Hand of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  Damien threw up his hands, the holographic screen from his PC fading out in the air.

  “And what do you want me to do?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But what I do know? These people need a Hand. They need someone to show them a way. Otherwise, the Marines are going to arrive, and tens of thousands will die because they’ll have no choice but to bombard the city’s defenses.

  “That’s the kind of mess from which UnArcana worlds are born,” she reminded him. “And they look at you, and they see a kid playing at war. I know your past. I know the Mage-King gave you that Hand for a reason. But they don’t even know you’re a Hand, and they can’t see past your appearance.

  “Telling them you’re a Hand won’t help – you need to prove it. You need to make them believe you can save them.”

  “And what if I can’t?” Damien whispered, even as her words tugged at something in his mind.

  “If you can’t, no-one else will,” his bodyguard told him.

  He swallowed hard. She was right. That thought was what terrified him and had him hiding in his room. He’d seen what happened when Mars failed to intervene properly – he’d almost died on Chrysanthemum, a world where a lack of Protectorate intervention had led to the locals getting Legatan help and becoming an UnArcana world.

  Legatan help. Like helicopter gunships, advanced weapons, veteran trainers – even Augment special forces. The kind of men and women who could, say, take down a security patrol without blinking.

  “Son of a bitch,” he swore aloud as the pieces clicked into place. A moment later, he was on his feet. “Where’s that battle laser of yours, Julia?”

  “In my room,” she replied, clearly confused.

  “Grab it,” he ordered. “I may not have a plan yet, but if nothing else, I just realized there’s an extra player in this twisted game – and I want to make sure whose side they’re on.”

  #

  Alissa Leclair had been living permanently at the hidden airbase for a while, and her quarters were near the command center – well away from where the various guests had been quartered.

  “Would you care to explain why I’m toting a squad support weapon through the middle of a friendly base?” Amiri demanded as Damien checked to make sure the corridors were clear around them.

  “Leclair is a Legatan Augment,” he explained simply. “And almost certainly a Legatan spy. If she so much as twitches, shoot her and keep shooting until she stops moving.” He stepped up to the door, grinding any fear or nervousness under foot.

  “Is it likely to get that bad?” his bodyguard asked, subtly shifting her stance as she realized he was deadly serious.

  “I hope not,” he admitted, and knocked on the Legatan woman’s door.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Montgomery,” he told her. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  The door slid open and Damien stepped through. Amiri followed him through a moment later, and the door slid shut behind them as Leclair turned to face them.

  “What the fuck?” she demanded as she found herself staring down the crystalline emitter of Amiri’s battle laser.

  “Sit down, Miss Leclair,” Damien ordered flatly. “Like I said, we need to talk, and I need your complete honesty.”

  “So you have your minion point a heavy weapon at me?”

  “If I’m wrong, I will apologize, but I have the suspicion not much less would suffice if you decided to be a threat,” he told her calmly. “You see, your contacts slipped in your scuffle last night. I was too distracted for it to really hit home.”

  The Legatan woman stared at him like he was crazy.

  “What are you on about?”

  “I take it you weren’t briefed on my history,” Damien told her conversationally. So far, there was still a chance he was off-base, but he doubted it. “Or you’d have known I once spent a month transporting an entire platoon of Legatan Augment commandos.”

  She froze. It wasn’t even a subtle thing. Every conscious and unconscious movement completely shut down as her body slipped into an inhuman trance. Her eyes flicked to the battle laser, assessing.

  “I almost didn’t realize what I’d seen,” he continued, certain now. “After all, who has square pupils? Only combat Augments. I’m surprised the Directorate didn’t send a more… subtle agent.”

  The Legatus Military Intelligence Directorate officially didn’t exist. Certainly, the Mage-King’s government had never acknowledged its existence – but everyone knew it was the dirty tricks branch of the Legatan government. A branch that, at least occasionally, helped rebellions turn planets into UnArcana worlds.

  “Even if I am an Augment,” Leclair said slowly, “I’m still a private citizen, here on my own business. People off Legatus like cyborgs little enough that it’s wise to keep secrets.”

  “I could almost buy that, Miss Leclair,” Damien told her. “Except… modern stealth gunships? A pilot completely trained in the use of those aircraft? An entire arsenal of modern small arms and squad support weapons?” He gestured to the laser in Amiri’s hands. “No. This is an LMID operation. I saw them on Chrysanthemum, and I can see the pattern. So you have a choice. You can tell me the truth, and we can perhaps come to a compromise – or I can tell Lori her entire rebellion has been funded and orchestrated by Legatus to betray the Protectorate.”

  The Augment, still in that inhumanly frozen combat mode, glanced at the battle laser, then at Damien’s ungloved hands where the silver inlay was fully visible.

  He could see the moment she made up her mind, her body slipping out of the hyper-active combat mode piece by piece, slowly returning to a normal human tone.

  “Fuck,” she said softly. “This whole op has been a disaster from the beginning,” she told them, slowly leaning back and taking a seat on her bed. “You may as well take a seat. Keep the gun on me if you want, Amiri, but let’s all be honest – I’m not one of the Mage-hunters, so I don’t stand much of a chance against Montgomery here.”

