Mage-Provocateur

by Glynn Stewart

  The Marines pretending to be security guards folded around him with practiced ease as he moved forward into the hotel. He didn’t expect to make it far, and he was entirely correct. A uniformed manager intercepted them halfway across the lobby.

  “Excuse me, sir, may I ask where you’re going?” he said politely. The man managed to make it sound like he was being helpful instead of demanding what they thought they were doing…but both messages made it through loud and clear.

  “I am Captain David Rice,” David told him. “I have a meeting scheduled here.”

  “Yes,” the manager said slowly, consulting his wrist-comp. “In the Brisbane. May I show you to the meeting room, Captain Rice?” He coughed delicately. “I can have some of my people escort your…security to the bar. I’m sure we can find some way to keep them entertained.”

  David exchanged a look with Skavar that the manager actually caught.

  “The Hollister prides ourselves on our security and privacy measures, Captain Rice,” he told David. “I promise you, you do not need to worry about your safety here.”

  “Ivan, you’re with me,” David finally ordered. “The rest of you, find the bar. Snacks only, no booze.” He smiled at the manager. “I only trust the hotel.”

  David was surprised by the sheer scale and emptiness of the meeting room when he stepped into it. The room was large enough to hold a midsized wedding or a large corporate presentation, but all it currently held was a single round table.

  A tall blonde woman in a conservatively cut black business suit sat at the table, with one chair across from her. An unusually large man leaned against the wall behind her, wearing a similarly expensive suit.

  There was no question what the man was. He might be wearing a designer suit, but his stance and awkwardness made it clear he was a hired killer stuffed into a designer suit.

  Vandella-Howard, however, wore her suit like a second skin. She was a stunningly attractive woman, with a heart-shaped face and bright blue eyes. From what Carmichael had said, it was a sign of respect that she’d dropped many of the games today.

  “Captain David Rice,” she greeted him. “I must admit I was surprised to hear you reach out to us.”

  “Did you expect that the true nature of the Azure Legacy would remain secret?” he asked, stepping up to the table and taking the empty chair. Behind him, Skavar took up his own portion of the wall, matching glares with Vandella-Howard’s bodyguard.

  She smiled.

  “You seem very certain of that identification, Captain,” she pointed out. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m impressed,” David told her. “You managed to say that with a completely straight face. I won’t betray my source, Ms. Vandella-Howard, but I have no reason to doubt them.

  “Armstrong, Lee and Howard held Mikhail Azure’s will. Since his death, you have been executing on that will—a process that has left a trail of blood and fire across the Protectorate, much of it spent chasing me.

  “I figure I should, at the very least, look in the eyes of the people determined to see me dead.”

  The lawyer sighed.

  “I see that I shall have to have some harsh words with the Admiral Commanding,” she noted. “The only way I can see you acquiring that information is if Aristos traded it for his life. One expects better from one’s mercenaries.”

  “I’m sure the galaxy weeps for the failings of your hired killers, Ms. Vandella-Howard.”

  “I will note, Captain Rice, that a large quantity of the blood you speak of was spilled by you,” she said quietly. “It is easy for you to speak of ‘hired killers,’ I suppose, but you have left entire mercenary fleets shattered in your wake.

  “Few of Admiral Aristos’s colleagues could share your kill count, Captain Rice. If you did not hold a hand of corpses and shattered ships, we would not be speaking. You know this.”

  “You sent them after me,” he told her flatly. “You started this damn fight.”

  “Mikhail Azure’s will is very clear,” Vandella-Howard replied. “One half of all his assets goes to the organization that kills you. We are simply coordinators of the bounty, accessing funds to cover operations against you.”

  “And half goes to put the Blue Star Syndicate back together, as I understand?” David asked.

  “Exactly.” She shrugged. “This is business, Captain Rice. Nothing more. We signed a contract that says how Mr. Azure’s money was to be split. However much money you think is on your head, Captain, I guarantee you that you underestimate it.”

