“Understood, sir,” the non-com replied sharply before turning to the team behind them.
“This way, Major,” David told the Augment officer, leading him into the central core of the ship. Behind them, the Legatan non-commissioned officer started snapping sharp orders to get the troops into line.
“We’ll be putting your men and the gunship cadre up in Ribs Three and Four,” the Captain told Niska as the shuttle bay doors closed behind them. “I assume you’ll want to split your platoon between the two Ribs, to keep an eye on the crews?”
“Of course,” Niska agreed. “We will also need unfettered access to the ship. The layout of the Venice class is not entirely consistent from vessel to vessel, so we will need to review all of the Blue Jay’s own peculiarities. I will also want to post guards on the bridge, Engineering, and, preferably, the simulacrum chamber.”
David winced at the thought of Augments guarding the chamber where Damien worked.
“Believe me when I say the men I would select to guard your Mage are very specifically chosen,” Niska continued, clearly catching both David’s reaction and the reason for it. “In the case of any attack on this ship, however, the simulacrum chamber is one of the three areas that will be the focus of a boarding attempt.”
“All right,” the Captain agreed with a sigh. “But if your men cause any issues – especially with Montgomery – that access will start restricting itself extremely quickly.”
“I will do my best to make sure we have no such issues,” Niska said calmly. “If there are, you must, of course, do what you feel is necessary.”
The conversation was interrupted as they emerged into the cross-chamber that linked in the rear set of airlocks and maintenance outriggers. An open cross-section of the Jay’s keel, the room was large enough to be difficult to crowd, but with everyone floating free in zero-gravity, the gunship cadre crews were managing it.
“Major Niska,” one of the officers greeted the Augment as he and David entered the room. “Captain Rice,” she added after a moment, nodding to the man who was merely here to transport her several dozen light years. “Group Commander Harriet Mons. If you have quarters ready for us, I think it’s best if we break up this incipient clusterfuck.”
“Where’s Jenna?” David asked before noticing his First Officer tied up with several of the blue-uniformed officers.
“She’s dealing with some of my prima-donnas who are worried about scratching their paint,” Mons replied. “Let me shut them up and we can get some order in place here.”
Moments later, Mons arrived, forcefully, in the middle of the conversation Jenna was having with the gunship crew. David couldn’t hear the conversation, but it looked rather like she was telling them to listen to Jenna.
“All right,” he bellowed, years of practice projecting his voice across the echoing compartment. “Everyone, look to Officer Campbell,” he pointed at Jenna. “She is responsible for getting you to your quarters. Cause her any more trouble, and your quarters will be in the smelliest latrine we can find on the ship. Am I clear?!”
The silence that answered was only broken by Mons’ chuckling. Finally clear of the previously un-relenting set of officers, now looking thoroughly cowed by the Group Commander, Jenna promptly had the crews moving with her usual efficiency.
Five minutes later, Mons, Niska, and David were alone on the Jay’s bridge.
“What is our ETA at Mercedes?” Mons asked.
“I’ll have to confirm with my Ship’s Mage,” David admitted. “Once Jenna has your crews settled, we’ll be clearing to accelerate out-system. Mercedes is forty light years from here, one of the furthest MidWorlds, so it’ll be eleven to twelve days.”
“That’s about what I expected,” the Group Commander accepted with a nod. “I’m impressed so far, Captain Rice. If there is anything you need me for – and especially of any of my pack of super-intelligent monkeys give your crew any trouble – feel free to contact me.”
She turned to Niska. “Once you’ve discussed your security plans with the Captain, please meet me in my quarters, Major. We have some matters to discuss.”
Mons shook David’s hand and left the bridge, leaving him alone with the Augment Major once more.
#
Damien was eating breakfast the next morning when Major Niska found him. With the ship under acceleration out towards space flat enough for him to jump them, the mess was oriented ninety degrees from normal. It at least had a definite down that it had lacked while they’d been waiting for the gunships to lock on.
