Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (32 page)

It lasted moments. Moments in which Adamant smiled grimly at her victory.

The blast faded to reveal the last trickling salvo from the traitor cruiser. Lacking control from their mothership, the sixty missiles threw themselves at the closest target - Mage-Captain Dionysios’
Master of Wisdom
.

The self-detonations of their sisters and the cataclysmic destruction of the
Unchained Glory
had hidden half of the salvo until it was far too late. They ripped across the last five light seconds in what seemed like moments. The Mages at their simulacrums lashed out with power, and the laser turrets from all three warships flashed their invisible energies.

Three missiles survived - guided by their suicidal computers, they slammed into the
Master of Wisdom
fractions of a second apart. Her armor was huge and magic guarded her core, but massive chunks of the cruiser vanished in plumes of vaporized metals.

Moments later, the crippled warship was back-lit by the detonation of her antimatter cores -
outside
the ship. The
Master
drifted, her engines gone, her weapons crippled, and her power source abandoned - but enough left for there to be survivors.

“Get me Dionysios,” Adamant ordered. “I need a status report!”

It took a moment to establish a channel, but the response was not from Mage-Captain Dionysios.

“This is Mage-Commander Caliver,” the voice of Dionysios’s XO told her. “Mage-Captain Dionysios… is dead. He… teleported the antimatter cores outside the ship - far enough to be safe. It… was too much for him.”

Adamant had seen the wreckage left when an amplified Mage over-exerted him or herself.
Master of Wisdom’s
bridge had to be a preview of Hell.

“We’ll deploy engineers and medical teams immediately,” she told Caliver. “We’ll have shuttles to you in ten minutes.”

“Understood,” the Mage-Commander said quietly, coughing against unseen smoke. “Thank you.”

Grimly, Mage-Commodore Jane Adamant turned back to her screen. For the first time since closing with the Seventh Cruiser Squadron, she had time to look at the overall situation.

The remnants of the Seventh were still running. She’d deal with that in a moment. The Ardennes System Defense Force was in even worse shape. Six of their ships were gone - either destroyed in the mass salvo she’d launched or taken out by Isabel and Jakab.

The remainder had ceased accelerating, and were accompanied by data codes notifying her that they’d surrendered and Marine boarding shuttles were on their way. That battle had begun and ended while they’d fought Cor.

“All right,” she said aloud. “Record for transmission to the remaining Seventh Cruiser ships:

“This is Mage-Commodore Jane Adamant. Your surrenders are accepted if you do the following immediately upon receipt of this transmission: you will stand down your engines and weapons and evacuate your amplifier chambers. Once this is complete, you will stand down from General Quarters and re-activate the external command access to your internal systems.”

She looked at the wrecked hulk of the
Master of Wisdom
. They’d been lucky, but there were still going to be hundreds - possibly thousands - of dead aboard the cruiser.

“These terms are not negotiable. Failure to comply will be met with the destruction of your vessels.”

#

Even in daylight the deaths of starships were visible from the world below. Damien was grateful for the auto-darkening windows of the gunship as the sky above them lit up with white fire, and he checked the relay from the Ardennes military scanners.

“That’s it then,” he said quietly as he studied the vectors and positions of the warships. “Four of Cor’s ships have surrendered, as has what’s left of the ASDF. The Protectorate controls Ardennes space.”

“Shouldn’t that basically end this whole game?” Amiri asked from beside him. Her voice was also pitched quietly - he could hear her over the interior noise of the helicopter, but the Freedom Wing fighters in the rest of the passenger compartment probably couldn’t.

“In a logical world, yes,” Damien told her. “But the main advantage of the high ground is the ability to drop rocks, and we want to keep everything down here intact.

“So a ground assault becomes the only way, and Versailles’ missile defenses…” he shrugged. “I don’t expect Vaughn to tamely roll over. That’s why we’re moving.”

The two cruisers that had taken out the ASDF were still on his original estimated time-table and had just made turnover. That put them five hours out. The Wing was moving into position, ready to deploy well in advance of their arrival - before Vaughn would, hopefully, expect any attack.

“Montgomery, we’ve got a problem,” Leclair’s voice cut into their conversation. She was transmitting over his headset,
very
careful to be sure no-one could hear it. “Take a listen to this.”

The cyborg pilot relayed the voice clip into his headset.

“All pilots be advised, this is Nouveaux Versailles Air Traffic Control. Due to the attack currently taking place above us, a no-exemptions no-fly zone has been established above Nouveaux Versailles. All flights are to divert to Atterrissage. Any aircraft entering Nouveaux Versailles airspace will be shot down without warning.

“I repeat…”

Leclair cut off the transmission.

