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

by Glynn Stewart

  David nodded for her to go ahead, even as he looked at her broken arm in concern.

  “Help her,” he ordered Jeeves. “Keep her to using one hand.”

  His XO snorted. It was a pained, forced sound, but it was there.

  “I’m a lot more worried about us dying than making my arm worse,” she admitted. “Right now, we can’t even tell what our missiles are doing!”

  David watched her for a few seconds, then turned back to internal coms. As LaMonte had said, the links to Engineering were down…but he could reach the simulacrum chamber.

  “Soprano, report,” he said grimly as he reopened the channel.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “What the hell happened? I don’t have any sensor feeds down here.”

  “Engineering took a hit and the antimatter cores got ejected,” he said shortly. “We’ve lost coms. I need you to get down there and see if anyone is still alive.”

  “It’s…that bad?” she asked.

  Until she hesitated, he’d forgotten that she and James Kellers had been becoming an item. He’d have kicked himself, but they didn’t have time.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I need you to get everyone who’s still alive into your Sanctum and let me know.”

  “David?”

  “Just do it,” he snapped. “We don’t have time.”

  He doubted their salvo of abandoned missiles were going to finish the job, which meant he needed a ship that could fight. There was only one way he could get that…but he wasn’t going to abandon any of his crew who were still alive!

  51

  Maria didn’t make it very far along the spine of the ship before she started to run into problems. Twisted metal barred her way, and the careful structure of the gravity runes was fraying. Instead of the usual one gravity of pull, they were flickering between nothing and two gees.

  The debris was easily dealt with. Just because she was too weak to jump didn’t mean she couldn’t do things that would be impossible for a mundane. She blasted a hole through the wreckage, hammering the warped hull and conduits into place to form a new, smaller, corridor toward Engineering.

  Then, with a sigh, she severed the rune constructs creating gravity in the area. She held herself to the deck with a spell of her own, but the damaged runes would be dangerous for anyone else. With that done, she kicked off, releasing her gravity spell to launch herself down the hole she’d made.

  Twice more she found her way blocked by debris, and by the third time she’d reopened a passageway down the ship, she was starting to feel the strain. Fortunately, that seemed to be the last, and the blast doors sealing off Engineering itself still had status lights blinking away.

  Those status lights were…unpromising. The air on the other side was breathable. Barely. Pressure was low and the toxic content was rising. From the way the pressure was dropping, there was at least one microbreach and the systems were struggling to compensate.

  Despite what the automated systems thought, Maria was grimly certain that there were living crew on the other side. That meant she had to get through the blast door—and as Ship’s Mage and First Officer, she had the override codes to tell the security system to sit down and shut up.

  Air blasted past her and she barely managed to keep herself in place hanging onto the edge of the door. Once the initial equalization was complete, she pulled herself into Engineering and inhaled sharply.

  The massive space that had served as a center point for the engine pods was a nightmare. Fires were visibly burning and debris was scattered everywhere. She could see the gravity runes flickering in random patterns across the decks.

  Fortunately, she could also see crew members and cross to them quickly.

  “Report,” she ordered, interrupting the engineers’ shock.

  “We’ve lost all the engines,” the very junior officer in charge of the team managed to gasp out. “Antimatter containment failed; radiation levels in here are dangerous, ma’am. We’re trying to stabilize the fusion cores but we don’t have enough control to shut down the feed. They’re heading for overload.”

  Maria winced.

  “How long if you leave the cores?” she asked bluntly.

  “Two, maybe three minutes,” the senior technician next to the officer replied. “These need someone babying them.”

  “No, they need to be blasted into space,” Maria corrected him. “Get everyone moving back to the Mage’s Sanctum. Stop there; I don’t think we want to be in the spine at all.”

  “Ma’am, if we leave the reactor—”

  “It will explode,” Maria finished for the engineering officer. “And at this point, it isn’t going to matter. Who else is left down here?”

  “We have wounded but we can’t spare the hands to move them,” the senior tech replied instantly. “If we’re all going, we can take them, I think.”

  “No one gets left behind,” Maria ordered. “Where’s James?”

  “He’s one of the wounded,” the officer told her grimly. “He manually ejected the antimatter cores and got hit with the backlash. We think he’ll live, but…none of us are doctors.”

  Neither was Maria. All she could do was make sure everybody got out alive to make it to the medical bay.

  “Help me get them moving,” she ordered. “There’s no gravity along most of the spine between here and the simulacrum. We don’t have much time.”

  The tech snorted.

  “If we stop babying this reactor, that’s going to be very, very true,” he pointed out.

  “Then you’re the last one out after the wounded are moved,” Maria replied. “But we are all getting out of here. Right now.”

  Maria ended up carrying most of the wounded herself, her magic lifting up and moving a dozen unconscious, hopefully alive, forms on her own. One of those forms was James Kellers, his muscular form probably the limpest of the lot and his face covered with a spray of fast-hardening bandage.

  She was very specifically not taking the time to check him over more closely. It did not look like her lover was in good shape—but he was alive. She was going to make damn sure he stayed that way.

