Interstellar Mage

by Glynn Stewart

  Had he followed her? She liked Acconcio well enough, but that was a glaring red warning sign.

  “Are you sure, ma’am?” the barista asked. “You don’t look like you need coffee.”

  “Sorry, just realized my boyfriend might have been stalking me,” Maria admitted in a rush, relying on the sisterhood of shared experience.

  “I see.” The other woman glanced out the window, then gestured Maria closer to her.

  “If you go down that hallway,” she pointed, “there’s a staff-only door past the washrooms. Go straight through, turn left. The door there exits out onto a completely different corridor.”

  For half a second, Maria wondered if she was doing Acconcio a disservice or if she was being too paranoid…but even as a Mage-Commander in His Majesty’s service, she’d encountered enough throwbacks not to take her safety with that much certainty.

  She could confront him, but that was unlikely to end well. For now, discretion was the better part of valor.

  “Thank you.”

  29

  “So?”

  “So what?” David asked Campbell as their shuttle crossed the void toward Anvil, Dazbog’s primary orbital station. Like the central hub of Foundry Yard Alpha, it was one of the many ring stations in the galaxy, but in Anvil’s case, the ring itself was easily a kilometer wide.

  The station was a transfer hub for the vast edifice of the orbital industry and the planet below. Since living on the planet now required filtration systems and air masks, over a million people lived on the massive platform.

  Like most sensible importers, BB&M operated out of a set of offices and warehouses in orbit. An even dozen heavy transport shuttles accompanied the personnel shuttle that the two officers rode in, each of them hauling a ten-thousand-ton cargo container: the first of many flights that would slowly move Falcon’s cargo over to Anvil for repackaging and transfer.

  “So,” his XO echoed, glancing around the passenger compartment, empty except for them and two security troopers, “are you going to make contact with Turquoise?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” he replied softly.

  If he trusted the Legatans, their referral would at least get him in the door with the crime boss. If he and Turquoise could come to a deal, they could combine their assets against a common enemy—if Turquoise wasn’t feeling vindictive about her old boss’s death.

  Too many ifs.

  “It seems like the best way to put an end to us being hunted across the galaxy,” Campbell said. “At the price of walking right back into the dens of snakes I thought we were trying to stay out of.”

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “I’ve got a good ship and a good crew. All I want is to run cargo, make money and be left the hell alone.”

  He’d include “not having my crew sell all my information” in “left the hell alone” too, but he could live with that part if everyone else would stop shooting at him.

  “So, yeah, we could poke at it,” he said. “We could talk to this Turquoise, draw the Legacy out, smash Azure’s little leftover gift to the universe.

  “Or, I can find the biggest cargo here that’s going as far as possible and run off to the other end of the Protectorate. We have a faster ship than most who might chase us. We can’t quite outrun the news of our existence, but we can keep one jump ahead of whoever wants to cause us trouble.”

  David shook his head.

  “That has its own flaws, of course,” he admitted. “But on reflection, I’m starting to like it better than walking into the middle of an underworld war. I owe our people better than that.”

  “That’s certainly an argument,” Campbell said unconvincingly. “Do you really have it in you to walk away, boss?”

  He shook his head with a small laugh.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I owe our people. None of them signed up to be dragged into a war with a bunch of assassins. Self-defense is one thing, Jenna, but we’re talking about actively going to war.”

  He shook his head again.

  “No, Jenna, that’s outside our scope,” he told her. He was quite certain everything he’d learned had already ended up in the hands of the Protectorate, or he’d plan to pass the information on. “We got tied up in this Legatan mess because we needed to, but we can get repairs and antimatter here in Svarog. And a cargo big enough for Falcon.

  “There’s no reason to start a war, not when leaving is much safer for everybody.”

  His XO grunted. She didn’t sound convinced, but she let it go for now.

  “And this ‘Legatan mess’?” she asked quietly.

