Mountain of Mars Read online

  Damien snorted.

  “We’re writing a Constitution to limit the powers of the monarchy, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving away the entire Mountain,” he agreed. “We’ll take those proposals back to Mars with us for Kiera and me to review with our staff in support.

  “That seems like a good excuse for us not to do anything substantive just yet, but we need to go over everything. Envoy? I need you to get me the current drafts of every proposal at every committee.”

  “I can do that, but…that’s a lot of paper to go through,” Velasquez told him.

  “An old friend is due back in Sol in the next couple of days,” Damien replied. “He was going to be bored without reading material.”

  Christoffsen might resign when he saw his opening project, but he’d also recognize that Damien needed him.

  “I’ll see what I can do, but if people are playing games, that may draw more ire than we’re expecting,” she warned.

  “We’ll deal with it,” Damien told her grimly. “You’ll return to Council with Combat Mages from Storm’s Marine contingent and a panic buzzer. It’s considered rude to fire boarding torpedoes into friendly space stations, but I’ll rank it below kidnapping our ambassador.

  “Am I clear?”

  “You are, my lord,” Velasquez replied, with a faintly stunned look he’d grown familiar with.

  “This is our fight, Envoy, but you are the scout on the front lines,” he warned her. “That makes you critical and vulnerable, but you have my and Her Majesty’s backing.”

  “One hundred percent,” Kiera agreed, backing him without hesitation. He hadn’t really worried about that.

  “I understand, my lord, Your Majesty,” Velasquez promised after a hard swallow. “What purpose is Her protectorate if we don’t protect people?”

  He smiled. It seemed that Martita Velasquez understood the driving principles of the Protectorate of Mars.

  “Romanov,” Damien greeted his bodyguard as the Royal Guard fell in around the Mage-Queen and her Regent.

  “My lord,” the Guard murmured through his red armor. “I’ve had my people and the Secret Service exterior detail making friends. The Marines here might be even twitchier than the Envoy. They don’t like the Lictors, and it sounds like there’s been some ugly arguments between Storm’s crew and the senior Lictors. Not Constable Lucas, she still has her head screwed on straight, but her subordinates are causing friction.”

  “And much as the Marines and the Navy play up their little feud, the Marines know their side in that kind of fight,” Damien whispered back.

  “Exactly, my lord. I’m not saying that Storm’s crew is one bad day from opening fire on Council Station…but I am saying that no one here is going to cry crocodile tears if you sent the Marines in to convince some uncooperative Councilors to write the Constitution your way.”

  “We can’t do that,” Kiera said softly from Damien’s other side. “That’s nearly the opposite of what we want to be doing here. Are we going to have a problem?”

  “I don’t think so,” the Guard replied. “No one’s going to go off without orders; they’re just hoping for those extremely unlikely orders more than is really appropriate.”

  Damien snorted.

  “I need you to coordinate with the Marine CO,” he told Romanov. “Envoy Velasquez needs a security detail. Our agreements say we don’t send armed personnel aboard the station, so I want at least two Combat Mages detached to her personal security.”

  That would be a third of the Combat Mages available to the Colonel in charge of Storm’s short battalion of Marines. As a Hand, Damien would have expected pushback.

  As Lord Regent, he suspected he’d only get prompt obedience.

  “They’re also to give her an emergency locator beacon to link into her wrist-comp,” he continued. “Panic buzzer. If she triggers, the Marines go get her, Council Station neutrality be damned.”

  Damien smiled thinly.

  “We’ll have those orders for the Colonel in writing before we leave.”

  “She’ll want them in writing,” Romanov agreed. “Especially the ones authorizing her to storm Council Station.”

  “Even in my worst-case scenarios, I don’t expect that to be needed,” Damien admitted. “But if it is, there can be no hesitation, no question of authority.”

  Romanov glanced over at Kiera.

  “You two are the final word,” he noted. “I’ll pass the word, but those written orders would be handy.”

