Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (26 page)

Denis Romanov always felt a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more able to stand straight, when he stood on his home planet and humanity’s mother world. The air in Ireland was clear and fresh, the pollution of previous years cleaned away—first reduced by dint of great effort and then erased later by vast amounts of magic.

The city hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. A few more suburbs sprawling out in the distance, another couple of older blocks demolished and replaced with arcology-esque apartment towers. Sector Six was next door to Sector Seven, where he’d grown up. The Sectors
had
older names, and he was sure most people might even use them—but he’d grown up in an arcology tower and his interest in his homeland’s history was minimal at best.

A fleet of automated electric taxis, combined with an interlinked system of monorail streetcars, tied Dublin—and most major Earth cities these days, for that matter—together. Leaving his charges behind, Denis hailed an autocab and gave it the address of the Sector Six Police Office.

Twenty-two minutes later, the vehicle delivered him to the office, what had once been a manor house surrounded by landscaped ground. The manor house, now the sector police dispatch, remained but the grounds had given way to a slightly classier style of apartment buildings than the one he’d grown up in.

The office looked utterly out of place, which he suspected was the point. Anyone looking for help would see the older building and then realize it was the police station. It served as a beacon.

The cab unlocked its doors and released him after he tapped the payment scanner with his Marine Corps payment chip. Anything he did in Montgomery’s service was charged to the Hand’s accounts. So far as Denis knew, Hands’ budgets didn’t
have
limits—at least, not in the context of anything smaller than starships and armies, anyway.

He’d traded his uniform for plain civilian clothes, slacks and a dress shirt of a simple style that seemed to stay relatively constant across centuries. None of the uniformed police officers or civilians paid any attention to him as he strode up the steps of the station and into the front lobby.

The lobby had been a grand entrance hall once but was now a somewhat comfortable waiting area. Two uniformed officers held down desks, clearly doing triage of who was and wasn’t important enough to be hurried in.

It didn’t
look
like there was anything in place to stop anyone going past those two into the offices deeper in the building, though Denis suspected no one would make it through any of the doors without being intercepted.

He approached the woman on the left, who looked
slightly
less harried, and cleared his throat loudly as she continued with whatever electronic paperwork she was doing.

“Wait until you’re called, please,” she said sharply. “We’ll get to you.”

“I need to speak to Captain Wanda Skellard immediately,” Denis told her calmly.

“Unless you have an appointment, please wait until you’re called,” the officer repeated, still ignoring him.

“What part of ‘immediately’ is difficult to understand?” he asked. “Your job, Corporal, is to assess who actually needs to get in to see the officers in this station. If you ignore them, you’re not
doing
that, are you?”

Finally,
the woman looked up at him, and he saw her angry retort die unspoken as she saw the golden medallion at his throat. Not only was he a Mage, but he’d be
very
surprised if a fully trained police officer didn’t recognize the sword etched into the medallion that marked him as a fully trained Combat Mage.

“And you are?” she finally asked carefully.

“Mage-Captain Denis Romanov, RMMC,” he introduced himself. “I’m here on the Mountain’s business and I need to speak to Captain Skellard immediately.”

“She is in a meeting,” the officer told him after spending a moment checking a schedule. “I could page her?”

“I can wait until she’s done. I’ll be outside her office,” he told her with a small smile, and swept past the guardian desks. “Please let her know I’m waiting, if you could.”

Now that the officer was doing her job, he had no reason to
continue
making her life difficult.

#

Wanda Skellard showed up five minutes after the hour, clearly
not
having left her meeting for him. She looked exactly like Denis remembered, allowing for ten years’ difference. She’d left the arcology at eighteen when he’d been fourteen, determined to make a life for herself.

The example of the tall woman striding down the hallway toward him with her own personal thundercloud was directly responsible for his being where he was now.

