Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  “Let me guess, it’s either fast or slow,” Thorn said.

  “Pretty much.”

  He smiled and looked back at Alix. “Could’ve sworn it was way less than that.”

  “Enough time to get to the wall, climb it, and get off some tranq shots off on the squid shaman who was standing right about here,” she said. “I was kind of hoping he’d be tied up dealing with you, and he was.” She narrowed her eyes. “Lesson in that for you, Thorn. You ’casters are freakin’ incredible, but when you’re in the middle of doing what you do, you’re really vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, point taken. Facing two of the bastards kind of took everything I had.”

  “Anyway, I figured the only way to make sure you didn’t get whacked by the other squids was to call Mol for help. Fortunately, she’s pretty damned smart and had already lifted and gone into a holding pattern when we said we’d reached the compound, just in case we needed her.”

  “Huh. Using the—ouch!” He shot a glance at Toff, who shrugged.

  “Sorry. You want gentle, find a cuter nurse with small hands.” He’d finished with Thorn’s ankle. “You should be able to walk, more or less. But that foot’s gonna stay bare for now, because there’s no way you’re getting a boot back on it.”

  Thorn tilted his head to one side, conflicted by the diagnosis. “Thanks, Toff. Oh, and who says you’re not cute?”

  The gruff, bearded soldier grinned back. “Sorry, you’re not my type. I would never date an officer—I got standards.”

  Thorn laughed and turned back to Alix. “Using the Gyrfalcon for air support was never part of the plan.”

  She shrugged, placid with her facts. “The plan gets you to the battle. Once the shooting starts, you just make it up and hope it works out. Friction of war and all that.”

  Thorn nodded, then winced as Toff helped him to his feet. With the man’s help, he hobbled to the Gyrfalcon and awkwardly clambered aboard her. The litter holding the squid shaman had been clamped down to the deck, with the rest of Tiger Team Three squeezing in around it. Thorn gave the creature a grave look, then reached out with a tentative mental touch, testing the shaman’s level of consciousness. He touched a chaotic morass of thoughts and memories and emotions that came together in a pool of otherness, alien and harsh. The neurotoxin obviously worked, preventing the creature from forming any sort of coherent mental actions or responses.

  Mol grinned at Thorn as he slumped into the crash couch beside her. “Hey, sir, you’re getting my ship all dirty. Oh, and you stink.”

  “Good to see you too, Mol.”

  Her grin widened, and she turned back. “Everyone . . . and everything,” she added, looking at the Nyctus, “aboard?”

  “Good to go,” Alix called back.

  Mol looked at Thorn as she tapped at the controls, then she closed the hatch and spooled up the engines. “Tanner wants the enemy taken back to the Hecate before we do anything else, so we’re headed back up into orbit. He’s going to give us a two-hour window to come back down to the wrecked squid ship and do whatever salvage we can, then we’re getting the hell out of here before the Nyctus show up in force. Oh, and by we, he doesn’t mean you. You’re staying on board the Hecate to babysit our new friend back there.”

  Thorn sank back in the couch. “Sounds good to me. I’ve done my planetside thing for this trip.” He closed his eyes as the Gyrfalcon lifted, but opened them again and looked at Mol.

  “By the way, thanks for saving my ass down there. Kind of last minute, though.”

  “Gotta keep it exciting.”

  Thorn laughed and closed his eyes again. By the time they were climbing through the stratosphere, he’d drifted off to sleep.

  17

  The Hecate’s infirmary proved more than up to the task of getting Thorn back on his feet—both of them—but couldn’t completely undo the damage from his wounds. His shoulder and ankle both still ached, but he could live with it. Had to live with it, because Tanner wasn’t giving him any time to relax. He wanted Thorn on top of the security around the Nyctus shaman, who was being kept drugged with the neurotoxin, securely bound, and kept in an airlock. Tanner made it clear he was going to be taking no chances.

  “If you have even a glimmer of suspicion that squid is getting out of control, you sound off, Stellers,” he said. “No heroic attempts to save the day.”

