Mountain of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  “She is effectively my little sister and legally my daughter until that date,” he continued. “Believe me, that thought terrifies me a lot. She got a lot of extra lessons around school, but she didn’t get quite the same intensive education in leadership and governance that Des got.

  “I’m going to be leaning on you, in particular, to fix that,” he told Christoffsen. “You managed to get me to useful in eighteen months. I’m hoping you can get her to Queen in three years.”

  “That’s a big ask, my lord,” the other man said softly. “But I understand. She’ll look to you for a lot of it, just from the reality that you will rule the Protectorate until her majority.”

  “I know,” Damien agreed. “We’ll work together—and she’ll work with us. I have no intention of ruling the Protectorate against her desires, after all.”

  “Of course. Any way that I can assist, I will,” the Professor replied.

  “You’ll take charge of her tutors and her education. I don’t expect you to be teaching her yourself every day, but I want you to take responsibility for her education. Can you?”

  Christoffsen had taught classes of ten thousand students, but even he had a moment of trepidation as Damien asked that question. After a moment, he met Damien’s eyes and nodded firmly.

  “I can,” he confirmed. “I’m guessing that’s only the beginning, though.”

  “Yeah. Take a look at this.” Damien slid a lead-sealed box across his desk, wincing slightly as Christoffsen opened it.

  Knowing what the bullet was and where it was reduced the discomfort a bit, but there was no way the matrix on those rounds would ever not feel wrong to his senses. The other man, of course, took the long bullet out and studied it without sensing anything.

  “That’s a very large bullet,” the Professor said slowly. “I’m not sure I’ve seen one with a runic matrix carved on it before, either…wait…the one you were shot with?!”

  “This is from the same set, yes,” Damien told the other man. “The intact and active matrix is extraordinarily uncomfortable for a Rune Wright to be in the same room with. It wants to dismantle my magic from over there.”

  “Where did this come from?”

  “That ties in to my second priority,” Damien noted. “We took this from the assassin who rigged Desmond Michael Alexander’s shuttle to explode.”

  Shocked silence was his only answer for at least twenty seconds.

  “Desmond was assassinated,” Christoffsen finally said. It wasn’t even a question. “You have the assassin…and this still isn’t public knowledge. You’re chasing the mastermind?”

  “We think it ties back to the Keepers and Nemesis,” the Lord Regent told him. He gestured for his companion to put the rune-breaker back in its box and sighed in relief after Christoffsen obeyed.

  “Voice Munira Samara continues her investigation with the support of Guard-Lieutenant Denis Romanov,” Damien continued. “The assassin is currently in custody under medical supervision. He is heavily augmented in several unusual ways, but I believe the Mountain can contain him.”

  “You want me to back her up,” the Professor concluded. Again, it wasn’t really a question.

  “Exactly. I have few people I trust who are as familiar with the Mountain’s archives or the details of just who and what the Keepers were,” he said. “I don’t know how much Nemesis and the Keepers interfaced, but I suspect that bullet came from the Keepers.

  “We might have some information on it in our archives, which could give us a line.”

  “And it wouldn’t hurt to find out who tried to have you shot, would it?” Christoffsen murmured.

  “That doesn’t even register in my priority list,” Damien admitted. “If it helps us trace back Nemesis, who we suspect is involved in Desmond’s assassination, it’s worth following. Otherwise, it can follow usual channels.”

  “Someone did shoot you,” the older man replied.

  “And he’s in a cell in the Mountain and I’ve already promised him his life in exchange for his full cooperation,” the Lord Regent replied. “What’s another death sentence I’d have to commute at that point?”

  “Fair, I suppose,” Christoffsen said. “I’m guessing the Constitution falls into your third or fourth priority slot?”

  “Third. I’m on a shuttle within an hour now to meet up with one of the Committees, where I need to call them on their bullshit,” Damien said. “I’m pretty sure I can manage that one without your help, Professor.”

  “Shouting down some of the most powerful people in the Protectorate? It’s not like you don’t have practice,” his friend told him. “I am at your disposal, of course, but that’s quite the priority list.”

  “Not to mention the other four hundred items waiting in my inbox to eat my entire day alive,” Damien concluded with a chuckle. “I’m just waiting to find out Kiera has a boyfriend—or girlfriend, I suppose, given her brother’s tastes—that she hadn’t told anyone about prior to now.”

  “May I be so rude as to suggest that would potentially be for the best for the Protectorate?” Christoffsen said gently.

  “You can, but it would be rude,” Damien said. “I got an earful from Dr. Gunther earlier today about preserving both the Royal Genome and the ‘secondary Rune Wright genome,’ I believe she called it.”

  The Professor chuckled.

  “She’s not wrong, you know,” he pointed out. “I fully agree with not wanting the Mage-Queen to get pregnant as a teenager, but you should probably be thinking about babies.”

  “Then you and Dr. Gunther can have that conversation with Grace when she comes to visit,” Damien snapped. “I will not be treated as a stud stallion. Am I clear?”

  “I understand, my friend,” Christoffsen said gently. “But you need to keep that in mind. Who sits second in line for the throne right now, Damien?”

