Interstellar Mage Read online

  RFLAM turrets were normal, if not usually in this quantity. His last ship, Blue Jay, had carried two. Defensive battle lasers and missile launchers loaded with fusion-drive missiles were uncommon, but licensed through normal procedures.

  Normally, a vessel like Red Falcon would have been stripped of her original guns. New, civilian-grade missile launchers would have been installed. Indeed, David had acquired all of the permits necessary to do such before the document on his screen had arrived.

  The content of the document was terrifying enough, but the plain signature at the bottom still almost refused to register.

  Captain David Rice of the merchant ship Red Falcon was authorized to keep the ship’s service weaponry under a personal writ from Mage-King Desmond Michael Alexander himself.

  The ship was a payment of debts owed. Royal Martian Navy warships had destroyed his Blue Jay after her Ship’s Mage had made some theoretically impossible and unquestionably illegal changes to the rune matrix that allowed the ship to jump.

  Red Falcon was a replacement, signed off on by the Hand of the Mage-King, one of Mars’s roving warrior-judges, who’d drafted said Ship’s Mage a year ago now. David didn’t know exactly what Damien Montgomery was up to now, but apparently it was enough to make the Mage-King think the debt extended to allowing David an armed merchant ship.

  He tapped a button on his wrist PC, linking to his ever-loyal executive officer.

  “Jenna, can you meet me in my office?” he asked softly.

  “We need to meet with Commodore Burns in just over an hour, boss,” Jenna Campbell replied. “Can it wait?”

  “No,” he decided after a moment. “Get up here, Jenna. You need to know what we’ve got into before we meet with Burns.”

  David’s long-time friend, comrade and subordinate was a broad-shouldered, noticeably overweight blonde woman of his own indeterminate “forties-ish” age. Jenna Campbell had been merchant ship crew her entire adult life, without his own stint in the Royal Martian Navy, working her way up from cargo handler to executive officer, as high as a non-Mage could go without owning the ship themselves.

  Currently, technically, she was no more an XO than David was a Captain—Red Falcon wasn’t yet an active ship, though ownership had been transferred. If they weren’t doing much to the weapons systems now, he’d have his ship soon enough.

  He wordlessly pointed her to the wallscreen where he’d thrown up the authorization form. Campbell took a few seconds to skim it.

  “Holy shit,” she exclaimed after a moment, then paused to consider. “That accelerates the fitting-out process significantly if we don’t have to rip out and replace the guns.”

  “And leaves us with almost three times as many launchers, turrets and beams as I was planning on having added to the girl,” he agreed. “I wonder if Burns knew this was coming. He was certainly dragging his feet on when they were going to get around to disarming her.”

  Red Falcon wasn’t the absolute last of her kind in the Royal Martian Navy, but the Martians had decided a while back that, since the limiter on strategic speed was how many Mages a ship had, they were better served by purchasing regular ships and stuffing them with Navy Mages than having custom ships.

  The Armed Auxiliary Fast Heavy Freighter program had been shut down, but the Navy had found themselves with twenty-odd ships that could accelerate alongside cruisers, fight alongside destroyers, and carry as much cargo as a large civilian ship.

  The cost of the AAFHF ships like Red Falcon had to be part of why they’d stopped building them, but David was surprised at how quickly they’d been phased out of service. It seemed to him that having dedicated ships that could carry Navy cargo and keep up with Navy task forces was worth keeping some around.

  But he didn’t run the Navy. Just his one no-longer-little ship.

  “What about the deposits on the weapons we had booked?” Jenna asked.

  He sighed.

  “I’m going to confirm with Burns before I do anything, and we’ll still be stocking up on fusion missiles regardless—the Navy launchers can fire both, and I think we can fit two of the kinetic-kill birds in where we’d have one AM weapon—but I’m pretty sure I’m out the deposits,” he admitted.

