“Agreed,” Stealey said, her voice still tired. “I need a fucking drink, Damien. Let’s talk somewhere more secure.”
Damien glanced around, arching an eyebrow at the twenty fully armed and armored Marines now forming a perimeter around the pair of them.
“More concerned about ears than guns, Damien,” she told him sharply, but it got a small smile from her.
“I know,” he allowed, returning the smile. “We’ve kept our rooms clear.”
#
“This planet,” Alaura announced between sips of whiskey, “is fucked up.”
Damien said nothing, nursing a cup of coffee as he waited for the Hand to get to her point. The Marines were busy settling in the new squad and the two senior Martian representatives were alone.
“The entire legal system has become a series of special case exemptions,” she continued, “and a good third of the population is in indentured servitude. I’m honestly surprised nobody is starving. I can’t blame the Freedom Wing for rebelling!
“But they’ve also crossed about half a dozen lines I can’t let them cross,” she finished, staring morosely into her glass. “Assassinating governors? That’s arguably a legitimate target. Blowing up a city? Attacking me?”
“Assuming they did it,” Damien quietly pointed out. “Vaughn blames them. But Vaughn is a corrupt crook who’s been using this planet as his own personal factory.
“Look at the pattern,” he continued. “Anderson’s death was the end of a clean, precise, urban guerilla campaign. Evidence suggests a well-trained, well-equipped group with a solid plan. With their objective complete, they disappeared – only to reappear three months later, with a hack-job of a terrorist campaign.
“The two campaigns are completely different levels of accuracy, planning, and precision. Perhaps most importantly,” he reminded her, “the first campaign represents a group we’d negotiate with – and the second does not!
“Desmond hammered a point home a few times over the years – always ask who benefits.
“Who benefits from us thinking the Freedom Wing is the worst kind of terrorist group? The kind of group that would level cities and attack Hands?”
Alaura looked at him in silence for a long moment and then swallowed the tumbler of whiskey.
“There’s also the possibility of multiple factions in the same movement, or even them just growing desperate,” she pointed out. “But you’re right – we need to know exactly what happened. Both in Karlsberg and in Nouveaux Normandy.”
“You’ve got a plan,” Damien said. It wasn’t a question – he’d sparked her thought process, and he could see the wheels turning in his boss’ head.
“Not so much a plan as a division of labor,” she warned. “Sorry, Damien, but you don’t have the oomph to pressure Vaughn. You’ve the technical authority, but he won’t buy it. Even from me, I’m probably going to have to lean on the implicit threat of Mage-Commodore Cor’s squadron.
“So I’ll ride our dear Governor, and dig into their files on Karlsberg,” she continued. “I think I’m going to break out the Hand itself, too. See what those overrides get me out of some of their locked files.”
One of the very high level secrets Damien had been briefed on was that the golden amulet the Hands wore was not merely a symbol of office – it was also an override chip, capable of accessing any government system in the Protectorate at the highest levels of security.
“But first,” Alaura paused, crossing to the door and leaning out. “Maria, I need you.”
A moment later, Maria Wong – Alaura’s personal chief of staff – entered the room. The dark-skinned and red-haired woman glanced at Damien for a long moment, then turned her attention to her boss.
“Yes, My Lady?”
“Maria, I want you to find the names of every trooper and civilian who died today,” Alaura told her grimly. “Then find their family and dependents. Whatever happens, I want a note adding all of their survivors to the Martian General Pension fund added our records. The soldiers died defending me, and those civilians got caught in the crossfire. We owe them.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Maria confirmed. “Anything else?”
“Arrange a meeting with the Governor,” Alaura told her, glancing at the clock. “Make it tomorrow evening, I’ll need some time to dig into what’s going on. Make sure the Marines get settled in, and give Mitchell a heads up that he’ll be escorting Envoy Montgomery shortly.”
