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THE SERVICE OF MARS
STARSHIP’S MAGE BOOK NINE
GLYNN STEWART
 CONTENTS

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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
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
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Preview: The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart

Chapter 1
The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart

About the Author

Other books by Glynn Stewart
The Service of Mars © 2020 Glynn Stewart
Illustration © 2020 Jeff Brown
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published by Faolan’s Pen Publishing. Faolan's Pen Publishing logo is a trademark
of Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc.
 JOIN THE MAILING LIST

For all the Glynn Stewart news, announcements, and insider

information, join the mailing list at GlynnStewart.com/mailing-list
 1

“G overnor N iska , welcome ,” M age -L ieutenant R oslyn C hambers told

the old Legatan cyborg as he entered the big briefing room aboard
the dreadnought Durendal. “Here’s your briefing chip. It’s still
encrypted until the Mage-Admiral releases it.”
“I know the drill,” James Niska, Military Governor of Legatus, told
the young blonde woman. He was the only native of Legatus in the
briefing room on the warship orbiting the occupied capital of the
Republic of Faith and Reason.
Roslyn was the Flag Lieutenant of Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander,
the woman whose fleet had reduced the defenses of that capital ten
weeks earlier. A lack of munitions and the murder of the Mage-King
of Mars had kept Second Fleet at Legatus for over two months.
“Is this going to be much the same nothing as the last few
were?” Niska asked, surveying the small collection of Martian flag
officers with resignation.
Roslyn wasn’t supposed to give anyone any idea of what was
coming, but Niska had been instrumental in getting them all this far.
She shook her head silently at him, as much information as she
could really provide.
“Interesting,” he said gruffly in response to her silent answer. “I
will leave you to your duties, Lieutenant. If you could have someone
bring me a coffee? It’s been a long few weeks.”
 “Yes, sir,” Roslyn confirmed, tapping a quick set of commands on
her wrist-comp. The stewards supporting the briefing would get the
message—in a smaller meeting, coffee would be her direct job, but
there were a lot of people coming today and she had to turn her
attention to the next arrival.
“Mage-Admiral Medici,” she greeted the man in charge of Second
Fleet’s cruisers. “Here’s your briefing chip.” She passed him the small
piece of black plastic. “Do you need anything to get set up?”
“Please tell me Marangoz is seated on the other side of the
room,” Medici muttered, the dark-skinned officer trying not to be
heard. “If I hear the idiot rattle on about the ‘inherent versatility of
our battleships’ one more time, I might engage in conduct
unbecoming an officer.”
Mage-Admiral Soner Marangoz commanded Second Fleet’s
battleships and was surprisingly twitchy over the fact that they were
no longer the heaviest units of the fleet. Durendal and her two
sisters in Second Fleet dwarfed even the largest battleships,
rendering the former queens of the fleet into a secondary role their
commanders weren’t quite sure of yet.
Roslyn checked her seating chart quickly. It probably wasn’t a
serious request—it wasn’t even particularly professional as a joke to
a junior officer—but when an Admiral asks, the Flag Lieutenant
obeys.
“He’s in the middle and you’re on the left with your squadron
commodores,” Roslyn told him quickly, before daring a small joke of
her own. “He’s definitely out of reach of your retribution, sir.”
Medici chuckled.
“Shame,” he conceded with a wink. “If there’s water at the
tables, I’ll be fine, Lieutenant.”
He gave her a nod and strode away, sliding the briefing chip into
his wrist-comp as the six cruiser Commodores began to gather
around him.
Roslyn shook her head, then refocused on the task at hand and
smiled up at Mage-Commander Tirta Kruger, the captain of one of
the older destroyers.
 A hundred and one captains, fifteen commodores, seven admirals
and ten civilians like Niska. She was one of three officers greeting
and passing out briefing chips, but it still felt like they were going to
be seating people for longer than Mage-Admiral Alexander would be
speaking!