“The Phantoms can’t hide their signatures enough to fly into the city without being detected,” she warned him. “We were relying on being able to look like civilian aircraft.”

“I know,” Damien reminded her. “We’re going to need to re-assess. Do we have any vehicles in position near the city?”

“Everything we had has already been commandeered for the ground teams we already have in place,” Leclair told him. “Looks like they’re drawing the no-fly line ten kilometers outside even the suburbs. That’s a hell of a long way to walk, Montgomery.”

“I don’t care where Vaughn’s people draw the line,” Damien said dryly. “Assuming they’ll shoot at us when they
see
us, how close
can
you get us?”

The pilot considered for a long moment as the gunships swept closer.

“We can get into the suburbs,” she finally said. “We’ll still have ten, fifteen, kilometers to go, but we can rendezvous with some of our existing people and, well, commandeer vehicles if needed.”

“All right,” Damien considered, glancing at the map. That would still be pushing the timing. “Next question. How close can
you
get
me
?”

He wasn’t entirely sure
which
package of augments Leclair had received from her Legatan masters, but even the basic set would give her faster reaction times and better perception than the rest of the pilots. Presumably, since the Augment had been sent to train pilots and fly gunships, she had a piloting-oriented suite that should make her
much
better.

“That depends,” she admitted. “How comfortable are you with them seeing us, and with them shooting at us?”

“The gloves are off, Miss Leclair,” Damien told her. For him, the statement was as literal as figurative - the long black gloves he normally covered the runes on his hands with had been left behind at the base. “I am
perfectly
comfortable with both being seen and being shot at. They may be surprised at the results of the latter.”

That managed to surprise a sharp chuckle from the pilot.

“I don’t think I can get us all the way to the Command Center,” she told him. “The Center has its own defenses, and I’m not sure we want to play with surface-to-air
lasers
. But the Central District’s towers impede its line of sight. I can get us… a kilometer or so away?”

“Pass the orders for everyone else to land safely and move on the missile defenses,” Damien instructed after a moment’s thought. “Then take us all the way in.”

#

Damien moved forward as they approached the city, displacing the co-pilot into the passenger compartment as he took the only seat available next to Leclair. The Augment spared him a quick look, nodded for her co-pilot to leave, and then returned her attention to the air outside them.

Nouveaux Versailles, with its glittering glass skyscrapers and crude concrete apartment buildings, was a solid block on the horizon, rapidly growing in front of them. The other gunships were barely visible blurs, speed and chameleon coatings helping to render them indistinct if you didn’t know what to look for.

The Hand
did
know what to look for, so he caught the moment when the other eleven aircraft broke off, diving down to disgorge their cargo of Freedom Wing assault squads into the city’s suburbs without detection.

From here, Damien could spot the ‘apartment buildings’ on the exterior of the Central District that housed Nouveaux Versailles’ concealed anti-air defenses. In the current environment, much of the pretense built into the structures was gone. Radar dishes had emerged from the roofs, and panels that had appeared to be apartments had slid aside to expose the racks of surface-to-air missiles.

“Everybody hold on,” Leclair said over the PA. “We’re going in low, we’re going in fast, and if you lose your lunch, you’re fucking cleaning it up!”

Damien had enough time to check that he was fully buckled in and to swallow hard before the Legatan pilot demonstrated why she was the only one going any further.

She started by turning
off
the helicopter rotors. For a heart-stopping several seconds, the Phantom dropped like a stone, plummeting towards the ground.

Then she re-engaged the engines and shot forward. They were, at most, twenty meters above the ground. The Hand in her co-pilot seat could
see
the people on the streets taking cover as the gunship ripped forward, the wind kicked up by their motion sending objects flying and shaking trees apart.

“And they’ve got us,” she said aloud, a tiny gesture of her head pointing out an icon on the dashboard flashing red - the radar had passed the detection threshold.

“You fly,” Damien told her. “Leave the missiles to me.”

He’d barely finished speaking before the first set launched. The four ‘concealed’ SAM sites in their line of sight fired simultaneously. Two missiles launched into the air from each site, sonic booms echoing out from their hulls as their engines flashed to full life.

Their speed saved none of them. For only the second time since arriving on the planet, Damien triggered
all
of his runes. His entire body lit up with a gentle warmth as energy channeled through the five Runes of Power on his torso and arms, doubling and redoubling, again and again.

With a smile, he reached out with his power and snuffed the missiles out. Each pair died together, moments after each other, their crumpled remnants falling harmlessly to the ground.

“
Son of a…
” Leclair cursed as the threats disappeared from the radar. “How did you…?”

“Magic,” he replied calmly. “Watch your flying,” he ordered, and turned his attention back to the exterior of the aircraft as the SAM sites launched again.

