“How is she doing?” he quietly asked the ship’s doctor as the woman came around.
“Non-life-threatening,” she replied crisply. “The wounds are all cleaned and bandaged under the cast. So long as she doesn’t move too much, she should recover with minimal scarring and no mobility loss.”
“Can she have visitors?”
The doctor sighed, half-glared at him, and shrugged. “You’ve made it this far,” she admitted. “I’m kicking you out if she starts seeming strained.”
Damien bowed his head slightly.
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else, doctor. Thank you.”
Despite her grouchiness, the doctor closed the door behind Damien as he entered the treatment room. The woman could still watch him through the window in the door, and had access to all of the equipment measuring McLaughlin’s health, but the tiny amount of privacy was appreciated.
“Hey you,” he said aloud.
She blinked a few times, then slowly opened her eyes.
“Hey yourself,” Grace replied. “I feel like I was kicked by a mule. A burning, angry, mule that I used to be attracted to. Who was on fire.”
“You remember everything?” Damien asked carefully.
“I do. What did I miss after passing out?”
“I’ve ordered all ships to converge on the Alan-a-dale,” he told her. “The MSF is about twenty minutes away and once we’re all in the same place, I’m calling a meeting of the captains. We’ve secured Wayne’s ship, but…”
“I’m injured, not useless,” she snapped. “How bad?”
“They fought to the death, Grace,” Damien admitted. “We took one prisoner. Just one.” He sighed. “And the last count I had from your people was two hundred and six fatalities in the boarding teams.”
“My god,” Grace whispered. “We only had four ten-man boarding teams per ship, and the new ships…”
Commander McTaggart had filled him in. There had only been two hundred and eighty trained boarders aboard the eight Patrol ships. The Patrol’s Marines equivalent had just been gutted.
“Sergeant Gibbons survived,” he told her. “He may have served us all better than he expected, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“The last survivor is cooperating in exchange for a reduced sentence and a pile of money once it’s over,” Damien replied. “The Alan-a-dale had two complete computer networks – black boxes, scanner processors, everything. The system you had access to was living in a fantasy world constructed by the frigate’s real computers.”
“That… explains a lot.”
“Apparently, on their very first out of system patrol, Wayne wandered over to a yard he knew in Amber that doesn’t ask questions and had it installed,” he explained. “The only thing you saw of his actions after that was what he wanted you to see.”
“How did he even know about a yard like that?” she asked bitterly.
“We’re not entirely sure what name Wayne was using while he was away from home,” Damien told her gently, “but we’ve identified a lot of his crew that used to use other names – names under which they were known to the Protectorate as pirates and murderers and those sorts of scum. I think…” he sighed, “I know, now, that Wayne was a pirate before he came home. He must have been ecstatic when he got the request to come take up command of a Patrol frigate.”
Grace looked sick in a way that wasn’t explained by her injuries.
“And to think I used to idolize the bastard,” she snarled. “Now I want to kill him again myself. You got all this from his computers?”
“No, so far we’re mostly running on what our survivor has told us,” Damien admitted. “It looks like Wayne’s people managed to wipe almost the entirety of both computer systems – but that brings us back to Gibbons. He led an assault on the bridge as part of the first boarding wave. Killed the XO, which helped keep magic out of the fight until my Marines arrived, but also kept them from wiping the jump calculation computer.”
Most Jump Mages kept a computer, entirely separate from the main network, on which they loaded the complex software they used to help them run jump calculations. A Mage had to visualize the jump perfectly, and the tools used to do so often varied from Mage to Mage.
“We now know the last two hundred or so real jumps that the Alan-a-dale took,” he told her. “Our prisoners says there was a rendezvous point that Wayne had with the people behind this, and there is one fixed point in deep space he kept going back to.”
“You have to find them!” Grace told him. “They destroyed Greenwood, killed our people, we have to…”
“I intend to take the Patrol, the Flotilla, and the Duke of Magnificence to that rendezvous point,” he confirmed. “I’m meeting with the Captains in half an hour.”
“I need to be there,” she said. “The prospect of revenge on Greenwood’s killers is probably enough, but if you’re commandeering my entire fleet, I need to tell my people I’m on board.”
Damien glanced back at the door. “I’m not sure your doctor is going to be okay with that.”
“Stubborn as you are, my dear Damien, you shouldn’t underestimate my ability to be convincing!”
#
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Damien entered the Duke of Magnificence’s amphitheater-like main conference chamber. This time, instead of Amiri walking behind him, a nurse from the battlecruiser’s medical department pushed Grace McLaughlin in a wheelchair on his left, and Admiral Yen Phan walked on his right.
Mage-Captain Jakab waited by the center podium with its holographic display tank, and the seven remaining Patrol captains – plus Commander Liam Arrington, now Acting Captain of the Robin Hood out of pure necessity – faced their fifteen Flotilla counterparts across the pit.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Damien greeted them. “Let’s begin with the most pertinent information: we have now fully secured the Alan-a-dale. Based off even a cursory review of the, ah, oddities to her computer network, I don’t think anyone would be comfortable taking her into combat, but we can be sure no more surprises are coming from that direction.”
