“I’m guessing you didn’t say yes,” the Marine noted.
“I didn’t say no, either,” Julia admitted. “I may…have dropped the ring on the ground, fled the building and grabbed the first courier back here.” She shrugged sheepishly. “I didn’t even know Damien had been injured when I left Ardennes.”
The Marine turned away and started making small convulsive motions. It took her a full ten seconds to realize he was laughing into his hands.
“Oh, fuck you, Romanov,” she snapped.
“Please tell me you at least emailed him with ‘I’ll think about it’ or something?” the Marine asked as he regained his composure.
“Well, yes…eventually,” Julia admitted. In truth, he’d called her while she was heading out-system, and she’d calmed down enough to at least promise to consider the idea. She’d said it at least as much to make him realize she wasn’t rejecting Mikael Riordan, just panicking at the thought of being a Minister and a First Lady.
“And you haven’t told Montgomery?”
“What would I tell him? ‘Your badass bodyguard can’t handle a marriage proposal’?”
“Special Agent, I’ve watched you in action,” Romanov replied. “No one is going to take you being flustered personally with any ability to not do your job. But you should probably tell Montgomery. Especially if you might take the job.”
Shaking her head, Julia looked around for a change of subject and checked the time.
“Wait…shouldn’t we have seen distraction girl by now?” she asked. “She was supposed to meet us here.”
Romanov checked the time himself and nodded grimly, a short-barrelled carbine materializing in his hands as he scanned the area around them.
“She had a comm code and she knew to look for the blue car,” he agreed. “We should have heard from her if nothing else.”
A pause.
“I’ll go look for her,” they both said simultaneously.
Shaking her head again, Julia made a “go ahead” gesture to the Marine.
“You go,” she ordered. “I’ll watch for Damien.”
#
Damien winced as he hit the ground, even in the soft soil. He had emerged just over two meters aboveground in the middle of a park, a position that, while awkward, would be clear of people—and then he’d messed up his landing.
His ankle twisted under him and he ended up face-first in the dirt, adding minor injury and dirty scrapes to the insult of realizing he’d gone to a lot of effort and risked major political consequences to…basically confirm that the TCNI auditors had told him the truth.
With a sigh, he levered himself off the dirt, waved shakily to a small boy who’d watched him appear and fall, and limped toward the alley where he was supposed to meet everyone. If anyone in the little oasis of pure greenery in the heart of Asimov thought a Mage appearing out of thin air and spraining their ankle like an idiot was strange, they kept it to themselves.
Entering the alley, he spotted the blue car and start limping toward it. To his surprise, Romanov emerged from around the corner and was heading to the car as well—and the Marine looked worried.
“What is it?” Damien asked, reaching the armored car and leaning on it as the Marine joined him.
“Chambers is missing,” Romanov said flatly. “I checked all the way back to the door where she was distracting the guards. She’s gone.”
“She may have just skipped on us,” the Hand replied. He tapped a series of commands on his PC, wincing as he put too much pressure on his twisted ankle. The small screen happily popped up a no connection notice.
“I already tried calling her,” Amiri said, stepping out of the car. “Her PC is either off or refusing calls.”
Damien tapped another icon, a command code that would override a call refusal. The computer still informed him that Chambers’s PC was unavailable.
“It’s off,” he said grimly. “That’s…not right. Neither of you saw anything?”
“We were watching for your emergency signal and keeping an eye for her,” Amiri replied. “She didn’t come into the alley at all.”
“Any sign of a fight?”
Romanov shook his head. “Nothing I recognized, but untrained or not, she’s a Mage. Anyone doing a snatch-and-grab would know they needed her disabled fast.”
Why would someone grab Chambers? Damien wasn’t sure, but he suspected he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“TCNI is clean,” he told them bitterly. “Let’s make sure the kid doesn’t suffer to have proven that. Head to her apartment.”
The car had barely started moving when Damien’s computer buzzed with an incoming call. It flashed up as unknown caller—something that wasn’t supposed to happen with a military-grade personal computer linked to the full databases.
“This is Montgomery,” he said sharply. “Who is this?”
“Who I am is irrelevant,” a calm, un-rushed voice with an identifiably English accent replied. “What is relevant is that I am the one with Roslyn Chambers in custody. She is quite unharmed and will remain so barring further unpleasantness.”
“I guarantee you,” Damien said quietly, “that if you don’t release her, there will definitely be ‘unpleasantness’.”
“Please, Lord Montgomery, let’s not be hasty,” the voice said. “Miss Chambers was picked up as…surety, let’s call it. We knew you’d want to access TCNI’s files, so we were in position to acquire an asset of yours when you moved.
“The plan was to pick up Miss Amiri, so you can imagine my operatives were pleased that you utilized a teenage girl. I am…less impressed.”
Amiri threw Damien a hand signal to note that she was tracing the call. She would need him to keep talking.
“I do what I must,” he told the stranger. “What do you want?”
“We need to meet, my lord Hand. The situation has already grown out of hand and we need to calm it down.”
“You’re with the people who bombed Andala.”
“I am,” the speaker admitted. “My brethren went too far. I believe an amicable solution remains possible; therefore, we must meet.”
