Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (14 page)

When they exited the ship, he found the docking tube already under guard. Four security officers, each equipped with the same black carbine/stungun combination as David’s escorts, manned a barricade blocking entrance or exit from his ship.

He finally began to understand what the hell was going on when he saw the man in charge of the operation. Standing amidst the security guards, keeping David’s crew back with nothing more than his black-armored robe and a flat glare was the readily identifiable figure of a Guild Enforcer.

“Sir, we found Captain Rice,” the officer who’d been doing all of the talking told the Enforcer. “He insisted on speaking with you.”

The Enforcer turned to face Rice, his magnetic boots clicking sharply on the ground. David found himself floating in the zero gee as he met the Mage’s gaze, and wished he had magnetic boots of his own. They wouldn’t have allowed him to be any more intimidating to the Mage soldier, but they would have let him feel less ridiculous.

“Is everyone off?” the Enforcer asked the security officer, ignoring David.

“We left the Captain to last,” the man confirmed. “One last team is sweeping the ship right now, they’ll be out shortly.”

The Enforcer turned to the four men on the barricade. “As soon as the sweep team returns, lock down the ship under a Security Code,” he ordered. “Provide the Code to Guildmaster Varren’s office, then maintain security over the docking tube,” he met David’s gaze levelly, “just in case.”

“What is the meaning of this?” David finally demanded, done with being ignored.

“I am Enforcer Evan Santos,” the man introduced himself calmly. “Your ship’s rune matrix was reviewed by a Rune Scribe this morning, under warrant from Guildmaster Varren,” the Enforcer continued. “Based on that review, your matrix was judged unsafe for use. There was also a noted risk of feedback and other issues that render the vessel unsafe for current habitation. Your Ship’s Mage has been arrested for illegal experimentation – you are damned lucky no one was hurt!”

“I was aware of the change to the rune matrix,” David responded. “There have been
no
issues from it, and it may have saved our lives.”

Santos shrugged.

“I am
not
an expert on these things,” he replied. “However, we escorted James Marlow, a senior Rune Scribe who
is
an expert, to review the matrix, and that was his judgment.”

“So, how, exactly do I get my ship back?” David asked.

“That will be up to Guildmaster Varren,” the Enforcer told him. “You will need to make an appointment with him – I was merely charged with evacuating and securing the ship your Mage made a deathtrap.”

“What happens to Damien?” David asked.

“If he saved your lives as you say, you might be able to argue some clemency,” Santos replied. “But I wouldn’t count on it – the Guildmaster cannot risk being seen as weak in disciplining Mages.”

#

Six walls, one door, zero-gravity. The walls that surrounded Damien were covered in silver runes that suppressed his gift, locking the nature of reality so that no magic could be done inside the cell. A hammock hung from one corner and the intimidating hoses of a zero-gravity toilet in another.

The cell was somewhere in the core of the Spindle, the cylinder that ran through the heart of the habitation zone of Corinthian Prime. Here, the rotation of the outside station was nonexistent, helping create a high security prison in the heart of the station.

Strangely to Damien, the runes that suppressed his ability to wield magic didn’t do anything to his gift for reading the flow of it. He spent the first few minutes after being tossed in the cell floating in shock, but then he’d turned to deciphering the runes to help keep his mind engaged.

Following the lines of energy revealed that the rune matrix binding the cell was surprisingly fragile. If he’d had the tools to do it, there were four connections tying together different components that would break the entire matrix if severed.

If he had the tools to do it.

Given that he was in the cell for illegal experimentation with rune matrices, Damien doubted that his captors were going to casually leave silver inlaying tools floating around the high security cell.

Mage Law was notoriously bad for laying out just what crimes fell under what category. Some were easy to guess – the standard ‘example’ given for a Class A Mage Law Violation was Pre-meditated Murder by Magic – but for a lot of the more esoteric crimes, the only people who really knew were Judges and Enforcers.

What Damien had been taught, though, was the penalties. The Class A Violation he was charged with carried a minimum sentence of twenty years forced labor. Mages put to forced labor weren’t hauling stones or swinging pickaxes, and the living conditions were supposed to be decent – but the work was things like ‘conjuring antimatter’. Mage prisoners did some of the most dangerous jobs in the Protectorate. Civilian and military Mages doing the jobs they made prisoners do were extremely well paid. Prisoners… simply had to do them.

That was the minimum sentence. There were rumors about the maximum sentence, rumors Damien wasn’t sure he believed. The Protectorate Charter forbade the death penalty for anything except treason… but the rumor was that if you were convicted of a truly heinous Class A crime, they would take away your magic.

And then let you go.

#

“So?” Jenna asked when David entered the hotel bar where his remaining officers were waiting. A bottle of expensive whiskey was set amidst the three of them, and Kellers silently poured David a glass after seeing his face.

“Apparently, this whole situation isn’t enough to get anything resembling urgency out of the Guildmaster’s staff,” he said quietly. “They may have impounded my ship and imprisoned one of my officers in a high security cell, but they can’t make time in the Guildmaster’s schedule for two days.” He sighed.

“I took the appointment, obviously,” he continued, “but Guildmaster Varren is in control of both the
Blue Jay’s
impoundment, and Damien’s imprisonment. No one else can do anything about either.”

“What about the system government?” Singh demanded. The turban-wearing pilot gestured energetically with a cup of milky tea – he was the only one not drinking the whiskey being passed around.

David took a slug of the whiskey, letting it burn its way down his throat as if that would help.

