Agents of Mars (Starship's Mage: Red Falcon Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I’m trusting you a lot,” Seule pointed out. “We both have reasons to be having this conversation, Captain Rice, but I’m not going to put my crew at risk. Vous comprenez, je l’espère?”

  David was reasonably sure he followed the smuggler’s comment and nodded his understanding. He was wondering how much Seule knew of his own activities.

  Their journey ended quickly enough, with the Captain leading them into a small private dining room. The walls had been covered in a hand-painted mural and a couple of quality sideboards had been added, but the table was an original installation, classic Navy light-and-solid plastic.

  “Have a seat, Captain Rice,” Seule said with a wave of his hand. As they obeyed, he opened up one of the sideboards and revealed a series of covered plates inside a concealed warmer. He and Camber served them quickly.

  The plates uncovered to reveal a simple stir-fried dish of rice, vat protein, and vegetables. It smelled surprisingly good, and David inhaled as he studied Seule.

  “Okay, so just what are you trying to bribe me for, Captain?” he asked bluntly.

  Seule laughed.

  “If I was trying to bribe you, Captain, I’d have come with something better than teriyaki vat protein! Consider this…relationship-building.”

  “Last time we met, you saved my ship and crew from a Hunter,” David reminded Seule. “You can consider the relationship built. I owe you, Nathan Seule, even if there’s only so far that can stretch.”

  “Fair enough,” Seule conceded with a wave of his hand. “Have you ever been to Darius, Captain Rice?”

  “I’ve only been to four UnArcana Worlds in my entire life,” David replied. “Darius wasn’t one of them.”

  “I’ve been through a few times, on legitimate and less-legitimate business,” the smuggler told him. “They’re good people. Their Fringe and UnArcana World status makes people underestimate them, but their universities and research campuses could rival most MidWorlds, let alone the Fringe. They’re self-sufficient in general, and their plan for the last century has been to leverage home-built technology to get ahead.”

  David listened carefully as he began to eat. The food was good, despite Seule’s dismissiveness.

  “That process has led them to be a bunch more individualistic than a lot of places,” he continued. “Not quite to, say, Amber’s scale, but they’re pretty damn live-and-let-live—and that attitude collided head-on with the Mage ban.

  “They’ve been quietly arguing over it in their various political forums for years, but then, well, I’m guessing you were briefed on the current situation?”

  “The new government is trying to lift the ban?” Soprano asked.

  “Exactly. Unfortunately, the old government tried to deny the election results. Half of the military went with them, half joined the new government.” Seule shook his head. “It’s a mess, and Stellarite Development Corps has shoved their spoon in deep.”

  “Where’s Mars in all of this?” David said. He knew the answer, but he wondered what Seule thought it was. The man made his living dealing with the problems Mars missed, after all.

  “My guess is that they know, roughly, what’s going on,” the smuggler replied. “But the whole factor of Darius’s UnArcana World status being in question means they can’t get too involved.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the bankers that lent the Darian government the funds to buy our cargos were quietly underwritten by Mars.”

  David wasn’t so sure, though it wouldn’t have surprised him. There were a lot of secret ships moving in the night in the Martian apparatus, and they didn’t always cross each others’ paths even when they should.

  “So, everyone’s involvement is at arm’s length, huh?” David asked.

  “Well, SDC is pretty up in the middle of it. The old government has to have promised them some pretty significant incentives for them to have involved themselves this deeply,” Seule replied.

  “Or someone else did,” Soprano suggested. “Like the other UnArcana Worlds?”

  “SDC is Legatus-headquartered,” their host said. “I wouldn’t care to assume the Legatan government isn’t involved, but you’re not going to find any evidence anywhere off of Legatus.”

  “No, you won’t,” David agreed. “So, you like the locals and they’re worth the effort, I get that…but where does that bring us into this?”

  Seule nodded and studied his drink for several seconds.

  “We scouted Darius before coming here,” he said quietly. “We dramatically underestimated just what SDC was prepared to commit to this operation. I was expecting a blockade of maybe half a dozen jump-corvettes, nothing we couldn’t handle.

