by J. N. Chaney
He turned back to Thorn. “When I was a Lieutenant, I worked for a Captain who always started every op with the same phrase. At the time, before there was any such thing as Starcasters, I just took it as a colorful figure of speech. It takes on a whole new meaning now, though.”
He turned back to the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s see what magic can really do.”
Thorn watched as another of the Cyclone missiles was eased into the loading bay of a battlecruiser. The FOB’s orbital dock had been turned into a hub for distributing the weapons, minimizing the amount of handling needed to deploy them across the Third Fleet.
“I’m not sure which I find more disturbing—that we’re actually preparing to use these things, or that we had so many of them already built.”
Thorn glanced toward the voice. It was Kira.
He nodded at her words, then turned back to the viewport. For a while, they both just stood in the concourse, watching the stately progress of the efforts to load the planet-killing weapons.
The Cyclone missiles carried a half-dozen warheads, each of them a variable-yield thermonuclear bomb that could be dialed from ten to one hundred megatons. They didn’t have much utility in space combat, being slow, cumbersome weapons whose space effects were quite limited. They were a blunt instrument, which really only had one purpose—bombarding the surface of a planet. Hard.
Every one of the Third Fleet ships carried at least one of them. The bigger capital ships carried multiple. When fully loaded, the Third Fleet task force about to be launched at the squid hydro world would be packing as much as fifteen gigatons of explosive effect. That would be more than enough to obliterate the planet’s biosphere and render it essentially uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. In fact, it was overkill, but intelligence regarding Nyctus defenses around and on the planet was almost nonexistent, so the Fleet had to be prepared to offset losses of both ships and missiles.
“Someone, somewhere, knew we’d eventually have to do this,” Thorn said. “That we’d have to attack an inhabited planet.” He looked at Kira and shrugged. “They probably started building them right after the raid that destroyed Cotswold. Once the squids did that, it was inevitable. They knew what they were getting themselves into, but they went ahead and did it anyway.” He looked back at the battlecruiser. The first Cyclone had been stowed, and now another was being maneuvered aboard her. “So to hell with them.”
Silence hung for a while. Kira finally broke it.
“Densmore came to me. She asked me to talk to you.”
Thorn gestured out the viewport. “Even if she could convince me to reconsider, it’s a little late, I think.”
“That’s not what she wanted me to talk to you about.”
“Oh? What, then?”
“She’s worried about you, Thorn.”
He glanced at Kira. “Really? Why?”
“For the same reason I am.”
“Okay, and what reason is that?”
Kira crossed her arms. “Thorn, why did you propose this attack on that Nyctus planet?”
“I’ve said it—what, a couple of dozen times, now? Because it’ll be a strategic blow that might make the squids think twice about continuing this friggin’ war? Or at least maybe dissuade them from flattening any more of our planets?”
Kira gave a thin, humorless smile. “All of which is true, yeah. But—be honest, Thorn. With me, and with yourself. How much of this is about the war, and how much of it is about you?”
Thorn sighed. “Again, for the umpteenth time, it’s not about me—”
“Bullshit.”
Thorn looked at her, but she pressed on.
“Remember who you’re talking to here, Thorn. I know you better than anyone. Maybe even yourself, at least when it comes to something like this.”
“Kira—”
“Mol told me about Trixie,” she pressed on. “I know that you considered that damned AI a friend. And now you’ve lost her. You’ve lost your family, our daughter, now Trixie—”
“Kira,” Thorn snapped. “I know that Densmore thinks I’m locked into some cycle of vengeance here. And—yeah, sure, I admit it, I’m not going to cry over the squids we kill. But that’s not the reason for this.”
“Thorn, if Cotswold and Nebo had never happened, and if Trixie was still the way she was, would you have proposed this plan?”
“Course I would have.”
“Really?”
Thorn stood, awash in disbelief. And maybe, in his core, a hint of shame.
His family still alive. A daughter he could visit while on leave. Trixie, her usual bubbly, irreverent self.
The squid hydro planet, populated by a multitude of families and—
His admission came in a rush. “I want to make the squids pay for what they’ve done. It doesn’t change the fact that two things can be true at once—like revenge and a step toward winning the war. Is that what you want, Kira? Because it’s the ugly, unalloyed truth, and I can’t give it any simpler.”
Kira’s smile faded, and she shook her head, sadly.
“No, Thorn. Of course not,” she said, and walked away, leaving Thorn alone in the concourse, surrounded by throngs of officers and Ratings all hurrying to get Op Trebuchet—Thorn’s brainchild—ready to launch. Thorn swore, lost in the chaos of preparation.
Thorn sat cross-legged in the Hecate’s witchport, and waited.
Task Force Trebuchet had finished its first Alcubierre hop, to a waypoint on the edge of a system containing a pulsar. There were planets, but they were just barren, airless lumps, long ago scoured down to their bedrock by the typhoon of hard radiation pouring off the fierce little star. Once every 0.7213 seconds, the pulsar swept the inner system with its ferocious emissions, making progressing any further than the inner edge of the Oort Cloud a hazardous undertaking indeed.
