“The hell if any of us going anywhere till we can do that,” Singh said firmly, and the others nodded.
“I’m not sure we’ll make any difference,” the captain warned them. “Varren apparently plays hardball with Mages in Corinthian – apparently, he wants to prove that Corinthian has nothing to fear from Mages.”
“He certainly isn’t showing Mages have nothing to fear from Corinthian,” Kellers murmured. “What do we do if they’re going to throw away the key? Or worse?”
David didn’t answer immediately, looking down at his hands and the glass of whiskey in them. At the end of the day, he could replace his ship – though his other issues would probably continue to pursue him – but was he really willing to abandon the young man who’d saved his life and the lives of all of his crew?
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he eventually said, his voice steady. “But I’d ask you all to remember this: what he’s being punished for, he did to save our lives. And he doesn’t even know why we were in danger.”
#
The Protectorate had stringent rules on keeping prisoners in zero-gravity cells, Damien discovered, as twice each day he was removed from the cell and taken to a gym with magically induced gravity to exercise and eat. The entire time he was outside of his cell, he was accompanied by two Enforcers in their ominous black armor, neither of whom said a word to him that wasn’t a direct instruction.
It wasn’t until after the fourth exercise session, at the end of the second day of his imprisonment, that Damien saw anyone other than his two guards. Instead of escorting him back to his cell, they escorted him to a small office with gravity runes where a bespectacled and balding man in a plain black suit waited for him.
“Please be seated Mr. Montgomery,” the stranger told Damien, gesturing towards one of the two chairs in the room. He was seated in the second, behind a desk that was too plain and empty to be his. “Please leave us,” the man then instructed the Enforcers.
“There’s a panic button under the desk Mr. Burton,” one of the Enforcers responded calmly. “If there are any issues, we’ll be back inside in seconds.”
The door swung shut behind them, and Burton met Damien’s gaze levelly.
“I am Zach Burton, your appointed defender,” he said calmly. “I apologize for not being in to speak with you sooner, but I had to research the particulars of the charge levied against you – as you can imagine, it’s not a common one.”
Damien glanced at the locked door.
“They’re acting like I’m dangerous,” he said quietly, the words half a complaint.
“Son, from what I’m told, you came within a sunbathing snowflake of scattering everyone aboard your ship in pieces across several light years,” Burton said dryly, looking over the tops of his glasses at Damien. “You’re facing charges of illegal modification of a Jump Matrix and eighty-six counts of attempted murder.”
The words hit Damien like a body blow and he sank in his chair as the full magnitude of the accusations sank in.
“I didn’t… I never…”
“I have to admit,” Burton continued after he realized Damien wasn’t going to be able to say anything coherent, “that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen quite so open and shut a case from this side. The ship itself constitutes an insurmountable degree of evidence.”
“No one was hurt!” Damien burst out. “It was completely safe, I could tell.”
Burton was silent for a moment, and then sighed deeply. “Damien, I’ve looked up what they’ve charged you with. They can take away your magic. An insanity plea won’t help you.”
“I am not crazy,” Damien told him. “I turned the matrix into an amplifier to save us all – if it hadn’t been safe, I wouldn’t have jumped us.”
“The Guildmaster and his experts – you know, the people who build those matrices? – disagree with you,” Burton said calmly. “They say you all burned up several lifetimes worth of luck surviving so many jumps, and the ship is at risk of coming apart just sitting there at this point. I’m honestly not sure what you can do other than plead the stupidity of youth and throw yourself on the mercy of the court.
“They might let you get away with two or three decades of labor if you do that,” the lawyer continued, “and you’re young enough that you’d still have a few good decades left after that.”
Damien sat in the chair in silence for a long time, staring at the lawyer.
“Look, there’s not a lot I can do here,” Burton finally said. “Unless you want to tell me magic space pixies modified the runes on that ship, they’ve got the physical evidence to prove the matrix modification charge, which leads inherently to the attempted murder charges. If you want to avoid this, you shouldn’t have broken the most complicated spell known to man and Mage!”
“If I hadn’t, I and those eighty-six people would be dead,” Damien told him quietly. “What do you want of me?”
“Listen, the trial won’t be for a few more days,” Burton told him. “Think it over, and I’ll see if I dig up some grounds for clemency. The guards will call me if you ask – they have to.”
The defender stood up, offering his hand to Damien.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Montgomery, but the truth is you’re screwed,” he said bluntly. “I stand by my recommendation: throw yourself on the mercy of the court and plead ignorance. It’s your only way out of here.”
Damien shook the man’s hand. The man was trying his best. None of the other Mages apparently thought what he’d done was possible, so, from their perspective, they were right. He had tried to kill everyone aboard his ship.
It wasn’t their fault that he had done something they knew to be impossible.
#
Captain Rice arrived at the Guildmaster’s office ten minutes early for his appointment. Two days had passed without any news of his ship or his Mage, and his staff and crew were starting to get impatient for their Captain to fix things. David had no illusions about his ability to fix this, but he knew he had to try.
