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

by Glynn Stewart

  “They weren’t intended to distinguish targets,” the Marine said, in response to Maria’s unspoken thought. “They were intended to wreck everything around them until they ran out of ammunition, then pick up enemy weapons and continue wrecking things until someone destroyed them.

  “They were a violation of a billion treaties then and a violation of those treaties plus the Charter now. All of them were supposed to be destroyed.”

  “And Gorman has one.” Maria studied it. “It’s dead, right? Everything else in here is dead.”

  There were other combat droids in there, but they were all obviously disabled. Most didn’t even have their weapons. The ODD did.

  “My files say it had an internal fission pile,” Leonhart said distractedly, the Marine clearly looking up more data even as she approached the war machine. “I’m not picking up any rads, so it has to be decommissioned, but what the hell was he think—”

  A searchlight on the dreadnought’s torso lit up, highlighting the Marine in the middle of the collection as she froze.

  “You are not Mehrab Gorman,” a calmly feminine voice said. “Identify.”

  “Who are you?” Leonhart snapped.

  “You are not Mehrab Gorman,” the machine repeated. “Identify.”

  “Marine Forward Combat Intelligence,” the Marine replied. “Stand down!”

  An upper arm rotated, leveling what looked like a gatling gun of terrifying scale on Leonhart.

  “Where is Mehrab Gorman?” it demanded.

  “We don’t know,” Maria told it, stepping up next to Leonhart and studying the machine. It didn’t have a power core and it didn’t look like the weapon was loaded…but she raised a defensive shield between them and the war machine anyway. “All evidence suggests he is dead.”

  The robot was silent.

  “No signal from command protocols,” it confirmed. “House power and systems are dead. Evidence aligns. Who killed Mehrab Gorman?”

  “One of his clients,” Maria said, wondering just what chain of commands they were working their way down. Were they headed toward a command sequence where the terrifying machine helped them…or one where it turned out to still have enough power to activate the laser on its other arm.

  Or even just its hands. The thing could rip them to pieces, armor or no armor.

  “Security protocol 9B activated,” the robot chanted. “Report situation to Sherwood Interstellar Patrol. They are advised to investigate Paladin 6B aboard Robin Hood.”

  It paused.

  “Power levels insufficient for further action.”

  With that, the searchlight died, and Maria breathed a long sigh of relief.

  “Did…did Gorman program a fucking war robot to help people find his killers if he got murdered?” she asked aloud.

  Everyone else in the room was too shocked to try and answer.

  38

  The advantage of working with professionals who knew who you actually were was the ability to set up secure and covert channels. Red Falcon’s communications systems now had a link into a hard cable, hidden amidst the resupply hookups, that tied her into the Patrol’s encrypted communications network.

  Even within that network, David’s communications with Grace McLaughlin were double-encrypted and running through the equivalent of a virtual private network inside the larger network. No one should have been able to even tell that they were talking, let alone what they were saying.

  Which was good, because the Sherwood Captain looked perturbed as she relayed Gorman’s message.

  “He had an ODD?” she asked. “How the hell did he sneak an ODD onto my bloody planet?”

  “That’s a question for SSS,” David pointed out. “I’m more concerned about his message. Does ‘Paladin 6B aboard Robin Hood’ mean something to you?”

  McLaughlin shook her head.

  “Sorry, still wrapping my head around the illegal warbot. No sign of Gorman himself otherwise, though?”

  “Nothing,” David confirmed. “Maria says there was a dog-sitter there who was killed along with the dogs. We passed on what we knew to the SSS; hopefully, they’ll coordinate with local authorities to make sure the family is informed.”

  “And, of course, no cameras, no records, nothing. Just some asshole who walked onto my planet, murdered one of my assets, and then killed an innocent for good measure.” McLaughlin looked pissed. “Aren’t you supposed to stop this happening, Mr. MISS?”

  “That would actually be the guys with one less ‘S’ in the initials,” he replied. The similarity between the initialisms for the Martian Investigative Service, the interstellar cops, and the Martian Interstellar Security Service, the interstellar spies, was not unintentional.

  “But yes, the Protectorate should have stopped this. Now we’re trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And you didn’t answer my question,” he pointed out.

  “Right, sorry.” She sighed. “Technically, I think this falls under self-incrimination. You’re not familiar with the name? I thought you served in the Navy?”

  “Not in the last couple of decades.”

  “Ah. Would ‘Redshield 6B’ make more sense to you?” McLaughlin asked.

  “Redshield was a brand-new program when I left,” he admitted. “All-in-one ECM computer and emitter slaved to central control. Made for a more redundant and efficient unit for the price of some volume.”

  “Redshield was replaced by Redeye, which was replaced, about two years ago, by Paladin,” she told him.

  “Then 6B would be one of your sternward dorsal emitter units,” David concluded. “How would he have left something there?”

  “Militias are supposed to only have access to the Redeye system,” McLaughlin admitted. “Paladin is supposed to be restricted to the Martian Navy. They were one of the major systems that Gorman sourced for us. Hence self-incrimination.”

  She sighed.

