Damien hadn’t even known her son had been in those courses.
“You know her, then?”
“Yeah, Brad and Des used to date way back when,” she said with a wave of her hand. “She used to organize birthday parties for us all. That may not sound like much, but when you’re trying to organize two royal brats who are seven years apart in age and a functionally randomly selected group of six age-mates for each of us, while serving as the admin assistant and organizer-in-chief for the head of Olympus Power…”
Damien half-whistled.
“Okay, I saw that role and assumed it ate her life,” he admitted. “I’m impressed. I hired her based on her handling you, though.”
The Queen laughed.
“Fair enough.” She looked around the room. “If you’re bringing in staff, you realize you need to get out of this office, yes? We can move Grace’s picture.”
“I know,” he allowed. “But I know where I’m supposed to move to and I’m dreading it.”
“Haven’t been in there myself since.” Kiera looked at Damien’s calendar. “Look, your next appointment is with Malcolm and Jess Karling. She’s…actually the current boss of Olympus Power, replaced Moxi’s old boss a few years back.
“Check with Malcolm if you can leave him to handle that, but I think you and I need to go to Dad’s office…your office…together.”
Damien exhaled slowly, then nodded.
“Fair,” he agreed. “I’ll check with the Chancellor.”
15
The office of the Mage-King of Mars was at the absolute top of the Royal Family’s section of the construction inside Olympus Mons, which meant it was one of the highest excavations inside the mountain.
The air on the other side of the transparent transmuted titanium window wasn’t even breathable. They were above the breathable atmosphere that magic and artifice had given Mars—and the window, Damien knew, was rated to withstand a direct hit from at least a small nuke.
It was his office now, he supposed, but he still half-expected to see Desmond standing by the window, waiting for him. The bookshelves were sparser now, at least, the books removed by the Mountain’s librarians to be re-cataloged and stored with the rest of the Alexander Family’s massive collection.
The empty bookshelves lined one wall. The opposite wall had a selection of small paintings, about twenty centimeters high, of every member of the Alexander Family from the first Desmond to Kiera herself.
The back wall, behind the desk from the perspective of the door and the floor-to-ceiling window, held four meter-wide seals: the mountain and red planet of the Protectorate, the rocket and red planet of the Royal Martian Navy, the crowned red planet of the Kingdom of Mars, and the rocket and rifle imposed on a red planet of the Royal Martian Marine Corps.
There were a lot of red circles on the wall, but the four emblems were well spaced on the stone wall and it managed to avoid being overwhelming.
The big wooden desk was plain. Built solidly from heavy wood and reinforced at key points with metal, it was that distinctive type of simplicity born from being built to last forever. Most of the furniture that belonged to the Alexanders shared the style.
Concealed technology in the desk and the walls would act as monitors, computers, hologram projectors…whatever Damien needed. His wrist-comp was already interfacing with the system using the codes Gregory had given him.
The chair was in the same vein as the desk, though the concealed technology in that case was ergonomic. The chair in his office was of the same plain-but-expensive style, and he knew it would automatically adjust to hold his back in the right position to avoid discomfort.
The magic in the room buzzed against his skin and now, standing there with the Royal Guard outside and only Kiera in the room with him, Damien leaned into his Sight, looking at just what Desmond and his predecessors had done to the room with magic.
The runes carved into the window had been done spectacularly well. Silver was traced through the titanium, but in thin-enough lines that the human eye couldn’t pick it out. To Damien’s Sight, the magic flowing through them glowed gently.
He’d need to recharge those runes with power every so often, just like the artificial gravity runes on a spaceship. So long as they were charged, an attacker would have better luck trying to blast through the starship-grade armor on either side of the “glass” than getting through the window itself.
The defensive runes on the windows were far from the only magic in the room. Much of it was linked to subtle runes hidden in corners or in the paintings. Anyone who decided to try and assassinate a Rune Wright in this room was in for a world of hurt.
Others were more informational, the magical equivalent of software alerts for people approaching the door. Even if the Mountain’s security system was somehow overridden or disabled, magic would still warn Damien when someone approached the room.
He could see and understand most of the magic in the room. But there was still magic, in runes forged entirely of magic that hung in the air like the interface he’d forged with the Olympus Amplifier, that he didn’t begin to understand.
“What is this?” he breathed, stepping up to a glowing orb of magic that hung in the air above the desk. He could trace the interlacing lines of magic, but this was magic that had never been anywhere near Martian Runic or any other codified language.
This was the power of the Rune Wrights at its most basic, reality bent to a will that didn’t need language to impose itself on rules of reality. He could follow the traces, study its purpose, but he couldn’t see its nature at a glance.
Any script in Martian Runic was simple enough that Damien could understand it instantly. This kind of magic was at the limits of his understanding…or potentially even beyond.
“I’m not sure,” Kiera admitted. “It’s a Rune Wright working—I can even tell you that it’s my father’s—but beyond that?”
