Starship's Mage: Episode 1 (4 page)

A full day after finally easing the
Blue Jay
into the docking arms at Sherwood Prime David Rice found himself walking the ship with the insurance agent, a thin man in a cheap gray suit. The agent said very little as they walked the docking arm, viewing the exterior damage from the windows. He occasionally took a picture with his PC, and spent much of his time making notes on a keyboard only visible to him.

When
they reached the entrance to the
Blue Jay
so they could survey the internal damage, they were interrupted by the agent’s PC buzzing,
“Excuse me, Captain Rice,”
the man told David before stepping aside to answer the call. Only the occasional small exclamation was audible of the conversation, but when the man returned, his closed exterior was replaced with a wicked grin that belonged on a prank-pulling schoolboy, not an insurance agent of a company notorious for nickel and diming every claim they ever received.

“I’m pleased to inform you, Captain Rice, that my superiors have confirmed that the damage to your ship is covered under the piracy clause in your contract,”
the agent told Rice. “As such, only half the usual deductible will apply as the damage is entirely beyond your control.”

“I thought that was what you were here to assess?”
Rice asked, and the agent shook his head.

“I’m assessing the value of the damage,”
the agent told him. “I have no authority on my own to confirm or deny your claim – the branch head retains direct control over all claims related to starship damages.”

“Ah,”
Rice observed. “So if I may ask, what is the joke I’m missing?”

The agent’s smile faded
slightly, but not completely. “Off the record, my manager is the worst I’ve ever met for rejecting claims on any grounds,” he admitted quietly. “But Mage-Captain Corr called the office and let us know that he and his crew would be perfectly willing to supply their professional analysis of your telemetry data if there was need to support the piracy claim – and then reminded him that the
Guardian of Honor
is slated to be onstation for the next
two years
, so they couldn’t even push it off until the ship left. It feels good to watch that tightwad get stuck in a corner.”

“I see,”
Rice agreed, understanding at least part of the other man’s thoroughly unprofessional glee, and grateful for the Martian officer’s assistance. Without Mage-Captain Corr leaning on the insurance, it would have taken longer to get the claim cleared, and if they’d managed to declare it an accident, it would have doubled how much of the repairs he had to pay for – a difference that would almost have bankrupted him.

“Shall we go see how much we have to fix then?”
he asked the agent, gesturing back towards the ship.

The rest of the tour with the agent was much more pleasant than the exterior tour had been, as if the certain knowledge that he wasn’t going to be forced to screw the ship’s crew took a large weight off the man’s shoulders.

David was
finally relaxed for the first time in days when he settled in at his desk to call the Ship’s Mages Guild to post for a new Ship’s Mage. The video screen on his desk showed the gold icon of the Guild, the same three stars that every Jump Mage wore carved onto the medallion at their throat and the Guild’s Latin motto: “
Per Magica Ad Astra
” – “Through Magic The Stars.”

The young woman who answered the call did not wear any such medallion – no one would waste a Mage on reception and booking duty.
She did wear a fetching skirt and blouse combination in green and white that accented her black hair in a manner that reminded David it had been two years since his divorce.

“Sherwood Ship’s Mage’s Guild, Melanie speaking, how may I help you?”
she chirped cheerfully.

“Good afternoon Melanie,”
David greeted her calmly, refocusing his attention where it belonged. “I need to put up a posting for a Ship’s Mage position.”

Among
its many roles and tasks, the Guild maintained the ‘job board’ on the System communication net. A ship’s captain could be fined for posting a Ship’s Mage role on a more general classified board, and none of the Jump-qualified Magi in a system would be looking for jobs anywhere else.

“Of course!”
Melanie told him. “That will only take a few minutes. Do you have an account with the Sherwood office?”

Of all the wonders that magic had given humanity, one that the Magi hadn’t managed to pull off was any
type of large-scale interstellar communications. A few facilities, massive monstrosities of runes and power, allowed a Mage to transmit their voice to a specially built, equally massive, receiver, but data transmission of any kind was impossible. It wouldn’t matter if David had accounts with every other Guild Office in the Protectorate, he would need an account for Sherwood.

“I do,”
he told the girl. He’d hired Kenneth in Sherwood, though that hadn’t been through the Guild but through a favor to an acquaintance in the government. He reeled off the account number. “Captain David Rice, aboard the
Blue Jay
,” he concluded.

Melanie
cheerfully started inputting data into a computer below the edge of the screen, and then stopped in confusion.

“I’m sorry Captain,”
she said slowly. “I’ve never seen this before, but I have a note here that your ship is blacklisted and I can’t authorize any job postings or hiring contracts.”

The ground fell out from underneath David in a way the
rapid rotation of the
Blue Jay
’s ribs to create gravity didn’t explain.

“I can put you through to a manager and you can try and sort out what it would take to get you un-blacklisted?”
she offered, still fully in ‘help the customer’ mode. The girl didn’t realize what a system-wide hiring blackout meant to a man like David. The McLaughlin had just killed his ship.

“No,”
he said faintly. “I will contact them later. Thank you Melanie,” he managed to squeeze out before cutting the connection, staring at the screen as it dropped back to an automatic rotation of the cameras around the docking bays, showing him the
Blue Jay
and the other ships in dock.

Miles James McLaughlin, it seemed, did not fuck around.
When he’d said that David would drag no more of Sherwood’s Mages into his affairs, the Mage-Governor had clearly leaned on the system’s Guild to block him hiring any Mage in the system. Since David hadn’t committed any of the acts – lack of payment, for example – that would normally result in being blacklisted, he knew it wasn’t a Protectorate-wide blacklist. He could send a note on another ship to another system’s Guild, hire a Ship’s Mage sight unseen and ship them to Sherwood.