  “She’ll get them.”

  19

  Masamune was settling into Mars orbit when Damien received a message from Moxi Waller. He opened it on his wrist-comp as the two of them boarded the shuttle back to Olympus Mons, surrounded by red-armored bodyguards.

  The largest item on it was his schedule for the next two days, broken out into half-hour segments. Even his meals were specified as to timing and who he was having them with.

  The Lord Regent of Mars did not have casual lunches as a rule. Damien hoped that would change in time, once they had everything running more smoothly, but he recognized that the transition period demanded that he meet a lot of people.

  The final piece of the message was probably the most important:

  Chief Sasithorn Wattana has requested to speak with you. Since her schedule is wide open due to house arrest, I believe I can squeeze her in immediately after you land. Should I include Her Majesty in this meeting?

  Damien glanced over at Kiera. Part of him did want to include her. She deserved to know about his suspicions and investigations into her father and brother’s deaths, but he wasn’t sure how well she’d take it.

  It was hard enough for him.

  On the other hand…

  He took his seat on the shuttle almost absently, the Guard stowing the bag he couldn’t easily carry himself anymore.

  “Kiera,” he called her attention to him. “We need to talk about something.”

  “We usually do, Damien,” she replied. “What did Moxi have to say?”

  “You’re not supposed to read other people’s mail over their shoulders,” he told her. “Or at least you shouldn’t admit it.”

  “I wouldn’t if it wasn’t your email, my Lord Regent,” Kiera said. There was humor to her tone, but also sadness and a sharp edge.

  And a point that Damien had to concede.

  “Touché.” He carefully tapped a command on one of the overlarge buttons.

  “Miz Waller, set up the appointment with Chief Wattana,” he dictated. “We will include Kiera in the meeting, I’ll brief her on what we’re guessing so far. Thank you. End recording, send.”

  The computer on his arm chirped confirmation at him, and he turned his attention back to Kiera as the shuttle’s thrusters gently pushed him back into his seat.

  The shuttle was a Marine Corps assault shuttle. It would have to be accelerating at a dozen gravities before it would do more than gently push him unless the cruiser’s Mages had failed to keep its magical gravity runes up to date.

  “What’s going on, Damien?” Kiera asked after glancing around the shuttle to make sure they were alone.

  There were Royal Guards in the room, but Damien trusted Denis Romanov explicitly and completely—which meant he also trusted the Guards Romanov selected to guard him and the other man’s opinion of the rest of the Guard.

  “Do you know Chief Wattana?” he asked.

  “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t recognize them, no,” Kiera admitted.

  “She’s the RMMC NCO who was in charge of maintaining your father’s shuttles,” Damien explained. “The inquiry has her under house arrest, since Vemulakonda seems to have decided we’re looking at either random chance or negligence.”

  “If someone’s lack of care killed—”

  “Peace, Kiera,” he cut her off. “Even the inquiry seems to be moving towards random chance. But we have the entirety of the maintenance staff who touched that shuttle in temporary house arrest—protective custody, really. />
  “But they also had their clearances revoked, so Wattana couldn’t access the scans and flight data we have of Desmond’s last flight.”

  “So? That seems right to me,” Kiera admitted.

  “And most people,” Damien agreed. “But I’m told by people I trust that Sasithorn Wattana is one of the, if not the, best shuttle techs in the Marine Corps and has worked on forensic crash analysis before.

  “And she knows that shuttle inside and out. She had every reason to try to prove it wasn’t her negligence, so I agree she shouldn’t have been part of the inquiry…but I still feel like we ignored an asset by not having her even look at the data.”

  “So, you gave it to her,” his Queen said levelly.

  “I gave it to her,” he confirmed. “Black on black, Kiera. Even Waller only knows that I told her to squeeze Wattana in if she asked for a meeting. Romanov”—he gestured toward the Marine with his chin— “is the only other person fully read in on what I’m doing here.”

