Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (15 page)

It wasn’t their fault that he had done something they
knew
to be impossible.

#

Captain Rice arrived at the Guildmaster’s office ten minutes early for his appointment. Two days had passed without any news of his ship or his Mage, and his staff and crew were starting to get impatient for their Captain to fix things. David had no illusions about his ability to fix
this
, but he knew he had to try.

The Guildmaster was almost half an hour late. David sat, surrounded by potted plants, in the waiting room on one of the higher floors of the black metal fortress the Guild called home on Corinthian Prime for forty minutes.

He spent most of the time trying not to take his growing frustration out on the gentleman holding down the massive wooden desk outside Varren’s office. There was nothing the assistant could do to hurry Varren up from wherever the man was hiding, and David had learned long ago never to piss off the people who organized the schedules.

When Varren finally showed up he entered through the waiting room himself. He was a large man, on the edge of grossly obese, wearing a perfectly tailored gray suit that tried to hide it. His hair had gone pure white around a growing bald spot on the top of his head, and his eyes were a cheerful bright blue. The gold medallion at his throat was the first David had ever seen to be larger than standard, but the number of symbols etched into it explained the need. Damien was unusual in that his medallion bore the marks of two specialties. Varren bore the three stars of a Jump Mage, the stylized atom of a Transmuter, the quill of a Rune Scribe, and the sword of an Enforcer.

For all of his size, the Guildmaster was light on his feet and approached David immediately.

“I apologize profusely for keeping you waiting, Captain Rice,” he told the Captain. “The Inspectors on the
Blue Jay
finished their work a bit earlier than planned, and I wanted to meet with them so I could give you an update on the status of the ship.”

“I appreciate that,” David replied.
Any
answers would be helpful at this point.

“My office then,” Varren instructed, gesturing forward. He turned to the assistant. “Cob, can you re-arrange my schedule for the rest of the day to make sure I have enough time for Captain Rice? The Governor is the only thing we shouldn’t be able to change.”

“I’ll see who I can push off till tomorrow,” the assistant promised.

“If someone’s willing to meet me after dinner, set that up instead,” Varren told him as he opened the door into his office for Rice to precede him.

The Guildmaster’s office was not what David had expected. The front room had been expensive furniture and green plants. The furniture of the office was probably expensive, but that was about all the room shared with the outside. Squat bookshelves covered every wall, surrounding an immense desk that might have been real wood, but was hard to identify under the paper that covered it. The shelves were bulging with paper copies of reports. The desk was occupied with four monitors, and two more were set up on the appropriate nearby shelves to provide more real estate for data.

Varren entered, and waved his hand. The monitors all rolled themselves up, shrinking into single bars lying on the desk, half-hidden by paper.

“I apologize for the mess,” the Guildmaster told David. “It drives Cob to distraction, but I find that the more data I can lay eyes on at once, the better I’m able to think. I always seem to end up with half the station spread around my office, though,” he admitted ruefully as he gestured David to a chair that, mercifully, did not seem to be occupied by paper.

Settling into the indicated seat, David almost jumped as the fabric and frame automatically adjusted itself to an appropriate ergonomic position for his body shape. Moments later, he felt a knot he hadn’t quite realized he’d been carrying in his back release, and he glanced down at the chair appreciatively for a moment.

Then he looked up, meeting Varren’s gaze across the man’s massive and crowded desk.

“My ship,” he asked quietly.

“I was hoping to have better news,” the Guildmaster answered, the cheerfulness of his voice fading. “The Inspectors have concluded that the damage done to the rune matrix is too pervasive for repair. Even if we could fix it, there’s so many changes that the ship would never be truly safe to jump. The
Blue Jay
is being condemned.”

Condemned
. David had known it was possible – even likely - from the moment he and his crew had been evacuated at gunpoint.

“We jumped that ship
fourteen times
after the modifications were made,” he argued. “The
Jay
is perfectly safe!”

“Captain, please!” Varren replied. “You and your crew should be scattered in pieces from here to Sherwood! Just because you have been unbelievably lucky doesn’t mean you should keep pushing your luck!

“The Jump Matrix hasn’t been changed since the first Mage-King
wrote
it,” he continued, “because no one has
ever
managed to do so and have the ship and Mage survive.

“The
Blue Jay
will be held to serve as evidence in Mage Montgomery’s trial, and then scrapped and the parts and scrap sold,” Varren concluded. “You will, of course, receive the funds from the sale, less costs and a service fee.”

The chair wouldn’t let David slump backwards.

“What about Montgomery?” he finally asked.

“Mage Montgomery has been charged with modification of a jump matrix and eighty-six counts of attempted murder,” the Guildmaster said gently. “So far as I can tell, he is either utterly ignorant and callous, or completely insane – and only an impossible amount of luck kept him from utterly destroying your ship.”

“He
saved our lives
,” David replied. At this point, it sounded like Damien’s only hope was to tell Varren everything. “He turned the matrix into an amplifier, Guildmaster,” he continued quietly. “If he hadn’t, the pirates would have killed us. Instead, he destroyed them. I agreed to let him. If someone has to be punished for this, punish
me
.”

Varren stood from his chair. It was a slow process – light on his feet or not, the Guildmaster was a massive man – and he was silent as he walked away from David to look out the window.

