Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (7 page)

Despite Dr. Kael’s clear impatience, Damien took another half-hour to carefully review the rest of the runes in the ancient gallery, the cold light of his false sun lighting up the silver even more clearly than daylight would have.

The matrix that covered the railings didn’t change anywhere along the way. A regular Rune Scribe would have recognized the runes, but the layout and structure were sufficiently different that they’d have problems being certain what they did without taking time to review it in detail.

The runes were sufficiently the
same
that even the most recently graduated Rune Scribe
would
be able to break down the purpose and function of the runes. It wasn’t just the script that was the same. Reading the alien runes was like what he imagined reading Spanish as a Portuguese speaker would be. The script was the same and the syntax and grammar were similar enough to help, but the words, while similar, were different.

“We’ll need to sweep the entirety of the lower levels for any other samples of runes,” he told Kael. “Not today, but before I leave. This is…huge.”

“This is
unimaginably
huge,” Kael replied. “My lord, this could make the career of every scientist here! We’ll need to bring in real experts, not Kurosawa’s mundane students, as soon as possible!”

“We’ll see about that,” Damien said sharply. If nothing else, the three who’d worked with Kurosawa were who was
available
, and he wasn’t sure just how far he really wanted to spread the knowledge of these runes just yet.

Someone had
died
for it already, after all.

“I need to go over
everything
you have on this base,” he concluded aloud. “Not just what’s been published, but every scrap of data, every artifact analysis,
everything
. There are patterns I may see that you haven’t.”

“Of course, Lord Montgomery.” The administrator paused. “Does this…mean the Protectorate will be taking over?”

“Probably,” Damien admitted. “We’re unlikely to change up too much. At least initially, we’ll just bring in more security and some specialized Mages.”

Most likely, Kael would be left in place heading the civilian side until or unless he pissed someone off. Based off the Hand’s experiences with him so far, Damien figured that could take as little as six hours or as much as six months, depending on the temperament of whoever ended up in charge there.

“Let’s get back to the base,” he ordered. “Malcolm, Connor, lead the way.”

The two Secret Service agents had been guarding the passage back to the human base since arrival, while their third companion had been trailing Damien around the gallery. At Damien’s order, they swept the tunnel with their lights, making sure at least the first few meters were clear before everyone entered.

Once Damien and Kael had reached them, they led the way back, their lights illuminating the hallway and side corridors as they advanced. They’d already come this way, but the Martian Secret Service didn’t train their people to make assumptions.

The lead pair made sure there was at least two meters’ distance between them and their charges—two meters that saved everyone
else’s
lives.

Damien didn’t see the tripwire
or
the mines. He could see magic where others saw only silver, but that didn’t allow him to see technology no one had ever touched with a spell.

Neither of the two agents saw them either. Malcolm stopped in the middle of the hallway as he hit the tripwire—and had just enough time to look back at Damien and yell “Shield!” before the mines went off.

The Hand’s sense of danger was as sharply tuned as anyone’s, so he had a shield of solid force in front of him before the Service agent had finished yelling.

It took
time
to stretch it forward and shield the two people out in front. Time Malcolm and Connor didn’t have. Half a dozen directional mines had been mounted on each side of the wall since they’d come in, and they all detonated simultaneously, filling the ancient corridor with fire and deadly projectiles.

Both lead agents went down, dead—
shredded
—before they hit the ground, but Damien’s shield was in place in time to save the rest of them. The projectiles hammered against his barrier, testing his strength, and then it was over.

And then the shooting started.

“Down!” Damien was hit in the middle of the back by the remaining Secret Service agent, flung to the ground as an automatic weapon sprayed the corridor with bullets. The man rolled off Damien and came up firing his own weapon—only for a blast of flame to rip the weapon from his hand.

Gunfire and Mage-fire resumed a moment later—and slammed headlong into Damien’s shield, now covering them from the front as he rose to his feet.

“Get back, both of you,” he ordered the scientist and bodyguard. “This one’s mine.”

The next salvo was a string of grenades, and Damien winced as the energy transfer rippled back into him. It was roughly equivalent to the recoil of a large pistol, far less dangerous than the grenades but uncomfortable. Stopping more of the energy would take more of
his
energy—and he had other uses for that.

“I am Hand Damien Montgomery,” he snapped down the corridor, using his Sight to track where the firebolts had come from.
There
. He started walking toward the attacker. “You know how this has to end. You have thirty seconds to surrender.”

The response was…disturbing. Another mine had been concealed at the height of his arm on the side corridor he was following the attacker down, and went off as he passed it.

His main shield was along the corridor path, but he’d still wrapped a lesser shield around himself. The explosive sprayed its deadly projectiles into his right arm, smashing against the shield and smearing metal across his jacket arm for a moment.

