Mage-Provocateur

by Glynn Stewart

  From the first explosion to the last, the whole battle lasted less than three minutes. One of the Teotihuacan corvettes was badly damaged, but both pirate ships were vaporized.

  “Well, that couldn’t have happened to nicer folk,” Jeeves said grimly. “Though. Hmm.”

  “Guns?” Kelly asked cheerfully. “You see something interesting?”

  “Yeah. Looks like there were a few more jump-ships than I originally thought docked at the orbitals.” He shrugged. “I was counting freighters, but now I’m seeing four courier- or yacht-sized ships suddenly moving out.

  “I’d guess one of them is Blade, but the others…friends or associates of the Legacy.”

  “Record everything you can; we’ll leave it with MISS in Sandoval,” Kelly ordered. “A few more bits of data on our enemies.”

  “Agreed. Wait…”

  Kelly saw Jeeves suddenly focus more on one of those ships.

  “Guns?” she asked again.

  “One of them appears to be following us,” he told her.

  Kelly chuckled.

  “Let him,” she replied. “We aren’t following the jump plan they’ll expect. They’ll never find us.”

  “True enough,” Jeeves agreed. “I’m still going to keep a very close eye on him.”

  27

  “Jump complete,” Soprano told David. Their trip into Atlatl had been brief but exciting. This trip was turning into a demonstration of just why setting out to poke the enemy in the eye and see how they reacted was a dangerous plan.

  “We are four light-years away from Atlatl now,” she told the video link to David’s office. The Captain was upright, leaning against his desk as he tried to get used to his new leg. “It will be eight hours before I’ll want any of us to jump again, but we should be beyond anything anyone can track.”

  Not least because none of those four jumps had been along any of the standard routes. They were light-years away from anywhere anyone would expect them to be. It would take them an extra set of jumps to reach Sandoval, but eight hours wasn’t going to change the timeline for their soil that much.

  “Jeeves and LaMonte will keep an eye on things,” David told her. “Go rest!”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she agreed. “See you in eight hours, boss.”

  The channel cut off, leaving David’s wallscreen showing the space around Red Falcon. The empty void between the stars was both draining and relaxing for him. On the one hand, it was darker than it could ever be in a star system, with no source of light for untold trillions of kilometers in any direction.

  On the other hand, it meant the stars were brighter and more visible here than they could ever be anywhere else—and it meant they were safe.

  And if he still felt a bit paranoid, well, even paranoids have real enemies.

  “Should you be up here?” LaMonte asked brightly as David limped onto the bridge. “Light duty, right?”

  “We’re four light-years from anything,” he grumped, one hand on a cane to keep his balance as his new leg spasmed. He was out of a wheelchair, at least, and the cane would be a thing for only a few more days.

  “And if I can walk under my own power, cane or not, I can sit in my damn chair,” he concluded.

  Given the extent of his injuries, he knew Gupta was right to try and keep him away from work or stress of any kind, but the reality of his ship meant that wasn’t possible. Being off the bridge was probably more stressful for him.

  “You’re the Captain, Captain,” LaMonte allowed, rising from the command chair and gesturing him to it.

  He smiled his thanks and took his seat, failing to conceal a heavy sigh of relief as he took his weight off his leg and activated the governors.

  “I have to walk to teach it,” he told his XO. “But walking with it sucks still. It’ll pass.”

  “You sure you should be up and about?” she asked.

  “Nope. Just that I’m sick of sitting in my office reading,” he replied with a grin. “Jeeves! What’s the deep dark void looking like?”

  “Deep, dark, empty. Very void-like,” his old friend replied. “What Captain Santiago used to call the quiet of the darkest sea.”

  “And our cargo?” David asked LaMonte.

  “According to the container sensors, everything is just the right amount of not-quite-wriggly,” she told him. “We’re keeping all the containers at a set eleven degrees Centigrade. The microbiome is warming most of them a couple of degrees, just as they said it would.”

