Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (14 page)

The expressway was empty. That was not what Damien had been expecting - he’d figured that once he’d reached the road he would have enough witnesses to be safe until Alaura’s agent got there.

If they’d closed the road, however, he was in trouble. He was panting, half-out of breath. He couldn’t go much further, not sustained by anti-nausea meds and painkillers. He could hear rotors again, and
knew
the gunship was closing behind him - either by chance, or because they’d picked up his PPS signal.

Damien ran his fingers over the gold medallion at his throat with a sigh. Carved into the precious metal was the quill feather of a trained Rune Scribe, and the three stars of a Jump Mage.
Not
carved into it were any of the qualifications he’d earned over the last few years - qualifications that would have made his pursuers far more hesitant.

Too exhausted to run, he breathed deeply and turned to face the sound of the helicopters. They’d killed his co-workers, killed his boss - killed his
friends
.

Let them come.

#

Riordan couldn’t have been far. He arrived quickly after Amiri got off the line with him, pulling up in front of the hotel in a boxy stylized utility vehicle - she recognized the chassis as having started as the last generation of the Marine’s all-terrain vehicle.

This one was black, and lacking the pintle-mounted machine gun. As she slipped into the passenger seat, she also noted the leather seats and high quality electronics.

“Nice car,” she noted.

“It’s mine,” Riordan told her. “Buried through a few shell corps at this point, but still mine. This better be worth it,” he warned. “Things are… worrisome right now.

“It will be,” Amiri promised. So long as Montgomery was still alive when they got there. “You brought weapons?”

“Cases in the backseat,” he replied. “Wait till we’re out of town. Now, tell me you at least know where we’re going?”

Nodding, she leaned over and plugged the co-ordinates into the PPS system. It threw up a map, a guide, and a timeline.

“That’s quite a ways,” Riordan told her as he pulled the truck out onto the main roads. “What’s that way?”

“I know you were watching the news,” she said quietly.

“Shit. The shuttle?”

“Someone lived,” she told him. “I got an SOS message, and I have no transport of my own. You were my only choice.”

“Don’t I feel privileged,” the Freedom Wing cell leader muttered. “Why the hell were
you
getting SOS’s? What’s going on?”

“Wait till we’re out of town,” Amiri repeated back to him.

With a curse, Riordan apparently accepted that, throwing the vehicle into gear and sweeping them down onto the highway. The next few minutes passed in silence, a mental clock running in the agent’s head. She really wasn’t sure they had enough time - they may have already taken too long.

“All right, Jewel,” Riordan said quietly as the city lights started to fade behind them. “I’ll be honest - I’m going on faith here because a dead Hand means we are
so
fucked I’m willing to grasp at straws. I’d love some clue of what sort of straw I’m grasping for, though.”

“My name isn’t Jewel,” she replied.

“No shit.”

“My name is Julia Amiri, Special Agent for the Protectorate Secret Service,” she continued, ignoring his outburst. “Alaura Stealey assigned me to Ardennes as a forward operative. My mission was to infiltrate the Freedom Wing and establish lines of communication for once Vaughn had been arrested.

“Once Stealey arrived on planet, I provided her with a onetime drop code to establish further communications or use as an emergency SOS.

“After the crash, I received an SOS code and these co-ordinates,” Amiri concluded. “Since I know Hand Stealey wasn’t on the shuttle, I presume she provided the code to Envoy Montgomery, and that he survived the crash.”

Her companion was speechless. Leaving him to process, the agent checked the cases in the back for weapons. Two of the cases were bog-standard assault rifles, made to the same pattern across the Protectorate. This pair had been manufactured on Amber, a world with notoriously lax laws on, well, everything.

The third case made her eyes light up. “Can you even use this?” she demanded of Riordan as she ran her eyes over the bulky lines of one of Legatus Arms newest and most dangerous toys.

“I have a rough idea,” he admitted.

“I’m fully qualified,” she told him. “I’ll handle it.”

She smiled, running her fingers over the Legatus Arms Tactical Battle Laser, Mod Five. It was one of very few energy weapons manufactured in the Protectorate, and one of the best she was aware of.

“Remind me why the hell I’m driving a Protectorate special agent into the middle of the country to rescue a Protectorate Envoy?” Riordan finally asked. “Last I checked, I was technically a traitor.”

“No, you’re a rebel,” Amiri corrected him. “It’s a fine distinction, but when a planetary government gets as down in the muck as Mage-Governor Vaughn’s has, it’s a hair we’re perfectly willing to split.

“The real answer to your question, though, is that Damien Montgomery is the only person on the planet with the authority to charge Governor Vaughn with Hand Stealey’s murder. If
he
lives, Vaughn falls. If he
dies…
your rebellion will probably be collateral damage of the inevitable fallout to Stealey’s death.

“Things are worrisome right now. Everything is teetering on the edge - and Montgomery might be able to salvage the situation. You have to pick a side, Mikael.”

“It’s not
my
side I’m worried about,” the rebel told her. “It’s
yours
.”

“I work for the Protectorate of the Mage-King of Mars,” Amiri said quietly. “Our job is to protect people - even, when necessary, from their own governments.”

Silence filled the car for a moment.

“There’s a roadblock ahead,” Riordan suddenly told her. “What do you want to do?”

“We can’t stop,” she replied. “Even if Montgomery was somehow uninjured from the crash, he won’t have much time before the Scorpions move in. Hell, if there’s a roadblock…”

“The Scorpions have probably already moved in,” he agreed grimly. “The car has the armor of the military version. I suggest you hold on.”

