Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (17 page)

A ring of consoles around the outside of the room showed where the Admiral’s—or in this case, Damien’s—support staff would work. A spherical hologram tank, easily three meters across, sat at the exact center of the flag deck, with a large chair festooned with controls next to it for the Admiral themselves to control the main display.

Unlike the all-surrounding displays, the holographic tank was online. The three-dimensional image was split into thirds. One third of it was showing an update on a self-diagnostic, another third showed space around
Duke of Magnificence
, and the last was focused on the construction slips for
Thunder
and her sisters.

Sitting in the Admiral’s chair was a dumpy woman with dark frizzy hair in a Navy uniform. She wasn’t
quite
overweight, but she was probably pushing even the Navy’s physical fitness requirements. She was focused on the holographic tank, her gaze and attention flickering between sections even as she used the controls in the command chair to manipulate the data in front of her.

“Lieutenant Commander Torres, I take it?” Damien said loudly when he realized she wasn’t paying enough attention to see him standing there.

Torres jerked upright, flinging herself out of the chair into a credible approximation of full attention and a sharp salute.

“My Lord Hand! I didn’t see you there.”

“At ease, Torres,” Damien said dryly. “I’m hardly offended you took my chair. How’s the flag deck looking?”

For a moment, it looked like the woman was trembling, and then she managed to get herself mostly under control.

“We’ll need to do some work,” she finally told him. “
Duke
’s flag deck hasn’t been actively operated since she was commissioned, and it looks like she missed an entire generation of hardware updates. The software updates are straightforward and the main display is usable, but we need to tear out
all
of the support consoles.”

“How long and what’s the difference?” Damien asked.

“Some of it’s only incremental improvements, and most of the processing power pulls from
Duke
herself, but the updates can easily make a twenty percent improvement in the efficiency of your staff,” she told him crisply. “Perhaps more important is that the staff I’m bringing over to support you is used to working with the new equipment and will face a noticeable learning curve catching up to the old gear.”

“And how long to replace them?” he repeated.

“Five days,” she replied. “They’re canned modules; I can have the old ones out and the new ones in before the rest of the repairs are done.”

Impressed, Damien nodded.

“Go ahead, then,” he ordered. If nothing else, it would give him the ability to assess the ability of his new naval chief of staff. “Now we’ve covered the hardware, yourself.”

“Myself?” she asked.

“I am sure that with the Navy’s usual efficiency, I will at some point receive your full record,” he said. “I haven’t yet. Summarize for me. Where were you transferred from, and what are your qualifications?”

Torres swallowed and nodded.

“I was promoted to Lieutenant Commander six weeks ago,” she began. “Prior to that, I was the junior operations officer for Mage-Admiral Segal’s staff for two years. Before that, I was junior tactical officer aboard the destroyer
Just Sword of Freedom
.

“Mage-Admiral Segal selected me personally to command your staff less than a week ago,” she noted. “I…understand that I replaced someone else he didn’t know directly. I am not sure of the reasons why, but I was told you would understand.”

It seemed Mage-Admiral Segal was starting to share Damien’s paranoia.

“I have two years’ experience as direct deputy to Mage-Admiral Segal’s Chief of Staff as we operated the Tau Ceti Station,” she continued. “While I am certain there are more qualified officers available, the Mage-Admiral selected me as…a matter of trust.”

“The Mage-Admiral understands my top concern at the moment,” he told her. “What about the staff you’re bringing with you?”

“I have four junior officers and sixteen technicians who will be joining us inside the next five days,” she replied. “All sixteen ratings and petty officers are being transferred directly from Mage-Admiral Segal’s staff. Two of the officers are from there as well; the other two are from
Righteous
Guardian of Liberty
with Mage-Commodore Adamant’s compliments.

“My understanding was that our priority was to find competent personnel we trusted completely,” she finished. “My lord…” She paused. “I’ve always assumed that Navy personnel could be trusted, but the Mage-Admiral was acting like we couldn’t trust anyone we didn’t know ourselves. What’s going on?”

“Send in your order for the flag deck repairs,” Damien ordered. “Then meet me in my office. If you’re going to work for me, Lieutenant Commander, it appears we’re going to have to fully brief you.”

