A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10)

by Glynn Stewart

  There was a pause.

  “Sir, if we’re engaging quarantine protocols…”

  “Then everyone in the ground is already locked down, I know,” Roslyn confirmed. “We’ll need full medical work-ups on everyone on my team before we go aboard ship. You are to act as if we are infectious until then; understand, Lieutenant Herbert?”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot agreed. “This is terrifying from above, sir. It’s like half the people in the region just went mad.”

  “We know,” Roslyn said quietly. “Leave it to the Guardia perimeter for now…” She sighed. “Can you link me to whoever is in charge? I need to update them on their precinct station.”

  No one was going to enjoy that conversation.

  “What do you mean, dead?” the officer on the other end of the channel demanded. He paused, swallowing hard. “Apologies, Commander, but that seems…”

  “I haven’t pulled the station’s security feeds,” Roslyn told him. She hadn’t got a name yet for the man in charge of the Nueva Portugal Guardia effort to contain the disaster she’d unintentionally caused. “But we haven’t seen anyone alive in here. It appears that everyone in the station was…affected by whatever is causing this and they turned on each other in extreme violence.”

  She heard the swallow.

  “I see, Commander Chambers.” He paused. “I am Captain Victoriano Bolivar. I normally head up our tactical response team, but this is…beyond anything we’re prepared for. I’m pulling officers in from their days off to run barricades, and basically leaving the rest of the city to fend for itself.”

  “Are you in contact with my commanding officer?” Roslyn asked. “Huntress has many tools that should be able to assist.”

  “We’re getting a sensor feed, but the regional Governor has forbidden us to call on further resources than that,” Bolivar admitted bluntly. “You’re on the ground, Commander Chambers. What are you seeing?”

  “So far, a horror show,” she told him. “I’ve got a teenage girl in manacles who attacked two of my Marines with her teeth. She’s still trying to bite anyone who gets near her. Your precinct station has multiple people physically torn to pieces, and I haven’t dared send anyone down to check on the cells.

  “My shuttle is landing now and, thankfully, has exosuit armor aboard for all of my Marines,” she said. “I’m going to have to settle for combat armor and a biohazard seal. I think you have to assume whatever is in play is infectious, Captain, until you have data showing otherwise.”

  “No one is leaving the perimeter until we’ve tested them to see if we can find anything,” Bolivar agreed. “This is madness, Commander. What was in that explosion?”

  “I don’t know, Captain,” Roslyn said. “A nightmare. My intent is to secure the precinct station once my Marines have full armor and heavy stunguns. Otherwise, I am standing by for orders from Captain Daalman.”

  “Understood,” Bolivar told her. “You are authorized to secure the station, but asking you to do more would violate my Governor’s orders. What I could use is blood samples from your prisoner.”

  “We’re going to be sending her into orbit under full quarantine protocols,” Roslyn told him. “That means a vacuum-barriered pod on the flight deck, not even sharing air with the rest of the ship.

  “I’ll request that Captain Daalman forward you all of our results as soon as we have them, but I don’t think we can risk dropping off actual samples.” She paused, swallowing hard herself. “We need to assume that anything that has entered the zone is potentially contaminated. Do you have biohazard gear, Captain?”

  “Not in the numbers I need for this,” Bolivar said grimly. “The regional Governor is holding off on requesting help from the Cardinal-Governor in the hopes we can contain this.”

  “You have more data than I do, Captain. How bad is it?” she asked.

  “Best guess is that eighty percent of the population has locked themselves in their homes and is hiding from this disaster,” the Guardia officer told her. “The other twenty percent are in the streets, attacking people and wrecking buildings, and I don’t know why.

  “Even in the relatively limited area we’re looking at, that’s ten thousand people, give or take,” he concluded. “We’ll be moving in to try and secure the area and take prisoners shortly.”

  “If you don’t have biohazard gear, that could be dangerous,” Roslyn warned.

