Sword of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  46

  Something had gone wrong.

  What should have been a momentary blink out of reality, a short-distance teleport like Damien had done a thousand times before, stretched out into seconds of darkness.

  There was no pain, no discomfort—none of the issues of a blocked jump or teleporting a starship too close to a planet. Just…nothingness.

  He emerged from the jump and fell to the floor. Even that floor was wrong—and he realized that, somehow, his jump had been redirected.

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” a calm male voice declared.

  Damien dragged himself to his feet and realized he was inside a glass cell of some kind. The outside of the cell was covered in silver runes and hung in the middle of what looked like a mix of a control room and an office.

  A single man had clearly been in the process of crossing between the two halves of the room when Damien appeared, and was now studying him.

  “Rune Wright, but only three Runes of Power,” the stranger said calmly, studying Damien through the glass. “Crippled hands. Platinum icon, hidden under the vac-suit. That leaves only one potential guest.

  “Welcome, Damien Montgomery, to my space station. I am Dr. Samuel Finley.”

  The stranger was a tall older man. He looked like he normally shaved what was left of his hair, but enough had grown in to reveal that he was also naturally mostly bald. Something about him poked at Damien’s Sight.

  This wasn’t a conversation Damien wanted to have while locked inside a cage. He tried to teleport out…and failed.

  “Did you really expect that to work, Lord Montgomery?” Finley asked. “This entire facility was built to hold captive Jump Mages. The main bays are simply blocked against jumping, but a soft block over the rest of the facility always seemed handy.”

  The Mage smiled.

  “Of course, it’s not like it works on me,” he concluded. “You might even be able to power through it. It will be fascinating to watch you try. I’ve never had the privilege of meeting someone else with the Sight.

  “Rune Wrights, that’s what you call us, right?”

  Us.

  That was what Damien was feeling and seeing. The runes that wrapped around him weren’t the precise lines of the Martian Runic script, standardized and shaped to control the flow of magic. They were the flowing lines and twists of true runes, silver that shaped magic as it was, not as it was expected to be.

  “I didn’t expect to meet a Keeper here,” Damien said quietly. “At the heart of this horror show.”

  Finley snorted.

  “I’ve met a Keeper,” he conceded. “He called himself Partisan. Obviously not his real name, but I didn’t care. He had such fascinating concepts and information to share. I was halfway to the Promethean Drive before he helped out, but between us we perfected the system.”

  “A system of murder and torture?” Damien asked.

  “Some things are necessary to achieve grander designs,” Finley told him. “I continue to refine the system. In the long run, the Promethean Drive will jump further and more reliably than any mere trained human. If sacrifices must be made, then that has always been the price of progress.

  “Besides, what are those who are only half a true Mage really worth?”

  Power flared through Damien, fueled by his anger…and was drained away by the magic that surrounded him.

  “Surely, you’ve realized that much, Damien,” Finley continued. “You and I represent the true nature of a Mage, able to wield power and understand what we do. The rest? The mundanes? The half-bloods who can only do what they are taught by their betters?

  “They are expendable.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Damien said conversationally, forcing himself to calm the homicidal rage that ran through him. “I am going to tear whatever excuse for a Rune of Power you’ve carved into yourself from your flesh and use it to cut your head off. You will join the children you murdered.”

  “Those Mages are very much alive,” Finley replied. “Crippled, perhaps, but you should be the last to say that the loss of the usual limbs is equivalent to death. The Republic doesn’t fully utilize all of the capabilities inherent in the Promethean Interface. Using them as shipboard AI enhancers would be far too risky for them.”

  This time, the rage was enough. Damien couldn’t teleport out of the cell, but he could channel enough power to sever part of the runes. The glass shattered around him and he dove forward.

  Power channeled around him as he charged Finley—and then he and his power alike were thrown across the room.

  “I don’t have a Rune of Power,” Finley told him. “Partisan refused to provide me a sample of the design, and it’s a hard one to come up with from scratch.”

  He smiled coldly as Damien struggled to his feet.

  “I managed the reverse, though,” he said calmly. “Any Mage except me in this room is badly weakened—and your Runes of Power won’t function. I’ll examine them once you’re dead; then I should be able to augment myself.”

  The door to the room slid open, and Damien looked up to see Connor De Santis walk in. The ex-RID agent had abandoned his exosuit somewhere.

  “Well, Agent?” Finley asked without even looking at the RID agent.

  “The assault on the life support section is still going to be a problem,” De Santis said calmly. “My husband is among them, so I’d rather talk them down. Once the rest are dead, that should be easier.”

  “And the assault on the prison bays?”

  “Almost inside your target zone.”

  “You betrayed us,” Damien snapped. He tried to channel magic against De Santis this time, but it failed to come.

  Without his Runes, Damien was actually a weaker-than-average Mage, and the runes on the room were robbing him of much of even that power.

  “He can’t harm you, Agent,” Finley told the Republican, keeping his gaze on Damien with a disturbingly warm smile. “Everything that has been set into motion has led here. We would rather have stopped you in Nueva Bolivia, but there was no opportunity for De Santis to make contact there.”

