A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Easy enough to pay in advance or set up recurring payments from an account with enough to cover it,” Mooren pointed out. “And most landlords don’t come around that often.”

  “Exactly,” Roslyn agreed. “Last report I have from Killough is six weeks old. He believed our Prometheus lab was somewhere in Nueva Portugal, and was digging into some of the companies that the previous agents had IDed as working with Finley.

  “It’s possible he simply lost access to the drop box that got uploaded to the Link,” she admitted. “But I haven’t seen anything in the local data drops, either. So far as I can tell, he went dark six weeks ago.”

  “If his target moved against him, he may have just gone dark and not trusted his coms,” Knight suggested. “But I’m not sure how to track him down if that’s the case.”

  “I have emergency data drops that should have been secure in that case,” Roslyn admitted. “They’re empty. I have nothing suggesting that Killough is still alive except that the apartment is intact and untouched.”

  “Do we have the authority to just break in and kick his door down?” Mooren asked. “I mean, I’m up for doing it either way—though if he is alive, that will make for some interesting conversations.”

  Roslyn considered the parchment-wrapped datachip inside her overnight case. She probably didn’t even need the Warrant for this, but…

  “We have the authority,” she said quietly. “But we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves if we can avoid it. Covert, not exosuits.”

  “We left the exosuits on the shuttle, anyway,” the Sergeant replied with a chuckle. “All we have with us is standard body armor.”

  “Which should more than suffice right now,” Roslyn said. “I don’t expect to run into Mages or Augments in Killough’s apartment. I’m hoping for information.”

  Right now, all she could say with certainty was that all of the companies MISS had been investigating were either headquartered in Nueva Portugal or had major operations there. The city was a nexus of all of the potential players.

  “There is one easy way to check it out,” Knight suggested. “I’ve got a case of aerial drones locked in the SUV. They’re pretty sneaky and they should be able to get us a peek into Killough’s apartment without drawing too much attention.”

  “What else do we have in the van?” Roslyn asked. “That’s a good idea, Corporal.”

  “Most of our gear is still on the shuttle, but we loaded everything we thought we would need quickly into the vans,” Mooren told her. “We have armor, stunguns and carbines in the vans, plus some specialty gear like the drones.”

  Roslyn exhaled and nodded.

  “I suggest we armor up and get those guns on hand before we send in the drones,” she told them. “Just in case. I’m reasonably sure Killough is dead…but that means I also figure the people who killed him are watching his apartment.”

  12

  “Well, isn’t that a nice, quiet alley?” Mooren murmured to herself, pulling the van suddenly off to the side of the road.

  Roslyn didn’t say anything as the SUV came to a halt in said alleyway, out of view from anyone not directly in front of the exit.

  “How close are we?” she asked.

  “Forty meters from the back entrance,” the Sergeant replied as the second SUV pulled in behind them. “A block of other apartments, but we can cross it in under a minute if we need to.”

  “We shouldn’t,” Roslyn said—but she accepted the black carapace chest-piece Corporal Knight absently handed her, leaning forward to pull it over her head. “But we’ll prepare for everything, I guess.”

  “All right, everybody out,” Mooren barked. “Knight needs space to work and we need to stretch our legs.”

  Roslyn waved the Marines out and slipped back to join Knight as the EW Marine opened up her case of toys.

  The drones varied from a winged unit the size of a large bird to a sphere equipped with miniaturized vertical-takeoff-and-landing systems—and hover systems.

  There were four of the VTOL spheres and Knight pulled them out. She set each one on a disk that appeared to link to her wrist-comp for diagnostics.

  “Everything green, full fuel,” she murmured. “These guys are quiet, Lieutenant Commander. Mix of ion engines and high-density air jets. They draw less attention than proper military drones, anyway.”

  “It’s your specialty, not mine,” Roslyn admitted. “Carry on, Corporal.”

