Judgment of Mars (Starship's Mage Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  He let that hang in the air for a long moment and was relatively sure he heard at least one muffled chuckle from the farther desks. Someone had heard the silent “un” in front of his last sentence.

  “If that will be all, Councilors, I must be returning to Mars,” he told them.

  While he was sure at least Newton and McClintlock were tempted, the Council wisely chose to let that be the last word.

  #

  Chapter 6

  Damien walked out of the Council chamber in a silence he knew would be read as incandescent rage by anyone who knew him. He could only hope that the Councilors and Lictors didn’t know him that well.

  Special Agent Romanov did, and the bodyguard fell in behind him in equal silence. Christoffsen and the Secret Service Agent with him emerged from the lounge in response to a signal Damien didn’t see, falling into place with Romanov in the Hand’s wake as he stalked the corridors of Council Station.

  It was apparently lunch break for most of the bureaucrats who populated the station, as the corridors were noticeably more crowded than they had been when he came in. The presence of two openly armed Secret Service Agents opened a path through the crowd, though Damien’s localized storm cloud almost certainly helped.

  Reaching the airlock where Doctor Akintola waited, they found another set of four guards from his detail watching over the jump-yacht.

  “Pack it up,” he ordered. “We’re done here.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Crossing over into the yacht itself, with its innumerable security systems to make sure no one else was watching the cameras, he finally allowed himself to relax slightly.

  “I take it your meeting with the Council did not go well,” Christoffsen said mildly as the Secret Service men and women began closing the ship up behind them.

  “I would place it on par with being shot again,” Damien replied. “While we definitely have friends in the Council, I’d say both the Legislaturists and the UnArcana Worlds are out to screw us over.”

  “That is…roughly the alliance I expected,” his aide admitted. “If you have an advantage, it is that Míngliàng is usually with the Legislaturists, but I believe they will take your side in almost any discussion.”

  Míngliàng had been one of two systems—the other Damien’s home of Sherwood—someone had tried to drag into a war over a shared uninhabited system. Like so much else, Damien suspected Legatus was behind it…but had no proof.

  He’d stopped the war, so Míngliàng’s government thought well of him.

  “We’ll see if we have enough friends,” he admitted quietly. “For now, I intend to return to Mars. If they want to talk to me again, they can damned well do so on my availability.”

  “We should tread softly here,” Christoffsen warned.

  “Professor, right now, I regard it as treading softly that Councilor Newton didn’t get thrown into a wall,” Damien pointed out. “We need to work with the Council, but there are limits to the disrespect that His Majesty or his Hands can afford to allow.

  “Besides,” he concluded grimly, “if I am to be forced to resign, and that is looking far more possible than I’d like, I want this mess with the Keepers cleaned up first.”

  #

  By the time he slipped Doctor Akintola into her orbital slot amongst the rest of the Civil Fleet, Damien was feeling calmer. He could, intellectually at least, see the point where the Council members were coming from—at least in terms of trying to understand just what had happened to result in the deaths of two Hands.

  “We show you in final orbital position, Lord Montgomery,” the Civil Fleet’s controller told him. “Do you need a shuttle directed your way?”

  “No, we have several aboard,” he told the man. “I’m going to need to keep Doctor Akintola on standby for the next few days at least,” he warned them. “With Duke of Magnificence down for repairs, I’m currently lacking in transport and may need to travel or leave the system.”

  “We’ll reserve her for you,” the controller agreed immediately. “If you give us a few hours’ warning if you need to leave the system, we can get one of our Jump Mages aboard to back you up as well.”

  “That would be appreciated,” Damien admitted. Despite everything he’d done to upgrade his skills and power, he’d discovered that the one-light-year limit on a jump spell still applied to him—and so did the sheer exhaustion after casting the spell.

  Most Mages needed a six- to eight-hour rest in between jumps. Even he couldn’t push it much past five, so having a second Jump Mage aboard could easily cut a trip in half.

  “I don’t expect to need to leave Sol until Duke is repaired,” he told the controller, “but I will likely need to travel around the system.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “Thank you.”

  Letting the channel drop, he made sure that everything was locked down in orbit, then rose and headed for his shuttle.

  With Duke of Magnificence in for repair, his only “home” was his apartment in Olympus Mons. Unless the world had collapsed while he wasn’t looking, he needed to take some time to rest.

  #

  Damien managed to make it all the way to his apartment in the mountain, remove his suit jacket and collapse into his couch before, inevitably, someone caught up to him.

  Fortunately, the “someone” was Kiera Alexander, the youngest child of the Mage-King and something resembling a friend, for all that she was fourteen years old to his thirty-plus. She flounced her way past his bodyguards, leaving at least one red-uniformed Royal Guard in the vestibule with his own Secret Service crew.

  “Dad said to check and make sure you weren’t ‘spitting nails,’” she told him with the casual bluntness almost unique, in Damien’s experience, to younger members of the Protectorate’s upper classes. “He…didn’t expect your Council meeting to go well.”

  “And he sent you?” Damien asked.

