Interstellar Mage (Starship's Mage: Red Falcon Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  Which made the depths between the stars the best safe haven he had. He couldn’t stay out there, Falcon didn’t have the supplies or capacity to be self-sufficient, but while they were out in the void, they were safe. Mostly.

  So, David Rice sat on his bridge and sank into the humming rhythm of his ship. Soon enough, he’d be in Svarog and have to decide whether or not he was willing to make common cause with criminals.

  Survival was a powerful motivator, and he’d lain down in the muck before. Flight wasn’t an option—the Protectorate’s gift was a millstone around his neck. To keep Falcon flying, he had to work, had to carry cargo.

  Had to be bait for the Mage-King’s enemies.

  MARIA SHOULD HAVE BEEN RESTING. She’d jumped barely three hours beforehand, and it would be another five before it was her turn to cast the spell that carried the starship through the stars again.

  Nonetheless, she’d left Iovis sleeping in his quarters and returned to the simulacrum chamber, surrounded by the screens that showed the stars through which Red Falcon drifted.

  There was no point to engines there. A few thousand kilometers more or less wasn’t going to change anything in the end; they could arrive only so close to Svarog’s star.

  The big freighter’s speed was normal to her, though most of the rest of the crew were impressed by it. The whole point of the AAFHF design, however, had been to keep up with the warships of the Royal Martian Navy.

  For all of her mass and speed, Red Falcon was no true replacement for the destroyers of Maria’s naval service. Her crew worked well together, but they weren’t the family she’d known aboard her last ship.

  The family she’d convinced to follow her into what had arguably been mutiny.

  MISS might think they were giving her a chance to honor her old oath, but they couldn’t give her back that belonging, that family. No matter what, she was no longer Navy.

  That still hurt.

  Maria sighed.

  It still hurt, but not as much as it had. Not enough to send her back into a dive bar to drink herself to death again. Brent Alois had done her that much of a favor, and David Rice had welcomed her into his crew. The Captain treated her as his strong right hand, with more trust than she’d expected.

  She was a screw-up who’d been kicked out of the Navy, after all.

  And then there was Iovis Acconcio. She had to wonder how long the older warrant officer had nursed his flame. It would have been utterly inappropriate when they served together, but aboard a merchant ship, it wasn’t a problem.

  She smiled softly. He might even be in love with her, which was a little scary. He was kind and gentle and considerate, but she didn’t love him.

  She supposed that could change. Certainly, she enjoyed his company enough.

  But there were times she needed to be alone, so she floated in an unmarked shipsuit inside the heart of the Mage sanctum aboard Red Falcon, relaxing and corralling her loose thoughts.

  From the simulacrum chamber, she could see everything going on around the big freighter—which meant she spotted the jump flares.

  DAVID WAS CONSIDERING SETTING the ship to automatically alert him of anything changing and heading to bed when the intercom from the simulacrum chamber flipped alive.

  “David, check two-forty by sixty-eight,” Soprano’s voice snapped. “We’ve got at least one jump flare incoming.”

  He swallowed hard, pulling up Falcon’s scanners and checking the direction she’d provided. The simulacrum chamber’s systems could give the Mage a decent view of what was going on, but they weren’t designed for detailed sensor display.

  The bridge systems were and he swallowed hard as they began to resolve the contacts.

  “Not one,” he told his Mage quietly. “Six, and I have fusion-engine flares.” He waited a moment as the computer tried to analyze it. “I’ll need Acconcio up here to be certain,” he admitted, “but I think we’re looking at an entire strike force of corvettes.”

  “Damn,” Soprano replied. “I make the range forty light-seconds, give or take. Can we touch them from here?”

  “We can hit them with the antimatter birds, but…” He shivered. “Those ships have a crew of sixty to a hundred apiece. Five, maybe six hundred people. I can’t just blow them away.

  “When can we jump?”

  His Mage looked ill.