The Guildmaster was almost half an hour late. David sat, surrounded by potted plants, in the waiting room on one of the higher floors of the black metal fortress the Guild called home on Corinthian Prime for forty minutes.
He spent most of the time trying not to take his growing frustration out on the gentleman holding down the massive wooden desk outside Varren’s office. There was nothing the assistant could do to hurry Varren up from wherever the man was hiding, and David had learned long ago never to piss off the people who organized the schedules.
When Varren finally showed up he entered through the waiting room himself. He was a large man, on the edge of grossly obese, wearing a perfectly tailored gray suit that tried to hide it. His hair had gone pure white around a growing bald spot on the top of his head, and his eyes were a cheerful bright blue. The gold medallion at his throat was the first David had ever seen to be larger than standard, but the number of symbols etched into it explained the need. Damien was unusual in that his medallion bore the marks of two specialties. Varren bore the three stars of a Jump Mage, the stylized atom of a Transmuter, the quill of a Rune Scribe, and the sword of an Enforcer.
For all of his size, the Guildmaster was light on his feet and approached David immediately.
“I apologize profusely for keeping you waiting, Captain Rice,” he told the Captain. “The Inspectors on the Blue Jay finished their work a bit earlier than planned, and I wanted to meet with them so I could give you an update on the status of the ship.”
“I appreciate that,” David replied. Any answers would be helpful at this point.
“My office then,” Varren instructed, gesturing forward. He turned to the assistant. “Cob, can you re-arrange my schedule for the rest of the day to make sure I have enough time for Captain Rice? The Governor is the only thing we shouldn’t be able to change.”
“I’ll see who I can push off till tomorrow,” the assistant promised.
“If someone’s willing to meet
me after dinner, set that up instead,” Varren told him as he opened the door into his office for Rice to precede him.
The Guildmaster’s office was not what David had expected. The front room had been expensive furniture and green plants. The furniture of the office was probably expensive, but that was about all the room shared with the outside. Squat bookshelves covered every wall, surrounding an immense desk that might have been real wood, but was hard to identify under the paper that covered it. The shelves were bulging with paper copies of reports. The desk was occupied with four monitors, and two more were set up on the appropriate nearby shelves to provide more real estate for data.
Varren entered, and waved his hand. The monitors all rolled themselves up, shrinking into single bars lying on the desk, half-hidden by paper.
“I apologize for the mess,” the Guildmaster told David. “It drives Cob to distraction, but I find that the more data I can lay eyes on at once, the better I’m able to think. I always seem to end up with half the station spread around my office, though,” he admitted ruefully as he gestured David to a chair that, mercifully, did not seem to be occupied by paper.
Settling into the indicated seat, David almost jumped as the fabric and frame automatically adjusted itself to an appropriate ergonomic position for his body shape. Moments later, he felt a knot he hadn’t quite realized he’d been carrying in his back release, and he glanced down at the chair appreciatively for a moment.
Then he looked up, meeting Varren’s gaze across the man’s massive and crowded desk.
“My ship,” he asked quietly.
“I was hoping to have better news,” the Guildmaster answered, the cheerfulness of his voice fading. “The Inspectors have concluded that the damage done to the rune matrix is too pervasive for repair. Even if we could fix it, there’s so many changes that the ship would never be truly safe to jump. The Blue Jay is being condemned.”
Condemned. David had known it was possible – even likely - from the moment he and his crew had been evacuated at gunpoint.
“We jumped that ship fourteen times after the modifications were made,” he argued. “The Jay is perfectly safe!”
“Captain, please!” Varren replied. “You and your crew should be scattered in pieces from here to Sherwood! Just because you have been unbelievably lucky doesn’t mean you should keep pushing your luck!
“The Jump Matrix hasn’t been changed since the first Mage-King wrote it,” he continued, “because no one has ever managed to do so and have the ship and Mage survive.
“The Blue Jay will be held to serve as evidence in Mage Montgomery’s trial, and then scrapped and the parts and scrap sold,” Varren concluded. “You will, of course, receive the funds from the sale, less costs and a service fee.”
The chair wouldn’t let David slump backwards.
“What about Montgomery?” he finally asked.
“Mage Montgomery has been charged with modification of a jump matrix and eighty-six counts of attempted murder,” the Guildmaster said gently. “So far as I can tell, he is either utterly ignorant and callous, or completely insane – and only an impossible amount of luck kept him from utterly destroying your ship.”
“He saved our lives,” David replied. At this point, it sounded like Damien’s only hope was to tell Varren everything. “He turned the matrix into an amplifier, Guildmaster,” he continued quietly. “If he hadn’t, the pirates would have killed us. Instead, he destroyed them. I agreed to let him. If someone has to be punished for this, punish me.”
Varren stood from his chair. It was a slow process – light on his feet or not, the Guildmaster was a massive man – and he was silent as he walked away from David to look out the window.
“If a man orders a doctor to remove his heart because it is broken - and the doctor does it,” he said quietly, “do you call it a suicide – or charge the doctor with murder, because he should have the knowledge to say no?
