Mage-Provocateur Read online

  And, well, it wasn’t like one of the dozen or so personal representatives of humanity’s ruler really needed to worry about the budget.

  “Mr. Daniels strikes me in desperate need of some remedial growing-up,” David noted as he poured himself a glass of water. “I am somehow unsurprised that the Navy was happy to see the back of him.”

  “I saw your comments,” Stealey agreed. She was an average-looking woman of average height with iron-gray hair and a perpetually sour expression. “I passed on some of my own to the case officer with MISS.”

  She shook her head.

  “To be fair to the man, it wasn’t like Daniels being a sexist pig made it into his jacket,” she concluded. “Though it bloody well should have. A few ears at the Navy will be bent before this is over.”

  “And Daniels?” David asked.

  “Daniels and his demonstrated big mouth have found themselves a comfortable posting to a survey ship heading to somewhere beyond the back of nowhere,” Stealey said grimly. “I feel a bit guilty for the survey ship’s crew, but the Captain seemed to understand what we were handing her.

  “And this way, he’s a long way away from anyone he can leak information to.”

  She shook her head.

  “Lacking a gunnery officer is going to be a headache, though,” she said. “The wheels are in motion to get you to Snap—Alois passed on the details, I hope?”

  “He did,” David confirmed. “I put out some feelers of my own, and I have found a man who could do the job. If you’re willing to wave the golden hand and make certain problems go away.”

  Stealey sighed, tapping the closed-fist icon of her office that hung on her chest.

  “What kind of problems, Captain Rice?”

  “Alexander Jeeves is an old friend from my own Navy days,” he told her. “He’s…an irrevocable idiot and walked himself into a lot of trouble with the wrong people, but he already owes me one and was a half-decent tactical officer in the day.”

  Stealey leveled a hard gray glare on him.

  “What kind of problems, Captain Rice?” she repeated.

  He sighed.

  “Jeeves is in a Protectorate penitentiary for arms smuggling,” David admitted. “He got tied up in some kind of deal with the Mafia and, so far as I can tell, got left holding the bag when much smarter people got out of Dodge.

  “I visited him after I found out where he was. He’s doing about as well as anyone can in prison, but I suspect he’d be more useful to everyone on my bridge.”

  “You want me to see an arms smuggler released into your custody to serve as your tactical officer, Captain Rice?”

  “It would certainly give us some bona fides for the kind of trouble you want me to get into,” he pointed out.

  Stealey laughed.

  “That’s fair,” she allowed. “I’ll talk to some people and pull the full record of just what he got locked up for. I make no promises, Rice, but if he looks trustworthy, you’re right in that he’d open up some doors we can use.”

  “Speaking of which,” Rice noted. “Snap, huh?”

  Stealey nodded in answer to his question, stepping over to the screen that covered one wall of the suite’s living room. Currently, it was showing the view from the protective fortification protecting Tau Ceti f from the system’s eternal bombardment of rocks.

  As David looked at it past her, one of the station’s lasers flared to life, a line of bright light that turned a rock too small and too far away to be seen into a glowing streak of light, an artificial shooting star.

  “Snap,” she agreed. “We couldn’t have you go there directly from Tau Ceti. For one thing, it would be too obvious. For another, Snap is pretty insular, so there aren’t any shipments going there from here.”

  “I know the name and that’s it’s an UnArcana World,” David admitted. “That’s it.”

  “That’s all most people know,” Stealey said. “Even for an UnArcana World, Snap is…xenophobic. It’s not just that they don’t like Mages; they don’t like anybody.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s not religious or anything,” she explained. “They’re just very insular. Since there are things they can’t make themselves, however, they have interstellar trade that’s filtered through some very specific channels.

  “Basically, nobody from outside the Snap System is even permitted in orbit of Flytrap, the habitable planet,” she told him. “The fifth planet, the next one out from Flytrap, is Junkrat. Junkrat has several orbital stations that are technically run by Snap’s government.”

