It was well past midnight local time when Damien returned to the airbase. He glanced around the hangar, realizing quickly that none of the other gunships had returned. The cavern was echoingly empty, with only him and Sierra - Alissa Leclair - standing in it.
“Where is everyone?” he asked aloud.
“I haven’t heard anything about major losses,” Leclair told him. “I think we’re just the first back - they may still need to shake pursuit. I need a drink,” she finished bluntly.
“Go ahead,” he told her, gesturing towards the barracks with its tiny bar. “I’ll wait until I hear more.”
The Legatan woman regarded him levelly.
“Your loss,” she finally sniffed, before wandering off deeper into the underground base.
Damien, shrugging, took a seat on one of the munitions crates to keep an eye on the big shielded doors sheltering them from the outside world.
He needed time to process what Alexander had dropped on him. He’d known relatively early on that he was being considered as a candidate for Hand - he’d caused and wandered into enough crazy shit before Alaura had brought him in for the Mage-King to have a good idea how he ticked.
The plan had been for him to spend a year shadowing Alaura, providing a level of magical support even the Hands couldn’t back. The Mage-Kings had long ago learned several things about the Runes of Power inlaid into the Hands: first and foremost, that they needed to be uniquely tailored to the magic of the individual they were carved on.
Only a Rune Wright could read the layers and complexities of an individual’s magic closely enough to create a Rune of Power for them. Even they had difficulties reading
another
Mage’s magic, so the Mage-Kings had restricted themselves to only marking a single Rune on their Hands.
Reading their
own
magic, however, was a different matter entirely. Damien hadn’t pushed too hard against the limits Alexander told him were true, but he understood that the current Mage-King’s father had injured himself quite badly trying to add too many Runes of Power. Alexander the Third had settled on five.
Damien, the only non-Royal Rune Wright in the galaxy, had followed his example. Those five Runes had taken his at-best mediocre power levels and elevated him to a level with, effectively,
no
equals bar the other Rune Wrights.
So he had been sent to provide the unexpected ‘muscle’ that a Hand like Alaura Stealey might have needed. The plan had been a year-long apprenticeship, watching Alexander’s best Hand operate - and now Alaura was dead and he had been raised to Hand within
weeks
.
It felt like the entire planet was resting on his shoulders, and he didn’t see an answer - the Navy could deal with Cor, but if they had to take Nouveau Versailles from space tens of thousands would die.
He didn’t
miss
Lori Armstrong entering the hangar and approaching him, but he was paying little enough attention that it was still a surprise when she spoke.
“They had to go to Plan B,” the head of the Freedom Wing told him. “Cor dropped Marines - Amiri got the Bastille defenses back online, but that just gave them a headache.”
“Damn,” Damien whispered. He shook his head. “It’s a legitimate response,” he continued quietly. “She’ll have sent the Marines she thought would stay loyal to Mars - the ones who might have helped us stop her.”
Lori swallowed visibly. “The bitch would, wouldn’t she?” she said fiercely. “Dammit, My Lord Envoy, this has to
end
!”
“Amiri and your people got out?” he asked.
“Everyone’s out,” she confirmed. “Several wounded, but they stole transport trucks, blew smoke, and triggered the Bastille’s jammers. There’s no way they were tracked, even from orbit. It’s just taking them longer to get home - everyone is fine.”
“I’m glad to hear,” Damien replied. “No offense, Miss Armstrong, but your planet is killing a lot of good people these days.”
“
Vaughn
is killing a lot of good people,” she objected. “I don’t think the planet has a grudge against anyone.”
“Fair,” he allowed, glancing back at the overhead doors.
“Did you reach the Mage-King?” Armstrong asked after a minute or so of silence.
“I did,” Damien confirmed. “I’m… still processing a lot of what he said. But,” he shrugged and glanced back to the rebel leader. “How long it would it take to organize a meeting of all of your leaders?” he asked.
Lori considered, glancing at the time on her wrist computer.
“I could probably pull something together by morning,” she told him. “Why?”
“I have good news and bad news,” Damien replied. “And I’m going to need your help - the entire Wing’s help.”
“You’ve… done everything we asked,” she told him after a moment’s hesitation. “I can organize it, but I fear what you may need from us. And… I don’t know if I can promise the full Wing will listen. Many of the cell leaders hate Mars as much as Vaughn.”
“We have failed you,” Damien acknowledged. “And now we ask you to help save yourselves from our failure - it is natural. But I promise you, Lori, we will make it work. Vaughn
will
pay for his crimes.”
Anything Lori might have said in response was lost in the cacophony as the overhead doors finally slid open, allowing the gunships to land, one by one.
Damien was on his feet by the time Amiri exited Brute’s helicopter, and he noticed that Riordan had appeared from nowhere when the doors opened. Some instinct held him in place as the rebel stepped forward, approaching the ex-bounty hunter special agent.
Amiri looked shocked as Riordan wrapped her in a tight embrace, and Damien smiled to himself as her stiffness faded before the Ardennes’ native had finished hugging her. From where he stood, it was very clear that
she
initiated the kiss that followed, and he turned his gaze back to Armstrong.
“The prisoners?” he asked.
He had to repeat himself before Armstrong shook herself free of a shocked stare at Amiri and Riordan and turned back to him.
“Most of our fighters and the prisoners are traveling by ground,” she told him. “They split into small groups and scattered. We’ll have the pilots to their bases by end of day tomorrow - then the Wing will be fully restored to all of what resources we have.”
“We’ll talk in the morning,” the Hand told her quietly, glancing back at Amiri. It didn’t look like he was talking to his Agent until morning either. “I think we all need to get some rest.”
