Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (16 page)

Mage-Captain Denis Romanov scanned the apartment building hallways as he made his calm, implacable way toward Roslyn Chambers’s thirteenth floor apartment. He didn’t spot any sign of whatever agents had dropped the girl off—
assuming
the creepy old man Montgomery had sadly not been able to choke to death had actually kept his word and returned her.

The place the young Mage had found was on par with where Denis had grown up. Cheap but well maintained, with residents and owners who clearly cared. While the apartment building was only thirty stories to the three-hundred-story building in Ireland his mother had lived in, it had the same feel of “poor but decent”.

The kind of place that smart people on Mage-stipends or other social assistance lived in. The pension of a Marine Mage-Lieutenant killed in the line of duty wasn’t nothing, but health had stopped his mother working.

It was only when he’d been about to sign up himself that Denis had realized that the massive friendly man at the end of the hall who’d always had candy or advice for him, whichever he’d needed, was a vet—and a Marine who’d served under his father.
No one
had been willing to tangle with the Sarge to harass Mrs. Romanov.

He smiled at the thought as he exited the stairwell onto the thirteenth floor. The last letter he’d got from his mother was that their delicate, decades-old dance had finally resolved with ex-Sergeant Wil Harrison asking Jessica Romanov to marry him. Time and past time, in her son’s opinion. Harrison had
always
been his second father, their wedding just made it official.

The hallway outside Chambers’s apartment brought back less-pleasant memories. There was a still in the air, an absence of traffic and a smell like a storm about to break. A human storm. The smell was nervous sweat.

Denis paused right outside the apartment door and listened.

“Come out,” he finally ordered aloud. “I can
smell
you, I can
hear
you, I may as well be able to
see
you.”

Three young men, two in torn old T-shirts and jeans and one in
much
nicer clothes, a local designer label from the looks of it, emerged from around the corner. All three were carrying, the two minions with cheap revolvers that might have arrived on Tau Ceti with the colonists, and the boss with a neat little concealable auto-pistol that was
completely
illegal on Tau Ceti, even
with
a license.

“I don’t know what you twinkles
think
you’re up on,” the leader told Denis, “but this is my vixen’s hole, and the comings and goings are making me
witchy
. What up?”

Twinkles
, as Denis understood current Tau Ceti slang, covered anyone in a suit or uniform that looked out of place or done up.
Vixen
he could guess. Apparently O’Kane, if the boy was who Denis thought he was, wasn’t actually
aware
he was Chambers’s
ex
-boyfriend.

Keeping his hands where the
idiots
could see them, he turned so that his uniform—
including
the Mage medallion at his throat, though the likelihood they knew what the swords meant was low—was fully visible.

“You would be O’Kane,” he said flatly. “
I
am Marine Mage-Captain Denis Romanov. I grew up in a building like this—it seems a peaceable place and I don’t want to start trouble. I
will
finish it.

“Now, the last
I
heard,” he continued, “was that Roslyn told you, specifically, to fuck off. Now, normally, I suspect the young miss could enforce her own orders, but you’re rubbing me the wrong way. So. Fuck. Off.”

“Marine” would normally be enough. “
Mage
” would normally be enough. Apparently, O’Kane was either angrier or stupider than he looked, however, as he lifted the gun to point it at Denis’s head.

His grip was better than a lot of wannabe gangsters, a proper two-handed stance that gave him enough stability that he might have even managed to
hit
.

Of course, his two flunkies
evaporated
the moment he pointed a gun at Denis, and the Marine simply smiled and snapped his fingers.

A tiny blade of force sliced the gun in half immediately in front of O’Kane’s fingers, leaving the kid holding only the grip of the auto-pistol as the barrel and extended magazine clattered on the floor.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” Denis said calmly. “Chambers is now a Navy candidate, if you hadn’t heard. We watch our own. Walk.”

Staring at the half of a gun in his hand, the youth backpedaled several steps, then turned and fled after his minions.

