The Service of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  Peyton’s office was on the top floor and had an admirable view of New Rome, Legatus’s capital city. The blue-suited regional director was standing by the window, examining the city, as her three Captains were ushered in.

  “Welcome to Legatus itself, Captains,” Peyton told them without turning around. “The heart of the beast, or so we thought.”

  “Director?” Riber asked, the tall and freckled Sherwood native’s voice a rumbling baritone.

  “The Navy assumed that once we controlled Legatus, that was the end of the war,” Peyton said. “No one is entirely surprised that was wrong, but it was a nice hope. We at the Agency, however, assumed that the capital would be a mother lode of intelligence either way.”

  The director trailed off, looking out over the planet, then sighed.

  “We were wrong,” she said flatly. “I’m not sure if we’re looking at the results of an extraordinarily competent cleanup operation or if the Republic never truly ran their covert operations out of Legatus, but there has proven to be very little here of value.”

  “LMID definitely operated out of here, didn’t they?” Kelly asked. “They certainly did when I was running into them before the war.”

  “The Legatus Military Intelligence Directorate always operated out of Legatus, yes,” Peyton confirmed. “While there was a decent job of sweeping their files, we have enough information from voluntary assets to piece together most of what LMID was involved in.

  “That has left enough gaps, even prior to the war, for us to realize that the Republic Intelligence Directorate, by one name or another, predated the Republic itself. And their operations, my friends, were never run from Legatus.”

  “From where, then?” Hull asked.

  “We don’t know.” Peyton’s words hung in the air of the office. “Just like we don’t know where the Republic’s fallback governance facility is. We have now, thanks to you three, scouted every inhabited Republic system. We have found no fallback facilities, no accelerator rings, nothing.

  “The RID could be based out of an office complex on any world, unfortunately,” she continued. “Most likely, though, they are based in the continuity facility.”

  “I’d hoped one of the other ships had found it,” Kelly admitted. “We found valuable targets but nothing like that.”

  “And from my quick review of your data, you found more useful targets than Captain Riber or Captain Hull,” Peyton replied. “A Prometheus facility is a priority one target. That data will be sent to Mage-Admiral Alexander and the fleet within the next twenty-four hours.

  “We need to assess our next steps. Our assumption that the continuity facility and the Navy’s theoretical second accelerator ring had to be in an inhabited system—an accelerator ring, after all, is something close to five million person-years of construction labor.

  “And yet…that assumption appears to be incorrect.”

  “So, we start sweeping uninhabited systems,” Riber suggested. “Starting with the ones close to Legatus. That facility exists, after all. We know Lord Protector Solace went somewhere.”

  “The existence of the governance fallback facility and the backup accelerator ring are conjecture and guesswork,” Peyton replied. “It is possible, after all, that Solace simply retreated to one of the Republic MidWorlds and has set up in an office building there.

  “The depth and completeness of the cleanup operation, though, leaves me in agreement that this was a prepared operation.” She shook her head. “I do not like the trust we have been asked to place in our source for the existence of the continuity facility, but the evidence supports his claim.

  “Which means we need to find it.”

  The source in question, Kelly knew, was Governor James Niska himself. It seemed that MISS was less enthused with the trust placed in the defector than others. She, however, had transported Montgomery and Niska on their search for answers through the Republic.

  She trusted Niska. They had history before that, too, back when she and Montgomery had been flying on the same civilian freighter. They’d been on the run and had ended up working for LMID for a while, delivering gunships.

  Her eyes narrowed as she remembered that mission.

  “Sir, a somewhat random question that may be related,” she said slowly. “I haven’t heard anything about Chrysanthemum. I thought they were part of all of this?”

  “Chrysanthemum is one of our three loyal children,” Peyton told her. “Three of the UnArcana Worlds did not join the Secession. They remain loyal members of the Protectorate.”

