“Ships, ships, there’s other ships!” With that loud, excited cry echoing through the corridor, the diminutive pink-skinned figure of Laein dashed straight to the open lounge. She burst in, the long dark cape she favored fluttering dramatically behind her through a mix of the spells she used to keep it moving and her own actual motion. Her eyes snapped back and forth before settling on the back corner of the room where two other figures were sitting at a table together. “Hey, wake up! We have other ships on sensors! Real ships, metal ones, not the ugly stupid biological living ships like the Fomorians! They’ll be right on top of us and ready to start a big fight in less than ten minutes, so stop the dumb canoodling or whatever you’re doing and start paying attention!”
Rising from his seat where he had been teaching Gaia a card game with a deck they had found in one of the storage compartments, Jacob replied, “You mean fewer. Fewer than five minutes. And yeah, she''s been scanning them to see what we''re dealing with. So far it sounds like they’re Seosten--and don’t ask me how I know anything about those people or what our relationship is like in the future because I really couldn’t even begin to guess. There''s three of the ships, but we''re better armed and armored. Even with the damage we took a few weeks ago. Call it the benefit of our ship being from the future, it’s more advanced. Unfortunately, it also means they won’t just let us pass by. They’ve obviously scanned our ship too, considering the beeline they’re making for us. My guess is they had all their systems start screaming about the tech we’ve got on here, so they want to take it for themselves. You know, for the war effort. Not that I blame them for wanting to grab every last possible advantage they can get, especially after what we saw back there, but it’s still a pain.” He paused before adding, “I may not remember much, but I do know that ‘being a pain’ is kind of what most of the Seosten are best at.”
Gaia spoke then. “I suppose simply telling them the truth, with a note that you are attempting to preserve the timeline and return to your own year, would be entirely too easy of a solution to have a chance of actually working. They should understand the problems inherent in changing things.”
With a long, heavy sigh, Jacob shook his head. “You know, I have so few of my full memories right now, and even then I still feel pretty certain that we can’t trust those Seosten to leave the dangerous technology alone. Besides, even if we could convince them we were telling the truth, there’s a chance they wouldn’t care about creating a new timeline. Especially if they actually thought it would allow them to live in a better one.” He considered that briefly before making a face. “Yeah, I’d rather not have to try to convince them to back off. Or talk to them at all, if we can manage it. Just doing that much could screw up the timeline too--which yes I do realize that that is almost certainly a laughable thing to worry about, given everything that’s happened already.” After saying that, the man actually blushed slightly, giving a sidelong look at the red-haired woman. Yes, either they had already done substantial damage to the future, or this was always meant to happen. If he’d had his memories back, maybe he’d actually know which.
Then again, if he was being honest with himself, there was a part of him that was glad he didn’t know.
“Right, right, so what do we do?” Laein was bouncing up and down, quite literally, while her eyes darted around. “Are we gonna fight ‘em, kick their fancy smancy asses, throw them out into space, and turn this singular ship into the center of a brand new fleet we can use to conquer the universe!?” Her gaze had shifted to the bright, bambi eyes a child might use to beg for a cookie.
“We’re not hijacking a bunch of Seosten ships and creating a pirate fleet,” Jacob informed her, snorting slightly as the girl visibly pouted. “Gaia can just shut them off or--wait, better idea.” He turned to the woman in question as the thought solidified. “Can you mess with their sensors just a little to make them miss us by like, a few hundred thousand kilometers or something? I mean, space is really big, if you shift something on their computers by a decimal point or two, they shouldn’t get anywhere near us. And they probably won’t know until it’s too late to fix.”
Rising from her seat, Gaia replied, “I am very humbled by your belief in my ability, Jacob. I honestly don’t know how far it can reach, or if I can create such an effect quickly enough to throw them so far off. Our ships are moving together with… speed I could not have believed possible before all this. I’m still wrapping my mind around that whole idea. The time between when they will be within my range, and when they will be right on top of us, is… very short. I will very likely only have one chance to actually pull that off, in a system I have never seen before, which may have plenty of its own special protections against just such an occurrence. It is a risk.”
