by J. N. Chaney
Thorn forced his head around. Bright little stars blossomed behind his eyes. It took grim effort, but he was able to avoid greying out completely.
“Brid. Dart. If that shaman decides to get aggressive, it’s up to you guys to stop him,” he said.
They both returned anxious nods. “We’ll do what we can,” Brid said, but there was little certainty in the words.
Mol pushed the Gyrfalcon through a hard, banking turn, using sheer engine power to emulate an atmospheric maneuver. The frigate spun into view, shooting down the last of their missiles, but it didn’t matter—they’d done their job. She rolled the fighter to the right, pitched up, and applied a blast of thrust that disrupted the Nyctus firing solutions. A pair of rail gun projectiles flashed through empty space that had, only an instant before, been full of Gyrfalcon.
“Little late, boys,” Trixie sang out.
“Hush, you. Too early to preen,” Mol said.
“Not preening. Just that good,” Trixie answered with what sounded suspiciously like a sniff.
“Still better than punk,” Thorn muttered, and Mol snorted as she deftly pitched the fighter back down, and opened fire, raking the frigate with a torrent of rail gun rounds that tore through its hull, blasting clouds of venting atmosphere and spinning debris from its far side.
Something clipped the Gyrfalcon, slamming it through a half-spin and starting a tumble. Thorn recovered from the shock of the impact, turned to Mol, and found her strangely slumped in her g-couch. He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, then saw her broken harness. It had given way during the hit and, judging from the impact cracks in her helmet, let her head slam against the bulkhead beside her.
Thorn cursed. “Trixie, get us under control and give me a target—”
“On it!”
Trixie fired a staccato series of thruster bursts to stop the fighter’s wild gyrations, then spun it back into firing position. Thorn gripped the co-pilot’s side stick, touching the trigger for the rail gun. As soon as he did, fire control switched to him from Mol, earning a grin as he closed his hand over the trigger.
“Magic is good, but sometimes, you just need explosives,” Thorn said.
The corvette swung into the rail gun’s field of fire, the reticle turned green, and he squeezed the trigger. The Gyrfalcon shuddered as hypervelocity slugs poured from her rail gun and ripped into the enemy ship. Depleted uranium penetrators tore along its length and flung it into a slow spin, trailing a plume of atmospheric gases that feathered away in seconds. An instant later, something detonated, blasting the midships portion apart and breaking the squid ship in two halves that gleamed with chaos.
“Trixie, get us the hell out of here,” Thorn snapped. “Any direction. Any.”
“You got it!”
Trixie turned the Gyrfalcon and applied thrust, accelerating away from the remains of the battle. The tactical display no longer showed the magical carnage he’d wrought on the other Nyctus ships, but it didn’t matter. He could see it clearly in his mind, could see—and, for just an instant, remembered feeling—all of those squids dying in the cold void of space.
As they hurtled away from the remains of the battle, Thorn unlatched his harness and saw to Mol. Fortunately, her crash helmet had done its job, taking the brunt of the impact. She opened her eyes when he called out her name, blinked slowly, then gave a nod that made her wince.
“Is she—?” Brid started, but Thorn cut her off.
“She’s fine, at least for now,” he said, then clambered back into his g-couch. They couldn’t let down their guard yet; there might be more squids around.
And if there were, Thorn would kill them, too.
“We’ll clear this field if we have to,” Thorn said.
“Were you a farmer?” Brid asked.
Thorn’s answer was loaded with menace. “No, but I’ve done my share of harvesting.”
“Okay, Mol,” Thorn said. “Take it easy. We’re going to get this helmet off, so just sit still.”
He unlatched her crash helmet, then gently lifted it off her head. Even that bit of movement made her wince and groan.
“Usually, when my head feels like this, I earned it the night before,” she said, offering a weak smile. “No burps, either. Small favors and all that.”
Thorn lifted the helmet, giving the impact crater, and star of cracks radiating from it, a holy shit look. “Looks like it lived up to its name,” he said.
“Crash helmet indeed,” Brid said, and Thorn nodded in thanks. Some tech was as good as advertised. Like a bucket made to keep your brain from scrambling.
Dart lifted the broken g-harness rig. One of its mounts, where it bolted into the g-couch, had snapped cleanly through. “Looks like metal fatigue. Some shoddy maintenance I guess.”
Thorn shut him up with a glare. “I’ve flown with Mol for three years, now,” he snapped. “There’s nothing shoddy about the maintenance she and her tech do on this fighter.”
“Sorry, you’re right, that came out wrong,” Dart hastily replied. “It was probably a hidden microfracture in the piece that broke—maybe even a manufacturing defect.”
Thorn kept his gaze on Dart for a moment, then turned back to Mol.
“You, my dear, need to rest.”
She shook her head, then blurted out, “Ow, shit!” She gave Thorn a disapproving look. “I’m the pilot. This is a ship that flies under the control of, you know, a pilot. That kinda means that—”
“It means that Trixie can take over for the time being,” Thorn said. “She can fly us from point A to point B, right?”
“As long as it doesn’t require anything too fancy,” Mol admitted, her tone grudging. “She’s awesome, but piloting isn’t her primary function.”
