by J. N. Chaney
“Stellers, Tanner here. Anything you can do?”
Thorn took a shuddering breath. He was tapped out. He could barely manage to defend the Hecate’s crew from the mental onslaught of at least three Nyctus shamans. The fact that Tanner had appealed to him to do something spoke volumes about the deep shit into which they’d plunged.
“I am so sorry, sir. I’ve done all I can,” he replied.
Which has basically been nothing.
Despair draped itself over Thorn like a funeral shroud. He’d tried to bring his daughter back from the dead, and failed. Instead, he’d lost her completely and, in the process, diffused and diminished his magical potential so much that he was now probably one of the weakest Starcasters in the Corps. He felt confident that would change, that his power would come back, in time—but time had all but run out.
He couldn’t even bootstrap his magical potential up the way he had in the past, rewriting reality to make himself more powerful. He’d tried. It hadn’t worked. Changing tea into coffee he could do, but that was about all he could do.
The Hecate slewed again. This time, something slammed into her hard enough to make the ship ring like a gong. More damage alerts blared.
“Decompression in sections eight alpha through nine delta. All hands evacuate.”
Something—probably a squid rail gun shot—had hit the Hecate hard, wounding her badly.
Thorn took another shaky breath, trying to desperately to concoct anything—
Mol in the Gyrfalcon shot past the witchport, flying close formation with the Hecate, trying to act like an additional point-defense battery for her, as well as providing a second target for the squids. It had worked, but it wouldn’t matter. The best thing Mol could do would be to bug out.
“Stellers, Tanner here.”
He was on a private channel. Thorn’s stomach flipped completely.
“Sir?”
“Unless you have something up your sleeve, in about two minutes I’m going to order the Chief Engineer to blow the reactor and scuttle the ship. I have absolutely firm orders that you are not to fall into the squid’s hands.”
Thorn closed his eyes, then opened them. “Understood, sir.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’d rather be turned to plasma than end up a captive of those bastards.”
“Sir,” Thorn said, licking his lips. “It has been been an honor, a privilege—”
“Hold that thought, Stellers,” Tanner snapped. “Another ship has just hopped onto our sensors. Stand by.”
Thorn flicked his attention to the repeater. His desperate hope was that it would be an ON ship. Preferably a big one. His mind-numbing fear was that it would be big, alright, but also Nyctus.
But it was neither. The Hecate’s tactical systems didn’t recognize it and, when Thorn zoomed in the image, neither did he.
For one thing, it was green.
The new arrival raced in at high speed. The two Nyctus corvettes swung onto an intercept course and began a fast, head-on approach. The green ship, whatever the hell it was, didn’t seem large, being smaller than either of the corvettes. Thorn expected this to be brief, but ultimately not much help. Whoever this was should just break off while they still could and make a run for it, rather than trying something heroic.
Thorn glanced away from the repeater—then back again, as it flared with lurid, emerald light. The glow enveloped one of the Nyctus corvettes, and then it wasn’t a corvette anymore. It was just an expanding cloud of debris. A few seconds later, the second corvette suffered the same fate.
“Holy shit.”
It took Thorn a moment to realize he was the one who’d said it.
When he looked back at the repeater, he saw that the remaining Nyctus destroyer and frigate were turning hard. They altered their trajectories away from the newcomer while pumping out another salvo of missiles at the Hecate. They were apparently intent on finishing her off before making their escape, but another of those dazzling flashes of green energy engulfed the missiles as they launched. Part of that blast also hit the frigate, opening a gaping hole on its port side. A second later, both Nyctus ships vanished, flinging themselves away from the battle at superluminal speed.
“All hands, priority damage control,” Tanner said. “Engineering, you’ve got five minutes to get me a list of what’s still working. Comms, raise our green friends out there and get them plugged into a channel. As long as they don’t decide we’re their next target, I should probably thank them for saving our asses.”
It took Thorn a while to reach the bridge from the witchport. He had to route himself around some battle damage, a section of the Hecate’s forward port quarter that had been breached by a missile strike and was now sealed off. He ended up taking a shortcut up one of the cramped access ladders that traversed the ship vertically, giving access to the various power distribution nodes coming off the main buses. The alternative was to go all the way back to near midships, then pick his way forward again. The ladder brought him up one deck short of the bridge, so he had to detour partway back anyway. By the time he arrived, he found Tanner in conversation with whoever was crewing their strange, green benefactors.
Tanner saw Thorn enter and raised a hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have to deal with something of some urgency. If you could wait a moment—”
“Please, Captain Tanner,” a smooth baritone replied from the comm. “Do whatever it is that you need to do. We’re in no hurry.”
“Thank you,” Tanner replied, and pointed at the Comm O, who put the channel into standby mode. Tanner turned to Thorn.
“What happened, Stellers?”
Thorn swallowed and glanced around the bridge, uneasily aware of the number of people in earshot. Tanner immediately shook his head.
“Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, Lieutenant. I expect all of my division heads to be able to give me an accounting of what worked and what didn’t. You’re no exception. We all need to know why your magic fell short this time, so we can contingency plan around it. You know, in case our squid friends decide to come back with reinforcements.”
