Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (12 page)

“But if they were
given
the runes, and it wasn’t fully explained what they had…a lot makes more sense. On the other hand, if aliens gave the Eugenicists the ability to breed magic into humanity…why did they? What did they want?”

Damien was lost for a moment, remembering the strange ruins with their impossibly familiar magic.

“And if they were in contact with the Eugenicists over three hundred years ago, where did they
go
?”

“There’s another question too, my lord,” Romanov pointed out. Both of his seniors looked at him and the redheaded Marine shrugged. “These are all key questions—so why is someone willing to kill to stop them being asked?”

The first place Damien went once Doctor Mohammed finally released him from the hospital was back to the surface of Tau Ceti
f
and once again to the reassuringly solid mass of the Runic Transceiver Array.

This time, Mage-Captain Romanov had spoken to the facility in advance
and
sent a platoon of Marines ahead. In the absence of his proper Secret Service detachment—still on their way back from their leave—the Marines had assigned Romanov permanently to Damien, along with an entire company of troops “borrowed” from
Duke of Magnificence
with Captain Jakab’s blessings.

When Transceiver Elva Santiago met him this time, it was in an empty hallway whose exits were blocked by Royal Martian Marines. Nonetheless, the formally robed Mage seemed utterly unperturbed as she led the Hand to the transmission chamber.

“As last time, we have cleared the secondary receiving chamber, and we have a recorder running in case any side transmissions come in. The recording will be reviewed by Agent Corei and any record of your conversation removed from it before it is passed to us.”

“I apologize for the extra inconvenience,” Damien said quietly. “We have…reason to be paranoid.”

“The Guild exists to serve the Protectorate, Lord Montgomery,” she told him. “If we are told it is a matter of Protectorate Security, we believe you. The primary chamber is waiting for you.”

With a grateful nod to the woman, Damien walked into the shadowed sphere that would allow him to talk to his boss.

#

“Damien,” Desmond Michael Alexander’s voice rumbled into the chamber. “It’s good to hear from you. When the first reports came in after you got back, we were worried.”

“I’m fine and you can tell Kiera and Des that,” Damien replied. He got along well with the Mage-King’s two children, at least when Kiera Michelle Alexander wasn’t teenage-crushing on him and Desmond Michael Alexander the Fourth wasn’t teenage-hero-worshipping him.

Or, well, teenage-crushing on him as well. Eighteen-year-old Des was officially into breaking hearts of
both
genders. Life in Olympus Mons was always fascinating for Damien.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Damien continued. “I…presumed you’d want to talk to me as soon as I was able. We found something of a mess.”

“You only interrupted me reviewing the latest set of ‘suggestions’ and ‘advice’ from the Council of the Protectorate,” Alexander said dryly. “I may need to arrange for the Councilors to receive remedial training in ‘not giving orders to their sovereign.’ Some days, I have a lot of sympathy for Charles II attempting to compromise with a Parliament determined to strip him of his power.

“Of course, both Charles and his Parliament were assholes, a problem we are thankfully in shorter supply of on both sides, I think,” the Mage-King finished. “And speaking of orders. What happened on Andala, Damien? That trip was supposed to be a glorified working vacation! Tell me
everything
.”

Damien obeyed, detailing everything he remembered and everything Dragic and Romanov had reported. Electronic copies of everyone’s reports were aboard couriers headed for Sol that would arrive within a day or so, but even that day could make a huge difference sometimes.

“Damn,” his King said when Damien finished. “And you’re okay?” he demanded. “I’ll admit I’ve never tested whether a Rune Wright could stop an orbital bombardment before.”

“I’m still weak,” Damien admitted. “Even this is taking more energy than I’d like, but I’m recovering. I’m going to get to the bottom of this, sir.”

He paused, considering. If there was
anyone
in this galaxy he trusted, it was his King, but someone had, so far as he could tell, dropped
Martian Marines
on his head.

“Sir…did you know?” he asked. “That our runes were alien in origin? That our
magic
was alien in origin?”

The transceiver chamber was silent for a long moment.

“I can understand why you have to ask,” Alexander replied. “No, Damien. I didn’t know. And no, I’m
not
aware of a covert special ops team using our tech and our training to murder people who might find out.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Damien told his boss. He
had
wondered, but he hadn’t been that far gone into his paranoia. Yet.

