Witch Nebula (Starcaster Book 4)

by J. N. Chaney

  Kira bailed out of his mind, then let her Joining dissipate, the magic that powered it draining into the ether. Her consciousness snapped her back to the here and now, and she blinked into darkness.

  “Lights.”

  She blinked again as the compartment illuminated. The low gravity made her take a little longer to get dressed. She didn’t want to spin herself into a bulkhead, or accidentally slam herself into the overhead. She deliberately took her time, then made up for it by hurrying off to find Damien.

  “So the Nyctus want the Danzur to delay you here,” Damien said.

  “That’s how Tadrup understands it, yeah,” Kira replied.

  He drummed his fingers on the table in the Venture’s common area. “Why? Why is it so important to the Nyctus that you stay stuck here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m a Starcaster, but my focus is Joining, not combat magic. That’s definitely more of Thorn’s thing.”

  Damien looked at her. “I understand that you and Stellers pretty much saved the fleet from a Nyctus ambush a few years back. It was the two of you working together that did it, right?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just us. It was also Captain Tanner and crew of the Hecate, and Mol Wyant, a kick-ass fighter pilot.”

  “Let’s put aside the modesty, shall we? The point is that you and Stellers worked together and undid a lot of the squids’ hard work in trying to trap and ambush a big chunk of the ON, right?”

  “I guess so, yes. I was able to Shade what we were doing—that means hiding it, magically. While that was going on, Thorn led the charge in the Hecate’s witchport, using just about every type of magic you could imagine against the Nyctus. He’s a Conduit, which means he’s not restricted to one type of magic.” Kira’s voice trailed off into a thoughtful look. Damien just waited for her to go on.

  “Wait. You’re saying that the Nyctus want to keep Thorn and me apart?”

  “It’s a theory.”

  “Sure, but it just brings us back to why. Why are they so focused on keeping us apart that they’d pay off the Danzur? As far as Tadrup is concerned, they made good on all of his losses, which probably means they made good on everyone’s,” Kira said.

  “If we knew the answer to that, we might have the one important piece of this puzzle we’re obviously missing,” Damien replied.

  “I have to talk to Thorn.”

  “I thought you said he was unavailable, locked away behind some sort of barrier.”

  “I did. And he is. I’m just going to have to find a way through it.”

  Damien nodded. “Okay. What then?”

  A slow smile spread across Kira’s face. “Well, the Danzur seem to be afraid of the Nyctus magic. Maybe they need to see what some real magic looks like.”

  “How are you going to arrange that?”

  Kira stood. “Leave it with me. In the meantime, keep Tadrup busy. Tell him I’m doing something else and can’t meet with him for now. Let him be on the receiving end of some stalling for a change.”

  26

  It took Thorn a moment to register what Bertilak said.

  Morgan.

  In terrible danger.

  He blinked and shook his head, like he was trying to clear away mental cobwebs.

  “Clarify that?” he asked. The fact that Bertilak had just named his daughter was only just starting to register.

  “Morgan. I just communed with her. She’s being attacked. By the Nyctus.”

  Thorn strode forward and grabbed Bertilak by the shoulders. “What the hell are you talking about? What do you know about Morgan? How do you know about Morgan?”

  “I—” Bertilak began, then stopped, looking helpless.

  “Tell me! What the hell is going on? Where’s Morgan?”

  “I don’t know! She’s out there, somewhere.” Bertilak gave a vague wave. “I only speak to her by communing. She wanted it that way.” His actions were far different from the confident, boisterous being Thorn had known until moments earlier, and that set alarms ringing—for Thorn. For Bertilak, his shift seemed to make him into another life form; one that had withdrawn and been reduced.

  Thorn shoved his face into Bertilak’s. “What do you mean? Where’s Morgan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is she?” Thorn yelled.

  “I don’t know! She didn’t want me to know so I couldn’t let it slip out, because she doesn’t want you to know where she is!”

