The Service of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  Of the rest, at least thirty starships and five or six hundred gunships had died before the rest had fled. The accelerator ring’s destruction was a more slow-motion process now, but it was shedding segments and descending into its gas-giant host.

  The last major fleet of the Republic Interstellar Navy was debris and corpses—and the shuttle computers were perfectly happy to give Roslyn their estimate of over a million dead from Alexander’s power.

  If anyone had assumed the power that had ended the Eugenics Wars had rested entirely in the Olympus Mons Amplifier, today had proven them very wrong.

  “An impression is one way to say it, I suppose,” Roslyn murmured. “I guess we just reminded everyone why they need to fear Mars.”

  “And we need to get back to Second Fleet and return here,” Alexander said. “Because we also need to demonstrate that the power of Mars is a shield, not a sword.”

  47

  There was a sharp tension to the air as the Republican assault shuttle descended to a halt in Rhapsody’s shuttle bay. Its coloring and lines were ever so slightly wrong compared to the spacecraft already waiting aboard the scout ship, clearly marking it as a stranger in this space.

  Part of the tension, Kelly knew, was the potential that the shuttle was still somehow a trap. She wasn’t entirely sure how the Republic could have pulled that off, but it was still technically an enemy ship that they were taking aboard.

  The rest of the tension was due to the reason she knew that was a silly concern. She might have commandos from Charmchi’s platoon stationed around the bay, and Shvets at her left hand just in case, but they’d all seen the Republic’s fleet driven into retreat and the accelerator ring broken.

  There was fear in the space right now, and Kelly wasn’t sure how to lift that tension. She felt it herself. She’d been vaguely aware that Damien Montgomery and the Alexanders were far above ordinary Mages, but she’d never expected to see one Mage take down a battle fleet.

  Cooling jets sprayed the exterior of the shuttle and the pad around it with water that turned instantly to steam, buying a few precious minutes, and a light near the pad turned from red to amber.

  It would now be merely extremely uncomfortable for a human to leave or approach the shuttle instead of almost certainly fatal. A door opened and a ramp extended from the spacecraft, allowing two women to step outside.

  The taller and older woman was leaning on the other, radiating a bone-deep weariness that Kelly could see from ten meters away.

  “With me,” she murmured to her escorts, setting off to meet the Mage-Admiral. Kelzin kept pace with her on the other side from Shvets, the three of them entering the unnatural sauna around the landing pad.

  “Captain LaMonte,” Roslyn Chambers greeted them, the young Mage looking only barely less exhausted than her Admiral. “You have no idea how good it is to see a friendly face.”

  “I can only guess,” Kelly admitted. “Admiral Alexander, how are you?”

  “Alive,” Alexander said in a tight voice. “In a lot of pain… I need to rest.”

  “Mike, get the Admiral to the medbay,” Kelly ordered as she took in the Crown Princess of Mars’s state. “We’ll take care of you, Mage-Admiral. It’s not every day someone single-handedly wins a war after dying.”

  Alexander was clearly too exhausted to take that in, readily accepting a transfer from Chambers’s shoulder to Kelzin’s. A commando was there a moment later, the two men propping up the Admiral as they led her away.

  The younger Mage waited until Alexander was on her way, then turned back to face Kelly and drew herself up to attention with a perfect salute.

  “Mage-Lieutenant Roslyn Chambers reporting, sir,” she stated. “I’m assuming that Mage-Admiral Alexander and I were presumed dead. We were kidnapped by an Augment infiltration cell that had managed to remove and replace Her Highness’s Royal Guard detail.

  “I’m not certain what measures they took to cover their mission, but we were brought here to be interrogated by the Lord Protector himself.” Chambers shivered. “I think Alexander was a prize, but he was hoping to turn me.”

  “The evidence suggests he failed, Lieutenant,” Kelly replied, trying to process everything the younger woman had packed into a handful of sentences. “Is there any reason you know of why we should remain in Chrysanthemum?”

