Starship's Mage: Omnibus: (Starship's Mage Book 1) (38 page)

“There! What’s that?” Damien asked.

David followed the icon that the Mage threw up on the screen. It was blinking on one of the larger asteroids, a ten kilometer long hunk of iron and rock that a long-ago mining ship had cut a massive gorge into to extract whatever the aliens had needed to sustain a few more years of life.

Inside that massive gorge, a light was flickering. After a few moments, the light rose out of the gorge and revealed itself to be the fusion maneuvering thrusters of a starship. The ship was smaller than the
Blue Jay
, only three hundred meters and narrow for most of its length with a sizeable ‘mushroom head’ radiation cap shield at the front and hefty engines at the back.

“That’s a Navy High Priority Courier,” David recognized it aloud. The Navy had built them fifty or so years ago to carry small cargos at extremely high speed speeds – the ships had been fitted with antimatter engines and carried a warship’s complement of Mages.

“Those were all decommissioned, weren’t they?” Jenna asked, and David nodded.

“Mars decided that mounting antimatter engines on full-size freighters was more valuable in an emergency, and that they could use normal freighters the rest of the time,” he confirmed. “The last one was supposed to be scrapped five years ago, but it looks like our Captain Seule saved one from the breakers.”

Antimatter was expensive, and most civilian ships didn’t use it. Somehow, though, David was sure that the
Luciole
still used antimatter in her main engines – she was, after all, a blockade runner. Corporations would hire and use private warships, but they rarely mounted military grade engines on them.

Once the spindly blockade runner was clear of the gorge and directed towards the
Blue Jay
, the computer informed them of an incoming transmission. With a swipe across the command pad on his chair, David threw the image up on his main screen.

“You’re our drop-off, I presume?” the dark-haired man in the dark red shirt on the screen asked him. “I can’t see someone randomly stopping in exactly the right spot, not in this place,” he gestured at the space around them.”

“If you are Captain Nathan Seule, then yes, I’m your delivery,” Rice confirmed. “Captain David Rice, of the
Blue Jay
.”

“I am indeed Captain Seule of the
Luciole
, Captain Rice. I see that Miss Alabaster delivered as always. How are you set up for cargo transfer?”

“I have four heavy lift shuttles,” David told him. “I think we should be able to transfer the cargo quickly, depending on your own resources.”

“Good to hear, Captain,” Seule told him. “We only have two shuttles ourselves, so it would take a while if we’re left to just my resources. Shall we be about it? I aim to not be around if the miners in-system start asking questions, if you catch my drift.”

“I’ll have my pilots start loading containers,” David said. “Have your pilots contact my First Pilot Kelzin as they approach, he’ll guide them in.”

#

The entire process of deep space cargo transfer, without the many and varied tools and resources of a space dock, was a new one for Damien. The
Luciole
matched vectors with the
Blue Jay
at about twenty kilometers distance, just far enough that both ships would be safe to light off their main drives, and then dispatched their two shuttles over.

By the time the
Luciole
shuttles arrived, Kelzin and his three pilots had their shuttles out as well. Once the transport shuttles, each minuscule compared to their parent vessels but still forty meters long apiece, were in place, Jenna released the catches holding six of the cargo containers of weapons to the
Blue Jay
’s cargo pylons.

The ten thousand cubic meter containers, each rated for ten thousand tons of cargo, drifted away from the
Jay
. The shuttles, already positioned above each container, swept in and latched onto the containers. Once the connection was secure, they flew over to the
Luciole
, where they repeated the process in reverse.

Both Kelzin’s and Seule’s pilots clearly knew the drill. The first transfer of six containers went without a hitch, and Damien started to relax – at least with regards to the transfer. There was a lot of small debris drifting through the Lagrange point, and every minute or two, the laser turrets of one vessel or the other would take out a good-sized rock.

“Keep an eye over there,” Damien told the pilots, flicking a warning icon over to all eight ships. “We’ve got a good sized chunk of rock heading our way. The lasers won’t be able to blast it, but its big enough and moving slow enough that you should be able to maneuver around it.”

As the shuttles continued with the second load of cargo, Damien kept an eye on the rock. It was a mid-sized asteroid, roughly a kilometer long and three hundred meters across at its widest point. With the futz of minor debris in the area, he couldn’t tell more about it than that it was primarily iron, and that it was going to pass pretty much exactly between the two freighters.

He figured he could break it up if it turned out to be a threat to either ship, but he also had no reason to expose the presence of
Blue Jay
’s amplifier to the crew of the
Luciole
. They knew nothing about the smugglers they were supplying cargo to, after all.

The second transfer of cargo went as smoothly as the first, and the third as well. As the six shuttles headed back towards the
Jay
, Captain Seule opened communications again.

“I think my shuttles can grab the last two containers,” he told Captain Rice. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with a competent crew, Captain Rice. If we’re ever together in more civilized space, look me up. I think I owe you dinner.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Rice replied. “For now, I think we’d both like to be a
long
way away from this place. It gives me the creeps.”

“I hear you,” Seule replied with a laugh.

The last two containers were loaded onto the shuttles. They then paused, orbiting the
Blue Jay
for a few moments as the asteroid Damien had picked up on passed through the space between the two ships.

“That’s strange,” the senior
Luciole
pilot, a gruff-faced man named, of all things, Vera, said over the channel. “I’m getting an energy reflection off that rock.”

