Dismissing his subordinates to begin preparations for their departure, Damien took a few minutes to ground himself. He hadn’t been back to Sherwood since he’d left over four years ago aboard the jump freighter Blue Jay. When he’d left, the Sherwood Interstellar Patrol hadn’t existed, and he’d paid so little attention to his home system since leaving that he hadn’t even known it had been created.
He didn’t have much attachment to Sherwood these days. His parents had died when he was a preteen, living long enough to know they were among the very few non-Mage families who could apparently produce Mages but not long enough to see him become an adult.
His teen and young adult romances and friendships had been with other Mages attempting to become Jump Mages. His one-time off-again, on-again, girlfriend, Grace McLaughlin – granddaughter of that McLaughlin, he’d discovered too late to run away screaming – had left on a jump ship shortly before he had, and his other friends had followed the same path.
He was more likely to run into people he knew on starship transit stations than back ‘home’. While he found it hard to believe Governor McLaughlin would do what he was accused of, he felt no desire to defend the man against the evidence being assembled.
Damien nodded firmly. His job required him to be impartial and fair. If he’d thought for even a moment he wasn’t able to do so with his home system, he would have had to inform Desmond Alexander that another Hand needed to be sent.
Certain he could do the job, he checked the status of Duke of Magnificence’s systems. It would be some time before the warship was ready to move. The courier FN-2187 was still decelerating into orbit in any case, so they would leave once Mage-Commander Renzetti’s ship was in position to accompany them.
He tapped a few commands on his wrist computer, which relayed them to the more powerful desk console that ran his office’s systems. The transparent wallscreen over the window faded into visibility. An image of a golden sheaf of wheat – Panterra’s planetary seal – appeared on the screen.
After a moment, it faded into the image of a young man with straw-blond hair,
“I need to speak with the Governor,” Damien told him. “Immediately.”
“Of course, my lord Hand,” the receptionist replied. “Please hold one moment.”
There weren’t many in the galaxy who would keep a Hand waiting; although there were excuses Damien was perfectly willing to accept. What little time he’d spent with Alaura Stealey before her death had made one thing clear: one of the main reasons the Hands’ authority was respected and honored was that they didn’t abuse it.
Governor Maria Rose appeared on his screen after roughly two minutes’ wait, by which time Damien had refreshed his coffee and was studying the jeweled necklace of simple satellites that provided Panterra’s weather forecasting.
“Hand Montgomery,” she greeted him. “How may I assist you?”
“This is a courtesy call, Governor,” he replied. “A courier from Mars has arrived in-system.”
“Do you have news of the commission?” Rose asked.
“No,” Damien shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m being called away to another crisis. The nature of the galaxy does not permit His Majesty to have idle Hands.”
“I see. You will not be participating in the commission you have called, then?”
“I was never intending to,” the Hand admitted. “My purpose here was to neutralize the NPLF. We have specialists with skills far more useful to such an endeavor, and they are on their way.”
“As you say, my lord Hand, the galaxy does not wait on our wishes or our desires,” the Governor allowed. “Your arrival was timely and your intervention a literal lifesaver.” She sighed and shook her head.
“I will await the arrival of your Commissioners,” she promised. “You are not wrong about my world. I’m not sure an outside perspective is what we need to fix things, but I will grasp at any straws to avoid further bloodshed.”
“I can’t speak to the solutions required, Governor Rose,” Damien told her. “I am a Hand. It’s my job to bandage wounds, not perform surgery. I wish you and Panterra luck.”
“You’ve given us time, my lord Hand. That may be more important than luck.”
“I hope so,” he replied. “Now, Governor, I must join my officers in preparing for our departure. I can’t speak to where we must go, but another shadow falls.”
“And the King’s Hand must lift it,” she replied. “Good luck, Damien Montgomery.”
#
At the heart of every starship was the simulacrum chamber, where all of the thousands upon thousands of silver runes carved on and throughout the hull of the ship converged onto a single point, containing a silver model of the ship. That model magically changed to match any damage or modification to the ship, and was, in a strange but absolutely true sense, the ship.
On a civilian ship, the jump matrix converged on a simulacrum chamber with walls covered in runes and screens, showing the world around the vessel. It was a quiet, calm, place rarely entered by anyone except the Ship’s Mage.
The Duke of Magnificence’s simulacrum chamber was also her bridge. As Damien joined Mage-Captain Jakab for the first jump away from Panterra, it was a hive of activity. While the spherical chamber had the same all-encompassing screens showing the world outside, and the same not-quite-liquid silver simulacrum as the civilian version, it also had no less than four circular tiers in the middle of the sphere.
Mage-Captain Jakab stood on the center tier next to the simulacrum. Around him were all the paraphernalia of a warship command. Each tier had consoles, chairs, and the systems needed to manage the massive ship.
For all of the firepower at Jakab’s command, however, the simulacrum itself was the Duke’s deadliest weapon. Where a civilian jump matrix could only augment the teleportation spell, allowing a Mage to move the vessel a full light year through space in a moment, the military amplifier matrix could augment any spell.
