Mage-Provocateur

by Glynn Stewart

  Directing them toward Caron and Cobalt Interstellar was harmless—or at least, if it wasn’t harmless, it was because the megacorporation was up to things they shouldn’t have been—and kept Falcon on the down-low.

  While getting MISS resources on making sure the Desdemona government didn’t start locking up David’s crew.

  “That’ll do nicely,” he continued after a moment’s thought. “Anything else I need to watch for? Have we heard anything from a Mr. Wu?”

  “Not much going on,” LaMonte admitted. “Put in replenishment orders for food, life support and antimatter. No one even blinked at buying AM, which is always nice.”

  Few ships outside the military used antimatter engines, though Red Falcon wasn’t unique in that aspect of her operations. She was rare enough, though, that buying antimatter was sometimes difficult and almost always attention-getting.

  “We’re fully stocked?”

  “We’ll be fully resupplied by twenty hundred OMT tonight,” she confirmed. “Talking with Cobalt, we’ll be off-loaded by about fourteen hundred OMT tomorrow. After that…”

  “What we do and where we go is up to me,” David finished for her.

  “Thanks, XO.”

  11

  In theory, Maria Soprano should have simply passed the executive officer the list of things the Ship’s Mages needed. The tools and supplies were necessary aspects of the starship’s operations, after all.

  Long tradition, however, said that the Mages didn’t have the mundanes purchase supplies for magic. It was a silly tradition, sometimes, but not always. Soldering irons and polymerized silver could be easily picked up by regular crew, after all.

  The handful of premade runic artifacts the ship used, however, required a Mage to assess them. It wasn’t like Maria could tell at a look whether the runes worked or not, but she could read Martian Runic.

  Most people couldn’t. With seventy-six characters and fourteen different ways of connecting them, the script was complex and difficult to read—and even a simple matrix on, say, an emergency personal shield, was tens of thousands of characters.

  Even Mages had varying levels of competency with the script. The best were the Rune Scribes…a category which did not include one Maria Soprano.

  Nonetheless, she was the most-qualified person aboard Red Falcon for that job, which left her in what looked like a knickknack shop off to one side of the bazaar. Only the most careful eye would have realized that the various trinkets were all marked with silver runes that described spells.

  Very, very few of the artifacts in the store could actually be charged to function away from a Mage. Most of them acted as amplifiers, allowing a Mage to achieve more complex effects than most could muster on their own.

  A few, like the shield bracelet Xi Wu was examining, could be. That artifact required near-daily charging but could protect the wearer from punches, knives or, well, one bullet. They were usually given as gifts to lovers by Mages.

  “If you buy those, realize you have to charge it for them every morning,” she murmured to the younger Mage, who promptly flushed. “And last I checked, Kelzin, at least, doesn’t share quarters with you.”

  “Not every night,” Wu admitted, still blushing. “Plus, I guess neither Mike nor Kelly is likely to get shot at, huh?”

  “Neither the XO nor a flight leader is usually in the kind of trouble a shield bracelet can protect from,” Maria agreed. “If a shuttle gets blown apart around Kelzin or, God forbid, Red Falcon gets blown apart around LaMonte, that bracelet won’t make any difference.”

  “I guess.” Wu touched the bracelets again, then nodded and stepped away. “Do we have what we need?”

  “I think so,” Maria told her. “Can you check over these for me?” She gestured at the range of runic items in front of her. “A double check never goes to waste.”

  Checking a runic artifact involved pulsing magic through it and seeing if it responded the way it should. Maria had occasionally heard rumors of Mages who could simply see how the runes worked, but she’d never met one.

  “Mage?” the store’s proprietor said quietly, seeming to appear out of nowhere and coughing delicately. “May I suggest that you hurry? A friend of mine at the local DesSec station said a call just went out for them to come here. No orders along with it…just the instruction that ‘Lieutenant Soun would know what to do.’”

  Maria sighed.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked as she swept the artifacts off the counter.

