Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (13 page)

“We can’t completely shut down the bases,” came Sierra, the Legatan woman now running their gunship squadrons. “Even if we don’t
fly
them, the gunships require regular maintenance.”

“Fine. But bury them deep,” Lori ordered. “No emissions, as little traffic as possible. We intentionally put the airbases close to settlements to hide the traffic, so let’s make damn sure the traffic stays hidden.”

“We can’t afford any slip-ups now,” she reminded them all. “When the Hands come hunting, the only rebels I want them to find are Vaughn’s people!”

#

It took Damien a moment to identify the beeping sound that slowly penetrated the black fog. It wasn’t a sound he’d heard outside of training videos, so it took longer to identify than it would have - though his slowly fading unconsciousness didn’t help.

When the ‘Critical Damage’ alarm of a Navy assault shuttle finally registered, his eyes snapped open fast enough to leave his skull pounding.

He was lying on the roof of the assault shuttle’s officer compartment, the screens with their flashing alerts two meters and more above him.

Struggling to his feet, a wave of dizziness and nausea swept over him. Concussion. He’d hit his head.

That realization brought everything back, and he looked over the compartment, hoping to somehow find Mitchell alive.

He hoped in vain. The Marine Sergeant’s body had fallen from the floor to the roof during the crash and was broken in ways that made it very clear he was
not
getting back up.

A quick glance confirmed that Brockson was also thoroughly dead. Damien was alone in the compartment and struggled against the concussion to think.

If the Critical Damage alarm was going, but the shuttle was still mostly intact, the fail-safes must have succeeded in ejecting the fuel tanks prior to impact. That meant he had time.

Forcing himself slowly to his feet, he also knew he didn’t have
much
time. Someone had shot down a shuttle carrying an Envoy of Mars. Unless they were terminally stupid, they
would
come back to finish the job.

The door to the cockpit refused to open, the electronic access panel completely dead. Hammering his battered brain into co-operation, Damien managed to remember and find the manual override. Locked down while the door had power, it allowed it to be opened if power failed.

He cranked the wheel. Ten seconds. Twenty. Finally, the hatch slid sufficiently open for Damien to squeeze into the cockpit.

Any hope of finding help vanished immediately. The pilot’s head hung at an impossible angle, and while the unbreakable transparent shield at the front of the ship had lived up to its marketing, the
consoles
had not. Shrapnel from the impact had torn the co-pilot apart. The man had died of blood loss before Damien had regained consciousness.

He had at least made it to the cockpit first aid kit, which allowed Damien to find it without having to strain his memory. His head already hurt badly enough.

Once he’d got some painkillers into his system, he realized he was bleeding. Nothing major, but he carefully dealt with the scrapes and cuts that had ruined his expensive suit.

With his wounds bandaged and his head starting to feel slightly better, Damien checked the emergency cabinet the first aid kit had come from. While the pistol stored there was less powerful than his own and the ammunition wasn’t compatible, there was also a pair of battle carbines and an armored vest.

Throwing the vest over the remnants of his dress shirt - and the lighter armor vest he wore under the shirt - he filled its pockets with clips and picked up one of the carbines. The missile had hit the compartment the Marines had been in, which meant he was almost certainly alone.

Finally, he linked his personal computer into the shuttle’s systems. It didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t expected - the shuttle was running out of power, had ejected its fuel, and wasn’t going
anywhere
.

Nonetheless, it had enough transmission power to link him into the planetary datanet. The contact code Alaura had given him was a single use code, one he hoped was still being checked.

His PC obligingly gave him the encryption algorithm to use, and he fired a message off to the code.

If anyone was eavesdropping on the ‘net - as he was sure Vaughn’s people were - it would look like a ‘first touch’ message from a dating site.

The contact, hopefully, would be able to interpret it into co-ordinates and a desperate plea for help.

Battered and concussed, Damien wasn’t sure how far he could make it on his own.

#

From the moment the news of the attack on Government House had broken, a rock had settled in Julia Amiri’s stomach.

The confirmation, an hour or so later, that Alaura Stealey had died in the attack turned that rock into spikes and lava. She’d made what excuses she could to the kitchen staff she was helping out, and fled back to her room.

‘Jewel’, immigrant to Ardennes who’d got herself tied up in someone else’s revolution, had no connection to one of the chosen trouble-shooters of the Mage-King of Mars.

Julia Amiri, on the other hand, had been directly working with Alaura Stealey for three years. She hadn’t intended to allow herself to become attached - the Protectorate Secret Service was a job, after all, a glorified counter-espionage organization.

But losing the boss who’d pulled you out of one scrape after another for years… hit hard.

It was Alaura Stealey who’d chosen to believe the random bounty hunter who had offered to help trace Mikhail Azure in his pursuit of Damien Montgomery. Stealey had believed that she could help, and that she
wanted
to help.

They’d saved Montgomery - who had, it must be admitted, done a decent job of saving himself - together. They’d brought peace to four worlds together, and Amiri had figured that Ardennes would be world number five. The planet needed it, after all!

The announcement on the news that Montgomery’s shuttle had been shot down was the icing on the cake. Both their first and last missions together were now wasted efforts, blood and tears shed for nothing.

On her own, there was nothing Amiri could do for Ardennes. She had a damn good idea of who had
actually
killed Alaura Stealey though - and as a senior agent of the Secret Service, she could make the Hands who would follow listen.

For now, though, she had to get off Ardennes. Disappearing would likely confuse Riordan and his friends, but the biggest favor she could do their revolution at this point was get what truth she knew into the hands of Desmond Michael Alexander and his Hands.

She grabbed her PC to pull up the details she needed for one of her emergency escape plans and stopped. A blinking ‘new message’ icon had appeared - attached to a specific one-time account. The account she’d given Alaura Stealey.