  Thorn had been getting himself dressed again in the infirmary. “Understood, sir. I’d only suggest that we hold onto blowing that shaman out of the airlock as an absolute last resort—”

  “Last resort? Yes. Absolute? No. If I think it needs to be done, it will be done.”

  “Who’s got their finger on the button, sir?”

  Tanner had returned a thin smile. “I’m not going to tell you who, or even how many are ready to open that outer door.”

  Thorn stared.

  “The mind the squid’s most likely to encounter is yours, Stellers. And if you don’t know—”

  “Then it can’t find out,” Thorn finished, nodding. “Good idea, sir.”

  “Every idea I have aboard this ship is a good one,” Tanner said equably. “The best one aboard, in fact.”

  That took Thorn aback, but he caught a rare glimmer of actual humor in the Captain’s eyes.

  Mol had returned to the surface, taking Tiger Team Three and an engineering detachment down to the crashed Nyctus ship. Thorn had had to watch on a tactical repeater from the bridge, while keeping close company with their “guest.” It was unlikely that there were any squids, much less more shaman, in or around the crash site; Thorn had reached out and found no signs of life in the area that weren’t indigenous. That, it turned out, was a problem all on its own.

  “The Nyctus haven’t destroyed their ship,” Alix said over the comm, as voice-over and imagery from the Gyrfalcon scrolled through a window on the tactical display. Mol was orbiting the fighter over the wreck, keeping a prudent distance. “The rear two thirds of it still look pretty much intact.”

  “Maybe they had no way to destroy it,” Thorn said, but Tanner, Mol, and Alix tripped over one another answering. The latter two immediately deferred to Tanner, whose reply was characteristically curt.

  “It’s a warship, full of things intended to go boom. The wonder is that it didn’t explode when it hit. That means they chose to not destroy it.”

  “Which means it’s probably rigged to explode if we try to enter and recover anything,” Alix said.

  “Roger that,” Tanner replied. “And we don’t have time to screw around finding and disarming traps. Wyant, you stay aloft, let your passengers gather as much info as possible remotely. Thirty minutes, then I want you back aboard.”

  “Roger, sir,” Mol answered.

  Thorn gave a relieved sigh. The whole idea of Alix and her people entering the crashed squid ship, without any clear knowledge about what dangers they might face—including the possibility of more squids—had made him decidedly uncomfortable. He’d become quite attached to Alix, Toff, and the others—not to mention Mol herself, of course—and would have found it tough to deal with losing any of them, especially without being in a position to even try to save them.

  Besides, he thought, staring at the unconscious shaman strapped into the airlock, I’ve got this guy to deal with. He—or maybe it was she, if that sort of thing even universally applied to the Nyctus at all—stood to be a far greater intelligence coup than any number of bits and pieces of their technology.

  As long as they could keep him alive and under control until they returned to friendly space, that is.

  Thorn blinked slowly, paused outside the bridge, and yawned. He wasn’t sure why he’d been summoned, especially from the brief period of sleep he’d been allocated, before having to settle in again to monitor their prisoner.

  He stepped onto the bridge. He’d managed to make himself presentable, uniform and all, just as Captain Samuels of the Apollo would have demanded. Tanner seemed a little more lax, obviously having come from his own r
ack time, and now dressed in what amounted to PT strip. He hadn’t reclaimed his command seat from the Watch Officer, though, and stood near the comm station, reading something on the display.

  “Stellers, over here.”

  He crossed the bridge to join Tanner. The XO was also present, a woman of forty named Raynaud. With short dark hair, black eyes, and carved cheekbones, she had a natural air of command. She also looked like she’d just tumbled out of bed.

  “Sir? Something wrong?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Wrong? Don’t know.” He gestured at the screen.

  PRIORITY PRIORITY PRIORITY

  MESSAGE BEGINS – ON HECATE ACTION RED – CHANGE COURSE TO INTERCEPT ENEMY VESSEL ON SPECIFIED TRAJECTORY. ENEMY VESSEL IS SUB-CORVETTE CLASS AND IS BROADCASTING DISTRESS BEACON IN CLEAR. YOU ARE CLOSEST SHIP. INVESTIGATE AND REPORT – MESSAGE ENDS. NAV DATA FOLLOWS.