“The first Mage-King, my grandfather,
might
have known,” the third Mage-King admitted. “But…he was dead before I was born. My father was a child of his second century, and both of them ruled for a hundred years. Remember that my grandfather was…a strong man, a
good
man—but also a man who was used as a stud stallion for seven years.

“He was broken in many ways, and my father was only born because the Protectorate
needed
an heir. I would not have put it past my namesake to have decided certain secrets should die with him.”

“And now someone seems determined to make sure that those secrets die with whoever else learns them,” Damien said with a sigh. “I’m meeting with the MIS forensics team that’s been going over Dragic’s samples shortly.”

“Damien…we both know your answers are likely here,” Alexander told him. “A third of the shipyards in the Protectorate that could have built that ship are in Sol. If
any
information about dealings with aliens by the Eugenicists was written down anywhere, it’s in the libraries of Olympus Mons.

“You’re wounded and you’ve been betrayed, my Hand. Come home.”

Damien smiled softly, touched by the concern.

“I will,” he promised. “But there are still questions to ask here. I’m not leaving this mess to someone else. Who would I trust?”

“I do have other Hands,” his liege reminded him.

“This is my…quest now,” the Hand replied. “People under my command died for this. I’ll find my answers. I promise not to get killed along the way.”

“I’ll make discreet inquiries here. Frankly, I agree that this should be kept close to our chests for now.”

“Not forever,” Damien insisted.

“No,” Alexander agreed immediately. “This secret has already killed too many. I wonder how many have died we don’t even know about. For now, though, I will keep this under wraps. Indeed, as much as possible, I believe we should keep this within the Hands for now.”

“I’ll be using other resources here,” Damien warned, “but that makes sense to me.
Duke
should be repaired within the week, and Amiri is already on her way here. Once I have my bodyguards and my ship back, I’ll return to Mars.

“Until then, I will poke around Tau Ceti and see what I can find.”

“Be careful, Damien Montgomery,” Desmond Alexander ordered his Hand. “We had enough problems before this. With Legatus running spies across half the galaxy and the Council pushing for more control, I
need
you. Don’t make me avenge you.”

“I have no intention of requiring revenge, only delivering it.”

Tau Ceti
f
was a wet, chilly world on the outer edge of the system’s Goldilocks zone. Debris and meteor strikes had prevented it from developing life much more complex than fungus before humanity arrived. Now a massive defensive constellation protected the planet from that bombardment, one large enough to be visible for about half the day and night from anywhere on the globe.

Early afternoon was station-rise in the capital of Asimov, and Damien took a moment standing outside the Martian Investigation Service’s Tau Ceti Headquarters to watch it.

Asimov was an impressive city. The designers and architects had apparently decided early on to try and offset
f
’s dreary skies and drizzle with a cacophony of strange designs and bright colors. If there was a gray skyscraper in the city, Damien couldn’t see it from the hill the MIS HQ stood on. He
could
see red, blue, green, orange and purple, plus a small handful of glittering glass edifices—common still on Earth but standing out like lost gems here.

While he’d spent more time on Tau Ceti than anywhere other than Mars or his home of Sherwood, Damien could still count the number of times he’d been able to stop and watch station-rise on one hand.

The MIS had built their headquarters, a steeply sloped jewel-toned pyramid of green glass and steel, on the top of one of Asimov’s highest hills, allowing him a clear view of the horizon as the first of the visible stations rose. At first, all you could see was lights, stars barely visible in the horizon during daylight.

Then the core station, the Tau Ceti
f
Impact Defense Platform, rose over the horizon. The two IDPs were among the largest manmade structures in existence, exceeded only by the Centurion Accelerator Ring the Legatans had built to produce antimatter without Mages. It was still a tiny shape in the sky, but unlike its newer and smaller supporting platforms, it was a visible
shape
, reflecting back Tau Ceti’s rays to the planet below.

“Sir?” Romanov asked questioningly. They’d dispensed with most of the
overt
security there, though the three armored cars that had delivered the Hand still had a full squad of Marines between them.

“We have a few minutes before we’re supposed to meet people, and I wanted to see station-rise,” Damien told him, gesturing toward the platform. “If we can build
those
, surely we can manage to get through a few hundred years of civilization without killing each other?”

“We mostly do,” the Marine said quietly. “It’s just you and I have jobs where we see every place our civilization
breaks
.”

“Depressing, that,” Damien murmured. “All right, Captain. Let’s go talk to the forensics people.”

