A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10) Read online

  There were another two dozen people on the shuttle, the last of Huntress’s crew returning from liberty, but Roslyn’s attention was focused on the small bag of personal items at her feet. Buried in the middle of that bag, wrapped in a black silk negligee she didn’t expect to use—retail therapy was still reassuring and very few people were going to poke at the tactical officer’s lingerie—was a plain manila envelope containing a standard datachip and a sheet of archaic parchment.

  Both bore the crowned-mountain seal of the Protectorate, and both said the same thing: for the duration of their mission to Sorprendidas, Mage-Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Chambers spoke with the Voice of the Mage-Queen of Mars.

  That was stunning. Roslyn knew that she was a protégée of both the Prince-Regent and the Crown Princess, for a number of reasons and in a number of ways, but to carry a Royal Warrant was a far heavier weight than she was ready for.

  But she was an officer of the Mage-Queen of Mars. She would do what she was called to do. What terrified her was why she carried the Warrant. Secret labs run by rogue Mages, built by the Rune Wright psychopath who’d created the Republic’s Prometheus Interface?

  That was taking some digesting, even before she tried to accept that she had been tasked to deal with it—and to keep it secret.

  All of that was a messy set of problems that kept her trying and failing to distract herself. There wasn’t much she could do about any of it until they reached Sorprendidas.

  When Roslyn spotted the dark-eyed blond man standing by the off-loading ramp, she initially glanced around to see if there were new officers among the other passengers of her shuttle. The only other officer was a Lieutenant from Engineering she already knew, so the executive officer wasn’t meeting a new arrival.

  “Mage-Commander Kristofferson,” she greeted the XO. He beat her to saluting by half a second. That was one of the oddities of her position: after two years, she was no longer one of the ten youngest Lieutenant Commanders in the Fleet—she was now the twelfth-youngest—but she was also one of seven living holders of the Mage-Queen’s Ruby Medal of Valor.

  That meant she’d been awarded the Medal twice—once for rising to act as tactical officer of a destroyer on her cadet cruise, and once for rescuing the Crown Princess Mage-Admiral Alexander from Republic captivity.

  “Mage-Lieutenant Commander Chambers,” Yaakov Kristofferson returned her greeting. “Welcome home. How was your leave?”

  “Mars has friends but no family,” Roslyn said after a moment’s thought. “Even assuming they keep coming, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to social invites to the Mountain.”

  Her boss laughed.

  “Kvetch, kvetch,” he told her. “Not many people saved the life of the Mage-Queen’s aunt. I imagine you’re popular around here.”

  Roslyn stepped out of the way of the other passengers and shook her head at Kristofferson.

  “I vaguely understand it,” she conceded. “Anything come up while I was gone?”

  The XO wouldn’t have taken time out of his day to meet the tactical officer without a reason.

  “Yes,” he conceded. “Real tsuris.”

  She glared at him. Nobody else on the ship spoke Yiddish that she was aware of. Roslyn could fumble her way through Mandarin Chinese if she had to, but she only really spoke English.

  “We had a problem with the missile launcher software,” he said more grimly. “They had to completely wipe and reboot everything, and now you have a brand-new tactical operations system.”

  Roslyn winced. That was…not great. It wouldn’t be the end of the world—at this point, she and her people spoke fluent warship, and there were only so many ways to set up a TOS, but switching without planning for it was a pain.

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” she told him. “I presume MarShips sent us training documents for the new mess?”

  “We are the seventh lucky prototypers for version seventy-eight,” Kristofferson told her. “That means the documentation is fragmentary at best and part of your job will be to build the software techs’ tutorials into something the Navy can use.”

  “I see,” Roslyn said. “It sounds like I need to get back to work ASAP.”

  The Martian Department of Ship Design was usually better than that, but she guessed someone had to write the tutorials MarShips usually sent out with software updates.

  “Sorry, I know it’s always better to ease back into things after two weeks’ leave,” Kristofferson told her. “But they sold Captain Daalman on it being the fastest way to get our missile launchers back and, well, the skipper wasn’t impressed with losing our main offensive firepower.”

