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  “In all honesty, I’m worried about the Republic,” he continued. “We have a surprisingly complete lack of intelligence on the classes or numbers of the new Republic Interstellar Navy. Without knowing what our potential opponent has in terms of capabilities, I can’t predict how they’re going to jump.”

  “So we watch and wait,” Romanov replied.

  “Exactly.” Damien shook his head. “Hell, Denis, I don’t even know who the Governor of Kormar is right now.” He gestured to the camera with a half-frozen hand. “All I can do is wait for them to get back to me and hope they decide to be cooperative.”

  “There’s what, eighty million people on Kormar?” his bodyguard asked. “That’s a lot of reasons to be cooperative. I don’t care how big of an asshole the Governor is—they can’t get reelected if their constituents are dead.”

  The minimum round-trip time for a communication had already passed by the time Romanov had reached his conclusion, but Damien hadn’t expected an immediate response. It would be over a day before they reached the orbit of Kormar, so the locals had time.

  Time to go over his message and scans of his convoy with a fine-toothed comb. Time to panic, to argue and to decide what they were going to do.

  In the end, it took them over an hour to respond to his message. Their response was tightbeamed directly to Duke of Magnificence, where Jakab’s crew relayed it to the flag deck.

  “System, play the recording,” Damien ordered after it arrived. The repeater screens on the admiral’s seat simply didn’t have enough space for the expanded icons and control schemes he currently needed. The voice commands weren’t perfect, but they were enough.

  The image that appeared in the main holotank was of a petitely attractive blonde woman flanked on both sides by grim-looking men and women around a dark red conference table. The hologram picked up the interface touch screens and tablets scattered across the table, though an automatic filter on the transmitting end blocked their screens.

  “Hand Montgomery, I am Governor Rozalia Motta. I am the elected leader of the planet of Kormar under the authority of the Republic of Faith and Reason.”

  Motta let her words hang for several seconds before she gestured at the men and women with her.

  “These are my Cabinet, the men and women I rely on to help govern Kormar. Our greatest task in recent months has been to deal with the growing crisis overtaking our world.”

  She grimaced.

  “You offer hope, Hand Montgomery, but I know who you are. The First Hand does not lightly cross between stars, and I can not blindly accept whatever price you demand for this aid. My duty is to my people first.

  “So, tell me, Montgomery, what does the Mage-King demand for his help today?”

  The recording froze and Damien nodded.

  “System, record for transmission.”

  He focused his gaze on the camera and smiled sadly.

  “Governor Motta, the Republic may have left the Protectorate, but realize that I am not your enemy,” he said gently. “If you know who I am, you know my word is good. I know you have no reason to trust me today, but there is no price for this help. This is a purely humanitarian effort. We may have drawn a border between us, but we all remain human.

  “It would neither serve our purposes nor fulfill our ethical burden to allow your people to starve. We offer aid the only way my King or I see as right: as neighbors, with open hands.

  “I will not leave innocents to suffer while it is within my power to help.”

  Damien shook his head.

  “You do not need to trust me, Governor Motta. I must simply ask you: what kind of monster would dangle hope in front of your people and hold it hostage? And do you truly believe me to be that kind of monster?”

  He tapped the one command he could easily control, to end the recording, then sent it on. It would still be most of a day before they made it orbit. He had time to convince Motta to trust him.

  And, like he said, he didn’t need her to trust him. He just needed her to let him feed her people.

  The next message—just over an hour later—that Damien received was a recording from the same elegantly-decorated conference room. Unlike before, however, this time the Governor sat alone.

  Of course, it was entirely possible her Cabinet was just out of sight of the camera, and it was almost certain there were still bodyguards in the room, but the effort was being made to suggest she was speaking to him in confidence.

  Damien didn’t believe it for a second, but she was at least trying.

  “Hand Montgomery,” Motta greeted him. “Understand, first of all, that I do not—that I cannot—acknowledge your authority. Even to the extent of granting you the honorifics you would be given in the Protectorate. I am bound, as I’m sure you realize, by the policies and dictates of the Republic and the Lord Protector.”

  George Solace had handily transitioned his role as President of Legatus into Lord Protector of the newborn Republic. Damien wasn’t entirely certain just how much, say, voting had been involved in that transition.

  He was becoming a cynic at the grand old age of thirty-odd.

  “Regardless of my opinions of the Protectorate, however, well…I ordered planetwide rationing fifteen days ago. Even with the controls and restrictions, it is likely we will see serious shortfalls inside the next month. We are…at least six months from any kind of homegrown crop relief. And that, Hand Montgomery, is dependent on either a breakthrough in dealing with this bacterial infestation or pure luck in the success of quarantining the new fields we’re breaking now.”

  Damien winced. They were worse off than he’d thought. Even as he’d made sure to have a team of microbiologists and their equipment so that he could help deal with the bacteria, he’d still assumed that Kormar had solved the problem themselves.

  “We need the food your convoy is carrying. We need your help. But I cannot sacrifice the choices my people made in willingly joining the Republic. If you are truly here as neighbors, then you are welcome and I am grateful for your help.