Damien spent the week waiting for something else to go wrong. To his surprise, it went without incident or interruption. Torres saw to the updating of the flag deck and the arrival of his new Navy staff with practiced efficiency. The repairs to the battlecruiser progressed around him, and finally, on the day before the repairs were supposed to be complete, Dr. Robert Christoffsen finally returned aboard.

When the pudgy, balding older man finally arrived in Damien’s office, the Hand looked him over critically. Christoffsen held multiple PhDs in political and legal science and had been Governor of the Tara System—a Core World—earlier in life.

Now the Hand’s political advisor, he was into his nineties, and even a few weeks seemed to have sapped his vitality.

“Are you all right, Professor?” he asked.

“My vacation in the sun and waves on Tara turned into a week-long emergency consultation with the latest Governor,” Christoffsen told him. “My successor had a heart attack on us, and his Vice-Governor felt…unsure of herself. A week of backing her up seems to have everything back on an even keel, but it was hardly
relaxing
.”

“No rest for the wicked, I see,” Damien said. “You’re not exactly coming back to work at the easiest time, either.”

“I reviewed the briefing paper your Torres pulled together,” the political advisor noted. “I assume there are aspects she wasn’t cleared for?”

“I brushed over how we survived the bombardment and how I knew the runes were Martian Runic,” Damien admitted. “She’s not aware of the existence of Rune Wrights, and until
I’m
more comfortable with her, that isn’t changing. Unfortunately, it appears our enemies
are
aware of Rune Wrights—and that I am one.”

“That’s a complicating factor,” Christoffsen agreed. He grabbed a chair and took a seat, eyeing the construction yards through the observation window. “A lot of complicating factors this time around. A conspiracy at the heart of Mars?”

“I don’t exactly want to believe it myself,” Damien admitted.

His political aide laughed.

“Politics on Mars aren’t pretty, my young friend,” Christoffsen told him. “There’s cabals and parties and factions galore. If you were going home to rest, they wouldn’t be your problem. Desmond is perfectly capable of handling them himself.

“But if we’re going
hunting
on Mars, you can’t afford to be politically naïve,” he finished flatly. “It sounds like our enemies hide in the Mountain, which makes this whole mess even more politically charged.”

Damien stepped up to the transparent steel of his office window and looked out over the yards once again. From there, the core space station that guarded the yards and Tau Ceti
e
was clearly visible, a sign of the power and will of humanity overcoming
any
danger.

“Give me the highlights,” he ordered.

“That could take a week.”

“We don’t have that kind of time,” Damien said. “Skim the top for me.”

The ex-Governor sighed.

“Remember that every conflict in the Protectorate seems to come to Mage versus Mundane,” he said. “The Compact gives Mages certain rights and responsibilities, and whether they are too much or not enough is a constant source of tension.

“
Mirroring
that tension has always been the push-and-pull between the Council of the Protectorate and the Mage-King. One hundred and five Councilors, one for each world. They technically serve an advisory purpose and the Mage-King decides everything, as limited by the Charter and his ability to convince the system governments to buy in.

“In practice, Desmond and his father have both used the Council to make sure that the system governments will buy in, and the Council has effectively been writing our legislation for fifty years.
That
, however, is not part of their role under the
Charter
, so it’s entirely at the Mage-King’s discretion.”

Christoffsen fiddled with his PC for a moment and threw a projection on the window of the one hundred and five worlds of the Protectorate, highlighting sections as he kept speaking.

“Forty-five of the Councilors are either directly loyal to the Mage-King or in agreement with his current agenda,” he noted. “Those forty-five will usually vote as he wants. Fourteen are from the UnArcana worlds. They’re fighting us on everything right now.”

“They can’t really admit that Legatus is behind our current spate of rebellions and piracy, can they?” Damien asked.

“No, they claim to just want us to spend less money,” Christoffsen said dryly. “They have some support in that, but it’s the system governments who have the right to deny the Navy funding—and they’re all
terrified
.”

“So, we have Loyalists and the UnArcana blocs.” Damien tapped the lit up symbols on the window. “That’s barely half the Council. Who else?”