  “We’re meeting with BB&M; we’ll pass on the cargo,” he told her. “We’ll quietly let the Protectorate know, and then we will get the hell out of everyone’s affairs. I’ve had enough cloak-and-dagger for one lifetime!”

  Melvin Boots was waiting for David and his people at the shuttle bay as they boarded Anvil, the delicately featured businessman clearly perfectly comfortable in the zero-gravity docking area. His black suit was the latest fashion from Mars, carefully tailored to stay in place despite the lack of gravity, and he offered David a cheerful smile and an extended hand.

  Shaking hands in zero gravity was an exercise in acrobatics, but Boots was clearly as experienced in the dance as David was.

  “Welcome aboard the Anvil, Captain Rice, Officer Campbell,” Boots told them. His gaze flicked over the two security guards with them, but he didn’t comment. “I have a transport pod laid on once we reach the ring. Anvil is quite large; you don’t want to walk all the way to our offices.”

  “I appreciate the courtesy, Mr. Boots,” David said. “Shall we?”

  “Of course. And no business on the way,” the small man ordered with a smile. “It spoils the trip—and sadly, Anvil’s walls are known to have ears.”

  “If you don’t mind, Captain,” Boots began as they finally dropped into the automated transit pod, “I have to ask: just how does a merchant captain end up with one of the Navy’s armed fast freighters? I didn’t think there were many of those left!”

  “There aren’t,” David confirmed. “I think once we took possession of Red Falcon, there were…two left in mothballs? I’m not sure. Jenna?”

  “Three, according to the conversations I had with the yard people in Tau Ceti,” his XO confirmed. “One in Tau Ceti, two in Sol. None of them are active, but the Navy apparently wants to have them around in case they ever have to deploy the battleships for extended duty.”

  Boots laughed nervously.

  “They don’t expect to ever do that, do they?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” David replied. “They did build them, after all. And sometimes I imagine it’s more convenient to send one absolutely massive ship than a cruiser squadron.”

  He grinned.

  “If nothing else, His Majesty’s battleships are impressive.” He’d seen one of them at Tau Ceti. Massive spikes in space carrying enough weaponry to sterilize half a planet, it was reassuring to know they were on his side…and even more reassuring, in many ways, to know there were only twelve of them!

  “But to answer your question,” he continued, “you get an AAFHF by doing a Hand a very large favor. I can’t tell you what I did, but by the time it was done, I didn’t have a ship anymore, and the Protectorate felt they owed me.”

  That the Protectorate also felt he’d painted a giant target on his back and wanted him to have some surprises in his pocket wasn’t Boots’s business.

  The importer laughed, somewhat less nervously.

  “I’ve never even met a Hand,” he admitted. “Most people don’t. I’m impressed, Captain Rice; you’re not what I expected to be delivering this cargo.”

  “I’ve made a lot of strange friends over the years,” David agreed. “People from all walks who trust my sense of honor.” He smiled. “As the saying goes, it’s not what you know or what you do that matters—it’s who knows what you know and what you do.”

  “I think the saying might be simpler t
han that,” Boots noted. “But I understand your point. I looked over the specs for your ship. With a full suite of Mages and no damage, there isn’t much that can outpace you.”

  “And that’s the way I like it,” David said. “It’ll be a few weeks before we can leave Svarog, sadly. I really do prefer not getting jumped by pirates.”

  “I heard.” Boots shook his head. “No one likes having pirates in the area of their home. You did us all a favor blowing those bastards to hell.”

  “The alternative was dying quietly. I didn’t like that option.”

  Boots laughed dryly again, glancing out the window and pausing uncomfortably.

  “What the hell?” he said softly, as the pod began to slow to a halt.

  “Mr. Boots?” David asked, looking out the window himself. They were in one of Anvil’s warehousing sectors, the pod trundling along its designated path amidst doors labeled with company names and nothing else.

  This was the personnel accessway. The massive doors for cargo would either open to space or to the massive cargo pathways that ringed Anvil. They weren’t needed for humans.

