UnArcana Stars

by Glynn Stewart

  “Threat alert!” McQueen reported sharply.

  Damien found himself looking at the wrong part of the displays. His focus was on the planet, and he was half-expecting to see that the Republic military had launched aircraft or something to take down his retreating shuttles.

  “Leaving Baghdad, my lord,” the tech told him after a moment. “We have multiple major energy signatures heading out to rendezvous with the gunships.”

  Damien adjusted the main display, zooming in on Baghdad and the orbital platforms there. Five massive energy signatures were now plainly visible across the entire star system, immense plumes of fusion energy from ships that were far larger than he’d been expecting.

  “How much detail do we have?” he asked, sounding far calmer than he felt.

  “CIC is working on it, but it’s definitely five capital ships using fusion engines. One’s somewhat bigger than the others, but we’re still isolating energy and acceleration to identify mass.”

  Damien nodded and looked at what data he had. Fusion drives were normally a civilian system. Both the gunships and the missiles the Republic had thrown at him had been using antimatter drives.

  On the other hand, antimatter in the Protectorate was the product of Transmuter Mages. Converting matter into antimatter was a straightforward, if draining and dangerous, process for Mages in general. Damien himself was known to use it as a weapon, though that was a trick that required at least one Rune of Power to pull off.

  The Republic’s sole source of antimatter was a massive particle-accelerator ring wrapped around Legatus’s largest gas giant. They obviously had decided to prioritize where they were committing it.

  “I think we can assume that their missiles are also antimatter-fueled, don’t you?” Damien murmured. A verbal command linked him to Jakab.

  “What do you make of it, Captain?”

  “Carrier group,” the Mage-Captain replied instantly. “Old wet-navy doctrine. They’re using the gunships as a force and hull multiplier, but they’ve got escorts to protect the carrier herself. We’d need additional data on them, my lord, to say more.”

  “There’s only one way to get that data, Mage-Captain,” Damien pointed out. “My reading says we’re still breaking down the energy signatures, but we’re definitely outmassed and outnumbered. Which means almost certainly outgunned.”

  He shook his head.

  “I won’t sacrifice your ships or this convoy for tactical data we have no way of getting home,” he continued.

  The only form of faster-than-light communication available to the Protectorate was the Runic Transceiver Arrays, massive constructs of magic and runes that took years to build and could project a speaking Mage’s voice to another RTA. They were too delicate and too large to be attached to ships or fleets, which meant that Damien could only send messages home aboard a ship.

  “How long until the shuttles are aboard?” Damien asked.

  “Seventy minutes,” Jakab reported. “We’ve got time, my lord. Scans show them accelerating at roughly four gravities.”

  “They don’t have magical gravity, so that makes sense. I can’t imagine they use their Mages for much other than jumping the ships.”

  “Where did they even get the Mages for this?” his Captain asked.

  “Some people will do anything for money,” Damien pointed out. “It’s not like our crime syndicates have ever had a notable shortage of Jump Mages, after all. I’ll admit, though, I was expecting one big ship. Not five smaller ones.”

  The sudden sick expression on Jakab’s face warned him before the Mage-Captain spoke.

  “How about five big ones?” he asked. “CIC makes the carrier forty million tons. Escorts are thirty apiece. Any one of those ships could probably take both Duke and Glory.”

  “Get the convoy ready to move, Mage-Captain,” Damien ordered. “We were here to help people, not fight a war—even if we could fight these people, I don’t want to!”

  The carrier group continued to accelerate toward Damien’s convoy. Their acceleration might have been slow compared to what his cruisers could manage, but it was better than most of his freighters could pull off.

  On the other hand, they’d started a long way away. If they accelerated the whole way and cut across his course at just the right angle, they could at least force a missile engagement as the Martian forces withdrew.

  That wouldn’t get them the freighters, however, and Damien was certain that the Republic had every intention of trying to seize his fleet.

  “Do you think they’re really willing to doom Kormar for this grandstanding?” he asked Romanov.

  “I’m not sure, my lord,” his bodyguard admitted. “I wouldn’t. There’s nothing in our files on this Admiral Emerson Wang, though.”

  “I know. I looked,” Damien agreed. “He’s enough of a hard case to try and blow us to hell and capture the convoy with his gunships, but so far, all it has cost him is a diplomatic incident we’re both probably willing to smooth over.”

  It would be a disservice to his dead, but Damien would do it anyway. The Royal Martian Navy had never been intended as a true warfighting force. They only had three types of warships, and there were less than twenty battleships in commission. A war would fall almost entirely on the cruisers and destroyers, and the entire RMN had a strength of under three hundred ships.

  The carrier group on their screens would slice through any cruiser squadron in the Protectorate, and there were very few formations or fleet bases with more than a cruiser squadron in place. If the Republic had a carrier group there in the Korma System, then Damien had to conclude they had at least three such groups. Almost certainly more.

  Which made the armament programs taking place in the Sol and Tau Ceti Systems utterly critical—and it would still be a year before any of the new cruisers were commissioned, let alone the battleships or truly new warships.

  Destroyers were starting to come out of the yards in small but increasing numbers, but Damien was now grimly aware of how short those million-ton warships might come up against their potential new enemy.

