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

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi, azw3
Amazon: B09V1LR93B
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing
Published: 2022-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Two hours into the system, Kelly had yet to leave Rhapsody’s bridge, and the back of her neck was itching like someone had tied sandpaper to it.

“Should we be bringing the destroyers in to support your sweep?” Sciacchitano asked over the Link. “It sounds like everything looks clear so far.”

“No,” Kelly replied. “Twenty-four hours, Mage-Commander. There’s a reason for that timeline. If someone is here, that’s an average amount of time they can keep their engines and life support dark without the ship being specially built for it.

“We haven’t seen anything, but we know the Legion can be sneaky.”

Plus, Rhapsody in Purple was in the inner system, scanning 95A-36R-II and -I—since I looked potentially habitable. It wasn’t a class-one garden world, but it appeared to have life of its own.

II’s biggest weakness was a low oxygen percentage, a weakness that I didn’t share. Between them, the gas giants and the asteroid belts, 95A-36R was probably one of the most valuable colonization targets that Kelly had seen that didn’t already have humans in it.

But the gas giants were quite separate from the two potentially habitable worlds, three-quarters of a billion kilometers from where Rhapsody was slowly decelerating toward 95A-36R-II. If there was a base out there—and that was where Kelly would have put it—they could easily have missed it on their scans so far.

“I want the destroyers to stand by to jump on my order,” she told Sciacchitano. “Keep an eye on our telemetry. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up, and this whole place feels like exactly where I’d expect a refueling depot.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Sciacchitano admitted. “We’ll keep the telemetry relay up and wait for your call.”

The Link conversation dropped, and Kelly turned back to Shvets.

“Well? Class one or two, Nika?” she asked them.

“Seventeen percent oxygen isn’t great, but humans can get used to it,” they replied. “Temperatures are on the warm side, but weather appears to be stable. Fifty-two percent water, about half of it in an equatorial ocean that circles the planet and splits the continents in half.

“Without soil samples and a wildlife survey, I can’t definitely say class one, boss, but it looks likely.”

“And do we see any sign of civilization?” Kelly asked. “My finely tuned paranoia is screaming, and if the Legion wanted to set up a new colony, here would be the place.”

“Nothing so far,” Shvets said. “If we launched drones, I could be certain, but without that, we have to wait to reach orbit.”

“Keep the drones aboard until the twenty-four-hour mark,” she ordered. Shvets had to be sharing a bit of her twitchiness, or they’d have launched the drones without checking.

“Yeah,” they murmured. “I have this sinking feeling that I’m being watched.”

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