  “This isn’t right. We’re in the wrong district,” Boots told him. “Officer Campbell, hit the emergency stop!”

  Campbell obeyed, but the pod ignored her, continuing on its way—but also continuing to slow down.

  “Sir,” one of the guards snapped. “The pod is setting itself up as an easy target. We need to get out.”

  The other security trooper hit the door release, which ignored him. Reyes clearly hadn’t been expecting it to work, however, as he was already removing a large knife from inside his coat with his other hand.

  “Stand back,” he told the others, and hit a switch on the knife’s hilt. The edge of the blade lit up in glittering blue as a plasma arc flashed into existence around it.

  David hadn’t even been aware there were any plasma-arc blades aboard his ship. They weren’t even restricted to the military. The anti-armor hand weapons were outright illegal.

  The superheated blade made short work of the light metal frame of the pod, and the trooper kicked the wreckage of the door out of the moving vehicle.

  “Go!” he barked, disabling the arc on the knife but continuing to hold it. The metal steamed as David dove past the trooper, rolling to absorb the impact as he hit the floor.

  Boots followed, half-thrown from the vehicle by David’s men, with Campbell right behind him.

  The security guards jumped clear a moment later, seconds before the pod turned a corner at a much slower pace—a pace that left it suspended in the corner, near-motionless for a fraction of a second.

  The explosion of the rocket that slammed into it left afterimages in David’s retina and he inhaled sharply.

  Apparently, his security people were just paranoid enough to keep up with his enemies.

  “Move back,” the senior security trooper ordered. Corporal Nour Nejem had already produced several blocks of nondescript metal and plastic from inside his jacket as he waved the officers back.

  As David watched, those components rapidly assembled into a MACCAW-9. He was relatively certain the gun wasn’t supposed to be concealable in that fashion, but given that the ex-Marine assembled the weapon in under ten seconds, he suspected Nejem could do several things with the gun that weren’t in the design manual.

  “I hate space stations,” Reyes noted quietly, the second security trooper having produced a more easily concealed MAC-6 pistol from inside his own gear. “No cover, no friendlies, no backup.”

  “Anvil Security should be on their way!” Boots insisted. “There’s no way that explosion went unnoticed.”

  “Someone reprogrammed your pod,” David pointed out. “I wouldn’t put it past them to have reprogrammed the cameras, too.”

  Boots looked terrified.

  “What do I do?” he demanded. “I’m a businessman, not a soldier!”

  “You listen to me,” Nejem told him harshly. “And you move back with the Captain and the XO while Reyes and I watch for the bad guys.”

  David grabbed his client’s shoulder before Boots could object, pulling the delicately built man along with him as they retreated back along the pod track. It was remotely possible their attackers were going to write them off as “dead in the explosion”, but…

  Nope.

  Six men—in the uniforms, light armor and face-concealing riot helmets of Anvil Station Police!—came around the corner. Five carried carbines, the sixth a magazine-fed multi-launcher. Unless the heavy gunner was incompetent, he’d already switched from rockets to fragmentation grenades.

  “Stop right there!” one of them snapped. “What the hell did you do to the pod? You’re under arrest!”

  “Not a chance in jaḥīm,” Nejem replied bluntly. “Not with you holding the damn rocket launcher that just blew up our pod!”

  The man with the multi-launcher clearly decided that was all the conversation that was needed. He lifted his weapon to fire—and then went flying backward as everyone confirmed what David had suspected: even theoretically ex-Marines had far better reflexes than any corrupt cop in the galaxy.

  Reyes put four six-millimeter high-velocity rounds into the gunner’s chest, two into his gun, and one into his head before the man had finished raising his weapon.

  Nejem opened fire in the same moment, a neatly controlled spray of bullets that put two of the attackers down before the others opened fire, retreating as they tried to cover themselves.

  The initial flash of violence was over in seconds, and the man David was dragging was clearly hyperventilating. Mr. Boots, it seemed, had no exposure to violence at all.

