Star Mage Exile

  Star Mage Exile

  Star Mage Saga Book 0

  J.J. Green

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  Books of the Star Mage Saga

  Prequel: Star Mage Exile

  Book 1: Daughter of Discord

  Book 2: Dark Mage Rises appears summer 2018

  ALSO BY J.J. GREEN

  SPACE COLONY ONE SERIES

  SHADOWS OF THE VOID SERIES

  CARRIE HATCHETT, SPACE ADVENTURER SERIES

  THERE COMES A TIME

  A SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION

  DAWN FALCON

  A FANTASY COLLECTION

  LOST TO TOMORROW

  (Amazon.com links. For links to your country's Amazon, scroll to the end of the book.)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter One

  Carina slung her Jensen 31 across her back and crawled beneath the remains of a desk. She had to bend low to avoid snagging the weapon on broken wood. The door to the room was slightly ajar, and from outside came the whispers and hisses of pulse slugs and the stamp of running, booted feet.

  She hated hiding in the middle of a firefight but if she didn’t do something soon, it would be all over for her and her merc band, the Black Dogs.

  Easing into a spot where she was hidden from view, she bit on the fingers of her silicon mesh glove, pulling it off. She dropped the glove and worked on the other until both her hands were free. Removing her protective gear was reckless, but she needed bare fingers to tell if the wood splinters from the desk were real. If they weren’t, the Cast would not work.

  Of course, casting brought its own risks. She faced slavery and torture if anyone found out what she was about to do. Not for the first time, she wondered whether being a mage was more of a curse than a blessing. On the other hand, saving her and her merc buddies’ lives would be a definite benefit.

  The door banged against the wall as it flew open and someone burst in. A pulse fizzed and a body hit the floor. She peeked from underneath the desk. A fellow merc was lying flat on his stomach and facing away from her, a smoking hole at the weak point where his helmet connected to his body armor. The man trembled once then was still.

  Though she couldn’t see his face, she recognized the dead man. It was the latest recruit, his new career cut short by the suicide mission they’d been sent on.

  Another figure ran in. Carina saw the calves and boots of one of the attackers. She shrank backward and lifted her Jensen, resting her finger on the trigger. If the soldier looked under the desk, he would receive a pulse round in his face. But the legs turned and left, and she heard footsteps running up the stairs to the next level. It was a lucky escape, but her luck wouldn’t last much longer.

  She picked up a splinter of wood from the desk and rubbed it between her fingertips. After peering closely at the fibrous strands, she closed her eyes to concentrate on their texture. The wood fibers were fine but not fine enough, and they were too smooth. The wood was fake. She threw down the splinter in disgust.

  Her canister of base elixir was missing only one essential element: wood. The real stuff had proven hard to find on this desert planet. Of course, even if she found some natural wood to add to the elixir, it was no guarantee she would be successful. There had to be fifty or more enemy soldiers in the embassy. She’d never cast at so many, but she had to try.

  Crawling out from under the desk, Carina scanned the room. Before it had been blown apart, the place had been luxurious. Some kind of animal skin buffed to a fine sheen had covered the walls, though now it hung in tatters. A delicate translucent mineral, intricately carved, had supplied the window lattices. Broken pieces of it were sprayed over the floor.

  The room must have belonged to a high-up embassy official, maybe even the Matahman ambassador—the kind of official to own real wood artifacts.

  The sounds of the struggle for possession of the embassy were growing louder. Fighting was going on in the stories above and below. Skirting the body of the fallen recruit, Carina closed the door and went over to a cabinet. The door was secured, but a single pulse from her Jensen melted the lock. She levered the door open with the muzzle.

  Reaching inside, she riffled through bottles of the local liquor, beakers, hard copies of documents, expensive-looking jars of some kind of local food or ointment, and boxes of different sizes. Carina pulled out the boxes and tried to open them, but they were fastened shut in a way she couldn’t figure out—possibly DNA or electronic locks.

  She had no time for cracking fancy locks, neither through ingenuity nor casting. After a brief glance at the door, she stood and brought the butt of her Jensen down hard on one of the more fragile-looking cases, smashing it apart.

  Her luck seemed to be holding. Inside the case was an oblong object. From the complex design carved at one end, she guessed it was some kind of seal or stamp. More importantly, the artifact displayed the finely grained effect of wood. Carina drove down the butt of her Jensen again, the blow jarring her arms.

  She’d split the seal at one end. Squatting, she dug her fingers into the split and ripped the object apart. She extracted a thin splinter and rubbed it into fine strands.

  From outside came the sound of footsteps running downstairs. No time remained to figure out if the seal was natural wood and not another clever synthetic. Carina took out her canister of elixir, unscrewed it and dropped in the strands. She swirled the mixture once, brought it to her lips and swallowed a mouthful.

  The elixir was foul-tasting, as usual, but Carina barely registered the taste anymore. Her eyes were closed and she was already writing the ideogram in her mind, willing herself to ignore the steps that were drawing closer.