  “Because you’re about to spend a large amount of money with my store,” the woman said brightly, “and that buys you at least the same heads-up I got.” She smiled. “I also have a back door?”

  Sneaking out the back door, Maria and Wu made their way back around to the main corridor. The senior Mage stopped them before they stepped out into the thoroughfare, watching for the cops they’d been warned were coming.

  It was always possible, she supposed, that the proprietor had lied to them to get them to buy the runic gear without checking it too closely, but…

  There they were. Maria recognized Lieutenant Soun from the docking bay. The men around the officer may have been the same too—their helmets weren’t closed up this time but had been before.

  The squad was armed with stunguns, and several were carrying the heavy rune-covered manacles of Mage-cuffs. They’d almost certainly been coming for the two Mages from Red Falcon.

  That…was not a good sign.

  She tapped her wrist-comp, calling Cobalt’s lawyer.

  “Caron speaking,” the man responded crisply.

  “Mr. Caron, this is Mage Soprano from Red Falcon,” she told him. “Did our friend get that piece of paper they were after?”

  The channel was probably secure enough to be honest, but she was certain he’d know what she meant. The silence as he considered suggested she was right.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Caron replied. “There may be some procedural games being played to keep them from doing so quickly. What’s going on?”

  “Lieutenant Soun just tried to arrest myself and one of my Mages,” Maria said instantly. “The shopkeeper hustled us out of the way, but…”

  Another silence.

  “Unless they’re playing some nasty games—which, sadly, I cannot rule out—Soun has no warrant for that,” Caron finally said. “Can you get back to your ship?”

  “We’re in the main bazaar,” Maria said. “Fifteen minutes to the ship. If they’re hunting us…”

  “They’ll find you by then,” he agreed. “My office isn’t really closer. Are you safe where you are?”

  Maria exchanged glances with Wu.

  “Not really,” she admitted. “We’re in a side corridor near the store they know we were in. It won’t take them long to find us if we don’t move.”

  “Or even if you do,” Caron completed the thought for her. “Damn. All right, Mage Soprano. Are you prepared to trust me?”

  “My alternatives are looking unpleasant,” Maria noted. They probably weren’t what Caron thought they were: they started with using MISS overrides to order her own release and slid downhill from there, to a worst case of Skavar’s Marines boarding the station in exosuits.

  Red Falcon’s crew could extricate themselves from this mess, but not without blowing their cover.

  “There are two regional DesSec stations in the bazaar,” Caron told her. “Spinward and counter-spinward. I don’t know which one Soun is posted at, but I do know the Spinward Bazaar Station commander, a Captain Li Han.

  “She was my second choice for taking on your prisoners if my first choice couldn’t. I trust her explicitly. I need you to go to her station and ask for her.

  “If Soun doesn’t have an actual damned warrant for your arrest, Han won’t give you up. Even if you are followed, she’ll stall until I can get there.

  “Understand, Mage Soprano?”

  “Thank you,” she told him. “I’d prefer not to have to transform anyone into newts to sur
vive my day.”

  He coughed.

  “Please don’t,” he noted. “So long as you keep your hands clean, I can protect you, but the moment you injure a DesSec officer, that all goes out the window.”

  “Understood,” she confirmed a moment later, regretting the instant of levity. “I’ll be speaking to Captain Han shortly.”

  “And I’ll be there shortly after. Good luck.”

  On their way through the bazaar, Maria dialed the ship on her wrist-comp.

  “Red Falcon, Second Officer LaMonte speaking,” the XO answered brightly.

  “Kelly, it’s Soprano,” Maria told the other woman. “We have a problem. Our friend Soun has shown up again, and he seems to be looking for me and Wu through this chaos.”

  “Damn. I’ll raise Skavar; what do you need?” LaMonte asked instantly.

  “I’ve contacted Caron and he’s arranged sanctuary, he thinks,” Maria told her. “We’re heading for the Spinward Bazaar Station of DesSec, where I’m told we can trust the shift captain.”