  Damien was silent for several seconds, considering what the “handover hologram” Desmond had left him had said.

  “Me, I believe,” he finally sighed.

  “A Rune Wright must sit the throne of Olympus Mons,” the Professor said, the words a familiar lash on Damien by now. “Alexander is fighting a war. Shit happens in war. She might be at the heart of one of the most powerful warships humanity has ever built, but she is still in a war.

  “Kiera is young and vulnerable. She’s strong and should make a fine Queen, but if she falls, her aunt becomes Queen—and if the last Alexander is lost, well, a Rune Wright must sit the throne. What happens after that if you are dead?”

  “The Protectorate endures,” Damien said softly. “Gregory would take the throne. There would be no Rune Wrights left, not without Dr. Gunther cooking someone up in a test tube. Which, I’ll note, she’s entirely capable of doing.

  “And has threatened to do,” he admitted. “An act that brings us far too damned close to the Eugenicists. I am not going to father a child for no reason but the good of the Protectorate; do you understand me?”

  “I do,” Christoffsen told him. “And I’ll back you, always. But you need to understand why everyone is starting to worry about the line of succession. Officially, it’s only one name long. Even if those of us in the know presume you’re on the list, that’s not public information.”

  “Even if Grace and I were to have children, that wouldn’t solve that problem,” Damien replied. “It’s a problem for later in any case. It will be months before Grace is on Mars.”

  “She is coming, though? That’s good.”

  “To visit, not to stay,” the Lord Regent said. “She is also bound by chains of duty.”

  “I’m familiar with the concept, Damien. You’ve given me a list and I’ll get started immediately,” Christoffsen said. “My old office is still clear?”

  “Check with Ms. Waller, but I believe so,” Damien told him. “Start with the bullet, if you can. Not even the man I took them from knows their source, though I know where the dead drop it was found in was.”

  “I’ve been briefed on enough
investigations to know that might be enough,” the ex-Governor told him. “I’ll see what I can find. May I take it?”

  “Please get it the hell out of my office,” Damien said with a chuckle. “I had it here to go over as a Rune Wright, but it makes my skin crawl if I open the box!”

  35

  “We have finished putting together the proposal we discussed last time you and Envoy Velasquez met with us,” Suresh Granger told Damien and his companions as he took his first sips of coffee.

  While it was theoretically possible for someone to jump from Mars to Council Station, it would be a risky process and one stunningly uncomfortable for the Jump Mage in question. Jumping in or out of a gravity well was something reserved for emergencies, not saving a few hours—not even for the Lord Regent of Mars and the Mage-Queen of Mars.

  Damien could once have jumped a ship that distance with relative ease, though it would have left him with a headache. His current lack of jump runes and the desire to keep the full extent of his and Kiera’s abilities secret contraindicated that, in any case.

  Which meant that it still took just over twenty-four hours to get to where Storm of Unrelenting Fury orbited with Council Station and he was theoretically well rested.

  With everything going on, theoretically was a key word in that assessment.

  Velasquez sat to his left hand, the poor woman tasked with dealing with the Council on a day-to-day basis and looking even less rested than Damien felt. Kiera Alexander sat to his right, and she was the only one of the three who looked like she had slept properly.

  “All right,” he told Granger as he let his coffee cup sink to the table. He wasn’t even pretending to use his crippled hands to maneuver the cup, and he could feel the discomfort that was causing for the non-Mage portion of the Committee on Constitutional Balances.

  Some of them were probably smart enough to know he was doing it on purpose. He doubted any of them knew him well enough to realize that it was a sign that he was very, very angry.

  With all of the distractions, he hadn’t managed to go through Desmond’s notes and files on the negotiations until the flight there. In doing so, he’d confirmed his worst fears.

  The Committee on Constitutional Balances and the Mage-King of Mars had already come to a verbal agreement on the exact structure and balances of the new government. Only parts of it were in writing—but even those parts contradicted what they’d presented to him last time.

  “Why don’t you lay out your current proposal,” Damien told the Committee, “and then I’ll let you know if I see any problems we’ll need to address.”

  “Of course,” Granger allowed with a small bow. The plushly appointed conference room’s lights dimmed as he gestured toward a projected screen like a conjurer.

  “We’ve assembled a structure based on the current Protectorate Council,” he noted. A block of a hundred icons, tiny black chairs, made up the top of the image. “A seat for each system, directly appointed by the planets’ Governors.

  “Each world will also have a single elected junior representative,” he continued, highlighting a block of gray chairs in the lower half of the image, “and both representatives will carry the title of Senator. Passage of legislation will require the entire chamber, while the senior Senate will directly approve Her Majesty’s judicial appointments and have final veto on financial matters.”

  Locking, Damien mentally noted, both the judicial review and the power of the purse into power of the appointed senators. Which was not even what Granger had told Damien last time, let alone what they’d discussed with the Mage-Queen’s father.

  “That’s only a high-level summary, of course,” Granger concluded. “Exact details are in the tablets in front of you and have been forwarded to you electronically.”