Jacob, for his part, reached down to take her hand. It was a reflexive gesture by that point, one he made without any conscious thought. His fingers interlaced with hers, as he offered the woman a small smile that still managed to make her heart flip over anyway. “I believe in you.”
That was it, the only thing he said on the subject. But for Gaia, it was everything. Her gaze dropped slightly, face turning pink before she returned the squeeze. “Well, let us go to the bridge and be ready for a bit of conflict anyway, just in case I--ah, happen to be having an off day, hm?”
Although he was worried about those ships, and about how all of this would turn out, Jacob still gave a soft chuckle before heading out with the other two. On the way, he sent instructions to the entire crew. The ghost crew, that was. Over these past weeks, they had steadily replaced the semi-automated functions (much of which had actually been directed by Gaia) with ghosts who had been given a quick (he refused to use the term crash) course in how to fill their new respective role. The computer systems were very helpful in that way. There were tutorials for everything, and plenty of simulations to run everyone through.
It had taken a fair bit of time and effort to get those tutorials running and make sure the ghosts who volunteered to work were actually learning from them, but it was all worth it. After all, giving Gaia less that she had to keep track of throughout the ship meant she would be far more effective at the parts she was still needed for. Having an actual crew, eclectic as it might''ve been, made it so the ship wasn''t simply limping along with the bare minimum to keep it going. It was actually operating with something approaching regular efficiency. Granted, they were still learning in some ways, and wouldn''t be quite as good as a real Seosten military crew that had been through years of training. But they were getting there, improving every time they ran a simulation. They were certainly in better shape than they had been before that encounter with the Fomorians.
That thought made the man glance ahead of them to Laein. She was particularly enthusiastic about making their ship more efficient, training their crew properly, and even more eager to come up with more and more outlandish, wild practice scenarios to do that with. He was really rather impressed by her creativity in that regard. It was funny to think that they had been enemies, even if only for a brief time. There wasn’t actually any personal animosity there, at least as far as he could remember. And the girl herself certainly didn’t seem to hold a grudge. She’d simply been hired by Fahsteth to do a job. He needed a Necromancer and she loved Necromancy. The match had worked. Until Jacob and Gaia showed up and wiped out that little army. Laein had been a prisoner at first, but after being flung to the far reaches of space and nearly being taken by the Fomorians, she became far more than that. She was a friend, even after such a short time. Jacob trusted her almost as much as he trusted Gaia. And even more importantly, she was another Necromancer, another person who could help feed energy to their ghost crew to keep them going. That could be incredibly important if this whole situation actually came down to a battle. God, please, please don’t let it come to a battle. They might have been getting better at making the ship work efficiently, but he just really didn’t want to get into another fight anytime soon.
But if it happened, he would be glad to have Laein on their side. Fahsteth, on the other hand, Jacob would cheerfully flush out the airlock before he allowed the man out of his cell no matter how dire their situation became. He absolutely did not trust that bastard, even if he didn’t actually have the full extent of his memories to tell him exactly why.
It helped that Gaia didn’t trust him at all either. Her instinct with that sort of thing seemed pretty spot on. But either way, Jacob knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that letting Fahsteth out would be a bad idea. Even if it was a life and death situation, the man would almost certainly find a way to both escape that situation himself, and make things worse for the rest of them on his way out.
On the other hand, perhaps finding a way to teleport Fahsteth over to one of the ships so he could start causing problems over there--no, no, bad idea. There were so many reasons that was a bad idea. Even dismissing the timeline issue, he didn’t want to piss off the Seosten that much. Throwing a live grenade into their midst like that felt like a good way to make them chase this ship much more aggressively than they already would.
By the time they reached the bridge, the ghost crew was fully briefed and empowered. Which, Jacob only realized once they arrived, he and Laein had done automatically without even taking a moment to confer with each other. The practice they had done over these past weeks paid off. They knew which ghosts were their own priority to feed energy into, and how to brief them on what was going on. He fully trusted the other Necromancer to do her part and make sure the ghosts in her assigned areas were topped up and ready to do their jobs.