“Of course, My Lady,” the Chief of Staff agreed. With a tiny nod to Damien, she slipped out of the room, the Hand closing the door behind her.
“Where am I going?” Damien asked.
“Nouveaux Normandy,” Alaura answered. “I don’t think I’ll be capable of being objective enough to investigate the attack cleanly. I need you to dig into it – all the way into it, Damien. Turn over every stone, follow every link – if you’re right, if it was Vaughn’s people, not the Wing, it changes everything. Follow me?”
Damien swallowed hard, but nodded.
“I’m sending Mitchell’s entire squad with you,” Alaura continued. “Anyone who decides to launch a follow-up round isn’t going to last long enough to realize it’s a bad idea.”
“I’ll find the truth,” he promised.
“Don’t worry, Damien, I’m not sending you off into the bush alone,” the Hand told him with a smile. “Some of this is paranoia, too. I’ve got an itchy feeling between my shoulder blades, and I want us in different cities.
“One of my agents checked in while I was on the flight back – coded message drop. She’s linked in with the Wing, and they’re telling their own people they didn’t do it,” she continued. “The drop included a contact code; I’m flipping it to your PC.”
“She’s in Normandy?”
“No, here in Versailles,” Alaura replied. “I don’t expect you to need to contact her, but I want to keep you in the loop – so no matter what happens, we see this through. Mars owes these people, Damien – and we will see this done.”
“You’re just nervous because someone tried to kill you already,” Damien replied, trying to make light.
The Hand shook her head. “It’s more than that,” she said quietly. “Either the Freedom Wing is what Vaughn says it is, and they’re very dangerous and very desperate, or Vaughn is behind a lot of this.”
“In which case, our dear Governor is very dangerous and very desperate,” he said softly.
“Exactly.” Alaura began to dig into a black briefcase she’d brought to Ardennes with her and removed a small velvet box. “Catch.”
“What’s th—” Damien opened the box to find the golden fist of a Hand’s insignia on a plain gold chain. He swallowed. “These are gene-locked,” he objected. “I can’t use yours.”
“That isn’t mine, Damien,” Alaura told him gently. “We both know what His Majesty intends for you – and today, it will be damned useful for you to have the Hand to crack the local files in Normandy.
“I’d say you can give it back when we’re done, but like you said. They’re gene-locked.”
“There’s formalities and training still to pass, but Desmond didn’t give me your Hand because he expected you to fail.”
#
Damien was more than a little distracted as he left the section of Government House that their staff and Marines had completely taken over. Nonetheless, he had been taught to maintain some semblance of situational awareness, and was completely taken aback when he managed to run into one of the cleaners.
“I’m sorry,” he immediately told the older woman, offering her a hand up.
“Tout va bien,” the woman replied, taking his hand and then bowing over it when she was on her feet. “It’s all right, My Lord,” she repeated, in heavily accented English. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Assurances and apologies exchanged, the Envoy of the Mage-King of Mars spent a minute helping re-assemble the cleaner’s cart, and then continued on his way – paying more attention, now, to where he w
as going.
Slipping back into the zone secured by the Marines, he quickly sought out Sergeant Mitchell.
“You got the word from Alaura?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the Marine replied crisply. “My squad will be ready to go in an hour, and I’ve checked in with the Navy pilots – they’ll be fueled up and ready to fly by then.”
“Thanks, Sergeant,” Damien replied. He paused for a moment and met the Sergeant’s gaze frankly. “I’ve been trained in this, but I’ve never led an investigation before in my life,” he admitted. “Any suggestions?”
Mitchell considered.
“I’m a bodyguard, sir,” he pointed out. “But… I’ve followed Stealey around like a heavily armed puppy on a few of these. I’ll keep an ear open, let you know if anything doesn’t add up to me.”
“I appreciate it, Sergeant,” Damien told him. “I want these bastards.”
“Assume nothing, verify everything,” Mitchell replied calmly. “This whole planet stinks, and I’m not talking about the air quality.”
