Hand of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I was not informed of this when I booked my window,” Damien told her, doing his best to imitate the coldly arrogant tones and posture of a senior corporate executive. “My information is time-sensitive and must be transmitted to my head office tonight. I am not prepared to have it recorded for the paranoia of a backwater governor who can’t deal with some raggedy-assed terrorists.”

  “You are welcome to reschedule your window,” the coordinator told him. “I don’t know when the restrictions on recordings will be lifted, though.”

  Despite the prissy, bored, tone of her voice as she rejected his request, she stretched out her hand to him, palm open in a universal gesture.

  With a sigh, Damien dropped a credit chip – one of several anonymized chips he’d carried to Ardennes in various denominations – into her hand. He’d expected to have to bribe his way in, and the amount on the chip was likely several months salary for the woman.

  She glanced at it, checking the number on her PC, then tapped a command on the computer.

  “Recorders are off,” she told him in the same prissy, bored tone. “No-one is scheduled to be in until morning. Let Mage Trudeau know you’re done when you leave.”

  Damien waited patiently while the woman left, looking around to try to identify the recorders she’d disabled. Thanks to a briefing from the Protectorate Secret Service, intended for exactly this circumstance, he quickly identified all twelve of the microphones. With a tiny burst of magic, he burned them all out.

  Since they were turned off, it would take a while for anyone to notice – and tonight, he needed to be sure.

  With a deep breath he stepped forward to the plinth and removed his elbow-length gloves. Laying his bare hands on the plinth, he channeled energy through the runes in his skin and into the massive assemblage of runes and power around him.

  The Array didn’t know where to send the energy, but he did. He’d checked the calculations again on the helicopter flight and knew exactly where to send it. The catchment area of a Runic Transceiver Array wasn’t much smaller than the planet it was built on, but from thirty-some light years away even that was a tiny target.

  He hit it perfectly.

  “This is an Alpha One Priority Communication,” he said aloud, the magic whisking his words across the light years. “Authentication Lima Victor Romeo Seven Seven Sierra Six Five Romeo Alpha Lima. I repeat, this is an Alpha One Priority Communication.”

  He took a breath.

  “I need to speak to Desmond Alexander immediately.”

  The tiny room was silent for a moment, and then a sleepy voice suddenly echoed into it.

  “This is Mars RTA Control, we are receiving you,” the Mage on the other end told him. “It’s past midnight here, we’re not waking the Mage-King up. We’ll record your message and have it added to his morning queue.”

  “What part of Alpha One Priority did you not get?” Damien demanded. “Confirm the authentication.”

  “We authenticated the code, we’ll have it added to his priority queue. Please transmit for recording.”

  Damien paused, taking a deep breath as he considered the relatively quiet life of the bureaucratic Mage on the other end, and then ran out of patience.

  “This is Envoy Damien Montgomery, and you have confirmed this is an authenticated Alpha One request,” he said harshly. “Every second this channel is open risks being bought with blood. Unless that is a bill you wish me to levy on you when I return, I suggest you wake Desmond Alexander the fuck up.”

  A long moment of silence followed.

  “My apologies, Envoy,” the voice, no longer sleepy, finally answered. “I will contact the King’s staff immediately, please hold the channel.”

  #

  With the Freedom Wing fighters scattered throughout the Bastille, opening cells and rescuing their friends, the command center rapidly got very quiet around Amiri. Two of the rebels had stayed to keep an eye on their Scorpion prisoners, but for some reason no-one in the room seemed inclined to strike up a conversation.

  The controls for the various screens and systems of the fortress prison were hardly intuitive, but she’d at least managed to access the facility's radar and automatic warbook and throw up the approaching air transports on a large screen.

  The Bastille’s new ‘defenders’ had gone to full stealth mode on the Phantom V’s, leaving plain transport helicopters the only aircraft on the scanners. Twenty of the big aircraft had lifted off from Nouveaux Versailles Central District and headed her way.

