Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  She also chuckled, but hovered for a bit longer. A few moments of attempting to bring up a tactical plot of the system later, and he’d managed to bring up a schematic of Duke of Magnificence’s sensor systems.

  “Fair,” he conceded. “All right, Commander. Show me how to bring up the system plot.”

  Torres went through the iconography carefully but quickly, both bringing up the plot and leaving Damien comfortable he could do it himself if he needed to. And as a bonus, he also knew how to bring up a sensor schematic!

  Clear of the fragile struts and repair pods of the immense shipyard complex at last, Duke rotated on his display as the big ship oriented itself on its final destination. The cruiser was an immense pyramid, four hundred meters tall and two hundred and ten meters square at the base, festooned with weapons of half a dozen kinds, and massing over twelve million tons unfueled.

  A notice flashed up on Damien’s chair screens, noting that the ship was going to full acceleration, a thirty-second notice proclaimed over the PA system everywhere aboard the ship except the bridge and flag deck.

  The countdown flickered to zero and the image of Duke on the system plot began to move faster. At ten gravities flank acceleration, the yards drifted away behind them.

  With his Gift, Damien could feel the magic pulsing through the floorboards, the gravity runes that fixed gravity in the ship at one gee shifting their power flow to reduce acceleration instead of creating gravity.

  Duke was a well-built ship just out of a repair yard, with plenty of energy fed into the runes. Ten gravities was her designed flank acceleration, intended to carry her out to deep space, where gravity wouldn’t interfere with the jump.

  While Navy Mages with access to an amplifier could jump from and to a planet’s orbit, it wasn’t particularly safe. With a Hand’s power behind it, such a jump could be done with relative simplicity, but it was still easier to take the just over two hours, in this case, to get twenty light-seconds clear.

  It was, Damien had to concede, far more comfortable to watch the trip out aboard the flag deck than crammed into one of the—intentionally, he was sure—uncomfortable observer chairs on the bridge. And unlike his observation deck office, the flag deck actually had all of the video feeds, scanner data, and information available on the bridge. Including, though he didn’t intend to use it outside of an actual battle, the ability to have the holographic tank show a miniature of the bridge in real time.

  A full flag deck staff was probably excessive for his needs, though, he concluded as the ship made its trek outward. He really just needed enough people to keep the lights on and answer his questions.

  The counterargument, he knew, was that his last mission had ended up with an entire fleet being commanded from Duke of Magnificence’s bridge. Hardly an efficient solution.

  With a small sigh, he settled back into the chair to watch the trip out of Tau Ceti. The amount of loose rock drifting around the system required the defenses that protected the planets and made for messy navigation, but no one would deny it also made for a gorgeous view.

  #

  “I’m sorry for springing everything on you in one shot,” the recorded image of Mikael Riordan, Governor-Elect of Ardennes, said. “It’s easy to see how tough you are and assume, well, that you can take anything. And”—he sighed—“I didn’t want to lose you. I figured putting all my cards on the table was the best plan.”

  Julia’s boyfriend was a mousy man, of average height with brown hair loosely streaked with gray. Nothing about him would ever stand out in a crowd—not until you heard him speak.

  She’d seen him captivate rooms when she’d been on Ardennes and met him during the rebellion there. Returning at the tail end of the election for Governor, she’d seen him enthrall cities. His vision of a better future, of an Ardennes that took the benefits of its years under a robber baron but built a happier, wiser world with them, could entrance her.

  “I got your message, obviously,” he continued with a small smile. “I know the thought is intimidating—you of all people know how much the governorship terrifies me! But…someone has to do it.

  “People seem willing to listen to me, and I don’t have it in me to walk away,” he said. “I love you, but I know we haven’t had that much time together, and I’m not just asking you to settle down in an estate and raise a swarm of kids—but then, you wouldn’t be interested if I was, would you?