  “We already have an investigation into my father’s death,” Kiera said, and her tone was cold and slow now. “Are you undermining that? Because I need those damn answers, Damien.”

  “You do,” he agreed. “So do I. But Kiera…I don’t believe in accidents that kill the Mage-King of Mars and his heir. It’s too neat.”

  “You think someone killed my family.”

  Her tone was still cold, but it wasn’t directed at him now.

  “Yes,” he told her. “I suspect we’re looking at the same group that manipulated us into conflict with the Keepers and then wiped out the Keepers…and there’s data to suggest that they were behind the BLF’s attack on Council Station.”

  “That’s a lot to hang on one asshole,” Kiera told him.

  “It is. I think we’re looking at a rogue Keeper, a man named Winton. He tried to recruit me to something on Tau Ceti. At the time, I thought it was the Keepers. In hindsight, I have to wonder.”

  “And he’s still breathing?”

  “He had a hostage, a young woman I’d pulled into matters at the time without realizing the danger.” Damien shrugged. “She’s a Lieutenant in the Navy now, so it worked out for her, but at the time, I owed her protection.

  “There’s another individual we encountered named either Kay or Nemesis. I believe the two are working together and I believe they acted against your father and brother. They wanted to put you on the throne because you are young and, I’m guessing, they believe you are weak.”

  “Or they wanted you on the throne,” Kiera suggested. “How many people knew what was in my father’s will?”

  “I don’t know,” Damien admitted. “But it can’t be many. Even Gregory didn’t know for sure.”

  “This all seems very vague and conspiracy theory-esque, Damien. I…” She sighed. “I almost want to think someone killed my family. Then I could have revenge, closure, some logic to the whole affair.

  “But it might have just been an accident, a fluke failure.”

  “It might have been,” he agreed. “And if both Wattana and Vemulakonda’s inquiry come back with that as the answer, I’ll even try to believe it.

  “But Wattana asked for a meeting, and I suspect that means she found something.”

  Kiera looked thoughtful for a few long seconds, then looked at him grimly.

  “I want in that meeting, Damien,” she told him.

  “Good. That’s why I was filling you in.”

  20

  Damien still wasn’t comfortable taking over Desmond’s office, but he was forcing himself to use it anyway. He and Kiera were waiting behind the big desk when an armored Royal Guard escorted Chief Wattana in.

  The door closed behind them and Romanov removed his helmet.

  “Chief Wattana, my lord, Your Majesty,” he said calmly as he took up a statue-like position near the door.

  Wattana looked back at him in confusion and Damien chuckled.

  “Guard-Lieutenant Romanov has been my bodyguard since he was a mere Mage-Lieutenant in the Royal Martian Marine Corps, Chief. There’s a reason he was the one who delivered the data to you. He is one of the half-dozen people I trust most in the Sol System.

  “Her Majesty, of course, has one of the closest and immediate interests in this as well. The four of us in this room are the only people who know I gave you that data.”

  Wattana sighed, taking a seat in the chair in front of the desk.

  “Okay. I, um…” She paused.

  “Take your time, Chief; I did ambush you with the Mage-Queen of Mars,” Damien told her.

  “Chief Wattana, if you’ve learned anything about why my father died, I need to know,” Kiera added. “Not just for Mars. For myself.”

  “Right.” Wattana nodded. “May I show you something? I presume you’ve all seen the footage of the flight?”

  “Kiera?” Damien asked, glancing at the Queen. He’d watched it, but he wasn’t sure if the young woman went in for that kind of self-flagellation.

  “I have,” she confirmed.

  “All right. My lord?”

  “Computer, give Chief Wattana access to the holodisplays,” Damien ordered aloud.

  A chirp on Wattana’s wrist-comp confirmed the temporary transfer. A moment later, a familiar set of scan data appeared in the middle of the room. The representation of the shuttle itself was a digital construct, but the data codes around it were from the scanners of the battleship Gauntlet of Honor.