#

Knocking on the young woman’s door garnered no response, but the lock turned out to be…lacking. Making a mental note to see someone install a better lock on her door—this one hadn’t kept out the Keeper agents and probably wouldn’t have even stopped O’Kane—Denis hot-wired it and entered the apartment in under ten seconds.

The suite was small and plain, lacking almost anything in terms of personal decoration. It had a kitchen, a sitting/dining area with cheap furniture anyone who’d grown up poor in the entire Protectorate would recognize the ancestry of, and doors leading into the bathroom—open, showing a plain white space, with a counter covered in cosmetics the only sign the apartment was lived in—and the bedroom, which was closed.

Denis rapped on the bedroom door, then, unsurprised by the lack of response, pushed it open and entered the room. The furniture was of the same ilk as that in the living room, even Chambers’s bedroom lacking in much of personal touch beyond clothing strewn across the floor.

The Marine breathed a sigh of relief to see the young woman on the bed. She’d been dropped there in the same clothes she’d been in when she’d been playing distraction and, thankfully, didn’t look too much the worse for wear.

Just unconscious.

Part of the light combat gear he was wearing included a pouch of various medical patches, including a stimulant patch that he figured should counteract whatever sedative they’d given her. He peeled the test patch off the back, confirmed she wasn’t allergic with it, then applied the main patch to her neck.

It took a few minutes to kick in, so he carefully draped the blanket over her so she was covered, and stepped back to a distance he hoped was nonthreatening to wait.

Chambers convulsed upward after a minute, clutching the blanket to her as she stared around in panic.

“What the
fuck
?”

“You were kidnapped,” Denis told her gently. “Once they’d got what they wanted from Montgomery, they dumped you at home. He sent me to check on you.”

“Fuck,” she repeated, then blinked as nausea clearly swept over her.

A few moments later, she was in the bathroom and Denis was calmly waiting on the couch. The
stim
wouldn’t be causing this reaction this quickly, so whatever they had given her had to be nasty.

Finally, she emerged once again from the bathroom, rubbing her mouth with a towel and a faint greenish tinge to her face.

“I’ve probably had worse wake-ups,” she admitted. “But not that I can think of. You’re…Montgomery’s Marine watchdog, right?”

“Close enough.” He chuckled. “You okay?”

“I’ll live. Last thing I remembered is being grabbed and, well”—she touched her neck—“stinging.”

“Hypospray from behind,” Denis concluded. “Professionals.”

“What did they
want
?”

“They used you as a bargaining chip to get Montgomery to meet with them,” he told her. “He did. It didn’t go the way they wanted, but they let you go regardless.” He smiled grimly. “I think they realized they had zero chance of hiding you from us for more than a day, so it was give you back or kill you. And the Hand would have ripped the system apart if they’d killed you.”

“Why? I’m nobody,” she snapped.

“They grabbed
you,
an innocent, to get to
him.
That would have been enough,” the Marine pointed out. “Plus, he thinks you have potential. Signed a letter to get you into the Navy if your nose is clean at intake. Not that that seems to be getting you to
keep
your nose clean.”

She sighed.

“I guess I didn’t really believe him, to be honest. I ended up in youth juvie for a reason. Pretty much fucked up everything.”

“And the Hand, for his own reasons, has staked a portion of his own personal reputation with the Navy to open a new door for you,” Denis pointed out. “Though, admittedly, right now he feels guilty for dragging you into this. You weren’t supposed to get
this
caught up.”

“Fucking bullies,” she sighed. “At every level, I guess. From tenement gang lords to government conspiracies. How do you deal?”

“You really asking me?”

“Yeah,” she said after a moment’s thought. “You’re a soldier, an officer, a Mage. Everything I wanted to be, that you all seem to think I
can
be.”

