Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (18 page)

There was no response.

“Amiri?” he repeated. Only silence responded, and Damien swore. Whatever had happened to the Agent, he couldn’t do anything about it - he had a building full of civilians to rescue. “Riordan, what are you seeing?” he demanded.

“The armor is
gone
, Montgomery,” the rebel replied. “Crushed - but the road’s gone with them. There’s troops moving in from everywhere to try and dig out survivors. Transports trucks are abandoned, grabbing one right now but I have no idea how we’re getting out of here.”

“Leave that to me,” Damien told him. “Sounds like I’m clear. Hold tight on that truck till I call you.”

“Roger.”

It seemed that they’d succeeded in drawing most of the soldiers out of the hotel. Despite Amiri’s earlier warning, Damien saw no-one as he made his way through the battered hotel. Inside the building, it looked like an earthquake had struck - cracks had appeared in the walls, things had been knocked over or free.

The emptiness made the back of his neck itch, and he found himself raising a defensive shield unthinkingly. It made him a little more visible to other Mages, but he left it up. Either Travere and his Mages were busy rescuing their friends, or he was going to need it.

Tucking himself against a corner to stay out of sight of any remaining patrols in the building, Damien checked his location against a map of the building and Amiri’s description of the clusters of people. If he read the map correctly, he was a corner and twenty feet from the main restaurant and the smaller group of prisoners.

Taking a deep breath, Damien stepped around that corner and walked calmly towards the glass doors of the entrance. Someone had activated the metal shutters used to lock the restaurant up at night, and then attached an emergency police lock to keep the shutters locked to the ground without the proper codes.

It was a formidable obstacle to anyone without the codes, heavy welding equipment - or a Mage. There were no visible guards, the paramilitary soldiers most likely outside trying to dig their friends out of the avalanche.

The lack of defenders in a building seized by Vaughn’s paramilitary troops was nerve-wracking, and it was almost a relief when the attack finally came.

A bolt of fire flickered out from an alcove he’d missed, hammering into his shields from behind. The bubble Damien had wrapped around himself was a relatively weak defense, a roughly spherical force bubble that moved with him without too much thought.

Relatively weak or not, it was designed to stop bullets and shed a mid-strength fireball with only a minor tremor of energy drain.

Damien spun, dodging sideways as a second fireball splashed through where he’d stood a moment before. He flung out one hand, sending a blast of fire flashing back towards his assailants.

He felt magic flare and his fire was knocked aside. Three men emerged from the shadows to face him, all in the heavy winter uniform of the Scorpions - and the man in the center wore the oak leaves and gold medallion of a Mage-Colonel.

“I presumed someone would try and sneak in while we were distracted,” Mage-Colonel Travere said coldly. “I didn’t think the rebels even had decent Mages, but here you are. It’s a shame. Any Mage could do better than joining the rabble.”

Damien smiled coldly and met the Mage-Colonel’s gaze.

“My name,” he said quietly, “is Damien Montgomery, Envoy of the Mage-King of Mars. Your Governor is guilty of treason. Work with me, and no-one else needs to die today.”

Travere jerked back as if physically struck, looking Damien over carefully.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said conversationally. “Killed in a shuttle crash, shot down by the rebels. I guess,” he said in a blatantly fake sad voice, “I’ll have to fix that.

“Because, you see,” he continued, his voice hardening, “several hundred of my men are buried under your avalanche, and likely dead. So no matter what you say, I think someone does still need to die today.”

This time, the Mage-Colonel knew he was facing a Mage. His attack was focused and powerful, a tightly focused stream of fire that would cut through any defense a Mage could muster.

Damien wasn’t there. He
blinked
forward, a teleportation spell putting him
behind
the three other Mages. Lightning flared out from his hand, slamming into one of Travere’s two Enforcers.

This wasn’t the stun spell he’d used outside, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the hallway as the Scorpion went down hard.

“
Jump Mage
,” Travere cursed, spinning as he spoke and sending another perfect lance of flame flashing out at Damien. The hotel walls behind him sparked and smoldered as the Envoy was, once more, somewhere else.

“Hold him,” the Mage-Colonel snapped, and his remaining minion obeyed with a will. Bars of force tried to snap onto Damien, attempting to hold him in place for the stronger Colonel to deliver the death blow.

