Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) by Glynn Stewart Page B

captain replied. “We couldn’t reach anyone down there! A ship jumped in a couple of minutes ago and opened fire! We’re outgunned—we’ve been forced to abandon orbit, and she’s incoming fast.”
    “Dammit, Pokorni,” Damien snapped. The armed courier had an amplifier . There wasn’t much that could destroy her before reaching the range of her captain’s enhanced magic. That was going to be a problem for another time. “What am I looking at?” he demanded.
    “She’s not a freighter, too small, too fast,” the Mage-Lieutenant-Commander replied. “Some kind of warship, but not like anything I’ve ever seen. Szar! My lord, they’ve dropped a rock toward the planet.”
    “A rock?” Damien demanded. “Not a bombardment weapon?”
    “Looks like just a chunk of asteroid, my lord.”
    Damien glanced up. A rock wouldn’t accelerate much until it hit the core of Andala IV’s gravity well, but if the ship was at an approach velocity, it would still only take a minute or so to hit the ground. It was slower than an actively accelerating smart kinetic bombardment projectile but would be perfectly effective at wiping the research base and the alien ruins from the planet.
    And it would look natural. Unless, of course, there were witnesses.
    “Listen to me, Pokorni,” he said quickly. “Run for safe space and jump as soon as you can. Keep jumping. Cycle your entire crew in the next ten minutes and make random jumps. Return once you can do so safely, with at least one Mage ready to jump you out if they’re still here!”
    “What about you, sir?”
    If she’d really cared, she might have tried fighting , but Damien sighed. TK-421 couldn’t face any real warship, not one with an amplifier, anyway.
    “That’s up to me now,” he said grimly. “ You need to get away so that no matter what happens, Mars knows this wasn’t an accident. Do you understand me?”
    Pokorni swallowed hard enough that he heard it on the voice link.
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “Then go .”
    Cutting the channel, he turned to Romanov. “Please tell me we have some kind of sensor network set up.”
    “I’m linked into the research base’s traffic control radar,” the Marine replied. “My people were supposed to set up more, but none of them are turned on and…well, I think White killed them.”
    “Link me in,” Damien ordered. “Then track the vector for the rock. I’ll need your help.”
    “What are we doing?”
    “You’re calling directions,” the Hand said grimly. “ I’m stopping an orbital bombardment.”
    Romanov paused, looking at him very carefully.
    “Can you do that?”
    “I’ll tell you in about ninety seconds,” Damien replied.
     

Chapter 10
     
    Seconds passed with excruciating slowness. The bright light that had detached from the ship grew lower and larger as the chunk of whatever rock they’d acquired continued on its deadly route, and Damien studied its path on the pathetic excuse for radar the research base had assembled.
    He inhaled deeply as it drew nearer. This would be something beyond even his experience. Without an amplifier and its attendant simulacrum and sensors, he couldn’t deflect or destroy the projectile with a carefully timed strike as he would an incoming missile.
    He was going to have to stop a rock that had been dropped from orbit. At least Andala IV was a relatively low-gravity world. Even that one-tenth gravity difference compared to Earth would make a huge difference to the final velocity of a dropped rock with no acceleration.
    “Aimed well,” Romanov noted. “It’s headed right for the center of the ruin. Won’t leave much of this place but a crater.” He paused. “Fifteen seconds.”
    Damien nodded and exhaled the breath he’d drawn in. With that exhalation he drew power into his Runes, feeling them heat up. A simple shield of force sprang into existence above the ruin and the research base.
    Simple. But immense. Even with the vector they had, Damien needed to cover