  “No,” Chambers said. “It will take them some time to recover from the body blow the Admiral did to them, but we’ll want to return to Second Fleet as soon as possible.” She swallowed. “I suppose Alexander should be in contact with Mars ASAP as well.”

  “Fortunately, Second Fleet has mostly returned to Legatus,” Kelly told the young woman. “Which is where we’re headed, no matter what.”

  She tapped her wrist-comp.

  “Mage Droit? We’ve got everyone and I don’t think there’s anything left for us in this system. Get us out of here.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Kelly wasn’t a Mage, but she could tell when a ship jumped. Some of the last tension in the shuttle bay released as magic rippled through the starship.

  “And we’re clear,” she murmured to Chambers. “You got yourself and the Admiral out, Lieutenant. That’s not shabby.”

  “She did most of the work at the end,” the young woman admitted. “I…broke the accelerator ring, but she was dealing with an entire fleet. It was awe-inspiring. And terrifying.”

  “Those tend to go together,” Kelly agreed. “Can you jump, Mage-Lieutenant?”

  “Once I’ve rested a bit, yes,” Chambers said. “I know even one Mage can make a difference, but I’ve already run up to my limits.”

  And a bit beyond, Kelly judged. The young woman’s eyes were bloodshot and there were light streaks of red on her upper lip. She suspected Chambers hadn’t even realized she’d been bleeding, but Kelly was familiar with the signs of early thaumic burnout.

  “Rest was part of the plan, Lieutenant,” she told the young woman. “At least a day, but even then, you’ll cut twenty-four hours off our run to Legatus.”

  “If there is any way I can help, I will,” Chambers said, her tone determined.

  “Right now, Mage-Lieutenant? You need to go join Admiral Alexander in the medbay and let my husband and our doctor check you over,” Kelly ordered. “You’ve had a hell of a few weeks, from the sounds of it.

  “We’ll take care of it from here; you have my word.”

  “Thank you,” Chambers said, visibly sagging around her bones as her tension slowly released. “I… I…”

  “Medbay, Lieutenant,” Kelly repeated.

  Roslyn Chambers was going to need some long sessions with a therapist, but that wasn’t Kelly LaMonte’s call or job. Her job was to get the two women who’d probably won the war home in one piece.

  48

  Rhapsody in Purple had been enough of a relief that Roslyn had thought she’d let go of all of the tension she’d accumulated in her weeks in Republican hands. She realized she was wrong when she completed the final jump into Legatus and saw Second Fleet on the screens.

  Dreadnoughts, battleships, cruisers…a Martian fleet over a secure world. A safe haven with friends and allies.

  There had apparently still been tension left in her shoulders to release, and she nearly collapsed before being caught by Xi Wu.

  “I was waiting for that,” the dark-skinned Mage said with a chuckle. “We’re still a few hours out, but the Captain will report in. Get to bed; we’ll wake you when we know more.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep at this point,” Roslyn admitted.

  “That wasn’t a suggestion, Lieutenant,” Xi Wu said pointedly.

  Roslyn wasn’t entirely clear on what ranks, exactly, anyone aboard the stealth ship had. She could treat LaMonte as a Captain without hesitation, but the rest of the crew seemed a mix of RMN hands, who weren’t using ranks, and civilians.

  Right now, though, the important part was that Xi Wu was the senior Ship’s Mage.

  “Yes, sir,” Roslyn con
firmed, saluting and slowly making her way out of the simulacrum chamber.

  She could see dreadnoughts. That meant she’d won.

  Four hours later, she was woken up by one of the cyborg commandos that seemed to be everywhere on the small ship.

  “Mage-Lieutenant? The Admiral is asking for you,” the man told her. “We’ve made contact with everyone, I think, and we’re heading for the Link. Fast.”

  “Thank you,” Roslyn replied, pulling herself out of bed.

  The commando saluted and stepped outside, leaving her to get dressed and check in on the situation on her new wrist-comp.

  The Link the Protectorate had claimed for their use in Legatus was aboard an orbital station that had been stripped of everything else. It now served entirely as a com relay linking the former capital of the Republic of Faith and Reason to Mars itself.