  “Have we scouted them, Director?” Kelly asked. “I know that Chrysanthemum, for example, was under a massive amount of pressure from Legatus seven to eight years ago. They might well be running a deception.”

  “MISS does not believe so,” Peyton replied. “If there was an accelerator ring at Chrysanthemum, Captain, we would know. Ships visit that system once a month.”

  “Civilian ships wouldn’t be in the right place or have the right sensors to see a ring,” Kelly pointed out. “Have they been scouted by military ships?”

  There was a long pause.

  “We can’t, Captain,” the Director said flatly. “Three of the UnArcana Worlds have stayed loyal. We cannot afford to have them join the Republic, which means we cannot make them think that we distrust them. Blatantly scouting their space would be a stressor we cannot risk on that relationship right now—especially when more covert operations have already given us a reasonable certainty that there are no major Republic presences in their space.”

  Kelly started to argue, then shut herself down. It didn’t sound like she was going to win that argument today…but she was going to have to think about it.

  She also realized that she needed to see if she could steal a planetary military governor for a “friendly” dinner.

  Peyton might not trust James Niska, but Kelly LaMonte did.

  20

  Niska, Kelly noted, made no attempt to pretend he was anything but a servant of a foreign occupier. Some people in his position would have made a show of having Legatan security and aides, doing their dealings with the Protectorate behind a curtain.

  The Military Governor of Legatus made no such pretense. The Protectorate had left most of the sub-planetary government intact, but the final buck stopped in the office of a man who worked for Mars. There were Royal Martian Marines guarding the entrances to the squat suburban office building Kelly and Xi Wu approached.

  “Captain LaMonte?” one of the Marines greeted them with a glance at the civilian car behind them. “I’ll have one of my people check in on your driver and handle the car.”

  “If you could take over for the driver, that would be helpful,” Kelly told them. “He is our husband and has also met Niska.”

  “Of course, the Governor did say there would be three of you,” the Marine noncom confirmed. “I’m Sergeant Albright. You have clearance into the office, but you’ll need an escort. I hope that’s acceptable?”

  “The Governor is in charge of a planet, many of whom would call him very ugly names,” Kelly agreed with a cheerful tone. “An escort is fine, Sergeant.”

  One of the Marines walked over to the car and had a conversation with Mike Kelzin that Kelly couldn’t hear. A moment later, her husband exited the car and crossed to join them.

  “If I can’t trust Marines, who can I trust?” he told Kelly with a shrug. “We know what’s going on yet?”

  “The Sergeant says we need a guide and escort,” she told him. “Apparently, we want to keep our grumpy old cyborg alive.”

  It would have been unprofessional for the guard to respond to that statement in any way, but there was a twinkle in Albright’s eye as he gestured one of his Marines over. This team wore medium body armor and carried standard battle rifles, but Kelly assumed there were exosuited soldiers with penetrator rifles around somewhere.

  “That was Lord Montgomery’s order, yes,” Albright finally said. “Private Nibhanupudi will guide you to the room we
have set up as a dining room. We do try to keep the Governor inside secured spaces as much as possible.”

  He paused.

  “As you suggest, Captain, people have attempted to assassinate him. We need to be careful.”

  “Of course,” Kelly agreed. “Lead the way, Private. I’m looking forward to this lunch.”

  Niska was late.

  That wasn’t really a surprise, though the steward who’d laid out the food looked slightly less impressed. Whoever had prepared the food, though, had clearly anticipated it as much as Kelly had. The platters of sandwiches and finger food had never been intended to be kept hot.

  When the Governor finally entered the room, he was answering someone’s question as he stepped through the door.

  “I know what Mayor Fox thinks,” he told whoever he was speaking to. “So, tell her that Silverwood is getting the exact same allowance of the water from the DeLeone dam that they’ve received for the last hundred years.

  “Being occupied by Mars does not magically make the river produce more damn water!”

  Kelly heard a muffled acknowledgement, and then the door swung shut and Niska turned to her.

