Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (23 page)

She stood and turned back to the communications station. “Please contact Mage-Governor Vaughn and direct the channel to my office. I’ll be there by the time you have the channel up.”

The young officer there barely had time to acknowledge her order before she swept out of the Simulacrum Chamber that acted as
Unchained Glory
‘s bridge. Her office was barely ten meters down the corridor, and she had time to reach her desk and pour herself a glass of wine before the channel with Vaughn opened up.

“What do you want, Adrianna?” the Governor demanded. He looked frazzled - the chaos he’d created was starting to wear on him. “We have a bit of a situation down here.”

“I’m aware of the situation at the Bastille,” she told him. “I wanted to inform you that under Article Seventeen of the Protectorate Charter, we stand ready to assist in any way we can.”

Vaughn winced. Article Seventeen covered situations of outside interference - but it also covered ‘complete failure to maintain law and order by local forces’. Tucked away in the sub-clauses of Seventeen was the authority of a Hand to relieve a Governor - but also the clauses obligating the Navy to assist when rebels with offworld tech attacked a prison.

“Can you destroy the prison?” he finally asked. “I’m not going to miss a bunch of murderers and rebels.”

Cor checked the figures on the Bastilles on her side screen and shook her head.

“We
could
destroy the Bastille with a kinetic bombardment,” she told him. “However, you built them well. They’re hardened against that kind of attack - the sustained sequence necessary to guarantee its destruction would cause major collateral damage to Nouveau Versailles itself.”

“That is… not acceptable,” he agreed after a moment. “What
can
you do?”

“My staff assures me that whatever stealth craft the rebels are in possession of will not be sufficient to defeat the sensors on our Marine assault shuttles,” she told him calmly. “I can have three platoons of exosuited Marines and their assault shuttles on their way shortly. I think we can agree that a hundred and twenty exosuits should be able to neutralize our terrorists.”

Vaughn looked like a drowning man thrown a rope.

“I agree completely,” he told her. “I… always appreciate the willingness of the Royal Martian Navy to assist with our little problems.”

“We’ll see if we can make this one go away,” she replied with a smile.

And unlike some
other
problems she’d dealt with for Vaughn, this one wouldn’t be haunting her dreams.

#

“Damien. You’re alive.”

He didn’t have to ask who was speaking. After three years at Olympus Mons, Damien could recognize the voice of Desmond Michael Alexander the Third, Mage-King of Mars, in almost any circumstance.

Hearing it now, in the polished ebony heart of Ardennes’ Runic Transceiver Array, caused him to sag in relief.

“My liege,” he greeted Alexander, his voice thrown across the light years by magic. “I am. I don’t know what you have been told about what happened here?”

“Vaughn reported a rebel attack and sabotage,” Desmond said slowly, his voice heavy with emotion of some kind. “He told us that Alaura and all of her people were dead and the
Tides of Justice
destroyed by Freedom Wing saboteurs and attacks.”

“He lied.”

The two words landed in the hemispherical room like tombstones, and silence was his only answer for several moments.

“I’d guessed,” Alexander said finally. “I am preparing a task force, but none of my Hands are available yet. What happened?”

“He used a secret team inside his Special Security Service to assemble and equip a ‘rebel’ faction that he controlled,” Damien told his King quietly. “I believe he killed Alaura himself, but his tame rebels killed the rest of the team - and his own people shot down my shuttle, killing everyone aboard but myself.

“I’m sorry, my liege, but I am the only one left.”

“I was afraid of that,” Alexander replied. There was a long pause. “There is something else,” he continued. “Vaughn’s betrayal was expected. Sabotage would have been insufficient to destroy the
Tides
. Your Warrant alone should have sufficed for the local naval squadron to enact his removal.”

“Mage-Commodore Cor has broken your Protectorate and betrayed Mars,” Damien said quietly. “The
Tides of Justice
was destroyed by close-range fire from ships we thought were her sisters.”

“Damn.”

“I have made contact with the rebellion,” Damien told his King. “They are helping me get access to the Transceiver Array, and I have helped them short-circuit some of Vaughn’s excesses. Their resources are impressive; co-opting them has proven valuable.”

“I trust the judgment of the man on the scene, Damien,” Alexander said softly. “You bear my Warrant, you speak in my Voice - any promises you made in my name will be honored. You know this.”

“I do,” Damien acknowledged, swallowing hard.

