“And the irony inherent in that the worst criminals of the war are Mages is not lost on us,” Montgomery said, his tone grim. “It leaves us with no choice but to see them caught and punished, otherwise the promises we made to end the war become hollow at best.”
A Warrant. Roslyn shivered. A Warrant of the Mage-Queen’s Voice meant that Roslyn would speak with the Mage-Queen’s full authority for the duration and scope of her mission.
“That is…a lot,” she said quietly. “Are we sure this lab requires it?”
“No,” Montgomery allowed. “But four MISS agents are missing or dead. The system has turned into a black hole for our operatives—and we owe it to them to find out what’s going on.
“And we owe it to everyone Samuel Finley and his people killed to make sure that his assistants are brought to justice. That is your primary mission. But, given the potential threat inherent in a Rune Wright’s secret projects…we want you to be ready for anything.”
“I am an officer of the Royal Martian Navy,” Roslyn said. “I serve at Your Majesty’s will. I’m not sure I’m the best choice for this, but I will do what I can.”
“I think you’re a perfect choice for this,” Alexander told her. “You have Montgomery’s complete trust and mine. Find our missing people, Commander. And find the bastards who betrayed their blood for money and power.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
2
Song of the Huntress was basically a brand-new ship. The new Bard of Winter-class destroyers had been designed during the war against the Republic of Faith and Reason and laid down afterward, as the Protectorate had realized the many weaknesses of its warship design.
The UnArcana Rebellions had been the first actual war the Protectorate had ever fought, after all. The Bards of Winter had been the second of the new “escort” destroyer classes built, designed from the keel out to carry the new generations of missiles and even more of the RMN’s rapid-fire laser anti-missile turrets.
Roslyn was junior enough that the new design didn’t look completely off to her, but she’d served on enough ships to be extremely used to the standard design of a Martian warship: a massive spacegoing pyramid, built to maximize engine area and point all of the weaponry forward.
Her shuttle took her around the destroyer, allowing her to examine the ship from the outside and smile at its odd-seeming appearance. The Bard-class ships had the same hundred-meter square-based pyramid as the older destroyers, but they now had an inverted skirt made up of the bottom twenty meters of a second pyramid. They gave up some of the massive surface area of the base of the pyramid but expanded the volume of the ship and provided mountings for more than the most basic weapons pointing behind the ship.
The Royal Martian Navy had learned that sometimes, even they had to run away.
“We’re on final approach, sir,” the pilot informed her. “Clearance from the landing bay. Captain Daalman says, ‘Welcome home.’”
Roslyn smiled and nodded her acknowledgement of the courtesy. Like her examination of the ship she’d lived on for twelve months, it helped distract her from the buzzing hive of bees in her stomach.
There were another two dozen people on the shuttle, the last of Huntress’s crew returning from liberty, but Roslyn’s attention was focused on the small bag of personal items at her feet. Buried in the middle of that bag, wrapped in a black silk negligee she didn’t expect to use—retail therapy was still reassuring and very few people were going to poke at the tactical officer’s lingerie—was a plain manila envelope containing a standard datachip and a sheet of archaic parchment.
Both bore the crowned-mountain seal of the Protectorate, and both said the same thing: for the duration of their mission to Sorprendidas, Mage-Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Chambers spoke with the Voice of the Mage-Queen of Mars.
That was stunning. Roslyn knew that she was a protégée of both the Prince-Regent and the Crown Princess, for a number of reasons and in a number of ways, but to carry a Royal Warrant was a far heavier weight than she was ready for.
But she was an officer of the Mage-Queen of Mars. She would do what she was called to do. What terrified her was why she carried the Warrant. Secret labs run by rogue Mages, built by the Rune Wright psychopath who’d created the Republic’s Prometheus Interface?
That was taking some digesting, even before she tried to accept that she had been tasked to deal with it—and to keep it secret.
All of that was a messy set of problems that kept her trying and failing to distract herself. There wasn’t much she could do about any of it until they reached Sorprendidas.
When Roslyn spotted the dark-eyed blond man standing by the off-loading ramp, she initially glanced around to see if there were new officers among the other passengers of her shuttle. The only other officer was a Lieutenant from Engineering she already knew, so the executive officer wasn’t meeting a new arrival.
“Mage-Commander Kristofferson,” she greeted the XO. He beat her to saluting by half a second. That was one of the oddities of her position: after two years, she was no longer one of the ten youngest Lieutenant Commanders in the Fleet—she was now the twelfth-youngest—but she was also one of seven living holders of the Mage-Queen’s Ruby Medal of Valor.
That meant she’d been awarded the Medal twice—once for rising to act as tactical officer of a destroyer on her cadet cruise, and once for rescuing the Crown Princess Mage-Admiral Alexander from Republic captivity.
“Mage-Lieutenant Commander Chambers,” Yaakov Kristofferson returned her greeting. “Welcome home. How was your leave?”
“Mars has friends but no family,” Roslyn said after a moment’s thought. “Even assuming they keep coming, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to social invites to the Mountain.”
Her boss laughed.
“Kvetch, kvetch,” he told her. “Not many people saved the life of the Mage-Queen’s aunt. I imagine you’re popular around here.”
Roslyn stepped out of