Damien took a look at the rock on the scanners and blinked. It wasn’t a reflection – all along the dead rock, fusion thrusters were blasting to life.

Without thinking, he grabbed the
Jay
’s simulacrum and merged with the ship. The power of the amplifier, the runes woven throughout the ship, sank into him and he breathed out, focusing his gaze on the asteroid as the ships that had been hiding on the asteroid.

He didn’t recognize them – they were small and narrow, almost missile shaped but significantly larger. Before he could say more, though, all fifteen of them fired off main engines – and blasted for the
Blue Jay
at eight gravities.

“
Boarding torpedoes
!” David shouted, and Damien finally recognized the threat.

He had only seconds before the tiny attack ships reached the
Blue Jay
, but he was linked into the amplifier. Time slowed as he shifted his consciousness into the runes, slowing reality
just
enough to let him channel his magic.

A whip of fire, the deadly close-range attack spell he’d been practicing from the Enforcer manuals, appeared in deep space and slashed across the ships. His magic and the deadly fire danced from torpedo to torpedo, shattering hulls, detonating engines – and ending lives. He didn’t know how many men each of the fifteen boarding torpedoes carried. Even one might carry enough men to take the
Blue Jay
if he let them board.

The last boarding torpedo died a hundred and twenty meters from the hull of the
Jay
, as Damien unleashed the fury of a fully functioning amplifier on his ship’s enemies.

#

“What the
fuck
?” Seule exclaimed over the comms channel.

“Those were boarding torpedoes, old Navy issue,” David said grimly. “Someone was trying to sneak up on us – if Damien hadn’t been practicing, I think at least some would have made it through.”

Unlike his Mage, David knew that each of those torpedoes was rated to carry eighteen soldiers, and that Damien had probably just killed almost three hundred people.

“I meant, what the
fuck
did your ship just
do
?!”

“You’re alive, Captain Seule,” Rice told him flatly. “I suggest you stop asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to and collect your shuttles.”

The red-shirted man on the other ship threw up his hands.

“Fine, keep your secrets Captain – they ain’t no business of mine, you’re right,” he told Rice. “But what the hell gets someone to launch that kind of op to try and catch you?”

“Money and revenge,” Rice said grimly. “We hurt a bounty hunter bad a few weeks back – if he could find us, he’d throw that at us.”

He didn’t need to explain the value of the
Jay
’s amplifier. If the other man guessed what Damien had just done, he could guess why the Syndicate would want David’s ship.

Seule sighed.

“Listen, Captain – you need to get out of everyone’s sight it seems,” he told Rice. “Head to Darkport – you should be able to bury yourself in the mess there, maybe upgrade your ship and find some extra cargo to take wherever you’re going.”

“Darkport is a myth,” David pointed out. Rumor mentioned a place by that name – an asteroid complex in an otherwise uninhabited system, where no authority ran. Amber was Libertarian – but Darkport was an anarchic hellhole, if it even existed.

“It exists,” Seule told him. “More importantly for your little problem, it’s a neutral zone for bounty hunters – if they try and claim a bounty on the station, they’re banned for life. Assuming they survive to leave at all.”

“Sounds like somewhere we could begin to recharge,” David admitted. “But since I didn’t even believe it existed, I don’t have the co-ordinates.”

“Sending them over,” Seule told him with a grin. “Tell ‘em Seule sent you, that’ll get you a docking berth if nothing more.”

“David, the Graveyard!” Jenna suddenly interrupted, shouting and pointing at the screen in a moment of panic.

Graveyard Station was just over eight light seconds from where they’d rendezvoused – almost two and a half million kilometers. Emerging over the shadow of the stations massive, sensor-blocking bulk was the characteristic white flare of antimatter thrusters.

A familiar looking jump yacht came around the alien station, the same ovoid vessel that had picked up the shuttles from the failed boarding attempt in Chrysanthemum. This time, however, the other ship clearly wasn’t planning on running. As soon as the bounty hunter ship was clear of her cover, she opened fire.

Whatever the ship had originally been built as, she’d clearly been heavily upgraded since. No less than twelve missiles shot forward from the front of the ‘yacht,’ already carrying a significant velocity before more antimatter thrusters flickered into existence.

These weren’t the normal, dirt-cheap, fusion thruster rockets of an ordinary pirate. The missiles blazing towards the
Blue Jay
were the missiles the Martian Navy had used during David’s own service twenty years before – and would cross the eight light-second gap in under three minutes.

“Clear the RFLAMs,” he ordered Jenna. “Get us a course directly away from that asshole. Damien – the RFLAMs are
not
rated for military grade missiles. Can you do what you did to the boarding torps?”

Damien lifted his gaze to meet David’s through the camera, and the Captain was shocked to see that the youth’s eyes were bloodshot and exhausted, like he’d just finished an all-night bender.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, barely loud enough for David to hear. “I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

“Do what you can,” David told him. “You’ve already saved us all once today.”

The young man nodded slowly, and returned his hands to the silver miniature of the
Blue Jay
.

David returned his own gaze to the sensors showing the space around him. Acceleration was pressing him back into his chair now, as Jenna pointed his freighter away from the pursuing bounty hunter. The
Blue Jay
’s three gravities of emergency acceleration was
nothing
compared to the pursuing missiles.

“Entering laser range,” Jenna said grimly, her fingers dancing across her console as she opened fire. The ship’s computer superimposed the invisible laser beams on their screen, and a pair of missiles disappeared as she scored direct hits.