Interstellar Mage

by Glynn Stewart

  “Neither would I, though that’s no guarantee. Can you handle the docking?”

  “I’m going to sit here until they attach a ship with one crew member and a million ion thrusters to Falcon’s ass and then watch as they shove us into place,” his XO replied. “I don’t need to do anything. Best kind of docking.”

  She grinned at him.

  “Yeah, I got it under control.”

  “Good. I need to go call the client and let them know which repair yard they need to pick their cargo up from.”

  “Bruno, Boots and MacDonald Materials Imports, Margaret Hall speaking,” a cheerful white-haired woman on David’s office screen boomed out at him. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Good morning, Ms. Hall,” he greeted her. “I am Captain Rice of the freighter Red Falcon. I have a cargo delivery for your company out of New Madagascar. I believe I spoke with Mr. Boots earlier this week?”

  Hall took a moment to respond, clearly running through files on a hidden screen in front of her.

  “That’s correct, Captain Rice,” she confirmed. “I have a note here that you were heading into the yards to repair damages but didn’t know the slip number yet?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Is Mr. Boots available, or should I just give you the information?”

  “Mr. Boots is currently off-station, but Mrs. MacDonald is available,” Hall told him. “All of the partners keep up with our major affairs like starship shipments. Should I put you through?”

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Charity MacDonald was a heavyset woman, blockily built with sunken eyes that seemed to glare at a spot about eleven centimeters above David’s right shoulder.

  She coughed indelicately, clearing her throat into a tissue before speaking.

  “Captain Rice,” she said calmly, her voice rough. David revised his estimate of her age up another ten years. She did not sound well. “How may I assist you?”

  “Mrs. MacDonald,” he replied politely. “Red Falcon is currently on our way to a repair slip at Foundry Yard Alpha. Mr. Boots informed me that you would need to know which slip we ended up in to make arrangements to retrieve our cargo.”

  She grunted and considered him in silence, her gaze still centered over his shoulder.

  “There’s only one slip at Alpha that can fit an AAFHF,” she observed eventually. “And Alpha are the ones who do the Navy repairs when needed. They’re the only ones who can fix up your antimatter drives.

  “That means, Captain, that you were only ever going to be at Foundry Yard Alpha’s Slip Alpha-Six,” she concluded. “Given Wu Tang’s notorious lack of tact, I suspect I will have to speak to Executive Kha and soothe troubled feathers.”

  “Ma’am?” David asked questioningly.

  MacDonald laughed, then choked and coughed into another tissue.

  “Executive Erikas Kha owns and runs Big Rock, the ship that Yardmaster Wu Tang will have displaced to host you,” she told him. “Big Rock was in for regular maintenance, the kind that doesn’t need a yard but is easier in it.

  “Shuffling him out will cost him at least two days on his repairs, and with thirty thousand unemployed miners waiting for Big Rock to haul them back to the Corvid system…only the greatest of tact could have kept Kha happy.

  “And Wu Tang doesn’t have that.”

  “I see, Mrs. MacDonald,” David said carefully. That didn’t sound like his problem, thankfully, unless some of those miners decided to take the delay out on his crew.

  “I will speak to Wu Tang as well,” she continued, half-ignoring his response. “We will have shuttles moving in to remove your cargo by tomorrow morning. Was there any damage to it in your troubles?”

  “Several of the containers are damaged, but our scans show that the cargo is intact,” he replied. “There was no radioactive leakage or anything of the sort.”

  “Good, good. I or one of my partners will be in touch about the loading. Good luck with your insurance and repairs, Captain Rice.”

  Before David could say anything in response, the channel cut off. MacDonald, it seemed, didn’t spare much time for pleasantries.

  So long as he got paid, David could live with that.

  28

  Foundry Yard Alpha was centered on one of the Protectorate’s near-ubiquitous spinning-ring stations. This one was wrapped around a central spire that protruded roughly two kilometers out from either side of the ring, serving as an anchor point for the collections of gantries and machine-shop pods that made up the working slips.

