,
with the assumption I was captain because of who my father was. Those who
understood, quickly assumed Tasha was the real captain, and she played up to
this role, almost ruthlessly. Given the company we were keeping, ruthless
equaled competence. But also given the vast majority of the captains were men,
the acceptance of Tasha was surprising. To me anyway.

I kept a sneer on my face, and we mingled.
I gained a measure of respect for Tasha, given she was projecting pirate, while
dressed in an outfit few marines would be seen dead in. Creating it had been a
challenge, but as far as I could see, no-one could tell it hadn't been hand
tailored. Likewise with the monkey suit I was wearing, which I couldn’t wait to
get out of.

We made a show of drinking, but in reality,
I was removing swallow amounts from both our glasses as we pretended to drink.

The evening wore on. A band played music,
but no-one danced. None of this made any sense to me.

He was
nowhere to be seen, although we knew he must be close by. We mingled, bandied
words with those who assumed we were competitors, and inferior, and gauged
threat levels.

Most of the men were armed. All of the
women were. None showed. Given what the women were wearing, this was no mean
feat.

At last, he made an entrance,
greeting people by name, shaking hands, and making his way slowly towards a
podium. We kept well away from him. He looked older in person, and I pondered
how some people did get made to look younger by the camera. Of course, some
time had passed since the rape vid was made as well.

With him was a man I recognized from the
slave auction, being none other than the auctioneer himself. They were flanked
by several guards I also recognized from the auction.

At the podium, he greeted everyone,
welcomed us to this, the first pirate gathering in the new age, and proceeded
to invite us to an auction the following day, of slaves and ships of the
highest quality ever seen in one place. This, he said, would open proceedings
which he hoped would lead to a pirate alliance, which would allow this area of
space to be quickly brought under their control.

Someone asked what the military would be
doing while this was going on. The grin which answered, reassured everyone the
military had plenty to concern itself with elsewhere, and wouldn’t be a
problem.

I saw skeptical looks on faces, but these
quickly vanished. The obviously rehearsed speech went on, and the crowd became
more and more enthusiastic.

I felt my sneer faltering. The words flowed
around me, and I stood there desperately trying to keep my fury in check.

Here stood a rapist, projecting command and
authority, and inciting treason and rebellion.

Finally, the words stopped, and the
applause began. I looked around the room, and I saw the worst people
imaginable, whipped into a frenzy by a rapist.

The thought popped in, and I suppressed it.

At the podium, he had his hands
raised, grin in place, suggesting the crowd quiet down for more, while
provoking the exact opposite.

The smug look faltered for a moment, and he
looked down.

The area of his groin was turning red.

He screamed.

Fifty Three

"Oops," I muttered, getting a
sharp look of horror from Tasha.

The man collapsed, and a medical team
quickly rushed to his side.

"No-one move!" yelled a voice,
and I looked around to find security people streaming in, and encircling the
room.

No-one moved. We watched as the ring
formed, and guns were pointed more or less at, or close to, everyone.

"You will lay your guns on the ground,
now."

There was a general movement as guns were
produced, and either dropped, or laid down. The man who'd ordered this,
threaded his way towards me, gun raised. He stopped, his gun pointed at my
head.

"I'm not armed," I said, cutting
off the obvious question. "Neither is my first mate."

His head jerked, and two more approached
us. Under the threat of his gun, we were both frisked. They found nothing. The
gun lowered, and he moved on to someone else. By the podium, he who would never
rape again, was placed on a gurney, and hurriedly wheeled out.

"What did you do?" whispered
Tasha.

"Not here," I whispered back.

Frisking over, the guns were all checked.
They didn’t appear to find what they expected, which I assumed was a gun
recently fired.

The auctioneer took the podium.

"Gentlemen and ladies, you may return
to your accommodations and ships. The auction will commence on schedule
tomorrow."

He stepped down, and retreated from the
room. People began to leave, without their guns. We waited until the rush
eased, and left ourselves, walking in no hurry back to the ship.

For the first time, I was now worried about
my magic. Everything up until now, as far as I knew, had been done with very
deliberate intent. Now I’d done something without direction, based on a mere
thought, which was dismissed as soon as it popped in. And yet, the magic
happened.

