Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  David nodded wordlessly and turned to his officers.

  “Stick together,” he told them quietly as Margrave started away. “No booze.”

  “I’ll keep the boys under control,” Jenna promised him. “Go see what the President wants – it’s not every day a planetary head of state wants to see you!”

  With a firm nod, David followed Margrave towards the fountain. Crossing the green lawn he saw that a number of men and women at the party wore gold-trimmed black military uniforms. He had no idea what insignia Chrysanthemum used for its military, but he suspected that the officers with multiple gold leaves on their collars were high ranking.

  “There’s a lot of soldiers here,” he observed to Margrave as they paused, allowing a team of waiters to make their way past with a trolley of hot food.

  “The military is important to Chrysanthemum,” the aide replied. “Many of our politicians are retired soldiers, and they have the right to still wear the uniform.”

  “Most Fringe worlds don’t have much of a military,” David observed as they set off again. “What happened here?”

  Margrave stopped, looking at David with sharp eyes. “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve heard rumors,” he said politely. Most of those rumors were related to the fact that a military junta controlled the government, not how there’d been enough of a military to take over in the first place.

  “Chrysanthemum was founded as a corporate colony,” Margrave explained as they headed into the clamshell of the main Festival Hall. “Our parents and grandparents came here for the promise of a good life. When they arrived, they discovered they were effectively indentured servants.

  “In the end, we revolted, and drove the corporation out,” he continued. “After ten years of war, we’d formed a true formal military, and one we owed our freedom to.” He glanced back at David. “And since the only Mages we’d known had worn the boots of tyrants, we barred them from our world and began to deal with Legatus.”

  David let that pass in silence. There’d been a number of worlds where Core world corporations had abused the colonists they’d imported. Most, sooner or later, came to the attention of the Hands. The corporations involved tended to cease to exist once the Mage-King’s wandering Judges got involved, but it seemed the law of the Protectorate had missed Chrysanthemum.

  “Ah, President Larson, sir,” the aide greeted his boss as they finally reached a large, white-clothed, table in the center of the main hall. “May I present Captain Rice – he is the master of the ship that brought us Group Commander Mons’ squadron.”

  The man Margrave had led him to wore the same gold on black military uniform as most of the men at the party, but where they had various rank insignias with numbers and material marking their rank, President Larson wore an exquisitely worked rose gold chrysanthemum on a chain around his neck.

  Otherwise, the President of Chrysanthemum was an utterly unimposing man. He was short, barely taller than Damien, and rotund with a receding hairline and a double chin. Something in his ice blue eyes, though, suggested that while the Generals might run the planet, this man was still not to be taken lightly.

  “President Larson,” David greeted the man. He realized that Group Commander Mons was standing at the President’s right shoulder. The Legatan officer’s plain blue uniform had blended in with the crowd around them, and he hadn’t known she was going to be here. He’d need to keep her away from Damien – she would recognize the young Mage and know he wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “I want to thank you in person, Captain Rice,” the President told him. His voice was soft and highly pitched, almost that of a child. “Your ship should be receiving a more tangible token of said thanks soon. You are welcome to our world."

  Almost on cue, David’s personal computer beeped an incoming communication.

  “Excuse me, Mr. President,” he said politely as he stepped away from the crowd and raised the wrist-computer to his lips.

  “Rice here,” he answered, as quietly as he could.

  “It’s Singh,” the First Pilot’s voice said sharply. “Our fuel tanker has arrived. Everything is hooked up; and the gas is flowing.”

  “That’s good,” Rice told him. He paused, considering the ex-Navy officer’s likelihood of calling him for nothing. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure,” the Pilot replied. “They docked further back than I was expecting – close enough that they could reach the shuttle bay. It’s making me nervous.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Strapping the suit on now,” Singh replied grimly. “I’m getting twitchy.” In the background, David heard someone shouting, and then Singh was speaking urgently. “Shit! They’ve fired a boarding tube at us – we’ve got…”

  The signal dissolved in distorted static. A type of distorted static that David hadn’t heard since he’d left the Navy – jamming.

