Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  But the alternative was a month of flying, just to get there and back. He did not relish the idea of spending a month cooped up in the Gyrfalcon with Brid and Dart.

  “Okay. We’ll do it. Brid, you and Dart work out how much time you need to get ready. Mol, same with you and Trixie and the Gyrfalcon. Get your time estimates to me by”—he checked the time—“let’s see, I want to get a preliminary mission plan to Tanner by twenty-two hundred, so I need your time estimates, and any special requirements you’ve got, by eighteen hundred. The Captain wants us to launch no later than two days from now, and preferably a lot sooner, so the Hecate doesn’t have to hang around too long in any one part of the Zone.”

  “Got it, boss,” Mol said. Brid and Dart looked relieved, but said nothing.

  Thorn nodded back, then turned and strode out of the mess. He had no desire to make small talk—not now, and not until he could tell Kira what it meant to have a child, but for only a moment. Their losses were not the same, but then, neither were they as people.

  Thorn stood, hands clenched so hard his knuckles popped, and the seed of something dark bloomed within him. He’d come up hard, and through things that only children of war could truly grasp. So when the first dark possibilities of revenge took hold, deep in that place that was so unlike the rest of him, Thorn felt nothing. A blip, a minor squelch in his signal, but nothing that he feared. Nothing that could reshape him into a weapon without remorse.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Thorn didn’t want to put it off. He’d been doing his best to keep the whole matter of him having been an unwitting father firmly off to one side, but ignoring it was simply impossible. Thinking of the little girl opened wormholes to places he’d never imagined, and a sense of loss he could never truly grasp. Of that, he was sure.

  With a force of will that surprised even himself, Thorn began to draw his focus to the task at hand; moving the Gyrfalcon dozens of light years to a target area that was, in the galactic scheme of things, a virtually dimensionless point. Nor could he have it looming over him while trying to do whatever he’d end up having to do afterward, because after they moved, Thorn expected them to fight. That was the nature of war. Long periods of travel and boredom punctuated by gut-churning fear. It was an old business, and the names and places changed, but the spiking fear and chaos never did.

  So he took a deep, cleansing breath and asked Kira to meet him—this time, in his quarters. The witchport would be more private, but the intimacy of the little compartment just didn’t resonate with him—not for something like this.

  Now, he sat staring at the door, a draft version of his mission plan glowing on the terminal on his desk. He’d been picking away at it in a half-hearted sort of way, tweaking the wording here, altering a number there. All of the changes were clever distractions, and nothing more.

  The door chimed.

  “Come in.”

  It was Kira, not anyone else, because the universe has a sense of humor that only goes so far. She stepped into his quarters, closed the door behind her, but took a few seconds before turning back to Thorn.

  He didn’t wait for her to turn around. He spoke to her back, then her profile, and then her, each word landing with an unintentional blow.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Kira?”

  “I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to tell me. But you didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t. I didn’t think you—either of us—were even remotely ready to deal with something like that.”

  Thorn’s face was stone. “You thought that? And you thought that for me? For us?”

  “Do you know, you never once mentioned having a family? I was convinced you thought that being a parent meant a kind of death, like what we knew, growing up. You know. Pain. Loss. All of it inevitable, all of it tied to when the rocks will eventually fall, and your world turns to ash because no one can stop it.” She paused, eyes hot with anger and loss. “Your eyes go dead talking about the shit we went through as kids, and I know you can’t see past the day your home burned. The day my home burned. But we had lives before the squid, and I planned on having one after, too.” She paused, cheeks flushed in anger. “You never even gave me the chance to talk about more. About kids. A life.”

  “Doesn’t mean I didn’t. Someday, I imagined—”

  “Someday. Sure. Does someday mean when you’re a Lieutenant in the Orbital Navy, stationed aboard a warship, fighting the Nyctus?”

  “No, probably not. But—”

  “But what, Thorn? What was the solution, in a galaxy full of stars that could be swept away by the bastards who took our lives?”