#

The front lobby of the building was lit with a pale green wash, an inevitable result of the green tint to the glass outside. While there were dozens of ways the MIS could have reduced or eliminated the effect, they had instead chosen to
augment
it by choosing dark green couches for the waiting area and pale green marble for the reception desk.

“Lord Montgomery,” the cheerfully green-washed young woman behind the desk greeted him as he walked in. “Welcome to the Emerald City! Director M’Bogo is waiting for you; if you’ll take a seat, he’ll be down to meet you in a few moments.”

“Thank you,” Damien told her. He’d barely started toward the couches with his close-in detail in tow, however, before an elevator door swung open and a tall, white-haired man with pitch-black skin emerged and made a beeline for him.

“Hand Montgomery,” he greeted Damien, offering his hand. “I am Director Alex M’Bogo, head of the Martian Investigation Service in Tau Ceti.”

Damien shook M’Bogo’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Director,” he told the other man. “We Hands tend to swing through everywhere at the highest levels, but we do know who helps keep order behind us. I do apologize for the level of disruption this whole mess has created, though.”

“It’s been…difficult, I will confess,” M’Bogo said carefully. “It’s not often I lose an entire floor of my building and two of my top forensics teams behind a wall of Marines. We
do
serve the same master in the end, my lord Hand.”

“We do,” Damien agreed. “I apologize for the necessity, but this is being kept under wraps at some of the highest levels. Even the Marines being used are only those who’ve served with us before.”

M’Bogo sighed but nodded.

“Indeed. And we are willing to cooperate,” he replied. “But it is…difficult. Speaking of that, however, if Captain Romanov and Agent Corei wish to have one of their people join our surveillance supervisors, Miss Penny here”—he gestured at the young woman behind the desk—“can show them to the center.”

Damien gestured for his bodyguards to sort it out, but apparently, it had been discussed previously. One of the two Marines backing the Captain and the single Secret Service Agent Damien currently had left immediately joined the young woman at the desk.

As they disappeared into one elevator, M’Bogo led Damien and his remaining crowd into another elevator, one thankfully large enough for all five of them.

“We have two levels of forensics here at the Emerald City,” the Director told them, using the inevitable nickname without even blinking. “When we were asked to provide a secure area that would need to be completely locked down, we offered Sublevel Ten. It’s the lowest level of the building—actually below our high-security cells—and was most easily secured.”

Ten levels below ground or not, the elevator smoothly delivered them to the lowest level in barely more time than it took M’Bogo to explain the location. The doors opened onto a secondary lobby, clearly primarily a security checkpoint with badge scanners and sealed doors.

Two fire teams of Marines occupied the space. Two of the eight were in full exosuits, looming over everyone present, while the other six wore fatigues and slung submachine guns.

All promptly saluted as Damien and Romanov entered.

“This is where we leave you, Director,” Damien gently told M’Bogo.

“What? But this is…”

“Still not your need to know,” the Hand told him, keeping his voice calm. “We’ll give you your people back shortly, but they’ll be under a Royal Seal. This is a matter of Protectorate security for now, Director.”

The tall man sighed and nodded slowly.

“I apologize,” he said gruffly. “I’m not used to being mistrusted enough to be cut out of the loop in my own building.”

“It’s not a question of trust,” Damien told him. He wasn’t even entirely lying, though right now, he wasn’t sure he trusted
anyone
who hadn’t at least been shot at with him. “It’s a question of those highest levels of security. We all serve the people of the Protectorate, Director. Today, we serve them best by keeping this quiet.”

“I don’t know what can of worms you’ve dug up, my lord,” M’Bogo told him. “But I hope you get it under control. Good luck.”

#

Past the secure doors, Damien found the sublevel to be institutionally bland. He expected a forensics lab to be full of blinking lights and fascinating machines, but instead he found white corridors with numbered doors. Presumably, each door hid a laboratory of some kind with those fascinating machines, but without a guide, he felt more than a little lost.

Fortunately, they were met almost immediately by a stocky older woman with a bun of graying hair and a white coat.

“I am Dr. Millicent,” she said calmly. “You must be Hand Montgomery—which makes you the reason I’ve been living with guards for the last few days. It’s certainly…odd, though from the briefing Captain Romanov here gave me, I understand the necessity.”

“I don’t recall being told that the good Doctor’s people were being locked in here,” Damien said to Romanov, his voice carefully low.

