Beyond the Eyes of Mars: Starship's Mage Book 12 by Glynn Stewart

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing
Published: 2022-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Rhapsody in Purple slid into orbit of the garden world with a final blast of magically concealed thrust. They’d been in-system for six hours now…and Kelly remained on the bridge, her back still itching like she was being sized up for a knife.

“Orbit is clear,” Shvets reported. “Beginning surface-mapping scan. If there’s anything unusual down there, the map should pull it out.”

II lacked a moon or any other orbital structure to hide behind. That made Rhapsody’s Mages’ job harder—Liara Foster had cycled off two hours earlier, and Jong-Su Alekseev was running the invisibility spell now—but it also meant no one was hiding around them.

“Let’s take it nice and slow,” Kelly said. “I’m guessing the mapping scan isn’t going to pick out, I don’t know, survey camps?”

“We’ll pick up just about anything with a technological power source,” Shvets told her. “Whether that’s nuclear, combustion, steam engines…even most modern batteries, if they’re running something.

“So, a modern survey camp should stick out like a sore thumb unless they turned everything off and covered their gear with emission-control blankets,” they continued. “I’m not going to pick up Stone Age nomads, but any permanent settlement more than a few acres in size is probably going to ping a closer review, even without power.”

“Good.” Kelly was silent, watching the computer take and process thousands of pictures each second as her ship orbited the planet.

“No power signatures so far,” Shvets reported. “A couple of items I’m flagging for analysis as potential sites where someone has landed and taken off again, but nothing solid.

“There’s no one down there or up here, boss,” they concluded. “I’m not comfortable speaking to the star system yet, but I think it’s safe to say that Two is clear.”

She murmured her acknowledgment, glancing at the far away gas giants.

“If you had a base on the gas giants…would you leave the garden world completely unwatched?” she asked.

“No,” Shvets agreed, their eyes turning inward. “I’d either have someone in orbit—which they clearly don’t—or I’d have scouts in the asteroid belt.”

“Yeah. You’re sure about Two?” Kelly asked.

“I need another thirty minutes to complete the detailed map, but there’s no major power sources down there.”

“Finish the survey, then we set our course for One,” she ordered. “And see if we can spook a scout.”

“There might just not be anyone here,” Shvets pointed out.

“We might be alone, yeah,” Kelly agreed. “But this system is exactly what I’d use for the kind of base we’re looking for—to lay the groundwork for future colonization, if nothing else.

“So, let’s poke the other colonizable planet and see if we can find someone.”

“Hard to spook people when we’re invisible,” Alekseev reminded her. “Should we lower some part of the invisibility?”

“No,” Kelly decided after a moment. “If they’re here, they saw the jump flare. They’re trying to find us…and they have no idea where we are. That might work to our advantage as much as anything else.”

“If we make this too fancy, we’ll never know if we actually missed anything,” Shvets warned.

“I prefer that to being surprised by a cruiser at laser range,” she replied.

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