Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (12 page)

Brockson was not the most co-operative prisoner ever.

In the end, Damien had used magic to
drag
the Special Operations Colonel out of the Scorpion base. Sheer audacity had carried them through most of the base, and a flash of Damien’s Warrant had got them out of the building.

From there, Marines in exosuits took over the prisoner. Something about the hulking suits of combat armor shut down further debate, and they commandeered a pair of APCs without further argument.

Despite his resistance, the Colonel remained silent until they reached the shuttle and locked him into the restraints in the officer’s compartment with Damien and Mitchell.

As the shuttle accelerated away from Nouveaux Normandy, carrying them back towards Versailles and Brockson’s fate, the Colonel leveled his gaze on Damien and smiled thinly.

“You’re going to find out damn quickly how limited your authority really is, kid,” he said calmly. “Governor’s gonna rip you a new one.”

Damien ignored him, focusing on downloading all of the data from Brockson’s personal computer into the shuttles computer - and his own PC. Just in case.

“That shiny paper may
say
you can do whatever you want, but this is
Vaughn
‘s planet,” the Scorpion continued after a minute or so. “What the paper says and what you can actually do ain’t the same thing, kid. They should have taught you that before they let you off Mars.”

“Can’t even let me go and walk away now,” Brockson told him with a satisfied smirk. “This one’s gonna go all the way up to the
Council
, and the Mage-King will kick you loose, just you
watch
.”

The Council of the Protectorate, the collection of representatives sent to Mars to speak for the worlds the Mage-King ruled, could ask the King to review a decision made by one of his Voices or Hands. Such a review went against the representative in question about a quarter of the time - but if it did, that was the end of that person’s authority. The Mage-King could not trust people with his authority who he’d had to counter-act in the past.

Damien checked that the download was running smoothly and looked up at Brockson. He met the Ardennes Security man with a small smile of his own.

“Vaughn won’t be in a position to save you, I’m afraid,” he said quietly. “We had enough evidence to arrest him for treason when we arrived. Even if we didn’t,” he gestured towards the computer they’d cut off Brockson’s wrist, “a Hand’s authority is sufficient warrant to make all of your personal files and notes permissible evidence. Can you really tell me there’s nothing in there that could send even a Governor to the gallows?”

That
at least gave Brockson pause. Even from his casual skim while initiating the download, Damien knew the man had recordings of his orders for the attack on Alaura. While Vaughn could probably
try
to pin that one on General Montoya, combined with everything else they already had…

Vaughn was going to hang. Damien didn’t even need Brockson to turn Mountain’s Evidence - the Colonel was likely going to hang right next to his boss. The Protectorate didn’t use capital punishment often, but their crimes fell into the category.

It seemed Brockson realized that as well, as the man was finally, blessedly, silent.

That silence was rudely interrupted an emergency signal from Damien’s personal computer, which automatically played the override signal.

“Stealey, Montgomery,” Mage-Commander Harmon’s voice exclaimed into the shuttle. “Karlsberg was destroyed by a
Navy
weapon - Mage-Commodore Cor has betrayed us. I am maneuvering for emergency ju—”

Silence returned to the compartment and Damien stared at the computer on his wrist in horror.

“Get him back on the line,” he ordered Mitchell.

The Marine dove into the computer system for a moment, and then looked back up, shaking his head.

“They’re
gone
, sir,” he said quietly. “Cor… blew them to pieces.”

That took Damien a moment to process. The
Tides of Justice
had a crew of four hundred and twenty - and they were all dead.

“Get me Alaura,” he snapped. She was supposed to be meeting with the Governor, but that now
needed
to be interrupted.

“We have a problem, boss,” another voice interrupted - over the intercom from the cockpit.

“What
now
?” Damien demanded.

“We have radar contacts at fifty klicks and closing fast,” the pilot informed him grimly. “Warbook is calling them F-60 high-altitude interceptors, but we’re not getting
any
IFF codes.” She paused. “If they’ve got the load-out we sell to the system governments, they’ll range on us in barely a minute.”

“Can we defend ourselves?” Damien asked, considering the situation.

“We weren’t loaded with any missiles when we left the
Tides
, sir,” the pilot admitted. “All I have is the cannon, and if the buggers have missiles we’re outranged four to one.”