“The Legislaturists,” his aide replied. “They’re going to be the problem. They’re the ones who want to rewrite the Charter to explicitly give the Council the right to write legislation, not the Mage-King. The
smart
ones realize Desmond has to have a veto, but
some
appear to think that the
Council
should be the true government of the Protectorate, not the Mage-King.

“There are thirty-six Legislaturists,” he concluded. “The remaining ten Councilors are more concerned with their planets’ needs than the Council’s infighting.”

“So, that’s the ground I’m on,” Damien said quietly.

“It’s more than that, Damien. Remember that many see you as not merely a Hand but as an adoptive member of the Alexander family,” Christoffsen told him. “You are young for a Hand, photogenic, and keep acting like a goddamn hero. You are the single most visible symbol of the monarchy after Desmond the Third himself.

“Everything you do in Sol will reflect not merely on the Mountain but directly on Alexander himself. You walk into dangerous waters, with shadowy enemies, and every eye on you.” The older man shook his head. “I’m not sure I can guide you through this minefield, Damien.”

“We’ll do the best we can and deal with the consequences as they fall,” the Hand said. “Do you know anything about this Royal Order of the Keepers of Secrets and Oaths?”

“No,” the other man admitted. “If there are any records of them anywhere, it’s in the Archives at Olympus Mons. Unfortunately, I’m forced to agree with His Majesty—it is entirely possible that his grandfather
did
create this Order and
did
task them to keep everything we knew about these aliens secret.”

“They suggested they might have to overthrow Desmond now he was hunting them,” Damien pointed out. “I don’t care
how
different Desmond the Third and the First are, I doubt the man who established a monarchy at the point of a Mage-led battle fleet would tolerate anyone turning on his grandson.”

“No,” Christoffsen agreed. “We’ll deal with them, Damien.”

“Of course we will,” the Hand replied with a confidence he didn’t feel. “That’s the damned job, isn’t it?”

When
Duke of Magnificence
finally made her way out the repair slip that had been her home for over a month, rebuilding the armor, systems and weapons lost under Damien’s command, the Hand was aboard her flag deck, watching everything take place around him.

Despite the upgrades, the room didn’t
look
particularly different to him. The big holo-tank in the center had been left unchanged, as had the command chair with its touch screens and displays, now linked into his personal computer.

One of the consoles that formed a ring around the holo-tank was Torres’s—the one with the nicest chair, apparently—but for the moment, she was standing next to Damien, walking him through the menus for his chair’s screens and the big tank itself.

“The menus and commands are kept as intuitive as possible,” she told him. “They’re designed for Admirals and such who…” She paused, clearly searching for a polite way to describe it. “Who don’t have time to take retraining courses,” she concluded.

Damien chuckled. That was a polite way of pointing out that Admirals were not the easiest beasts to direct and generally would want things shaped to
them
instead of the other way around.

“It’s simpler than the controls to fly
Duke
herself, and I can do that,” he pointed out. “I’ll be fine, and if I’m not”—he gestured at the junior officers and enlisted who now held stations at the consoles—“there are a dozen of you here to help me through it.”

She also chuckled, but hovered for a bit longer. A few moments of attempting to bring up a tactical plot of the system later, and he’d managed to bring up a schematic of
Duke of Magnificence
’s sensor systems.

“Fair,” he conceded. “All right, Commander. Show me how to bring up the system plot.”

Torres went through the iconography carefully but quickly, both bringing up the plot
and
leaving Damien comfortable he could do it himself if he needed to. And as a bonus, he also knew how to bring up a sensor schematic!

Clear of the fragile struts and repair pods of the immense shipyard complex at last,
Duke
rotated on his display as the big ship oriented itself on its final destination. The cruiser was an immense pyramid, four hundred meters tall and two hundred and ten meters square at the base, festooned with weapons of half a dozen kinds, and massing over twelve million tons unfueled.

A notice flashed up on Damien’s chair screens, noting that the ship was going to full acceleration, a thirty-second notice proclaimed over the PA system everywhere aboard the ship
except
the bridge and flag deck.

The countdown flickered to zero and the image of
Duke
on the system plot began to move faster. At ten gravities flank acceleration, the yards drifted away behind them.

