by J. N. Chaney
Densmore remained absolutely still, listening. “Okay, that is unusual. And I have to admit, a little disturbing.” They’d reached another airlock, one opening into the shuttle about to depart for the FOB’s surface facility. “I’ll do some digging and see what I can find out. Oh, and forget about owing me anything for this. Hell, you could have probably saved your ass and Wyant’s by fiddling with reality again, but you didn’t, and were ready to die for it. I think that should be worth something.”
“I really appreciate that, ma’am.”
She stepped into the airlock. “Tell me if you hear her again. No hesitation—report immediately.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
She stepped into the shuttle, which had apparently been holding for her. A few seconds later, the two sets of airlock doors slid closed, as did the shuttle’s hatch, then it separated with a puff of frozen water vapor and began to thrust away, starting its long fall to the surface.
Thorn watched it for a moment, then turned back for the Hecate. Just like the ship itself, he had a lot to do, and not much time to do it.
14
The original plan had been for Thorn to Shade the Hecate, protecting her from detection, as she cruised into the star system hosting Ballard’s World. When the Alcubierre drive cut out and the ship returned to normal, flat space, he saw no sign of any other traffic. The only power emanations detectable were whatever radiated from the mining facility on the planet’s surface—which wasn’t surprising, given that it was never meant to be a stealthy operation. The Hecate’s tactical computer filtered out every other emission and radiation source as something natural.
“Sir,” Thorn said into the intercom. “Not really sure we need to Shade the ship. I’d recommend not, so I can keep myself relatively fresh for whatever’s coming up.”
“Do it anyway, Stellers,” Tanner replied. “Just in case this is all some elaborate squid trap, I’d rather find that out before they see us coming.”
“Aye, sir.” Closing his eyes, he touched the talisman, he let his awareness radiate away from, passing through the ship, her hull, and into the vacuum beyond. When he was ‘casting Thorn did the opposite of everything he’d known as a child. Instead of being small, he became big, reaching across the black with tendrils of will that carried him on winds made of his own ability.
Gathering power from the well within himself, he began to weave. A simple act, it was a simple result- a net, made of magical will, opaque and tough, and keeping the Hecate in shadows, never directly in the enemy view.
To an external observer more than a few hundred meters away, the ship simply no longer existed. It reflected no light, emitted no heat or radiation. Ordinarily, this would create a crucial, and catastrophic problem; while warships like the Hecate were designed to minimize their emissions, their life support and other systems were intended to radiate away a certain amount of heat. Prevent that heat from escaping, though, and the ship’s heat sinks would eventually be saturated, and the crew would quickly be broiled alive.
But magic, in its enigmatic and paradoxical way, did an end-run around normal physics here, too. Thorn was able to simultaneously block the Hecate’s emissions, while not actually interfering with them at all. It was just another thing Starcasters knew how to do, without knowing why it worked.
Time passed. Thorn maintained the Shade as the Hecate fell sunward, her trajectory aligned to drop her into orbit around Ballard’s World. He kept part of his awareness on the intercom chatter between the Helm, Tactical and Engineering stations, and the occasional interjection by Tanner. Even distracted by the need to concentrate and maintain the Shade, he could hear the tension putting sharp points and angles on their words, and understandably so; the Hecate was deep in the Zone, alone and unsupported, and far from help. This had been part of the plan; the brass running the op had decided that its best protection was keeping as low-key and stealthy a footprint as possible. Even keeping a squadron on-hand to come and bail the Hecate out of trouble risked attracting the attention. Attention was bad. Stealth was good.
Not that they could even call for help easily, being well beyond the twenty-five light year range of real-time comms. Only Thorn could reach back across the gulf of space and converse with anyone. But not only would that cost more of his strength, it also assumed he was conscious—or alive.
The Hecate had slid neatly and quietly into her orbit, a low one to maximize the concealing effect of the various background emissions of Ballard’s World. She was rigged for silent running, taking everything off-line that wasn’t absolutely essential: life support, maneuvering thrusters, and passive sensors. Tanner even had her fusion plant shut down, preferring to risk having to take the fifteen minutes or so it took to fire it back up rather than let it keep spitting heat and radiation into space. It left the Hecate running on her power cells, supplemented by emergency solar power arrays she extended from her hull.