Damien exhaled, slowly. “All right,” he told her. “Pipe a detailed visual feed to my compartment. Use any defenses or evasions you need.”

“Sir?” the pilot replied questioningly.

“I will deal with them,” he said quietly. “Trust me.”

Gesturing for Mitchell to watch Brockson, Damien pulled up the screen with the visual feed. Quickly, carefully, he oriented himself and the screen so that what he was seeing was in the direction he was facing.

Zooming in on the two jet fighters, the Envoy stripped off his elbow-length gloves and suit jacket. Silver glimmered in the light from the screen as the silver polymer inlay on his skin rippled with his movements, the slight chill of the air cooling the metal.

“I see your compatriots are weak on the concept of loyalty,” he told Brockson coolly, his gaze focused on the distorted, heavily zoomed, image of the aircraft.

“I would call these rebels, not my ‘compatriots’,” the prisoner replied.

“Sorry, Colonel, I don’t buy that
any
rebellion could acquire F-60s,” Damien told him dryly. “There’s a limit to my credulity.”

“Why not?” the Scorpion replied. “They got their hands on stealth attack gunships, after all.”

“The difference, my dear Colonel, is that the data we have on that attack suggests
those
were from Legatus,” the Envoy said softly. He didn’t explain why that made a difference, but Brockson sighed and shrugged.

“They won’t know I’m aboard,” he allowed. “Montoya won’t have told them. Makes it easier on everyone.

“Don’t think sending them video of me will make a difference, either,” he continued. “They’re loyal to the
Governor
. You should have just left well enough alone.”

“That, Colonel Brockson, would not be doing my job.”

“
Vampire
!” the pilot shouted over the intercom. “Missiles detected, four inbound. ETA two minutes.”

Damien sighed and slowly stretched his neck.

“We have that on record?” he asked quietly.

“Everything aboard is recorded,” Mitchell replied.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Damien told him, and then focused on the growing dots of the missiles, rushing towards the frail-feeling assault shuttle at four times the speed of sound.

Warmth flared through the runes wrapped around his torso and arms, power surging and circling in his body as he reached out across the intervening space, judging distances and speed with trained practice.

The screen lit up brightly the first set of missiles ran into a wall of force that appeared directly in their path and detonated, convinced they’d hit their targets.

As he turned his focus to the second pair of missiles, everything went to hell.

“Look out!” Mitchell bellowed, but, focused on his magic, Damien didn’t react in time.

Brockson slammed into him full-force, the Scorpion latching his hands around Damien’s neck with brutal force. Half-formed old memories paralyzed Damien for a moment, the Mage struggling helplessly against Brockson’s iron grip.

The moment passed faster than his attacker would have wanted, and Damien
flung
Brockson away with a blast of magic.

“Deal with the missiles,” Mitchell snapped at him and charged Brockson. Somehow, the Scorpion Colonel had managed to escape the cuffs that bound him, and he met the Marine in the middle of the tiny compartment, struggling to get past him to attack Damien.

Damien tried to turn his attention back to the missiles rapidly closing on the shuttle, but the life or death struggle mere meters away from him threw off his attention. Focusing hard, he threw another shield of force at the missiles.

One exploded. The other wobbled on an evasion pattern and clipped the edge of the shield, spiraling through the air wildly before smoothing out its flight towards them.

Then a gunshot echoed through the tiny compartment, and his attention was brought back to the moment. Damien spun back towards the struggling pair in the aircraft to realize that Brockson had got his hands on Mitchell’s sidearm.

Despite being shot, the Marine grabbed onto Brockson’s arm, struggling to regain control of the weapon.

He failed.

Before Damien could act to intervene, the pistol fired again. And again. Four times, the sharp report echoed in the tiny room, and Cam Mitchell collapsed. Brockson shoved him aside, the dying Marine unable to resist, and then fired twice more - into the door controls for the main compartment.

“Time to die, kid,” he said harshly, raising the weapon towards Damien.

The immediate threat triggered reactions programmed into him with years of harsh training. The momentary shock at Mitchell’s death fueled a sharp gesture and surge of power. A blade of pure magical force slashed across the compartment, removing Brockson’s hand and the gun with it.