  Both Damien and his King were more prepared to see the Republic go its own way than they were to fight a war—but if they had to fight a war, the Protectorate needed to complete their construction program.

  “What happens if he pushes it?” Romanov asked.

  “Most likely?” Damien shook his head. “We die. Duke of Magnificence and Glory in Honest Purpose can’t stop those ships, so if they force a missile engagement, they’ll take us down. They won’t be able to stop the convoy escaping, though. If they really want an atrocity to kick everything off, they might be able to destroy half or more of the freighters, but not all of them.”

  “Someone would get home,” the Marine concluded.

  “Exactly. And there’d be a war…and Kormar wouldn’t get the food they need, either.”

  Damien looked at the hologram and the five ships hurtling toward him.

  “Admiral Wang has to know that,” he admitted. “At least part of him is playing chicken, because I don’t care how much of a hardcase he is. He almost certainly isn’t going to let eighty million of his own people starve.”

  “So, what do we do?” Romanov asked.

  Damien looked down at the controls on his seat and sighed.

  “We get someone to set up a com channel for me so I don’t hurt myself,” he replied. “And then we’ll see if I can talk some sense into the good Admiral.”

  The coms officer, Gwen Rustici, flashed Damien a thumbs-up as the recorder started.

  “Admiral Emerson Wang of the Republic Interstellar Navy,” Damien greeted the Republican officer. “I am Damien Montgomery, First Hand of the Mage-King of Mars.”

  He forced a smirk.

  “Of course, we both know who the other is, but the niceties are required, aren’t they? Just like I have to ask why your battle group is headed towards my convoy. I’m sure there is a long list of justifications you’ve written up for the press and your superi
ors, but we both know the truth.

  “You are heading toward my convoy to steal what was meant to be freely given, to destroy the ships I brought to protect that cargo, and likely to force the Mages and crews of the ships in my convoy into the service of the Republic.

  “This. Will. Not. Happen.”

  Damien bit off each word, then forced a smile.

  “We have made one delivery to the surface, approximately five million tons of food. Give or take, six weeks of food for the population of Kormar. The local scientists have not developed a countermeasure to the bacteria that ate their crops. Their best plan is to plant crops somewhere else and hope that there is no contamination.

  “I have a team that could help them. I have enough food to carry Kormar through an entire growing season. I came here to do those things, but I will not—I cannot do them under threat.

  “Unless we come to some agreement or you pull your ships back to your docks at Baghdad, I have no choice but to evacuate this system. I’m not going to pretend I can fight your battle group with two cruisers. I will simply withdraw, and between you and me, we will have damned the people of Kormar.”

  Damien let that hang as he gave the camera his most level look.

  “I would rather that you and I come to an agreement, save a world and eighty million people, and show both our nations that we can work together. But so long as your fleet is advancing, I have no choice but to withdraw.

  “The next step is yours, Admiral Wang. I am prepared to negotiate. Are you?”

  He waved his hand and Rustici cut off the recording.

  “Do you want to review it, my lord?” she asked.

  “No. Just send it,” he ordered.

  She nodded and set to work, and Damien leaned back in his seat. He wanted to massage his temples, but he couldn’t do that. He wanted to massage his hands, but he couldn’t do that, either.

  Eighteen months wasn’t long enough to get used to barely having any use of his hands.

  “What happens if he isn’t prepared to talk?” Romanov asked quietly.

  “Then we leave,” Damien replied, his voice equally soft. “I’ll hate myself for it; don’t get me wrong. But I won’t sacrifice the lives of our people for nothing.”

  “If it feeds a world, is it nothing?” the Marine said.

  “No,” Damien admitted. “It isn’t…but my first duty is to the people I brought out here.” He shook his head.

  “PO Rustici, how long until we hear back?”

  “He’s six light-minutes away and closing,” she reported. “Minimum twelve minutes.”

  “More likely twenty or thirty,” Damien said. “He’s going to play for time, try to see if he can lure me into a trap.”

  “Why are you so sure of that?” Romanov asked.

  “Because if I was stuck with his horrific set of objectives, that’s what I’d do.”

  7

  Half of the time left before the shuttles made it aboard had passed before Damien finally heard back from the Republic officer.

  “Incoming transmission. It’s a pulsed recording,” Rustici reported.

  “Play it,” Damien ordered. “Loop in Jakab and Popov. Let’s keep everyone informed.”

  “What about Mage-Captain Flipsen?” Rustici asked and the Hand paused.

  He shook his head at his own forgetfulness. Nuria Flipsen was the commanding officer of Glory in Honest Purpose. Jakab was the senior officer and the designated commander of the convoy, but Damien should have been including Flipsen already.

  “Include her,” he agreed. “And…send her my apologies. I’m out of practice, it seems.”

  The Petty Officer didn’t quite chuckle at the Hand’s error, but she did smile as she set to work.

  A few seconds later, the holographic tank in the middle of the room dissolved into the image of a heavyset man barely taller than Damien. Emerson Wang seemed nearly as broad as he was tall, with a thick epicanthic fold and heavy jowls as he glared down at his audience.

