“Assuming full sanction…we go in with stunguns and jammers,” the Marine replied. “Jam the emergency callcode, SmartDart any guards that get in our way. Glorified smash-and-grab; even with the jammer, we’d only have a few minutes.
“Since it does hold military records, any significant attack will result in the security company escalating to Marine Rapid Response Teams. We could override those, but that will raise a lot of questions.”
“And make it obvious it was us,” Damien said quietly. “Let’s…presume we don’t want anyone to get in trouble for this. Amiri? Thoughts on sneaky options?”
“Marines,” she sighed aloud with a gentle smile at Romanov. “Any kind of assault is overkill: it’s a server farm. It’s full of people in suits, most of whom don’t know each other, running around on half a dozen tasks.
“You want to sneak in, not shoot up the place.”
“I can override the locks,” Damien admitted, “but the guards are going to be looking for something a bit more solid.”
“What you need, my lord, is a distraction,” Romanov noted. “I have a company of Marines, sir. I can arrange a bar fight.”
“No,” the Hand said slowly, “that’s not going to draw corp security guards to check it out. We need something more immediate.”
“You sound like you have an idea,” Amiri noted.
“I do. I just need to find someone.”
#
Somehow, Damien was not at all surprised that Roslyn Chambers wasn’t at home. He was mildly pleased to discover that her “home” wasn’t her parents’ sprawling estate twenty minutes’ flight from Asimov but a small apartment in one of the city’s calmer areas.
The Mage-King’s officials on any planet paid a stipend to any Mage who asked for it, no questions, no applications. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to live on or tide over a difficult stretch in your life. Its purpose was to try to keep Mages out of the criminal underworld, a purpose it succeeded at surprisingly well.
No one expected that they could keep every Mage from crime, but the stipend softened the kind of financial need that forced people into it. According to the records he had accessed, Chambers had walked out of the penitentiary and had her mother drive her to the nearest Guild office, where she’d formally requested the stipend.
She hadn’t even been to her parents’ estate from what he could tell. She’d had the apartment she was living in registered to her name by the end of the day she’d left juvie.
Fortunately, Damien’s Secret Service agents had full access to the city’s cameras, and it had taken them less than two minutes to track down his young Mage.
The Hand assessed the situation with a practiced eye as he rapidly grew more and more amused. Chambers had settled herself down in a corner café, with the cheapest drink on their menu going cold on the table in front of her as she paid more attention to the convenience store across the street.
With a sigh, he gestured Amiri and Romanov to a different table and dropped himself into the empty chair at Chambers’ table.
“I seem to recall telling you to stay out of trouble,” he told her genially.
“What? Who? How?” the dark-haired girl spluttered, staring at him in shock. After a moment and a deep inhalation, she glared at him. “Last I checked, drinking coffee might not be good for me, but it’s hardly getting in trouble.”
“Miss Chambers, please,” Damien replied. “You are acting as lookout for at least one, perhaps more of your friends who are about to try and rob that convenience store. It’s completely automated, so I’m assuming they have some kind of hack that will cause the machines to hand over either money or goods, and you are here to make sure no cops see what’s going on.”
She looked guilty and he smiled coldly.
“Call it off, Roslyn,” he said gently. “I can help you get into Fleet, but not if you rob someone in front of me.”
The young woman sighed, and tapped an icon on her wrist computer.
“Roger Wilco, people.”
“What? Roger Wilco? There’s nobody…” a voice replied.
“Roger Wilco,” she repeated. “We’re done.”
“If this is for nothing, O’Kane’ll have your head.”
Chambers flashed a brilliant smile at Damien across the table.
“I don’t think so,” she said calmly. “Tell him we’re done. And he knows what I can do if he wants to push it.”
Killing the channel, she met his eyes challengingly.
“Now that I’ve pissed off the boss of the gang who runs my apartment building—who is also an ex-boyfriend, so my tears are limited—why the fuck is a Hand of the Mage-King at my table?” she demanded.
“I need a favor,” he admitted. “I need some people distracted, and I can’t get anyone officially associated involved.”
“Okay.” She leaned back and eyed him. “I can make that happen. What do I get?”
“I can make sure you’re not bothered by O’Kane?” He gestured at her wrist-comp.
She laughed.
“O’Kane won’t bother me,” she replied. “He’s a small-time petty thief with delusions of grandeur, but he knows not to fuck with a Mage.”
“You already have a letter that will get you into the Academy if you don’t get charged with a crime between now and then,” Damien pointed out. “Something that made your stunt today damned stupid, if you ask me.”
“It was a favor,” she admitted, flushing. “O’Kane got me the apartment so I didn’t have to spend any time at the estate. It was help with a few jobs or fuck him, and I didn’t feel like making my way on my back.”
“Fair.” Damien waved it away. “I can ignore it,” he told her, “which leaves me, I suppose, with a simple question: what do you want for your help?”