  It was easy to tell once they got back into the portion of the spine that was more intact that the rest. Even before they hit the working gravity runes, they could see flashing lights and hear an automated announcement.

  “Emergency conversion process initiated,” the calm recorded voice told them. “Please evacuate all areas with red lights. These areas are not safe. Blue light areas are safe. Orange light areas are not safe but will be once the conversion is complete.

  “Repeat, emergency conversion process initiated.”

  It kept cycling to the point where Maria could have recited it back to the recording—but the red flashing lights lining the spinal corridor she was leading and hauling people through were far from calming.

  “David, I need more time,” she snapped into her wrist-comp.

  “I know; I’m watching you,” the Captain replied. “Everything behind the simulacrum chamber is going to get blasted into space. Hurry up.”

  That was not the response Maria had been hoping for, and she glanced behind her. She was still thirty meters, at least, short of the armored pod containing the Mage’s Sanctum and the simulacrum pod. Some of the engineers were as much as fifty more meters behind her.

  Even carrying the wounded was starting to strain her, but they were out of time. She closed her eyes, feeling for the runes beneath her feet. She couldn’t see them and often couldn’t even feel them, but right now she needed to.

  Her power reached out, to the end of the corridor, and then hammered into the floor with a line of fire that severed the gravity runes.

  “What the—”

  The running evacuees from Engineering found themselves lifting off in mid-step, but Maria was already acting. Her magic swept backward now, catching the entire collection of engineers, techs, and wounded and carrying them forward through zero gravity.

  She picked hersel
f up with them, hurtling them all along the corridor at a frankly dangerous pace, collecting everyone as she came.

  Then they crashed through into the corridor outside the simulacrum chamber and collapsed back down to the floor. Maria was grimly certain she’d probably caused a slew of new injuries, but she wasn’t done yet.

  Blinking away liquid from her eyes, careful not to try and tell what it was, she forced herself back to her feet and slammed the emergency lock. A heavy steel shutter slammed shut behind them, and she took a moment to be sure that the space she’d got everyone into was lit up in blue.

  Then she grabbed her wrist-comp.

  “We’re clear,” she told David.

  Then she passed out.

  52

  Broken arm or not, Kelly LaMonte remained one of the best programmers and engineers David had ever seen. It took her just over two minutes to get Red Falcon some semblance of eyes back, and just as Soprano was starting to haul the wounded out of Engineering, David and the bridge crew knew just how bad the situation was.

  Their massed salvo of missiles had done their job and done it well. Of the six remaining functional monitors, three were simply gone, a fourth was as badly damaged as the first two, and the remaining two ships had taken at least near-misses.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. Two of Aristos’s monitors remained combat-capable, and they were now accelerating toward Red Falcon at their maximum thrust.

  “They think we’re crippled,” Jeeves said quietly.

  “They’re not wrong,” David replied. “Unless we dump the engine pod, we’re fucked. Even if we do, we have no missiles left and the conversion hurts our acceleration.”

  “I’m not seeing much choice, boss,” his gunner replied.

  “Agreed.” David tapped a command that started a warning sequence running through the ship. He was only vaguely aware of just what the “emergency conversion process” entailed, only that it would ditch his cargo, if he was carrying one, and eject the engine pod.

  “We still have lasers?” he asked.

  “Capacitors are pretty badly drained,” Jeeves replied. “The forward power cores can charge them, but, um…”

  “Lay it out,” David ordered.

  “We never kept them fully fueled,” his gunner reminded him. “That much hydrogen was a fire hazard. We can break down the water in the cap supply to make hydrogen…but not quickly. Give us a day and we’ll have the forward cores fully fueled and able to charge the lasers.”

  “And until then, what’s in the capacitors is what we’ve got,” David concluded. “What can you give me?”

  “All ten guns at half power or four of them at full with two at half,” Jeeves said. “Either will take me time to switch out, but we’ve only got four guns I’d trust at full power if you give me a choice.”

  “Start switching for as many full-power shots as we can get,” David said with a sigh. The monitors were closing the range, but unless they decided to start launching missiles, he had some time. Not a lot. Not with Red Falcon unable to maneuver.

  The monitors’ big lasers could easily wreck his ship at seven or eight million kilometers. The real range limitation was the dodging…and Red Falcon couldn’t dodge.

  “David, I need more time,” Maria told him over her wrist-comp.

  He looked at the inner sensors. She was most of the way to the simulacrum chamber and the armored pod around it that would be fine. But…they only had minutes at best until the mercenaries were in range to finish them off, and he needed engines.

  He wasn’t willing to sacrifice his people. Not unless he had to—but if they didn’t make it, he’d have to.

  “I know; I’m watching you,” he told her, even as his heart tore in half. “Everything behind the simulacrum chamber is going to get blasted into space. Hurry up.”

  Then her magic flared, carrying the wounded forward in response to his demand, and he inhaled sharply. He knew how much jumping took out of a Mage, and Maria couldn’t have that much left.

