Hubaisha vanished, causing Jane to frown.
“I sent Hubaisha an almost undamaged Rawtenuga battleship to take apart and reverse engineer.”
“Good thinking. How hard was that to do?”
“Required some special thinking.”
Which it had.
“Was that you?”
“Was what me?”
“A Rawtenuga titan just appeared in the Haven system, and scared the crap out of a million people.”
“Did it? Odd. I thought I opened the rift far enough away it wouldn’t cause any issues.”
It was a little white lie, and no-one would know the difference but me.
“Are you kidding? Every AI in the system knew it arrived the moment it did, and the media were short stroking the story as soon as they changed their shorts. The only reason we didn’t destroy it on sight was there were no life signs on board. Give us some warning next time, for fuck’s sake.”
If there was a next time. I didn’t know if she was having a bad day, and I guess AIs were prone to them like everyone else, but I was too tired to cope with this.
“Hey! You asked for a titan transport. I sent you one. Next time include delivery instructions.”
A chuckle came from somewhere near her.
“He’s got you there,” said the Imperator.
“How did you manage that?” she asked, sounding like she’d regained control.
“A ran a rift around inside it, moving all living things down to the planet below.”
“What did the locals say about that?”
“Nothing. They’d been nuked a couple of days ago.”
She should have known that. I wondered why she didn’t.
“Exactly where did you send the dinosaurs?”
“To the worst radiation spots.”
She seemed lost for words, now.
“And whoever nuked the planet?” asked the Imperator, who was still not showing on the console.
“Dust.”
There was another silence.
“Carry on, Commander.”
Jane looked sideways for a moment, and then vanished.
“Are we still protecting what you can do?” asked Leanne.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
There was an implied why in her tone, but I ignored it.
“How are they doing on the station?”
“Mopping up already.”
“Good.”
I concentrated, and locked the jump points. No-one was going to disturb this system again. I had to increase the amount of energy I was taking from the dark sun to stay awake, but I waited patiently for the station action to end. Jill finally popped up on the console, still in her combat suit.
“Station taken. We’ve some damaged combat suits, but no casualties on our side. I’ve issued the order for the ships to dock, so we can walk back on board. All our mages appear to be quite tired, and I figured you might be as well. By the way, we didn’t find any sign of the locals. Station records say the place was vented, then the dinos cleaned it up in spacesuits. All the bodies went into the waste system. No clues as to why they left it open to space so long.”
“I don’t care. Docking approved. I want to be out of here as soon as possible now.”
Nodding inside a combat suit wasn’t easy to do, but she managed a partial one. And vanished. Judge jumped, appearing just off the station, and a few seconds later, slid into a dock. The airlock doors opened, and combat suits started walking back aboard. Just inside the cargo bay, the first of them stopped, and the pilot stepped out of the back, and sat hurriedly on the deck. He wasn’t the only one.
I waited for the last of them to leave the station, and linked up with the local sun again. Dinosaur bodies vanished from the station decks, and reappeared on the ground, everywhere there was a space big enough for one, but every single one right next to a live dinosaur. I looked down on them using my magic sight, and saw a lot of them freaking out, more than they had already been. Some of them were now lying down, maybe showing the first signs of sickness. But some of them were looking up. A few of them were shaking their fists at me, without knowing I could see them.
The airlock doors closed, and the ships backed away.
The station vanished, and reappeared in my home system, in orbit of my penal planet, positioned so it would never show up from my home world. Anyone with a navmap might spot it if they were looking. Hubaisha popped up on the console again, showing she was very aware, opened her mouth, but decided not to ask. She vanished again. The answer was yes anyway. Clean it up, and convert it for our use. With a thought, I changed an airlock to be a rift, and linked it to a grey square well away from where my ships on the ground at home were being refitted, large enough for the largest builder droid to pass through. I sent her the location of the rift.
I let go the local sun again, this time now feeling majorly fatigued. But I waited until my team were back on their bridges.
“Are we leaving them there like that?” asked Loren.
“They should get what the locals received,” said Metunga.
“I agree,” said Woof.
I’d already made up my mind.
“Fire.”
Tamsin knew what I meant, and every ship fired every missile they could launch.
We bombarded that continent until there was nothing there capable of moving.
Gitte looked sick. Jill didn’t look happy. No-one said anything.
The missiles stopped launching, and with a nod to Tamsin, we started jumping back to our home base.
“You do realize that was technically a war crime,” said Edna.
The Imperator had done worse to three Trixone worlds. This was no different really, but they’d brought it on themselves by being unnecessarily brutal to the locals, and I realized I had no idea what the locals had even looked like.
“Karma’s a bitch,” said Jill, still looking unhappy.
Thirty Two
Oddly enough, I woke at my normal time the next morning.
The last thing I’d done before going to bed was send a report to Admiral Jedburgh. It was just a text message, as I wasn’t up to doing a vid by then.
“Cluster secured. Planet found to be dead outside cluster, and system isolated. Station appropriated as ordered for training on. Titan delivered as ordered. Bud.”
There was no response when I checked after waking, but before getting up. All my ships were docked again. We’d been resupplied, and replacement combat suits had been delivered, with the damaged ones taken away.
I felt fine, and hadn't had any bad dreams. But I was alone on the bed, and my mood hadn’t improved at all. When I asked, Leanne told me Serena was in her own quarters. I’d gone to bed first, so maybe she’d not wanted to wake me.
The running track was empty, and I did my normal ramping up the speed as the laps went past. Pilots joined me, but others were happy to be passed. I was still running when everyone else went on to the courses. While I ran, I thought about what I wanted the station turned into, and dictated a voice message to Hubaisha with instructions. The word ‘eggs’ came back, so I assumed she’d been eavesdropping, and had heard the suggestions I’d made.
In fact, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she was on the ship, and wasn’t letting anyone know, although hiding from Leanne would be difficult. Unless Leanne knew and wasn’t telling either. For a moment I wondered if she was running the butler droid which served me all the time. But I let that speculation go as a waste of time.