Mountain of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  “It has always been the duty of the Mage-King’s Hands to deal with the underlying problems as well as the overt conflicts,” Damien concluded. “I have to leave, which means someone else must speak for those who might be forgotten. It has to be you, James. It can only be you.”

  Niska snorted.

  “You know how to dance on all of my buttons, don’t you?”

  “Consider it a fair return for you dancing on mine,” Damien replied. “You talked me into giving the Republic’s people a chance. Now I’m making it your job to make them take it.”

  “All right,” he said, shaking his head. The graying cyborg turned his attention to Chambers. “I know it’s not your job, Lieutenant, but you think you can help me get in touch with the ship’s crew and get my things transferred over?”

  “I think that falls under the Admiral’s staff, personally,” Chambers replied. “I’ll talk to my team. Will you need to go back to Duke?”

  Niska glanced around, then shrugged.

  “I don’t need to say goodbye to Persephone, I suppose,” he allowed. “I travel light; I’m sure Lord Montgomery’s people can get it packed up and over?”

  “My cat might forgive you for leaving without saying goodbye eventually,” Damien said, letting the moment of humor ease some of the tension. “I’ll have Commodore Jakab’s people package your things and send them over.” He paused, shaking his head. “I guess that’s Mage-Captain Denuiad’s people. The Commodore won’t be bothered with that.”

  Mage-Captain Milena Denuiad had taken over as Captain of Duke of Magnificence after Damien had promoted Kole Jakab to avoid confusion. That meant she’d inherited Jakab’s role as Damien’s “driver,” though she seemed okay with that so far.

  He carefully clasped forearms with both Niska and Chambers, forcing a smile for them both.

  “We’ll be on our way within twelve hours,” he warned them. “Alexander’s people should be arranging the transfer of a few Mages—which I suspect I’m trading Mage-Commodore Jakab for.”

  No one was going to argue with his taking a cruiser, but he figured he should probably leave the cruiser squadron commander with the squadron. He’d miss Jakab, but there were a lot of people with the fleet he was going to miss.

  “I’ll tell Persephone you both said hi and give her some pets from you,” he told them. “The sooner everything is moving, the sooner we’re on our way and the sooner I’m at the Mage-Queen’s side.”

  And much as he disliked leaving a job half-done, he had to admit that was the place for him. He was the First Hand of the Mage-King of Mars. When the Mage-Queen needed a sword and a strong right hand, well, that was his job.

  5

  Persephone’s opinion of Damien’s being back aboard Duke of Magnificence was very clear. The moment he entered the observation deck that had been converted to his office, the cat was running through the specially installed tunnel from his quarters to the office. He heard claws on metal for a good fifteen seconds before she came barrelling across the floor and leapt onto his chest.

  Magic held her in place while the First Hand of Mars, inarguably one of the two or three most powerful human beings alive, carefully slid an arm into place to hold the purring ball of black fur up.

  “Good to see you, too,” he told the cat as he delicately lowered himself into his chair.

  “I swear the cat misses you more than any person has ever missed me,” Denis Romanov said dryly, the Special Agent leaning against the heavily armored window looking out over the fleet. “You’d think she’d be more attached to Jeff. He feeds her.”

  “Jeff feeds everyone who comes into his orbit,” Damien pointed out. Jeff Schenck—properly, Chief Steward Jeff Schenck—was the Royal Martian Navy NCO tasked with keeping one Damien Montgomery organized and alive.

  He was also only a few moments behind the cat in stepping into the office to check in.

  “From her reaction, I’d think you’d been gone for days instead of hours,” Schenck noted. “Can I get you anything, sir? You’re still scheduled for dinner with Captain Denuiad in four hours.”

  “We’ll cancel that dinner, Jeff,” Damien told the older man. “I’ll eat here. Captain Denuiad is going to be busy: we’ll be moving out in about ten hours.”

  “Of course, sir,” Schenck said. “Anything in particular you need?”