“Vaughn must be removed,” the Mage-King continued. “Too much blood has already been shed. What do you need?”

“Warships,” Damien answered. “With Cor’s betrayal, we need sufficient space-borne firepower to neutralize her squadron and the Ardennes Self Defense Force. I suspect every warship in the Ardennes system will obey either Vaughn or Cor, and will fight to defend them.”

“I will arrange it,” Alexander said flatly. “There should be sufficient ships in Tau Ceti, even if we have to borrow from the system fleet. Three days, Damien, and you will have your warships. Their commander will place herself at your command - do what you must.”

“My command?” Damien asked. “I… cannot command warships.” An Envoy did not hold what ancient Rome had called
imperium
- the right to command military force. A
Hand
did.

“Did Alaura give you the Hand?” the Mage-King of Mars asked bluntly.

The young Mage, so many light years away, swallowed hard and nodded. Realizing after a moment that his King could not see him, he spoke aloud.

“Yes.”

“You stand on a world I cannot touch,” Alexander told him. “You could have - you perhaps
should
have run. Have hidden, until a Hand arrived to fix the problem.”

“Cor’s betrayal would have destroyed them,” Damien said. “It would have… betrayed the Protectorate.”

“You stand on a world I cannot touch,” the Mage-King repeated. “You bear my Hand, you speak with my Voice, you fight my battle - and you honor and
understand
my Protectorate.

“Damien Montgomery, regardless of the paperwork, regardless of announcements and ceremonies and grand speeches, you have
done
what I would have asked a Hand to do. So yes, the Naval forces sent to Ardennes will place themselves under your command.

“And yes, it will fall to you to remove Mage-Governor Vaughn. He will become desperate. The people of Ardennes will need a protector. It will fall to you.

“I need not send a Hand to Ardennes, for I already have one there.

“You are my Hand, Damien Montgomery,” Desmond Michael Alexander said flatly. “You have bought that with blood and honor. A Hand falls. Another rises.

“The people of Ardennes, whether they know it or not, look to Mars for salvation.
I
look to
you
to answer them.”

Damien swallowed hard again, but found his spine straightening at his King’s words. Even though Alexander could not see him, he removed the Hand from his pocket and hung it around his neck, letting the golden symbol slip beneath his shirt and lie, cold, against his skin.

“I understand,” he said slowly. “I will not fail them.”

#

This time when the contacts appeared on the Bastille’s sensors, it took Amiri a moment to work out what was going on. She was watching for contacts inbound from Nouveau Versailles or approaching from the Army bases.

She hadn’t been expecting anyone to drop from orbit.

The computers warned her there were contacts, but proved recalcitrant when it came to giving her more information. There weren’t many things that could disguise themselves while dropping through atmosphere, but she knew of at least one.

Unfortunately for the Royal Martian Marine Corps, the Bastille had been equipped with extremely powerful radar arrays and the inevitable turbulence of entering atmosphere told her where to look. A few keystrokes aligned the big dishes and lit up the dropping assault shuttles with radio waves, exposing them amidst the turbulence of their descent.

Three modern RMMC assault shuttles. Depending on gear, that could be anywhere from sixty to a hundred and eighty Marines - loyal soldiers of the Protectorate, following orders from the rogue Mage-Commodore.

That… was a problem.

“Brute, this is Amiri,” she said into the communicator. “We’ve got friends dropping from out of the sky. I think we’re going to have to change plans.”

“Saw the pulse,” the pilot said calmly. The radar pulse would have highlighted the spacecraft to everyone for dozens of kilometers around. “We’ve got them outnumbered two to one.”

“And each of those shuttles out-masses your entire squadron,” Amiri said flatly. “They’re bigger, they’re better armed, and they have the altitude advantage. You can’t fight them, Brute, and we always knew it was a chance we’d have to break out on the ground.

“Break off and get out of here,” she ordered. “Meet us at the rendezvous point.”

Silence.

“Fine,” the rebel pilot told her. “You’d better have a plan,” he continued.

“Go,” she replied. She had at least two, but they were rapidly running out of time.

Flipping to another channel, she raised all of the Freedom Wing fighters in the building.

“All right everybody,” she said briskly. “Everyone’s favorite rogue Mage-Commodore has decided to play, and our flight has been canceled. Make your way to the Bastille motor pool on Level One, but keep an eye out for Marines.” She paused. “If you run into them, hit them with everything you’ve got,” she ordered quietly. “If they make it down, we’re out of chances to change their minds.”

