Flipping to another channel, she raised all of the Freedom Wing fighters in the building.
“All right everybody,” she said briskly. “Everyone’s favorite rogue Mage-Commodore has decided to play, and our flight has been canceled. Make your way to the Bastille motor pool on Level One, but keep an eye out for Marines.” She paused. “If you run into them, hit them with everything you’ve got,” she ordered quietly. “If they make it down, we’re out of chances to change their minds.”
Those orders given, she turned her attention back to her incoming guests. She had at least one shot at getting them to back down. Sighing, she grabbed the microphone for the Bastille’s own communication system and hailed the incoming shuttles.
“Royal Marine Flight Group, be advised this facility is now under the jurisdiction of the Protectorate Secret Service,” she told them. “Authentication Lima-Seven-Lima-Omega-Niner-Niner-Alpha-Five.
“I repeat, this facility is now under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service. Break off your approach and stand down, or I will be forced to destroy your shuttlecraft.”
She waited. The automated message receipt system on the assault shuttles told her they’d got the transmission, but none of them replied. They were now a hundred kilometers up and dropping fast. She had… minutes.
“Royal Marine Flight Group, this is your final warning,” she said calmly. “This facility has been seized by the Protectorate Secret Service, authentication Lima-Seven-Lima-Omega-Niner-Niner-Alpha-Five.
“If you do not break off your approach and stand down, I will be forced to defend this facility with all available force. This is your final warning.”
As she spoke, she began to access the anti-aircraft systems. Unless she was severely mistaken, the Bastille had surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down incoming shuttlecraft. The codes Montgomery had given her could be used to turn them on as well as off.
The problem was that it was easier to shut down everything than to turn on something specific. She didn’t even need to activate the IFF – Brute’s squadron was out of the free-fire zone. She just needed the launchers active.
“You’re Secret Service?” the officer who’d mouthed off at her earlier said softly from where he was tied up. “That auth code… it’s real?”
She glanced at the time to landing, then back at the officer and the Freedom Wing soldier guarding him.
“Let him at the console,” she told the rebel. “Check it yourself,” she instructed the officer, turning back to bringing the system online.
Several seconds later, she realized she was actually in the menus for the internal security system and had accidentally discovered how to activate individual sectors of that system. That might help once they were landed, but she would rather that didn’t happen.
“Authenticated,” the officer said quietly, and looked over at her, straightening against his handcuffs.
“Ma’am, I am Captain Davis Hiverner,” he told her. “I accept your authentication and authority. We don’t have time to get these cuffs off, but I can walk you through activating the SAM turrets.”
“You’ll need a ride when we’re done,” Amiri said quietly.
“I know,” he agreed. “But… I didn’t sign up to beat up civilians and guard political prisoners. Let me help you.”
With the Marines about to start knocking, she didn’t have many alternatives. She gestured for him to begin.
#
Mage-Commodore Cor watched her shuttles drop on the screen in the center of her flag bridge with pleasure. It was always satisfying to be able to unleash the full power of the force under her command against the mundane fools who stood in the way of her goals. Watching those unable to grasp reality be swept aside at the whim of their betters was gratifying.
Major Morales had selected the men to take down as carefully as she’d hoped. While the Major himself was completely her man, many of his sub-officers and men were more… old-fashioned in their loyalties. He’d selected his force entirely from those men – they would follow orders for a mission like this, and if the Freedom Wing proved more intractable than expected, their deaths only strengthened Cor’s position.
Regardless of their loyalties, they’d properly ignored the blatantly false attempt by the rebels to pretend they were Protectorate Secret Service. There were no PSS agents on the planet – as the senior military officer in the system, Cor should have been informed if any had been deployed.
The shuttles dropped below the clouds, starting to become more difficult to make out in the visual. Her flagship’s sensors still highlighted them clearly. They couldn’t find the stealthed aircraft that had made the assault, and Cor found herself concluding, sadly, that they were unwilling to challenge her Marines.
She missed the first warning flash from the fortress prison. Cor was more used to using her displays to track space movements and exercises than ground combat, and she didn’t understand what the screen was telling her for a moment. None of the staffers on her flag bridge would have dared to try to explain it, either. They would risk far too much by assuming she didn’t know what she was seeing.
Then five more warnings flashed, and Unchained Glory’s computers automatically added icons for the rising surface-to-air missiles fired from the fortress. Six missiles – two for each shuttle – blasted into the air from the Bastille, and the Mage-Commodore swore under her breath.
There was no way the rebels were in command of the prison’s defenses – it wasn’t possible.
But it was happening.
As she watched, all three shuttles dropped like rocks – their pilots aiming them for the fortress’ courtyards and firing the engines downwards. It was risky, but it could save them – especially as their ECM began to hash the surrounding area, rendering it impossible for even the Unchained Glory to track what happened.
The explosions stood out, though. The original designers of the Bastilles had been insane, she realized. Not satisfied with sufficient weapons to stand off any airborne or ground-launched assault or prison revolt, they’d added weapon systems capable of engaging an orbital drop. The missiles weren’t nuclear or antimatter tipped, but at their speed heavy conventional warheads were sufficient.