  Knight nodded and started entering commands on her wrist-comp’s holographic keyboard. The four drones lifted off, proving out their mistress’s promises of their noise levels, and then flitted out the open side door of the SUV.

  Roslyn could see the video feed from all four drones in the holographic display projected by the Marine’s wrist-comp. They lifted up into the air, above the apartments, and swept toward their destination.

  For a few seconds, the drones orbited the complex, allowing Knight to pinpoint their target.

  “Fuel is limited,” the Marine murmured. “Twenty minutes’ endurance.”

  “All I need to know is if someone is in that apartment, Corporal,” Roslyn said. “Then you can bring them home.”

  Nodding, Knight sent the four drones dropping slowly toward their destination. The unit had an interior balcony, opening out onto the well-kept gardens in the center of the apartment complex.

  If the curtains had been open, they’d have had their answer almost instantly. As it was, the balcony doors were closed and the curtains were drawn behind them.

  “That’s a pain,” Knight murmured. “But handleable.”

  Roslyn stayed silent as the Marine worked her technical magic. The four drones dropped onto the balcony, one of them moving up to the lock for the balcony door.

  A new set of icons and commands popped up on the display for that drone as it extended a toolkit. Knight was focusing on that drone now, taking the little robot in closer as she prepared to pick a lock by remote.

  Except the moment the toolkit touched the lock, all four screens died.

  “What the hell?” Roslyn asked.

  “Drone-killer pulse,” Knight snapped. “Someone had a security system set up to stop us doing just that—and if the drone triggered that, it triggered an alarm.”

  The Marine shook her head.

  “It shouldn’t have,” she admitted. “Not without my doing a lot more—not unless someone knew our gear perfectly.”

  “I saw that pulse,” Mooren interrupted, sticking her head back in the SUV. “What happened?”

  “Someone killed the drones with a focused EMP,” Knight replied. “Are there still lights in the building? I half-expect—”

  “Everything in the building is fine that Jacques can see,” the Sergeant cut her off. “That’s damn precise and damn specific.” She turned her gaze on Roslyn. “Sir, they were waiting for Marine drones. We need to move now.”

  “Agreed,” Roslyn decided instantly, jumping out of the SUV as she spoke. “Let’s go.”

  The Marines took off at a steady sprint. Even in full body armor and carrying several weapons, they moved faster than Roslyn could have—but she had no illusions about that and instead stayed by the SUV, running a series of numbers through her wrist-comp.

  Mooren stayed with her, presumably because she remembered they were supposed to be Roslyn’s bodyguards, not her strike team.

  “Coming, sir?” she finally asked as Roslyn finished her calculations.

  “No,” Roslyn replied sardonically. “I’m leading. Give me your hand.”

  The Sergeant looked at her in confusion.

  “Give me your hand, Staff Sergeant, and remember that I am a Navy Mage.”

  Realization swept over Sergeant Mooren’s face and she took Roslyn’s hand. Power flashed over them as Roslyn stepped and they moved from the alleyway to the corridor outside unit 322 of the apartment complex.

  “The door, please, Sergeant,” Roslyn ordered as she took a deep breath to steady herself. Fifty-odd meters wasn�
�t as draining as a full light-year—but on the other hand, she had the runic infrastructure of a starship’s amplifier for that teleport. Any teleport was draining.

  To her surprise, Mooren was only slightly off-balance. Most people who rode along on a personal teleport ended up vomiting. The Sergeant just took a moment to regather her senses before following Roslyn’s order.

  The presence of anti-intrusion measures was more than sufficient cause for Roslyn and her people to break into the apartment, and Sergeant Mooren was an apt student of the Royal Martian Marine Corps’s method for forced entry.

  An armored boot slammed into the door next to the lock. It was as much a test as anything else—a lot of doors would resist a regular human’s muscles.

  This one wasn’t one of those, and the flimsy manufactured wood shattered under the Sergeant’s boot, sending pieces flying into the room beyond as Mooren followed up with her entire torso.