  Damien pulled up a chair, but Amiri remained standing, the laser’s emitter still trained on Leclair.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be an infiltrator,” Leclair told them. “You’re right – LMID doesn’t send combat Augments on infiltration missions. By and large, we don’t even send Augments on them, but there are a few with more expensive optics used for quiet ops.

  “It was supposed to be a full-disclosure armed support mission,” she continued. “The Wing was offered a deal – in exchange for putting UnArcana status to a vote in the new, properly elected, legislature, we’d provide aircraft, armor, and infantry equipment, plus trainers for all that, to wage their revolution. We were offering a lot for what we figured wasn’t a big concession.

  “Armstrong and her people turned us down flat. We had to scramble at the last minute – in the end, we started smuggling the gear we’d planned to give them into the shipments they were paying for. More than a few smugglers and arms dealers got paid twice, but we got the gear we wanted into their hands here.

  “I and a few others were already en route, so we were tasked with subtler infiltration,” she explained. “I was supposed to command the training team, but I was the only one who actually managed to get into the Wing – and the trust I earned was worth too much to risk it by bringing in the rest of my team.

  “So yeah,” she concluded, “I’m LMID. But honestly? We’re here because Mars wasn’t. At this point, we’re not even getting anything out of it – but we’d planned the op and Vice-Director Rickets figured removing Vaughn was worth the money and equipment we already had in place all on its own. A moment of weakness on his part, I suppose.”

  “I can imagine that de-stabilizing the Protectorate and distracting Martian resources for years were also on his mind,” Damien said dryly. “So what happens if I tell Armstrong and the rest this?”

  She stiffened again, though this looked to be a more… human reaction than her earlier lapse into combat
mode.

  “Nothing of much fun for anyone,” she admitted. “They need me to lead the gunship squadrons, but wouldn’t trust me if they knew the truth. Armstrong might even do something… unwise.”

  “Like kill the spy?” Amiri asked from the door.

  “Like that,” Leclair agreed, glancing over to the Secret Service Agent and the bulky laser.

  “I think we can probably avoid that,” Damien allowed. “On two conditions.”

  Leclair glared at him, but he let it wash over him. He’d been glared at before – and by people more likely to kill him.

  “You support me in getting the Wing to act,” he told her. “And when the dust settles, and Vaughn is gone, you disappear before I have to start investigating all of the Legatan gear that got mixed up in this. You understand me, Miss Leclair?”

  “I’m not your enemy, Montgomery,” she pointed out.

  “You were here on a mission to de-stabilize a Protectorate world and send it careening into open civil war,” Damien replied flatly. “Barring Vaughn’s insanity, we would never have been on the same side. Work with me, and I’ll forget I saw you. Oppose me…”

  “I get it,” Leclair said aloud. “I’ll do it,” she agreed. “Regardless of our reasons and our causes, today we are on the same side. I, for one, want to see that son of a bitch fall. Nobody should nuke a city and walk away.”

  “On that, Miss Leclair, we are in complete agreement,” Damien told her.

  #

  “Are you ready?”

  Amiri’s question interrupted Damien’s pacing. For the first time ever, he wore the golden Hand of his new office outside of his clothes, but they hadn’t yet left his quarters. Armstrong had re-convened the cell leaders ten minutes before, but he doubted they were getting any further.

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment’s thought, glancing over at his bodyguard. “You?”

  “All I’ve got to do is stand there and look pretty,” she told him sweetly. “But yeah, let’s go.”

  She led the way in front of him, clearing the corridors from his room to the hidden airbase’s single conference room. What he was aiming for now was as much theater as psychology, but every piece of momentum he could leverage, he would use – and complete surprise about the Hand was the biggest piece he had.

  Two Freedom Wing fighters, in street clothes under medium body armor and carrying assault rifles, barred the doors to the conference room. They both looked uncomfortable as Damien and Amiri approached, and one of them clearly saw Damien’s Hand, involuntarily taking a step back.

  “Let us in,” Damien ordered.

  “They’re not to be interrupted,” the less aware guard told him. “Armstrong was very clear.”

  Damien turned to the guard and tapped the Hand. The rebel glanced down and his faced whitened.

  “Regardless of whether you let me through or not, I’m going in,” Damien said quietly. “I’d rather not hurt anyone, though.”

  He wasn’t sure which guard hit the door panel, but both were out of his way with commendable alacrity. Nodding calmly to the guards, Damien Montgomery, Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, took a deep breath – and entered the room.

  Any conversation on the conference call cut off as he and Amiri barged into the room, allowing the door to close behind them as Armstrong and the others looked up in shock.

  “Have you come to a decision yet?” he asked mildly.

  “We have not,” Lori told him, eyeing him askance. “I told you we would let you know when we did.”

  “And the timeline has now become ridiculous,” he told her bluntly. With a subdued flourish, he tossed the Hand onto the table. Lori stared at it like it was a venomous snake, about to lash out and bite her. “What’s the obstacle?”

  “You’re not an Envoy,” Lori whispered. “You’re a god-damned Hand.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed aloud so that everyone on the conference call knew exactly what he’d just done. “And I repeat myself, Alpha, what’s the obstacle? What does the Freedom Wing require?”

