“I know,” she said calmly. “Unfortunately, I am assured by those who understand these matters that any competent Rune Scribe, given a few weeks, could duplicate what was done to the Jay. She represents a template that any of the galaxy’s crime lords could use to manufacture a fleet of undetectable raiders.”
“The Blue Jay, bluntly, represents an unacceptable risk to the peace of the Protectorate,” Alaura told them flatly.
“You just saved us, and now you want to destroy my ship?” Rice snapped. “Who do you think you are?!”
“I think I am a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars,” she replied. “Captain Rice, the Protectorate owes you and your crew a deep and abiding debt for allowing us to remove Darkport and for removing Mikhail Azure. I am prepared to compensate you well above market value for this ship. Indeed, I believe we would be able to hand one of the Navy’s Archon transports over to you as a replacement vessel.”
That shut the Captain up. An Archon was one of the largest freighters built, mustering a fifteen million ton cargo load – five times the Blue Jay – and carrying a limited but effective suite of self-defense weapons.
“Please Captain,” she pleaded gently. “I do not want to take away your livelihood or your hard built equity. But I cannot allow the Blue Jay to sail away. You must understand.”
“She’s right, boss,” Damien Montgomery said quietly. “Any ship I did that to… it’s why everyone has been chasing us for the last six months. She’s offering you the best she can.”
Rice nodded choppily. “Can we at least evacuate our things?”
“Of course,” she agreed. “All of your personnel and possessions will be transferred to the cruiser Rising Sun of Gallantry. They will transport you to the Tau Ceti fleet base, where the Captain will make sure you take possession of your new ship.”
“If the Blue Jay is a threat, what guarantee will you need that Damien won’t do the same to another ship?” Rice asked, and Alaura sighed.
“Mister Montgomery has an exceptionally rare gift,” she said, turning to look the Mage in the eyes. “I assume that to destroy the Gauntlet you have marked a Rune of Power on yourself. Show me,” she instructed.
Slowly, uncomfortably, the young Mage rolled up the sleeve of his turtleneck, revealing the lines of silver she’d expected.
“Untrained and unaware, you are a worse threat than the Blue Jay,” she said quietly. “You also, when in possession of the perfect raider, believing yourself wanted for crimes you hadn’t committed, and chased to the edge of civilization, still acted with honor and integrity.
“Because of this, if you insist, I will let you go,” she promised. “But I have an offer for you.”
Montgomery gestured for her to continue.
“You are a Rune Wright,” Alaura explained. “Only a Wright can see the flow of magic, and only a Wright could have turned a jump matrix into an amplifier.
“You have no idea what you can truly do with that gift,” she continued. “There is only one person in the Protectorate who can teach you. If you come with me, I will take you to him.”
“And then what?” he asked.
“Most likely? You would be assigned to the Hands to assist us, if not made a Hand yourself,” Alaura admitted. “With your gifts and our support, you would be in a position to do good few others could match.
“Unfortunately, I need you to decide now,” she told him.
The conference room was quiet for at least a minute, the young Mage looking down at his hands as Alaura watched him, hoping he would make the right choice. Finally, he looked back up at her and nodded once.
“I will need to say goodbye,” he said quietly. “But then, I am yours, Hand Stealey.”
#
The Rising Sun of Gallantry turned out to have an observation deck, a massive slab of magically transformed transparent steel that allowed people to look out onto deep space. As Damien and the rest of the crew of the Blue Jay occupied that deck, however, the ship had been turned so it faced the Jay.
Even at four kilometers distance, the massive freighter was clearly visible. The Ribs were no longer rotating, but the running lights were still on, outlining the ship against the black of the space between the stars.
“Scanners confirm no life signs,” a voice carried over the intercom. The ship’s Captain was piping an audio feed from the bridge to the observation deck, a small courtesy Damien appreciated.
Everyone was off the Blue Jay. Their hundred kilograms of possessions each had come with them. The ship’s cat was apparently sharing Jenna’s quarters aboard the cruiser, though she hadn’t brought the animal to the observation.
“All ships confirm minimum safe distance,” another voice reported. “We are fully clear.”
“Fire tube one,” the soft contralto of the Gallantry’s captain ordered.
A flash of light struck out from the cruiser. At thirteen thousand gravities, the missile crossed four kilometers in a blink of an eye, a bright streak that didn’t, quite, connect the two ships.
Then the warhead detonated. A filter automatically darkened, shading the watcher’s eyes from the glare of a one gigaton antimatter explosion.
When the light faded, nothing remained of the old ship, vaporized in a single moment.
Damien blinked away tears, and felt Kelly cuddle up to him.
“It’s sad,” she said softly. “It’ll be better when we get to Tau Ceti and see the new ship the Captain’s been promised.”
“I’m not coming to Tau Ceti,” Damien admitted. Evacuating the ship had been a rush. Now was the first moment of relative quiet he’d had with Kelly, for all that he knew it was probably the worst possible time.
“You’re not?” Kelly sounded a lot calmer than he’d been afraid of.
“I’m going with Stealey,” he told her awkwardly. “She knows someone who can train me in my gifts, and then I think I’m going to be working with her. Trying to make the Protectorate a better place.”