  Julia attempted to imagine herself and Mikael with a big fancy house and a half-dozen children, and chuckled. While the image had a lot less revulsion than she would have expected, it certainly wasn’t one either of them fit into.

  “I’ll be honest, Julia,” he continued, “if you want to pass on the Minister for Defense, that’s fine. I just want you here, with me. Unfortunately…if you marry me, you are the First Lady of Ardennes.

  “And you know we need an outsider at Defense,” he concluded. “If you don’t want the job, I’m going to have to see if I can poach someone from the Navy.” He shook his head. “And while the Navy stopped that madwoman, there’s more than a few people here who don’t trust anyone in the uniform right now.

  “You don’t need to decide straight away,” he told her. “We have time—I won’t be sworn in until the end of November. If there’s some way you can come back before then, even if you haven’t decided…I know your job doesn’t run on a schedule.”

  He sighed and blew a soft kiss at the screen.

  “Let me know, Julia. I can wait. I will wait. Just…let me know.”

  The message ended and Julia Amiri was left looking at a blank space where the hologram had been. The recording had arrived in a naval mail drop before they’d left Tau Ceti, and she’d taken a full day to getting around to watching it.

  She was willing to marry Mikael Riordan. She hadn’t been sure of that when she left Ardennes in such a hurry, but her impatient waiting for his message—and fear-driven procrastination after she had it—was enough for someone as self-aware as Julia to be sure of that.

  Marriage hadn’t exactly been in her life plans at any point, and certainly not since her brother and bounty-hunter crew had died and she’d somehow ended up in the Protectorate’s Secret Service.

  Minister for Defense, much as she didn’t think she was qualified for the job, was in many ways more to her taste. First Lady she could take or leave, though she knew that Mikael would back her when she chose her duties.

  She found herself missing Alaura Stealey. That Hand had dragged both her and Montgomery in from the cold, stood them up, brushed them off, and showed them how to make the galaxy a better place.

  “What would Alaura do?” Julia murmured aloud, then smiled. Alaura Stealey would do whatever would help the most people.

  Damien Montgomery had a lot of power to change the world and desperately needed a minder, an older and wiser mind to keep him on track and aware of the world around him. She knew, with harsh certainty, that Montgomery was more effective with her.

  But was he enough more effective to offset the good she could do on Ardennes?

  Julia sighed.

  That wasn’t a question she could answer on her own, and only one person could help her find the answer.

  #

  She found Montgomery in the observation deck he’d converted into his office. For a man who lived a surprisingly ascetic lifestyle, the fact that he’d claimed a massive space with transmuted steel windows seemed odd…until you realized that the cruiser had three such spaces and the loss of one had barely been noticed by the crew.

  It was a luxury he could allow himself without hurting someone else, though it was certainly possible the young Hand hadn’t thought it all the way through. She doubted, though, that Montgomery would have taken over the space if it had been Duke’s only observation deck.

  Montgomery stood with his back to the door, seemingly unaware of her presence. While the Marines and Secret Service Agents outside the door would never have let a threat into his space quietly, the woman responsi
bility for his safety still hoped he was paying more attention than it looked.

  Past him, she could see the glitter of stars in open space. Sixteen hours into their trip—two thirds of the twelve-light-year voyage—they were far enough from either star that they could truly be called lost in the void. More stars were visible there, with no close-by star to hide them, than could possibly be seen with the naked eye in any star system.

  “No sun. No worlds. Yet we’re almost as lit up as we would be at, say, Jupiter,” Montgomery finally said after a moment’s silence. Apparently, he was aware of her. “I never tire of looking at the stars. Grew up wondering what was out there.

  “Now I’m wondering if we really want to know.” He sighed. “You’re not here to listen to me moan, Julia. What’s up?”

  Julia grabbed one of the several rolling chairs that had ended up in random corners of the office, and took a seat.

  “You know I came back from Ardennes early,” she reminded him. “It…wasn’t because I’d heard you were injured. That news reached Ardennes about six hours after I left, from what I can tell.”