Those orders given, she turned her attention back to her incoming guests. She had at least
one
shot at getting them to back down. Sighing, she grabbed the microphone for the Bastille’s own communication system and hailed the incoming shuttles.

“Royal Marine Flight Group, be advised this facility is now under the jurisdiction of the Protectorate Secret Service,” she told them. “Authentication Lima-Seven-Lima-Omega-Niner-Niner-Alpha-Five.

“I repeat, this facility is now under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service. Break off your approach and stand down, or I will be forced to destroy your shuttlecraft.”

She waited. The automated message receipt system on the assault shuttles told her they’d got the transmission, but none of them replied. They were now a hundred kilometers up and dropping fast. She had… minutes.

“Royal Marine Flight Group, this is your final warning,” she said calmly. “This facility has been seized by the Protectorate Secret Service, authentication Lima-Seven-Lima-Omega-Niner-Niner-Alpha-Five.

“If you do not break off your approach and stand down, I
will
be forced to defend this facility with all available force. This is your final warning.”

As she spoke, she began to access the anti-aircraft systems. Unless she was severely mistaken, the Bastille had surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down incoming shuttlecraft. The codes Montgomery had given her could be used to turn them on as well as off.

The problem was that it was easier to shut down
everything
than to turn on something specific. She didn’t even need to activate the IFF - Brute’s squadron was out of the free-fire zone. She just needed the launchers
active
.

“You’re Secret Service?” the officer who’d mouthed off at her earlier said softly from where he was tied up. “That auth code… it’s real?”

She glanced at the time to landing, then back at the officer and the Freedom Wing soldier guarding him.

“Let him at the console,” she told the rebel. “Check it yourself,” she instructed the officer, turning back to bringing the system online.

Several seconds later, she realized she was actually in the menus for the
internal
security system and had accidentally discovered how to activate individual sectors of that system. That might help once they were landed, but she would rather that
didn’t
happen.

“Authenticated,” the officer said quietly, and looked over at her, straightening against his handcuffs.

“Ma’am, I am Captain Davis Hiverner,” he told her. “I accept your authentication and authority. We don’t have time to get these cuffs off, but I can walk you through activating the SAM turrets.”

“You’ll need a ride when we’re done,” Amiri said quietly.

“I know,” he agreed. “But… I didn’t sign up to beat up civilians and guard political prisoners. Let me help you.”

With the Marines about to start knocking, she didn’t have many alternatives. She gestured for him to begin.

#

Mage-Commodore Cor watched her shuttles drop on the screen in the center of her flag bridge with pleasure. It was always satisfying to be able to unleash the full power of the force under her command against the mundane fools who stood in the way of her goals. Watching those unable to grasp reality be swept aside at the whim of their betters was gratifying.

Major Morales had selected the men to take down as carefully as she’d hoped. While the Major himself was completely her man, many of his sub-officers and men were more… old-fashioned in their loyalties. He’d selected his force entirely from those men - they would follow orders for a mission like this, and if the Freedom Wing proved more intractable than expected, their deaths only strengthened Cor’s position.

Regardless of their loyalties, they’d properly ignored the blatantly false attempt by the rebels to pretend they were Protectorate Secret Service. There were no PSS agents on the planet - as the senior military officer in the system, Cor should have been informed if any had been deployed.

The shuttles dropped below the clouds, starting to become more difficult to make out in the visual. Her flagship’s sensors still highlighted them clearly. They couldn’t find the stealthed aircraft that had made the assault, and Cor found herself concluding, sadly, that they were unwilling to challenge her Marines.

She missed the first warning flash from the fortress prison. Cor was more used to using her displays to track space movements and exercises than ground combat, and she didn’t understand what the screen was telling her for a moment. None of the staffers on her flag bridge would have dared to try to explain it, either. They would risk far too much by assuming she
didn’t
know what she was seeing.

Then five more warnings flashed, and
Unchained Glory
‘s computers automatically added icons for the rising surface-to-air missiles fired from the fortress. Six missiles - two for each shuttle - blasted into the air from the Bastille, and the Mage-Commodore swore under her breath.

There was
no way
the rebels were in command of the prison’s defenses - it wasn’t
possible
.

But it was happening.

As she watched, all three shuttles dropped like rocks - their pilots aiming them for the fortress’ courtyards and firing the engines downwards. It was risky, but it
could
save them - especially as their ECM began to hash the surrounding area, rendering it impossible for even the
Unchained Glory
to track what happened.