“One day at a time, one asshole at a time,” he told her. “You don’t stand by when someone’s being pushed down. You don’t walk away from someone calling for help. You put on the uniform, you face the bad guys. You check in on the poor kid who got sedated because your enemies saw a weakness,” he finished with a sigh.

“No one is going to
make
you sign up,” Denis reminded her. “But the Navy needs every Mage who can meet their standards, and everything I’ve seen says you can—if you grow up a little.”

She flushed and stiffened at that.

“I can do whatever it takes,” she told him.

“Good. Then you can make it five months without getting arrested or kidnapped again, can’t you?”

She flipped him a very old universal hand gesture, but she was laughing as she did it. Denis would make sure a medic swung by later, but it looked like Chambers was going to be okay.

The next morning saw a weary Damien Montgomery looking out the massive window of his observation-deck office aboard the battlecruiser
Duke of Magnificence
, studying the massive shipyard tucked in behind the defensive constellation shielding Tau Ceti
e
, a large world with barely tolerable gravity, from the system’s debris fields.

Where Sol and Legatus, the other key shipbuilding centers of the Protectorate, had spread their construction capacity to multiple locations across their systems, the debris danger in Tau Ceti was such that the yards were concentrated in the lee of the
e
constellation. While the Tau Ceti
System
was only the third-largest producer of sublight and jump-capable spaceships in the Protectorate, these yards
were
the biggest single
shipyard
in the Protectorate.

In the center of his view was the nearly complete hull of the Royal Martian Navy’s thirteenth battleship, soon to be christened
Thunder of Glorious Freedom
. While
Thunder
had been the only battleship under construction when she was started, shortly before Damien became a Hand, he could see the skeletons of two more beginning to take shape beyond her.

Three more were under construction in Sol, along with more…covert projects.
Someone
—Damien had his guess and a lot of circumstantial evidence to back it—had tried to trigger a civil war between the system militias of two systems only a few months before. Similar agitators had been attempting to provoke planetary rebellions and crises across the Protectorate.

The Navy was expanding to deal with the threat. While some members of the Council had argued that battleships were unnecessary, that cruisers and destroyers were the best tool to keep the peace, the Mage-King commanded the Navy.

So, the battleships were being built, and a peacetime Navy slowly began to gird itself for a war they hoped they would never have to fight.

And while they did so, it fell to the Hands to make sure no one stabbed them in the back.

“So, we failed to track Winton,” he concluded aloud, not turning around to look at the other people in the room with him. “I’m not entirely surprised, but how exactly did he manage it?”

“He was picked up by a black car, went downtown, mixed it up with at least a dozen other identical black cars, and then eight of those cars randomized their VIN beacons,” Amiri told him, the bodyguard’s voice a mix between apologetic and impressed.

“It was prearranged,” she continued. “We managed to track and localize all eight cars eventually, but by then, they’d all been abandoned. VIN beacons and physical labels were destroyed and the vehicles had been flash-sanitized of any genetic traces.”

“That’s not a particularly survivable process for a car interior,” Romanov pointed out.

“No. The cars are write-offs. It was an expensive, though effective, way of thwarting pursuit.”

“Whether or not these people actually
are
a Royal Order constituted by order of one of the Mage-Kings, they have enough resources that they may as well be,” Damien pointed out. “Any one of the four Talon Sevens they fired at Andala cost as much as a dozen luxury cars.

“They have funds and resources to burn, and a disturbingly accurate threat profile for
our
capabilities. Winton knew I was a Rune Wright, for example,” he told them. “Captain
Romanov
was only cleared for that after I woke up. The existence of the Wrights is one of our most closely guarded secrets.

“What about Chambers?” he asked the Marine. “She’s all right? Any sign of whoever dropped her off?”

“She was unconscious for the whole affair,” Romanov replied. “Local cops and a couple of friends at the Asimov Marine barracks are going to keep an eye on her just in case, but she seemed like she was going to be fine.

