Starship's Mage: Episode 5 (3 page)

A massive banner hung over the way forward, two simple Latin words that Damien had learned in school:
Caveat Emptor
.

Buyer beware.

#

The Bazaar was a cacophony of sights, sounds, and smells. Every fourth or fifth stall was cooking food – and
every
stall keeper was shouting out their wares at Damien and David as they passed by. They were offered medications, guns, jewels, and mercenaries in the first five minutes.

The pair was halfway to the starship parts section David had spotted when Damien clearly made out one of the offers directed at him and nearly stopped on the spot in shock.

“Hey young man, want a girl? We got all kinds, all sizes – rent by the hour, or buy ‘em to keep! Guaranteed docile and well-behaved.”

Damien spun around at the voice and found himself staring at an older man in one of the roofed stalls. The area behind him had been set up as a pseudo-lounge, with red leather couches and thick carpeting. A trio of young women reclined on the divans, clad in flimsy negligees that barely managed to leave anything to the imagination. All three also wore dainty silver collars locked around their necks, each connected to a solid looking chain attached to the couch.

David’s hand locked, hard, on Damien’s shoulder and pulled him away even as the young Mage’s mouth opened to say something intemperate in response.

“Not here, not now,” the Captain hissed. His grip was hard enough to hurt as he yanked Damien along with him.

“But those girls are…”

“Slaves,” David said bluntly. “Kidnapped and forced into slavery, yes. Darkport is the center of the slave trade, and that trade
is
Falcone business. If we do what both of us would like to do, they will kill us.”

Looking around now, Damien spotted several groups of men and women with metal collars. Often, the entire group was linked together with small chains tied to the waist of the men or women around them. Elsewhere, single collared individuals were scattered around. Some had chains linked to the wrists or waists of their companions, others were on their own, their body language meek and defeated.

“What hell-hole
is
this place?” Damien demanded.

“Darkport,” his Captain said flatly. “The darkest underbelly the Protectorate has. I’m sorry you have to see this – I knew what it would be like, but I needed you with me as security. This place is not safe.”

The shock of the slave girls broke Damien’s distraction by the exotic and gaudy nature of the bazaar. Now he kept his gaze sharp, looking past even the obvious guards and weaponry for the even darker layer hidden underneath.

There were no children here. A marketplace like this, he would have expected to see them running everywhere – the children of the stall-keepers if no others – but no one would bring a child to this place. Alongside the medications being offered was a full suite of illegal drugs, from the mundane he’d heard of like Hyper-X, to something called Dreamy White he didn’t
want
to hear of.

As they approached the parts store, they came across the remnants of a firefight. It wasn’t clear who had started it, but three men lay on the ground. One was still whimpering in pain as they approached, until a single gunshot silenced him to allow the killers to loot the bodies uninterrupted.

Finally, after an eye-opening fifteen minutes through the twisting mess of the alleys and stalls, they arrived in a small open space in front of the junkyard they’d spotted. The pile of starship parts was easily eighty meters across and as many deep, and the owners had cleared a space around the only entrance.

A terrifying-looking black weapons turret sat beside that entrance, a massive man with milk-white skin watching the crowd with cold eyes.

“Whatcha business?” he asked as David and Damien approached.

“We’re looking for starship weapons,” David told the guard. “Willing to deal in trade or currency chips.”

The big pale man nodded and tapped something on a screen in his turret, invisible from the courtyard.

“Just Captain,” he said after moment. “Mage stays. Safety promise.” He patted the big black turret affectionately as he said the last.

“Stay here,” David told Damien. “Keep your head down, don’t go too far, and don’t cause trouble.” After a moment’s thought, he slipped Damien a handful of the black chips. “Your PC can tell you how much is on each,” he told the Mage. “If you see anything useful to you, check it out – just stay in sight of this gentleman,” he nodded towards the pale guard.

The guard drew himself up sharply at the gesture. “Will watch Mage, no trouble, promise!”

With this apparently agreed, David approached the gate next to the guard’s turret. The door swung open, and the Captain passed through.

Behind him, Damien exchanged glances with the guard, who gave him as reassuring a smile as the massive beast of a man was capable of.

“Anyplace decent for food near here?” the young Mage asked after glancing around the courtyard. After considering for a moment, the guard pointed at a specific stall, about thirty yards away and still easily in sight of the turret.

“Angie’s. Good steak!” he said enthusiastically.

Damien accepted the recommendation with a nod, and set off down the courtyard.

#

After an expensive but surprisingly good steak, Damien found himself wandering the edge of the courtyard, checking out the various stores. Few of them had any items of interest, until he reached what looked like an almost stereotypical ‘gypsy seer’ stall.

The owner had assembled a cloth ceiling to bring the stall into murky shadow, and then covered the furniture in brightly colored cloth that stood out even in the shadow. The inventory seemed haphazardly scattered about the tables, but Damien’s trained eye picked out the patterns that would show any missing item clearly.

Most of said inventory was crap, the usual pseudo-mystic forgeries and frauds inherited from the old ‘New Age’ movement, given new life by the discovery of real magic. At the back of the store, under a gentle white light mostly concealed from the main courtyard, was a single table of
other
items. The shopkeeper, wrapped in so many layers of gaudily colored fabrics their gender was unidentifiable, watched Damien carefully as the Mage reviewed the items.

Runic artifacts generally required a Mage to charge them, and none of these had been charged. To Damien, though, their runes were as clear as day. He traced the tiny remnants of power woven into the runes of a silver and green hand-made bracelet that would, if recently empowered by a Mage, actually stop bullets.