  Creating the character required the utmost concentration. The Cast was useless unless the strokes were completed perfectly and in the correct order. One after another they appeared in her mind’s eye.

  Just as she drew the final stroke, someone ran in. Carina’s eyes flew open and grabbed for her weapon, which was slung over her shoulder, but the newcomer was merc officer Lieutenant Torres.

  “Come with me, Lin,” the lieutenant said. “Up to the—”

  Torres fell forward, the back of her helmet a ruined, burning mess. She squirmed at Carina’s feet. Behind her, framed by the door, was the enemy soldier who had shot the lieutenant at point blank range. His weapon was now aimed directly at Carina. She didn’t stand a chance. The soldier grinned.

  Then the Cast began to work.

  As always, the effect wasn’t immediate. If the soldier had ignored it and fired, Carina would have been dead, but he was distracted by its sensation. The man hesitated, his weapon still pointing at her, and looked down at his arms in disbelief as they began to disappear.

  He lifted his head to meet Carina’s gaze, his grin quickly giving way to a look of panic. The next moment, he was gone.

  And so were most of the rest of the enemy in the embassy, Carina hoped. She estimated the Cast’s radius to be around forty meters, which had to encompass most of the enemy within the building.

  She dropped to her knees at Torres’ side. The woman was no longer moving, and Carina’s stomach t
urned at the sight of gray matter oozing from the split in her helmet. Gently, she turned the lieutenant over. Her eyes were fixed and still.

  Mourning the lieutenant, the new recruit, and whoever else had died on the hopeless assignment would have to wait until later. It was time for the Black Dogs to retreat before enemy reinforcements arrived.

  Carina listened hard for sounds of fighting, but the embassy was quiet. Her Cast had given the mercs a little breathing space. She went to find the rest of her platoon. Speeding downstairs, she leapt over the corpse of a fallen attacker and empty steps before running into the embassy lobby. She skidded to a halt. Three Jensens were aimed at her.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Lin?” barked Captain Speidel, lowering his rifle, “I nearly shot you.”

  His rebuke stung, though Carina knew in his eyes she deserved it. She had a lot of respect for the captain and hated being the object of his disapproval.

  “Are we under attack, sir?” asked Staff Sergeant Brown. “The ones who had me and Halliday pinned down vanished. And I don’t hear any fighting. Did you see what happened to the enemy?”

  “I’m not sure what I saw,” Speidel replied.

  “Sir, Lieutenant Torres bought it,” Carina said. “And the new guy too.”

  “Shit.” Speidel turned away to speak into his helmet mic. As she listened in to his conversation with the mercs on the upper stories, Carina heard their confusion about the sudden disappearance of the attackers. The mercs on the roof reported more enemy forces approaching from every side.

  It didn’t need to be said. If they didn’t get out of there soon, they were screwed.

  Chapter Two

  The soldiers crammed into the shuttle that would take them back to their starship, Duchess. They laid the bodies of the fallen in sections under the floor. Sleeping in the locker, it was called.

  No one said a thing while the shuttle lifted into the air and away from the embassy, which was now ripe for the taking. The atmosphere was tense as the mercs waited for ground-to-air fire while they made their escape, but nothing came. The enemy seemed to have lost interest now that they’d retreated. Carina guessed it would be some time before the reinforcements realized that their associates had disappeared. It would be still longer until the soldiers she’d transported returned from the spot where she’d sent them.

  She was mind-weary after such a large Cast. She was also worried about the questions that would inevitably be asked about the unusual events of the firefight. In the two years since she’d joined the Black Dogs, she’d kept her Casts small, personal, and easily concealed. It had been the first time she’d risked doing something so noticeable.

  After the shuttle left the danger zone, there was none of the banter and jibes that usually went on among the mercs at the end of an mission; none of the black humor they employed to deal with the loss of friends and even enemies within their band. They’d failed. They’d retreated, and ingrained into the men and women, who were mostly ex-military, was the shame that came along with that.

  The mysterious disappearance of their attackers hadn’t yet been mentioned, as if no one wanted to risk being thought mad or stupid. Carina was certainly not going to be first to bring it up.

  The merc sitting next to her, Smitz, reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of the foul herb he was addicted to. He bit off a few centimeters of the brown substance and pushed it into his cheek with his tongue before beginning to chew. Carina immediately regretted her choice of seat. She shifted her boots sideways in case he targeted his spit near her feet.

  “Bastard lied to us,” Smitz finally said, breaking the silence.

  The Black Dogs’ assignment had been to act as back up for the government force that was supposed to be defending the embassy, only the government troops hadn’t shown.

  His comment was met with mutterings and grumbles. Captain Speidel, who was sitting next to the exit and gazing out of a small porthole, didn’t seem to have heard Smitz’s words.

  “Can’t fight a company with a platoon,” Smitz continued, drawing further murmured agreement.

  “Quieten down, soldier,” Speidel said, finally noticing the man’s complaints. The murmurs ceased, and the captain returned to his morose contemplation of the view.

  Carina felt for Speidel. He would be the one to take the blame if the top brass decided after debriefing that he’d made the wrong call, despite the hopeless situation they’d found themselves in.

