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

  “All right. I don’t want to have to repeat myself, so why don’t you arrange for your squad to meet me in a secure conference room?” Roslyn suggested. “No one even aboard Huntress is to know about this.”

  “I will make it happen, sir,” Mooren assured her. “No one will ever know we were gone.”

  9

  “Settle it down, Marines,” Mooren barked as Roslyn stepped into the room.

  The Mage managed not to visibly shake her head as she realized what Mooren had picked as a “secure conference room.” She was almost certainly correct that the security around the Marines’ ready room was as good as any secure conference room, but the age-old space of lockers and benches certainly didn’t feel professional.

  Still, the ten Marines in the room were on the benches and paying attention within seconds of the Sergeant’s order, and Roslyn surveyed them calmly, hopefully concealing her own momentary discomfort.

  At least half of the squad was older than she was, and all of them were hardened veterans of assault operations in the war against the Republic. She’d taken some time to review their records before this meeting, and she’d been impressed.

  “All right, people,” she said to them. “Major Dickens apparently assigned you to me because you’re the best he has. Are you going to live up to that?”

  “Oorah,” ten voices echoed back at her, and she had to grin at their enthusiasm.

  “Good. You’re going to be living in my back pocket for the next few days at least as I investigate the situation on Sorprendidas,” she told them. “Since we’re going into an unknown threat environment, I want to make sure you know almost as much as I do about the situation. Hence, this.”

  She waved around.

  “What’s the threat, sir?” one of the older Marines asked. “We can prep for anything.”

  “Threat is unknown,” Roslyn repeated. “But it will likely involve either or both of Mage war criminals and Republic covert-ops Augments.”

  The room suddenly silenced and she realized she had everyone’s attention.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” she asked. “For those of you who missed it, the inventor of the Prometheus Interface was a Mage named Dr. Samuel Finley. Prince-Regent Montgomery killed him—before he was Prince-Regent, obviously.

  “But there were other Mages involved in the Prometheus Project. We’ve identified twenty-six and we’ve only brought eleven to justice,” Roslyn told the Marines. “That’s fifteen war criminals, Mages who voluntarily helped the Republic murder thousands of other Mages and extract their brains to fuel their warships.”

  Now the silence was angry.

  “After the war, the Mountain sent out imagery of every one of those Mages we had to every asset we had in the former Republic,” she continued. “The Red List, it’s called. An MISS long-term plant here in Sorprendidas identified Finley as a recurring visitor and even flagged several businesses that he was involved in.

  “Then that agent went silent. A second agent sent to follow up was killed in a car crash. Two more sent to follow up on that have also gone silent. Four MISS covert operatives—primarily spies but still expected to handle themselves—are missing. Presumed dead.”

  “And you think they found something?” another Marine asked.

  “I’m not sure they did,” Roslyn admitted. “I have all of their reports prior to them going dark, and there’s no smoking gun in there. But I think they each got close enough that someone decided not to take the risk.

  “That tells me there’s something active here, not just a few businesses that took investment from the worst war criminal of the last few centuries,” she told them. “The Prince-Regent thinks there’s a secret laboratory somewhere on Sorprendidas—and if there’s a rogue Prometheus lab, it likely has rogue Prometheus Mages.

  “We want to find the Mages. Find the lab. Capture the Mages. Shut down the lab. And not die doing it.”

  The room was silent for longer than Roslyn expected.

  “We’re not really equipped for fighting Mages, sir,” Mooren finally admitted. “Not without full exosuit combat armor, anyway.”

  “You have a blank check from Captain Daalman for any gear you need that Song of the Huntress carries,” Roslyn replied. “We have a shuttle at our disposal until the mission is over. We load it with exosuits and everything else you can think of.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to be facing, so I suggest we make certain we can take on anything.” She spread her hands. “I can take on most Mages,” she admitted.