“Denis Romanov,” she greeted him, her tone flat. “I’ll confess this isn’t how I expected to find you in my station. Come in,” she ordered, the easy authority of having kicked her way from a slum to a prestigious command in ten years showing in her words and motions.

“Captain Skellard,” he returned the greeting, bowing his head and following her into her office. He’d expected some kind of plain utilitarian space and was instead confronted with what had probably been the den when the manor was originally built. Paneled in
very
old oak with an equally old oak desk, every inch of her office dripped power and prestige.

Sector Six contained some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Dublin. It was a plum appointment, and one he knew the girl from his block had
earned
.

“Call me Wanda, Denis,” she told him as she dropped into the much-more-modern ergonomic chair behind her desk. “From what my poor abused front desk tells me, you’re a Captain yourself these days. The Marines have been good to you, huh?”

“As good for me as Dublin Police has been for you,” he agreed. “No one’s ever been surprised to see Wanda Skellard succeed, though.”

“Where I half-expected you to end up in here for gang trouble, even
after
I heard you’d gone to the Marines,” she replied genially. “Mage or not, you were a
pain
as a kid.”

“I learned better,” he told her seriously. “Even before I went to the Marines, to be honest.”

“Fair,” she allowed. “It’s not like I ever went back. You?”

“Mom married the Sarge; I visit them once a year or so,” he replied. “It’s… Well, nothing ever changes in the welfare towers. Nothing’s permitted to break, but no one ever cares to make it work
better
.

“I’m here for work, though,” he continued. “I need a favor.”

“No offense, Denis, but if I let old times’ sake drag me into trouble, I wouldn’t have this office,” she pointed out.

“I was relying on ‘old times’ sake’ to get me in here, not to convince you to help me,” Denis replied. “I need access to the MIS identity databases.”

The joking friendliness vanished instantly. Suddenly, Skellard’s feet were flat on the floor behind her desk, her face was level, and her eyes had gone gray and cold as she focused on him.

“Talk fast, Denis,” she ordered in a clipped tone, one he recognized from his superiors in the Corps. “Accessing those databases without a warrant would cost
me
my career and put
you
in jail.”

“In front of a court-martial, at least,” he confirmed, and tapped a command on his wrist PC. “You should have the warrant on your system by close transfer now.”

She held that cold gaze on him for a long moment and then checked her computer. The Sector Captain studied the warrant for a long, long moment.

“Denis, this is a Hand’s Warrant,” she said slowly. “Hands don’t ask Sector Captains to look up identity databases. They have MIS falling over themselves to look up this shit.”

He sighed.

“How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go, Wanda?” he asked quietly. “It’s legit; you can tell that without me saying it. Do you need the explanation?”

“What the hell have you wandered into, Denis?” she asked in turn, her voice concerned instead of harsh now.

“My company has been seconded to Hand Montgomery for his personal security,” he explained. “I report to his Secret Service lead, but otherwise I share responsibility for the life and safety of one of the Hands of the Mage-King of Mars.

“This appears to come with a lot of
other
tasks,” he noted, “including trying to get a database search done without anyone knowing about it. There are reasons.”

“Down the rabbit hole, huh?” she said slowly. “All right, Denis, how badly would knowing the answers hurt me?”

“Possibly fatally,” he admitted. “We
should
have that chance removed, but…people have died over this already.”

“I have my Sector,” Skellard noted. “One hundred thousand citizens, two hundred and fourteen cops. Our job is to keep them safe, no matter what.
That
gives me problems sleeping at night. I wouldn’t take a Hand’s burden for anything. This’ll help?”

“It will,” Denis promised. “And the warrant covers you. He has the authority to make the request; we’re just…well, finding someone we can trust.”

“Ten years later, you still trust me that far?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She sighed.

“Fuck you, Denis Romanov,” she said with a smile that took the bite from her words. “I presume you’ve got faces for me and not much else?”

