Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (35 page)

The observation lounge was a quiet, elegant place. The sort of spot where wealthy merchants and starship captains made deals and watched their ships through the walls of steel made transparent through magic. Runes swirled across the floor, creating a gravity field that held everyone and everything down, and discreet human staff delivered drinks to the widely scattered quiet tables.

“I guess that’s it then,” he finally said, watching the
Blue Jay
’s ribs spin up. If Jenna had spun up the ribs for gravity, then the last of the cargo was loaded. “Your special cargo came aboard with the rest. I’m impressed you found it all,” he admitted.

“I am the best at what I do,” Keiko told him cheerfully, her gaze meeting his. “This has been nice, David, but I’m not one for teary goodbyes. I hope you weren’t expecting one.”

“Hardly,” he said with a snort of laughter. “It would clash with your ‘hardened revolutionary’ vibe.”

She put a finger to her lips. “Shush,” she replied, laughing herself. “That’s not part of my reputation here. On Amber, I’m known as wealthy, ruthless, and perfectly willing to bury people in lawsuits if they get in my way.”

“Guess that’s how business is done here,” David admitted, eyeing his ship. “I was surprised by how good the safety gear was, to be honest. I was expecting…”

“You were expecting slaves driven with whips?” Keiko asked dryly. “Which do you think is going to motivate a business to do better at safety: a government standard that, once they meet, they’re no longer liable – or the knowledge that a death will see them sued out of business? Our companies have the best safety gear around – they know they won’t survive a death liability case.”

David figured much of that to be exaggeration – the gear wasn’t as
bad
as he’d feared, but he’d definitely seen better and safer work crews, too. That was also, he understood, at least partially the choice of the crews – and that was how Amber worked. He kept his peace, though. Keiko was a native of Amber, and a fervent believer in its unique system.

“I should get to my ship,” he said finally. “We need to leave by morning if we’re going to make the rendezvous at Excelsior.”

Keiko’s eyes were suddenly softer, and she laid her hand on top of his.

“Seule won’t disappear if you’re late,” she told him. “You can spend the night on the station if you want.”

“I thought you weren’t one for long goodbyes?” he asked.

“I’m not planning
goodbyes
,” she told him with a wicked wink. “I’ll twist some arms; make sure you’re clear all the way out in the morning. What’s the point of influence if I can’t spend some of it to get laid?”

David laughed, and was about to agree when his wrist computer buzzed. The tone was an urgent message, not something that Jenna would use unless it was an emergency. He flipped the message up on the screen, and the laughter died.

Protectorate destroyer in system. Return to ship ASAP – it’s time to go boss
.

“I have to go,” he said quietly, meeting Keiko’s eyes. “There’s a Protectorate ship in system. I don’t think even the ADC will ignore a direct request from a warship to hold us – not once the destroyer realizes we’re here.”

Wordlessly, Keiko dragged him into a surprisingly fierce embrace.

“I understand,” she told him, then kissed him thoroughly. “If you’re ever back in Amber, look me up,” she ordered. “I won’t make promises, but we can always see what happens.”

“I will try,” David said, cautiously, and she laughed.

“Go, my dear Captain,” she told him after one final kiss. “Tell Seule I say ‘hi’ – and remember, the
Luciole
in the Excelsior Three trailing Trojan cluster.”

“The Graveyard,” he said softly. “I remember.”

David paused on the edge of the lounge for one long moment, looking back at the tall, thin, Amberite – his opposite in many ways – and gave her one last wave.

Then the Captain of the
Blue Jay
left, heading for his ship.

#

David found himself envying Damien’s ability to generate his own gravity with magic as he made his way down the zero-gravity keel of the
Blue Jay
. The personnel tube, which had retracted behind him as he came aboard, connected at the rear of the ship. The
Blue Jay
’s bridge was on Rib One, at the front of the ship.

It was noticeably
faster
to make the long dive along the keel and around the simulacrum chamber from the shuttle bay to the forward elevators than it was to run along the Ribs themselves with their centrifugal gravity. What it wasn’t, David considered as he plummeted towards the front of his ship, was
safer
.

Practice allowed him to catch one of the handholds by the elevators with his stronger hand, and swing himself to a halt. The effort almost wrenched his arm out of its socket. He oriented himself towards the elevators gingerly, wincing at the now-vicious pain in his shoulder.

As he reached the elevator, he felt a familiar vibration run through the ship, followed by a faint but definable sense of ‘down’ – the ship was moving. He spared a moment to be grateful that the engines hadn’t engaged
while
he was making his one handed landing from his reckless zero-gravity jump.

Moments later, the elevator delivered him to the outside of his bridge and he carefully walked in, trying not to let the pain in his twisted shoulder throw him off too badly.

“Where are we at?” he asked Jenna, settling into his command chair with a concealed wince.

His XO was at her usual station at navigation, her fingers flying across the screen as she brought the
Blue Jay
away from the immense-yet-vulnerable bulk of Heinlein Station on their maneuvering thrusters.

“To no one’s surprise, I’m sure, Heinlein Station will bump you to the head of the clearance queue if you pay an extra fee,” Jenna told him. “We’re pulling clear on thrusters and should be ready to engage main engines in about five minutes.”

“How’s our Martian friend?”

Jenna gestured towards the main viewscreen, which was zoomed in on the single icon and showing a series of numbers around it.

“They came out roughly the standard one hundred sixty million kilometers out,” she told him. “I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet – they’re burning in at three gravities, but that’s pretty standard for a Navy ship.”

