Free Starship's Mage: Episode 3 by Glynn Stewart Page B

under wraps.”
    “ It is going to be so nice to have half the ship back,” Kelly observed. It was hard to cuddle in zero-gravity, but she was doing her best to stay snuggled up to Damien’s side – with his enthusiastic assistance.
    “ We’ve still got some time on station here,” Damien replied. “The Captain’s going to try to find a cargo – we may end up carrying passengers out, too.”
    The pretty young engineer made a face.
    “ We’ll see what comes out of the party,” Kelzin told the others. “Singh says I have to pretend Damien is my boss.”
    “What?” Kelly asked, turning to look concernedly at Damien. “Chrysanthemum is an UnArcana world, you can’t be planning on going down?!”
    “There’s a lot going on the Captain isn’t comfortable with,” Damien told her quietly. “He’s hedging his bets by keeping the only one of us trained in boarding and counter-boarding up here, and taking the heaviest firepower we have – me – down to the surface.”
    “ I’m leaving my medallion behind, and pretending to be the Jay ’s First Pilot,” he explained. “I’ll be fine.”
    “Singh says the whole setup stinks,” Kelzin agreed. “We’re sticking a whole bunch of those carbines Singh found us aboard the shuttle.”
    “ I don’t think the Captain really thinks anything is going to go down,” Damien reassured Kelly. “But if it does, between the Captain, Kelzin and me, they don’t have a big enough army to take us down.”
    He felt her shiver against him regardless.
    “Be careful, Damien,” she asked. “You’ll be in more danger than us – the only thing the rest of us will be up to is hooking tubes into receptacles.”
    “Yep – and you have lots of practice with that recently,” Kelzin told her innocently.
    Kelly promptly emptied her champagne bulb into the pilot’s face, causing him to spin back, messily wiping bubbling liquid from his face, to the general laughter of the Blue Jay ’s younger officers.

#
    The shuttle landed gently on a floating landing pad, mounted on pontoons a hundred meters away from the shore. As the sound of the craft’s thrusters faded away, Kelzin stuck his head back into the passenger cabin.
    Damien and the other three officers were all plain gray suits. Damien’s was worn over a shirt borrowed from Kellers, the dark-skinned engineer being the only person on the ship even close to the Mage’s short and slight frame.
    “ We are landed and locked in on docking pad five at Chrysanthemum City,” the pilot informed them all. As he spoke, he made his way to a locker and pulled out one of the Legatan Arms SC-5 carbines, sliding and locking both magazines in.
    “Your PC’s are running coms through the shuttle relay,” Kelzin continued. “That’ll provide encrypted channels for about fifteen klicks out. I checked the map on the way down, the ‘Festival Hall’ is seven klicks from here, you should be fine.”
    “Check in via radio often, and don’t stay out too late,” the pilot concluded. “If you’re out past midnight, my little friend and I will come and enforce your curfew.” He patted the carbine.
    “Let’s try not to start a war if we don’t have to,” David observed dryly. “That said,” he glanced around the officers, his gaze settling on Damien, “I don’t trust these people at all. Let’s make nice, see if we can get a cargo – but don’t go anywhere alone!”
    The safety lecture done, Kelzin hit the door latch, opening the shuttle ramp onto the cooling pad.
    “ It is a balmy twenty six degrees Celsius,” he informed them, “and the wind is from the south, so you get to dodge the smell of the fisheries to the north. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll keep the lights on.”
    Kellers led the way out, with Damien and Jenna following out onto the gently bobbing platform. The smell of the salt air hit Damien like a brick wall. He’d lived near the coast on Sherwood, but the smell was different here. There was a slight edge of