“Charlotte, my lord Montgomery,” she introduced herself. “Charlotte Ndosi.”
That made her the second most recent Hand and the woman who’d apprenticed with Alaura Stealey while he’d been studying on Mars.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he murmured.
“Likewise. Alaura spoke of your…adventures, on occasion,” Ndosi told him with a smile. “And to answer your question: three Hands on Mars is a little unusual, but there’s usually two of us floating around. We…” She shrugged. “We burn out, frankly. And His Majesty appears damned good at picking it up and ordering us home for a while.”
“What I burnt out on is apparently on everyone’s lips,” Damien replied. “But you seem to have been…quieter in your affairs than I.”
She smiled and chuckled softly.
“Most of us, with a few exceptions”—she nodded toward where Lomond was holding court with a pair of Navy officers—“try to avoid our situations exploding into outright shooting. Negotiate, compromise, find the middle ground.” She shrugged. “Of course, there are always assholes, but when an interstellar corp tries to strong-arm a planetary government and gets cut off at the knees by a Hand, no one wants it to make news.
“Too much compromise gets a little toxic, though, and you’ve got to sit back and grab some fresh air, or your compromises start getting too pragmatic,” she observed. “I’ve been here a month, and I’m here until His Majesty sends me out again, which he has thankfully started making noises toward.”
“It’s good to be home,” Damien admitted. The degree to which he wasn’t sure if anyone he met was a Keeper was dragging on him, but it was still good to be around friends.
“That’s everyone,” Gregory told him. “I need to go disperse and mingle, but if you and Hand Ndosi want to catch up, you can find the drinks table. If anyone needs you, we’ll find you,” he finished with a wink.
Damien glanced at Ndosi, who was looking at him with an unreadable expression.
“Thank you, my lord Chancellor,” he told Gregory.
“The drinks table is over there, Damien,” the attractive woman told him with a smile. “Shall we?”
Chapter 32
Waking up the next morning and processing that he wasn’t alone in the bed in his unreasonably large but still underground suite in Olympus Mons, Damien had to admit to himself he wasn’t entirely sure who had seduced whom.
He was reasonably sure Ndosi, currently curled up into his spare pillow in a distractingly naked fashion, was the one who’d suggested going back to his suite. Beyond that was a haze of fine liqueurs and conversation that had progressed to kissing and then, well, to waking up naked with two golden Hand chains of office sitting on his dresser.
Both before and after the reception had turned out to be very pleasant, and he smiled softly as he ran his hand gently up Charlotte’s side. She shifted, unfolding from the pillow like a cat as her eyes snapped open. There was a moment of stiffness as she awoke, but then she relaxed, leaning into his caress with a soft sound.
“Good morning, my lady Hand,” he said quietly.
“Good morning yourself, my lord Hand,” she replied, her eyes barely half-open. “I think your quarters are nicer than mine.”
“I lived here for three years before taking up the Hand,” he pointed out. “What’s the longest you’ve stayed here?”
“Three months, just after Alaura died,” Ndosi said quietly, shifting herself to lean against him. “I missed the funeral and needed some time. Then a month this time.” She chuckled. “I’ve been on Mars more than not the last year, it seems some times. It’s…a good place to recover.”
“It is,” Damien agreed. “This helps,” he told her with a wink.
“It does,” she said with a smile, guiding his caressing hands across her body. “Do you know how long you’re here?”
“Until I’m done with my current case, and then until Desmond has more work for me,” he told her. “You?”
Implicit to both of their questions, he was sure, was that this tryst would be just that…a tryst. The Hands of the Mage-King might return to Mars, but they spent their time all over the Protectorate. Trying to make this more than that was unwise, and distracting as Charlotte’s nakedness was, he didn’t think this could be more.
“It shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks,” she admitted. “I’m not on a case here. You are?” she asked. “Not much work here for Hands.”
“Someone tried to kill me,” he told her grimly. “We think the ship came from Sol, so we’re trying to trace it.”
“Damn,” Charlotte replied. “Let me know if I can help!”
“We’re keeping it quiet,” Damien said, distracted as she guided his hands to her breasts. “We’re worried about leaks.”
“At least we know we can trust each other,” she told him, gently pushing him back down to the bed. “Brothers and sisters in service to Mars, that’s the Hands.
“Now,” she continued with a wicked smile as she straddled him, “I’ve a definite idea of how I can help right now!”
#
The suite of rooms Damien had in Olympus Mons was the size of a largish house and included his office, a space almost as large as his commandeered observation deck aboard Duke of Magnificence. Since, even on Mars, his personal security was run by professional paranoids like Julia Amiri, there was a “waiting area” between the access to the rest of the tunnel complex and his house, a quiet space with a pair of comfortable couches, usually occupied by the two Secret Service Agents of his working detail.
With Charlotte Ndosi having gone back to sleep, it was time for him to get to work, but he stopped in his tracks as he stepped into the normally quiet waiting area.