  Damien manfully refrained both from sinking his face into Persephone’s and from asking his steward to bring him alcohol.

  “Coffee, please,” he finally ordered. Schenck would know what to bring. Damien’s supply of small-batch coffee from the best coffee growers in the Protectorate was one of his few luxuries.

  “For both myself and Agent Romanov,” he continued. “Have you been briefed on what happened back home?”

  There was a long pause, then Schenck bowed his head.

  “I was, my lord. I didn’t know His Majesty, but it’s still terrible news. You have my condolences.”

  “In a perfect world, we’d all live forever,” Damien murmured. “We’re going home, Jeff. I’m not sure how long I’ll be on Mars, but Mage-Captain Denuiad may end up reclaiming this space. You’ll probably need to at least plan packing as we travel.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Even magic couldn’t have made the coffee appear faster, and Damien took a slow sip as he considered the situation in front of him.

  “Is there anything you still need to take care of here, Agent?” he asked Romanov.

  “I go where you go,” the Marine-turned-bodyguard replied. “So do my people. You may want to touch base with LaMonte and her crew and give Alexander your files on the Republic. Just in case.”

  “Both of those were on my list,” Damien confirmed, “but thank you. Any concerns with the detail?”

  “Mostly for the future,” Denis said. “How much security do you really need in the Mountain, after all?”

  “The last time I spent significant time in the Mountain, I acquired a girlfriend who tried to kill me and then nuked herself.” He shook his head. Hand Charlotte Ndosi had been in the same kind of “recuperate in safety” status as him when they’d met on Mars.

  She’d also been a Keeper and had fought him to protect their secrets. She’d been vaporized in the nuclear explosion that had destroyed their archive—but she’d already been dead at that point. One of her own Mages had killed her.

  Someday, Damien would find that Mage. Today, he wondered if that betrayal had anything to do with the Mage-King’s death.

  “I’m seconded to the Secret Service and to your detail until you don’t need or want me anymore,” the Marine finally said. “I hope we don’t need to worry about Hands turning on you again. Or girlfriends, for that matter.”

  “My girlfriend has a battle fleet,” Damien said quietly. “I prefer not to upset her.”

  “You certainly know how to pick them,” Romanov confirmed brightly. “Like I said, I suggest you talk to LaMonte before we leave. God alone knows when you’ll see each other again.”

  “We both entered the service of Mars in the end,” he murmured. “We knew what we were getting into.”

  “Did you?” the Marine asked. “Because I signed on ‘cause the girl I was crushing on thought the uniform was hot, and now I’m in the Secret Service, guarding the First Hand.”

  He shook his head.

  “I definitely didn’t know what I was getting into.”

  There was more involved in getting ready to leave the fleet behind than just passing his files over to Alexander, and it took Damien several hours just to get the data transfers handled. Between his files on Duke of Magnificence and the copies on the stealth ship Rhapsody in Purple, Damien probably knew as much about the Republic as some of the people who’d been running it.

  He certainly knew more about the Daedalus Project and the Promethean Interface it had created. That sickening merger of magic and technology was the key to the Republic war fleet, using the extracted brains of Mages to jump ships.

  Mos
t of the Republic’s first wave of those brains had come from them kidnapping and murdering the Mages born in the UnArcana Worlds. Several thousand children had been murdered to fuel the Republic’s war machine, a revelation that had shattered the fleet attempting to defend Legatus.

  A revelation that had broken a lot of Damien’s faith in humanity. The Mage-King’s death didn’t help. Everywhere he turned right now, he was looking at reminders of just how low his species could sink.

  But, well, humanity was the only game he had, and he’d made a few promises along the way.

  With the data handled, he followed Romanov’s suggestion and pinged Kelly LaMonte. Rhapsody in Purple’s Captain was an old friend and an ex-girlfriend. She was married to her Ship’s Mage and her First Pilot now, the three of them running what he figured was the most efficient covert-ops ship he knew about.

  “Damien,” she greeted him within moments of the connection being made. “Are you okay?”