  She paused.

  “I didn’t think that shipping dirt would be quite so complicated and detailed a procedure,” she noted.

  “That, XO, is because you think of dirt as inanimate,” David replied. “And the whole point of shipping soil is that we’re shipping that microbiome. We’ll keep it warm and alive, get it where it needs to go.

  “It may not seem like much, but this dirt will allow Sandoval Prime to build thousands of hectares of new farmland and get that bit closer to food independence.” He shook his head. “Not many MidWorlds aren’t food-independent; that’s got to be nerve-wracking for them.”

  “How’d they end up dependent?” LaMonte asked.

  “More immigrants and babies than planned for,” he told her. “They’ve had several economic booms based on resources and industrial projects, all of which needed workers. When every piece of farmland is bought with sweat and toil, balancing the food supply against the population is hard enough without massive waves of new mouths.”

  He shrugged.

  “They were supposed to be temporary workers, in the main, but over three times as many chose to stay as they projected. For all of its food issues, Sandoval is a comfortable world, and a well-run one.

  “I think we’ll end up staying there for a few weeks for shore leave,” he noted. “I think I want this damn leg working properly before I go sticking our nose in further trouble.”

  “I can appreciate that,” his XO agreed.

  “Wait,” Jeeves suddenly interjected into the conversation. “That doesn’t look right…”

  “Guns?” LaMonte said sharply, and the lanky Third Officer looked up at them with nervous eyes.

  “Jump flares,” he reported grimly. “I have multiple jump flares!”

  “Tracker,” David said instantly, staring at the plot of space around Red Falcon as Jeeves dropped in the icons of the newcomers. “The sons of bitches have to have a Tracker.”

  “What in ever-loving FUCK is a Tracker?” Jeeves snapped.

  “Weird people who can somehow make sense of the energy signature of a jump,” LaMonte told him. Her hands were flying over the XO’s station, turning the ship away from their new companions.

  The ships were too close.

  “Like the name says, they can track a jump. Mikhail Azure had two we know of; there’s a third that works for Mars now.” She shook her head. “Apparently, the Azure Legacy found one.”

  “What have we got, Jeeves?” David asked quietly.

  “Four ships. Weird ships,” his gunnery officer said drily. “Not jump-yachts, too big. Not destroyers, too small.

  “Oh. Oh, fuck me.”

  “Jeeves?” David snapped.

  “I know those ships,” the gunner said quietly. “There’s only six of them in existence and they were all built for one guy: Jason Aristos. The Admiral Commanding of the Golden Bears.”

  “They’re…mercenaries, right?” David asked.

  “In polite company, at least,” Jeeves replied. “I guess the Protectorate could never prove anything, but their rep in the underworld is that if you need somebody dead with no records, no proof, just disappeared between the stars…the Admiral Commanding could make it happen.”

  “A Tracker and half a dozen baby destroyers,” LaMonte said aloud. “Yeah, I can see how that would work.” She shook her head. “Antimatter engines, boss. They’re inbound at twelve gees. I can buy us time, but…”

  “Not enough for the Mages to jump us,” David concluded on hi
s own. “They’ll be in missile range in a few minutes if they have antimatter birds like we do. Jeeves—what do we have on these guys?”

  “Seven hundred thousand tons apiece,” the gunner reeled off, clearly half from memory and half from his scans. “Aristos calls them ‘monitors,’ though from what I know of the historical version, that’s a crappy name for them.

  “They’re fast and well crewed. Not as heavily armed, ton-for-ton, as a true Navy ship—they’re designed to board and capture as much as kill.”

  “Any idea what the armament is?”

  “No amplifiers,” Jeeves told him. “Amber-built, some upgrades slotted in at Tau Ceti and Legatus and…well, anywhere else they’d take money to put top-of-the-line gear in a starship.

  “I’d guess antimatter birds, heavy battle lasers, RFLAM turrets.… We probably outgun each of his damn monitors on their own, but with four of them…”

  “The odds go the other way,” David accepted grimly. “Jeeves?”