  “I get it,” Roslyn said. If Mage-Captain Laura Daalman had signed off on the changeover, she didn’t even get to complain much. Unlike prior generations of Royal Martian Navy warships, Song of the Huntress might have a Link quantum-entanglement communicator…but her Captain was still very much her master after God.

  “Lieutenant Jordan will be back tomorrow,” the XO noted. “Lieutenant Samuels should have been back this morning, but she was in a groundcar accident on the way to the spaceport.”

  “Is she okay?” Roslyn asked. “Why am I only hearing now?”

  Mage-Lieutenants Semele Jordan and Kirtida Samuels were her two subordinate officers. Both did double duty as Jump Mages and had the same mixed ethnicity as Roslyn and Kristofferson.

  “You were already on the shuttle when we got the update,” Kristofferson told her. “This was the first opportunity I had to tell you. She got hit with some bad whiplash and is undergoing soft-tissue treatment in Curiosity City. She should be back aboard in three days.”

  Roslyn sighed and nodded her thanks. She’d check in on Samuels anyway. While the XO had overall responsibility for everyone aboard the ship, Roslyn was responsible for her tactical department.

  “Your Chiefs have already had a first crack at the software, so while I refuse to micromanage, I will tell you to check in with them,” he concluded. “If you need anything—help, access to the MarShips techs who coded the damn thing, anything—let me know.

  “Last rumor I heard had us shipping in five days at most,” Kristofferson warned. “We want to make damn sure the tactical team is at least able to fire the guns by then.”

  “Unless MarShips has done something spectacular, I’m confident my people can fire the guns right now,” Roslyn replied. “But we’ll be better, given time. Five days will be plenty.”

  Her own briefing from the Queen and Prince-Regent suggested they might not even have five days—but Roslyn hoped she was going to have the three to get her junior officer back!

  3

  “MarShips has done worse by us,” Chief Slavka Westcott noted as she and Roslyn looked over the new operating system. Roslyn had a practice copy of the software projected to her office wallscreen, to make sure they didn’t accidentally fire off gigaton missiles in Mars orbit.

  Roslyn was the destroyer’s first tactical officer, a keel-plate owner like most of the rest of Huntress’s current crew. In thirteen months, she’d done as much to personalize the space as she felt she could. There were framed photos on the wall of her parents, flanked by several pieces of abstract three-dimensional art.

  Someday, Roslyn would have time to learn how to make that art herself. For now, she just bought pieces made by two of the girls she’d gone to prison with.

  The tactical operating system main display at least made more sense on first glance than the abstract art. There were rows of icons for the destroyer’s three main weapon systems: Phoenix IX antimatter-drive missiles, ten-gigawatt battle lasers, and five hundred-megawatt RFLAM turrets.

  Roslyn could even see how the display would adjust for larger warships that carried the Samurai bombardment missiles. There was more on the main screen than on the prior version of the software, where she’d had to drill down to see details on the individual weapons systems.

  Of course, limiting the people handling a particular system to seeing what they were resp
onsible for had been an intended feature.

  “It seems reasonable on the surface,” Roslyn said, poking an icon to drop down into the rear-facing missile battery. Four of Huntress’s launchers surrounded her engines, giving her a shot at a pursuer. The other sixteen of her missile launchers, plus all twelve battle lasers, pointed forward.

  The software gave her ammunition counts and status reports, but it took her more than a few seconds to find the targeting systems.

  “Okay, I see where I give targeting commands.” She shook her head. “This isn’t bad, but why did they change it?”

  “Because they’re software geeks, sir,” Westcott said with a chuckle. She was a pale-skinned blonde, older and lighter-skinned than her boss. “If it isn’t broken, you haven’t optimized it enough yet.”

  Roslyn snorted.

  “All right. Is this going to be a problem for anyone?”

  “We’ll walk people through it. The tutorials…exist,” Westcott said. “There’s only really you and maybe the XO and skipper who need to know the mass-targeting interface, though I poked at it to see if I could help you learn it.”