It wasn’t that I'd just castrated a man
with a mere thought, it was a sense of horror at what I could potentially do
with a stray unguarded thought now.

Tasha took my arm as we walked, not looking
at me, but the horror on her face perhaps matching my own.

I knew I could kill with a thought. I'd
accepted that. But killing on an unguarded whim, was now not only possible, but
unless checked, very likely. Who knew how much chaos and damage I could do if I
really got angry, and lost my temper? Had gun man actually hurt me with his
gun, or search guy touched me in the wrong place, I could have killed everyone
there before I even knew I’d done it.

My mind raced as we walked back. The more I
thought about it, the more concerned I became.

They were waiting for us at the airlock. I
walked in without saying anything. I'd remote sent the entire event to the main
screen on the main bridge, and they knew what had happened.

When I reached the main lounge room, I sank
into a chair. Tasha sat next to me, and the rest followed.

"What did you do Thorn?"

Jen's tone was curious.

"I got angry for a moment."

"And?"

"And in that moment, the thought
popped in for a split second."

"What thought?"

"That rapists should be castrated.
Only my definition is a little wider than the normal one."

There was silence for a full minute.

"You didn’t?"

"Yes I did. He won't be raping anyone,
ever again."

"Why not?" asked Lea, who didn’t
seem to be keeping up.

"You know what's between a man's
legs?" Jen asked her.

"Sure."

"He doesn’t have anything
anymore," I said quickly. "Just three open wounds."

There was silence again.

It was broken by Jen and Jess high fiving.

Fifty Four

"No," I said. "Count me
out."

It was several hours later, and they'd been
discussing what to do the following day. I'd stayed out of the discussion.
Several times I’d left it to get drinks.

Part of me wanted to get drunk. Another
part of me was terrified of the consequences if I did. Even just one beer might
be the loss of enough self-control to have tragic consequences.

I drank water. And I made damned sure it
stayed water.

The only thing I agreed on, was the best
time to take action, was as the auction started. For the rest, I was somewhat
shocked at what they planned to do.

I shouldn’t have been. They were all
military. The troops went in with guns, and guns tended to be fired. In this
case, pirates were the bad guys, and there were scores to settle. But early on
I’d pulled my pad out, and looked up the station's statistics.

Sure, the station was run by pirates. But
it was owned by a mining company, and they actually had a bounty out for anyone
who could take control back for them. Not something I could look up myself, but
I'd whispered to Tasha to find out who owned the place, and she'd transferred
the results to my pad.

Of the population living here, more than
eighty percent were civilians, who had nothing at all to do with piracy. They
suffered under an oppressive security force, but as I'd seen last time I was
here, it was just the same as any other station to live on.

If we went in all guns blazing, the
civilian casualties were going to be high. The plan as outlined so far wasn’t
quite that bad, but it may as well have been, in my mind.

The kicker was the plan for the auction
space. Go in. Shoot everyone.

No.

"I agree with Thorn," said Tasha.

"You don’t get a vote," said
Sasha. "We're here to shut this place down. It's what we came onto this
ship for. You agreed when we first discussed it."

"I'm not going to fire
indiscriminately into a crowd."

"We don’t need to," I added.

They looked at me. I looked at Jen. She
wasn’t happy.

"This is my call," she said.

"This is your revenge, you mean. Jen,
he's gone, shipped off to a medical facility. I know you want him dead, but he
got what he deserved, and living with it is going to be a bigger punishment for
him than dying would be."

She glared at me.

"I know you want the people who
stripped you naked in public, and sold you like meat, to pay, and by pay you
mean killed. But if you do this, you become as bad as they are."

She still looked unhappy, but the glare was
gone.

"Besides, there's another way."

"What?"

I told them.

Fifty Five

It was a long night. For everyone.

The easy part for me was copying the data
storage for each ship docked at the station. Jess linked them all up to our
ever growing intelligence computer, and everyone but me had their pad synced so
they could check what was there.