  “Apologies, Captain LaMonte, Mage Wu, Pilot Kelzin,” he said. “When Montgomery browbeat me into this job, I was expecting more armed sedition and less resource-rights discussion.”

  He gestured toward the table.

  “Please, be seated, eat,” he told them. “That’s my plan, anyway.”

  The Governor took a seat and grabbed a sandwich. The gray-haired Legatan was showing his age more than he ever had before, in Kelly’s opinion, but he still moved with the grace of a mechanical tiger.

  Being more than fifty percent machine by mass likely had something to do with it. Kelly wasn’t entirely sure what level of cybernetics went into making someone a covert combat Augment, but she suspected Niska was about as augmented as a human being could get.

  Presumably, that helped with getting old, even if it wasn’t an option most would consider.

  Kelly grabbed a carafe and poured four coffees before taking a sandwich of her own.

  “I’d wondered why you’d taken this job,” she admitted. “From what you said when you were on Rhapsody, I was expecting you to go for a quiet retirement.”

  “After all I did for this world and everything the Republic became, well…” He sighed. “That was my plan. But Montgomery was right that Legatus needed someone who knew us—but also someone who knew how far we’d fallen in our pursuit of freedom and equality.”

  “And now resource rights?” Kelly asked with a grin.

  “Resource rights,” Niska agreed.

  “I’m guessing the armed sedition isn’t entirely absent, is it?” Kelzin asked.

  “No,” the Governor admitted. “But it’s quieter than I’d dared hope. I…” He shook his head. “It stinks, to be frank, but you knew that. There’s too many things going on that suggest the Republic expected to lose Legatus.”

  “Or planned for it, at least,” Kelly agreed quietly. “I can’t tell you too much about what MISS is seeing, but I can tell you that we’re looking at an amazingly complete cleanup job.”

  “I’m seeing the same thing in the government files,” Niska told her. “Your new boss isn’t talking to me, but the initial MISS teams did. My government was prepared to lose our homeworld.

  “It’s probably too strong to say they expected to,” he admitted. “But they were prepared to. And there’s nothing on any of that in the files here.” He shook his head. “The more this goes on, the more I begin to realize that the LMID I served was only one organization of several using our name as a cover.”

  “That ties back to what I wanted to talk to you about,” Kelly said, squeezing Xi Wu’s hand under the table as the Mage touched her knee. “Do you remember Chrysanthemum?”

  “Vividly, Captain LaMonte,” he told her. “You spent a day there. I spent four months.”

  “With everything Legatus invested in them, they didn’t secede,” she said. “Do you know why?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “We invested a lot in all of the UnArcana Fringe Worlds. That was how we kept them more loyal to our concepts and ideals than to the reality of Martian power. We had to provide more help than Mars did—and Mars was often willing to provide a lot of help to those not too proud to take it.

  “Chrysanthemum was too proud to take Martian aid. Almost too proud to take ours, but…” Niska was silent for a few seconds. “They took it, but yeah. Chrysanthemum. Alignment. New Madagascar.

  “Three worlds didn’t follow us into secession…and the Republic, from what I can tell, took that far more calmly than I would have expected.”

  “Would you trust them?” Kelly asked bluntly. “MISS doesn’t want to provoke them, but if Legatus was funneling resources into them…”

  “Trust them? No,” Niska told them. “I wouldn’t trust anyone right now. But, so far as I know, Legatus didn’t send enough resources to any of those star systems to build an accelerator ring. The continuity base for the government might be in one of them, I suppose, but an antimatter-production facility would take decades to build.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t have any idea where they did build it?” Kelly asked.

  “If I did, there’d already be a fleet there,” he admitted. “My first loyalty is still to Legatus, Captain, but the best way I see to protect my people and my world is to end this damn war.”

  “I understand,” Kelly said. “I think everyone’s on that page around here these days.”