The suit jacket was wrecked. His defense had stopped the mine from killing him, but enough heat and melted metal had burned through to shred the suit. Its expensive-looking fabric concealed an expensive flexible composite, though, that had sacrificed itself to save him.

Under the wrecked suit, the Rune of Power inlaid into his forearm was now fully visible, and with a chill, Damien realized that the mine hadn’t been meant to kill him. It had been meant to break or damage the Rune, one of the five that made him, born a Mage of average strength, the second most powerful Mage alive.

No matter
who
his attacker was, they shouldn’t have known about those Runes. One was inlaid on the right forearm of every Hand—more than one was only possible when a Rune Wright was designing the Runes on themselves, unfortunately—but the source of the Hand’s extraordinary power was kept secret.

“Right,” he muttered aloud, forcing his shield forward as a second salvo of grenades launched out of the darkness. “Time’s up.”

He caught the grenades with his power and flung them aside as he charged forward. A tighter shield wrapped around him now, protecting him as a series of mines at the right height and angle to hit a Hand’s Rune fired off as he passed them.

Another sweep of power caught up the projectiles and explosive force of those weapons and brought them with him. His Sight picking out the Mage in the tunnels with him, he
threw
all of that force directly at them.

The speed and power of the shield they conjured answered his question. His attacker was a trained Combat Mage—and almost certainly Kurosawa’s killer.

“Why’d you kill the doctor?” he demanded, following a trail he was sure the assassin didn’t know they were leaving.

“Orders,” a feminine voice replied, though his Sight showed she was somewhere different from the source. Probably a speaker. “Same as you. Some secrets must be kept, no matter the price.”

“You know you can’t kill me,” he said quietly. “Turn in your employers and I can arrange clemency.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped. The voice was still coming from in front of him, but she’d taken another tunnel and was sneaking around behind him, using the speaker as a distraction. “I am a Keeper and my oaths
will
be
kept
!”

She lunged from the corridor, a long rune-encrusted knife, presumably designed to cut though a Mage’s shield, in her hand.

Damien’s power
flared
in the underground tunnel, the Runes of Power across his body flashing with heat as he caught her arm, overcoming the knife’s runes with sheer overwhelming power and stopping her in mid-strike.

Frozen in the moment, he got a good look at his attacker for the first time. She was dressed in the same plain lab utilities as everyone else on the base and wearing light-gathering optics above her breather. He couldn’t see her eyes, but the cast of her face made her anger clear.

She
twisted
to escape his hold—and then her arm
snapped
like a twig, the knife falling from nerveless fingers as Damien tried to maintain his hold. Her
other
had lifted the deadly-looking carbine she’d been firing earlier.

He lashed out with a bolt of pure force. He was trying to just stop the weapon, but he lost a degree of fine control when he was doing multiple things at once. Her arm snapped back, the second limb snapping in a handful of moments.

“Others will come,” she told him, her voice thick with pain. “The secret will be kept.”

Then she spasmed, the distinct convulsions of poison. Damien dropped her, pulling clean air around them as he desperately tried to pull off her breather to force out whatever pill she’d taken.

Despite his power, he was only human. By the time he got the face mask off, her mouth was full of foam and her convulsions were weakening. He stared at her in horror as she gave one final full-body convulsion…and stopped.

The tunnel behind Damien had collapsed as the explosions rippled through it. They’d been closer to the surface than he’d initially thought, though, as he could see the sky through the holes. If he hadn’t already been wearing a breather, the atmosphere could have been a problem.

The assassin was a slight woman, not much taller than Damien but easily beyond his ability to carry. With a sad sigh, he wrapped gentle bands of power around the body and lifted it up after him as he climbed up the debris into the ruins of the surface portion of the Strangers’ base.

“Corei, do you read me?” he said, opening a channel to his surviving Secret Service agent. “Are you and Dr. Kael all right?”

“We’re okay, but the tunnel you went through collapsed. Where are you?!”

Damien glanced around him. Despite the base being abandoned for centuries; the local plant life was only now beginning to break through the sealed concrete. There weren’t many exterior structures there, but there had been garages and even what looked like had been the site for a set of surface-to-space missiles. The immense domes rose all around him and blocked his view of the prefabricated models of the base camp.

“I’m on the surface,” he told his bodyguard. “Take Dr. Kael back to the base. I’ll coordinate with Lieutenant Romanov’s people to get back inside myself.”

“Sir, we’re responsible for your safety!”

