Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (6 page)

By the time Damien had rejoined Alaura and her staff and watched the Marines shake themselves out into an honor guard under Sergeant Mitchell, the landing pad had cooled sufficiently for them to exit the Navy shuttle.

The Marines exited first, marching out in two neat files to link up with the Governor’s honor guard of Ardennes Special Security Service troopers in their black and red body armor. Alaura waited on the edge of the shuttle for a calm thirty seconds as the two sets of soldiers matched their lines and formed a corridor for Mars’ representatives to pass down.

With that complete, she released her gentle grip on Damien’s forearm and stepped forward. He waited another handful of seconds, then followed the Hand an appropriate meter or so behind her.

Mage-Governor Vaughn waited for them at the other end of the lines of soldiers, the heavyset blond man towering over both Damien and Alaura - by easily thirty centimeters in Damien’s case. He wore a red and black suit, clearly stylized to resemble the uniforms of the Security troopers around him.

“Welcome to Ardennes, My Lady Stealey, My Lord Montgomery,” Vaughn greeted them, taking Alaura’s hands in his and bowing over them. He gave Damien a firm nod, respectful but much more perfunctory than his greeting to Alaura.

“We came as soon as we learned of Karlsberg, Governor Vaughn,” Stealey told him. “A tragedy of this scale requires response. His Majesty sends his condolences.”

“A response is needed indeed,” the Governor replied. “Come, we have food and drink ready for you in the terminal. I find the shuttle trip from orbit the most draining part of any journey!”

“Envoy Montgomery will accompany us, of course,” Stealey said. “Do you have someone to take care of our things and my staff?”

“Of course!” Vaughn snapped his fingers and gestured. One of the security men approached, and Damien saw the uniform bore the icon of a scorpion embroidered onto the collar and shoulder.

“Lieutenant, please see that the Hand’s staff and things are taken to Government House. Master El-Hashem should have rooms prepared for them all.”

Mitchell materialized out of nowhere behind Damien. “Corporal Wu and I will accompany you and the Envoy, Lady Hand.”

It wasn’t a suggestion or a request, but Alaura accepted it with a smile and a calm gesture.

“Lead the way, Governor Vaughn,” she instructed.

#

Vaughn led them in to a luxury waiting lounge, likely usually reserved for wealthy travelers waiting for the shuttles to their liners or personal yachts. The pair of red and black uniformed security troopers guarding the entrance, however, made it clear the lounge was closed.

A server materialized as they entered and gently ushered the Marines to a set of seats near the door. Another young man quickly uncovered a small buffet table of still-warm food for the Governor’s guests and disappeared.

Damien followed Alaura’s lead carefully, taking a plate of food and then claiming one of the comfortable seats.

“We appreciate the welcome, My Lord Governor,” the Hand said after a few bites. “It’s warmer than a Hand often sees, let me assure you!”

“You are here to help find the people who murdered thousands of my citizens,” Vaughn said grimly. “Any aid I can provide, any resources or personnel, is yours for the asking. We
must
bring these murderers to justice.”

Either Damien’s suspicions of the man were misplaced, or Vaughn was one of the best liars he’d ever encountered. With everything he’d learned so far, he wasn’t prepared to take bets! The Envoy carefully tucked into the food, leaning back in his chair as he watched Alaura maneuver.

“We will need
all
of the information your defense force recorded about the attack,” she told the Governor. “I will need to inspect the site, both from the ground and the air.”

“All of our files are open to you, My Lady Hand,” Vaughn agreed instantly. “You may also want to contact Mage-Commodore Cor. Several of her cruisers were in orbit at the time, and their sensors are superior to the ADF’s destroyers.”

“Of course. And access to the site, Governor?”

“That may take some time,” the Governor said slowly. “The area was a uranium mine, Lady Hand. While the impactor itself appears to have been a purely kinetic weapon, the nature of the region has rendered the impact zone highly radioactive. Atmospheric heavy metal counts are dangerously high. I’ve ordered the entire area under a no-fly and no-entry zone until the dust settles.”

“The attack was enough of a tragedy,” he continued, “and since we’ve confirmed that all the survivors have been rescued, I hesitate to add more injury and death to the toll!”

“My people are well trained and equipped,” Alaura replied. “We will be perfectly safe.”

“I’m told that a storm is expected to sweep through the region for the next several days,” Vaughn countered. “The storm both makes it less safe to visit now, and safer to visit once it has passed. I beg you, Lady Hand, please wait until the storm clears the area - I could not bear to report any injury to yourself to the Mage-King.”