“I think it’s something to do with health,” Damien finally concluded, stepping away as he blinked the brightness from his eyes. “I think—but I’d have to study it for hours to be certain—that it is pushing the bodies of everyone in the room to heal just a bit better.
“I might have to be more familiar with Mage-healing to be certain,” he noted, “but I suspect that this helps explain the health and long lives of the Mage-Kings if this is within their power.”
The spell was, at least theoretically, inside Damien’s power. He could certainly maintain it without much difficulty, but he’d need to learn far more about magical medicine than he’d ever known to create something similar.
That was knowledge Desmond had had and Damien didn’t. He sighed and shook his head.
“I’ve known I was a Rune Wright for six years and spent most of that learning,” he told Kiera. “Things like this remind me that your father was over a century old and knew he was a Rune Wright from the moment he was old enough to wield power. Six years of study and experimentation pale against nine decades.”
Kiera was studying the room with an odd look to her eyes.
“I barely managed to think of him as the Mage-King some days,” she admitted. “Let alone as the godlike being of amazing power the people around him thought he was. He was just…Dad. Dad contained all of that, but it wasn’t important when he dealt with me.
“The politics were more so.” She sighed. “I miss him.”
“You should,” Damien told her. “We all should.”
The funeral was still three days away—they were heading out to meet with the Council beforehand and would be back with about twelve hours to spare. He wasn’t sure if that was going to help him lay his friends to rest or just drag everything back up again.
With a sigh, he stepped around the desk and lowered himself into the chair. It whirred softly, adjusting to his form…and then stabbed him.
“Ow!” Damien was on his feet, staring down at the chair looking for the needle or whatever had bitten him.
“Damien?” Kiera demanded.
A hologram of Desmond Michael Alexander the Third appeared in the middle of the room and Damien suddenly knew exactly what the chair had needed a DNA sample for.
The hologram was facing the desk, but from the way the image jerked, Alexander had just been pacing before the recording started.
“This recording is for Damien Montgomery,” he said calmly. “Think of it as…worst-case-scenario insurance. For it to activate, Damien, you sat in my chair after the system was informed of my death. There’re a few other criteria the program is using, but it’s pretty brute-force.
“If you’re seeing this, you’re expected to be using my office and I am dead.” Desmond shrugged. “Forgive me, Damien, for what I have done—and I pray to the holiest of holies that you are seeing this message as Kiera’s Lord Regent and not as Mage-King of Mars in your own right.”
Damien sat back down hard. That hadn’t even been a possibility, had it? Except…he could see the logic. It took a Rune Wright to wield the Olympus Amplifier. A Rune Wright had to sit the throne of Olympus Mons.
If the entire Alexander family had somehow died, he would have been the only one left. Desmond had prepared for all contingencies, it seemed.
“These messages are refreshed every few months and they are a morbid and fascinating exercise,” the hologram continued as if he hadn’t just yanked the ground out from under Damien. “There is a similar note for Des, as you can imagine, but if you are seeing this…well, Des is also dead. I can’t imagine what would bring us to that point, but these are for disaster planning, not optimistic scenarios.
“I am recording this message in early July of twenty-four sixty,” the hologram told them. Damien glanced at Kiera, realizing that she probably wasn’t taking it well.
She apparently knew how to summon the chair from the concealed closets in the walls and had taken a shaky-looking seat.
“As I record this, I am aware of my sister’s victory at Legatus and your role in it. You have once again served my Protectorate beyond all rational hope, even if what you uncovered is a horror beyond all rational nightmares.”
Alexander paused, marshaling his thoughts.
“I see a small number of key problems that I want to warn you about. There are more detailed files in my computers that the system should pass on to you, but I want this message to give you a baseline for the state of the nation.
“Unless the war has ended, in which case I’ll probably record a new one of these messages, the Republic of Faith and Reason remains our greatest threat. We won a major battle but we have not won the war.
“You must be prepared to fight a long war still, my young friend,” the dead man told them. “The Republic prepared for this for longer than even my worst nightmares projected. The expansion of the Navy must continue, which will be a fight for you.
“The Council will be your challenge now, and the Constitutional negotiations are only the tip of the iceberg. Until the Constitution is approved by the governments of the member worlds—every government, Damien—the individual funding agreements with the Core Worlds remain critical.
“But the Core World governments know that gives them power, and they will use it. Worse, I fear they are beginning to realize that the Constitution and the new tax structures that come with it will undermine that power. I believe I have already short-stopped the worst attempts to unbalance the new governing structure in their favor, but you must remain vigilant for changes to the text that I did not approve.
“My death will cause chaos and confusion. I hope Gregory remains with you, as between the two of you, I think the Councilors and politicians who seek to take advantage of Kiera’s inexperience and the inevitable weakness of Mars will find themselves badly bruised.
“You are here because I believe you are the best man for the job, because the job for the next few years is to hold the course, and I’ve met few men less likely to be deterred from their path,” Desmond told Damien with a chuckle.
