Starship's Mage: Episode 5

Episode 5

By Glynn Stewart

Copyright 2014 by Glynn Stewart

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons— living or dead— is entirely coincidental.

Cover art Copyright 2014 by Jack Giesen  

Alaura Stealey was a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, the King’s voice and his sword in the worlds beyond the Sol System – a Judge and warrior; the representative of the executive branch of the government that ruled humanity.

She was not used to being kept waiting.

The gray-haired woman stood impatiently in the outer office of Mage-Admiral Lillian Castello, commander of the Royal Martian Navy’s Seventh Cruiser Squadron, and the station commander of the Nia Kriti Naval Base.

Stealey had arrived in the system nine hours before and her personal transport had set new speed records closing the distance to the Naval Base. After that rush, however, she’d now been left cooling her heels in the Admiral’s office for forty minutes.

She turned back towards the door with its Marine sentry, about to order the neatly turned out young man to stand aside, when it
finally
slid open. A middle aged woman in the dark blue uniform of a Navy Captain exited the office, presumably the commanding officer of the cruiser they were aboard, the
Rising Sun of Gallantry.

Alaura was through the door into Castello’s office before the ship’s captain had half-completed her salute. The Admiral sat on the other side of a massive desk of dark black wood, polished to a fine sheen, her mouth half-open in an unvoiced protest as the Hand crossed the space to her desk and stood, facing her in silence.

The two women regarded each other for a long moment. Alaura knew that what Castello saw was unimpressive. The Hand wore an unmarked, black, version of the Navy’s uniform, from which hung the open-palmed golden hand of her symbol of office. She was short, stocky, and graying – unbothered by her appearance, she’d declined the many and varied treatments available to a citizen of the Protectorate to reverse the look of age.

Castello, on the other hand, was a lithe red-headed woman who looked in her early thirties – and was closer, Alaura knew, to seventy.

“How may I… assist you?” the Admiral said after a long pregnant pause.

“You were sent a brief of the situation and the forces I requested,” Alaura told her calmly. “I presume you have reviewed it?”

“Frankly, Lady Hand, I have not had time,” Castello replied, her tone icy. “I am responsible for a security area of fourteen star systems. I cannot drop everything every time a self-important flunky from Mars arrives.”

Alaura regarded the other woman with a degree of calm she didn’t feel.

“I am sorry,” she said calmly. “Did you just tell me you intentionally disregarded a Priority Alpha-One Communique from a
Hand of the Mage-King
?”

“Everyone who comes to this system thinks their needs are Alpha-One, Lady Stealey,” Castello replied. “It is my job to decide whose needs actually
are
.”

“Who is your second-in-command?” Alaura asked.

“What?” Castello replied, startled.

“Who is your second-in-command?” Alaura repeated. “Since you are so busy, I will do you the courtesy of not imposing further on your time.”

“Mage-Commodore James Medici of the Fifteenth Destroyers,” the Admiral said slowly.

“Very well. Pack your things,” Alaura ordered. “Mage-
Admiral
Medici will be assuming command of the Seventh Cruisers, as well as the Fifteenth Destroyers, to accompany me on my mission.”

“You don’t have that authority!” Castello bellowed, surging to her feet.

“I am His Majesty’s
Hand
,
Admiral,” Stealey said flatly. “Be grateful I do not relieve you of your
commission
. You will transfer your flag to one of the ships remaining – I will be taking your cruisers and Medici’s destroyers.”

“If I were you,” she continued, “I would
pray
that your delay does not result in the failure of my mission. His Majesty will be…
displeased
if that’s the case.”

Alaura turned on her heel and strode from the Admiral’s office, leaving the woman whose career she’d just shattered staring after her in shock.

#

James Medici was waiting for Alaura once she returned to the
Tides of Justice
, the destroyer she used as her personal transport. The newly-promoted Mage-Admiral was a tiny man with skin as black as night and the slanted eyes of a Martian native.

“Lady Hand,” he greeted her calmly.

“You’ll need to get new insignia, Admiral Medici,” Stealey told him calmly. He still wore the single star of a Navy Commodore, not the two stars of an Admiral.

“I believed reviewing your brief and meeting with you were a higher priority,” he told her dryly. “I did not wish to raise your ire as Lillian has done.”

“That would be difficult,” the Hand replied. “My office,” she ordered curtly, allowing Mage-Lieutenant Harmon, her personal aide and ‘Navy Liaison’ to lead the way. Medici was silent until they reached her office and Harmon had left them in private.

“Admiral Castello is a capable officer with a lot on her plate,” he said quietly. “Your arrival was unexpected, and this region has more than a few priority concerns.”

“That is my presumption, Admiral Medici,” Alaura told him. “That is why the Admiral is still employed. That said, I need her ships – and I
don’t
trust her to command them in action. Don’t disappoint me.”

He nodded sharply, standing calmly at attention as she took a seat behind her desk. She gestured Medici to a chair, but he shrugged and remained standing.

“You have reviewed the brief,” Alaura reminded him. “Your opinion?”

“The cruiser represents a significant threat to the security of the Fringe,” Medici agreed. “She is insufficient to present a major threat to the MidWorlds or the Core, of course, but her presence in the hands of the Blue Star Syndicate is a concern.

“That said, the force level you are requesting seems excessive,” he continued. “A squadron of cruisers, a squadron of destroyers and three Marine battalion transports? I’ve seen planetwide rebellions suppressed with one cruiser, let alone eight with as many destroyers.”

“You have professional blinders, Admiral,” Alaura told him calmly. Unlike with Castello, at least he’d
read
the briefing and seemed prepared to listen. “You’re focusing on the rogue warship and not the other factors in play.”

