Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  She had grabbed his wrist, a strange look on her face. “That book.”

  “Brought it from home,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving it here.” And he didn’t. Bringing the book made sense. It didn’t take up much room. It would have been wasted. It’s not like the other reclamation specialists would have read it. It would have gone into the trash pit the second he lifted off planet. That book was the one constant he had, hard proof of the life he’d had before war erupted and he became an orphan. He’d heard the ON required soldiers to cut ties, but he wasn’t cutting this one.

  “No, I don’t think you should leave it,” Kira had said, hand still on his wrist, although her grip had softened. “There’s something about it. Something special. Keep it with you, Thorn.”

  He’d tossed her a grin—that Thorn Seller’s patented special, designed to let him just get by without revealing anything real—trying to wipe the odd look off her face, but it had lingered.

  Now, standing on the tarmac of an unfamiliar world, Thorn tightened his grip on the carryall handle. It was like he could see through the bag’s canvas sides, straight through to the worn cover and yellowing pages wrapped up in his spare clothes. The book’s presence was calming. It always had been.

  When he snapped back to reality, he saw Kira had already stepped off. Thorn followed, lengthening his stride a few steps to catch up. When he did, she glanced at him and said, “That building straight ahead is where you’re going. Once I hand you off, the rest is up to you.” She fought a smile, the corner of her mouth quirking and her dimples dancing between visibility and non-existence, before giving in to the grin. “Try not to worry too much about fucking up. Failure is part of training.”

  “You’re coming too, right?”

  Kira stopped midstride. “What?”

  “Aren’t you training with me?” Thorn asked. “We’ve come this far. Might as well keep the team together.”

  Kira shook her head and said almost gently, “I’m an officer, Thorn. I’ve already been through training. My job was to deliver you. Your job is to—well, you’ll see.”

  When she started walking again, Thorn lagged a step behind. He told himself it was because he wanted a chance to enjoy the view.

  Kira placed Thorn in the hands of a bony woman with “Narvez” on her nametape and long frown lines bracketing her mouth. She wore silver double bars on her collar like Kira did. Thorn turned an experimental grin toward her, but the woman didn’t even look at him.

  “What fresh idiot you bringing me now, Wixcombe?” Narvez asked Kira.

  “Well…” Kira flashed her dimples. “You always yell when I bring them to someone else.”

  Thorn cleared his throat. “Them? How many people have you brought here?”

  Narvez looked at him for the first time.

  “Ma’am,” Thorn added.

  He waited for more, but the woman stood there with her lips pressed tightly and her arms crossed, saying nothing. She had a narrow face, somewhere just short of gaunt. With her mouth thinned to a line, she was a study in slashes, like someone had taken a sharp knife to a plug of clay.

  He shrugged, his grin fading. “I’m not sure I—”

  She cut him off by thrusting her knife of a nose in his face. “You,” she said, her voice a hiss, so he had to stay where he was, nose to nose, to catch every word, “will address her as ma’am. Lieutenant Wixcombe is not your drinking buddy. You will address me as ma’am. You will address all female officers as ma’am, and if you happen to see a male of the species, and he’s wearing officer rank, you will address him as sir. Does that sound simple enough, or do I need to write it down for you?” She pulled back, an arm’s length away, and redirected her gaze to Kira. “What did you say his name was?”

  “She didn’t, actually,” Thorn said, a flare of anger piercing his usual calm. “It’s Thorn. But if you want to be drinking buddies, you can call me whatever you want.” He paused just a moment before adding, “Ma’am.”

  “His name is Stellers,” Kira told Narvez.

  “Stellers.” Narvez said it like she’d just gotten a mouthful of something rotten. “If you’d be so kind as to follow me for swearing in and processing.” She looked him up and down, then delivered a grin of her own. “Enjoy your attitude while you’ve got it. It’s about to be fixed.”