When the dust and ECM cleared, two of her shuttles were gone. A moment to check and she confirmed that Major Morales had not survived, which caused a pang of sadness.
It wasn’t a very big pang. Morales hadn’t been a Mage – he’d been useful, but there were others to take his place.
She hit a button, opening a channel to the surviving platoon leader.
“Lieutenant Hammond, report,” she ordered.
“Hammond here,” a young, breathless voice replied. “We are deploying.”
A loud crashing sound, rapidly repeated, interrupted him.
“Get down,” Hammond ordered. “Use the mobile shields, suppress those guns.”
“We’re running into heavy resistance,” he said to Cor. “All automated – this entire sector is firing on us. It’s mostly lightly weaponry, not much of a threat to an exosuit except in quantity – but this place has quantity.”
“We need to prevent the prisoners escaping, Lieutenant,” Cor told him. “You will have to advance.”
Silence answered her for a long moment.
“We’ll do what we can,” the young officer said flatly. “Hammond out.”
She tried to raise him, but failed.
“Is he ignoring me?” she demanded of her staff. They flinched away from her, but then one of the officers finally spoke up.
“No, ma’am,” he told her. “The entire Bastille just disappeared into a fog of jamming – no coms, no sensor readings.”
Cor looked back to the visual representation in the center of her flag bridge, only to watch it disappear as dozens of rockets flashed into the air and exploded into smoke. The electronic jamming blocked her scanners – the smoke blocked their telescopes.
She was blind, and out of touch. Her pleasure at the assumed destructi
on of her foes turned to ashes in her mouth.
This wasn’t supposed to happen to the Royal Martian Navy!
#
Damien emerged from the immense dome of the Runic Transceiver Array in something of a daze. He wasn’t sure any more what he’d been expecting, but to have Alexander promote him to Hand and drop the entire mess of Ardennes in his lap definitely hadn’t been it.
The Phantom sat alone on the helipad when he returned to it, with Sierra nowhere to be seen. There was a faint smell of cordite in the air, snapping him out of his longer-term worries. He removed his right glove and slowly drew energy into his hand as he glanced around for the pilot.
She emerged from the bushes beside the pad a moment later with a pistol in her hand, glancing at him nervously.
“A Scorpion patrol came by and recognized the Phantom for what it is,” Sierra said grimly as she approached. “I don’t think they got a message off before I killed them, but they’ll be missed pretty quickly either way. Are we done here?”
“We’re done here,” Damien assured her, resolving not to piss the Legatan woman off. For an ex-paramedic, she seemed to take killing four or five men a little too calmly. There was something in her eyes that made him uncomfortable too… a familiar flatness to her pupils.
“Then let’s go,” she told him, gesturing to the gunship.
Moments later, they were off, Sierra weaving the aircraft between office towers with consummate skill.
Then a light started flashing on the console and she swore. Hitting a key, she accepted the call.
“Flight F-451, this is Nouveau Versailles Control,” a calm voice told. “There’s been an incident at the RTA. You are ordered to cease your course and return to the facility to co-operate with the investigation.”
She glanced over at Damien. Her eyes were calmer now, but there was still something odd about them – something familiar too. Almost like her pupils were half-square, which had to just be a trick of the light.
“Can’t go back,” she said simply. “If I ignore them, they’ll react before we’re out of town, and I can’t stealth my way past police aircraft when I’m surrounded by skyscrapers.”
“Do what you have to,” he ordered.
The pilot nodded grimly and engaged the throttle, driving the helicopter towards the edge of the city faster. A minute or so passed, and then the light flickered on again.
“Flight F-451, this is ground control. If you do not return to the RTA site, we will assume you were responsible for the attack on our personnel and shoot you down. You have thirty seconds to comply.”
Damien watched over Sierra’s shoulder as she flipped the key that enabled the gunship’s weapons. Making sure he had a clean line of sight to the sensors, he removed his gloves and tucked them inside his coat. He’d prefer not to have to engage – it would make what was going on obvious.
But better for a Mage to have been clearly involved than for them not to make it home.
“I see they’re giving up on talking to us,” he said softly, spotting the two new icons on the scanners – flashing orange as ‘unidentified’ contacts. The contacts turned red a moment later as Sierra dialed them in and labeled them as hostile.
“And they’re not playing games,” she replied. “Those are jet interceptors – I think they’re guessing who we are, and guessing right.”
“Can you take them?”
“If we were outside the city, I’d just disappear,” Sierra said grimly.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It’ll depend,” she replied. “Ground control has an accurate guess of what we are. But if these guys trust their radar… they’ll come in fat and sloppy.”
Damien glanced at the icons closing – and closing in fast and high. They weren’t breaking the speed of sound, but they were pushing close against it. They were at most a minute outside of range.
“Good luck,” he told her, and settled his own mind – clearing his thoughts to more easily channel magic.
“And… now,” Sierra whispered and hit a button. Damien felt the gunship shake as two decoys launched from the back of the aircraft, and two missiles flared out from the launchers tucked under the rotors.