  “Costa’s next on the roster, but he can’t jump early,” she admitted. “Wu…could jump in an hour or so, but so could Costa. I could jump in two. They’ve got us pinned, boss.”

  “They brought through enough base velocity to halve the range by then,” he warned. “They could easily have fusion missiles that could tag us from there, but the flight times would suck.”

  David hit a series of commands on his controls, lighting up Red Falcon’s massive engines. Whether the strange ships had been lucky or extremely well informed, they had a two-thousand-kilometers-a-second velocity toward his ship.

  They were burning toward him at ten gravities, so either they had gravity runes aboard or were absolutely punishing their crews. He could match that acceleration, but for now, he just activated an automated evasion program.

  Those corvettes had lasers, and he wasn’t interested in testing the bastards’ luck.

  “I’m flagging red alert,” he told Soprano. “Wake everyone up and poke your Mages. I’d love to jump out of here before I discover if these people are here to kill us.”

  It was nowhere near as easy to activate the red alert as it would have been to take a warship to general quarters, but despite her weapons and engines, Red Falcon remained primarily a cargo hauler. Nothing changed in the bridge or the simulacrum chamber on the intercom screen, but the ship’s systems informed him that the klaxons and lights calling everyone to emergency stations were now ringing throughout the ship.

  “If they’re here to kill us, how did they even find us?” Soprano asked. “We’re easily ten light-years from where we’re supposed to be.”

  “But we didn’t play any games beyond that,” he said grimly. “They knew where we were going, Maria. They knew both the deception and the real destination.

  “Somebody sold us out.”

  And much as he wanted to think so, he didn’t think it had been any of Conroy’s people.

  THE STRANGERS MADE no attempt to communicate as they closed with Red Falcon, a glaring warning sign to David. Nonetheless, as a civilian in command of an armed ship, Protectorate law was quite clear: if he fired first, he would be guilty of murder.

  And regardless of what the law said, he would be guilty in his own mind.

  Despite her guns, his ship wasn’t a warship, and it took time for crew to report to emergency stations. Acconcio and Campbell arrived almost simultaneously, both of their quarters as near to the bridge as any space on the rotating gravity ring.

  Others filtered in over the following few minutes, taking up their stations around the bridge and across the ship. Various sections of the ship flipped from a greenish-yellow—night-shift operations, only one or two people on duty—to the bright orange of emergency stations on his displays.

  “These guys should not be here,” Acconcio said grimly. “Two Caribbean-class corvettes. One might be our ghost from earlier; the radar signature is wonky enough for stealth plating. Two Antioch-class ships—those are Legatan-built; putting jump matrices into them must have been a pain. Last two aren’t any class I recognize, custom civvy jobs but basically corvette equivalents.”

  The gunner shook his head.

  “Those are pirate ships,” he concluded. “And like I said, they should not be here!”

  “Someone sold them our course,” David replied. “And believe me, Iovis, I intend to find out who. Jenna!”

  Campbell looked over at him.

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Hail them,” he ordered. “And put me on.”

  A small screen in his chair’s repeaters showed him the image he was sending out to the other ships, and he carefully adjusted to gla
re directly at the camera.

  “Unidentified vessels, this is the armed merchant freighter Red Falcon, Captain David Rice commanding,” he barked. “We both know this isn’t a regular jump point, which leaves me wondering just why you’re here.

  “Your approach suggests unkind intentions. I warn you that this is ship is armed and we will defend ourselves. If you do not begin to vector away, I will need to regard your approach as threatening and prepare to take necessary actions.

  “Clarify your intent and break off,” he ordered. “Or I will be forced to defend this ship.”

  “On the chip,” Campbell told him.

  “Send it,” David replied. “Iovis, do we have them dialed in?”

  “Of course,” the tactical officer confirmed. “Assuming they’re all equivalent to the Antiochs and Carribeans, though…”

  “Finish the thought,” David said as the man trailed off.