The first thing we had to establish was if
any of the ships were not pirates. The definition of pirate had been widened to
include any ship carrying slaves, without any other evidence of actual piracy being
necessary. And for those which were, we needed any evidence they had stored
away.

While the data search was going on, I
viewed every ship looking for obvious slaves. When I found them, I put what I
could see up on the screen on my bridge, and Tasha took images, from which we
hoped to identify individual people. Especially against missing person's
records from the stations we'd visited so far. The searches were then added to
the data collection tasks.

In the small hours of the morning, I
shifted to identifying all the security personnel on the station. Those who
were asleep in their beds were easiest to deal with. Sealed doors, and severed
coms lines, would keep them isolated until everything was over.

I made note of those scheduled to head for
bed as soon as the shift changed in the morning, and left magic intent on their
doors, to seal them in as soon as they closed doors behind them, and sever
their coms at the same time.

This probably wouldn’t work, as those
relieving them wouldn’t show up. But it was worth the effort, even if it just
trapped a few. The less we had to deal with the better.

I identified every place on the station
where security were located, or regularly patrolled, and prepared to isolate
them as well.

The next step was the really long boring
part. I had to cover every ship again, and the whole station, rendering every
single weapon useless.

By the morning, we were all on stimulants
of one sort or another, but we had what we needed.

Every ship docked here with people on board
but ours, had a slave on board, and we'd identified at least one slave on each
ship as being someone reported missing. Several on different ships were linked
to the same missing ship. Several of the ships were missing ships, with new
ID's overlaid cleverly. Another five were actually missing ships, with their
actual ID's intact. The assumption was, they were providing the slaves for the
auction, and the ships were to be auctioned after them.

The pity was, nothing we collected would
stand up in a court. But it wouldn’t matter, because it was all still there to
be discovered by more appropriate authorities. And then it would.

As the station shifted into day time mode,
and security people began to be noticed as not turning up for work, while
others who'd just ended their shifts dropped off the coms, the marines geared
up.

I rechecked the locations they would start
from, making sure they were empty. We had three main targets, and four teams to
target them.

"Thorn," said Jen, over the coms,
"we're ready for you."

I didn’t bother responding. I simply moved
myself to where she was waiting with the others near the airlock. The marines
were back in uniform.

Sasha was leading the first team. I walked
over to her, and held my arm out. She slipped a hand over mine. A ring formed
with the rest of the squad, as they also put a hand on top of a hand. Most of
the hands were inside metal.

"Ready?" I asked.

Sasha nodded. I rechecked the store room,
found it still empty, and moved us there. I dropped my hand, and shifted myself
back. The second group, led by the Sergeant, did the same thing, as did the
third, led by Tasha.

When I materialized next to Jen once more,
it was just us, Jess, and Lea left. They were dressed in security uniforms, and
had the only security side arms still working. Jen looked at me, and opened her
mouth.

"No," I said, cutting her off.
"If you take assault rifles, you'll only be tempted to use them. I won't
sanction casualties if they can be avoided. Revenge doesn’t require bloodshed.
There are far worse fates than being dead, and I for one intend to deliver
them. Are you with me?"

What I didn’t say was, if she used her side
arm for anything other than self-defense, I'd take it away from her.

It could be said Jen wasn’t very happy with
me. But enough of the others had endorsed my plan to make her see her way
wasn’t the best way of handling things. Her way we ended up in jail cells
ourselves. My way we had options which didn’t include incarceration.

I was finally getting a handle on Jen. She
was a very good ship captain. But her emotions were too raw to let her be
anything more.

And for the first time since my first
desperate jump, I was using the strategic and tactical skills which had me
winning the wargames during my testing period. It felt so long ago now, part of
another life. But the skills I’d learned then, were here with me now.

For a moment I wondered if my ego was
getting the better of me. Perhaps, perhaps not. Time would tell. But for now,
it was my plan, and I didn’t intend to lose.

"Fine then," said Jen.
"Let's get going."

Fifty Six

The auction started on time.

I could see a small amount of concern on
the face of the auctioneer's face as he emerged, but it was quickly gone,
replaced by arrogance and showmanship. He took his place at the podium, and
beamed around the room.

