by J. N. Chaney
“Like radio waves. They propagate through real space, but from our perspective as humans, we can’t detect them at all. It’s basically an entirely separate radio universe that exists on top of the one we can see. So we can only detect their effects when they hit a radio receiver.”
Thorn stared for a moment, then grinned. “Can I steal that explanation, sir? It’s the best one I’ve heard. Oh, and before you accuse me of blowing sunshine up your butt, I’m not at all.”
“I don’t plan to close my mind and get set in my ways until I get promoted to Admiral, Stellers. Until then, I like to think I can be open to new things. Like I said, Starcasting is something new, as far as I’m concerned, but I can at least try to understand it. And you’re damned right I’ll exploit the ever living shit out of it if it will help me win this war.”
Thorn gave a nod. “That’s music to my ears, sir. On behalf of Starcasters all through the fleet who are still hearing echoes of those old witch hunts when other officers talk to them, thank you.”
“Not looking for gratitude, Stellers, just answers. Is there anything you can offer about the squids? Maybe not direct information, but some magical perspective. I hate not knowing what’s going on over there.”
Thorn sat back. “All I can think, sir, is that after we moved the Task Force to destroy their planet, then brought our own planet, Nebo, back from the dead, they decided to pause, pull back, and think through the implications.”
“We didn’t do those things. You did, Stellers.”
“Doesn’t matter, sir. We’re all in this together.”
“Oh, bullshit. Credit where it’s due.” Tanner narrowed his gaze. “Although, I do have to wonder whatever prompted you to bring back Nebo, complete with its entire population. As an event, it’s unprecedented. As a tactic, it’s incomprehensible.”
“It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“And you created an actual nebula, with columns of gas and stars, in the process.” Tanner shook his head, still amazed at the reality of magic and how it was unfolding before him.
Thorn shifted uncomfortably. “That was an unexpected side effect.”
“Stellers, feeling drowsy after taking some meds the doc prescribed is a side effect. Creating stars and nebulae from nothing is not.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be,” Tanner said, waving him off. “I said I’d keep an open mind, try to understand, and I will. But you have to give me time to get used to the idea of creating matter, okay?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Still, that probably does make sense. You put on quite the show for the Nyctus, made them gun-shy. Best case scenario now is that it finally convinces them to come to the table and talk this war out.”
“And the worst case, sir?”
“Oh, you mean the one I fully expect? That would be the Nyctus countering with their own nasty surprise when they renew hostilities, probably in a big way.” Tanner looked at Thorn for a moment, as though deciding whether to say something else.
“Fair to say the squids know all about you, Stellers?”
“I would think so, sir. I’ve never really tried to keep myself a secret from them.”
“Which means that you are a high-value target. Maybe their highest-value target. That makes me think they might try to do something about you. So, we’re all going to have to be on guard against squid ops to take you out, especially since there may still be Skins among us. You are going to have to be especially vigilant, in the way only you can.”
“Got a massive target on me. Got it, sir.”
“Either you’re being flippant, or you have long since come to terms with this. Hoping it’s the latter,” Tanner said.
“Mostly, sir.”
“Alright. That’s all I’ve got, Lieutenant. If you do learn anything useful—hell, even anything half-assed interesting—about the squids, you let me know asap. Wake me up if you have to.”
Thorn stood and saluted. “Aye, sir. Will do.”
Thorn left and headed for his quarters. He needed to get some rest. Kira had been right about that much—he really still wasn’t back to his full ’casting powers. Not even close.
Thorn narrowed his eyes and concentrated on his target. He let his awareness sink into the intimately familiar depths of his talisman, treading the magical paths he knew so well, gathering power. When he felt he had sufficient might, he reached out with it and began to nudge and shape reality, squeezing it, kneading it, changing it to a truth—to the only truth. To his truth.
The universe changed.
Thorn relaxed, let his consciousness reassert itself inside his head, and cast a critical gaze on his target.
It looked like nothing had changed. But there was only one way to tell.
He picked up the mug and sipped. The warm, smooth bitterness of coffee washed across his tongue.
It had worked. He’d started with tea in the mug and changed it to coffee.
Because who the hell preferred tea over coffee?
He sipped coffee again, then reflected on what he’d accomplished. He’d changed a bulkhead from a shade of grey to a noticeably different shade of grey. He’d considered shocking pink but didn’t want to antagonize Tanner. Instead, he’d changed the Tac O’s socks to shocking pink, from the standard-issue grey. He’d convinced the universe that the beef stew on his plate had actually always been spaghetti, that the hot and cold water taps on his wash basin had always been the other way around, and that the place rug in his quarters was not blue, but green.
So, success.
A degree of success, anyway. And that’s what mattered.
Thorn had come to think of these little ’castings as a sort of talisman all on their own. He knew he still lacked the capacity to wield the sorts of power that brought planets successfully—and without complications—back from the dead. He fell far short of it, in fact. But keeping up with these little ’castings, these tiny nudges to reality, also kept him engaged with his ’casting, and with minimal drain. The exercises felt like sharpening a knife, and he, of course, was the blade.
They also let him drink coffee instead of tea.
