Starship's Mage: Episode 5 (9 page)

“Keep your eyes peeled, Mister Wong,” Azure ordered softly, his eyes on the scanners. “Rice is a tricky bastard, and I will tolerate no more surprises from him.”

Wong simply nodded and returned to his station, just behind the Simulacrum at the heart of the bridge.

Azure settled into his chair, watching the screens gathered around him and the bridge crew beyond them. They weren’t the finely oiled machine of the handful of Protectorate warship’s he’d seen the bridge of, but they were more than good enough for his purposes.

Sixty minutes passed while the
Azure Gauntlet
’s massive engines blazed, propelling her towards her prey at fifteen gravities. Without the gravity runes carved into the floor of every level of the ship, the crew would have been crushed to death long ago at these speeds.

“Sir, the
Blue Jay
just dropped a cargo container,” Hu reported from the sensor station. “I’m not detecting anything unusual about it, but its drifting free in space. Seems an odd time to be ejecting their garbage.”

“The
last
time the
Blue Jay
appeared to be disposing of their garbage, a starship hunting them
died
,” Wong observed dryly. “Monroe! Target that container with a heavy missile and blow it to hell.”

The brightly haired gunner didn’t respond aloud, but moments later a single missile blasted out from the
Gauntlet’s
forward tubes. It blasted forward at thirteen thousand gravities, closing in on the innocent-looking cargo container.

Four minutes later, with the Syndicate missile still forty seconds out, the cargo container gracefully came apart. With the
Azure Gauntlet
’s sensors focused on it, Azure was easily able to spot the pre-placed charges that blew out all six exterior panels.

Several seconds passed in silence as Azure found himself holding his breath to see what happened next. Then, with their missile still ten seconds out, the neat racking holding the contents together came apart as well.

The
Blue Jay
disappeared from their screens, hidden behind
hundreds
of threat icons.

“
What the fuck?!
” Azure exclaimed involuntarily.

“The container was full of missiles,” Hu answered after a long pause. “It looks like they suffered some attrition to the charges and initial launch, but we have three hundred and seventy eight fusion drives missiles inbound.”

Azure looked at the blinking red icons on his screens. The missiles were blazing back at the
Gauntlet
at five thousand gravities, nothing compared to their own missiles, but there were so
many
of them.

“Talk to me, Wong,” he ordered.

“Tempests of some variety,” his servant explained calmly. “They’re self-targeting and very smart. Compared to our own missiles, they’re slow, long-burning, and carry pitiful warheads.”

“And?”

“And we can stop maybe three-quarters of that salvo,” Wong admitted. “Our armor would probably take thirty or forty hits before it gave way. The remaining fifty or so nukes would gut us and end the Blue Star Syndicate in a blaze of nuclear fire.”

Azure glared at the missiles as they shot towards him.

“Surprises,” he said bitterly. “Do what you must, Mister Wong.”

His captain nodded sharply, and turned back to the
Gauntlet’s
bridge crew.

“Jourdaine!” Wong snapped. “Get us the
hell
out of here!”

#

“Damn.”

The mild curse word from David was among the worst Damien had ever heard the Captain swear, but it utterly failed to cover the disappointment at watching the pursuing cruiser disappear into a jump flash as the massive salvo of missiles bore down on it.

“Kelly, activate the self-destructs,” the Captain ordered after a long pause. “No point in leaving a traffic hazard around for the next poor bastard.”

A moment later, the screens surrounding Damien in the simulacrum chamber darkened automatically, as over three hundred one-hundred-megaton fusion warheads detonated simultaneously.

“Damien, get us out of here,” David ordered after the fireballs faded. “While they
probably
can’t jump right back, I’d rather not stick around and find out!”

The only reasons Damien
hadn’t
already jumped them away was David’s strict orders not to jump without waiting twelve hours from the last time. Once the Captain revoked that order, he settled his hands on the Simulacrum.

Energy flowed through him as he aligned the runes inlaid into his palms with the gaps and the models, and he relaxed into the warming sensation.

“Jumping,” he reported, and channeled the spell.

One indistinguishable moment later, and the freighter was somewhere else – and Damien’s migraine was back. At least he wasn’t bleeding like he’d been after pushing the first six jumps.

“We’ve bought ourselves at least some time,” David told Damien and the others over the intercom. “Everyone get some rest –
especially
you, Damien. In six hours, I need you to jump us again.

“Then, once we’ve got a bit more space between us and these assholes, I’m calling a staff meeting,” the Captain continued. “I’m starting to run out of clever ideas, so I’m planning on stealing all of yours.”

#

Alaura paced her office on the
Tides of Justice
impatiently. She’d configured the one bare wall to show her the view of the asteroid below, and it was a depressing sight.

Darkport had been hammered hard, and it turned out that their main hangars weren’t even working anymore. Brigadier Raphael’s transports had ended up having to blast their way into the station to deliver desperately needed oxygen resupply.

For all that the second thing the Brigadier’s men had done was arrest the entire ruling council of the station – all Falcone Dons, wanted for dozens of crimes across the Protectorate – they’d been greeted as rescuers and heroes. Julian Falcone, who had met the Marines when they boarded and pre-emptively surrendered himself, had not understated the situation.

Raphael’s men judged that they’d had less than twenty minutes to spare when they’d blasted new tunnels into the blocked off third of the station and set up field oxygen supplies. There had been fourteen hundred people in that part of the station, and every one of them owed their lives to the Protectorate.

The Protectorate was now in unquestioned control of the notorious station that had spawned a
lot
of black spots on recent history. The last twenty hours were easily described as ‘a good day’s work,’ but Alaura still had a problem.