  “Skipper?”

  “Take the ship to battle stations and make sure the antimatter birds are loaded. If they want to tangle with us in deep space where there’s no witnesses, I see no reason not to take advantage of the situation.

  “We’ll see what this Aristos has to say…but the moment they enter missile range, you will open fire and keep firing until we run out of antimatter missiles, clear?”

  “As crystal, sir.”

  “I don’t suppose our friends are saying anything?” David asked several minutes later as the monitors continued to close with Red Falcon. They were still over fourteen million kilometers away, closing at a speed that expanded the already-impressive range of the modern Phoenix VII missiles in his magazines.

  They’d carried a significant velocity relative to Falcon through their jump and were closing at two percent of light. Accelerating away was buying David’s people time…but not much, not at those velocities.

  Not the four hours he needed for his Mages to jump him away.

  “Not a squeak,” LaMonte replied. “Three minutes to missile range. Ninety-second communication turnaround.”

  “All right, let’s see what they have to say,” David said grimly.

  He activated the recorder and leaned into his camera.

  “Admiral Jason Aristos…or whoever is commanding the Golden Bear detachment. I know you’re following me. I know you’ve used a Tracker to find me here in the middle of nowhere.

  “I can only assume that you’re in the employ of Azure Legacy. I’ll warn you that this isn’t going to go the way you think. You’ve apparently spent quite some time and energy preserving your license to operate in the Protectorate…but if you attack me, that’s over. I have friends in high places, and they will hear of your actions, your crimes.

  “Begin deceleration now, and we can both go our separate ways. No one needs to die today…but in the absence of communication and a reversal of your course, I have no choice but to regard you as pirates and defend my ship at the maximum range I am capable of.

  “Withdraw or be destroyed.”

  He ended the recording and transmitted.

  “If they start reversing course, give them extra time to communicate,” he told Jeeves. “Otherwise…open fire as soon as you can.”

  “If they’ve got the same missiles we have, they could play enough games to get into range,” his gunner replied.

  “If they’ve got Phoenix Sevens, we’ll deal with that, but there will be hell to pay later,” David pointed out. “If they’ve got Sixes, though, we’ve got about a hundred seconds of range over them. Let’s use it.”

  The Phoenix VII had a shorter flight time than the older missile but accelerated two thousand gravities faster.

  Both missiles had a seven-minute-plus flight time at maximum range, though. If Aristos had Phoenix VIs, Falcon’s missiles would hit over two minutes before the mercenary missiles—but almost five minutes after the Golden Bears launched.

  “Incoming transmission,” LaMonte told him. “Relaying to your screens.”

  As soon as Jason Aristos appeared on David’s screen, he recognized the man. The most successful mercenary in the Protectorate was famous enough that he’d seen Aristos’s image before.

  Aristos was a tall, thickly built man with tanned skin and pitch-black hair that hung to his shoulders. He lounged in a command chair very similar to David’s, and he had an irritating smirk on his face.

  “Captain Rice, I see you recognize my ships,” he said calmly. “You are quite brave, but let’s be honest: each of my monitors outguns your half-disarmed Navy auxiliary. Unless you’re hiding a handful of destroyers in your cargo of mud, this is only going to end one way.

  “But I have no desire to fight a battle I can avoid. You don’t become a successful mercenary that way.” His smirk expanded.

  “I’ll make you a deal, Captain. Surrender yourself to me and I will let your people leave. The Legacy is paying me to destroy Falcon, but we both know they only want you.

  “Seems a fair deal, doesn’t it?”

  The recording stopped and David sighed.

  “Does the entire galaxy think I’m enough of a sucker to surrender to torture and death to maybe protect my crew?” he asked aloud.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d received that exact offer since the Azure Legacy had started chasing him. The last person who’d given it was dead.

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “XO, Guns. Are we clear for action?”

  “We’re clear, sir.”

