by J. N. Chaney
Thorn stared into the darkness, letting his thoughts filter out, unmasked, and unfiltered. Look what you made me become.
18
“So when the CO2 levels get higher than ten percent,” Mol said, “we’ll start to feel it. Headaches, lack of focus, slowed thinking, sometimes even convulsions. By the time it breaks twenty percent—”
“We’d be through the worst of it and well on our way to a speedy recovery?”
She gave him a tired smile. “Something like that, yeah.”
He glanced at the panel. They were at seven percent CO2 in the Gyrfalcon’s cabin.
“How’s that mojo of yours coming along?”
Thorn considered it like an athlete testing an injured limb. He could probably start ’casting—but nothing like the kind of effort it would take to move the Gyrfalcon back to the Hecate.
He sat up.
Mol did the same. “You think of something brilliant? Something to get us out of this mess?”
“No. Or—” He shook his head. “No, probably not. But something that might help.”
He extracted his talisman and placed it in his lap. Grit scraped under his fingertips; he caught ghostly whiffs of fire and smoke, felt the faint thunder of explosions somewhere on the very edge of hearing. He couldn’t move the Gyrfalcon. But that didn’t mean all this had to be for nothing.
He closed his eyes, tried to ignore the buzzing static still clouding the edges of his awareness, and dug deep into the well of magical power, as deep as he could manage. Drawing that power around him, he shaped it around a name, a familiar face—an identity he knew almost as well as he knew his own.
Kira?
Nothing but the dead silence of empty ether.
Kira, please—I need you.
Nothing.
Then—
Thorn?
He dug deeper, pulled more power from the reservoir. He’d drain it dry if he had to—and he might very well have to.
Kira, I need you to talk to me.
Thorn, I will always talk to you, anytime—
No, I mean I literally need you to talk to me. It’s complicated, but I can’t maintain this for very long.
He felt the Joining already fading, like a battery running out of charge. He didn’t want to let her go, but he did. If Kira established the Joining link to him, then the burden of powering it would mostly fall on her.
He hoped.
Thorn opened his eyes. He felt Mol watching him.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“You know, I’m usually a patient person—”
“Really?”
“—but not right now. You know what the hell I mean.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I was able to reach Kira. Now, though, I need her to reach back to me.”
They waited.
The CO2 level rose to eight percent.
Shit. Maybe she couldn’t find him. Maybe, in his diminished state of ’casting, he just didn’t have enough of a presence in the ether to give her anything to talk to.
Stellers?
Thorn closed his eyes again, slowed his breathing, and did his best to center himself.
Kira? he said, but immediately knew it wasn’t.
No. It’s Densmore. Wixcombe’s indisposed.
Thorn let out a slow breath as rich in despair as it was in CO2. Densmore was the last person he wanted to talk to.
Where’s Kira?
She’s in the brig.
What?
Stellers, just shut up and listen. I know you think I’m a squid spy. I’m not.
Ma’am, look—
What part of shut up and listen didn’t you understand?
She then proceeded to describe what had transpired back aboard the Stiletto, and how Kira had ended up in the brig, herself suspected of being a Skin.
But she’s not! Thorn said. The Skins were Bridmante and Justice—you know, your two lackies—ma’am.
He spat out that last word like a curse. Not only was he talking to someone he was sure was compromised, but she’d apparently locked up Kira for that very thing. Brid and Dart may have won, anyway.
I believe you, Stellers.
You—wait. You—
Believe you, yes. Bridmante and Justice were assigned to the Stiletto, and they were involved in a few ops that I ran. There were only four survivors from the last one, though, and they were recovered by the frigate Culver. I never saw them after that. They were transferred directly to Fleet intel and worked there until they were assigned to you.
Thorn narrowed his eyes, weighing the possibility that she was being truthful. It sounded plausible, but he’d spent the past three years suspecting Densmore of being a spy, and in his current state, forgive-and-forget took more than a casual wave of his hand.