“We must rebuild and reform the Protectorate. I knew that even before the Secession. A dozen stars could be treated as effectively independent under the semi-formal auspices of the Charter, but a hundred stars and a hundred billion people? We need a structure, a guide…a nation. We’re halfway there, but I hoped to pass a reformed humanity on to my children.”
Desmond’s smile quirked sadly.
“If you’re seeing this, I failed. I hope that this message will go the way of the others like it I’ve recorded before. They’re a useful way to focus my thoughts on what are the key components of my current affairs.
“If I have failed, then I leave my Protectorate in your hands, Damien Montgomery. I hope I leave my daughter in your hands,” he added softly. “She is vulnerable. This will not be an easy time for her, but I fear the events that might lead to my true worst-case scenario.
“I leave you Mars and all mankind, my Hand. My Sword. My friend. I bind you to this duty as I could chain no other. I know you, Damien. I know you won’t fail me.”
Desmond shook his head.
“But I also know I pray that these messages never get played,” he admitted. “But prayers or no, I record them, nonetheless. Tell my daughter that I love her. There is no world in which I ever said that enough.”
The hologram fizzled out and Damien stared out the window at the weak sunlight streaming down over Olympus Mons.
He hadn’t truly needed any more reminder of how critical a time this was for the Protectorate. A sniffle reminded him that he wasn’t alone, and with a swallowed sigh, he rose again and crossed to Kiera to give her a hug.
“I’m with you,” he told her gently. “Side to side and back to back. The Council is never going to know what hit them.”
16
Most of the Royal Martian Navy’s battleships had been designed in an enduring peace that no one had really expected to end. They’d been built to be warships first and foremost, intended to outfight their own mass of lesser warships, but they’d also been designed as flagships and mobile headquarters for the Protectorate government.
Damien was sure there’d been more thought put into the arrangement of Storm of Unrelenting Fury’s missile batteries than into the battleship’s conferencing facilities—but the fact that the warship had a dedicated section that was basically a conference center said everything.
Storm’s conference rooms had seen a heavy workout since she’d taken up her current position as the Council’s watchdog. According to the notes Damien had received from the Mage-King, Desmond the Third had been out here at least twice a month.
Re-formalizing the relationship between a hundred stars wasn’t an easy process. The woman responsible for the Protectorate’s contribution bowed as Damien and Kiera left their individual shuttles.
This time, at least, it was absolutely necessary to bring the Mage-Queen to the Council. Damien wasn’t sure they could justify it in the future, but today…today they needed to remind everyone that Kiera was in charge and Damien merely spoke for her.
And in case anyone forgot the first part of that, they’d travelled aboard the only dreadnought left in Sol. The meetings would take place aboard Storm, but Masamune loomed large in the back of everyone’s thoughts.
“Welcome aboard Storm of Unrelenting Fury, Your Majesty, Your Highness.”
“Please don’t call me that,” Damien told her with a chuckle. “I can live with ‘my lord,’ I had to learn that one, but, well…I look for someone else in response to ‘Your Highness.’”
His humor faded. The someone else in question was Des now, and Des was gone.
“I understand, my lord,” Martita Velasquez told him. “Your Majesty, my deepest condolences on the loss of your father,” the tall Spanish woman continued as she turned to Kiera. “He and I were working closely together on this file.”
“We’re talking about the future
of the Protectorate and the shape it will take,” Kiera told the older woman. “There are few more important tasks on my plate or my father’s. He selected you from the entirety of the Martian diplomatic service, Envoy Velasquez. I hope that together, we won’t disappoint him.”
Damien concealed a smile. Kiera might have been the “spare,” but she’d had a lot of the same training as her brother—and a teenage girl’s desire to manipulate her father and brother. She was far better at manipulating people than Damien himself.
“I hope not,” Velasquez murmured. “I hope you have access to his files, though. While I’m tackling most of the negotiation, there are certain aspects of the Constitution that the Councilors only wanted to talk to him about.”
“Which aspects?” Damien asked as the diplomat gestured for them to follow her. “My understanding is that the negotiations are mostly complete and we’re approaching the point of creating full drafts of the document?”
“Soon, I hope,” the diplomat demurred. “But the ground seems to shift a lot around here. I spend most of my time on Council Station, surrounded by Lictors.”
She glanced back at the red-armored Royal Guards following in Damien and Kiera’s wake.
“It’s somewhat reassuring to be surrounded by Martians with guns.”
“Let’s get to a secure conference room before we follow that thought further,” Damien suggested. If the woman responsible for the Protectorate’s voice in the Constitutional Convention going on didn’t feel she was safe on Council Station…
They might have a real problem.
One of the Royal Guards swept the room before the trio entered, and Damien hung back outside a moment to check in with Romanov.
“If Velasquez is feeling twitchy, I’m prepared to humor her,” he murmured to the commander of his bodyguard. “Do me a favor?”
Mountain of Mars Page 9