  Thorn locked his gaze onto Bertilak’s. He would have driven himself into the alien’s mind like a sharpened spike, ripped it open, and found out what he knew. If he could. But he couldn’t, because from a magical perspective, Bertilak still didn’t exist.

  But the alien also wasn’t lying. Through the misery on his face, Thorn could see that Bertilak was telling the truth. He did know about Morgan, but he didn’t know where she was.

  Thorn hung on the edge of hyperventilating. Of hitting Bertilak—or hitting something. Instead, he took a deep breath, then let it out. At the same time, he let his awareness sink partway into his center, touching his focus and using it to find some calmness amid the stormy swirl of emotions that suddenly gripped him.

  He let go of Bertilak and stepped back. “You had better start talking, Bertilak. Now. And you’d better not leave anything out.”

  Thorn could hear the flat menace in his own voice. So could Bertilak. The big alien winced, then nodded.

  “Fine. She was very clear that I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything. But something’s wrong. She’s in some sort of danger. So I’ll tell you.” He took a deep breath.

  “Morgan is alive. She survived her confrontation with you. But she fled because you tried to change her. You tried to make her into something she wasn’t.”

  Thorn eased out a breath. “Go on.”

  “She found refuge . . . somewhere. I honestly don’t know where. She thought that if I didn’t know where she was, I couldn’t give it away.”

  Thorn stared. “Wait. I don’t understand. How could you have talked to her if you don’t know where she is? Did she have access to some sort of comms?”

  “No. Like I said, I commune with her.”

  “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “I speak to her mind-to-mind.”

  “So you’re a Starcaster? You can use magic?”

  Bertilak shook his head. “No. It’s just in my nature.”

  “Damn it, Bertilak, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  The big alien stood and started to pace. “You don’t get it, do you? I can commune with her because she made it work that way.” He spun and faced Thorn. “She created me, Thorn. From scratch. I didn’t exist until shortly before the Nyctus attacked the Hecate.”

  “She . . . made you?” Thorn just stared again. “Why?”

  “To test you. She’s obsessed with you, Thorn. Ever since she learned that you’re actually her father, she’s been fixated on you. But she doesn’t understand why you tried to change her.”

  Thorn sat down. “I was trying to do what I thought was best for her. If she wasn’t able to use magic, if she was just an ordinary little girl growing up on Nebo—” He ended on a desolate shrug. “I was trying to help her.”

  “So you were playing at being a god? Trying to reshape this girl into something that suited you?”

  “Says the guy who was apparently created out of thin air.”

  “She’s a child, Thorn. You’re not. She doesn’t really understand the consequences of what she does. You do. Or, at least, you’re supposed to.”

  Thorn had been staring at the deck between his feet. Now he looked up. “Wait. She created you.” He swept a hand around the bridge. “All of this—a ship full of tech, an alien who understands and can talk about space flight, and smuggling, and arms dealing.” He sat up, suspicion tightening his face. “Why am I having a hard time believing that?”

  Bertilak smiled, but it lacked any of his usual humor. “Look around you, Thorn. Look at these controls and displ
ays. They’re meaningless, just nonsense.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m made to reflect who and whatever I interact with, especially you. Some of this is taken from your own memories and experiences, which then get filtered through the perceptions of a child.” He pointed at the pilot’s station. “That looks like a control system of some sort, but what it really is, is what Morgan thinks you think a control station looks like. You understand something about some of the Hecate’s control stations, but deep inside, you find them intimidating, even a little incomprehensible. Now, pass that through the mind of a little girl, and you get this.” He sniffed. “It looks very sophisticated and technical, but it doesn’t really do anything.”

  “So how the hell do you control this ship?”

  Bertilak sat down, facing Thorn. “I just do. It works because it does. Because, just like me, Morgan made it that way. I am the operating system.”