From the simulacrum chamber and bridge of a warship, a Mage could teleport the same light year as aboard a civilian jump ship. They could also turn regular self-defense spells into ship-killing weapons, defend their ship from incoming missiles, and in general wield magic a thousand times more powerful than their normal spells.
Put Damien in Jakab’s chair, and link his Runes of Power into the amplifier, and he could perform outright miracles. Access to the amplifier in Olympus Mons had allowed the first Mage-King to complete the terraforming of Mars in days and throw entire fleets around the Sol system like toys.
Of course, the Duke’s amplifier was a pale shadow of the one in Olympus Mons. No one was quite sure how the silver dust simulacrum of the entire solar system in the heart of the mountain had been built. The Eugenicists who had built it had used the amplifier to identify the tiniest scraps of magical talent in their test subjects and breed magic back into humanity.
The fact that they’d killed some ten thousand children who hadn’t shown magical talent along the way helped explain why no one who’d known where the Olympus Mons amplifier had come from had lived long enough to answer questions.
“We have confirmed we are clear of Panterra and the star’s gravity well,” the navigator reported. “Panterra Control wishes us a pleasant trip and informs us we are clear to jump.”
“Give Panterra Control my regards,” Jakab replied calmly. The Mage-Captain took the last half-step up to the simulacrum and removed the skin-tight gloves almost every Mage wore. Panterra’s star was still large enough in the surrounding screens that its light glittered off the silver runes inlaid into the man’s palms.
“All hands, prepare for jump,” he continued as he laid his hands on the simulacrum.
Damien’s sight – the talent that marked him as a Rune Wright and almost unique even among Mages – tracked the energy flow out from Jakab’s hands and back from the ship. The energy of the ship reached out for the Mage-Captain, encasing him and surrounding him in a way only Damien could see.
To hi
s gaze, Mage, simulacrum, and starship were all one.
And then Jakab jumped, and the flare of energy forced Damien to close his eyes.
When he opened them again, the Duke of Magnificence was in deep space – on her way to Míngliàng.
Chapter 6
Míngliàng was a gorgeous planet from space. From their emergence point, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, it was a blue marble heavily reminiscent of humanity’s home world. It lacked the reddish tinge of terraformed Mars, the purple tinge of Ardennes, or the lavender tinge of Sherwood. The blue was almost the same hue, the white almost the same white, as Earth.
With a quick command on his PC, Damien overlaid sensor data and the ship’s tactical display over the view from his window. The Duke’s computers happily flagged the destroyers and corvettes of the Míngliàng Security Flotilla. Eight of the destroyers held equidistant patrol orbits around their home. A pair of two-ship patrols swanned around the rest of the system.
The remaining four ships were probably either in the Antonius system or sweeping the usual jump points one light year out from the system. The system also flagged thirty corvettes, home-built ships in the quarter-million ton range. Tapping one of the icons, Damien brought up the ship’s information on the vessels: fleet-footed ships with heavy laser armaments but no jump matrices.
The MSF was very capable of defending its home system and, unlike many system militias, could also project firepower outside its system. It wasn’t an investment many of the second-wave colonies – the MidWorlds – would have made, but it was one Míngliàng could afford.
As the world grew closer, its differences from Earth became clearer. Earth had distinct landmasses, continents making up almost a third of its surface. Míngliàng did not. It was a world of islands and archipelagos. Fishing and tourism had fueled its economy in the beginning – the white beaches of Míngliàng were famed throughout the Protectorate.
The revenues had been well-invested. Later, immense tidal power stations had provided near-infinite amounts of power to fuel massive, carefully maintained, floating industrial platforms.
Those platforms, in turn, had provided the muscle to build one of the few space elevators not on Earth itself. That immensely tough beanstalk rose from another floating platform into orbit, providing the anchor point of an orbital industry that put Panterra, founded alongside the Core Worlds, to shame.
Most MidWorlds had a single large space station. Míngliàng’s orbital stations were far smaller, but more plentiful. Fourteen stations, each one kilometer in length, were spaced equidistantly along the geostationary orbit. A fifteenth, twice the size of the others, hung at the counterweight point of the space elevator.
The small stations were efficient for production and docking, but weren’t big enough for the large construction slips needed for million-ton-plus interstellar freighters or warships.
Their civilian shipping resembled their corvettes – small ships, mostly without jump matrices. A construction site drifting in one of the Lagrange points showed the beginnings of a larger yard to change that.
Míngliàng was one of the four most industrialized, most powerful MidWorlds. Between their wealth and their ability to take matters into their own hands, their accusations had to be answered by one of the Mage-King’s Hands, to make sure things didn’t get out of control.
What worried Damien, as his ship gently set its course for one of the geostationary stations, was that the system they were laying their complaints against was Sherwood. Not only was Sherwood his home, Sherwood was the second most industrialized MidWorld.
Míngliàng’s fight was easily in their ‘weight class’; which meant that any war would be a bloody, drawn-out affair.
Exactly the sort of thing the Protectorate existed to stop.
#
Special Agent Julia Amiri had access to all of the resources of a fully modern battlecruiser, including a full twelve hundred strong regiment of the Royal Martian Marine Corps, hundreds of suits of exosuit battle armor and dozens of assault shuttles, to keep her charge safe.