Damien eyed the Governor carefully, wondering. He didn’t think there was much that you could conceal at the impact site of a kinetic weapon, not with only a few days.

“Very well,” the Hand allowed slowly. “In that case, I will need to visit Nouveau Normandy tomorrow. If I must wait to see the latest atrocity, then I wish to review the files of those incidents and visit the aftermath.”

“The Normandy attacks were six months ago,” Vaughn objected. “We have all of those details in our files here.”

“I find context important, Governor,” Alaura replied. “Visiting the location of the attacks is important, as will be speaking to the people there. I do not doubt that all of these attacks are tied together - I
will
find the common link, Governor. And I will use it to drag Karlsberg’s murderers to justice.”

Vaughn’s impressive calm slipped a bit, his eyes dark for a moment that left Damien wondering if he’d imagined it.

“Of course,” he concluded softly. “As I said, all of our files, all of our resources, are at your disposal. I can have a plane ready to transport you to Normandy in the morning?”

“That will be sufficient. If you can make all of those files available to myself and Envoy Montgomery by the time we reach Government House, we can begin our background research.”

Michael Vaughn, Mage-Governor of an entire system of three billion souls, bowed as he rose to his feet.

“It shall be as you command, My Lady Hand.”

#

An entire floor of the eastern wing of Government House, the residence of Ardennes’ planetary Governor, had been turned over to Alaura Stealey and her party.

Mitchell and his men had already set up when Damien and Alaura arrived, and directed them into the rooms on the end of the wing, furthest away from the staircase up.

“Two guards on the staircase at all times,” he told them calmly. “Two more at this end,” he gestured toward the doors to their rooms. “None of the staff leave this section without an escort - neither of
you
leaves without at least two Marines.”

Damien smiled at the determined soldier and glanced over at Alaura.

“Who is in charge of this little party again?” he asked.

“I thought I was, but I see I have to reconsider this assumption,” she replied.

Mitchell had the grace to look somewhat abashed, but he didn’t waver.

“My job is to make sure you both survive, ma’am, sir,” he told them. “I won’t tell you how to do your jobs, but I will insist you do them escorted.”

“It’s fine, Sergeant,” Damien replied, still smiling. “You’ve swept for bugs?”

“The place was
crawling
,” Mitchell replied. “We’ve cleaned them out, but expect the terminals to be tapped. Keep anything confidential on your PCs.”

“Let’s not assume we’re clear yet,” the Envoy told him. “I’ll sweep for runic artifacts. The Governor would
expect
us to clear the technical bugs, but magical ones are rare and hard to find.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” the Marine in charge of their bodyguards admitted. He didn’t sound like he disbelieved Damien; he sounded more frustrated that there was a threat he hadn’t been aware of.

“They’re still rare,” Damien replied. “We’ve
tried
to keep the matrix designs under wraps, but I tend to assume we fail at such things.”

He open the door to his room and glanced in. A king-sized canopy bed held pride of place amidst a cushioned display of luxury that made him uncomfortable just
looking
at it.

“I’ll sweep for them,” he concluded. “Then we can talk.”

#

Wandering through the plushly carpeted halls of the rooms they’d been provided, Damien kept his eyes open for the energy flow of magic. Finding something like this wasn’t something that Alaura could do - while the Hands had runes tattooed into their flesh to make them stronger than other Mages, they still lacked the ability to see the flow of magic that separated Rune Wrights from the rest of the Mage population.

There were a few technological ways to detect runic artifacts - usually looking for heat signatures - but a cleverly designed rune matrix could avoid those. No matrix Damien had yet encountered could hide from him or the Mage-King; nor had any of them proven impossible to understand.

In the end, he found four ‘decorative’ ivory rods, each tucked into a flower vase in the corner of a room. He laid them out on the table, studying the meticulous hand-carved silver etchings on each of them.

“This is impressive work,” he told Mitchell. “It’s almost a shame.”

He removed the skintight glove on his right hand and held his palm out over the ivory rods. Before the Marine could ask what he was doing, energy flashed from the silver runes inlaid into his palm. Each of the ivory rods glittered with lightning for half a second and then a faint scent of burning enamel, reminiscent of a dentist’s visit, wafted into the air.

“Why can
you
see them and Alaura can’t?” Mitchell asked quietly, watching the smoke of burning ivory float through the air.

“Because exactly five people in the galaxy can,” Damien told him. “Two are minors.”

