Starship's Mage: Episode 3

by Glynn Stewart

  #

  The shuttle landed gently on a floating landing pad, mounted on pontoons a hundred meters away from the shore. As the sound of the craft’s thrusters faded away, Kelzin stuck his head back into the passenger cabin.

  Damien and the other three officers were all plain gray suits. Damien’s was worn over a shirt borrowed from Kellers, the dark-skinned engineer being the only person on the ship even close to the Mage’s short and slight frame.

  “We are landed and locked in on docking pad five at Chrysanthemum City,” the pilot informed them all. As he spoke, he made his way to a locker and pulled out one of the Legatan Arms SC-5 carbines, sliding and locking both magazines in.

  “Your PC’s are running coms through the shuttle relay,” Kelzin continued. “That’ll provide encrypted channels for about fifteen klicks out. I checked the map on the way down, the ‘Festival Hall’ is seven klicks from here, you should be fine.”

  “Check in via radio often, and don’t stay out too late,” the pilot concluded. “If you’re out past midnight, my little friend and I will come and enforce your curfew.” He patted the carbine.

  “Let’s try not to start a war if we don’t have to,” David observed dryly. “That said,” he glanced around the officers, his gaze settling on Damien, “I don’t trust these people at all. Let’s make nice, see if we can get a cargo – but don’t go anywhere alone!”

  The safety lecture done, Kelzin hit the door latch, opening the shuttle ramp onto the cooling pad.

  “It is a balmy twenty six degrees Celsius,” he informed them, “and the wind is from the south, so you get to dodge the smell of the fisheries to the north. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll keep the lights on.”

  Kellers led the way out, with Damien and Jenna following out onto the gently bobbing platform. The smell of the salt air hit Damien like a brick wall. He’d lived near the coast on Sherwood, but the smell was different here. There was a slight edge of something he couldn’t identify to the smell of sea and waves, something completely different.

  The smell of a new world. For the first time in his life, Damien was walking on the surface of a strange world. At Corinthian and Legatus, he hadn’t gone to the surface, which made Chrysanthemum his first ‘alien’ world.

  The water was a different shade: a deep purplish blue that lack the slightly iridescent tinge of his homeworld’s waves. The sky was darker than Sherwood’s, with a dimmer sun shining through a thicker atmosphere. The floating landing pad wasn’t something Sherwood would have used, as his home had significant areas of granite to hold landing facilities near most of the inhabited zones.

  A blonde-haired man clad in a dark blue suit was standing at the edge of the platform, where transparent barriers protected beds of bright pink flowers. He gestured for the Blue Jay’s officers to approach, and stepped out to greet them with a bright smile that made Damien think of oil.

  “Welcome to Chrysanthemum City, Captain Rice,” he greeted David. “I am James Margrave, Aide to President Holsen. And these are your officers?”

  “They are,” Rice confirmed, stepping past Damien to face the aide and give quick introductions. Damien found it odd to be introduced as ‘Damien Montgomery, my First Pilot,’ but nodded along regardless.

  “I have a car waiting for us on the shore to take us to the Festival Hall,” Margrave told them. “President Holsen is looking forward to meeting you. If you’ll follow me?”

  #

  The trip to the Festival Hall took the Blue Jay’s officers through a neighborhood of neatly trimmed hedges, public flower gardens of dozens of varieties of chrysanthemums, and large houses set well back from the road in treed surroundings.

  The impression of peace and luxury was spoiled somewhat by the view of the massive industrial complex, fisheries, factories and warehouses mixed together, that David could see to the north. He also could see the omnipresent cameras and security men that he suspected his officers missed.

  He doubted even Damien missed the two patrols of uniformed, face-masked, police in black armored personnel carriers that they saw sweeping the streets. They’d been directed to the shuttle pad for the system’s dignitaries and industry leaders, so the path ran through a showcase neighborhood. Those same dignitaries required round the clock armed security on Chrysanthemum.

  The Festival Hall was the clear centerpiece of the neighborhood, and of Chrysanthemum’s attempts to show off to anyone they felt they needed to. It was a massive structure, built of local stone and painted a brilliant white. Two wings swept away from a central structure that looked like an immense white clam.

  The entire bottom section of the ‘clam’ apparently slid up, providing a semi-open air central chamber that open out onto a front green lined in carefully nurtured flower beds and containing a small, somewhat tasteful stone water fountain carved in the shape of a giant chrysanthemum – in case anyone had forgotten the name of the planet.

  Margrave stopped the massive, open-topped black ground car he’d delivered them in, and gracefully opened the doors for them.

  “Welcome to the Solstice Festival gentlemen, lady,” he told them. “The food is inside, to the left. Waiters are circulating with drinks and appetizers.” He turned to David. “Captain Rice, the staff will take excellent care of your officers. If you’ll come with me, the President wishes to speak with you.”

  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 a
s 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 though 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.