  Which was painful. While he wasn’t complaining about what the Protectorate was giving him in trade for Blue Jay, he was starting to feel the pinch on his cash reserves from sitting still for a year and hanging on to his best officers along the way.

  Falcon was also going to require over four times Jay’s crew, especially with the gunners he’d need if the Navy were leaving her full weapons systems intact.

  “It’s going to be an interesting few days,” he told Campbell. “Once we meet with Burns, I think tonight may be the last free time you have for a few days, XO.”

  “A few days, boss?” She laughed at him. “If we’re getting the keys, we need to hire four hundred hands, at least half of them with real Navy experience, ASAP. That bird is going to take tons of antimatter to operate, and she won’t be making us a dime sitting in dock.”

  “That she won’t,” he agreed. “I want to be in space fifteen days after they hand her over, Jenna. We’ve still got Kellers as chief engineer, but we’ll need new Mages, pilots… Once we’ve got the officers, I’ll leave the rest to you and them while I find us a cargo.”

  “Sure, take the easy job!”

  “If you’d rather switch,” David replied, “I’m sure I can find ex-Navy gunners in one of the Mage-King’s biggest Fleet bases more easily than I can find twenty million tons of cargo.”

  Commodore Rasputin Burns’s office was in the main command center for the Tau Ceti shipyards. The center was attached to the zero-gravity section of the main station, an armed and armored spike that stood sentinel over the heart of the yards.

  It was outside the sections of the station that spun to provide the closest thing to technological artificial gravity humanity’s technology could provide, but the Mages who had given humanity interstellar travel had also discovered a way to provide artificial gravity.

  David Rice didn’t pretend to understand how Mages did any of what they did, but there were certain sets of runes he’d learned to recognize: the jump runes that allowed starships to travel between worlds, and the gravity runes that allowed him to walk safely.

  Few ships could afford the latter outside the Navy, mostly because they required weekly renewal by a Mage. Navy ships had more Mages aboard than did civilian ships, for multiple reasons, and hence could afford the time and energy.

  A shipboard facility like the command center was easier to justify, David supposed, though much of the center would still be zero-gee. Only the main thoroughfares and offices had magical gravity, but as a civilian he’d never see anything else.

  He and Campbell were met by Royal Martian Marines when they entered the station, a smiling pair of young men who cheerfully saw them through the plain corridors to where Commodore Burns was waiting for them.

  The sharp-featured and dark-haired Commodore greeted them with a broad smile as they stepped into his office.

  “Captain Rice, Miss Campbell. It’s a pleasure as always. Coffee? Tea?”

  “Coffee, please,” David told him.

  “Tea,” Campbell added.

  They took their indicated seats while the Commodore’s aide poured the drinks. Burns’s office was the same standard Naval administrator office David had seen in four different postings in three star systems during his service. The desk, the chair, the computer screens and filing cabinets were all identical to those offices, courtesy of the Mage-King’s military logistics pipeline.

  Burns, however, had decorated his walls with models of the current generations of destroyers and cruisers of the Royal Martian Navy, vessels that would have been built in these yards under his supervision.

  One of the models caught David’s eye. It was the almost unique tall mushroom of the AAFHFs like Red Falcon. A forward dome shielded the cargo and habitation spaces from radiation, and a
rotating ring was tucked under the shield to provide living quarters and work space for the crew. A long, narrow stem extended back from there, providing the base for an array of struts that cargo containers could link to, with a massive cylindrical pod at the end of the core to contain the engines and fuel tanks.

  “We built two of the AAFHFs after I got this office,” Burns said, seeing where David’s gaze had gone. “The last two ever built, so far as I know. Hulls twenty-four and twenty-five. Twenty-four entered service for a year before decommissioning.” He laughed, somewhat bitterly.

  “Hull twenty-five went straight from space trials to mothballs,” he admitted. “And that’s the one His Majesty is giving you, Captain Rice. Red Falcon.”