“I’m glad you specified that awesome part,” Trixie said. “Otherwise, my feelings might be hurt.”
Mol gave the control panel a fond smile. Trixie was actually buried in the Gyrfalcon’s engineering bay, in an armored container well-hardened against EMP, but everyone tended to treat the panel as her face.
“The regs,” Mol went on, “say she has to be under human supervision unless she’s flying in a state of—” She stopped, wincing. “Shit. Anyway, unless it’s a state of emergency. So someone has to be in the pilot’s seat while she’s flying.”
“I don’t mind,” Trixie said. “I enjoy the company. Okay, now for the big question. Where do you want to go?”
“Well, home, of course,” Brid said.
Thorn glanced at her, then shook his head. “Nope. We’re going to check out that next system along the Pool’s trajectory.”
Brid and Dart exchanged a glance. “Uh, sir,” Brid said. “Shouldn’t we get Mol back to proper medical attention? That helmet might have stopped her from smashing her head open, but she obviously still took a pretty bad knock.”
“I’ll be fine,” Mol said. “There’s no way this mission’s gonna be cut short just because I’ve got a headache.” She grimaced, adding, “Even my hair hurts.”
“Now that’s a hangover,” Thorn said.
“We also expended about half our rail gun ammo, and we only have two missile reloads left,” Dart said. “If we get into another fight we can’t avoid—”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Thorn said. “Those squids weren’t hanging out in that ring of rocks just for the hell of it. They were either on station there, or were sent there to intercept us. Either way, it means there’s something they don’t want us to see—and I’m thinking it’s in that next system.”
“We’re not even in their space, though,” Brid replied. “Are we?
Thorn sniffed. “Really? You’ve seen charts of what they consider to be their space?”
“We’re on the far side of what we think is their space,” Mol put in. “We really have no idea who’s where back here. Hell, we didn’t even know about the Danzur until—” She stopped and rubbed her temple. “Shit. I’ll say it again—ow.”
“Anyway,” Thorn went on, “I want
to see what’s in that next system. If it’s nothing, we’ll go home.”
Brid and Dart exchanged another look, then Brid shrugged with false deference. “Your call, sir.”
Thorn regarded them in silence, breaking it just before things got awkward. “Yes, it is.” He looked back at Mol. “You are going to lie down and try to get some rest. For the time being, you can leave the flying to us.” He glanced at Brid and Dart. “Two hour shifts. I’ll take the first one.”
“For the record, I still think I’m fine to fly,” Mol said, her tone decidedly grumpy.
“For the record, I don’t care.” Thorn smiled and pointed into the cramped cabin behind the cockpit. “Now, sleep. Go.”
Mol curled her lip, then offered Thorn an exaggerated salute. It would have come across as sarcastically as she meant it, if not for her cringing, clutching her head, and groaning.
Thorn sniffed. “Serves you right.”
“Okay,” Trixie said. “I’ve got a trajectory plotted to get us out of this system, and I’ve mostly got the parameters done for the Alcubierre hop to the next system. I just need someone to give me the go signal.”
Thorn smiled, then touched Mol’s shoulder. “It’s still your ship.”
She returned a look that was both grumpy and grateful. “Go ahead, Trixie. You have control.”
The drive rumbled to life, and the Gyrfalcon began accelerating on its course to the next star system.
15
Thorn moved aside so Brid could clamber out of the pilot’s seat, then settled himself into place. They were taking two hour shifts overseeing Trixie, which mostly just meant making conversation with her. The fact was that the AI was a far more capable pilot than any of them, so she didn’t really need much overseeing.
“Anything I should know about?” Thorn asked.
Brid started, then relaxed. “Not in particular, no. Trixie seems to have everything well in hand.”
She made her way back into the cabin, which had been configured for sleeping, and folded herself into her bunk. Thorn fastened the g-harness, which had been replaced with the only spare aboard. He’d honestly been surprised to find even that. How often did g-harnesses fail, anyway?
“Hey, Trixie,” he said. “How about you? Anything up I should know?”
It took her a few seconds to answer. “Don’t think so. We’re about four hours from our Alcubierre hop. Otherwise, as long as no other Nyctus show up, we’re pretty much just flying in a straight line. Even I can do that.”
Thorn smiled. “If it makes you feel better, Trixie, I don’t believe for a second you need me sitting here watching over you.”
“Appreciate that, boss.”
He let his head drop back against the g-couch, giving a faint sniff as something occurred to him—he and Trixie had a lot in common. Even three years into the fight, Starcasters were still viewed with suspicion to outright contempt by the crusty officers who still thought magic was a mere distraction from the real business of waging war. In the same way, regulations required a human to oversee an AI, even if that human knew absolutely nothing about piloting. It wasn’t a regulation, as much a desperate attempt to hang onto a past that had become obsolete.
Magic was here to stay. So were AIs. Both were having a growing effect on the war, and that made more than a few of those traditionalists . . . uncomfortable.
“To hell with them,” Thorn said.
“An interesting statement, especially without any—” Trixie began, then abruptly stopped.
Thorn narrowed his eyes. “Trixie?”