“Mage Montgomery, I am Major James Niska,” the Augment introduced himself, sliding into the empty seat opposite from Damien with a tray of food. The crew Damien normally ate with, including Kelly, were on shift so he was eating alone.
“I know who you are,” Damien responded, looking up and taking in the Augment’s strange square-pupilled eyes. “And what you are. What do you want from me?”
“I wanted to have a chance to talk to you before any misunderstandings occurred,” Niska said softly. “I see I may be a little too late.”
“What is there to misunderstand?” the Mage asked crossly. “I am about as happy to have you aboard as you are to be relying on a Mage to ferry you around.”
“I don’t get the impression that you are calmly content and glad to have the option to have us available,” the Augment replied. “In the absence of a technological solution, men like you are the only tool we have to tie humanity together. I admire and appreciate Jump Mages like you.”
“Working as a Mage-killer is a great way to show that appreciation.”
Niska shook his head. “It is not my job to kill Mages,” he said sharply. “My job is to arrest Mages who break the laws of the Legatus system.”
“Which is basically breathing on the surface, so far as I can tell,” Damien replied.
“To an extent,” the cop admitted. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming that we hate Mages, though. I won’t deny that prejudice exists, but it’s not the reason for those laws.”
Damien sighed and leaned back, looking at the Augment who seemed determined to convince him of something.
“And why, exactly, would my setting foot on Legatus be a crime then?” he asked after a moment. Partly, he was humoring the man. But part of him was curious too – he’d always wondered how exactly the UnArcana worlds had come into being.
“Because if you set foot on Legatus, you are not subject to our laws,” Niska explained. “We were not allowed to opt out of the Compact, so any crime you commit on Legatus has to be tried by Mages. You have separate rights and privileges from anyone else.”
“Our ancestors weren’t prepared to allow the master race the Eugenicists had built to rule over them,” he continued. “The Mage-King told them that they had to accept the Compact, or the jumpships wouldn’t carry cargo to Legatus. They agreed – but then barred Mages from their worlds to render the Compact meaningless.”
Damien shivered at the mention of the Eugenicists. The group had taken control of the Mars colony centuries before, and then subjected the population to strict breeding controls and restrictions. Earth had tried and failed to stop them for decades.
“I’m a Mage by Right, not by Blood,” he pointed out. “My ancestors didn’t come out of the Olympus Project.”
“There’s been a lot of research on the Mages by Right that suggests that the vast majority of them can trace their ancestry back to the lucky rejects of the Project,” Niska replied.
The ‘Olympus Project’ had been a massive, bloody-handed, forced-breeding program of individuals who tested as ‘gifted’ to a number of tests the Eugenicists had developed. It took them eighty years, but they succeeded in creating the modern Mage. Along the way, they’d dumped a few tens of thousands of ‘lucky rejects’ into the general population – and were estimated to have murdered almost a hundred thousand older subjects once they’d been bred.
In the end, the Eugenicists had been destroyed by their own creation
s, led by the man who became the first Mage-King of Mars. He had, in turn, imposed the Compact to protect the other Mages from those who feared the Eugenicists’ creation. In exchange for that protection, the Mages had agreed to serve – most importantly as the Jump Mages that carried man’s colonies to the stars.
“So we are all to be tarred with the brush of the Eugenicists then?” Damien asked. “Even those descended from those who, arguably, suffered worst?”
“When Legatus was founded, it was seen that placing the Mages as a ruling caste over us would be allowing the Eugenicists to win – accepting the master race they’d built. Now,” Niska shrugged. “Now it’s about not wanting to have a separate privileged caste imposed on us from outside. And a certain degree of stubborn pride in doing things our way.”
“As one of the people caught in the gears of your ‘stubborn pride,’ I can’t say I’m enthused,” Damien pointed out. “Seems to be more about prejudice than anything else.”