Stepping across the bridge to the captain''s chair, Jacob leaned over to look at the screen. By that point, the Seosten ships were two minutes away. If anything, they had picked up speed. Yeah, they definitely knew there was something odd about this ship. He was pretty sure they didn''t already know they were from the future or anything. Especially with the shields they had that were meant to make it harder to use magic or technology to get too many details. Most likely, they were simply getting basic scan readings that made it clear the ship had more power and advanced weaponry than it should. They probably just assumed it was from some other alien race they hadn''t met yet. Or possibly a secret project from one of those they did know. Though any species they were connected to who could keep something like this secret from the Seosten would be pretty damn impressive. Which might explain their rush in coming to get a closer look.
Whatever they actually thought, something told him these guys probably wouldn''t easily be convinced that the ship was none of their business and that the best move was simply to live and let live. Even with his whole memory issue thing, he was still pretty sure they weren''t the type to give up that easily on acquiring spiffy new advanced technology for themselves. Especially when it was the type of advanced technology that translated into giving them much even stronger weapon systems for their war.
He didn’t actually sit in that captain’s chair. That was for Gaia to take, since controlling the ship really came down to her. Plus, it just seemed right. Instead, he moved to the other side of the bridge after simply checking the screen to see how close the Seosten were. He was tempted to press Gaia about how her efforts were going, but knew distracting the woman was a bad idea. Instead, he addressed the other member of their little group, his voice crisp while he pressed a few holographic buttons on the console there to start routing energy to weapons. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. “Laein, how far along are we with our ghost-shield? Any chance it’s ready for a live test if this comes down to a real fight?” They had, of course, not been content to stick to simply training the ghosts to handle the ship in the intended way and leave it at that. No, they had been working on an assortment of ways to deal with any problems that tried to present themselves. Some were far more experimental and out there than others, and at least one was downright ridiculous. The ghost-shield was the one with the best chance of really working so far. Essentially, it amounted to creating a sphere of Necromantic magic around the ship, which would drain the energy of any spell directed at it, converting part of it into Necromancy power to fuel the sphere itself. There was a lot more to it than that, and they were still working out the kinks, but that was the gist. Create an anti-magic forcefield that was made even stronger the more magic was thrown at it. It had taken everything all three of them, Gaia included, had to get it even close to working.
Laein immediately leapt into one of the other seats and strapped herself in. Her fingers danced over the controls as she quickly called out, “We just finished applying the last of the new runes with the updated spellforms yesterday morning! You uh, you know what happened with the last test, but we ironed out the kinks this time, I’m sure of it! And we didn’t even have to look for another Kaunke crystal since we ironed out the energy transference issues! We haven’t actually tested the new arrangement yet, but that’s what field tests are for!” She turned slightly, flashing a quick grin toward Jacob. The expression was both eager and nervous, though he could only read the latter in her face thanks to spending so much time with her recently. “It’s ready if we need it.”
Jacob, in turn, returned her smile, trying to look reassuring. He knew that underneath her cocky exterior, Laein was very much afraid of what might happen. She was small, still quite young, and had been through far too much already. She’d shared her history with him one evening, and it was--yeah, he understood why she would present herself as so untouchable and dangerous.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Shaking that off, the man replied, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that and this whole thing is smooth sailing. But if it does, be ready.” His smile turned slightly devilish. “Whether it works exactly the way it’s supposed to or not, I think it’s safe to say they’ll never see it coming.”
After getting that out, he glanced over his shoulder toward Gaia. She was silent, eyes closed while her attention was clearly cast off into the distance, stretching her power as far as it would go. With any luck--okay with a hell of a lot of luck-- she would be able to adjust those sensors just enough to send the Seosten sailing right by them. By the time those people noticed the actual problem, it would be too late. But if that didn’t work, if they actually had to face them… better to be prepared. The weapon systems were online, as were their shields. The other shields, not the experimental ghost-shield that was absolutely, definitely, maybe going to work.