  Rhapsody was burning at her maximum fifteen gravities of deceleration toward a rendezvous with that station. Roslyn could eyeball the intercept at about twenty minutes, which meant she really was short on time.

  Thankfully, she finally had access to proper fitted shipsuits again and was able to dress in the single-piece garment quickly. Her cyborg alarm clock was waiting for her outside her room with a smile.

  He was roughly her age and attractive in a clean-shaven-but-rough-hewn way. That Roslyn was even noticing that suggested she was finally getting over the base level of exhaustion that had consumed her since the Republicans had delivered her to Chrysanthemum.

  “Looks like we’re running short on time,” she told the man. “Lead the way.”

  Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander had finally received proper medical attention for both the cocktail of chemicals the Republic had put her on as well as for the massive chunk of skin Roslyn had removed from her back. She was seated in a briefing room with Captain LaMonte and looked mostly free of pain.

  Roslyn could see the places where new lines had been carved into the old woman’s face from her ordeal, but Alexander seemed on top of things. She wasn’t going to assume weakness on the Mage-Admiral’s part.

  The fate of the entire fleet that had collided with her was a counter-indicator to that idea!

  “Roslyn, come in, sit down,” Alexander instructed. “We’ll be reporting to a shuttle in a few minutes. Is there anything aboard Rhapsody you’ll need?”

  “No, sir,” Roslyn confirmed as she took a seat next to her boss. “Didn’t bring much aboard except an assault shuttle I don’t need to keep.”

  “That’s good,” LaMonte said with a chuckle. “My husband will be flying you over to the Link Station, and he point-blank refuses to fly that thing. We’ll be handing it over to some friends of ours who will dissect its computers for anything we can learn about Chrysanthemum, but the shuttle itself is relatively useless to us.”

  “And much of what we might learn about Chrysanthemum will be background details now,” Alexander noted. “The shuttle was assigned to the accelerator ring, which…won’t be a problem anymore.”

  There was a satisfied tone to Alexander’s voice that made Roslyn conceal a shiver.

  “My niece is aware that we’re alive and has leveled the full authority of her office to demand to speak to me the moment it is physically possible,” Alexander continued. “I’m imposing on my authority to bring you with me for now, Lieutenant. At this point, I trust your judgment over just about anyone else alive.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Roslyn said quickly.

  “You saved my life, Roslyn,” the Admiral reminded her. “That is not an act or a debt that I will forget or permit others to forget. If they want to hang glory and victories on me, I’m hanging them on you, Mage-Lieutenant. You are a heroine of the Protectorate. Don’t forget that.”

  Roslyn swallowed. She knew what she’d done had been difficult, but all she’d really been doing was enabling Alexander. Any victory was the Admiral’s, really.

  Alexander didn’t look like she was going to buy that argument, though.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” she repeated—earning herself a laugh from both of the older women in the room.

  “I know damn well you’re not that self-effacing, Mage-Lieutenant Chambers,” Alexander told her. “Remember that unlike the rest of your fellow officers, I got the full story of how you got the Lord Regent’s recommendation letter. Petty-thievery skills are useful when assisting in covert ops and escaping enemy bases, but they weren’t acquired by a wallflower!”

  “No, sir,” Roslyn admitted. “I’m sure at least a quarter of the Mages in the Navy could have done what I did, though, sir.”

  Her false humility got her another laugh.

  “Better,” the Admiral told her. “All right. Is our shuttle ready, Captain?”

  “It should be, or Mike is sleeping on the couch tonight,” LaMonte replied. “I’m glad we were there at the right time, Admiral.”

  “So am I. If you’d been much earlier or later, you’d have brought Second Fleet in to finish the job and avenge us, but I do prefer this whole living business.”

  49

  Until the moment the video feed from the Link showed the faces of the two women he’d seen reported dead, Damien Montgomery didn’t truly believe that Jane Alexander and Roslyn Chambers had survived.

  Too many people had died around him and around the throne of Mars for him to trust that some of those deaths had been a lie.