  “Instead, the Stellarites showed up with ten half-megaton ships of a class I’ve never seen before, and over two dozen jump-corvettes,” Seule explained. “With a pair of Venice-class ships like your old Blue Jay for logistics.”

  David leaned back, swallowing his surprise. That was a lot of firepower for a development corporation to even own, let alone deploy on a single op. He could see Seule’s problem.

  “You can’t outmaneuver that many ships,” he said aloud.

  “Not a chance. I can dodge and out-dance any individual ship in that flotilla—and merde, Luciole probably outguns half the corvettes combined, but I can’t run a blockade of over thirty ships. Not without a distraction.”

  “You want us to be your distraction,” Soprano said. “That’s a big ask. David?”

  “I’m not sure that it’s worth it for us,” David agreed.

  “You’re not here for money, Captain Rice,” Seule said quietly. “I don’t know why you took this contract, but you sliding back into smuggling makes no sense to me. Not without an ulterior motive.”

  “You fly an antimatter-drive ship,” David argued carefully. “You know what my operating costs look like, at least in terms of magnitude.”

  “Yes,” the smuggler agreed. “But I can’t haul twenty million tons of cargo in half of the time anyone else can. There’s only so much demand for a fast packet hauling a million tons when there’s three megaton ships that will haul it for cheaper if not as quickly. But you can run half-empty and still make a profit because you turn your cargos so quickly.

  “So, I have to think there’s something else at play, especially seeing you end up here. I’m guessing you need data, Captain Rice, and I won’t ask why or for whom…but I won’t sell out my contacts without a reason. Without a price that no one else is in a position to pay.”

  Nathan Seule, David reflected, was too damned smart for anybody’s good. He was still considering his response when an alert signal klaxoned through the room, and Seule grabbed for his wrist-comp.

  “Nathan,” he answered briskly. “What’s happening?”

  “SDC is here,” an unfamiliar female voice barked. “And they brought a friend I don’t recognize.”

  “Oh, fuck us.”

  Jeeves’s epithet echoed around the bridge as Kelly swallowed her own curse.

  Their radar pulse hadn’t picked up anything, and for several minutes all had seemed quiet. Then Jeeves had sent a second pulse, “just in case.”

  Apparently, whoever was in command had decided that meant Red Falcon had detected her—or at least was going to detect her if she stayed in hiding. Now the radioactive fog cloud was disgorging a small squadron of ships accelerating toward Falcon and Luciole at five gravities.

  “I take it you also recognize the big one?” Kelly asked the gunnery officer.

  “Yeah.”

  Five ships had emerged from the fog, four of much the same size and a fifth, bigger one, hanging back behind the others.

  “Big one is a Golden Bear monitor,” Jeeves confirmed. “Seven hundred thousand tons, eight missile launchers, one giant laser gun—unless they’ve upgraded since the last time we tangled with them and handed them their asses.”

  “And the smaller ones?” Kelly asked.

  “Corporate security ships, heavy jump-corvettes,�
�� he said. “That’s just a guess, though at five hundred k-tons, they’re bigger than most CorpSec goes for.” Jeeves shook his head. “The Bears had antimatter birds last time we fought them, though given the trick you pulled, they might hesitate to fire them at us.”

  The Golden Bears mercenary company had come after Red Falcon for the Azure Legacy before that organization had ceased to exist. Their survivors were among the few people who’d fought Falcon and lived, not least because their fleet had outgunned the covert ops ship badly.

  Kelly had used a secret MISS override code to turn their missiles against them. She doubted it would work on the Bears again, but it still might make them blink before firing the more-advanced missiles at the armed freighter.

  “What are the odds that the CorpSec ships have AM birds?” she asked quietly.

  “Zero, give or take,” Jeeves replied. “Almost certainly good fusion birds, though, and at their velocity…they’re almost in range for those.”