  “We could have—”

  “What? Tell me, Thorn. Tell me how what we do—and our duty—would have room for an infant. A child whose sole existence meant we would fight to the death to save her, but if she was with us, she would die out here in the hard vacuum? With us? How could we protect her?”

  “Family. That’s how.”

  “Neither of us have any family, Thorn, aside from distant cousins and such that might as well be random strangers. We weren’t even going to be on the same damned ship!”

  “Kira—”

  “This is why I finally decided not to tell you, Thorn—oh, and don’t think I didn’t agonize over that decision, and then second-guess the shit out of it ever since,” Kira said. Her voice was on that edge where pain and tears meet and fight for control, but neither wins nor loses.

  He took a deep breath to calm himself—partly because she was asking questions he couldn’t readily answer, putting him on the defensive. And that pissed him off. “You know, it seems that the one who should be outraged here is me, not you.”

  Kira stared for a moment, then nodded. “You can feel as alone as you want, Thorn, but you’re not.”

  She hovered close to tears. Thorn heard the desolation in her voice, the miserable regret, the second-guessing. He took another breath, and deliberately backed away a bit.

  “Kira, I had a right to know.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Yes. You did. And I’m sorry for not telling you, for whatever it’s worth. But, you know what? I’m also not sorry. You haven’t had to spend the past three years so worried about the child you basically gave up that sometimes you can’t sleep at night because of it. You were spared dealing with the day-by-day, hour-by-hour consequences of a few minutes of carelessness, of indiscretion. You were able to just carry on with life. I wasn’t. I chose to carry this for both of us, because I knew how shitty this war was going to be, and that even if we do everything right, all of our worlds might come to an end. I chose this, Thorn. So you—hell, so we could both fight. So we could do whatever we had to in order to win, because I knew that the more room you had in you for fighting, the better our chance of survival. All of us. Not just her.”

  “And that’s why you were so silent? Right up to the time of the Vision?”

  “You’re a Starcaster, Thorn. A powerful one, a Conduit. You can do everything other Starcasters have to treat as a specialization.” She shook her head. “You’re also closer to me than any other living person. You would have seen through me in an instant.”

  Thorn rubbed his face. “Okay. I get it. But—damn it, Kira, I was her father.” The word tasted like ashes, and he had to pause again, jaw muscles working furiously. “I get your reasons, and I get how tough it must have been for you. But you still should have told me. Instead, you cut me out of the whole thing and stuck her on some remote planet—"

  “It was a nice planet, Thorn. A nice family—you know, a family, the one thing neither of us have, and that we couldn’t give her. I thought she’d be happy there—safe there.”

  “Turns out she wasn’t. We haven’t killed enough squid.” Thorn looked away, the color rising in his cheeks. “We’ll never get to that point.”

  Kira watched Thorn for a moment, like seeing a caged animal break free. She knew grief. She also understood danger, and even in his moment of loss, Thorn was—shifting.

&nbs
p; The bloom inside Thorn that fed on revenge grew taller. His spirit, darker.

  “Thorn?”

  He looked to the door. “There are some things that I can keep inside.”

  “And the others?” Kira asked, fear in her voice.

  “Those, I will have to set free. But not here.” He leaned to her, kissing her cheek with lips that were dry and flat. “I will know when.”

  11

  He didn’t see Kira again before h-hour, the time the mission launched. Or he did see her, but only briefly, during planning meetings and the like. Each time they made brief eye contact, and that was it. For the time being, at least, it was all they had left.

  He wondered if she’d show up to see him before he joined Mol, Brid, and Dart aboard the Gyrfalcon, because the reality was that he might not come back. The state of war made no allowances for broken promises, grief, or loss. War went forward, inexorable and cruel.

  But there was no sign of her as Thorn clambered up the ladder into the fighter’s cabin, and the outer airlock door sealed behind him, its muffled thump sounding far too final for Thorn’s liking, but then he looked around, eyes resting on the familiar interior. This was more home to him than his own bunk, and at least Mol was there.