With his Gift, Damien could feel the magic pulsing through the floorboards, the gravity runes that fixed gravity in the ship at one gee shifting their power flow to reduce acceleration instead of creating gravity.

Duke
was a well-built ship just out of a repair yard, with plenty of energy fed into the runes. Ten gravities was her designed flank acceleration, intended to carry her out to deep space, where gravity wouldn’t interfere with the jump.

While Navy Mages with access to an amplifier could jump from and to a planet’s orbit, it wasn’t particularly
safe
. With a Hand’s power behind it, such a jump could be done with relative simplicity, but it was still easier to take the just over two hours, in this case, to get twenty light-seconds clear.

It was, Damien had to concede, far more comfortable to watch the trip out aboard the flag deck than crammed into one of the—intentionally, he was sure—uncomfortable observer chairs on the bridge. And unlike his observation deck office, the flag deck actually had all of the video feeds, scanner data, and information available on the bridge. Including, though he didn’t intend to
use
it outside of an actual battle, the ability to have the holographic tank show a miniature of the bridge in real time.

A full flag deck staff was probably excessive for his needs, though, he concluded as the ship made its trek outward. He really just needed enough people to keep the lights on and answer his questions.

The counterargument, he knew, was that his
last
mission had ended up with an entire fleet being commanded from
Duke of Magnificence
’s bridge. Hardly an efficient solution.

With a small sigh, he settled back into the chair to watch the trip out of Tau Ceti. The amount of loose rock drifting around the system required the defenses that protected the planets and made for messy navigation, but no one would deny it also made for a gorgeous view.

#

“I’m sorry for springing everything on you in one shot,” the recorded image of Mikael Riordan, Governor-Elect of Ardennes, said. “It’s easy to see how
tough
you are and assume, well, that you can take anything. And”—he sighed—“I didn’t want to lose you. I figured putting all my cards on the table was the best plan.”

Julia’s boyfriend was a mousy man, of average height with brown hair loosely streaked with gray. Nothing about him would ever stand out in a crowd—not until you heard him
speak
.

She’d seen him captivate rooms when she’d been on Ardennes and met him during the rebellion there. Returning at the tail end of the election for Governor, she’d seen him enthrall
cities
. His vision of a better future, of an Ardennes that took the benefits of its years under a robber baron but built a happier, wiser world with them, could entrance
her
.

“I got your message, obviously,” he continued with a small smile. “I know the thought is intimidating—you of all people know how much the governorship terrifies me! But…someone has to do it.

“People seem willing to listen to me, and I don’t have it in me to walk away,” he said. “I love you, but I know we haven’t had that much time together, and I’m not just asking you to settle down in an estate and raise a swarm of kids—but then, you wouldn’t be interested if I was, would you?

Julia attempted to imagine herself and Mikael with a big fancy house and a half-dozen children, and chuckled. While the image had a lot less revulsion than she would have expected, it certainly wasn’t one either of them fit into.

“I’ll be honest, Julia,” he continued, “if you want to pass on the Minister for Defense, that’s fine. I just want you here, with me. Unfortunately…if you marry me, you
are
the First Lady of Ardennes.

“And you know we need an outsider at Defense,” he concluded. “If you don’t want the job, I’m going to have to see if I can poach someone from the Navy.” He shook his head. “And while the Navy
stopped
that madwoman, there’s more than a few people here who don’t trust anyone in the uniform right now.

“You don’t need to decide straight away,” he told her. “We have time—I won’t be sworn in until the end of November. If there’s some way you can come back before then, even if you haven’t decided…I know your job doesn’t run on a schedule.”

He sighed and blew a soft kiss at the screen.

“Let me know, Julia. I can wait. I
will
wait. Just…let me know.”

The message ended and Julia Amiri was left looking at a blank space where the hologram had been. The recording had arrived in a naval mail drop before they’d left Tau Ceti, and she’d taken a full day to getting around to watching it.

She was willing to marry Mikael Riordan. She hadn’t been sure of that when she
left
Ardennes in such a hurry, but her impatient waiting for his message—and fear-driven procrastination after she
had
it—was enough for someone as self-aware as Julia to be sure of that.

Marriage hadn’t exactly been in her life plans at any point, and certainly not since her brother and bounty-hunter crew had died and she’d somehow ended up in the Protectorate’s Secret Service.