An unfriendly little light, Thorn mused, eyes drifting over the yawning blackness.
But the Fleet wasn’t here to do anything more than move on. This was a navigational stop only. According to the plan, the next hop would take the Fleet to a red giant, starting it on its way to its destination—a Nyctus-controlled planet on the edge of the Zone known to humans as Sherman Prime, the only habitable planet orbiting its namesake, Sherman’s Star. The squids had fortified it into a FOB. Its destruction would open a major gap in their defenses, ripe for exploitation by the Fleet.
All of this was, of course, a lie. While Sherman Prime was a crucial strategic objective, attacking it would entail a major fleet engagement, followed by fighting through the planet’s defenses. Fleet kept a contingency plan handy for assaulting it, but Fleet contingency-planned lots of things. It had been a simple matter to modify the existing plan, turning it into the lie that everyone in Task Force Trebuchet, except for the ships’ Captains, assumed was the truth.
Thorn sat quietly, breathing and shifting his fingertips around his talisman until they felt right. He currently had nothing else to do but wait, as the actual plan for the Task Force was propagated among the ships by Admiral Scoville, who had taken personal command of the attack.
Scoville’s general broadcast was available on the intercom, but Thorn had muted it. He knew what the man was going to say, so he could better use the time for what was coming.
Stellers?
Densmore’s voice hummed in his mind. She was aboard the Stiletto, somewhere near the rear of the Task Force. Her ship, along with half dozen others, would actually split from the Task Force and make the hop to the next waypoint, the red giant. Once there, they’d use spoofing tech to portray the signatures of a much larger force, hoping to keep the squids’ attention focused on them for as long as possible.
I’m here, ma’am.
We just received intel that the squids are moving a large chunk of their reserve toward Sherman Prime.
So we’ve definitely got a leak.
Several, I’d imagine. She paused a moment. You know, you would think that someone who intended to be
tray this op would tell the squids to move their reserves the other way, further into their depth, where we’re actually going to attack, not forward.
Thorn gave a chagrined smile. Point taken, ma’am. He hesitated, then went on. Look, ma’am, I’m sorry—
Don’t be. You were right to suspect me. Hell, I’d have suspected me. But I hope this puts your suspicions to rest.
It does, ma’am. His smile turned a little more genuine. For now, anyway.
Densmore’s laughter rang in his mind like chimes, but it faded. Just do me one favor, she said. Try to not wreck the universe.
“Stellers,” Tanner said over the intercom. “Admiral Scoville’s on for you.”
Thorn opened his eyes. “I’m here, sir.”
“Okay, Stellers,” Scoville said. “We’re at H minus fifteen minutes. That’ll give the Stiletto and her detachment time to get clear of the Task Force. Once they are, this becomes your show.”
“Understood, sir.”
“Stellers?”
“Sir?”
“Early in my career, I decided I’d never wish anyone good luck. I didn’t believe luck really existed, and it all ultimately came down to brains and skill. That you made your own luck. That was before I found out that magic is real—real enough that I’m actually expecting to move an entire fleet hundreds of light-years by means of what I still have a hard time convincing myself isn’t just fevered bullshit.”
“I can’t help thinking there’s a but coming, sir.”
“Damned right there is. But, if magic is real, is luck really that far-fetched? Anyway, all this is a long and convoluted way for me to say good luck, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll be ready.”
Thorn closed his eyes again and waited, breathing in and out slowly, deeply, settling himself into the intimate connection between flesh and cardboard, where his fingers rested on the old book.
Fire. Smoke. Confusion. Terror—
Thorn didn’t fight these ghosts speaking to him from deep inside his talisman. They were familiar, practically old friends. They anchored him, keeping him grounded in his own history against the wild unreality of magic.
“Stellers,” Tanner said. “Admiral Scoville just sent the go signal. The Task Force is ready. What happens next is up to you.”
“Understood.”
Thorn had been considering, now, for days, the best way to approach this. Densmore’s concerns about him damaging the universe were justified; he could rewrite reality, so he had to make sure he didn’t rewrite it into something catastrophic.
The first time he’d done it, changing how the Hecate’s Alcubierre drive worked to save Code Gauntlet, his magic had been contained in its own little pocket universe. The second time, when he’d desperately increased his own magical power to overcome the effects of the drug Brid had injected into him, he’d kept the focus on himself. And that seemed to be the key. The effect had to be constrained by something—even just intent.
Intention was something that could be set. It was a law—and Thorn was the author.
He began to draw magical power to him, using his talisman as a locus, a target upon which the eldritch energy would converge. He was a lightning rod, starting to attract the first stirrings and wisps of electrical charge from the air.
If he continued this way, he would soon saturate himself with magical power, drawing no more without allowing some to drain away. Thorn knew that, compared to most Starcasters, his capacity for magical force was immense—but it still fell far short of what he needed to move the Task Force.
Now for the tricky part.
Thorn had bootstrapped his power up when Brid’s vile drug concoction had tamped it down, bypassing the artificial limit brought on by modern chemistry in the form of a needle to the neck. He’d do exactly the same thing now. The difference was that, then, he only sought to move a single Gyrfalcon. This was going to be far more demanding, so he needed far more power. An ocean of chaos, if he made his mark, and that meant he was about to find out the answer to one question Starcasters hadn’t even dared to ask.