“As for the people who dropped her off…nothing,” he said flatly. “The building’s security systems
exist
but are so full of holes and pre-planted worms, they probably automatically delete more footage than they save. Her return to the building isn’t recorded at all.”

“So, what we have learned is that our opponents are very capable, extremely well resourced, intimately tied into our own government…and that their damn ship wasn’t built in Tau Ceti,” Damien summarized aloud.

“We also know that the Mage-King is not involved,” Amiri said grimly. “Given how much access these people seem to have, that’s…not an insignificant win.”

Damien winced but nodded. She wasn’t wrong.

“The ship remains our best and clearest starting point,” he told them. “She’s a warship and a big one—the size of Sherwood’s new frigates or even a bit larger. There’s only so many shipyards in the galaxy that can build a six- or more million-ton starship.”

“Nine, now that Sherwood has bootstrapped themselves into the list,” Romanov confirmed.

“And three are in Sol,” Damien finished. “Two more are in Legatus, which…well, I’m unlikely to get access to the records for either, and I don’t think a conspiracy based in the Mage-King’s court would buy from them anyway.

“Sol is our best bet. No one there outside the conspiracy will even consider denying a Hand, and we have His Majesty for backup.” Looking away from the shipyard at last, he turned back to his staff.

“We’re going to wait for the Professor to get back and for
Duke of Magnificence
to be repaired, and then proceed to Sol.”

He grimaced.

“I’d prefer
not
to find my enemies in my home,” he said quietly, “but I’m afraid that’s
exactly
where they’re hiding.”

#

Damien found Mage-Captain Kole Jakab in his office aboard
Duke of Magnificence
, carefully rearranging the wall of medals and still images that he’d had to put away while the ship was being repaired. The
Duke
’s commanding officer was a tall man, with the pale skin of a lifelong spacer for all he was Terran-born.

“Good to be home, Captain?” the Hand asked from the doorway.

“Yes,” Jakab said simply. “Our yard people are the best, but you’re never
sure
you’ll get your command back intact when you hand her over.

“Come in.” He waved Damien to a chair, smiling as he placed his Martian Cross—the RMN’s second-highest award for valor—carefully in the center of the display, directly above the model of the ship.

He’d earned the Cross charging
through
hostile fire to make orbit of Ardennes to support Damien and the rebellion there.
Duke of Magnificence
had been one of the ships in position when Damien had ordered the Navy to bombard the command center if
he
failed to stop the madman who’d rigged bombs to blow up six of the planet’s largest cities.

Jakab hadn’t had to follow that order, as Damien had succeeded in stopping General Montoya from killing tens of millions of people himself, but the Hand would always have a soft spot for the ships that had stood ready anyway.

“You know you’re going to have to shuffle that aside shortly, right?” Damien asked the Mage-Captain, gesturing to the Cross. “His Majesty has every intention of pinning the Solar Star on you as soon as we’re back at Mars. After Antonius and the pirate rendezvous point…” He shook his head. “You earned it.”

“I disagree, personally,” Jakab replied. “I did my job.”

The Solar Star was the Royal Martian Navy’s
highest
award for valor, only awarded at the discretion of the Mage-King himself. Hands and Admirals could recommend it—and Damien had, in Jakab’s case—but only Desmond the Third could decide to actually award it.

“We stopped a war, Kole,” Damien told him. “His Majesty’s already hung the only honor I’ll take from him on me, so he’s going to stick the Star on you.”

“It is unwise to argue with one’s King,” Jakab admitted with a sigh.

“It is?” Damien asked with a smile. “I do it a lot. It’s part of my job.”

“And hence why you can get away with it,” the Mage-Captain told him, shaking his head as he made his way to his desk and gestured for Damien to sit. “What can I do for you, my lord?”

“Our investigations here have mostly drawn a blank,” the Hand admitted. “It’s time for me to return to Mars and for our investigation into the attack on Andala IV to proceed in Sol. Given the events in Andala, I’d rather return aboard
Duke
. How long until she’s ready to fly?”