  “Well, no,” Kiera admitted blithely. “Gregory’s supposed to be by later; I figured I’d check in first. You won’t spit nails at me.”

  Malcolm Gregory was the Chancellor of the Protectorate, the man who ran much of the day-to-day government of Mars and humanity’s colonies. Damien could easily see the Mage-King asking him to check on a Hand he’d expected to have a bad day.

  “I’m not spitting nails at anyone,” he told Kiera. “But you’re no more immune to an angry Hand than your father is.”

  Less so, in that the Mage-King had as many Runes of Power as Damien did and had been a stronger Mage before them. Alexander could magically “sit” on Damien if he needed to. Kiera was a powerful Mage but lacked both her father’s training and her father’s Runes.

  “None of you would ever hurt a hair on my head,” Kiera replied. “Especially not you. You’re a big softie.”

  Damien chuckled. He doubted it was a particularly pleasant sound. He might have been a glorified cop in many ways, but even he had lost count of how many people he’d killed over the last ten years.

  “You…” He shook his head at her. “You don’t really get just what your esteemed father uses his Hands for. Even I am not a ‘big softie.’”

  “I know exactly what my father uses you for,” Kiera told him, her voice serious. “I know perfectly well who killed Lawrence and Charlotte, Damien. I’m neither deaf nor blind.”

  He winced.

  “You are very young,” he pointed out. “But you’re right; I apologize. I’m still not really a softie.”

  “Remember that I’ve met all of my father’s Hands,” she replied. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But not even your father can fix this one. We’ll get through it.”

  “What do you want me to tell him?”

  “That I’m not ‘spitting nails,’” he quoted back to her. “I need some rest, that’s all.”

  Fourteen and overly blunt or not, she could at least get that hint. Kiera sprang back to her feet with the easy energy of youth and smiled brightly at him. />
  “Gregory’s going to tell you you’re invited for dinner,” she noted. “But I’ll pass that on.”

  “Shoo, Kiera,” he told her.

  #

  Chapter 7

  Kiera clearly passed on Damien’s request for rest to the Chancellor as well as her father, because it was the next morning before the door on his apartment chimed again and he found the immense form of Malcolm Gregory on his step.

  “Come in,” he told the older man, gesturing Gregory to come inside.

  The Chancellor of the Protectorate of Humanity was a grossly obese man noticeably into his second century, his hair long gone and his face marked with a perpetual smile. The unwise read that smile as befuddled and considered him a nonentity.

  Malcolm Gregory’s rise to power and service to his King was paved with the political and literal graves of the unwise.

  Despite his massive bulk, Gregory remained on his feet as he entered Damien’s sitting room, glancing around the sparse furnishings. The couch and table were expensive, but they’d been there when he’d moved in. He’d lived in the apartment for three years at one point, but it still didn’t truly register as home.

  “You know, Damien, if you’re not careful, I’m going to sneak someone in here and decorate while you’re gone,” he observed dryly.

  “You presume I would even notice,” Damien replied. “So long as I have a bed and a screen to hook my PC up to, I’m pretty happy.”

  “There may be something fundamentally wrong with you,” Gregory noted. “Though it seems to work for you. You threw a few glorious wrenches into the Council yesterday.”

  “My impression was closer to being fed to a herd of piranhas.”

  “That, my young and innocent friend, is because you were paying attention to who was talking,” the Mage-King’s right hand man told him. “I, on the other hand, have spoken with those who were listening. You handled that mess as well as anyone could, and the degree to which Newton and McClintlock were pushing you did not go unnoticed.

  “I won’t say you couldn’t have done better,” Gregory noted, “but you did well. And the fact that you clearly weren’t being political probably helped as much as handling them more smoothly would have.”

  “I also got pulled aside by Councilor Granger,” Damien said. “Were you aware of that piece?”

  “I am well informed,” the Chancellor said slowly, “but not omniscient. I was aware you had breakfast with him, but it sounds like there was more than just him reiterating his support for the Mountain.”

  “He asked me to resign to short-circuit this whole mess.”

  Gregory started to say something, then cut himself off.

  “That is not…unexpected,” he finally admitted. “I don’t agree with the logic, but I can see it.”

  “I’m not planning on resigning,” Damien told him. “Not until this mess with the Keepers is sorted.”

  “I’d prefer not even then,” Gregory replied. “The man they call the Sword of Mars is not a tool I would lay aside happily.”

  Damien blinked.

  “They call me what?”

  “The Sword of Mars,” Gregory repeated. “It’s a nickname that goes around the media, usually attached to the Hand that’s seen the most outright military action in the last few years. Lomond was the last one anyone called that, but it’s been a few years since they hung it on him, and it seems you’ve got it now.”

  “Can I give it back to him?”

  “We don’t control what the media calls us, but this one is a useful tool,” Gregory said. “Even if they push for your resignation, it will be a public relations disaster for many of the Councilors.”

  “And if their governments back them?”

  The Chancellor sighed.