I wasn’t really paying attention, as the
action wasn’t happening here. Yet.

Sasha and her troops made a clean sweep of
the main security offices, taking everyone into custody, and locking them in
their own cells. Most of them had pulled guns, and been horrified when they
failed to fire. Satisfied no-one was going anywhere, by the expedient of having
them all strip to their underwear, thus removing pockets, and anything in them,
Sasha moved out to find and neutralize the remaining security officers
patrolling the station.

At the same time, the Sergeant's team swept
into the slave pens. Security there also discovered their guns didn’t work, and
several of them decided to fight. You couldn’t even call it a fight really, as
armour simply pounded them into the deck. The rest surrendered, were also
stripped to their underwear, and left locked in the smallest of the slave
cages.

While the big mouth at the podium was
rabbiting on, the controls for the slave collars were identified, and the
collars removed.

One slave went up to the Sergeant, and
identified himself as the senior ship captain there. Within minutes, all of
them were on their way to his ship, the marines acting as an escort. I double
checked there was no-one on board, and had the airlock open, and waiting for
them. But I also made sure the engines would not turn on, so the ship couldn’t
leave. They, and their testimony, would be needed later.

I nodded to Jen, who was positioned not far
away from the podium, facing outward as if monitoring the crowd, but in actual
fact, making sure her face couldn’t be seen from the podium. She nodded back,
and the four of us made eye contact with each other, the others being spread
around the area.

The auctioneer announced lot one, and made
a big flourish, expecting the first slave to be brought to the block. Nothing
happened. He announced the first slave again, and nothing continued to happen.
His grin faded a little.

Jen took the opportunity to walk up to the
podium, draw her gun, and point it at him.

"Remember me, you bastard?"

Auction mouth did a double take, and did
indeed seem to recognize her. The grin vanished, and his face went white.

"I remember you too," said a
voice behind her.

Jen didn’t look. She didn’t need to. The
rustle of movement took only seconds, and I let my own grin loose.

Almost everyone there had pulled a gun, and
they were all aimed at Jen. I peeked down from above, and all arms pointed to
the same place, in a giant fan shape. Only those in the inner rings could
actually draw a bead on Jen, but this was still several dozen guns.

Mouth on a podium let his grin out again.

"Nice to see you again my dear. Let me
have your gun dearie, before some of these nice people decide to shoot you. I
would so hate to lose such valuable merchandise a second time."

Jen's grin shifted to feral, and his
slipped once again.

"Let's do it arsehole!"

And she shot him.

The noise of dozens of guns not firing
followed over the next two seconds.

"Nobody move!" yelled Tasha.

Her team were spread around the crowd,
heavy weapons aimed inwards. Heads jerked around to see who'd yelled, and some
of the reactions were priceless. Marines were the last thing they expected to
see today.

"Drop them," commanded Tasha.

Guns clattered on the deck. No-one moved.

I moved. Big mouth was down behind the
podium, Jen still covering him with her gun. She'd shot him in the shoulder,
and he lay there whimpering. I walked past her, and stood above him.

"Help me," he said.

I kneeled beside him, grabbed his other side
hand, and rammed it against his wound. He groaned.

"Hold this," I said. "No-one
is else is going to. If you're good, we might allow a doctor to see you."

"Do you know who I am?" he
bellowed.

"Yes. You’re scum who sells people
into slavery. Jen should have hit you in the neck, so you could never talk
again."

"Good thing she's such a lousy
shot."

"She's an excellent shot. I told her
she wasn’t allowed to kill anyone."

"Who are you?"

Just for an instant, I changed my
appearance. A dark cloak appeared around me, the hood pulled over my head, my
face shadowed and indistinct. My fist, held near his face, glowed a white hot
looking blue.

He shuddered violently, and I turned it
off.

"Death. Now be quiet, or I might
decide to let Jen shoot you again."

He whimpered for a moment, and began
begging for me not to do it.

"Fuck it," I said, stood, and
walked back to Jen.

Behind me, the man made a serious effort to
talk, but no sound came out of his mouth.

It never would again.

Fifty Seven

The process of separating pirates and slave
owners from those here for the entertainment value, took a while.