Spell and counter-spell wove through space for a moment, then Damien redirected the whole mess into the wall. The side of the corridor disappeared, several entire hotel suites shattering into pieces that scattered across the mountainside.

Damien followed up with a fire-blast of his own, the same tightly focused beam that Travere had attacked with. The Enforcer threw up a force shield to block it - only for Damien’s spell to burn clean through the defense and punch a fist-sized hole through the man’s chest.

He and Travere faced each other in the corridor for a moment, the Ardennes’ soldier’s men dead around him. Then the second story of the building, above the rooms the struggle had blasted to splinters, collapsed.

Debris blocked the daylight that had begun to stream in from the outside, and then the damage severed a hidden power cable in the roof, plunging the entire hallway outside the restaurant into darkness.

There was silence in the hotel, any temptation to make noise on the part of the civilians locked into the restaurant buried by the clear and obvious signs of violence outside their door.

Damien listened and looked carefully. Travere was in uniform, but not wearing any sort of headgear - he wouldn’t have thermal vision of any kind. Smiling to himself, the Envoy reached out with other senses - senses even another Mage wouldn’t have.

Long ago, he’d learned to read the flow of magic in mankind’s runes. Under the Mage-King’s tutelage, the Rune Wright had learned to see
any
flow of magic - including that in the runes carved into the flesh of many Mages - and
all
combat Mages..

“I can still see you, Colonel,” he said softly as he identified the shifting light of the other man’s magic. “I can sense the magic in your blood.

“You challenged Mars, Travere,” he continued, closing on the other Mage. “How did you
think
it was going to end?”

Travere’s response was light and fire. With one hand, the Mage-Colonel threw a ball of light into the air to allow him to see, and then he filled the entire hallway where he’d heard Damien speak with fire.

The runes wrapped around Damien’s torso flared to life as he drew on their strength, corralling the Scorpion’s strike with a net of force - and then flinging it
back
at the man. A blast of flame intended to fill a corridor and catch someone he couldn’t see was focused back to the size and position of a single man.

With his own full strength turned on himself, Travere didn’t even have time to scream.

#

It turned out that there
were
soldiers in with the Green Party prisoners, but when Damien tore the security shutters off the doors and stormed into the room, they had their weapons on the ground before he could even demand their surrenders.

The sergeant in charge kicked his assault rifle over to Damien with his hands in the air.

“
Je ne mourir pas pour cette
,” he spat. “I won’t die to arrest the harmless,” he continued in English.

“You and your men over there,” Damien ordered, gesturing the Scorpions away from their weapons and prisoners. Nodding and signaling for his men to follow him, the Scorpion squad leader obeyed.

Damien waited for the soldiers to back themselves into the corner, well away from their prisoners and weapons, then turned his attention to those prisoners.

They were a sad-looking collection of men and women in businesswear. They’d clearly been forced to sleep in the clothes they’d been wearing when the Scorpions had stormed the hotel, and several of them had visible bruises.

“Are you all able to move?” he asked gently.

The politicians looked around at each other for a moment, and then a gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard stepped forward.

“None of us are badly injured,” he said grimly. “But you’ll understand if I fear a scheme of some kind to damn us all? We have done
nothing
- we are not rebels, just politicians.”

“That distinction is unfortunately now lost on your governor,” Damien told him gently. “I am Envoy Montgomery, I’m here to help you. I won’t
make
you come with me, but I wouldn’t recommend staying.”

The old man glanced around at his people, then sighed.

“I am Jacob Pierre,” he said quietly. “Leader of the Ardennes Green Party, such as our Governor has allowed it to be. We have several handicapped individuals who travel by wheelchair. I am not certain…”

“We have a vehicle waiting,” Damien cut him off. “What we do not have is
time
, Monsieur Pierre.”

Pierre drew himself up for a moment, as if offended, and then released all of his tension in a single breath and a firm nod.

“Of course.” He turned to his people. “Let’s get moving everyone. Joe, Raul, help Lori. Everyone else - follow Montgomery.”

“Thank you,” Damien told him softly.

“If we live… thank
you
.”

The main opposition party of the Ardennes Planetary Parliament may have been bruised and exhausted, but the chance to escape got them to move with a will. Damien led the way out of the hotel, pointedly
not
hearing the gasps from some of the more impressionable members at the shattered state of the corridor outside.