  “Then we will have a problem, though I suspect the PR consequences of it would help resolve any such crisis in our favor. His Majesty will back you, Damien.”

  “And if I decide the price is too high to allow him to?” Damien asked quietly.

  “That is a sacrifice neither he nor I would approve of,” Gregory replied. “Though it is certainly your choice to make.”

  “We’ll keep that in our quiver for a while yet, I think. For now, I think I need to get back to work.”

  “No one is going to judge you for finding a beach and a martini for a day or two,” Gregory pointed out.

  “Someone killed the only Keeper I knew was left,” Damien pointed out. “I’d like to make sure any of them I’ve missed get found before they share his fate.”

  “And all of the resources of Mars are yours to command in that quest,” the Chancellor agreed. “I worry, Damien, about any secret so powerful it can turn even the Hands against us.”

  “Whatever the cost, I can’t help but feel that the first Mage-King would rather the secret was exposed than lost,” Damien said. “We’ll find the survivors. We’ll drag all of this into the light and we will find our answers.”

  #

  For the “sin” of being the first senior Martian Investigation Service member dragged into Damien’s investigation on Mars, Director Wong appeared to have been handed the global responsibility of dealing with the Keeper investigation.

  She looked about as tired when Damien called her as he still felt.

  “Lord Montgomery, how can I assist you?”

  “I need an update on your investigation into the Keepers,” he told her. “And if there’s any way I can assist you in that investigation, let me know.”

  “Right now, we’re still in data-compilation-and-analysis mode,” Wong replied after a moment’s thought. “I don’t know if we’ve got good news or bad news yet, just…data.”

  “Run me through the highlights.”

  “Raptis had been dead for roughly ten hours when you found him,” she began. “That’s both good and bad. Bad because someone beat us to him. Good because they beat us to him by enough that I can be confident we didn’t betray his location.”

  That was a more reassuring conclusion than Damien would have expected it to be. With the reach the Keepers themselves had demonstrated throughout his investigations into their operations, it had been a real possibility that the MIS had accidentally betrayed Raptis to his death.

  “What about the archives?”

  “Destroyed,” Wong said flatly. “Some of the data media were recoverable enough for us to establish they had been wiped before being burned. Raptis’s murderer was very thorough.”

  “The safehouse was fortified. Cameras?” Damien asked.

  “Destroyed. Their data storage wiped, then destroyed as well. No records. No footage. No identifying information.”

  “I’m guessing the area wasn’t under useful surveillance?”

  “No. The community association had planned to put in a local security net three times over the last twenty years, but it failed each time,” the MIS Director replied. “I can’t help but wonder why.”

  “The Keepers protected the safehouse,” Damien concluded. “You’re right, Director, that we don’t have much good news here. I hate to even ask, but do we have any other comparable murders?”

  “I have a team investigating, but their reach is…limited,” she admitted. “While the local databases are eventually uploaded into the planetary and system-wide systems, it’s not an immediate process. Active, ongoing cases are sufficiently close to home that few police departments like handing their files over to the MIS before they have to.”

  Damien smiled coldly.

  “How big of a stick do you need me to provide, Director?” he asked.

  “A Hand’s Warrant is probably enough,” she told him. “Most police officers understand that we’re all on the same side here.”

  “You’ll have it,” he promised. “I’ll be at your office in a couple of hours,” he continued. “Mars doesn’t see that many murders. I want at least high-level details on every one in the last three weeks.”

  “I’ll make it happen.”

  #

  Chapter 8


  Curiosity City was starting to be familiar to Damien, though the University’s massive heroic bronze of the rover it was named after still seemed excessive to him.

  His shuttle swooped over the city, carving a careful course that brought the spacecraft to a halt on the roof of the skyscraper that served as the MIS’s headquarters in Curiosity City.

  Damien waited, as much tired as patient today, while Romanov and his team swept out to secure the rooftop, then stepped out to meet Director Wong on the rooftop landing pad. The Director looked even older today, her hair frizzing up in the wind on the top of the tower as she directed her companion towards him.

  “Hand Montgomery, this is Inspector Munira Samara,” she introduced the woman in the dark blue headscarf. “She’s been leading my team looking into the details of this mess for you, so I’m seconding her to you for this case.

  “She’ll be your liaison and continue to head the investigation team as well. Please try not to drag her away from the planet unless necessary, but she is now dedicated to this case.”

  “Inspector Samara.” He bowed slightly to her. “I appreciate your efforts on the Protectorate’s behalf. This situation grows more complex every time I look at it.”

  “My own investigations have not simplified affairs,” she agreed, blue eyes flashing as she smiled at him. “Your suggestion to look into other murders has provided unexpected fruit, however. If we can move inside, I’ve had my team prepare a briefing for you and the Director.”

  “You haven’t been briefed yet?” Damien asked Wong.

  “There hasn’t been time, my lord,” she reminded him. “We only received your Warrant two hours ago, after all. If Samara says this is worth our time, though, I’ll trust her.”

  “I did not intend to imply otherwise,” he said apologetically. “Of course, Inspector. Please lead on.”