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

He could See and feel the other Mage channel energy, focusing it in
just
this way,
just
this angle…and then release it.

There was a flash of both light and nothing, and then TK-421 was a light-year away, on its way to Andala.

Damien spent most of the trip studying the information that had been available in Tau Ceti on the Andala Expedition. Launched three years ago, two years after a corporate survey looking for mineral deposits had found something
very
different, the Expedition was led by one Dr. Johannes Kael and had
already
produced at least fifty papers of various degrees of importance.

The Hand had a university degree, a minor and three years of focused postgraduate training under the Mage-King himself. It took him less than an hour to skim the papers sufficiently to work out which fourteen actually contained useful information.

So far as the Expedition could tell, the facility had been calmly closed up between two hundred and fifty and three hundred years before, during the Eugenicist War between Earth and occupied Mars. There were no bodies or even—strangely—images of the occupants, so they had no idea what the aliens had looked like.

The absence of any seating arrangements recognizable to humans suggested that the creatures had been at least different from humans, but analysis of the interior of the facility also suggested that they’d breathed the same air, seen on roughly the same wavelengths of light, and needed spaces only slightly larger than humans.

And, in three years of study, that was basically every piece of conclusive data Kael and his people
had
. There were a lot of guesses and qualifiers in the documents Damien had but nothing solid. The aliens had removed a lot of tech and destroyed much of what they hadn’t removed in place.

Until Kurosawa had broken into the sealed lower levels, there’d also been no evidence of magical use in the facility. Legatus had put up a good chunk of the funding for the Andala Expedition in the hopes of finding the UnArcana World’s holy grail: an FTL drive that didn’t require Mages.

It seemed they were going to be disappointed.

Another flicker of
nothing
passed through the ship and Damien checked his computer to confirm what he already knew: they’d arrived in the Andala System.

#

Lightspeed delay in communication was a fact of life. Since they were in no hurry—no one had left the facility since the murder, according to the report Damien had received—and multi-second gaps in conversation weren’t conducive to mutual understanding, he waited until they were in orbit before reaching out to Dr. Kael.

The man who appeared on his wall when the channel finally connected couldn’t have been a more stereotypical professor if he
tried
. He was a portly, balding older man with his remaining hair gone shockingly white and a distracted, grumpy look on his face.

“You must be the MIS team,” Johannes Kael began immediately, cutting Damien off before the Hand could say a word. “You look too young, though. Whatever,” he said, cutting off his own question.

“Get down here at once,” he ordered. “You’ll coordinate with my security chief, Volk. You will
not
interrupt my people’s work or distract me until you have an explanation for Kurosawa’s death. We are very busy here and I will not tolerate interference!”

Damien was silent for a moment in pure shock. Even if he
had
“merely” been a Martian Investigation Service Inspector, Kael’s peremptory orders would have been unacceptable.

“Did they send the rune person with you?” he continued abruptly. “How
nice
of the Navy to send a ship—make sure they know they won’t be permitted on the planet. I shudder to
think
of the chaos those uniformed thugs would cause!”

“Dr. Kael,” Damien finally snapped. “Shut. Up.”

The academic administrator stumbled to a halt, tripping over his own tongue—then started to inhale, clearly about to launch onto a tirade.

In response, Damien leaned forward, making sure both the gold medallion at his throat—the one that marked him as a Mage, with symbols carved into it denoting his training as a Jump Mage, Combat Mage, and Rune Scribe—and the chain and amulet of his rank were fully visible in the camera.

“I am Hand Damien Montgomery,” he told Kael softly. “Your conditions are unacceptable, Doctor. This investigation is under the jurisdiction of Mars and will be carried out as
I
choose. Do you understand me?”

“We didn’t call for a Hand!” Kael barked.

“But a Hand is what you got. I speak for Mars, Doctor, and my assistance is not under discussion,” Damien told him calmly. “I am both your investigator and your rune expert. My shuttle will be departing TK-421 shortly, I expect to arrive within the hour, and I will be meeting with
you
as soon as I land.

“I will be accompanied by my shuttle’s four-man crew, three Secret Service Agents, three Martian Investigation Service Inspectors and a squad of Royal Martian Marines. Please make sure you have quarters ready for them,” Damien instructed. He paused, eyeing the now-silent academic.

“Will there be any problems, Dr. Kael?” he asked, his voice softer now. “Believe me when I say I have no intention of interrupting your people’s work more than I must, but Doctor Kurosawa’s discovery is of critical importance to the Protectorate—which makes his murder my concern as well.”

Doctor Johannes Kael visibly swallowed and slowly nodded.

“I had not considered it in that light,” he admitted. “I am concerned about both our research and my people’s morale, Lord Montgomery,” he continued, “but I will try not to impede your investigation.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kael,” Damien told him. “We will speak once I have landed.”

He cut the channel with a sigh. He’d give Kael the credit of his words, but somehow he doubted the man was going to manage to
not
be a problem.

#

The shuttle dropped away from TK-421 with all the grace of a brick dropped from a plane. The Royal Martian Marine Corps did not build their assault shuttles to be pretty or graceful. They built them to land in the face of hostile fire, take hits, and deliver their payload of Marines alive.

Damien’s detachment was smaller than the platoon the shuttle was designed to deliver, which thankfully meant there were safety harnesses for everyone. Among other things, the RMMC didn’t bother with gravity runes in their shuttles, so multi-gravity combat maneuvers were painful affairs.

In the absence of incoming fire, the MIS Inspectors had clearly thought the harnesses wouldn’t be required. Luckily for them, Mage-Lieutenant Romanov had insisted—and the Navy pilot of the assault shuttle promptly dropped them toward the planet at four gees.

