Judgment of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I have a job,” Damien said slowly. “I do the job. I won’t say there are no political aspects to it, but largely, the political aftermath is not my problem.”

  “This one is,” the Councilor said flatly. “I’m not saying this is right or just, Lord Montgomery. It is simply what you must do.”

  “No. It isn’t,” the Hand replied. “It is my duty to fight the Protectorate’s enemies, not surrender to them. My resignation might turn back this particular attack, but it would not stop the forces that move in the shadows around us, Councilor.

  “My resignation would not stop wars or arrest rogue governors. I can.” Damien smiled thinly. “Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Granger. I appreciate and understand your concern. But I have work to do, and I will not resign.”

  He would consider it if the Council demanded it. It would still short-circuit the conflict Granger warned of if he took the decision out of his King’s hands, but…he couldn’t walk away from his responsibilities.

  “I swore an oath,” he told the other man. “To protect the people of the Protectorate. There was nothing about being more concerned about my own safety or the political consequences in that oath. We will deal with those as they fall.

  “Until then, I speak for the Mage-King of Mars, and I will not be intimidated.”

  Granger nodded slowly, bowing his head.

  “So be it, then, my lord,” he told Damien. “We shall all see what the consequences are, I suppose.”

  #

  Chapter 5

  Damien brought his advisor and bodyguards to the entrance to the Council Chamber, but he wasn’t surprised when one of the two Lictors in plain white uniforms stepped forward to bar their way as he approached.

  “My Lord Montgomery,” she greeted him. “Your name is alone on the summons I have. Your companions will need to wait here. There is a quite comfortable waiting room around the corner, I can show them over.”

  For a moment, Damien considered arguing. The Lictor was correct in that the Council had only summoned him, but even here he could override that.

  Alexander’s orders to “tread softly” echoed in his ears, however, and he inclined his head politely to the guard.

  “Thank you,” he told her. “Gentlemen, I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Romanov said with a sharp glance at the Lictors. “One of us will be at this door until you return,” he continued. “We’ll keep the Council’s guards company.”

  The Lictor looked like she might object, but swallowed anything she was going to say as the Special Agent looked her in the eye. Damien’s bodyguards would follow orders, but everyone knew the Council was playing power games, and his people were clearly less patient with it than he was.

  “As you wish, of course, Special Agent,” the woman replied. “You may enter, Lord Hand.”

  Checking the time, Damien waited a few seconds to be certain he was arriving exactly on time, then stepped past the white-uniformed guards into the chamber.

  He didn’t enjoy these kinds of games, but if the Council of the Protectorate wanted to play, he’d learned the rules by now.

  #

  The Chamber of the Council might have been built in a space station, but its designers had decided that didn’t meant it couldn’t have one hell of a view. The chamber was built up against the “upper” side of the rotating ring of Council Station, and the entire back side of the chamber had been magically transmuted to be transparent.

  The white-uniformed Lictor led Damien across the floor and he looked up at the circular levels leading up towards that transparent wall. Five rows had been set up, though only the first four were fully occupied with thirty seats apiece.

  One hundred and twenty seats for one hundred and twenty star systems. Thirteen Core Systems, including Sol and Legatus, whose representatives took up most of the first row. Thirty-three MidWorlds. Fifty-four Fringe Worlds, four of those desks still new enough to look out of place in the chamber.

  Behind the risers containing those desks, Damien looked out at the plains of Ceres, currently eclipsing the Sun and haloing the entire room in a gentle gleam of light.

  The room was quiet as he followed the Lictors to a plain table in the middle of the chamber, facing the assembled representatives of the Protectorate’s worlds.

  “Here, my lord,” the Lictor instructed.

  Damien calmly sat, facing the men and women who had summoned him, and waited.

  The quiet stretched out, silence rippling down from the top of the chamber as the conversations died down. Most of the Councilors ceased their conversations as soon as he’d sat down, but others continued on for a good minute.

  He continued to wait, his gloved hands crossed on the table in front of him, and studied Ceres behind the Council. Even from here, some of the gouges of the massive open-pit mines that had fueled the initial diaspora were visible. He suspected that had been intentional on the part of the original designers.

  “Damien Montgomery,” someone finally spoke. Damien turned his attention to the speaker, a white-haired man whose desk declared him the Councilor for Alpha Centauri. “This Council has summoned you to allow us to understand the events that led to the deaths of Hand Lawrence Octavian and Hand Charlotte Ndosi.”

  “I am at the Council’s disposal, Councilor Newton,” Damien said politely. If Councilor Paul Newton thought that refusing to grant the Hand his title was going to put him off-balance, the man really needed to up his game.

  “So we see,” Newton said flatly. “Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? Why were you on Andala IV in the first place?”

  “There had been a murder and the Protectorate was asked to investigate,” Damien replied.

  “But why were you there?” the Councilor for Legatus demanded immediately. Raul McClintlock was a red-headed man with tanned skin and dark eyes. He was glaring at Damien as he spoke. “Andala was over fifty percent funded by Legatus. We certainly do not understand why a Hand was sent for a regular murder investigation.”