  Roslyn was right behind the Marine as the remains of the door crashed to the floor around the other woman. She had no time to take in the contents or state of the apartment as she realized there were more anti-intrusion measures.

  She didn’t know for certain what the black cylinder in the middle of the room was, but it looked like the kind of object that had THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY printed on it somewhere.

  “Bomb!” Mooren shouted in agreement with Roslyn’s assessment, charging forward to examine the black device.

  Roslyn was right behind her, cursing herself for her failure to follow the risks all the way through.

  “No time,” she told the Sergeant, shoving Mooren aside to lay her hands on the device. That the bomb hadn’t gone off already was probably due to the speed of the Marine’s entrance, but Roslyn doubted they had any time at all.

  Her magic flared to life again and pulsed through the runes in her hands. She felt the device heat as the explosion began—and then the bomb was gone.

  The room was silent.

  “Where did you send it?” Mooren asked quietly.

  “Fifteen klicks straight up,” Roslyn said. “I really fucking hope there was no one in that airspace.”

  13

  “Sweep the apartment,” Roslyn ordered the first Marines to join them. Coming down from the adrenaline high had occupied most of the minute it had taken the rest of the squad to reach them. The fire team certainly hadn’t expected to find their two superiors waiting for them in the apartment and had entered with weapons drawn.

  “Yes, sir,” the Corporal replied immediately, gesturing for his Marines to check out individual rooms.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find much, sir,” Mooren admitted as she and Roslyn finally took the time to look around. “The EMP system will have self-destructed automatically—and so would anything linked to it.”

  The apartment was a solid midrange unit that would have looked perfectly normal on any planet Roslyn had ever visited. It was significantly nicer than the unit she’d lived in after leaving prison as a teenager, that was certain.

  It was also a complete disaster. Someone had gone through everything. The tightly upholstered furniture had been sliced open with a blade. Every drawer in the kitchen had been emptied out on the floor. Anything in the main space that could be opened had been.

  “Someone already went through here with a knife,” Roslyn agreed. “But we’ll see what we can find regardless.”

  She knelt down by where the bomb had been sitting and studied the impression in the carpet.

  “The bomb was here for a while,” she noted. “I guess that’s positive.”

  “Positive?” Mooren asked.

  “The bomb wasn’t set for us, Sergeant,” Roslyn said. “It was set for Killough and it was never detonated. That means he didn’t come back here—and while that doesn’t mean he’s alive, it increases the odds of it.”

  Her wrist-comp started to buzz with incoming messages, and Roslyn grimaced.

  “And now I need to explain why a bomb just went off above me,” she noted. “What’s your bet, Sergeant? Captain Daalman or the locals?”

  “No bet, sir. It’s the Captain.”

  Roslyn nodded silently and stepped away from the Marines as they continued to sweep the apartment.

  “Lieutenant Commander, would you happen to know why a midsized explosive just detonated in the sky above Nueva Portugal?” Daalman asked calmly.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Because it was that or watch it blow up an apartment building, sir.”

  There was a long silence.

  “That bomb was enough to level several city blocks,” the Mage-Captain noted. “If you’re in an apartment building, how many people just nearly died?”

  Roslyn winced.

  “Assuming half of the residents are away from home because it’s only midafternoon, several hundred,” she said levelly. “I was investigating a potential location for a contact, sir. And there were anti-intrusion measures.”

  “May I remind you, Lieutenant Commander, that the last thing we can afford is to cause trouble with the locals?” Daalman said. “Nearly killing several hundred people would count.”

  “I did not anticipate explosives, sir,” Roslyn admitted. “I…” She breathed in sharply, glancing at the Marines and keeping her voice low enough that they couldn’t hear her.

  “I don’t think I accurately assessed the risks,” she confessed. “I didn’t think a ground investigation would be dangerous in ways the Marines couldn’t handle.”

  Of all people, Roslyn should have known better. She’d already been dragged into the wrong end of a Republic covert operation targeted at Crown Princess Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander, back when she’d been Alexander’s Flag Lieutenant.