O nce everyone was seated in the large briefing room, Roslyn’s job
became simpler if not necessarily less important. She took her own
seat next to the presenter’s dais and linked her wrist-comp into the
controls for the room’s holographic projectors and screens.
She’d prechecked everything before the shuttles had even started
arriving, but she checked everything again as Her Royal Highness,
Mage-Admiral Jane Alexander, Crown Princess of Mars stepped up to
stand behind the lectern and survey her officers.
Alexander was not quite into her second century and had spent
an entire lifetime in the Royal Martian Navy. Her late brother had
been the Mage-King of Mars and her niece was now Mage-Queen,
but the Admiral had focused her life on serving the Protectorate in
its Navy.
“Officers and respected guests, welcome aboard Durendal,” she
told them. Roslyn made sure that the backdrop behind the Admiral
was the view of Legatus from the dreadnought’s main scanner
arrays, as planned. “We’ve spent a lot of time here in Legatus, both
during the Siege and since taking control of the system.
“For the first time since the surrender of the planet, however, we
are finally looking to leave,” she concluded. “People, Operation Eagle
Tickle is a go. We have finished restocking our magazines with the
new missiles and we are finally ready to deploy.”
The new Phoenix IX missiles had far superior acceleration and
range to the old Phoenix VIIIs—and given that their enemies in the
Republic had used missiles with longer ranges than the VIIIs, that
edge had proven absolutely necessary.
 “We have not, of course, been nearly as well reinforced as any of
us would like,” Alexander continued. “We have received fifteen
destroyers since the fall of Legatus, but that’s all the Protectorate
has to spare. We remain the single largest concentration of hulls and
tonnage the Protectorate of the Mage-Queen of Mars has ever
mustered.”
Second Fleet’s order of battle was now floating in the air around
Alexander. Three dreadnoughts, eight battleships, thirty-eight
cruisers and fifty-two destroyers. That was every dreadnought in
commission, a third of the battleships and over half the cruisers.
“While intelligence suggests that we have neutralized the only
accelerator ring the Republic has, a lack of fuel is unlikely to
materially impede the RIN’s operations,” the Admiral noted. “We
have also neutralized the only shipyards we know to be capable of
installing the Promethean Interface. While there are reasons to
suspect our knowledge is incomplete, we have yet to locate any
evidence of additional major antimatter or Promethean Interface
production.”
The room’s silence took on a deadly chill at the mention of the
Interface. No Mage—no human, in Roslyn’s opinion—could find what
the Republic had done to fuel their warships less than horrifying. At
the core of each RIN jump ship were the extracted brains of several
Mages, linked to a device that forced them to cast the teleportation
spell on command.
Without the cadre of Mage officers who formed the beating heart
of the Royal Martian Navy, the Interface was how the Republic had
duplicated the ability to magically travel between the stars—but the
UnArcana Worlds that had become the Republic had banned magic.
The only Mages they’d had access to were the teenagers who’d been
identified with the Gift and had chosen to remain on their
homeworlds.
The Republic had built their star fleet on murdered children, and
Roslyn doubted she was alone in thinking that could never be
forgiven.
“What we have confirmed is that the Nueva Bolivia System
contains the largest gunship-manufacturing plant in the Republic
after Legatus itself,” Admiral Alexander said grimly. “So long as the
Republic retains any carriers at all, possession of the Nueva Bolivian
yards will permit them to continue to replenish losses to their
combat groups.
“Eagle Tickle intends to remove that capability by the simplest
means available: Second Fleet will be leaving Legatus in thirty-six
hours to move on the Nueva Bolivia System. Our scouting runs have
left us quite confident in our ability to engage the forces there, and I
expect to be able to secure the system inside of two days of active
combat.”
Roslyn switched the holograms and screens over to the Nueva
Bolivia System. The system had eight planets: one habitable world,
Sucre, and two gas giants. The rest of the planets and the asteroid
belt were only really important as supplies of raw materials.
“Our current estimate is that the defensive fleet around Sucre
consists of roughly four thousand gunships and the reassembled
remains of two RIN carrier groups,” Alexander told them all. “A
Courageous-class carrier, three battleships and seven cruisers. That’s
backed by the existing fortifications put in place around Sucre to
defend their orbital industry.”
Sucre was one of the more human-friendly worlds ever
discovered, with vast world-circling oceans, gorgeous archipelagos,
and calm weather. The colonists had always wanted to keep it that
way and had put almost all of their industry in orbit.
That industry was a vulnerability now that they were at war, but
the RMN wasn’t looking to wreck the planet. Just take control of it.
“We also need to make sure that Legatus itself remains in our
hands,” Alexander continued. “So, I will be detaching a Task Force
Twenty-Two under Mage-Admiral Hovo Tarpinian.”
That worthy, the man who’d brought the three dreadnoughts to
the Battle of Legatus, bowed slightly as he was indicated.
“Mjolnir will remain here in Legatus, accompanied by two
battleships and a cruiser squadron,” Alexander said. “The rest of
Second Fleet will proceed to Nueva Bolivia and commence
operations against Sucre itself.
 “Details of the plan are on your briefing chips, which should now
be unlocked, but Mage-Captain Kulkarni will run us all through the
high levels,” the Admiral said, indicating Roslyn’s boss, Alexander’s
operations officer.
Indrajit Kulkarni stepped up beside her Admiral. She and
Alexander were both tall, but where the Crown Princess of Mars was
gray-haired with the ambiguously brown coloring of a Martian native
and a descendant of Project Olympus, Kulkarni’s skin and hair were
black as night as she captured the audience’s attention.
The Mage-Captain gestured for Roslyn to switch to the next part
of the briefing and smiled levelly at the gathered officers.
“While the force we are bringing to Nueva Bolivia should be
overwhelming,” she noted, “the reality is that we cannot count on
the RIN to roll over politely for us. They like their surprises—and our
scouting operations have yet to locate enough of the force they
brought against us at Centurion to make me happy.
“Therefore, we will…”
 2

