Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars (11 page)

Mage-Commodore Adrianna Cor watched the assault shuttle take off from Nouveaux Normandy with thinly veiled disgust. The evidence suggested that Vaughn’s people were incapable of even the most rudimentary track-covering - the Hand’s lapdog Montgomery had found the head of the Governor’s precious ‘Special Operations Directorate’ in under a day.

She had to admit - to herself, if not to her bridge crew, at least - that blowing the shuttle out of the sky was tempting. Unfortunately, there was no way she could justify a weapons malfunction
that
precise. Montgomery was going to deliver Brockson, wrapped in a neat bow, to the Hand.

Cor was not aware of anyone ever managing to keep secrets from a Hand. And since she suspected that Brockson knew of at least
some
of the deal between her and Vaughn that meant that she was going to be strung up right next to the Governor.

Her bridge crew was silent around her. Their gazes were locked on the shuttle as well - they all suspected what she had done, and they’d all been present when they’d decided to take the Governor’s money and blow away a city.

“I wish I knew what they were thinking,” she muttered aloud.

Her tactical officer cleared his throat hesitantly, and Cor leveled a steely glare on him.

“You have something, Trevor?” she asked calmly.

Lieutenant Trevor Hamilton nodded, looking somewhat abashed.

“I… figured we’d want to keep an eye on what the
Tides of Justice
was up to,” he admitted. “Since we have the squadron flagship codes, I, um, used them to hack into the internal security feeds. I don’t have access to Stealey or Montgomery, but I can give you the
Tides
‘ bridge feed.”

“Do it,” Cor ordered. “Feed it to my station.”

The mundanes on
her
crew, at least, knew their place. Hamilton was about as useful as a non-Mage could be, she reflected. If they made it through the next few days, she’d have to see about getting him bumped to Lieutenant-Commander.

A moment later, the image of the bridge of Alaura Stealey’s personal transport popped up on her screen, an audio feed linking in from the speakers in her chair.

“It’s about fifteen seconds delayed,” Trevor warned her. “I’m pulling it from their backups, not directly from the camera feed.”

Cor nodded absently, her attention now focused on the scene in front of her. She recognized Mage-Commander Harmon - he had a solid reputation, though he’d spent the last few years as Stealey’s pet.

“All right people,” Harmon was saying. “Right now, I’ve got a Hand about to meet with the Governor and an Envoy holding evidence of high treason on his way to meet them both.

“But we didn’t
come
here to arrest a corrupt Governor, folks. So, tell me, before we risk losing the thread, are our games worth it? Can you tell me what happened to Karlsberg?”

“The system is just running an analysis of everything we’ve pulled now,” another officer, a Mage-Lieutenant unknown to Cor, reported. “It should take another… that’s odd.”

“What?”

“It came back almost immediately,” the Mage-Lieutenant told him. “This doesn’t make sense, sir. The system recognized the impact pattern.”

Cor froze. That thought had never crossed her mind. Of
course
a Navy computer would recognize the impact pattern, even from less than complete data.

“The system is telling me it was a Talon Seven Orbital Impactor. But…”

“But what, Evan?”

“They pulled
our
orbital impactor rounds when we were seconded to Hand Stealey,” Evan said helplessly. “The Navy watches them like hawks. There’s no way rebels got their hands on them. Hell, even the ASDF couldn’t get them.”

The Mage-Lieutenant swallowed, squared his shoulders, and said the words Cor was dreading.

“Sir, the only people in the system with Talon Sevens are the Seventh Cruiser Squadron.”

The bridge of Cor’s flagship was deathly silent. Everyone around her knew what they’d done. They knew that what they’d just heard from the hacked video feed was their death.

Cor was not going to accept that.

“Ma’am, they’re activating their engines - and transmitting to the surface,” Trevor snapped. Suddenly, the fifteen second lag in the video they were watching was critical - possibly fatal.

Because Adrianna Cor had to make a decision - and had to make it without knowing what Harmon was telling the Hand.

“Battle Stations,” Harmon snapped. “Clear for emergency jump - get me a channel to Montgomery and Stealey.”

Before that channel opened, the screen cut to black.

“What happened?” Cor demanded.

“Battle Stations severed all non-critical external communications,” Trevor reported. “Ma’am, they’re clearing the planet and preparing to jump. What do we do?!”

Suddenly, everything was very, very, clear.

Adrianna Cor was not going to hang for fifty thousand mundane rebels.

Vaughn had to have a plan for the Hand - the woman was unlikely to live out the day, especially with Brockson under arrest. If the Governor wanted to live, Alaura Stealey and her people had to die.

All of that would be wasted if the
Tides
reported.

“Mage-Captain Ishtar,” Cor said calmly to the woman standing next to the simulacrum at the heart of the bridge - the heart of the ship. At the sound of the Commodore’s voice, Ishtar instinctively laid her runed palms on the tiny magically perfect model.

“Yes, Commodore?” the Captain of the
Unchained Glory
asked quietly.

“Destroy that ship.”

The cruiser shuddered as the Mage-Captain closed her eyes. A moment later, the sky lit with fire as magic reached across the empty void to the
Tides of Justice
.

With her crew focused on trying to jump away, the destroyer never had a chance.

#

While Adrianna Cor had been watching Damien’s shuttle leave Nouveaux Normandy, Alaura Stealey was wondering when Mage-Governor Vaughn was going to let her get to the point of the evening.

He’d insisted on a dinner meeting and then had his staff put on an incredibly impressive spread. They’d met in a small dining room, not one of the grandiose halls Government House possessed, but the room was still decorated in wood and velvet from Terra.

The meal had started with escargot - actually imported from France on Earth, of all things! - and progressed through several courses. If this was how Vaughn normally ate, she was surprised it had taken him this long to start to go fat.