It doesn’t mean that you weren’t involved in them becoming Skins—
Stellers, I’m going to try something here. I’m going to try and link Wixcombe, since she’s the more powerful Joiner by far. If you don’t trust me, then you can at least trust her. Unless you think she’s been compromised, too. You understand? Don’t trust me. Trust her.
Thorn still harbored deep misgivings, but the idea of connecting with Kira—and perhaps helping her—gave him a flare of clarity. He was depleting his magical resources at a far slower rate, as he’d hoped. But, like the air in the cabin, he was depleting them nonetheless, and his options were narrowing to a point too fine to see.
Go ahead, Thorn allowed.
A moment passed, then Thorn felt the presence of Kira, warm and familiar, as though she was standing right beside him.
Thorn?
Kira, look. Brid and Dart planted evidence to make you and me both seem to be Skins.
I already figured that out. Good to hear from more than one place, though.
Where are Bridmante and Justice now? Densmore asked.
On a trajectory that will eventually take them into the galactic core. In those few words, Thorn proved it was possible to relay casual menace via telepathy, earning a stunned moment of silence.
Alright, Densmore said in his mind, dragging the word out. What’s your status otherwise?
We’re injured, running low on ox, and well on the way to suffocation. We have neither the time nor the inclination to satisfy any petty bullshit with an officer like you. Is that clear enough?
Kira, do you really trust Densmore? Thorn asked, his mental tone flat and cold.
I’m right here, you know, Densmore said.
I do now, Thorn, Kira replied, taking a second to answer. She wouldn’t do this if she was a spy. You’re too valuable to not save.
Thorn felt his magic falter, a rippling sensation that carried across the curve of his mind, making his signal pulse in and out. Then he regained control with an effort. It was close to the end, and he knew it.
He was going to have to trust Kira’s judgment on this, so he did. With his remaining energy, he gave them the rest of it—the Danzur, what they’d learned about the Pool of Stars, the Nyctus hydro planet, how Skins seemed to work. When he was done, Kira spoke.
Thorn, I—
And that was it. At the same moment the CO2 level hit ten percent, Thorn’s ’casting finally failed, his body and mind reaching a hard limit where thoughts and will were overwhelmed by simply chemistry.
He was done. That was it. He’d recharged some magical power, but not enough to move them home.
“Were you able to tell them all we learned?” Mol asked.
Thorn opened his eyes. They stung.
“More or less.”
She smiled, settled back, and closed her eyes. “Well, at least this won’t all have been for nothing. So, how do you want to do this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, shall we just go to sleep? Or do you want me to disable the safeties on the reactor, and—”
She made an explosion sound and spread her fingers apart like a starburst.
Thorn gave a tired laugh. She was a da
mned good pilot, and a good friend. She deserved far better than this.
“Surprise me.”
The Gyrfalcon didn’t have an actual scuttling charge; no ON ship did, except maybe ones like the Stiletto, that absolutely could not fall into enemy hands.
But every ON ship had a fusion reactor.
There was a specific procedure for using the incandescent fury of fusing helium as an improvised scuttling charge, but it was cumbersome by design. If nothing else, it had to be a deliberate act. An act of desperation.
Mol turned back from the access port in the back of the cabin. She’d pulled two modules out of it and placed them on the deck.
“One more,” she said, her voice slurring a bit. “And then it’s just pull a lever, rotate, and push.”
Thorn turned to face her, and the movement made tiny explosions detonate behind his eyes. “Red stars,” he said.
“Where?” Mol asked.
He pointed to his head. “Here.”
She squinted. “I’ll be damned. There are.” Her smile was wan, then her hands started moving again, slow but steady. She glanced at the display and grimaced. “Eleven percent. Twelve is next.”
“I hate twelve,” Thorn said, and Mol laughed.
He smiled. He could always rewrite reality. Make it so he and Mol could comfortably breathe carbon dioxide. That wouldn’t solve anything, just prolong the inevitable, but—
Thorn turned. “Mol, wait.”