“A ll right , people , I believe this is the last stop on the U nofficial

Sneaky Tour of the Republic of Faith and Reason,” Kelly LaMonte told
her people brightly. The covert ops ship commander was a petite
woman with currently dark-turquoise hair, clad in an unmarked
shipsuit.
Her role required her to assume a level of professionalism that
negated having the brightly colored hair she’d enjoyed as a junior
engineer earlier in her life. Now she ran an entire starship—and if
Rhapsody in Purple was small, she was all the more valuable for
what she carried.
“What are we looking at, everyone?” she asked.
Rhapsody was bigger than a Royal Martian Navy courier ship, and
that was about all Kelly could say for her command’s size. Built with
every technological stealth trick the Protectorate could muster and a
small but potent arsenal, the stealth ship was an expensive toy…and
one utterly dependent on magic to truly carry out her work.
“We are currently eight light-months away from the Gygax
System,” Conrad Milhouse reported. Kelly’s tactical officer was a still-
gangly man in his late twenties. Like the gunners for Rhapsody’s
limited weapons systems and the stealth ship’s powerful sensor
array, Milhouse had been seconded from the Royal Martian Navy.
“Gygax is a Fringe World, one of the seven that followed Legatus
into the Secession,” he continued. “Positioned as it is on the far side
of the region of space occupied by the UnArcana Worlds, it didn’t
see a lot of traffic even before the Secession.”
Rhapsody had a briefing room, but Kelly preferred to run
meetings like this on her bridge. There were enough extra seats to
allow everyone who needed to be in the meeting to be there, and
the bridge was the most secure place on the ship.
Built as a civilian ship bridge, it was separate from the
simulacrum chamber the ship would be jumped from and arranged
in a rough semicircle facing a large viewscreen. A civilian ship
wouldn’t have had the other half of the circle on the other side of
the viewscreen, where Milhouse’s military hands ran the ship’s
sensors and weapons.
There were always spots on the bridge for the captain, the
navigator and the tactical officer. Today, they were joined by the
First Pilot, Kelly’s husband Mike Kelzin; the senior Ship’s Mage, Kelly’s
wife Xi Wu; and the commander of their boarding party of
Protectorate Bionic Commandos, Captain Jalil Charmchi.
Rhapsody in Purple was very much a family affair for Kelly
LaMonte, even as she reported up to the general structure of the
Martian Interstellar Security Service. She didn’t really regard herself
or her people as spies, though that was the MISS’s role.
They were the Protectorate’s sneaky eyes, jumping into systems
where they weren’t welcome and seeing just what was going on
there.
“All of our intel on Gygax is badly out of date,” the navigator
reminded everyone. Nika Shvets was a new addition to the crew, an
androgynous MISS agent with shoulder-length blond hair, watery
blue eyes accentuated with dark makeup, and the knowledge of how
to kill someone with a spoon.
At least four different ways, from what Kelly understood of the
operative who was now her navigator. There were parts of Shvets’s
file she wasn’t officially cleared for, and she doubted they were going
to explain those blanks to her.
“The last sensor scans we have were from a civilian tramp
freighter two weeks after the Secession,” Shvets continued, their
voice soft. “The freighter crew didn’t know about the Republic yet—
in fact, it’s entirely possible that no one in Gygax knew. It is
questionable whether any Links were distributed to the system.”
“They had enough of the transceivers to hide them on
Protectorate warships to enable their spies to report in,” Kelly
reminded her people. “Someone in Gygax would have known—and if
we fuck this up, someone in Gygax will be able to tell the rest of the
Republic we were here.”
“It’s hard to avoid them knowing we were here, love,” Xi Wu
pointed out. The dark-skinned Chinese woman smiled at her wife.
“Once we’re in the system, we can hide from everything they can
throw at us so long as my Mages and I can trade off every few
hours, but the jump flare is unavoidable.”
“They have their own ships coming and going,” Milhouse
countered. “Not many, one presumes, but they do exist. And if our
target is actually here, there might be even more traffic.”
“Shvets, can you show everyone those scans?” Kelly asked. “Let’s
take a look at what the geography is.”
The main screen switched over to a projection of the star system.
Six planets, with one gas giant and one habitable world in the inner
part of the liquid-water zone.
“Our freighter was not a covert ops ship or anything remotely
unusual,” Shvets reminded everyone. They tapped a command,
highlighting the habitable world. “They visited Greyhawk, sold their
cargo of agricultural and industrial machines and parts, and
purchased a cargo of refined titanium and local fish.
“From Greyhawk, the ship did not get a solid view of Kenku, the
gas giant,” they continued. “There was no unusual industrial activity
at Greyhawk or at Paladin, the planet much of the system’s heavy
industry is anchored around.”
The third planet in the system, a frozen, uninhabitable rock
similar to Sol’s Mars, flashed on the screen.
“Nothing in this suggests that there’s a secret Republic military
base and antimatter supply station here,” Milhouse noted. “Except
that any base like that would be at the gas giant, and they
encouraged the ship not to go there.”
 “A lot of systems have assorted expensive crap at their gas
giants,” Kelly said. “Especially the UnArcana Worlds. The rest of the
Protectorate uses antimatter for a lot of things, and we don’t have
quite so immense a demand for hydrogen and helium.
“The cloudscoops at the gas giants are the only things fueling the
power stations of an UnArcana World. Keeping them from prying
eyes is pretty common.”
“But it still leaves a gap in our intelligence that must be filled,” Xi
Wu replied. “Do we have a plan?”
“We do,” Kelly confirmed. “Apologies, Jalil, we’re keeping your
people as passengers for now.”
The immense shaven-headed cyborg woman grinned.
“Just how we like it,” she noted. “Quiet, easy cruises where you
lot do all of the work.”
“It’s a standard scoot ’n snoop,” Kelly continued, glancing around
her crew. “Mage Foster will jump us in and Xi Wu will take over
stealthing us immediately. We’ll sweep around Kenku to make damn
sure of the presence or absence of our target, and then we’ll do a
long drift over to Greyhawk and Paladin to do detailed scans of the
orbital industry.
“If everything goes perfectly, we’ll be in-system for about thirty-
six hours and have full information on every planet, every ship, and
every space station in the Gygax System.”
“And what if things don’t go perfectly?” Milhouse asked.
“Then we’ll be spending a lot less time in Gygax but might be
leaving with a lot more useful information,” Kelly told him. “We are
the sneakiest starship in existence, people, and there are only a
handful of ships like Rhapsody. The Republic might have figured out
we exist, but they still can’t track us, and they can’t fight what they
can’t see.
“If Gygax is the Republic’s fallback position, we will know very
shortly.”
“And if they’re not?” her husband asked, the ship’s senior pilot
having been quiet so far.
“Then there are two more ships doing the same thing we are in
other star systems,” Kelly replied. “We rendezvous back at Legatus
with them and we collate data. We know the Republic leadership
went somewhere.
“We’ll find them, Mike. We are the invisible eyes to see what they
think they’ve hidden, and they have nothing to stop us.”
 3