  “How big of a disaster is this, Chambers?”

  “It’s under control. No one was hurt here and I should have got the bomb clear of anything in the air,” Roslyn said in a small voice.

  “Our scans say you’re right. No one was injured, but that’s a hell of a mess you’re making, Chambers. I can’t… I can’t stand by while you risk civilians, Lieutenant Commander.”

  “I have no intention of risking further civilians, sir,” Roslyn said stiffly. “I need to continue this investigation.”

  There was another long silence. Roslyn could use her Warrant to override the Captain if Daalman tried to shut her down, but that would ruin their working relationship.

  “I trust you,” Daalman said with a long sigh. “You have some contact with the locals now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roslyn said, concealing her relief.

  “Calm the waters,” her Captain ordered. “Find out whatever you need to find out and then get back aboard Huntress. Please try not to find any more bombs?”

  “I wasn’t expecting to find this one, sir,” Roslyn admitted. “If I find any more, well… Fifteen klicks up seems safe enough.”

  “I guess it does, doesn’t it?” Daalman asked. “Be careful, Chambers.”

  “Yes, sir,” she agreed quietly. The Captain cut the channel before she could say more, and she sighed as she saw that she now had a call from Lieutenant Oliveira.

  “Mage-Lieutenant Commander,” the Guardia officer greeted her politely. “May I inquire as to just what you are doing right now…and if it had anything to do with the explosion just reported above my city?”

  “Classified, Lieutenant,” Roslyn said as calmly as she could manage. “But I can tell you that if I hadn’t been here, that explosion would have occurred rather closer to the ground.”

  Oliveira paused, seeming to chew on that.

  “Then I guess I should thank you?” he asked. “May I ask that we avoid future explosions?”

  “Believe me, Lieutenant, explosions are the second-last thing I want, behind major public attention,” Roslyn told him, managing not to grit her teeth. “It will hopefully not repeat.”

  “I’m sure. Please keep me informed of what you can, Lieutenant Commander,” Oliveira said plaintively. “Explosions do draw attention, after all.”
>
  This time, Roslyn cut the channel, feeling a little bad for the Guardia officer.

  “What do we have?” she asked the Marines as they reconvened.

  “Nothing,” Mooren said grimly. “Place was occupied by one heavyset male of relatively decent taste. From the state of the food in the fridge, no one has been here in about five weeks. The search was professional and complete, if extremely destructive. Electronics on the EMP setup self-destructed when the device triggered. Neither the main bomb nor anything else were linked to the sensors, though.”

  The apartment was now stripped twice over.

  “I’ll let Oliveira know to come check it out once we’re clear,” Roslyn told the Sergeant. “Anything of use? At all?”

  “One of the bedrooms had been turned into an office; looked like it had a computer console set up,” Mooren said. “It’s gone. Someone even cut a few test gouges in the table to make sure it wasn’t hiding data.

  “The people searching this place were very thorough.”

  “Fuck,” Roslyn swore. “All right. Let’s get out of here and head back to the hotel. Next step is going to involve a lot of financial records, so I hope someone has brushed up on auditing recently.”

  Mooren coughed.

  “We’re Marines, sir,” she said delicately. “Only thing I audit is weapons inventory.”

  “Then you’re the best I’ve got,” Roslyn replied. “Get ready for paperwork, Sergeant. Tracing the ownership structures of the companies MISS flagged and seeing what they own in Nueva Portugal might be all we have left.”

  “I don’t suppose giving up is an option?” the Sergeant asked, but there was no heat in her tone. She was looking around the wrecked apartment—and focusing on the impression in the carpet that had held a bomb capable of leveling the entire building full of innocents.

  “We’re looking for the people behind Project Prometheus, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied. “What do you think?”

  “I think we want to hang them high in the main square,” the Sergeant admitted. “Alongside the son of a bitch who planted that bomb.”