This time, each site launched
six
missiles - and he didn’t let them get nearly as far. With a sweep of power, he flung the first set
back
into its launchers. The others made it further out, and he crushed them into harmless debris a second time.

There were fail-safes built into the missiles to stop them detonating too close to their launchers. Fail-safes meant to keep them from triggering in any circumstance except hitting their target. They worked perfectly - on five of the six missiles.

The sixth slammed head-on into the rack of missiles it had launched from and detonated. Sixty more SAMs followed a moment later, gutting the concealed launch site as a dozen tons of high density chemical explosives went off.

“One down,” he said grimly. “Are we clear?”

Leclair ducked them into between two apartment buildings, diving them down a side street half a dozen meters off the ground.

“I am
so
glad I didn’t push my luck with you earlier,” she told him, then pulled the aircraft to a sudden halt that left him gasping for breath against his restraints.

“And yes, we’re clear,” she finished. “This is our stop.”

#

Stepping outside of the gunship onto thankfully solid ground, Damien made sure his wrist computer was online, and linked into the Freedom Wing’s communications network.

“Alpha, status report,” he requested.

“You rang the doorbell nice and loud,” Armstrong replied. “We’re moving against the surface-to- space and surface-to-air sites now. They may not have been expecting us, but everyone was on edge - they’re dug in and fighting hard.

“They’re also under-equipped and outnumbered,” she continued. “Zu kept his word - Iota confirms orders have gone out for the military to stay in their barracks. We’ve been identified as ‘Mars-sanctioned special operatives’.”

“That’s what you are now,” Damien reminded her. “Keep your people playing nice - let’s do this cleanly.”

“I get it, Montgomery,” the Freedom Wing’s leader replied. “No atrocities, no reprisals. Just… bring down Vaughn.”

“We’ll all do our jobs,” the Hand promised, glancing around the empty streets. “Keep me in the loop, we’re going in.”

Amiri and Leclair had been extracting and organizing the half-dozen troopers with them as he spoke to Alpha, and he now had a small, eight person, squad in medium armor and all packing various degrees of heavy weapons.

Two of the troopers had backpack-powered battle lasers matching Amiri’s, and the other four were armed with Legatus’ finest multi-purpose firearm, a heavy battle rifle with a magazine-fed under-barrel grenade launcher.

Leclair was apparently following a similar ‘gloves-off’ approach as Damien was. She was carrying a drum-magazine-fed, fully-automatic, thirty millimeter grenade launcher. It was a weapon the Legatans made exclusively for the use of Augments. For anyone else, it was a belt fed tripod-mounted weapon.

Damien smiled grimly as he looked over his team. He wore the same body armor as them, but wasn’t visibly armed.

“What do you need us to do?” Leclair asked. Unlike her men, she clearly knew who the most dangerous person on that street corner was.

“Keep up,” he ordered flatly, and took off.

#

Whoever was in command of security for the Command Center hadn’t taken the chance that Damien’s team had landed so close to them by accident. They came around the corner to find a pair of armored personnel carriers rolling straight towards them - and the heavy machine guns mounted on the vehicles opened fire immediately.

The bullets ran into the shield of solidified air Damien was maintaining in front of them, ricocheting away as if they’d hit a solid wall. They intensified the fire, but he barely felt the impacts.

“On my count,” he told his squad. Understanding his intention, Amiri hefted her laser and took aim. The Freedom Wing fighters followed suit a moment. “One, two… three.”

On three, he shattered the air shield and threw its pieces at the APCs. The machine guns stuttered and jammed. He knew from his training that with the lack of anything actually
physical
blocking the barrels, the modern weapons would clear themselves in moments - but they had a few seconds of silence.

Three battle lasers and five grenade launchers fired into that silence. Full power shots from the battle lasers required a full minute to cool - but also applied a level of force equal to several kilograms of TNT.

The modern, Legatus-built, armor-piercing grenades, on the other hand, simply went clean through the APCs armor before detonating
inside
their crew and passenger compartments.

One vehicle was, to all intents and purposes,
gone
- ripped to pieces by the laser hits. The second was still intact… but an empty hulk, its crew and interior electronics shattered by explosions inside the armor.

“Move,” Damien ordered, leading the way past the burned-out wreckage towards the Command Center. Every second they delayed was time for the defenders to get ready for them.

Past the APCs, they rounded another corner to see the slightly larger than usual office tower built on top of the Ardennes Planetary Command Center. Today, any pretense had been abandoned. Planters and glass had disappeared behind thick metal barricades that had risen from the ground, and heavy fixed weapons - mini-guns and automatic grenade launchers - had emerged from hiding places to join them.