The two Agents of his normal Martian working detail were in their normal spots, flanking the security door leading into his suite like statues in expensive suits. The rest of the room, however, was also crowded with that particular class of polite and deadly young men and women who guarded the Protectorate’s VIPs.
Any visitor would have been unable to find a seat, as both couches were full of Secret Service Agents, four he recognized as his and six he didn’t recognize at all. A second group were Marines, clad in light body armor and carrying only carbines, but he recognized their shoulder flashes at least as being Romanov’s new company.
A fire team of four under a Corporal he recognized after a moment as Chan was guarding the outer door. A pair of “extra” Marines, he realized, were both Mage-Lieutenants, Combat Mages whose brand-new shoulder flashes also marked them as Romanov’s people.
The last members of the crowd were another four young men in plain black suits, presumably more Secret Service agents, who were lounging against one of the walls in position to support Chan’s people if anything somehow happened to attack the suite buried in the heart of the Protectorate’s capital.
Damien’s people had Ndosi’s outnumbered by two, and while everyone seemed to have come to a comfortable agreement, the other Hand’s security team were eyeing the two Marine Mages uncomfortably.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said softly after a moment. “I presume your discretion. Do any of you need to speak with me before I grab Corei and Wang here and go about my day?”
That got him a mix of chuckles and uncomfortable looks. The two Mage-Lieutenants waited a moment to see if anyone else said anything, then stepped forward in an eerie synchronicity.
The pair looked alike enough to be brother and sister, both with short-cropped blond hair, golden medallions proclaiming them as fully trained Combat Mages and pristine uniforms over athletic bodies.
“My Lord Hand,” the woman greeted him. “We’ve just been assigned to Mage-Captain Romanov’s company, and he asked us to introduce ourselves to you. I am Mage-Lieutenant Andrea Forbes and this is Mage-Lieutenant Mykyta Kozel.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Damien murmured. While having more Mages relatively easily accessible wasn’t a bad thing, he hoped that Romanov had selected them
carefully. He suspected, though, that Lieutenant White’s betrayal had made even more of an impact on the Marine than on him.
“May we walk with you, sir?” Forbes asked after a moment, not so subtly glancing around the room. “Corporal Chan seems to have the security of your quarters in hand.”
The noncom threw them a confirming salute, and Damien glanced back at where Corei and Wang were guarding the door, and gestured for them to follow him into the corridor.
He was still leaving enough people behind that he was sure that Charlotte’s guards weren’t going to steal his cutlery or anything else dangerous.
#
“Care to explain the crowd, Agent Corei?” Damien said dryly.
“Well…her working detail showed up with your working detail, right after you two got back from the party,” the agent replied. “They weren’t going to leave until she left, obviously, so we all settled in. Your quarters normally have a four-person detail watching the main area who are less obvious in presence, but we messed up on our interfacing with Romanov’s people, so we had four of ours and four of his.
“Since we realize that, like us, they had to have a backup team hanging just out of sight of the principal, we invited them in once we, um, realized Hand Ndosi was staying the night.” Corei managed to get that out with a straight face, to Damien’s amusement.
“Turned out her support detail was larger than we expected, but we had the Marines to even the numbers, so we, well, shared the watch and made sure you two had your privacy.”
“Which was appreciated,” the Hand admitted, turning his attention to the Marines as he led the way deeper into the Mountain.
“While I’m glad to have you,” he told them, “you’ll understand that my team is under a pretty heightened state of awareness right now. How can I be sure you came from Romanov?”
The two Marines exchanged concerned glances.
“I suppose you could call him, my lord?” Kozel finally suggested. The Mage, who had so far let Forbes do the talking, had a very quiet voice with an odd pitch to it.
With a sigh, Damien did just that, linking into the Mountain’s internal datanet, as his communicator’s transceiver wouldn’t reach very far through solid rock.
“Romanov, it’s Montgomery,” he greeted the Marine. “Did you send two new Mages to meet with me?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Yes,” the Marine replied slowly. “And I guess that simply showing you their orders would be less of a reassurance than I assumed. My apologies, sir. I keep thinking of Mars as safe ground.”
Considering his activities of the prior night, Damien shook his head.
“We all do,” he admitted. “And it should be. Can these two be trusted?” he asked, meeting the two Marines’ gaze calmly.
“Kozel and Forbes? Yeah. I went through Basic and RMMC OCS with them. They’re solid, they had no idea what I was asking about when I asked about the Keepers, and neither of them is bright enough to lie to me successfully.”
“They can hear you,” Damien pointed out gently as both of the Mages winced.
“Then remind them that I remain their superior officer,” Romanov said in a serious tone. “I trust them to have my back and yours, my lord. That’s what’s important.”
“Thank you, Captain,” the Hand told him.
“I don’t think I need you two at this moment,” he continued to the two Mages as he ended the channel. “Check in with Romanov and Special Agent Amiri for your duties. We have reason to believe we have enemies on Mars, so, well, don’t trust anyone.”
Both of the Marines looked painfully young as they nodded their understanding.