They had
no
idea where either the
Blue Jay
or Mikhail Azure’s
Azure Gauntlet
had gone. Darkport wasn’t a place for requiring flight plans on good days, let alone while under attack by overwhelming force.

Now that Raphael’s men were in control of the station, he had a cyber-warfare team quietly tearing through the computers. Alaura’s hope was that they would find
some
clue that would permit to chase one of the two ships.

A pinging chime from her wrist personal computer interrupted her reverie, and she threw the call up on the wall-screen, superimposing it over the image of Darkport.

“Brigadier,” she greeted Raphael. “Do you have good news?”

“Not sure yet, ma’am,” the soldier, still wearing his combat exo-suit despite having declared the station secure four hours ago, told her. “I have someone who is insisting on speaking to the ‘leader of your tin cans out there’, and since she managed to sneak into my command post past half a platoon of
very
capable security types, I figured she might well be worth your time.”

Raphael gestured, and the camera rotated to show a woman dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit. For a moment, Alaura thought she was a small woman, and then realized that the soldiers flanking her were still in exo-suits. The intruder was easily six feet tall, with short-cropped black hair and dark eyes that were currently unreadable.

“I am Alaura Stealey, Hand of the Mage-King of Mars,” Alaura introduced herself calmly. “You’ve managed to impress my Brigadier. Who are you, and why do you wish to speak with me?”

“A Hand, huh?” the woman repeated in a soft voice. “That works. I am Julia Amiri. You haven’t heard of me.”

Alaura checked her files surreptitiously.

“You’re right,” she admitted.

“I’m a bounty hunter,” Amiri continued. “I worked with my brother, ran a ship – the
Last Angel
. We tried to stay on the right side of everybody, including the Protectorate.”

Alaura gestured for her to continue. She wasn’t sure where Amiri was going, but she could at least guess at part of it.

“My brother, idiot that he was, took the
Last Angel
out against Azure,” Amiri said flatly. “Mikhail Azure killed him – him and twenty-six other men and women who were the next thing to family to me.

“I want blood, Lady Stealey, and I think you can give it to me,” she finished bluntly.

“I’m not sure what you think I can do, Miss Amiri,” Alaura said carefully. “I intend to pursue Azure, yes, but I don’t see any reason to bring you with me.”

“You won’t find him without me,” the hunter replied. “I can give you Azure. I can even give you the ship he jumped out of here after, since I doubt you care nothing for the
Blue Jay
and its wonder Mage,” she continued with a cold smile.

“I’m a Tracker, Lady Hand,” Amiri told her. “Get me full sensor read-outs of their jumps, and I can tell you where they went.”

Alaura froze.

“That isn’t possible,” she objected. “No analysis has ever found a pattern to jump flares.”

“It’s not a pattern,” Amiri replied. “It’s… a feeling, an intuition. But I haven’t been wrong in ten years. And without me, you’ll never bring Azure to bay.”

The Hand looked the woman up and down frankly. Flanked by two hulking men clad in armor that would allow them to rip her apart with her bare hands, she was tense and on edge – but not afraid.

“Raphael,” Alaura said after a long moment, and the camera rotated back to the Brigadier.

“Yes, Lady Hand?”

“Send her to me.”

#

When Julia Amiri was escorted into Alaura’s office by Mage-Lieutenant Harmon, the size of the woman truly sank home. The young Mage-Lieutenant wasn’t a small man by any means, just over six feet and broad-shouldered.

The bounty hunter over-topped him by three inches, was just as broad-shouldered, and had a physique to put legendary Amazons to shame. Harmon looked overwhelmed – though not intimidated – by the woman he was escorting.

“Miss Amiri, Lady Hand,” he announced her before bowing out of the room.

Amiri glanced back after him, somewhat amused.

“He’s cute,” she observed. “Personal aide, huh?”

“Mage-Lieutenant Harmon is on track to command a Navy destroyer before he’s thirty,” Stealey told Amiri calmly. “His superiors judged that time in service to a Hand would broaden his horizons in a useful manner. He is also a powerful enough Mage that you are absolutely no physical threat to him. Still think he’s cute?”

The bounty hunter whistled silently, and glanced back at the closed door.

“Cuter,” she admitted, “though in a different sense than I meant before. My apologies, Lady Hand. I am… unaware of the protocol for dealing with a Hand.”

“The protocol is what I say it is,” Alaura told her. “So it’s irrelevant. You said you could track the
Blue Jay
and Azure’s ship. What do you need?”

“A three dimensional modeling tank and every sensor scan you pulled from Darkport’s computers of the jump,” Amiri said immediately. “Privacy to work would be appreciated as well. As you might imagine, it’s not a simple task.”

“I’m still only barely accepting it as possible,” Alaura told her dryly, considering the hunter’s request. “How are you at secrets?” she asked eventually.

“Depends on whose and how badly they need to be kept,” Amiri replied.

“The Protectorate’s, and the kind the crew of this ship doesn’t know about,” Alaura replied. “If you can do what you claim, I would be interested in employing you after this is complete – and I have tools that would be of value to you then and now.”

The statuesque bounty hunter eyed the Hand.

“Not much of one for interview processes, are you?” she asked. “Don’t know much about what Hands do. Hunt bad guys, keep the peace, right?”

“We are His Majesty’s voice, sword and hand beyond Sol,” Alaura agreed. “Interstellar criminals, wannabe warlords, pirates, and rebellions – these are our purview. Our Mandate is that of the Protectorate – to keep humanity safe.”