Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (24 page)

With the
Blue Jay
separated from the spinning wheel of Interface Station and floating in its new assigned high orbit, Damien floated in the middle of the simulacrum chamber in zero-gravity. The screens surrounding him showed the busy space around the ship.

The freighter’s external ribs, usually in motion while the ship was orbiting, were frozen in place. Beyond them, five sets of engines flared as the Legatan ships approached. Damien gestured on his control panel, zooming in on the squadron.

Four
Crucifix
gunships, all in what the Captain had referred to as ‘Squid Mode’, decelerated carefully towards the freighter. In the midst, a single shuttle shaped its own, slightly different, course. The
Blue Jay
’s computer told Damien it was an assault shuttle, of a class unique to the Legatus Self Defense Force.

The assault shuttle, probably chock full of the Augments assigned to guard the tiny but deadly squadron the
Blue Jay
had been hired to transport, hung back as the gunships slowly approached the freighter.

They approached closer than any full size ship had ever come to the
Blue Jay
, the pinpricks of their engines cutting out as they expanded into the hulls fully visibly from Damien’s cameras and sensors. Each gunship was a hemisphere, forty meters deep and as many around, to which four twenty meter cubes were linked by sixty meter long cylinders. With the modules swept behind them, the ships were sixty meters across at their widest, and a hundred and twenty meters long.

The ships were tiny next to the
Blue Jay
. As the first slowly slid between Rib One and Rib Two and fired small thrusters to arrest its motion and bring into the freighter’s hull, Damien realized that four gunships was nothing against the normal volume of cargo they carried. The plan was to lock a single ship in each quarter of the hull, but they could just as easily have locked all four ships nose to tail along one side of the ship, and carried sixteen of the gunships all told. Of course, the
Blue Jay
could only have carried the mass of eight of the ships.

The lower mass was a factor in some of his jump calculations. He was starting to update the course he’d been plotting when the buzzer sounded for entry to the simulacrum chamber.

“Come in,” he instructed.

The door slid aside, temporarily blocking off part of the view of the outside universe as Kelly LaMonte drifted in.

“Figured I’d find you here,” she said softly. “Do you know how to not work, Damien?”

“That shuttle,” Damien said quietly, pointing at the small spaceship now shaping a gentle arc towards the
Blue Jay
’s shuttle bay, “carries twenty-eight men and woman who voluntarily submitted to life-altering surgery to allow them to hunt and arrest Mages like me. It’s a little sobering.”

The engineer caught herself on the platform next to where Damien floated and settled onto it.

“We get this job done, we get out of UnArcana space, and we never deal with these crazies again,” she told him. “Why get hung up on their issues?”

“It’s nerve-wracking to realize that anyone hates you that much,” Damien shrugged.

Kelly carefully laid her hand on his shoulder, balancing perfectly in zero-gravity.

“Not your problem,” she said forcefully. “You didn’t break their laws, didn’t use magic on the station. Besides, if they cause problems on the ship, the Captain will throw them out the airlock.”

He looked ‘up’ at her, somewhat disbelievingly.

“He won’t stand for his officers being harassed, you’ll see,” she promised.

“Fair,” he allowed. After a moment, he reached up to cover her hand with his own. Her skin was warm against him. They floated there in zero-gravity in silence for a long moment.

“I was starting to wonder,” she said quietly, “if you were still mad at me for getting you arrested. James told me it was nothing of the sort.
He
said you were just young and oblivious.” Kelly took advantage of her better leverage to turn Damien around to face her. “So, Damien, let me be as obvious as I can. Want to come back to my quarters and I will
cook
you dinner?”

Even he wasn’t that oblivious.

#

David was waiting in the shuttle bay with Narveer and Kellers when the Legatan shuttle came aboard. The three officers floated behind a safety shield, watching the pilot neatly slow the ship to a halt in the exact center of the bay, and then gently connect her to the deck with a tiny burst from the top-side maneuvering thrusters.

The shuttle was a thick, dark-painted wedge, designed to be equally at home in space or in atmosphere. Each side of the wedge bore the golden cog with the lightning bolt cut out that was the symbol of Legatus’s Augment Corps. Hatches on the front likely covered weapons systems designed to clear the way for the platoon of soldiers aboard. A larger hatch, roughly halfway back the port angle of the wedge, opened shortly after the shuttle settled onto the deck.

An eerily skinny man with iron gray hair, clad in a blue-trimmed black uniform with the Augments golden cog at his collar, exited the ship first. He saw David and his officers and kicked off from the shuttle, neatly directing himself to grab the blast shield and efficiently orient himself to face them.

“Major James Niska, commanding Security Team Alpha-Seventeen,” he reported crisply, giving a credible zero-gravity salute.

“Welcome aboard the
Blue Jay
, Major Niska,” David greeted him. Behind the Major, more black uniformed men and women spilled out of the ship. Each carried a duffel bag and a slung rifle, and they quickly aligned themselves in neat lines behind their commander. “How was your flight?”

“Utterly boring. It was perfect,” the Augment replied cheerfully. “All of the gunships looked to have hitched on correctly. Are their crews aboard?”

“They are coming in through the maintenance outriggers,” David confirmed. “My First Officer is checking up on them. If you want to meet up with them, I can have my First Pilot,” he gestured carefully to Narveer, “show your men to their quarters.”

“That would be perfect,” Niska agreed, gesturing for one of his team to approach him. “Karl, take the platoon and get them settled in. Follow Mr.…?”

“Singh,” Narveer replied, shifting forward to face the platoon. “Narveer Singh.”

“Follow Mr. Singh,” Niska finished. “We’ll sort out the rotation and guard schedules once I’ve had a chance to sit down with Captain Rice.”