Chambers paused for a long moment, then laughed.
“I have no clue,” she replied. “Why do you need me?”
“Because I’m facing a conspiracy in my own government and don’t know who I can trust,” he told her quietly.
“Damn.” She was silent for a second. “You’re not shitting me, are you? This is the real deal?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck it. I’m in.”
Chapter 21
Damien stood impatiently in the alley behind the server building, waiting to see just what Roslyn Chambers unleashed on the two unsuspecting men chatting next to the staff entrance. Signing in wasn’t the best option, but he could easily override the secured entrance—if he had about a minute without interruption.
Despite Amiri and Romanov’s protestation, he was going in himself. Only the codes in his Hand could override the security on TCNI’s servers, and without knowing exactly what security they were using, he couldn’t give them one-time codes as he’d occasionally given Amiri before.
His pair of minders lurked nearby, ready to swoop in if something went very wrong. He didn’t expect to need them, but it was reassuring to know they were there. It was always possible, after all, that some part of Chambers’s plan would raise more havoc than expected.
He was starting to worry that the young Mage had flaked out on him, when she finally appeared in the side street, heading deeper into the maze of alleyways that linked Asimov’s downtown away from the main thoroughfares.
She’d managed to find a skirt and shirt ensemble that, combined with tying her hair back into pigtails, managed to make her look both even younger than she was and scandalously underdressed. The two guards, both old enough to be her father, were clearly uncomfortable as she approached them.
“Can you help me?” she asked as she reached them. “I’m trying to find an office around here, but the datanet map is confusing!”
“Certainly, young miss,” the older of the two guards told her. Sensibly, the other remained steady, watching the door as the first stepped over to Chambers to help her with her manufactured directional difficulties.
She pulled her wrist computer around to show the guard the map she had projected on it, a mo
vement that both showed the guards what Damien suspected was a dangerously distracting amount of skin and allowed her purse to slip down her other arm.
Exactly like that had been a prearranged signal, another teenager emerged from the shadow nearby, yanked her purse out of her loose grip, and bolted down the street at full speed.
“My purse!” Chambers squealed in a pitch that Damien doubted she had ever used without intent in her life. “Help!”
There was a moment of hesitation on the part of the guards, but the door was locked behind them and this was a young woman, likely the age of their own children, in dire need.
Both men took off after the runner, abandoning their post and allowing Damien to quickly approach the door without attracting attention.
“I need a full minute,” he told Chambers, who was looking after the guards with a sad expression on her face. “Think your friend will get us that?”
“He’s a champion sprinter,” she said quietly. “He’ll get us that and they won’t get close enough to even ID him before he loses them. Those are good guys, Montgomery. They don’t deserve to get into trouble for this.”
“They won’t,” he said, activating a series of codes on his wrist computer. “I promise you that.”
The light on the panel flashed green, the door accepting his Hand override at last.
“Thank you,” he told her. “And I promise you—no one is getting in trouble for this. I swear it.”
#
The inside of the building was sterile and corporate. Plain white walls, small plaques with numbers and names, offices and server rooms all around him.
According to the information TCNI had provided the Navy, the most secure backups were stored in the basement behind another set of security doors requiring a higher level of access. So, conveniently, were the recordings of the systems surveillance network, which Damien would need to plant a bug in before he left.
TCNI was still working to provide him their compromise data. He didn’t really want them to know he’d snuck into their building and illegally accessed the data they hadn’t been willing to give him.
His staff had been far too willing to assist in his blatantly illegal break-and-entry, too. That gave him more pause than he liked to admit. They were technically breaking the law at his request, confident that he was in the right and that he could shield them from the consequences.
It gave him an eerie insight into how the shadowy figures he was facing could draw Marines like Mage-Lieutenant White into their conspiracy—the beginnings of a slippery slope that could end in their turning on their fellow Marines.
No one in the building questioned him. He was better dressed than most of the people he saw running around, but there were enough people in suits that his went unquestioned. He knew where he was going, and he’d found that a suit and a determined expression got most people out of your way.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs into the basement, he took a quick glance through the tiny window in the door, a moment’s paranoia that spared him potentially serious issues.
There was, indeed, another set of security doors blocking access into the secured archives in the basement. However, unlike what the data Romanov’s people had acquired had said, there were guards down there.
Two men, both in TCNI Security uniforms and carrying stunguns, stood in front of the security doors, clearly watching for any potential intruders. If Damien had barged through the stairway exit, he’d have found himself doing some uncomfortable explaining.
As it was, he had to deal with two armed guards without raising an alarm or attracting attention. Neutralizing them, even non-lethally, would be easy enough—he could step through the door and electrocute them with a charge equivalent to what the auto-calibrating SmartDarts in their stunguns would deliver.
That would, unless the guards’ employer was incompetent, almost certainly trigger an alarm. A subtler measure was required.