  “Robin Hood is my command. I’ll have my engineering team rip Paladin 6B apart and see what our gunrunner friend left us.”

  McLaughlin called David back six hours later, managing to look tired, angry, and excited at the same time. She was back aboard Robin Hood now, pacing her office in front of a small pile of electronic parts on her desk.

  “So, Gorman decided that the Patrol made a great place to hide his insurance policy,” she told him, gesturing to the parts behind her. “An additional memory module and encrypted channel receiver were installed inside Paladin 6B. Nothing significant, just enough to receive irregular burst transmissions from him as he worked with us.”

  “He was keeping backup records?” David asked.

  “More blackmail files,” she said. “Enough to nail a few people to the wall if they fell into the hands of the right authorities, though there’s also enough in here to void our deal with him and send him back to jail.

  “He never stopped working for others as well, smuggling guns and weapons for everyone who’d pay,” McLaughlin concluded. “We’ll transmit you a copy of the data, but there are a number of people in here we’ll be having sharp words with ourselves.”

  “Send one over to MIS as well,” David told her. “We’re following a specific line, and they’ll be better equipped to handle those kinds of investigations.”

  “Fair enough,” McLaughlin said with a sharp nod. “I’m glad we were able to help in the end, Captain Rice. We don’t know which of Gorman’s contacts turned on him…but his insurance policy turns them all in.”

  David smiled coldly.

  “Shucks. Looks like MIS is going to roll up the local arms-smuggling rings, doesn’t it?”

  She laughed.

  “So it does. I hope you find what you need in here, Captain. The Patrol is always ready to help the Protectorate’s people.”

  By morning, Binici and LaMonte had gone through the entire database in Gorman’s insurance policy. David’s XO didn’t look like she’d slept, but she certainly looked victorious as she gestured the rest of the senior officers to sit.

 
“Gorman is probably dead,” she admitted, “but he gave us the next link in the chain. We managed to cross-reference his files with the information MISS forwarded us on the Freedom Wing’s deliveries, and identified three shipments.

  “All were arranged and paid for by the same person.”

  “A Legatan?” David asked hopefully.

  “No.” She shook her head. “The name doesn’t show up in any of our records. Coral Drummond. Gorman’s contacts with them were via dead drops and couriers, but…”

  “You’re about to wow us, aren’t you?” he asked. “Lay it out, XO.”

  “Gorman didn’t know where Drummond was. They were someone he worked with remotely, coordinating cargo ships to meet in distant locations. Few of the cargos the two of them worked together on ever came anywhere near Sherwood.

  “For that to work, the couriers and dead drops had to be delivered to Sherwood and back to Drummond for their contracts and plans and payments to take place. One delivery wouldn’t be enough for us to identify where Drummond was. Even three might be a problem.”

  LaMonte grinned.

  “Gorman was very thorough in his insurance policy. He gave us the dates and times of forty-six interactions with Drummond, and we matched them all up with ships in Sherwood at the time. Three systems stood out: Antonius, Míngliàng, and Java. There were ships from or headed to each of those systems during each of Gorman’s contacts with Drummond.

  “A little bit of research tells me that Antonius is an uninhabited system that Sherwood shares exploitation of with Míngliàng. There’s almost always ships headed to one or both of those systems.

  “Java, on the other hand, is an UnArcana MidWorld some twenty light-years away,” LaMonte concluded. “Not a world that gets involved in politics, not a world that has a lot of shipping. They export some raw minerals and some rare gemstones and have developed some pretty impressive crystal-manufacturing industries but are still a bit of a one-trick pony as their economy goes.”

  “On the other hand, they’re the main source of laser optics for Legatus, last I checked,” Leonhart noted.

  “For Mars, too,” Soprano said. “The Navy sources them from a few places, but Java is probably in the top three.”

  “So,” David concluded. “An UnArcana world with no major shipping to or from Sherwood has always had a ship here when our last known link in the chain made contact with this Drummond. I think that’s the best we’re going to get.”

  He shook his head.

  “And now it’s time to see how good the Patrol and our local broker are,” he continued with a smile. “Because someone is going to have to come up with a reason for us to go to said quiet UnArcana World.”

  39

  The answer turned out to be laser optics. The Sherwood Interstellar Patrol was about to begin production of a new set of six warships, each of which had twenty main battle lasers and a hundred RFLAM turrets, for a total of over a thousand individual lasers per ship.

  Each of those lasers required carefully calibrated crystals for their optics and spares. The Patrol had been putting together an order to acquire them from several potential sources, and Java had been leading the way anyway.

  “So, we send you with the order on contract to pick up the optics,” Grace McLaughlin told him after they’d gone over the details. “We pay you to act as a courier one way—obviously, you see what secondary cargo you can pick up here, but there probably isn’t much—and to haul several million tons of carefully calibrated crystals back.”

  “That will definitely work,” David agreed. “Will they have that much on hand?”

  “We don’t know,” she admitted. “Probably not, but the worst-case scenario is that we look excessively eager to get those optics—which we are. So, it doesn’t cost us anything we wouldn’t be spending in the first place, and we do a favor for the Protectorate.”

  David snorted.