The Ardennes Special Security Service, for all its many flaws, produced tough,
tough
men. Even missing a hand, his life’s blood pumping out onto the shuttle’s metal floor, Brockson
charged
Damien.

Damien’s gun was in his hand without him thinking. His instructors on Mars had spent
weeks
drilling that tiny teleport into him until it was an unthinking action.

He fired.

The ST-7 wasn’t a high-caliber weapon and Brockson was a big man. He fired five times, and the Scorpion lurched back with each impact. A blast of magic followed the last bullet, flinging the dying man against the opposite wall from Mitchell.

“I’m evading, everyone
hold on
,” the pilot yelled over the speakers, and Damien yanked his attention back to the missile.

It was almost on them, and he threw magic at it, trying to stop it before it hit them.

At the same time, the pilot dove for the ground, trying to generate a miss.

They both failed. The missile slammed into the back of the shuttle and exploded. The entire spacecraft lurched, spinning through the air as the engines failed and shrapnel filled the main compartment.

Standing next to the screen, unstrapped in and unprepared, Damien was thrown across the room. He threw out magic, slowing himself before he slammed into the wall.

Then the shuttle spun again, nosediving downwards as the pilot lost control.

Damien tried to shield himself again, but the corkscrewing fall threw off his angle and he saw the wall coming straight for him.

Blackness.

#

The building was on fire, and everything was proceeding exactly according to plan.

Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn stood in the situation room buried deep beneath Nouveaux Versailles and watched the center of his government burn. The rebel attack he’d arranged was being as dramatic and destructive as he’d hoped.

As he watched, part of the west wing of the House exploded outwards, a Mage from Hand Stealey’s party blasting their way out to escape the attack. Two rebel Mages countered, dragging the Martian bureaucrat to the ground and burning her alive.

Missiles responded from the sky. Ardennes’ Army gunships swept through the air, targeting the rebel Mages and heavy weapons. Grounded by ‘inconveniently’ timed maintenance, the gunships had been too late to save Government House - or any of Stealey’s staff.

Ever since the Freedom Party had staged its mass resignation and walk-out, becoming the Freedom Wing and openly declaring rebellion against him, Vaughn had known he would need a stalking horse eventually. So he had set Montoya and the Special Operations Directorate the task of creating it - the ‘Action Wing’.

He watched on the screens around him as the Action Wing’s rebels died. With the Scorpions and the Army moving in, most would not escape. But enough would. With the destruction they’d wreaked, the bodies of the security guards and Army troops responsible for protecting Government House, and their escape, Vaughn would be able to justify much.

With Stealey’s body burnt in the fire, and nature having had its way with Karlsberg, whoever was sent to resume her investigation would have evidence of nothing except an armed and virulent revolution. One guilty of atrocities the Protectorate would not forgive or forget.

Even if there were prisoners taken tonight, which Vaughn doubted his men would even try for, it wouldn’t matter. The Action Wing believed that they were members of the Freedom Wing, and the same cellular organization that had frustrated his attempts to break open Armstrong’s organization meant that even the Freedom Wing couldn’t be sure they weren’t!

“My Lord Governor,” a surprisingly calm voice interrupted. Vaughn turned from the monitors to find a gray-uniformed older man standing behind him. General Caleb Zu was the senior-most officer of the Ardennes Army. He bowed slowly, his white hair shimmering in the light from the screens.

“I must apologize for our failures,” Zu said stiffly. “We -
I
did not anticipate such a violent attack from the rebels. And now we have lost Hand Stealey.”

“A tragedy, my old friend,” Vaughn said quietly. Zu was
not
in his confidence about the Action Wing. “I don’t blame you or your people,” he continued. “
None
of us foresaw the Wing launching so blatant an attack.”

“Or in such strength, and with such knowledge of our routine and positions,” Zu replied bluntly. “They had heavy weapons and perfect knowledge of our guard posts. They knew where to hit and when - we lost fifty people before we even knew we were under attack!”

“Governor, General!” one of the many sensor technicians interrupted. “We just got confirmation from Commodore Cor - the
Tides of Justice
was destroyed by sabotage! There were no survivors.”