“Understood, sir,” the non-com replied sharply before turning to the team behind them.

“This way, Major,” David told the Augment officer, leading him into the central core of the ship. Behind them, the Legatan non-commissioned officer started snapping sharp orders to get the troops into line.

“We’ll be putting your men and the gunship cadre up in Ribs Three and Four,” the Captain told Niska as the shuttle bay doors closed behind them. “I assume you’ll want to split your platoon between the two Ribs, to keep an eye on the crews?”

“Of course,” Niska agreed. “We will also need unfettered access to the ship. The layout of the
Venice
class is not entirely consistent from vessel to vessel, so we will need to review all of the
Blue Jay
’s own peculiarities. I will also want to post guards on the bridge, Engineering, and, preferably, the simulacrum chamber.”

David winced at the thought of Augments guarding the chamber where Damien worked.

“Believe me when I say the men I would select to guard your Mage are very specifically chosen,” Niska continued, clearly catching both David’s reaction and the reason for it. “In the case of any attack on this ship, however, the simulacrum chamber is one of the three areas that will be the focus of a boarding attempt.”

“All right,” the Captain agreed with a sigh. “But if your men cause
any
issues – especially with Montgomery – that access will start restricting itself
extremely
quickly.”

“I will do my best to make sure we have no such issues,” Niska said calmly. “If there are, you must, of course, do what you feel is necessary.”

The conversation was interrupted as they emerged into the cross-chamber that linked in the rear set of airlocks and maintenance outriggers. An open cross-section of the
Jay
’s keel, the room was large enough to be difficult to crowd, but with everyone floating free in zero-gravity, the gunship cadre crews were managing it.

“Major Niska,” one of the officers greeted the Augment as he and David entered the room. “Captain Rice,” she added after a moment, nodding to the man who was merely here to transport her several dozen light years. “Group Commander Harriet Mons. If you have quarters ready for us, I think it’s best if we break up this incipient clusterfuck.”

“Where’s Jenna?” David asked before noticing his First Officer tied up with several of the blue-uniformed officers.

“She’s dealing with some of my prima-donnas who are worried about scratching their paint,” Mons replied. “Let me shut them up and we can get some order in place here.”

Moments later, Mons arrived, forcefully, in the middle of the conversation Jenna was having with the gunship crew. David couldn’t hear the conversation, but it looked rather like she was telling them to listen to Jenna.

“All right,” he bellowed, years of practice projecting his voice across the echoing compartment. “Everyone, look to Officer Campbell,” he pointed at Jenna. “She is responsible for getting you to your quarters. Cause her any more trouble, and your quarters will be in the smelliest latrine we can find on the ship. Am I clear?!”

The silence that answered was only broken by Mons’ chuckling. Finally clear of the previously un-relenting set of officers, now looking thoroughly cowed by the Group Commander, Jenna promptly had the crews moving with her usual efficiency.

Five minutes later, Mons, Niska, and David were alone on the
Jay
’s bridge.

“What is our ETA at Mercedes?” Mons asked.

“I’ll have to confirm with my Ship’s Mage,” David admitted. “Once Jenna has your crews settled, we’ll be clearing to accelerate out-system. Mercedes is forty light years from here, one of the furthest MidWorlds, so it’ll be eleven to twelve days.”

“That’s about what I expected,” the Group Commander accepted with a nod. “I’m impressed so far, Captain Rice. If there is anything you need me for – and especially of any of my pack of super-intelligent monkeys give your crew any trouble – feel free to contact me.”

She turned to Niska. “Once you’ve discussed your security plans with the Captain, please meet me in my quarters, Major. We have some matters to discuss.”

Mons shook David’s hand and left the bridge, leaving him alone with the Augment Major once more.

#

Damien was eating breakfast the next morning when Major Niska found him. With the ship under acceleration out towards space flat enough for him to jump them, the mess was oriented ninety degrees from normal. It at least had a definite down that it had lacked while they’d been waiting for the gunships to lock on.

“Mage Montgomery, I am Major James Niska,” the Augment introduced himself, sliding into the empty seat opposite from Damien with a tray of food. The crew Damien normally ate with, including Kelly, were on shift so he was eating alone.

“I know who you are,” Damien responded, looking up and taking in the Augment’s strange square-pupiled eyes. “And what you are. What do you want from me?”

“I wanted to have a chance to talk to you before any misunderstandings occurred,” Niska said softly. “I see I may be a little too late.”

“What is there to misunderstand?” the Mage asked crossly. “I am about as happy to have you aboard as you are to be relying on a Mage to ferry you around.”

“I don’t get the impression that you are calmly content and glad to have the option to have us available,” the Augment replied. “In the absence of a technological solution, men like you are the only tool we have to tie humanity together. I admire and appreciate Jump Mages like you.”

“Working as a Mage-killer is a great way to show that appreciation.”

Niska shook his head. “It is not my job to kill Mages,” he said sharply. “My job is to arrest Mages who break the laws of the Legatus system.”

“Which is basically breathing on the surface, so far as I can tell,” Damien replied.

“To an extent,” the cop admitted. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming that we hate Mages, though. I won’t deny that prejudice exists, but it’s not the reason for those laws.”

Damien sighed and leaned back, looking at the Augment who seemed determined to convince him of something.

“And why, exactly, would my setting foot on Legatus be a crime then?” he asked after a moment. Partly, he was humoring the man. But part of him was curious too – he’d always wondered how exactly the UnArcana worlds had come into being.

“Because if you set foot on Legatus, you are not subject to our laws,” Niska explained. “We were not allowed to opt out of the Compact, so any crime you commit on Legatus has to be tried by Mages. You have separate rights and privileges from anyone else.