  While it was theoretically possible to access the spire from Red Falcon’s dock and travel to the ring station and its amenities without ever going into vacuum, Maria and Acconcio rode aboard a personnel shuttle carrying the first liberty group.

  Somehow, once Maria realized that the pilot was Kelzin, she wasn’t surprised to find both Xi Wu and Kelly LaMonte aboard the shuttle. There were about twenty members of Falcon’s crew on the shuttle all told, and including the three youths, a quarter of the group were officers.

  Wu and LaMonte spent the first half of the flight holding hands in the passenger compartment before disappearing into the cockpit, causing Maria to chuckle to herself.

  “What?” Acconcio asked.

  “From my own experience, you can fit three in the cockpit of one of these shuttles,” she observed. “But it’s a…cozy experience.”

  The big ex-warrant officer glanced at the closed door leading to the cockpit, then chuckled himself.

  “I see,” he noted. “As a passenger, I have to hope there isn’t enough space in there to get more than cozy.”

  “Even if there was”—and, in Maria’s own experiments in the area when she’d been LaMonte’s age, there most definitely wasn’t—“Kelzin is too damned good a pilot to let them distract him—and those two are too damned sensible to try.”

  “Ah, to be young and in love,” Acconcio mused—and then snuck his hand across to take Maria’s.

  She returned his smile, then paused as her com vibrated.

  “Give me a moment, hon,” she told her lover, checking the text message.

  We need to meet in person. Green Parson’s Bar, FYA Central Level 6. 2200 OMT.

  She sighed. She had been planning on dragging the burly gentleman holding her hand back to a hotel room after dinner, but…if MISS wanted her to meet with them, it was probably important.

  “Work calls,” she said softly. “Some ship’s business I’ll need to deal with after dinner.”

  “Want company?” he asked brightly, but she shook her head.

  “Mage affairs,” Maria told him gently. “They’ll only meet with me.”

  Green Parson’s Bar was in a much nicer location than Maria had been expecting. She’d headed to Level 6 after dinner with Acconcio, expecting to end up back in the same kind of dive bar she’d been recruited in.

  Instead, she discovered that the section of Level 6 the bar was in was a subdued semi-residential section. The type of station section with double-wide corridors and carefully manicured trees in the thoroughfares.

  The bar was designed in a “neighborhood pub” style, with an open patio surrounded by a handful of real trees for both atmosphere and privacy, and a set-back “indoor” area with faux wooden paneling on the wall. There were probably nicer bars on Central, but not many.

  Despite the casual atmosphere, it was clearly not a “seat yourself” location, and she approached the front desk, where a pair of young womn in matching jeans and dark blue T-shirts, clearly a uniform, were waiting.

  “My name is Maria Soprano,” she told them. “I’m meeting someone here; I’m guessing there’s a reservation?”

  They checked and the right-hand girl nodded.

  “Of course, Mage Soprano,” she said after a quick glance at the medallion at Maria’s throat. “If you’ll follow me, please?”

  Maria nodded and followed the waitress into the “indoor” portion of the restaurant. Through the restaurant, in fact, as the girl led
her to a side door and into a private room.

  “Ms. Choi, your guest is here,” she announced as she led Maria in. “Your server will be with you shortly.”

  The waitress paused.

  “She’ll knock before entering,” she added before disappearing back out the door and closing it behind Maria.

  The woman waiting at the table was a tall and elegant woman with shadowy skin and a pronounced fold to her eyes. Not, Maria noted absently, the ethnic mix of the Martian-born and Mages, but the coloring of a purer extract from Old Earth’s Asian regions.

  “Ms. Soprano, please, sit,” the woman told her. She wore a long, tight sheath dress that drew attention to her legs and athleticism.

  Maria was all too familiar with using sexuality as a weapon and could recognize a fellow mistress of the art at this range.