  “That sounds more complicated than it should be,” David said.

  “It is,” she agreed. “Snap doesn’t bother to actually police Junkrat Orbital. The main station is safe enough, but that’s because Legatus runs it. The rest…”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s a criminal organization’s dream,” she said. “Massive transshipment facilities with minimal to no oversight. Even Amber keeps better track of what moves through their space than Snap does of what moves through Junkrat.

  “It’s entirely different story if you move over to Flytrap,” she continued. “You wouldn’t make it there, for one. Snap may not build starships, but they’ve got some very effective long-range missiles based out of orbital platforms.

  “Build them big enough and you, too, can have a fusion-drive missile that rivals the performance of everyone else’s antimatter birds.”

  David winced. Given the difference in performance between his handful of Navy-built antimatter missiles and his police-grade fusion missiles, those had to be huge missiles.

  “Even Snap has limits on what they’re prepared to tolerate—or so the crime families assume, at least—which has led to Junkrat being something of a neutral ground for criminals,” she continued.

  “There’s no official enforcement like there was on Darkport, but everyone is there to do business, and nobody wants trouble. If you cause trouble, no one will do business with you,” she summarized.

  “Sounds like a wonderful place to visit and a horrible place to live,” David replied. “Why are you sending me there?”

  “MISS intelligence suggests that the Azure Legacy is attempting to broker a peace between the various remnant factions of the Blue Star Syndicate,” Stealey said flatly.

  Azure Legacy was an organization created by Mikhail Azure’s will after that crime lord had died trying to hunt Rice and his ship down. It had two purposes, as he understood it: to kill the people who’d killed Mikhail Azure, and to make sure the Syndicate didn’t fall apart.

  Since the Syndicate had done a solid job of falling apart and they hadn’t managed to kill David yet, he figured they had to be pretty frustrated.

  “Not everyone is in, but the estimates I’m seeing suggest that if Legacy pulls this meeting off, they’ll re-concentrate about seventy percent of the Syndicate’s resources under one banner. They wouldn’t be the largest crime organization again…but they’d be close.”

  “Damn. I see why we need to stop it. Do you have a plan for me beyond ‘show up and look intimidating’?”

  She chuckled humorlessly.

  “More ‘show up and look like a target,’” she admitted. “Our hope is that your presence will distract the Legacy and cause them to come after you, hopefully undermining their authority with the fragment syndicates and exposing the whole summit for our operatives on the station.

  “We want to break up this meeting and prevent any chance of the Blue Star Syndicate re-forming,” Stealey told him. “But this also gives us the opportunity to tag a number of the leaders of the successor organizations we haven’t IDed yet. If we can make them and follow them home, we have the chance to dismantle that same seventy percent of the Syndicate’s leftovers.”

  “That seems worth the try, at least, my lady,” David admitted. “I have a meeting with the shipper to get us to Desdemona in the morning. We’ll get the wheels moving. Do we have more detailed information?”

  She
slid a data chip out of her pocket and dropped it on the table.

  “Everything we know about the Legacy’s summit and the power players in Junkrat,” she told him. “I’ll take a look at your friend, too, see if I think he’s safe enough to hand over.”

  “If I’m walking into this kind of den of vipers, I could use a solid hand on Falcon’s guns.”

  “I know,” she agreed. “But there’s a limit to the level of scum I’m willing to trust you with, Rice!”

  5

  “Captain Rice, a pleasure to speak to you,” the man on the screen greeted David. “I am Roger Yukimura, Vice President of Special Projects for Cobalt Interstellar Elements.”

  Yukimura was a slim man with bleached-white hair that reached down to his shoulders, and long delicate fingers that were in full view as he held a cup of tea in front of himself.

  He didn’t seem to be drinking the tea so much as using it as a prop, but David had dealt with stranger.

  “A pleasure indeed,” David replied cheerfully. “Your agent told me that you had a large cargo that needed to be delivered quickly and safely? Red Falcon excels at all three of those things: with our antimatter engines, we clear the gravity well faster than most freighters, and with four Mages aboard, we move between systems faster as well.