With the remainder of the roaming security
force also locked away in their own cells, Sasha and her team joined Tasha's,
and Sasha took over the processing.

There was one difficult moment, when Jen
recognized the man who'd been top bidder at her auction, and tried to remove
all his teeth. The doctor on duty at the nearest medical suite, managed to save
some of them.

I gave Jen the look, and she, Jess, and
Lea, went back to the ship. She had work to do there anyway.

Satisfied Sasha had things under control,
with the Sergeant's team now roaming the station individually as a de-facto
security patrol, I found a nice empty spot, and moved myself back to the ship
as well.

We invited the mining company to take back
their station, claimed their bounty, and suggested they bring both a security
force, and some system protection.

It took them two days to arrive, by which
time Jen was itching to be somewhere else. The rest of us were as well.

Jen and Sasha met the company
representative at the dock. Sasha passed security of the station over to her
counterpart, and took him for a tour of the detainees.

Jen escorted the mining team to station
management, and they took control of the station back. After some negotiations,
the company paid the bounty being offered, plus bonuses, and assigned Jen a
lawyer. She didn’t understand why she needed a lawyer, until he pointed out how
many rewards were on offer for information about missing people, now identified
to be here on the station, or on the ships docked to it. Many of the rewards
had clauses increasing the payout, for safe return of the missing.

I mainly slept, and kept well out of
everything. I’d done my bit, and wasn’t really interested in what else happened
as a result.

So of course, when several men entered my
living room, and pointed guns at me, I was completely unprepared for it, but
managed not to do something precipitate.

They gathered Jen, Jess, Lea, and me, at
the airlock. Our hands were restrained behind out backs, but we could walk
unhindered.

We were taken to station security, and put
into an empty cell together.

"What's going on?" Jess finally
asked.

We'd had no response to the same question
from our captors, so I'm not sure why she expected one now.

"Pretty obvious I would have
thought," said Jen, bitterly.

"No good deed goes unpunished?" I
suggested.

She nodded.

We waited, until at length, the same lawyer
appeared. He chivvied the guard out, so he wouldn’t be overheard.

"Sector military ordered your
arrest," he said. "Apparently they thought you were dead."

He seemed to find it quite funny.

"But alas, someone recognized you when
your message to us was sent on to them, as part of requesting some system defense."

"I knew suggesting that would be a bad
idea," muttered Jess.

"Military will be here tomorrow
apparently, and we’ve been ordered to keep you locked up until they
arrive."

"What about our marines?" asked
Jen.

"Not in any trouble, and the word is
someone was very happy to find they weren't dead."

"Our funds?" asked Lea.

"All transactions have been finalized.
Your funds are yours. If I come across any more you can claim, I'll drop those
funds in your accounts. It's very likely investigations of the people here who
had slaves, will lead us to others. The wave you started here will ripple
across our space like an unstoppable tidal wave, and given time, all slaves
will be found and freed. Having started the process, at least part of every
bounty or reward will flow back to you. As now, the mining company will pick up
the tab for the legal bills."

"Not much use to us in a cell,"
muttered Jess.

He grinned at her.

"We'll see about that. They better
have their legal ducks all in a row, or we won't be handing you over. Of
course, that assumes you're still here at the time."

His grin widened.

I looked daggers at Jess before she could
mutter anything more, and she closed her mouth. It was more than obvious he
expected our marines to bust us out of here, well before the military showed
up.

"I'll take my leave of you now. The
company is extremely happy with you, and should anything go unexpectedly bump
in the night, no-one is going to look very closely at it until morning. When
things settle down, if you ever wish to work for us, we could use a good
mercenary ship in the protection of our assets. You have my contact if you need
it. In spite of our payments to you, the company still owes you bigtime, so if
you need anything we can provide in the future, please ask. Good day to you
all."

He left, and the guard didn’t return.

Fifty Eight

I waited until the middle of the station
night, before jumping us back to the ship.

Sasha and the troops were waiting for us.
There was a short discussion, and we prepared to leave.

Sasha requested the docking clamps be
released, and when asked, told the station she'd assumed command of the ship,
on the request of the military, who were impounding it away from the station,
so we’d be unable to escape. The clamps were released, and Jen backed us away.

