A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10)

by Glynn Stewart

  Roslyn grimaced. Despite Daalman’s assurances, she couldn’t shake the feeling this was her fault.

  “Let’s hope the autopsies show something we can use to protect people,” she told him. “Anything. This is a nightmare.”

  “I wish it was a nightmare,” Killough said. “I’m a lucid dreamer, Commander. I can fight my fucking nightmares. I can’t fight this, and I won’t wake up from this.”

  The room was silent, and Roslyn glanced back at her data search.

  “It’s going to be an hour or so before we even have our first-wave search results,” she told Killough. “I suggest you try that sleep business. See if you do wake up.”

  He snorted.

  “Fair. What about you, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “I need to keep going,” she told him. “My nightmares are bad enough most days. I’m not looking forward to these additions.”

  “A word of advice?” Killough offered. “Go rest yourself. Taking a few more hours to look at the data isn’t going to change anything, and even nightmare-ridden sleep is better than working yourself to death.

  “And once you’ve done that, talk to the damn ship’s doctor. I’m assuming she knows how to handle trauma.”

  Roslyn already had regular sessions with Dr. Breda. The RMN was very specific in their doctors’ training.

  “She does.” Roslyn sighed. “You’re probably right. I just want my damn answers.”

  “Even this data search just kicks off a wave of analysis which just tells us where to point Huntress’s sensors,” Killough pointed out reasonably. “None of this is going to be fast, Chambers.

  “We’ll be better at the analysis if we’re both fresh. Go rest.”

  21

  Roslyn’s sleep was as bad as she’d feared, but she did sleep. New nightmares of Guardia officers full of bullet holes trying to tear her apart joined her old nightmares of cells aboard Republic warships and space stations.

  When she woke from a dream where a bullet-filled Guardia officer tried to sexually assault her in one of her old cells, she decided enough was enough. She’d never actually been sexually assaulted while a Republic prisoner—it was a low bar to clear but one the Republic covert-ops team that had captured her had managed.

  Checking her wrist-comp, she saw that she had managed to sleep for five hours. Her data search had finished three and a half hours earlier—and she had a video message waiting for her from Dr. Breda.

  She hit Play on the message as she donned a fresh uniform. She’d presumably be back in her own quarters that night, which would help with some of the stress level.

  “Lieutenant Commander Chambers, I figured you’d want to see the summaries of the autopsies the locals have been carrying out,” Dr. Breda told her. “As I’m recording this, they’ve completed just over two hundred and seventy individual autopsies of affected individuals, and there are definitely some visible signs of what happened.

  “The reports they sent up are attached, but I wanted to give you my own take on it all as well,” she concluded. “The major thing to realize is that we are looking at something with a clear and significant effect on the brain stem and nervous system.

  “As with the bioscans, there is limited sign of any cause of the damage by the time of the autopsy,” Breda warned. “But the dead don’t heal. We can see patterns of damage and…integration, for lack of a better term.

  “Whatever affected these people was directly linking into their nervous system in a way that’s rarely seen with viruses or bacteria. That kind of intrusion is more usually linked to a larger-scale parasite—but it has been incorporated in artificial viruses.”

  Breda’s face was perfectly professional, but something in her voice and eyes told Roslyn she was worried by what she was seeing.

  “We are continuing to see the presence of silver carbonate as you flagged in the bloodwork of our own patient,” she told Roslyn. “Both in the dead and the living prisoners.

  “Most disturbing of all, though, is that several autopsies show clear signs of postmortem damage,” Breda said quietly. “I do not believe that either the locals or our Marines were intentionally shooting corpses, which means in some cases it at least appeared that an affected individual was still threatening the containment teams while already dead.

  “Given the pattern I’m seeing, it is possible that the nervous-system integration allowed an affected individual’s body to continue moving after blood flow and brain function had ceased,” she concluded. “I do not believe, given the degree to which even blood samples are clear of the infection, that situation would last very long…but it is a possibility in the short term.

  “That could be why Nix and SmartDarts have no effect,” Breda concluded. “Potentially, the brain is being disabled…and the virus is puppeting the victim.”

  The doctor paused.

  “Unfortunately, our own prisoner will not be able to answer questions,” she said quietly. “Despite our best efforts, her body is shutting down. We are doing everything we can, but keeping her unconscious and in a state of partial hibernation is the only thing buying her time.

  “If she can be saved, Commander, we will save her. But this kind of coma is hard to predict or counteract. If I had an intact sample of the damn virus, I would be able to identify just what it did to her body and be certain I could save her—and, in saving her, save the hundreds the locals have in the same state.

  “As it is…” Breda shook her head. “I know you’re doing something classified that I suspect is related to this mess. I hope it’s finding the bastards who did it. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.

  “There’s a comatose sixteen-year-old girl dying in quarantine in my medbay, and she’s just one example of this mess. Someone has to pay.”