“If a man orders a doctor to remove his heart because it is broken - and the doctor does it,” he said quietly, “do you call it a suicide – or charge the doctor with murder, because he should have the knowledge to say no?

“Even if he managed what you claim,” Varren continued, his voice still quiet as he refused to face David, “The Jump Matrix wouldn’t have survived intact. Bring what evidence you have to the trial, Captain, and you may manage to argue the Judge down in his sentence, but I have no choice.”

“No choice, Guildmaster?”

“Based off of the evidence I have seen, my assessment is that Damien Montgomery is either dangerously unaware of his limits or criminally insane,” the old man told David, his gaze on the greenery of the Spindle. “My recommendation to the Judge will be that his magic is taken from him, and we have already requested the presence of a Hand to carry out the sentence.”

A Hand. Damien’s crime was so severe, they were bringing a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, the roving warrior-Judges who served as the King’s enforcers and wielded his authority outside Sol, to punish him.

“I understand your loyalty to your people,” Varren continued. “It says good things about both you and Mage Montgomery, but his crimes are inarguable and the punishment is not mine to set.”

The Guildmaster finally looked away from the window. His hands behind his back, his eyes were sad as they met David’s across the room. “I am sorry, Captain Rice, but with what Mage Montgomery has done, my hands are tied.”

“I understand,” David replied. He might not understand the reason, but he understood the reality. He stood. “If you’ll excuse me, then, I must inform my crew.”

“I appreciate your understanding Captain Rice,” Varren replied. “If there is anything I or my office can do to assist you while you remain in Corinthian, let me know. I realize how difficult a situation you are in.”

“Thank you,” David told him, the words ashes on his tongue.

#

The Citadel had an efficient elevator system, and David was outside, blinking in the light from the glowing core above his head, within a few minutes. He quickly left the main pathway, losing himself in the parks around the Guild’s offices until no one could see him.

No ship. No Mage. No crew – for his officers would never forgive him if he couldn’t save Damien.

He wouldn’t be able to forgive
himself
if he let this happen.

He stared at the trees for a long time, and then pulled a business card from his pocket and plugged a contact number into his personal computer.

A few moments later, a red-haired man with piercing green eyes answered.

“Captain Rice. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you at this point,” the man told David.

“You said you deal in information, Carmichael,” Rice replied. “I need some. We need to meet.”

#

Alaura Stealey was not drunk. Given the five now-empty bottles of stupendously expensive, actually-shipped-from-Scotland-on-Earth, whisky sitting on the desk in her office, this would be a surprise to anyone who interrupted her, and was a disappointment to her.

As a Hand of the Mage-King of Mars, Stealey was sent into the worst conflicts that the Protectorate had to offer, and the mess she’d just resolved on Corona was no exception. The original colony had been funded by a corporation out of Tau Ceti, third oldest of the Core Worlds. That corporation had been leaning on the local elected government to allow them mining access in explicitly designated reserves.

A portion of the local populace had responded with violence. After six
weeks
of negotiation, Stealey had finally managed to ram a deal that neither side was satisfied with down everyone’s throats. The corporation didn’t get to mine in area that was unique in the Protectorate and in
need
of protection, but there were no pardons for the rebels either. Nine of their leaders were going to be spending the next couple of decades as guests of the Coronan prison system, judged and sentenced under
her
authority as Hand of the King.

Unfortunately for Stealey’s desire to get very drunk, one of her first operations as a Hand of the King had run her into a similar group of rebels, with less of a point and less of a willingness to negotiate.
That
encounter had resulted in her taking several explosive rounds to the stomach. She’d lived, but every organ in that section of her body had been replaced with cybernetic parts.

Cybernetic parts served the purposes of those replaced organs in the main, but the toxin filters didn’t distinguish alcohol from any other poison. Her new and improved guts didn’t allow for such minor things as getting drunk. Or pregnant, for that matter, which she hadn’t expected to bother her before it happened.

With a sigh, Alaura reached for the sixth bottle -- she
liked
the taste of whisky, and it was theoretically possible she could get drunk if she drank
enough
-- only to be interrupted by a ‘New Message’ alert on her desk. She stared at the alert as the monitor extended itself up off her desk, noting that it was an interstellar delivery, carried by a courier ship out of Corinthian.

“I stayed in one place too long,” she said aloud, and then opened the message with a sigh. She paid almost no attention to the recorded video message from the Corinthian Guildmaster, beyond confirming that they needed her presence, but then started skimming the attached files.

A modified matrix had made
fourteen jumps
?

That was only possible if it had been successfully modified and turned into a true amplifier. As Stealey understood it that was theoretically possible, if you had the full schematics of the jump matrix
and
understood that a jump matrix was a restricted amplifier.

Without those, working with no time and under fire, it should have been impossible.

Alaura hit the intercom, raising the control bridge of her personal ship.

“Harmon,” she greeted the ship’s first officer. “Is anyone off ship?”

“The last of the crew shuffled aboard about fifteen minutes ago according to the master at arms,” the Lieutenant, seconded from the Protectorate Navy to her personal service, replied. “What do you need, ma’am?”

“If everyone is aboard and we’re fully fueled, set a course for the Corinthian system,” she ordered. “I have business there.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lieutenant Harmon replied. “Computer gives me an ETA of five days with the Crew Mages working standard shifts,” he advised her after a moment’s pause.

“Include me in the jump rotation,” Stealey ordered. “This may be important.”