  “And I promise you that however much you think it will cost you to collect it, you underestimate that,” he replied. “I want to bring this to an end, Ms. Vandella-Howard. There has to be a way to make peace here.”

  “Several of our…contractors, shall we say, have made the offer very clear,” she reminded him. “Surrender yourself to us, and your crew and employees will go unharmed. We are prepared to restrict the responsibility for Mr. Azure’s death to you.

  “That is as much flexibility as the will gives us.”

  “I have no intention of blithely committing suicide to make your lives easier,” David told her. “If you want my head, you’re going to pay the price for it in lost lives, lost money and lost ships.”

  “You know, the wonderful thing about offering a bounty is that we don’t pay anything unless they bring you in,” Vandella-Howard noted. “You’ve cut quite a swathe through the galaxy’s undesirables, but you honestly haven’t cost us that much money yet.

  “We can keep this up for longer than you can, Captain Rice. If you hoped to buy us off, you don’t have the money. If you wanted to threaten us, you don’t have the firepower. If you planned to turn us in to the Protectorate, you don’t have the evidence.

  “You have nothing to hold over Armstrong, Lee and Howard, Captain. I’m not sure what you expected to get out of this meeting other than to meet me in person. This is business,” she repeated. “Nothing more. And my firm’s reputation requires that we fulfill our clients’ wills, or we have no business.”

  “How much would it take?” David asked, bluntly. “If there’s a price Azure offered, perhaps I can match it.”

  She laughed.

  “You speak of Mikhail Azure,” she pointed out. “Your ship would count for only a fraction of the wealth he left for us to manage. How many trillions do you have hidden down the back of your couch, Captain Rice?

  “I think we’re done here,” she concluded, rising. “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, we don’t like to cause trouble here in Corinthian. You are safe to return to your ship. Remaining in Corinthian, of course, will simply allow us to calibrate our attacks so as to…limit the trouble.”

  “There are things money cannot buy, Ms. Vandella-Howard,” David said. “Things that could turn the tide of the rest of your plans. Half of Azure’s money is tied up in killing me…but what if I could offer you something that would guarantee your success in reunifying his syndicate?”

  The blonde stopped, standing with her back turned to him, then sighed.

  “There are only a handful of things I can think of that would meet that description,” she noted. “I do not believe you have access to any of them.”

  “I know where Azure Gauntlet is,” he told her. “She’s damaged, yes, and her crew is long dead. But my understanding is that she may be reparable.”

  “Azure Gauntlet was destroyed,” Vandella-Howard replied. She wasn’t continuing to leave, though.

  “And who told you that?” David asked. “She fought us and lost, her crew were killed and she certainly isn’t combat-capable without work…but she’s intact. How much money, Ms. Vandella-Howard, would it cost you to acquire a new cruiser?”

  “We both know that mere money would not suffice,” she said sharply. “Azure spent years and tens of millions assembling the connections and the blackmail necessary to steal Gauntlet. Money could arrange for the acquisition of an export cruiser…but those lack amplifiers.�
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  “Exactly,” he said quietly. “Gauntlet may not be capable of flight or combat without repair…but her amplifier is intact. What price, then, for that?”

  She was silent for several seconds, letting the quiet drag on before she turned to face him.

  “Is that your offer, then, Captain Rice?” she said slowly. “You lead us to the godforsaken patch of void where Azure died, and in exchange, we let you live?”

  “Basically,” he agreed. “Though I was thinking more on order of ‘give you the coordinates and we go our separate ways.’”

  “That would not suffice,” Vandella-Howard said flatly. “If I am to even consider this, you will come with me, as hostage to your good intentions.”

  “That’s a rather…different situation,” he replied carefully. That would be a problem, especially since he doubted the Navy was going to be particularly interested in taking prisoners when the Legacy showed up.

  “Regardless. That is my offer, Captain Rice,” she snapped. “You leave here with me. We board a ship, we meet the fleet the Legacy has assembled for our tasks, and we go recover Gauntlet.

