Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (27 page)

“Chrysanthemum is run by a paranoid military junta,” he continued. “In exchange for the gunships, they’re supposed to be running elections in the next six months. Until then, though, the place is run by scum I wouldn’t trust to polish my boots, and they’re my
allies
.

“Whatever you do, Damien, don’t go to the surface.”

#

Damien watched the gunships leave early the next morning from the simulacrum chamber, with Kelly LaMonte, one of the other junior engineers, two of the pilots, and a bottle of champagne. With the
Blue Jay
in orbit, the room at the center of the ship had no gravity, making pouring difficult, but the small celebration was worth the effort.

Each gunship detached from the cargo pylons on the side of the keel in turn. A few, carefully timed, jets of the maneuvering thrusters flung the small warship through the gap in the freighter’s rotating ribs. Once clear, the characteristic white flare of an antimatter rocket flashed into existence, and the ships headed towards the Rock, the captured asteroid fifty thousand kilometers ahead of the
Jay
.

“That went a lot better than I was afraid it was, even with their cloak and dagger bullshit,” the older of the two pilots, a buzz-cut young man named Kelzin, announced. “Can’t imagine it was comfortable for Damien here,” he nodded to the Ship’s Mage, “but they were polite to the rest of us.”

“The ones Niska let deal with me were polite,” Damien admitted. “I think if he or Mons had any people they weren’t sure could play nice, they kept them under wraps.”

“It is going to be so nice to have half the ship back,” Kelly observed. It was hard to cuddle in zero-gravity, but she was doing her best to stay snuggled up to Damien’s side – with his enthusiastic assistance.

“We’ve still got some time on station here,” Damien replied. “The Captain’s going to try to find a cargo – we may end up carrying passengers out, too.”

The pretty young engineer made a face.

“We’ll see what comes out of the party,” Kelzin told the others. “Singh says I have to pretend Damien is my boss.”

“What?” Kelly asked, turning to look concernedly at Damien. “Chrysanthemum is an UnArcana world, you can’t be planning on going down?!”

“There’s a lot going on the Captain isn’t comfortable with,” Damien told her quietly. “He’s hedging his bets by keeping the only one of us trained in boarding and counter-boarding up here, and taking the heaviest firepower we have – me – down to the surface.”

“I’m leaving my medallion behind, and pretending to be the
Jay
’s First Pilot,” he explained. “I’ll be fine.”

“Singh says the whole setup stinks,” Kelzin agreed. “We’re sticking a whole bunch of those carbines Singh found us aboard the shuttle.”

“I don’t think the Captain really thinks anything is going to go down,” Damien reassured Kelly. “But if it does, between the Captain, Kelzin and me, they don’t have a big enough army to take us down.”

He felt her shiver against him regardless.

“Be careful, Damien,” she asked. “You’ll be in more danger than us – the only thing the rest of us will be up to is hooking tubes into receptacles.”

“Yep – and you have lots of practice with that recently,” Kelzin told her innocently.

Kelly promptly emptied her champagne bulb into the pilot’s face, causing him to spin back, messily wiping bubbling liquid from his face, to the general laughter of the
Blue Jay
’s younger officers.

#

The shuttle landed gently on a floating landing pad, mounted on pontoons a hundred meters away from the shore. As the sound of the craft’s thrusters faded away, Kelzin stuck his head back into the passenger cabin.

Damien and the other three officers all wore plain gray suits. Damien’s was worn over a shirt borrowed from Kellers, the dark-skinned engineer being the only person on the ship even close to the Mage’s short and slight frame.

“We are landed and locked in on docking pad five at Chrysanthemum City,” the pilot informed them all. As he spoke, he made his way to a locker and pulled out one of the Legatan Arms SC-5 carbines, sliding and locking both magazines in.

“Your PC’s are running coms through the shuttle relay,” Kelzin continued. “That’ll provide encrypted channels for about fifteen klicks out. I checked the map on the way down, the ‘Festival Hall’ is seven klicks from here, you should be fine.

“Check in via radio often, and don’t stay out too late,” the pilot concluded. “If you’re out past midnight, my little friend and I will come and enforce your curfew.” He patted the carbine.

“Let’s try not to start a war if we don’t have to,” David observed dryly. “That said,” he glanced around the officers, his gaze settling on Damien, “I don’t trust these people at all. Let’s make nice, see if we can get a cargo – but don’t go anywhere alone!”

The safety lecture done, Kelzin hit the door latch, opening the shuttle ramp onto the cooling pad.

“It is a balmy twenty six degrees Celsius,” he informed them, “and the wind is from the south, so you get to dodge the smell of the fisheries to the north. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll keep the lights on.”

Kellers led the way out, with Damien and Jenna following out onto the gently bobbing platform. The smell of the salt air hit Damien like a brick wall. He’d lived near the coast on Sherwood, but the smell was different here. There was a slight edge of something he couldn’t identify to the smell of sea and waves, something completely different.

The smell of a new world. For the first time in his life, Damien was walking on the surface of a strange world. At Corinthian and Legatus, he hadn’t gone to the surface, which made Chrysanthemum his first ‘alien’ world.

The water was a different shade: a deep purplish blue that lacked the slightly iridescent tinge of his homeworld’s waves. The sky was darker than Sherwood’s, with a dimmer sun shining through a thicker atmosphere. The floating landing pad wasn’t something Sherwood would have used, as his home had significant areas of granite to hold landing facilities near most of the inhabited zones.

A blonde-haired man clad in a dark blue suit was standing at the edge of the platform, where transparent barriers protected beds of bright pink flowers. He gestured for the
Blue Jay’s
officers to approach, and stepped out to greet them with a bright smile that made Damien think of oil.