  He glanced around those in the room – Leclair, Pelletier, Armstrong and the others.

  “Do you need pardons for crimes committed to date?” he asked. “Then done. Immunity from prosecution for actions to overthrow Vaughn? Done. Access to government systems? Done. I am a Hand, but I am not Legion. I need your help – what price do you demand?”

  “It is… not a matter of price, monsieur,” November’s accented voice replied.

  “Isn’t it?” he asked. “You are here because you swore to overthrow Vaughn. You took up the cause of your people’s liberty. Now, faced with the fulfillment of that oath, you waver. Faced with sacrifice in the name of your cause, you quibble.

  “I offer you victory in the cause you fight for,” he continued. “Fight by my side, and you will be remembered as heroes. Stand aside, and you will be remember as fools who betrayed your oaths and let Ardennes burn.”

  He met Armstrong’s eyes levelly and saw the answer in them. He continued regardless.

  “If you will turn me away, then turn me away,” he told them. “I will storm Versailles myself. Fight by my side or get out of the way – honor your oaths or betray them. Choose. We are running out of time.”

  The conference room was silent for a long moment, and then Leclair laughed.

  “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’,” she quoted. “You’d really do it, wouldn’t you? Try and storm the city with just Amiri and your magic?”

  “If I must,” Damien replied.

  “‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’,” Pelletier’s voice rumbled into the room. “’He restores my soul, he leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake’. Our dear Sierra picked an appropriate Psalm,” he told his fellows. “I believe the path of righteousness has been laid before us. We would betray our cause and the path on which we have laid our feet, were we to turn aside now.”

  The room was silent for a long moment.

  “Il est un batard, mais il est notre batard,” November finally said into the silence. “You’re Martian, Hand, and I don’t trust you,” she told Damien. “But you’re right. This is our cause, and you’re our only hope.”

  A moment of silence passed, and Armstrong met Damien’s gaze levelly.

  “I think you have our answer, My Lord Hand,” she told him. “Even if perhaps we needed more convincing than we should, we are with you.”

  “Then I come back to my first question, with a different emphasis,” he replied. “What do you need? If we are to neutralize Vaughn, what do we need that we don’t yet have?”

  The table was silent again, but it was a far more positive silence – a thoughtful silence.

  “Two things, I think,” Pelletier finally said aloud. “Intelligence is necessary – we need to know where Vaughn is hiding.”

  “I’m guessing the Command Center,” Damien replied. “From what data I have, the planetary Emergency Command Center and the Nouveaux Versailles Defense Command and based in the same underground facility – from there, Vaughn can control the planet. We’ll need to seize it either way, and it’s the most likely location for the Governor.”

  “We’ve already shown we can get the Phantoms into the city without too much difficulty,” Leclair reminded. “That can get sixty troops wherever we need them, and the Scorpions in Versailles are shattered.”

  “But the Army remains,” Pelletier said calmly. “There is most of a division – eight thousand men and women – based in and around Nouveaux Versailles. Which brings me to our second need: we need the Ardennes Army to sit this out.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Damien observed. “I believe General Zu is in command?”

  “Of the entire Army, but he’s headquartered in Versailles,” Pelletier agreed. “I believe the good General’s loyalties have always lain with the people not the government. So long as we were rebels, he would never work with us…”

  “But it’s a di
fferent matter when he’s speaking to a Hand,” Damien finished for the priest. “While the thought of simply sneaking into his house is tempting, a meeting would be better. Can you set one up?”

  “He is a good Catholic man,” the Archbishop replied calmly. “His conscience has not sat easy with Vaughn’s governance.

  “In short, yes, I can arrange a meeting.”

  #

  Chapter 36

  When the French and Canadian national governments on Old Earth had launched the colonization expedition to Ardennes, one of their major sources of funding had been the Catholic Church. Its Quebec Reformation branch had been on good terms with both governments, and by contributing funds and personnel the Church had got a foothold on the ground floor of an entire planet.

  One of the consequences had been an old European informal definition of ‘city’ – one that required a cathedral.

  Of course, Ardennes’ cathedrals had been built in the twenty-fourth century. Underneath their native stone facades and stained glass were all of the modern amenities. Their pulpits had cleverly designed acoustics and expensive electronic sound systems, designed for easy upgrading. And hidden away from the eye of the congregations were modern apartments – and modern conference rooms.

  The conference room ‘Papa’ Pelletier had snuck Damien into was a perfect, if small, example of its type. From the personal computer on his wrist, he could activate a series of screens built into all four walls, or raise a three-dimensional display tank out of the middle of the table. With the exception of the cruciform-heavy décor, the room wouldn’t have looked out of place in any corporate headquarters in the Protectorate.

  Damien wasn’t alone in the room for very long. Less than ten minutes after he’d been smuggled into the cathedral and set up in the conference room, the door opened again and a gray-uniformed, white-haired man stepped into the room. The Hand got a glimpse of Pelletier behind the General, but the Archbishop only bowed and then closed the door behind Zu.

  “General Zu,” Damien said quietly. “Thank you for meeting me.”