  “And if Caron is wrong?” LaMonte asked.

  “That’s why I’m phoning home,” the Mage said. “So you know where we are. Mobilizing Skavar’s people is probably a good idea. Most likely, we won’t need them, but this system is turning into more of a problem every second.”

  “I hear you,” the younger woman agreed. “We’ll have security on standby. Hopefully, we won’t need them… I hear most space station administrators disapprove of firing boarding torpedoes into their stations.”

  Reaching the DesSec station, Maria realized they had another problem. Soun, it seemed, had either been eavesdropping or guessed what their next step would be. The Lieutenant himself wasn’t waiting at the station…but four burgundy-armored DesSec troopers with helmets down, stunguns up, and Mage-cuffs at their belts were.

  “Mage Maria Soprano, Mage Xi Wu,” the tallest of them, the one with an extra gold stripe on her armored shoulder, barked. “You are summoned to surrender under the Covenants of Mars!”

  Maria managed to conceal a wince. That was a weapon she couldn’t argue with, not really. The Covenants regulated relations between Mage and mundane—and while they said that a Mage could only be tried by a court of Mages, they also called for Mages to surrender peacefully to mundane law enforcement.

  Because either Maria or Wu could have killed all four Desdemona Security cops in a thought and a breath…but that would have made them Covenant-breakers, and the Protectorate could not tolerate Covenant-breakers.

  She raised her hands placatingly.

  “What am I being charged with?” she asked delicately.

  “You will be advised of that in due time,” the sergeant told the Mage as she and her men came forward, detaching the Mage-cuffs.

  “If I am not being charged, why am I under arrest?” Maria said. “I am a Ship’s Mage, registered in the Tau Ceti System. I have rights, Sergeant.”

  “And they will be respected. You will be advised of the charges by the appropriate individuals at the appropriate time.”

  Maria held out her hands…but used a tiny jet of force to fling the Mage-cuffs in the sergeant’s hands against the window of the station.

  “Oops,” she murmured. “I’d hate to cause problems with your illegal detainment, Sergeant.”

  “You are bound by the Covenant,” the cop barked. “Stand down, Mage Soprano.”

  “Sergeant Eleanor Travert,” a new voice said from the door of the precinct station. “You’re not assigned to this district. Hot pursuit is one thing, but it appears you were lurking outside my precinct station.”

  A tall woman with pitch-black skin and hair emerged through the door of the station, leaning sideways to scoop up the Mage-cuffs Maria had “knocked” with.

  “Captain Han,” Travert said stiffly. “This is a Special Security issue.”

  “Indeed?” Han asked. “You are aware, Sergeant, that the Special Security teams are supposed to provide notice when they’ll be operating in my district? Indeed, in general, SS teams are not deployed unless regular security has failed.”

  The Captain smiled thinly.

  “I was not even informed of any outstanding warrants against Mages staying on board the station.” She tapped a sequence of commands on her wrist-comp. “In fact, the records available to me say there are no such Covenant warrants outstanding.

  “Would you care to explain why, then, you are arresting two Mages outside my station?”

  “You’re not cleared for that information, ma’am,” Travert replied.

  “Right.” The sarcasm in Han’s voice was sharp enough to cut a knife with. “In that case, Sergeant, I will have to temporarily detain these two ladies in my station until such time as either Special Security can produce a warrant for their arrest or the constitutional limit on detainment without charge expires.

  “Would you care to refresh my memory on that limit, Sergeant Travert? Or does Special Security no longer teach the constitution?”

  “Twenty-four standard hours, ma’am,” the Sergeant said reluctantly after several seconds silence. “Ma’am, you don’t have the authority to interfere in this case.”

  The tall Captain walked over to Travert. One woman was in burgundy armor, the other in a plain dark gray working uniform, but Han towered over the armored noncom as she tapped the gold stripes on Travert’s shoulder.

  “Special Security has access to warrants that allow you to operate in my district and override my authority, Sergeant. Do. You. Have. One?”

