Free Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) by Glynn Stewart

unless he pissed someone off. Based off the Hand’s experiences with him so far, Damien figured that could take as little as six hours or as much as six months, depending on the temperament of whoever ended up in charge there.
    “Let’s get back to the base,” he ordered. “Malcolm, Connor, lead the way.”
    The two Secret Service agents had been guarding the passage back to the human base since arrival, while their third companion had been trailing Damien around the gallery. At Damien’s order, they swept the tunnel with their lights, making sure at least the first few meters were clear before everyone entered.
    Once Damien and Kael had reached them, they led the way back, their lights illuminating the hallway and side corridors as they advanced. They’d already come this way, but the Martian Secret Service didn’t train their people to make assumptions.
    The lead pair made sure there was at least two meters’ distance between them and their charges—two meters that saved everyone else’s lives.
    Damien didn’t see the tripwire or the mines. He could see magic where others saw only silver, but that didn’t allow him to see technology no one had ever touched with a spell.
    Neither of the two agents saw them either. Malcolm stopped in the middle of the hallway as he hit the tripwire—and had just enough time to look back at Damien and yell “Shield!” before the mines went off.
    The Hand’s sense of danger was as sharply tuned as anyone’s, so he had a shield of solid force in front of him before the Service agent had finished yelling.
    It took time to stretch it forward and shield the two people out in front. Time Malcolm and Connor didn’t have. Half a dozen directional mines had been mounted on each side of the wall since they’d come in, and they all detonated simultaneously, filling the ancient corridor with fire and deadly projectiles.
    Both lead agents went down, dead— shredded —before they hit the ground, but Damien’s shield was in place in time to save the rest of them. The projectiles hammered against his barrier, testing his strength, and then it was over.
    And then the shooting started.
    “Down!” Damien was hit in the middle of the back by the remaining Secret Service agent, flung to the ground as an automatic weapon sprayed the corridor with bullets. The man rolled off Damien and came up firing his own weapon—only for a blast of flame to rip the weapon from his hand.
    Gunfire and Mage-fire resumed a moment later—and slammed headlong into Damien’s shield, now covering them from the front as he rose to his feet.
    “Get back, both of you,” he ordered the scientist and bodyguard. “This one’s mine.”
    The next salvo was a string of grenades, and Damien winced as the energy transfer rippled back into him. It was roughly equivalent to the recoil of a large pistol, far less dangerous than the grenades but uncomfortable. Stopping more of the energy would take more of his energy—and he had other uses for that.
    “I am Hand Damien Montgomery,” he snapped down the corridor, using his Sight to track where the firebolts had come from. There . He started walking toward the attacker. “You know how this has to end. You have thirty seconds to surrender.”
    The response was…disturbing. Another mine had been concealed at the height of his arm on the side corridor he was following the attacker down, and went off as he passed it.
    His main shield was along the corridor path, but he’d still wrapped a lesser shield around himself. The explosive sprayed its deadly projectiles into his right arm, smashing against the shield and smearing metal across his jacket arm for a moment.
    The suit jacket was wrecked. His defense had stopped the mine from killing him, but enough heat and melted metal had burned through to shred the suit. Its expensive-looking fabric concealed an expensive flexible composite, though, that had sacrificed itself to save him.
    Under the wrecked suit, the Rune of Power