Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Sir, we’re responsible for your safety!”

  “Corei…” Damien sighed. “I need you to make sure Malcolm and Connor’s bodies are retrieved and prepared for return to Mars. Romanov is capable of seeing to my security, and you can’t do it on your own. Besides, the assassin is dead. While I suspect our problems are far from over, I don’t think there are any other immediate threats here.”

  “Understood, sir. I’ll see you at the base camp.”

  Shaking his head, Damien flipped channels to bring up the Marine commander.

  “Lieutenant Romanov, this is Montgomery.”

  “Sir, we registered explosions and gunfire,” the Combat Mage replied. “I have a fire team strapping on exosuits. What do you need?”

  “I’ve been separated from the Secret Service agents and I’m on the surface,” Damien told him, pausing for a moment to consider before continuing. “I need you and those exosuited Marines to rendezvous with me on the surface. Kurosawa’s killer attacked me. She’s dead now, but I’m not willing to assume we’re all safe just yet. Put your people on high alert.”

  “White is outside with a team right now,” Romanov replied. “I can have her meet you immediately.”

  “I’m not that worried,” Damien said dryly. “Leave her and her team to their work. I’ll see you when you’re out, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  #

  Denis Romanov had not expected to find out that someone had attempted to kill the principal while the Hand was in an abandoned alien base accessible only through a single tunnel linked to a prefabricated base camp full of scientists.

  Given that one of those scientists had murdered another one, he supposed it should have been a possibility, but when the principal was a Hand, you tended to assume that most attacks were going to be…grander than an assassin in the dark.

  “Keep loading up,” he ordered the team with him. They were halfway into their exosuit armor, but their commander wasn’t joining them in the heavy gear. Working magic through the heavy powered armor was possible but annoyingly difficult. He’d be going out in a breather and light body armor, which had been much easier to put on.

  “I’m going out to rendezvous with the Hand,” he told the Corporal leading the team. “Follow as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leaving the squad behind him, Romanov entered the airlock. The inner door slid shut behind him…and then the lights cut out and the air exchangers stopped.

  “What the hell?” he asked aloud, tapping at the controls. “Team Charlie, check in—the airlock just shut down. Is the facility secure?”

  There was a pause.

  “Yes, sir,” the Corporal replied calmly. “I’ve got red flashing on the airlock, but that’s it. Lights and air are on in here.”

  Denis considered for several seconds. The only reason to block the airlock, in his mind, was to stop the Marines getting out to join Montgomery. He knew the Hand hadn’t wanted to interrupt White, but…

  “Delta Team, break off your perimeter and move to secure the principal,” he ordered. Silence answered him and a chill ran up his spine. “Fire Team Delta, Corporal Carmichael, report. Mage-Lieutenant White, report.”

  Only silence answered him.

  “Corporal Chan,” he said very calmly. “Set up an emergency airlock in that room and follow me as soon as you’re able. I am breaking my way out…now.”

  Blades of force flashed into existence around his hands as he slung his battle rifle, channeled magic and struck. The airlock was a civilian structure, though designed for vacuum rather than its current purifier duties. It resisted him for less than a moment before the steel door fell outward, cut to ribbons in his hurry.

  “Lord Montgomery, please confirm your location,” he asked over the radio.

  His only answer was a sharp buzzing that hadn’t been there a moment before. He was being jammed.

  “I need to find that jammer,” he said aloud, fully aware no one could hear him.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Denis,” another voice replied. “I have new orders, and I can’t let you interfere.”

  He was somehow unsurprised to find Mage-Lieutenant White standing on the concrete, framed by the blue-green trees behind her as she raised her hands. The projector rune at the top of her hand flashed with power, and only years of training got Denis out of the way before fire hammered through where he’d been standing.

  “Whose orders?” he demanded. “You don’t fuck with a Hand, White—that’s treason.”

  “Orders from high enough, Romanov,” she said flatly. “Surrender and you can leave with me. Push it and I’ll leave you dead in the dirt with everyone else.”