#
“My Marines have finished securing your prison, Governor,” Cor told Vaughn over the video link. “Our losses were heavy. It seems your little rebellion has now shed Martian blood.
“How the hell did they get access to the Bastille’s weapons, Vaughn?” she demanded. “I’ve seen the specifications for your prisons - they were designed by professional paranoids!”
“That was the point,” Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn told his ally calmly, massaging his temples as he glanced around the office tucked away in the underground command center. He was starting to miss the airy top floor office he’d kept in Government House.
“They were designed so that no-one could get in, and no-one could take control,” he continued. “And no, I’m not sure how the rebels took control of the weapons systems. I regret the deaths of your men, but it could have been worse.”
He met Cor’s eyes, and she nodded slowly. He knew damned well she’d used the attack as an excuse to purge the unreliable elements of her Marine detachments, and her comment about ‘Martian blood’ was more than poetic license. While it was unlikely any of the men who’d died re-taking the Bastille were Martian-born, the Mage-King didn’t take the deaths of those who swore allegiance to him lightly. It was another anvil he could hang around the Wing’s neck - and this one honestly!
“Have you found Captain Hiverner?” he asked. “He was in command of the prison, and should have a better idea than anyone else of just what happened.”
“No,” Cor said softly. “My men haven’t rescued or found the body of anyone by that name. If he’s missing…”
“
Tabernac
,” Vaughn swore. “I guess that explains how they got in.” He straightened and faced Cor. “Mage-Commodore, if one of my people committed treason, we will find the truth. The bastards who killed your Marines
will
be found and punished.”
Cor nodded, once.
“Let my people know if there is any assistance that the Royal Martian Navy can provide,” she told him briskly. “We will speak again soon.”
The image of the Martian squadron leader disappeared from the screen, which began retracting into the desk. Vaughn looked past it to where James Montoya leaned against the wall, listening in on the conversation without contributing.
“Hiverner is yours,” he said quietly.
“He is,” Montoya agreed. “And he requested prison duty after getting mixed up in one of our uglier suppression ops. He did well in the op, so I granted his request - it looks like I should have looked harder into why he wanted to be in something most would call ‘cleaner’.”
“Especially before we handed every fucking Freedom Wing prisoner we’d taken over to him,” Vaughn snapped. “Would you care to explain how
any
aspect of this is not a fucking unmitigated disaster?”
“No, because it’s an unmitigated disaster,” Montoya told him bluntly. “What’s
worse
, boss, is that you missed the real problem.”
Vaughn glared at his chief enforcer and closest friend.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he demanded.
Montoya walked forward from the wall, his PC linking into the screen and causing it to extend from the desk again. Once fully up, the screen lit up with a view of the Nouveau Versailles Central District, focused on a collection of Fire Department vehicles clustered around the burning wreck of an aircraft.
“While we were all focused on the Bastille,” Montoya said calmly, “a security patrol at the Runic Transceiver Array turned up dead. When ARTA control identified an aircraft leaving from near where they were found, they were ordered to return.
“The controller smelled a rat when the flight refused to turn around and ordered an intercept on his own authority,” the Scorpion General continued. “He was entirely correct - when two F-60 interceptors tried to force the helicopter down, it turned out to be one of the rebels’ damned gunships.”
He gestured at the wreckage on the screen. “This
was
one of the Nouveau Versailles’ Defense Squadron’s interceptors. The other broke off to gain distance after this plane was shot down, and the rebels demonstrated that their gunships have a level of stealth tech that should
not
be available to them.”
“You lost them,” Vaughn concluded.
“Exactly. What I have confirmed,” Montoya continued, “is that the gentleman whose name the appointment was booked in hasn’t left the tower he lives and works in for about six days.
He
definitely wasn’t in the ARTA.”
“Then who was?” the Governor demanded. “Everyone who enters the Array is recorded.”
“And those cameras were destroyed. Up to the point of their destruction, they recorded an empty chamber.” Montoya sighed. “Most likely, at least some of that footage was faked - we
know
the ARTA administration takes bribes to allow unrecorded transmissions. We allow it as a favor to the interstellars, and now it has bitten us in the ass.”
Vaughn looked at Montoya levelly, then back at the wreckage of one of his precious imported jet interceptors.
“What are you presuming, James?” he asked softly.
“The most likely person on the planet to make a secret call home is Montgomery, boss,” Montoya said flatly. “And if the Envoy has called home to Mars, we’re done, Michael. The Mage-King will know
everything
, and the next Hand he sends is going to show up with a fucking battle fleet.”
The General made a sharp gesture with his hand and the screen shut down again, facing his Governor squarely even as Vaughn sputtered in disbelief.
“You can justify everything we’ve done to yourself if you want, Michael,” Montoya continued sharply, “but Desmond Michael Alexander will
not
buy it. He’ll hang us for what we’ve done - and Cor alongside us.
“It’s time to think about backup plans. We’ve got enough loyal Mages - we can load enough money and bullion on a fast ship to live our lives out comfortably a long way from here - beyond even Alexander’s reach.”
Vaughn knew he was gaping at Montoya, his mouth opening and closing like a hungry goldfish. Finally, he swallowed and squared his shoulders.
“No, James,” he said calmly. “Ardennes is
my
planet,” he continued. “If Alexander wants to demand my head, he will have to take this world by force. Cor and the ASDF will fight, and I doubt the Mage-King will be inclined to create a precedent of the violent removal of an elected planetary Governor.”
His General - his
friend
- shook his head.