“J ump complete ,” L iara F oster reported . T he video link from the

bridge to the simulacrum chamber showed her wavering slightly as
she stepped back from the simulacrum itself. The standardized spell
that teleported a starship a light-year at a time was immensely
draining—and Kelly was told that short-jumping was in some ways
more so.
She had to trust her Mages on that. Like every child of the
Protectorate, Kelly LaMonte had been tested for the Mage Gift at
eleven years of age, and like the overwhelming majority of them,
she lacked even the tiniest fragment of the power her wife wielded.
Xi Wu stepped up to replace Foster, laying her hands on the
semiliquid silver model of Rhapsody in Purple suspended at the
exact center of the jump ship. Kelly knew the other woman had
silver runes inlaid into her palms that linked her into the rune
matrices woven through the ship, allowing her to project her magic
around the vessel.
“Stealth spell up,” Xi Wu reported after a moment. “Liara, go fall
over,” she ordered her subordinate. “We’ll need you soon enough.”
There were four Mages on Kelly’s ship, three of them answering
to Xi Wu. Two were RMN Mages seconded to MISS. Two, including Xi
Wu, were full-time MISS agents.
“Milhouse, what are we seeing?” Kelly asked her tactical officer.
 “Still pulling data in from the arrays,” Milhouse replied. “No one
should know we’re here yet, not for another couple of minutes.”
“Shvets, put some distance between us and the jump flare under
Xi’s shield,” Kelly ordered.
“On it,” they replied, the stealth ship vibrating as her engines
came to life. Antimatter engines would obliterate the ability of the
technological solutions to hide the ship, but the spell woven around
her could conceal them.
For a while, anyway. Kelly knew her wife well enough to pick out
the signs of strain on Xi Wu’s face as the Mage adjusted her spell.
“I’ve got something at Kenku,” Milhouse reported. “Multiple
energy signatures. Trying to get visual resolution, but we are a long
way out, skipper.”
Four light-minutes was enough to keep them safe from initial
observation, but it also limited how much data they could grab.
Foster had dropped Rhapsody in Purple almost exactly halfway
between Greyhawk and Kenku, which meant they had a view of
both.
“What about Greyhawk and Paladin?” Kelly demanded.
“Greyhawk is more active than our old reports, but nothing
major,” Milhouse reported. “Hard to say for sure, but I’d guess that
they’ve installed some new orbital forts. Paladin…is significantly
busier, but that could just be civilian industry.
“Kenku, I’m looking at something new. There were cloudscoops
there but not on this scale.”
“Shvets, set a course that will sling us around Kenku and get us
close enough to Paladin to pick out details as well,” Kelly ordered.
“Sounds like we’ve found something interesting at least. Let’s go see
what it is.”
The main display shifted as the new course was laid in. What
information they did have on each cluster of signatures appeared by
each of the three planets as Milhouse worked through the data.
It wasn’t much. Their old intel said there were four cloudscoop
gas-extraction and refining facilities in orbit of Kenku—but even their
years-old most recent scan data of the system hadn’t seen them.
 Right now, it looked like there were either ten times as many
extraction platforms as there had been or someone had moved in a
good-sized fleet. Since they could only see one side of the gas giant,
they could be missing as much as fifty percent of the orbitals, too.
She started an analysis in her computers. The captain’s seat on
any ship had a number of screens attached to it, usually called the
“repeater screens” as they could be set up to mirror any station on
the bridge. Kelly, who had been an engineer and a computer
programmer before she’d been a covert ops commander, was more
active in using them than most.
It was possible there was an accelerator ring there, her program
concluded. They couldn’t be certain until they were much closer, too.
The odds weren’t great, but they’d need to close within two light-
minutes to entirely eliminate the chance.
“Shit!” Milhouse suddenly swore. “Jump flare, danger close,
danger close!”
“Shvets, kill the engines,” Kelly snapped. “Milhouse, what am I
looking at?”
She checked the time. That was fast. They’d been in the Gygax
System for just under twenty minutes and no one had been within
four light-minutes of them. That meant the RIN had detected them,
picked a destination, and deployed a starship inside twenty minutes.
“Dear gods, either someone is really paranoid, or they’ve worked
out that we exist,” the tactical officer replied as he transferred data
to the main displays. “That’s a Bravado-class carrier, Captain. Forty
megatons, a hundred and fifty gunships.”
And the gunships, Kelly was grimly certain, were far more
relevant than the rest of the carrier’s weapons. The carrier had
emerged just over three million kilometers from Rhapsody in Purple’s
jump flare, and the parasite warships were already spilling from her
bays.
“She’s between us and Kenku, but we’re looking at barely ten
light-seconds of distance,” Milhouse said grimly. “Captain, what do
we do?”
“Xi?” Kelly asked softly. “Engines are down; can you hide us at
this range?”
 “Yes. It gets harder as the range drops, though,” the Mage
confirmed. “I can also kill her if she gets much closer.”
Kelly nodded grimly. Rhapsody in Purple was sized more like a
civilian ship than a warship, but she had the bones of a military
vessel. Most critically, she had an unrestricted amplifier instead of a
simple jump matrix.
The carrier had chosen her distance carefully. If her target was a
Protectorate warship, anything within two million kilometers was
suicide. That was the reach of a Mage with an amplifier, a distance
inside which no mundane structure could stand against the power of
the scions of Project Olympus.
But it would take Xi almost as much energy to take out each
individual gunship as it would take to destroy the carrier. Now there
were over a hundred of the parasite warships in space, even
destroying the carrier wouldn’t be a victory.
“Killing the carrier looks great on everyone’s record, but it’s
contrary to our actual mission,” Kelly pointed out. “We need to know
what’s going on at Kenku and Paladin—that there even is a carrier in
Gygax says something is happening here.”
Their intel was that the Republic had only built sixteen of the big
ships, after all, and the Protectorate had captured or destroyed
seven. With just nine of them left, what the hell was one of them
doing at the far end of the Republic?
“Shvets, see what we can manage for movement while cold,”
Kelly ordered. “Doesn’t need to be much. I just want to go around
their search net if at all possible.”
Their current velocity was only a few hundred kilometers per
second. It was going to take them a long time to get past the
Republic search net if they couldn’t accelerate.
“Xi, how close do they need to get to see through our cloak of
invisibility?” she asked her wife.
“I’d say knife range, but we’re already in knife range,” Xi Wu said
grimly.
“And if we open fire with the laser, we die,” Milhouse replied.
Rhapsody had two missile launchers and a single ten-gigawatt
battle laser. Her laser outclassed anything the gunships carried, but
there were also a lot more gunship lasers out there.
And the carrier’s weapons individually outclassed hers—and they
were also in effective laser range of the carrier.
“We’re not getting out of knife range quickly,” Kelly told them.
“Our best chance is that they figure they had a sensor glitch and go
home after a few hours.”
“And if they don’t?” Shvets asked, their voice calm, almost
distant.
“We cycle through Xi’s people slowly and surely as we drift
toward Kenku at a couple hundred kilometers a second,” she said,
yanking on her braid. “We can hide from them unless one of those
gunships literally stumbles over us.”
They could even, in theory at least, micro-jump the four light-
minutes to Kenku. They wouldn’t be able to conceal their arrival at
that point, though, and given that accurate a starting point, she was
grimly certain the Republic could find her and catch her.
 4