“We’re heading in the opposite direction, I presume?”

“Of course!” she confirmed. “As soon as I’m clear, I’ll push us up to about one and a half gravities.”

David nodded and turned to the channel to the simulacrum, where Damien was patiently waiting.

“What’s your status, Damien? When can we jump?”

“The matrix is clean and functioning,” the Ship’s Mage told him. “I can jump closer in than most with the amplifier as well – at a gee and a half, we’ll probably be clear in six hours.”

David nodded appreciatively. He kept being surprised by the capabilities that Damien squeezed out of the amplifier he’d turned the jump matrix into. A Navy destroyer could jump at three million kilometers from a planet if they needed to, but it wasn’t fun for anyone.

“Keep an eye on things,” he ordered his Mage. “I don’t want to pick a
fight
with
a destroyer, but I’m not sure I want to surrender either.”

“They can’t catch us in time,” Jenna asserted. “We’ll be heading in the opposite direction at half of their acceleration, and we have a lot less distance to cover.”

“I hope you’re right,” Damien said quietly. “Because they have more Mages aboard, and theirs are trained in the use of an amplifier in combat. I couldn’t face them. And
that’s
assuming they don’t just blow us up with missiles.”

David didn’t respond aloud. He simply nodded his acceptance of the Mage’s comments, and settled in, watching the viewscreen’s data on the million-ton warship carefully.

#

The next several hours passed quietly. With the course plugged into the computer, David sent Jenna to rest while he and Damien continued to watch the
Golden Sword
and their own location.

It was obvious when the destroyer’s crew finished running the beacons of all the ships through their databases and identified the
Blue Jay
. The destroyer’s arc shifted, moving away from a direct course to Heinlein Station and instead shaping an intercept for the
Blue Jay
– and she sped up, her acceleration increasing from three gravities to ten.

A number of warning signs starting flashing on David’s screen a few moments later, as the Protectorate warship painted the
Blue Jay
with directional radar and lidar – both lightspeed sensors being targeted on the
Blue Jay
from several light minutes away.

The
Jay
’s sensors warned about the laser and radar hits for several seconds, and then the warnings were silent. Standard procedure, David knew from his own long-ago days in the Martian Navy, would be to scan the ship flying a flagged identification beacon to both confirm that it was the right ship and identify any unknown dangers.

From eight light minutes away, it took almost twenty minutes for the sensor reflection to reach the
Golden Sword of Freedom
, the bridge crew to review it and decide that yes, this was the ship in their database, the commander to record a transmission, and for that transmission to wing its way across space back to the
Blue Jay
.

When he received the transmission, David threw it up on the screen after checking that Damien was in the communication loop. He preferred the Mage to know what was going on – after all, if things came apart, it would fall to Damien and his amplifier to try and save them.

The image in the transmission turned out to be a tall, slim, black woman with a shaved head and the dark blue uniform of a senior officer in the Royal Navy of the Mage-King of Mars. Behind and around the woman was visible the room-encompassing viewscreens and silver runes of the destroyer’s simulacrum Chamber – since the main weapon of a Protectorate warship was its amplifier, the simulacrum Chamber at the heart of the ship doubled as the vessel’s bridge.

Unlike the simulacrum Chamber aboard the
Blue Jay
or any other civilian ship, however, the
Golden Sword
’s had magically controlled gravity. Despite the ten gravities of acceleration the other ship was pushing, the Captain showed no sign of being under force except a normal gravity.

“Captain David Rice of the
Blue Jay
,” the woman said calmly. “I am Mage-Captain Amelia Okoro of His Majesty’s destroyer
Golden Sword of Freedom
.” She paused, seeming to consider her words carefully.

“I know you are running,” she finally continued. “I am ordering you to heave to, and prepare for a rendezvous.

“I promise you, upon the honor of His Majesty’s Navy, no harm will come to you or your crew if you surrender, but you
must
surrender. I will range upon you before you reach jump distance. Do not force me to act hastily.”

David ran the geometry through his computer, and then glanced up at Damien on the screen to his own simulacrum Chamber.

“When can you jump, Damien?” he asked.

“I could jump now,” the young Mage told him. “I’d be useless for at least twenty-four hours afterwards, though. If we wait three hours to when I originally estimated, I’ll be fine. Can they intercept us short of that?”

“No,” David told him. “She
could
intercept us well short of the nine light minute mark though, even if she maneuvered to board and we did our best to escape. We’ll jump on schedule, Damien.”

He glanced back at the main viewscreen, then shrugged and activated his own recorder. He leant forwards slightly and focused his gaze on the camera.

“Mage-Captain Okoro,” he said calmly, “I am afraid that I have no intention of surrendering this ship to His Majesty’s forces. I will not allow a member of my crew to have his magic stripped from him to calm the fears of the foolish.”

Another twenty minutes passed while his short message reached the
Golden Sword
, and Okoro’s response came back. He played it when it arrived.

The black-skinned Captain had acquired an odd quirk to her mouth, as if she was trying not to smile.

“Your loyalty to your crew does you credit, Captain,” she told him. “To my knowledge, Mr. Montgomery is in no danger of that anymore – but I am required to deliver him, yourself, and your crew to the Lady Hand Stealey.”

David smiled, and activated the recorder again.

“If you wish to deliver us to the Hand, you will hardly be able to fire into my ship, Mage-Captain,” he told her dryly. “I have no intention of surrendering or being intercepted. You may as well let us go.”