Voice of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  She paused as they moved one of the bodies – the man who’d been standing next to the simulacrum originally. His throat still bore the golden medallion of a Mage, and his uniform marked him as a Commander… but she knew that face.

  “Hold up,” she ordered, stepping over to the body to be sure. The wrist computer she wore under her armor interfaced with the armor itself, and its memory capacity was huge. Most people would only purge or download their wrist computer’s memory three or four times in their lifetime – and she hadn’t done it since well before she’d come to work for the Protectorate.

  The little computer happily confirmed her recognition. There’d been a bounty on this man – one of the quasi-legal ones she and her brother had pursued, not the illegal underworld ones. Her computer spat up the details.

  “Who was he?” Julia asked aloud.

  Gibbons leaned on his medic, crossing over to examine.

  “That was the XO,” he told her. “Commander Jamieson, he came with Wayne from the merchant ship he used to run. Sherwood native, but he hadn’t been home in a while.”

  “Jamieson might be his name, but he was using another one for a long time,” the ex-bounty hunter replied. “Because I knew him as Akbar Randall – when he was wanted for piracy and murder!”

  #

  “I think we now know why Wayne’s crew was willing to follow him into piracy and murder,” Julia told Montgomery over the com channel. “It’s because they’d done so long before he joined the Patrol,”

  Once Reid had finished ‘reducing’ the remaining holdouts, a review of the ship’s personnel files against her old database of outstanding bounties – and the Duke’s database of known pirates – had proven illuminating.

  Akbar Randall, apparently originally born as Michael Jamieson on Sherwood, was a key example. Once captain of a pirate ship for the Blue Star Syndicate, he’d been captured in the sweep that had gutted the Syndicate after Montgomery had killed its leader. Captured, convicted, and sentenced to life at hard labor with no chance of parole.

  He’d then been one of several hundred prisoners liberated from a Protectorate penal colony when la Cosa Nostra had broken their Capo Julian Falcone free. Randall had been confirmed involved in several kidnapping and ransom incidents after that before disappearing from the Protectorate’s radar – roughly when Michael Wayne had been called back to Sherwood to take up a frigate command.

  The Alan-a-dale had carried a crew of three hundred and fifteen. Running their faces and biometrics against the Protectorate’s databases had come up with over ninety matches – all wanted for piracy. Many known to be Cosa Nostra, others had been Blue Star Syndicate members who’d fallen off the radar with the collapse of their organization.

  “It looks like Wayne was affiliated with both Blue Star and la Cosa Nostra,” Montgomery agreed. “Given the number we can identify as pirates, I’m guessing the rest were as well.” He paused. “Shouldn’t the Patrol have known this?”

  “A third of these people we only identified from my old bounty database,” she pointed out. “Most of the rest… we’re not as good as sharing Protectorate-level criminal databases with regional governments as we probably should be. For that matter, there could easily be people in Protectorate databases where that update hasn’t made its way to us.” She shrugged at the Hand’s image. “Data travels by ship, after all.”

  “I don’t suppose this helps us sort out what the hell they were doing with their computers?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she admitted. “It’s helpful to know, though. The Commodore will probably appreciate realizing that Wayne was rotten before he ever set foot on a Patrol ship.”

  Her boss shook his head.

  “It’s still hitting the Patrol hard,” he told her. “I don’t know if they’ve even put words to it yet, but they’re feeling betrayed and dishonored.”

  “Is that our problem?”

  “It could end up being,” he replied. “If nothing else, I know there’s at least eight destroyers out there pretending to be Míngliàng ships. Not to mention I’m still not sure how the hell Wayne could have managed that last attack on the MSF. We ran Phan’s data – the ship that attacked her wasn’t any of the frigates here.”

  “We’ll keep digging here,” Julia promised. “Now that everything’s secure, I could use my analyst people. The Marines are good, but my Secret Service people are better.”

  “I’ll have Jakab send them over,” Montgomery agreed. “Maybe I should come over as well. The Hand might open up some doors regular overrides won’t.”