Minister for Defense, much as she didn’t think she was
qualified
for the job, was in many ways more to her taste. First Lady she could take or leave, though she knew that Mikael would back her when
she
chose her duties.

She found herself missing Alaura Stealey. That Hand had dragged both her and Montgomery in from the cold, stood them up, brushed them off, and showed them how to make the galaxy a better place.

“What would Alaura do?” Julia murmured aloud, then smiled. Alaura Stealey would do whatever would help the most people.

Damien Montgomery had a
lot
of power to change the world and desperately needed a minder, an older and wiser mind to keep him on track and aware of the world around him. She knew, with harsh certainty, that Montgomery was
more
effective with her.

But was he enough more effective to offset the good she could do on Ardennes?

Julia sighed.

That wasn’t a question she could answer on her own, and only one person could help her find the answer.

#

She found Montgomery in the observation deck he’d converted into his office. For a man who lived a surprisingly ascetic lifestyle, the fact that he’d claimed a massive space with transmuted steel windows seemed odd…until you realized that the cruiser had
three
such spaces and the loss of one had barely been noticed by the crew.

It was a luxury he could allow himself without hurting someone else, though it was certainly
possible
the young Hand hadn’t thought it all the way through. She doubted, though, that Montgomery would have taken over the space if it had been
Duke
’s only observation deck.

Montgomery stood with his back to the door, seemingly unaware of her presence. While the Marines and Secret Service Agents outside the door would never have let a threat into his space
quietly
, the woman responsibility for his safety still hoped he was paying more attention than it looked.

Past him, she could see the glitter of stars in open space. Sixteen hours into their trip—two thirds of the twelve-light-year voyage—they were far enough from either star that they could truly be called lost in the void. More stars were visible there, with no close-by star to hide them, than could possibly be seen with the naked eye in any star system.

“No sun. No worlds. Yet we’re almost as lit up as we would be at, say, Jupiter,” Montgomery finally said after a moment’s silence. Apparently, he
was
aware of her. “I never tire of looking at the stars. Grew up wondering what was out there.

“Now I’m wondering if we really want to know.” He sighed. “You’re not here to listen to me moan, Julia. What’s up?”

Julia grabbed one of the several rolling chairs that had ended up in random corners of the office, and took a seat.

“You know I came back from Ardennes early,” she reminded him. “It…wasn’t because I’d heard you were injured. That news reached Ardennes about six hours after I left, from what I can tell.”

“Ah,” Montgomery said calmly. “Something went wrong?”

“Something went…awry,” she replied. “Mikael proposed, the night he won the election. Wanted me to marry him…be First Lady…and he’d already asked me to be Minister for Defense.”

“I can see the logic on the Minister for Defense,” the Hand said slowly. “Normally, you most definitely
don’t
want an outsider in that role, but with your candidates tarred by either serving Vaughn or being rebels…”

“Exactly his argument,” she sighed.

“Since you’re not handing me a resignation, I’m guessing there’s more to it.”

“I… I wasn’t expecting it,” Julia admitted. “I panicked. I ran. Give me a firefight or an assassin, I can handle that. A marriage proposal? Apparently, that was a flanking maneuver I wasn’t ready for.”

Her boss visibly winced and finally turned away from the window.

“Didn’t say no, didn’t say yes,” he concluded. In the faded light from the stars behind him, the Hand looked even older than his thirty standard years. Wiser, somehow, than his youthful features made him look.

Or maybe that was just what she
wanted
him to be.

“Do you need me to tell you I can’t function without you?” he asked quietly. “To tell you can do more good here than you could there?”

She laughed softly.

“It would make my choice easier,” she admitted. “But I get the feeling I’d be asking you to lie.”

“You can make a huge difference here, Julia,” Montgomery told her. “With you at my back, I fear no threat, no enemy. I value your advice; I value your skills at arms…”

“But.”

“But,” he agreed with a nod. “I have other advisors. Political, military, even Romanov for small-team tactics now. I have other guardians—Romanov isn’t Secret Service, but he does good work. There are Secret Service Senior Agents who’d do the job. I’m sure you could even find one
you
trusted to take over.