The Patrol officers looked embarrassed, which Damien personally considered unfair. If they hadn’t started shooting up their own missiles from behind, far more would have made it to the Duke. No other method had been – or could have been! – as effective.
“For those wondering just what led the crew of a Patrol frigate to the crimes we have now associated with them, the answer is, sadly, far simpler than we feared,” he continued. “The crew of the Alan-a-dale was drawn from the pirate vessel that Michael Wayne secretly commanded before returning to Sherwood. We have reason to believe he was affiliated, at different points, with both the Blue Star Syndicate and la Cosa Nostra.
“Offered command of one of Sherwood’s new frigates, he saw an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. It also appears that he had outside help,” Damien told them all grimly. “Our prisoner spoke of an unknown number of warships in the hands of Wayne’s sponsors. Based on the attack on Greenwood, and the attack on the Wil Scarlet, we assume that these sponsors are in possession of at least eight destroyers retrofitted to appear to be Míngliàng units.”
He smiled, looking slowly around and meeting each captain’s gaze levelly. None of them looked nervous, and from the determined expressions on their faces, all of them had guessed what came next.
“Since I cannot be certain that those eight destroyers are the only forces available to these sponsors, I am officially commandeering all available warships of both the Sherwood Interstellar Patrol and the Míngliàng Security Flotilla for counter-piracy operations under my authority as Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, and placing you all under the command of Mage-Captain Jakab here.”
The room was silent. Damien waited a good ten seconds for anyone to raise a comment and then tapped a command. A map of the local region of space, with Míngliàng, Sherwood, and Antonius highlighted, appeared in the holo-tank.
“Captain Wayne got up to a
lot of things that he didn’t tell his superiors about,” he told the captains grimly. “But, again and again, he returned to a specific point in space. Our prisoner tells me he was making physical rendezvous with his sponsors, often to off-load stolen cargo. That point was here.”
A new dot, about two light years away from Antonius but still equidistant from Míngliàng and Sherwood, appeared on the map.
“The exact location varies a bit,” he continued, “but since we have a number of the jump calculations used to get there, we have derived the exact references used by Captain Wayne to make the rendezvous. We can be there in two jumps.”
The fact that they needed to be there as soon as possible, because their prisoner believed said sponsors had a form of communication that current magical research said was impossible, was something he would keep to himself. They’d found no evidence of a miniaturized Runic Transceiver Array, but there were definitely places aboard the Alan-a-dale where something had been destroyed as part of the computer purge.
“Captain Liu,” he said briskly. That worthy, the commander of one of Phan’s damaged destroyers, sat up straight and looked attentive.
“We have enough firepower on hand that I think we won’t need the damaged ships like yours in the hunt,” he told the Captain gently. “But I need a ship to stay here, and one to go to both of the home systems carrying messages from me.
“I want you to take your ship to Sherwood. You’ll be flying a Code Lambda and carrying messages under my personal seal, so you should be safe.”
Code Lambda meant a ship had been commandeered by either the Navy or a Hand for courier duty, and was to be treated as an ambassadorial vessel.
“Captain Văn,” Damien turned to another of Phan’s commanders. “I want you to return to Míngliàng. You’ll also be under Code Lambda and honestly, the message is identical.
“Lastly, Captain Phan,” he turned to the commander of the last damaged destroyer. Even without the family name, the tall black woman was obviously related to her Admiral – though too old to be Phan’s daughter. “I want you to remain here as a touchstone for everyone who should be coming here over the next few days – Admiral Medici should arrive at the same time as the Governors and I intend to leave Inspector Accord and Doctor Christoffsen here to meet them.”
“The Governors are coming here, my lord?” the younger Phan asked.
“I am ordering them to,” Damien confirmed. “With everything that has gone down, I think I need Governor Wong and Governor McLaughlin to sit in the same room as I explain exactly how they were almost fooled into going to war – so I can make damn sure they don’t fall for it again!”
#
Damien gestured Christoffsen and Accord to seats in his office. The massive window of his office gave them a surprisingly clear view of the large chunk of ice that the Tiāntǐ tíqǔ was mining. The mining ship itself was invisible except as a tiny glint of metal on the side of the ice – as, for that matter, was the Míngliàng Security Flotilla cruiser barely a thousand kilometers away.
“Gentlemen, thank you for being willing to be thrown from ship to ship at a few minute’s notice,” he told them. “Your shuttle to the Chimera will be departing in fifteen minutes – and the fleet will be leaving Antonius less than five minute after that.”
“Are we really in that much of a rush?” Christoffsen asked. “It seems unlikely that Wayne’s sponsors would be moving that quickly.”
“Unfortunately, everything I have seen suggests that our mysterious enemy has some form of communication we have not accounted for,” Damien told them. “Our prisoner confirmed this, though he has no more information than we do on what it was. The Secret Service agents on the Alan-a-dale are specifically looking for anything that could duplicate an RTA’s effect, but,” he shrugged. “I have no idea how they could miniaturize that rune structure enough to fit in on a starship, let alone hide it on a starship.”