  He was a good man who didn’t deserve the shit thrown at him as the meat in the sandwich between Tarsalan, the company’s owner along with commanding officer Cadwallader, and grunts like Smitz. Carina was, and always would be, grateful to Speidel for saving her from persecution and squalor in the slums of a nowhere planet. Though she rarely admitted it to herself, the older man was the closest thing to a father she had. She hoped he wouldn’t suffer Tarsalan’s ire, though it was unlikely he would be so fortunate. The woman was notorious for her fixation on profits and disregard for the lives that were lost to achieve them.

  Still no one was mentioning what was on everyone’s mind—that all the attackers within the embassy building and compound had suddenly, inexplicably, vanished.

  In the end, it was Halliday who spoke. “Hey, did...er...did anyone see anything weird happen down there?”

  The uneasy shifting of bodies was the soldiers’ only reply. Even Smitz, who was never slow to tell everyone and anyone exactly what he thought, was silent on the issue. From the corner of her eye, Carina could see Speidel shaking his head, no doubt wondering how he was going to explain to his superiors that the only reason most of them had gotten out alive was due to an impossible event.

  The micro-gravity of low orbit was taking hold, and Carina lifted from her seat and bobbed against the straps of her harness. They were nearly back at Duchess. Soon, she would be able to return to her cabin and safely stash her canister of elixir away from prying eyes.

  “Hey, Lin,” said Smitz. “You got any water? I’m all out.”

  Thinking that if he didn’t chew his disgusting herb he wouldn’t be so thirsty, Carina shook her head.

  “Come on, Lin. Don’t hold out on me. We’re nearly back at the ship.”

  “Then you can wait,” Carina replied.

  “Come on, give me some. I know you always bring extra. I can see your bottle sticking out like a third tit.” Smitz made a grab for the pouch that held the elixir canister. Carina deflected his arm with her elbow, following through and driving it into his gut. The blow had no effect other than pushing him away a little, due to the man’s armor. Smitz reached out with his other hand and Carina knocked that away too. She shoved him into the bulkhead for good measure.

  “Smitz. Lin,” barked Brown. “Cut it out, or you’re both on report.”

  Smitz relented. Carina’s racing heart slowed, and she was glad that her face was hidden behind her tinted visor. Her skin was hot and moist with sweat.

  It was with relief that she felt the shudder that rippled through the shuttle as it engaged with Duchess’ access hatch. After another few moments she was pulling herself through the short tunnel that led to the ship. As she went along, Duchess’ AG field took hold and Carina’s feet drifted to the floor. She let go of the bars she’d been grasping and walked.

  Now that they were back at their ship, the chances of reprisals for the mission went down. Duchess didn’t live up to her name in terms of classy looks, being rather dumpy and squat, but she more than made up for the deficit with armaments. State-of-the-art pulse cannons fore and aft and fusion-rocket long-range missiles were supplemented by turret-mounted rail guns. As well as deterring space pirates with cocky ideas, Duchess’ artillery meant that retaliation from the opposing side after a mission was rare. When it came to Tarsalan’s own safety, she didn’t skimp.

  The same could not be said for the mercs. Carina and the others removed their armor and hung it up in the armory. The protection was flexible, light and tough, but it was showing sign
s of wear. At the embassy, their attacker’s weapons had been able to penetrate it at close range. One of the problems of working as a merc was that levels of technological advancement varied widely between worlds. New weapons were constantly being developed, and they were never quite sure what they would be up against next.

  Carina transferred her canister from its pouch into her shirt and went straight to the cabin she shared with three other mercs. It was empty. She slid the canister into the hole she’d dug in her mattress. Then, finally relaxing for the first time since she’d cast, she lay down on her bunk and put her hands behind her head. After around half an hour a comm woke her.

  “Corporal Lin,” came the message. “Report for debriefing immediately.”

  Her earlier tension returned. Why did they want to talk to her? Had someone seen what she’d done? Carina wondered how that might be possible, and her stomach dropped as she remembered that Lieutenant Torres had been wearing a body cam like they all did. What if it had recorded her casting?

  She swung down from her bunk, wracking her brain for an explanation as to why she would have taken a drink and then stood still with her eyes closed in great concentration, just before a horde of enemy soldiers disappeared.

  By the time she reached the debriefing room, she hadn’t thought of a logical explanation for her behavior.

  Chapter Three

  “We don’t need to know everything,” said Lieutenant Colonel Cadwallader. “Only describe exactly what you saw toward the end of the engagement, Corporal. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Standing to attention in the mission room, Carina’s gaze flicked to Captain Speidel, who sat on one side, stroking his stubble and watching. Cadwallader and Tarsalan sat behind a desk.

  Cadwallader’s pale blue eyes seemed intent on piercing right through her, and Tarsalan’s full lips, coated in a purple sheen, were set in a line. Neither gave a hint of what they were expecting her to say. Carina didn’t know if she had to explain herself regarding Torres’ body cam footage or only report on the disappearance of the enemy.