“And if I refuse to meet with you?”
“Then I am afraid Miss Chambers’s parents will be mourning the child they should have spent more time with,” the voice said grimly. “I have no desire for unpleasantness, but we do what we must.”
“Harm her and I will crush you.”
“I have dealt with Hands before, Lord Montgomery. I cannot threaten you. I can only make you responsible for the lives of others. I am not asking you to betray the Protectorate or dishonor your oaths. Just to meet with me.
“Isn’t the safety of the girl worth at least that?”
Damien glanced at Amiri, who shook her head. They couldn’t trace the call. Whoever the speaker was, he was good.
“Fine. Where and when?”
“Good. You can be reasonable.”
Chapter 23
The stranger’s instructions took Damien to the open-air patio of an old restaurant on the outskirts of Asimov’s downtown. The sign proudly announced that the Golden Hare Public House had been opened in twenty-two-sixty, which would probably make it one of the first restaurants opened in the Tau Ceti system.
It looked the part, if nothing else. There’d clearly been renovations and expansions over the nearly two centuries since the restaurant had opened, but the core structure was recognizably one of the prefabricated residences shipped out in their millions in the first wave of colonization.
Mostly metal and plastic, many of those prefabs had survived surprisingly well. The Golden Hare had clearly been successful and expanded. Damien spotted two outside seating areas, a bar, and at least two separate indoor dining areas.
Given his name, the hostess saw him onto the rooftop patio, an outside seating area built on top of the expansion of the ground floor, and to a table tucked away in a secluded back corner, out of sight of the vast majority of the patrons.
“We have a clea
r line of sight to the table,” Amiri reported over his earbud. “We’re running facial recognition scans and Romanov’s team has the suit in their sights. If he tries anything, we’ll drop him.”
Damien sighed and shook his head. It was the only response he could make, but with the cameras, shotgun microphones, and sniper rifles trained on this rooftop, it was one he was sure Amiri saw. His bodyguards had reacted to the invitation with professional paranoia, and he had the sneaky suspicion they’d done more than they’d told him about—and he’d been told about the squad’s worth of Marine snipers scattered around the area.
“The suit” was an older man with shockingly white hair and pale skin, exuding an air of frailty as he rose carefully and offered Damien his hand.
“Lord Montgomery,” he said, his voice the same clipped British accent as on the communicator before. “Welcome. Thank you for meeting with me.”
Damien left the hand hanging in the air, looking up at the taller man with cold eyes. The other man might want to fake the niceties, but he was there because of an explicit threat to an innocent. Frail-looking or not, the man could rot.
The stranger waited a moment, his hand wavering slightly, then sighed and turned his outstretched arm into a gesture of invitation at the other chair.
“We can play that way, too,” he said calmly. “Sit, my lord. I insist.”
Damien obeyed, though he did so carefully to make sure he could still draw the pistol concealed under his suit jacket.
“While I presumed you wouldn’t be willing to have a meal with me, I did order some appetizers and wine so the waitress would leave us alone,” the white-haired man told him. “I should also note, my lord, that your bodyguards won’t find me in their facial recognition database. Believe me, I would not be so foolish as to meet with you if I thought you’d be able to find me.”
“Most people simply choose not to threaten His Majesty’s Hands,” Damien told the other man quietly. “I presume you have a name?”
“Which I am not going to give you,” the stranger replied. “You may call me…Winton.”
“All right, Mister Winton,” Damien said slowly. “You threatened an innocent young woman to get me here. I suggest you get to the point before I decide tearing the planet apart to find her is more convenient.”
“Please, my lord, patience,” Winton told him. “Miss Chambers is fine and will be returned unharmed so long as I leave here unharmed. I simply wish…ah, here are our drinks.”
A young man in plain slacks and a white shirt appeared out of nowhere with a tray of freshly baked pretzels, a salty smell that assailed Damien’s determination not to touch anything Winton had arranged for, and two glasses of a pale pink wine.
With his delivery complete, the waiter vanished and left Damien and Winton alone in the secluded corner.
“Well?” Damien demanded.
“Please, my lord,” Winton told him, “my goal here is to find a peaceful compromise. I’ll confess my brethren may have been a little…hasty at Andala. The situation had accelerated well beyond any preparations, and the man on the scene attempted to, well, erase it.”
“Your ‘brethren’ tried to kill an archaeological expedition,” the Hand pointed out. “That’s a level of mass murder I’m not particularly inclined to write off as ‘being hasty’.”
“Says the man who ordered an entire city destroyed as a backup plan?” Winton asked.
“That,” the Hand said carefully, “proved unnecessary and was a last option. Your people seemed to go to mass murder as the first one.”
“The first choice was to wipe the runes before anyone saw them,” Winton explained. “The lower levels weren’t scheduled to be opened for another six months. We’d already arranged to control the safety inspections that would be part of that so we could make certain that the runes were destroyed before anyone who wasn’t a Keeper saw them.”
“Like you did with the upper levels.”
“Exactly,” Winton confirmed calmly. “When Kurosawa decided to ignore everyone’s schedules, he threw our plans off course. Our agent on the scene acted to minimize the risk, but then that foolish grad student found the Professor before she could reseal the lower levels. “Kurosawa’s actions sealed his fate. Everything that followed was unfortunate necessity.”