“Ma’am?”

“The destruction of the Syndicate’s cruiser is a priority,” she told him, “but it is one of
two
Alpha-One priorities at play here. The second is the capture of the
Blue Jay
and Ship’s Mage Damien Montgomery – and Montgomery
must
be captured alive. That requires numbers, to make sure he doesn’t run.”

“I also wish to minimize casualties when bringing the Syndicate cruiser down,” Alaura continued, “for which overwhelming force seems wise. Could you guarantee the destruction of the ship with no casualties with a lesser force?”

Medici shrugged, still standing at a slightly relaxed form of attention as he faced her, his hands clasped behind his back.

“There are no guarantees in combat, ma’am,” he reminded her. “Even outnumbered seventeen to one and out-massed nine to one, the Syndicate ship may still inflict damage.”

“The ships are available,” Alaura concluded, “so we will use them. They will also come in handy in exploiting the opportunity we have been handed – the opportunity I want those Marine transports for.”

“I’ll admit to being unclear on that, ma’am,” the Admiral said. “My understanding is that we are pursuing the
Blue Jay
, as we know her destination and that the Blue Star ship is also chasing her. Why are we bringing enough Marines to fight a mid-sized war?”

“I take it you didn’t note
where
we know
Blue Jay
is going, Admiral,” the Hand replied. “My information is that the
Jay
is headed to Darkport to take on supplies and make repairs. I have the co-ordinates.”

“If we can bring our various prey to bay there, so much the better. But I see no reason to pass up the opportunity to wipe out the center of the Protectorate’s slave trade when it is handed to me on a silver platter!”

The little Admiral considered for a long moment, and then nodded.

“Darkport,” he said quietly. “That’s a pockmark on the universe I’ll be glad to burn out.”

#

“I guess that answers that question,” Mikhail Azure said drily, watching the footage on the main viewscreen of the Blue Star Syndicate cruiser
Azure Gauntlet
. His cruiser.

The screen was showing the now six days old light from when the deadliest bounty hunter he’d ever known had finally caught up with the
Blue Jay
and its ever-frustrating Captain. For several moments, the crime lord had begun to believe that his pursuit of the hunter and the freighter had been unnecessary.

Then the
Jay
’s ‘discarded’ fuel tanker had lit up its engines and rammed the bounty hunter ship, removing the most useful contractor Azure had known in recent years from the galaxy in an explosion that put stars to shame.

He crossed over to where Wong, the Captain of the
Gauntlet
, was reviewing the information from the sensors.

“Well, Mister Wong?” he said calmly. “Can you track them now?”

“Now that I can identify the source of the interference, yes,” the other man replied. Wong was one of the few in the Protectorate who had mastered the complex art of tracking a jumpship through its jump. “That explosion threw out a massive amount of energy,” he continued. “There was no way we could track the
Blue Jay
through its aftermath.”

Azure nodded grimly. If he’d had even the slightest doubts in Wong’s ability, the Tracker’s insistence that he was unable to pick jump signatures out of the hash of radiation in this quiet corner of deep space would have resulted in the
Gauntlet
having a new Captain. As it was, the four day exercise of jumping ever-further out, trying to get ahead of the light and radiation from the ‘battle’ had strained his patience to the limit.

“Able did not survive?” he asked.

“Only one jump signature, and there was no ship left when we were there,” Wong answered with a shrug. “Your Hunter is dead.”

Wong did not sound displeased that the
second
-best Tracker in the Protectorate was dead.

“Then find me the
Blue Jay
,” Azure told him. “We better not need to repeat this,” he added, gesturing at the old light scans on the screen.

“We won’t,” Wong confirmed. “We will gain on them quickly now. Five days at most – they have only Montgomery to jump them, after all.”

Azure himself had never learned to jump a starship, but Wong had three Mages serving on his ship. They would jump three times as fast as the
Blue Jay
. Unless Wong was somehow unable to track the
Jay
again, they would soon bring their prey to heel.

The
Blue Jay
and its Mage would make Azure even more powerful than he was now – and the capture of the freighter’s Captain would finally allow him to avenge his son’s death.

He settled back into his chair as Wong began to co-ordinate the jump. He would wait. Impatient as he was, for this prize, Mikhail Azure could wait.

#

The system looked empty. Dead. The ugly bloated red giant of a star recently out of its transition from a smaller sun illuminated the shattered wreck of the system it had eaten. A single gas giant, half again the size of Sol’s Jupiter, orbited well outside the sparse remnants of what had likely been a dense asteroid belt once. Inside the asteroid belt, two rocky balls of worlds orbited, both seared clean of any atmosphere when their star had begun to burn helium.

The ship that had surveyed the system, almost a hundred years ago now, had written the entire place off as useless, even going so far as to name the system Nani Mo Nashi. According to the survey database the
Blue Jay
had provided Damien, the name meant roughly ‘there’s nothing here.’

“I’ve seen colleges after exams are over with more life than this place,” the young Ship’s Mage announced over the intercom to the bridge. “There’s really supposed to be something here?”

“You’re seeing what they want you to see,” Captain David Rice replied. The ship’s stocky Captain tapped a command on the panel on his chair, zooming in the main viewscreen – and the screen in Damien’s simulacrum chamber at the center of the ship that was currently mirroring it –on the gas giant.

“Most of the system is dead, but Nashi Three has a massive moon, four times the size of Earth,” Rice explained. “This gives it gas giant sized Lagrange points here, here, and here.”

Three spheres were defined on the screen in transparent blinking white light. ‘Nashi Three’ was the gas giant, which had never earned a name other than that of its system. Who would name worlds in a system they never expected humanity to visit?