  Thorn sighed. On one level, he wondered why any of this surprised him. If Morgan was powerful enough to alter reality, then changing it into one where Bertilak and his ship existed was easy to understand. It was also a horrifying use of magic, one that could have cataclysmic consequences. But, like Bertilak said, she was a child.

  On a more fundamental level, Thorn found it all so unbelievable. He was a Starcaster, he’d changed reality himself, but he still found this hard to accept. Maybe it was that the idea of actually creating life from scratch such a soul-shaking thing that he just couldn’t accept it.

  Except wasn’t that what he had done? He’d created—okay, recreated—Morgan from scratch. And he’d tried to change her into something she wasn’t while doing it. That didn’t exactly give him the moral high ground here, did it?

  It did explain a lot, though. For instance, why Bertilak and his ship seemed utterly immune to magic. It must have something to do with the fact that they were magical creations themselves. And why this improbable ship was able to exist and operate at all. Again, it was because it was a magical construct, which worked simply because it did. Morgan had made it that way.

  Thorn finally shook his head. The ethics and implications of all this were massive, but they’d have to wait. “So if you can commune with her, Bertilak, then do that. Find out where she is, so we can go and help her.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Damn it, you said she was in danger!”

  Misery darkened Bertilak’s face. “I didn’t say I won’t. I said I can’t. As in, I’m not able to. She stopped communing with me. I’ve tried to reach her, but she just won’t respond.”

  Thorn’s head dropped, his gaze falling to the deck again. If what Bertilak said was true, then she may very well be dead again. And that meant that, for the second time, Thorn had come close to saving his daughter, but fallen short. The realization made his throat hurt, his eyes sting.

  “She’s not dead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Bertilak said.

  Thorn’s head snapped back up. “How do you know? You said she’s gone.”

  “Again, you’re not hearing me. I said she won’t answer me. She’s still there, she just won’t respond. It’s like trying to talk to someone through a closed door. I speak, but they don’t answer. I don’t know if it’s because she can’t hear me for some reason, or she’s just decided to not answer.”

  So she wasn’t dead. Or so Bertilak said, anyway. But if that was true, then it gave Thorn a slender lifeline of hope, one he now used to haul himself back from the brink of complete despair.

  “Okay. Okay. So she’s still alive, was in danger, and probably still is. You don’t know where she is, and she won’t talk to you.” Thorn rubbed his eyes. “Did she say anything about what sort of danger she was in?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Shit. If we knew even that much, maybe we could—”

  Thorn stopped, struck by a sudden suspicion. “Hang on. You said that she created you and sent you to test me. So the Nyctus attack on the Hecate, the damaged Nyctus ship, the smugglers on Fringe—was any of it real?”

  “The first attack by the Nyctus against the Hecate was. I was looking for a convincing way to announce myself to you. Saving you and your ship from the Nyctus seemed like the perfect opportunity. The rest of it though?” Bertilak gave another humorless smile. “That was all fabricated.”

  “Does Fringe even exist?”

  “It does now.”

  Thorn hissed in anger, then shook his head at the enormity of Morgan’s ability. The damage Morgan might be doing to reality was already beyond understanding, but she had no way of knowing that. Like Bertilak said, she was a child. But she was also a child with Thorn’s capacity for magic. She was a Conduit and might be an even more powerful conduit than he was.

  She hadn’t ended the universe yet. But she might.

  Thorn yanked his attention back from the possible end of creation and put it back on Bertilak. “So how do I know this is real? How do I know this isn’t another test?”

  Bertilak rested his hands on his knees. “I wish it were, Thorn. I really do. But it’s not. This was never meant to happen. I have no idea what to do now.” He looked squarely into Thorn’s eyes. “I’m lost. I have no purpose beyond testing you.”

  “So what were you going to do when the testing was done? When Morgan was satisfied that she’d learned what she wanted to know about me?”

  Bertilak’s face became as cold and empty as the starscape on the viewscreen.

  “I don’t know, Thorn. I really have no idea. I don’t think she did, either.”