  “There is one thing you set into motion that you forgot about,” De Santis said quietly.

  “What?” Finley demanded, turning to face the Agent.

  He never completed the turn before De Santis shot him. It was the classic perfect headshot of a combat Augment, designed to take down a Mage before they could act. Most likely, that wound would have killed him, but De Santis apparently wasn’t taking any chances.

  He shot Finley in the head again, leaving little but a stump. He then shot Finley three times in the chest, then crossed to Damien to offer his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I made contact before I saw the nightmare at that school station, and they told me to play along.

  “I don’t think they realized that my loyalty had a limit—and it was somewhere short of cutting brains out of teenagers!”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Damien demanded as De Santis helped him up.

  “I wasn’t sure there wasn’t anyone else who was leaking to the RID,” De Santis admitted. “Their defense of the life support has failed, and this is the control center that could dump the prison bays into space.

  “I couldn’t let him do that, Montgomery. I needed Finley to trust me enough to get me in here.”

  Damien leaned on the Augment and sighed.

  “Fair enough. Now, this room utterly sucks for me,” he admitted. “Can we wreck those controls and meet up with everybody else?

  “It’s time to call for our ride out of here.”

  47

  “Boarding forces, report in,” Damien ordered. The advantage of voice communication was that none of his subordinates could see him leaning against the wall in exhaustion. Whatever Finley had done to his office had left the Hand exhausted.

  “This is Force Four; we are now in control of the life support systems,” Maata reported. “We’ve taken multiple casualties and we can’t find D
e Santis, but we’re now in control of the air systems for this ring.”

  “De Santis is with me,” Damien replied. “Situation under control. What about the systems for the other rings?”

  “It looks like there is a central control, but cutting the individual sections of the station into local control is stupid easy from the actual systems,” Maata told him. “Even if we found the central system, the people in charge of each ring could take local control without any trouble.”

  “Damn. Everyone else?”

  “This is Niska. Forces Two and Three are in the prison bays, and we have full control,” the Augment told him. “We have a lot of very angry Mages who don’t have a clue what’s going on.” He paused. “Do I brief them, Montgomery?”

  “As much as necessary,” Damien ordered. “Those Mages are probably our best chance to take the rest of this damn station.”

  “This explanation is the least punishment for what I helped happen,” the old spy said softly. “I’ll talk to them.”

  “Force One?” Damien asked a moment. “LaMonte, what’s your status? I don’t suppose you have the evidence we need?”

  “Would the briefing slides Finley used to explain this mess to the Lord Protector count?” LaMonte replied. “Because apparently, the director was a data packrat. Everything is in here…and surprisingly well organized, once I convinced the encryption and security protocols to fuck off and die.”

  “You have proof?” he demanded. “Like…sourced, easily transmittable proof?”

  “Well, I don’t have a recording of Finley giving the damn lecture to George Solace, no,” she said. “All I’ve got are his slides, but those have pictures and attached video, and the bit I watched made me very sick.”

  “It’ll have to do,” Damien replied. “Pull everything. See what you can get packaged up into a neat box we can hand the Republic and watch explode. First, however, I need to know how to take full control of this station and the defense network.”

  “Minerva Control is in the central zero-gravity hub,” LaMonte told him. “I’ll pull the exact coordinates.” She paused. “Damien, it’s the control center for a hundred defensive satellites. It’s going to be defended. Do we have the numbers to hold this ring and assault the command center?”

  “Even if I were to call Alexander right now, it’ll be six hours before they get here. We’ll secure the command center and then call for backup. Get me the exact coordinates.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” LaMonte demanded.

  “Everybody, I need five exosuited troopers from each team headed to my location right now,” Damien ordered. “I’m going to take those coordinates, Captain LaMonte, and teleport a strike team right into the command center.

  “Their defenses won’t matter much if we’re inside them.”

  First, though, he needed to go back into Finley’s hellhole and make sure that the cell that had trapped his last teleport was completely disabled. It was more than big enough for one person.

  It wouldn’t hold twenty.

  Minerva Station Control was well aware that their station was under attack. Every security measure was engaged. Armored bulkheads had sealed every entrance to the command center. Augments and Republic Space Assault Troopers had dug in around every approach.

  Unlike many places in the Republic, the command center even had shields against teleportation. Unfortunately for them, Damien was the First Hand of Mars. He tested the defenses from where his troops had gathered, judging how much power he was going to need.

  He was tired, but he was far from tapped out.

  “Most of the defenses are outside the actual command center,” he said aloud, “but most of the crew are armed and there are Augment security troops in there.”

  “We’ll deal with them,” O’Malley promised, the ex-LMID Augment joining Romanov to lead Damien’s newly assembled strike force. “Captain Romanov?”

  Romanov’s suit turned to study the Augment.

  “Agent.”

  “We’ve got this, right?” she asked.

  “We do,” he confirmed.