#
Damien ended up being over half an hour late to meet with Christoffsen in the Archives. While he was the one who’d set the time, he couldn’t bring himself to regret the delay, though he did feel bad for making the Professor wait.
“Professor?” he called as he stepped into the onyx cavern of the Olympus Mons Archives. Carved early in the human occupation of the Mountain by the Eugenicists, the Archives were an immense cavern with multiple floors, each partially open to the floor beneath, all carved from black stone.
The lighting reflected back from the polished stone, allowing a tiny number of lights to reasonably illuminate the huge chamber full of stacks of server hard drives, three hundred years of different physical data storage mediums, and even climate-controlled cases of paper documents.
The active records and accounts of the Protectorate were backed up in one set of these servers, much like the data center he’d raided on Tau Ceti, but most of this was cold storage that couldn’t be accessed remotely. About a third could be accessed from inside the Mountain, but even ignoring the data that was on paper or detached storage media, over fifty percent of the data in the Archive could only be accessed there.
It meant that the data in cold storage was rarely accessed, but it was in cold storage because it was rarely accessed. Inconvenient or not, the Archives contained everything the Protectorate government had ever done or written, not merely that which had been regarded as important enough to preserve.
Enough was classified, regardless of age, that researchers were only allowed in under supervision. That restriction stopped few of the researchers who were aware of the Archives’ existence from regularly scheduling appointments, though the security systems had informed him that his political aide was the only person in the Archives right now.
“Professor?” he called again, wandering deeper through the stacks of servers and data.
“Ah, there you are, Montgomery,” the older man replied, appearing suddenly appearing from behind a set of shelves full of late twenty-first-century data storage disks, all labeled with the official logo of the Martian Republic—the short-lived government of Mars before the Eugenicists took over.
“Come,” the ex-Governor and ex-academic turned political advisor ordered. “We have a lot of work to do.”
He led the way to a group of consoles set around a sturdy metal table holding a meter-tall stack of data readers for the over two dozen different forms of media stored in the Archives.
“The program Jakab’s people put together cleared TCNI’s database in under five minutes,” Damien pointed out as he eyed the consoles and readers. “How much work do we actually have to do?”
“That was one database,” Christoffsen pointed out. “One database, already organized in a specific way that the people writing the spider were familiar with, and you were sweeping for something you had all of the possible references for.
“The Archives contain just over ten thousand databases,” he continued, gesturing expansively around them. “That’s excluding anything on hard storage, though that’s mostly pre-Protectorate or extra-Solar, so we shouldn’t find anything in those.”
He removed his stiff gray blazer and slung it over his chair, eyeing the stacks around him balefully.
“If this needle-hunt you’ve got me on, my lord, takes us into the hard storage stacks, we are going to have to find minions you can trust,” the Professor concluded. “I am certainly not trying to go through the Archive Index on my own!”
Chapter 33
Eight hours later, Damien was starting to go cross-eyed. He’d also acquired a new respect for Christoffsen’s capabilities as a researcher. Damien had used a canned program to search the databases at TCNI and was using something similar to sweep through the databases here in the Archives.
Christoffsen was using something he’d presumably written himself, dropping various modules of code into and out of the program as he turned from one database to the next, sweeping the immense sea of data he and Damien had access to for any sign of the Royal Order of Keepers or Keeper of Oaths herself.
They’d cleared maybe a tenth of the databases. These were old records, from the founding of the Protectorate, and they were not organized or consolidated particularly well at all. Damien didn’t expect to find the ship in these files, though he’d looked, b
ut he was hoping to find some information on the founding of the Keepers.
He stood up and stretched, trying to loosen muscles tightened by hours of fruitless research.
“Is this going to get us anywhere?” he asked quietly. “It feels like there should be a better way.”
“We are looking for something that was buried, my lord,” Christoffsen replied. “The Keepers were clearly meant to be secret, so we’re not going to find the standard charter and founding documents for a Royal Order.” He stretched himself. “I’ve got spiders running on some of the larger databases, but we could be at this for days.”
Before Damien could put together a constructive response to that, his wrist computer chirped an incoming communication.
“This is Montgomery,” he answered it.
“Hi, Damien, it’s Charlotte,” the other Hand greeted him. “How’s your evening looking?”
Damien glanced around the immense stacks of data storage around him.
“Long and potentially excruciating,” he admitted. “What do you need?”
He wasn’t going to admit aloud, where his aide could hear him, that he was hoping for a rescue from the data search.
The woman chuckled.
“Well, I hate to interrupt, but I’m headed into Olympus City for dinner and was wondering if I could steal you? I know an adorable little French restaurant, very quiet, very private.”
Damien sighed and began to make his apologies when Christoffsen interrupted him.
“We’ll be at this for days, Damien,” the ex-Governor told him. “Go. Don’t choose a night in a library with an old man over a night out with a beautiful woman!”
Damien wondered if his entire staff had been told Charlotte Ndosi had spent the night in his room at their morning briefing or something similar.
“My attempt to admit I’m working has been overruled by my staff,” he told her with a chuckle. “Where do you want me to meet you?
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