The engineer turned away from him, and he laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“We’re spacers, Damien,” she told him after a long pause. “I always knew we would never last forever. Always figured you’d find some cause that would drag you away – you’re that type. I just hoped we would have more time.”
“Me too,” he admitted. “I always seem to be leaving people behind, wherever I go. I’m going to miss you.”
“But not enough to stay.” It wasn’t a question. She laid her hand on top of his and squeezed hard. “I get it, Damien.” Her voice was choked with unshed tears. “I get it. But with everything else, it hurts.”
He wrapped her in his arms.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
#
Damien walked through the unmarked stone corridors Alaura had led him to in silence. The walls pressed in on him oppressively, and he honestly wasn’t sure where they were. The underground facility they had entered was immense, but it wasn’t as if the Protectorate didn’t have dozens of facilities that would meet that description.
They’d spent sixteen days jumping, so they could be almost anywhere in the half of the Protectorate on this side of Sol. Alaura had taken an almost childish delight in not telling him where they were going, and they arrived on planet via a Marine drop shuttle – which noticeably lacked such amenities as windows.
Now the Hand led the way through the tunnels with calm assurance, while Damien tried not to be distracted by the complex twists of silver runes snaking across the walls and roof around them. They moved too quickly for him to read them, but they seemed to be an amplifier matrix of a scale he could barely comprehend.
The runes and the Hand led him to the same place, and they stepped out into a single massive chamber at the heart of the mountain, and Damien gasped in shock.
The air above them was filled with a scale model of a star system. Everything from the sun at the center, to the four massive gas giants, to the asteroid belts and even, he wa
s sure, the tiniest of ships was duplicated in floating molten silver sand that carried every minutiae of the reality of the system. It was a simulacrum, but unlike anything he’d ever seen.
“It affects most people who see it for the first time,” an amused deep voice told him, and Damien looked up to see the only occupant of the room. He was a tall man, with silver hair but an unlined face, and he stood before a throne carved from the solid stone of the mountain – a throne that all the runes of the amplifier and the simulacrum ran to.
“This is the man I meant,” Alaura Stealey said softly. “The only person who could even begin to train a Rune Wright.
“Damien Montgomery, be known to my master: Desmond Michael Alexander the Third, Protector of Man, and Mage-King of Mars.”
###
Author’s Note
Starship’s Mage began as an experiment in short story writing sometime in 2012. My agent, Mike Kabongo, liked it and suggested I expand it. The story could quite neatly become a novella, but to turn it into a novel I was going to have to add a lot of content, which would in some ways be completely separate arcs.
At the same time, I was starting to read a lot more self-published fiction, and had come across several serials of novellas and novels that caught my eye and gave me the idea of releasing Starship’s Mage as a series of novella length episodes.
I was also having problems at the time with completing novels, and figured that writing what was basically a full novel in multiple shorter pieces would help me break through the barrier I was struggling with. As it turns out, announced release dates are a very effective motivator for me!
The first month that "Starship’s Mage: Episode 1" was out, I sold twenty novellas. In October 2014, ten months later, I sold over two thousand.
This Omnibus is the culmination of the year of effort that went into the Starship’s Mage serial, fuelled by the interest of you, the readers. Getting to this point took the help of more people than I can quickly name, but at the top of the list are the crazy souls who have been my beta readers throughout: Russell Rokos, Meg Anderson, Stef Herrel, and G. W. Renshaw. Right next to them on the list is my wife and cover artist, Jack Giesen, without whom these books would be much less pretty!
It’s been a whirlwind journey (cut) for both myself and poor Damien, but this isn’t the end of the story for either of us. A month before the release of this Omnibus, I put my first full-length novel, Children of Prophecy, out into the world in both e-book and paperback forms. Next year will see me release two full novels—and yes, one of them will advance Damien Montgomery’s story.
You can find Children of Prophecy, an epic fantasy about destiny, love, and duty—along with a threat that might completely destroy everything the Kingdom of Vishni seeks to defend—on Amazon now.
Space Carrier Avalon, a space opera about cold war, honor, and the prices soldiers pay to defend their countries, was released in June of 2015, and its sequel, Stellar Fox, was released in December of 2015.
In Hand of Mars, the next Damien Montgomery novel, the young mage must master his unique gifts in the service of Mars. The book was released in September of 2015. The third Starship’s Mage book, Voice of Mars is expected to be released in March 2016.
Thank you for joining me in the journey so far, and I hope you continue to read and enjoy my work!
-Glynn Stewart
If you enjoyed the novel, please leave a review!
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Other books by Glynn Stewart
Starship’s Mage
Starship’s Mage: Omnibus
Hand of Mars
Voice of Mars
Alien Arcana (upcoming, see www.faolanspen.com for latest estimated launch date)
Castle Federation
Space Carrier Avalon
Stellar Fox
Battle Group Avalon
Q-Ship Chameleon (upcoming, see www.faolanspen.com for latest estimated launch date)
Castle Federation
The Terran Privateer
Stand Alone Novels
Children of Prophecy
City in the Sky
Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) Page 39