  Thorn skimmed over the details of locations, trajectories, and velocities, which mostly meant nothing to him without a star chart to reference. Then he turned to Tanner.

  “A squid ship in trouble? Seems pretty suspicious, sir.”

  “To put it mildly, no shit, Stellers. But there it is. The sensor telemetry that came appended to this message—which we’ve authenticated, by the way—confirms it. A squid ship, about the tonnage of what we’d consider a sloop, returned to normal space here”—he tapped the display to switch to a star chart depicting the data and pointed at the beginning of a red trajectory track—“and is now traveling this way at high sub-light. On its present course, it’ll make planetfall at Rubicon . . . in about eighty-five years.”

  “And broadcasting a distress beacon? In the clear, unscrambled?” Raynaud said. “A defector, maybe?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing,” Tanner replied, rubbing his chin. “Stellers, thoughts?”

  Thorn blinked eyes that still felt full of sand. “A question, actually. Why us? We’re en route back to friendly space with a high-value prisoner. Shouldn’t that take priority? Especially with a squid task force only a few hours behind us—at least, in theory.”

  “All very good points,” Tanner replied. “We still can’t confirm if the squids coming to ruin our day at Ballard’s World actually decided to come after us, but we have to assume they have. However, you’ll notice that phrase ACTION RED, along with the fact we’re the closest ON ship. The next closest, the Fury and her patrol, is another full day and a half away. We can be there in about eight hours. That RED doesn’t give me much latitude to question this—as in, none at all.”

  “It’s damned lucky that we happened to be the closest ON asset,” Raynaud said. “Maybe too good.”

  Tanner nodded. “Exactly. I can’t help but feel that maybe we’re being set up for something here.”

  Thorn’s eyes lost focus as he sifted possibilities. “You mean some squid plot to rescue their shaman? Is that even feasible, sir? I’m not a navigator, but isn’t this data saying this sloop would have to have gotten underway about two days ago?”

  “That is almost a full day before we even arrived at Ballard’s World,” Raynaud said.

  “Sure,” Tanner replied. “And not that long ago, I would have agreed with you, that these things couldn’t be related.” His wintry grin was almost playful. “But that was then, and this is now. I can’t discount the fact that the enemy might have somehow known this was going to happen—that they saw into the future, saw we were going to capture their shaman, and this is their way of getting him back.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that possible, Stellers? Could the squids be able to see into the future?”

  Thorn shrugged, palms up. “Doubtful, sir. Magic seems to be constrained by time as much as anything else.”

  “Doubtful doesn’t mean no.”

  “No. Sorry, sir. It doesn’t,” Thorn admitted. “So probably not?”

  “That is absolutely no better.” Tanner rubbed his chin again. “Well, investigating this is going to cost us about a day, but it is still going to get us closer to friendly space.”

  “And it’s an order from Fleet,” Raynaud said.

  “And it’s an order from Fleet.” Tanner looked at the Rating manning comms, who’d just been trying to stay out of the way while they talked. “Send my acknowledgement back to Fleet, then send this nav data to the Helm.” Tanner turned to the Watch Officer. “As soon as the Helm has the new course data plugged in, go ahead and implement it. I intend to get the remaining sleep I have coming to me.”

  The Watch Officer nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  Thorn followed Tanner and Raynaud off the bridge, heading for his own bunk.

  Time travel?

  No.

  But they really didn’t know much about what the Nyctus could do.

  Thorn let that thought fade, but as he lay in his bunk and stared into nothing, he couldn’t shake a faint, persistent feeling of dread about what they were going to find aboard that rogue Nyctus ship.

  Thorn once more sat cross-legged in the Hecate’s witchport, his attention shifting between his awareness of the drugged shaman in the airlock, the tactical display repeater from the bridge, and his immediate surroundings. Sleep had done him a world of good; he hadn’t realized just how much the foray down to the surface of Ballard’s World had depleted him, body and mind. He felt far more in control, and that was despite the aches in his shoulder and ankle. The treatment he’d received from the Hecate’s infirmary had done wonders for both wounds, although he still couldn’t get a boot on his injured foot and had to settle for PT shoes.