  “And so are we,” Kelly said grimly. Falcon carried antimatter-drive missiles, but Kelly wasn’t going to use those without Captain Rice’s orders. Their Rapier IV fusion-drive missiles had seven minutes of four thousand gravities of acceleration, much the same as she assumed the corporate security ships were carrying.

  “What do we do, XO?” the gunnery officer asked, and Kelly inhaled sharply.

  Rice was aboard Luciole. Unless he got orders to her—even if he got orders to her—Kelly LaMonte was still in command of Red Falcon.

  “We’re not here to start a fight,” she finally said. “Get me coms…but Jeeves?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “If they start shooting, you are authorized to return fire immediately.”

  18

  “Unidentified vessels, this is the armed merchant freighter Red Falcon,” Kelly said as levelly as she could. “We weren’t expecting to see anybody in this system, and your approach pattern is extremely aggressive.

  “Please clarify your intentions. If you do not break off your approach, I will be forced to regard you as pirates and respond appropriately.”

  She hit Transmit and checked the status panels on the repeaters surrounding her. Falcon’s crew was returning to battle stations. Alert Bravo had kept most of them on hand, but also meant that the third who were being recalled had almost certainly been asleep.

  “Minimum one-minute turnaround time,” Jeeves noted. “Coms at this range always suck.”

  “I know.” Kelly tapped a sequence of commands, linking over to Luciole.

  “Luciole, this is XO LaMonte. Can you connect me to my Captain?”

  “Give me two seconds,” a female voice replied. “All right, linking to his wrist-comp.”

  “Rice here,” Kelly’s Captain’s voice answered swiftly. “Kelly, that’s you? What’s the situation?”

  “We have some new friends and some old friends in the system,” she told him. “Four of what appear to be SDC heavy corvettes backed up by one of the Golden Bears’ monitors—I’m guessing with their Tracker aboard, allowing them to follow Seule from somewhere.”

  “From Darius,” Rice said grimly. “He scouted the system and I guess he got spotted.”

  “Where the hell did they get a Tracker?” Kelly heard Seule exclaim in the background.

  “They rented them from the Bears,” Kelly replied, hoping the other captain could hear her. “Hence the monitor. I doubt she’s planning on getting involved, not without extorting a hell of a payday. The Bears are a little…nervous about us.”

  “They may also be holding a grudge,” Rice warned. “Look, Kelly, I can’t command Falcon by remote. Maria and I will help out Seule from here if we can, but you’re in command of Red Falcon. Fight our ship, Kelly. I trust your judgment.”

  No pressure.

  “All right,” she replied aloud. “I’ve given them a warning to back off. We’ll see what they do. Eventually, I’m going to have to set a line where we will shoot at them.”

  “Oh, I guarantee you that they will at least shoot at Luciole before then,” Seule interjected. “What happens if they ignore your ship, Captain Rice?”

  “My Captain is aboard your ship, Captain Seule,” Kelly said before Rice could reply. “I don’t give a shit which of us they shoot at; if they open fire, I will engage.”

  The channel was silent.

  “Fight our ship,” Rice repeated. “Good luck.”

  The channel cut and Kelly looked around the bridge. Usually, she held down navigation while everything went to hell, and Rice sat in the command chair.

  Now one of her subordinates held down that console. Her girlfriend was holding down the simulacrum chamber with the exhausted expression of a Mage who had just jumped but was In Charge, Dammit. Her boyfriend was on the likely target of the incoming warships, along with the two officers ahead of her in Red Falcon’s chain of command.

  “Right,” she said aloud. “Let’s do this. Any word from the bastards?”

  “Nothing so far,” her com tech responded.

  “They are now in our Rapier range,” Jeeves reported. “Dialing them in with passive sensors. I’m not detecting active radar from them, but they could be targeting the same way.” He paused. “Luciole has engaged evasive maneuvers. As have the SDC ships.”

  Kelly hit a command that brought up an automated program before he’d finished speaking.

  “Sarah-Beth, maintain the program I just triggered,” she told the subordinate holding down her normal slot. “Throw in whatever random vector changes you feel like, but keep us moving.”

