The Service of Mars Read online

  “So I am informed, yes,” South Isle confirmed. “While leaving the tracker in my bunker and the detonation codes unchanged. I believe, Admiral, that the RID was expecting me to surrender and attempted to prevent that.”

  “And now you are surrendering,” she told him. “The Protectorate’s terms are simple, Governor: Sucre and the rest of the Nueva Bolivia System will be occupied by Protectorate Guard forces. The planetary-defense installations will be demolished—carefully. All planetary and Republican military forces will be disarmed and processed by the Guard but not further imprisoned unless we have evidence of crimes.

  “Orbital and planetary industrial sites will be subject to regular inspection to prevent the production of munitions, and a Royal Martian Navy security force will remain in the system to prevent any clever ideas.

  “Otherwise, you will continue to govern yourselves as usual. Law enforcement will be expected to cooperate with the occupation garrison, but we will otherwise leave them to their work.”

  “I understand.” South Isle’s face was grim. “Is that it, Admiral?”

  “We will also require the surrender of every known Link installation in the system,” Alexander said. “Our purpose is to fully neutralize Nueva Bolivia as a threat, Governor, not to engage in reprisals.”

  “And when the war is over?” he asked softly.

  “The Republic of Faith and Reason is done,” she said harshly. “But when the war is over, we will require a plebiscite on the part of the people of Nueva Bolivia on whether they wish to remain as an independent world or rejoin the Protectorate of the Mage-Queen of Mars.”

  In Roslyn’s opinion, that was probably just a question of labels. Any of the “ex-Republic” worlds that chose to stay independent were inevitably going to join back up in a new structure. So long as that structure wasn’t engaged in the mass murder of Mages to build jump-ships, though, she figured her superiors would tolerate that.

  “I don’t have much of a choice,” the Governor admitted. “I would like to think that humanity is past the point where violence like this is the answer, but enough people have died to make your point.

  “We accept your terms, Mage-Admiral Alexander. The planetary defenses will stand down. Sucre surrenders.”

  15

  Roslyn stepped inside Alexander’s office in response to the unspoken command of the door sliding open. The red-armored Royal Guards flanking the door eyed her but didn’t challenge her as she entered.

  They at least recognized her, though she’d heard some complaints about the level of security they were imposing.

  The architect of that security was standing next to Alexander’s desk. Von Sulzbach had his helmet down and was in the loose parade rest that Roslyn understood to be basically sitting inside the armor.

  Kulkarni was sitting in front of the desk and gestured Roslyn to the empty seat.

  “We’ve had an expected wrinkle,” Alexander told the three of them once Roslyn was seated. “While Governor South Isle unquestionably has the authority to stand down the military forces of Nueva Bolivia, his legislature is dragging their feet.

  “He has suggested that I speak to them,” she continued. “A virtual presentation won’t make a sufficient show of force. While I don’t think the Governor is quite aware of the level of show of force I’m thinking of, my understanding is that he wants this all settled as fast as possible.”

  “Our analysis of the legislature’s politics suggests that they’re doing this as much to embarrass him as anything else,” Kulkarni warned. “Some of South Isle’s regular allies in the legislature are contributing.”

  “We need this to end and we need it to end now,” Alexander concluded. “I’ll be landing with one of First Corps’s combat regiments. Twenty-five hundred soldiers with full armor and air support. We’ll make for quite a damn parade down Main Street.”

  “I still think this sounds like a trap to me,” von Sulzbach interjected. “Even with an entire regiment around you, you are more vulnerable on the surface than aboard Durendal.”

  “Your job is to keep me safe while I do my job, Guard-Captain,” the Admiral said firmly. “However, it would be helpful, I think, to bring the entire Guard detachment down. Everyone knows your reputation and, well, what can they really throw at us that thirty Combat Mages can’t stop?”

  “Not much,” von Sulzbach admitted slowly. He sighed. “As you say, my job is to enable you doing yours. We’ll bring the detachment down. We’ll leave the Secret Service team aboard Durendal to keep your spaces secured.”