“But you think they know where we all are,” the Professor said slowly. “I think I understand the rush, then.”
“Right now, Míngliàng and Sherwood are very vulnerable,” the Hand told them. “Míngliàng at least has a squadron of corvettes, but Sherwood has no such defenses. I intend to cut off these bastards before they can launch such an attack, but that leaves an entire aspect of this mess untouched.
“Hence summoning the Governors,” he concluded. “I need to sit them down in the same room and get them to talk to each other. I need you two to convince them to do so when they get here.”
“That’s a tall order,” Accord admitted. “I think the McLaughlin will be willing to talk at this point, but…”
“Christoffsen will speak as my representative,” Damien noted. “Through my authority, he will stand as a Voice of Mars. I hope they will listen.”
“I will try not to disappoint you, my lord,” the old ex-Governor replied. “But I must confess, that this situation is far worse than anything that arose during my own time as Governor.”
“I think we’re past the risk of outright war,” the Hand said. “My concern now is dealing with the underlying tension. There was a conflict here to prod at, or it would never have got this bad. Put most simply, Antonius needs a new governing structure. One more useful than ‘these two systems share ownership.’”
“Ah,” Christoffsen said calmly. “If that is all you need me to arrange, I believe I can manage that.” The older man paused and shook his head slowly.
“But realize that if you fail and Sherwood is attacked, I’m not sure there is anything I will be able to do to hold things together.”
“I know,” Damien told the two men. “But at this point, everything is down to timing – all I can do is hope that we intercept them before they attack Sherwood.”
Chapter 39
Ship after ship emerged from their jump flares, and Damien didn’t even need to look at Mage-Captain Jakab to know things weren’t going quite as the Navy officer had expected. When he’d issued the jump order in Antonius, the two militia fleets had been assembled around the Duke in a relatively tight formation. They’d all received the jump order at once.
They’d arrived at the deep space target point in… a less organized state.
The ships had trickled in over thirty seconds, and any semblance of the neat formation they’d left Antonius in was long gone. The two cruisers had only been a thousand kilometers away from the Duke when they jumped, but now one was two thousand kilometers away – and the other was over a hundred thousand kilometers off.
“I see the militias have not been practicing formation jumps,” Jakab observed. His XO saluted crisply before retreating from the bridge to allow Mage-Lieutenant Philips to take his place. The Duke’s fourth Jump Mage was aboard the Robin Hood, making up for the absence of Commodore McLaughlin.
“It doesn’t help us,” Damien agreed. “Does it change anything?”
“No,” the Duke’s CO said flatly. “We don’t have time to drill their Mages. Are you sure about this rapid cycle, my lord?”
Normally, jumps were cycled evenly – every eight hours for every Mage. If you had two Mages aboard, the way all of the Patrol and Flotilla ships did, that meant you jumped every four hours. Since more than eight hours had passed since any of the warships had arrived in the Antonius system and they were only making two jumps, Damien had ordered the jumps to take place only ten minutes apart.
“Unless we wait eight hours, the militia ships still wouldn’t be able to jump away from the rendezvous point any sooner after arriving,” he pointed out. “But the longer we take to arrive, the more likely it is that they’ll act on whatever intelligence they’re getting. If they’ve already moved, delaying the jump won’t help. But if they haven’t…”
The Hand shrugged.
“Besides, Kole, would four hours of instruction via radio change anything?”
“No,” the Mage-Captain repeated with a sigh. “We will coordinate. The fleet will be ready to jump on your schedule, my lord. Are you intending to
remain on the bridge?”
“I can neither be as aware of the situation or as available to you, Captain, anywhere else,” Damien noted. “You are in command, Kole, but I am responsible for everything and everyone here.”
“The Duke has an entire flag bridge, Damien,” Jakab pointed out. “A fully functioning secondary command center, designed to allow a senior officer to oversee everything going on without physically hanging over my shoulder.”
Damien chuckled.
“I hear your point, Kole,” he admitted. “But I have a staff of exactly twelve, most of whom are Secret Service agents. I didn’t expect to end up in a fleet action, so I didn’t borrow the staff needed to run a flag bridge from the Navy. In hindsight, that was an oversight – one I will rectify.
“But until I have,” he told the Mage-Captain, “I’ll be keeping your observer seat warm.”
“As you wish, my lord,” Jakab said with a gracious nod. “But if you’ll excuse me, I must coordinate our next jump.”
#
The jump to Wayne’s rendezvous point went surprisingly more smoothly than the first. The ships still filtered in over thirty seconds, but they returned to something resembling the formation they’d left Antonius in.
The two Míngliàng Security Flotilla cruisers flanked the Duke of Magnificence, neither exactly at the thousand kilometer mark, but both at least within ten thousand kilometers. The eight Patrol frigates were scattered around, but they had come out of their jumps in a rough protective wall in front of the cruisers. The destroyers were actually the most organized, with all ten of the million ton ships appearing within a few hundred kilometers of their positions in the layered sphere missile defense formation Mage-Captain Kole Jakab had shown them.
Voice of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 3) Page 28