  “I won’t betray the Hand and I won’t leave my men,” Mage-Lieutenant Denis Romanov told her. “Go to hell, White.”

  He was suddenly very sure why Fire Team Delta hadn’t answered his call—and it wasn’t because they were being jammed. A shield of energy snapped into place as White attacked him again, and Denis was forced a step away from the airlock door.

  He conjured lightning, his own projector rune warming in his flesh as it helped him channel his power over greater distances. White dodged, but it bought him time to start moving.

  A Royal Martian Marine Corps Combat Mage was one of the deadliest beings alive short of a Hand. They weren’t necessarily trained to fight each other, but the thought had certainly crossed his drill sergeant’s mind.

  Shields helped, but either of them could burn through the other’s shield in a matter of moments, given the chance. Mobility was everything, and Denis wrapped power around himself as he leapt, crashing to the ground a dozen meters from where White’s next attack landed.

  A dozen sparks flashed from his fingers, each carrying a charge that would short out a tank or stop a human heart. White dodged most of them, flicking the last few aside with a shield, and replied with a sheet of fire that dropped on Denis, trying to envelop him so he couldn’t jump aside again.

  This time, he ripped her attack with spikes of force and sent those spikes, accompanied by her own conjured flame, hurtling back at her. She dodged away, and he leapt again, landing on the ancient alien dome and looking down at the traitor.

  “We’ll find the jammer, White,” he taunted her. “You’ll pay for my men. I don’t know what you think you’re getting out of this, but all you will get is a traitor’s death.”

  She answered with force and he wasn’t moving fast enough. Blow after blow slammed into his shield, forcing him to pour all of his energy into trying to stay alive.

  “I get to live,” White told him. “And fulfill my oaths. Look to the sky, Romanov. Your death is coming.”

  She was a stronger Mage than he. He tried to slide down the dome, but her force strikes picked him up and flung him back up the ancient concrete. His shield prevented injury, but she had him pinned. He couldn’t move.

  She wasn’t moving, standing in the uniform she’d dishonored and looking coldly up at him as she gestured above their heads.

  “The secret will be kept,” she promised him. “Not that you’ll know. Sorry, Romanov.”

  White had looked back up at the stars when he opened fire. Both of them had ignored their rifles for the entire fight—at this range, magic was far more dangerous than any battle rifle. Her magic was enough to pin Romanov in place, and she was slowly crushing down his shields—but not strong enough to do that and shield herself.

  Heavy bullets slammed into her torso, ripping apart the other Mage in a spray of bullets. Her eyes still to the heavens above them, Karina White fell.

  The pressure released and Romanov rose to his feet. Considering White’s words, he looked up—and swallowed hard.

  There was a new star. A big star, one screaming across the sky toward them at an impossible speed.

  A ship. One that wasn’t supposed to be there.

  #

  Damien had picked up his pace back toward the base camp as soon as he rea
lized he was being jammed. The sounds of fire and lightning magic led him to break into an all-out run, but the domes were huge.

  He finally made it to a point where he could see what was going on, to find Karina White collapsed on the ground, very obviously dead, and Denis Romanov staring at the sky in horror.

  Following the Marine’s gaze, Damien spotted the same rapidly approaching light.

  “Please tell me that’s TK-421,” he shouted toward Romanov as he approached over the curve of the alien ruin.

  “TK is in orbit,” Romanov replied. “They’re approaching orbit and decelerating hard; that’s why they’re so visible.”

  The Marines, Damien reflected, had a lot more reason to train in identifying what ships were doing from the ground than he did.

  “I can’t raise TK-421 to confirm what they see, either,” Romanov continued. “I’m pretty sure the men who went out with White are dead and she’s set a jammer up somewhere.”

  “Can you localize it?” Damien asked.

  Romanov pulled up his computer, studying it. “I don’t have enough data,” he admitted after a moment.