Checking the sensors once more showed the Seosten ships continuing to get closer. They were down to less than one minute before they would be too close for the ‘make them miss us by a finger-width on the starmap’ plan to actually work. But he trusted Gaia. If anyone could pull it off with her power, this quickly and without live practice, she could. He had to give her time to--
Suddenly, Gaia spoke. But she wasn’t saying anything to them. Not yet. The word she spoke was a spell. It cast a bubble of energy around the bridge. A bubble of--of time manipulation. She was speeding them up, allowing them to have a few minutes of conversation within the thirty seconds of real time they actually had. But why would she do that? Putting herself in this bubble wouldn’t help her affect the other ships. Her power wouldn’t reach outside of the bubble while it was active. That was why she hadn’t done that to begin with, just to give herself more time.
“Gaia,” Jacob found himself asking after taking all that in, “what’s going on? Why did you just--”
“I can do it,” she abruptly announced, speaking quickly as she cut him off. “I can redirect them.” Her eyes opened, shifting over to look at him. “But if I do, we’ll be sending them to their deaths.”
Before he even knew he was moving, Jacob was on his feet. His eyes widened as he blurted, “What?” Reflexively, he glanced toward the sensors. Not that it would help. The markers for the three Seosten ships were basically frozen in place thanks to the bubble’s speed-up effect. And it certainly wouldn’t do anything to actually tell him why they were apparently in so much danger.
“The ships aren’t coming to try to take new technology for themselves,” Gaia informed him, her voice flat. “They’re coming because they have no other choice, no other chance. They’ve been in a battle with Fomorians, and were badly damaged, critically damaged.” She took a breath before letting it out again slowly. “I checked their computer systems, Jacob. They didn’t expect to run into any Fomorians out here. I believe the only reason they did run into them is because those Fomorians were scouring the area looking for us, after we escaped. Those Seosten, they were part of a research fleet. Most of them were already destroyed, already killed. Those three ships are all that’s left. Their long-range communications have been knocked out. It’s all they could manage just to get them moving again at all. They have no weapons, barely any shields, and not much else. Their original plan was to send one of their message capsules and hope they’d be rescued in time, before their life support ran out. Or before the Fomorians found them again. Then they detected our ship and… and they made a choice. They decided to try to come straight for us. They threw every last bit of power the ships had into reaching us, Jacob. I can make them miss us, to protect the timeline. But if I do, they won’t survive. They can’t be rescued by their own people now, after they left the area they sent the message pods from. We’re their last chance.”
“And they wouldn’t even have been damaged by the Fomorians in the first place if we weren’t out here,” Jacob finished for her, rocking back on his heels. “We already changed that part of the timeline anyway. We might make it worse if we let them see us, if we--but if we don’t--and they end up--” He stopped talking, falling completely silent while staring down at the deck with a frown. The dark implications of the entire situation were running wild through his mind.
Gaia gave a single nod. “You see then, why it needed to be discussed. You have repeatedly spoken of the dangers when it comes to potentially changing the timeline. Dangers we have already risked to a rather absurd degree in some ways. But this is another level entirely.”
Jacob sighed. “Another level that wouldn''t even be necessary at all if we hadn''t been out here to run into the Fomorians to begin with. If we weren''t here, those Seosten would still be fine. We''ve already changed things. Or maybe we haven''t, and this is always the way my timeline went. I wish I could remember more details about that, or about anything. For all I know, it was always supposed to work out this way. I don''t have anything to compare it to. I’m flying blind on this.”
Laein rose from her own seat, jumping down before hesitantly speaking up. For once, she sounded uncertain. “Do you know for sure that they won''t be able to get help if they miss us? They could always just send a magical message with their new coordinates, couldn''t they?” By the end of that, she had managed to inject her voice with some faint semblance of optimism.