“Alright, Stellers,” Tanner said over the intercom. “We’ve done our part and settled into waiting-and-bored mode. Over to you and your team.”
“Aye, sir.”
Thorn turned and looked at the others jammed into the Hecate’s tiny hangar. He’d thought it was crowded in here with just him and Mol trying to work their way around the Gyrfalcon, but adding six more people, all heavily armed and armored, made it truly claustrophobic.
He took a moment to look over the spec ops team, codenamed Tiger Team Three—four men and two women, all with the alert demeanor of predators on the hunt. A cloud of competence surrounded them, and on the rare occasions they spoke at all, it was in an easy tone that was completely at odds with their appearance. Simply stated, they looked dangerous, and Thorn found himself thankful they were on his side.
The leader of Tiger Team Three, a short, dusky woman with brush-cut dark hair, turned from her squad and faced Thorn. “You care to inspect the squad, sir, before we mount up?”
Thorn shook his head. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Master Petty Officer Brand. You know your trade, I know mine. We’re about to see how much they cross over.”
Brand gave a professional smile. “Understood, sir. We always offer the courtesy.”
“And I appreciate it, Master Petty—”
“’scuse me, sir, but we don’t use ranks when we address one another. You can call me Alix.”
Thorn blinked. “First name? Isn’t that a little informal for the ON?”
“Maybe for the line, sir, but we’re spec ops. Security is what we do. Enemy hears Master Petty Officer Brand, that tells them things. They hear Alix, it tells them a lot less.”
“I’ll remember that. I like mitigating danger. Alright, Alix, I’m Thorn.”
“Understood. From now on, I’ll refer to you as Thorn, and we’ll lose the sir part as well. That way, we’re all equally likely to get killed,” Alix said.
“An admirable goal. I’ve always been a fan of shared responsibility,” Thorn said. “Even if it is the possibility of getting our brainpan cooked off by a squid.”
“That’s the spirit. Doom all ‘round,” Alix said, with a genuine laugh. She sobered, leaning forward. “Can you really—cook them off, as you say? Can they do that to us at close range?”
“Not on my watch, and, yeah. I can. I see a squid, I’m prying his head apart and using them against themselves, their squad, whatever. If I go rigid, I’m not ignoring you. One of two things has happened—I’ve ‘jacked a squid, or they’ve ‘jacked me,” Thorn said.
“How will we know the difference?” Alix asked.
“Simple. If I’m killing squid, we’re good. If I’m not, put a round in me. Somewhere survivable, if you don’t mind,” Thorn said.
Alix grinned. “Hear that, team? We’ve got permission to shoot an officer in the leg.”
“Calf muscle, trooper. Not leg. I plan on walking to the bar later,” Thorn said.
The squad laughed as one. Alix pointed at Thorn, grinning. “We’ll make a soldier of you yet.”
Mol’s fingers hovered over the Gyrfalcon’s flight management system. “Okay, we’re clear of the Hecate. Trixie’s got all the numbers crunched, so we can start deorbiting at any time,” she said, glancing at Thorn.
He nodded, while trying to avoid banging his knees into the console. He’d had to slide the co-pilot’s crash couch as far forward as possible to make a little more room for the Tiger Team. The Gyrfalcon hadn’t been designed as a shuttle or troop-carrier; the space behind the cockpit was intended for extra supplies during long range patrols or mission-specific equipment. The six spec ops soldiers jammed into it probably counted as the latter, Thorn thought, but this equipment was breathing and giving off body heat, making the cockpit close and steamy.
“Go ahead, Mol,” he said.
Her fingers moved, and a dull thrum of thrusters rattled the Gyrfalcon’s hull. She slowed, her orbit dropping, until she began falling out of orbit and into the atmosphere of Ballard’s World.