“Riordan, we’re on our way,” he radioed. “Please tell me you’ve got a truck.”

“I’ve got a truck, but I haven’t heard anything from Amiri,” the rebel replied, his voice worried. “I…” he swallowed, “I don’t think we’ve got cover fire.”

“We’ll deal,” Damien told him. “And if we don’t hear anything, I’ll go back for her, Mikael. Your planet’s already killed too many of my friends.”

No-one barred their way, and he led the Greens to the service entrance without any issues. Riordan was waiting for them with the big armored truck, standing next to the back of the truck as he pulled down the door.

“We don’t have a ramp,” Riordan told the one woman in a wheelchair. For a moment, the rebel looked helpless, but the two burly men already accompanying her simply grinned.

“We made this far, monsieur,” one of them said. “Clear the way
pour un moment
, we will see it done.”

Damien gestured the rest of his rescuees away from the truck while he kept an eye for the rest of the Scorpions. The two big staffers picked up the wheelchair bodily and heaved it into the back of the truck, with Riordan helping guide the chair into the body of the truck.

“All right,” Riordan said to the rest once the woman was aboard. “Get aboard - it’s going to be cramped, but it’s what we’ve got.”

Pierre started to corral his people, the party leader showing a sense of experience at organizing this particular stampede. Glancing over at Damien and Riordan, he gestured them towards the front of the truck with a nod of his head.

“I’ll get them sorted,” he said softly. “Just… get us out of here. I owe you both.”

Damien nodded and followed Riordan to the front of the truck. Swinging into the cab, he took stock of their resources.

“We have no guns,” Riordan said quietly. “The only heavy weapon I had was the battle laser Amiri took. If they try to stop us…”

Amiri had been supposed to provide covering fire with the laser from above the resort, but she still wasn’t on the radio. Damien wasn’t sure what had happened to her, but the immense avalanche that had swept the mountain suggested unpleasant possibilities.

“I’ll deal with it,” Damien repeated. Before he could say more, Pierre swung up into the cab.

“Everyone’s aboard,” the politician said quietly. “I’m not sure how you’re getting the truck out through the avalanche, though.”

“Yeah, I was hoping I’d get some explanation of that
before
I drove into something,” Riordan agreed.

“Magic,” the Envoy told them drily. “I figured that was obvious?”

“So what do I
do
?” Riordan demanded, shaking his head.

“Just drive,” Damien instructed. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Muttering under his breath, Riordan threw the big truck into gear. The engine came to life with a roar, and the vehicle lurched into motion. They drove out of the service lane and around the hotel, allowing Damien his first look at the disaster zone they had made of the road.

There had been tanks and armored personnel carriers lined up across the entrance. He couldn’t tell - there was no sign of any vehicles in the field of devastation. Two entire buildings had been ripped to pieces and scattered across the road, and rocks from the cliffside they’d collapsed filled the pass leading down the mountain.

He swallowed hard. It had been a logical, easy, plan - take out a significant chunk of Travere’s troops, and distract the rest. Looking at the shattered field in front of him, with red and black uniformed soldiers digging desperately to try to find their friends, it didn’t seem quite so logical or easy anymore.

“Take us over the avalanche zone,” he finally ordered Riordan, drawing power to him for the spell he’d need. “I can’t give you a lot of traction, so just go straight.”

Even while looking at him like he was crazy, the Freedom Wing rebel obeyed. The heavy truck rumbled across the resort’s grounds towards the devastated field. They were most of the way there before anyone spotted them, then people started pointing and gesturing.

Damien wasn’t worried about the soldiers. He was watching for Mages, knowing that at least half a dozen more of them were around. Some of them had to be buried with the tanks, but he couldn’t count on
all
of them being out of the fight.

“Hold on,” he murmured as the rock-pile approached, and released the power he’d summoned. Riordan cursed in shock as his wheels left the ground, running on iron-straight rails of solidified air.

“Just
drive
,” Damien ordered. The other man obeyed, while Pierre stared on in shock as they drove on air, rising to easily four or five meters over the debris field.

“Watch out!” the party leader snapped.

Holding his attention on the road he was forging in the air, Damien could barely spare enough attention to spot the soldier with the rocket launcher that Pierre was pointing out. Despite his intent, he couldn’t spare the energy to counter-attack, and for a moment prepared to drop the truck to protect it.