  “I was available,” Damien said simply. “I also have some expertise in runic matters, and we knew that Professor Kurosawa had discovered strange runes before his death.”

  “You have a minor in Runic Studies,” McClintlock pointed out. “What made you more qualified than any of the investigators in Tau Ceti?”

  “The fact that I was a Hand and have His Majesty’s trust,” Damien said. Even in this chamber, no one here had need to know about the Rune Wrights. “Hands take on the missions that we feel are appropriate, Councilor McClintlock.”

  “Hand Montgomery’s qualifications are not under question here,” Councilor Montague of Tara interjected. “Continue, my lord.”

  Damien inclined his head towards the Asian-looking woman who spoke for Tara, the Core World Christoffsen had once ruled.

  “During my investigation, one of the Marines under my command assisted Kurosawa’s murderer in attempting to assassinate me,” he told them. “They failed, but the archeological dig came under attack by Octavian’s vessel.”

  “And how you do you know the vessel was Octavian’s?” Newton demanded.

  “That was a long and complex piece of research included in my report, which I know this Council was provided a copy of,” Damien noted. “I believe he was attempting to destroy—”

  “Stop,” Newton ordered. “This Council is not interested in your conjecture or your justifications, Montgomery,” he snapped. “The events only, if you please. You do not know that the ship was Octavian’s with absolute certainty, do you?”

  “I only know of one ship of its type built in the last hundred years,” Damien said quietly. “And that ship was owned by Hand Octavian…and Hand Octavian has not been seen since that ship attacked me.”

  “We are getting ahead of ourselves,” McClintlock pointed out. “A ship attacked Andala IV. What happened?”

  So, that was how the Council was planning on doing this. From some of the expressions Damien could see, not
everyone was on board with this, but McClintlock and Newton seemed to be running this right now.

  “The ship attempted to bombard the dig site, using military-grade munitions,” he told them. “I stopped it.”

  “You’ll forgive me, Montgomery, if I find that hard to believe,” Newton snapped. “There is no defense against bombardment munitions that I am aware of, and while there is significant damage to the Andala IV site, it is hardly consistent with such a bombardment.”

  Damien turned his thin smile on the Councilor for Alpha Centauri.

  “Councilor Newton, I am repeating myself here, but I am a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars,” he said gently. “Not all of the capabilities of the Hands are available to even the members of this Council. Suffice to say it is within my capacity to stop an orbital bombardment.

  “The damage to the site that you noted was inflicted when that ship launched a landing force in an attempt to kill myself and any others at the site.”

  “Damage to an irreplaceable artifact of incalculable value,” McClintlock snapped. “Inflicted when your Marines detonated antimatter weapons on the surface.”

  “Yes,” Damien agreed. “Because the alternative was to allow an unknown force to exterminate the civilians we were supposed to defend—including several hundred Legatan academics, as I understand.”

  That shut McClintlock up, at least.

  “If this ship was so determined to destroy the facility, what happened to it?” Newton demanded.

  “They made two attempts to bombard the facility and landed ground troops to try and kill everyone,” Damien said. “After all of those attempts failed, they retreated from the system, presumably surprised at their failure.”

  And if they hadn’t, everyone would have died, because Damien himself had been in a coma triggered by magical overload at that point.

  “Again, we are not looking for your conjecture, Montgomery,” the Councilor snapped.

  “I have no answer for you but conjecture,” he said softly. “They attempted to destroy the camp. They failed. They left. I and a number of others were medevaced to Tau Ceti, where Mage-Admiral Segal deployed a destroyer squadron to secure Andala.

  “To my knowledge, no further attempt was made to attack Andala,” he noted.

  “You said you were medevaced to Tau Ceti?” Councilor Montague asked. “What happened to you?”

  “Thaumic burnout,” Damien said simply. Every Mage in the room, roughly forty percent of the Councilors, visibly winced. “Even Hands have their limits, and I exceeded mine by a large margin protecting the dig site.”

  “That is not relevant to today’s discussion,” Newton said after a moment, recovering from his own wince. Most Mages had the consequences of thaumic burnout spelled out to them very vividly in training.

  “What happened on Tau Ceti after you woke up?”

  “I was asked to meet with an individual who promised some answers,” Damien summarized. There was no need to go into his own questionable actions and the ensuing kidnapping that had forced him to meet the man who’d only introduced himself as “Winton.”

  “The individual attempted to recruit me to an organization he called the Royal Order of Keepers of Secrets and Oaths, even going so far as to offer me the Throne. I declined.”

  “And this was the first you’d heard of this Order? These ‘Keepers’?”

  “The assassin who attempted to kill me had used the name before, but otherwise, yes.”

  “And based on this one discussion, you decided the Keepers were enemies of the Protectorate that needed to be destroyed?” McClintlock demanded. “Rather…abrupt of you, wouldn’t you say?”

  “My encounters with the Keepers had involved them trying to kill me, trying to blow up the research facility I was standing in, and offering me the Throne of Olympus Mons if I joined them,” Damien pointed out mildly. “But no, I did not decide they needed to be destroyed. Identified and contained, yes, but it was quite clear that whatever secrets they were hiding were dangerous and needed to be uncovered.”