The ride down was reminiscent of Mol’s aerobraking maneuver around the gas giant, but nowhere near as intense or protracted. Tongues of flame erupted from the Gyrfalcon’s nose as it plowed through the thickening atmosphere, washed over her hull, and trailed behind her in a long, glowing wake. It also announced to Thorn that it was time for his next part in the op.
He extracted his talisman from a pocket, placed it in his lap, and let his fingers rest on the smooth, scuffed cardboard. Using the sensation of fingertips on book as a point of focus, he again let his awareness expand, until it encompassed the Gyrfalcon. Just as he’d done with the Hecate, he wove a web of concealment around the fighter, blocking its incandescent passage through the atmosphere from view.
And now we eat the sound, he thought, weaving magic around the supersonic shockwaves that followed their entry. Silent was best. Silent and invisible was even better.
The fiery light show faded as the Gyrfalcon slowed. Mol switched her flight management system to atmospheric mode, using aerodynamic forces to maneuver, only supplementing them with bursts from the thrusters. Thorn glanced back to see how Tiger Team was doing.
Most of them were asleep.
Brand—or rather Alix—was the only one clearly awake. She was reading a data-slate and idly tapping her fingers, the slow rhythm neither hurried nor frantic. When she looked up and saw him, she grinned, then went back to reading with a casual air.
Lush rainforest scrolled by beneath them, wreathed in restless tendrils of mist. Far off, on the edge of sight, a drab, grey-brown line demarcated where the coastal rainforests ended at what Thorn knew was a colossal mountain range, with nothing but the continental interior’s trackless desert for thousands upon thousands of kilometers. The thought made the Gyrfalcon, and all of them aboard it, suddenly seem very, very small.
“LZ ahead,” Mol announced. A flashing icon appeared in the view, superimposed over a clearing about two klicks away from the mining operation. The Gyrfalcon slowly veered, until the icon was centered in the screen. Thorn used it as a starting point, then let his gaze slide leftward, until he saw the tops of the towers and headframes of the mining facility poking above the trees. Beyond it sprawled a lake that stretched off into the haze of distance.
“Thirty seconds,” Mol called out.
Tiger Team Three instantly switched from relaxed to fully alert. Magazines were snapped into railers, visors dropped over faces, belts and straps cinched and tightened. Thorn touched his own weapon, a railer strapped to the bulkhead beside him, then released his helmet from its clamps and maneuvered it onto his head. He still maintained the Shade around the fighter, and would do so until they were down.
The clearing loomed ahead. Mol flared the Gyrfalcon, applied vertical thrust as the landing gear extended, then deftly dropped the ship onto the ground.
“Trixie, shutdown checklist,” she said.
Things began to scroll across the flight management system’s panel, and the Gyrfalcon began powering down. As soon as Trixie switched the engines to idle, Thorn let the Shade dissipate.
Everyone was looking at him.
His fingertips still rested on his talisman, connecting him to the power that lay between reality and his own mind—a place where magic bloomed, neither physics nor fantasy, but real in more ways than humans could perceive.
Thorn reached.
The forest drew near, becoming close, deep, and lush. Mol sat with her hand on the stick, radiating tension as she watched Thorn for any sign of stress of attack.
Life, Thorn sensed. A lot of it. But all primitive, the glacially slow growth of plants, the skittish awareness of small creatures. Fear and living and dying. The path of nature.
That was all.
He shook his head. “Nothing close.”
Alix nodded. “Okay, Tigers, as soon as the hatch opens, box formation, oriented on the ship’s six.”
Five thumbs up.
Mol studied a display. “Trixie, air quality?”
It was just a formality; humans had already been living and breathing on this planet. But regs required it.
“Decent,” Trixie replied. “I’d happily breathe it, you know, if I needed to breathe.”
Thorn rolled his eyes and Mol chuckled, but Tiger Team Three was already in motion, moving to the hatch, then spilling outside the instant it opened. There were no shouted commands, no displays of aggression—just quiet, methodical purpose, broken only by the thunk of boots and the sharp snaps of railers being cocked. In a way, Thorn found the silent professionalism far more intimidating than a bunch of noise and shouting.