“Right here.”
“You cut yourself off.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You said that it was an interesting statement, without any—” He made a chopping motion with his hand. “And that’s as far as you got.”
“Huh. My log file records me finishing that with, —without any context.”
Thorn sat up. “You don’t make errors, Trixie.”
“No, I don’t. And as far as my log file is concerned, I still haven’t. You sure you just didn’t mishear me?”
Thorn hesitated. He was—but he wasn’t. He’d only had a couple of hours of down-time since the enormous exertion of the battle, and he was feeling pretty dragged out.
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s more likely than you screwing up, that’s for sure,” he said.
“Incidentally, what were you talking about? To hell with whom?” Trixie asked.
“What? Oh, just muttering to myself.” He let his head drop back. “I was thinking about all the people who distrust—hell, even resent—Starcasters and AIs, both. There are still way too many of them.”
“Oh, well, you won’t get any argument from me. To hell with them, indeed!”
They flew on in silence for a while, Thorn just letting the white-noise background of the Gyrfalcon’s myriad systems lull him into a meditative state. He could feel his capacity for magic, almost completely exhausted by the battle, starting to firm up again. A spell of contemplative mindfulness would help—as long as it didn’t turn into him falling asleep, of course.
“Hey,” Trixie said. “It’s so quiet. You wanna listen to some music—”
“No!”
Dart crawled out of his bunk just short of the two hour mark, took a few minutes to wash his face in the tiny booth that passed for a head on the Gyrfalcon, then made his way forward. Thorn did a quick handover, which basically amounted to nothing to report, then headed back for his own rack.
“Sir?”
Thorn stopped and turned back.
“I’ve been wondering,” Dart went on as he settled into the g-couch. “Back at the battle, when you killed all those Nyctus the way you did—”
“What about it?”
“Was that . . . difficult for you? I mean, the way you did it—” He shook his head, then looked at Thorn like he was a loaded gun. “That was pretty—”
“Go ahead.”
“It was gruesome. Pulling them all into space like that, so they died like that. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty much what let us win the battle, but still.” He paused, eyes drawn out toward the vastness of space. “Even if I was able to do that, I don’t know if I could.”
“You have family?” Thorn asked.
“Uh, yes, I do. My father passed a few years ago, but my mother’s still alive. And I have two sisters—” He cocked his head. “Why?”
“Because I don’t. My family’s dead. They were killed by the Nyctus when they attacked Cotswold.” His voice went flat. “That’s why I had no problem doing what I did. The squids are monsters. They attack and kill innocents without a second’s hesitation. You’re a Starcaster, so you know what they did on Nebo.”
Dart tilted his head slightly, wanting to agree. “Yeah, I do. That was—okay, I see where you’re coming from.”
“But?”
“But, I don’t know,” Dart said. “These cycles of hatred, they just go round and round, there’s lots of death and destruction—and then they continue. Like a fire that never dies.”
“You’re right,” Thorn said. “The squids shouldn’t have started us down this road. So the sooner we can end this war, the better. And if that means pulling every living squid into the void and leaving them there to die, well, there you go.” He smiled a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Your cycle of violence problem is solved when I’ve turned the last Nyctus into a drifting block of ice.”
Dart said nothing, and just stared. Thorn patted his shoulder, turned away and headed back to check on Mol, then fell into his rack.
Violence is the way of a ’caster, Thorn thought, as his eyes began to close. And I have to admit—I don’t hate it.
Back in the hot seat, Thorn thought, as he displaced Brid. “Okay, Trixie, we should be just about ready to light up the Alcubierre drive, right?”
“You betcha. Nav parameters are all plugged in and good to go,” she replied.
Thorn looked around to make sure everyone was ready—
> But stopped himself. Something plucked at him, on the verge of an idea, but less than a compulsion. It was instinct made real, for the briefest of moments, and Thorn, who’d honed his own sense of preservation in the tough years as an orphan, knew to listen.
“All set here,” Brid said.
Thorn, though, raised a hand. “Trixie, can you show me the flight parameters you’ve set?”
The flight management system filled with tables of data, and the results of complex equations.
“There you go!”
“Uh—okay, but not quite what I meant,” Thorn said. “What I mean is, can you show me a graphic, a star chart, showing our planned trajectory?”
“I think Trixie’s proven herself by now, sir,” Brid put in.
“A hundred times over, in fact,” Thorn replied. “But hey, the regs say we have to oversee her when she’s piloting, so I’m doing some overseeing.” He smiled. “Indulge me.”
The image on the flight management screen changed, depicting the local grouping of stars, their current location, and a trajectory track leading to their destination.
Okay, Thorn thought, this probably wasn’t going to be necessary—but. That chipped fingernail had been Trixie strangely cutting off her own words, then insisting she hadn’t. The more Thorn thought about it, the more certain he was that he had not just misheard her.
He just needed to see this for himself.
He froze. The graphic on the flight management screen was clear. It said they were headed to their target system, known on their charts only by another standard stellar catalog number, DW 10875.9.3. But the trajectory Trixie had actually calculated had them travelling to another system entirely, about the same distance away.