  “At this range, it would take a full salvo to guarantee taking down a ship,” Acconcio said. “We could spread our fire out as we thin their numbers, but we could easily burn half our magazines of antimatter birds to take them down.”

  And while David was authorized to possess antimatter missiles, there hadn’t been any discussion of him buying new ones. He had the connections to sort that out—if nothing else, Amber had no laws regarding sale of weapons of any kind, and a chance to visit with Keiko wasn’t to be passed up—but fifty AM missiles was a lot of money.

  “I’m not prepared to fire first,” he said softly. “Load all launchers with the fusion-drive kinetics. Target our ghost first, and the instant they open fire, you start shooting.

  “And you don’t stop until they’re debris or have surrendered.”

  SECONDS TURNED TO MINUTES. More than enough time passed for David to be certain that the attackers had received his message and could have responded.

  They didn’t. The six ships continued on their steady approach, accelerating toward Red Falcon at ten gravities. He surrendered control of the ship to Campbell, allowing her to keep up the evasive maneuvers—but they weren’t accelerating away from the pirates.

  “We’re in range of our fusion missiles,” Acconcio reported softly. An uneven blue circle appeared on the main display, extending around Falcon to show the reach of her lighter missiles. The civilian-grade self-defense weapons could accelerate at two thousand gravities for ten minutes, roughly the capability that David would expect pirate missiles to have.

  At five million kilometers, the pirate’s velocity would bring them within reach of Falcon’s missiles, but David still waited.

  “No reaction to our message?” he asked.

  “None,” Campbell confirmed. “Their course didn’t even twitch.”

  “Of course not.” Red Falcon’s Captain considered for several seconds.

  “Iovis, bring up Laser One,” he ordered. “Warning shot at forty percent power; keep it at least ten thousand kilometers clear.”

  At two gigawatts—forty percent of their rated firepower—the heavy battle laser would resemble the heaviest weapons David had originally acquired permits for. If the pirates didn’t know who they were fighting, it might be enough to scare them off.

  If they did, it might help them underestimate him. With one ship, however well-armed, versus six, he’d take every advantage he could.

  “Jenna, clear the RFLAMs,” he continued. “Keep humans in the loop but bring up the automatic defense protocols. I don’t want to be waiting on our reflexes to save us if we’ve missed something.”

  “Turrets coming online,” she replied instantly.

  “Warning shot ready,” Acconcio reported. “Firing.”

  All twenty-five of the icons marking Red Falcon’s rapid-fire laser anti-missile turrets flipped green, with a red outline marking them as fully active and under computer control.

  A moment later, the computers drew in the laser beam as a single white line on the screen. The high-powered beam wasn’t operating on any visible wavelength, but the computer picked up the slight scatter of radiation and told the humans where it was.

  It sliced directly past the pirate ships, just inside David’s ordered ten-thousand-kilometer margin.

  “Put me on again,” he said softly, then faced the camera once more.

  “Unidentified ships, that was a warning shot,” he told them. “I will not tolerate any further aggression. Break off now or I will have no choice but to open fire.”

  Letting the message send, he turned back to Acconcio.

  “Status?” he asked.

  “All laser capacitators at full charge,” the ex-Navy man reported instantly. “Launchers one through ten loaded. I have a passive lock on Bogey Alpha, our ghost, but I’d like to get a hard active lock before I fire.”

  “All RFLAMs are online and clear to fire,” Campbell added.

  “We’re standing by in the simulacrum chamber to add what we can,” Soprano reported from her station. “Falcon may not have a warship’s amplifier, but we were all trained for this. We’ll sweep anything the turrets miss.”

  “Thank you, Ship’s Mage,” David murmured. “Jenna. Any sign of a response?”

  “Negative.”

  He exhaled heavily, then nodded.

  “Third Officer Acconcio,” he said formally, “you are authorized to bring up active sensors and acquire hard lock. Stand by to fire on my command.”

  “Wait!” Campbell snapped. “Incoming transmission!”

  “Play it.”