  The health-warning transmission from her wrist-comp a moment later told him all he needed to. She was alive, but she’d pushed herself well past what was reasonable. Without proper care, she could easily die.

  From the sounds of it, that was true of many of the people she’d pulled out of Engineering.

  “Everyone is clear of the red and orange zones,” Jeeves reported. “What do we do?”

  Red Falcon was spinning in space, unable to bear on anything or anyone until she had engines again. Her velocity vector was solid enough, that the Bears would be able to hit them cleanly.

  “Hang on,” David ordered, and punched a command he never thought he’d use.

  From the outside, it must have looked like the ship was exploding. First, explosive charges placed around the spine at the simulacrum chamber’s pod detonated, severing the entire rear half of the spine, engine pod and all, from the ship.

  The force flung the five-hundred-meter-long chunk of starship away from Red Falcon barely in time. It was only a few kilometers distant from the freighter when the fusion cores finally overloaded despite the programs the engineers had left running. The rest of the Red Falcon’s transformation process was hidden under the brilliant light of a tiny new sun as the fusion reactions overcame their containment.

  As the sun lit up the back of the ship, the front half of the spine was disintegrated as smaller charges blasted the exterior hull and cargo spars away. A few seconds passed as thousands of tons of cargo control and storage technology cleared the area, and then the umbilicals and conduits connecting the simulacrum pod to the forward dome and hab ring began to coil up.

  Normally, the heavily armored cables and pipes were far from flexible, but the designers had accounted for that. Sections of piping folded in on themselves, new links forming as entire hundred-meter pieces of supply umbilicals were ejected into space.

  The entire process took a little under twelve seconds, and when it was done, the simulacrum chamber and its armored pod slammed into the rear of the forward section with bone-crushing force. Inside, the magical model of the ship would already be adjusting, changing to show Red Falcon’s new shape.

  Finally, the last connections popped into place and a new set of green indicators lit up on David’s screen.

  Something like a third of Red Falcon’s unfueled mass was now scattered around her in pieces, and she would never carry cargo again. The freighter was, in a very real sense, dead.

  What was left was a two-million-ton pocket warship, and David took live control of his ship once again as his enemies opened fire in panicked fear.

  The secondary engines buried in the forward pod weren’t as powerful as the main thrusters he’d lost, but they also didn’t need to push twenty million tons of cargo and three million tons of starship plus fuel.

  Falcon went from zero to eight gravities at the touch of a button, the newly shrunken ship responding to David’s hand with an eagerness he’d never felt from her when she was a freighter.

  “Lasers and Rapiers,” he said quietly to Jeeves. “Hit them with everything.”

  Ten-gigawatt laser beams flashed through space where Red Falcon had been a moment before, their sudden acceleration sparing them from the mercenaries’ fire—and then Jeeves returned the fire.

  The light from Red Falcon’s newly activated engines hadn’t reached the enemy when Jeeves fired. They had seconds to evade, seconds they clearly lost to a very human moment of shock.

  The range was too long for the freighter’s battle lasers to be effective on their own, but the lead monitor took six lasers to her forward armor. Even dispersed by distance, it was enough to rip the ship open like a rotten banana.

  Missiles poured in afterward as Jeeves emptied the magazines. They only had a hundred Rapier fusion missiles left aboard, but it would be enough. It had to be enough.

  The monitor’s laser flared again and again, but she didn’t launch missiles. Apparently, Aristos hadn’t brought the lower-tier missiles with
him this time. With only a single beam, David managed to dance around the long-range fire until it was too late for anyone.

  Rapiers didn’t carry warheads. They didn’t need them. Arriving at just over ten percent of lightspeed, the six missiles from the first salvo that made it through were all it took. Hammering into the monitor like the fists of the Gods, they shattered the mercenary ship.

  The rest of the missiles continued on for several more seconds until Jeeves hit a command to detonate them. Their engines overloaded and the remaining missiles blew apart.

  Silence reigned.

  “Now what?” the gunner finally asked.

  “We flag this location for MISS to send search-and-rescue out to,” David told him. “We check in on our Mages and our wounded…and then we get the hell home to Tau Ceti before anyone else finds us.”

  The Golden Bears’ jump-yacht was still around somewhere, but he doubted she could rescue the survivors from the ship. Falcon certainly didn’t have the capacity anymore, but he owed it to fellow spacers to make sure that people who could help knew they were here.

  Even if they’d tried to kill him.

  53

  “I’m pretty sure we told you that you could only do that once.”

  Commodore Rasputin Burns, the main dockmaster for the Tau Ceti shipyards, had been the man to deliver Red Falcon to David. The sharp-featured and dark-haired man hadn’t changed much since the last time they’d met, though he looked tired as he studied the hologram of the newly abbreviated Red Falcon floating over his desk.

  “Honestly, I was surprised it worked once,” David admitted. Both men stood in the Commodore’s office in the shipyards’ main command center.

  “Worked is a strong word,” Burns agreed. “You’re alive, though. That’s important. Falcon, on the other hand…”

  The yardmaster sighed and tapped a command. Red lines appeared on the hologram, lacing their way through the entire hull.