  “I hope so,” he told her. “Because I’m worried that there isn’t enough resistance—because that means that they’re building up resources and preparing to help retake the world when the Republic comes back.

  “Some of that might be wishful thinking—but if the people running the underground resistance here are more aware of what’s going on than I am, they might well have everything from a plan to a date.”

  The Military Governor shook his head.

  “I thought I knew my Republic, Captain LaMonte, but the more I poke at curtains, the more I wonder what kind of chimeric monster we truly created.”

  21

  Roslyn woke up slowly, groggily. Everything felt vaguely wrong, like she was submerged in water, and she gasped for air.

  “Careful, careful!” someone snapped. “We had her under for days, people; watch your dosages.”

  That made no sense to her…and then the memory of what had happened on Sucre came crashing back in. Her eyes snapped open and she tried to move.

  Nothing happened. She realized after a moment that her legs and arms were restrained, locked down in some kind of manacles, but that wasn’t the problem.

  “You’re awake, good,” an unfamiliar female voice told her. “The paralytic effects will fade, Lieutenant,” the voice continued. “It’s useful for us at the moment, but you will recover completely.”

  Roslyn tried to pull on magic to see if she could at least free herself. Unlike the vague memories of her failure on Sucre, she could feel it start to warm in her chest…only to be sucked away by a chill drain around her wrists and ankles.

  Mage-cuffs. She’d been bound with Mage-cuffs, the silver-and-steel runic artifacts used to restrain criminal Mages and drain away their power.

  “Rest, Lieutenant Chambers,” the woman told her. “You’ve been unconscious for eighty-three hours.”

  A sealed bulb with a straw emerged into her view, held in a delicately long-fingered hand. The straw was put to her lips, and she found that she had enough control to suck on the straw desperately.

  “I’m not going to tell you where you are,” the stranger said calmly. “You are a prisoner of war now. As your doctor, I have responsibilities to you, but I am still your captor.”

  If Roslyn hadn’t been manacled to a bed, the world would have fallen out from beneath her. It added up, but what the hell was going on?

  She focused as best as she could against the fog still claiming her mi
nd. The ceiling above her was painted white, but she recognized the paneling. Most spaces in a starship had open ceilings with exposed systems for easy access.

  One of the places that didn’t was the medbay, where white-painted metal panels were placed to seal away those systems to help maintain a sterile environment. She was in the sickbay of a spaceship.

  She’d been kidnapped by the Royal Guard of the Mage-King of Mars. That didn’t make any damn sense.

  “Is she awake?” a more familiar voice asked. Von Sulzbach. The traitor.

  “She’s awake and her vitals just spiked hard when she recognized your voice,” the doctor replied. “I don’t think you’ve made many friends, boss.”

  “We weren’t here to make friends. Can she move yet?”

  Roslyn tried to flex her fingers and toes. There was a bit of movement but nothing useful.

  “The paralytic post-effect scales to how long she was kept at a dose of that sedative,” the doctor replied. “It’ll be an hour or two before she can move at all.”

  “Sit her up, then,” von Sulzbach ordered.

  The bed moved underneath Roslyn, slowly folding to bring her into a sitting position. For the first time since he’d boarded Durendal, she saw the supposed Royal Guard without an exosuit.

  Without the armor, he was a slimly built man with well-defined muscles easily visible through the tight-fitting shipsuit he wore. Combined with the dark hair and deep brown eyes she’d always seen; she could very easily find him attractive.

  Except.

  “Traitor,” she managed to grind out.

  “No,” von Sulzbach told her as he stepped up in front of her bed. “There is a long list of epithets you can throw at me that are true, but that one is not. If for no other reason than because Mario von Sulzbach is dead.”

  He waved a hand over himself.

  “We inserted my biometrics into the files on the Royal Guard transport, but thankfully, von Sulzbach was close enough in appearance to me that it only took a little surgery to match me up.