The explosions stood out, though. The original designers of the Bastilles had been
insane
, she realized. Not satisfied with sufficient weapons to stand off any airborne or ground-launched assault or prison revolt, they’d added weapon systems capable of engaging an orbital drop. The missiles weren’t nuclear or antimatter tipped, but at their speed heavy conventional warheads were sufficient.

When the dust and ECM cleared, two of her shuttles were gone. A moment to check and she confirmed that Major Morales had
not
survived, which caused a pang of sadness.

It wasn’t a very big pang. Morales hadn’t been a Mage - he’d been useful, but there were others to take his place.

She hit a button, opening a channel to the surviving platoon leader.

“Lieutenant Hammond, report,” she ordered.

“Hammond here,” a young, breathless voice replied. “We are deploying.”

A loud crashing sound, rapidly repeated, interrupted him.

“Get down,” Hammond ordered. “Use the mobile shields,
suppress those guns
.”

“We’re running into heavy resistance,” he said to Cor. “All automated - this entire sector is firing on us. It’s mostly lightly weaponry, not much of a threat to an exosuit except in quantity - but this place
has
quantity.”

“We need to prevent the prisoners escaping, Lieutenant,” Cor told him. “You will have to advance.”

Silence answered her for a long moment.

“We’ll do what we can,” the young officer said flatly. “Hammond out.”

She tried to raise him, but failed.

“Is he ignoring me?” she demanded of her staff. They flinched away from her, but then one of the officers finally spoke up.

“No, ma’am,” he told her. “The entire Bastille just disappeared into a fog of jamming - no coms, no sensor readings.”

Cor looked back to the visual representation in the center of her flag bridge, only to watch it disappear as dozens of rockets flashed into the air and exploded into smoke. The electronic jamming blocked her scanners - the smoke blocked their telescopes.

She was blind, and out of touch. Her pleasure at the assumed destruction of her foes turned to ashes in her mouth.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to the Royal Martian Navy!

#

Damien emerged from the immense dome of the Runic Transceiver Array in something of a daze. He wasn’t sure any more what he’d been expecting, but to have Alexander promote him to Hand and drop the entire mess of Ardennes in his lap definitely hadn’t been it.

The Phantom sat alone on the helipad when he returned to it, with Sierra nowhere to be seen. There was a faint smell of cordite in the air, snapping him out of his longer-term worries. He removed his right glove and slowly drew energy into his hand as he glanced around for the pilot.

She emerged from the bushes beside the pad a moment later with a pistol in her hand, glancing at him nervously.

“A Scorpion patrol came by and recognized the Phantom for what it is,” Sierra said grimly as she approached. “I don’t
think
they got a message off before I killed them, but they’ll be missed pretty quickly either way. Are we done here?”

“We’re done here,” Damien assured her, resolving not to piss the Legatan woman off. For an ex-paramedic, she seemed to take killing four or five men a little
too
calmly. There was something in her eyes that made him uncomfortable too… a familiar flatness to her pupils.

“Then let’s go,” she told him, gesturing to the gunship.

Moments later, they were off, Sierra weaving the aircraft between office towers with consummate skill.

Then a light started flashing on the console and she swore. Hitting a key, she accepted the call.

“Flight F-451, this is Nouveau Versailles Control,” a calm voice told. “There’s been an incident at the RTA. You are ordered to cease your course and return to the facility to co-operate with the investigation.”

She glanced over at Damien. Her eyes were calmer now, but there was still something odd about them - something
familiar
too. Almost like her pupils were half-square, which had to just be a trick of the light.

“Can’t go back,” she said simply. “If I ignore them, they’ll react before we’re out of town, and I
can’t
stealth my way past police aircraft when I’m surrounded by skyscrapers.”

“Do what you have to,” he ordered.

The pilot nodded grimly and engaged the throttle, driving the helicopter towards the edge of the city faster. A minute or so passed, and then the light flickered on again.

“Flight F-451, this is ground control. If you do not return to the RTA site, we will assume you were responsible for the attack on our personnel and shoot you down. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

Damien watched over Sierra’s shoulder as she flipped the key that enabled the gunship’s weapons. Making sure he had a clean line of sight to the sensors, he removed his gloves and tucked them inside his coat. He’d prefer
not
to have to engage - it would make what was going on obvious.