“They are not,” the Mage-Captain replied. “We
have
had them assigned bodyguards until the conclusion of the project, however.”

“Ah.”

“It is not an impediment,” Millicent told him. “Just…odd. If you’ll come this way, please, we’ve prepared a briefing on what we’ve discovered.”

Damien followed the older woman as she led them to one of the many numbered doors. This one turned out to contain a relatively standard-looking conference room with a white-coated older man with the faded brown skin and slanted eyes of a Martian native.

“This is Dr. Rose, the other senior investigator here,” Millicent told them. “My team is pathology and biologicals; his is tech and materials. He has more useful things to say today than I do. Please, be seated.”

Damien grabbed one of the seats, as did Romanov. Agent Corei and the remaining Marine, however, took up flanking positions at the door. Just in case someone attacked the building, made it past the squad of Marines outside the building, all of MIS’s own defenses, and the
other
squad of Marines guarding this specific floor to attack them in this specific room, the Hand supposed.

“Since my report is the easiest, I’ll start,” Millicent told them. With a wave of a hand across a sensor, she turned on the screen at the front of the room and then tapped a command on the screen itself. A series of numbers and symbols promptly filled it.

“Inspector Dragic retrieved just over two hundred biological samples,” she noted, tapping one of the columns that Damien realized was a number sequence from one to two hundred and nine. “Some were unusable and others turned out to be from the same individuals.

“All told, we have biological samples from one hundred and two individuals. Genetic markers do not suggest any particular commonality of origin, ethnicity, age or sex. The largest grouping, sixteen individuals, were from Mars. All were physically healthy, consistent with being ground troopers of some kind.”

Millicent shrugged. “I ran every comparison I could think of,” she told Damien. “There are no commonalities to lead us anywhere or give us a better starting point for analysis. I ran all hundred and two sequences against the identification databases for the MIS Offender Registry, the Tau Ceti and Sol medical databases, and the Royal Military databases.

“There were no matches,” she concluded. “Various markers suggest at least six individuals were born in Tau Ceti, but none of their genetics are on file as having been born here. Most likely, the records were scrubbed.

“I apologize, my lord, but whoever these people were, their tracks were carefully covered. We can’t identify them.”

“I didn’t expect you to be able to,” Damien admitted. “According to the briefing I received, their gear was completely sanitized. I’d be surprised if they hadn’t made sure their people couldn’t be tracked.”

“As for their gear, I’ll speak to that,” Doctor Rose interjected. He tapped several commands on the screen, bringing up an image of a crashed assault shuttle.

“The samples we were brought were from the interior of this shuttle,” he noted. “Inspector Dragic also sent us some wreckage samples from one of the shuttles your people shot down when the Nineteenth Squadron sent their first courier home. We’ve analyzed both, plus the video footage and scan data provided, in detail.

“I’m sure no one is surprised that this is a Royal military craft,” he continued, tapping the image. “It’s a Model Twenty-Four-Forty-Five Assault Shuttle. They’re manufactured in three plants: one in orbit of Tau Ceti
e
, run by Tau Ceti Nova Industries, and two in Sol—on Mars and in Jupiter orbit, respectively.

“Without serial numbers or intact computer systems, we can’t verify the exact origin or manufacturing timeline of the spacecraft ourselves, but what we
could
confirm was the exact isotopic makeup of the materials used.”

Dr. Rose paused, as if expecting applause or some more positive reaction. When Damien simply waited for him to explain, he sighed.

“The isotopic makeup is unique to a given source of, say, titanium,” he explained. “While the processing removes many of the impurities, it is still often possible to trace even a manufactured metal to its origin.

“We reviewed the shuttle fragments and armor samples provided by Inspector Dragic. They had four different points of origin—but all four were extraction facilities here in Tau Ceti.”

“So, the shuttles were built here?” Damien asked.

“Almost certainly,” Rose confirmed. “The exosuit armor as well. The weapons retrieved were Martian Armaments gear, manufactured on Mars, but MA gear is scattered across the entire Protectorate in the hands of Royal and system government troops.”

“We have a lot more detail in our reports and analysis,” Millicent told Damien. “You can review it at your leisure, but those are the high points.” She paused. “Don’t let Rose fool you,” she noted. “What
his
team did was almost impossible.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Damien replied with a chuckle. “And thanks to you, Dr. Rose, I now know where to go next.”

“My Lord?” Romanov asked.