  “And, well, if anyone decides to tangle with your cargo, Falcon retains a portion of the armament from her Navy days,” he concluded. “Whatever you need delivered, Mr. Yukimura, we can get it there.”

  In truth, Red Falcon retained the entirety of her Navy armament, though in naval service her magazines had been entirely filled with antimatter-drive missiles. The launchers could still handle fusion-drive missiles, however, and the battle lasers were still very intact.

  “So I’m told,” Yukimura allowed. “You understand, Captain, that Cobalt rarely relies on small-scale shippers, however capable their vessel.

  “This cargo for the Desdemona System was originally booked with Chevalier, and I remain surprised by their failure to fulfill their contract.”

  David managed not to visibly whistle silently. Chevalier Arcane Transshipment had been the very first interstellar shipping line and remained one of the largest and richest, even though their immense megafreighters almost never left the Core Worlds.

  “Desdemona is a MidWorld, I suppose,” he said carefully. “I didn’t think Chevalier left the Core anymore.”

  Yukimura took one hand off his teacup for long enough to make a languid dismissive gesture.

  “I suppose not. Negotiations between Cobalt and Chevalier around contract penalties continue, but that is irrelevant to our current discussion,” he admitted. “We are almost two weeks late in moving this cargo now.

  “Without it, the new refinery facility in Desdemona cannot be completed. The system government gave us quite generous terms to operate in their space, which means there are also significant penalties if the plant does not come online and begin providing employment as promised.”

  “We can get your cargo to Desdemona in under four days from it being loaded,” David told the executive. Desdemona was forty light-years from Tau Ceti, three full days plus a few extra jumps for his Mages, and it would take them about ten hours to get out to and in from jump distance.

  “Four days?” Yukimura noted. “Chevalier wasn’t prepared to promise less than a week.”

  “Chevalier doesn’t have antimatter drives and only carries three Mages per ship as standard,” David noted. “I may only have two-thirds the cargo capacity of one of their big ships, but I’d bet against them in any race.”

  “Which fate, it seems, now requires me to do as well,” Yukimura concluded. “Standard carriage terms for a fifty-light-year transit, with a twenty-five-percent bonus for delivery inside five days.” He shrugged slowly, delicately. “The same terms we agreed to with Chevalier.”

  “If you can have the cargo aboard inside twenty-four hours, that’s entirely acceptable,” David replied. “If your people fail to have the cargo loaded in time, that five-day timeline will need to be extended.”

  The executive’s eyes flashed, the first sign of real energy from the man in the entire conversation.

  “Our people have access to the best gear in the system,” he declared.

  “Then you’ll have no problem allowing for loading delays in the bonus timeline,” David said brightly.

  “Captain, there are some…gentlemen here at the main boarding tube with a package for you,” Skavar’s dry tones echoed over David’s wrist-comp shortly after his meeting with Yukimura.

  “I’ll be right down,” David promised.

  He could guess just what kind of “package” would be showing up on his doorstep today, a bit over a day since meeting with Hand Stealey and her promising to look into Alexander Jeeves’s case.

  So, when he arrived at the docking tube to find a wiry, dirty-looking little man in prison fatigues and shackles half-suspended between two burly officers in Tau Ceti System Police uniforms, he wasn’t entirely surprised.

  “You ordered a felon, sir?” Skavar whispered to David as he approached. “He doesn’t look like much.”

  “Neither would you after two years in a Protectorate medium-security facility,” David murmured back. “Give the man a chance.”

  He stepped past his guards and nodded crisply to the two TCSPD men.

  “You were looking for me?” he asked.

  “You Rice?” the bigger of them asked.

  “I’m Captain David Rice, owner of the Falcon shipping line and Captain of this ship, yes,” David replied levelly.