E ven a hundred and fifty gunships paled in comparison to the sheer

scale of deep space. Four light-minutes from anything of value or
interest, they had to be guessing where Rhapsody in Purple could
have gone and how close they needed to get to catch her.
“I’d say their estimate is that they can spot us at around sixty
thousand kilometers,” Milhouse said as the net took its final shape.
“The longest distance between any two gunships is a hundred and
twenty thousand klicks.”
Each set of gunships made a square eighty-five thousand
kilometers on a side, forming a literal net in space accelerating
toward the location of Rhapsody’s jump flare—and, not
coincidentally, Rhapsody herself.
It made for a net over a million kilometers across, with six
gunships held back to defend the carrier. Just in case.
“I liked it better when my enemies didn’t know our ship existed
and weren’t competently paranoid,” Kelly admitted. “Shvets?”
“They’re only accelerating at five gravities,” the navigator told
her. “It’s going to be a long few hours while they sweep.”
“Can we get around them?” she asked.
“No,” they admitted. “If we could conceal our full acceleration for
those hours, yes. As it stands…no.”
“So, our best chance is to slot ourselves right through the middle
of one of those squares and hope they’ve overestimated their
scanners,” Kelly concluded. She glanced at her wife’s image on the
link from the simulacrum chamber.
“Xi, you know this magic better than anyone,” she admitted to
her wife. “Can we hide from them at sixty thousand klicks?”
“Yes,” the Mage said flatly. “We’ll want to bring up every tool
we’ve got, though. Heat sinks, baffles, everything. Once we’re within
a hundred thousand klicks, it’s down to luck as much as anything
else. We should be able to get to fifty so long as the spell doesn’t
blip, but every bit of energy we’re radiating is a chance for a blip
that wouldn’t matter at longer range.”
“Then we go completely dark at one ten,” Kelly decided.
“Milhouse, set it up. How long will it take us to get through that?”
Shvets exhaled and rubbed their eyes.
“Longer than any of us are going to like, skipper,” they admitted.
“I’m setting up the course now, but even with their accel, we’re
looking at a relative velocity of maybe five hundred KPS. Ten
minutes, maybe.”
“We can go full heat-sink for twenty-five,” Kelly replied. “We’ll be
drowning in our own sweat by minute twenty, but we can retain
functionally all of our heat radiation for twenty-five minutes.”
They’d then need to radiate it, but she could pick the direction
she did that, and there was always some angle to vent heat where
no one would see it.
“Stand by for going dark,” she concluded. “We’ve got an hour to
prep for this. We’ll get through it, people. And these sons of bitches
are never going to know what snuck past them!”