  Given Wang’s height, Damien knew that was only possible by careful positioning of the recorders. He had to arrange things so he wasn’t looking up at everyone. He’d never have set it up so he was looking down, however, and he felt a chill running down his spine.

  “I know who you are, Damien Montgomery,” the Admiral said calmly. “Your reputation for deception and trickery has made it to the Republic. We remember the man whose lies shattered the unity of the human race.”

  “Lies, facts, it’s all the same, isn’t it?” Romanov murmured in Damien’s ear.

  Damien had been the one to find and present the evidence connecting Legatus and the UnArcana Worlds to the covert war they’d waged against the Protectorate for over half a decade. He’d laid those crimes at the feet of the Legatan Councilor in a session of the Council of the Protectorate—and the response had been the Secession.

  No one had blamed him for the Secession to his face yet, but he wasn’t particularly surprised by the Admiral’s tack.

  “Your presence and the presence of your warships in this system are an act of war against the Republic of Faith and Reason. If your mission was as humanitarian as you say, you hardly needed warships to see the cargo delivered.

  “Your own presence represents a provocation the Republic cannot ignore. You will either surrender yourself, your ships, and your convoy to internment, or I will be forced to engage and destroy your ships.”

  The recording ended.

  “Well, that’s wonderfully helpful, isn’t it?” Damien said aloud. “Nice to know that I’m apparently the Republic’s public enemy number one.”

  He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt, though. If he’d sent someone else to deliver the cargo, perhaps they would have managed it without all of this trouble. Only his desire to see the task done—and, he supposed, to take credit for it—had needed him to be there.

  “How long until the shuttles are back aboard?”

  “Thirty minutes,” Jakab replied instantly. All three of Damien’s senior military officers were on the channel, and his hologram split into three screens showing their faces. All of them looked as grim as Damien felt.

  “My CIC says there’s no course where we can prevent him ranging on us unless his missiles are much shorter-ranged than we expect,” Flipsen noted.

  “They know the capacity of our Phoenix VIII,” Damien said. “There’s no way their new main-line missile doesn’t at least match its delta-v and powered range, if not necessarily its acceleration. All we can do is assume their weapon is comparable.”

  “So, what do we do, my lord?” Jakab asked.

  “We proceed as per the last plan,” Damien ordered. “Get the shuttles aboard and run for space clear enough to jump. We use the cruisers to cover the freighters against long-range missile fire, and we use our own weapons entirely for defense.”

  “And the Republic?” Flipsen said.

  “We’re not here to start a war,” he replied. “If I thought we could engage them without risking our charges, I’d order it at this point. But we’re going to need every missile we’ve got to cover our own asses. Our priority is getting the convoy out.”

  “What about Kormar?” Popov said grimly.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” the Hand told them. “Not unless Wang decides to back off and let us unload. I’ll make one more attempt to convince him to stand down, but…I don’t have much hope.”

  “My lord, may I borrow a moment of your time?” Flipsen’s request was soft-spoken, almost hesitant. Even in the hologram, the Mage-Captain’s skin seemed to blend in with her black-and-gold uniform, but her gaze was level as she met Damien’s eyes.

  “Of course, Mage-Captain,” Damien replied. He needed time to marshal his thoughts for the message he was about to send. Any distraction would be worthwhile.

  “My lord…no Captain likes to admit this, but Glory is not combat-capable,” she stated flatly. “I’m not certain that we would even be capable of assisting in the missile defense of the c
onvoy, other than by providing an additional target.

  “If that is your order, we will do so, but…”

  “But your responsibility is to your ship and crew,” Damien agreed. He paused thoughtfully. “Is your amplifier matrix intact?”

  “I have Mages reviewing the damaged sections of the ship right now, but I believe so,” Flipsen confirmed. “I can use the amplifier to great effect if given the opportunity, my lord, though I worry that—”

  “They won’t get close enough, Mage-Captain,” Damien cut her off. “I had something very different in mind. An amplifier, Captain Flipsen, can jump from a significantly stronger gravity field than a regular jump matrix.”

  And if he sent one of his ships away now, it would help make his point to Admiral Wang very, very clearly.

  “I want Glory to start moving immediately,” he ordered. “As soon as you’ve confirmed your amplifier is safe to use, you are to jump to the rendezvous point and wait for us there.”

  Flipsen winced.

  “I…” She hesitated.

  “You do not want to appear a coward and you don’t want to be useless,” Damien said gently. “But you are correct. I will not commit a ship into action that is not capable of defending herself, let alone others. Plus, Mage-Captain, I have a use for the demonstration I’m asking you to undertake.”

  He smiled.

  “How much are you willing to bet, Mage-Captain, that our good Admiral Wang isn’t nearly as comfortable with his knowledge of the limitations of a jump matrix as you and I are?”

  It took Flipsen a moment to add up the pieces he’d given her, but her answering smile was cold.

  “And you intend to educate him?” she asked, then nodded. “Glory in Honest Purpose will be underway in the next few minutes, Lord Montgomery. We’ll give you your demonstration.”

  Glory in Honest Purpose vanished four minutes later, a pop of magic teleporting the starship a full light-year away.