  He stopped there before Newton could complain about conjecture again.

  “And after this?” the Centauri Councilor asked.

  Damien sighed.

  “We filed an official flight plan and traveled to Mars, partly to investigate the Keepers and partly to check in with His Majesty. Our flight plan was used to intercept us, and the ship that was at Andala attacked us one jump short of Sol.”

  “That seems a rather dramatic leap,” Newton said dryly.

  “I am aware, Councilor, of exactly three living men and women capable of tracking Jumps,” Damien replied. “One of them was aboard Duke of Magnificence. The other two are assigned to special duty Navy task forces.

  “In the absence of a Tracker, the only logical explanation for how we were intercepted is that Hand Octavian had access to my flight plan.”

  “Why are you so certain it was Hand Octavian?” McClintlock asked.

  “In truth?” Damien shrugged. “Because no one has seen him since the ship was destroyed. Its wreckage gave us more evidence of the existence of the Keepers, and we dug into its history. As my report said, that linked us back to Octavian again.”

  “So, you returned to Mars in search of vengeance?” Newton asked.

  “I returned to Mars in search of answers. I did not expect to find enemies there,” Damien admitted. “Our search led us to Curiosity City University and from there to the location we now know was the Archive of the Keepers.

  “There, I was intercepted by a squad of Combat Mages and Hand Ndosi.”

  He sighed. Those were unpleasant memories.

  “We talked, we argued, and then we fought,” he concluded. “Hand Ndosi had a dead man’s switch linking her vitals to the suicide charge in the Archive. On the verge of death, she teleported me clear.”

  “Most people’s discussions don’t end in a nuclear explosion, Montgomery,” Newton pointed out.

  “We were Hands,” he said quietly. “I’d sworn an oath to my King. She’d sworn some oath to the Keepers. We did not find a compromise before the situation deteriorated.”

  By now, Damien was starting to get frustrated with the interrogation.

  “All of this was in my report,” he reminded them, “with far more detail.”

  “It is valuable to hear it in your words,” Newton told him. “None before you have ever killed two Hands. The situation is without precedent, and we must be certain of our actions.”

  Damien waited for the Councilor to elaborate.

  “A nuclear weapon was detonated on one of our homeworlds,” he continued. “Two Hands of the Mage-King are dead. At the center of all of this, one Hand. A very young Hand raised in turmoil and without explanation or qualification.

  “We have our concerns and our questions.”

  “I believe my record speaks for itself,” Damien said. “I serve Mars, Councilors, and through her, humanity.”

  “So do we all,” McClintlock told him. “We would be remiss in our own duties, Lord Montgomery, if we did not investigate this situation to make sure there were no more bombs hidden away on us.”

  That was ironic, coming from the Legatan Councilor.

  “My job is to find those bombs and defuse them,” Damien told them. “Regardless of their source, whether it’s pirates in deep space or conspiracies on Mars. In this, I serve our King and you.”

  “Of course,” Councilor Montague agreed, cutting off her colleagues. “We do have more detailed questions as well, Lord Montgomery. Since we have you here.”

  “I am at the Council’s disposal today,” Damien replied. “I must warn you that there are matters I cannot discuss, even with this illustrious body.”

  More of them, he suspected, then any of the Councilors suspected. None of them liked being reminded of that, either—but Newton looked the most offended.

  “Fine,” he spat. “I’ll ask you to refrain from speculation and self-justification as we continue,” he warned Damien. “We want the
events and the truth, not your opinion.”

  #

  When things finally seemed to be wrapping up, over two hours later, Damien was relatively certain he’d rather be shot again than go through another of these hearings.

  “I believe those are our last questions for today,” Montague told him. “The Council appreciates your patience and honesty, Lord Montgomery. I imagine this has not been an easy time for you.”

  Damien smiled mirthlessly. If he was very lucky, none of the Councilors realized he and Ndosi had been lovers. “Not an easy time” was a pale descriptor of his last few weeks.

  “It is in the interests of his Majesty’s servants for us all to work together,” he said smoothly.

  “The Council will deliberate on this and other evidence,” Newton told him. “We will need you to remain on Council Station until our discussions are complete.”

  Even if Damien had had any patience left with the Alpha Centauri Councilor—and his patience was a frayed rope at this point—that wasn’t acceptable.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” he said as gently as he could.

  “That was not a request,” McClintlock snapped, the Legatan Councilor glaring at him.

  Damien returned McClintlock’s glare levelly.

  “Then perhaps it should have been,” he said firmly. “I must remind this Council again, it seems, that I am a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars. I answer to one being in this universe: him.

  “He has charged me to continue investigating the Keepers on Mars. That mission continues and requires my full attention. Attention I cannot give it from half a dozen light-minutes away.

  “While it is and will always be my intent to cooperate with this Council, my duties as His Majesty’s Hand do come first. If this Council wishes to interview me again, you may request that through His Majesty’s offices and I will attempt to make the time.

  “I most certainly cannot and will not restrict myself to this station for your convenience. Like yourselves, I have a job to do.”