Next to that bracelet was another whose runes took more interpreting for him. After several moments, he realized that the runes on the jade arrowhead necklace were medical in nature – a field of magic he was extremely unfamiliar with – and, he was quite certain, would duplicate the effects of virility drugs.

“What do you seek, young Mage?” the store owner asked as he ran his fingers over the items. “You are trained and wise, what brings you to the shadowy corners of Erena’s store?”

“Spending time while the ship is docked,” Damien replied. It had the virtue of being both true and saying absolutely nothing.

“Ah yes, the new ship. The one here for safe haven from the bounty hunters,” Erena, said in a voice pitched so as to conceal the user’s accent and gender. “So, young Mage, do you seek to hide then? Or to flee?”

Damien looked up at the garishly clad storekeeper. “Nothing you have here is of any use to me,” he told them. That wasn’t
entirely
true – he was tempted by the shield bracelet, if only to make Kelly wear it – but there was nothing here he couldn’t easily make if he had the time and energy.

“Ah,” Erena said triumphantly. “So you seek
power
do you, little Mage?”

Something in the fake gypsy’s tone and voice caused Damien to narrow his eyes.

“What are you after?” he asked bluntly.

“I have… an item,” the shopkeeper said slowly, as if trying to draw out the anticipation. “A rune, to call it what it is. This rune was taken from the arm of one of the Mage-King’s Hands – and I have seen with mine own eyes the wonders and terrors that the Hands can invoke in His name!”

“And you think this rune is what allows that?”

“I know this to be true, young Mage,” Erena replied with a flash of bright teeth under the shawls. A box materialized from behind the shopkeeper’s desk, and Erena opened it carefully. A scanner demanded finger- and thumb-prints before the case finally opened, revealing its contents.

The strip of material inside was thirty centimeters long and ten wide. It took Damien a good ten seconds to realize it was actually tanned human skin – the skin of the man they’d taken the rune from.

Silver had been inlaid into the previous owner’s skin, a weave of power unlike anything Damien had ever seen in his entire life. Every other rune he had ever seen had been written in the Martian Runic Script, with its multitude of characters and connectors that
almost
met the true lines and flows of power only Damien saw.

This rune had never been written in a Runic Script. Where the Script had defined characters and connectors, this had been shaped as the power flowed – an
exact
match for the truth of magic, not the Script’s re-usable approximations.

Damien turned his gaze on the silver in the dead man’s flesh and
looked
at the power that had once flowed through it. The rune had been tied into the man’s own magic, reflecting and re-doubling it. It was everything the shopkeeper said it was.

And it was utterly useless to anyone.

His Sight, his ability to see the flow of magic, told him the truth – this rune had been
intimately
tied into the magic of the man who’d worn it. If Damien were to carve this rune into his own flesh, it would
kill
him.

“I have a man who can carve the rune for you,” Erena offered breathlessly. “He is careful, his hands steady. Think of it – immense power, and it is yours!”

“How many of those you’ve carved it upon have died?” Damien asked flatly, and the shopkeeper jerked back in surprise. “This rune was tied to the life and power of the man who wielded it – upon any other Mage; it would be a death sentence.”

“How do you… how did you?” Erena was thrown completely off, and then was silent for a long moment as both of them stared at the tanned skin before them. “Well, that explains that, doesn’t it?” the shopkeeper said finally. “Thought it was just bad luck.”

“This thing
is
bad luck,” Damien told Erena. “Just think what a Hand would do if they learned you had this.” He considered. “I’ll take it off your hands – before anyone comes back looking for revenge.”

The shopkeeper drew up to an impressive height. “I give nothing for free!”

Damien sighed, and quoted a figure. It was less than the shield bracelet had been labeled for, and Erena winced – only to wilt as he looked back at the human skin with its inlaid silver.

“Done. Take it and be gone.”

The box scanners re-keyed, Damien paid Erena and left. Under his arm was the last remnant of a man who had died for the Protectorate and part of him was grimly determined to see it returned home.

The rest of him wondered if he could do what Erena couldn’t – and somehow make use of the rune.

#

“Lord Azure.”

“Yes, Mister Wong,” Mikhail Azure replied. Floating in the middle of his private zero-gravity sanctum, he opened his eyes to look calmly at the Captain of his warship.

“I have completed my assessment,” Wong told him, standing just inside the door of the room, holding onto the edge of the door as he return his master’s gaze. “I have identified our destination.”

“Our destination is the
Blue Jay
,” Azure told him, his eyes sharp as he tried to read the other man’s inscrutable pose.

“Perhaps I should say the
Jay
’s destination,” Wong said, unfazed. “They made a point eight light year jump to an uninhabited star system.”

“Then prepare the ship for jump,” the crime lord instructed. “You do not need me for that, Mister Wong.”

The old Tracker remained standing in the door, silent, for a long moment before speaking again.

“You know, My Lord,” he said quietly, “that there are things from my old life that I am not permitted to speak to you of. Oaths I have sworn that are not superseded by my vows to you.”

Azure considered. He vaguely recalled that Wong, previously one of the most dangerous bounty hunters in the galaxy, had warned him of such things when he had entered Azure’s service. The man had delivered two decades of loyal and valuable work since, and the crime lord had mostly forgotten.

“You would not be reminding me of this without a point,” he said softly.

“I am privy, through the Hunters, to information that would be of immense value to your operations,” Wong said calmly. “Certain codes, certain ciphers, certain markers are known to me, and I have kept my eyes and ears open. My oaths to my brothers have kept me silent until now, but with the opportunity now before us I would betray my oaths to you if I kept silent.”