“You haven’t heard?” she replied, gesturing for the Secret Service agents with her to take up position around Damien. “I guess you wouldn’t have. I hitched a ride on the news courier. Election was three days ago. Mikael won. My boyfriend now runs a planet.” She shook her head. “Which takes some adjusting to, unlike the fact that you tried to get yourself killed while I was gone.”
“I wasn’t trying,” Damien noted. “It was supposed to be a quiet murder investigation.”
“Who’s been watching your back?” she demanded.
He gestured at the pair behind him.
“Agent Corei and Marine Mage-Captain Romanov.”
Amiri stepped up, sizing both of them up with an appraising eye.
“Well, the little guy’s still breathing, so you did okay,” she said critically. “Where to, Damien?”
“Back to Duke of Magnificence,” he told her. “I need to brief you and I need to borrow some poor junior officer to chase a CEO’s staff.” He glanced around. “Where did you find our agents?” he asked, gesturing at the suited men and women.
“They arrived in system just before I did,” Amiri said with a possessive smile. “They just aren’t quite as capable as I am of getting Captain Jakab to tell them where you were. Just…why is the dear Captain acting like a professional paranoid?
“Because I told him to,” Damien said shortly. “Like I said, I need to brief you.”
#
“So, that’s the summary version,” Damien Montgomery told his bodyguard two hours later. The repairs on Duke of Magnificence were now mostly complete—sufficiently so, at least, that he’d been able to reclaim the observation deck he’d turned into his office when he’d moved aboard the ship.
His senior bodyguard leaned back in her chair, sipping her cup of excellent coffee—the Hand’s only major vice—as she took in everything he’d said.
“I see Romanov is more directly responsible for you still being breathing than I thought,” Amiri finally said. “That was a near-run thing, Damien. There’s a reason you’re not supposed to go places with just a three-man detail, for crying out loud!”
“I brought Marines,” he pointed out. “And it was supposed to be a working vacation, not kicking open the biggest can of worms that’s crossed even my desk in recent memory. Hell, Julia, I’m not sure who to trust anymore. A Marine stabbed Romanov’s people in the back.”
“Duke’s crew seems safe enough,” Amiri said thoughtfully. “They’ve walked into hell with you; I doubt any conspiracy can offer most of them enough to betray you. But…seriously, boss? Mystery ships? Navy bombardment weapons? What have we stumbled into?”
“A secret the first Mage-King may have meant to die with him,” Damien said grimly. “What worries me, Julia, is that the first Mage-King may have set up something to make sure the secret stayed dead. It seems…possible that we are facing an organization operating at the highest level of the Protectorate, under black orders from Mage-King Desmond Alexander the First himself.”
He hadn’t said it aloud yet to anyone—he hadn’t even briefed Romanov on everything the Mage-King had said—but that was the worry in the back of his mind. The King might back him, but if the King’s grandfather had created these secret-keepers, they might have access to all of the resources that he did.
“But His Majesty has our back, right?” she asked.
“I’ve never known Desmond to lie to me,” Damien said quietly. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t or wouldn’t, but… Yeah, he’s with us. This whole mess is dangerous, Julia. I won’t drag you into it if you want out.”
She laughed at him.
“Dangerous, huh?” she asked. “And stepping into the middle of an incipient civil war wasn’t? Launching a revolution wasn’t? I’m here to keep you alive, Montgomery. That means I go where you go, especially when it’s dangerous.”
He shook his head at her and raised his coffee cup in salute.
“Ever thought of a different career?” he asked.
“Used to be a bounty hunter,” she reminded him. “I like this better.”
Something in her eyes and the way she quickly started drinking her coffee suggested that he’d hit a nerve. If it was important, though, Damien knew she’d tell him.
“I’ve reached out to Captain Jakab,” he told her. “With my staff still scattered across at least three systems—the Professor is still a week away—I’m leaning on his people. His poor communications officer is trying to pin down TCNI’s CEO and Board for a meeting. We’ll probably end up having to give them the data in advance to make the meeting worthwhile.”
“That officer has one hell of a name to conjure with,” Amiri pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you’ll get your meeting.”
“The Mage-King’s name opens many doors,” Damien agreed, only to pause as his bodyguard laughed and shook her head at him again.
“I doubt he’ll even need to mention the King,” she told him. “Your name is a pretty potent conjuration all on its own.”
Damien shivered. Hand of the Mage-King or not, that was never a comfortable thought.
Chapter 19
It took just over two days for the bureaucracy of a major interstellar megacorporation to grind through the gears sufficiently to acquire Hand Damien Montgomery a meeting with Tau Ceti Nova Industries’ CEO and Board of Directors.
In Damien’s admittedly uneducated opinion, that was basically a miracle.
Despite the horrendously overbooked schedules of corporate executives at that level, however, the Hand found himself flying into their headquarters in orbit of Tau Ceti e barely three days after being released from intensive medical care.
His plan to fly the shuttle himself, his normal habit, was promptly vetoed by, in order, Amiri, Jakab and Doctor Mohammed. Instead, a young Lieutenant from Duke of Magnificence’s contingent of pilots named Vanessa MacDonald and her crew of Petty Officers took on the task.