For a moment, she allowed herself hope. It was possible, after all, that the media Vaughn was controlling was lying about her death.

The message dashed her hopes. It took her a moment to translate it, but the co-ordinates were clear. Seventy-five kilometers outside of Nouveaux Versailles, in the massive forest between the city and the mountains - on the route from Nouveaux Normandy.

Only one other person than Stealey might have had that code, and that person’s shuttle had gone down in about that area.

For a moment, Amiri seriously considered just running. She didn’t know Montgomery well. Didn’t owe him what she owed Alaura. He would be alone, injured, and hunted. No-one would ever know if she left him and went to Mars - many would even say that was her duty, to make sure the truth reached Mars.

But, a long time ago, Damien Montgomery had killed the man who’d murdered her brother and their crew. Regardless of duty, she owed him.

With a sigh, she programmed in the code Riordan had given her.

“What?” he answered.

“Riordan, this is Jewel,” she said quietly. “I need a favor.”

“This is not a good time,” Riordan told her. “You’ve seen the news. It wasn’t us, but we’ve got to react - got to deal with the consequences.”

Amiri sighed and then let ‘Jewel’ go.

“Mikael, listen to me,” she continued sharply. “If you believe anything you’ve told me - if you believe in the cause you convinced so many to follow, understand this:

“What I need to ask may make a bigger difference to your cause than anything you’ve done before or could ever do again. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the fate of Ardennes rides on the next few hours - and rides on you helping me.”

There was silence on the line for a long moment.

“Who are you?” he asked. “You’re not who you say you are.”

That was true enough.

“I am the only hope you have to stave off the vengeance of the Hands,” Amiri told him.

Silence again.

“What do you need?”

#

Modern medicine could do many things, but it couldn’t cure even a mild concussion with a few pills. The drugs from the shuttle’s first aid kit were sufficient to allow Damien to stand without dizziness or nausea, but only so long as he didn’t move very quickly.

It would have to be enough. Standing in the emergency exit from the cockpit, he could see the fire starting to spread from where the fuel tanks had landed - several kilometers away, but the sticky scent of Ardennes’ pale purple trees burning was reaching him anyway. The wind was
not
on his side.

Everyone else on the shuttle was dead. Magic and more than a little bit of luck had spared him, but he was alone and injured. Worse, if Vaughn had come after
him
, he was pretty sure that he had to have moved on Alaura.

Unless he was wrong in his estimates, Damien was potentially the last member of the team that had accompanied Alaura Stealey to Ardennes. If Vaughn had gone this far, he wasn’t going to do anything as foolish as retrieve any survivors alive.

With a glance at his PC to orient himself on the map, he set off for the nearest road. Thankfully, that road was
away
from the fire starting to slowly spread through the forest behind him. He hoped that the purple and wet foliage would at least slow the flames.

He estimated it at two hours after the attack when he heard the rotors for the first time. He took cover and watched the helicopter gunships pass overhead. A twist of magic zoomed in on the nearest of the three aircraft and confirmed what he’d feared: the icon painted on the doors was the stylized scorpion of the Ardennes Special Security Service, not the crossed rifles of the Ardennes Planetary Army.

The Scorpions wouldn’t have been sent to bring in survivors.

Grimly focusing through the fog from the drugs and the concussion, Damien moved forward once more. Behind him, the sound of the rotors slowly faded as the gunships approached the crash site. One set quieted further and then went silent - presumably landing at the wrecked shuttle.

Keeping one ear on the Scorpion aircraft behind him, he focused on putting one foot in front of another. It would take them time to confirm he wasn’t on board or near the shuttle. His path wasn’t well hidden, but looking for it would buy him more time - potentially even enough time that the fire would overtake the wreck before they’d found it.

Ten minutes later, he was struggling to keep moving while maintaining a spell that allowed him to still hear the rotors behind him. The third set switched back on suddenly, going from silent to full power in moments -
far
faster than the aircraft had to be rated for.

He couldn’t see to confirm, but he suspected that they’d just made an emergency ascent, dodging away from the fire that would now incinerate the bodies of Cam Mitchell and his men.

“Sorry Cam,” he whispered into the gathering twilight. “Best I can do.”

Trying to judge distances based on the rotors of aircraft now kilometers behind him was proving difficult. If the Scorpions followed normal search and rescue - or search and destroy - doctrine for Protectorate forces, the three would now split up, each taking a segment of the compass away from the fire and sweeping for thermal signatures.

Damien tried to wrap a shield around himself to cover his body heat, but with the fog in his brain he was only half-sure he’d succeeded. Stumbling over a tree root, he realized he’d lost his direction. He wasn’t sure which way the road was now.

Now would be a good time for Alaura’s agent to show up. He allowed himself a hopeful moment, and then brought the map back up on his computer. The electronic signature
might
be detected - but wandering in circles in the forest with a concussion could kill him almost as easily as Vaughn’s soldiers. It would just take longer.

It took a moment for the Planetary Positioning System to find his location, a moment Damien spent carefully scanning the sky for aircraft. Finally, it brought up his location on the map. He hadn’t gone as far off-course as he’d been afraid of - he was only a half-kilometer from the road.

Shutting down the network connection, he set off once again. A moment of dizziness struck him and he wavered. Despite not nearly long enough having passed for it to be safe, he paused and took more of the medications.

He could get his liver fixed later if he lived through today. For now, the extra stability and reduced nausea was enough to allow him to make his way through the trees towards the road.

The drugs carried him onto the road, a four-lane expressway that cut a laser-straight line between Nouveaux Versailles and the province of Nouveaux Bordeaux on the other side of the immense forest occupying the center of the continent.