W ith a final nerve - wracking shiver , Rhapsody in Purple’s antimatter

reactor went into cold shutdown. Kelly checked over the metrics on
her repeaters and patted the arm of her chair.
“It’s all right, girl,” she murmured to her ship. “We’ll have you
back awake in no time.”
 Batteries and capacitors fueled the stealth ship now, keeping the
lights and life support on as she drifted forward toward the dragnet
coming her way.
“Angle is perfect,” Shvets announced. “We will be roughly one
hundred kilometers off center. Range is one hundred ten thousand
and closing at five hundred and ten kilometers per second.”
“All systems cold,” Kelly said aloud, confirming for the rest of the
bridge crew what she’d just checked for herself. She hated shutting
down the antimatter reactor. It was a catch-22 in a lot of ways—the
antimatter reactor provided the power that contained its own
horrendously dangerous fuel.
There were specific batteries and systems to continue powering
that containment, but if they failed…well. If the containment on
Rhapsody’s antimatter fuel tanks failed, no one aboard the stealth
ship was ever going to know.
“From this close, Milhouse, confirm something for me,” Kelly
murmured. “Are the gunships running antimatter or fusion engines?”
“Fusion, sir,” the tactical officer replied after a few seconds. “I
guess we don’t merit the good stuff.”
“Not today, at least,” she agreed. “And not on their current
standards, which I hope are getting really sticky around the use of
antimatter.”
Seconds ticked by around them. The kilometers between them
and the gunships vanished, and Kelly resisted the urge to close her
eyes.
Even if this went wrong, the Republican warships would almost
certainly attempt to take them intact. The crew of an MISS scout
ship wasn’t worth much to the RIN, but the ship itself would be
worth its weight in antimatter. There weren’t many areas where
Protectorate tech drastically exceeded Republic tech, but the stealth
systems aboard the Rhapsodies were definitely one of them.
“They’ve definitely been paying attention,” Kelly said aloud as
they began their closest approach. “Someone put together the
various pieces and realized we had stealth ships scouting their
systems. Paranoid bastards.”
 “If this is their standard reaction, that might be useful for Second
Fleet to play with,” Milhouse noted. “I can see all kinds of uses for
drawing a carrier out away from the main forces.”
“Me too,” Kelly agreed. It was getting hot on the bridge and she
pulled on her braid absently. “Though I’m guessing the Republic has
allowed for that. They can call in reinforcements instantly, after all.”
She’d been told that the Rhapsodies would be getting some of
the first Protectorate-manufactured Links once they were available,
but the Protectorate hadn’t finished reverse-engineering the
entanglement technology yet.
Not enough to trust that the Republic couldn’t eavesdrop,
anyway.
For now, the Republic continued to have a tighter command-and-
control loop than the Protectorate. Kelly had hoped the war would
be over after the Republic fleet had disintegrated at Legatus, but the
grim competence of the gunships sweeping around her told her the
truth.
Montgomery had broken the morale of the RIN that day, but the
Republic had clearly found some answer to the horror of the
Promethean Interface. If nothing else, she supposed, they’d
probably been able to find enough people who just didn’t care what
they did to Mages to keep the RIN operating.
“We’re through,” Shvets reported. “Range is now sixty-five
thousand kilometers and rising. We are through.”
“Now we just need to dodge around a carrier and keep drifting
on,” Kelly said brightly. “How long do you think before the gunships
start sweeping the routes to Kenku and Greyhawk?”
“They’ll probably start decelerating once they hit the jump-flare
zone and then settle their new courses once they’re at zero,” Shvets
guessed. “Give them another two hours. We won’t have long where
we’re at a range we can maneuver safely at, not if they keep up the
search.”
“They’ll keep up the search,” Kelly predicted. “They know they
can see us leave as clearly as they can see us arrive.” She shook her
head. “Unless they give up and call it bad data, they’re going to
keep hunting us until we actually leave.
 “We’ll keep the reactor offline until we’re clear of the carrier,” she
decided. “Hopefully, we can get at least five million klicks of
clearance from all of their ships and get our velocity up.”
She grimaced.
“If I have to travel four light-minutes at less than five hundred
KPS, I will, but I can think of better ways to spend three days!”
Another random document with
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Newgate or Bridewell. It will be a great comfort for our brother
Drayton to hear that he is not chargeable to the Society during his
imprisonment. Truly the Lord hath blessed him in his deed, for in
taking these children he hath brought a blessing to his household.
Doubtless the Lord hath spoken by him to me concerning the
manner He would have me use that which He hath given me, for of
all the plans that hath been devised, this for the founding of a new
Quaker colony across the seas cloth commend itself to me as the
wisest and most useful."

"Verily, it was through these children that the Spirit gave him that
wisdom," said the old man. "He hath come to me sometimes, and
told me how sorely his heart ached for the little ones, and how
hopeless it seemed that they could ever dwell together again. It
would cost Westland years of labour even to send for his wife, and
he could never hope to be able to pay for all his children to go to the
plantations to him. Yet it was the only earthly hope our martyr-brother
cherished, and each time that Friend Drayton went to see him, his
talk would be of the home he would make for his wife and children
across the seas."

"Yea, and verily his hopes shall be fulfilled," said Sir William
fervently. "We will have a free colony where no man shall dare to
say, 'Ye cannot serve God after this fashion,' but where we may lift
up our voices in prayer and praise, none daring to make us afraid."

Audrey thought that such a place might be a little heaven below to

some people, but she was not so sure that Bessie's father would be
happy there, for if there were only Quakers to live in the colony, there
would be no scope for his preaching-power, and he would have to do
as Bessie had done, turn the energy to a more practical account;
and the fervour once displayed in preaching to sinners who would
not hear, might be used in some way for the help and development
of the Friends dependent upon each other for all the comfort and joy
of life.