  “Link to my PC; we should be close enough at this point.”

  Another moment passed, and the Marine shook his head, gesturing toward the nearby forest.

  “It’s that way,” he said, his gesture encompassing an arc of several hundred meters of forest, “somewhere between five and six hundred meters. Not really helpful.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Damien told him dryly. “Does your combat gear suggest there’s anything alive over there?”

  “What?”

  “Your helmet has thermal and motion sensors,” Damien reminded the Marine. “Is anything except the trees in that area you just described?”

  Romanov turned his head, scanning the forest. “No, but…what are you going to do?”

  Normally, Damien tried to keep his open use of magic inside what one of the Marine Combat Mages could achieve. Even when he wasn’t doing that, he tried to stay inside what the other Hands, with only one Rune of Power to his five, could do.

  Something about today’s events, though, left him very, very nervous.

  All five of his Runes flared with a gentle warmth as he channeled magic, drawing energy from the alien earth beneath him and from the web of the universe. With a broad gesture, he unleashed it, conjuring a vast wave of flame that swept over the arc Romanov’s scanner had indicated.

  Trees popped, the local cellulose equivalent no more resistant to that heat than Earth’s trees would have been. Blue-green bushes and leaves vanished in an inferno that filled the area the jammer had to be in…and then vanished when Damien loosed his will once more.

  The jamming stopped.

  “TK-421,” he snapped into his radio. “Pokorni, what the hell is going on up there?”

  “Oh, thank goddess you’re alive,” the armed courier’s captain replied. “We couldn’t reach anyone down there! A ship jumped in a couple of minutes ago and opened fire! We’re outgunned—we’ve been forced to abandon orbit, and she’s incoming fast.”

  “Dammit, Pokorni,” Damien snapped. The armed courier had an amplifier. There wasn’t much that could destroy her before reaching the range of her captain’s enhanced magic. That was going to be a problem for another time. “What am I looking at?” he demanded.

  “She’s not a freighter, too small, too fast,” the Mage-Lieutenant-Commander replied. “Some kind of warship, but not like anything I’ve ever seen. Szar! My lord, they’ve dropped a rock toward the planet.”

  “A rock?” Damien demanded. “Not a bombardment weapon?”

  “Looks like just a chunk of asteroid, my lord.”

  Damien glanced up. A rock wouldn’t accelerate much until it hit the core of Andala IV’s gravity well, but if the ship was at an approach velocity, it would still only take a minute or so to hit the ground. It was slower than an actively accelerating smart kinetic bombardment projectile but would be perfectly effective at wiping the research base and the alien ruins from the planet.

  And it would look natural. Unless, of course, there were witnesses.

  “Listen to me, Pokorni,” he said quickly. “Run for safe space and jump as soon as you can. Keep jumping. Cycle your entire crew in the next ten minutes and make random jumps. Return once you can do so safely, with at least one Mage ready to jump you out if they’re still here!”

  “What about you, sir?”

  If she’d really cared, she might have tried fighting, but Damien sighed. TK-421 couldn’t face any real warship, not one with an amplifier, anyway.

  “That’s up to me now,” he said grimly. “You need to get away so that no matter what happens, Mars knows this wasn’t an accident. Do you understand me?”

  Pokorni swallowed hard enough that he heard it on the voice link.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Then go.”

  Cutting the channel, he turned to Romanov. “Please tell me we have some kind of sensor network set up.”

  “I’m linked into the research base’s traffic control radar,” the Marine replied. “My people were supposed to set up more, but none of them are turned on and…well, I think White killed them.”

  “Link me in,” Damien ordered. “Then track the vector for the rock. I’ll need your help.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “You’re calling directions,” the Hand said grimly. “I’m stopping an orbital bombardment.”

  Romanov paused, looking at him very carefully.

  “Can you do that?”

  “I’ll tell you in about ninety seconds,” Damien replied.