  Roslyn Chambers was a Mage by Blood, able to trace her bloodline to the survivors of Project Olympus, the victims of Mars’s pre-Mage-King Eugenicist rulers. Even for a Mage by Blood, she was powerful.

  There were few Mages she wouldn’t be confident in her ability to handle. Assuming a fair playing field or one tilted in her favor, at least—she’d been tranquilized and captured by a Mage traitor once, after all.

  “Can I make an argument for an assault shuttle?” Mooren suggested. “Can we trust local backup?”

  “To a point,” Roslyn said. “An assault shuttle is too much for theoretically friendly landings on a Protectorate world, Sergeant. And while I suspect our target has at least partially co-opted local authority, the government of Sorprendidas would probably be just as horrified to discover a secret Prometheus lab as we are.”

  She shook her head.

  “We will cooperate with the local authorities, but we are the RMN and RMMC,” she told them. “We have the authority and the orders to investigate and handle this situation. We will do so covertly and quietly while trying not to draw attention to ourselves…for as long as we can.”

  “And then we kick down doors in exosuits?” Mooren asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Where do we start?” the Marine NCO asked.

  “The last agent I have a location on was staying in a rental apartment in Nueva Portugal,” Roslyn said. “I need to access the records for the rental company, but at least theoretically, his lease isn’t up yet.

  “I plan to check that out first.”

  “Then what are we waiting for, sir?” Mooren asked. “Corporal Knight can breach any lock ever built.” She gestured to a petite Black woman who was listening patiently and nodded firmly at the gesture.

  “We’re waiting for you to decide what you need on the shuttle, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied with a chuckle. “I expect to be intermittently on the surface and back up on Huntress, but I suggest you load for bear…and for a long stay.”

  10

  “Nueva Portugal Spaceport Control, this is shuttle Huntress-Charlie. We are on the provided vector and slowing to land. Do we have a pad assignment?”

  Roslyn listened to Lieutenant Alvina Herbert talking to the ground control while studying the city beneath them through the shuttle’s cameras. Nueva Portugal had been well named in several ways. It was built on a peninsula that stuck out into Sorprendidas’s warm oceans, with vast white beaches visible from the air.

  A mountain range at the east end of the peninsula provided readily accessible raw resources, while the peninsula itself was covered in farms suggesting fertile soil—and the oceans were likely a rich source of aquaculture and fish.

  All of that supported Sorprendidas’s second-largest city, a metropolis of two million people. The peninsula supported almost five million total souls, making up the region of Nueva Portugal as opposed to the city itself.

  The spaceport was on the western extreme of the peninsula, with clearly marked water docks for larger landing-capable ships. For shuttles like theirs, a hundred floating pads were hooked up to piers that stretched out into the water.

  “Understood, landing pad forty-four,” Herbert told the ground control. “Stay is currently indefinite; we’re on Navy business.”

  The redheaded pilot paused.

  “No, I’m not going to explain further,” she said. “Navy business. If it becomes your business, we’ll tell you.”

 
“Be nice, Lieutenant,” Roslyn murmured. “We’re supposed to be making friends here, not enemies.”

  She wasn’t going to allow Herbert to actually tell ground control what they were up to, but that didn’t mean they had to be rude about it.

  The pilot waved her off, continuing to listen to her headset.

  “I understand, I understand,” she assured ground control. “We’ve got our course set for forty-four. The shuttle will be secured against intrusion as our team goes into the city. Can we arrange vehicle rental?”

  There was a pause.

  “Really? Well, my boss will be sure to pass on her thanks. Nice working with you, NPSC.”

  With no visible change, Herbert turned to Roslyn and raised an eyebrow.

  “There’s apparently several vehicles already waiting for us, organized by the Nueva Portugal Guardia,” the pilot told her. “Did we arrange that in advance?”

  Roslyn sighed and shook her head.

  “No, we didn’t,” she admitted. “Not unless Captain Daalman or Major Dickens didn’t tell us something, which seems unlikely.”

