Witch Nebula (Starcaster Book 4)

by J. N. Chaney

  “Well, I’ve got one observation,” Damien replied. “If you plan to advance in the ON and become a Commander, or even a Captain or an Admiral, then diplomacy is going to be a big part of what you’re going to have to do to be successful. Hell, I spend at least half of my diplomatic effort to balance agendas and schemes, interests, and motivations . . . all inside the Allied Stars bureaucracy. The ON isn’t going to be any different. However—and I say this slowly, so you grasp the importance—you have a natural grasp of the value that contrast can bring to the negotiating table.”

  “Lieutenant for life doesn’t sound half bad, and I was always good at playing good officer, bad officer.”

  “You’ll get a way better pension as an Admiral, though.”

  Kira smiled. “Admiral Wixcombe. Yeah, right. Anyway, what do you think is going on?”

  “With Tadrup, or the Danzur generally?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  Damien stretched out his legs. “I don’t know. I’ve got no idea what sort of reparations were paid.”

  “So there are no other channels open between the Allied Stars and Danzur? Things going on in the background we don’t know about?”

  “If we don’t know about them, then how could I say?”

  Kira hissed in frustration. “Fair point, but you know what I mean.”

  Damien nodded. “I’m sure not aware of any back channels between us and the Danzur. More to point, it would be unheard of. Running some sort of back channel with a party, while having a formal diplomatic mission deployed to deal with that party, but keeping your own mission in the dark? It makes no sense to do that, because how do you stop everyone from working at cross purposes?”

  “So what the hell kind of reparations were made?”

  “I’ll get a diplomatic signal cranked up to send back home. It’s going to take a while to get an answer, of course.”

  Kira nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll do some signal cranking of my own.”

  Kira allowed herself the indulgence of sprawling across the voluminous bed in her quarters. She luxuriated in the vast expanse of fine, smooth fabric—something like silk, but thicker and more supple. It was decadent, something she’s rarely experienced since joining the ranks of a navy engaged in a life-or-death struggle of galactic proportions.

  It was also three times the size of her rack aboard the Venture. Okay, so maybe there were some perks to these diplomatic missions.

  Still not enough to offset the aggravation, though.

  Kira closed her eyes, breathing in and out slowly. Having the Danzur spy on her doing this was of little concern. From their perspective, she’d merely be silent and still, apparently taking a nap. Of course, there were other implications to being surveilled that actually did bother her—there was a reason she still changed and showered aboard the Venture. She doubted the Danzur would have much interest in the human body, but she really didn’t want to find out that she was wrong about that the hard way, and her natural shyness—a product of the collective home—lingered like an old habit.

  When she’d fully settled into her center, she threw her awareness into deep space. She rode a wave of her magic like an expanding shockwave, the bow shape growing wider with each passing second. Fortunately, she knew she could concentrate most of her attention across a limited arc. It was unlikely that Thorn would be anywhere but back in the direction of Allied Stars space and the Zone.

  Thorn?

  It was just a shout into the ether. Thorn would hear it and reply. That would snap the link closed between them. As far as she’d been able to tell, no other Starcasters, nor anyone else sensitive to magic, would be able to overhear it. Her intent was only to speak to Thorn, and it seemed that magic honored that intent.

  Except he didn’t. She got no response at all.

  Thorn, are you there?

  Silence.

  Thorn, somehow the Allied Stars or the ON made reparations to the Danzur, but we don’t know anything more. Do you? Can you find out?

  Nothing.

  Kira frowned. He wasn’t ignoring her. She’d become attuned enough to Thorn’s presence in the ether that she could tell if he was out there, somewhere, and simply choosing to ignore her. Of course, it might be for good reason, if he was enmeshed in something complex or dangerous. But this was different. There simply wasn’t any sense of him even existing—

  Thorn?

  She sat bolt upright, inadvertently breaking her concentration and abruptly ending her attempted Joining.