  “I’d say that’s unnecessary, but they’re probably not needed on the surface, either,” Kulkarni admitted. “You haven’t made yourself popular in the fleet, Guard-Captain.”

  “I don’t care,” the Guard admitted calmly. “My job is to protect Her Highness, not make friends. I am prepared to work with the RMN personnel, and certainly, I can’t get in the way of the Mage-Admiral’s work, but my priority is her safety.”

  “Oh, the crew get that,” Kulkarni told him. “That’s the only reason we haven’t had trouble. They understand and they’ll tolerate, but it’s bothering them. Something to think about, Guard-Captain.

  “We are all on the same side, after all.”

  “I know that, Mage-Captain,” von Sulzbach replied. “But I have to consider the chance that there is someone aboard Durendal who is only pretending to be on our side.”

  He glanced over at Alexander.

  “I’ll need to coordinate with whoever is in command of the regiment we’re taking down,” he told her. “Do we know who?”

  “Roslyn will have all that information shortly,” Alexander said with a gesture toward the young woman. “She’ll be accompanying me to act as my aide and general gofer on the surface. This needs to go smoothly, people.”

  “Of course,” von Sulzbach allowed.

  “Kulkarni, you’ll remain up here and act as my point of contact with Second Fleet if anything comes up,” Alexander continued. “We’ve agreed to do this tomorrow morning, which means we have twelve hours to set all of the wheels in motion.

  “We already have the Governor’s signature on one copy of their surrender. I want it validated by their legislature in twenty-four hours. The scout ships should be back in Legatus in the next few days, which means we should have a target for the fleet in a week or so.

  “I don’t want to be held up here with Nueva Bolivian politics at that point!”

  Roslyn had barely left Alexander’s office when she got a message from von Sulzbach asking to meet her in her office. She’d been heading there anyway, so she sent a confirmation, stopping at the kitchen station by Alexander’s space to grab coffee.

  Like all of the spaces around Alexander, the station was now being run by one of the small team of catering staff the Royal Guard had brought with them. The woman there was probably older than Roslyn, but she cheerfully handed over a tray with two cups and a carafe of coffee.

  “Let me take that,” von Sulzbach told her brightly, an armored hand slipping between hers to balance the tray. “The armor can handle the weight and balancing automatically; seems easier.”

  “Thank you,” Roslyn said. “You caught up, I see.”

  “Let’s chat in your office, still,” he said. “Security is important.”

  “All right.”

  Walking beside a suit of armor was still a bit odd and intimidating for her, even if the man inside the armor was attractive enough. Von Sulzbach kept his helmet retracted most of the time, though his Guards always kept them up. The commander was the only one of the Royal Guard whose face Roslyn had actually seen.

  Entering Roslyn’s office, he put the tray down and delicately poured two cups of coffee before taking one for himself. The ceramic mug was sized for spacers’ coffee appetites, but it was still dwarfed in his gauntlet.

  Nonetheless, he was clearly used to working within the limitations of the exosuit and took a solid gulp of the steaming beverage.

  “Do you have th
e contact info for the regiment we’re going down with yet?” he asked.

  “I’ve traded a couple of messages with Bunnag’s staff, but not yet,” she admitted. “I think the General is still picking the regiment. Someone might have kicked him into not sending one of the ones from Earth, and then he had to stop and think.”

  The Guard-Captain snorted.

  “I can understand that,” he admitted. “Sooner is better, of course. The advantage of the Guard is that they’re intact units, which means they’ve had parade-ground training already and can probably march down a boulevard without problems.

  “It doesn’t mean, though, that they’re practiced in VIP protection.”

  “As I understand it, most planets don’t use entire regiments for VIP duty,” Roslyn replied with a smile. She took a sip of her own coffee as she studied the dark-haired man across from her.

  “That’s true. I want to double-check with you, though. Do you know if the Admiral was planning on riding down with the Guard?”

  “We could, but unless we need to, it would be a pain,” she told him. “No one has told me anything, so I’m assuming we’re taking a separate shuttle down from Durendal.”