  “If all is as you say, you will be released, and we will lift all bounties on you. If you have lied…then we will fulfill Mikhail Azure’s will.”

  David glanced back at Skavar.

  “Choose now,” she snapped. “Your bodyguard can return to your ship to tell them what has come to pass.”

  “No one else knows where Gauntlet is,” David protested as he met Skavar’s gaze. He was telling the truth in one sense—no one knew where Gauntlet was. Vaporized debris was hard to track.

  Both Soprano and LaMonte knew where the location for the fake ship was, however, and Skavar knew that.

  “Then that is a better guarantee for me,” Vandella-Howard told him. “You have my word and the bond of Armstrong, Lee and Howard, Captain Rice, that if you fulfill our bargain, the bounty will be lifted and you will be released safely to a world where your ship can pick you up.

  “That is the same word and bond that binds us to hunt you to the ends of the galaxy to honor Azure’s will. You will find no greater surety.”

  She’d phrased her promise carefully, too. There were no loopholes or gaps they could betray him through without breaking their word.

  He could lead them into his trap, but only if he stuck his head in with them and trusted his crew and his allies to get him out safely.

  Fortunately for him, he knew his crew.

  “Very well, Ms. Vandella-Howard,” he said levelly, intentionally letting fear color his voice. “You have a deal.”

  36

  “The Captain did what?” Maria demanded, staring blankly at the wall of her office.

  “He agreed to go with the Legacy to ‘recover Azure Gauntlet,’” Skavar repeated. “He left with them. I’m on my way back to the ship; I think most of this is a conversation we should have in person.”

  “Fair,” she allowed. She didn’t trust the walls of the Spindle to keep their secrets at this point. “I’ll pull the rest of the senior officers together.”

  “Start brainstorming,” the security chief told her. “This is about sixty percent disaster, forty percent opportunity.”

  “Agreed,” she replied. “Get back here on the double, Chief.”

  The channel cut and the Mage leaned back in her chair, breathing carefully to try and control any incipient panic.

  If Rice was now in the custody of the Legacy, they had to have promised him his safety in a manner he trusted. The problem was that Rice wasn’t going to uphold his end of whatever bargain he’d made. He was leading his enemies into a trap that would almost certainly kill him, too.

  Maria Soprano wasn’t going to allow that. With her Captain in custody, she now commanded Red Falcon, and if she couldn’t change David Rice’s fate with just this ship, well…she had a lot of other resources at her command.

  “Kelly,” she pinged the XO. “We have a problem.”

  “I know. Skavar sent me the rundown in text while he called you,” she replied. “What do we do?”

  “Right now, I’m calling a meeting,” Maria said with a chuckle. “But near the top of our priority list is to make damn sure we know which ship he leaves on.

  “We know where they’re going; we can probably beat them there,” she concluded. “But I need to know when they leave so we can make sure of that.”

  “What will we do if we beat them there?” LaMonte asked.

  “That’s what I’m hoping to think up at the meeting,” Maria admitted.

  “Should we grab Jenna?” the XO asked.

  Maria paused. That was a good question. One of the reasons that Campbell had got Peregrine was because she’d wanted out of the new employment that Maria had talked Rice into. But…she had their second ship, and that wasn’t a resource they could pass up.

  “Yes, ping her,” she ordered. “Let’s get everyone in one place where we’re sure nobody is eavesdropping.

  “I only know two things for certain: if the Legacy goes after that cruiser, they are not going to like what they find—and I have no intention of leaving the Skipper to burn with those bastards!”

  “Well, don’t you look promising?” Jeeves murmured as Maria stepped onto the bridge.

  “Guns?” she asked immediately, the old Navy slang falling off her tongue unintentionally.

  “Well, my math says that the earliest anybody could have made it from the Hollister to any of the docks was about five minutes ago,” he noted, then tapped his screen. “And, about twenty seconds ago, what looks like a neat, fast little yacht just popped clear of one of the private ports built into the Spindle itself.