  “You heard,” he replied. It shouldn’t be a surprise, he supposed. The Mage-King’s death was the news of the day. Hell, of the year.

  “Of course I heard,” LaMonte snapped. “Both Desmonds gone. I know you were friends with both of them, too. Rumor has it you’re going back to Mars, so I repeat my question. Are you okay?”

  “No,” he admitted, a word that was getting more familiar than usual. “I’m not okay. I don’t even know what… I don’t know what to think or what to do.”

  There weren’t many people he’d admit that to, but Rhapsody wasn’t a large ship. Everyone aboard had spent the last few months living in each others’ back pockets, and he’d known Kelly LaMonte well before that, too.

  “Head back to Mars?” she asked. “That seems to be the next step.”

  “I haven’t heard from Kiera yet, but that was what Gregory asked. We’ve got two extra Mages reporting aboard, which makes it a two-day trip if we push it,” he told her. “I…want to be home, I think. I lost two good friends today and I was too far away to do anything.”

  “If it wasn’t for the Link, we wouldn’t have known for at least two days,” she pointed out. “I see the advantage of the thing, even if I want to curse it right now.”

  “You’ll have one on Rhapsody soon enough.” Damien sighed, then smiled as Persephone jumped on his desk to be in the camera.

  “You’re not supposed to be up here,” he scolded her. She ignored him, nosing at the image of the currently blue-haired covert-ops captain before settling down on the desk.

  “You spoil her,” LaMonte told him.

  “It’s true,” he admitted. “She also knows I can’t pick her up, so…”

  He made a vague gesture with his left hand and Persephone vanished from the desk with a pop, reappearing on the floor with a disgruntled meow.

  “I have no idea what’s next on your agenda,” he said to LaMonte. “I’m heading back to Mars to deal with everything there. I have my suspicions about what needs to be done there.”

  “It’s been seventy years since the last succession. It’s going to be messy—and it’s a mess centered on a kid who just lost her father and brother,” she agreed. “Kiera’s going to need you. As a friend and as her First Hand.”

  “I know. And I’ll be there,” he told her. “Which means I need to get moving, which means I leave everything here in the lurch.”

  “Don’t worry; if there’s a secret Republic accelerator ring, we’ll find it,” she told him. That was the second biggest fear they had: both Republic and Protectorate warships needed antimatter for power, engines and weapons.

  The Protectorate produced it with the services of transmuter Mages. Legatus had built a particle accelerator ring that had encompassed an entire gas giant. The sheer scale of the installation meant that its construction had never been repeated, and its capture should have cut the Republic Interstellar Navy’s fuel supply.

  Should. But if there were a second accelerator ring…it would fall to the scout ships to find it.

  “I’m more worried about a second Prometheus facility,” he admitted. “We know of at least one extraction facility that had been shut down to move operations here. Something like that could be reactivated if we don’t do something about it.”

  LaMonte shivered. She hadn’t boarded the Prometheus Station in Nueva Bolivia with Damien, but she’d been the one hacking its systems.

  They’d all seen the footage of the first place the Republic had murdered children to steal their magic.

  “If there’s another one of those hells, we’ll find it, too,” she said coldly. “Finley died too easily. The next fucker who follows his research is going to beg.”

  “I want to agree with you,” Damien admitted. “But we can’t become them, Kelly. If we get down into the mud and the shit with the monsters, we become monsters. Anyone senior from the Prometheus Project is going to get a very clean, very transparent trial.”

  And they’d get a clean death. But there was no question at all in his mind of how that trial would end. The Protectorate didn’t have the death penalty on the books for very many crimes.

  Mass murder was one of them.

  6

  It was still reassuring to Damien to be back in the Royal Martian Marine Corps assault shuttles he’d done most of his flying in since becoming a Hand. He’d had to give up the blatant and heavily armed spacecraft when he’d made his journey into Republic space to find the Prometheus Project.