  She turned to look into the back compartment.

  “Mooren, I’m going to need backup when we touch down,” she told the Sergeant. “Everybody else stay aboard until the Sergeant and I have talked to the locals.”

  Her day was messy enough. This was a complication she could have lived without.

  There were six vehicles waiting on the floating dock next to their landing pad, Roslyn realized. Only two of them would be capable of hauling her entire team—and somehow, she didn’t think showing up in an armored utility vehicle with bright gold and blue Guardia coloring was going to help her need to be subtle.

  An officer in a similarly brightly colored uniform was standing in front of the collection of vehicles. He wasn’t visibly armed, but he was tapping a hand impatiently on his hip—which probably also expressed the mood of the two more drably dressed tactical officers behind him with the stunguns.

  “Officer, we didn’t request an escort,” Roslyn greeted the man as she and Mooren crossed the small-but-disconcerting gap between the floating launchpad and the long fixed dock. “May I ask what’s going on?”

  “I am Lieutenant Celio Oliveira,” the young man greeted her. His tone was more servile than his body language suggested. “The Guardia wishes to provide any necessary support for the RMN’s operations in our city…so that you can leave as quickly as possible.

  “The presence of Martian military personnel is going to be an active irritant to several segments of our population and create potential difficulties for the Guardia,” he concluded. “We wish only to help you complete your duties and return to your ship as efficiently as possible.”

  Roslyn eyed him for a few seconds, then sighed.

  “I appreciate the effort, Lieutenant Oliveira,” she told him. “But I can’t make any promises as to how long my duties here on the surface are going to take. I can provide you with my contact information to make sure that we coordinate with the Guardia as necessary, but I’m tasked with matters of the Mountain’s security, and I can’t delay or abrogate that mission.”

  “I see,” he said stiffly. “I hope that transportation will help?”

  “It will, though I’ll admit that marked vehicles will not,” Roslyn told him. She studied the vehicles. There were only two unmarked vehicles, and they were standard electric sedans. They could maybe fit all twelve members of her team into the two cars, but it would be a squeeze.

  “On the other hand, if the Guardia would like to assist, I could use access to your computer systems,” she continued. “We can travel to a Guardia station with you, and you can arrange unmarked transport for twelve.”

  Unless they had some kind of low-profile unmarked armored personnel carrier, Roslyn didn’t think that Lieutenant Oliveira could manage that.

  “I should be able to arrange that, sir,” he admitted. “Both access and vehicles, Mage-Lieutenant Commander…”

  “Chambers,” she told him, somewhat surprised by his managing to read her insignia. “If the Guardia can be quietly helpful, I suspect that will serve both of our purposes best. I would prefer to keep the operations of my team under wraps, but I understand the Guardia’s legitimate concerns.

  “As much as I can, I will accommodate them.”

  So long as the Guardia remained helpful, at least. She certainly wasn’t planning on telling them everything—but she also suspected the Guardia could tell her whether Angus Killough’s apartment had been rented to someone else.

  “That is the most we can ask, I suppose,” Oliveira admitted. “You have more people aboard the shuttle, then?”

  “Two years ago, this world was actively at war with the Protectorate, Lieutenant,” Roslyn said gently. “For the same reason you’re worried about our activity in your city, my Captain insists that our officers travel with Marine escort.

  “We will make use of whatever unmarked vehicles you can loan us,” she continued. That would allow the Guardia to track their movements, so they’d also want to acquire other vehicles—but the appearance of cooperation was worth a lot.

  “We only wish to serve,” Oliveira told her.

  “And observe,” Roslyn said pointedly.

  To her surprise, that got an honest chuckle from the young man. Maybe they could get some value out of the partnership after all.

  11

  Two hours later, Roslyn and her team were equipped with two large gray SUVs that hopefully wouldn’t draw too much attention as they shuffled around the city—and the information that the lease signed by Andrew Jackson, Killough’s alias, was still active.

