Sighing, they extricated themselves and Grace passed him the computer.
“This is Montgomery,” he answered it, careful to activate it in voice-only mode.
“My Lord, we have a new sequence of jump flares. Current IFFs are reading at least two battleships and twelve cruisers with destroyer escort…under command of Mage-Admiral Alexander.”
Damien inhaled and met Grace’s eyes.
“That’s Jane Alexander, correct?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Let me know when she reaches orbit,” Damien ordered. “I’ll meet with Her Highness immediately once she has.”
Her Royal Highness Mage-Admiral Jane Michelle Alexander was the Mage-King’s younger sister and one of the handful of other Rune Wrights alive. Apparently, she’d managed to convince the Navy to come up with a real force to help hold Ardennes.
“Yes, my lord. The Admiral’s ETA is about eight hours.”
“Thank you.”
The channel closed and Damien turned to find Grace sitting on his bed, stretching. Still naked.
She grinned at him.
“So, where were we?”
Damien was reasonably sure that the Mage-Admiral knew his reputation well enough to realize that he wasn’t a fan of ceremony. That didn’t seem to have changed anyone’s mind on whether to meet him with a full welcoming party.
Dress-uniformed Marines saluted and a greeting party of Righteous Shield of Valor’s senior officers waited for him at the end of the carpet they’d rolled out.
There was no question who Mage-Admiral Alexander was, though. Even if he’d never seen pictures of her, he’d have recognized her instantly. She looked like her brother’s twin, sharing his height, his eyes and his gunmetal-gray hair.
That wasn’t really a surprise. Damien knew, better than most, the degree of genetic engineering that was going into making certain the Mage-King’s family remained Rune Wrights. Jane Alexander and her brother weren’t quite clones…but they were far closer to that than to naturally-conceived humans.
“My Lord Montgomery,” Alexander greeted him.
“Your Royal Highness, Mage-Admiral,” he replied. “It’s good to see you—and your ships.”
“I imagine it would have been better to have seen us, what, a week ago?” she admitted. “I am somewhat immune to the displeasure of my fellow Admirals, so my brother asked me to come here.” She shrugged. “Unfortunately, I was on the other side of the Protectorate on other business.”
“After the losses we took, we’re glad to see you regardless,” Damien said. “You’ll take over command?”
“Once Admiral Medici has had a chance to fully brief me,” she told him. “Until I’m entirely up to date, I’d rather not get in the way. May we speak in private, Lord Montgomery?”
“I am at your disposal,” he said.
It was an open question which of them had authority over the other, but the easiest solution was to treat each other as equals. The only person who could resolve an actual conflict between them, after all, was on Mars.
“I take it your presence here doesn’t represent a change in the Admiralty’s strategy,” Damien said as he took a seat in her office.
“In and of itself, no. The Battle of Ardennes, however, has forced some rethinking,” Alexander confirmed. “My current task is to continue what you and Medici have done so dramatically: hold this system. I’ve been promised reinforcements, because eventually I intend to take the fight directly to Legatus.”
“What about the systems in Republic hands?” he asked.
“We’ll be scouting those over the next few weeks, seeing if we can establish what kind of force the RIN is protecting them with,” she said. “The hope is that we can liberate them with lighter forces while I take most of our battleships and cruisers on a direct strike at the heart of the Republic.
“If we can capture or otherwise neutralize the Centurion Accelerator Ring, the lack of antimatter should bring their war effort to its knees in short order. I doubt it will be easy, but since you just smashed at least half of their offensive forces, it should be more straightforward than before.”
“A siege, most likely,” Damien suggested. The Centurion Accelerator Ring was a massive particle accelerator built around Legatus’s main gas giant, Centurion. It was the primary source the Republic had for antimatter, and cutting it off from the RIN would drastically reduce their ability to fuel gunships and missiles.
She winced but nodded.
“Both Legatus and Centurion are heavily fortified. Dividing the two from each other will eventually deprive one of manpower and the other of antimatter, but it won’t be a quick or clean process. That’s my job now, though.”
“Thank you,” he told her. “I’m no fleet commander. That’s what I have Mage-Commodore Jakab for—and Medici did an exemplary job.”
“As I understand it, you’re the one who found the fleet,” she said. “Speaking of which, how long are we planning on keeping the Militia here?”
“They do have jobs of their own, and the mercenaries are getting expensive,” Damien conceded. “Though compared to what we’ve paid in death benefits and ship replacements, the daily cost of keeping the ones left isn’t much. If we’re up to five battleships, we can probably send most of them home.”
He’d miss Grace, but they’d known what they were getting into this time.
“We’ll want to talk to the commanders, see if we can hang on to some of the heavier ships for a while,” Alexander said. “At least until the next wave of Navy reinforcements arrives. We’ve been promised every battleship that isn’t effectively nailed down but…well, that’s still only ten of them.”
That was still half of the Protectorate’s battleships—and half a billion tons of warships.
“It seems like Ardennes is in good hands,” Damien said.
“From what I have seen, Damien, Ardennes was in good hands all along,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ll take over the war, but I definitely still see value in having you along if you’re available. I’m a soldier, not a politician. There’s a reason I avoid Mars.”
“I’m a glorified cop, not a politician,” he objected.
“Sure you are,” she told him. “Whatever label you’d like, you’re still the First Hand, which makes you a better choice for arguing with system governments than I am. Plus, if we start punching into Republic space, you have full plenipotentiary authority to negotiate for Mars. I don’t, officially at least.”
“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere else,” he admitted. “This war is the most important thing currently going…”
Damien’s wrist-comp buzzed and he stared at it in surprise. He’d muted it. There wasn’t even a priority code that could get through the lockdown he’d activated, since he was aboard a Navy warship and they could get in touch with him regardless if the system came under attack.