“Corei…” Damien sighed. “I need you to make sure Malcolm and Connor’s bodies are retrieved and prepared for return to Mars. Romanov is capable of seeing to my security, and you can’t do it on your own. Besides, the assassin is dead. While I suspect our problems are far from over, I don’t think there are any other immediate threats here.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll see you at the base camp.”

Shaking his head, Damien flipped channels to bring up the Marine commander.

“Lieutenant Romanov, this is Montgomery.”

“Sir, we registered explosions and gunfire,” the Combat Mage replied. “I have a fire team strapping on exosuits. What do you need?”

“I’ve been separated from the Secret Service agents and I’m on the surface,” Damien told him, pausing for a moment to consider before continuing. “I need you and those exosuited Marines to rendezvous with me on the surface. Kurosawa’s killer attacked me. She’s dead now, but I’m not willing to
assume
we’re all safe just yet. Put your people on high alert.”

“White is outside with a team right now,” Romanov replied. “I can have her meet you immediately.”

“I’m not
that
worried,” Damien said dryly. “Leave her and her team to their work. I’ll see you when you’re out, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

#

Denis Romanov had
not
expected to find out that someone had attempted to kill the principal while the Hand was in an abandoned alien base accessible only through a single tunnel linked to a prefabricated base camp full of
scientists
.

Given that one of those scientists had murdered another one, he supposed it should have been a possibility, but when the principal
was
a Hand, you tended to assume that most attacks were going to be…grander than an assassin in the dark.

“Keep loading up,” he ordered the team with him. They were halfway into their exosuit armor, but their commander wasn’t joining them in the heavy gear. Working magic through the heavy powered armor was
possible
but annoyingly difficult. He’d be going out in a breather and light body armor, which had been much easier to put on.

“I’m going out to rendezvous with the Hand,” he told the Corporal leading the team. “Follow as soon as you’re ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leaving the squad behind him, Romanov entered the airlock. The inner door slid shut behind him…and then the lights cut out and the air exchangers stopped.

“What the hell?” he asked aloud, tapping at the controls. “Team Charlie, check in—the airlock just shut down. Is the facility secure?”

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir,” the Corporal replied calmly. “I’ve got red flashing on the airlock, but that’s it. Lights and air are on in here.”

Denis considered for several seconds. The only reason to block the airlock, in his mind, was to
stop
the Marines getting out to join Montgomery. He knew the Hand hadn’t wanted to interrupt White, but…

“Delta Team, break off your perimeter and move to secure the principal,” he ordered. Silence answered him and a chill ran up his spine. “Fire Team Delta, Corporal Carmichael, report. Mage-Lieutenant White, report.”

Only silence answered him.

“Corporal Chan,” he said very calmly. “Set up an emergency airlock in that room and follow me as soon as you’re able. I am breaking my way out…now.”

Blades of force flashed into existence around his hands as he slung his battle rifle, channeled magic and
struck
. The airlock was a civilian structure, though designed for vacuum rather than its current purifier duties. It resisted him for less than a moment before the steel door fell outward, cut to ribbons in his hurry.

“Lord Montgomery, please confirm your location,” he asked over the radio.

His only answer was a sharp buzzing that hadn’t been there a moment before. He was being jammed.

“I need to find that jammer,” he said aloud, fully aware no one could hear him.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Denis,” another voice replied. “I have new orders, and I can’t let you interfere.”

He was somehow unsurprised to find Mage-Lieutenant White standing on the concrete, framed by the blue-green trees behind her as she raised her hands. The projector rune at the top of her hand
flashed
with power, and only years of training got Denis out of the way before fire hammered through where he’d been standing.

“Whose orders?” he demanded. “You don’t
fuck
with a Hand, White—that’s
treason
.”

“Orders from high enough, Romanov,” she said flatly. “Surrender and you can leave with me. Push it and I’ll leave you dead in the dirt with everyone else.”

“I won’t betray the Hand and I
won’t
leave my men,” Mage-Lieutenant Denis Romanov told her. “Go to hell, White.”

He was suddenly
very
sure why Fire Team Delta hadn’t answered his call—and it wasn’t because they were being jammed. A shield of energy snapped into place as White attacked him again, and Denis was forced a step away from the airlock door.

He conjured lightning, his own projector rune warming in his flesh as it helped him channel his power over greater distances. White dodged, but it bought him time to start moving.

A Royal Martian Marine Corps Combat Mage was one of the deadliest beings alive short of a Hand. They weren’t necessarily
trained
to fight each other, but the thought had certainly crossed his drill sergeant’s mind.

Shields helped, but either of them could burn through the other’s shield in a matter of moments, given the chance. Mobility was everything, and Denis wrapped power around himself as he
leapt
, crashing to the ground a dozen meters from where White’s next attack landed.