  “Prepare for the worst, Chief,” Roslyn told her. “I want both Lieutenants and all three of you Chiefs fully trained on the top-tier interface alongside me. People die, Chief Westcott. This ship needs to fight even if that happens.”

  Westcott nodded, her face unreadable.

  “I see your point, sir,” she conceded. “But…we aren’t at war anymore. Pirates can’t hurt Huntress.”

  “We lost an average of two-point-three destroyers a year to hostile action prior to the war, Chief,” Roslyn reminded her subordinate. “We now know some of that was Legatus backstabbing us, but we also know that there are rogue Legatan warships turned pirate out there still, too.

  “We might not be expecting to go into battle on a dreadnought’s flanks this week, but we need to be prepared to engage peer or superior combatants. You’ve heard the speech, Slavka. Do I need to echo Captain Daalman on this?”

  “No,” the Chief said. “Not arguing, sir. Just…pointing out. The galaxy’s changed a lot in two years. We’re the only ones out here again.”

  Roslyn concealed the shadow that passed over her at the Chief’s words. Almost every former Republic system had voted to rejoin the Protectorate. Having spent time with some of the Republic’s former leadership—as a prisoner they were trying to convert, to be fair—she had to wonder how much of that had been fear of what Mars would do.

  Once, they had been the UnArcana Worlds, where the practice of magic was banned. Then they had been the Republic of Faith and Reason and had waged active war against Mars and the Protectorate.

  Now, officially, those worlds were just…ordinary worlds of the Protectorate. There were no laws against magic there now—though the new Constitution of the Protectorate had removed some of the special status of Mages that the UnArcana Worlds had opposed.

  “That’s what we say, at least,” she murmured. “Orders will be coming, Chief. Once Mage-Lieutenant Jordan returns, we’ll sit down and go through the entire software suite as a group and see if we can improve MarShips’s tutorials.

  “Then we can test those tutorials on Mage-Lieutenant Samuels,” she concluded with a grin. “After three days laid up for soft-tissue regen, she’ll be desperate for a challenge, I think.”

  Roslyn was in her office late that evening, digging through the inevitable paperwork from having been on leave for two weeks—with both of her juniors joining her for the second of those weeks.

  The knock on her door was a surprise, if for no other reason than that the door had an admittance chime and people generally didn’t knock.

  “Come in,” she ordered.

  The door slid open to reveal the lanky form of Mage-Captain Laura Daalman grinning down at her.

  “Welcome back aboard, Commander Chambers,” Daalman said, leaning against the frame of the door. “Do you plan on working all night or are you going to eat at some point?”

  “Still catching up, skipper,” Roslyn replied. “Lots of work.”

  “There always is. We’re in orbit of the capital of our Protectorate, under the protective envelope of an entire squadron of capital ships and more defensive fortresses than I can count,” the Mage-Captain said drily. “If there’s ever a day or a place to not worry too much about the work, this would be one.”

  “I suppose so, sir,” Roslyn conceded.

  “I mean, to be fair, I only just shut things down myself,” Daalman told her. “Officers’ dinner in the Captain’s mess in five minutes, Chambers. Walk with me?”

  “Yes, sir,” she agreed. She took one final quick glance over the file she was reviewing—a request from Chief Atkins to swap fifty of their oldest missiles with freshly serviced weapons from Mars’s magazines—and decided it would wait for morning.

  She closed down the work station, flashing the remaining files to her wrist-comp, and rose to join Daalman as the Captain chuckled at her.

  “Conscientious as always, I see,” the older woman said. “Still convinced you only got the promotion from nepotism?”

  “Favoritism, sir,” Roslyn conceded as she fell into step beside Daalman. “Nepotism would imply I was somehow related to Mage-Admiral Alexander.”

  “A fair correction, I suppose,” Daalman replied. “I suggest you consider the math, though.”

  “The math, sir?” she asked.

  “You were promoted to Lieutenant at the age of nineteen, skipping direct from Cadet and missing two and a half years of your Academy training,” the Mage-Captain reminded her. “You were promoted to Lieutenant Commander after eighteen months, which is not, actually, particularly unusual.