  She grimaced and opened up her communications control again.

  “Unidentified starships,” she said flatly. “We have you flagged as a Golden Bear mercenary warship and security vessels of the Stellarite Development Corps. We have grounds to believe you hostile, and bluntly, you’re flying like pirates.

  “If you approach within seven million kilometers of my vessel without communicating and adjusting your course to maneuver away from us, we will open fire.”

  She heard Jeeves exhale a long sigh as she hit Transmit.

  “Guns?” she asked.

  “Right call, XO,” he half-whispered. “Right call, but damn if you didn’t just throw the dice.”

  “It’s only a gamble if I don’t already know they’re going to shoot at me.”

  The mercenaries were already within five minutes’ flight time of Kelly’s “line in the sand” when the response finally arrived, and it was roughly as cooperative as she expected it to be.

  A sharp-featured woman with close-cropped black curls looked down a long nose at the camera. Instead of a uniform, she wore a primly cut navy blue suit—though it looked like she wore it over an emergency vacuum suit.

  The only remotely military-looking thing about her was the discreet silver star pinned to the lapel of her blazer.

  “I am Flotilla Manager Patience Ferro,” she said crisply. “Our presence in this system is of no concern of yours, Red Falcon. We are in pursuit of the known criminal Nathan Seule commanding the smuggler ship Luciole.

  “If you attempt to intervene in our detainment of Seule, you will be treated as an accomplice and we will engage your vessel. We have the jurisdiction here.”

  That was the extent of the message, and Kelly smiled wryly.

  “Do you think she’d back down if I told her she was wrong and that we have the legal jurisdiction?” she asked her bridge crew.

  “I doubt it, ma’am,” Jeeves replied. “‘Manager’ Ferro looks like she’s out for blood. We might be able to get her to back down if we completely blew our cover and played all of our cards. Maybe.”

  “If I thought she would, I might even try it,” Kelly admitted as she did the mental math. The Gold Bears monitor had a crew of two hundred or so. Each of the SDC heavy corvettes probably had a crew of about a hundred to a hundred and twenty.

  Seven hundred people, give or take.

  “Sarah-Beth, maneuver us between the SDC flotilla and Luciole,” s
he ordered. “Let’s give our Flotilla Manager one more chance.”

  “Your call, ma’am,” her gunner said quietly as the big freighter’s engines flared.

  “I’m not changing the line, Jeeves,” Kelly told him. “Seven million kilometers, you open fire.”

  “That doesn’t leave her much time to respond,” he pointed out.

  “I know.” Kelly brought up the coms one last time and leaned into the camera, forcing herself to keep up the same wry smile that the original jurisdiction crack had awoken.

  “Flotilla Manager, we both know nobody has jurisdiction this far out in the ass end of beyond,” she said brightly. “By my math, you have less than one hundred and forty seconds from your receipt of this message to begin a good-faith effort to break off.

  “If you fire on my ship or on Luciole, we will take you down like the pirate scum your pretty suit pretends you’re not.”

  Ferro’s response was exactly what Kelly expected it to be. Roughly fifteen seconds after the earliest Kelly would have received a radio response, they instead got the lightspeed data of Ferro’s flotilla opening fire.

  “The monitor has not fired,” Jeeves noted. “The SDC ships have. Six missile launchers apiece, twenty-four. Readings make it…Rapier IIIs. Older missiles but still packing a punch.”

  Kelly pulled up the data on the IIIs in her system and nodded. The III actually had a slightly longer powered range than its newer sister, with five hundred gravities less acceleration but forty seconds more flight time.

  There was also a note on the file that made her blood run cold.

  “Can you validate which model?” she asked.

  A few seconds passed as Jeeves went over his data and then he shook his head.

  “What did Seule do to these people? You’re right—they’re Rapier III-Bs. Three-hundred-megaton fusion warhead, as if a sixteen-thousand-KPS impact from rest wasn’t enough.”

  It was “merely” a fifty percent increase in impact energy with the closing velocities in play, but it also meant that they didn’t need direct hits.