  “We’re clear…but I’ll remind you that this ship was designed by Martians, sir,” Jeeves told him.

  David chuckled. The Royal Martian Navy didn’t design it’s ships to run away.

  “That’s right, isn’t it?” he replied. “Kelly?”

  “Skipper?”

  “All of our guns point forward. Bring us about—it’s time to show this ‘Admiral Commanding’ just how disarmed we actually are.”

  Red Falcon flipped in space, the mushroom shape of the megafreighter spinning in place to turn the “cap” of the ship, the part with the water tanks, the armor, and the missile tubes to face the pursuing enemy.

  If the Golden Bears were surprised, they didn’t show it—but when Falcon opened fire, they didn’t respond.

  Ten missiles flashed into space. Twenty seconds later, another ten followed. Then ten more in twenty more seconds.

  Fifty missiles were in space before the Bears did anything. Once the range dropped far enough, they returned fire.

  “Phoenix Sixes,” Jeeves confirmed. “Closing at ten thousand gravities…eight per monitor.”

  Thirty-two missiles in each salvo. David shivered. That was more missiles than he had defensive turrets, and he really wasn’t sure how well the RFLAM turrets would handle fire incoming at over fifty thousand kilometers a second.

  In theory, they could handle it, but maximum-range fire was always the fastest and most dangerous.

  “Dialing in their missiles,” LaMonte announced. “Poor buggers.”

  “XO?” David asked.

  “Unless they’re being really, really clever, they haven’t replaced the standard electronic penetrator suite on the Sixes.”

  “It’s a damn capable suite; why would they replace it?” he asked.

  His XO turned back to face him with an absolutely wicked grin on her face.

  “Because we’re MISS, boss, which means I have every line of the penetrator suite’s code. Instead of making it harder for us to shoot down their missiles, they’re actually making it easier.”

  “Given the number of weapons heading our way, I’m not complaining,” he said calmly as a second salvo of thirty-two missiles launched into space.

  The Golden Bears now had more antimatter missiles in space than he did.

  “Want to take bets on how many of those missiles they have?” Jeeves said cheerfully. “Or how many they’re willing to spend?”

  “I know what Legacy is prepared to p
ay to see me dead,” David replied. “I don’t know how many missiles Aristos might have been able to acquire, but I guarantee you he’s willing to spend them all.”

  “What did you do to these people?” Jeeves replied. “I mean, really, is killing someone’s boss worth all this?”

  “It is when said boss’s will puts up a multi-trillion-dollar reward for the death of his killer,” David pointed out.

  Jeeves swallowed.

  “Is it too late to change my mind about prison?”

  “Yes. What are our odds of hurting these bastards?”

  “Decent. They’re not used to going up against the Navy’s top-grade missiles,” Jeeves admitted. “I doubt we’ll get them all, but they’re going to get more hurt than they expected.”

  “I don’t suppose we can make sure we blow Aristos to hell?” David asked.

  “Not enough data,” his gunner replied. “And not enough control. Boss, we’re still thirty light-seconds away from them. Whatever instructions I give our missiles are basically a minute out of date by the time they reach them.

  “Terminal is always up to their computers.”

  “Which is why their missiles are screwed,” LaMonte pointed out. “So…if I keep shooting down all of their missiles, what does Aristos do next?”

  “If the rumors I’ve heard are right…each of those monitors is built around a single old cruiser laser. A ten-gigawatt beam.”

  “Ah,” David said softly. “So, we do not want to court a laser engagement.”

  “It could be worse; they’ve only got one beam each so they’re easier to dodge,” Jeeves replied. “But yeah. We’ve got ten lasers to their four, but theirs are twice as powerful.”

  “Assuming they live that long,” the Captain replied, watching the missiles head toward each other.

  “Assuming, yeah,” Jeeves told him, then sighed. “That was it, boss. We’re out of Phoenixes. Fifteen minutes before we’re in range for the Rapiers.”