  Not even a hint of Thorn, not anywhere in the ether. She couldn’t find a trace of the most powerful Starcaster she knew. That meant that either someone or something out there was powerful enough to block access to him—

  Or Thorn Stellers was dead.

  22

  Thorn groaned.

  “I wish I was dead.”

  He sat up, gingerly lowered his feet to the floor, and took his head in his hands. He then took a moment for self-examination. He wore a tunic and shirt, underwear, and, for some reason, a boot and sock on one foot, the other being bare.

  He continued his personal assessment. His body ached in every joint, a shrill whine filled his ears with a piercing white noise, and his head—

  Oh, yes. His head.

  Someone had replaced his brain with a throbbing brick of agony. He could feel it pounding behind his eyes, like an irritating harmonic from a fusion reactor in need of tuning. Pain—less pain—more pain—less pain—more pain—

  He heard someone moan. It was him.

  He felt a metallic rush as the door slid open.

  “Thorn, my friend, how are you?”

  Thorn shrank back from Bertilak’s booming voice. “Please, Bertilak, keep it down to a dull roar, okay?”

  The alien laughed but at least tried to restrain himself, with only modest success. He saw Bertilak’s enormous green feet cross to a chair and heard him sit down—but he didn’t look up, because that would involve moving his head, and that was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

  “I’m sorry, Thorn, but you can’t carry on the way you did last night and not pay the price for it.”

  Thorn levered his head up so he could look at Bertilak. “As I recall, you were carrying on just as much as I was.”

  “Ah, but I’m used to it, and in terms of mass, I am both heavier and denser than you. A fact that carries some weight when it comes to revelry, if you’ll pardon my pun.”

  Thorn lowered his head again, ignoring Bertilak’s irritating use of humor, and his breathing, and even the presence of his enormous green feet, which were close enough for Thorn to see without moving at all. He could well believe Bertilak’s assessment. Everyone at this strange, lonely outpost seemed to know Bertilak. Even in the bar, all he had to do was order the usual, a feat that Thorn considered to be the result of many trips to the same watering hole, to quote an old commander at Code Nebula.

  Fringe was, Thorn had to admit, a remarkable place. Located just outside Allied Stars space, but still well away from the demilitarized zone, Fringe answered to no one.

  And that was the point. No one even seemed sure who’d first established the place—a waystation for smugglers, a refuge for those on the lam, and a generally freewheeling, rambunctious place where the rules were simple: you pay your debts, you don’t rat on anyone, and you never, ever ask anyone about their past.

  And all of it happened aboard an orbital platform, in the sense that it was platform-like and it orbited the relatively benign moon of one of the most violent gas giants Thorn had ever seen. But the similarity with other orbital platforms Thorn knew about, like the one serving Code Gauntlet, ended there. Someone had dropped the hull of an old bulk carrier into orbit, stripped out the drives, kept the powerplant running, and turned it into a makeshift space station. Someone else had come along with a smaller derelict ship and strapped it to the bulk carrier, then someone else had done the same. Eventually, the place known as Fringe came into being, a shabby mishmash of ships, hulls, a
nd cargo pods, all bolted together into a single, sprawling thing. There was no better word for it, Thorn thought. Fringe was definitely a thing.

  It also reminded him of other places he’d been, although in bits and pieces, not as a whole. The bar where he and Bertilak had done most of their carousing, for instance, was strongly reminiscent of a place on Seagram’s Planet where he’d once taken leave.

  Which raised another question. How did the ON not know about this place? Or, maybe they did and just kept it under wraps. For that matter, given the sorts of trade that went on here, everything from pale grey markets, to the blackest of black ones, maybe the ON did know about it and just let it do its thing. Before he joined, Thorn had been around enough shady types and places to know the score. Places like Fringe had some advantages, not the least of which was tending to congregate all the rogues, rascals, and reprobates in one place. It made it easier to keep any eye on them.

  Bertilak’s feet reappeared in Thorn’s field of view, which was still pretty much stuck on a spot between his own. “Thorn, I know you feel unwell.”