But seeing what Bessie had done in the way of practical work that
lay nearest to her hand, there was little doubt but that her father
would do the same; for some such thoughts as these had arisen in
the mind of Sir William Penn when the plan was first proposed to
him, and that was why he felt so much pleasure in hearing about
Bessie and the homely work she had undertaken. Out there in his
new colony there would be plenty of homely work for everyone who
would do it, and those who could not stoop to that would be of little
use to themselves or others, and therefore had better stay in
England until they were wiser, or the king grew tired of fining and
imprisoning Quakers. This was not likely to happen very soon,
seeing that these people were a convenient scapegoat for the
gradual curtailment of civil and religious liberty, which was slowly but
surely being effected now in the new laws that were made and put
into force so rigorously.

CHAPTER VIII.
CONCLUSION.

THE six months' imprisonment to which Master Drayton the hatter

had been condemned came to an end at last, but not before his
health had become so greatly impaired by the close confinement and
impure air of the prison that the doctor greatly feared he would never
be strong again, more especially as he would now be known as a
Quaker, and consequently watched and harassed by the authorities
upon the smallest provocation.

The thought of this and the sight of her husband's pale worn face
soon overcame Dame Drayton's reluctance to give up her home and
friends in England, and join the band of Quakers who were soon to
sail for New Jersey in His Majesty's plantations of America.

This year 1677 was likely to be one of blessed memory in the history
of the Society of Friends, for Sir William Penn had carried into
practical effect the dream of Master Drayton, and had spent a portion
of his wealth in the purchase of land upon which his poor persecuted
friends could settle, and worship God according to the dictates of
their conscience, none daring to make them afraid.

Bessie's father had been despatched with a party of convicts to the

older settlement of Massachusetts; but as Quakers were persecuted
almost as bitterly at Boston as in London, an agent had been sent by
Sir William to buy the prisoner at the auction of the convicts, which
would take place as soon as the vessel arrived.

Westland was a more robust man than his friend the hatter, and,
thanks to the care of Friends outside the prison, he had not suffered
so severely as the London tradesman.

The lax rules of the prison had given Westland an opportunity of

preaching the gospel to the prisoners confined with him, and though
many mocked and jeered at his warnings, a few were impressed with
the earnestness of his faith; and this was so great a comfort to his
ardent soul that he forgot the discomfort of his surroundings in the
joy of knowing he had been the means of awakening some souls
from the night and sleep of sin, to seek the Saviour who could give to
them a new and better life.
As it had been decreed that his wife must remain in Bridewell until he
could earn the money to pay her passage to the plantations, it was at
first feared that she would have to remain in prison for a much longer
time than her husband; but although Sir William Penn was known to
be an obstinate Quaker, many about the Court who had known his
father were willing to do him a favour, in the hope of drawing him
back to what they deemed was his rightful position in society; and by
the interest of some of these it was at last arranged that Bessie's
mother should be released when the party of Friends were ready to
sail from Gravesend.

Bessie was allowed to go and see her father just before he was
taken from Newgate; and now to hear at last that her mother would
be released to go with them to the new strange home across the
seas was almost too much joy for the poor girl.

"We shall see her, Dorothy! we shall see her! thee and me; and we
shall not be afraid of people knowing we are Quakers. Verily, God
hath been good in giving us such a friend as Sir William Penn, who
is indeed our champion and protector."

But Audrey was by no means so delighted as Bessie over the

impending change. The two girls had learned to know and love each
other by this time, for each had been drawn to the other by the
mutual helpfulness that had kept business and household going
during the long illness of Dame Drayton and the imprisonment of her
husband.

It had seemed impossible at first that pretty, fashionable Audrey

Lowe, whose father lived by ministering at a steeple-house, and the
stern, uncompromising Bessie Westland could ever be friends, in the
closest sense of that word. But circumstances had thrown them so
closely together the last few months, that they had learned to look
below the surface they each so much disliked in the other, and there
they could recognise the true spirit of Christ Jesus, who came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister.
In spite of her mother's chafings and warnings lest their fashionable
friends should find out that they were related to Quakers, Audrey
Lowe insisted upon spending the greater part of her time at Soper
Lane during her aunt's illness; so that the girls were necessarily
thrown together a good deal, and thus had learned to know and
appreciate the selflessness each displayed in working for Dame
Drayton and her family. When at last the day of parting came, it was
not such an unmingled joy to Bessie as she had anticipated, for her
heart clung to this friend, who was so like and yet so unlike herself in
all externals of character and surroundings.

"I shall never be able to say a word against steeple-houses and the
people who go there, after knowing thee, Audrey," she said, the last
evening they spent together.

They were sitting on a box in the keeping-room, waiting for the

waggon to come and fetch the last of their goods to the wherry,
which would carry them to the schooner chartered by Sir William
Penn to convey them to their new home. The girls sat hand in hand,
their hearts too full to say much, until Bessie spoke about the
steeple-houses.

"I am glad," said Audrey in a whisper, "for I never liked to hear thee
speak of what I loved and reverenced with such contempt. I cannot
understand how thee can do it, when it is God's house of prayer."

But this was treading on dangerous ground, and had been the most
thorny subject of discussion between the two girls; so Audrey
hastened to add—

"I have learned to understand what a real Quaker is from knowing

thee, Bessie; and I shall always try to help them if I can, and they
need my help."

"Ah, and I fear there will be many poor Friends left behind here in
London who will need all the help man can give them," answered
Bessie. "For we cannot all go in this ship to another land; and Friend
William Penn says it would not be good for us or for England to carry
all the Quakers away. We have had our share of the battle, and
fought for the truth and for liberty of conscience, as God
strengthened us to do. Now He will strengthen others to take our
places, while we go to plant the truth in other lands. Although Friend
William Penn hath been imprisoned for the truth again and again, he
will not come with us now, but stay and fight the battle of religious
liberty here; for it can only grow and become strong through fighting
and struggling—hard as it may be for us who suffer."