Except it wasn’t enough, Thorn thought, as he left his quarters and headed for the Gyrfalcon.
He hadn’t expected to find Mol with the fighter, but she was there. Once again, she was fiddling with something up inside the landing-gear well. Thorn made sure to pointedly clear his throat when he entered the repurposed shuttle bay. He made sure to do that every time, ever since he’d startled Mol enough that she cracked her head on an ordnance hardpoint. That had caused the spillage of a little blood, and a lot of profanity.
She was craning her neck to look at whatever she was working on. As Thorn approached, she looked down, catching him square in the face with the glare of her headlamp.
Thorn squinted and raised a hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk! Just no more rubber hoses, okay?”
Mol grinned and aimed the light away from his face. “Don’t talk to me about rubber hoses.”
Thorn tried to peek up inside the gear well. “What the hell do you keep working on in there? I mean, I ride around in this thing all the time. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“The list of things I don’t tell you is way longer than the list of things I do,” Mol replied. “I guarantee that’s the way you really want it.”
“I believe you,” Thorn said, smiling, knowing that it was complete bullshit. Mol kept the Gyrfalcon in absolute fighting condition. For her to be repeatedly trying to fix something meant there was something genuinely wrong.
He stepped up beside her. “Anything I can help with?”
Mol glanced at him sidelong. “You’re offering to help me do maintenance? Bored, are we, sir?”
“We are. In the absence of any apparent squid threats, I don’t have a lot to do.”
Mol grinned. “Apply for some leave. No better time than during a lull like this.”
“I’d rather wait until I
can coordinate my leave with Kira. And who knows when she’s going to be back.”
“She still doing diplomatic stuff at that planet we found?”
“She is, yeah—” Thorn stopped and winced as something viscous hit his cheek with a splat and oozed down the side of his face. “What the hell?”
“That’s my problem, right there. The newer models of the Gyrfalcon use electrical motivators and such to raise and lower the gear, operate atmospheric flight-control surfaces, that sort of thing. This is an earlier model that still uses hydraulics as the primary, with electrical backups. I need to get some upgrades done to her, but the heavy-duty shop time she needs is in short supply.” Another drip of murky fluid hit the deck between them. “Anyway, like I said, this is my problem. I’ve got a slow, drippy leak of fluid from that coupling, right there, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”
“How about replacing it?”
Mol crossed her eyes. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that? I is so dumb.”
“You have replaced it.”
“Yes. Several times. So it’s not the coupling itself, it’s the socket it sits in. But I can’t replace that without replacing the entire gear-well assembly, and I can’t do that outside of a dedicated shop with some technical expertise.” She sighed. “So I tighten it and use sealant on it, and mess around with it until it stops leaking, and then it resumes leaking, and I do it all over again.”
“Mind if I try something?”
“Will it fix my leak?”
“It might.”
Mol stepped back and gestured at the gear well. “Go for it.”
Thorn stepped under the well, then he extracted his talisman and relaxed. Once more, he let his awareness fall into it. And once more he traversed the well-trodden magical pathways, the ones that carried hints of smoke and fire and fear. He sharpened his focus on the leaky coupling, applied a glimmer of magical force, and nudged into existence a new one, one imposed by his will.
One in which the coupling had never leaked.
Then he let the magic dissipate, and relaxed.
He found Mol staring at him.
“What?”
“You can use magic to fix my Gyrfalcon? How long have you been able to do that?”
Thorn held up a hand. “Before you think there’s a whole branch of magic devoted to fixing leaky hydraulics, there isn’t. Instead, I think you’ll find that this coupling has never leaked.”
Sure enough, there was no smear of hydraulic fluid on Thorn’s cheek, and no spatter of it on the deck near his foot.
“Wait,” Mol said. “You mean you did your reality-changing thing?”
Thorn nodded.
“I didn’t think you were supposed to do that.”
He gave her a conspiratorial look. “I’m trying to keep myself fine-tuned until I get all of my—” Thorn stopped, then smiled. “All of my mojo back.”
Mol smiled back, but it quickly faded. “Does that mean you can do something about Trixie?”
Thorn’s smile faded, too. “No. Or, at least, not yet. It’s one thing to fix a leaky hydraulic line, or change tea into coffee.”
“Wait, what?”
“I know, right? Who likes tea?”
“I do.”
Thorn rolled his eyes. “No accounting for taste. Anyway, I’m confining myself to little things. Me drinking coffee instead of tea, or you never having that leak, aren’t likely to lead to universe-shaking changes.”
“Aren’t likely to. That doesn’t mean they won’t.”
Thorn sighed. “Well, that’s true. I’ll put it this way—I think the tiny amount of risk is worth the reward.”
Mol cocked her head. “And what, exactly, is the reward?”
“My sanity.”
Mol blinked at that. Thorn caught himself just an instant too late. He hadn’t meant to be that blunt but had blurted it out before he could edit it into something less dire.
“You okay, Thorn?” Mol asked, dropping the sir. It didn’t bother Thorn at all. Somehow, it didn’t seem like much of a transgression from someone with whom he’d spent so much time—including at least a few near-death experiences. “Anything you want to talk about?”
