The Service of Mars Read online

  “We weren’t so lucky with the rest of the team. I never really expected it to work, but I underestimated how much trust the Royal Guard had.”

  She stared at him in growing horror.

  “You’re not Royal Guards.”

  “No,” he confirmed. “We were so damned lucky that my people were never expected to use magic when I wasn’t around. The information I had from Dr. Finley suggested that the Royal Guard armor would conceal our lack of magic from Alexander’s Sight, but with one Mage where we should have had thirty…”

  “You…killed thirty Guards.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed, his tone completely unbothered. “Mages always think they’re immortal and invulnerable. And then you poison them and they die like writhing insects.” He shrugged.

  “Unfortunately, we’ll need to keep you in Mage-cuffs for now,” he continued. “The good doctor strongly recommended against maintaining the dosages necessary to keep your gift out of commission.”

  “I can discharge her to the cell in about three hours, I think,” the doctor told him. “Until then, well, you’re spiking her heart rate something fierce.”

  “Von Sulzbach” grinned.

  “Somehow, I don’t think that’s because I’m pretty,” he said. “Though I know I was managing that when you thought I was a Guard.”

  He leaned in and touched the side of her face. Despite her best efforts, Roslyn was unable to flinch away.

  “Since it’s unlikely to matter, my name is Connor ad Aaron,” he told her. “And you, Mage-Lieutenant Roslyn Chambers, are now a prisoner of the Republic of Faith and Reason.”

  Unlike ad Aaron, the doctor never gave Roslyn a name. She spent three hours poking and prodding the Mage as various limbs woke up, leaving Roslyn with an unbelievably bad case of pins and needles.

  Eventually, Roslyn was able to shuffle across the room with her ankles manacled together, and the doctor called that good enough. The woman tapped a command on her wrist-comp.

  “Chambers can move under her own power. Can you get someone down here to move her?”

  Pause. Roslyn couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. It was quite possibly going to an implant in the woman’s head.

  “You know what my priority is. I could barely spare these hours.”

  Another unheard response and the doctor snorted.

  “Fine. Five minutes.”

  She turned back to Roslyn and carefully forced the young woman back onto the bed. The strength concealed in the blonde woman’s slender frame suggested more implants.

  Was everyone on this ship an Augment? Which damn ship was she on?

  Ad Aaron had implied he was a Mage, so it was possibly a traditional jump-ship. That raised the question of just what a Mage was doing working for what was clearly a Republic Intelligence Directorate operation.

  The doctor stood by the bed, watching Roslyn carefully until the door to the infirmary opened up and two men in plain black shipsuits stepped in. Both were armed, Roslyn noted as she was dragged to her feet by the doctor.

  Their weapons at least had under-barrel stunguns, weapons that would fire intelligent SmartDarts that would shock her unconscious with a calibrated electric jolt. They were probably more likely to use the SmartDarts than shoot her with real bullets.

  Probably.

  “You know the orders,” the doctor told them. “We’re to deliver her intact. None of your damn games.”

  “On a prisoner of war?” one of the soldiers asked in mock horror. “We’d never dream of it.”

  Each of the men grabbed one of Roslyn’s arms. Both of them were also quite blatantly examining her body through the gown she was wearing. She hadn’t registered the flimsiness of the garment until that moment, but she was suddenly very aware how thin the fabric was.

  “Now I can get back to the main damn problem,” the doctor said. She paused for a moment, then shrugged. “May as well show her,” she noted. “Bring her this way.”

  Roslyn was roughly hauled across the sickbay to a closed intensive-care chamber. The doctor opened an observation window that had been closed before, allowing Roslyn to look into the room and see its occupant.

  Jane Alexander looked old and frail, lying unconscious on the bed, wires and tubes stuck into her at random intervals.

  “You we can contain with Mage-cuffs,” the doctor told her. “Our orders on her are that she doesn’t wake up until she’s delivered into the hands of people far more aware of her abilities than I am. Keeping her alive is my main job now.”