A dozen sparks flashed from his fingers, each carrying a charge that would short out a tank or stop a human heart. White dodged most of them, flicking the last few aside with a shield, and replied with a sheet of fire that dropped on Denis, trying to envelop him so he couldn’t jump aside again.

This time, he ripped her attack with spikes of force and sent those spikes, accompanied by her own conjured flame, hurtling back at her. She dodged away, and he leapt again, landing on the ancient alien dome and looking down at the traitor.

“We’ll find the jammer, White,” he taunted her. “You’ll pay for my men. I don’t know what you think you’re getting out of this, but all you
will
get is a traitor’s death.”

She answered with force and he wasn’t moving fast enough. Blow after blow slammed into his shield, forcing him to pour all of his energy into trying to stay alive.

“I get to live,” White told him. “And fulfill my oaths. Look to the sky, Romanov. Your death is coming.”

She was a stronger Mage than he. He tried to slide down the dome, but her force strikes picked him up and
flung
him back up the ancient concrete. His shield prevented injury, but she had him pinned. He couldn’t move.

She
wasn’t
moving, standing in the uniform she’d dishonored and looking coldly up at him as she gestured above their heads.

“The secret will be kept,” she promised him. “Not that you’ll know. Sorry, Romanov.”

White had looked back up at the stars when he opened fire. Both of them had ignored their rifles for the entire fight—at this range, magic was far more dangerous than any battle rifle. Her magic was enough to pin Romanov in place, and she was slowly crushing down his shields—but not strong enough to do that
and
shield herself.

Heavy bullets slammed into her torso, ripping apart the other Mage in a spray of bullets. Her eyes still to the heavens above them, Karina White fell.

The pressure released and Romanov rose to his feet. Considering White’s words, he looked up—and swallowed hard.

There was a new star. A big star, one screaming across the sky toward them at an impossible speed.

A ship. One that wasn’t supposed to be there.

#

Damien had picked up his pace back toward the base camp as soon as he realized he was being jammed. The sounds of fire and lightning magic led him to break into an all-out run, but the domes were
huge
.

He finally made it to a point where he could see what was going on, to find Karina White collapsed on the ground, very obviously dead, and Denis Romanov staring at the sky in horror.

Following the Marine’s gaze, Damien spotted the same rapidly approaching light.

“Please tell me that’s TK-421,” he shouted toward Romanov as he approached over the curve of the alien ruin.

“TK is in orbit,” Romanov replied. “They’re
approaching
orbit and decelerating hard; that’s why they’re so visible.”

The Marines, Damien reflected, had a
lot
more reason to train in identifying what ships were doing from the ground than he did.

“I can’t raise TK-421 to confirm what
they
see, either,” Romanov continued. “I’m pretty sure the men who went out with White are dead and she’s set a jammer up somewhere.”

“Can you localize it?” Damien asked.

Romanov pulled up his computer, studying it. “I don’t have enough data,” he admitted after a moment.

“Link to my PC; we should be close enough at this point.”

Another moment passed, and the Marine shook his head, gesturing toward the nearby forest.

“It’s that way,” he said, his gesture encompassing an arc of several hundred meters of forest, “somewhere between five and six hundred meters. Not really helpful.”

“You’d be surprised,” Damien told him dryly. “Does your combat gear suggest there’s anything alive over there?”

“What?”

“Your helmet has thermal and motion sensors,” Damien reminded the Marine. “Is anything except the trees in that area you just described?”

Romanov turned his head, scanning the forest. “No, but…what are you going to do?”

Normally, Damien tried to keep his open use of magic inside what one of the Marine Combat Mages could achieve. Even when he wasn’t doing
that
, he tried to stay inside what the other Hands, with only
one
Rune of Power to his
five
, could do.

Something about today’s events, though, left him very,
very
nervous.

All five of his Runes flared with a gentle warmth as he channeled magic, drawing energy from the alien earth beneath him and from the web of the universe. With a broad gesture, he unleashed it, conjuring a vast wave of flame that swept over the arc Romanov’s scanner had indicated.

Trees
popped
, the local cellulose equivalent no more resistant to that heat than Earth’s trees would have been. Blue-green bushes and leaves vanished in an inferno that filled the area the jammer had to be in…and then
vanished
when Damien loosed his will once more.

The jamming stopped.

“TK-421,” he snapped into his radio. “Pokorni, what the hell is going on up there?”

“Oh, thank goddess you’re alive,” the armed courier’s captain replied. “We couldn’t reach anyone down there! A ship jumped in a couple of minutes ago and opened fire! We’re outgunned—we’ve been forced to abandon orbit, and she’s incoming fast.”