Then the soldier’s torso exploded in a puff of red, the telltale sign of an invisible military-grade laser. More explosions followed on the ground around him, ice and rock vaporizing in small explosions as the battle laser walked across the field, driving the Scorpions back.

It seemed Amiri was okay after all.

#

Amiri didn’t remember anything between ducking under the rock outcropping, and waking up with a start in a dark pocket, slightly short of breath. The clock in her goggles informed her she’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, and the lump on the back of her head suggested she’d been hit by debris.

From the staleness of the air she was breathing, she was pretty sure her little pocket was running out of oxygen, and fast. As she scrabbled to her knees in the pitch-black space, though, her hands fell on the familiar metal stock of the battle laser.

The air was sparse enough she could feel herself starting to panic, and she forced the panic down. She’d been in worse spots in her years as a bounty hunter. Well, one worse spot, and her brother had saved her from that.

Montgomery was too busy to save her, which left it up to her. Taking a deep breath of the heavy air, she picked up the laser and carefully activated its screen. It appeared undamaged, which given the notoriously fragile nature of even military laser weapons was a minor miracle.

Setting it for a wide cone, she pointed it away from the rock behind her and fired. Super-heated steam filled her impromptu cave as snow vaporized and blasted away - but she only got a tiny glimpse of blue sky before more snow and rocks filled the hole again.

Swallowing, she aimed higher and set the weapon for a maximum duration beam - one that would require most of a minute of cooling before being fired again.

This time, the steam exploded outwards as she blasted a woman-high hole through the debris and snow. Unsure how long the gap would remain, she dove for it, pulling herself most of the way out before it started to collapse on her.

She almost lost her boots, but she managed to get out and onto the side of the mountain.

The mountainside beneath her was strewn with debris, a long trail of destruction stretching down and past the battered resort nestled in the valley beneath her. The landscaping had preserved the hotel itself, though it looked like
something
had collapsed an entire wall’s worth of suites.

As she breathed deeply of the frigid mountain air, she spotted one of the heavy trucks rip out from behind the hotel, heading for the exit. All of the Scorpions looked to be digging for their friends, which meant it was almost certainly Montgomery and Riordan.

Checking her weapon, she realized the laser was still overheating - and it looked like they were going to need her help a lot faster than the weapon would cool on its own, even in the mountain air.

She stared at the snow in front of her for at least five seconds before the solution came to her. Laying down, she quickly packed snow over the battle laser, using the debris from her avalanche to build a rough weapon mount and cooling sleeve.

The laser was still insisting it needed to cool - and as she finished packing in the snow, she spotted the Scorpion with the rocket launcher. Regardless of what the weapon’s computer thought, it was out of time.

Setting it to the lowest energy level and holding her breath, she lined up the laser and fired.

The man with the rocket launcher exploded away from the beam, a chunk of his flesh exploding into hydrostatic shock waves that couldn’t possibly leave him alive.

Then she lay down a slow, low-energy suppressive fire. The Scorpions had had a really, really, bad day. If they were willing to keep their heads down, she was willing to let the rest of them live.

Finally, the flying -
seriously, Montgomery?!
- truck touched down on the road beneath the avalanche and began to trundle away to safety.

“Amiri, are you okay?” Montgomery demanded over the radio.

“Got buried, had a laser,” she replied. She glanced back at her pack. “I don’t think my hang glider is intact, I’m going to have to hike my way out.”

“I doubt the mountain is stable enough, Agent,” the Envoy said dryly. “Give me your co-ordinates.”

She did. “Why?” she followed up. “What are you going to do?”

Silence answered for a moment, then Riordan replied.

“Apparently, he’s going to jump out the side of the truck and use magic to land safely,” the rebel told her. “I’m not entirely what his plan is from there.”

Amiri barely had time to wonder what the kid was
thinking
when there was a sudden popping noise, triggering a minor slide of snow thirty feet away from her. Spinning towards the noise and drawing her sidearm, she found Montgomery standing there, delicately balanced on the debris and wreckage their plan had scattered across the mountain.

“What are you
doing
?” she demanded.

“I refuse to allow my best ally on this rock to break her fool neck trying to climb down a mountain we just demonstrated is unstable as hell, Julia,” Montgomery told her bluntly, crossing the snow to her gently. He offered her his arm. “May I give you a lift?”

“Has anyone told you that you’re insane?”