At the same time, she dove down, driving the helicopter closer to the ground even as more contacts flared onto the display – four missiles launching from the jets.
Damien focused on the missiles. Those were something he could deal with without being obvious. Practice and training let him pick out the tiny dots of the weapons as they approached, and he reached out with his magic.
Force ‘gently’ grabbed the two lead weapons, shoving them off their course – and into each other. Fire lit up the night sky as the warheads exploded. Sheltered in the light of the destruction of the lead missiles, Damien reached out and crushed the trailers, leaving their damaged chassis to fall – hopefully harmlessly! – to the street below.
Without magic interrupting their flights, Sierra’s missiles were more successful. One hit a decoy, adding to the fireworks in Nouveaux Versailles’ sky. The other slammed into the lead jet fighter and detonated, scattering the high-tech aircraft in pieces across the city.
This was apparently more than the other interceptor’s pilot was expecting. The aircraft jerked away from the fireball that had been his wingman and climbed high, blasting out of the Phantom’s range at high speed.
“Sucker,” Sierra whispered. “Missed your chance – now you get to watch me disappear.”
Glancing away from their attacker, Damien realized they were now well clear of Nouveaux Versailles’ Central District with its constraining towers. As the jet interceptor flashed away, clearly intending to prepare for another run, the Legatan woman hit a set of commands.
Suddenly, instead of imitating a civilian helicopter, the Phantom was imitating empty air.
It was hard to read body language from the tiny dot of an aircraft on a radar screen – but Damien was sure he could see the pilot’s confusion nonetheless.
#
Chapter 32
Mage-Captain Jane Adamant jerked awake to the alert. Years of practice had trained her to awaken instantly, but she still could swear she’d only been asleep for a few moments as she pulled herself from her bed and tapped a key, accepting the transmission voice-only.
“Captain, it’s Lieutenant Fiero,” her junior communications officer, the woman currently stuck manning the station in the middle of the ship’s night, greeted her. “Tau Ceti f RTA has forwarded an Alpha One priority transmission from Mars.”
She shook the final dregs of sleep from her eyes. Alpha One from Mars almost certainly meant from the Mage-King himself – and even battleship Captains didn’t receive many missives directly from the King.
“Forward it to my cabin,” she ordered. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
By the time the Captain had grabbed a robe and wrapped it around her body against the slight chill of the cabin, an icon had appeared on both her cabin console and the PC discarded on her dresser. Belting the robe tightly closed, she touched the icon.
An authentication prompt appeared, demanding her personal identification and security codes. While the Transceiver Mage at the array would have heard the entire message, those individuals were among the most tightly screened and highly cleared individuals in the Protectorate for just that reason. Once the messages were recorded into the system, the security and encryption went back on.
No-one had yet worked out how to transmit anything except the voice of the speaking Mage via the Runic Transceiver Arrays. In an era of massive data transfers and computers capable of storing all mankind’s knowledge that fit in a wristwatch, the only instantaneous method of interstellar communication was somewhat less capable than an early telephone.
Her codes input, the file began playing, the even voice of Mage-King Desmond Alexander filling her cabin.
“This message is for Mage-Captain Adamant aboard the Righteous Guardian of Liberty, from Desmond Michael Alexander. Authenticatio
n is Kilo Kilo Seven Nine Victor Charlie One Six.
“Captain Adamant, I am not certain what information has reached you with regards to the events on Ardennes. I will summarize these events as I am aware of them, as much of what has been previously disseminated has turned out to be incorrect.
“As has been announced, Hand Alaura Stealey is dead. However, new evidence has confirmed that her death was the work of Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn, not the rebellion.
“I have also confirmed that the destruction of the city of Karslberg was not the work of the rebellion. Karslberg was destroyed by Navy munitions, Captain Adamant. Munitions fired from Mage-Commodore Cor’s warships.”
Adamant paused the message to curse. She’d known Adrianna Cor in the Academy – the woman had been brilliant but arrogant, tied up in her own views of how the world should be. Skill had driven the other woman up the ranks faster than most, but it looked like that was coming to an end.
Sighing, she restarted the Mage-King’s recording.
“Given that both the local government and Navy forces in the Ardennes system have been compromised, we need to deploy external resources to secure the system before we can attempt to fix the clusterfuck it is clear Ardennes has become.
“You’re it,” the Mage-King told her flatly. “Consider this message notification of your promotion to Mage-Commodore. Paperwork will follow with the appropriate physical couriers, but you’ll need the authority.
“You are to assemble a task force of sufficient force to secure the Ardennes system, assuming full resistance from both the Ardennes Self Defense Force and Mage-Commodore Cor’s Seventh Cruiser Squadron.”
She paused the recording to curse again. The promotion was welcome, but enough firepower to take on an entire cruiser squadron? If she wasn’t starting with a battleship, it would be impossible. As it was… she swore again, then unpaused the recording.
“If Mage-Admiral Segal does not have sufficient vessels to spare, you will commandeer combat units from the Tau Ceti System Fleet,” Alexander continued, as if such things were straightforward. “Under any circumstances, you will depart Tau Ceti within twelve hours of this message.
Hand of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 2) Page 22
