One
“What the hell?”
I stopped abruptly after stepping though the rift to Long Water from our living room on Haven station.
Serena stepped straight into me, and we both crashed towards the deck, which was fortunately carpeted. Jill stepped through and fell over Serena, going down over the top of both of us. Woof ended up lying on top of her.
“WAIT!” I yelled.
Metunga stuck his head through the rift, and started laughing. He vanished, and the sound of a lot of laughter came through the rift instead. Woof scrambled off the top of Jill, she rolled off Serena, who picked herself up, leaving me spread full length. I looked up at the three of them, but they were ignoring me completely.
I wasn’t surprised. We were not on Long Water. That much was obvious.
Someone had moved my rift.
Picking myself up was easy enough, but the girls helping me would have been nice. Instead, they were staring, mouths open, at the much bigger than expected room we were in. It was definitely a living room, but set up for a lot more people than we had. Long Water’s upper living room sat thirty comfortably. This one looked like it sat sixty.
“Where the hell are we?” asked Jill.
I moved away from the rift, noticing all the other rifts were in place as I expected, albeit the wall was a lot longer than needed for the rifts. The girls followed me, but Woof moved to the side of the rift we’d come in through, and stuck his head back through it.
“It’s okay now,” he said, pulled his head back, and stepped aside.
Metunga stepped through, looked around with an amazed look on his face, but kept moving. The rest followed. By the time all of them were through, I’d moved to the door to the main passageway, and they followed me out. A quick glance in each direction showed me this was a much bigger ship than the corvette I’d expected to return to. I turned for the bridge, and everyone followed me.
The bridge was substantially bigger than I was used to, and had three main chairs down the middle instead of two. The layout was bog standard Imperium, but the third chair was raised on a rostrum, and was obviously meant for an admiral.
Leanne and Tamsin were waiting, seated on opposite ends of the main console, but swiveled to watch us walking in. Both were grinning. We all still looked like we were sleep walking in someone’s dream, and hadn’t yet figured out whose.
A figure popped up on the console to one side of the helm chair. Not a head and shoulders as we normally saw, but a full half height figure. This one belonged to Admiral Jedburgh.
“Welcome to your new ship, Commander. All of you please be seated. I won’t keep you long.”
I sat in the captain’s chair, while Jill took the XO’s chair to my left, and Serena the third officer’s chair to my right. The others divided themselves to the left and right chairs. Given our ships had so far been designed for only three people and the ship AI, I had no idea why they still had so many chairs on the bridges.
Technically, as far as I knew, I still reported to Rear Admiral Jane. Even being promoted yesterday to lieutenant commander, there had been no word of anything changing, and the morning after a particularly good party was an unexpected time for things to change radically on you. Jedburgh wasn’t Jane’s superior, as she worked for the Imperator, but he was the Admiral who commanded the Imperium’s space navy. And so, my ultimate boss, no matter who was giving me orders.
“You’re all getting new ships,” he went on. “Commander, you get the biggest one, in the form of a new class of cruiser, which is essentially a scaled down Relentless class dreadnaught. It’s half the length, but not half the firepower by any means. I’ll leave you to find out what it does hit with.”
He looked directly at me.
“The class hasn’t been named, and so far, it’s one of a kind. It was built specifically for you, completed and acceptance tested several days ago, but we hadn’t at the time the ship was designed expected you to be promoted quite so soon. So instead of someone else getting her for a shakedown cruise, you do.”
“Thank you, sir. May I ask her name?”
“You may change the name if you wish, but for now, she’s called ‘Judge Thorn’.”
I smiled at him, as did everyone else. Thorn had been my great-great uncle, and the most powerful mage ever. Naming a ship after him made sense, and me being her first captain was an honour.
“Sounds perfect to me, sir.”
He looked around the rest of my team.
“You remain Navy Mage Squadron One, but your corvettes are being reassigned in preparation for Navy Mage Two, when they are ready to step up. You’ll find the rifts in the squadron living room lead to twelve destroyers, which are also a new class, based on the Water class super corvette, but using a more scaled down version of this ship. The original idea was to use whatever destroyer hulls were available, but the first of them proved too difficult to modify the way your corvettes were. So we built twelve brand new destroyers instead.”
The rest were looking enthusiastic, and quite obviously wanted to sprint back to the living room rifts, and claim a ship.
“Are we still operating as carriers?” I asked.
“Yes. Eagle Wing will be coming aboard as soon as you’re ready for them. You’ll get some time to get used to your new commands, and then receive orders to pick up more squadrons. For now, you’ll get a mix of Excalibur fours and fives. Most of the new squadrons will be fives though. You’ll shakedown for a day or two, and then we have a mission for you.”
“Are we getting an admiral, sir?”
I was wondering if we’d be seeing Jane again.
“Not immediately. And from now on, you report directly to me, as one of the independent commands. But Admiral Jane still has an interest in you, and of course, anything which needs an immediate response will have orders coming from her as usual. All ships cruiser sized and above are being fitted out for flagship duty now, so having the extra chair and rooms does not indicate they will be used. Likewise, we took what you did with Long Water to ensure the squadron had its own living rooms on the flagship, so you can remain a team while your squadrons have their own living areas. Any questions?”
“No, sir. I’ll await our formal orders.”
“Good. Carry on, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.”
The hollo vanished.
“YES!” said Woof, doing a fist pump.
Two
Their co-pilot AIs were waiting beside a rift.
We watched them all step through onto their own ship, and then Serena and I went back to our bridge. One by one they popped up on the much wider console between Leanne and Serena. No-one said anything, as we all dived into the ship systems to verify everything was as it should be. Even midshipmen were taught never to accept a ship without checking it first yourself.
An hour later, I was satisfied Judge Thorn was indeed ready for action. I’d even verified our cargos from our corvettes had followed us, mainly being Ralnor goodies we’d not really had a chance to sample properly yet. I suspected Syrinx had done the transfers of the rifts and cargos, as very few mages could move one end of a rift like this. It saved me the trouble of having to do them all again myself, or even Gitte or Haynes having to.
The Judge, as I was already thinking of this ship as, was essentially a pocket battleship. The length was a half kilometer, making her a cruiser hull, but everything had been retained at battleship levels. Three main turrets to each side of the basic oblong hull shape, two located forward and one aft on two sides, and one forward and two aft on the other two. All of them could fire in any direction at the same time, which somewhat negated the layout, I thought. While being cruiser sized turrets, what came out of each barrel was a battleship pulse.