  Damien glanced at his wrist-comp, which confirmed he’d received the message. The Councilor’s tech support was on the ball today.

  The Lord Regent of Mars smiled, managing to project an air of calm as he slowly and intentionally floated his coffee cup up for him to take a sip.

  “This does seem very heavily based on our current system,” he finally said, letting that hang in the air.

  “Well, what is the engineer’s aphorism, my lord? ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’?” the Senator for Eridani asked. “The Council has served the Protectorate well for two centuries.”

  “And yet,” Damien said softly, letting the two words hang in the air for an extended pause before he repeated himself. “And yet, are we not in this room and having this discussion because we are all in agreement that the Protectorate is broken?”

  He rose to his feet. His height didn’t let him stare down at the Councilors if everyone was standing, but if he was the only one standing…

  “Isn’t the fact that the Protectorate is literally broken in two by secession and war proof that how we have run the Protectorate is broken? This Council served as an advisory board, and in that role, having you all be directly appointed by Governors made sense.

  “But the Protectorate has never dictated the basis by which Governors were selected, and many of your worlds opted for implicit or even explicit constitutional monarchies,” Damien continued. “Some of you represent ‘democracies’ that are concealed oligarchies at best. Less than a quarter of the current Council are elected directly by the people they represent…which means you represent those who appoint you, not the people that the Protectorate is sworn to protect.”

  Damien gestured to the image.

  “Half of our legislature explicitly appointed? And that half to control the power of the purse and the judiciary? The Mountain will not accept this model. Not now. Not ever.”

  “My lord, we are—”

  “Liars at best, traitors at worst,” Damien cut Granger off flatly. “Kiera? Would you be so kind as to project the briefing document from your father’s last meeting with this Committee?”

  Like the Hands she could appoint, Kiera had authorization codes to bend any governmental computer in the Protectorate to her will. Granger’s presentation vanished, replaced by a distinctly more complicated map.

  “I think you should all be familiar with this model,” he continued. “Based on a mix of Westminster Parliamentarism and the United States Congress. One thousand elected Members of Parliament serving two-year terms, supported by an elected Senate of one Senator per world, serving a ten-year term—with both Senators and Members limited to ten years service.

  “Power of the purse held explicitly by the Parliament and the power of judicial review held by the Senate; most legislation required to pass them both in joint assembly.”

  Damien shook his head.

  “This is your briefing document, Councilor Granger, so I doubt any of this is news to you,” he noted. “According to Desmond’s notes on this meeting and the message I was sent in its wake, this Committee and Desmond had agreed on this exact model as the basis for all discussions going forward.”

  The Committee was silent and none of them would meet his gaze.

  “There is no perfect system,” Damien told them. “But I will not allow you to trap the Protectorate in a continued mess of patronage and appointment. We will not impose a standardized democracy on the Governorships—Mars will remain a monarchy itself, after all—but neither I nor Her Majesty will accept anything less than an entirely elected legislature.”

  “What are you accusing us of?” Granger finally managed to get out.

  “I am not accusing you of anything,” he replied. “I am stating that you have taken advantage of Desmond’s death to attempt to change the entire structure of the Protectorate’s future government to one that would serve you and your patrons better than the people of the Protectorate.

  “I am duty-bound to see the power of the Martian monarchy reduced and limited by this document. That was Desmond Michael Alexander’s choice and command,” Damien reminded them. “I will not do so for anything less than the goals and purposes he sought.

  “We are redr
afting the way the vast majority of our species will be ruled for at least two centuries to come. I will not create a structure that leaves our people with an even less-balanced government. The Mountain is prepared to relinquish some level of our power, but we will not relinquish it into the hands of the clients of Core World oligarchs and MidWorld monarchs. Am I understood?”

  He was being moderately unfair to the governments that the Councilors represented. Most of them were fundamentally democracies, even with their issues. Allowing those governments to continue appointing their representatives to the Protectorate would undermine the counterbalance that kept them democratic.

  “We will go back to this document,” Damien told them. “And you will draft a new proposal based on it. Once you have done so and I agree with it, we will put our agreement to it in writing to avoid any future confusion.

  “This is your one and only warning, Councilors. Even if I have lost Desmond’s notes on a matter, I fully understand his original intent—as does Her Majesty. What was agreed to with him stands.

  “Am I understood?”

  He waited, studying each Councilor in turn. Interestingly, the Councilors for Sherwood and Tara both met his gaze levelly, Angus Neil giving him a deep nod of respect.

  “Given that understanding,” Damien finally continued, “is there a point in continuing today’s meeting—or was the entire planned discussion predicated on your assumption that Desmond’s death allowed a complete reset of this process?”

  Granger coughed.

  “There are some items I think we can still discuss,” he said in a shaken tone. “But I’m afraid our…misunderstanding may have underlain much of the agenda.”

  “Then let’s get on with it,” Kiera said sharply. “Before I start wondering what crystal ball you were looking in before my father’s death.”

  “That was perhaps going a bit far,” Damien told his ward later, as they waited for the shuttle to return from their cruiser taxi. “We can’t accuse the Council of assassinating your father.”