“Are we actually in this much of a hurry, my lord?” Inspector Mara Dragic, the senior member of the MIS team Damien had “borrowed” on his way out of Tau Ceti, asked. The dark-haired, hook-nosed police officer looked vaguely ill under the force of the acceleration.

“No,” Damien allowed. “But the people responsible for our safety, Inspector Dragic, take it very seriously. They may take unnecessary precautions—but the day those precautions turn out to be necessary, you will be very glad they were taken.”

She looked confused for a moment.

“When would this become necessary?” she finally asked.

“It was on Ardennes,” Damien said shortly. “A squad of Marines and a Navy flight crew, much like these men and women, died to get me to the ground alive then. So, you are right, Inspector, that I do not expect this to be necessary today. But I didn’t expect it to be necessary then, either.”

The whole mess on Ardennes was public knowledge, though given the size of the Protectorate, Damien doubted few of the Mage-King’s citizens knew more than the headline blurb of “A Hand falls, another rises, Governor removed for treason.”

He was okay with that.

“Landing in ten minutes,” the shuttle pilot reported. “We have a storm incoming, and despite my best efforts, we aren’t going to miss it. It’s going to get bumpy.”

Dragic looked even more horrified for a moment.

“This
isn’t
bumpy?”

#

The planet Andala IV wasn’t habitable by humanity but that didn’t mean it lacked life. A strange forest of blue-green trees with spindly branches and strange cylindrical leaves shifted and trembled in the hammering rain and vicious wind as the assault shuttle finally touched down.

Inspector Dragic had managed to make it all the way to the surface intact, but as soon as she attempted to rise, she crumpled to her knees and vomited. The ever-handy Romanov had a bag in her hand the moment before she lost it, and the mess was at least contained.

The new Mage-Lieutenant, a stocky, mannish, blonde woman Damien had been introduced to as Karina White, moved up to the airlock with a quartet of Marines. All five wore small metal breathers over their mouths, and another fire team of Marines was passing out the devices to everyone else.

“We’ll sweep the pad for threats,” she said calmly. “Please remain aboard until we report it clear.”

If White was surprised by her fire team suddenly acquiring a suited Secret Service agent after her announcement, she didn’t show it. She led all five of her companions out into the airlock and cycled it behind her.

“Are you all right, Inspector?” Damien asked Dragic.

“Yes, my lord,” she confirmed, taking a proffered cloth from one of the Marines to clean her face before putting on the breather.

“Pad is clear,” White reported over a radio channel. “Dr. Kael is waiting inside the facility.”

“Let’s go,” Damien instructed, only to get a raised hand from Dragic.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing a breather, my lord?”

He smiled. Once, long before, he’d been a mere apprentice to an older and wiser Hand who had told him it wouldn’t do for a Hand to appear like “a soaked rat.” Appearances were important, and not needing the breather or being bothered by the storm they’d landed in were components of projecting power in a way Dr. Kael would understand.

“I am a Hand,” he told the Inspector. “I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

#

From the shocked double take Doctor Johannes Kael made when Damien walked in from the rain and poisonous atmosphere outside his climate-controlled camp site without a breather and bone dry, the point was probably made.

“Welcome to the Andala Expedition Research Facility, my lord.” The balding scientist offered his hand to Damien, who calmly shook it.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Damien glanced around the reception area for the facility, such as it was. Kael had only two companions with him, who he gestured to immediately.

“Allow me to introduce Miss Jessica Volk, our head of security and facilities,” he waved toward a tall woman with soft features and a clean-shaven head. She bowed slightly at Kael’s introduction. “She is seeing to quarters for your companions, but it’s taking some time.”

“We were using the space as storage, to be honest,” Volk told Damien in an unusually deep voice. “I don’t have a lot of manpower, so it will take us most of the day to get the spare quarters freed up.”

“Romanov?” Damien asked. He didn’t need to specify what he wanted.

“Kitcher, Chan,” the ever-serious Lieutenant barked crisply. “Take your fire teams and help Miss Volk out. If the extra manpower would be of use?”

It sounded like a question, but Damien didn’t think anyone in the room was fooled. In addition to helping clear out and set up the quarters, the two Marine teams would make sure they were safe.

“Of course,” Volk agreed cheerfully. “If you’ll excuse us, Dr. Kael?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Kael said shortly, and gestured the third person with him forward. “This is Jarek Zitnik. He was Professor Kurosawa’s senior student and the one who found his body.”

“Ah, good,” Damien said, offering his hand to the youth. Dark-haired with tanned skin, tall and muscular, Zitnik looked more physically able than some of the Marines, hardly what he would have expected of a xenoarchaeology student.

“Professor Kurosawa was a mentor and a friend,” Zitnik told him in noticeably accented English. “If anything I can do will help catch his killer, I am more than willing.”

“Let’s take this conversation somewhere more private,” Damien suggested. “Inspector Dragic’s team will start interviewing the rest of the staff, starting with Kurosawa’s students.”

“I can arrange some…” Kael trailed off at the Hand’s gesture.

“No,” he ordered. “
They
will arrange things, with the support of the Marines. Surprise, I’m told, is helpful in these affairs.”

Kael visibly swallowed again.

“I wish I could say it was just an accident,” he whispered. “Just a damn fool old man who fell off a balcony.”

“You saw the body, Doctor,” Zitnik told him.

“I did,” the Andala Expedition’s senior scientist confirmed, drawing himself back up with a firm nod. “The compound is not particularly large, Lord Montgomery. My office is nearby. Shall we?”