  “Ah,” Montgomery said calmly. “Something went wrong?”

  “Something went…awry,” she replied. “Mikael proposed, the night he won the election. Wanted me to marry him…be First Lady…and he’d already asked me to be Minister for Defense.”

  “I can see the logic on the Minister for Defense,” the Hand said slowly. “Normally, you most definitely don’t want an outsider in that role, but with your candidates tarred by either serving Vaughn or being rebels…”

  “Exactly his argument,” she sighed.

  “Since you’re not handing me a resignation, I’m guessing there’s more to it.”

  “I… I wasn’t expecting it,” Julia admitted. “I panicked. I ran. Give me a firefight or an assassin, I can handle that. A marriage proposal? Apparently, that was a flanking maneuver I wasn’t ready for.”

  Her boss visibly winced and finally turned away from the window.

  “Didn’t say no, didn’t say yes,” he concluded. In the faded light from the stars behind him, the Hand looked even older than his thirty standard years. Wiser, somehow, than his youthful features made him look.

  Or maybe that was just what she wanted him to be.

  “Do you need me to tell you I can’t function without you?” he asked quietly. “To tell you can do more good here than you could there?”

  She laughed softly.

  “It would make my choice easier,” she admitted. “But I get the feeling I’d be asking you to lie.”

  “You can make a huge difference here, Julia,” Montgomery told her. “With you at my back, I fear no threat, no enemy. I value your advice; I value your skills at arms…”

  “But.”

  “But,” he agreed with a nod. “I have other advisors. Political, military, even Romanov for small-team tactics now. I have other guardians—Romanov isn’t Secret Service, but he does good work. There are Secret Service Senior Agents who’d do the job. I’m sure you could even find one you trusted to take over.

  “Ardennes?” he shrugged. “The most qualified people served in Vaughn’s military and government. Even those Riordan might trust, his people wouldn’t. The rest were in the Freedom Wing, unacceptable to much of the government and, frankly, to the Protectorate.

  “He could grab a Navy officer, but unless they were one of the captains from the Battle of Ardennes, Cor’s shadow will hang over them.

  “But all of Ardennes knows you,” he concluded. “They remember you, in the heart of the battle, liberating the Bastille, standing at my side when we proclaimed Vaughn’s defeat. You’d be welcomed, loved, even adored.”

  “There was a time it wouldn’t have mattered,” she said quietly. “I joined Stealey for revenge. I wouldn’t have expected it to end here.”

  “She left a mark on the lives of all who met her,” Montgomery agreed. “She showed us…that we could be better. That we could make the galaxy better. She’d say to go where you’d do the most good.”

  “And that’s Ardennes,” Julia admitted with a sigh. “My lord Montgomery, will you accept my resignation?”

  “Can you stay until this mess is over?” he asked. “I’m walking into a snake pit; I’d rather do it with my strong right arm at my side.”

  “I can stay,” she promised. “But I’ll need to let Riordan know. He can plan the damn wedding for when I get back—I just need to make damned sure he knows I’m not wearing a dress!”

  Chapter 28

  Damien woke to a loud klaxon he’d never heard in his quarters before. He had finally managed to get to sleep, trying to get some rest before arriving in Sol, where he was going to get very busy very quickly, but now bolted upright in his small quarters near his office.

  Since he mostly lived in the office, the room was barely large enough to hold a bed, a side table and a closet, and echoed painfully with the emergency klaxon.

  “Battle stations,” a voice announced as the klaxon cut off. “All hands report to battle stations. This is not a drill. All hands report to battle stations.”

  Damien grabbed his wrist PC from the side table and pinged the bridge.

  “This is Montgomery. What’s going on?” he asked.

  “My lord, we’re at Tau Ceti–Sol Jump Ten and we have an unidentified ship maneuvering aggressively,” Jakab told him. “We don’t have a clean enough scan to say if she’s our mystery ship from Andala, but anyone inside missile range and maneuvering at me makes me twitchy.”