Zu grunted as if struck, closing his eyes in pain. Vaughn himself winced - he’d presumed from Mage-Commander Harmon’s transmission that Cor had acted to preserve them, but he hoped she had
something
to back up that story!

“What about Envoy Montgomery?” he asked aloud. “Have we managed to find his shuttle yet?”

“No, Governor,” the tech replied. “I can query Cor’s ships - they may have been in position to see what we missed.”

“Do so,” Vaughn ordered. The disadvantage of arranging for Montoya’s ‘dark’ interceptors to take down the shuttle when none of the satellites could see it was that he didn’t know what had happened himself! With the Navy scans, he could still hold up the rebels having advanced tech to draw help from Mars, without having the interceptors in a position where he had to actually
catch
them.

“They’re sending us the feed now,” the tech reported, throwing it up on one of the screens.

Vaughn turned to watch the recording. Even to Navy sensors, the F-60s hadn’t shown up until they’d gone to active targeting. He watched, impassively, as the two fighters closed with and fired on the shuttle. He heard Zu make a hopeful noise beside him when the first set of missiles exploded - clearly taken down by a Mage - and tried not to look disappointed.

What followed was… unclear, from such a high level perspective. One missile was knocked out, but the other made it through. The shuttle wasn’t instantly destroyed - the Martian Navy built its craft
tough
- but it was clearly crippled, falling rapidly from the sky.

“Cor’s people report they couldn’t track the interceptors once they went back to stealth,” the tech reported. “I’m sorry, sirs, we lost them.”

“Gunships at the Rocher d’Or,” Zu whispered. “Interceptors now. Rocket launchers, sniper rifles, perfect intelligence. Who
are
these people?”

“Aided by inside agents,” Vaughn told him bluntly, an instant decision made. “It appears that we put too much trust in some of our people.”

“Who?!” Zu demanded. “If they’re mine I’ll…”

“He was a Scorpion, Zu,” Vaughn told him. “Montgomery arrested Colonel Elijah Brockson earlier today. He… had the information, and the authority to help cover up importing weapons. I fear many of tonight’s deaths and tragedies can be laid at his feet.”

After all, the man was most likely dead.

“Damn,” Zu whispered, eyeing the burning half-ruin of Government House on one set of monitors, and the smoke where the Navy shuttle had gone down on the other. “There may be survivors from the shuttle crash,” he said suddenly, sharply. “I’ll send my people.”

“I need your people cleaning up Nouveaux Versailles, Caleb,” Vaughn told him swiftly. “People
trust
your troops, we need that right now to keep the peace!”

The Ardennes Special Security Service could keep the peace in Versailles. A few more heads might get broken, a few more idiots end up in jail. It wasn’t anything Vaughn would weep over. But pulling the Army into Versailles meant that they couldn’t check on Montgomery’s crash.

“I’ll have Montoya send choppers to check for survivors,” the Governor assured. “If anyone has survived, we’ll find them.”

And because Montoya would send the
right
pilots and crews, take care of them.

#

Lori Armstrong stared at the news in horror. It hardly made her stand out - everyone in the hotel lounge who was staring at the screens showing the images of Government House burning, was doing the same thing.

“Reports continue of street fighting in Nouveaux Versailles as Ardennes Army ground troops track down the remnants of the Freedom Wing forces that struck at Government House this evening,” the reporter told her fixated audience. “Reports are that hundreds of security officers and civilian staff are dead, though we have confirmed that Governor Vaughn is still alive.

“We have no evidence as to why the Freedom Wing launched this well-equipped attack, or even where a group of ex-politicians acquired the weapons and people to launch such an attack.”

Not least, Lori knew, because the Freedom Wing hadn’t
launched
the attack. It was
possible
a rogue cell had launched the assassination attempt in Nouveaux Normandy, though unlikely. An assault of this magnitude would have taken
every
cell - and even then, she suspected that the attackers had had better weapons and intelligence than she would have had!

“Analysts suggest —” the perfectly-coiffed talking head stopped as someone off-screen spoke to her. A moment later, with her teleprompter reset, the woman swallowed hard - the first sign of humanity Lori had seen from the woman in five years of her presenting the news.