  “His Majesty’s generosity continues to amaze me,” David told him. “Even if the timeline hasn’t been what I’d hoped for.”

  “I understand,” the Commodore agreed. “Much of that was politics.” He waved his hand dismissively. “The politicians involved may have worn uniforms, but that doesn’t change the nature of the problem.

  “Red Falcon was fully worked up, with all of her weapons systems checked out, but she only ever made two jumps. We haven’t had a lot of time to go over her systems over the last eight months, and, frankly, some of the people who should have been making sure it happened weren’t comfortable handing that ship over to a civilian.”

  “I see their concerns,” David conceded, “but I understand that His Majesty has made his opinion very clear.”

  Burns smirked.

  “Hand Stealey told me what this was in payment of,” he told the merchant captain. “Mikhail Azure’s death seems enough to me, even if I get the feeling that the Lady Hand wasn’t telling me everything.”

  David managed to keep his smile. There were aspects of the situation that Hand Alaura Stealey, the Mage-King’s personal troubleshooter who had drafted his old Ship’s Mage, had told him were going to remain secret. Red Falcon was the payment for keeping their mouths shut.

  “I was also waiting on the writ that arrived from Sol this morning,” Burns noted. “I was honestly expecting it three months ago; that’s why I didn’t push any of my idiots.”

  “I see,” David admitted. “So, do I get my ship?”

  He felt a bit rude putting it so bluntly, but he’d been cooling his heels in Tau Ceti for almost an entire year. He was a spacer. He wanted stars under his feet again.

  “The last I’d heard, all of her systems were back online and everything should be working,” the Commodore replied. “I gave the orders to start fueling her up an hour ago, but filling the hydrogen and antimatter tanks on a ship of her scale from nothing to full takes a while.

  “We also need to load your hundred missiles,” he continued. “His Majesty made clear that those were coming from our stocks.”

  “His generosity continues to amaze,” David repeated.

  “I can tell there’s more going on than I was being told,” Burns said. “But I’m a military officer. I know when to shut up and soldier on, Captain. You’ll have Red Falcon in three days. Will you have crew for her?”

  “I have some personnel from my old ship, Jenna here and my old Chief Engineer,” he replied. “We’ll be recruiting once we have her in hand.”

  “Of course,” the Commodore agreed. He tapped his wrist PC and ejected a chip. “Certain…mutual friends told me to pass this on to you. It’s contact information for a Mage who is uniquely qualified for your needs.”

  David eyed the datachip warily.

  “How uniquely qualified are we talking?”

  “She was a Navy Mage-Commander until a few months ago,” Burns told her. “She’s good, Captain Rice, and if you can, I’d snap her up before someone else does.”

  “If she’s so good, why is she available?”

  Burns shrugged expressively.

  “Well, she was discharged for disobeying orders,” he said delicately. “Some people prefer not to hire those who have creative interpretations of the rules. Your reputation, however…”

  “Precedes me, I see,” David agreed with amusement of his own. “I’ll interview her, Commodore. Tell your ‘mutual friends’ I don’t promise more than that.”

  3

  The elevator pods that moved people from the zero-gravity, mostly motionless core of Armstrong Station to the spinning rings with their three quarters of a gravity, clearly labeled what direction gravity was going to be upon arrival.

  David had ridden hundreds, if not thousands, of similar pods over his life, and it was inevitable that someone in the vehicle didn’t pay enough attention. A burly gentleman in a simple suit, almost certainly a planetsider of some kind, missed the flashing arrows and came crashing down as the pod accelerated up to the speed of the rings.

  As was typical, the big man crashed down across a pair of teenage girls with the lanky builds of the spaceborn. They’d oriented themselves perfectly and had been lost in conversation with each other and several other people on their wrist-comps.

  The businessman was starting to splutter angrily at the two shocked kids he’d landed on when David and Campbell materialized. David Rice wasn’t a tall man, but he was heavily built with broad shoulders and an imposing physical presence.