  Twenty minutes after that, Thorn sat on a metal table in a pale blue room. He was naked. Everything about the room conveyed a flesh-creeping cold—the shade of the paint, the temperature, a handful of pastel sketches that showed the inner workings of the human reproductive system from different angles, and one unusually large poster of venereal diseases identifiable by sight. The thin paper lining on the table stuck to his butt whenever he shifted. About the time he realized the room was likely a test of some kind and he was probably being watched, someone knocked on the door.

  Thorn called out, “Come in.” He stood just as the door handle turned.

  A woman walked in, cute, blonde, surrounded by an air of bustle. She had a clipboard with a medical scanner fastened to it. She didn’t bat an eye when a naked Thorn stepped forward to shake her hand. She took it without changing expression, glanced at the clipboard, and asked, “Stellers, Thorn?”

  “In the flesh,” he replied. “Obviously.”

  She glanced at the clipboard again, unimpressed. “This is your entrance physical.”

  He tapped her clipboard, and she looked up, expression still stoic.

  “Kira made it sound like I already had the job.”

  “It’s just a formality. The ON fixes what gets broken during training or service—if there’s anything left to fix. They’re not likely to deny for a preexisting, but they do want to know what you’re coming in with.”

  “Coming in with?”

  She shrugged. “Childhood trauma is fairly common in the Magecorps.”

  She didn’t add much warmth to the room. For all that she was cute, and seemingly flesh and blood, she could have been a well-designed ’bot. Thorn had dropped Kira’s name, hoping for a connection of some kind—anything to tether him to this new world, and what might be a new life.

  Instead, she waved him to the exam table and ran the scanner from his temple to his shoulder and then across his chest at nipple level. Every now and then, it beeped and she made a notation. She worked her way down, then back up, and front and back, without ever saying a word—except twice. Once when she asked him to turn his head and cough, and later when she instructed him to hop off the table and grab his ankles.

  “I kind of prefer reclamation work,” he muttered.

  “Don’t take it personally,” she said, moving around to his front again, her eyes flat with clinical regard. “We do reclamation work here, too.”

  The pale blue walls seemed to muffle background noise. The stylus against the clipboard, the girl’s breath, the shush of the air circulators—he couldn’t hear any of it. It was like being stuck under an ice sheet in a frozen sea, sunlight filtering in from above.

  She was scribbling notes after poking and prodding him when Thorn asked her how she liked being in the service. She blinked, puzzled for a moment, and then started to laugh. “The ON’s recruiting comedians now?”

  “Apparently.”

  She stepped to the door, then through as it opened. “Enjoy your sense of humor while you’ve still got it.” With that, she was gone.

  3

  Code Nebula was a much smaller planet than the mud-ball Thorn had spent the last few years on, so the darkness that met him as he left the medwing took him by surprise.

  Narvez waited, tall and angular, with her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Her sharply angled elbows mocked a hawk’s wings. In contrast to her poise, Thorn sauntered toward her, shoulders slumped forward, hands jammed into the pockets of his oil-worn trousers. Having lived on a planet known for nothing more than mud-slush and monsoons, he’d learned to keep his head down and hands warm. He didn’t expect the sharp—and sudden—two-finger jab to the diaphragm
that propelled his body upward in a desperate attempt to swallow the air he’d lost.

  The woman’s lips curled in a frigid bow. “Stellers,” she hissed. “You will stand upright and at attention or I will make you stand upright and at attention.”

  “I think I understand. Ma’am.” Thorn choked on his words as he recovered from the shock, keeping his anger at bay with a force of will.

  Narvez stared, then turned on her heel and led him toward a small grouping of oil-shined steel buildings. She didn’t look back, assuming he would follow. He did, though he looked around, stunned at the sights.

  Code Nebula was pristine. On Murgon 4, Thorn had stood out from the other workers, literally a head taller than the rest, but also because he couldn’t stop himself from attempting to clear the muck from every facet of his life. As he absorbed his surroundings now, he felt as though he was the muck they’d be wiping from their shiny black boots.

  They arrived at the barracks, and Narvez directed him to the second on the right. Simple black markings above the door read “2A.” Thorn paused, a new life waiting just beyond the metal threshold, then pressed into the orderly, sterile space.