  “That’s relevant,” von Sulzbach said. “Can you get a confirmation on which shuttle we’ll be using?” He asked. “I’ll have one of my teams take possession of it at least six hours in advance and go over it with a fine-toothed comb.

  “After the Mage-King’s death, well.” His armored shoulders shrugged. “The Guard is taking no chances with shuttlecraft, even ones launching from the most powerful warships in the fleet.”

  “I’ll check with Durendal’s crew and get all of that sorted out for you,” Roslyn promised. “I’ll have an update for you in an hour or so?”

  “I appreciate it, Chambers,” the Guard said with a grin that sent a pleasant shiver down her spine. “The line of succession has grown too damned short. The Crown Princess shouldn’t be an Admiral on the front lines, but she already was, and we can’t shift up the entire command structure of the war just to protect her.”

  “I don’t think she’d let you,” Roslyn pointed out.

  Von Sulzbach chuckled.

  “No, she wouldn’t. And both Her Majesty and the Lord Regent would back her on that, I suspect. So, we work with the position we’re in, but that requires risk I don’t like. If she dies, Chambers, there is no heir to the Martian throne.

  “What happens then?”

  Roslyn shrugged.

  “I’m sure there’s some kind of plan,” she admitted.

  She’d spent enough time around Alexander to know that the older Mage had some kind of gift with magic she’d only seen once before—and that suggested part of the answer to her. Roslyn Chambers didn’t know what gifts and powers the family of the Mage-King of Mars possessed, but she knew that Damien Montgomery shared them.

  And if that didn’t put the Lord Regent of Mars next in the line of succession after her boss, she’d eat her uniform. If the Royal Guard didn’t know that, though, it was definitely not her place to say anything.

  “If there’s a plan, no one in the Royal Guard knows it,” von Sulzbach admitted. “Which is scary, isn’t it? We have to be ready for anything tomorrow. If something goes completely to shit, Chambers, you’ll be right next to Her Highness with myself and the close protection detail. We have to focus on Alexander.”

  “The Admiral can take care of herself, you know,” Roslyn said delicately. She suspected that Alexander could take on her entire thirty-Mage guard detail and wipe the floor with them. “So can I, even if not quite so competently. I am a trained Navy Mage, after all, Guard-Captain.”

  “Good,” he told her. “We’ll try and keep you safe as well, but if you can help, that won’t go amiss.”

  “Everyone around the Admiral will be Mages, Guard-Captain,” she said with a smile. “None of us are helpless.”

  “True,” he conceded. “It’s easy to forget that when you’re focused on protecting someone, though.”

  “Fair.”

  Roslyn shook her head and drank more coffee.

  “I’ll get you the contact and the shuttle info,” she promised. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Not right now,” he told her. “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m your contact for the Navy side,” Roslyn reminded him. “Whatever you need, Guard-Captain.”

  16

  By the time the assault shuttle carrying Roslyn, the Mage-Admiral, and the platoon of the Royal Guard touched down, the Guard force was already on the ground and spreading out from the shuttleport.

  The heavy lander was a looming presence on the edge of the field, four ten-meter-by-one-hundred-meter containers permanently attached to each other and the heavy-lift shuttle needed to move them into space.

  A dozen tanks were drawn up around the edge of the pad as Roslyn followed the Royal Guards onto Sucre’s surface, with a company of exosuited soldiers surrounding them.

  “Which unit did Bunnag deploy in the end?” Alexander murmured as she joined Roslyn in surveying their show of force.

  “The One Four Two Thirty-Two. First Regiment, Fourth Brigade, Second Division, Third Corps, Second Battle Group,” Roslyn recited. “One of the Tau Ceti units and the one with the best readiness metrics among the Guards with us.”

  “Makes sense,” the Admiral agreed. She moved forward in the middle of a moving wedge of red-exosuited Royal Guard. Tanks and exosuits moved in behind them, leaving only a single platoon of exosuited soldiers to watch the shuttle.