Just how much magical power can a single human channel?
He was about to find out. Thorn drew a slug of inhuman might out of the seething reservoir, focused his will through his talisman, and used it like a cutting tool, shaping the raw energy into something new, like a patch for reality. He snapped it into place, overwriting what had already been there—
Thorn had the capacity for much more magic than he thought he had. That final constraint he’d always assumed had been a myth, because this had always been true.
Eyes still closed, Thorn shook his head slightly. He now knew two entirely different realities—the one of a moment ago, that he rendered obsolete, and the new one he’d crafted to replace it. Both were incompatible, yet equally real. Like translucent panes of glass, they could be placed over each other, matching flawlessly so that the denizens of this place—his place—would never know. He was stitching reality between the two places, their flat expanses smooth and unblemished in the corridors of his mind.
Unlimited. If I can survive it.
He hadn’t been so deliberate about it when he’d brought the Gyrfalcon home. That had all been oxygen-deprived desperation. Thorn knew that Densmore was right; he could easily screw things up, possibly catastrophically, if he did this wrong. He may have screwed things up, in fact, and no one was aware of it yet. But he had a war to help win, and war meant taking risks.
Keeping his focus firmly on himself, Thorn once more drew power from the roiling swirl of it within him, imposed his will on it, and placed the version of reality together with a silent, formless union. In this plane made of two places, he could contain and wield more power still.
It’s time.
Magical discharge flashed from the join of his fingertips and the talisman, power like gaseous lightning leaking out of him and into the real world, endless streamers tailing away into nacreous ribbons of dancing light.
Beautiful.
He did it again.
Now power howled through Thorn, a vast lake of it held in place only by the dam of his concrete will. It shoved against his consciousness, an ever-mounting pressure trying to break free and dissipate back into its natural, ethereal state—a place of chaos and undoing. A place without form. Somehow, Thorn knew that death waited there, but he would not go. Instead, he loosed bolts and pulses from his fingers, from the dog-eared corners of the book, from the wild miasma of energy that sizzled through his bones.
He was magic. He was the talisman, and more. His teeth were so tight that he had to inhale desperately through his nose just to draw a breath. A groan escaped his lips, deep and animalistic, a sound not heard among humans since the times of earlier shamans who painted in caves.
Again. Thorn released the power, and it ran free.
He soared to a pinnacle of magical might; it poured from his eyes, from his mouth, flared from his skin in an inhuman light, and gouged chunks out of the witchport’s black foam lining in spitting fires that survived, impossibly, in the vacuum of space. Bolts of it flashed away into the black, but the power kept growing, filling a titanic capacity both welcome and terrifying.
For an exquisite instant, one that merged agony and ecstasy into a coruscating singularity of raw, incandescent experience, Thorn stood as the most powerful being in the universe. He was the universe—every atom, every particle, every wave. The magic that infused its sprawl of billions upon billions of light-years was, for this instant of time, a continuum—a single, coherent whole, with Thorn its epicenter, the focal point of some universe-spanning antenna.
Glimpses, hints, fragments of reality flashed and flickered through Thorn. Time—he could sense all of it, all the time that had ever passed, would ever pass. Stars were born, grew old, died with desolate whimpers or creation-shaking explosions. Galaxies swirled, collided, spun off into new ones. Life rose, flourished, fell again.
His awareness touched on the primordial moments after c
reation, then brushed against the heat-death of the universe itself, entropy’s ultimate victory. But there was even more. There were other universes, alternate, parallel, a labyrinthine jumble of them, a tangle of infinite complexity, of infinite scope—
It was too much. This was bordering on godhood, a state of existence the mortal frame and mind were never meant to contain.
Thorn screamed, and the universe screamed back.
He launched his awareness through the ether, encompassing myriad specks of matter and organized energy—the fleet, a dim and distant part of him thought.
The fleet.
Ships. People.
An anchor, his last tether against apotheosis and whatever would come next.
Thorn reached across the light-years, grabbed creation, and folded it like a blanket. It was a trivial thing, consuming barely a fraction of the power he commanded. He merged that place and this one, making them one, then separating them again, returning them each to its naturally flat, three-dimensional existence.
But he still commanded power. Oceans of it. He still was the universe—
And it was killing him.
Thorn couldn’t just let the power drain away, because more would rush in to fill the void. That was how the universe worked. But the flood of power battered against his psyche like a storm surge, eroding away who and what Thorn Stellers was. If he didn’t make it stop, he would cease to exist altogether. He would be something made of magic—maybe a god, maybe just a dust mote forever lost among the thundering gales of a hurricane. Either way, he would no longer be human, or even alive.
Thorn desperately clung to that nebulous thing he called himself, an amalgam of thought and memory, of experience and belief, of hope and desire, of needs, of dreams. He particularly focused on one aspect of it, the one fueled by the psychic impressions indelibly stamped into his talisman—that night when his life was yanked off one path and shoved onto another, when fire fell from the sky.