  “I agree,” Damien replied. The Mage-Captain didn’t need his approval to take the ship to battle stations—or even to defend himself if attacked. Opening fire preemptively, though, would be better done with the Hand’s authorization.

  “Our bogey’s at ten million kilometers. That’s inside our missile range, but if she’s only got the half-dozen launchers she fired at TK-421, there’s no way she can hurt us,” Jakab pointed out.

  “And how many missiles would you have launched to take out an armed courier?” Damien asked.

  “Maybe ten,” the Mage-Captain said with a snort. “I take your point, my lord.”

  “Do whatever you feel is necessary, Kole,” the Hand ordered. “I’ll be on the flag deck in three minutes.”

  #

  It was the first time the Hand had ever had to make it to the flag deck in a rush, and he took over thirty seconds longer than he had told Jakab. It hadn’t made too much difference—the strange ship was accelerating at roughly twelve gravities and had already been moving at a fair velocity toward Duke, but they’d still carved less than a light-second off the range.

  “What’s our status, Torres?” he asked as he settled into the command chair. The Lieutenant Commander might have been on the flag deck when everything went down, but he wasn’t certain. It was entirely possible she’d made it there well ahead of him.

  “Range is just under nine point eight million kilometers,” she replied. “Flight time for our missiles is six and a half minutes. No idea what they might have; CIC still hasn’t confirmed an ID.”

  “Thank you.” He brought up the tactical plot in the main holo-tank, an empty-looking display with only two icons on it. A few more taps zoomed in on the strange ship, allowing him to study what data they had.

  As he did so, he saw the refresh of new data come through and the amorphous blob from the previous scans resolve itself into a familiar odd-looking bullet shape.

  “Jakab, that’s it,” he snapped into the communicator.

  “We see it too,” the Mage-Captain confirmed. “Sir…it’s your call. She likely has comparable weapons to us, but she’s only half our size. We’ve got her outgunned. Do we engage or wait to see what she does?”

  There was, Damien reflected, a chance that the other ship was here by coincidence and it wasn’t hostile. There was even a possibility that it wasn’t the ship from Andala…except that no ship like it existed in the records of the Royal Martian Navy, and the vessel was very
clearly maneuvering to engage Duke of Magnificence.

  “No, Captain,” he said quietly. “That ship is guilty of, if nothing else, the attempted murder of a Hand and a thousand innocents. If they choose to surrender, we’ll talk, but I am not okay with that ship in weapons range of me. Engage at your discretion, Kole. Take the fucker down.”

  “My lord,” the Mage-Captain acknowledged gruffly. He turned on the screen to focus on the rest of his bridge crew.

  “All right folks, you heard the Hand,” he snapped. “Carver—run the turrets, full defense; assume we’re facing Phoenix VIIIs. These bastards seem to have the rest of our gear.

  “Commander Rhine,” he addressed his tactical officer. “Full salvo, all launchers. Fire when ready!”

  Damien’s current link to the bridge was a small screen on his chair, limiting his ability to see anyone’s reaction to the orders from Jakab, but he saw the results of Rhine’s actions on the main holographic tank with the tactical display.

  A fountain of new icons emerged from Duke, dozens of missiles flashing across space at twelve and a half thousand gravities. Even at those tremendous accelerations, it would take them over six minutes to cross the void between the two ships.

  Twenty seconds after Duke launched, a second flurry of icons emerged from the other ship.

  “That’s not right,” he murmured.

  “They launched before we did,” Torres confirmed aloud. “They must have realized we’d have identified them from the active scans.”

  “Damn. What am I seeing, Torres?” Damien asked. Even as he spoke, though, he was fiddling with his controls, zooming in on the missiles and reviewing the data they had.

  “Twelve point five kilo-gees,” she said crisply. “Forty-five missiles. We’re losing them to sensor jamming already—if they’re not Phoenix Eights, they’re close enough in capability to make no difference.”