“We have breaking news,” she said slowly, regaining her composure. “Reports from Government House now confirm that the primary target of the attack was Alaura Stealey, Hand of the Mage-King of Mars.”

“First responders have identified Hand Stealey among the dead already removed from the House’s wreckage,” the anchor continued, and Lori sucked in a breath, feeling like she’d been punched in the gut. They were fucked. They were
so
fucked.

“Other reports suggest that her second, Damien Montgomery, Envoy of the Mage-King of Mars, was also killed in a high-altitude assassination carried out with military-grade attack aircraft. While Montgomery’s body has not been recovered, his shuttle was shot down some seventy kilometers short of Nouveaux Versailles.”

“This attack constitutes the single most devastating direct attack on Protectorate officials on Ardennes… ever.”

Lori finished her drink in a single swallow, glancing around the lounge. The rest of the guests fell into rapid gossiping, all trying to dissect how this bombshell was going to affect their businesses and lives, or just morbidly going over the details of the violence.

None of them were paying enough attention to notice her leave.

#

Lori made her way through the guest portions of the third-best hotel in Ardennes’ second-best mountain resort town with practiced ease. She’d grown up in this building - her father had built it, a long time ago.

Now, technically, she didn’t own it. There was no financial connection between her and the building to be found - but everyone from the new owners to the kitchen staff knew who she was. Both aspects had their advantages.

Today, they let her slip into an unused conference room and activate the security shielding. The door locked, and security screens would prevent any eavesdropping or electronic bugging of the room.

She still swept the room quickly with a scanner designed to pick up any electronic bugs before bringing out the encrypted military com and turning it on.

“I need everybody online,” she said into it calmly. “Emergency link-up, find somewhere private where you can at least listen in the next five minutes.”

She waited. Leader of a planetwide resistance or not, she’d had to learn patience as a politician on Ardennes, and again as a rebel. Five minutes notice was nowhere
near
enough time to get everyone on the line, but those who couldn’t would get the recorded message later.

A few verbal acknowledges and a lot more text notifications came in over those five minutes. Lori had more of her core cell leaders than she expected, probably because
everyone
was watching the news.

“You’ve all seen the news out of Nouveaux Versailles,” she said bluntly when the five minutes were up. “I doubt I need to tell any of
you
that it wasn’t us. The Governor has found a spectacular use for his stalking horse rebels.”

“I don’t know what his plan was, but I doubt its coincidence that the Hand died,” Lori told her cell leaders. “I think that Montgomery and Stealey had found out what was really going on and were about to act on it.”

“That should work for us then, shouldn’t it?” Riordan asked. “They say when a Hand falls, another rises. Whoever comes in next will know…”

“How, Lambda?” Kappa, their senior agent in the Ardennes Self Defense Force, demanded. “It hasn’t hit the news yet, but Stealey’s destroyer is
gone
. Cor is claiming sabotage by the Wing that no-one detected in time, but most likely
she
killed them. If both Stealey and Montgomery are dead, and their staff and notes gone in the fire… who’s left to tell the King the truth?”

“No-one,” Lori said flatly. “Vaughn will spin it to Desmond’s people any way he likes. In the end, I can’t help but think his house of cards is going to come tumbling down, but that doesn’t change what it’s going to mean to us in the short-term.”

“Which is?” Riordan asked.

“A Hand falls, another rises,” the Freedom Wing’s leader repeated Lambda’s words. “Another Hand - or several! - will follow in Stealey’s footsteps, with cruiser squadrons instead of a destroyer, and Marine battalions instead of a platoon. They will arrive with authority and firepower that Vaughn cannot even dream of, and they will rip this planet apart until they have dismantled the rebellion that killed Alaura Stealey.”

“But that wasn’t us!” another cell leader complained.

“They won’t care,” Lori warned. “This is the single worst direct attack on the Hands in years, if not ever. The Hands and the Mage-King must be
seen
to act. They will discover the truth eventually - but not in time to save any of
us
if we aren’t very, very careful.”

“Which is what we need to do, because I
don’t
want to be collateral damage before the Mage-King’s people work out who
really
killed Alaura Stealey.”

“We’re going dark,” she ordered. “Shut down everything. Training camps, ammunition manufacture, recruiting, even
speechifying
- shut it all down.”