  Once the two women, one old, one young, appeared on his screen, he had to believe it. Next to him, he could tell that Kiera Alexander was fighting back tears, the Mage-Queen of Mars’s carefully managed façade disintegrating.

  “You are alive,” the Queen whispered through her tears.

  She and Damien were once again in his office, taking advantage of the now-permanently-installed standalone com console relaying from the Link at Deimos. Both of them sat in front of the big stone desk, facing the video camera concealed above the wallscreen.

  “I am,” Jane Alexander confirmed. “Despite the best efforts of our enemies, my beloved niece. I am alive and the Republic already regrets that. I…” She sighed. “What happened to my actual Royal Guards, Damien? They were replaced before they arrived in Nueva Bolivia.”

  “We don’t know yet,” he admitted. “The investigation I started was focused on the shuttle. We’d confirmed it was destroyed by a bomb, and we were trying to focus on how that happened.”

  “That’s fair,” the old Admiral conceded. “I’ve already sent orders to Durendal to arrest the supposed Mountain catering team, but it turns out they’d ‘returned to Mars’ after my death.”

  “What catering team?” Kiera Alexander demanded. “We sent a platoon of the Royal Guard. That was all.”

  “So I’d guessed from the fact that team was feeding me different pieces of multi-part poison,” the Mage-Admiral said. “Fuckers.” She shook her head. “We can confirm that the Republic fallback position and the accelerator ring are in the Chrysanthemum System, if that part of the report hasn’t percolated upward yet.”

  Damien nodded, exhaling his breath in a long sigh.

  “I personally ordered LaMonte’s scouting mission, so I’m not surprised,” he admitted. It felt, now, like they should have seen that one coming. “We’ll also send a task force to investigate New Madagascar, just to be certain. I would prefer to keep the kid gloves our subordinates wanted, but…”

  “Two of their compatriots betrayed Our trust,” Kiera Alexander said next to him, and he knew that tone and use of capitals. “They will suffer Our distrust.”

  “The situation in Chrysanthemum requires immediate attention,” Mage-Admiral Alexander told them. “The accelerator ring is no longer functional and their fleet was heavily reduced, but we’ll need to move on the base there before Lord Protector Solace has any more clever ideas.”

  “What…happened?” Damien asked. Then he realized. He, of all people, knew how deadly a Rune Wright could be—and most of his involvement in space combat had been at real combat ranges, hundreds of tho
usands or even millions of kilometers.

  “Mage-Lieutenant Chambers broke me out of my cell,” the Mage-Admiral told him. “As we escaped, we realized the bastards had put a Rune of Nullification on me, but Chambers successfully removed it.

  “They faced the wrath of a Rune Wright at ranges of under ten thousand kilometers. I broke them, Damien. Now we need to make certain we finish the job.”

  Damien nodded slowly and focused on the young woman who’d been silent so far. Roslyn Chambers wore an unmarked shipsuit and looked surprisingly well for someone who’d been through everything she had been.

  “It seems the Protectorate owes you a great debt, Lieutenant,” he told her. “It seems I chose well on Tau Ceti back then.”

  “You gave me a chance that others might not have,” Chambers said quietly. “Everything I do is in repayment of that.”

  “I think that debt is paid ten times over,” Damien replied. “It was repaid in ships saved at Nia Kriti, in the victory at Ardennes—and now, in the life of the Crown Princess of Mars. I think we owe you, not the other way around.”

  “This doesn’t change your addition to the line of succession, Damien,” the Mage-Queen pointed out with a chuckle beside him. “You’re now second in line, but you are still a Prince of Mars.”

  “Let’s keep any public announcement of that quiet until you’re no longer my ward, shall we?” Damien asked. He was uncomfortable enough with that as it was—and so far as he was concerned, the fewer people who knew about it unless it became necessary, the better.

  The only person who absolutely needed to know was Grace McLaughlin, and she was on her way to Mars as they spoke. Part of him was looking forward to the inevitable confrontation between his girlfriend and the Mountain’s medical establishment over the concept of Rune Wright children.

  The rest of him was dreading it.