Grace McLaughlin was Montgomery’s partner and the mother of the twin girls. Roslyn had expected her for a social event—and not the Queen, which made her suspicious.
“So, there are guards at the door and we’re in one of the most secure offices in the Protectorate,” she said slowly. “I’m not seeing tea or dinner anywhere yet, and the only people in the room are the rulers of the Protectorate, a pair of babies and me.
“Why do I think this is not just a social invitation?”
“Told you,” Montgomery repeated, making a vague gesture toward the Queen. “I didn’t end up recruiting her for illegal special ops as a seventeen-year-old because she was stupid.”
That recruitment had allowed Roslyn to get into the Royal Martian Navy despite a teenage conviction for vandalism and grand theft auto. Helping out the Hands of the Mage-King—specially authorized troubleshooters like Montgomery had been then—covered for a lot of sins.
“There will be a dinner in about an hour, yes,” Alexander said quietly. “And it will be a purely social event with a number of other people, many of whom lack the clearances present in this room.
“Despite your junior rank, you’re one of the few people in the Protectorate fully cleared on the Rune Wrights,” the Queen noted. “That means we can tap you for the problem that has come up without having to brief someone else.”
Roslyn inhaled sharply, then forced herself to relax and pet the kitten still purring on her shoulder. She’d served as Flag Lieutenant to the Mage-Queen’s aunt, the current Crown Princess, Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander.
Like the Mage-Queen and Damien Montgomery, Jane Alexander was a Rune Wright: one of the rare Mages who could see magic as well as wield it. It gave them many unique gifts, but most important was the ability to create Runes of Power and augment their own strength far beyond any other Mage.
“I would prefer not to be pulled from Song of the Huntress,” Roslyn admitted. “But I am yours to command. That is my duty.”
She was the tactical officer on the destroyer Song of the Huntress. She’d held that role for two years, since being promoted to Lieutenant Commander after saving Jane Alexander’s life.
“We won’t be moving you from Huntress,” Montgomery told her. “We’ve made arrangements for Huntress to be assigned where we need you. Mage-Captain Daalman will be receiving her new orders tomorrow.”
“I see,” Rolsyn said. “What do you need of me?”
“First, we need to brief you on one of the bits of ugliness about the Republic we haven’t talked about,” Alexander said grimly. “We’ve been open about a lot of what was going on with Project Prometheus and Dr. Samuel Finley, but we’ve kept some secrets still.”
Roslyn stopped petting the kitten, earning her a disgruntled squeak as she looked down at the floor. The Republic had been a group of worlds that had seceded from the Protectorate to “escape from the domination of the Mages.”
Since the Mages were the key to interstellar travel, they’d needed a new solution. Their answer had been Project Prometheus: where thousands of Mages had been murdered and their brains used as the core for a pseudo-technological jump drive.
And Dr. Samuel Finley had been the architect of that project.
“Finley is dead, isn’t he?” she asked carefully. Nyx batted at her ear and she pulled the kitten back into her lap.
“Oh, he’s dead,” Damien said grimly. “I saw one of our ex-Republic agent allies put two through his skull myself. What we haven’t told anyone is that he was a Rune Wright.”
Roslyn nodded slowly. She still wasn’t petting the kitten, and with one final disgruntled mew, the animal jumped back onto the floor and set off in pursuit of her sibling.
“I see potential problems there, I suppose,” she allowed. “But he is dead, so…”
“We’ve been digging through the Republic’s files for two years,” Alexander noted. “But even a mere three years of a mostly functional governmental, military and research infrastructure produces a lot of files.
“We focused on Project Prometheus and some of the related research projects early on. But there were a few detached projects that we didn’t identify until recently.”
“The Martian Interstellar Security Service now believes that Finley was running a network of covert labs that the Republic wasn’t fully aware of,” Montgomery said. “He was basically defrauding the Republic to pay for it, so it was well concealed even in their files.”
“I didn’t meet him,” Roslyn said slowly, “but given what he publicly got up to for the Republic, that seems…dangerous.”
“We agree,” the Mage-Queen told her. “Song of the Huntress is being sent to the Sorprendidas System. It’s a Fringe star system that only saw stealth scouts from our side in the war. They weren’t really involved in anything, though Sorprendidan personnel served in the Republic Interstellar Navy.”
“MISS sent several agents to investigate the data we had on the lab,” Montgomery told her. “All of them have stopped reporting in. They wouldn’t have had Link access, so it’s possible they just lost access to their communication networks, but we…” He shook his head. “We’re assuming they’re KIA.
“Your job is to find them if you can, find whatever breadcrumbs they left behind if you can’t. Locate the lab, assess the threat level and neutralize it if the threat is unacceptable.”
“Damien wanted to read in all of Huntress’s senior officers,” Alexander noted. “MISS wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps—and the Rune Wright factor argues in their favor.
“You will be authorized to brief Captain Daalman if you feel it necessary, but you will also carry a Warrant of Our Voice,” the Mage-Queen said firmly. “If necessary, you will use that Voice to assume command of all Protectorate resources in the system to do what you deem fit.
“We do not believe the laboratory will present that much of a threat, but…we do know that at least two of Finley’s Mages are there. Those people are war criminals, Lieutenant Commander Chambers. They must be brought