  He settled himself into the co-pilot’s acceleration couch, alongside Mol. The couch gripped him in a familiar and strangely welcoming embrace. He’d spent many hours of his life sitting here already, flying mission after mission with Mol. Brid and Dart settled into their own acceleration couches behind them.

  The Gyrfalcon’s cabin had been reconfigured for long-duration flight with four passengers; non-critical avionics had been removed, extra missile stowage emptied, and a whole suite of sensor gear had been moved to pods slung under the fighter’s wings. The extra space resulting had been repurposed for additional supplies and a tiny increase in the available living space. It was still going to be awfully cramped, and they’d had to plan for the contingency that Thorn wouldn’t be able to move the Gyrfalcon by magical means. That meant the engines and avionics had to function—perfectly. There was no going back if they got caught in Nyctus space with a broken vessel.

  “Trixie, run the pre-flight checklist,” Mol said. Trixie’s response was a blast of ear-splitting noise, something like a cat whose tail had been caught in an angle grinder.

  “Trixie!”

  The so-called music abruptly cut off. Dart uttered a soft curse. “What the hell was that?”

  “That was the Sex Pistols,” Trixie replied. “Aren’t they awesome? So raw, so much energy—”

  “I almost hate to ask, but what are Sex Pistols?” Dart asked.

  “And where can I get one?” Brid put in.

  Mol flashed a grin back at them. “It’s some ancient musical act, from the Twentieth Century. Trixie’s been exploring entertainment from the past, and has decided that punk rock is her thing.”

  “Totally,” Trixie said. “Just call me a riot grrrl.”

  Somehow, Thorn thought, the AI managed to say grrrl in a way that made it clear it was all r’s and no letter i’s. He glanced at Mol like a parent who blames the other parent for a kid gone wild. Or, at least as wild as you could be while existing in a lattice matrix aboard a spaceborne fighter.

  Still grinning, she flipped switches, provoking a rising whine from the Gyrfalcon’s energizers. “Trixie, care to explain that riot thing?”

  “It’s a late twentieth-century feminist-activist movement, spurred on by bands like Bikini Kill.”

  “Of course it is,” Thorn said, shaking his head in amazement. “Well, Trixie, I’ll make you a deal. Listen to all of this punk rock that you want—just don’t do it so we can hear it.”

  “Aw. I wanna share it with you. It’s so awesome.”

  “I believe you. I really do. But your mom and I need some alone time, and we—”

  “You’re not my real dad,” Trixie pouted, channeling a persona from the height of teen petulance.

  Thorn rolled his eyes. “Rather in character, isn’t she?”

  “You can’t imagine,” Mol said. “Easy on the racket, like Thorn said, okay?”

  “Fine,” Trixie said, turning the word into a howl against every indignity teens had experienced since the first parent told them they couldn’t borrow the car keys.

  Thorn smiled into his hand, and it felt good, even if his laughter was brought on by an AI going through the identity crisis of a fifteen-year old girl.

  “Pre-flight checklist complete,” Trixie reported, businesslike about the important things. “All systems nominal. Ready to launch.”

  Mol acknowledged as the Hecate’s main shuttle bay, repurposed into a permanent hangar for the Gyrfalcon, decompressed. When it was wholly empty of air, the big doors slid open. Mol asked for, and received, clearance from the destroyer’s flight controller to launch, and nudged the fighter into space with brief puffs from the thrusters.

  “How far do you want me to take us from the Hecate before you hocus-pocus us away?” Mol asked Thorn.

  He glanced at her. “Hocus pocus?”

  “Some old Earth thing, when people talked about magic.” She shrugged. “Trixie’s not the only one with a thing for ancient history.”

  Thorn offered a faint smile, doing a little math before speaking. In truth, it wasn’t math. It was what scientists called an educated guess. “Let’s make it at least a thousand klicks. I doubt that the area of effect of the jump will be anywhere near that, but just in case, I don’t want to accidentally drag the Hecate along with us.”

