Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  The tank squatted in the middle of a room in the heart of the bunker, lined entirely with metal. Besides Tanner, Damien and Narvez, there were two medical techs monitoring the equipment, and four more people, all ON personnel. Three wore the badges of the Starcaster Corps, and were apparently Joiners, deployed here to keep the shaman’s magic in check, should the drugs being dripped through the tubes fall short. The fourth was a Lieutenant wearing no Corps badge or ship’s logo, which probably meant Intel. The rest of the room was absolutely barren.

  No, not entirely barren, Tanner corrected himself. Someone had hung a neatly-framed picture of the ON logo prominently on the wall over the tank. The squid could, to the extent it was even conscious, certainly see it, and little else besides blank alloy. It was a little piece of psychological warfare Tanner appreciated.

  “With your permission, sir, we’ll begin the interrogation,” Narvez said.

  Tanner nodded. “At your convenience, Commander.”

  She turned to Damien. “Mister Forester, feel free to intervene if you have any specific questions or comments.”

  “I will, and I actually do. Like I told Thorn Stellers when we interrogated Petty Officer Ignatius, it’s helpful to establish a baseline of behavior and responses. We then keep an eye out for deviations from them, which might hint at falsehoods, hidden agenda, that sort of thing.”

  He raised his eyebrows at the squid in the tank. “I’ve never done this for a squid before. But I found it worked with the Danzur pretty well, so it’s at least worth trying here.”

  The logo-less Lieutenant gave him a curious look. “What do you mean by that?”

  As Damien explained himself, Tanner studied the squid.

  Who are you? What do you know about us, or think you know about us? How much of it is true, and how much is just propaganda, like the ON logo hung over the tank?

  Tanner found himself frowning more and more deeply. The creature was utterly alien, a rubbery agglomeration of tentacles emerging from a flabby torso. It had more in common with a literal squid, than it did with him.

  And yet, there was something oddly familiar about it. Not this particular squid, who Tanner didn’t know from a random deck plate. Rather, it was the concept of the squid that somehow plucked at him. In a way he couldn’t begin to explain, he thought he saw a glimmer of something he recognized in it.

  “Okay, you can bring the squid out of it, as we discussed,” Narvez said to the medical techs. They nodded and fiddled with their instruments. One of the little peristaltic pumps dripping a clear fluid into the shaman through a tube stopped.

  “Probably take about five minutes for it to start waking up, ma’am,” one of the techs said to Narvez.

  She kept her eyes on the squid. “And what about our fail-safe?”

  The tech gestured to another pump, also currently switched off. “Right there, ma’am. Turn that pump on, and no more than ten seconds later, this will be an ex-squid.”

  Tanner looked up at that. “You have a fail-safe that takes ten seconds to kick in? Not good enough.” He knew what someone like Stellers could do in ten seconds, and even if this shaman were only a fraction as powerful, it could still do a lot of harm in that time.

  “Best we can do, sir, I’m afraid,” the Lieutenant replied.

  “The hell it is. You’ve got MPs with sidearms right outside.”

  “Sorry, sir, but no weapons are allowed inside this room while a squid isn’t fully unconscious.”

  Tanner looked back at the squid, then shook his head. “Not on my watch. I want to be able to kill this thing instantly, if we need to.”

  “Sir, protocols—”

  “Are being changed, at my discretion. Sorry, you didn’t bring me here just to be another pretty face. I want two of those MPs in here, ready with their sidearms, and that’s an order.”

  “But the risk—”

  “War is risk, Lieutenant. We don’t try to avoid it, we just try to manage it.”

  The Lieutenant looked as though he’d continue to object. Tanner was ready for it. Fleet Intel technically had its own chain of command, separate from the one that applied to Tanner. It tended to make them think they didn’t have to answer to anyone not their own superiors. This Lieutenant was about to find out just how wrong he was about that.

  The man apparently got that, because he relented and just nodded. Narvez called in two of the MPs and instructed them to kill the squid instantly, if ordered, or if they reasonably believed the interrogators were losing control of the creature. She then reassigned one of the Joiners to watch over them, and blunt any effort by the shaman to control or influence them.

  “The squid’s coming to,” one of the other Joiners said.

  Narvez looked at Tanner. “We’re ready, sir.”

  “By all means, carry on.”

  Per Damien’s request, the interrogation initially focused on mundane minutia, in an attempt to establish a baseline for the squid’s responses. Tanner had, frankly, expected it to come up a bust. He’d only briefly encountered the Danzur, after Stellers had moved the Reserve Fleet into their space as a show of force. They’d struck him, though, as similar enough to humans that Damien’s baseline thing working didn’t surprise him. What did surprise him, though, was that it seemed just as easy to establish a baseline for the shaman’s responses. And this was despite its grogginess from the drugs still being fed into it, and the fact that Narvez had to retrieve the answers from its mind, effectively acting as its translator.

  It meant that when questioning began in earnest, Damien was immediately able to spot variances that might be significant. Tanner had to admit that the guy did seem to have a natural talent for it. Maybe Fleet was actually right for once, and this really was his calling.

  He raised a hand at Narvez, interrupting the questions the Intel Lieutenant had been feeding her. “Ask it again about the plans for the new Skins it let slip,” he said, his voice pitched low and quiet.

  Narvez and the Lieutenant both nodded. Between them, they crafted the question differently. The squid no doubt hadn’t meant to say anything about the Skins, but had revealed it was the primary purpose of their gravity traps.

  Now, it answered the revised question, saying much the same thing. The primary purpose of the gravity trap had been to capture ON personnel, to turn them into Skins.

  Damien narrowed his eyes, then leaned toward Tanner. “First time, sir, it said traps. This time, it said trap. When you get an inconsistency like that, it might be a lie.”

  Tanner pushed up his lower lip, impressed. “So which is it? Trap, or traps? Because. if there’s more of those things out there, we need to know about them.”

  Damien huddled for a moment with Narvez and the Lieutenant. They muttered amongst themselves, then broke apart again.

  “So tell us about the gravity traps. Where are they?” the Lieutenant asked.

  Narvez stared down at the squid, her voice going monotone. “Pulsing star. Pulsing star. Human ships, predictable. Waypoint. Pulsing—”

  She cut off, blinked, let out a breath. “It’s fighting back.”

  Tanner glanced at the two Joiners helping Narvez keep the creature under control. The third, still mentally shielding the MPs. None of them seemed to be in distress, like they were fighting for control. The two MPs simply looked grim, ready to blast the shaman full of holes at the least provocation.

  He turned to Damien. “Pulsing star, and a waypoint. There’s a pulsar in Sector Four-G that ON ships sometimes use as a distinctive navigation waypoint on their way out to patrol Sector Five.”

  “Sounds worth checking out, sir.”

  “It does indeed.”

  The questioning continued. They managed to pry a little more information about the Nyctus attempts to infiltrate Skins into the ON, but finally bumped up against the limits of what the shaman actually knew. Tanner sensed the interrogation was reaching its own conclusion, but Damien leaned in closer.

  “Ask it about Nyctus allies,” he said.r />
  Narvez gave him a puzzled look. “Allies? Why?”

  “Because a few answers back, it referred to your enemies—plural. This time, in the answer it just gave, it said we are your enemy—singular.”

  “Another inconsistency,” Tanner said.

  “It is.”

  Tanner nodded to Narvez and the Lieutenant. “Go ahead.”

  The squid dug in its mental heels this time. It did let slip something about another enemy, seemingly one that the squids either had recruited to their cause, or were in the process of doing so. But further attempts to dig out more information about it just provoked variations on what amounted to screw you.

  “I think that’s all we’re going to get,” Narvez finally said.

  The Lieutenant crossed his arms and sighed. “I think you’re right, ma’am. My suggestion is we put it back under, and resume this in a later session.” He looked at Tanner for approval.

  “I can’t keep the Hecate hanging in orbit here forever. When’s the base commander due back?”

  “Three days, sir,” Narvez replied.

  “Fine. You can do your resuming when she’s back on the ground. In the meantime, I—”

  “I want to try something,” Damien suddenly said.

  Tanner stepped back as Damien pushed past him. He’d been wanting to bring this to a close, so he could get back to the Hecate. But if Damien had an idea about how to extract more information from the squid now, he wasn’t going to stop him.

  Damien grabbed the framed ON logo and pulled it off the wall, then held it over the tank.

  “See this?”

  Tanner just watched. What the hell was Damien planning here?”

  He lifted the framed logo so everyone could see it. “Does everyone see this?”

  Narvez looked confused. So did the Intel Lieutenant. So did the rest of them.

  Tanner, though, felt a sudden tightening in his gut. It was the same feeling he got just before joining battle.

  He opened his mouth just as Damien said, “It’s the symbol of failure!” He slammed the frame against the edge of the tank, shattering the glass, then grabbed a jagged shard and plunged it into Narvez’s throat.

  Blood erupted from the wound in a pulsing jet. Narvez flung her mouth open in a ragged gasp, and more blood poured over her lips. Damien yanked the shard out of the wound, and stabbed it at his own throat.

  Tanner caught it, the glass neatly slicing his palm. It deflected the shard enough that it only drove a few centimeters into the skin below Damien’s jaw. Then the room erupted into an explosion of chaotic noise—shouts, sudden movement, a fusillade of shots into the tank that fountained water in plumes of spray. Tanner yanked the glass shard out of Damien’s hand and flung it away. At the same time, as though running on autopilot, he snatched the sidearm out of the nearest’ MPs hand.

  The other MP shouted something, and started to lift his weapon toward Tanner. He ignored it, though, and slammed the weapon into the water, the muzzle jammed against the squid’s head, and squeezed the trigger, again and again. The water, already crimson with Narvez’s blood, turned to soupy gore.

  Damien slumped to the floor. Tanner waved off the other MP, then returned the sidearm to its owner.

  “Takes only a few centimeters of water to stop a bullet,” he snapped, then turned back to the anarchy filling the room.

  Command voice.

  “Right! Everyone stand fast!”

  Confusion became ponderous silence. Tanner glanced at Damien, but he’d just dropped to all fours on the floor and muttered something over and over again. Kira, Tanner thought. Something about Wixcombe, anyway. He told the MPs to watch him, then moved to Narvez’s side. She’d dropped to her knees, still gasping wetly, drooling blood from her mouth and clawing at her slashed throat. Tanner pulled her hand away and slapped his own over the wound, pressing as hard as he could. He shouted over his shoulder at the medical techs.

  “One of you get over here and help me! The other, get a crash team in here!”

  He looked Narvez squarely in the eyes. “Commander, you’re going to be fine. We’ve got pressure on the wound, and help is on the way.”

  Even as he said it, though, blood gushed around his hand.

  He made himself keep looking her in the eyes, anyway.

  At least she wouldn’t have to die alone.

  17

  Thorn stood in the Jolly Green Giant’s airlock, his talisman clutched in both hands. Despite the confidence he’d shown the Astarti regarding his ability to shunt asteroids around, this was going to be a demanding task. Moving a fleet might require more raw power, but this would be more like deflecting the squid’s massive KEW from slamming into Code Gauntlet. It would require power, but even more, it would require control. He had to accelerate three chunks of rock, each almost as big as the squid’s KEW had been, but he had to do it just so. He then had to maintain that precise state of just so while Bertilak kicked in the Alcubierre drive, and keep the rocks in place while they and the ship remained in the drive’s little pocket universe. And then, when they emerged back into normal space, he had to ensure the rocks’ trajectories would settle them into a stable orbit as close to the orbiting smelter as possible.

  Thorn remembered a saying he’d heard once, from somewhere. As easy as shit through a goose.

  Well, this wasn’t that, for sure.

  Thorn saw a point of light move across the starfield, then come to a halt as it matched the Jolly Green Giant’s velocity. Over the comm, Yinzut spoke.

  “We’re ready. Any time you begin, is amazing for us.”

  The translator really was struggling with the Astarti tongue. Thorn wasn’t used to it throwing so many errors this long after chewing on a particular language. He just hoped it didn’t translate something especially badly when it really mattered.

  “Okay, Bertilak, I’m ready, too. You can go ahead,” Thorn said, letting his awareness sink once more into the echoes of old pain embedded in his talisman.

  “Roger that. Here we go.”

  The airlock began to depressurize. Thorn enclosed himself in a close-fitting bubble of intent, one that would allow him to stay comfortable and breathing, despite the vacuum. The airlock wasn’t actually a witchport, but it would have to do.

  The last of the air drained away, then the outer door silently slid open. Thorn now stared into eternity, the unending void pulling his gaze along with it until it was lost in forever. A brief moment of vertigo washed over him as he sat down. The witchport enclosed him enough that he didn’t feel quite so nakedly exposed to the emptiness. Nothing stopped him from just stepping out of this airlock, though, and drifting away into nothingness.

  He shoved the intrusive thoughts aside, and instead launched his awareness out into space. It immediately encountered the three asteroids, which the Astarti had already marked with hazard beacons. Thorn tagged each of them with a sliver of his perception, so he could keep precise mental track of them.

  Two larger, one slightly smaller. Their total mass exceeded that of the huge impactor the Nyctus had launched at Code Gauntlet. The difference here, though, was that he wasn’t trying to change their trajectories in such a dramatic way—and while watching the minutes tick down to impact. Here, he could take more time.

  Thorn focused, and gave each of the asteroids an experimental nudge with carefully-applied Hammer magic, just to see how they responded. One of the larger ones, and the smaller one, seemed essentially solid, with no evidence of flaws or potential points or planes of failure. The third one, though, was split more than halfway through by a jagged fracture, a scar from some ancient collision. There was only one way to safely apply force to it without risking shattering it, which meant he had to keep its precise orientation just right.

  Great. Something else he had to keep track of.

  Thorn closed his eyes and spent a few moments just accumulating magic in a reservoir, building up his reserves of eldritch power. It hummed in the back of his mind like a bared high-volta
ge conduit. Taking a deep mental breath, he then began pushing the asteroids, slowly easing them out of the orbital tracks they’d been following for hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of years. The first two behaved themselves, but the third, with its deep fracture, didn’t want to cooperate. Stress immediately began to build up on the coherent rock that remained holding it together. In a moment, it would shatter into at least two pieces, and probably more.

  Fine. Thorn eased off, ending his massed Hammer effect.

  “Yinzut, I have to fix one of these rocks. I hope you don’t mind if I partly melt one,” he said.

  A moment passed before Yinzut replied, and then it was only a single word.

  “What?”

  Thorn smiled at the complete confusion in the Astarti’s tone. She obviously wasn’t used to the idea of magic at all, which was good. It would make that much more of an impression on her.

  “I’m going to melt part of one of these asteroids, to try and fuse it together so it doesn’t fly apart on me. Will that affect your smelting and refining?”

  Another pause. “I’ve never been asked this question before. But I would say, no, no different. Smelting means melting anyway.”

  “Okay,” Thorn said, then redirected some of his magic into a powerful, but localized scorch effect. It took a moment to heat the rock, because he wanted to avoid an abrupt change in temperature that might itself lead to fracturing and shattering. Eventually, the rock began to glow, and then to liquify and flow. Thorn held the Scorch ’casting until more than half of the fault plane had become molten and slurried together, then reversed the effect, drawing back out of the rock. It cooled, darkened, then hardened into a glassy solid.

  There.

  Thorn switched his efforts back into Hammer magic, once more poking and nudging at the asteroids.

  “They’re moving!” Yinzut said.

  Thorn didn’t reply. He kept his attention focused on the three hunks of rock. He angled their trajectories ever more slightly sunward, changing their orbits from enormous elliptical ones around the star, into spirals that would eventually send them crashing into it. He took his time, keeping the accelerations to a fraction of a g. It wasn’t much, but as he and Bertilak had figured when they’d simulated this, it didn’t need to be much. Most of the heavy lifting would actually be done by the Jolly Green Giant.