“We made it here under our own power,” Jakab pointed out. “I could kick all of the yard staff out and be underway in twelve hours.”

“Which will leave you short, what? A quarter of your missile launchers still?” Damien asked.

“They’re all
installed
,” the Captain replied. “We could do the final hookups ourselves.”

“Assuming I let you finish your repairs, how long until you can fly?”

“A week,” Jakab told him. “We’re already at the point where all of the work that requires the hull to be open is done. We’re mostly on aligning and hookups now, but when you’re talking about systems that handle gigaton-range warheads, this needs to be done carefully.”

“We can spare a week,” Damien said. “I’m waiting on Professor Christoffsen anyway; he wasn’t planning on being back until your repairs were done, anyway.”

“Our repairs will be complete on schedule,” the Captain replied. “We can accelerate a few days if needed.”

“A week is fine, Captain.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Jakab paused. “You and your staff are back aboard then?”

“We are,” Damien confirmed. “We’re…still short Secret Service people until we’re back on Mars, so I’m probably going to keep Romanov for a bit.”

“That’s fine,” the Captain told him. “You’ll also want to meet with Lieutenant Commander Anita Torres. She’s the head of your new flag deck staff.” The Captain smiled. “I took the liberty of arranging for us to take on a military team for you as we finished repairs; Torres is actually on the flag deck now, checking to see if she needs to make any changes or updates while we still have a shipyard at hand.”

Damien had completely forgotten about the suggestion that he take on a Navy staff to support his security team and political staff and allow him to fully utilize
Duke of Magnificence
’s
flag deck instead of interfering directly from Jakab’s bridge.

“Well, that sounds like the best place for me to touch base with her,” he said. “Do you need anything from me, Captain?”

“Not today,” the cruiser commander replied. “I’d like to be briefed on whatever you have on the ship at Andala before we leave, though. Somehow, I suspect I’ll be meeting her.”

#

Despite having living aboard
Duke of Magnificence
for almost a year, Damien had only set foot on the flag deck once, when he’d received his initial tour. He was very familiar with the regular bridge, though, and the flag deck was one short stairwell away.

The two major command centers for the warship were ninety seconds’ brisk walk apart. At a run, abusing magic to control gravity, Damien figured he could make it under twenty if he had to. Since the bridge was also the simulacrum chamber that allowed access to the amplifier, that wasn’t an irrelevant point.

Like the bridge, the flag deck was sealed away behind heavy security hatches. Seeing them open for once, Damien realized he’d walked
past
the flag deck at least a dozen times without realizing it was there—closed hatches, even security ones, were not uncommon enough aboard the ship to draw attention on their own.

Today, though, the hatch was open and a fire team of four Marines stood guard outside it. All four wore the shoulder flashes of Romanov’s new company, which had been all but permanently assigned to Damien’s security. Having an entire company of over a hundred of Mars’s finest ground troops acting as glorified bodyguards bothered him, but he was no longer able to pretend he
didn’t
need security.

“Lieutenant Commander Torres is inside, my lord,” the Corporal in charge informed him. “We’re to keep everyone else out until she’s finished her inspection.”

“Does that include me?” Damien asked.

“She didn’t exempt you, but we work for you, not her,” the NCO pointed out with a laugh. “Go right on in.”

With a smile, Damien strode past the Marines and into
Duke of Magnificence
’s flag deck. It was a smaller room than he’d perhaps expected, only about two thirds the size of the bridge below it and circular where the amplifier matrix required the bridge to be the same shape as the ship.

While the flag deck lacked the runes that linked the bridge into the amplifier, it had been otherwise designed in a similar fashion. The floor, walls and ceiling were covered in high-resolution screens that, when active, would show the world outside the ship as if you were suspended in deep space. Right now, they were turned off, faded to a dull gray that told no one anything.