Agents of Mars (Starship's Mage: Red Falcon Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  Maria was less sensitive than most…and even she felt the pulse of power as Xi Wu unleashed her magic, bending the very specific magic of the jump matrix to something very close to its designed purpose.

  It lasted longer than a usual jump. Longer, even, than the struggle to get Red Falcon directly into Darius orbit. Tension filled the air of the simulacrum chamber, and magical static sparked when anything moved.

  And then it released like an elastic snapping and one of the cameras was no longer showing an empty parking lot. Fifty ten-by-ten-by-hundred-meter containers now filled the space, and one of Falcon’s twenty cargo spars was empty.

  “All right, people, Nguyen, you’re up,” Maria barked as she laid a hand on Wu’s shoulder, gently pulling the younger Mage away. They were about to find out how much rest each of them was going to need after this stunt, and that would define whether or not this whole stunt had been fully worth it.

  Like the original plan, though, the first cargos going down were the surface-to-orbit missiles. The Stellarites might control the rest of the system still, but given twelve hours to deploy the first wave of self-mobile launchers, the government would control the space above their port.

  “I’m fine,” Wu insisted, breathing heavily. “That’s…hard, but not exhausting, if that makes sense?”

  That was roughly where Maria ranked in-system jumps into planetary orbit, though at least her subordinates didn’t appear to be having nosebleeds. Power flared through the simulacrum chamber again as Karl Nguyen repeated Xi Wu’s spell.

  It took a noticeable few seconds more with Nguyen casting, but it worked just as well. A second row of fifty containers appeared on the surface, and a full tenth of the cargo was “delivered.”

  “Barrow,” Maria barked, checking the time. Ten minutes for the locals to clear the delivery space and five for them to deliver the first two waves of cargo.

  If they kept this up, they had enough time. Just. The corvettes that had moved out after Luciole were already accelerating back. They’d hit zero-velocity one hour after Red Falcon arrived, and then they’d be coming back toward Darius.

  They had chosen not to fire missiles with a velocity disadvantage—even the SDC could guess what would happen to forty or so fusion drive missiles crawling toward Falcon—but once they were accelerating back, that calculation changed again.

  If the next round of teleports went more slowly, they might have a problem…

  Again and again power flared through the simulacrum chamber as Maria and her subordinates worked their way methodically through the thousand containers arranged on twenty of Falcon’s cargo spars.

  The second round was faster, the Mages having a better idea of what they were doing. The third slowed down, as did the fourth. Their “safe” hour finished as Nguyen completed his fifth teleport…and collapsed against the simulacrum.

  “The corvettes are launching,” Rice said grimly, but his words were quiet and his eyes were focused on Nguyen as Maria and Barrow lifted him away from the simulacrum. “We have forty missiles inbound. They aren’t great missiles, but that’s a lot of firepower.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Barrow, you’re up,” Maria ordered as she checked Nguyen’s pulse and sighed in relief. “He’s fine. Unconscious and a hell of a nosebleed, but it looks worse than it is.”

  Wu stepped up next to her and offered a damp cloth to help clean the ex-Navy Mage’s face. Asleep, he looked a lot younger and more vulnerable, and Wu took him from Maria, her magic helping her lift the larger man.

  The youngest and most powerful Mage aboard the ship, senior to the older two junior Mages by virtue of date of hire and a natural gift for both magic and organizing a department, didn’t look much better than Nguyen. She was just upright and carefully moving the other Mage as she met Maria’s gaze.

  “We can’t run in real space,” Wu pointed out carefully. “We’ve got more acceleration than those corvettes…but not enough. Someone has to jump us.”

  Power began to coil around Alessandra Barrow as she began to work the spell.

  “It’ll have to be me,” Maria said grimly. “Barrow and Nguyen don’t have enough left to jump from orbit, and you don’t have the trai—”

  “Fàng pì,” Wu spat. Maria didn’t understand the words, but the junior Mage’s meaning was clear. “You’re in no better shape than they are. Worse, even. If you teleport the cargo down and jump from orbit, it’ll kill you.”