  “No!” Julia said flatly. He was right, in that the override sequences hidden in his badge of office might have some impact on the computer software. But there was no way she was going to let him aboard an only recently secured rogue ship. Who knew what stragglers were still hiding – or what they might do if they realized a Hand was aboard!

  “It’s too risky,” she continued. “You may not care if you live or die, but I’m the one who has to tell Princess Keira if something happens to you!”

  “Low blow,” he replied with a laugh. Princess Keira Alexander, second-in-line to the throne of Mars, was currently an aggressive not-quite-fourteen – and suffered from an on-again, off-again teenage crush on the youngest of her father’s Hands.

  “I’ll send your people over,” he promised. “And – since despite what you think I do not have a death wish – I will stay here. Near the simulacrum. Watching.”

  Julia tried to hide a shiver. She liked Montgomery. She trusted Montgomery. But she’d seen him in action without an amplifier – the thought of what he could do with one scared even her.

  “Agent, my lord,” a voice interrupted as Reid came into the channel. “Apologies for interrupting – but we have a prisoner!”

  Chapter 37

  The Patrol had followed the Martian Navy’s design standard of providing a complete secondary life support system and set of airlocks for the main medical bay aboard their warships. Even as breaches had opened vast portions of the ship to space and the crew had vented other sections to delay the boarders, the medical bay had remained intact and protected.

  When the Marines had swept the medbay before dragging the prisoner and their wounded in, however, it had been empty. Julia knew they were still comparing the crew list with the dead, so it would be a while before anyone could say what had happened to the ship’s doctor and medical staff.

  She waited outside the secure treatment room as the Marine medics finished their rough treatment of the prisoner’s wounds. Out of over three hundred crew, one had been taken alive, and he’d lost a leg and passed out from blood loss. The armored space-suit he’d been wearing had tourniqueted the limb to keep him alive, saving him from the vacuum that had claimed most of the other wounded in the vicious fight to take the Alan-a-dale.

  Julia glanced up as Major Reid joined her, the Marine CO still in the exosuit armor that the Special Agent, normally taller than Reid, had shed for a hopefully somewhat less intimidating pressure suit.

  “Is the ship secure?” Julia asked.

  “As much as it can be at this point,” Reid replied after removing her helmet. “The Patrol is restoring atmosphere in the sections that can still hold it and my people are sweeping for stragglers. I wouldn’t want Montgomery aboard just yet,” she finished dryly.

  “And our friend?” the Agent asked, gesturing towards the cell-like room every military medical bay had.

  “I think his friends thought he was dead,” the Marine replied grimly. “We’re going to have go over everyone’s helmet footage, but I think I saw at least one incident of them putting their own wounded down. It wasn’t just that they were all facing Mass Murder via Weapons of Mass Destruction charges, Agent. They really didn’t want us taking prisoners.”

  Julia shook her head.

  “That makes no sense,” she complained. “Even with pirates, at least some will usually surrender.”

  Reid sighed. “I’m going to flip you a video,�
� she said quietly. “One of my people forwarded it to me and it’s disturbing as hell.”

  An icon popped up on Julia’s wrist comp and she hit accept, starting playback. The PC promptly threw up a holographic screen she could watch on, showing the image of the Alan-a-dale’s primary life support plant.

  Most of the defenders were dead, but a trio of them were in cover behind a big carbon dioxide scrubber. They returned fire at the Marines, but Julia could tell they didn’t have weapons capable of penetrating exosuit armor.

  A Marine bullet punched through the scrubber and slammed into the gut of the center pirate. It was hard to tell from the camera Julia had, but it looked like a non-lethal hit – at least with decent medical attention. Crippling in combat though, and dangerous in the not-quite-vacuum in the life support chamber.

  The wounded pirate seemed to pause and take stock of the situation, then, without warning, shot his two companions in the back of the head. As they collapsed, he started spasming, his body jerking in unexpected ways as he collapsed violently to the floor.

  “That was the ship’s chief engineer,” Reid said quietly. “He was on your bounty list – was identified as part of the crew of a Blue Star gun-runner, but never crossed the Protectorate’s radar.”