Osborne, the Tac O, caught Thorn’s eye and offered what was meant to be a reassuring nod. Thorn acknowledged it briefly, then turned back to Tanner.
“Some of the ’castings I’ve done lately have drained me, sir, and I haven’t had enough recovery time.” He offered Tanner an apologetic look. “For the time being, you should probably plan as though my contributions to any fight are going to be pretty limited.”
Tanner held Thorn’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Understood. Now, let me ask you this—is there anything you can tell me about our green rescuers out there?”
Thorn pulled open the cramped jump seat, his usual spot when he was on the bridge, from the bulkhead where it was stowed. “Give me a moment, sir, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Tanner nodded and turned his focus back to other matters, which seemed to be a dozen different problems, all of which he had to juggle at once. Not for the first time, Thorn found himself marveling at the man’s ability to take in information, digest it, and spit back orders, all in a few seconds.
But he pulled his attention away from the drama swirling around the Captain, instead pulling out his talisman and centering himself around it. He’d recovered a tiny bit of his potential and used that to push his awareness beyond the Hecate’s wounded hull and into—
Nothing.
Thorn frowned. He pushed a little harder, expanding his perception like an inflating balloon. He dug deep and kept at it, until his awareness had expanded beyond the strange, green ship.
Still nothing. It was as though the other ship and its crew didn’t exist at all.
Still frowning, he ended the scrying and looked back at Tanner.
“Sir?”
Tanner raised a finger, finished snapping out direction to a soot-stained Petty Officer from a damage control party, then turned to Thorn.
“Go ahead.”
“I get nothing, sir.”
Tanner paused a beat, then nodded and started to turn away. “Okay then—”
“No, sir,” Thorn went on. “I literally get nothing. As in, nothing at all, just empty space. Magically, there’s nothing and no one out there.”
The older man turned back, fixing him with a hard stare. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure. It means that either there’s someone or something aboard that ship powerful enough to Shade it even though it’s sitting right in front of us, or it somehow just doesn’t interact with magic at all.”
“Okay. So what are the implications?”
“Well, sir, since this is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this, I don’t really know what the implications are. This is something entirely new.”
“Huh.” Tanner looked back to the main viewscreen, holding the image of the unknown ship. “Can’t deny that whoever they are, they were here when we needed them. Also can’t deny it makes me more than a little uneasy that we apparently know nothing whatsoever about them. We’ve got nothing in our tactical or cultural databases, and now you can’t even sense them with your magic.”
Thorn shook his head. “I have to be honest, sir. This feels like some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . a setup of some sort.”
Tanner tensed. “I thought you said you couldn’t detect these people, or whatever the right word is for it.”
“I can’t, sir.”
“So what makes you think it’s a setup?”
“I . . .” Thorn began, then trailed off. “I don’t know, sir. I can’t point to anything specific. It just feels wrong, somehow.”
“Stellers, when anyone else says that I tend to give it the weight it deserves, which usually isn’t much. Maybe the XO, maybe the Chief Engineer when it comes to the powerplant and drives and the like. But that’s about it. When you say it, though, I have to follow up—”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m not getting this from magic. At least, not that I’m consciously aware of. It really is just a feeling.”
Tanner nodded. “Well, just park that feeling for now, Stellers.” He glanced at the Comm O. “Reopen the channel.”
The Comm O gave a thumbs up.
“This is Captain Tanner. My apologies for the delay, but as you can appreciate, we’re pretty busy over here.”
“I understand,” the resonant voice replied. “Your ship clearly took some serious damage. I hope that you are able to get underway, and get help from your own people.”
“We should be,” Tanner replied. “In the meantime, are you in a particular hurry to get anywhere?”
“We are not.”
“Very well then, I would like to invite you aboard the Hecate. The least we can do is offer you some hospitality for helping us out here.”
Thorn glanced at Tanner, who returned the look sidelong, but said nothing.
“I would be delighted to visit your ship, Captain Tanner.”
“We still haven’t recovered our Gyrfalcon—that’s the fighter keeping station off our starboard side. I can have it shuttle you—”
“No need. I will use our own shuttle. As you said, you’ve got a great deal to do, and I don’t want to get in your way.”
“We appreciate that. I’ll have our Chief Engineer work out the docking details with you.”
“Thank you. I will be ready when he contacts me.”
The Channel Open indicator flicked off. Tanner gave the Chief Engineer his instructions, then turned to Thorn.
“Alright, Lieutenant, let’s see how your feeling plays out when you get face-to-face with whoever the hell this is.”
“Sir?”
“As soon as the Chief Engineer works out where they’re going to dock, you and I are going to be the reception committee.”
“Aye, sir,” was all Thorn said. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more going on here than it appeared.
Of course, maybe Tanner was right. A feeling was just that—a feeling.
Besides, when wasn’t there more going on that it seemed?
9
Thorn had to work hard at not gaping when the pilot of the green ship stepped through the airlock and into the Hecate.