  #

  Damien had followed Jenna and Kellers to the buffet table, but was spending his time watching the crowd, not eating the food. It had been years since he’d gone anywhere in public without the gold medallion proclaiming him a Mage, and it was odd to realize just how much extra personal space and minor courtesy the coin gave him.

  The noticeable decrease in his personal ‘bubble,’ despite the relatively sparse crowd at the Festival Hall, put him on edge and alert. The first thing he noticed was Group Commander Mons, standing by a rotund man of Damien’s own height. Carefully, he turned away from her, looking first at the buffet table, and then past it.

  The back wall of the Festival Hall had been covered in curtains painted in a mural of an agrarian landscape entirely out of sorts with the buzzing industry and paranoid security of the city so far. He was looking to see if the artist had hidden any hint of the reality of life on Chrysanthemum when the breeze from an opening door flipped aside the curtains, revealing who was coming through that door.

  Three black armored soldiers with face-covering helmets, armed with familiar looking stunguns, were now hiding behind the curtain. Where there were three, there were likely more.

  He slipped over next to Jenna, grabbing a glass of champagne to cover his approach.

  “We have a problem,” he told her while pretending to sip. “Soldiers behind the curtains. I doubt they’re here to seize the Legatans.”

  The XO didn’t seem to hear him for a moment, and then sighed. “Let’s make for the Captain.”

  “He’s got Group Commander Mons with him,” Damien replied, noting as David stepped away from the President.

  “She’s not a squad of soldiers looking to shoot us,” Jenna pointed out, putting her glass on the buffet table and gesturing for Kellers to join them.

  As the three made their way over to David, Damien saw the Captain jerk in surprise, and pull his PC away from his face, as if the noise it was making was painful. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he saw the soldiers stop trying to hide as they saw the Blue Jay’s officers moving away.

  A dozen soldiers, armored in faceless black unmarked except for a gold chrysanthemum emblazoned on their chest, cut through the crowd like sharks through water. Even the officers and other soldiers in the crowd parted ways, clearing a rapidly growing space around them as they reached David. The Captain looked up at the arrival of his officers, and then beyond them.

  Before any of the Blue Jay’s officers could speak, however, Group Commander Mons stepped forward, between them and the soldiers, and turned to Larson.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “These people are under the protection of the Directorate!”

  “I apologize, Group Commander,” Larson told her. The President’s voice was oddly childlike, and yet utterly flat. “These people are wanted by the Protectorate for major crimes. I would be remiss in my duties as the leader of a Protectorate world if I allowed them to go free.”

  Mons glanced at David, who shrugged back at her.

  “Did you think Ricket hired a perfectly clean crew for his illegal
delivery?” the Captain asked.

  The Legatan glanced past David and met Damien’s own gaze. Her eyes widened at the sight of the Mage, and Damien inclined his head slightly. He was already preparing his body and magic, and thankful that the crowd around the police squad had cleared.

  “They are under the protection of the Directorate,” Mons repeated. “I do not care what crimes they committed before they entered our service – they are protected.”

  Larson shrugged. “The Directorate is welcome to fund their legal defense,” he said coldly. “Please stand aside, Group Commander. I have no desire for my men to injure you.”

  Mons paused and looked back at Damien again. On meeting the young Mage’s eyes, she nodded sharply and stepped aside.

  “Do what you must,” she ordered.

  She wasn’t speaking to Larson.

  “Seize them!” the President snapped, but Damien was already acting. Power flowed through his body as he spun to face the soldiers, his hands splayed out palms down.

  A wave of pure force blasted out from his hands at knee-height. The Chrysanthemumite soldiers went down in a tumble, the snapping noises of breaking bones and shattering kneecaps suggesting none of them were getting up quickly.

