Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (9 page)

“From the rebels? So why would you trust it?”

“I don’t,” the Envoy replied dryly. “It is, however, one more starting place than I had
before
they planted it on me. I think that I have some research to do on our way to Normandy.

“And in the meantime,” he continued, turning back to Mitchell, “I believe we have some preparation to do. And Sergeant?”

“Yes, My Lord?”

“I suggest you pack for arrest and interrogation.”

#

The shuttle was in Nouveaux Versailles for less than twenty hours. It was eight in the morning, local time, when Damien and Mitchell boarded the Navy ship for the trip back to Nouveaux Normandy.

Several of the Marines promptly went back to sleep after strapping themselves in. Damien and Mitchell passed them, entering the semi-private ‘officers’ compartment’ between the main cargo bay and the cockpit.

The assault shuttle was designed to carry an entire platoon of Marines, either in exosuit battle armor or accompanied by a light tank. Mitchell’s single ten man squad were dwarfed by the cargo bay, but the officers’ compartment had the advantage of a computer setup designed for tactical deployments and strategic communications.

The Marine Sergeant blandly took up a position blocking the door to allow Damien to work in privacy. Something about the way he did it made Damien very sure the soldier knew that Alaura had given him the Hand and was making sure he could use it without interruption.

“Lieutenant,” Damien asked the pilot over the intercom, “can you hook me up with a direct link into the government network?” He paused. “For that matter, can we keep that completely separated from the shuttle’s systems?”

The Navy officer laughed.

“I’d appreciate the last, yeah,” he admitted. “The tactical setup back there has a fully separated computer network for just that reason. Should be linked in to the global-net already.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

Damien spent a few moments familiarizing himself with the computer system. The setup was designed primarily for communication and co-ordination, but was capable of handling a complex data search if you found the right tools.

He linked into the Ardennes planetary government’s databases, pulled up personnel files for the Ardennes Special Security Service and, after a short moment of hesitation, typed in “Colonel Elijah Brockson.”

The database churned for a moment, then flipped up an ‘Access Denied, Record Restricted’ message.

That
was strange. Apparently, even Brockson’s very
existence
was classified?

Damien typed in the access code the locals had provided him. Supposedly, he’d been provided full access to their systems, but the same message flashed up. Now it had an extra line - “Gubernatorial Seal.”

Most likely, if he hadn’t been typing in the exact name, the record would never have shown up in his search. Since he was looking directly for the man, however, he’d bounced up against a hard seal - one Vaughn had either implemented himself or had been done under his direct orders.

Glancing at both doors of the compartment and swallowing hard, Damien reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the Hand. The golden icon was light, no more than forty or fifty grams, but it seemed to hold the weight of worlds.

He turned it over in his hands. The Hand was a closed fist cast in gold, and he didn’t see any way to connect it to the computer at all.

“It needs to touch your palm. Warmest part of the body and the easiest spot for the gene scan,” Mitchell told him from the door. The Sergeant was eyeing the amulet with awed eyes. Somehow, despite the fact that Damien
knew
the Sergeant had seen Alaura’s Hand dozens of times, the icon was still awe-inspiring to the Marine.

It was
terrifying
to Damien.

Following Mitchell’s advice, he stripped off the skintight glove from his right hand. He stretched his fingers for a moment afterwards, watching the silver inlaid on his palm and forearms ripple gently. Finally, he placed the Hand in his palm and watched.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then, as the tiny golden symbol warmed from his hand, it shivered slightly and he felt a momentary prickle - and a connector port slid out of the thumb.

Damien wasn’t sure if he’d been expecting something more dramatic - or just nothing, the Hand not actually being his.

He took a deep breath and slipped the connector into the computer. It beeped, and ‘OVERRIDDEN’ flashed up on his screen across the ‘Access Denied’ message.

Even unlocked, Brockson had a very bland record - though interesting in its blandness. Up until five years ago, he had a normal-looking progression through the ranks, up to Captain at age thirty.

Then the first ‘Special Assignment - SOD’ entry popped up. Three months, no details, followed by a promotion. Several more ‘Special Assignments’ followed, until a year ago, accompanying his promotion to Colonel, was the note “Assignment - Commander, Special Operations Directorate.”

That was the last note in the file until very recently, when Brockson had been assigned as ‘Logistics Coordinator, Nouveaux Normandy Province’.

It looked like a lot of information had never made it into the files, but the latest position looked odd. Damien pulled it up. With the Hand overriding all security measures in the government system, the database happily informed him that while the posting was
backdated
to a week ago, it had been entered last night.

A few keystrokes brought up another database, this one the government records tracking official and civilian travel. Brockson had arrived in Nouveaux Normandy ten hours before Alaura had, accompanied by several cases of cargo under a Special Operations Directorate seal instructing that they were to be handled with care and not opened or exposed to heat.

Another, more local database, told Damien that Brockson had only
just
signed in at the Nouveaux Normandy Logistics Center this morning. He’d been in town for a full day before checking in at his supposed assignment - an assignment that hadn’t existed until
after
the attack on Alaura.

None of Damien’s briefing files had mentioned anything about a Special Operations Directorate, either. Searching for the Directorate in the government ‘net, however, returned nothing except a list of personnel.

Any further files on missions or tasking was clearly not kept connected to the net. A list of personnel, however, combined with the passenger tracking system for air traffic and a paramilitary force’s general preference for locating its people, gave Damien a starting point.

The Directorate’s personnel were scattered across the planet, usually in singletons. Running his track into the past he found clusters, times and places where anything from five to twenty SOD officers and personnel had met up for several days or weeks.

Some of the dates and times looked familiar, and Damien pulled up one of his briefing files - and promptly swore.