  “All right, take us past the address,” Roslyn ordered. “Regular speed; let’s look like we’re going somewhere.”

  “Subtle peeping tom, right,” Mooren replied. The Sergeant was driving the lead vehicle, with Herbert driving the following van.

  “We don’t know what happened to Mr. Killough,” Roslyn pointed out. “It seems likely the apartment is watched.”

  “I was making commentary, not arguing,” Mooren noted. A navigation system overlay appeared on the bottom half of the SUV’s windshield as the Marine plugged in addresses. “There’s a nice hotel in the suburbs of Nueva Portugal that we’d drive right past the apartment on the fastest route to,” she noted.

  “Sounds good,” Roslyn said. “We’ll probably need a home base for a bit.”

  She pulled up the holographic screen and keyboard on her wrist-comp and fired off a note to Abiodun back aboard Huntress. Booking hotel space for twelve definitely fell into the Logistics Department’s responsibilities.

  “What have we got on the apartment?” she asked. Corporal Knight was sitting directly behind her, and the electronic-warfare tech had been doing research for her in the public records.

  “It’s the third-floor unit in a five-floor complex inland from the main downtown core,” Knight replied. “Villa-style complex, with two hundred units around a central courtyard. Reasonably midrange, mostly occupied by young professionals and new arrivals.

  “Fourteen Guardia reports in the last year: minor domestics and a couple of break-ins. None were related to the unit we’re looking at.”

  “Security?” Mooren asked.

  “Artificial stupid silent alarm at the entrances,” the Corporal replied. She paused. “That’s an Artificial Sequential Intelligence,” she clarified. “Pre-coded semi-learning algorithm, works through a logic chain to decide whether to call the Guardia.

  “Nothing complicated or unusual,” she concluded. “ASI alarm has never been triggered. This is quiet and boring, sir. Exactly where I’d rent an apartment if I was trying to stay under the radar.”

  “Wonderful,” Roslyn murmured. “So, if we have to cause trouble, we’re causing it for a bunch of the people we don’t want to bother.”

  “They’re all Protectorate citizens, aren’t they?” Mooren asked, the Marine’s voice calmly pointed.

  “They are,” Roslyn ag
reed. “We do everything we can to make sure we aren’t risking anyone, but I prefer not to irritate the people who might have their local MP on speed dial.”

  Several of the Marines chuckled—but the Staff Sergeant cleared her throat.

  “If you look out your left, we’re coming up on the complex,” she told them. “Time to peel our eyeballs, I think.”

  There was surprisingly little to see from the outside, Roslyn quickly realized. The complex was a square structure of white brick and red tile, with a gated accessway through to the inner courtyard with a stylish metal gate closing it off.

  “Herbert, can you swing by the other side and see what the rest looks like?” Roslyn requested. There were balconies on the outside, but they had privacy screens to prevent exactly the kind of surveillance she was trying.

  “On it,” the pilot replied.

  “Not much to see,” Mooren agreed. “Can’t slow down without drawing attention, either.”

  “Take us to that hotel,” Roslyn ordered. “I’m going to see if I can get overhead from Huntress. Might not tell us much more, but everything we can get helps a little.”

  She was already considering her worst-case scenario: there wasn’t going to be any way to tell if Killough was present from the outside. They were going to have to move in.

  The suite Abiodun acquired for Roslyn at the hotel had clearly not been picked at random. It was excessively comfortable, in the Lieutenant Commander’s opinion, but it had the virtue of having a seating area large enough for the Marines to all squeeze in.

  Knight set up a few security devices to make sure they weren’t being watched, and then Roslyn projected a hologram of the complex from her wrist-comp.

  “This is what we’ve got,” she told them. “It’s not much. Right now, I know that Angus Killough rented a third-floor apartment in this building and the lease is still active. Someone is paying for it and the landlord doesn’t think he’s disappeared.”