  The recruit bunks somehow managed to exude the kind of cold that seeps into your bones while at the same time hinting at comfort he could only dream of. In all his years, he had never felt so luxuriously neglected. The soft white pillow beckoned to him, and he realized just how utterly exhausted he was. Kira may have slept en route, but he’d never had the pleasure. All of the plane jumping seemed to smack him in the face, and his eyes began to droop.

  “STELLERS!” Thorn jolted to attention at the sound of Narvez’s voice. He didn’t remember drifting into a sleep haze.

  “Ma’am?” he said, his brain lagging two steps behind his mouth.

  “Your bunk is there.” She pointed with a long finger. “Near the window. Get the hell out of Rodie’s bunkspace.”

  “Shit,” he grumbled. Then, as his brain finally caught up to him, he snapped to attention and flashed a brilliant smile at the serrated woman. “I mean shit, ma’am.”

  Though she didn’t seem too pleased with the correction, Thorn snatched up his canvas bag and clutched it tightly as he transitioned to the correct bunk. The other six recruits in his barrack sniggered into the crooks of their elbows or behind their blankets, but Thorn didn’t pay them more than a glance. He didn’t have the energy. Until their collective laughter, he hadn’t even clocked their presence.

  Narvez left him with an icy glare, and Thorn sighed away the tension as he collapsed on the edge of the mattress.

  “I’m Rodie,” a nasally voice announced from much closer than Thorn had anticipated. “This is Drigo. Don’t worry about the bunk mishap. They all look the same anyway.”

  Thorn grasped the man’s hand and shook it, marveling at the slight figure he saw before him.

  When Kira had offered him the job, Thorn thought he was a lock. Obviously, the ON would be interested in a tall, heavily-built man such as himself. But standing before him now was a young man barely more than skin-and-bones with a head two sizes too big for his neck and glasses that made a job of sliding down the bridge of his nose.

  “I…uh, yeah…” Thorn stuttered at the juxtaposition before him.

  Drigo chuckled and lifted his arm to press it against the metal bed frame. “We get it, man. Don’t worry about it. The first day in Magecorps is a little freaky. Messes with your head and shit.” He had a subtle air of aggression, even when he was smiling. Thorn knew his type—as the tallest kid in every group, and on the slop crews, Thorn was made to be challenged, and usually by guys like Drigo, who thought their natural position was in the lead. They’d have to reach an understanding at some point.

  Thorn dropped his head and ran his fingers through his chunky locks of blonde hair. “Magecorps.” He tested the word on his lips. It fell from his mouth naturally and somehow brought the collision of reality to the surrealism of his surroundings.

  “Yeah, well, trust me, man—your head’s gonna be doin’ somersaults tomorrow.” Drigo’s bicep rippled as he gestured vaguely about the oncoming day. His physique fit the construct Thorn had created of his fellow recruits much better than Rodie’s—just about a foot and a half shorter than what he expected. What he lacked in height, he’d certainly gained in bulk, though.

  Add Napoleon complex to his urge to lead, Thorn mused.

  Rodie chimed in again, pushing his glasses up with a crooked finger. “That’s Val over there. She’s a beast. Then you’ve got Streya, Tuck, and Unger.” He leaned in close enough that Thorn could feel his breath against his cheek. “But if you need anything, you wanna talk to me.”

  Drigo grabbed Rodie by the shoulder and nudged him gently toward the aisle between the bunks. “Yeah, yeah, let’s let the poor guy get some sleep before you start touting your goods, eh?”

  The pillow on his bunk was just as inviting as Thorn imagined Rodie’s to be. Even the rough blanket couldn’t stop sleep from finding him, and soon he slipped away for the night, his body and mind finally at rest. For a while.

  A resounding crack brought Thorn reeling out of sleep. His heart pounded against his chest, and he gulped to calm his staggered breath. He hardly recalled his dreams anymore, though he didn’t know why. He did know that the racing thump of his heart and beading sweat on his brow wasn’t unfamiliar. Without thinking, he reached for the book stashed beneath his pillow and ran his thumb across the cracked cover in the dark.