  The Republican woman shook her head.

  “She’ll be fine,” she told Roslyn. “So long as you don’t cause trouble, I suspect.”

  “Come on, girl,” the soldier holding her right arm told her. “We’ve got a nice cold cell waiting for you.”

  “We can certainly help you get warm once you’re there,” the other soldier told her with a leer in his voice. “But like the doctor said, you’re gonna have to ask for it.”

  Roslyn was reasonably sure both men had been guarding her and Alexander’s quarters in Royal Guard armor for the last week—and if she could have gnawed her own arms off to escape their touch, she would have!

  22

  “My lord, we’re receiving an emergency communication request for you through the Link.”

  Moxi Waller rejoiced in the plain job title of “secretary,” a descriptor that did not begin to suggest the pay scale she worked at, the importance of her role, or the power wielded by the woman who managed the communications of the Lord Regent of Mars.

  “From Legatus?” Damien Montgomery asked. The young man behind the massive desk still felt dwarfed by both the room he’d inherited from the Mage-King of Mars and the role he’d been called to.

  “I don’t know anywhere else that we’ve got Links we’re willing to trust,” Waller pointed out to her boss. “I thought we weren’t willing to directly connect the Link to our communication network, though.”

  “We’re not, as a rule,” Damien said slowly. “If it’s urgent enough, though, a live channel might be worth it. What’s going on?”

  “They didn’t say, only that Admiral Tarpinian wanted a direct live channel to you.”

  Damien sighed.

  “You know Her Majesty’s schedule better than I do,” he told Waller. “Can we get her up here?”

  The Lord Regent of Mars ruled the Protectorate in the name of the Mage-Queen of Mars. If it was urgent enough that one of their Mage-Admirals wanted to risk hooking an only-partially-understood piece of stolen Legatan technology into the Martian com network, the Mage-Queen should be involved.

  “I think so,” Waller said slowly.

  “Get in touch with her team and get her up here, then,” Damien told her. He rose from behind his desk, not that rising added much to his height. The Lord Regent was only a hundred and fifty centimeters tall. He knew perfectly well he’d never dominate any room with his height.

  As Waller stepped out, Damien crossed to the window of the office. The room was above the breathable part of the terraformed atmosphere of Mars, looking out from the very peak of Olympus Mons over the city on the slopes of the mountain.

  “Computer,” he said aloud. “Get me a link to the coms team.”

  Damien’s hands were encased in thin black leather gloves to disguise the level of damage and scarring. An act of desperation prior to the Secession had melted the runes in his hands and forearms and left molten silver to burn its way through his nerves and tendons.

  Recovery was a slow process, and voice commands remained his main way of using computers.

  “Lord Regent, how can we assist you?” a tech answered his call breathlessly.

  “I need a stand-alone communications setup built in the next, oh, five minutes,” Damien told them. “I need a clean point-to-point connection to Deimos Research Station that doesn’t enter the main Olympus Mons network.

  “Can we do it?”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “We have
a few solo transceiver setups that we can link to a stand-alone console,” the tech replied. “It might take ten, my lord?”

  “I can live with ten. I need it set up in my office for the Mage-Queen and me.”

  “Of course, Lord Regent. May I?”

  “Thank you, Morales,” Damien told the man.

  The tech’s name had been on his uniform, but the Lord Regent acknowledging him by name clearly had an effect.

  Damien figured he’d get the console in five minutes.

  Mage-Admiral Hovo Tarpinian was a square-shouldered man only a few centimeters taller than Damien Montgomery himself. He was clearly of Japanese extraction, with dark skin and folded eyes.

  Tired eyes. Even if the request to speak via the Link without spending the time to have Damien physically travel to Deimos hadn’t told Damien something was wrong, Tarpinian’s eyes would have.

  “Mage-Admiral, you have myself and Her Majesty here,” Damien told the man.

  Her Majesty, Mage-Queen Kiera Michelle Alexander of Mars, was a seventeen-year-old redhead. She was seated directly to Damien’s right, the two of them facing the screen attached to the mobile console added to the office.