“Even if he managed what you claim,” Varren continued, his voice still quiet as he refused to face David, “The Jump Matrix wouldn’t have survived intact. Bring what evidence you have to the trial, Captain, and you may manage to argue the Judge down in his sentence, but I have no choice.”
“No choice, Guildmaster?”
“Based off of the evidence I have seen, my assessment is that Damien Montgomery is either dangerously unaware of his limits or criminally insane,” the old man told David, his gaze on the greenery of the Spindle. “My recommendation to the Judge will be that his magic is taken from him, and we have already requested the presence of a Hand to carry out the sentence.”
A Hand. Damien’s crime was so severe, they were bringing a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, the roving warrior-Judges who served as the King’s enforcers and wielded his authority outside Sol, to punish him.
“I understand your loyalty to your people,” Varren continued. “It says good things about both you and Mage Montgomery, but his crimes are inarguable and the punishment is not mine to set.”
The Guildmaster finally looked away from the window. His hands behind his back, his eyes were sad as they met David’s across the room. “I am sorry, Captain Rice, but with what Mage Montgomery has done, my hands are tied.”
“I understand,” David replied. He might not understand the reason, but he understood the reality. He stood. “If you’ll excuse me, then, I must inform my crew.”
“I appreciate your understanding Captain Rice,” Varren replied. “If there is anything I or my office can do to assist you while you remain in Corinthian, let me know. I realize how difficult a situation you are in.”
“Thank you,” David told him, the words ashes on his tongue.
#
The Citadel had an efficient elevator system, and David was outside, blinking in the light from the glowing core above his head, within a few minutes. He quickly left the main pathway, losing himself in the parks around the Guild’s offices until no one could see him.
No ship. No Mage. No crew – for his officers would never forgive him if he couldn’t save Damien.
He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he let this happen.
He stared at the trees for a long time, and then pulled a business card from his pocket and plugged a contact number into his personal computer.
A few moments later, a red-haired man with piercing green eyes answered.
“Captain Rice. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you at this point,” the man told David.
“You said you deal in information, Carmichael,” Rice replied. “I need some. We need to meet.”
#
Alaura Stealey was not drunk. Given the five now-empty bottles of stupendously expensive, actually-shipped-from-Scotland-on-Earth, whisky sitting on the desk in her office, this would be a surprise to anyone who interrupted her, and was a disappointment to her.
As a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, Stealey was sent into the worst conflicts that the Protectorate had to offer, and the mess she’d just resolved on Corona was no exception. The original colony had been funded by a corporation out of Tau Ceti, third oldest of the Core Worlds. That corporation had been leaning on the local elected government to allow them mining access in explicitly designated reserves.
A portion of the local populace had responded with violence. After six weeks of negotiation, Stealey had finally managed to ram a deal that neither side was satisfied with down everyone’s throats. The corporation didn’t get to mine in area that was unique in the Protectorate and in need of protection, but there were no pardons for the rebels either. Nine of their leaders were going to be spending the next couple of decades as guests of the Coronan prison system, judged and sentenced under her authority as Hand of the King.
Unfortunately for Stealey’s desire to get very drunk, one of her first operations as a Hand of the King had run her into a similar group of rebels, with less of a point and less of a willingness to negotiate. That encounter had resulted in her taking several explosive rounds to the stomach. She’d lived, but eve
ry organ in that section of her body had been replaced with cybernetic parts.
Cybernetic parts served the purposes of those replaced organs in the main, but the toxin filters didn’t distinguish alcohol from any other poison. Her new and improved guts didn’t allow for such minor things as getting drunk. Or pregnant, for that matter, which she hadn’t expected to bother her before it happened.
With a sigh, Alaura reached for the sixth bottle -- she liked the taste of whisky, and it was theoretically possible she could get drunk if she drank enough -- only to be interrupted by a ‘New Message’ alert on her desk. She stared at the alert as the monitor extended itself up off her desk, noting that it was an interstellar delivery, carried by a courier ship out of Corinthian.
“I stayed in one place too long,” she said aloud, and then opened the message with a sigh. She paid almost no attention to the recorded video message from the Corinthian Guildmaster, beyond confirming that they needed her presence, but then started skimming the attached files.
A modified matrix had made fourteen jumps?
That was only possible if it had been successfully modified and turned into a true amplifier. As Stealey understood it that was theoretically possible, if you had the full schematics of the jump matrix and understood that a jump matrix was a restricted amplifier.
Without those, working with no time and under fire, it should have been impossible.
Alaura hit the intercom, raising the control bridge of her personal ship.
“Harmon,” she greeted the ship’s first officer. “Is anyone off ship?”
“The last of the crew shuffled aboard about fifteen minutes ago according to the master at arms,” the Lieutenant, seconded from the Protectorate Navy to her personal service, replied. “What do you need, ma’am?”
“If everyone is aboard and we’re fully fueled, set a course for the Corinthian system,” she ordered. “I have business there.”
Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) Page 11