“It’s Mage Law,” he said bluntly. “The Compact says the mundane government can’t interfere unless they have evidence of a flawed trial.” The Compact was one of the two documents that underlay the legal structure of the Protectorate – the Charter defined the rules and laws that governed everyone, and the Compact defined how Mage and Mundane dealt with each other. Simplest of those rules: Mages tried their own, unless they were clearly abusing the privilege.

The table was silent for a long moment as the whiskey bottle made its way around.

“So what do we do?” Singh finally asked.

“The note on the
Blue Jay
is almost paid off,” David said quietly. “If everything falls apart, I pay out the crew, return to Mars and finance a new ship. If you’re willing to come, I’d be pleased to have you all with me.”

“Fuck that,” the pilot said bluntly. “I meant: what do we do about Damien?”

“We wait,” David replied. “I’ll keep paying the crew until we know for sure what’s happened with the ship, and I’m not going
anywhere
until I have a chance to speak for Damien.”

“The hell if any of us going anywhere till we can do that,” Singh said firmly, and the others nodded.

“I’m not sure we’ll make any difference,” the captain warned them. “Varren apparently plays hardball with Mages in Corinthian – apparently, he wants to prove that Corinthian has nothing to fear from Mages.”

“He certainly isn’t showing Mages have nothing to fear from Corinthian,” Kellers murmured. “What do we do if they’re going to throw away the key? Or worse?”

David didn’t answer immediately, looking down at his hands and the glass of whiskey in them. At the end of the day, he could replace his ship – though his other issues would probably continue to pursue him – but was he really willing to abandon the young man who’d saved his life and the lives of all of his crew?

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he eventually said, his voice steady. “But I’d ask you all to remember this: what he’s being punished for, he did to save our lives. And he doesn’t even know why we were in danger.”

#

The Protectorate had stringent rules on keeping prisoners in zero-gravity cells, Damien discovered, as twice each day he was removed from the cell and taken to a gym with magically induced gravity to exercise and eat. The entire time he was outside of his cell, he was accompanied by two Enforcers in their ominous black armor, neither of whom said a word to him that wasn’t a direct instruction.

It wasn’t until after the fourth exercise session, at the end of the second day of his imprisonment, that Damien saw anyone other than his two guards. Instead of escorting him back to his cell, they escorted him to a small office with gravity runes where a bespectacled and balding man in a plain black suit waited for him.

“Please be seated Mr. Montgomery,” the stranger told Damien, gesturing towards one of the two chairs in the room. He was seated in the second, behind a desk that was too plain and empty to be his. “Please leave us,” the man then instructed the Enforcers.

“There’s a panic button under the desk Mr. Burton,” one of the Enforcers responded calmly. “If there are any issues, we’ll be back inside in seconds.”

The door swung shut behind them, and Burton met Damien’s gaze levelly.

“I am Zach Burton, your appointed defender,” he said calmly. “I apologize for not being in to speak with you sooner, but I had to research the particulars of the charge levied against you – as you can imagine, it’s not a common one.”

Damien glanced at the locked door.

“They’re acting like I’m dangerous,” he said quietly, the words half a complaint.

“Son, from what I’m told, you came within a sunbathing snowflake of scattering everyone aboard your ship in pieces across several light years,” Burton said dryly, looking over the tops of his glasses at Damien. “You’re facing charges of illegal modification of a Jump Matrix and eighty-six counts of attempted murder.”

The words hit Damien like a body blow and he sank in his chair as the full magnitude of the accusations sank in.

“I didn’t… I never…”

“I have to admit,” Burton continued after he realized Damien wasn’t going to be able to say anything coherent, “that I don’t believe I’ve ever seen quite so open and shut a case from this side. The ship itself constitutes an insurmountable degree of evidence.”

“No one was hurt!” Damien burst out. “It was completely safe, I could
tell
.”

Burton was silent for a moment, and then sighed deeply. “Damien, I’ve looked up what they’ve charged you with. They can take away your magic. An insanity plea won’t help you.”

“I am
not
crazy,” Damien told him. “I turned the matrix into an amplifier to save us all – if it hadn’t been safe, I
wouldn’t have jumped us
.”

“The Guildmaster and his experts – you know, the people who
build
those matrices? – disagree with you,” Burton said calmly. “They say you all burned up several lifetimes worth of luck surviving so many jumps, and the ship is at risk of coming apart just sitting there at this point. I’m honestly not sure what you can do other than plead the stupidity of youth and throw yourself on the mercy of the court.

“They
might
let you get away with two or three decades of labor if you do that,” the lawyer continued, “and you’re young enough that you’d still have a few good decades left after that.”

Damien sat in the chair in silence for a long time, staring at the lawyer.

“Look, there’s not a lot I can do here,” Burton finally said. “Unless you want to tell me magic space pixies modified the runes on that ship, they’ve got the physical evidence to prove the matrix modification charge, which leads inherently to the attempted murder charges. If you want to avoid this, you shouldn’t have broken the most complicated spell known to man and Mage!”

“If I hadn’t, I and those eighty-six people would be dead,” Damien told him quietly. “What do you want of me?”

“Listen, the trial won’t be for a few more days,” Burton told him. “Think it over, and I’ll see if I dig up some grounds for clemency. The guards will call me if you ask – they have to.”

The defender stood up, offering his hand to Damien.

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Montgomery, but the truth is you’re screwed,” he said bluntly. “I stand by my recommendation: throw yourself on the mercy of the court and plead ignorance. It’s your only way out of here.”

Damien shook the man’s hand. The man was trying his best. None of the other Mages apparently thought what he’d done was possible, so, from their perspective, they were right. He had tried to kill everyone aboard his ship.