She placed the last safety module on the deck and looked at him. “Yeah, I’m having second thoughts, too. But this is better. It’ll be quick. Instant. But I’m going to have to do it now—”
“No. Wait. There’s one more thing I can try,” he said. He was the butterfly, beating its wings; that might do nothing, or it might cause a hurricane. There was no way to tell, but even with his training and his moral core, Thorn knew, at his heart, that he was an animal.
And animals do one thing best of all. They survive.
She nodded, grave as a judge. “Well, you’ve got a minute or two, and then—” She closed her eyes again, then forced them back open with a force of will that impressed even Thorn, who knew what true will looked like. “And then, I’m done. We’ll have to hope we die before the Nyctus get us. I—shit.” She rubbed her eyes, hard. “Damn it. Hard to think. Anyway, I don’t really want to chance it—”
“I won’t need long. If I don’t come to, in, say, a minute, then do what you have to do.”
She tried to nod, settled for a twitch of her lips.
Thorn placed his fingertips on his talisman again, and shifted his awareness inward, toward the core of who and what he was. It became his anchor. The rest of reality was fluid, malleable—it was like clay, and Thorn could shape it as he saw fit. It had always been soft, it was just Thorn’s desperate need that made him accept it. The universe belonged to magic, not the other way around.
His power was a guttering candle; it would have to be enough.
Thorn nudged the universe, changing it by a fraction around him—in this version, he had power left. The clay of creation was stiff, hard to shape, but he was able to do it, draining himself to change it just that tiny bit. In his mind—the deepest recess, where the red stars floated and his dreams took refuge—Thorn heard a sound.
A splash. Like his feet in a creek, walking with his dad. But this memory was streaked in silver—not water.
Magic.
Thorn, it turned out, had more magical power than he thought.
He immediately dipped into his reservoir of power, and changed the universe once more. Again, he saw a version of himself that was flushed with magic, fairly brimming with the silvery threads of energy that pulsed through his body, hot and alive.
And that version became real, settling over him like a shadow, the edges a perfect fit.
And again.
The flaw, he knew, had been in himself. He’d seen limits on magic, when there were none. He’d put shackles on his power, when he was using a tool that existed outside the rules of science, in a place that was as real as his own flesh and blood. The stream became a torrent, shifting to a shore—a lake, then an ocean—clouds building over a body of something silver and blue and all colors at once. Alive, and lethal to the universe itself if he lost control of it.
Remember the way back, Thorn told himself, looking at the ocean of chaos behind him, as he spread his hands, fingers wide, chin up—
The butterfly flapped its wings furiously now. And the power in Thorn ran hot.
Raw power howled through Thorn, a tsunami of it threatening to sweep away his very sense of self. The pressure soared to unbearable heights, causing him to twist, writhe, almost convulsing in the g-couch.
Too much. Too much power.
He’d pushed too far, too hard. The human frame was never meant to feel such vast might; it was like trying to push far too much current through a wire-thin conductor. Thorn felt like he might explode, his body and soul straining to command an energy so primal it did not even have a name.
Before he could fail, Thorn pushed a final, coherent thought through the maelstrom—the Hecate. He fixed the Hecate in his mind, a beacon glowing faintly through endless night. There was no finesse, this time, no measured folding of space. Instead, Thorn drove a tunnel through reality, and pulled the Gyrfalcon along it.
He screamed as the accumulated power erupted from him, magical shockwaves rippling the ether like the seismic jolts of an earthquake. He discharged the power, all of it, draining himself until he felt like empty, transparent crystal, his skin and psyche brittle to the touch.
Thorn opened his eyes.
Sweat drenched his aching limbs, even as the steady drip of blood poured from his nose, hot and metallic on his lips. He reached out with what senses remained, the papery connection crackling each time Thorn shifted his gaze or thoughts.
The Gyrfalcon still seemed to be in one piece. Mol—
He turned his head. It was like moving stone, and took uncounted ages. Mol lay slumped on the deck, unconscious, or—worse.