  “But realize that I have no choice but to watch your every move with the greatest of caution. I will defend my people.”

  Governor Motta laid her hands on the table and faced the camera head on.

  “Until you give me reason to disbelieve your assurances, however, you and your convoy are cleared to enter Kormar orbit. We will have distribution center locations for you to begin delivery to by the time you’re here, and I will make certain we have a detailed breakdown of our available shuttlecraft as well.

  “Thank you.”

  The recording ended and Damien breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Make sure that’s passed on to Mage-Captain Jakab and the rest of the convoy,” he ordered. “Let’s get this done, people.”

  3

  Glory in Honest Purpose led the way into Kormar orbit, the silver spike of the Martian cruiser glowing bright white in the exhaust plume of the engines around her. Freighters followed her, establishing a neat globe formation as Duke of Magnificence took up the rear.

  The cruisers on either side of the freighter formation were probably where the gaze of every military professional in the system was focused. Damien’s focus, however, was on the shuttlecraft the freighters were already deploying.

  One hundred and fifty million tons of cargo meant fifteen thousand standard ten-thousand-ton cargo containers. Even the most capable heavy-lift shuttle couldn’t deliver more than four of those to the surface in a single pass.

  Across Damien’s entire convoy, he had roughly two hundred and fifty shuttles with a total capacity of five hundred containers. Each flight would take eight hours, which meant off-loading his convoy would take over a week.

  There was a cargo station in Kormar orbit, but even if Damien was prepared to attach any of his ships to the local space station, it wouldn’t get anything down to the surface any faster.

  “Any word from the locals on shuttles?” he asked Jakab as he joined the Mage-Captain on the b
ridge. With the ship securing from maneuvers, he didn’t need to worry as much about jostling the older man’s elbow.

  “Vague promises and unclear timelines,” his subordinate replied. “You wouldn’t think they were going to starve if we didn’t deliver this food.”

  “That’s strange,” Damien murmured. “We were promised assistance. They can run the numbers on how long it will take to offload the cargo just as well as we can. What about the gunships?”

  “They pulled them all back to their refueling station. That sits at a Lagrange point with the moon, L3-equivalent. Not out of range, but they’ve locked the ships down.”

  “We didn’t even ask for that,” Damien said. That was more of a gesture of surrender than of cooperation.

  “I suspect the Governor doesn’t trust her Republic-funded defenders not to do something stupid,” Jakab replied. “I’ve passed the order that no Mages go down to the surface, sir. We’re here to help, not cause trouble.”

  The UnArcana Worlds had uniformly banned the practice of magic on their planets, a reaction to the Compact that gave Mages special rights on the worlds of the Protectorate. Damien wasn’t sure what the Republic’s rules on Mages were, but he doubted they were any gentler.

  There was no reason to court trouble.

  “Good call, Captain,” he confirmed. “Anything looking suspicious in the rest of the system?”

  “Not yet,” Jakab said. “We’re keeping our sensors online, though, and doing occasional active sweeps.” He shook his head. “I’m finding myself wishing we’d picked up a couple of destroyers on the way. More eyes would help with this itch down my spine.”

  “You too, huh?” Damien studied the screens that covered every surface in the simulacrum chamber bridge. “My read on Motta is that she’s on the level. She wants to help her people, and she’s willing to let us help her.”

  He was silent for several seconds, looking at the planet below them.

  “I’m hearing a but there, my lord,” Jakab concluded.

  “Yes. Motta was the Governor before the Secession. She isn’t due to stand for reelection for another year—and she predates the Republic. Before the Secession, I’d say the final decision was hers. Now…I have to wonder what Republican authority is in this system.”

  Damien shook his head.

  “In their place, I’d at least have someone keeping an eye on her—hells, on all of the Governors, but especially on anyone who hadn’t been vetted by a Republic-supervised election. I wouldn’t put it past the ‘Lord Protector’ to have someone in Korma who can override the local Governor.”

  “A Hand-equivalent?” Jakab said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah. Except His Majesty would be pissed if I interfered in a humanitarian mission like this…and I’m not so confident in the opinions of Lord Protector Solace.”

  The shuttles were underway within the hour, five million tons of food heading towards sixty-two distribution centers scattered across the two inhabited continents.

  Even from orbit, Damien could see the damage done by the new bacterial problem. Most of the images he had on file of Kormar had a glowing golden heart just north of the capital city. That heart was a massive prairie that supported enough food for a world of eighty million souls, along with a readily exportable surplus.

  The massive collection of farms had been visible from orbit. They still were, he supposed, though it was a sick blue-black color now, not golden. It was almost grotesque, and he was sure the bacteria were spreading into the cities, too. The destruction of trees and gardens wasn’t a crisis like the loss of thousands of square kilometers of farmland, but it would have its own impact.

  “We’ll want to coordinate getting Dr. Aputsiaq’s team down to the surface as soon as possible,” he told Jakab. Dr. Itzel Aputsiaq was the Earth-native microbiologist leading the team he’d “borrowed” from Tau Ceti’s main university.