“Welcome to Chrysanthemum City, Captain Rice,” he greeted David. “I am James Margrave, Aide to President Holsen. And these are your officers?”

“They are,” Rice confirmed, stepping past Damien to face the aide and give quick introductions. Damien found it odd to be introduced as ‘Damien Montgomery, my First Pilot,’ but nodded along regardless.

“I have a car waiting for us on the shore to take us to the Festival Hall,” Margrave told them. “President Holsen is looking forward to meeting you. If you’ll follow me?”

#

The trip to the Festival Hall took the
Blue Jay
’s officers through a neighborhood of neatly trimmed hedges, public flower gardens of dozens of varieties of chrysanthemums, and large houses set well back from the road in treed surroundings.

The impression of peace and luxury was spoiled somewhat by the view of the massive industrial complex, fisheries, factories and warehouses mixed together, that David could see to the north. He also could see the omnipresent cameras and security men that he suspected his officers missed.

He doubted even Damien missed the two patrols of uniformed, face-masked, police in black armored personnel carriers that they saw sweeping the streets. They’d been directed to the shuttle pad for the system’s dignitaries and industry leaders, so the path ran through a showcase neighborhood. Those same dignitaries required round the clock armed security on Chrysanthemum.

The Festival Hall was the clear centerpiece of the neighborhood, and of Chrysanthemum’s attempts to show off to anyone they felt they needed to. It was a massive structure, built of local stone and painted a brilliant white. Two wings swept away from a central structure that looked like an immense white clam.

The entire bottom section of the ‘clam’ apparently slid up, providing a semi-open air central chamber that open out onto a front green lined in carefully nurtured flower beds and containing a small, somewhat tasteful stone water fountain carved in the shape of a giant chrysanthemum – in case anyone had forgotten the name of the planet.

Margrave stopped the massive, open-topped black ground car he’d delivered them in, and gracefully opened the doors for them.

“Welcome to the Solstice Festival gentlemen, lady,” he told them. “The food is inside, to the left. Waiters are circulating with drinks and appetizers.” He turned to David. “Captain Rice, the staff will take excellent care of your officers. If you’ll come with me, the President wishes to speak with you.”

David nodded wordlessly and turned to his officers.

“Stick together,” he told them quietly as Margrave started away. “No booze.”

“I’ll keep the boys under control,” Jenna promised him. “Go see what the President wants – it’s not every day a planetary head of state wants to see you!”

With a firm nod, David followed Margrave towards the fountain. Crossing the green lawn he saw that a number of men and women at the party wore gold-trimmed black military uniforms. He had no idea what insignia Chrysanthemum used for its military, but he suspected that the officers with multiple gold leaves on their collars were high ranking.

“There’s a lot of soldiers here,” he observed to Margrave as they paused, allowing a team of waiters to make their way past with a trolley of hot food.

“The military is important to Chrysanthemum,” the aide replied. “Many of our politicians are retired soldiers, and they have the right to still wear the uniform.”

“Most Fringe worlds don’t have much of a military,” David observed as they set off again. “What happened here?”

Margrave stopped, looking at David with sharp eyes. “You don’t know?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” he said politely. Most of those rumors were related to the fact that a military junta controlled the government, not how there’d been enough of a military to take over in the first place.

“Chrysanthemum was founded as a corporate colony,” Margrave explained as they headed into the clamshell of the main Festival Hall. “Our parents and grandparents came here for the promise of a good life. When they arrived, they discovered they were effectively indentured servants.

“In the end, we revolted, and drove the corporation out,” he continued. “After ten years of war, we’d formed a true formal military, and one we owed our freedom to.” He glanced back at David. “And since the only Mages we’d known had worn the boots of tyrants, we barred them from our world and began to deal with Legatus.”

David let that pass in silence. There’d been a number of worlds where Core world corporations had abused the colonists they’d imported. Most, sooner or later, came to the attention of the Hands. The corporations involved tended to cease to exist once the Mage-King’s wandering Judges got involved, but it seemed the law of the Protectorate had missed Chrysanthemum.

“Ah, President Larson, sir,” the aide greeted his boss as they finally reached a large, white-clothed, table in the center of the main hall. “May I present Captain Rice – he is the master of the ship that brought us Group Commander Mons’ squadron.”

The man Margrave had led him to wore the same gold on black military uniform as most of the men at the party, but where they had various rank insignias with numbers and material marking their rank, President Larson wore an exquisitely worked rose gold chrysanthemum on a chain around his neck.

Otherwise, the President of Chrysanthemum was an utterly unimposing man. He was short, barely taller than Damien, and rotund with a receding hairline and a double chin. Something in his ice blue eyes, though, suggested that while the Generals might run the planet, this man was still not to be taken lightly.

“President Larson,” David greeted the man. He realized that Group Commander Mons was standing at the President’s right shoulder. The Legatan officer’s plain blue uniform had blended in with the crowd around them, and he hadn’t known she was going to be here. He’d need to keep her away from Damien – she would recognize the young Mage and know he wasn’t supposed to be here.

“I want to thank you in person, Captain Rice,” the President told him. His voice was soft and highly pitched, almost that of a child. “Your ship should be receiving a more tangible token of said thanks soon. You are welcome to our world."

Almost on cue, David’s personal computer beeped an incoming communication.

“Excuse me, Mr. President,” he said politely as he stepped away from the crowd and raised the wrist-computer to his lips.

“Rice here,” he answered, as quietly as he could.

“It’s Singh,” the First Pilot’s voice said sharply. “Our fuel tanker has arrived. Everything is hooked up; and the gas is flowing.”

“That’s good,” Rice told him. He paused, considering the ex-Navy officer’s likelihood of calling him for nothing. “What’s wrong?”