Montgomery, on the other hand, hated being a passenger and hated pomp and ceremony. It was part of his charm, to be sure, to an ex-criminal bounty hunter turned bodyguard-slash-enforcer for one of the most powerful men alive, but also a giant headache.
This time, she’d at least convinced him to bring along Marines as an honor guard – and Amiri would have words with the Major if their dress uniforms were less than perfect – and let someone else – someone like, say, one of the Navy pilots trained in evasion and combat landings – fly the shuttle.
As twelve dress uniformed Marines led the way onto the shuttle, she could hear Damien chuckling to himself.
“My job is to keep you alive,” she told him. “You don’t make it easy.”
“Julia, I appreciate all you do for me,” he murmured. “But we both know I don’t actually need a bodyguard.”
“It’s not always about keeping you safe, Damien,” she replied. “If you want to stop these people from starting a war, you need to make an impression. They need to remember who you are and what you represent.”
The Hand was silent as they stepped onto the shuttle, but as they took her seats she saw he was smiling. It was at her expense, but it was still worth it. It was getting rarer and rarer to see the younger man smile.
“What?” she asked.
“Julia, if I didn’t agree with you about making an impression, do you really think you’d have won the argument?”
The shuttle dropping away from the Duke robbed her of any response but a sharp glare.
#
Damien waited patiently for the shuttle’s sensors to declare the landing pad outside cool enough to walk on. The Marine Mage-Lieutenant heading the bodyguard Amiri had picked out was the only other person on the shuttle who could protect themselves against the heat, and ceremony dictated the Marines went first.
Finally, the Marines began to troop out of the shuttle onto the concrete. He watched on the shuttle’s screens as they formed a neat double file, linking up with the local Míngliàng Planetary Security troops to form a corridor of armed and uniformed men and women.
With the preparations complete, Damien finally exited the shuttle, Amiri one step behind and to his right, where she could more easily draw a weapon to cover him, and Christoffsen one step behind and to his left. Both of his aides had sub-vocal microphones linked to Damien’s concealed earpiece.
The skies over the landing pad were a bright shining blue, and the smell of sea salt mixed with the normal burnt concrete smell of a landing site. The pad was on a hill overlooking one of Míngliàng’s famous beaches, and he could see the sun reflecting off the waves behind the welcoming committee.
The welcoming committee itself consisted of a two men and a woman. The woman and the taller man were in military uniforms, the woman in the black and red of Míngliàng Planetary Security and the man in the black and blue of the Míngliàng Security Flotilla.
The short, dark-skinned man with the pronounced epicanthic folds around his eyes in between the two officers wore a neat business suit. He stepped forward as Damien approached and offered his hand to Damien.
“Good morning, my lord Hand,” he said softly. “I am Wong Ken, Minister for Trade and First Husband of Míngliàng. My husband sends his regrets, but he was pulled into an emergency meeting as we were about to leave. He should have the immediate crisis resolved by the time we reach Government House.”
Damien shook the man’s hand and nodded to the military officers.”
“The duties of Governor Wong’s position are often onerous,” Damien allowed. “I look forward to meeting with him.”
“Of course, my lord,” Wong Ken agreed. He gestured to the two military officers with him. “If I may present General Matija Avery, the commander of Míngliàng Planetary Security, and Commodore Ratree Metharom, second in command of the Míngliàng Security Flotilla.”
Avery gave Damien a firm nod. The man responsib
le for keeping Míngliàng itself secure was almost entirely uninvolved in the current crisis. Commodore Metharom smiled and half-bowed.
“Admiral Yen Phan sends her regrets as well,” she told him. “She arrived in the system shortly after you did and remains aboard the destroyer Light of Peace. She is in conference with the Governor as we speak, and looks forward to meeting with you once she makes planetfall.”
“It sounds, gentlemen, Commodore, that there are matters in play that should not be discussed in even a semi-public setting,” Damien said quietly. The pad was behind several layers of security, and he could see several armed vehicles on the perimeter, but it was also on the edge of the main spaceport. Outside, all of the security in the world could be foiled by a skilled journalist with a half-decent shotgun microphone.
“We have vehicles ready to take everyone to Government House,” Wong Ken confirmed. “I assume your Marines will accompany us as well?”
“If you have sufficient transport.”
“I’ve read at least the public reports of your trip to Ardennes, my lord Hand,” the First Husband explained. “I presumed you would be more comfortable with a full escort.”
“I appreciate the thought, Mister Wong.”
#
Government House on Míngliàng was a sprawling complex of low-slung buildings built along the top of a sharp cliff. Their convoy passed the Planetary Assembly building, a baroque three story structure based on the original Parliament building in London, on their way into the complex.
The complex appeared undefended, and the pair of armored vehicles escorting Damien’s convoy looked distinctly out of place. Appearances were deceiving, however, and Amiri maintained quiet commentary as they traveled, pointing out the green hillocks that concealed surface-to-space missile launchers and similar defenses.
Finally, they pulled up in front of the Governor’s residence, a surprisingly small building built of the local stark-white stone.
Voice of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 3) Page 4