Correction—when he ducked through the airlock. He stood a full head taller than Thorn, Tanner, and the two members of the Honor Guard the Captain had arranged for their visitor. The Honor Guard, Thorn knew, was less about honoring and much more about guarding. But even the two seasoned Ratings couldn’t help simply staring at their guest as he straightened.
He was alarmingly tall. He was also bulky and muscular, with tendons like steel cables smoothly sliding beneath his skin as he moved.
His green skin.
Thorn caught himself staring, then shifted his features to a neutral look of thanks.
In every respect, he looked like a man—an unusually large and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.
Except for the green part.
Every bit of his exposed skin—since he wore only trousers and a loose vest, there was a lot of it—was a similar shade of green to his ship. He wore sandals, so Thorn could see that even his bare feet were green. And he had no apparent body hair, the overall effect of which was to make him resemble an enormous green mannequin, albeit bulging with corded muscle.
Their visitor stopped and stared for a moment, tracking his head left to right to take in the little tableau inside the Hecate’s airlock. Besides his minimal clothing, a number of odd gadgets hung from a broad belt around his waist. Any of them might have been weapons, although none were obviously so. Thorn noted the somber, almost grave expression on the alien’s face and braced himself in case there was trouble. He felt the two Ratings doing the same.
Then the green face split into the brightest, broadest grin Thorn could imagine, revealing teeth that were—
Thorn blinked. He’d expected some shade of green, but what he got was gleaming white.
“My friends,” the big green man said, flashing that flawless grin. “I am Bertilak, and I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.” Every word the man uttered was laden with enthusiasm that fell just short of shouting.
Tanner offered a smile. “And I am Captain Tanner, of the Allied Stars Orbital Navy. Welcome aboard the Hecate.”
The man stuck out a big green hand in what was obviously an invitation to shake it, which Tanner did. Their size difference made the effect disconcertingly like a child solemnly shaking the hand of an adult.
“I am so pleased to meet you,” Bertilak said. “I have heard of your people—hoomans, correct?”
“Humans, yes,” Tanner said. “And you are?”
“I already told you. Bertilak.”
“Right. I was hoping you would tell us the name of your people.”
“Bertilak.”
Tanner glanced at Thorn. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m confused. Is Bertilak your name, or the name of your people?”
“I am Bertilak. I am, in fact, my people.”
“I see.” Tanner nodded. “Well, welcome aboard my ship. I’m afraid that, as a warship, we’re not really configured for a lot of diplomatic niceties.”
“Ah, what niceties matter among the civilized peoples, captain? If we have air, and water, and food, we are in an enviable position. This is the opinion of Bertilak.”
Thorn watched Bertilak as he spoke. Every movement, every gesture, every word and tone was just a little exaggerated. A touch theatrical, a smidgen over the top. It was like watching an enthusiastic amateur playing his first speaking role just a little too hard.
Thorn didn’t trust him—not one bit.
“Well, Bertilak, this is Lieutenant Thorn Stellers,” Tanner said. “He’s one of my officers, and he will act as your liaison and guide while you’re aboard the Hecate.”
Thorn started to shoot a glance at Tanner but cut it off as his hand vanished into Bertilak’s massive green fist. He waited for bone-crushing power, but for all of his obvious siz
e, power, and enthusiasm, the alien’s handshake was surprisingly restrained, almost gentle?
“I am pleased to meet you.” Bertilak’s smile faltered. “Lieutenant? Thorn? Stellers? Which should I call you?”
“Thorn is fine.”
The smile flared back to full power. “Thorn it is, then. I approve of your economical speech.”
“Lieutenant Stellers will escort you to the mess—a word that describes much of my ship right now, unfortunately.” Tanner’s diplomatic smile returned. “And it’s back to dealing with that mess I have to go. Before I do, though, allow me to once again thank you for your assistance. The crew and I are deeply grateful.”
Bertilak shook his head. “Bah! Thanks are unnecessary. I merely came to the aid of a ship in distress, the same way I’m sure you would have if I’d been the one in need.” Bertilak’s grin turned sly. “Besides, I owed those water breathers an ass-kicking. The last time I tried to deal with them, they took my cargo, then withheld payment on some stupid technicality or other. And I couldn’t do much about it, because they vanished back into hiding beneath the ice. Bertilak can tolerate many things, as the universe is filled with endless new experiences—but cowardice is to be avoided. Or punished, if Bertilak is given the chance to do so.”
Something struck Thorn as Bertilak spoke. Their comms weren’t doing any translating. The big, green man was speaking as fluently as any human.
“You’re a trader,” Thorn said, “so I gather you must do a lot of business with humans. Because you speak our language so well.” He gave an appreciative smile that he hoped came across as sincere.
It apparently did. “I do, and kind thanks. I much prefer to speak a language than rely on translators. The lack of nuance is . . . simple. And as a trader, nuance is among the tools I need to succeed.”
Tanner’s personal comm chimed. He glanced at it, then looked back at Bertilak.
“There are some things I need to attend to, I’m afraid. Thorn will take care of you. Incidentally, how large is your crew? I don’t know if we can accommodate more than—”