  Right now, she was silent. She’d learned to be very good at that, Damien reflected. She had an astonishing sense of when the Mage-Queen needed to speak and when the best thing the teenager could do was listen and learn.

  “That…is probably best,” Tarpinian said slowly. “We have a new crisis on our hands, my lord, Your Majesty. I am the bearer of…”

  He swallowed.

  “Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander is dead,” he said flatly.

  Damien was glad he was sitting down. He forced himself to focus on Kiera Alexander, turning to check in on her.

  “Kiera?” he asked softly.

  She made a later gesture, clearly forcing herself to remain composed.

  “How, Admiral?” Damien finally asked.

  “From what I now know, she was addressing Nueva Bolivia’s legislature when she began to feel weak and have some pain,” Tarpinian told them. “Her Royal Guard rushed her to her shuttle, but she was unconscious and suffering clear heart attack symptoms by the time they made it there.

  “According to Second Fleet’s sensor data, it appears that the shuttle crew rushed their checks to make sure that they got the Admiral back aboard Durendal in time for proper medical care.”

  The officer swallowed.

  “Something went wrong, and the shuttle came apart in the upper atmosphere,” he concluded. “When the courier was sent to inform me of this, the search for debris was ongoing, but they were certain there had been no survivors.”

  Damien swallowed hard.

  “Who else was with her?” he asked slowly.

  “Thirty members of the Royal Guard and her Flag Lieutenant, Roslyn Chambers,” Tarpinian told them. “I have a list of the dead that will be forwarded along with all of our sensor information.

  “We…” Tarpinian trailed off. “My Lord, it is now an open question who commands Second Fleet. Mage-Admiral Marangoz is senior, but he was technically senior to Mage-Admiral Alexander.”

  “I will review the files of the Mage-Admirals and send orders ASAP,” Damien promised, trying to find something he could do inside the mess they were facing.

  “This is a catastrophe,” Tarpinian admitted. “We have acquired some data on valid targets, but we have not located the Republic fallback facilities. Without Admiral Alexander…”

  “The Navy will continue,” Damien ground out. “Her Majesty and I have full faith in the Admirals of our fleets, Mage-Admiral Tarpinian. This war will not fail simply because one officer, however senior, however high in the line of succession, falls.”

  The Protectorate might be in trouble. They’d gone from a Mage-King with a line of succession three names long to a Mage-Queen with no successors.

  “Make sure all of the information you have is sent to Deimos Station for them to handle and send safely onward,” Damien ordered. “Her Majesty and I will confer with the High Command and pass on further orders.

  “For now, I trust our Admirals to act like adults and do their jobs,” he told Tarpinian. “I hope my faith in Mage-Admiral Marangoz is not misplaced.”

  “I do not believe he will fail you, my lord, Your Majesty,” the Admiral confirmed. “I will pass on everything I can. And…” The Admiral swallowed. “Your Majesty, may I offer my personal condolences for the loss of your aunt?”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Kiera said, her voice very soft. “That will be all.”

  The channel closed and the office was very quiet.

  “Damien?” Kiera continued, her voice still very soft.

  “Yes, my Queen?”

  “Why is my family cursed?”

  She was crying now, and he swallowed any answer as he simply wrapped his ward in the tightest hug he could manage.

  23

  Damien had spent months working alongside Jane Alexander after the Siege of Legatus, and her death was a shock. Once Kiera managed to get herself somewhat composed, he passed her a box of tissues and poked at the desk with his magic.

  “It’s here somewhere,” he muttered. “There!”

  A concealed drawer popped open. It wasn’t one he’d made much use of, but he’d discovered what Desmond the Third had hidden in it a while before, and it seemed appropriate. The bottle of whisky was older than Damien was—it was older than Jane Alexander had been.

  Carefully, using magic to support his hands, he put the bottle on the desk. Three tumblers floated over to join the bottle, and he regarded it all levelly.