  Unlike David’s crew.

  “Jenna, take him,” David ordered, passing their client over to his XO. He produced his own sidearm and glanced over at the two security troopers.

  “Your call, Nejem,” he said quietly. “I know who the experts are right now.”

  “We’ve got a clean straight line until we’re out of the warehouse district,” Nejem replied. “We can move back, but we can’t get out of their line of fire.” The heavily tanned ex-Marine shook his head. “I checked. We’re jammed. No coms, no way forward.”

  “So, we fall back and hope we see them first,” David interpreted.

  “Oh, I’m quite certain we’ll see them first,” Nejem said with a dangerous smile.

  To David’s surprise, they made it most of the way down the hall without interruption. Their original attackers seemed to have been scared off, but the continued jamming suggested that the Legacy wasn’t done with them yet.

  The sound of an approaching transit pod was the only warning they received of the second string to the attackers’ bow.

  “Off the tracks!” Nejem ordered as the sound reached them.

  David followed the security troopers to the side of the hall, helping Campbell haul the still-in-shock Boots with them. His troopers might have better gear than he’d expected on them, but he doubted they had anything that could stop a several-hundred-kilo transit pod.

  The emergency brake in this pod clearly was working, as it came slamming to a halt barely ten meters from them and the door sprang open. Before David or his people could sound any kind of challenge, however, four small cylinders flipped out simultaneously.

  The gaps between the grenades were perfect, one landing every three meters and leaving David staring at them in horror—until they started spewing smoke, at least.

  His people might not be instantly dead from smoke grenades, but they also couldn’t see anything—and he heard motion from the pod. Heavy feet slammed into the ground as someone—multiple someones, clearly able to see through the smoke—charged out of the track-linked vehicle.

  Nejem’s MACCAW barked, short controlled bursts firing at something. Then the gun went silent as the distinctive hiss-crack of a stungun firing its SmartDarts cut through the smoke.

  A shadow moved through the smoke, not coming from any of the directions he knew his people were in, and he ope
ned fire. He landed at least three hits on the figure, but it ignored the bullets, lunging through the smoke to rip the pistol from his hand with impossibly strong fingers.

  The smoke began to clear and David found himself pinned, his hand held in an iron-hard grip that forced him to his knees as he looked at a completely nondescript man wearing long black leather gloves over his hands and forearms.

  “Uh-uh.” The stranger shook his head, holding David’s pistol in his free hand. With a cold smile, he crushed the gun like it was a toy. “No tricks, no clever games. It’s over.”

  The movement, the strength—the man was a cyborg. But his accent was distinctly local and his eyes lacked the distinctive square pupils of non-covert Legatan Augments. Not an Augment, then. “Just” a thug with upgrades.

  As the cyborg used his grip on David’s one hand to twist the burly Captain around to see the rest of his people, he realized there was no “just” about it. These men were going to kill him.

  Nejem and Reyes were down. Both appeared to be alive, the only guns the cyborgs were carrying were stunguns—an odd mercy for rent-a-thugs.

  “Contract says you die,” the cyborg holding David told him. “We don’t get paid for nobody else, so nobody else dies.”

  Campbell and Boots were in much the same shape as the security guards. Shot with SmartDarts, they were almost certainly going to live. David, it seemed, wasn’t going to get the mercy of such unconsciousness.

  “Stop toying with him,” another of the thugs snapped. Instead of the gun David had expected, he produced a metal box of…syringes?

  “Blue are MemErase,” the leader snapped to his minions. “Red isn’t.”

  Passing the blue-marked syringes to his men, the leader knelt down by David with the red one.

  “Could’ve told them bad cops ain’t efficient,” he said conversationally. “But that’s the breaks. Pod accident, Captain. Your friends won’t remember anything different. If it helps”—he tapped the syringe—“they swear this shit is painless.”

  The man who’d first grabbed David now grabbed his free arm, pinning the big Captain down as the leader approached with the syringe.