  Roslyn grimaced as the recording stopped. There wasn’t much she could say to that—and she agreed completely with the doctor’s sentiment.

  22

  Ulla Lafrenz’s fingers had woven through every corner of Nueva Portugal.

  The data analysis that Roslyn had left running gave her the answers she needed, but she wasn’t sure how helpful they were. Triple Q had become one of the largest single builders in Nueva Portugal over thirty years—right up until the moment they hit penalty clauses on seventeen contracts within six months and collapsed.

  Roslyn had the authority, one way or another, to access the company files locked behind the seal of the courts. Not many people would have that authority, though, which made the bankruptcy and ensuing lawsuits an effective screen against acquiring data on Lafrenz’s activities.

  The problem was that she didn’t know when the lab had been constructed. Triple Q had collapsed about six months after the war ended—they had been far from the only major corporation in the former Republic worlds to come apart despite the Protectorate’s best efforts to arrange a smooth transition.

  On the other side, Finley and Lafrenz had taken control of the company shortly before the actual Secession. That left a period over four years long in which they’d controlled a major construction company and been able to do whatever they wanted.

  “I wish I knew when they finished the Prometheus research,” she said aloud. If the lab on Sorprendidas had been intended to carry out research expanding on the brain-interface work Project Prometheus had done, then logically, they wouldn’t have built the lab before that was done.

  But…they wouldn’t have moved into Nueva Portugal with enough money and influence to secure control of Triple Q until they’d been planning on building the lab, so she could assume that the lab would have been built as quickly as possible after they took control.

  She had no idea at what point Lafrenz would have decided to cover her tracks by destroying the company, but it would make sense that they’d have started building within, say, six months of her taking control of the company as CEO.

  Roslyn ran that into her data as a filter. That brought her down to a mere twenty-eight construction projects across the city. T
hree neighborhoods, seven apartment complexes, four parks, two hotels, a casino, and eleven office towers.

  She pulled up a holographic map of the city and marked those twenty-eight locations in red. Between the parks and the neighborhoods, there were several large swathes of Nueva Portugal lit up in red—plus the casino complex, in one of the exurb communities several dozen kilometers outside the city itself.

  None were in the quarantine zone. That area had more to do with where Angus Killough had set up his base than with anything the secret lab was doing.

  At least with only twenty-eight targets, they could actually start pointing Huntress’s sensors at the locations and see what they could pick up. The rogue Republic lab would be well concealed, but there were limits.

  “I see you couldn’t sleep very well,” Killough observed from the door.

  She looked up at him and snorted.

  “I had nightmares before this,” she said. “If anyone ever told you naval service was a joyride, well, they lied.”

  “I know a few people who would have figured being the Crown Princess’s protégée would be,” Killough said. “Though, as I understand it, you were captured with her.”

  Roslyn shivered.

  “Yes,” she confirmed shortly. “And that’s as much as I really want to talk about that.”

  Being imprisoned and stripped of her magic for weeks had been one of the more unpleasant aspects of her life—and she’d spent two years in the care of Tau Ceti’s “Juvenile Rehabilitation Program.”

  To give them credit, the JRP had tried to live up to the R part of their name, but she’d still lived in a detention center for those two years. It wasn’t something she talked to most people about, and it ranked well above being a prisoner of war in terms of experiences.

  “Fair,” Killough conceded, stepping around to study the map of Nueva Portugal. “What are we looking at here, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “Everything Triple Q started construction on in the six months after Lafrenz took control of the company,” Roslyn told him. “It gives us a first cut at potential locations, but doing detailed scans of each of the sites could take days.”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m prepared to spend those days,” she admitted. “But if you’ve thoughts on narrowing it down, I’m listening.”

  The MISS agent stood across the hologram from her, studying the image of the city in silence.

  “Power and victims,” he finally said. “We know there’s been people going missing. We can’t necessarily map the excess over what we should be seeing, but we can map roughly where missing people disappeared from.

  “Give me a few minutes.”

  “And power?” Roslyn asked.

  “Even if they have their own power-generation facilities, they’re better off with access to the grid to help bury their emissions if nothing else,” Killough said. “If you want to map up the power grid, I’ll map up the missing people. Let’s see if that narrows it down any, shall we?”

  “I’ve had enough experience with drugs and gamblers in my life that my first urge is to mistrust a casino,” Roslyn admitted fifteen minutes later as their three-layer map took shape.

  “It’s not a perfect match,” Killough said. “I don’t see a perfect match on here, but I agree it looks…fishy. Right on the main transmission line from the fusion plant at Nuevo Habanero and definitely the highest density of missing people outside the city.”

  “That could just be regular organized crime,” she pointed out. “Not to lean on stereotypes or anything, but casinos aren’t always the cleanest of organizations in any sense.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “They’re also just off the main transport routes off the peninsula: highway and monorail alike.”

  The monorail stop was probably part of why the casino was situated where it was. It was only walking distance from the casino if you were determined, but a few seconds’ search told her there was a free automated shuttle running a ten-minute loop between the station and the casino.