Breathing carefully, Damien reached out with his magic and manipulated the air around the men’s heads. Not the air in the room—strange variations in that would likely trigger another alarm—just the air in a tight, invisible bubble around each man’s head.
It was the exact inverse of the spell he’d used to breathe on Andala IV’s surface without a breather, slowly lowering the oxygen level in the air around them. It had to be a careful, subtle thing, and it took time…but neither guard even noticed it as they slowly grew more tired, both settling into chairs…and then passing out.
Damien stepped into the room, sweeping his spell away as he checked on both men. Their pulses were strong, their breathing steady now that they had proper oxygen access again. They’d wake up with ugly headaches but otherwise be unharmed.
He felt painfully guilty nonetheless as he overrode the lock and stepped into the secured archives. None of the guards he’d tricked or gassed on his way in had deserved it. Hell, even if they had built the ship, TCNI probably didn’t deserve this.
He just had to know they hadn’t.
The inside of the basement archive was a chilly room with racks of floor-to-ceiling black cylinders. Each of them was a server containing an amount of information Damien could barely comprehend, usually accessed via specific links from the outside, but there had to be some local access.
It took him a minute to find the set of cubicles and link his Hand to the consoles there. Like almost all technology built in the Protectorate, the secured console chugged its objections for a moment but then turned on and gave him full access.
Transferring into the console the search program he and Amiri had put together before he’d arrived, he set it to run while he found the security office. One preprogrammed virus installation later, and all record of him would be wiped from the records.
No one would ever know he was there unless he got caught on the way out, and he already had a plan for that.
There was nobody in the basement, which was helpful for Damien if a bit creepy. All of these servers, though, were just that: servers—and backup servers at that. Everything on them was accessible remotely and also kept in more easily accessible, higher-grade servers.
The set of four cubicles and consoles he’d taken over were basically there to enable maintenance of the server towers. There were guards, because this was sensitive data, but no one would be down there unless something had gone wrong.
It was still creepy.
Returning to his suborned consoles, he saw that about half of the search programs were done. Looking through each individually, a sinking feeling settled into his stomach.
Nothing.
Nothing.
More nothing.
They’d put together twenty-two different searches and crawlers, looking through TCNI’s files in every way smarter people than Damien could devise, and each one came back with the same result.
The Board had been telling him the truth, and he’d broken into their building and assaulted two of their security officers for nothing.
“Damn,” he whispered.
The sound of movement caught his ears and he realized the guards outside were awake now. Muttered cursing echoed through the walls, and he sighed. His plan had been to simply walk out the front door to avoid potential complications, but since that wasn’t an option…
He brought up a program on his PC, quickly checking vectors and distance against its internal map. Once he was sure, he channeled power through his runes, casting the spell that, aboard a starship, could teleport the entire ship a light-year away.
Seven hundred and eighty-six meters was child’s play.
Chapter 22
It was not Julia Amiri’s job to tell Damien Montgomery when he was being foolish. It was her job to tell him when he was putting himself in danger—which she had done—and to make sure his foolishness didn’t kill him.
That last duty was why she found herself sharing a blue covert armored car tucked into a side street with a Marine, waiting for Damien to finish his latest foolish escapade, waiting for
an emergency signal that responding to would open not merely the can of worms but the entire barrel.
“You’ve been with Montgomery a while?” Romanov asked. Julia didn’t know him well—she’d only peripherally interacted with the Marines aboard Duke of Magnificence—but she’d met him before.
“Since the beginning,” she agreed. “Though I don’t know if that counts as a while. He became Hand when Alaura Stealey died on Ardennes, and that was only a year ago.”
“I was there for the end,” Romanov replied. “Hell of a day. Did he really go into the Governor’s bunker on his own?”
“He did,” Julia confirmed. “Didn’t kill the Governor, though. After all he’d done, Vaughn died stopping his pet madman from blowing up his cities. Guess he still had a conscience left.”
Memories. It had been odd to go back to Ardennes and visit Riordan. The ex-rebel had been doing a spectacular job of helping the interim Governor bring peace to the warring factions there—too good a job. The interim Governor was now the “Peace Commissioner,” and her poor boyfriend had managed to get himself elected Governor.
“You seem distracted, Special Agent,” the Marine said quietly.
“It’s none of your business, Captain,” she replied harshly, but his flat gaze in response got a chuckle from her.
“Right now, Special Agent, I work for you,” Romanov pointed out. “But I also work for the Hand, and if you’re distracted such that you can’t protect him…”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Don’t tell him, though. Understand?” The Marine nodded. She didn’t need to specify the him. “My boyfriend was just elected Governor of Ardennes. He’s putting together his cabinet, and he needs the best person he can find for Minister for Defense to help put the shattered wreck of the system militia back together.”
“He offered you the job,” Romanov guessed.
“And a fucking ring with it, if you’ll believe it,” she said. “Planetary First Lady and Minister for Defense. Me. An ex-bounty-hunter-turned-bodyguard.”
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