  “Oh, I passed unwell a few light years back. I’m well into shitty, believe me.” He dragged his gaze upward again. “I’m no lightweight. What the hell was I drinking?”

  Bertilak laughed, making Thorn wince. “What weren’t you drinking? You were the life of the party—the life of the life of the party, even. Color me as surprised as anyone to find that you could sing,” Bertilak said, holding out a cup.

  “Color me your color. Because that’s how I feel.”

  “Drink, friend. It’s a remedy, and it will help you immediately. It’s tailored to your blood chemistry, and—”

  “Shh. I’ll drink it, if only to keep you from talking,” Thorn said. He took the cup, sniffed, made a face, then drank it—and felt his lips begin to rise in alarm. “Was that hair of the dog? Smelled like the muck on Murgon-4, but with the added stench of death.”

  Bertilak shrugged. “Maybe they’re the same thing.”

  Thorn grimaced. He didn’t really think Bertilak would try to get him to drink hydrocarbon sludge, but the alien was still something of an unknown.

  “I haven’t yet steered you wrong, Thorn. Trust me on this.”

  Thorn sighed again and finished the mug, his throat working mechanically as the thick, noxious goo began to go to work. He’d tried many hangover cures before, only a few with even mild success, so he expected this one to be no different. Still, get hungover enough, and you’d do anything to—

  Thorn’s eyes widened. A soft warmth radiated from his stomach, rolling through his guts, his chest, then into his limbs, and finally his head. As it filled him, it completely washed away all traces of the night before.

  Thorn looked up at Bertilak. “Holy shit.”

  The alien grinned. “What did I tell you?”

  Thorn stood. No aches, no pounding head, no wonky stomach. His mouth no longer tasted like an ashtray.

  “I’ll say it again. Holy shit. Bertilak, why haven’t you put that on the market? You’d make a fortune!”

  “If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to appear as a miracle worker in moments like this, now would I?”

  Thorn chuckled. “I guess.” He looked at the dregs clinging to the inside of the mug. “Still, you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth here, my friend.”

  “I thought you were more interested in my tech, my sensors and weapons and the like.”

  “Who the hell needs those when you’ve got this?”

  “Well, since you seem to be back on your feet, why don’t you get dressed? We’ve got work to do here at Fringe.”

  “What sort of work?” Thorn asked, putting the mug down and reaching for his trousers. “For that matter, why are we here, Bertilak? You were pretty determined to be all coy about it last night.”

  “I still am. However, once you get dressed and have had some breakfast, all your questions will be answered.”

  Bertilak left. Thorn watched him go, then finished dressing.

  Breakfast. Now there was something he’d assumed he’d just skip this morning, because nothing he’d have eaten would’ve stayed down for long. Now, though, he was ravenous.

  He glanced at the mug as he strapped up his boots. An instant, almost perfect hangover cure. Was there anything Bertilak couldn’t do?

  Which was a question still plucking at Thorn as he followed Bertilak through the maze of nearly identical twisting passages and compartments that made up Fringe. Some of it was still devoted to actual operations, housing generators and energizers, power converters and air processors. Fringe was still an orbiting platform, if a bizarre one, and had to maintain attitude control and a livable environment. The bulk of the place, though, seemed to be devoted to storing and moving cargo, or to debauchery, without much of a transition between the two.

  They threaded their way among some crates and saw clothing scattered around the deck. Thorn’s gaze followed a trail of hastily flung-around trousers, shirts, belts, socks, and eventually underwear. The trail led around the corner of a stack of cargo pods, around which drifted an awful lot of pretty distinctive noise. He glanced at Bertilak, who just grinned and shrugged.

  Thorn agreed. He really didn’t want to know and just followed Bertilak onward.

  Eventually, the big alien stopped. “We’re meeting several, um, individuals just ahead. Please, let me do all of the talking. Oh, and no questions,” he said.

  Thorn cocked his head. “Individuals? Who are they? What are you going to be talking to them about?”

  “Now what did I just say.”