  “Enough traffic and power flow that no one is going to question anything in terms of supply trucks or movement,” Roslyn concluded. “If they’re even a little careful, they could conceal a truck dock somewhere underground and have everything they need.”

  “Guns, guards, supplies and power,” Killough agreed. “Enough to start with, yes?”

  “Enough to run deep scans of the area, at least,” Roslyn said. “We’re not landing Marines until we know more.”

  The MISS agent snorted.

  “May I suggest that there can be at least one step between those two?” he asked delicately. “You and I, for example, can be much less attention-drawing than a platoon of armored boots.”

  “Assuming the place is even open right now,” she pointed out. “Let’s get the sensor data first, and then start planning next steps. There might be nothing there.”

  Daalman had set her up with access to the ship’s sensors from the same office. It took Roslyn a minute or so to bring up the tactical operating system—and longer than she’d like to find the sensor controls in the new software.

  Having Killough watching over her shoulder made her self-conscious of the way the new system slowed her down.

  “Let’s start with the basics,” she said aloud. “Overhead.”

  The hologram of Nueva Portugal vanished, replaced with a new image of the casino. Vehicles and people were moving around the structure of the complex as the destroyer’s optical sensors trained on it.

  Huntress’s computers were already going through the data for anomalies as Roslyn looked at the image herself. It took a moment for the sensors and computers to catch up and build a three-dimensional model of everything they could see, but then they had a nearly perfect visual of the casino at that moment.

  “Matches up well to the plans, so far as I see,” Killough noted. “That’s suspicious on its own, to me. Nothing matches the plans.”

  Roslyn chuckled as the analysis sweep completed.

  “Oddities there and there,” she pointed, highlighting two sections. “Nothing clear that we can resolve without putting drones or boots on the ground, but there’s something off on the north side of the surface parking lot and the north side of the building.”

  Killough moved to examine that chunk of the hologram more closely, zooming in with a gesture.

  “Looks like a concealed entrance of some kind on the parking lot,” he noted. “Underground access for trucks. Not supposed to be there, though.” He looked at the section of park in question and shook his head.

  “I don’t know what the computer is seeing there,” he told Roslyn. “Could just be landscaping. Or a security bunker. Can’t be sure.”

  “Bringing up everything else we’ve got for passives,” Roslyn replied. “Thermals and spectrography should give us a bit more.”

  The complete lack of anything on thermal at the two points that had looked odd to the computers was probably a sign on its own. They looked perfectly normal in infrared.

  The spectrographic analysis, though…

  “Yup, definitely a concealed parking entrance,” Killough noted. “They’ve got a good seal on the door, but every time they open it, they mix up the material composition of the dirt around it.”

  “And the other anomaly?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “Might be nothing. Somehow, though, I think it’s the edge of an underground structure.”

  “Well, I guess the question is how good you think their scanners are,” Roslyn told him. “I can do a radar pulse and get a pretty decent map of the underground, but they’re going to know we did it if they have any kind of anti-radiation system.”

  “They can’t stop you doing it, but they can know you did it,” he agreed. “And we need to know. Damn.”

  “You’re the spy,” she said. “I’m inclined to scan them and let them panic, but it’s not subtle.”

  “Um.” Killough looked at the hologram again. “It’s not like we can go poke at
holes in the ground without drawing attention, I suppose,” he admitted. “And yet I still feel like a subtle ground mission might be the better idea.”

  “Angus…there’s a comatose sixteen-year-old girl dying in our medbay,” Roslyn told him quietly. “Hundreds in the same state on the surface. If we can find out what these people did, we might be able to save their victims.”

  The office was silent as Killough studied the hologram.

  “Are we still quarantined?” he asked. “If we find something, who do we send in?”

  “Good question,” Roslyn admitted. “I’ll talk to Dr. Breda, but my inclination would be that you and I go in first, with Mooren’s squad as backup aboard the shuttle. No need to break up a team that worked, after all.”

  23

  In the end, Roslyn and her team were back aboard the shuttle when the radar pulse was activated.

  “Drones are in position, sir,” Mage-Lieutenant Jordan told her. “We’ve got them at each cardinal point, ready to double-check the return from the radar ping. If there’s anything in the site, we’ll pick it up.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Roslyn replied. “Herbert, what’s our drop time?”

  The pilot chuckled.

  “We’re pretending we’re en route to the NP spaceport,” she replied. “We’ll detour from that as soon as we have an update. Depending on where we are on the path, anything from three minutes to thirty seconds.

  “I don’t think anyone is going to know we’re coming.”

  “That’s the hope,” Roslyn said. “This isn’t going to be subtle.”

  She and Killough were back in light body armor and hazmat helmets. The Marines were in full exosuits, carrying ugly-looking shotguns with under-barrel stunguns.

  The plan was to take their targets alive, but they weren’t going in without real weapons and armor this time.