  That meant roughly four hundred soldiers. While that was a lot more people than she had in the fortress, she trusted Brute to even the odds.

  She was starting to wonder where the Scorpions’ escorts were when the screen suddenly flashed up new threat warnings. High-powered radar sweeps hammered across the sky as six jet fighters came dropping in from high altitude at Mach Two.

  In theory, the radar sweeps from the jet fighters’ high-powered arrays should have picked up even stealthed craft. In practice, the Phantom Vs were almost forty years newer than the fighters available to the Ardennes Special Security Service.

  Amiri wasn’t sure what the detection threshold for the Phantoms was, but they weren’t showing up on the Bastille’s huge radar dishes. There was no way the jet fighters saw anything.

  That is, until Brute’s team opened fire. Each of the five gunships fired a pair of anti-radiation missiles, blasting high into the air towards the jet fighters.

  The Scorpion aircraft went into evasive maneuvers – but kept their radars on, trying desperately to locate the Freedom Wing helicopters. It was exactly the wrong thing to do, as the ARMs homed in on the radar emissions with deadly precision.

  Sixty seconds after the jet fighters fired up their radar, they were descending fireballs, leaving the transport helicopters wide open to Brute’s squadron.

  The smart pilots realized it. The neat formation of transports came apart into swirling chaos – some pilots diving for the ground, others turning to run.

  Six of the transport helicopters kept grimly on. A hundred and twenty Scorpions died moments later as heat-seeking missiles flashed through the air, scattering the aircraft and their passengers across the sky.

  It took Amiri a moment to understand what she was seeing on the radar after that. Then she pulled up the view from a camera on top of the fortress.

  White specks were beginning to fill the sky under the transports. Troops, crew and pilots recognized the futility of trying to take on the deadly aircraft Legatus had given the rebels and bailed out.

  Her sensors didn’t have enough resolution to say how many people escaped. From how long it took Brute’s team to destroy the remaining helicopters, it looked like he gave those bailing out the time to do so; it was likely more of the troops escaped than she thought.

  Not one of the helicopters survived to land or flee.

  #

  Mage-Commodore Adrianna Cor watched the destruction of the assault force in a state of not quite shock. The jet fighters had taken the exactly correct approach to knowing the enemy had stealth craft, and all it had done was seal their fates.

  That was military technology – real military, not Ardennes’ glorified backwater militia. Martian Marines could duplicate the stunt the rebels had just pulled, but a ragtag bunch of revolutionaries shouldn’t have that tech.

  “Any ID on those aircraft?” she demanded of her CIC staff.

  “Nothing yet,” the Mage-Commander running the shift reported. “But from the quality of the stealth tech… they’re Core World-built. Probably either ours or Legatan.”

  “Could we detect them?”

  “Not from space,” the officer admitted. “But our assault shuttles should be able to from atmosphere.”

  Cor considered for a moment, glancing at the communications station. Even regardless of their unofficial agreements, this was a situation where the Governor could request the Navy’s aid. She wouldn’t normally offer it, but…

  “Have Major
Morales prepare three assault shuttles for a combat landing,” she instructed. “Get me an ETA as soon as you can.” She couldn’t trust the Marines for everything, even if Corral and the other officers were mostly on side. He would know to send the… less reliable units for this. Those losses would be less inconvenient than others.

  She stood and turned back to the communications station. “Please contact Mage-Governor Vaughn and direct the channel to my office. I’ll be there by the time you have the channel up.”

  The young officer there barely had time to acknowledge her order before she swept out of the Simulacrum Chamber that acted as Unchained Glory’s bridge. Her office was barely ten meters down the corridor, and she had time to reach her desk and pour herself a glass of wine before the channel with Vaughn opened up.

  “What do you want, Adrianna?” the Governor demanded. He looked frazzled – the chaos he’d created was starting to wear on him. “We have a bit of a situation down here.”