  “I thought you meant don’t ask them any questions,” Thorn replied.

  “Ah, technicalities and loopholes. You’ll fit right in here.” Thorn noted it explicitly didn’t answer his questions, but Bertilak had walked on before he could speak. He followed the big alien through a tight hatch into another compartment, this one apparently a repurposed cargo module. It was set up like another bar, with tables and chairs bolted to the deck. Thorn noted that the ashtrays were fastened down on the tables, and all the food and drink was served in flimsy, plastic containers. None of it could be weaponized during a brawl.

  Which would be fine, if not for the fact that the two people glowering at them as they entered were already armed to the teeth.

  A man and a woman, both looking as hard as ablative armor. He had a scruffy beard, a sneer, and a pair of massive handguns strapped to his waist. She wasn’t much different, aside from the beard.

  “Bertilak, you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” the man snapped. “And time is money.”

  Bertilak laughed and reached into a pocket. “Ten minutes? Here.” He tossed a single coin, a microcredit, onto the table. “That should cover ten minutes of your time, Garlen. You can owe me the change.”

  Thorn followed Bertilak to the table, warily, taking in all of their surroundings the way one did when stepping into a new watering hole for the first time. Aside from him and Bertilak, and the man apparently named Garlen and his companion, there was one other man jammed behind a table covered with empty plastic cups. A gruff-looking bartender watched them all suspiciously from behind a pile of crates set up as a bar.

  Bertilak sat down at the table, Thorn beside him. “So, Garlen, who’s your friend?” he asked.

  The woman sat up. “I can speak for myself, thanks. Name’s Keely.”

  Bertilak grinned. “And this fine gentleman is Thorn Stellers.”

  Garlen scowled. “Looks like a cop. Are you a cop?”

  “A cop? No. Not a cop.” Thorn considered telling him he was a Lieutenant in the Orbital Navy, but he decided to hold back until he knew just what the hell was going on here.

  “So, what then? You’re some sort of aw-thor-it-ee figure, that’s for sure.” Garlen said it that way—aw-thor-it-ee, each syllable drawn out for emphasis and dripping with suspicious contempt.

  Thorn sighed and prepared himself for a fight. He figured he and Bertilak should have this, but just in
case, he touched his charm, his grubby old book, which was tucked away in his jacket’s inner pocket.

  But Bertilak leaned forward, muscles bunched in menace. “Thorn is my friend and new partner, Garlen, and that’s all you need to know.”

  Keely glared. “Sorry, but—”

  Bertilak stood. “Fine. Thorn, these people don’t want our business, so let’s find some who do.”

  “Just wait a minute,” Garlen said, raising a hand. “You can’t fault us for being careful, Bertilak. There’s a lot at stake here.”

  “Most of it illegal,” Keely put in.

  Garlen looked at her. “There are parts that aren’t illegal?”

  She laughed.

  Thorn shot Bertilak a glance as the big alien sat back down. A lot at stake, and illegal. What the hell was Bertilak up to?

  “Alright, we’ll stay and keep talking. But I’m vouching for Thorn. And that should be good enough, right, Garlen?” Bertilak said.

  The man gave a grudging nod. “I guess.” He suddenly raised his voice. “Mind you, I don’t like talking out in the open like this, where just anyone can hear it, you know?”

  The bartender snorted out a resigned sigh and came out from behind the bar. He collected the bar’s only other patron, the barely conscious man now slumped in the corner, and bundled him out through the hatch. Before he left, he paused and turned back.

  “This is going to cost me business, Garlen,” he said, glowering. “At least a hundred credits worth.”

  “I’ll give you five hundred if it’ll shut you up.”

  The bartender gave him a gap-toothed smile. “Don’t burn the place down,” he said, then left and closed the hatch.

  “Now then, how about we get down to business. Bertilak, I’ve got some good stuff this time around. Think you’ll be damned interested in it,” Garlen said.

  Keely leaned forward, a glare hardening her face. “You’ve got some good stuff, Garlen? Remember how you got your hands on it.”