  “I’m Sergeant Stanka Chilikov,” the officer introduced himself. “I have orders to transfer one Alexander Jeeves into your custody.”

  Jeeves managed to stand somewhat straighter. His permanent slouch slipped away enough to reveal that he was actually of average height, despite his wiry appearance.

  “I’m being released?” he asked.

  “No,” Chilikov said bluntly. “You’re not being released; you’re not being pardoned. Your sentence has been commuted to a work term under Captain Rice per authority higher than I can argue with.”

  “Huh.” Jeeves studied David. “You’re looking good, Chief. I guess Captain now?”

  “You know; you don’t guess,” David said dryly. They’d met before. “Want a job?”

  “I’m not under the impression I get a choice,” the dirty little man noted.

  “Oh, you have a choice,” Sergeant Chilikov said sweetly. “If you don’t want to work for the Captain, you and I get back on the shuttle we arrived on and you go back to breaking rocks for the greater good.”

  Jeeves paused dramatically, then his face turned thoughtful.

  “What’s the job?” he asked bluntly. “There are things I’d rather break rocks than do.”

  “Gunnery officer aboard a civilianized Armed Auxiliary Fast Heavy Freighter,” David told him. “Don’t piss off the XO or the Ship’s Mage. Some other complications, but those are confidential company data.” He eyed the cops. He trusted them as much as he trusted anyone, but they didn’t need to know that Falcon was a covert ops ship.

  “I don’t need more time on my sentence, David,” Jeeves said quietly. “I get myself in enough trouble on my own.”

  David laughed.

  “Believe me, Alexander Jeeves, I don’t promise not to get you in trouble,” he told his old comrade. “I do promise that none of that trouble is going to add to your jail time. Deal?”

  Jeeves looked at Chilikov and his companion and shrugged.

  “The Sergeant isn’t nearly the sourpuss he’s pretending to be,” he noted, “but medium-security facilities are boring.

  “If you can lend me a shower and some clean clothes in, oh, the next five minutes, we have a deal.”

  “We can do that,” David promised.

  “Then deal.”

  David had known exactly how much stuff Jeeves would be arriving with, so he’d made sure the Third Officer’s quarters were stocked wi
th basic toiletries and clothes in the man’s size.

  Shaved, showered, and dressed in an unmarked ship’s uniform, Alexander Jeeves could almost pass for the soldier he’d once been. He’d kept the shoulder-length hair, though, and there was a twitchiness to the man he hadn’t had when he’d been in the Navy.

  “There’s still a catch to all of this,” David warned as Jeeves took a careful seat on the couch in what would hopefully be his new suite. “Stuff that your escorting Sergeant wasn’t cleared for.”

  “Cleared for,” Jeeves echoed, then glanced around the room. “This is a civvy ship now, I’m told. You’re definitely a civilian now. Not Navy. So, who the hell is clearing whom for what?”

  “I’d say that it was just company-confidential information, but you need to know what you’re getting into before it’s too late to get out,” David told him. “You can still get out if you choose, so we’re clear.”

  “That much fun, huh?” his old friend asked. “All right, Chief, lay it on me.”

  “Firstly, don’t call me Chief,” David replied. “‘Chief’ on this boat is either James Kellers, Chief Engineer and Fourth Officer; or Ivan Skavar, Chief of Security. Clear?”

  “Habit,” Jeeves admitted. “Sorry, Skipper.”

  “Better. Now, you’re right, we’re not Navy,” David confirmed. “Until relatively recently, I was a private shipper with odd connections. Now…now we’re MISS.”

  “Covert ops. Fuck.” There was no heat to Jeeves’s words.

  “You know Mikhail Azure is dead and the Blue Star Syndicate is falling apart,” David said. “I imagine that made it into prison.”

  “Yeah. Not many people talking up just how, though.”

  “We killed him,” David Rice said flatly. “He chased us across half the damn Protectorate, caught up to us, and my Ship’s Mage vaporized him and his ship.”

  Jeeves was silent.

  “You’re serious.”