  “I’m aware of the situation at the Bastille,” she told him. “I wanted to inform you that under Article Seventeen of the Protectorate Charter, we stand ready to assist in any way we can.”

  Vaughn winced. Article Seventeen covered situations of outside interference – but it also covered ‘complete failure to maintain law and order by local forces’. Tucked away in the sub-clauses of Seventeen was the authority of a Hand to relieve a Governor – but also the clauses obligating the Navy to assist when rebels with offworld tech attacked a prison.

  “Can you destroy the prison?” he finally asked. “I’m not going to miss a bunch of murderers and rebels.”

  Cor checked the figures on the Bastilles on her side screen and shook her head.

  “We could destroy the Bastille with a kinetic bombardment,” she told him. “However, you built them well. They’re hardened against that kind of attack – the sustained sequence necessary to guarantee its destruction would cause major collateral damage to Nouveau Versailles itself.”

  “That is… not acceptable,” he agreed after a moment. “What can you do?”

  “My staff assures me that whatever stealth craft the rebels are in possession of will not be sufficient to defeat the sensors on our Marine assault shuttles,” she told him calmly. “I can have three platoons of exosuited Marines and their assault shuttles on their way shortly. I think we can agree that a hundred and twenty exosuits should be able to neutralize our terrorists.”

  Vaughn looked like a drowning man thrown a rope.

  “I agree completely,” he told her. “I… always appreciate the willingness of the Royal Martian Navy to assist with our little problems.”

  “We’ll see if we can make this one go away,” she replied with a smile.

  And unlike some other problems she’d dealt with for Vaughn, this one wouldn’t be haunting her dreams.

  #

  Chapter 30

  “Damien. You’re alive.”

  He didn’t have to ask who was speaking. After three years at Olympus Mons, Damien could recognize the voice of Desmond Michael Alexander the Third, Mage-King of Mars, in almost any circumstance.

  Hearing it now, in the polished ebony heart of Ardennes’ Runic Transceiver Array, caused him to sag in relief.

  “My liege," he greeted Alexander, his voice thrown across the light years by magic. “I am. I don’t know what you have been told about what happened here?”

  “Vaughn reported a rebel attack and sabotage,” Desmond said slowly, his voice heavy with emotion of some kind. “He told us that Alaura and all of her people were dead and the Tides of Justice destroyed by Freedom Wing saboteurs and attacks.”

  “He lied.”

  The two words landed in the hemispherical room like tombstones, and silence was his only answer for several moments.

  “I’d guessed,” Alexander said finally. “I am preparing a task force, but none of my Hands are available yet. What happened?”

  “He used a secret team inside his Special Security Service to assemble and equip a ‘rebel’ faction that he controlled,” Damien told his King quietly. “I believe he killed Alaura himself, but his tame rebels killed the rest of the team – and his own people shot down my shuttle, killing everyone aboard but myself.

  “I’m sorry, my liege, but I am the only one left.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Alexander replied. There was a long pause. “There is something else,” he continued. “Vaughn’s betrayal was expected. Sabotage would have been insufficient to destroy the Tides. Your Warrant alone should have sufficed for the local naval squadron to enact his removal.”

  “Mage-Commodore Cor has broken your Protectorate and betrayed Mars,” Damien said quietly. “The Tides of Justice was destroyed by close-range fire from ships we thought were her sisters.”

  “Damn.”

  “I have made contact with the rebellion,” Damien told his King. “They are helping me get access to the Transceiver Array, and I have helped them short-circuit some of Vaughn’s excesses. Their resources are impressive; co-opting them has proven valuable.”

  “I trust the judgment of the man on the scene, Damien,” Alexander said softly. “You bear my Warrant, you speak in my Voice – any promises you made in my name will be honored. You know this.”

  “I do,” Damien acknowledged, swallowing hard.

  “Vaughn must be removed,” the Mage-King continued. “Too much blood has already been shed. What do you need?”