  A broad-shouldered man in an expensive but ill-fitted suit suddenly appeared on David’s screen. At some point, the hair on his scalp appeared to have been permanently lasered off in some kind of pattern that wasn’t quite visible from the front.

  He smiled broadly, showing sparkling white teeth and warm brown eyes as he turned a grin that David would normally have found reassuring on Red Falcon’s crew.

  “I don’t see any reason for me to give you a name, Captain Rice, but you know who I work for,” he said cheerfully. “But let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?

  “I am under contract to the Azure Legacy to deliver either you, dead or alive, or proof of your death, to an agent in a system I’m not going to tell you,” he continued. “I won’t pretend you’re likely to survive live delivery, Captain, but I’ll be up front with you:

  “My contract is for you and you alone. Surrender peacefully and I will permit your crew to leave with your ship.” The pirate shrugged. “I have six military vessels, Captain Rice. You have one half-armed freighter. Fight me and your crew dies.

  “Are you not prepared to sacrifice yourself to spare others?”

  The message ended and David swallowed a snarl.

  “Iovis.”

  “Captain?”

  “You may fire when ready.”

  THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN IGNORING most of Red Falcon’s attempts at communication, but the pirates didn’t ignore it when Acconcio lit up the leader with directed radar. Alongside the weapons systems, the Navy had left behind the targeting scanners to aim them.

  Even at fourteen light-seconds, there was no missing it when those beams pinged somebody’s hull. Falcon’s computers easily resolved their target, ignoring his stealth plating, but the corvettes started real evasive maneuvers—in case the next stage was a massed laser strike.

  “Holding lasers for now,” the third officer said calmly. “First missile salvo away. Reloaders running…estimate fifty seconds to second salvo.”

  “Thank you.”

  The new icons joined Falcon and her attackers on the screen, ten tiny triangles with their own vector-dating zipping across space toward the pirates.

  They were joined in turn by at least thirty triangles around the corvettes.

  “They fired first, I take it?” David asked.

  “Six seconds after the radar pulse hit them,” Acconcio confirmed. “Thirty-two missiles in the mix: the Antiochs have six launchers apiece, the rest have five. Accelerating at twenty-two hundred gravities.”
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  “Well, at least we’re worth the good stuff,” the Captain replied. “Jenna?”

  “Missile defenses are tracking,” she confirmed. “Estimate nine-minute flight time; RFLAMs will range at sixty seconds from impact, relative velocity at that point will be just over point oh three cee.”

  “You can handle them?” David asked.

  “I’ve got twenty-five turrets to thirty-two missiles, and sixty seconds to shoot them down,” Campbell said confidently. “First salvo is easy. Everything after that depends on their cycle time.”

  He nodded. He knew the math—better than Campbell did, if he was honest. Her only space combat experience was the trouble she’d got in with him. He’d been trained for this. Once. A long time ago.

  Acconcio, though…

  “Iovis?”

  “Salvo running clean and true; second salvo launching…now,” the gunner replied. “Seeing if I can herd them into a nice, neat box for the lasers.”

  “How out of our weight class are we?” David murmured to his third officer.

  Acconcio smiled thinly, half-baring his teeth.

  “You got the question the wrong way around, boss,” he said. “They fucked up. Hard. This little squadron could have taken any of the disarmed AAFHFs, sure. But a fully equipped, fully armed Navy auxiliary?”

  The screens started to light up as the anti-missile turrets lit up on both sides. All six pirate ships combined had fewer turrets than Red Falcon did, and the turrets of six individual vessels didn’t sync up as well as those aboard one ship.

  Campbell shredded the pirates’ entire first salvo, but the second was close on its heels. Only forty seconds passed between the two missile salvos, cutting her intercept time for each successive salvo.

  The pirates, on the other hand, stopped only eight missiles. Two missiles hammered into the “ghost” corvette at just under ten thousand kilometers a second. Combined, the ship took the equivalent of twenty megatons of force and simply…came apart.