  “Ms. Choi,” she returned the greeting as she took the seat. “You’ll forgive me bluntness but, given the circumstances around my ship I need to be clear. Who do you work for?”

  Choi laughed.

  “I am System Coordinator Bluma Choi of the Martian Interstellar Security Agency,” she replied brightly, slipping an ID hologram out of her cleavage and onto the table. It flashed to light for a moment, showing a three-dimensional image of the woman along with the rank and name she’d given.

  The microprojector vanished back into Choi’s cleavage, and the agent smiled at Maria.

  “I am responsible for all MISS operations in the Svarog system,” she noted. “I find Foundry Yard Alpha Central to be a convenient base of communications—the main MISS office is on the surface, but I and my senior analytical team are up here.

  “Where no one looks for us,” she finished with a grin.

  “I wouldn’t have expected to find the system coordinator up here, I’ll admit,” Maria agreed. “You wanted to meet with me?”

  “I did. I reviewed your report and forwarded the summary on via the RTA,” Choi confirmed. “It took you long enough to get into the station that we actually managed to get a response—and Hand Stealey was nowhere near Mars.”

  “Wait. Hand Stealey?” Maria demanded.

  “Yes. Hand of the Mage-King Alaura Stealey appears to have taken a personal interest in your ship, and she sent a message via the RTA for you, specifically,” the MISS agent confirmed. “Before we continue this discussion, you need to hear it.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Choi smiled.

  “While I suspect you’ve already eaten, we can also get drinks while we’re here. Green Parson’s has an excellent bar.”

  Once the waitress had returned with their drinks order and they were relatively certain of a stretch of uninterrupted time, Choi tapped a few commands into the comp on her wrist.

  “This message is for Mage Maria Soprano aboard Red Falcon,” the voice of an unfamiliar woman said into thin air. “It is to be relayed through the MISS local office under security protocol six.”

  Maria wasn’t familiar with the security protocols of the Mage Guild’s Transceiver Mages. She only knew that they were sworn to a level of secrecy and confidentiality that lawyers and accountants only aspired to.

  Every message that came into an RTA was recorded, categorized and classified before being distributed. It was theoretically possible to have a block of unrecorded time for a direct conversation, but that required both parties to be Mages and a lot of either money or authority.

  There was a pause, enough to allow the routing information to be collected without requiring the transceiver Mages to listen to the entire message, and then the speaker continued.

  “This is Alaura Stealey, Hand of the Mage-King of Mars. Mage Soprano, you are not aware of my involvement, but I have made Red Falcon and her crew something of a personal project. I owe—the Protectorate owes—Captain Rice a greater debt than he realizes.

  “It was as partial payment of that debt that he received Red Falcon and that you were encouraged to take service aboard his ship.

  “We also, however, expected him to attract the exact attention he has attracted,” Stealey noted grimly. “I’ll admit, however, that the scale of the operation that appears to have been deployed against Captain Rice surprised me. I suppose we should have expected Azure to be the vindictive type and anticipated such an action, but this Azure Legacy is a new type of threat for us.

  “We do not wish them to succeed in either of their stated objectives. While many of the Blue Star successor organizations are dangerous in their own right, even the aggregate of their efforts is a far lesser threat to humanity than the Syndicate itself was.

  “I have no choice, Mage Soprano. You must convince Captain Rice to continue on the course these Legatans have set him on. You must make contact with the individual they sent you to and see what you can drag out of the shadows.”

  That was a big ask. A potentially suicidal one, in Maria’s opinion. But…the Hand might well be right. Rice might well be the only wedge they had to break open the entire Legacy and, through it, keep the Blue Star Syndicate from re-forming.

  “I am not prepared to lose Captain Rice in this pursuit, however,” Stealey noted. “Nor am I prepared to lose you or his ship. These are your instructions. Director Choi has received instructions of her own through regular channels.

  “More importantly, Commodore Andrews has also received instructions through…less regular channels. His resources are not what I might prefer them to be in this situation, but anything he can put at your disposal, he will.”