  The last four words could have been carved of asteroid ice.

  “Not on me, ma’am.”

  “Then you will release these Mages to my custody,” Han ordered.

  “Ma’am…”

  “My district, Sergeant. My authority. My custody. Now go.”

  The armored cops seemed to fold in on themselves, especially as several more gray-uniformed officers followed Captain Han out of the precinct station. Travert finally lowered the Mage-cuffs and left, gesturing for her men to follow her.

  “Unfortunately, Mage, since Special Security has stated a warrant exists, I don’t have a choice but to hold you for those twenty-four hours,” Han told Maria politely. “May I ask your names?”

  Maria blinked.

  “Didn’t Caron call you?” she asked. She’d assumed Han had raised that much trouble on their behalf because Cobalt’s man had talked to her.

  “The lawyer?” Han replied. “No. I haven’t spoken him to a few days. What is going on, lady Mage?”

  “I am Mage Maria Soprano, Ship’s Mage off Red Falcon,” Maria introduced herself with a shake of her head. “This is my junior Mage, Xi Wu.

  “If I knew what was going on with any degree of certainty, I don’t know if I would have left my ship this morning,” she concluded. “A Lieutenant Soun seems to be trying to arbitrarily detain members of our crew, but so far as we can tell, he has no grounds.”

  “Soun,” Han echoed, sounding like she’d found a piece of manure stuck to her boots. “I know Soun. Come on.” She gestured for them to follow her.

  “If Caron is involved, I probably won’t have to hold you for twenty-four hours,” she told Maria as she led the way into the station. “But barring legal intervention, I have to respect my fellow security officers’ claim that there is a reason to detain you.

  “I apologize, but that is where we’re at.”

  “I understand,” Maria allowed. She didn’t really, but she did understand that Han had just stuck her neck out to protect them. “I wasn’t aware of such a thing as ‘Special Security.’”

  “In theory, they’re the system-wide upper tier of DesSec,” Han told her. “In practice…” The police captain sighed as she tapped a keypad and opened a comfortable-looking detainment room.

  “In practice, I can’t officially say anything,” she admitted after a moment. “The detainment room will block your wrist-comps from accessing the network. I’ll advise Mr. Caron and your ship of the situation.

>   “That’s the best I can do, ladies. I wish my system was showing you a better face.”

  Maria chuckled.

  “Believe me, Captain Han, I’ve seen worse.”

  12

  Caron arrived shortly afterward, the lawyer’s credentials apparently sufficient to get Maria and Wu onto a conference call with Captain Rice with the lawyer in the room.

  “What the hell is going on, Mr. Caron?” Rice demanded.

  “You, Captain Rice, appear to have managed to get yourself stuck in the middle of an attempt by a group of government officials to use the contract with Cobalt to set themselves up as power brokers,” Caron said flatly. “The department that will be responsible for administering the fines if Cobalt Interstellar fails to bring the smelter online appears to have decided to force that event.

  “If they did so, that would give the bureaucrats involved a slush fund equal to a significant part of Desdemona’s annual budget. With that slush fund, they’d be able to manipulate government priorities, elections…potentially even fund a coup, though I don’t think we’re that far gone.”

  “I hope that you saying this means you have handed proof over to the police and my Mages can make their way home,” the Captain replied.

  “I wish,” Caron replied. “I have conjecture and hearsay at the moment. Several top DesSec investigators are working the file, however, and Cobalt has closed up security around their facilities.”

  “We’ll have fully off-loaded Cobalt’s cargo in under two hours,” Rice told them. “I’ll be making contact with our likely client for shipping out tonight. I’d like to leave as soon as my new cargo is aboard.”

  “That, frankly, will be best for everyone,” the lawyer agreed. “While I can’t guarantee that the people behind this mess will be prosecuted, we are now at the point that, barring them preventing you from off-loading, they have failed.

  “The smelter will come online on schedule, there will be no fines to be paid, and there will be some painful questions asked about where funds and people have gone,” Caron noted.