#

“Only two of the faces were clear enough for Captain Skellard to pull details from the databases,” Romanov informed Damien and Amiri as the Hand piloted the shuttle back up to
Doctor Akintola
. “The other was
just
shaded enough that we couldn’t get a clear ID.”

“That’s two more than I was afraid of,” Damien admitted to the Marine. When he’d first seen how carefully Octavian had guided his people through the boarding gallery, he’d worried that even having found
Keeper of Oaths
’ construction slip wouldn’t help them.

“Who have we got?” he asked.

“Rune Scribe number one is this young lady,” Romanov flipped an image to both Damien and Amiri. Still paying
some
attention to the shuttle and its automated course, Damien laid it onto the cockpit window as a translucent overlay.

“Jessica Philips, Rune Scribe, Mage, graduate of Curiosity City University with a Masters in Thaumaturgy and Runic Studies four years ago,” the Marine concluded. “She was a grad student at the time, and one from a poor family at that. Her involvement was almost certainly motivated by money.”

“Can we find her?” Damien asked.

“Eventually, almost certainly,” Romanov answered, “But not quickly. She left Sol eighteen months after graduating; records say she went to the Kaber System. MidWorld; relatively advanced, but no RTA. We’d need to physically go there to find her.”

“I’d really rather
not
do that,” the Hand said dryly. Kaber was fifty-two light-years from Sol, hardly a quick day trip out to ask some questions.

“We don’t have to, because Rune Scribe number
two
was Miss Philips’s
professor
,” the Marine said, flipping a second ID photo over. “Dr. Periklis Raptis, PhD in Runic Studies, Masters in Third Millennium Solar History and Thaumaturgy.”

Dr. Raptis was a swarthy older man, a fringe of shockingly white hair that surrounded a liver-spotted bald patch drawing all attention in the picture.

“He was and remains the Head of Martian Runic Studies at CCU,” Romanov explained. “He’s a tenured professor teaching several classes, including first-year History of the Eugenicist War and fourth-year Rise of the Protectorate History classes, plus between four and eight Runic Studies courses a semester.”

“Busy man,” Amiri observed. “Surprised he teaches the history classes.”

“Always has, according to the CCU website. I guess they’re his hobby.”

“And an interest in that period would tie neatly into working with the Keepers,” Damien said quietly. “The bastards probably know more about the war than anyone else. Part of the damned secrets they keep.”

“We can probably use MIS resources to trace his movements over the last while,” Amiri pointed out. “But the truth is, he’s probably most easily found at his school.”

“So, that’s exactly where we’ll go,” the Hand concluded as
Doctor Akintola
came into view. “The Keepers probably expected us to spend longer on Earth, going through the shipyard records if nothing else. If we move fast enough, we may be able to interrogate Raptis before anyone knows we’ve identified him.”

“Does it ever go that smoothly?” Romanov asked, sounding honestly curious.

“No.”

Returning to Mars at last, Damien found himself tensing as they emerged from the jump, focusing on the sensor displays around him as he watched for some kind of threat. Here of all places he should be safe, but…he could no longer take that for granted.

By the time they made into orbit, he had finally started to relax. No new missiles had appeared out of the shadows, and the jump-yacht was now, not particularly
subtly
, under the protective guns of two of the Martian Squadron’s battleships.

“
Doctor Akintola
, this is Olympus Control,” a voice came over his channel. “Our holding patterns are currently full; I’ve been requested to redirect you to the transfer station.”

Damien sat bolt upright.

“OC, I’m going to need to request authentication on that,” he said calmly. “This is Hand Montgomery.”

“I understand that, my lord,” the controller replied, her voice strained. “Believe me, my lord, this is
not
normal. I have
four
Councilor delegations on approach for a private meeting with His Majesty. Authentication is Lima Victor Tally Ho Six Five Niner.”

The code was solid: no one at Olympus Control was under duress that the controller was aware of. He sighed. He could fly from the transfer station to Curiosity City just as easily as he could do so from Olympus Mons, but he’d been hoping to meet up with the Mage-King first.

