Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (33 page)

All of the hunters were down, the last two tanglewebbed to the floor from behind. Standing over them, holding an automatic shotgun very similar to the one David had stolen from the Hunters, was a dark-skinned youth with a bright grin.

“Keiko sent me,” he said cheerfully. “She wanted to be sure you didn’t get into trouble on the way down – though I think she underestimated how much trouble even
you
could get in.”

James shook his head as he approached and dragged the youth into an embrace, rendering the familiar resemblance unmistakeable – their rescuer was lighter-skinned than the engineer, but clearly related.

“Let’s get to Keiko’s,” James told David. “These guys are likely to have friends, and we don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

#

Damien was lost in his work when the door slid open, so Kelly’s voice interrupting his thoughts was a complete surprise. He jerked, turned to face her, and slashed the line of silver fire he’d conjured across a third of the wall of his workshop before he cut the spell.

The acrid smell of burning steel filled the room and he coughed slightly, blinking at the shocked face of his girlfriend.

“Sorry, I missed you opening the door,” he said quickly. Embarrassed, he walked over to the wall his spell had scorched. He’d been practicing against a backdrop he’d enspelled to resist the force of the spells he’d been testing, but his shock had almost caused him to take out the computer screens showing a series of verbal instructions and diagrams.

“You were supposed to meet me for dinner half an hour ago,” Kelly told him quietly. “What’s up, Damien?” She walked over to him, seemingly unbothered by his slicing up his office. She looked at the screen, with its meticulous instructions. “What’s this?”

Damien shrugged.

“This is Amber, and they say everything is for sale,” he repeated to her. “So I decided to test the theory – this is the first of the four combat training manuals the Guild uses to train their Enforcers. I found them all.”

“Enforcers are like cops, right?” she asked.

“And private soldiers,” Damien admitted. “They’re the deadliest Mages the Guild can recruit after the Navy and Marines are done hiring the very best. If the Captain had an Enforcer with him on Chrysanthemum instead of me, one of them could have saved everyone.”

“Like you did?” Kelly reminded him. “Nobody down on Chrysanthemum with you died, David. You
did
save everyone. I don’t care how good these Enforcers are, they couldn’t have saved Narveer from half a world away!”

Damien glanced away, but nodded his admittance.

“An Enforcer wouldn’t have collapsed and needed to be carried,” he said, very quietly. “Kelzin almost died because I was weak.”

“So, what, you read these books and you’re better?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted, his voice still quiet. “I can learn a lot from these, but training isn’t everything – it’s also raw power. I have unique gifts,” the very nature of their ship – and their problems – proved that, “but I am barely even middle of the range in power.”

“Learning these spells, using power more efficiently, that’s the only way I can hope to face the Enforcers and Navy Mages who
will
come after us, sooner or later. Even with these, though, I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to protect everyone,” Damien admitted.

That was the fear running under all of his studying, in the back of his mind since Corinthian.
His
actions and
his
gift had made the
Blue Jay
and her crew targets. His presence had made his
friends
targets – and he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to protect them.

“You took out an Enforcer on Corinthian, didn’t you?” Kelly asked after a moment, pulling a chair up next to him and taking his hands.

“That was luck and trickery,” the young Mage told her. “If he’d had a chance to act, he’d have disabled or killed me in moments.”

“So we rely on trickery,” the engineer replied fiercely. “Your magic saved us at Sherwood and Chrysanthemum – trickery and tricks saved you at Corinthian. The Captain’s no slouch at this game, and you’re stronger than you think.”

She kissed him fiercely.

“I’m not going to tell you not to study these books,” she told him. “You
are
our best protection, and the stronger you are, the safer we all are. But our problems are
not
your fault and you are
not
protecting us alone. We’re hardly helpless – who saved
you
on Corinthian, after all?”

“You all did,” Damien admitted, resting his head against her shoulder. “And we’re all on the run for that. I owe you all more than I can ever repay.”

“No you don’t,” Kelly told him. “That’s what we do for crew, Damien – that’s what
any
of us do for our friends.

“When push comes to shove, there are eighty damned determined people on this ship – and we’re not going to let
anyone
push us around. When you do your wizardly duty to protect us, remember that we are
right
behind you – and we are not defenseless. You get me?”

“I get you,” Damien replied, giving her a small smile, still worried but regaining some balance.

“Good. Now, you owe me dinner.”

#

David followed James and their ‘escort’ into the office on the bottom floor of the gallery of Heinlein Station’s Quadrant Gamma. The entrance was a discreet door tucked between a gun store and a flower shop that the Captain almost missed. Through the door, they followed a plain corridor back about twenty feet, where another door opened into a pristinely decorated reception area.

Plants lined the walls, bringing a sense of freshness to the air that he wasn’t used to on space stations. A small number of comfortable looking chairs were tucked in one corner for people waiting, and a petite, dark-skinned young woman with short-cropped hair sat behind a desk.

“James, you found them,” she exclaimed. It took David a moment to realize she was speaking to their escort, not his Chief Engineer. “Any issues?”

“They were being picked on by some Sanctioned Hunters,” the younger James replied. “Is Keiko in?”

“Conference B,” the receptionist told him. “She’s waiting for you.”

“Right this way,” their guide instructed David and Kellers. He led the way through a door concealed behind a large potted tree and into a mid-sized conference room.

