Pulsar Race (Starship’s Mage #9.5) - Glynn Stewart Page 0,4

documented.”

Ivan wasn’t entirely familiar with the document he was signing, so he took a few seconds to read it. It was just a summary of what they’d discussed and a recognition that as Ship’s Mage, he had legal responsibilities to both the ship and the Protectorate.

Those responsibilities paled in comparison to those he’d had as a Mage for the Royal Martian Navy, though. He signed the tablet.

“I’ve never been a civilian Jump Mage before,” he told Dumitrescu. “It’s going to be an experience.”

“Good luck, Mage-Captain,” the youth replied. “From all the flags on the file, it sounds like you might need it.”

“I appreciate it, Mr. Dumitrescu,” Ivan said. “Luck is something I find is never in sufficient supply!”

To his surprise, Ivan was intercepted in the main lobby by a tall Asian woman waving him down.

“Mage-Captain Halloway?” she asked. She managed to get the first syllable right, which was more than the Navy Reserve office had managed. “I just got an update from my office, but you are Ivan Halloway, right?”

She got his first name wrong, and Ivan sighed as he stepped out of the rush of traffic toward the woman. The ground floor of the office tower was a boutique mall of some kind, and it was busy this afternoon.

“I am,” he conceded. “I’m not sure we know each other?”

“I’m Jade Kush, one of the Guild administrators for Xanth,” she told him. “You just activated a Ship’s Mage contract, yes?”

“I did,” Ivan agreed, eyeing the attractive woman—probably at least a decade younger than him—carefully. “I even listened to and acknowledged all of the warning flags.”

“I got that too,” Kush agreed. “Umm.” She hesitated, looking around the lobby mall as if to see whether anyone was listening.

“Look, that ship…Restoya. Something weird is going on there,” she told him.

“My understanding is that Captain Charpentier had a midlife crisis and pissed off his crew,” Ivan replied. “That’s weird, I suppose, but not uncommon enough to worry about.”

“I’ve seen that three times in the last year alone, Mage-Captain Halloway,” Kush warned. “Most Captains are smarter than that, but there’s always a few idiots. We encourage Mages to get out of those situations where it’s possible…and we can always make it possible.”

“Karl won’t be taking anything out on me,” Ivan said. “I know the situation and I know him.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair,” Kush said swiftly. “But I wanted to warn you.”

“I think you just did,” Ivan replied, starting to feel a bit frustrated.

“Not about what’s officially in the files,” the woman said. “We did initially attempt to source new Mages for Captain Charpentier; it’s our job, after all. We eventually stopped.”

“Why?” That was not something Charpentier had mentioned.

“Because we had four separate candidates go from eager to I’m out in twenty-four hours, all of them before they even met the Captain,” Kush whispered. “I have no proof, Mage-Captain, but I think someone might have threatened them.”

Ivan nodded slowly. He really wished he’d learned all of this before he’d agreed. He didn’t have it in him to back out now, but he was starting to get more and more uncomfortable with each conversation he had around his old friend’s ship.

“Thank you, Ms. Kush,” he said. “I appreciate the warning, but I’ve already signed and Captain Charpentier is an old friend. We’ll make it work, no matter what.”

“Fair enough,” she said cheerfully, her voice louder now. “Good luck with your new ship, Mage Halloway. Let me know how it goes.”

“I will, Ms. Kush.”

He walked away from her, waiting until he was out of the lobby and presumably out of her sight before shaking his head with a sigh.

Just what the hell had Karl Charpentier dug his way into?

Ivan needed to make another stop, it seemed. A stop he’d hoped to never make.

3

The sign outside the office said it belonged to “Maple Leaf Investment Services” and had a logo of a purple three-part leaf Ivan wasn’t familiar with. Even inside the office, there was nothing unusual except, perhaps, for a lack of the busily wandering staff most offices had.

“I can’t tell you much, Halloway,” the woman behind the desk told him with a shake of her head. Jessie Theodore had been the intelligence officer on the first cruiser he’d served on. They’d stayed in touch after that, even after the raven-haired woman had transferred to the Martian Interstellar Security Service.

“Firstly, I don’t have much on la Cosa Nostra in Xanth,” she warned him. “That’s more in the MIS’s bailiwick.”

The Martian Investigation Service and the Martian Interstellar Security Service