  Chapter 10

  Seconds passed with excruciating slowness. The bright light that had detached from the ship grew lower and larger as the chunk of whatever rock they’d acquired continued on its deadly route, and Damien studied its path on the pathetic excuse for radar the research base had assembled.

  He inhaled deeply as it drew nearer. This would be something beyond even his experience. Without an amplifier and its attendant simulacrum and sensors, he couldn’t deflect or destroy the projectile with a carefully timed strike as he would an incoming missile.

  He was going to have to stop a rock that had been dropped from orbit. At least Andala IV was a relatively low-gravity world. Even that one-tenth gravity difference compared to Earth would make a huge difference to the final velocity of a dropped rock with no acceleration.

  “Aimed well,” Romanov noted. “It’s headed right for the center of the ruin. Won’t leave much of this place but a crater.” He paused. “Fifteen seconds.”

  Damien nodded and exhaled the breath he’d drawn in. With that exhalation he drew power into his Runes, feeling them heat up. A simple shield of force sprang into existence above the ruin and the research base.

  Simple. But immense. Even with the vector they had, Damien needed to cover several square kilometers of sky—with enough strength to stop a probably kiloton-range weapon.

  He could feel the Runes. Despite what most non-Mages thought when they saw them, they weren’t tattoos. Each of his Runes of Power was made of a flexible silver-polymer inlaid a full millimeter and a half into his skin, and he could feel the heat from every bit of that surface as he channeled more power than he ever had before.

  Then the rock hit.

  It was a twenty-five-ton projectile carved out of a nickel-iron asteroid. The attempt to make it look natural meant it came in slowly for a kinetic bombardment weapon, and the attackers had made up for the lack of speed with sheer size. Traveling at over a hundred kilometers a second, it hit Damien’s shield with the force of a thirty-kiloton bomb.

  The sky above them lit up with white fire fading to sparks as drops of molten metal flung themselves dozens of kilometers in every direction. Damien physically lurched away from the blow, the force of the impact cracking the concrete under his feet as he passed the force he couldn’t control through himself.

  “My god,” Romanov whispered, staring at Damie
n. “How… That’s impossible.”

  “I am the Hand of the Mage-King of Mars,” Damien whispered, wavering on his feet as a wave of exhaustion swept through him. His breath came in short, heavy bursts, but he was alive—and so was everyone else. “And even I wasn’t sure that was possible,” he admitted with a grin, suddenly feeling very young.

  “Damn. Why do you have bodyguards again?” Romanov asked, returning the grin around the breathers they both wore.

  “Because I only have one set of eyes,” Damien pointed out, then paused as Romanov was suddenly refocused on the computer again.

  “New launch,” he said grimly. “I’m tracking an active projectile, moving fast,” The Marine swallowed. “Sir, that’s a Talon Seven. That’s ours.”

  Somehow, Damien wasn’t surprised in the slightest. The downside was that the Talon Seven was a multi-impactor weapon capable of over a thousand gravities of acceleration. Each of the Talon Seven Orbital Impactor’s submunitions would arrive with almost twenty times the kinetic energy of the rock they’d dropped before—and as the name implied, it would deploy seven of them prior to impact.

  “ETA and vector?” he asked, his voice far calmer than he felt. Stopping the rock had been hard enough. He really didn’t think he could stop a Talon Seven. Certainly, even if he could, no one else could.

  “Sixty-five seconds. There.” Romanov pointed. “It’s separating,” he said grimly. “Sub-impactors activating their own engines.”

  “Only one target; they’ll go for different angles,” Damien said aloud, thinking through what he had to do. Shielding everything was the only option.

  “I’m sorry, Mage-Lieutenant,” he told Romanov. “I don’t know if I can do this. But I’ll do what I can. If you’re religious, I’d suggest praying.”

  “God helps those who help themselves, sir,” the Mage-Lieutenant replied seriously. “They’re splitting up, as you predicted.”

  Damien swallowed, nodded to the Marine, and raised his hands to channel power once more.