The risks and price
tag of that option made him sick, and the shifting images on his screen weren’t helping. He touched the screen, freezing the picture on a single camera, and then stopped in thought.

Off to the side of the camera view he was watching was the
Gentle Rains of Summer
. Four times the
Blue Jay
’s size and capacity, the ship likely had more than one Mage aboard, and Andrew Michaels was an old friend of David’s.

Maybe
they could work something out, at least to get the
Blue Jay
out of this ill-begotten system with its vengeful overlord.

With his rooms tucked away deep in the cheaper areas of Ring Seven, Damien didn’t think that anyone knew where he was staying – he certainly hadn’t
given
anyone the name of the cheap hotel or his room number, so when the buzzer for his door went off, he had a moment of panic.

Remembering
after a second that he was paid up for a full week and it was unlikely to be the landlord, Damien opened his door. Waiting on him was the last person he expected: Grace McLaughlin, one of the two McLaughlin mages who’d beaten him out for the
Gentle Rains
’ junior Ship’s Mage slot… and his on-again, off-again lover from the Jump Mage program.

“Hi Damien,”
she greeted him with a mischievous grin. “Hurry up and invite me in, this is one
shitehole
of a neighborhood you’ve picked to slum in.”

Damien
was too surprised to do more than wordlessly step back and gesture her in. The petite redhead ducked under his gesturing arm and closed the door behind her, rapidly finding the room’s sole ragged couch and perching on it, eyeing him like a cat with a favorite toy.

“You know, I know you’re trying to save money, but would it kill you to have asked for a little help?”
she asked him. “I don’t know what you’re paying, but I’m sure we could have found you somewhere nicer for about the same – the family
always
knows somebody.”

“It doesn’t work that way for most of us,”
Damien told her quietly. He’d spent a lot of time around the various McLaughlin scions of his age, and continued to wonder at their view of the world. They weren’t
arrogant
, they were too driven to help and serve to be arrogant, but they knew that everyone on Sherwood would happily do them favors at the drop of a hat.

“It works that way for family,”
Grace told him, locking her gaze on him. “And you went to school with six of us
and
Granddad likes you – you practically
are
family.”

Grace, as Damien had not found out until
after
he’d shared her bed, was the eldest daughter of the Governor’s eldest son. She was the only adult in the entire
system
that would refer to the McLaughlin as ‘Granddad.’ Damien wasn’t so sure the Governor liked him – he’d barely met the man after all.

“How did you even
find
me?” he asked finally. “It’s not like I even told your Captain where I was staying.”

“Casey,”
Grace answered simply. “First rule of being shipboard – the Bosun can
always
find out what they want to know. I asked her, she sent me to Casey, who apparently lifted your address from your PC while he was saving your life. An incident, I’ll point out,” she said sharply, “that you didn’t mention to me, my sister,
or
my cousins.”

As usual when dealing with
Grace, Damien was starting to be overwhelmed. He was never sure why the woman had picked him to be her lover, though he would never have dreamed of complaining. She ran at roughly twice his speed on a good day.

“Everyone involved is spending a very long time as guests of System Security,”
Damien told her. “Beyond that, what was the point of telling anyone?”

Grace sighed
loudly, and pushed Damien down onto the couch to hop into his lap, snuggling up against him in an
extremely
pleasant way.

“Because, you adorable dolt, we actually care and worry about you when we don’t hear a peep for weeks?”
she told him. “To hear
about
you getting beaten up from the spacers on my new ship on top of that is not my idea of a good day.”

Damien
hugged her back, not sure of what to say.

“I’m sorry about the
Gentle Rains
,” she continued after a moment, her voice quieter. “I wasn’t expecting Mom to call in favors quite that heavily. If it helps, she promised to make sure the next Captain heard about you first.”

Arya
McLaughlin was, as well as the daughter-in-law of the system governor, Head Administrator for Sherwood Prime. Her prodding ship captains about Damien couldn’t hurt him, but he felt uncomfortable at the thought of strings getting pulled on his behalf.

Before
he expressed that thought aloud, however, Grace laughed, and kissed him.

“You, of course, have an even greater portion of pure Sherwood Scot stubbornness than any of the family,”
she told him. “Which is a small, teensy, portion of why I’m spending my last night on the station here.”

“You leave tomorrow?”
Damien asked, surprised.

“Yeah, we ship out at eleven hundred hours station time,”
Grace told him. She sat up straight, remaining on his lap but creating some distance between them. “Which, given that I need to be on-ship two hours beforehand, means we only have about twelve hours. I’d better get business out of the way.”

“What business?”

She slid a tiny data disk out of her cleavage and dropped it on the side table.

“That’s from Captain Michaels,”
she told him. “It’s the contact info for Captain David Rice on the
Blue Jay
– they’re the ship that came in damaged from a pirate attack a couple of days ago. Trick is, they lost their Mage on the way in – but for whatever reason, the Sherwood Guild has blacklisted them. Rice can’t post for a new Mage.”

“You mean…”
Damien said slowly.

“Rice asked the Captain if he knew anyone,”
Grace told him. “Then the Captain asked Kyle and me if we knew you – and I said I was trying to track you down since we were leaving, and he told me to tell you to contact Rice if you still wanted a Jump job.”

For a long moment, Damien was silent, looking at the tiny
disk on the table. Finally, he looked up at Grace.

“Thank you,”
he said quietly.

“You’re welcome.
Now, I believe I mentioned spending the night?” she continued with a familiar wicked grin.