  “Already working on it,” the Captain replied. “The locals are making me nervous, my lord. Until about an hour before we hit orbit, everything was going smoothly and everyone was being perfectly helpful and cooperative.

  “Then, suddenly, we couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone about anything except the DCs.”

  Damien nodded slowly.

  “Keep it quiet,” he told Jakab, “but bring both warships to status two. I don’t think we’ll see an attack from the planet, but something wicked this way comes.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Lord Montgomery, you need to see this,” a young dark-haired Lieutenant suddenly reported. Damien took a moment to process where she was and attach a name and role to the face: Lieutenant Sarah Wayan, a Tau Ceti native—and Duke of Magnificence’s junior communications officer.

  “What is it, Lieutenant Wayan?” he asked as he crossed to the woman’s station. She seemed almost taken aback that he knew her name, and he managed not to visibly shake his head.

  The Lieutenant was one of the few officers on the bridge actually younger than he was, but he’d also made a point of at least knowing the main officers in each of Duke’s departments.

  It made his job easier.

  “We’re receiving a request for an encrypted and scrambled tightbeam channel,” Wayan told him after a moment. “It’s coming from a satellite we hadn’t picked out as unusual from the regular orbitals, and the codes are…odd.”

  “Odd how?”

  “They flagged as expired, so I double-checked what they were,” she admitted. “They’re the Protectorate gubernatorial codes for Korma. All of those were deactivated in our system, but I still have them and can activate the protocols.”

  “Protocols the Republic would only have access to if Governor Motta had given it to them,” Damien murmured.

  “Exactly, sir. I might be able to trace the relay back to the original source, but it may take some time…”

  “Do it,” he ordered. “Since I suspect I can guess the origin, however, connect Governor Motta to my office while you’re doing that. Full encryption, full scramble, maximum tightbeam. I don’t want anyone in this star system to know we’re in communication.”

  He looked over at Mage-Captain Jakab.

  “Governor Motta is going quite a bit out of her way to speak to me in confidence,” he noted. “The least I can do is return the favor.”

  Damien was completely unsurprised to find Persephone asleep on his desk when he returned to his office. There was a small cat door in the wall between the observation deck and his quarters, and the kitten could get between Damien’s two main spaces with ease.

  “Okay, cat,” he addressed her. She rose and stretched, blinking slowly at him as she started purring. “Work time. Get down.”

  He was about to teleport her to the floor when, to his surprise, she calmly leapt down onto the chair and then the floor. Shaking his head, he settled into his seat—and Persephone promptly curled up on his feet.

  He activated the channel that Wayan had sent up, and smiled slightly as his guess was confirmed. Governor Rozalia Motta looked out of the screen, sitting in a small office with the blinds drawn behind her.

  “You know, we did deactivate those codes, Governor,” he noted conversationally.

  “I assumed you had,” she agreed. “I also assumed you had them on file just in case. It was a gamble, Hand Montgomery, but it seems to have paid off. No one on my side knows I’m speaking to you.”

  “That’s a gamble all on its own, isn’t it, Governor?” he asked. “Some might say that’s treason.”

  “They’d probably be right, but sometimes, the people I’m supposed to work with decide to be bloody morons,” she snapped. “I’ve been ordered—ordered, Hand Montgomery—to hold all of my shuttles on the surface. The ground teams at the distribution centers have instructions to delay your shuttles on the ground as well.”

  “That seems…less than efficient at getting your people taken care of,” Damien said slowly.

  “That’s because that isn’t the point. There’s a gunship carri
er at the cloudscoop, Hand Montgomery,” Motta told him flatly. “They can’t get my people food, but they can sure turn up warships to cause trouble when someone else does.”

  Damien wasn’t even entirely certain what a “gunship carrier” was, but he suspected they were about to find out in far greater detail than he could ever hope.

  “They’re going to attack.”

  “Technically, your warships’ presence here is an act of war,” she reminded him. “So, the esteemed Admiral Emerson Wang has decided to destroy your cruisers and seize the freighters. He thinks he can take your two ships without much difficulty, especially with the advantage of surprise.”

  “An advantage you are taking away,” Damien noted. “I suspect, Governor, that that is treason. Why are you helping us?”

  “Because you’re helping me,” Motta told him. “Given the choice between the arrogant bastard who’s giving me, the elected Governor of this damn star system, orders, and the people who showed up in my people’s hour of need with a hundred million tons of food…”

  She sighed.

  “I swore an oath, Damien Montgomery, and it didn’t say a single damn thing about Republic or Protectorate. It said a lot about defending and serving the people of the Korma System. Admiral Wang is not under my orders; his chain of command goes straight to Legatus. I can’t do more than warn you, but…I can’t not do that, either.”

  “I understand. Thank you, Governor Motta,” he told her. “I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

  “So do I.” She shook her head. “Do what you must, Hand Montgomery. But if you possibly can…don’t let my people suffer for this.”

  “If I possibly can, at all, Governor, I won’t.”

  4

  “A gunship carrier?” Jakab asked Damien after he was filled in. “What the hell is that?”