The room continued the theme of plants. Plant trays ran along both sides of the room, supporting what David believed to be strawberry plants, of all things. Two smallish trees flanked a professional holographic display podium at one end, and a massive black table filled the room.

Leaning against the end of the table closest to them was a tall, pale woman with flaming red hair and bright green eyes. When they entered, she wordlessly dragged James Kellers into a tight embrace.

She released him after a moment and inspected him carefully.

“You’re alright?” she asked sharply.

“We’re fine, Keiko,” Kellers told her. “I didn’t realize James was working for you,” he continued, nodding towards the younger man.

David glanced from the younger James, to his James, to Keiko, and saw the familial resemblance all around.

“I thought you said Keiko was a friend from school,” he said dryly, nodding towards James. “Did I misread how friendly you were?”

Keiko and both Jameses looked at him strangely for a minute, and then Keiko laughed.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she told him. “James Junior here is my
brother’s
son – with James’s sister. I didn’t think of how it would look.”

“And I didn’t realize that Brian’s kids were both working for you,” the older James admitted. “James helped save our asses, though. A bunch of Sanctioned Hunters jumped us in the gallery.”

Keiko nodded, her face suddenly grimmer. She turned to the younger James.

“James, can you go and tell your sister to close up?” she asked. “I’ve no more appointments today, so you two can shut things down and take off.” She glanced over at the older James. “Tell your parents that I’ll be bringing James and his Captain over for dinner later.”

“Will do,” the youth confirmed and disappeared from the conference room, carefully closing the door behind him.

“Take a seat,” Keiko instructed, gesturing towards the table. “I apologize for the trouble,” she continued. “If I’d been expecting anything, I’d have sent more men than just James to escort you.”

“We
are
wanted fugitives, Miss Keiko,” David reminded her quietly. “I presume James told you that.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” she told him. “According to the Protectorate, you’re not. If there’d been a Sanctioned Bounty on you, I’d have known regardless of whether or not James here had told me when he set up this meet.”

Keiko touched a spot on the black conference table with a long pale finger. A section of table around it lit up with touch controls, which she promptly manipulated to bring up a page of text on the holographic display.

“They must have been after the Blue Star bounty,” she admitted. “I knew it existed, but it looks like it’s been expanded recently. Azure has doubled the bounty on you, Captain Rice, and added specific bounties for your ship and your Mage Montgomery. Montgomery is specified alive.”

“No such consideration for me, I presume,” David said quietly. The lack of a Protectorate arrest order was strange. Even ignoring Damien’s modifications to the
Blue Jay
, they’d staged a
mass jail-break
to get him out.

“No, Azure still wants you dead,” Keiko said calmly. “Which is a recommendation in my books,” she added. On the holo-display, data continued to flow as she searched through databases. “Huh,” she said suddenly, “that’s strange.”

“What is?” Kellers asked.

“There’s no Protectorate
warrant
for you,” she explained, “but there
is
a request to inform the Navy if you are in-system and to hold your ship.” She shrugged. “It’s a mass-mailing to every MidWorlds system.”

“So we’re going to be trapped here?” David asked.

“Hardly,” the woman replied with a laugh. “For warrants, there’s a standing agreement for payment to the Co-ops for delivering prisoners, but for a one-off like this, there’s no money attached. Which means that the ADC won’t do shit – they’re a business, after all.”

The operation of law enforcement and defense in Amber confused David, but he was willing to take her word for it for the moment.

“So, we’re safe then?”

“For the moment,” she confirmed. “At least, from Sanctioned Hunters who want to keep their Sanction – the idiots who went after you in the Gallery will be unemployed by morning. The Defense Co-operative does
not
like their Hunters freelancing – and doing so as publicly and messily as that is a big no-no.”

With a sweep of her hand, she cleared the data.

“Sooner or later, someone will look at that request, and
ask
whoever the notification is supposed to go to for money,” she admitted. “Then, the Protectorate will pay up, and your ship will be locked down. So we’d better get to your business quickly. What do you need, Captain Rice?”

“We’re heading out on a Fringe run,” David told her. He slid a datachip across the table to her. “I need a pretty standard speculative cargo; the details are on the chip. We’ll be paying cash by electronic transfer.”

“Let me see,” Keiko told him. As she began to review the data, she began to wrap one curl of her red hair around her left hand, distracting David enough that he almost missed Kellers’ sigh beside him.

“I can get this, but about a third isn’t manufactured here,” she admitted. “The price will be higher, and we’ll need to convince some people to re-direct cargos in mid-transhipment – that’s money
and
favors.”

David took his gaze off of her hair and blinked himself back to reality.

“What do you need?” he said finally.

“Smart man,” she said approvingly. “Favors make the world go around – if I’m going to call in favors I’m owed to help you, then I’ll need a favor myself. A big one.”

David simply gestured for her to continue.

“I am involved with several organizations in the Fringe,” Keiko said slowly. “Groups resisting the influence and control of the Core World Mega-Corps.”

“Rebels,” Kellers clarified next to David.

“Not against the Protectorate, in general,” the woman told them. “But, generally the Protectorate’s attention doesn’t get drawn to abuses before things start coming apart. I have a blockade runner slated to take supplies to their destination, but he can’t even make it into Amber without getting jumped – your bounty from the Blue Star Syndicate is
nothing
compared to what the Mega-Corps have on Seule.”