  “Adding that missing two and a half years to your age would make you, what, twenty-six?”

  “Roughly, sir,” Roslyn said slowly.

  “Twenty-six, Commander Chambers, is the exact median age of our Mage-Lieutenant Commanders. You see? You are hardly underage or underqualified for your position, even ignoring the Ruby Medal of Valor.”

  Roslyn shook her head.

  “I’m not sure most of our comrades see it that way, sir,” she admitted.

  “That is because our comrades look at you and see an adorable blonde thing,” Daalman said bluntly. “With the exception of the ones who get stuck on your boobs. Thankfully, the RMN is mostly better than that.”

  Daalman had a good twenty centimeters on Roslyn, giving her the main impression of lankiness, but she was built such that she’d almost certainly also encountered that problem of Roslyn’s.

  “It’s easy for others to forget that you have almost three years’ more experience than your age suggests,” the Mage-Captain told her. “I try not to. You definitely shouldn’t. Understand, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “I think so, sir,” Roslyn admitted. “Hopefully, it will be…less so as I get older?”

  “Almost certainly,” Daalman agreed. “It helps that a lot of people got accelerated promotions when the RMN expanded for the war—and I haven’t seen anything from on high suggesting we’re going to be drawing down fleet strength anytime soon, either.”

  “Any idea why, sir?” Roslyn asked. “I have to admit, I’ve wondered. As one of my Chiefs said today…we’re the only ones out here.”

  They’d arrived at the door to the Captain’s mess and Daalman chuckled.

  “If you have any clues from your friends on the Mountain, let me know,” the Captain instructed. “For now, I have no idea…but I do have orders, hence officers’ dinner.

  “After you, Lieutenant Commander.”

  4

  It was not, at least, the full officer’s dinner that would put all of the destroyer’s twenty-six commissioned officers in one space. As Roslyn made her way to a seat at the long table in the Captain’s mess, she realized it was technically a senior officers’ dinner—everyone there was a department head, which made Roslyn the youngest officer by two years.

  A time frame, she noted, that was less
than the amount of Academy time she’d lost. Now that Captain Daalman had pointed it out, she’d have to check—but it was quite possible she had more time-in-grade than Lieutenant Commander Jamshed Abiodun, the destroyer’s logistics officer.

  She didn’t think that was the case with the other three officers around the table. Lieutenant Commander Nikoleta Franklin, the chief engineer, was the oldest of the ship’s five department heads at thirty. Mage-Lieutenant Commander Eva Lehr, their navigator, was only two years behind her. Lieutenant Commander Ignác Frost, the coms officer, was halfway between Abiodun and Lehr.

  “Officers,” Daalman greeted them all. “I apologize for the late notice and I’m glad everyone made it here in time. Mage-Commander Lehr has the watch, which leaves her eating a sandwich on the bridge, but the rest of us get slightly better food than that.

  “Steward Washington will be here momentarily with the dinners, and we will refrain from discussion until dessert, but I do have our new orders and wanted to share them with you all.”

  That had everyone’s attention and Daalman nodded approvingly.

  “Abiodun, you’re going to have your work cut out for you for a few days,” she told the logistics officer. “We are shipping out in seventy-two hours—and the only reason it’s seventy-two and not twenty-four is because Lieutenant Samuels is in a Mars-side hospital.

  “Command decided that waiting for us to have our full Jump Mage complement was going to get us to our destination faster,” she continued.

  The math made sense to Roslyn. With the Captain, the XO, the three tactical department officers and Lieutenant Commander Lehr, they had six Jump Mages aboard. Each could teleport the starship a full light-year roughly once every eight hours.

  With Samuels aboard, they could travel twenty-four light-years a day. Without the sixth Mage, they were jumping twenty times each day. It would extend the time to get to Sorprendidas, on the edge of Protectorate space, from five days to six. Waiting two days to save one made sense, especially when not having that Mage and watch-standing officer would give Huntress’s crew multiple other problems.