  The buffet table shared their fate, as did many of the decorations, but none of the guests were injured. That didn’t stop them panicking and bolting for the exits at the sight of an angry Mage. Damien gestured again, and the stunguns tore themselves from the hands of the flattened soldiers to land at his feet.

  David picked one up with a calm nod to Damien, and then turned to the frozen in shock Larson and Mons. The non-lethal weapon barked twice and two of the calibrated electro-shock SmartDarts slammed into the planet’s President. Mons caught him as he fell and gently laid him down before looking back up the Blue Jay’s crew.

  “They’ll mobilize quickly, and I doubt they left your ship alone,” she told them. “I’m being jammed – I can’t reach Niska on the Rock. Get to your shuttle – I certainly won’t be stopping you!”

  Damien shook his head at the thought of being helped by an UnArcana military officer to escape a trap set by an UnArcana government. Wordlessly, he followed David out of the Festival Hall.

  #

  Margrave had abandoned the long open-topped car he’d driven them from the landing pad in. Damien kept watch as the others piled in, Jenna grabbing the wheel while Kellers settled into ‘shotgun’ with a stolen stungun at the ready.

  The only soldiers actually at the Festival Hall, it seemed, had been the squad now lying whimpering on the floor, nursing their shattered limbs. Some of them might be crippled for life, but so far as Damien could tell they would all live.

  He followed David into the backseat of the car, and Jenna gunned the engine, heading towards the shore.

  “I can’t raise Kelzin or the ship,” Kellers reported, fiddling with the personal computer strapped around his wrist. “They must have slammed a jamming field on us just as the soldiers moved. What did they expect the Jay to do from orbit?!”

  “The Jay is under attack as well,” David informed them all grimly. “Singh told me they’d launched a boarding tube into the shuttle bay. We could easily escape to our ship and land directly in a trap.”

  “You’ve met Singh, right?” Jenna said drily, swerving the car around a speed bump and ignoring a set of traffic signals. “Strap him into that exosuit, and it would take an army to get to the ship.”

  “From the size of the tanker, they could have brought an army,” David reminded her. “Or some Augments or exosuits of their own.”

  The car was silent for a moment - a silence suddenly interrupted by gunfire as Jenna whipped around a corner into the face of a blockade of black armored vehicles. Three of the black armored personnel carriers they’d seen while driving through the neighborhood had been parked in a row, blocking the road to the landing pad.

  “Turn us around!” Kellers shouted, and they all lurched to one side as the car swerved in a dangerously tight turn.

  “Hold me down,” Damien told David sharply, rising to his feet in the back of the car and facing the APCs. The other man grabbed onto his waist, and Damien stretched out his hands. He felt for the core of power within him, throwing it out in front of him.

  The second burst of gunfire from the APCs was more on target than the first. For a moment, even Damien thought the heavy bullets were going to rip through the car – then they slammed into the shield he’d raised with a force that shoved him backwards. Without David’s grip, the Mage would have fallen out of the car.

  Grimly, Damien held the shield as the car turned around and Jenna slammed on the accelerator. Bullets continued to splash off for a few moments, and then they were clear. The young Mage slumped, leaning on David for a second as they screamed around another corner, turning onto a different route to the landing pad.

  “Damien!” Kellers shouted. “Up ahead!”

  Blocking the way to the road and rumbling towards them was a tank. Damien barely got his shield forward in time, and was slammed back into his seat when the first shot from its main gun slammed into his defense.

  He took a deep breath as the world seemed to slow down around him. The soldiers in the Hall had brought stunguns – they hadn’t been trying to kill him and his friends, so he’d tried not to kill them. Now he was being shot at, and he was out of patience.

  Surging back to his feet, Damien thrust his right hand out in a clenched fist. Bright light flashed around him as he moved, a field of super-hot plasma coalescing around him without touching his skin, and then blasting forwards with the motion of his fist.