Alix poked her head back inside. “Any time, Thorn.”
He’d already clambered out of the crash couch and was waiting for Alix’s all-clear. He glanced at Mol as he moved to the hatch.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, smiling, despite a sudden tension balling up his gut. He hadn’t done anything in what could be called wilderness since basic, at Code Nebula.
Where Kira was.
Thorn muttered a curse at himself. Focus, Stellers . . . focus.
“I’ll keep the motor running,” Mol replied, offering an encouraging grin.
Thorn stepped through the hatch onto Ballard’s World, and let his senses run.
Thorn watched the Spec Ops with a mixture of awed jealousy. He knew how to be quiet, but they took silent moving to levels he had never seen. Moving like spirits, they glided through the dense growth, disturbing nothing and seeing all.
Every hundred paces or so, the Tiger Team would stop, go to ground, and just listen. Since they’d left the Gyrfalcon behind, he’d heard nothing but the whisper of leaves rustling in a fitful breeze, the occasional, thin, piping of some sort of creature that seemed to lurk in the treetops—and his own pulse, steady and true. The halts gave him a chance to let his awareness drift farther out, using his own form of stealth to prowl for hints of any higher intellect too sloppy to cover their own thoughts.
But there was still nothing. The forest remained green and verdant and impenetrable.
Alix appeared in front of him, and he twitched. He hadn’t even seen her approaching, much less heard her.
“We’re about a klick from the objective, Thorn. Anything?”
He lifted his gaze, focusing on the heads-up display, where it depicted a map with their current location. The locator used a periodic burst signal from the Gyrfalcon to keep them oriented. He saw the icon indicating their objective, the mining facility, and one representing him. They had a little over one thousand meters to go, all of it downhill from here to the lakeshore.
But there was still nothing to suggest any higher life-forms anywhere nearby.
Thorn shook his head. “Nothing.”
Alix’s eyes narrowed as she glanced around, suspicious. “Could the squid be hiding himself from your magic, or whatever it’s called?”
“Magic is fine,” Thorn said, then considered the question. “The shaman might be shading—that’s what we call it—but that chews away at psychic resources. Eventually, every mask falls
, and remember that we really want to take this bastard alive.”
Alix clapped him on the shoulder. “Appreciate the honesty, sir. Usually, when we do an op with a SME along, they go out of their way to make it seem they’re always on top of everything.”
“SME?” he asked, repeating her pronunciation—smee.
“Sorry, Subject Matter Expert. That’s what you are.”
He waved at himself. “You sure baggage that you have to lug along and babysit wouldn’t be more correct?”
“That’s only what we call you behind your back.” She said it without cracking her deadpan expression.
Thorn smiled, and it felt good. He’d trusted Alix before; now he believed in her, based on her easy attention to detail. “Okay, then. Anyway, if I had to guess, I’d say that the squid—or squids, if there’s more than one—are going to stick close to that lake, and the mining op. They don’t really have much reason to come wandering into the bush.”
“Unless they’ve detected us.”
But Thorn shook his head. “Not likely he could have done that with magic, unless he was specifically looking for us. And I’ve felt absolutely nothing. Of course, he could be so powerful he can completely conceal himself from, but if that’s the case—”
“We’re screwed,” Alix said flatly.
Thorn had to nod. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Alix hefted her railer. “I love my job. Really,” she said, then slipped away.
Ahead, the team began moving again, silent as ghosts.
They stopped again about six hundred meters short of the mining compound. Thorn could see the lake through the trees now, a dark, purple-blue expanse of water under a sky seemingly veiled with a high, permanent yellowish haze. The pre-op briefing had summarized Ballard’s World as terrestrial, but with an inordinate amount of active volcanism, so the air was high in carbon dioxide; this could have led to a spiraling greenhouse effect, except that stratospheric haze of volcanic dust and gas ate up sunlight, so the two forces balanced out. That was good, because a little unbalance either way and Ballard’s World would either be a steamy hellhole or a frozen hellhole.