“I already said I don’t deny that,” Niska replied, shrugging uncomfortably. “I don’t like it – personally, I think there would be grounds for compromise with the Compact and the Mage-King at this point. The Legatus Legislature wouldn’t stand for it now, though, and too many worlds have followed our example.”
“Regardless of that, though,” the Augment continued, “I’m supposed to be providing security for this ship, which means I need to work with you. I wanted to clear the air between us, as I know the reputation Augments have with Mages. Are you okay with us assigning a sentry to the simulacrum chamber?”
Damien sighed. “I see the logic,” he admitted. “If they cause trouble though…”
“If they cause you trouble, let me know, and you won’t see that agent again,” Niska said flatly. “You are under our protection, and I will not stand for my people being rude. We clear?”
The youth nodded, taken aback at the fierceness of the soldier’s declaration.
“We’re clear.”
#
Mikhail Azure watched the bounty hunter pass through the outer office of his establishment with the security cameras. The man was one of Azure’s favored mercenaries, though he had twice turned down membership in the Blue Star Syndicate.
If he succeeded at the mission he was currently set upon, Azure would offer again. If he declined again, more permanent measures would have to be taken. Azure appreciated the man’s skill, but could also not allow that skill to be used against the Syndicate.
After five minutes of back and forth with the secretary, she reached down under her desk and hit a button that didn’t appear to be connected to her phone.
“Sir, there is a Mr. Able here to see you,” she said through the intercom. “His pass-phrases are valid.”
“Thank you Meryl,” Azure replied. “Please send him back.”
Azure leaned back in his unprepossessing chair and glanced at the door to his office. It was an unassuming office – officially that of a small, utterly average, trading house – tucked away in a secondary orbital station above a moderately advanced MidWorld. Nothing about it stood out, but the Protectorate’s law enforcement would collectively trade their right hand for its location.
From this plain office, Mikhail Azure – not the name he’d been born with – ran the largest criminal syndicate in the Protectorate. He’d once planned to pass that enterprise onto his son, but David Rice of the Blue Jay had changed that.
He hoped Able had good news.
The bounty hunter, a slim man of average height, with average brown hair and calm blue eyes, entered the office with his eyes tracking around for any possible threat. None of the defenses were visible, and the deadliest sat behind the desk.
“I do not see the Blue Jay docked at my station,” Azure said calmly. “You have brought neither a prisoner nor a corpse before me. If you are not delivering David Rice to me, Able, why are you here?”
“It seemed an appropriate time to check in,” the bounty hunter replied, his voice equally calm. “I know where the Jay will be next and I had a question I needed answered.”
“And what, Able, do you know that no other who was in the same system as them wouldn’t?”
The hunter laughed.
“I know that the Blue Jay was hired by Bryan Ricket, of LMID,” he answered. “That means whatever flight path they filed is exactly where the Captain thinks he’s going – and nowhere near where they actually are headed. Ricket couldn’t think in a straight line if his life depended on it. So I asked the right people, and now I know what even Rice doesn’t: where he’s going. They’ve only got the one Mage,” Able concluded, “so I will beat them there.”
Azure held the mercenary’s gaze flatly. He knew from long experience that his own ice-cold blue eyes, the only part of him he never changed when he modified his face and body to hide from the law, could intimidate the strongest of men.
“I see,” he acknowledged. “But I do not see why you are here?”
Able shrugged. “The job was for Rice,” he said. “But with what rumor says was done to his ship, I have to ask – do you want it too?”
Azure considered.
“What rumors have you heard?” he asked. Many different stories had made their way to him from Sherwood and Corinthian. He knew that Rice’s new Mage had been charged with illegally modifying a jump matrix, but that the ship continued to jump without issue.
“Rumor says that the Blue Jay took out a pirate near Sherwood,” Able answered. “Says that it was an amplified attack spell – something a freighter shouldn’t be able to do. And then Montgomery was charged with modifying the jump matrix – but the ship can still jump.”
