Starship's Mage: Episode 5 (13 page)

“All ships confirm minimum safe distance,” another voice reported. “We are fully clear.”

“Fire tube one,” the soft contralto of the
Gallantry
’s captain ordered.

A flash of light struck out from the cruiser. At thirteen thousand gravities, the missile crossed four kilometers in a blink of an eye, a bright streak that didn’t, quite, connect the two ships.

Then the warhead detonated. A filter automatically darkened, shading the watcher’s eyes from the glare of a one gigaton antimatter explosion.

When the light faded, nothing remained of the old ship, vaporized in a single moment.

Damien blinked away tears, and felt Kelly cuddle up to him.

“It’s sad,” she said softly. “It’ll be better when we get to Tau Ceti and see the new ship the Captain’s been promised.”

“I’m not coming to Tau Ceti,” Damien admitted. Evacuating the ship had been a rush. Now was the first moment of relative quiet he’d had with Kelly, for all that he knew it was probably the worst possible time.

“You’re not?” Kelly sounded a lot calmer than he’d been afraid of.

“I’m going with Stealey,” he told her awkwardly. “She knows someone who can train me in my gifts, and then I think I’m going to be working with her. Trying to make the Protectorate a better place.”

The engineer turned away from him, and he laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“We’re spacers, Damien,” she told him after a long pause. “I always knew we would never last forever. Always figured you’d find some cause that would drag you away – you’re that type. I just hoped we would have more time.”

“Me too,” he admitted. “I always seem to be leaving people behind, wherever I go. I’m going to miss you.”

“But not enough to stay.” It wasn’t a question. She laid her hand on top of his and squeezed hard. “I get it, Damien.” Her voice was choked with unshed tears. “I get it. But with everything else, it hurts.”

He wrapped her in his arms.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

#

Damien walked through the unmarked stone corridors Alaura had led him to in silence. The walls pressed in on him oppressively, and he honestly wasn’t sure where they were. The underground facility they had entered was
immense
, but it wasn’t as if the Protectorate didn’t have dozens of facilities that would meet that description.

They’d spent sixteen days jumping, so they could be almost anywhere in the half of the Protectorate on this side of Sol. Alaura had taken an almost childish delight in
not
telling him where they were going, and they arrived on planet via a Marine drop shuttle – which noticeably lacked such amenities as windows.

Now the Hand led the way through the tunnels with calm assurance, while Damien tried not to be distracted by the complex twists of silver runes snaking across the walls and roof around them. They moved too quickly for him to read them, but they seemed to be an amplifier matrix of a scale he could barely comprehend.

The runes and the Hand led him to the same place, and they stepped out into a single massive chamber at the heart of the mountain, and Damien gasped in shock.

The air above them was filled with a scale model of a star system. Everything from the sun at the center, to the three massive gas giants, to the asteroid belts and even, he was sure, the tiniest of ships was duplicated in floating molten silver sand that carried every minutiae of the reality of the system. It was a simulacrum, but unlike anything he’d ever seen.

“It affects most people who see it for the first time,” an amused deep voice told him, and Damien looked up to see the only occupant of the room. He was a tall man, with silver hair but an unlined face, and he stood before a throne carved from the solid stone of the mountain – a throne that all the runes of the amplifier and the simulacrum ran to.

“This is the man I meant,” Alaura Stealey said softly. “The only person who could even begin to train a Rune Wright.”

“Damien Montgomery, be known to my master: Desmond Michael Alexander the Third, Protector of Man, and Mage-King of Mars.”

###

Damien’s story will continue in:

Mage-King’s Hand

Coming September 2015

If you liked the novella, please leave a review!

Follow Glynn Stewart on Twitter @faolanspen or on his blog at www.glynnstewart.com

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