“Sir?” Mitchell asked, surprising by the sudden exclamation.

“Vaughn is a murderous fucking son of a bitch,” the Envoy said bluntly, gesturing towards the screen. “We
thought
it looked like there were two terrorist groups - one precise urban guerilla movement, one wanton terrorist faction.”

“It looks like we were right,” he continued grimly, “except that the wanton terrorists work for the Governor.”

#

The sight of the red and black uniforms of the Scorpions waiting when Damien exited the shuttle sent a shiver down his spine. The Special Operations Directorate was a unique group with its own crimes, but he had to wonder about
any
organization that contained something like the SOD.

For that matter, he had his suspicions about just how Vaughn had kept the peace as he quietly choked every last penny out of his planet - and the Ardennes Special Security Service was high on his mental list of suspects.

A squad of the Scorpions were providing security for the pad Nouveaux Normandy Air Control had directed them to, and a trio of officers were waiting at the edge of the pad.

The pad was still too hot for them to step onto, but Damien wasn’t feeling overly patient. Despite Mitchell’s uncomfortable look at Damien heading out of the shuttle, the shield he was holding protected him completely.

He’d also extended it around the two Marines Sergeant Mitchell had sent out immediately after him, though their exosuit battle armor meant it was likely redundant.

The expression of the lead Scorpion officer as Damien walked calmly across the still steaming concrete surface, accompanied by the two-meter-plus hulks containing his bodyguard, was worth every erg of energy the shield took to maintain.

“My Lord Envoy,” the large black man, apparently unused to being the one intimidated, greeted Damien with a slow salute. “I am Major Ken Leblanc, commanding officer of the Thirty-Seventh Special Security Battalion.”

“A pleasure, Major, though I’ll admit the circumstances could be better,” Damien told him, returning the salute. The 37th, according to his research, was one of the two Security Battalions actually housed in Nouveaux Normandy.

Damien kept walking, forcing the Scorpion officer to fall in at his side. The two junior officers were brushed aside by the bulk of the exosuited Marines, falling in at the end of the little procession.

“How can the Ardennes Special Security Service help you, My Lord?” Leblanc finally asked.

“Two of the men who were with Hand Stealey survived, correct?” Damien replied, stepping out into the streets of the city and glancing around. Nouveaux Normandy’s nicer areas rivaled even Mars for glitz and glass, but he could see the concrete blocks of the apartments built for the Work Placement Program even from here.

“That’s right,” Leblanc confirmed. “Lieutenant Avison and his squad were from my battalion.”

“I’ll need to speak to those men, immediately if possible.”

“They’re in protective custody,” Leblanc said slowly. “I’ll need to get confirma…”

“No, you won’t,” Damien told him flatly. “I
will
speak to them. Now.”

“I…” Leblanc trailed off as Damien turned to face him.

There was no way the man had risen to the rank of Major without getting his hands dirty on this planet. Damien held that thought in his mind as he met the gaze of the much larger, more physically intimidating man, and removed his Warrant from his pocket.

“Do you need to see my Warrant, Major?” he asked quietly. “Or do you accept my authority as your Governor has?”

Leblanc finally shook his head.

“No, My Lord Envoy,” he admitted. “We have a vehicle waiting for you, this way, sir.”

#

The armored limousine Leblanc provided was subtler than the armored personnel carriers they’d ferried Alaura around in. That subtlety was somewhat ruined by the pair of exosuited Marines jogging on either side of it.

By the time they reached the Ardennes Special Security Service’s main Normandy base, Mitchell and his Marines had ‘borrowed’ the vehicle Leblanc’s security detail had arrived in and caught up to them. The big Major looked unimpressed when the transport truck pulled up and disgorged Marine black and gold uniforms, not Scorpion red and black ones.

“Sergeant, have your men wait here and prep for an arrest,” Damien murmured. “Make sure that Colonel Brockson does
not
leave the base while I’m here.”

“Of course, sir,” Mitchell agreed. “You
are
taking an escort in, correct?”

“
Not
Braid and Coral,” the Envoy told him, glancing at those two worthies in their two meter suits of battle armor. “It would be a little much,” he finished dryly.

“I’ll accompany you myself, My Lord,” Mitchell told him.

“Just make sure about Brockson,” Damien ordered.

The Sergeant nodded and gestured his two section leaders over to him.

There were a few minutes of quiet muttering, while Leblanc was looking more and more uncomfortable, and then Mitchell and two Marines joined Damien.

“Let’s go, Major,” Damien told Leblanc.

“Your men will have to leave their weapons at the front security desk,” the Major said as they headed towards the entrance to one of the several mid-sized office buildings that anchored the Scorpion base.

“No, they won’t,” Damien told him affably. “Please make sure of it before there are any misunderstandings.”

The Major looked like he’d been chewing on lemons, but when they reached the security desk he bluntly ordered his people to issue Mitchell and his Marines passes for their weapons.

“This way,” he said once they were through, and led the way down into the bowels of the building, finally passing through an - open - heavy security door into what was unquestionably a prison.

“I thought they were in protective custody, not a dungeon,” Damien observed.

“There is nowhere safer on the planet than down here, My Lord,” Leblanc replied. “I assure you, they are being made as comfortable as possible.”

Finally reaching the section of the empty underground prison the two soldiers were in, Damien conceded at least that point. Someone had made an effort to re-calibrate the lights from their harsh institutional brightness to something more tolerable, and the rough prison cots had been replaced with comfortable looking beds and couches. Several cells, behind a secondary security door, had been converted into an apartment.

That secondary security door was still sealed with both mechanical and electrical locks and guarded by four men in medium body armor.