Mage-Provocateur by Glynn Stewart

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faolan’s Pen Publishing
Published: 2018-03-12T22:00:00+00:00

Two women in dark-purple uniforms under black armored vests were waiting when David and his officers exited Red Falcon. As he’d expected, the docking area was zero-gee, but LaMonte and the two security officers helped him out of his wheelchair and folded it up.

The chair was designed for that, after all, and the two officers took the whole thing with cheerful grace.

“Don’t worry, Captain; we’re delighted to see you,” the senior woman told him. “We’ve been waiting on your cargo for six months.”

“It’s quite the cargo,” he noted as they “swam” through the zero-gravity dock. “And we saw a bunch of missile platforms on the way in. Are those new?”

“Very,” she agreed. “I’m not cleared to say much, Captain; Commodore Al-Mufti will fill you in on what she’s prepared to tell you.”

“All right, then lead the way,” David told them with a smile. “It’s not like I’m going much of anywhere without help!”

Nahuatl Orbital was the largest single space station in Teotihuacan local space, but that didn’t mean much. It had a grand total of four docks and was basically a large X in space with a spinning hab section around the central point.

The section was smaller—and therefore spun faster—than most David had seen, and the transition from the docking structure to the pseudogravity hab ring was nauseating. Even the locals looked uncomfortable as the elevator pod accelerated up to speed.

For its small size, however, there was a warm feeling to the Orbital that a lot of space stations didn’t have. All of the walls were painted, and many had murals of agricultural or pastoral scenes from the moonlets around them—and others had decoration that had very clearly been designed and applied by relatively young children.

That decoration made up in color and enthusiasm what it lacked in style or comprehensibility, bringing a smile to even David’s currently disgruntled face.

Unfolding the wheelchair and getting him back into it took longer than he’d like, but eventually they reached the security doors into Teotihuacan Security Control. Even there, the warm nature of the decorations continued. The scene painted across the heavy hatch was a cutesy bright one of sunlit meadows and white rabbits.

If only half the rabbits were really identifiable and the sun had a face, well, that helped reduce the threat level of the two exosuited guards standing outside the armored hatch.

One of their uniformed escorts handed the guards a plastic card, and there was a silent exchange before the door slowly opened.

“The Commodore is waiting for you, Captain Rice.”

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