For a moment, Thorn considered just spilling it all to Mol, including the things he hadn’t even told Kira. He knew full well that that was the problem—that he couldn’t get past failing to bring back Morgan. He had tried to do too much and gotten overconfident in his control over his powers. He had tried to change her into something she wasn’t, just to suit his idea of who and what she should be.
He slammed face-first into a wall of guilt and regret because she’d been so close. She’d been right there. He tried to remake her into someone that wasn’t a Starcaster, and she fought back so he lost her.
Thorn even opened his mouth to speak, but words suddenly failed him. He didn’t know what to say, or even how to say it. And how could he tell Mol something he’d never shared with Kira, Morgan’s own mother?
“I’m okay, Mol. It’s more a matter of being bored, I think. With nothing much to do, I have to keep in practice somehow, right? If I just sit around waiting for the Nyctus to do something, I’ll probably go stir crazy. That’s what I meant.”
Mol gave him a doubtful look. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’m just saying, if you need to talk, there are two seats, side-by-side, in the cockpit up there. It’s easy to talk between them.”
Thorn smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mol—”
Tanner’s voice cut him off. “All hands, battle stations. I say again, battle stations. This is not a drill, I say again, not a drill.”
Thorn exchanged a look with Mol, then headed for the exit from the bay. Mol rolled up her toolkit and went the other way, toward the Gyrfalcon’s airlock. As she did, she glanced back over her shoulder.
“This is your fault, you know,” she said.
“My fault? How? Because I changed tea into coffee?”
“Maybe,” Mol shot back, lifting a foot onto the ladder. “More likely because you said you were bored. Never say you’re bored, ’cause if you do, you can bet the universe will take care of it for you.”
8
Maybe Mol was right. Maybe the universe was involved somehow, getting back at Thorn for saying he was bored. Or maybe the universe was just offended by Thorn, over the liberties he took with it, and was lashing back. Whatever the reason, Thorn realized the deep irony that the Hecate was under attack by a Nyctus flotilla—after a long discussion with Tanner about the Nyctus likely pulling back to lick their wounds.
He clambered into the witchport, thankful that the battle station’s klaxon cut out just before he settled himself. It wasn’t easy focusing with the damned thing blaring. He activated the bridge repeater panel with a tap. It would give him essential tactical information, while also keeping him on a direct line to Tanner.
Thorn retrieved his focus and placed it on his knees, then tried to relax.
“Captain, Stellers here. I’m on-station.”
“Got it.”
Thorn just breathed in and out for a moment, centering himself. Then he plunged into the magical depths of the talisman, tapping into his reservoir of available power—
Which was still far less than he was used to. It was like gazing across the warm, shallow waters washing a gentle slope of beach, instead of staring into the deeps. Into the dark, almost unbound depths, now denied him.
He gave a mental shrug. It was what he had to work with.
Thorn tapped into a tiny fraction of the power, extended it around him, and opened the witchport. Simultaneously, he oriented himself with the repeater display so he could pick out the approaching Nyctus ships. They were still far enough away they’d be dim dots at best, but—
A diffuse patch of light snagged his attention, pulling him out of the moment and almost making him lose the bubble of containment he’d extended around himself.
By vast coincidence, the Nyctus ships were closing from only a few degrees off Thorn’s line-of-s
ight to the Witch Nebula.
Thorn took a breath and reasserted control. It took some time and effort, though—far more than it normally would or should. The containment bubble was something he should be able to pretty much fire and forget, usually requiring almost no conscious thought to maintain at all. It made his stomach twist a little. Was he really that weak? Had changing even tiny aspects of reality, like tea into coffee, or the color of the Tac O’s socks, dissipated that much of his capacity?
Thorn took a long, slow breath, then let it out, recentering himself. He had to stay in the moment, ignoring the Nebula and his limited capacity for magic. Ignore all of it and focus on the task at hand.
Tanner’s voice broke in over the intercom. “Tac O, time to range?”
“Two minutes to maximum missile range. Four point five minutes to rail gun range. Five point five to particle beam range.”
Thorn glanced at the trajectories depicted on the repeater. The fact that four Nyctus ships were so close mystified him. They were essentially in open space, with nothing nearby that could have hidden them. And one of them was a destroyer of the Hecate’s size, too.
“Stellers,” Tanner said. “How did they get so close to us undetected? Magic?”
Thorn released a breath. “I’m still running on low, sir, so I can’t afford the power to check. Not without leaving me short for battle.”
“Don’t do that. We’re badly outgunned here as it is.”
Thorn’s gut twisted another notch. Tanner was counting on him to help offset the squids’ numbers. For the first time in a while, Thorn’s confidence that he could do that faltered.
“Sir,” he said. “Far be it from me to offer tactical advice, but why not just do an Alcubierre hop and withdraw?”
There were other Captains in the ON, Thorn knew, who would take a suggestion to retreat as something not far from mutiny. Tanner, though, was far more pragmatic.
“Love to. However, the drive’s off-line for at least another fifteen minutes. The Chief Engineer was working on it and has to bring it back up to power. Wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d detected these assholes sooner, like we should have.”