  “I know,” Bolivar said calmly. “But if I have ten thousand raging madmen in the streets, that means I have forty thousand terrified civilians hiding in their homes, Commander. I have to rescue them—even if that means Nix-gassing a mob of thousands.”

  “If it’s what we think it is, Captain, even the mob are innocent,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” he repeated. “And the best thing I can do for them is to stop them hurting themselves.”

  Roslyn had just closed the channel and was turning to look up at the shuttle flying toward them when she heard the crashing sound of a door being flung open.

  She turned toward the noise and realized it wasn’t the stairwell they’d come up that was open. It was the other stairwell, the one that had been wedged shut…at the bottom. It had been battered open by two men in Guardia uniform, falling sideways with the lock clearly broken as the Guardia rushed out.

  Roslyn’s greeting died unspoken on her lips as she registered the complete nothing in their eyes—and the multiple bullet wounds the lead man was ignoring.

  “Hostiles!” she snapped, summoning a barrier of solidified air to contain the two attackers. They moved so quickly, she missed one. The second Guardia man was pinned inside her barrier, clawing uselessly at an invisible shield, but the second was on Roslyn before she could recover.

  He leapt on her, the weight of his body driving Roslyn to the ground as the breath was crushed from her lungs. A stungun cracked and her attacker spasmed, but he was still on top of her, clawing at her uniform and trying to bite at her face.

  Her own hands were up, Roslyn’s basic martial arts training sufficient to keep his teeth away from her skin. She couldn’t focus on her magic with someone pinning her to the ground, and the mild aura effect of the SmartDarts left her twitching against the shock.

  “Watch the other!” she heard Killough shout—and then a familiar sound she’d hoped not to hear echoed across the rooftop as at least two of the Marines opened fire with battle rifles.

  Her own attacker was flung aside by the high-velocity rounds that punched through his flesh. Injured, probably dying, he still managed to snarl and lunge back at Roslyn.

  She couldn’t disagree with the Marines’ decision to go to lethal force—and followed suit. Her hands flashed out, channeling power as she summoned lightning and force in a hammerblow that could take out a tank.

  Her target went flying over the side of the roof and vanished, not even screaming as her power incinerated his flesh.

  Magic still flared around Roslyn as she turned to the second Guardia man. He had been flung backward by multiple gunshots but was getting up again—at the edge of the roof.

  Mooren was there before Roslyn could act. The Sergeant was unarmored, having stripped to her skivvies to enter her exosuit, but she held a fully automatic combat shotgun in her hands as she stepped between the madman and her Marines.

  The gun cracked three times in as many seconds, slamming heavy lead pellets into the rising Guardia officer and hurling him off the roof to join the first man.

  The rooftop was suddenly very still and very silent.

  “I didn’t authorize lethal force,” Roslyn said quietly. “But…well done, Marines.”

  “Fuck this,” Mooren said harshly. “Exosuits up; cover the accesses with heavy guns. Everybody else, get in a fucking suit of armor.”

  “No exosuits for myself or Killough,” the Mage pointed out.

  “We have body armor and hazmat helmets,” Mooren countered. “We have one sized for you, and I think Killough can fit in my armor.”

  The MI
SS agent gave the tall Marine a frank but nonsexual glance up and down and then nodded.

  “Probably,” he agreed. “Might have to adjust here and there, but I’ll take it over these poor bastards trying to eat my eyes.”

  “Hurry,” Roslyn ordered. “That kid we have in cuffs aboard the shuttle is the best chance we have of working out what the hell is going on. Mooren—pick a fire team to send up with her and Herbert.

  “They stay aboard the shuttle until Medical has cleared them. Full quarantine,” she repeated for the tenth or eleventh time.

  “Sardonis, go,” Mooren ordered instantly. “We’ll armor up and sweep the building.

  “What are the locals doing, sir?”

  “Securing the perimeter of the neighborhood and arguing with politicians,” Roslyn replied. “But they’re about to start moving in with riot vehicles and nonlethals.”