  “What the hell happened to him?”

  “Suicide implant,” the Marine CO replied. “At a guess, all of Wayne’s officers had them. I’m guessing they were the stick to a carrot of a giant pile of money to keep everyone on board with the mass murder plan.”

  “Damn.” Julia shook her head again. “They must have figured there was somebody in-system with a remote trigger, too.”

  “And pirates being pirates, figured they’d take everyone else aboard down with them if they couldn’t get out,” Reid agreed. “Fucking self-centered nihilists.”

  The medic finally stepped out of the cell, stripping off his working gloves and looking up at both his armored commander and the towering Special Agent.

  “He’ll live,” he said shortly. “I’ve got some stimulants running into his IV now, he’ll be awake in a few minutes.”

  “Do we know who he is yet?” Julia asked.

  “Petty Officer Christopher Truman,” the medic answered. “Computer tech specialist, assigned to the Combat Information Center Bravo Shift.”

  Julia smiled. A computer tech? Petty Officer Truman had serious potential.

  #

  “Where am I?”

  Christopher Truman’s voice was nasal, annoyingly high-pitched, and foggy from the drugs.

  “You are in the medical bay of the Alan-a-dale,” Julia told him, calmly watching him from a chair several feet away from his bed. “As you may guess from your restraints, this ship is now in the possession of the Royal Martian Marine Corps, and you are under arrest. You are facing a laundry list of charges, but you and I both know only one matters: Mass Murder via Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

  Truman carefully sat up, gently testing the limits of the cuffs that chained him to the bed, and then looking down at his missing leg with a sick expression.

  “Well, shit,” he said bluntly. “And you are?”

  “Special Agent Julia Amiri of the Protectorate Secret Service,” she introduced yourself. “And, much as it sickens me, I am also your only chance of living more than the week it would take us to get back to Sherwood and collect appropriate witnesses to the Hand sentencing and executing you.”

  Truman sighed and shifted in the bed, leaning his back against the wall and regarding her levelly. He didn’t seem nearly nervous enough for his position.

  “Well, from the rumors I heard aboard ship, I’m guessing you didn’t take a single officer alive,” he observed nasally. “Given the, ah, circumstances of most of the fight, I’m guessing you don’t have many of us left at all. That you’re here at all, Agent, tells me clemency is on the table.”

  “But not necessary,” Julia pointed out. “We can and will tear this ship apart, hack open the encryption and find Captain Wayne’s secrets. Your help would only make it easier.”

  “While I’ll admit that my fellow crewmates aren’t the most competent people around,” Truman noted, “I suspect they managed to hit the flashing red icons that would dump and hash the entire system’s memory. You can probably get something out of it, eventually, but you have a time limit, Agent.”

  Julia tried not to react to that tidbit, but she must have twitched as Truman broke out into a wide grin.

  “A freebie, then, Agent,” he told her. “Wayne reported to someone else – I honestly don’t know who – who has a small fleet of other ships.”

  “And you can just happen to tell us where these ships are?”

  “Maybe,” the computer tech told her. “But I think that’s worth a lot more than life in jail instead of a bullet, don’t you? Every warship in two systems is here. Some might see that as opportunity.”

  That was a concern that had crossed Julia’s mind, but they’d been watching for jump flares. So far as everyone aboard the Duke or any of the militia ships could tell, no one had left the Antonius system. With no Runic Transceiver Array in-system, only a ship could have carried the news.

  Truman shook his head.

  “You’re thinking they can’t know,” he told her. “But I warn you – they know. However clever you think you are, whatever tricks are up the Hand’s sleeve, your enemy knows where you are. Always.”

  “That would be impossible,” she noted. He was talking about an RTA somehow concealed on a ship – when an RTA couldn’t fit on a ship in the first place!