  She was…probably wrong. Maybe. Maria shivered at the thought. She hadn’t seen anyone burn out in person, though she’d seen a few get as bad as Nguyen currently was.

  “You’ve never jumped this deep in a gravity well,” Maria said. It wasn’t an argument, not really.

  Energy flared through the chamber and Barrow slumped against the simulacrum.

  “I’m okay,” she gasped out, slowly lifting herself off and dabbing at the blood oozing slowly from her nose. “I’ve had better days.”

  “Missiles inbound,” Jeeves reported. “ETA three minutes. We can probably handle this lot, but…”

  “I can do this,” Wu insisted. “And nobody else can. Move those last crates, boss. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Maria obeyed her subordinate, sliding past Barrow to slam her hands onto the simulacrum. She was exhausted, but she’d done this four times before. One last spar of cargo containers, one last slot on the surface.

  Power flared through her into the semiliquid silver model in front of her, focusing onto a specific section of it. Even on the simulacrum, the spar of cargo glowed…and then vanished.

  She wavered, stumbling away from the model as her nosebleed started up again. She’d worked her people too hard. Way too hard. This could kill them all.

  “Engaging incoming fire,” she heard Jeeves report. She couldn’t see the screens…that was when she realizing her eyes were bleeding and everything was a blurry shade of red.

  Wu was right. If Maria tried to jump Red Falcon, she would die.

  But the other Mage was right there, pressing a damp cloth into Maria’s hand as she stepped past and dropped her hands onto the simulacrum.

  The world tore.

  For an eternal moment, Maria felt reality break around her. This wasn’t a jump. This was half of a step into hell, and her flesh burned as the world fell apart around her.

  And then Xi Wu’s magic wove around them all and rebuilt the universe…and Red Falcon was no longer in the Darius System.

  23

  “That was possibly the most excruciating jump I have ever been through,” David noted aloud as he and the rest of his bridge crew slowly caught their breath. “Simulacrum chamber, report. Is everyone okay?”

  There was silence for several seconds.

  “Ship’s Mage, report,” David repeated, starting to be seriously worried.

  “We’re all here,” Alessandra Barrow finally answered in an exhausted tone. “‘Okay’ would be stretching it. Maria is bleeding from her eyes, Karl is unconscious, and Xi is…well, she’s just unconscious, but there’s enough raw magic sparking around her that no one is going to get near her for a couple of minutes.

  “We’ll all be fine,” she concluded. “But I think the entire Mage contingent needs to go straight to sick bay and talk to Dr. Gupta. I hope it was worth it.”

  “I’ll have Gupta send people to help you,” David promised. Dr. Jaidev Gupta was the senior physician aboard Red Falcon, the man who’d installed David’s own cybernetic leg and lung. He’d be able to put the Mages back together.

  “Thank you.”

  “We’ll find out if it was worth it,” he told Barrow. “But I won’t forget how far above and beyond you went. Go rest.”

  He cut the channel to the simulacrum chamber and studied his bridge crew.

  “What’s Falcon’s status, Kelly?” he asked.

  “We’re fine,” his XO replied. “Didn’t use any ammunition and we’re still at about sixty percent fuel supply. I’d prefer our next trip be to
somewhere where we can refuel, but…we didn’t even get scratched and we completed the delivery.”

  “Let’s hope Seule comes through on his side,” David agreed. “Go check in on Xi, Kelly. We’ll be fine.”

  His XO flashed him a grateful smile and rose as he turned to Jeeves.

  “Alexander, did we learn anything?” he asked quietly.

  “The regular corvettes are a pretty standard design,” the gunner replied. “Could have been built in a dozen systems. The heavies were definitely built in Legatus.” Jeeves shook his head. “The Bears’ monitors jumped out while we were in Darius orbit. Whatever they were being paid for, fighting us wasn’t part of it.”