  “Some nice piloting, too, taking the best advantage of the spin to get themselves going,” he continued.

  “Let me guess: the right kind of yacht for an Amber-converted jump-corvette?” LaMonte asked from the command chair. The XO started to rise but Maria waved her back to her seat.

  They would be collecting the senior officers for their planning session in a few minutes. There was no point in shuffling seats at this point.

  “A bit too small, actually,” Jeeves concluded. “You could fit a nasty punch into a girl like that, but no sustained fight. If she’s armed, it’s ‘kick ’em in the nuts and run’ gear, not pirate gear.”

  “Interesting,” Maria said. “Jeeves, you’ve got the trigger pulse for the beacon on the Captain, right?”

  “I do, but if we ping it now, they might pick it up,” he warned. “The more often we ping it, the more obvious it is…”

  “Let’s take the risk,” Maria told him. “We need to know for certain if that’s where the Captain is.”

  “Understood.” Jeeves tapped a command and waited. A few seconds later, a tiny green dot flashed into existence on the ship before disappearing a moment later.

  “That’s him,” the gunner confirmed. “They moved fast, though having a ship attached to the Spindle made it easier for them to get going.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’d love for the Legacy to be slow off the bat, but that’s not the evidence we’ve seen so far,” Maria replied. “Now we know, which means we have our timeline. How long till she jumps?”

  “She’s running standard fusion engines, but she’s a small ship and they’re big drives,” Jeeves told her. “Burning hot and hard; looks like eight gravities. She’ll be clear in about sixteen hours.”

  “And after that, it depends on how many Mages they have aboard,” LaMonte concluded. “Can we catch them, Maria?”

  Maria smiled thinly.

  “We have four Mages aboard, all of them capable of sustaining six-hour jumps for several days,” she reminded them all. “Our target is thirty-three light-years away. Just over two days for us if we push it.

  “Even if they’ve got four Mages aboard, they won’t have all Navy-quality Mages. It’ll take them most of three days to get there.

  “We’re not going to just catch them, Kelly. We’re going to beat them there.” />
  Maria waited for Campbell to take her seat, Peregrine’s Captain the last to arrive of the collection of officers.

  “All right, everyone, you all know what the Captain has gone and done,” she said without preamble. “I’m sure we’re all shocked that David has done something daring and stupid after attracting trouble to himself.

  “We now need to get him out of that trouble, and I don’t see a lot of easy options.”

  “That yacht didn’t look like it was very well armed,” Jeeves noted. “We could easily chase it down and capture it.”

  “They’d kill Rice the instant they worked out what we were doing,” LaMonte objected. “Remember, killing the boss is basically a win condition for them. He’s offered them something worth giving that up for, but if they think for even a second that things are hinky—”

  “David dies,” Maria concluded. “A degree of risk to the Skipper is inevitable, people, but an open attack with Red Falcon will all but guarantee his death. If we’re going to pull this off, we need to come at them sideways.”

  “Just what did the Captain offer to get them to play nice?” Campbell asked. “I mean, he’s hardly poor, but he doesn’t have that much money.”

  “He offered them Azure Gauntlet,” Maria explained.

  “…That’s impossible. Gauntlet was vaporized,” Campbell replied. “Damien blew the containment on her antimatter capacitors. There wasn’t even time for the safeties to engage.”

  “I know that,” Maria agreed. “You know that. Who else knows that, really? With certainty? The people who were on Blue Jay’s bridge, most of whom are on Red Falcon or Peregrine, and all of whom were sworn to secrecy—and a bunch of naval officers who take their oaths seriously.

  “So, the Navy set up a trap. A ship of the same class, lurking where Gauntlet died, rigged up to look like a wreck. When the Legacy shows up, they’ll find their Gauntlet…and then the Navy will blow them to hell.”

  Campbell winced.

  “With David aboard their ship now.”

  “And therein lies the flaw in our Captain’s brilliant plan,” Maria agreed. “The only option I see is to remove him from their ship before the Navy vaporizes them.”