MacDonald delivered them to the station perfectly on schedule, and Amiri led the way onto the station.
While Mage-Captain Romanov and his company had effectively been permanently assigned to Damien, this task called for a gentler touch. If Damien’s Secret Service detail had still been scattered to the winds on vacation, he’d have used the Marines anyway, but since his people were starting to re-coalesce now, he’d use the right tool for the job.
Two suited Agents followed Amiri, sweeping the station corridors like hunting hawks. Two more followed Damien as he boarded the station. It all felt a little ridiculous to him still, but after someone had tried to use orbital bombardment to kill him, he was no longer prepared to call it overkill.
The group waiting for him seemed completely unbothered. The set of three executives, two women and a man, all cut from the same hard-eyed-but-graying cloth, had their own set of guards, a quartet of burly young men in security uniforms.
“Welcome to Nova Central Station, Hand Montgomery,” the taller of the women greeted him. “I am Andrea Volk, CEO of Nova Industries. These are Lucía Fierro, my Senior Vice President in charge of Internal Audit, and Quanah Comanche, our Chairman of the Board.
“Miss Volk, Miss Fierro, Mister Comanche,” Damien greeted them. “I understand we are meeting with the entire Board?”
“We are,” Volk confirmed. “Miss Fierro has been responsible for the research into your data and will be carrying the core of the presentation. If you’ll come with us, please?”
#
Damien had, in his nearly a year as Hand of the Mage-King and three years training under the Mage-King, seen conference rooms on half a dozen worlds, put together for heads of governments, rulers of space stations, and the Protector of Humanity.
The conference room that Volk led him to put most, though not all, to shame. It was a two-tiered, horseshoe-shaped affair, floored in Sherwood oak imported from Damien’s homeworld. The gravity runes had been inlaid into the expensive hardwood with care, and then lacquered over. It made them more difficult to charge but protected them an
d the imported floor from traveling feet.
Each tier had its own table, each space marked with a carefully stuffed leather chair and an interface setup for personal computers and communicators. The table was soft-pink marble, probably from the marble quarries on Tau Ceti f, though there were other quarries in the galaxy it could have been imported from.
Damien was led to the middle of the lower tier and given the central chair, where he could see everything. Amiri took a seat near the door without asking, and her agents flanked the door like silent black-clad statues.
Volk took her own seat to one side of Damien, and Comanche took the seat on the other. No one introduced the fourteen members of the Board who had been waiting in the room, though Damien could have named each of them from his briefing on the way over.
“The room is sealed,” Lucía Fierro announced, stepping up to the lectern at the center of the horseshoe. “No electronic communication in or out is now possible. Hand Montgomery, you are of course welcome to step outside at any time, but you impressed upon us the importance of secrecy and confidentiality of the data you provided and asked us to review.”
“Your caution is appreciated,” Damien said mildly. “Carry on.”
“My lord, you provided us with material scans, sensor data, and a wealth of other information on several assault shuttles involved in the attack on you,” Fierro began. “My Internal Audit analysts have reviewed this data and we agree with the MIS’s conclusion: we can confirm that the spacecraft that was intact enough for thorough examination and sampling was manufactured here in Tau Ceti by us.
“You will understand I hope, my lord, that the full internal audit to attempt to identify any missing spacecraft will take time,” she warned him. “Months at least.
“We have done, however, a full preliminary analysis from materials acquisition to spacecraft delivery. While it is possible our data systems have been compromised at some point, I can assure you that would not be easy. Our purchased materials for this program are fully accounted for, as is every shuttle manufactured for the program.”
Fierro looked uncomfortable.
“Every Model Twenty-Four-Forty-Five assault shuttle we manufactured was delivered to either the Royal Martian Marines or the Royal Martian Navy. Much as I dislike the thought myself, I suspect the craft were diverted after they entered His Majesty’s service, not while they were in our possession.”
Damien nodded slowly.
“I will need to have my people review the analysis,” he noted.
“We should be able to provide that,” Fierro told him. “It will take us a few days to turn my people’s internal analysis into something useful to those unfamiliar with the data, but we can have that to you quickly.”
“Very well. What about the ship?” he asked.
Fierro tapped a command on the lectern, and an image appeared on the wall behind her. It was an odd-looking ship to Damien, far from the sharp lines of the pyramids the Martian Navy preferred. A sharply curving bullet-like shape half a kilometer long according to the scale on the screen, it was very different from anything he’d ever seen.
“Between the surface scan data and TK-421’s sensor scans, we have a relatively detailed image of the ship that attacked you,” Fierro told Damien. “Roughly six million tons, five hundred and two meters long, one hundred and fifty meters wide. Antimatter engines, current Navy-issue weapons; she’s a very unusual ship.”
“Unique, so far as I can tell,” Damien replied. “A custom build is my guess.”
“That is my own assumption as well,” the auditor confirmed. “We unquestionably have enough data to identify the vessel if she were in our records.” She paused. “We’ve scoured everything, my lord. Including records that are technically supposed to be sealed without a court order. We did not build this ship.”