With a small smile, the first sign of anything except anger or despair Amiri had seen out of the man since he’d picked her up, Riordan gunned the engine.

The blockade consisted of a handful of plywood barriers and two highway patrol cars. The three women and one man directing traffic back probably had no idea why the road was closed - and likely would have been furious if they knew they were being used to reduce potential witnesses to murder.

They were
not
expecting the big armored truck to ignore the flashing lights directing people off to the side and slam forward at full speed. The plywood barrier splintered under the impact, and Amiri got a perfectly clear glimpse of the senior officer’s utterly stunned face as they plowed past.

She still half-expected gunfire, or
some
kind of response, but whatever the highway patrol had been told was going on, they were clearly willing to write off some idiots as evolution in action.

The barrier cleared, she took a deep breath and pulled the battle laser from the back seat. If they were lucky, they’d find Montgomery, stick him in the car, and disappear before the Scorpions arrived.

Given the day so far, she didn’t expect to get that lucky.

#

If the gunship had picked up Damien’s Planetary Positioning System signal, the pilot hadn’t regarded it as enough reason to call for backup. The single aircraft swept over the forest, bare meters above the trees as a spotlight played over the ground below.

Damien, too tired to keep running, stood on the edge of the expressway watching it come. Injured and exhausted, he couldn’t reach out far enough to bring the helicopter down from a distance - plus, technically he remained an agent of the law. He wasn’t supposed to strike first.

The gunship crew were clearly focused on the forest beneath them, since they’d emerged into the cleared zone around the highway before they noticed Damien standing there watching them.

As soon as they
did
notice him, the spotlight immediately settled on him. The light hammered spikes into his concussion, and Damien reeled away, covering his eyes from the light with his hand.

“Put your hands over your head and freeze where you are!” an amplified voice bellowed. “This is an interdicted area. Identify yourself immediately!”

Blinking away the dizziness, Damien straightened and faced them, keeping his hands exposed though not raising them as ordered.

“I am Envoy Damien Montgomery,” he shouted back to them. “I am in need of transport and am commandeering your craft under my Warrant. Land immediately!”

Any chance that they were actually there to rescue him vanished as the gunship immediately
jumped
away, the pilots engaging in the standard anti-Mage maneuver of ‘create distance’.

Damien was saved from having to decide if that was enough aggression for him to act by the aircraft’s gunner opening fire moments later. Two missiles detached from the sides of the helicopter gunship, and a nose-mounted mini-gun opened up half a second later.

There were limits to a Mage’s power and reaction time, and if he hadn’t been expecting
exactly
that it might have been enough.

As it was, he’d raised a shield before he’d even seen the attack craft. The missiles exploded in the air ten meters away from him, and the stream of fire from the mini-gun ended in the same place. The explosions and gunfire lit an invisible sphere in the night.

Damien winced, his attention wavering as his concussion screamed against the strain of the spell. Bullets tore through the momentarily vanishing shield, tearing up to the dirt to his left before he restored the shield - but he couldn’t keep this up for long.

A second salvo of missiles screamed through the night, hammering into his shield and driving him to the ground. His concussion sent spikes of pain stabbing into his skull, and he struggled back to his feet, forcing himself to both hold the shield and locate the helicopter.

They’d left the spotlight on. It might have helped them target him - but it also helped
him
find
them
.

Another stab of pain ripped through his head and then, for a moment, his head was clear and he could see the spotlight, though not the gunship itself.

The wall of force he conjured didn’t need to be that accurate. It crashed down on the attack gunship like the fist of an angry god and yanked the Scorpion aircraft out of the sky.

It slammed into the asphalt with enough force to make the ground tremble under Damien’s feet, and then promptly exploded as munitions met fuel and sparks.

The explosion hammered into his shield, which came apart into fragile wisps under the blow - but still sheltered Damien from its force.

Silence fell over the twilit road. The acrid scent of burnt plastic and metal wafted towards Damien from the crash, accompanied by the popping sound of the burning remnants of the aircraft.

Wavering against the concussion and the energy drain of so much magic, Damien trembled, trying to find the momentum to keep moving.

He struggled through his pockets, finally finding another set of the anti-nausea meds and slugging them back. He clearly hadn’t grabbed enough of anything - he didn’t have the food or water for an extended hike, and he probably wasn’t going to have the time.

As if summoned by his thought, he began to hear the faint sound of rotors again. Two pairs, most likely the other two aircraft from the search squadron. They’d know where the other gunship died, and he didn’t think he could fight two ships through his concussion.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t as if
running
was an option. He turned to face the rotors, hoping the drugs were enough to keep him standing.

Focused on the oncoming aircraft, he missed the engine of the approaching vehicle until the big utility vehicle came to a sharp stop behind him and a familiar voice shouted at him.

“Hey, Montgomery,” Julia Amiri told him. “As pretty a fire as you’ve made, I get the feeling being elsewhere is a better idea, right?”

He turned towards her, blinking in surprise as her presence completely failed to process. She wasn’t registering as a threat - she just wasn’t really registering at
all
.

“Shit, he’s been hit hard,” another voice, one he didn’t recognize, told Amiri. “Quick, let’s get him in the car - we don’t have much time.”

He was… conscious enough to get halfway into the car with Amiri’s help. He fell the rest of the way as the driver gunned the engine.

“We do
not
want to be here,” the strange man announced calmly as the door slammed shut behind the sprawled Mage.