Mitchell, he knew, was cleared to know about the existence of Rune Wrights. His squad had been filled in before the mission - briefed from necessity, seeing as how protecting a Rune Wright was now part of their job.

“So that’s going to be a rude awakening for the Governor,” the Sergeant gestured at the ivory rods, now marked with a surprisingly attractive pattern of ash and silver.

“Indeed,” Damien glanced up as Alaura entered and waved her over. “We’re clear now, no eavesdroppers of any kind.”

“Good,” she said briskly. “What was your impression of Vaughn?”

“He’s hiding something at the impact site,” the Envoy replied instantly. “Not sure what he can expect to hide in a handful of days, but there’s
something
there he’s hoping will be gone by the time that storm passes.”

“I’ve checked the weather report,” Alaura explained grimly. “The impactor messed up the weather in the region badly - the ‘storm’ he mentioned is looking to be a full-blown hurricane. It may just obliterate any evidence we could hope to find.”

“Damn.”

“The good news,” Mitchell pointed out, “is that we
did
sweep pretty close to the impact site on our way down. Combined with the data Harmon can pick up from
Tides
, he should be able to at least confirm the Governor’s data.”

“Or suggest that it’s fake,” Alaura agreed. “Damien, I want you on everything we can pull on the impact, the video from both ADF and Commodore Cor - and everything you can find in local files on Vaughn.’

“Whatever you do,
don’t
link your PC into the local ‘net’,” Mitchell warned. “I
really
don’t trust this network.”

“Should we complain to the Governor about the bugs?” Damien asked. That fell under the category of ‘etiquette he hadn’t thought about’.

“No,” Alaura replied. “That we wiped them all out - and will continue to - is enough.” She glanced around the room. “Mitchell, I want you to stay in Nouveaux Versailles with Damien tomorrow. Pick your best Corporal and section to send with me to Normandy.”

The Sergeant sighed. “Are you hanging yourself out as bait, ma’am?”

“Not intentionally,” she told him. “Doesn’t mean no-one will take a shot at me. I need to get a feel for the locals - I’m not sure how big of a time bomb we’re sitting on here.”

“What do you need me to do while you’re in Normandy?” Damien asked.

“Sit on Vaughn,” she said bluntly. “Get through those files and get out into the city. We
know
Nouveaux Normandy had a rebel campaign. Nouveaux Versailles is the capital - if the pressure is building here, Vaughn has more problems than he thinks.”

#

Paranoid as she was feeling, Alaura hadn’t been able to come up with a reason not to let Governor Vaughn’s staff arrange her transportation. The young lady who’d booked the flight and the vehicle at the other end had been competent, if flustered by the pair of armored Marines looming behind the Hand.

Landing at the Nouveau Normandy Regional Airport, a six-strong security detail from the Ardennes Special Security Service was waiting to augment the four marines Mitchell had insisted accompany her.

The pale and young-looking Lieutenant saluted as he stepped forward.

“Lieutenant Avison, my lady,” he greeted her. “We’ve been assigned as your security detail in Normandy - while things are quiet, we don’t think we caught all of the rebels and a Hand is a massive target of opportunity for them.”

“I can understand that, Lieutenant,” she said calmly. “The Governor’s office arranged transportation?”

“Of course, ma’am,” he replied. “Regional Governor Fok asked me to extend his invitation for you to join him for lunch if your business allowed.”

Alaura nodded without speaking, gesturing for Avison to precede her. Fok had been Regional
Vice
-Governor until the elected Regional Governor had taken a sniper round through the center of her forehead. What intelligence she had suggested that Fok had done a good job cleaning up the mess of corruption his predecessor had left behind - quite likely part of the reason he hadn’t shared the woman’s fate.

“First, I wish to see where Marguerite Anderson died,” she told the Scorpion as they emerged into the light. A second team of six more security troopers was waiting outside, standing guard over a trio of locally built armored personnel carriers.

“I’m… not sure that’s wise, ma’am,” Avison said slowly. “It’s not in a good area of town.”

Alaura gestured at the sixteen armed men and women surrounding them and the three APCs.

“I somehow suspect we’ll be fine,” she replied dryly. “Given the precision and symbolism used by the rebels leading up to Anderson’s assassination, I suspect that
where
she died was as important as how and why. I need to see it with my own eyes to understand the context.”

From his conflicted expression, someone had told Avison that she wasn’t supposed to go there. Unfortunately for said someone, Avison was
maybe
a year out of college, and had no idea how to stop a Hand with the power to have him summarily arrested from going anywhere she wanted.