  Few System Militia units were going to turn down the chance to do that. Especially not local militia fleets where MISS now knew they had ECM systems that were supposed to be restricted to the Navy.

  “And in exchange, MISS and MIS turn a blind eye to that collection of Paladins, huh?” he asked.

  “That would be optimal for us, yes,” she agreed cheerfully. “Favor for a favor, Captain.”

  “I can make that happen,” David admitted. It wasn’t really worth the Protectorate’s time to push back on a System Militia going through black-market channels to get more advanced systems than they were supposed to.

  “I appreciate the help nonetheless,” he told her. “You’ve been incredibly helpful—and we’ve been damn lucky.”

  “And Gorman was damn paranoid,” McLaughlin said. “For the record, we have opened up his vault and called in specialists from Sol to deal with the ODD. I know the power plant appears to be missing, but I don’t care to take risks with a robot than can go rogue and level cities.”

  “Cities are probably safe,” David replied. “It was designed to wreck military bases, I believe.”

  She shivered.

  “I’ll be happier once it’s dismantled and not on my home planet,” she said. “We’ll have the contract for your review soon enough—twenty-four hours or so. You’ll see it in the morning.

  “Good luck, Captain Rice.”

  “Thank you. My experience suggests we’ll need it!”

  “So, this Drummond isn’t in our files at all?” David asked as his people gathered for a war planning session.

  “Nothing,” LaMonte told him. “I checked and triple-checked. They may be in our files under a different name, Gods alone know how many names some of these people work under, but there’s no Coral Drummond.

  “We do have files on Java, primarily because it’s a major supplier to the Navy,” she noted. “One of the only major suppliers that’s an UnArcana World, actually. I guess they figure Mages’ money spends the same.”

  “What do the files tell us about arms smuggling or the underworld in general?” David asked.

  “Arms smuggling isn’t apparently a thing in Java,” LaMonte admitted. “Now, optics being produced without record and smuggled out to be turned into illegal lasers of all stripes? Gods, yes. But actual guns, spacecraft, weapons? Nothing.”

  “So, who is doing the smuggling? Are we looking at another Blue Star fragment?” Soprano said.

  “La Cosa Nostra,” the XO replied. “Most of those laser crystals and gems that get smuggled off-world? They go to Condor.” She grimaced. “The people putting together the files aren’t sure, but they think Java may be one of the systems the made men prowl for vulnerable people looking for a new start.”

  David grimaced.

  “Trafficking victims,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  For all of humanity’s advances, slavery of one type or another simply refused to die. It was mostly about sex and power now, though he’d heard about facilities using carefully supervised slaves for technical manufacturing.

  The most common victim of slavers in the Protectorate, unfortunately, was someone in their late teens who wanted to be somewhere—anywhere—other than home. They were promised work and new lives, boarded planes and shuttles…and found themselves in very different situations.

  Sometimes, they were lucky and ended up passing through the hands of someone like David Rice who broke them free. But for every shipment of fifty thousand cryo-frozen kids that was intercepted, three made it through.

  Working for MISS had given him far too much detailed information on the fate of the millions trapped in slavery and human trafficking in the Protectorate. The Navy, the Hands, and the rest of the Protectorate infrastructure burned it out wherever they could find it, but it continued to exist.

  That was why the blind eye the MISS office had turned in Condor had infuriated him so badly.

  “So, we’re heading to a la Cosa Nostra source world,” he said. “We can expect made men and associate thugs, and it’s not unlikely that Drummond is la Cosa Nostra thems
elf.”

  “What do we do?” Leonhart asked.

  “We go in, we get the data we can from the local Martian offices, and we hack the fuck out of local law enforcement,” he replied. “We pull together all the data we can on Drummond, and then we try to find the bugger.

  “If they’re working for Legatus, I’m prepared to authorize—what did you call it, Rhianna? ‘Involuntary asset extraction’?” He shook his head. “I want the links, people. Let’s trace this all the way home. All the way back to the sons of bitches who want to tear apart human civilization.”

  40

  Kelly lay sprawled across the bed in the quarters she shared with Mike and Xi, luxuriating in both the expensive mattress and the general afterglow while listening to Mike putter around in the kitchen, making supper.

  It was the first evening the three lovers were scheduled to have off together since Red Falcon had left Sherwood, and Kelly was enjoying being lazy. Mike was determined to make some wonderful dinner for the three of them, and Xi had picked the movie they were planning on watching together, but Kelly’s plan was to spend the evening avoiding decisions.

  She made enough decisions on a day-to-day basis that just letting her lovers make some for her was the most relaxing thing she could do.

  “Hey, Kelly, can you come out and taste test this for me?” Mike called from the kitchen.

  With a sigh, she dragged herself from the bed’s warm embrace and threw on a flimsy robe. She doubted it left anything to Mike’s imagination, and the only reason that was a problem was that he was cooking.

  His momentarily stunned happy look as she came into the kitchen made it entirely worth it. For all that he’d been living with the two women for over a year now, Mike Kelzin had a way of looking at Kelly that warmed her down to her toes. That look, that sheer awe at how lucky he was, was enough for her to keep him.