“Excuse me, Admiral, the fact that my wrist-comp shouldn’t be notifying me of anything makes me curious,” he confessed.
“Go ahead,” she said. She looked curious enough herself.
Damien brought up the holographic screen with a gesture. His wrist-comp wasn’t requiring precise hand motions right now, which made it slower than most people’s…but usable for Damien.
“That’s strange,” he observed aloud. “Apparently, one of your ships’ post databoxes picked up a message for me somewhere along the way that got bounced to the surface when you arrived. Just got sorted by the post computers and sent back my way.”
Every ship, even the Navy ones, carried an encrypted post databox that picked up massive dumps of data and mail from each system they traveled through. With the RTAs only capable of voice communication, the automatic-post databoxes were what truly held interstellar communication together.
“The origin is garbage data,” he continued. “But the wrapper included some kind of code that forced my wrist-comp to notify me. That’s…strange.”
“Wrist-comps are pretty standard,” Ale
xander pointed out. “My understanding is that the notification function is disturbingly unsecured by their standards, too.”
Damien nodded and flicked a screen aside, opening the message. It was very short. And very impossible.
Damien Montgomery.
We met once before and worked well together. Now it seems my nation has gone mad and I have received orders I never expected to see. Meet me on Amber. The bar of the Six Red Seasons Hotel on Heinlein Station.
You may be my only hope. What I have learned may be the Protectorate’s.
James Niska, Legatus Military Intelligence Directorate
They both stared at the message hovering in the air.
“You know an LMID operative?” Alexander asked.
“Back before I was a Hand, I was a Jump Mage,” Damien reminded her. “We hauled gunships for LMID. Major James Niska commanded a contingent of Augments put aboard our ship to protect them. I knew he was more than he pretended to be, but I never expected to hear from him again.
“Especially not now.”
“It seems, Lord Montgomery, that I’ll need to find someone else to argue with governments for me,” the Admiral said. “This is suspicious as hell, but…”
“But we need to act on it,” Damien agreed. “Conveniently, we have an MISS stealth ship to hand.”
He shook his head, then smiled.
“I wonder if Captain LaMonte has space for my cat.”
54
“Damien, how can we help you?” Kelly LaMonte greeted the face on her screen.
“I need you to clear space for an extra shuttle, two Mages, thirty Secret Service Agents and Marines, one cat and supercargo of one First Hand,” Damien Montgomery told her with a chuckle. “I’m commandeering your ship and crew for the good of the Protectorate.”
Kelly was taken aback and stared at him in silence for a second.
“You’re serious,” she responded.
“We’re on our way over aboard an RMMC assault shuttle. We need to be on our way in short order, and this needs to be covert. My people can stay on the shuttle if we need to, but…”
“No, we have space,” Kelly replied as she thought it through. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, though. I can put you and the Mages up in visitor quarters, but the Agents and Marines will have to share space with my cyber-commandos.”
“I am quite certain I can make sure there are no problems,” Damien said calmly. “We’ll compress ourselves into whatever space you can give us. As soon as we’re aboard, you need to set your course for Amber…but if you can get us out of Ardennes without anyone knowing where we’re heading, that would be preferable.”
“What’s going on, Damien?” she asked.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted cheerfully. “But what I can promise is that it’s important—and the entire fate of the Protectorate may hang on it. I need your ship and I need your brains. Can I count on you?”
“Always,” Kelly told him. “What about Duke? And…McLaughlin, for that matter?”
“Duke of Magnificence will rendezvous with us one light-year away from Amber after we’re done,” he replied. “I’m not giving up our backup, Kelly, but I think we need to keep what we’re doing under wraps—and Rhapsody in Purple is designed for that.”
He sighed.
“As for Grace, well. I’ve spoken to her already. We both understood what we were getting into. That’s more than I can say for some of my other relationships.”
Kelly snorted. Damien had left her behind to head to Mars and the Mage-King’s service. She’d understood even then. It had still hurt.
“So, Amber, huh?” she asked. “What’s in Amber?”
“If I’m reading between the lines correctly, a spy who wants to come in from the cold.”
About the Author
Glynn Stewart is the author of Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible–but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Duchy of Terra, Castle Federation and Vigilante, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.
Writing managed to liberate Glynn from a bleak future as an accountant. With his personality and hope for a high-tech future intact, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife, their cats, and an unstoppable writing habit.
Other Books by Glynn Stewart
For release announcements join the mailing list or visit GlynnStewart.com
Starship’s Mage
Starship’s Mage
Hand of Mars
Voice of Mars
Alien Arcana
Judgment of Mars
UnArcana Stars
Sword of Mars (upcoming)
Starship’s Mage: Red Falcon
Interstellar Mage
Mage-Provocateur
Agents of Mars
Duchy of Terra
The Terran Privateer
Duchess of Terra
Terra and Imperium
Light of Terra: A Duchy of Terra series
Darkness Beyond
Shield of Terra (upcoming)
Castle Federation
Space Carrier Avalon
Stellar Fox
Battle Group Avalon
Q-Ship Chameleon
Rimward Stars
Operation Medusa
Exile
Ashen Stars
Exile
Vigilante (With Terry Mixon)
Heart of Vengeance
Oath of Vengeance
Bound By Stars: A Vigilante Series (With Terry Mixon)
Bound By Law
Bound by Honor
Bound by Blood (upcoming)
ONSET
ONSET: To Serve and Protect
ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent
ONSET: Stay of Execution
Changeling Blood
Changeling’s Fealty
Hunter’s Oath
Noble’s Honor (upcoming)
Fantasy Stand Alone Novels
Children of Prophecy
City in the Sky
UnArcana Stars Page 31