If there were
four
members of the Council of the Protectorate in the Mountain, though, that wasn’t happening either way.

“My apologies, Hand Montgomery,” the controller told her. “Be advised any shuttle flights for the next hour are going to run into the same problem. If you want to hold in orbit, it’ll be ninety to a hundred and twenty minutes before we’ll have a clear entryway.”

“Understood, Olympus Control,” he finally allowed. “We will proceed to dock
Akintola
at the royal transfer station.”

#

Damien, Amiri, and the rest of his security detail had made it onto the transfer station and were heading for a waiting shuttle when they were intercepted by a trio of suited young men in matching black suits.

“My Lord Montgomery, Agent Ishmael,” the leader said quietly. “Authentication Kilo Tally Mike Seven Delta Seven. We’re with the Service. If you could come with us, please?”

Damien glanced at Amiri, who nodded calmly. The code was legit, then—he’d trust her judgment on that.

“What’s going on, Agent Ishmael?”

“I can’t say anything in public,” the Secret Service Agent said calmly. “But if you, Agent Amiri, and Mage-Captain Romanov will come with me, I can take you to the individual waiting for you.”

“Denis is getting his people off of the ship and coordinating with the ground,” Damien replied. “It’s just me and Amiri.”

“That’s fine, my lord. I was asked to bring you; the inclusion of your bodyguards is for your comfort.”

“He’s legit,” Amiri said quietly.

“All right, Agent Ishmael,” Damien said. “Lead the way.”

The young man nodded, almost a small bow. He led them through a side door and down a somewhat dingy corridor leading away from the main sections of the station.

After several minutes of similar back corridors, Damien was starting to get nervous.

“Agent, what is going on?”

“My principal is…not on the station, if you understand me,” Ishmael said after a moment’s hesitation. “He wished to meet with you in complete secrecy. The situation, I am led to understand, deserves such.”

Further questioning was cut off as they emerged into a
very
different part of the station. Here, gravity runes were inlaid into thick, traffic-resistant carpet, and the walls had been painted in murals of soft green and blue.

Damien had seen the VIP section of the station before, and wondered just
who
he was meeting. The presence of another grim-faced trio of Secret Service agents reduced the likely possibility dramatically, and he wasn’t entirely surprised to be ushered through a pair of double doors into the reception area of one of the nicer hotel suites containing Hand Hans Lomond.

“Hand Lomond,” he greeted the other man. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

“Because you’re not meeting
me
, Hand Montgomery,” the older man said cheerfully. “I haven’t been briefed on your current mess, and I don’t really expect to be. I’m His Majesty’s hammer, and this doesn’t sound like a problem for a hammer.

“Today, though, I’m just the taxi driver,” Lomond continued. “Got him up here without anyone the wiser.”

With the Mage-King tied up meeting with the Council, the only “him” who could convince Hands to help him sneak around out of sight would be…

“Well, shit,” Damien said aloud.

“Like I said, I don’t know what’s going on,” the older Hand told him. “In fact, I’m heading out-system in about ten minutes—we think we may have found Julian Falcone’s latest hiding place, and I’m taking a trio of cruisers out to pay a visit.”

“Good luck,” Damien assured him. Once, long before, he’d passed through Darkport, a slave-trading port run by Julian Falcone. The man had ended up in jail but had broken free after less than a year—and many of the criminals broken free
with
him had ended up involved in the pirates attacking Sherwood and Míngliàng.

“I’ve had my ear to the ground for a long time, though, Montgomery. Something stinks on Mars, and it feels like you’ve stirred it all up. The kid wants to help, and he
could
, but I don’t think he realizes just how bad the snakes’ nest you’re walking into is.”

“I wasn’t planning on encouraging him,” Damien noted.

“If you need backup, I can postpone my trip,” Lomond offered. “The Navy can handle Falcone without me. We can call Ndosi, muster up everyone. I don’t know
who
is fucking with you, Montgomery, but they can’t fight three Hands.”