  “Then it’s down to you, Lord Montgomery.”

  Damien smiled thinly.

  “Then gather closer. They tried to seal it, but that only means I need you within touching distance.”

  “Don’t you need to actually touch us?” Romanov asked.

  “I’ve been practicing,” Damien said. “Sadly, I don’t think this is going to be any pleasanter for you lot.”

  He stepped.

  Minerva Station Control was thankfully large enough for twenty exosuited soldiers to fit in it with room to spare. It consisted of several concentric rings; each one half a meter lower than the one outside it. Even the smallest ring was wide enough for a dozen men, and the entire room was over twenty meters across.

  Jump-sickness disabled Damien’s assault force for a few moments—but it didn’t disable him. Low-energy lightning sent a dozen crew sprawling back from their consoles, sparking like they’d been shot with taser darts.

  A shield protected his people from the gunfire that opened before they could react, but none of the defenders had expected an assault force inside the control center. Damien’s people were throwing up in their suits, but they didn’t react that much later than the guards who hadn’t been expecting them.

  “Throw down your weapons and surrender!” Damien shouted; magic augmented his voice over the gunfire. “Anyone who surrenders will not be hurt!”

  The station control crew clearly weren’t prepared to die for the Republic today. Most of them hit the ground, sidearms skittering away on the floor.

  The Augment security was more determined, but after about ten seconds of fierce gunfire, the handful of survivors threw down their weapons as well.

  “Romanov, see to the injured,” Damien ordered. “O’Malley, can you get me control?”

  “On it,” she replied. “Sylens, get the Hand coms. I believe you have a call to place?”

  One of the crew tried to grab a penetrator rifle the Augment security had dropped. Damien’s magic caught her in mid-slide across the floor and yanked her over to him, holding her in the air with a firm-but-not-dangerous grip around her throat.

  “Miss, this station has murdered several thousand Mages and installed their brains in spaceships,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “My usual rules of engagement call for me to take prisoners wherever possible, but I am very angry right now. Don’t push me, all right?”

  Calm or not, his tone seemed to get the message across. He could see the difference in the body language of his prisoners as they went from looking for ways to turn the situation around to looking for ways to stay alive.

  He wasn’t going to kill them, not outside of open combat. He would have hated himself for it later, and he liked being able to shave with a mirror.

  “Coms console is over here,” the tech O’Malley had ordered to find the coms told him. The man’s exosuit gauntlets had retracted, allowing him to work on the computer with free hands.

  “It was already logged in; I’ve broken what security was left. We now control this station’s coms.”

  He stood back and made an inviting gesture.

  “It’s waiting for you, Montgomery.”

  With a small smile, Damien let the woman he was holding in the air slide to the ground.

  He had work to do.

  “You’re going to need to help me,” he muttered to Sylens as he joined the tech. “I doubt this is set up for someone with no usable hands.”

  “I can set up the call,” the tech agreed instantly. “We’re using a group of relays in a polar orbit of Trajan. They’re not always in the same place, but there’s always one on the edge of the planet, so we can tag it.

  “Who are we transmitting to?”

  “Second Fleet,” Damien replied. “Doesn’t really need to be more specific than that.”

  Sylens poked at the console, then gestured toward a camera as it rotated to face Da
mien.

  “You’re live whenever you want. They’re almost a light-minute away, though, so it’s not going to be a live conversation.”

  Damien nodded and eyed the camera.

  “Admiral Alexander, we have now secured control of the core facility of the Daedalus Complex and, most importantly, of its defensive network.

  “I have an unknown but large number of Mage prisoners in the station that we are in the process of liberating. While we should be able to break them all free before you can get here, I wouldn’t object to a few Marines—or a few thousand, if you’ve got them.

  “Please refrain from firing on the Daedalus Complex, as its existence alone is proof of the Republic’s crimes. Beyond that…” He shook his head. “I leave the fate of the rest of Centurion’s infrastructure to you, Admiral Alexander. That’s your area of expertise.

  “My math says I won’t see you for at least six hours, but my admittedly uneducated assessment of the situation is that you won’t have many problems getting here.

  “I look forward to speaking in person again. Montgomery out.”

  48

  The new Samurai heavy-bombardment missiles were unlike anything Roslyn had ever seen before. The cardinal forts had barely even begun launching their gunships, secure in the knowledge that even Second Fleet’s maximum-acceleration charge would take them almost two hours to reach missile range, when the handful of ships in the fleet with the new missiles opened fire.

  Second Fleet had been accelerating for over an hour and a half before they launched, but the Samurai missiles still launched well before the Republic was expecting them to fire. When Mjolnir and her friends had ambushed the task force, they’d intentionally stepped down their missile accelerations to match the older missiles’ ability.

  The new range was a shock—they launched just over five minutes before the Republic would be in range…and the Samurai I only had a five-minute flight time.

  There were only two hundred and seventy of the heavy-missile launchers in the fleet, but the Republic had no data on their performance—and few of their defenses could really handle missiles coming in at ninety thousand kilometers a second.