  “They were probably hired for the Tracker and those ships were just there to keep them safe,” David guessed. “Hopefully, the Darius government will make proper use of their new toys. Once the rebels are dealt with, SDC doesn’t even have a fig leaf anymore—and then they can talk to the Navy.”

  So long as the conflict was between pro-UnArcana World and pro-Protectorate factions, the Navy could not intervene without setting off a political nightmare.

  “How long until Seule arrives?” Jeeves asked. “I don’t get the impression we’re jumping anywhere soon.”

  “We’re not jumping for at least twenty-four hours,” David confirmed. “And I’ll check with Maria once she’s in a fit state, to talk about if we should wait longer. Seule should be here in about eighteen hours. He’s going to jump to a random intermediate point, just in case the Golden Bears and their Tracker come back.”

  “The Tracker will still be able to follow him,” Jeeves pointed out.

  “I know. But it’s all about buying time. We didn’t come here to fight a war, after all.”

  Seule was roughly two hours late, and by the time he arrived, David had sent most of his people to bed. He was going to pay for staying awake as long as he had, but he needed to be the one there when Luciole finally arrived.

  The smuggler’s navigation was once again impressive, the blockade runner appearing less than a million kilometers from Red Falcon. David had the battle lasers online in remote control mode and was targeting the ship when the transponder code arrived.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. A ship that close would be a nightmare if they were hostile.

  A moment later, a blinking icon noted that Luciole was opening a channel.

  “Rice here,” he greeted the smuggler ship.

  “Your people did well, Captain,” Seule told him as the younger man’s face appeared in the screen. “Governor Mitchell asked me to pass on her regards—and a data packet we are attaching to this transmission.”

  Seule grinned widely.

  “If it’s anything like the one she sent me, it’s the codes to several numbered accounts on Amber as a payment for a job well done. I think we really made a difference, Captain Rice, and you more than honored my request.”

  “I’ll admit that the SDC definitely did their best to make me feel better about screwing them,” David said lightly. “I look forward to hearing about Security Vice-President Charleston’s reports to his superiors."

  “You’ll be waiting a long time, sadly,” the smuggler replied. “Charleston apparently rushed his flagship back to try and intimidate the Governor into handing over the cargo we’d dropped off. He claimed that his ship did have bombardment munitions.”

  David’s own grin tightened uncomfortably. While the Navy made a point of restricting the manufacture and possession of orbital-bombardment weaponry as best as they could, it wasn’t out of the question for SDC to have assembled some cruder systems.

  “Did he?” David asked.

  “I don’t know,” Seule said. “Mitchell decided not to find out—they’d already deployed the first squadrons of the surface-to-orbit missile trucks. Turns out that those heavy corvettes aren’t any better at shooting down missiles coming up from the surface. His flagship is gone.”

  David couldn’t regret Charleston’s death, though he supposed the hundreds of others aboard that ship hadn’t deserved to die with him.

  “That’s…unfortunate for him,” he allowed. “And the rest of the SDC flotilla?”

  “They were falling back from the planet when we jumped,” Seule reported. “The blockade may not be over, but they won’t be in close orbit anymore. I don’t think the Darian civil war is going to last much longer.”

  “Good. I don’t like arming either side in that kind of war,” David admitted.

  “I choose who I arm carefully,” the gunrunner told him. “So does Alabaster. But…I promised you information in exchange for helping me, and you more than kept up your side. We’ll make our way in to rendezvous, but may I invite yourself and the lovely Mage Soprano back aboard for supper?

  “I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  Once again, David and Soprano found themselves in a small, intimate dining room as Nathan Seule served them with his own hands. This time, the meal was plainer in many ways, a simple protein and vitamin powder-laced pasta dish that any spacefarer would have recognized.

  “I trust my crew,” Seule said quietly as they started to eat, “but this room is now sealed and secured. No one aboard Luciole knows what we’re talking about or what I promised you in exchange for your help in Darius.”