“Kurosawa did his job and made the discovery of a lifetime—and your people murdered him. I’m not seeing the necessity here at all, let alone the ‘unfortunate necessity’.”
“And that is because we have done our job for two hundred years,” Winton replied. “We have bought humanity time, protecting them from themselves, no matter the price.”
“And how many have you killed for this fantasy?” Damien demanded. “You tried to kill a thousand last week. Is that a rounding error for you? Unnoticed amidst the piles of bodies you’ve buried in ‘accidents’ and ‘disappearances’?”
“Less, my lord Hand, than even a most conservative estimate of what would follow if the secrets were unveiled.”
“What secrets? That aliens gave humanity magic? That aliens gave the Eugenicists the tools to unleash their reign of terror and to carry out the scientific murder of tens of thousands to perfect the human Mage?”
“You’re guessing,” Winton pointed out. “Even your…unique gifts provide no proof.”
“It’s pretty damn suggestive that our runes our identical,” Damien replied. “You’re saying that you have proof?”
“I’m saying that you have no idea of the scope or magnitude of the shadows you begin to fumble in—and no concept of the consequences of unveiling the secrets I am sworn to keep.”
“Keepers, huh?” the Hand said. “Secret Keepers?”
“The Royal Order of the Keepers of Secrets and Oaths,” Winton reeled off calmly. “We serve Mars, Lord Montgomery, the same as you. We are sworn to a sacred oath to guard a deadly secret until the right time. And like you, we are sometimes called on to make harsh choices and hard sacrifices to preserve the Protectorate.”
“I guard the Protectorate from real and present dangers,” Damien said. “You… I don’t know what you guard us from, and I question its validity.”
“I can explain everything, Lord Montgomery,” Winton told him. “But there is a price that must be paid.”
“What, that I join your little Order?”
“Exactly. You join the Keepers, and you order everything that happened at Andala IV sealed. You have that authority.”
“Not anymore,” Damien told the stranger. “The Mage-King has already been informed. Everything I know is in his hands or will be shortly. He will decide what happens now—unless you think your precious ‘Order’ will defy our King.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Winton looked taken aback. He took a long moment to take a slow sip from his wine glass.
“That is unfortunate,” he said quietly. “While the Order has concerns about the rule of the current Desmond, we would prefer not to move against him.”
“You somehow feel you have the right to judge the Mage-King?”
“When his weakness and compromises undermine the Charter and have led us to the brink of civil war, yes,” Winton said flatly. “Compromise was not how our Protectorate was built. He weakens our cause and encourages his enemies. We will allow no man, not even the Mage-King of Mars, to weaken Mars in the face of the threats to come.”
“The Protectorate is built on compromise. The alternative is civil war.”
“The Protectorate was built on force,” the old man replied. “Desmond the First imposed the Charter; it was not a compromise. Weakness on the part of the Mage-King threatens us all and has allowed Legatus to undermine the very fabric of our civilization.”
“If you think not compromising would have weakened Legatus’s hand, you’re mad,” Damien told him. “Every time we make peace, every time we show another world the Protectorate fights for everyone, we buy ourselves friends and loyalty that will stand in the face of any threat, internal or external.”
>
“You are young, Lord Montgomery, and naïve. Time will season you, open your eyes. Strength is required to face what is coming, and Desmond the Third does not have it,” Winton said. “But a Rune Wright must sit the throne at Olympus Mons. As you have no doubt surmised by now, that amplifier wasn’t built to be usable by humans. Only a Rune Wright can command its full power.”
The frail old man studied Damien, who was busy processing the fact that the man clearly knew a lot more about Rune Wrights than anyone not one themselves should know. For that matter, Damien hadn’t known the unimaginably powerful amplifier in the throne room in Olympus Mons, with its simulacrum of the entire Solar System, required a Rune Wright to function.
It made…too much sense for him to disbelieve.
“Of course,” Winton said softly, “if you were to join the Keepers, another option would be available to secure the safety of Mars.”
Damien stared at the other man, trying to parse what he was suggesting. He couldn’t possibly mean…
“We could use one of us upon the throne,” the Keeper told him bluntly. “Likely as Lord Regent, not Mage-King, but—”
The Hand had heard enough. Power and anger flared through his body and he lunged to his feet, his magic tearing Winton from his chair and suspending the man in the air by his throat.
Damien’s hand, clad in black gloves as always to conceal his Runes, crooked toward Winton as the man struggled to draw breath.
“If I die,” the Keeper choked out, “so does the girl.”
Damien jerked convulsively, throwing the man through a table and into the restaurant wall as he released the magic around Winton’s throat.
“I will never betray my King,” he told the older man as he advanced on the wreckage. “I will never murder innocents or cover up your atrocities for you. I don’t know what secrets you guard, but I will learn them. I don’t know what resources you command, but I will break them. I will hunt the perpetrators of your crimes at Andala to the ends of the galaxy or to the heart of Mars, wherever you have hidden them, and I will burn your order to the ground.”
Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) Page 15