Alaura was, despite her cybernetic stomach, hardly immune to good food. The quality and delight of the spread Vaughn had put on had put her in a good mood - but so had the sure knowledge that tonight she would finally get to arrest the bastard.

“I presume,” she finally said firmly as the servers carted away laid-out whiskey and disappeared from the room, “that you’ve heard about Montgomery’s arrest.”

“Yes,” Vaughn said slowly. “I must admit, Lady Stealey, I am somewhat disappointed. My understanding was that you would at least give me some heads up before you started arresting my citizens -
especially
my officers. I must register a protest over Envoy Montgomery’s high-handed…”

“Montgomery was entirely within his authority,” Stealey interrupted him flatly. “And even if he wasn’t, I fully support his actions. You forget your place, Mage-Governor Vaughn.”

“My place?” Vaughn demanded haughtily. “Do not forget whose planet you stand upon, My Lady Hand.”

“This world belongs to the people of Ardennes,” the Hand told him quietly. “And they long ago bent their knee to Mars. In exchange, I believe, for the enforcement of a uniform code of laws upon even the most mighty.

“You swore an oath, Governor, to honor those laws - and those laws charge the Mage-King of Mars to stand as the court of last resort and the voice of the silent. You answer to Desmond Michael Alexander - and he has sent His Hand and His Voice to Ardennes, Governor.”

“Do you have a point to this egotistical rant, My Lady?” Vaughn asked pointedly. “You have the authority to make arrests on Ardennes, I do not dispute that. I ask for the courtesy of fair warning as, last I checked, I still ruled this world.”

Alaura opened her mouth to change that simple fact, and her personal computer squawked an emergency signal. A moment after the raucous alarm silenced her words, Mage-Commander Harmon’s voice echoed through the dining room.

“Stealey, Montgomery,” he snapped. “Karlsberg was destroyed by a
Navy
weapon - Mage-Commodore Cor has betrayed us. I am maneuvering for emergency ju—”

Alaura closed her eyes in a moment of grief. She’d heard that sharp cutoff in a transmission before - enough times to know exactly what it was. Harmon was dead, and his ship with him.

If Vaughn’s face had betrayed any hint of whether or not Cor was working for him, it had passed while her eyes were closed. Nonetheless, the gaze she leveled on him was even and cold. The
best
case she could see for Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn was if Cor was threatening or blackmailing him.

“I think,” Vaughn told her, his voice soft and slow as he fiddled with a control under the dining table in front of him, “that whatever you meant to discuss tonight should be put aside in the face of this new information. My Defense Force is hardly capable of protecting us from an entire squadron of rogue cruisers!”

Alaura smiled thinly, her gaze still leveled on Vaughn.

“Wrong choice, Michael,” she said conversationally. “You could, I suppose, have thrown yourself on my mercy. Claimed the ‘big bad evil Commodore’ had threatened you, murdered your people to keep you in line. I don’t think I’d have believed you, but it would have bought you time.”

Shoving her chair back and rising to her feet, Alaura looked down at the seated Governor. She knew there wasn’t much intimidating to her - many mistook her age and iron-gray hair as more grandmotherly than threatening - but there were times.

Vaughn shivered away from her.

“Michael Vaughn,” she said formally, “you are under arrest for High Treason against the Protectorate.

“Don’t worry, Cor will get hers, but I need to remove the
distraction
first.”

The Governor sighed and laid what he’d been fiddling with on the table. It was a diffuser - now spraying something into the air.

“I was afraid it would come to this,” he said conversationally. “Desmond’s Hands have always been ivory tower intellectuals, unable to see the realities of what needs to be done to build economies and keep the peace.

“I cannot - I
will
not let you destroy all I’ve built,” Vaughn told her fiercely. “I have struggled for decades. Sacrificed - and demanded sacrifices of my people. We’ve made something of Ardennes, and you would throw all that away on the words of a few malcontents who fail to understand the necessity of their sacrifice!”

“I arrived on this planet with enough evidence to arrest you, Vaughn,” Alaura told him bluntly. “Rigged elections. Murdered protestors. Now, we know that the entire terrorist campaign you asked for help with was staged - to bring us in to quell your enemies.

“You should have known better,” she warned him. “Now, I think it’s time we got going.”

“I don’t,” Vaughn replied. “You see, Hand Stealey, I expected this - or something like it. Most of the food you’ve been served contained components of a binary poison. One innocuous enough that even your cybernetics allowed you to ingest it. This is the other half,” he gestured at the diffuser, “and you’ve been breathing it for a good minute.”

She’d been feeling it for at least ten seconds, but she’d been so angry she hadn’t noticed it. Alaura’s fingers were slightly numb. Her chest was starting to ache and her throat was scratchy. The bastard had managed to poison her
despite
her advantages.

With a snarl, Alaura gathered power. She might die - Vaughn might succeed at that - but Ardennes would be free either way. Her hands flashed with fire, destroying her gloves, and then she lashed out at Vaughn.

Her fire hammered into a shield of force - one of the strongest she’d ever encountered. Fire splattered across the room, lighting the priceless drapes on fire.

“You may have the Mage-King’s gift, Hand,” Vaughn told her, finally rising to his feet, his face eerily shadowed by the flames and the darkness growing across Alaura’s vision. “But I am no weakling. Plus, the poison was chosen to rapidly degrade your access to your magic.

“I am sorry, My Lady Hand. But I will not see all I have built destroyed! Yours is but one more necessary sacrifice.”

Alaura struggled, raising energy for a strike that would destroy them both, but Vaughn beat her to it.

Silver fire flashed from the Governor’s fingertips, and the poison robbed Hand Alaura Stealey of the strength to defend herself.

#