"Oh, Bessie, I cannot bear to think there should be all this fighting
about it," said Audrey, in a pained tone.

"It hurts thee only to think of it," said Bessie, "and therefore God hath
not called thee to this work, but to be a comforter of those who
suffer, and help to make them strong and gentle. Thou art tender and
loving and pitiful. I thought scornfully of these things once; but since I
have known thee, I have learned to see that God hath work for all in
His world. For it is His world, Audrey, in spite of the sin and pain and
trouble that wicked people make in it. Now I want to fight this
wickedness, and so does my father. But it may be God hath other
methods, only I have not learned them. But I am glad—oh, so glad!
—that God hath called my mother and father, and all of us, out of the
fight for a little while—or, at least, this sort of fighting," added Bessie.

"The fight can never be over, while we have our own sin and
selfishness to struggle against," said Audrey quickly.

"I know. I have learned that since I have been here," replied Bessie.
"There was not time to think of much besides the other sort of
fighting before. We needed all our courage to be faithful and true,
and preach the gospel to every creature, as the Lord Jesus
commanded; but since I have been here, dwelling in safety and
comfort, such as I never knew before, I have learned there is another
battle to fight, and other victories to be won, and I have been trying
to do this as well."

"I know, Bessie," whispered Audrey, "I know it has not been easy for
you to do just the everyday work that was so important to aunt and
uncle. You are Brave Bessie Westland—the bravest girl I ever knew,
especially in what you have done for aunt and all of us here."

They were interrupted at this point, for the box on which they were
seated was wanted, and there was no further opportunity of talking.

At daybreak they were going by water to Limehouse Hole, where a

wherry was to be in readiness to convey them to Gravesend. The
whole party who were going were Quakers, many of them in broken
health from imprisonment in unwholesome gaols. Some were
bringing all their household goods, as Master Drayton was doing;
while others, like Bessie's mother, possessed but the few rags they
wore when leaving prison. Most of them came from London and its
neighbourhood; but a few were brought from neighbouring gaols, the
authorities giving them up to save, the expense of transporting them
as slaves to the plantations.

Audrey and her mother bade the Draytons farewell the night before
they started. It was hard for the sisters to part after this short
reunion, for they too had begun to understand each other better than
they had done before, and whatever their differences of opinion
might be, they were heartily at one in desiring that religious liberty
should be the right of everybody, whatever name they might be
called by; for, as Dame Lowe remarked, there were more silent
martyrs in any cause than the world dreamed of; and, as Audrey
added, there were not many like Brave Bessie Westland.

So the tears of parting had all been shed when the sun rose the next
morning, and if they were not all as happy as Bessie herself and her
two sisters, it was a calm and hopeful party of men and women who
went on board the wherry at Limehouse Hole, and though most of
them were being forcibly driven from their native land, they could yet
look forward to the new home they were going to make in the
unknown world beyond the seas. To many of the more timid of the
company, seated among the baskets and bundles on board the
wherry, the voyage, with its unknown perils, was the most fearful part
of the trial, and if they could not have rested upon the arm of their
Father in heaven, they would scarcely have braved its dangers even
to escape persecution. But almost all among them had a nearer and
dearer self in husband, wife, or children, to think of, and for their
sakes the timid became brave, for the time at least, so that when the
schooner was reached, where the prisoners had been already
placed under the care of the captain, the party of Friends in the
wherry were able to meet them with cheerful, hopeful words and
greetings.

To Bessie and her sisters it was a moment of great joy, although a

second look at the dear mother showed that the months spent in
prison had left cruel marks upon her. The hair, so dark when she
went away, was now quite white, they saw, as they looked more
closely under the hood that covered her head. She was better
clothed than most of those who had been brought from different
gaols, for Dame Lowe and Audrey had made her a homely but useful
outfit for the voyage, and some of the things had been taken by
Friends to the prison the day before. For this thoughtful kindness
Dame Westland was deeply grateful, since the rags she had been
wearing would have been a pain and grief to Bessie, she knew, and
to be able to meet her children decently clad was a great comfort.

Truly the passengers going on this voyage were of all sorts and
conditions of men; but they were linked in the bonds of love to God,
and the truth declared by the Lord Jesus Christ, and for this they had
all suffered in mind, body, or estate, some being beggared, some
maimed, some broken in health and hope alike, but all brave, true
friends and brethren, ready to help each other and bear each other's
burdens.

By the help of the same benefactor, under the guidance of God, they
had been brought together to make a new home in a new country,
and they resolved that, so far as it was possible, religious as well as
civil liberty, should be the charter of the new homestead they were
going to set up in New Jersey. It was to be a home and refuge for the
persecuted Society of Friends. Sir William Penn had bought it, and
they were to establish the faith of God upon it.
Later, perhaps, if the persecution of their people in England did not
cease, he would endeavour to secure a larger territory in liquidation
of a debt owing by the king, for money advanced by his father the
admiral. Whether these larger plans would ever come to anything,
the present band of pilgrims did not know; but, of course, it would
largely depend upon the success of this venture, so every man and
woman of the party felt that it would depend upon them whether or
not this larger refuge could be founded, and all with one accord, who
had heard the story, resolved to follow the example of Brave Bessie
Westland.

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRAVE BESSIE
WESTLAND ***

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