  “Warships,” Damien answered. “With Cor’s betrayal, we need sufficient space-borne firepower to neutralize her squadron and the Ardennes Self Defense Force. I suspect every warship in the Ardennes system will obey either Vaughn or Cor, and will fight to defend them.”

  “I will arrange it,” Alexander said flatly. “There should be sufficient ships in Tau Ceti, even if we have to borrow from the system fleet. Three days, Damien, and you will have your warships. Their commander will place herself at your command – do what you must.”

  “My command?” Damien asked. “I… cannot command warships.” An Envoy did not hold what ancient Rome had called imperium – the right to command military force. A Hand did.

  “Did Alaura give you the Hand?” the Mage-King of Mars asked bluntly.

  The young Mage, so many light years away, swallowed hard and nodded. Realizing after a moment that his King could not see him, he spoke aloud.

  “Yes.”

  “You stand on a world I cannot touch,” Alexander told him. “You could have – you perhaps should have run. Have hidden, until a Hand arrived to fix the problem.”

  “Cor’s betrayal would have destroyed them,” Damien said. “It would have… betrayed the Protectorate.”

  “You stand on a world I cannot touch,” the Mage-King repeated. “You bear my Hand, you speak with my Voice, you fight my battle – and you honor and understand my Protectorate.

  “Damien Montgomery, regardless of the paperwork, regardless of announcements and ceremonies and grand speeches, you have done what I would have asked a Hand to do. So yes, the Naval forces sent to Ardennes will place themselves under your command.

  “And yes, it will fall to you to remove Mage-Governor Vaughn. He will become desperate. The people of Ardennes will need a protector. It will fall to you.

  “I need not send a Hand to Ardennes, for I already have one there.

  “You are my Hand, Damien Montgomery,” Desmond Michael Alexander said flatly. “You have bought that with blood and honor. A Hand falls. Another rises.

  “The people of Ardennes, whether they know it or not, look to Mars for salvation. I look to you to answer them.”

  Damien swallowed hard again, but found his spine straightening at his King’s words. Even though Alexander could not see him, he removed the Hand from his pocket and hung it around his neck, letting the golden symbol slip beneath his shirt and lie, cold, against his skin.

  “I understand,” he said slowly. “I will not fail them.”

  #

  Chapter 31

 
This time when the contacts appeared on the Bastille’s sensors, it took Amiri a moment to work out what was going on. She was watching for contacts inbound from Nouveau Versailles or approaching from the Army bases.

  She hadn’t been expecting anyone to drop from orbit.

  The computers warned her there were contacts, but proved recalcitrant when it came to giving her more information. There weren’t many things that could disguise themselves while dropping through atmosphere, but she knew of at least one.

  Unfortunately for the Royal Martian Marine Corps, the Bastille had been equipped with extremely powerful radar arrays and the inevitable turbulence of entering atmosphere told her where to look. A few keystrokes aligned the big dishes and lit up the dropping assault shuttles with radio waves, exposing them amidst the turbulence of their descent.

  Three modern RMMC assault shuttles. Depending on gear, that could be anywhere from sixty to a hundred and eighty Marines – loyal soldiers of the Protectorate, following orders from the rogue Mage-Commodore.

  That… was a problem.

  “Brute, this is Amiri,” she said into the communicator. “We’ve got friends dropping from out of the sky. I think we’re going to have to change plans.”

  “Saw the pulse,” the pilot said calmly. The radar pulse would have highlighted the spacecraft to everyone for dozens of kilometers around. “We’ve got them outnumbered two to one.”

  “And each of those shuttles out-masses your entire squadron,” Amiri said flatly. “They’re bigger, they’re better armed, and they have the altitude advantage. You can’t fight them, Brute, and we always knew it was a chance we’d have to break out on the ground.

  “Break off and get out of here,” she ordered. “Meet us at the rendezvous point.”

  Silence.

  “Fine,” the rebel pilot told her. “You’d better have a plan,” he continued.

  “Go,” she replied. She had at least two, but they were rapidly running out of time.