Half an hour away, the station suffered a
momentary power interruption, during which a key part of their long range
scanner array burned out.

"Done," I said.

Jen changed course, to take us well away
from both the station, and the jump point.

The following morning, as I sat gazing out
into space, Jess and Lea walked in. Tasha was doing her own space gazing, but
turned her attention to the girls.

"Thorn," said Jess. "I think
we found your home planet."

I looked up, and looked in her eyes to be sure
she wasn’t kidding. She wasn’t.

"Where?"

"Would you understand it if I showed
you?"

"Probably not. How then?"

"We found two references," said
Lea. "One was in the station mission logs, ordering a two man ship on a
recon mission. The other was on the logs of one of the smaller ships here,
which indicated it'd been on the recon mission."

"Recon? Is that what they call taking
slaves now?"

"The logs had nothing about taking
slaves," said Jess. "Both seemed to suggest they're looking for a
world to put a base on. They seemed to think they'd found it."

I sighed.

"That's just brilliant," I
muttered.

"What?" asked Tasha.

"I find where home is, and pirates and
slavers have taken it over. Just one of the smallest ships here is all they'd
need. Reduce a town to slag, and the leaders would surrender the planet to
them."

"They had nothing to fight back
with?" asked Jess.

"Not as far as I know. Plenty of hurt
making things available, but nothing which could get into orbit. And without
being able to threaten a ship in orbit, the threat is all one way.
Downwards."

"Well if they have a few ships in
orbit," said Tasha, "we can take them on. And as long as they haven’t
landed more than a company strength of troops, we can take them on as well, if
we have to."

"What do you want to do Thorn?"
asked Jen, from the doorway.

Fifty Nine

We jumped into where we thought my home
system was, a week later.

I'd had to jump the ship out. And this
time, it was a lot longer jump, since the jump point on both sides had military
ships guarding it. They knew we were at large in the system somewhere, and
eventually we'd be caught if all they did was keep us bottled up.

I spent hours preparing for the jump,
gathering energy from the sun, building until I thought I had more than enough.

The jump itself was anti-climax, the ship
dropping neatly into the jump lane to jump out on the other side of the next
system. I was tired, but not excessively so. The others were amazed we'd jumped
so far, but I played it down as having the time to prepare properly. In truth,
I’d been amazed myself.

After that, we simply kept out of
everyone's way, and headed towards my home. It was after all, a direction
no-one was going to expect us to take, and they weren't looking for us yet
anyway. All we had to do was not be recognized, until we diverted off the main
space-ways.

Over the planet, we found two of the recon
ships.

But at the same time, we discovered the
planet had no signs of intelligent life.

"There was no intelligent life
there," I joked, but I steeled myself for finding this wasn’t my home.

The pirates attacked us while I was musing
over possibilities.

Without really thinking, I put up a force
wall, and rammed it back towards them, extinguishing missiles, and then the
ships.

"I thought someone who shall not be
named, didn’t want to kill anyone else?"

Jen sounded a little bitter, but she still
wasn’t over the whole ordeal. I'd talked to Jess and Lea about getting her to a
shrink again, and they were working on it. But in the meantime, shooting the
auctioneer, and beating up the high bidder, hadn't been as cathartic for her as
I'd hoped.

I let it go.

"What happened to the people down
there?" I asked instead.

"There's no evidence anyone ever lived
there," said Jess. "This can't be your home planet."

"Do we have a map of the continents
yet?"

"In progress."

I watched as the sensors mapped the planet.
But I knew.

Eventually, I pointed to a small bay.

"That's where I lived."

"There's nothing there," said
Jen. "You're memory must be at fault."

"I'm going down anyway."

"Thorn?"

"Yes Jen?"

"I'm not waiting. If you go down, you
stay there."

Jess and Lea shot confused looks at her.

"I understand."

And I did. She was finally seeing me for
what I really was. A threat to her position as captain. And in her damaged
state, she couldn’t see how wrong she was.

"Give me five to get my stuff."