“My problem isn’t firepower,” the younger man demurred. “The problem is finding a shadow.”

Lomond sighed and nodded.

“And that’s why I go squish pirates,” he said brightly. “And leave the shadows—and the
family
—to you.”

“Thanks
so
much.”

#

Desmond Michael Alexander the Fourth, eldest child of the Mage-King of Mars, Rune Wright, and Crown Prince of the Protectorate, looked more than a little guilty as Damien entered the room he was hiding in.

Des towered over Damien, but that didn’t seem to be making him any more comfortable as the Hand stalked across the room.

“Does your father even know you’re here?” Damien asked.

“Yes,” Des replied. “Of course, he thinks I’m seeing Lomond off,” he admitted.

“As opposed to
what
, exactly?” the Hand demanded. “Please tell me you at least have your
bodyguards
here?”

The youth flushed.

“Of course. Agent Ishmael brought over a dozen Secret Service agents with him,
and
we had Lomond’s detail with us aboard the shuttle up. Was rather crowded, all things considered.”

The boy was irrepressible, and Damien sighed. He hadn’t been a lot better in his own not-too-distant youth.

“What do you
want
, Des?” he asked. “This is a giant mess, and not one you need to be anywhere near!”

“I want to
help
,” the Crown Prince exclaimed. “I have a full set of Runes of Power, I’m trained as a Jump Mage, I’m as powerful as you or Father. I’m no good to anyone sitting around the Mountain learning how to make nice with politicians!”

“When you inherit from your father, making nice with politicians will be your job,” Damien pointed out. “Politics is sadly a more useful skill for running the Protectorate than being a fully trained Combat Mage—something you’re not, Des.

“Even if you were, this isn’t a mission I can
use
backup for,” he continued. “It’s a question of shadows and answers, conspiracies and lies, and the
last
thing I need is to be watching an eighteen-year-old with phenomenal cosmic power but not the sense to
duck
.”

The tall youth winced.

“Honestly, you’d have been better off asking your father to send you with Lomond,” the Hand pointed out. “That’s a straightforward assignment, one that would give an idea of just what the people your father commands are sent to do.”

Des sighed.

“I…I thought you’d be easier to work with than Lomond,” he admitted. “He’s…intimidating.”

“Des?” Damien said dryly. “I wouldn’t have let you tag along up to the transfer station. I think you find him easier to
manipulate
, if nothing else.”

The youth flushed and sighed.

“Is there
anything
I can do to help?” he asked plaintively.

“You’re better off asking your father that than me,” the Hand pointed out. “He’s the one with all the problems of mankind loaded onto his shoulders. I only carry some of the burdens for him.”

“These Keepers,” Des said quietly. “They scare him. A lot. He thinks Great-Granddad may have betrayed his own Charter and Compact, and the consequences could be bad. The Council is already chipping at the Mountain’s power. If they know the first Mage-King set this into motion…”

“That’s going to be a headache.” Damien shook his head. He did
not
want the Mage-King’s job—and Winton had thought that was a prize to tempt him with! He knew enough
other
headaches of his boss’s to be sure of that. “But this is a situation that needs discretion and speed. I need to be on my way down to Mars to follow up a lead.”

“Can I help?” Des repeated, and the Hand sighed, realizing that there
was
something the boy could do.

“Here.” He loaded a datachip into his wrist PC and transferred all of his files and research, including the IDs they’d managed to make, onto it. “If you want to help? Make sure you deliver this to your father—into his hands, no one else’s. I’m not betting that my enemies don’t know where I’m going and what I’m doing, so let’s make sure my
friends
do as well.”

“I will make sure of it!” the Crown Prince promised, as if he’d been asked to do something far more important than act as a secure courier.

“Tell no one, Des,” Damien told him. “I’m starting to hate secrets, but this has to stay in the shadows a little while longer.”