Free Starship's Mage: Episode 5 by Glynn Stewart

can escape me if you refuse. You are out of time. I can be magnanimous, but I will not be defied.”
    The recording ended.
    Damien stepped back into the bridge, glancing around at David and Jenna.
    “He’s right that we can’t run,” Jenna said quietly, looking at him.
    “You got his son killed,” Damien said to David. “Would he really keep his word?”
    “He’s not as trustworthy as Falcone,” the Captain replied slowly. “But in this? To buy your loyalty? He would.
    “Your gift would be worth that to him.”
    Of course, Damien knew, what Azure would want from him was warships. Dozens of ships like the Blue Jay – regular freighters with amplifier, whose victims would never seem them coming. He could save the Blue Jay , but only at the cost of thousands of lives.
    “May I?” he asked Jenna, touching the communication controls. She nodded slowly, activating the recorder and focusing the camera on Damien.
    “Lord Azure, I have considered your offer,” he told the camera, “and I have decided that I have no interest in being a low-life murdering scum working for criminals and slavers. You can go to hell, and take your ‘offer’ with you.”
    Cutting the recording, Damien turned back to Captain Rice – his Captain.
    “Please tell me you have a plan, boss.”
    “After all we’ve been through?” David asked him with a slow grin. “Of course I have a plan.”
     
    #
     
    Azure had not actually expected Montgomery to blithely change sides, though he had suspected that Rice might convince the youth to make a career change to save the rest of the ship. There was rejection and there was insulting , however.
    “I see that Montgomery has already established his opinion of us,” he said icily, loud enough that everyone on the bridge of the Azure Gauntlet. “I suggest we show him what us ‘low-life murdering scum’ think of lily-handed Mages too naïve to know a good offer when they see one!”
    The answering growl told him he’d hit the right tone. Few of his people had chosen the path they now walked, and to be judged by a man who’d been handed the world on a silver platter the way many of the Protectorate’s Mages were stung.
    “Take us in to seven light seconds, Mister Wong, and prepare your precision kinetics,” Azure ordered, leaning back in his chair.
    They’d emerged from their jump twenty light seconds away from the fleeing freighter. The Blue Jay was well within the range of the Gauntlet’s heavy missiles, but those weapons lacked the precision to disable the ship’s matrix. A single one of those gigaton warheads would vaporize the freighter.
    The Navy’s answer to that, decades ago, had been the precision kinetic missile: a light, antimatter-driven missile with no warhead except its own mass. Carefully aimed, the missile could eliminate turrets, break rotating ribs, and similar disabling damage. To carry a low enough velocity to avoid doing critical damage though, the weapon’s range was limited – and detailed targeting instructions were required from the parent vessel.
    The Snapdragon V missiles carried by the Gauntlet had a maximum range of just over ten light seconds. At that range, though, Azure’s experience was that even Navy vessels tended to inflict far more damage than intended. The closer they got to the Blue Jay before firing, the better – and rare indeed was the Mage who’s amplified reach was more than six light seconds.
    “We will be clear to fire in less than three hours,” Wong reported quietly. Behind him, the Mages at the Simulacrum switched out, the dark-haired youth whose golden amulet actually bore the stars of a Jump Mage replacing one of his illegally trained fellows. “I’ve had Jourdaine move up,” Wong continued, nodding to the exchange behind him. “He’s rested for eight hours, so he can jump us after the Jay if they run.”
    “Keep your eyes peeled, Mister Wong,” Azure ordered softly, his eyes on the scanners. “Rice is a tricky bastard, and