  “This is starting about fifteen seconds before the explosion,” Wattana told them, her voice firming as she started what he suspected was a prepared presentation. “I’ll run it in real time first.”

  Damien had seen—and flown himself—a lot of surface-to-orbit transfer flights. Every change in aspect, every maneuver, was entirely familiar. The shuttle started the clip in ballistic flight, moving on inertia from its earlier maneuvers as it headed toward the research station.

  The flip-and-burn to shed velocity and rendezvous with the station was textbook. Even with an antimatter rocket to play with and magic reducing the impact of thrust on the passengers, the shuttle was still bound by the laws of physics.

  Everything was textbook…right up to the moment the shuttle exploded. Damien was intimately acquainted with the stark white explosion of matter-antimatter annihilation. The data froze and he checked in on Kiera.

  She might have seen it before, but that didn’t seem to have reduced the impact. It was a very clinical way to watch your family—and seventeen other people—die.

  “Is there something we should be looking for?” Damien asked as the recording reset. “It all looks, well, standard.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Wattana agreed. “Now I’m going to play from minus point five seconds at one-hundredth speed. Watch carefully.”

  This time, it started in the middle of the flip and burn. Everything continued to go perfectly normally except…

  “Wait, what was that vector change?” Damien asked.

  “What are you talking about?” Kiera demanded.

  “You were a pilot, right, my lord?” Wattana replied. “And you’re looking for something weird. And we’re going through it frame by frame, metaphorically. What did you see?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Something jarred the shuttle?”

  The scan data reset to a specific moment.

  “Jarred isn’t necessarily the word I’d use,” Wattana told him, then glanced at Kiera. “But yes. Point one one seconds before the explosions, we have this vector change.”

  The velocity lines around the image of the shuttle adjusted as the image played out.

  “It wouldn’t have been noticeable aboard the ship, not with the gravity runes. Plus, well, human reaction times aren’t actually fast enough to register that kind of bump in one hundred and seven milliseconds,” she continued.

  “The shuttle was accelerating and had a vector change,” Kiera said. “What’s the problem?”

  Wattana tapped a few commands and the model of the
shuttle expanded to a roughly meter-across image.

  “This a modified and upgraded Model Twenty-Four-Forty-Five Assault Shuttle. The model is mass-produced in Tau Ceti and Sol, primarily for the RMMC. Seventy-two Twenty-Four-Forty-Five-Zulu Shuttles have been built as speciality VIP transports, almost entirely limited to the Solar System.

  “Sixteen of the Zulus were purchased by the Mountain and underwent a second layer of upgrades and augmentations to bring them up to the standard required to act as Mars One. All sixteen, including the one His Majesty and His Highness were in, have been kept updated to a functionally identical standard.”

  Green arrows appeared all around the spacecraft.

  “With all of those upgrades, these are the vectors on which one of the Royal shuttles can accelerate.”

  There were a lot of them. The primary engines could be adjusted to fire at up to sixty degrees away from the center line, and there were two sets of maneuvering thrusters at the front of the ship.

  “And this is the line that vector change was along.”

  A red line cut through the diagram and it was suddenly very clear.

  “What are we looking at, Chief?” Kiera asked.

  “A sudden and unexpected velocity change like this is indicative of some kind of traumatic event. If the velocity change was higher, I’d be looking for debris or a weapon. At this level, I’m almost tempted to write it off as a data artifact.”

  “Except that this was the Mage-King’s shuttle a tenth of a second before it exploded,” Damien said dryly. “So, we’re looking at…”

  “Shaped-charge bomb. Not on the actual antimatter fuel tanks itself—there’s no way someone could have got a bomb powerful enough to penetrate that armor—but somewhere on the fuel lines. The shielding is still tough there, we need specialty tools to cut it, but you could potentially have sneaked something aboard to damage it.