Unfortunately, it was optimism that couldn''t last. Gaia gave a reluctant, “No, even with all their people working together, they won''t be able to send a spell message that far. Their only choice would be to send out a call for help toward the nearest inhabited planet and hope it reaches them before all of their life support is gone. The captains of the ships have already agreed to draw lots if it comes to that and have two of the ships give the remainder of their supplies to the last, to give those people the best chance to survive. They were going to do that before. Then they detected our ship and… decided to take a chance that we might be able to help them. If we do not, if we let them pass us, there is a more than ninety percent chance they will all die.”
God, what was Jacob even supposed to say to that? Let alone do about it? No, that wasn''t actually a question. He knew exactly what he should do about it. He knew what the right thing was, no matter how risky it seemed or how loudly the voice Inside told him that he would be changing things even more. If it came down to it, they could potentially find ways to deal with these people learning things they shouldn''t, or seeing technology they shouldn''t see yet.
But far more importantly, he didn''t care. The honest truth, when he got right down to it and asked himself the hard question, was that if the choice was between never getting back to his own time and irrevocably changing the future, or willingly leaving all those people to slowly die as they were stranded in space, he would choose to save them every single time. He didn''t want to live in a timeline where he would abandon those people, no matter who they were.
After letting those thoughts and his realization play through his mind for a moment, the young man squared his shoulders, straightened up, and looked back and forth between the other two. “We''re not abandoning them. We aren''t going to leave them to die. I know that''s a weird thing to say when we were just getting ready to fight them, but things change. First we help save them, see if we can do anything to make sure they get rescued by their own people, then we''ll figure out what to do from there. One step at a time, and the first step is not being the type of people who could abandon those ships.” He got all that out before giving a soft cough. “I mean, that''s what I think anyway. If you guys have anything else to say about it, now’s the time.”
Gaia spoke first, her voice sounding more firm and assured than his had to his own ears. “If you were willing to leave them to die, you wouldn''t be the man I know you are. Whatever comes of this, good or ill, I''d like to be able to look in the mirror without adding another reason for shame. If we are taking votes, then I say you''re right. We can''t just abandon those people.”
Laein waved her hand with a heavy and possibly somewhat exaggerated sigh. “Yes, yes, make it unanimous or whatever. Dying in battle after a fierce and bloody struggle is one thing. Letting all of them slowly die out here in the middle space just because we tricked them into going the wrong way after they threw every hope they had into coming to us for help? That''s the sort of evil that I never want to be associated with.” She visibly perked up, as something occurred to her. “Besides, if we save them and help them get their strength and power back, maybe we’ll have a chance to fight them later and actually prove how much better we are. Making them die because of a navigation error? That''s just pathetic. Killing them at full strength in a real battle? That’s better. So sure, let''s roll out the welcome mat.”
Jacob opened his mouth to reply, then paused. “Well, maybe we don''t have to get them on this ship at all. We can go over there ourselves and offer to use our own systems to call a tow truck for them. You know, so to speak. Or just help fix them up so they can get home themselves. We’ll offer to do what we can to help them stay alive. Just don''t let any of them touch you. And we need to do regular possession checks on each other.”
Gaia, of course, had little to no idea of what he was actually talking about when it came to the whole tow truck thing. But she still got the gist enough to nod. “In that case, I will lower the time bubble. I considered contacting them through their own systems, but I believe that would do more harm than good. They have been frightened enough as it is. Knowing that a stranger from a vessel they have never seen the likes of before has been rooting through their files would probably do very little to make them feel more comfortable with the whole situation.”
She had a point. This whole thing was going to be sensitive enough as it was, for a whole multitude of reasons. If they were very lucky, maybe they could pull off making these Seosten think that they were from some distant part of space, explorers or something. He would rather not tell them about the whole future thing if he could help it at all. It didn''t matter how desperate these people were, that still felt like a bad idea. They would help them survive, but still try to change as little as possible. That was probably a losing proposition from the start, but whatever. He was doing his best in what was honestly a pretty epically screwed up situation.
In any case, he wasn''t ready to tell the ghost crew to stand down just yet. Yes, it sounded like the incoming ships would be hard pressed to actually stage an attack on a human rowboat, but still. It was better to be safe than sorry. They could stay at their positions until this was over.