“I think he gave the Jay an amplifier,” Able concluded. “And I think that’s worth even more to you than Rice.”
“You dare much, if you plan on telling me what I think,” Azure snapped. It was almost automatic though, as he thought over Able’s words. If the hunter was right – and it fit with what he knew – the Blue Jay now represented the prize of the century.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch that the ability to turn any freighter you get your hands on into a raider to give the Navy nightmares is of value to you,” Able replied. “But if it’s not,” he shrugged, “I’ll go back to the old plan of blowing the ship apart from the longest range I can and extracting Rice’s flash-frozen corpse from the wreckage.”
The bounty hunter turned to go, but Azure froze him in place with a gesture and a flick of power. The criminal overlord rose from behind his desk and crossed to the mercenary, walking around to face the man he’d frozen in place before releasing him.
“You are correct, so you will do nothing of the sort,” he told Able, watching as the bounty hunter quailed away from him. “Bring me Rice – dead or alive. Bring me Montgomery - alive. Bring me their ship - intact. Do this, and I will pay you ten times what you were promised for Rice. Deal?”
Able swallowed, slowly straightening to face his employer. “Deal.”
“What’s your plan?” Azure demanded. The hunter seemed to consider refusing for a moment, then shrugged.
“Ricket is having them deliver gunships to Chrysanthemum,” he explained. “I have friends in their security apparatus, and they’ll leap at the chance to bring in a Mage the Protectorate wants arrested. While they’re on planet dealing with that, I’ll seize the ship. If I tell the Chrysanthemumites I’m delivering them to the Protectorate, they’ll turn Montgomery and Rice over, and I’ll hop, skip and jump right back here.”
“Easy money for you then,” Azure observed. “Don’t fuck it up.” He gestured to the door.
Able stumbled from the room, and the Blue Star crime lord watched him go. Once the bounty hunter had left the office, he re-activated the intercom to Meryl.
“Meryl, contact Captain Shepard,” he instructed calmly. “He is to prepare my yacht for an immediate trip.”
“Then arrange for a runic transceiver message to be sent to Echelon, to our Mr. Wong. He is to have his people prepare the Az
ure Gauntlet for action.”
“You expect Able to fail.” It wasn’t a question.
“I do not place great faith in his success, no,” Azure confirmed. “And if he fails, no lesser force than my Gauntlet will succeed.”
#
“Jump complete, Captain,” Damien reported over the intercom. David glanced at the screens on the Blue Jay’s bridge slowly resolving their new location.
“Everything is looking clear up here Damien, we’re bang on target,” he told the young Mage. “Next jump on schedule?”
“I need a nap,” Damien replied, yawning. “After that, I think so. Will let you know if I need a delay. I’m out.”
The com channel to the simulacrum chamber closed, and David turned back to checking their course. They were four days – two of flight inside Legatus and two of jumping - and six jumps out from Legatus. Like most stopping points along the way for interstellar travel, there was absolutely nothing around them for light years in any direction.
“The jump is complete?” Niska asked, the Augment entering the room behind David. “How far out are we now?”
“I’ve never met a Mage trained to jump anything other than a light year, Major Niska,” David pointed out, turning back to face the cyborg. “I imagine you are perfectly capable of doing the math.”
The iron-haired soldier smiled tightly, and then turned to his men outside the bridge.
“Seal the bridge,” he ordered flatly. “Miller will see Montgomery up here. No one else enters or leaves till I give the all clear.”
The bridge door slid shut behind him as he stepped in, to David and Jenna’s stares of shock. For the first time since he’d boarded the ship, the Augment Major was visibly armed, with a massive black block of a pistol slung on his hip.
“What’s going on?” David demanded, starting to rise.
“Please stay seated, Captain,” Niska instructed. “No harm will come to you, but certain matters should be discussed in confidence. I will explain once Mage Montgomery arrives.”
Starship's Mage: Episode 3 Page 5