She nodded, and I walked off. Behind me,
raised voices indicated Jen's position wasn’t acceptable to the others. But it
was for me.

Home was down there. I didn't understand
the world up here, and I was a threat to it. A serious threat. If I stayed any
longer, I'd be revealed for what I was. And when it happened, I’d be hunted,
enslaved by governments, and forced to kill for them.

I'd wanted to be a battle mage. I’d become
a spacemage. Something more powerful than even the King could have imagined.
And in that power, was the seeds of my own destruction.

For my own sake, and those I’d come to
love, I needed to put the power away, and take it beyond those who would abuse
it.

Tasha was waiting for me at the door into
my bedroom.

"Are you really leaving?"

"Yes."

She looked at me, obviously trying to make
up her mind about something.

"I'll miss you."

She hugged me, pecked me on the cheek, and
left.

I gathered up my backpack, and filled it
with what little I had. Which was more than I'd thought, and I copied it to
take the rest. With both of them slung over my shoulders, I pressed the button
for contacting the main bridge.

"Goodbye."

I jumped.

The last thing I wanted to do, was have
girls begging me not to go, so I went before they could.

Where the city had been, only a few short
months ago, there was only grass.

Sixty

I wandered the area for weeks, seeking any
sign there'd ever been a civilization here.

There was nothing. It wasn’t a case of the
civilization having been destroyed, or removed. There were no ruins, no signs
of mining, quarrying for stone, or any other of the things people did when they
built a city. It had never been.

And yet I remembered everything about it. I
stood where my bedroom in the share house had been. I used my sight to peer
downwards, seeking buried foundations, or anything at all. Nothing.

I spent days sending my sight all around
the world, seeking any signs of people at all. Nothing.

Forced with making a choice about what to
do, instead of deciding to make a house, and getting on with living, I decided
to try and find where my original home had been.

And to my amazement, I found it. The King's
castle was a ruin, and buried meters down, but it was there. It took a while,
but I found the foundations of the house I grew up in, and the village around
it. There wasn’t much left. I carefully excavated the ruins.

It wasn’t until I'd finished, I realized it
wasn’t underwater. The oceans hadn't risen, and the site of my second life, was
a plateau a little way inland. I wondered if the advanced society had caused
the rising of the seas, as part of its own development. I'd never know now.

I cast my eyes around the ruins.

This was my home.

Was.

And still was. Only now I was truly alone.

I used my magic to rebuild my parent's
house, and the furniture it'd had. I created a power generator, and used it to
recharge my pad and tablet whenever I needed to, so I could keep reading my
books, and keep looking at the images I had stored. I mixed what I wanted, from
three levels of life.

I hunted the local game with magic created
weapons, and used magic to plant crops to keep my diet balanced.

My fourth life had begun, and I learned how
to live all over again.

* *
*

I'm leaving this record here, to be found
if anyone ever comes here again. I still have no idea what happened to the
advanced civilization I lived amongst only a few months ago, or even why it
vanished.

But I can't help thinking it must have been
something I did. Or didn’t do.

Somehow, Yesterday's Spacemage in the
future, changed the past.

In all likelihood as you read this, I'm
long dead now. I accepted this when I came back here, expected it at times to
be a lonely existence, but I think it will be a good life. I may or may not
update this record. Perhaps not. What happens to me now, isn’t really relevant.

I'll leave it to you, to be the judge of if
what I did, was good or bad, right or wrong. In the end, I don’t think it
matters.

Things were, things are, and things happen.

We make choices, and we live with them.

I lived with mine.

Thorn.

Last survivor of a planet which was never
named.

Thorn will return,

in

Today'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's taken a lot longer than it normally does. At the time of
publishing, I'm unsure if this is a standalone book, or the beginning of a
trilogy. I'm also not sure if this is part of the Hunter Legacy, or something
completely different. Time may tell.

On day 4, after lots of reviews asking
for a trilogy, I started work on book 2. There is definitely going to be a
trilogy! The ending everyone hates, will be explained. Not changed, explained.

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.

Please join me on the Hunter Legacy series Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/TheHunterLegacy

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Group:

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Thank you.

Timothy Ellis

Also by Timothy Ellis

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