“Yes, ma’am,” he finally said helplessly.

#

It was a church. Technically, though Alaura would admit she wasn’t
entirely
clear on the distinction, it was probably a cathedral.

Certainly, it was a massive edifice of stone and glass, likely built when the first French and Quebecois settlers were laying the groundwork of the capital city of the province of Nouveaux Normandy. At some point in the two hundred years since, the glitter of the stained glass had been muted somewhat by what appeared to be a layer of transparent anti-ballistic armor.

The area around the cathedral was rundown, old houses giving way to row upon row of newer blocky gray concrete towers, the homes of the poor caught up in Vaughn’s Worker’s Placement Program.

The grounds of the old church itself, however, were clean. Simple grasses, tinged with the reddish hue of local plant life, marked neatly maintained lawns. The garbage and debris strewn through the streets of this, Normandy’s poorest neighborhood, were noticeably missing here.

Waving Avison and his Scorpions back, Alaura walked forward across the flagstone path leading to the gates. She’d seen video of the shooting, but the backdrop of plain concrete hadn’t revealed the nature of where Anderson had died.

Judging from her memory of the videos, though, Alaura stopped and studied the ground.
There
. The sniper round had been fired from high up and aimed down. A high caliber, high velocity bullet, it had left a visible wound even in the heavy stones that had been beneath the regional governor’s feet.

A single shot, as the reports said. There were no other damaged flagstones. Someone had tried to fill this one in with cement, but it still showed the crater where the bullet had hit.

“Why was she
here
?” Alaura muttered to herself.

“
Excusez-mois, ma fille
,” a soft voice interrupted. “
Puis-je vous aider
?”

“
Non
,” she replied without looking at the speaker. “
Merci beacoup, mais je suis a la recherche
.”

She didn’t need anyone helping her today. The speaker chuckled, however, and she looked up to see a white-haired man with pitch-black skin, clad in the uncomfortable looking frock of a Catholic priest.

“I am not blind, my daughter,” he said kindly, his English as unaccented as his French. “Nor deaf. You are wondering about our dear departed governor’s fate.”

“Pardon me, Monsieur…?”

“I am Father Eli Pelletier,” the old man said calmly. “I am the priest of this church, and it is my repair that you are examining so closely.”

“Surely an edifice of this scale has more than one priest,” Alaura objected.

Pelletier smiled, a tiny twinkle in his eyes.

“Such it does,” he admitted, “but I keep my hand in on the small things as much as the large. But, my child, you had a question - and since I am not blind, I know that amulet you wear means the answer may be important.”

Alaura hadn’t realized that the gold hand she wore around her neck had fallen out of her shirt while she was investigating the flagstone. With a subdued sigh, she slipped it back inside her clothes.

“I was wondering why Regional Governor Anderson was even here,” she admitted. “The neighborhood is not…” she gestured around, “where I would expect to find the Governor.”

“It is about… context,” Pelletier admitted. “History is why she was here. History is why the rebels chose this place, this day, to deliver their message.”

“A very pointed message,” Alaura replied.

“Miss Anderson
was
the message, not its recipient,” the priest told her. “You see, she was here to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Worker’s Placement Program. Twenty years before that exact day, Miss Anderson was selected from the ranks of the Prosperity Party’s Youth Wing to cut the ribbon on the first of a new complex of affordable housing towers.” He gestured to the blocks of concrete buildings behind him.

“Since, well, affordable housing towers are rarely photogenic, they had the pretty young thing cut the ribbon in front of the church - ably assisted by the mastermind of the program, Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn.”

Alaura looked at the patched over hole and traced its vector back in her mind. The shot had come from the roof of one of the WPP residential towers. She stepped over to line herself up with those buildings, and then looked out over the lawns of the cathedral.

“There’s only one spot on this lawn you can give a speech from, isn’t there?” she said quietly.

“The timing was exact,” Pelletier told her. “That was Anderson’s plan - and apparently, the rebels’. Twenty years to the minute from Vaughn’s announcement of the WPP, she was giving a speech celebrating the anniversary standing
right
where he did.”

“And then she died.”

“And then she died,” the priest confirmed.

#

Walking back to the APCs, Alaura noticed that Lieutenant Avison was on the radio, talking to someone. As she approached, however, he put the radio back into the vehicle and came to meet her. He stopped after several steps, staring in surprise at the priest she’d been speaking to.

“What’s Archbishop Pelletier doing out here?” he asked in surprise.