Damien sighed. He wanted to believe them. Wanted to trust them. But this was the same system where someone had managed to attach an assassin to his bodyguards—and Mage-Admiral Segal’s MPs had so far failed to even find a trace of the orders reassigning White to that task.
“I will need to see that data as well,” he said finally.
Fierro shifted uncomfortably, and gestured toward Comanche.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors cleared his throat.
“My lord, Miss Fierro was not exaggerating when she said there were records reviewed that would not have been opened for a request from a lesser authority,” he said calmly. “We have signed confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements, and have a moral and ethical obligation besides to protect our clients’ interests.
“Providing you the data would not allow you to prove a negative,” Comanche said flatly. “I spent four hours sitting with Miss Fierro’s analysts this morning, Hand Montgomery. Once they got over the shock of having the Chairman of the Board in their offices, they walked me through their analysis from beginning to end.
“I swear to you, Lord Montgomery, that Fierro speaks the truth. I can provide no greater assurance, but we cannot simply hand you this data. We would be in violation of a dozen or more contracts.”
“All of which are subject to override by court order,” Damien said flatly. “I remind you, Mister Comanche, that my orders are a court order.”
“And under the Charter, we have sixty days to comply,” the Chairman replied. “It would take almost that long for us to find a reasonable compromise between your needs and our own moral and legal obligations. We will take that step, if you insist, but my lord…we have worked with His Majesty’s government for decades. Over a century, in fact.
“We provide you with detailed files on every ship we build for the system governments,” he pointed out. “We work with you on every file. We are being cooperative. I am…not certain what more you want from us.”
“Certainty,” Damien said flatly. Anything they manipulated, anything they touched before they gave it to him, was suspect. The Board wouldn’t even need to know the data had been manipulated—the people he was looking for wouldn’t hesitate to lie to TCNI’s Board as well.
“Ladies, gentlemen, I am dealing with a conspiracy that threatens the very safety of the Protectorate. Even a filtered dataset would be insufficient. I fear I will require unfettered access to your files.”
“That we also have sixty days to comply with,” Comanche said quietly. “And while I can begin to see your need, understand that we would be remiss in our obligations to our shareholders, our employees and our clients were we to permit you that access without challenging it all the way to the Council of the Protectorate and the Mage-King himself.
“We will put together as complete a supporting package of our analysis as we can,” he finished, nodding to Fierro, who looked determined. “We want to help. But we cannot simply hand you access to all of our confidential files, my lord.”
“I understand,” Damien said stonily. “I would appreciate that package being provided as soon as possible.”
“I will have all hands on deck, my lord,” Fierro promised. “I cannot guarantee anything, only that you will have it as quickly as you can.”
The Hand nodded. They might be honestly trying, but it wasn’t enough.
He was going to have to find an alternative.
Chapter 20
“That’s it,” Romanov told Damien, gesturing out the tinted window of the black government car.
Asimov was the capital city of a star system with two inhabited planets and just over seven billion human beings. Traffic control and design continued to advance every year, but there was only so much that could be done. Stuck in traffic in the downtown core, the black vehicle was moving slowly enough to allow inspection of the building without being obvious.
It didn’t stand out much. Amidst the glittering multicolored jewels of Asimov’s downtown, the black ten-story building almost disappeared, beneath anyone’s notice. Anyone who paid attention, though, would note that the building had even more cooling vanes than most, with narrower windows and heavier shu
tters.
Two uniformed guards stood just inside the door, but a lot of corporate buildings there had at least a small uniformed presence to secure their assets.
This particular corporate building was a server farm for a computer services company that was, on paper, utterly independent of Tau Ceti Nova Industries—but had long ago had its entire capacity subsumed by the bigger corporation. The servers here didn’t support TCNI’s operations—but it was their secure backup facility.
“What do we know about it?” the Hand asked as the car slowly moved on. The Marine Mage-Captain, Amiri, and the Secret Service agent driving the car were the only people he’d mentioned anything to about this arguably questionable course of action.
“We only know it’s here since our contracts say they have to tell us where the records of Navy production are stored,” Romanov pointed out. “I had a couple of my Sergeants pull all the records they could find as a ‘training exercise’, though, so I have a few details.”
“And?”
The Mage-Captain glanced at the tinted windows, as if making sure no one could see what he was doing, then tapped a command on his wrist computer that opened up a holographic image of the building in front of him.
“It’s not a military facility,” he pointed out, “so security is relatively light. Doors are all secured by codes in the staff’s wrist computers, everyone who doesn’t work in the building has to check in at the front desk, and there is a surveillance system in place which monitors everyone’s arrivals and departures.
“There are three ground-level accesses: the front door, the staff entrance, and the delivery dock. All are guarded twenty-eight/seven.” Tiny red holographic figures appeared at each of the doors. “During the day, there are two guards at each entrance. At night, the delivery door is physically locked down and unguarded; there is a guard at each entrance, and four patrolling guards.”
“How would you gain access, Captain?” Damien asked softly, eyeing the hologram.
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