  Just when he thought the calm had returned, another sharp, atmospheric crack sounded in the distance. This time, he saw the light that filled the room with an ethereal glow. Thorn pulled himself up by the window ledge and stared out in wonder. He had only seen that particular luminescence once before, and it had emanated from his own palm. Here, he saw the clouds alight with the spectacle.

  Thorn glanced around the room. Everybody else seemed to still be sleeping. Smart. Catch your flies while you can, he knew, so he eased back down to a prone position. Despite his exhaustion, Thorn lay awake listening to the sky crackle as flashes of light splashed across the ceiling tiles.

  It wasn’t much longer before the barrack door smashed open and a cyclone of cold air tore through the bunks, ripping blankets from the recruits and jolting them all awake. At the back of the room, Thorn was lucky enough to see the destruction, so he clung to his bunk, fingers in a death grip.

  The slim figure in the doorway could be none other than Narvez, but right now she appeared to stand ten feet tall. Her cloak swirled about her knees as she stood silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky.

  Narvez’s voice echoed above the tired groans of his bunkmates. “Breakfast in five, or none at all.” Then she was gone.

  With each passing second, Thorn was missing the muck and oil of his former life.

  The mess hall was far from messy. Thorn couldn’t help but marvel at the polished aluminum floors, the shiny metal chairs—hell, he could nearly see his reflection in the tray Drigo passed back to him. Bodies jostled about as they shook off the haze of fitful sleep. Men with silver bars on their jackets stood throughout the room, surveying the recruits with professional disinterest.

  To say the breakfast was meager would be an overstatement. For a hard day’s labor on the pipes, Thorn could eat nearly a dozen eggs, toast, bacon, and then some. He had a feeling today would be a bit more strenuous than working pipes on Murgon 4, but what he got was two egg-like circles of protein on top of a slice of dusty bread so thin it only had one side. For his second slice of what the cook seemed to think of as bread, there was a jelly with the consistency of engine oil, smelling vaguely of burned sugar and peaches. He devoured it out of necessity but took solace from the coffee. It was hot, heavily caffeinated, and only mildly offensive.

  After breakfast, Narvez led the recruits of 2A to the training grounds where they came to a stop on a running track. The sun was just starting to rise above the wooded hills in the distance, and the new officer pulled a cap on to shade hi
s eyes.

  “Recruits, at attention!” Narvez commanded.

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” Thorn was a syllable behind the rest in response as they saluted in unison.

  “Instructor Burnitz, your recruits. Stellers, step forward.” Narvez tipped her head to the ginger-bearded man. “Instructor Burnitz, your newest recruit—Stellers. Good luck with this one.”

  Thorn shuffled forward, uneasy with the limelight for the first time in his life. Instructor Burnitz scoffed, then sized him up like livestock. Thorn felt his anger rise, but only just.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you’re called, recruit. Get back in line.” Burnitz’s voice was all bite and no bark. Thorn could sense the danger this man held at his fingertips.

  “Get ready to run, Proby,” Val whispered over her shoulder in his general direction.

  Rodie’s right. Thorn raised a brow as he took in the hard lines that shaped her physique. She’s a beast.

  “Recruits! Fall in!” Without another word, Burnitz started down the track with a quickness that took Thorn by surprise.

  Thorn hadn’t been on a run in ages. His chest burned as they trekked through the hills and slogged through muddy banks, but he refused to fall out. He wouldn’t be that Proby. The other bunks had just caught up with them when Thorn’s legs began to falter, and his mind told him the run was over. But they continued. They must have done about six miles when Burnitz finally spoke above the gasps and moans.

  “What’s the matter? We’re just over halfway there now.” Burnitz chuckled at the hopeless grunts. He stayed ten yards ahead of the rest, seemingly unfazed by the rugged terrain. “You know, I am feeling a bit shaded in these trees. Can any of you get my hat off my head?”

  A few recruits started moving faster and pressed forward, but Burnitz only increased the distance between them. Now he turned and ran backward, a slight smile lifting the corner of his beard.