He dragged his gaze back to the viewscreen. The Hecate hung in space, a solid presence just a few klicks away.
The sight of her seemed to signal to Thorn’s battered mind that it was time to let go, to sink into the waiting oblivion. His final thought was an unexpected, and disturbing one.
Did I bring us to them—or them to us?
He wasn’t sure, and sank into that thick, deep darkness without knowing the answer.
“One of these days,” Doctor Al-Nouri said, “I’m just going to stick a toe tag on you and be done with it, Stellers.”
Thorn offered a weak smile. It made him wince. “Did I die again, doc?” he asked, then sniffed. “Okay, that has got to be one of the most unasked questions ever.”
“Oh, it’s probably up there,” Al-Nouri replied. “Right with, What do you weigh?”
Thorn chuckled. It trailed off into a groan. “Notice you didn’t answer, though.”
Al-Nouri stuck her hands in the pockets of her white smock. “Just like when you saved Code Gauntlet from that big rock, you were brought in here with no life signs. And by no life signs, I mean absolutely none. No heartbeat, no respiration, no brain activity at all. So, yes, you were clinically dead.” She tapped her data slate with a stylus, brows lifted in surprise. “Ordinarily, that would be it—you’d be in a drawer in the morgue. But I decided to wait, to see what would happen. And here you are.”
Thorn let out a slow breath. Dead. Again. That could not be good for your health.
The door slid open, admitting Tanner and Mol. She looked bleary-eyed, but was back on her feet. As Thorn understood it, they’d both been taken off the Gyrfalcon suffering from acute carbon dioxide poisoning, but while he’d also suffered other physical ailments, it seemingly hadn’t affected Mol at all. As cataclysmic as the hurricane of eldritch power he’d unleashed had been, its unbridled rage had been contained within him.
A storm inside, Thorn knew, and that detail w
as worth remembering.
Tanner stopped by the bed, his face utterly unreadable. Thorn sat up and braced for questions. Or worse. He still wasn’t sure if he’d brought them back to the Hecate’s location, or if by losing clear focus amid the deluge of power, he’d actually pulled the destroyer to join them, and now they were all stranded on the back side of Nyctus space.
He’d asked Doctor Al-Nouri, but she’d dodged the question—which wasn’t a good sign.
“Stellers,” Tanner said. “You need to answer a question.”
Thorn frowned. “Sir?”
“Are you a Nyctus spy?”
“Am I—” Thorn blinked. Even that hurt. “What? No, of course not.”
Tanner held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Good enough for me.”
“Sir, I don’t understand—”
“Just as we uncovered evidence that Wixcombe was a Skin, we found things to suggest the same thing about you. Personally, I thought it was bullshit, but I had to report it, and I was ordered to open an investigation. I just did. Opened it, and closed it.”
“Sir, Kira’s not a Skin.”
“Of course she’s not,” Tanner replied. “I just spoke to Captain Densmore, and she agrees. Wixcombe has been released from custody.” His eyes narrowed. “I only wish you’d been able to bring those two bastards, Bridmante and Justice, back here with you. It might have helped us figure out what makes those damned Skins tick.”
“Okay. Back here. That’s a relief,” Thorn said.
“What?”
“Sorry, sir. I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to get the Gyrfalcon to the Hecate’s location, or the other way around.”
“That was a possibility?”
“I’m honestly not sure, sir. But I can’t rule it out.”
Tanner crossed his arms. “Believe me, Stellers, if you’d yanked my ship halfway across the galaxy, we’d be having a different conversation right now. Once was enough, thank you.”
Thorn grimaced. Three years previously, he’d lost control of his magic and hurled the Hecate off into the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, he’d been able to bring her back in time to save a large part of the Fleet from annihilation in a Nyctus trap. Tanner still occasionally grumbled about it, though. Captains were sensitive about their ships being lobbed a thousand light-years. Or more.