  “Computer, link me to Chancellor Gregory. Maximum priority,” he ordered. The room’s systems chimed a confirmation and softly burbled as the call connected.

  “Gregory,” Chancellor Malcolm Gregory, the man who ran many of the day-to-day functions of the Protectorate government, answered.

  “Malcolm, I need you in my office now,” Damien told the Chancellor. “We need to take stock of the situation.”

  “Situation?” Gregory asked in the same clipped tones, leaving the Lord Regent to wonder what he’d interrupted.

  “Jane’s dead,” Damien said flatly.

  The call was silent for several seconds.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Kiera was still sniffling into tissues, and Damien pulled one to his own eyes with a gesture and a spark of power. He was only vaguely conscious of using magic to open the bottle and pour three generous glasses of the ancient whisky.

  The first thing he gave the young woman, though, was a glass of water from the sideboard. It floated across the room and landed in front of the Mage-Queen with a soft thud.

  “Drink, Kiera,” he instructed. “Malcolm’s on his way.”

  She gulped down the water, pausing to swallow a harsh sob.

  He took a large swallow of the scotch and shook his head.

  “I don’t think your family is cursed,” he told her. “I think they’ve just made too many enemies, and all of them are coming out of the shadows right now.”

  The door chimed and Gregory entered a moment later. The Chancellor of the Protectorate was a large man in every sense, with a perpetually befuddled grin that helped people underestimate his deadly-sharp intellect and will.

  Damien gestured, and glasses of century-old scotch whisky floated out to the others.

  “To Jane Alexander,” he toasted. “A friend, a princess, a warrior. She died as she lived: in the service of Mars and all humanity.”

  “Jane,” Gregory replied, taking a swallow of the whisky. “What is this?” he asked after a moment.

  “The Second Special Royal Reserve,” Damien replied. “Laid down in barrels the day Desmond the Third was born, bottled when he was crowned. There are…maybe fifteen bottles left, including this one?”

  “I forgot that existed. I guess there was one for Des, too, wasn’t there?” Gregory asked.

  “The Third Reserve was bottled on Kiera’s coronation, but
was still only in barrels for twenty years,” the Lord Regent agreed. “What a goddamn mess this all is.”

  “Des” had been Desmond Michael Alexander the Fourth, Kiera’s older brother and the heir apparent until he’d died with his father. They’d been killed when an assassin had rigged their shuttle to explode.

  “I don’t trust shuttle accidents, for obvious reasons,” Damien continued. “Especially not shuttle accidents in Republican space when leaving an occupied world.”

  “What happened?” Gregory demanded.

  “You’ll get a copy of the reports Tarpinian forwarded,” Damien said. “But basically, Jane had a heart attack after speaking to the Asamblea Legislativa on Sucre. Her Royal Guard contingent rushed her to the shuttle, which did an emergency launch and apparently came apart in the upper atmosphere.”

  The office was silent. Kiera stood up, holding the whisky tumbler in one hand as she crossed to the window and looked out over the side of the mountain. The tissue box rose into the air behind her, following her across the room like a flying puppy.

  “I am so fucking sick of people killing my family,” she finally said, taking a solid swallow of the whisky. She coughed harshly. “I’m guessing we’ll have another empty tomb in the Black Mausoleum?”

  The Black Mausoleum was a set of stone tombs built at the base of the Fields of Sorrow. The Mage-Kings of Mars and their family and closest retainers were buried next to the thousands of victims of Project Olympus.

  “Most likely,” Damien said. “If the shuttle broke up the way Tarpinian describes it, there won’t be much left for even the accident analysis.”

  He held up a hand to forestall any questions.

  “We’ll send the best we’ve got,” he told them. “The people who put together your father’s assassination will be on a ship as soon as we can call them up. But…in Nueva Bolivia, launching from Sucre?

  “I think we’re safe to assume that Jane Alexander was murdered by the Republic,” Damien said grimly. “We’ll need to sit down with High Command and decide who should inherit command of Second Fleet, but that just brings us back to one key point: