Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  Osborne looked at Tanner. “Thirty seconds, sir.” But he stopped, and let out a breath.

  “And there’s the task force, sir, suddenly just there, high on our starboard beam and, holy crap, they’re close!”

  Tanner nodded. One instant, what had been empty space was suddenly full of ON ships, led by the massive bulk of the Arcturus. All eight of the ships loomed within a hundred klicks of the Hecate. The instant they appeared, they opened up with a blizzard of point-defense fire, shredding nearly all of the incoming squid missiles in a two or three second long orgy of destruction. At the same time, they opened up on the squid ships. The colossal mass-driver that ran almost the entire length of the Arcturus’s keel, the single largest weapon ever fitted to a warship, spat out a depleted uranium slug at a breathtaking velocity. It took only a few seconds to cross the intervening void, slamming into the leading squid heavy cruiser, raking its length, and erupting from its stern in a shower of glowing debris. For a few seconds, the squid ship drove along on its own momentum, then vanished in a colossal explosion.

  A deep boom echoed through the Hecate, and she quivered through her structural bones. One lucky missile had managed to avoid the deluge of point-defense fire and hit her, topside, blasting away a scanner array and a trio of reactive armor plates. It didn’t affect her fighting ability, though, and she fell in smoothly with the rest of the task force, powering directly at the suddenly way overmatched squid flotilla.

  Tanner let himself relax. Only a fraction, though. Battles weren’t won until they were won, and this one wasn’t over. Not yet.

  Mol flipped the Gyrfalcon over and dove back at the asteroid, her rail gun slamming out shots, another pair of missiles launching. Targeting the squid witchports using data repeated from the Hecate wasn’t easy, not at all. Trixie did her best to compensate for the parallax shift resulting from the destroyer’s different perspective, but most of her shots cleanly missed.

  She didn’t care. After being stuck, helpless, utterly powerless, it just felt good to hit back.

  She veered the fighter slightly, lined up and fired again. This time, a lucky rail-gun slug found its mark, one of the witchports vanishing in a bright flash.

  “Yeah, eat depleted uranium, you slimy squid bastard!”

  Mol pitched the Gyrfalcon up again, sweeping past the asteroid. A chunk of rock sailed past her and she laughed. Apparently desperate, the squids had reverted back to what they seemed to know best, using magic to fling boulders around.

  Not that it wasn’t still dangerous, mind you, but for a ship as nimble as the Gyrfalcon, dodging them wasn’t a problem at all.

  As long as she saw them, of course.

  She spun the Gyrfalcon around and, drive still burning at full power, mimicked an atmospheric fighter doing a tight bank. The Gyrfalcon had enough power to do a multi-axis turn, and—

  An alarm sounded and crimson flashed on the damage control display. Oh, right, the damaged structural rib.

  “Dammit, I never get to have any fun,” Mol grumped, while throttling back the drive.

  “Gyrfalcon, Hecate. You can come on back home.”

  Mol looked at tactical. The last of the squid ships had been smashed into wreckage. Another, racing away from one of the asteroids and probably carrying a load of squid shamans, was being pursued by a flight of missiles that relentlessly gained on it. The squids on the other two asteroids had gone dormant, likely just hunkering down, and trying to hide.

  But they were still down there. “Hecate, Gyrfalcon, roger. There’s still a bunch of squid shamans left on two of those asteroids.”

  “Understood. We’re carrying a butt-load of Starcasters who’ll take care of that. They want to take at least one of the bastards alive.”

  “Got it, Hecate. On my way.”

  Now Tanner relaxed. Damage control was in action, every system was otherwise running normally, and for the moment, he had nothing to do, and could just leave it all to his crew.

  It gave him a moment to think about what he’d said to Wyant, about the task force carrying an extra-large cadre of Starcasters. Their combined magical might should be one of the most fearsome in space.

  And, yet, something told Tanner that, even all working together, they still weren’t as powerful as Stellers.

  And that, frankly, scared him far more than any approaching swarm of squid missiles.

  15

  Thorn whistled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a system this busy. Not even Sol.”

  Bertilak glanced at him, smiled, but just turned back to the viewscreen.

  The system, huddled around yet another unremarkable yellow-white, Sol-like star, had no name in the ON database Thorn had brought with him, only a catalog number. From the perspective of ON space, this place was just too far away to resolve any detail. Any radio or other emissions from it would be lost in the wash of EM energy radiating from the squids. The entry on Thorn’s data-pad just said, Habitation by advanced lifeforms likely, giving it a whopping sixty-percent chance.

  Well, they could revise that to one hundred percent. Or, given just how busy this system was, a little more than a hundred percent might be in order. Mere certainty giving way to no, really?

  But Thorn started to frown as the data came sluicing in. “This all seems to be robotic. Are there any actual life-forms here?”

  Bertilak glanced at him again. “Pretty narrow definition of life there, boss. It’s not necessarily all based on gooey, icky organic chemistry.”

  Thorn thought about Trixie, and nodded. “Fair point. Still, machines don’t usually just pop into existence on their own. I assume someone made them, so there must have been gooey, icky organic types here at one point.”

  Bertilak pointed at a small, rocky planet just inside the star’s Goldilocks Zone. “And there still are, right there. Not many of them, at least not the last time I was here. But they’re there.”

  “And everything else seems to be robotic.”

  “Why not? Mining and smelting is dangerous, dirty work,” Bertilak said.

  Thorn nodded. The Jolly Green Giant swept past fractured asteroids mounting automated mining plants that chewed away their substance. Robotic ore carriers trundled in and out of the inner system, dumping loads of feedstock into enormous, solar-powered smelters and refineries. More ore was being scooped from two of the outer rocky planets, huge mass-drivers stretching across their cratered, scarred surfaces flinging containers of it toward the star. Every direction that Thorn looked, he saw busy, industrial purpose.

  “Who are these people again?” he asked Bertilak.

  “The Astarti.”

  Thorn pursed his lips. Bertilak had named a bunch of alien races beside the Imbrogul, and Astarti had been one of them. He thought. Probably.

  “So the Nyctus have got us isolated from all of these races? I’m surprised they haven’t won this war already, with these kinds of resources and industrial capacity available.”

  Bertilak tweaked the controls. “Ah, but it’s not necessarily available to them. Don’t think of this as one, big, happy family of alien races, all working together. Some of them are like the Danzur, and are okay with the Nyctus. Others hate them. They each love some of their fellow races, despise others, and it changes constantly. I think the Nyctus are just happy if they keep bitching and fighting amongst themselves, because if they ever did act together, the squids would probably never stand a chance.”

  “Which means we wouldn’t, either.”

  Bertilak offered a thin smile. “Then you have something to thank the Nyctus for. They deliberately keep these different races as off-balance and pissed off at one another as they can, so they can concentrate on you. Humans aren’t the only ones they’ve turned into Skins.”

  “Sorry, but you’ll have to forgive me for not thanking the squids for a single damned thing,” Thorn snapped back.

  Bertilak raised a conciliatory hand. “Of course not, my friend. How about this, then, instead? You can be grateful to all of these diffe
rent races for being here, and also being the proverbial thorn in the squid’s butts.”

  “That I can get behind, sure. Oh, and the thorn in their butts is me, by the way. I mean, duh.”

  Bertilak glanced again at Thorn, then burst out laughing. “You got me there, friend.”

  But his laughter didn’t last. His face became serious again, as he studied his controls. As always, they made no sense whatsoever to Thorn. When Bertilak pointed at what looked like two writhing, intertwined lines on a panel, he just nodded.

  “Astarti scanners are starting to get interested in this region of space. Some trace of us might be leaking through your Shade. Can you take care of that? I’d like to be well in-system before we reveal ourselves, because the Astarti can be a little skittish.”

  “Okay, although, if they’re skittish, wouldn’t it make more sense to give them lots of warning that we’re coming?”

  “You’d think so, but they seem to have a flair for the dramatic. Popping into existence right in front of them will impress them to no end.”

  “Okay, you’re the expert here,” Thorn said, and sank more magical power into his Shade. It actually worked better than he hoped, his magic seeming to complement that imbued into the Jolly Green Giant by Morgan when she created it, making the Shade effect much stronger. Thorn wondered if her being his daughter had something to do with it. Maybe their magic resonated in some way, the same way family members could sometimes sing in utterly perfect harmony, even if they weren’t actual singers.

  The idea gave him a glimmer of hope that, if he found Morgan again, he might be able to repair his battered relationship with her. At least, that’s what he wanted to believe.

  The Jolly Green Giant raced past more blast-scarred asteroids and busy robotic miners, entering the Goldilocks Zone. Their target planet loomed ahead.

  “Alright, my friend, I think this is close enough. You can go ahead and drop the Shade.”

  Thorn relaxed the slight concentration the Shade required, and felt it fall away. A few seconds later, an incoming hail rattled from the comm system—a big, round speaker with two glowing buttons, and a chunky microphone on a flexible stand.

  Whatever the hail was saying, though, Thorn didn’t know. All he heard was a harsh, guttural, and slightly wet-sounding blur of noise. At the same time, a window popped open on the viewscreen, displaying what he assumed was the speaker.

  It was a toad.

  Okay, it resembled a toad, or at least the big, fat toads he vaguely remembered living in the ditches along the road leading to his childhood home on Cotswold. But it was much bigger, of course, human-sized and stocky. A set of what looked like stained, greasy coveralls covered its torso, and on its head was perched a frankly silly-looking blue hat, cocked jauntily to one side.

  Bertilak smiled, and then replied to what was presumably an Astarti in its own language. Thorn raised his eyebrows at him. A drawn-out retching noise made the big alien sound like he was about to projectile vomit. But the Astarti was apparently pleased, softening its tone as it coughed and gurgled back.

  Thorn let this go on for a few exchanges, then tapped Bertilak’s shoulder. “Hello, guy who doesn’t speak the language here.”

  Bertilak grimaced. “Ah, right. Apologies!” He tapped a control. The comm system immediately began to translate.

  “Thorn, this is Yinzut, System Overseer for the Astarti Corporate. Yinzut, I’d like to introduce Thorn Stellers, my companion and friend,” Bertilak said.

  “Pleased to meet you, Thorn Stellers, companion and friend,” Yinzut said.

  Thor nodded. “Likewise. I hope we didn’t startle you too much.”

  “Too much? No, not too much. Impressive, though. We would know how you hid yourself so deep in this water.”

  Thorn glanced at Bertilak. “Water?”

  “The Astarti are aquatic. They refer to all locations as ‘water’.”

  Ah.

  “So, we conduct trading at a different water. This water is fouled by the work of industry. Meet at the sweet waters. I will send coordinates. Be well,” Yinzut said.

  A few moments passed, then Bertilak confirmed receiving the new nav data on his inscrutable instrument panel. A few minutes after that, a small ship separated from an orbital refinery platform, and streaked away in a blur.

  Bertilak tapped at his controls. “I guess we follow. I do like the idea of sweet water, though. I wonder if we’ll be required to float while we discuss prices. Oh, and we could do it naked. What a feeling of freedom that would be!”

  Thorn pulled a face. “I’d prefer that you keep your pants on, honestly.”

  “Ah, but what if the Astarti don’t wear pants? I’ve only ever talked to them by comm, and have only ever seen them from the waist up.” Bertilak flashed Thorn a mischievous grin, while keying the Alcubierre drive and smearing the stars away into darkness.

  Thorn narrowed his eyes dramatically. “Tough. If we’re going to be spending time in a tub together with giant toads, you’re still wearing pants.”

  The coordinates Yinzut had provided gave them a destination only a single system away. Again, it had no name in the ON star-charts, just a number. According to Bertilak’s inscrutable instruments, the Astarti apparently called it something that sounded like gargling, combined with someone clearing their throat and whistling at the same time. It apparently translated literally to Sweet Water.

  “I’ll stick with calling it that, thanks. I don’t want to risk breaking my voice box,” Thorn said.

