He can stop a war.
Warning! Late Arrival Spoilers abound for Starship's Mage Omnibus.
"No one on this planet really knows what it means for a Hand to go to war."
— Damien Montgomery
Following four years of training on Mars under the personal tutelage of the Mage-King himself, Damien Montgomery is ready to begin his training to become a Hand of the King. He is made an Envoy, allowed to carry the Voice of the Mage-King for a single mission, and sent to the planet Ardennes with the Hand Alaura Stealey to find the cause of the rebellion and put an end to it—one way or another.
They find a corrupt government staging violent terrorist attacks to make themselves look good by comparison. Not only that, but the Martian Navy in the system has turned traitor, a fact that Stealey only discovers when it is too late.
But when one Hand falls, another rises...
This book provides examples of:
- Big Bad: Governor Vaughn is a corrupt tyrannical dictator who starts the book off by destroying an entire city.
- Bullying a Dragon: Governor Vaughn kills a Hand and destroys her destroy despite the fact this will undoubtedly bring down the wrath of Mars. Damien shows why this is a bad idea.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Damien facing off against the Mage Enforcer, illustrating how much more powerful he's become since he left his home planet of Sherwood.
- David Versus Goliath: The only resources that Damien has to take down a corrupt government that is perfectly willing to blow up its own cities is the resistance made up of a bunch of ex-politicians, some gear smuggled in as part of a bigger conspiracy, and the access codes that he has from being a Hand.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Every action Vaughn takes makes his situation progressively more severe.
- The Dragon: Governor Vaughn has multiples of these with Mage Commodore Cor being his primary one and Brockton being his ground based one. Brockton dies very early.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Governor Vaughn is perfectly willing to destroy one of his own cities to further his political goals. That there are some lines even he won't cross is rather terrifying.
- False Flag Operation: Governor Vaughn engages in a huge number of these like blaming the rebellion for the destruction of a rebelling city. It's so common that it actually undermines his attempts as they know he's a persistent liar.
- Fantastic Racism: Mage-Commodore Cor believes that mundanes are inherently inferior to mages, which is part of the reason she goes along with the Governor's plans to kill so many of them. In the end, she is killed by a mundane member of her own bridge crew after she kills one of her own mages in an attempt to save herself.
- Foreshadowing: Vaughn has weapons provided to him by Legatus. They later become the Big Bad.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Lori Armstrong's rebellion on Ardennes started as an opposition party that realized elections were being rigged by Mage-Governor Vaughn. The group attacks military targets and aims to back up the citizenry when it rebels against the corrupt government. Vaughn chooses to destroy the liberated city himself rather than allow it to fall to the rebels.
- What You Are in the Dark: Cor's bridge crew stages a mutiny at the last second, executing her for sacrificing her own men to save herself. Their ship is destroyed before they have a chance to tell the loyalists they turned; they clearly didn't expect to survive either way, but they refused to die without taking out Cor.
- You Are in Command Now: Damien is elevated from an Envoy to a Hand after the death of his boss. Played with as he was already promoted but just didn't realize it.