  “Alcubierre drive cut-off in fifteen seconds,” the Nav Officer said over the intercom.

  Tanner immediately spoke up. “All stations, make sure your toes are right on the start line, here. If this looks anything even remotely like a setup, I want to be back underway at plus-light before the Alcubierre cores even had time to cool off.”

  Acknowledgements rattled in, crisp and decisive. Everyone was already tensed right to the edge of readiness; Tanner had made his expectations clear during his pre-op briefing an hour earlier, right after an early and abbreviated breakfast. Thorn didn’t need magic to know the man was not happy about this detour, and couldn’t really blame him. The Hecate was alone in the hostile space of the Zone, still a good distance away from friendly space, and had a valuable and potentially dangerous enemy shaman aboard. He’d used the phrase “an abundance of caution” at least a half-dozen times during the twenty minute briefing.

  The alarm warning of Alcubierre drive cut-off sounded; a few seconds later, Thorn was hit by that slight, dislocating wrench as the Hecate’s miniature universe vanished and she slid back into the real one.

  Thorn watched the repeater. Data immediately began to sluice into the ship’s sensors, the computers rendering it down to an instantly digestible tactical picture.

  There it was, about 10,000 klicks distant—a small ship, about a third the size of the Hecate, of definite enemy design. It radiated an entirely unremarkable set of emissions, exactly what would be expected of a small ship underway, coasting on momentum alone, on a fixed trajectory and velocity.

  There was nothing else. To the limits of the Hecate’s sensor range, space was utterly empty.

  “Stellers,” Tanner said. “You’re on. Talk to me.”

  “Aye, sir. Stand by.”

  Thorn, his talisman in hand, closed his eyes, surrounded himself with an airtight bubble of identity, and opened the witchport. The curved hatches slid smoothly aside, exposing Thorn to the full weight of hard vacuum and radiation that was space.

  Hello again, he thought, as the yawning black filled his sight.

  He only felt the hostile environment as a faintly cold sensation, the rest of his awareness expanding as a wave that radiated away. Directionless and powerful, his focus split in two; a small, intense point of magic remaining with the captive shaman. This bit of magical dexterity cost him time, but not much—he was still strong enough to continue questing through the dark for bright points. Each light was the signature of a
shaman, their power impossible to hide, entirely, and so Thorn kept on, seeking and drawing near to the flickering lights of alien souls bent on his destruction. As to resolution, there was little, but he didn’t need it. The lights were fuzzed but present, and that was good enough for a ‘caster of Thorn’s range and ability.

  Despite Tanner’s abundance of caution, Thorn opened his power wider still, like the cowl of an ancient lamp spilling light across a darkened room. There, he saw the Hecate, then the little Nyctus ship, and no other sources close enough to matter.

  Yes. There.

  Thorn opened mental eyes wider, his vision piercing the dark with the fury of his stored magic. He took a moment to confirm what he’d found, then ended his psychic foray into space and opened his actual eyes, blinking them at the abrupt transition.

  “Captain, Stellers here.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, I’m only sensing one living being aboard that squid ship.”

  Tanner must have caught the tension in Thorn’s voice. “More information sooner, if you please, Stellers.”

  Thorn looked at the image of the Nyctus ship locked into the middle of the tactical display.

  “Whoever’s aboard that ship, sir, it’s not a squid. They’re human.”

  Thorn settled himself into the Gyrfalcon’s cockpit, a much more unwieldy process this time, thanks to the bulk of the assault EVA suit. A combination of vac-suit and armor, he’d only donned the cumbersome suit—better known as vac-armor—three or four times in his career. Once for orientation training, with every other instance being a refresher session to keep him current. He’d never actually worn the suit into battle, or for anything that wasn’t strictly controlled training, in fact, and never really expected he would. Boarding actions were complicated, high-risk affairs, rarely launched and then only by dedicated marines trained and equipped to fight in airless no-g.

  He took a breath and rested his bulky helmet in his lap. First time for everything.