  Campbell’s own bulk was less intimidating, but it also made her motherly enough that the two girls almost instinctively tucked in behind her as David politely offered his hand to the fallen businessman.

  “You should watch the signs,” he told the stranger. “Falling like that can hurt yourself and others.”

  He turned to the girls. “Are you two okay?”

  “Yeah,” the taller teen responded after visually checking over her more shocked friend. “Thanks, Captain.”

  The burly stranger took David’s hand and carefully came to his feet, swallowing his irritation and embarrassment, as it was clear no one around him was going to side with him over the girls.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he echoed the teenager finally, then inclined his head to the children still half-hiding behind Campbell. “My apologies, ladies. This is my first time in space and I didn’t know where to look.”

  The self-effacing humor was forced and stilted, but it was better than the tongue-lashing he’d clearly been planning on giving them. A token effort made, the stranger half-stalked away into the small crowd in the pod.

  David watched him for a moment to make sure the crisis was defused, and spotted another man who was standing on the edge of the crowd with a wry grin. He was a tall, dark-haired man with shoulders almost as broad as David’s and looked like he’d been about to wade into the mess himself.

  Despite his plain shipsuit, something about the man screamed soldier—but he simply gave David a respectful nod before disappearing into the crowd himself.

  “Black hole,” the outspoken teenager hissed after the departing businessman once the crowd had closed behind him. “Always some planetsucker without eyes.”

  “Always,” David agreed cheerfully. “You should keep your own eyes peeled for them.”

  The quiet girl giggled and poked her friend, who sighed and nodded.

  “Fair enough, Captain.” The two girls gave him grateful nods of their own. “Thanks again.”

  Leaving the pod, David and Campbell passed into the rapidly shifting crowds of Armstrong Station Ring One’s main concourse. The designers had put a massive public gallery next to the main arrival station for the transfer pods, and their successors had happily installed everything from a public water feature—a combination pool, fountain and quarter-million-liter water reserve for the station—to a shifting holographic mural—this week a hand-rendered scene of Paris on Earth—to dozens of restaurants, shops and market stalls.

  It was the retail heart of Ring One and constantly packed. Armstrong Security officers were scattered through the crowd in stand-out pale-blue uniforms. While David knew from the bitter experience of a misspent youth that the security guards carried stunguns, they kept them out of sight.

  He
re, at least, they were glorified mall cops.

  “Any chance to go shopping?” Campbell asked with a laugh.

  “We’ve been here for months,” he pointed out. “Anything you’ve needed, I’m sure you found by now.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been living out of a cheap short-term rental for those months,” she replied reasonably. “Now I know we’re going to have a home in a few days.”

  He chuckled.

  “The Navy built her,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t count on your quarters being big enough for much of anything. Their priority was cargo space, speed and guns—in that order, so far as I can tell. Comfortable quarters weren’t in there at all.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  David Rice, who had once been a junior petty officer in His Majesty’s Navy, just shook his head. His XO had no idea just what the Navy could cram into a berthing compartment.

  “You’ll learn,” he warned ominously. “The innocent always learn.”

  Before Campbell could respond, however, someone stepped up between them and put a hand on David’s shoulder. It was the big observer he’d seen on the pod, the man who’d registered as a soldier.

  “Captain Rice, you are in danger,” he murmured in a soft baritone. “There are three men following you. They’re good but not good enough.”

  “Who are you?” David snapped, though he was willing to extend enough trust not to look for their pursuers.

  “A friend,” the soldier murmured. “Also, a job applicant. My resume is buried somewhere in your stack for Chief of Security.”

  “So you’re stalking us?” Campbell said.

  “Nah, I just recognized you in the pod and then spotted your tails,” he told them. “Turn left here.”

  Here was a side corridor that led them past a curry restaurant and out of the main gallery. The soldier guided them away from the concourse into quieter corridors.