  “Transport is waiting at the edge of the pad,” von Sulzbach told them. “Open-topped, as requested.”

  His tone said everything about what he thought of using an open-topped vehicle on an occupied planet, but Roslyn agreed with Alexander.

  The point of today was to be seen. The Crown Princess of Mars would be seen on the other side of a moving wall of tanks and soldiers, but she would be seen.

  The density of Guard soldiers increased as they passed the landing craft. Presumably, the artillery and aircraft were still aboard the lander, but Roslyn stopped counting tanks and armored all-terrain vehicles at sixty.

  The vehicle von Sulzbach led them to was an open-topped all-terrain vehicle, a recon transport intended to carry half a squad of light infantry or a single fire team of exosuits.

  “You two mount up,” the Guard ordered. “The driver is ours, but we’ll accompany in our armor. We can keep up.”

  “We won’t be going particularly quickly, not with the parade I called for,” Alexander said. “It’s not my idea of fun, either, Guard-Captain. It’s just necessary.”

  “As you command, Admiral Your Highness,” von Sulzbach agreed.

  Roslyn stepped up into the vehicle first and offered her arm to her boss. Alexander snorted—but did not decline the help. She was closer to a hundred than ninety, after all. The Admiral was healthy enough that Roslyn was certain her concern was unwarranted, but she was going to offer it anyway.

  “Strap in, please,” a modulated female voice came from the suit of red armor in the driver’s position. The actual seat there had retracted into the floor of the vehicle, leaving enough space for an exosuit to settle in and link to the transport’s systems.

  Roslyn obeyed instantly. Alexander took a couple of grumpy moments longer, but the safety belts were secure enough.

  “We’re coordinating with Colonel Travere’s people,” the driver told them. “First units are moving out now.”

  At the edge of the impromptu vehicle park in front of the heavy lander, Roslyn watched the first tanks start rolling out. Presumably, there were already some vehicles and exosuits along the path they’d be taking, but most of the 142-32 would move as one.

  Twenty-five hundred soldiers, a thousand in exosuits, fifty tanks and a hundred armored personnel transports.

  Alexander definitely had her show of force—and it made one hell of a parade!

  The Nueva Bolivia Asamblea Legislativa held their deliber
ations in a specially built structure, a white marble dome containing an amphitheater designed to hold one thousand delegates.

  From Roslyn’s research, it currently held a little under half that number, but the planet’s founders had believed in future-proofing. There was an entire block of less decorative, if still gorgeous, office buildings next to the Asamblea to hold the working spaces of the Diputados and Senadores—and enough space was kept clear to allow for another full block of office buildings to be built while keeping most of the landscaped grounds.

  El Domo de la Asamblea was “merely” the place the Asamblea held their formal meetings, which meant it was where they would meet the Mage-Admiral demanding their surrender.

  While the Domo clearly had spots for security and armed guards, they were empty today as Alexander’s vehicle drove up to the entrance. A massive grand promenade in front of the Domo was paved in white concrete, clearly intended for parades similar to the one gathered on it.

  Alexander and Roslyn walked down an aisle of tanks and exosuits, the Protectorate troops deathly silent as the Royal Guards and their charges approached the Asamblea Domo.

  A single white-suited woman stood in front of the doors, holding a ceremonial staff. She tolerated the Royal Guard who stepped up to her with a scanner with decent grace before bowing slightly to Alexander.

  “Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander? I am Monica Peron, the President of la Cámara de Senadores de Nueva Bolivia,” she said in a fluid mix of English and Spanish. “It is my task to greet you and present you to the Asamblea Legislativa.”

  Peron studied the entourage that surrounded Alexander, then apparently decided to ignore Roslyn and the Royal Guards alike.

  “If you will follow me, please, Mage-Admiral.”

  “Of course, Señora Peron,” Alexander replied.

  Peron turned on her heel and knocked on the large marble doors with her eagle-headed staff. For a moment, that seemed purely ceremonial, and then the stone doors silently slid open, driven by concealed motors.