“I’d rather they just forgot it,” he admitted. “I don’t need them to think I’m useful to hire.”
“I do,” the Hand said flatly. “That both the Legatans and the underworld seem to regard you as a useful tool is of immense potential value to me, David Rice. I can use that.”
“And if I just want to fly cargo and be forgotten?” he asked. “Is that an option?”
“Do you think the Legacy will let you disappear?” Stealey asked. “They’ve been explicitly charged to see you dead. You’ve destroyed Turquoise. She might escape herself, but with the lost ships and lost base, she’s done.
“The Legacy will hunt you until they are destroyed. Underworld faction leaders like Turquoise will find you useful just for that.” She shrugged. “The Legatans, however, trust you. That has an entirely different scale of value.”
He sighed.
“Do you know what they’re planning?” he asked.
“No. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stealey said. “The components you were hauling suggest they’re building an antimatter production facility somewhere, but there’s so many cutouts and layers of deception involved here… You helped peel back some of the layers for us, but… Andrews didn’t learn anything new at Turquoise’s base.”
“I’m surprised,” David admitted. “She was definitely working with them.”
“Oh, yes,” the Hand agreed. “I’m relatively sure her people didn’t fit the station with an antimatter suicide charge.”
David winced.
“They blew themselves up?”
“I’m relatively sure someone else blew them up,” Stealey said dryly. She tapped a button on her wrist-comp, and a holographic display appeared in the middle of the room.
The space station in the center had started life as a prefabbed ring station. Even a quick glance told David that at least half of it was uninhabitable, open to space or otherwise wrecked. That still left a massive amount of real estate to be sitting in deep space.
A single destroyer of the same type they’d fought orbited the station, with a surprisingly strong fleet of two dozen corvettes…
“What is that?” he asked, gesturing at the unfamiliar cigar-like ship hovering behind the station from his viewpoint.
“We don’t know,” Stealey told him. She turned away from the view of Amber and stepped over to the hologram of the ship. “The Navy has no records of any ship like it. Fifteen million tons, clearly built around internal rotational gravity, heavily armed.
“Andrews brought two cruisers and six destroyers to the party—and that cruiser almost fought his fleet to a standstill on its own. No communications. No attempt to run. And when it died, well…”
The hologram moved. Andrews’s squadron appeared in it, in the middle of an attack run. The strange vessel came apart as David watched, a swarm of Navy antimatter missiles vaporizing her in a single final blow.
And then the station ignited. It wasn’t one antimatter charge—it was six, and by the time they were done, the entire ring station was gone.
“Six corvettes managed to run. Another ten surrendered,” Stealey told them. “Interrogations were continuing when Andrews detached a destroyer to courier me his report, but it sounds like the crews we took know nothing about a deal with Legatus or the Legacy.”
“So, we know nothing,” David said.
“We know nothing new that you didn’t find out for us,” she replied. “You almost accidentally shredded a Legatan materials supply chain they’d spent years building—and you did it in a such a way that they don’t even think it’s your fault.”
Stealey smiled.
“I want you to do it again,” she told him. “I need you three to be agents-provocateurs, to slide back into the Legatans’ covert supply chains and track down where these components were going.
“I can only assume that ship was theirs. So, they’re building a secret fleet and a secret logistics base. There’s only one reason for Legatus to do that.”
“They’re preparing for a civil war,” David said softly.
“Exactly. And we don’t plan on starting one,” Stealey replied. “The Protectorate needs you, Captain Rice. Will you answer the call?”
He didn’t want to. He wanted to take his ship and go back to hauling cargo that didn’t have strange questions and traps attached to it. He wanted to keep his people safe and live in peace.
But his gaze kept going back to the explosion of the space station.
“Aye,” he finally said. “Aye, Hand Stealey, I will answer.”
OTHER BOOKS BY GLYNN STEWART
For release announcements join the mailing list or visit www.glynnstewart.com
Starship’s Mage
Starship’s Mage: Omnibus
Hand of Mars
Voice of Mars
Alien Arcana
Judgment of Mars
Starship’s Mage: Red Falcon
Interstellar Mage
Mage-Provocateur (Upcoming)
Duchy of Terra
The Terran Privateer
Duchess of Terra
Terra and Imperium
Castle Federation
Space Carrier Avalon
Stellar Fox
Battle Group Avalon
Q-Ship Chameleon
Rimward Stars
Operation Medusa (upcoming)
Vigilante (With Terry Mixon)
Heart of Vengeance
Oath of Vengeance (upcoming)
ONSET
ONSET: To Serve and Protect
ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy
ONSET: Stay of Execution (Upcoming)
Stand Alone Novels
Children of Prophecy
City in the Sky
Table of Contents
Ebook Copyright
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Other books by Glynn Stewart