The Hand turned sharply to spot the priest she’d been speaking to standing just outside the doors to the cathedral. The old man bowed deeply to her, then disappeared into the building.

Apparently the ‘simple priest’ she’d been speaking to was the head of the Quebec Reformation Roman Catholic Church on Ardennes.

“I didn’t recognize the name,” she admitted aloud. “He was telling me about Madame Anderson.”

Avison nodded, but was silent for a moment afterwards. It seemed the young Scorpion was unwilling to speak about the Governor - likely due to the realization that speaking ill of the dead was unlikely to do his career any favors.

“Anything I should be aware of?” she finally asked, nodding towards the radio in the vehicle.

“What? Oh!” he responded, flustered. “Governor Fok was asking if I knew if you would be available to meet with him for lunch. He just finished an event not too far from here.”

Alaura checked her personal computer. She had a few more stops she wanted to make - locations of attacks both during the campaign that ended with Anderson’s death and the later, cruder, campaign - but she was also curious what kind of man had replaced Marguerite Anderson.

“I will have more sites to visit afterwards,” she warned the youth, “but yes, I believe I will be able to meet with the Regional Governor.”

Avison bowed slightly and gestured for her to get into the vehicle.

“I will let him know we’re on our way.”

#

It said many things about the life experience of Hands that Alaura Stealey was
intimately
familiar with how it felt when an electromagnetic pulse mine was used to disable an armored vehicle. First, there was the thump as the mine launched itself from the street, latching itself onto the bottom of the vehicle.

Then there was the sensation of every hair on your body standing up as the air filled with electrical energy, and the sparking, burning sound and smell as every system in the armored personnel carrier overloaded its EMP hardening and died.

Safety systems on the passenger compartment spared them, but the slight tinge of pork to the burning smell told her the driver and gunner, exposed to their own systems by necessity, had not been so lucky.

“We’re under fire!” she snapped. “Evac!”

“Ma’am, the vehicle is armor…”

“And a sitting target for people with heavy weapons,” Alaura overrode her Marine. Avison was still looking at her in shock. “
Move
!”

The Marines obeyed. As her Corporal pulled the APC’s emergency lever, blasting the exit hatch off with explosive bolts, Avison finally got past his own shock.

“Cover the Hand,” he ordered his men. “Us first,” he then told the Marines. “We’re more expendable.”

Even as Alaura wondered where Fok had found an
honest
man in a Scorpion uniform, two of Avison’s men charged out of the APC, followed by Avison himself. Alaura’s Marines followed the last of the Scorpions out, and then
finally
the Hand herself escaped.

The street was deserted. Sixteen-story concrete towers surrounded them, but they were ghost-like in their emptiness. The handful of storefronts were either boarded up or had metal shutters closed.

The armored personnel carrier was alone and obviously trashed: frozen in the middle of the street like some giant metallic bug. The lead vehicle was around the corner and gone, already out of sight.

The third APC was rolling up beside them, its gunner behind the pintle-mounted machine gun, sweeping the rooftops for threats.

“Into the buildings,” Avison ordered, clearly assessing the threat much as Alaura did. In the middle of the street they were in danger from snipers and rocket teams - and she didn’t expect whoever had set up an EMP mine in the street not to have a second wave waiting.

“Sir, what’s your—” the gunner on the third APC never finished his sentence. A rocket blasted down from a third story window and slammed into the vehicle, directly beneath the gunner’s seat. The entire vehicle vanished in a fireball of high-powered explosives.

“
Cover
!” Avison yelled, gesturing for Alaura to run for the building. The young Lieutenant had acquired an assault rifle on his way out of the APC and used it to return fire at the window the rocket had launched from.

Gunfire responded, and a second rocket slammed into the now-vacated stalled APC. Alaura’s Marines hustled towards a storefront, the Scorpions following while maintaining covering fire.

Two of the Ardennes Special Security Service troopers went down, one missing a significant chunk of his head.

Alaura’s Marines reached the nearest storefront, one with heavy metal shutters.

“Clear!” one of them yelled, slamming chunks of a pale purple putty on the shutter locks, then stepping back.

The thermite paste flashed blindingly bright, and then the Marines flung the shutters up to clear the way into the store. It was, Alaura noted absently, the kind of corner convenience store that showed up in poor neighborhoods across the Protectorate.

Shelves clattered to the floor as the soldiers threw together an impromptu barricade. The fire from the street had slackened off, but the attackers
would
follow up.