  Bertilak laughed as he started the Jolly Green Giant toward a big terrestrial planet, the fourth out from the slightly bluish star and nestled smack in the middle of the Goldilocks zone. Unlike the frenetic rush of industrial activity in the last one, Sweet Water seemed relatively sedate. A handful of ships, a couple of wholly unfamiliar design, were bound in or out of the system, and that was it. More ships orbited close to a toroidal platform revolving around their destination planet, including one that looked like a profusion of long spikes radiating in all directions from a central hub.

  “That’s a Somathi ship,” Bertilak said, in answer to Thorn’s question.

  “And they are—?”

  “Toxic. Literally. They breathe a mix of ammonia and nitric acid. Nobody likes dealing with them.”

  Thorn gave a sage nod. “Coming from such a hostile environment? Yeah, I can see that.”

  “No, it’s not because of their atmosphere. It’s because they’re assholes.”

  “Ah. Well, okay then.”

  Thorn had Bertilak bring the Giant to a halt a few dozen klicks away from the station, so he could give it a Scrying pass. He’d actually expected that the station might contain water, and that they’d have to either board in vac-armor, or just meet over a comm circuit. But it wasn’t, being pressurized with breathable, if somewhat thick, moist air. More to the point, he was able to shift his focus to a broad Joining and get a sense for the Astarti psyche. He was a little surprised to find their minds easy to access, and relatively straightforward in their thinking.

  “They seem to be really motivated by profit. But they also seem to be pretty open-minded, and not very duplicitous. Pretty laid-back all around,” Thorn said.

  Bertilak nodded. “That about sums them up, yeah.”

  Thorn gestured at the station. “Shall we?”

  The big alien touched the Giant’s controls, and the Astarti station started to grow on the viewscreen.

  “We shall!”

  Thorn didn’t have to think very hard to recall if this was the first time he’d been in orbit, in space, sitting on a log. He was pretty sure he hadn’t. But there was a first time for everything, and this proved it.

  He and Bertilak sat on a literal log, a rough hunk of tree about four meters long, still clad in damp bark. The top surface of the log had been planed down to bare wood, offering seats about as comfortable as you’d expect a slab of solid wood to be. It was one of three arrayed around a small, shimmering globe of what sure seemed l
ike water, held in place by some unknown force. Across from them sat Yinzut and two other Astarti—although, it struck Thorn that sat wasn’t really the right way to describe it. They squatted, hunkered down, more than sat, and did it on massive club mosses that looked like they’d be cultivated specifically to be seats. More wet moss floored the space enclosed by the logs and their host’s strange seats.

  “Welcome, soon-friends, to Sweet Water Home Port. Astarti are so pleased to be you,” Yinzut said.

  Thorn blinked, his brain parsing Yinzut’s words and stumbling over that be you. The translator was having trouble working out the nuances of Astarti speech, which seemed to have layers of meaning embedded not just in its gargled words, but also in tone and cadence. He opened his mouth to reply.

  Then stopped, resisting the urge to gasp. The air he’d pulled into his lungs felt as thick as syrup, and reeked of a stew of organic chemicals reminiscent of what they’d encountered on the terraformed squid planet. It made Thorn wonder if these Astarti were responsible for that, or at least involved. He hoped so, because that would just make them even more valuable as allies.

  He coughed. That assumed, of course, he could actually manage to talk to them.

  “I’m sorry, your air is a little on the damp side for me,” he said.

  Yinzut opened her mouth and held it that way for a moment, then closed it. “We understand. Maybe comm talk better way to flash.”

  Flash had to be another mistranslation. Thorn shook his head.

  “That won’t be necessary. In any case, I appreciate your welcome and your hospitality and, on behalf of the Allied Stars, offer greetings.”

  Thorn felt a brief surge of satisfaction. That had actually sounded pretty diplomatic. Damien, he thought, would have been proud.

  Yinzut again opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it again and launched into a series of questions about the Allied Stars, the Orbital Navy, their war with the Nyctus, and even Thorn himself. Some of the questions were actually quite blunt, even bordering on rude, but Thorn didn’t detect any malice or guile in them. The Astarti were, it seemed, genuinely curious, and perfectly happy asking questions to satisfy that curiosity, even if they did come across as kind of inappropriate. Thorn, in turn, held nothing back, and responded with questions of his own.