  “I can imagine how happy Captain Tanner would be about that,” Brid said.

  Thorn settled in as Mol spun the fighter, lit the drive and accelerated the Gyrfalcon away. The Hecate quickly and smoothly dwindled into the distance behind her, until she’d vanished against the starfield.

  “Alpha one, this is Alpha prime,” Tanner said over the comm. “Anything else you need from us?”

  Thorn answered. “Alpha prime here. No, we’re good.”

  “Alright. As soon as you’ve done your, ah, thing, we’ll be on our way.”

  “Alpha one, roger, out.”

  Tanner would keep the Hecate on-station until Thorn had moved the Gyrfalcon, then start a series of random Alcubierre hops, never spending more than twelve hours in any one place. Her actual location shouldn’t matter when Thorn brought them back; his magic should just return the Gyrfalcon to the vicinity of the destroyer, since his intent would be making it back to her. It was helpful to have a specific target for his jump magic, as he’d come to call it—a specialized form of Force magic that seemed to be unique to him. What he was attempting was unique to Thorn, a Conduit, and the first of his kind. Thorn could tap into any form of magic and apply it with the deft skill of a Starcaster who’d known only one skill since his sorcerous awakening.

  He wondered if his daughter could—

  Thorn instantly banished the thought. He had to keep himself fixed on the mission. He knew it would take all of his mental discipline to do it, but it had to be done, even at the cost of a self-imposed callousness where he silenced the memory of a daughter he had never known.

  And never would.

  Inside Thorn, the bloom unfurled yet again, unseen to all, but felt by him.

  “Just passing through one thousand klicks from the Hecate,” Mol announced.

  Thorn nodded and extracted his focus, his battered old children’s storybook, from the pouch on his crash suit where he kept it.

  “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking—what’s that?” Dart asked.

  Thorn tried to deflect the question with a grin. “Good luck charm.”

  He saw Mol glance at him but ignored it, drawing his focus to a point so bright and hard that it swam before them as a physical thing out in the black. A mote of light grew in his vision, giving a fixed place not to where the Gyrfalcon was, but—

  —where he wanted it to be.

  Mol had already put up a star chart on the co-pilots flight management screen, so
Thorn could see it clearly. Trixie had also projected a glowing icon onto the Gyrfalcon’s canopy, showing the exact direction they needed to travel to get to the last known location of the Pool of Stars. Both together gave Thorn clear visual cues as to the future location, the place beyond their physical state. A place of possibility, made real only by the power beginning to rise in Thorn’s awareness, like a tide’s first rippling return.

  With these things fixed firmly in his mind, he let his senses sink into the old book, riding its texture and detail like a familiar path, each step fitting into a place he had gone many times before. His consciousness collapsed in on itself, coalescing around that deep, enigmatic place where magic came from. Power began to swirl around him, a trickle, then a stream, each pulsing moment making Thorn’s interior presence ever larger. Beyond the limits of human senses, Thorn grew. He expanded, reaching outward, drawing the magic to him in a veil of coruscating energy that wrapped around him as surely as a mother’s arms.

  Then, he connected the points. It was all so simple, out there in the darkness. There was here—where the Gyrfalcon was, and where she needed to be, and there was nothing between.

  At least nothing Thorn would allow to exist. He was bridge and engine. Path and power. He was, in that moment, outside the universe even as he sat there in the crash couch of a ship that winked from existence in a soundless flash.

  The journey began without noise or movement. It began as nothing at all, save Thorn’s will.

  Slowly, he drew those two points together in his mind, applying increasing power as he did. He envisioned space like a sheet of paper that he was folding, trying to make those two, distant points coincide. The resistance increased the more acutely he folded the page, just as magnets would fight for shared space, so too did Thorn’s magic, forcing the silent fabric of space to bend close. Closer.