  “How you keep your secrets is your business,” David allowed. “I need to know who sent you to Ardennes, though.”

  Seule nodded and took a bite of his pasta as he considered.

  “You think Legatus was involved.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Given the gear that showed up in the Freedom Wing’s hands and some of what they had to say when it was all over, yes,” David agreed. Seule clearly figured he knew who David worked for. It wasn’t hard, for that matter. The smuggler might not know the exact agency, but “these are agents of Mars” was enough for most purposes.

  “Quel merdier.” Seule shook his head. “A clusterfuck,” he clarified in English. “I didn’t put those pieces together, to be honest. Legatus is one of the top three weapons manufacturers in the Protectorate. I didn’t think much of the cargo being all Legatan, more than I would have thought of it being all from Mars, Earth or Tau Ceti.”

  “But when you look at the entire equipment set that the Wing deployed…” David shrugged. “The pattern is clear, but we need more than a pattern.”

  “You want proof.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can’t give you proof,” Seule warned. “If I don’t know that Legatus is involved, I can’t give you anything to tie directly back to them.”

  “I didn’t expect you to,” David agreed. “What can you give me? Who hired you for the delivery?”

  “Man named Mahometus Kovac in the Condor System,” Seule said simply. “He’s not a big player in the gunrunning business, but he’s a known quantity. Doesn’t care too much about who buys the guns, but I wouldn’t have fingered him as a Legatan agent.”

  “Probably isn’t one,” Soprano interjected. “If he takes people’s money without asking questions, he’d probably happily take someone’s money to pretend to sell guns to someone else. Just a bonus in his mind.”

  “He’s crooked as they come, but he isn’t particularly twisty,” Seule agreed. “I could see him buying in to that. He operates out of a hotel on one of Condor’s secondary transshipment facilities, McMurdo Station. We’re pretty damn far from there right now, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”

  David snorted. Condor was a MidWorld on nearly the opposite side of the Protectorate, easily a hundred light-years away. That was going to be a headache, but…

  “We have resources,” he agreed. “Thank you, Captain Seule. You have done us all a service and I think we can call all debts paid.”

  “Debts don’t quite work like that, in my experience,” the smuggler replied. “But good enough for me for now. I’ll wish you good luck once we’re done, but now, we may as well eat!”

  24

  “A hundred light-years is a
long way, even for us,” Soprano noted in the meeting the next morning, once Luciole had headed on her way to wherever gunrunners went when they weren’t working with spies. “If we jump it Navy-style, it’s still almost seven days to Condor. If we give our people a break—and after our stunt in Darius, I am entirely for taking it easy—it’s almost nine.”

  “I don’t think we’re in enough of a hurry to push our people this time,” David replied. “Darius was above and beyond, and I refuse to ask more of your people until we need to.”

  LaMonte was already pulling up an astrographic chart and marking their location.

  “We’re here,” the XO noted, highlighting a green dot in deep space near Darius. “The Condor System—properly the Principality of Condor—is here.” A green three-dimensional X appeared on the chart.

  “The Principality is a solid MidWorld operating under a constitutional monarchy,” she continued. “Prince Gadhavi is theoretically only the Governor as far as the Protectorate Charter is concerned, but everyone uses his official title. Our files say the system is rich but somewhat insular, with two habitable planets and more real estate than they know what to do with.

  “Gadhavi would probably prefer not to have interstellar gunrunning going through his system, but so long as they keep it to orbit, he doesn’t seem to actually care. Certainly, his government doesn’t care. Bringing something to the planets? It’s screened six ways to Sunday. Transshipping or storing in orbit? There’s a simple fee per cargo container—and apparently, the inspections aren’t really audited and are easy to buy off.”

  “That’s got to make them popular with a lot of people,” David noted, pulling the data up on his wrist-comp.

  “There’s an MISS local station but no RTA,” his XO said. “Because…yeah, the system is popular with several streams of the underworld. Most notable from our interest is that la Cosa Nostra seems to be operating a major shipping hub there.”