  “I don’t disagree,” Truman pointed out. “But tell me it doesn’t match what you’ve seen? I watched our missions, our timelines. They made no sense if the news we were acting on traveled by ship. Hell, Agent, if nothing else – how were we in the right place to meet the Commodore’s courier without raising suspicion? We knew where they’d be, and that they’d been sent… and no, I don’t know how,” he admitted.

  “Assuming I believe your time limit, Petty Officer, what exactly do you want?” Julia demanded.

  “I want a ride the hell away from either of the systems that got tied up in this mess, a clean record, and ten million Martian dollars,” Truman replied instantly.

  Julia laughed in his face. It would be hard enough to justify letting a member of the Alan-a-dale’s crew live, let alone letting him go.

  “You really think the help you can give us is worth that?” she demanded.

  “Depends,” he admitted. “Do you really think the people who blew away Greenwood and the Processing Facility will blink at bombing a world full of people to finish the job?”

  That stopped her cold. She hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. They had things mostly under control… but would even the presence of the real Míngliàng ships here stop a war if the fake ones attacked Sherwood itself?

  The bud in her ear buzzed.

  “I’ve been listening,” Montgomery told her quietly. “Put me on.”

  She started to scrabble for her sub-vocal microphone to communicate, and then she heard the Tone settle into his voice – the tone of a Hand who had made up their mind.

  “Put me on, Julia,” he ordered.

  She sighed and opened a channel on her PC.

  A holographic image of Damien Montgomery appeared in the middle of the room, his gaze focusing on Truman.

  “Petty Officer Christopher Truman,” he said very calmly, “I am Hand Damien Montgomery. You paint a dire picture, Mister Truman, but I am not entirely convinced. Why should I believe you?”

  Truman swallowed, his eyes flickering from Julia to the hologram of Montgomery.

  “I don’t want to die,” he finally whispered. “But these people… I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where they’re from. But they are without conscience. Without even a pirate’s honor.”

  The hologram looked over at Julia. She glanced down at the camera on her wrist computer that was sending the image of the room back to Montgomery and nod
ded slightly. Truman was scared. Whoever Wayne’s employers had been, they had scared someone who’d worked for Mikhail Azure witless.

  “I have a compromise to suggest, Mister Truman,” Montgomery said finally. “I will reduce your sentence to ten years in the Carnery Penitentiary. If you are not familiar with it, Carnery is a medium security facility used to house non-violent offenders. It is not luxurious, but it is more comfortable than any prison you’d normally go to.”

  Carnery was on Mars, Julia knew. It was often used for exactly this kind of deal – to the point where she wondered how many of its prisoners actually were the sort of white-collar criminals the prison had theoretically been built to hold.

  “If your information pans out and you serve your sentence, you will leave Carnery with four million Martian dollars,” the Hand continued.

  “And if my information doesn’t pan out, or I run?” Truman asked.

  “Then I will execute you with my own hands,” Montgomery told him. Julia shivered. The Hand didn’t lower his voice or anything. He simply threatened the pirate in the same tone he’d offered to pay him a fortune.

  She’d now worked for two, and Hands still terrified her.

  The impact on Truman was gratifying. For the first time since he’d fully awoken, he didn’t seem at ease or certain of himself. He swallowed, hard, and nodded.

  “All right,” he agreed, then turned to Julia. “I’m assuming you’ve got computer techs aboard, starting to tear into the old girl’s systems? You’ll want to put me in touch with them – the Alan-a-dale has two complete computer networks, and if they cross-wire them accidentally they could lose what’s left on the real one…”

  Chapter 38

  With a fully body cast wrapped around her torso, Grace McLaughlin looked far too vulnerable to Damien’s eyes as he looked through the window of her infirmary room.

  All things considered, today was a huge victory, pulling two systems back from the brink of outright war via the intervention of a Hand. The cost, though… Three Marines dead and ten wounded in Wayne’s surprise attack. Two dozen more wounded, though thankfully no more fatalities, securing the Alan-a-dale. Over two hundred Patrol boarders dead, not to mention the over three hundred crew members from the Alan-a-dale themselves. They had apparently been traitors to a man, but they were still Patrol personnel who hadn’t lived out the day.