Gaia lowered the bubble and allowed time to go back to normal. Jacob watched the timer tick down while the dots on the sensors continued to get closer. Now they were within range of the more elaborate sensors, which told him the same thing Gaia had already said. These people had no working weapons and their shields were barely enough to hold off a few spitballs. Granted, they could have been faking it, but the idea that they would have gone as far as creating all those false entries in their computers just in case someone like Gaia poked around in them was pretty far out into the land of extreme paranoia. If they went that far, they almost deserved to win. No, they really had been through hell against those Fomorians. Which made him feel another slight pang of guilt about the whole situation. How many people had died on those other ships who wouldn''t have if those Fomorians hadn''t been in the area? How many people had been horrifically murdered and transformed into more biological material to be repurposed into going out and killing even more people just because Jacob and the others were out here?
Damn it, he couldn''t let that thought take over. He''d never stop turning it back and forth in his mind if he didn''t push it away now. He couldn''t change what had happened, but he could decide how he would react to it. He couldn''t save those other people. These ones were a different story. Even if they had to be very careful about it, for a multitude of reasons, they could still help.
Finally, he didn''t need to look at the dots on the sensors anymore. The ships were visible on the screen right in front of him. Granted, they were still several thousand kilometers away, but on the screen, they were right there. And neither Gaia’s words or the description on the sensors themselves had done the idea of the damage justice. Those ships were wrecked, completely and utterly. He was honestly surprised they were flying at all. It was obvious they had been through a massive battle with the Fomorians. Entire chunks of the ships were missing and had what looked like emergency chunks of metal awkwardly welded into place just to stop the vacuum of space from getting in. It was clearly a rush job. Other parts of the damaged ships were only covered by shields, leaving what looked like large gaping holes in them. And given what he knew about their energy situation, he wouldn''t trust those to hold very well. None of the three ships had all of their engines. They were puttering along on minimal thrust. Even as they came within view, the single working engine on one of the ships stopped completely. It was moving forward only through inertia. The people on that ship had given everything it had left just to make it this far. If Jacob and the others had actually followed through with tricking them, they would have been dead in space in every sense of the word.
The other two ships stopped as well, though it looked like they could have kept going at least a bit further if they needed to. They pulled in front of the one whose engines had completely died, looking like they were trying to protect it somehow. For a moment, the three nearly dead ships stayed right there, seeming to stare at them in silence. Jacob was about to ask if their short range communicators were broken as well, but just as his mouth opened, there was a ping. One of the ships was calling them. The signal wasn''t exactly strong, but it was definitely them.
At first, he didn''t make a move to answer it. Honestly, he forgot that the others would expect him to. It was an odd feeling, and somehow he didn''t think that was only because of his memory issues. The sound of the communication request continued to ping a few more times, probably making the people on the other ship sweat a bit before he finally shook himself and stood up. In the same motion, he activated the language translation spell he’d used his instant-inscription power to put on his arm. It was a spell that Laein had provided, actually. Apparently the girl had sought it out because she’d wanted to make sure her enemies could always understand when she informed them of their impending doom. It not only translated what the other person was saying, as long as the language was within the understanding of the spell itself, but also read the mind of the caster when they wanted to speak in that other language and adjusted their words on the fly even as they spoke them. It was a strange feeling in some ways, for your brain to tell your mouth to say one thing and then have different words come out. Some practice had been required. But now they were each reasonably confident of their ability to use the spell. Which was good, since these real Seosten would probably want to speak in their own language. He had a fairly decent grasp of Latin, but not enough to trust himself not to give something away.
Moving to stand in front of the screen, Jacob took a deep breath and told the computer to accept the call. One way or another, it was time to talk. Hopefully without revealing to these people anything that they shouldn’t know. So here went nothing.
Time to talk to these people, and hope they didn’t manage to completely fuck the timeline or end up with the entire Seosten Empire trying to chase them across the universe.