  He returned to Olympus Mons in the style to which he’d become accustomed…and then some. His own shuttle was at the center of a formation of other spacecraft, half-escort and half-decoys, and their course kept them in full line of fire from Duke of Magnificence for the entire descent.

  Mars Defense Command was taking no chances. They’d lost their King. They weren’t going to lose the First Hand.

  “Olympus Control has just changed our landing pad,” the pilot reported. “Agent Romanov?”

  Talking to Damien and Romanov was easy enough for the woman. Damien had taken over the copilot seat, and Romanov was strapped into the back of the cockpit. The shuttle behind them was empty, but Damien wanted to see where he was going.

  “Part of the plan, Lieutenant,” Romanov said calmly, the Marine Secret Service officer clearly having been briefed. “No one outside Olympus Mons had the real landing pad until this moment. Even I only knew it was going to change.”

  “All right, following the ball,” the pilot confirmed.

  Damien shook his head.

  “Everyone’s on edge,” he said quietly, watching the immense mountain grow in the distance as they dropped through Mars’s atmosphere and the “red planet” came into clear view.

  Not that twenty-fifth century Mars was red. The First Mage-King’s magic had finished what a century-plus of terraforming efforts had begun. The planetary rotation had been accelerated to match Earth’s day. The last of the ice caps had been melted and the channels had been controlled. The small sample forests had expanded explosively over Desmond the First’s reign, his magic allowing the works of centuries to be done in years.

  Mars was a green world now, but there was an ever-so-slight ruddy tinge to most of the plant life. Damien suspected that tinge was intentional, inserted by the geneticists and biologists assembling an artificial ecosystem to keep the planet red.

  Olympus Mons rose from those green plains like the solitary god it was. The tallest mountain in the Solar System and still among the ten largest mountains known to humanity. Olympus City encircled its roots, a metropolis of the tens of millions of souls required to run even the loose nation of the Protectorate.

  “I have atmospheric interceptors rising from the Mountain,” the pilot told her passengers. “IFFs make them Royal Guard Air Squadron Three. Formation in sixty seconds, shuttle escort breaks off in seventy-five.”

  “Understood,” Damien confirmed. Long practice allowed him to make out the moving sparks above the city that were the next wave of their escort. He shivered at the name, though.

&nb
sp; The Royal Guard were nothing to be trifled with, even for a Hand. Less than three hundred strong, every one of them was either a Marine or a Navy Combat Mage and a proven veteran. Trained in a dozen different roles, they were given armor, weapons and magic that the Protectorate couldn’t justify for any larger or less critical force.

  Nine had died with the Mage-King of Mars.

  The Protectorate Secret Service guarded the Mountain, the secondary heirs, the Hands and the Voices of the Mage-King. But the Mage-King—the Mage-Queen now—was guarded by warriors without peer. Only the Mage-Queen and her immediate heir would have Royal Guards.

  Which meant, Damien realized, that a team had to be on their way to Legatus to resume their watch over Jane Alexander. Unless Kiera opted to do something unusual, Jane was going to be her niece’s heir for a while.

  The interceptors weren’t that different from those used by planetary defense forces around the Protectorate. They flashed into view in a blur of red, flipping and falling into formation perhaps a bit faster than another squadron might have.

  Once the dozen aircraft were in position, the shuttles flashed their running lights and brought their engines up to full power, blazing back to orbit on individual pillars of flame.

  “We’re two minutes from landing,” the pilot announced. “We are inside the Mountain’s defensive perimeter in sixty seconds. Lord Montgomery, can you do the copilot list?”

  Damien grinned and switches started flicking around him without his moving an injured finger.

  “I know the list,” he told the pilot. “So long as you don’t mind that I won’t actually be touching anything.”

  The technological and magical artifice of the Protectorate didn’t stretch to making it safe for human beings to stand on a landing pad as a shuttle came down. There were ways for a human to survive that—Damien had once, memorably, stopped an orbital bombardment—but they tended to send the Mage doing it to the hospital.