The Envoy nodded, the gold amulet in his jacket pocket a surprisingly heavy weight. Unconsciously, he touched the amulet – only to feel a layer of paper over it.
“What the…?” he muttered. His suit blazer had both a sealed interior pocket – now containing the Hand – and a mostly decorative outer pocket. Reaching into the outer pocket, he pulled out a sheet of neatly folded paper.
“I’m guessing you didn’t put that in there yourself,” Mitchell told him, scooping the sheet out of Damien’s grasp with a gloved hand. “Better safe than sorry, sir,” he said by way of apology.
“I am wearing gloves, Sergeant,” Damien pointed out. Like Alaura – and most other Jump and Combat Mages for that matter – Damien wore skin-tight gloves to cover up the runes inlaid into his palm. His were the same jet-black as his suit blazer and ran all the way up to his elbows, covering runes most other Mages would not have.
“And if someone was being a clever bastard, they’d have accounted for that,” the Marine pointed out. “I’m expendable, My Lord. You aren’t.”
“Fuck that, give me the note,” Damien ordered.
With a long-suffering sigh, Mitchell quickly unfolded the note – presumably to trigger any trap concealed in the infinitesimal space between the halves of the sheet – and handed it back to the Envoy after a moment.
“Thank you,” Damien said dryly as he glanced at the handful of lines on the sheet.
If you seek answers on the Special Operations Directorate, find Colonel Elijah Brockson.
- A friend
“That’s… rather un-useful,” Mitchell noted, reading over Damien’s shoulder. “The note could be from anyone. How can we trust it?”
Damien looked at the paper carefully.
“It was planted on me by a member of the staff,” he concluded aloud. “I think we can safely say it’s from the Freedom Wing.”
“From the rebels? So why would you trust it?”
“I don’t,” the Envoy replied dryly. “It is, however, one more starting place than I had before they planted it on me. I think that I have some research to do on our way to Normandy.
“And in the meantime,” he continued, turning back to Mitchell, “I believe we have some preparation to do. And Sergeant?”
“Yes, My Lord?”
“I suggest you pack for arrest and interrogation.”
#
Chapter 12
The shuttle was in Nouveaux Versailles for less than twenty hours. It was eight in the morning, local time, when Damien and Mitchell boarded the Navy ship for the trip back to Nouveaux Normandy.
Several of the Marines promptly went back to sleep after strapping themselves in. Damien and Mitchell passed them, entering the semi-private ‘officers’ compartment’ between the main cargo bay and the cockpit.
The assault shuttle was designed to carry an entire platoon of Marines, either in exosuit battle armor or accompanied by a light tank. Mitchell’s single ten man squad were dwarfed by the cargo bay, but the officers’ compartment had the advantage of a computer setup designed for tactical deployments and strategic communications.
The Marine Sergeant blandly took up a position blocking the door to allow Damien to work in privacy. Something about the way he did it made Damien very sure the soldier knew that Alaura had given him the Hand and was making sure he could use it without interruption.
“Lieutenant,” Damien asked the pilot over the intercom, “can you hook me up with a direct link into the government network?” He paused. “For that matter, can we keep that completely separated from the shuttle’s systems?”
The Navy officer laughed.
“I’d appreciate the last, yeah,” he admitted. “The tactical setup back there has a fully separated computer network for just that reason. Should be linked in to the global-net already.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
Damien spent a few moments familiarizing himself with the computer system. The setup was designed primarily for communication and co-ordination, but was capable of handling a complex data search if you found the right tools.
He linked into the Ardennes planetary government’s databases, pulled up personnel files for the Ardennes Special Security Service and, after a short moment of hesitation, typed in “Colonel Elijah Brockson.”
The database churned for a moment, then flipped up an ‘Access Denied, Record Restricted’ message.
That was strange. Apparently, even Brockson’s very existence was classified?