  Thorn paced the bridge. He couldn’t sit down. He needed to keep moving because it was the only way he could keep his racing thoughts in some semblance of order.

  Bertilak sat at the pilot’s station, saying nothing. Thorn wasn’t sure what the big alien was thinking. At the moment, he didn’t care. Or he did, because he felt profoundly sorry for Bertilak, a person created for a specific purpose, but with no history, no memories, no family or friends, nothing. But he couldn’t dwell on that right now.

  What Thorn needed was—

  “Kira,” he said.

  Bertilak looked at him. “What about her?”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “Oh. She’s actually been trying to talk to you.”

  Thorn slammed to a halt. “What?”

  “She’s been trying to talk to you. Or, actually, commune with you, I guess.”

  “And you’ve been stopping her?”

  Bertilak nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because it was what Morgan wanted. She wanted you to be alone with me and never talk to anyone else, except when you were being tested.”

  “And you just went along with that?”

  Bertilak stood. “You still don’t get it, do you? I did it because I had to. It’s my basic nature to obey Morgan, because she made me that way.”

  Thorn had come to accept that everything Bertilak had told him was true. So why doubt this?

  “Can you let me talk to her, or commune with her, now?”

  Bertilak sighed. “I shouldn’t, because my last instruction from her was to not let you. But she gave me enough free will to do things independently, so yes. Yes, you can talk to Kira now.”

  Thorn forced himself back into the seat he’d occupied. “Okay. This is going to take some time and effort. I’m still not back up to my full magical potential.”

  Thorn, please answer me!

  Thorn reeled under the impact of what amounted to a psychic shout.

  Kira?

  Thorn?

  Believe it or not, I was literally just going to contact you.

  A vast flood of relief washed over him. Thorn! Holy shit, finally! Where are you? What the hell’s going on?

  Thoughts tumbled through Thorn’s mind. It took him a moment to get them all to line up in something even resembling a coherent order.

  Okay. This is going to take some explaining. I need you to be patient and not interrupt until I’m done. Okay?

>   This doesn’t sound good.

  It isn’t, Thorn replied, then took a deep mental breath and went on. I’m on a ship with an alien named Bertilak, sort of—on loan. He is not an actual alien. He’s a construct, wholly made from magical energy and willed into reality by our daughter.

  What?!

  It’s Morgan. She exists, she has a deep anger directed at me, and she’s in danger. Right now. She created a watcher, and now she needs me. She needs us, Kira, and any anger you harbor will have to wait. I can’t make you forgive me, but I can ask you to see this as what it is—our daughter needs us, and right now.

  Silence. Thorn waited.

  And kept waiting. He knew Kira was still there, but she was saying nothing. Maybe she had nothing to say. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to Thorn anymore.

  I—

  It was all Kira managed before she went quiet again. Thorn just kept waiting.

  I don’t know what to say, Thorn. I honestly don’t know what to say. This is going to take me time to digest.

  I know. Of course it is.

  I don’t even feel anything about it. Not yet. I mean, I think I should probably be heartbroken, or furious, or terrified, or wallowing in sympathy for you, but I don’t feel any of that. I’m just numb, she said.

  Again, I get it. Kira, take all the time you need—

  I can’t. We can’t. I’ve been a toy for the Danzur, who are working with the Nyctus. Everyone is our enemy, Thorn, and for now, I want to put anything from the past—

  Can we set it aside, Kira?

  Yes. And we will. She matters more. We matter more, and the ON, and humanity. Thorn, we can’t afford a second front. But if Fleet moves its reserves to attack the Nyctus, and they get bogged down, there’ll be nothing to stop the Danzur. On the other hand, if they keep the reserves where they are, then there’s just not enough force available to give us a realistic chance of defeating the Nyctus at all, never mind quickly. And we could still end up fighting the Danzur.

  Thorn had to work at not howling in rage at their options, but he calmed himself, if only for a second, and found his voice. So we’re screwed.