  The bolt met the tank shell coming the other way and incinerated it before slamming into the tank’s turret. Molten metal exploded away from the top of the armored vehicle, and then Damien slammed a second plasma bolt into the main chassis.

  This one went clean through the tank, and hit the ammunition on the way. From sixty meters away, the explosion rocked the car the Blue Jay’s officers had stolen, the heat blasting against Damien’s face.

  Exhaustion collapsed him back into the seat and it felt like his head was exploding as a vicious migraine stabbed into his skull. Blinking against the pain, he put his hands to his face – and at a warm wet feeling, pulled them away to see them spattered in his own blood.

  “Damn it Damien, you’re bleeding from everywhere but your eyeballs,” David hissed, tossing him a package of gauze from somewhere in his suit. “I saw Kenneth after he overdid it, I won’t bury two Mages!”

  Wincing at the fierceness of David’s speech and the migraine, Damien shook his head. “Not likely,” he half-whimpered.

  “I’ve got something!” Kellers suddenly snapped, turning the volume up on his personal computer.

  Most of what they heard was static, but a few words came through: “Pad… attack… took off… your way.”

  “That’s Kelzin,” Jenna exclaimed. “Where is he?”

  “Not close enough,” Kellers replied grimly, as they reached the end of the road with the burning tank, and a second light battle tank emerged from the greenery at the side of the road. Another APC and a dozen infantry had dug in behind a temporary barrier to block the road behind the tank.

  “Shoot them!” David ordered, suiting actions to words and opening fire with the stungun. The weapon’s range was impressive, but the SmartDarts couldn’t penetrate military body armor. The Captain ducked back down next to Damien as more bullets rattled off the hull.

  Damien tried to rise; to see if he could shield them again, but David easily forced him back down as the migraine stole his balance.

  “What do we…” Kellers’ voice was cut off by the roaring of rockets as their shuttle came screaming overhead. Down-facing thrusters sent the soldiers scattering as the shuttle set itself down, its back ramp opening.

  The tank started to train its gun on the shuttle, and then a new sound ripped the sky. Modern armor-piercing rounds ripped through its armor like tissue paper, each bull
et carrying only the tiniest of explosive charges – but the accumulation of a hundred rounds enough to shatter the tank’s armor and leave it a burning mess.

  “Get over here!” Kelzin shouted, stepping around the shuttle as he loaded another pair of magazines into the carbine. “These guys are not playing nice!” Fitting actions to his words, a hail of gunfire landed around the pilot, who ducked behind his shuttle before returning fire.

  Jenna slammed the car into a screeching stop, throwing her door open and leaping out. Kellers followed her, but paused to look back at David and Damien.

  “Can you walk?” David asked as Damien struggled to his feet. Gunfire echoed around them, and before Damien could work up the energy to reply, the Captain looked at Kellers. “Grab him,” he ordered.

  Strong arms grabbed each of his shoulders and dragged him forward. He stumbled, struggling against the migraine and the exhaustion wracking his body.

  “I can’t do this,” he muttered to David. “I’m not an Enforcer.”

  “Cover us!” David shouted forwards, continuing to drag Damien forward. “You’re my Ship’s Mage,” he said harshly. “I don’t need you to be a soldier!”

  They rounded the shuttle to discover there was no cover between them and the Chrysanthemum soldiers now except the second burning tank. Jenna had made it into the shuttle, and was returning fire with a carbine she’d grabbed from inside.

  Kelzin was next to them, pumping careful bursts at the locals.

  “Go first, I’ll cover you,” the pilot ordered.

  Damien felt more than saw David nod, but managed to struggle enough to his feet that he wouldn’t be completely useless when they ran.

  “Go!” Kelzin snapped.

  David and Kellers took off, half-supporting, half-carrying Damien as he ran with them. For a moment, gunfire echoed around them, but then it diverted. A few steps behind them, Kelzin followed, spraying bullets with abandon to keep the soldiers’ heads down.