  She shook her head, looking at the smears of blood where her Marines had shot two functionally rabid Guardia officers.

  “Good luck to them,” she murmured. “We provide what support we can. I’m going to talk to Daalman…because Major Dickens needs to be ready to start dropping Marines for civil support. This is about to get very, very messy.”

  She hated herself for it, but she was grimly certain that whatever plan the Guardia had wasn’t going to cut it. Whatever the hell was going on, she doubted water cannon, sonic dispersers and SmartDarts were going to bring calm.

  18

  “We’ve activated the security shutters on the exterior accesses,” Mooren reported once they’d completed their sweep of the precinct station. “No one is getting in. We can still get out, though our control is pretty manual. Someone needs to be inside to open and close the shutters.”

  “Better than nothing,” Roslyn said. The hazmat helmet felt claustrophobic, limiting her visibility and head motion in every direction. She’d never worn full body armor outside of training exercises. All her hand-to-hand combat had been…insufficiently planned to call for that.

  “Agreed.” Mooren loomed in the exosuit combat armor, looking out over the neighborhood from the station roof. “We checked the cells, too. Everyone is still contained.”

  There was an edge to her tone that Roslyn didn’t like.

  “But?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to recommend that the Guardia recheck the filtration systems on their air handlers,” the Marine said quietly. “The ones that are still alive are definitely affected and have tried to physically bash their way through the bars. None of them are in good shape…and those are the ones that were in solitary.”

  “And the others?”

  “The drunk tank is a slaughterhouse,” Mooren said, her voice forced level. “I eyeball that there were fifteen prisoners, at least, in the cells. Maybe five are alive and they’ve all hurt themselves. Badly.”

  “And we’ve still got most of the population hiding in their apartments and the locals have contact with the other precinct station,” Roslyn observed. “This must have been one of the epicenters.”

  “Most of the chaos seems to be concentrating on the park where we started,” the Marine replied, pointing down the street. “The affected don’t seem to be attacking each other anymore, either. The…wreckage here says they did at the beginning.”

  Roslyn nodded quietly, glancing down at her wrist as her comp buzzed. It was Bolivar, and she tapped a command to link in the Guardia officer, sending audio only from her end.

  His video feed was more compressed than it had been, a narrow square around his head. Behind him she could clearly see some kind of vehicle.

  “I figured you’d want to be in the loop, Commander,” Bolivar told her. “We’re flagging a concentration of the…affected near your location, and we’re moving a secondary perimeter in on the south side.”

  He shook his head.

  “Primary perimeter will now act as a quarantine zone. No one leaves the zone without full medical work-up, blood, bioscans, the works. We need to know what we’re looking at and that it won’t spread.”

  “I agree,” Roslyn told him. “My Captain is standing by to provide any medical or other assistance you need.”

  “I know,” Bolivar confirmed. “Right now, however, my Governor is refusing to even call in planetary resources, let alone Protectorate resources. ‘If we can secure the crisis alone, we have no need to call on others.’”

  The last sentence was a clear echo, but Bolivar managed to say it with a mostly straight face.

  “Officially, I cannot provide a full update to Captain Daalman,” he continued. “However, you’re in the area and I see a full need for both of us to be sure you’re informed.

  “How many Marines do you have, Commander?”

  “Nine, all in exosuits with both nonlethal and antipersonnel ordnance,” Roslyn replied. “I didn’t think we needed to bring real heavy weapons, so they stayed on the shuttle.”

  “I’m not going to ask why you have heavy ordnance on your shuttle, Commander,” Bolivar said drily. “I’m forwarding you an access program for a full tactical link. You should be able to see us move in and interface with our sensors and video feeds.

  “I am trusting you not to forward that data to Captain Daalman; do you understand me, Commander Chambers?” the Guardia officer told her.

  “I understand completely, Captain Bolivar,” Roslyn agreed. She understood that he wanted her to relay everything to Daalman, just in case things went very, very wrong.