  The Hand paused.

  “I am also making arrangements for the Commodore to be reinforced and…” She sighed. “I am attempting to get myself out there. Sadly, I don’t expect to be free of my current affairs until this situation is resolved.

  “So, I have no choice but to leave it in your and Captain Rice’s capable hands. Commodore Andrews and Director Choi will support you, but you and Rice are at the center of it all.”

  Maria was staring at the comp on Choi’s wrist in horror.

  “This Legacy is an active danger to the safety of the Protectorate, Mage Soprano. We need you to stop them.”

  The small private dining room was silent for a while, Maria considering the bombshell that had just been dropped on her from every angle she could fit into her mind. The mission she’d been dragged into had a Hand at the core of it?

  “So, what do we do?” she finally asked Choi.

  “From what the Hand said, you need to talk Rice into meeting with this Turquoise, which I leave entirely up to you,” the MISS director told her. “For my own purposes, I’d like you to get me every piece of information you can on who and where Falcon’s cargo is being delivered to.

  “If there’s a Legatan covert op running through my region of authority, I want to track it down.”

  “That’s fair,” Maria agreed. “I don’t know how much danger a giant pile of raw materials can be, but the fact that they’re trying to move it around without our knowing about it is a warning sign all on its own.”

  “I agree completely,” Choi said. “Those materials can be turned into a lot of things, Mage Soprano. And the factories and foundries of Svarog would be a good place to turn them into things without being noticed.

  “There’s very little they can’t make here, but there’s less attention on the MidWorlds than on the Core. Or, perhaps more important for this question, there is much less attention on Svarog than on Legatus. Svarog isn’t even an UnArcana world.”

  “We’re delivering to a specific factor, but they’re just a middleman,” Maria warned her. “Bruno, Boots and MacDonald.”

  “I’m familiar with them,” Choi confirmed. “And you’re right. They’re a middleman, nothing more. One renowned for their discretion and confidentiality. We could get answers from them with a warrant, but I’d need more support to get a warrant out of local authorities.”

  “What do you need?” Maria asked.

  “I need to know where that cargo ends up, Mage Soprano. We’ll do our best to follow it, but
there are ways to make it easier.”

  Maria sighed.

  “I’m presuming that you have trackers I can plant in the containers?” she asked dryly.

  “I have several varieties, including some that are stealthy enough that I don’t think the Legatans will ever know they were there,” Choi said with a smile. “We’ll have a case delivered to you in the morning. Will you need assistance?”

  “I was a Navy Mage, Director Choi,” Maria replied. “I’m relatively sure I can float some trackers into the cargo containers without help.”

  “Of course. I appreciate your assistance, Mage Soprano.”

  “Last time I checked, we work for the same boss,” Maria said. “I’m not even really sure how my chain of command through MISS works, but I took the job. We’ll find them, Director.”

  “I know we will,” Choi confirmed. “And we’ll keep Captain Rice safe. A few of my people have already started watching his movements. If something like the bullshit on New Madagascar goes down, he’ll have backup fast.

  “I promise you that!”

  Maria finished her drink and stepped out into the restaurant, only casually surveying the space as she exited. She’d made it out the door before the familiarity of one of the faces at the bar struck home, and sheer surprise propelled her the rest of the way.

  A moment of panic familiar to any woman on any planet followed, and she quickly moved out of sight from the open patio, stepping into a coffee shop on the corner of several corridors a good fifty meters away while she looked back.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” the woman behind the counter asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” Maria replied, looking back to see if she could catch another glimpse of Iovis Acconcio.

  It was possible she’d made a mistake and it had been some other heavyset, olive-skinned man wearing the same dark gray outfit. She didn’t judge it likely, however, which meant that her lover had ended up in the same restaurant as her.

  She hadn’t told him where she was going, and her blithe earlier comments would have suggested she was heading to the Mage Guild’s office.