Damien typed in the access code the locals had provided him. Supposedly, he’d been provided full access to their systems, but the same message flashed up. Now it had an extra line – “Gubernatorial Seal.”
Most likely, if he hadn’t been typing in the exact name, the record would never have shown up in his search. Since he was looking directly for the man, however, he’d bounced up against a hard seal – one Vaughn had either implemented himself or had been done under his direct orders.
Glancing at both doors of the compartment and swallowing hard, Damien reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the Hand. The golden icon was light, no more than forty or fifty grams, but it seemed to hold the weight of worlds.
He turned it over in his hands. The Hand was a closed fist cast in gold, and he didn’t see any way to connect it to the computer at all.
“It needs to touch your palm. Warmest part of the body and the easiest spot for the gene scan,” Mitchell told him from the door. The Sergeant was eyeing the amulet with awed eyes. Somehow, despite the fact that Damien knew the Sergeant had seen Alaura’s Hand dozens of times, the icon was still awe-inspiring to the Marine.
It was terrifying to Damien.
Following Mitchell’s advice, he stripped off the skintight glove from his right hand. He stretched his fingers for a moment afterwards, watching the silver inlaid on his palm and forearms ripple gently. Finally, he placed the Hand in his palm and watched.
For several seconds, nothing happened. Then, as the tiny golden symbol warmed from his hand, it shivered slightly and he felt a momentary prickle – and a connector port slid out of the thumb.
Damien wasn’t sure if he’d been expecting something more dramatic – or just nothing, the Hand not actually being his.
He took a deep breath and slipped the connector into the computer. It beeped, and ‘OVERRIDDEN’ flashed up on his screen across the ‘Access Denied’ message.
Even unlocked, Brockson had a very bland record – though interesting in its blandness. Up until five years ago, he had a normal-looking progression through the ranks, up to Captain at age thirty.
Then the first ‘Special Assignment – SOD’ entry popped up. Three months, no details, followed by a promotion. Several more ‘Special Assignments’ followed, until a year ago, accompanying his promotion to Colonel, was the note “Assignment – Commander, Special Operations Directorate.”
That was the last note in the file until very recentl
y, when Brockson had been assigned as ‘Logistics Coordinator, Nouveaux Normandy Province’.
It looked like a lot of information had never made it into the files, but the latest position looked odd. Damien pulled it up. With the Hand overriding all security measures in the government system, the database happily informed him that while the posting was backdated to a week ago, it had been entered last night.
A few keystrokes brought up another database, this one the government records tracking official and civilian travel. Brockson had arrived in Nouveaux Normandy ten hours before Alaura had, accompanied by several cases of cargo under a Special Operations Directorate seal instructing that they were to be handled with care and not opened or exposed to heat.
Another, more local database, told Damien that Brockson had only just signed in at the Nouveaux Normandy Logistics Center this morning. He’d been in town for a full day before checking in at his supposed assignment – an assignment that hadn’t existed until after the attack on Alaura.
None of Damien’s briefing files had mentioned anything about a Special Operations Directorate, either. Searching for the Directorate in the government ‘net, however, returned nothing except a list of personnel.
Any further files on missions or tasking was clearly not kept connected to the net. A list of personnel, however, combined with the passenger tracking system for air traffic and a paramilitary force’s general preference for locating its people, gave Damien a starting point.
The Directorate’s personnel were scattered across the planet, usually in singletons. Running his track into the past he found clusters, times and places where anything from five to twenty SOD officers and personnel had met up for several days or weeks.
Some of the dates and times looked familiar, and Damien pulled up one of his briefing files – and promptly swore.
“Sir?” Mitchell asked, surprising by the sudden exclamation.
“Vaughn is a murderous fucking son of a bitch,” the Envoy said bluntly, gesturing towards the screen. “We thought it looked like there were two terrorist groups – one precise urban guerilla movement, one wanton terrorist faction.”
Hand of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 2) Page 8