  “For now, I want you and your Marines to remain in position and provide a backup surveillance from inside the zone,” he continued. “Hopefully, we will meet in person very shortly, Lieutenant Commander.”

  “Good luck, Captain Bolivar.”

  The live channel closed, and Roslyn looked over at Mooren.

  “We’re getting a tactical feed from the Guardia,” she told the Marine NCO. “Can you or Knight set up a relay to get it to Huntress?”

  “Of course.” Mooren paused. “They’re moving in, then?”

  “They are. Bolivar says we should see them shortly,” Roslyn said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “That’s what he’s afraid of, yes.”

  By the time the Guardia vehicles rolled in, Knight had interlaced the data from the locals with the overhead from Song of the Huntress and provided them with a stunningly detailed view of Nueva Portugal’s attempt to restore order.

  Whatever the situation might be, the Guardia had a standard set of protocols for escalation of force. Massive loudspeakers ordered the crowds to disperse—but only seemed to draw the attention of the small crowds of victims still scattered through the southern half of the neighborhood.

  Dozens, then hundreds, of bodies gathered toward the sound of sirens and loudspeakers. There was a standoff as the lead vehicles, armored riot vehicles that could pass for light tanks, came to a halt ten meters from the crowd, continuing to bellow orders to disperse.

  Instead of dispersing, the crowd on Knight’s holographic projection surged toward the vehicles. New icons flashed up on the hologram as the lead pair of vehicles activated their sonic dispersers, noisemakers that were supposed to act on subconscious instincts to send humans running.

  The crowd kept charging. Roslyn grimaced as she watched the civilians storm onto the riot vehicles, clawing mindlessly at the armored panels and trying to break into the pseudo-tanks.

  The officers behind the riot vehicles opened fire with stunguns, but Roslyn already knew what was going to happen there.

  “We told them,” Knight said grimly. “What the hell are they going to do?”

  “That,” Mooren said grimly, pointing as the video feed showed gas vents opening on the exterior of the riot vehicles. “Nix solution. It’s a last-ditch defensive measure for exactly this situation.”

  Except it wasn’t working. The hologram was interpolating imagery from multiple sources and gave Roslyn and her people a clear image as one of the people swarming the lead riot vehicle tore the access hatch open. Half a
dozen people fell into the opening within seconds—and the Nix solution came with them.

  “My god,” Roslyn whispered. “What… What do we do?”

  More SmartDarts cascaded over the crowd as the Guardia officers opened fire with everything they had. The SmartDarts’ shock settings were still managing to bring people to the ground, temporarily disabling them…but Nueva Portugal had been an UnArcana World. The local police didn’t have Mages to pin people down as Roslyn had incapacitated their one prisoner.

  The second wave of vehicles and officers began to pull back. It wasn’t a planned thing. It was a wavering step backward. Then another. Then three.

  Then people were running—and like predators sensing weakness, the crowd came after them.

  Seventy-plus officers abandoned their vehicles and fell back toward the outer perimeter. At least three hundred theoretical civilians came after them. Even from several kilometers away, Roslyn heard the incoherent keening scream as the affected victims charged the Guardia.

  She knew what had to happen next and forced herself to keep watching. Everyone who was going to have to live through this was innocent, attackers and Guardia alike. They deserved her witness.

  The vehicles of the barricade were pulled aside to let the fleeing officers through. There were still maybe forty Guardia on the perimeter, and Roslyn could feel their hesitation. More loudspeakers were blazing. Sonic dispersers were active.

  The icons of Nix grenades scattered across the charging crowd as several automatic grenade launchers opened up, but the supposedly perfect knockout gas did nothing. Flash-bang icons, their overwhelming sound audible even from Roslyn’s perch, seemed to slow the charge…but only for a moment.

  The gunfire was inevitable, and it broke her heart anyway. The Guardia didn’t even have a lot of lethal weaponry—very few Protectorate police forces carried lethal weapons by default—but they’d issued automatic rifles to the outer perimeter.