by J. N. Chaney
While the Comms O worked, Tanner turned back to Thorn. “I’ll be honest here, Stellers. If your daughter weren’t capable of rewriting reality itself at a whim, I’d probably just pass this up to Fleet and let them decide what to do with it, notwithstanding her being your child. I’m sympathetic, certainly, but we might be about to pull some unknown race into the war. This is one hell of a gamble we’re taking here, but ensuring she doesn’t end up in hostile hands makes it more than worth it.”
“I understand, sir,” Thorn said, making his tone as grateful as he could. He appreciated Tanner’s position, certainly. If Morgan had just been an ordinary little girl, as much as it sucked, he couldn’t justify what he was apparently about to do—take the Hecate, and maybe some other ON warships, and violate some unknown race’s space. That might be harsh, but it was fair.
But Tanner was right. Even if Morgan hadn’t been his daughter, they needed to extract her from the hands of whoever had her. She was just too dangerous not to.
Kira leaned in. “Thorn, are you sure she’s there? You’ve never been able to sense her location before.”
“That’s because she didn’t want me to find her. Now she does.”
She called for him. Screamed for him. Screamed DADDY.
Thorn gritted his teeth. He wanted to be on his way to her, now. He had no idea what was happening to her, and it was starting to tear him up.
“Sir, I have Captain Brost,” the Comms O said.
“Put her on the main viewscreen,” Tanner replied.
The image flicked to that of a middle-aged woman with hair the color of iron, and an expression to match. “Captain Tanner, I understand you have something urgent you want to discuss.”
“I do. It involves walking right up to the boundary of what Regs allow, and probably putting at least one toe over them. Maybe more than one toe. Could make whoever’s involved heroes, because they’ve stopped some very, very bad things from happening to the Allied Stars. Or, it could be a career-ender, and make everything a lot worse. You interested in hearing more?”
The woman’s flat, metallic gaze pierced the screen for a moment. Then it softened, and she smiled.
“I’m listening,” she said.
25
Thorn opened his eyes. The view from the Hecate’s witchport hadn’t changed in any way he immediately recognized. Had something gone wrong? But then the ship maneuvered, the starfield sliding aside and revealing the enormous disk of a gas giant, striped with swirls of cloud and the oval scars of enormous storms.
“Stellers, you still with us?” Tanner asked over the intercom.
“Aye, sir, I am.”
“Oh. Kind of expected you to be semi-comatose after moving us like that.”
Thorn narrowed his eyes at the gas giant. Or, rather, at a point just above the great, sweeping curve of its surface, where one of several dozen moons was rising into view.
He understood Tanner’s concern. Previously, when he’d moved ships using magic, it had effectively kicked the shit out of him. Semi-comatose indeed. But the impact of it varied with the number of ships he was moving, and how far he was moving them. Moreover, it seemed to get a little easier each time he did it. This time, though, there was another factor at play, more important than all the rest.
He was here to get his daughter.
So his reply came out not just clearly, but calmly, too. “No, I’m locked and loaded, sir. Morgan’s on the biggest moon we just see rising now, almost dead ahead.”
“Roger that. Okay, Task Force Tanner, we’re implementing part alpha of the plan now,” Tanner said, broadcasting over the comm net linking the three ON ships and the Jolly Green Giant.
Thorn had actually objected to naming the impromptu task force after Tanner, reasoning it put a bullseye on him if this went wrong. But Tanner had countered that that was exactly the point.
“Not looking for glory here. Just want to make sure it’s clear who’s taking the blame,” he’d said.
He’d get the credit, too, but Thorn believed him. Tanner really wasn’t after glory or medals or anything of the sort. Thorn accepted that the man genuinely wanted the universe to know that, if this went badly sideways, this Tanner guy was the one responsible.
Thorn closed and pressurized the witchport, so he could go to the Gyrfalcon. As he did, he reflected on how calm and measured he felt. It was remarkable, really, that he felt so in control. There were so many things to rage about, so many desperate worries and so much frantic second-guessing. But all of it had subsided into a quiet background hum, barely noticeable over a veritable ocean of composure.
The witchport sealed, the pressure indicator turning green. Thorn released the little, habitable bubble he’d created around himself, then clambered out of the witchport and hurried to the Gyrfalcon.
Mol spun the Gyrfalcon hard, then accelerated to match pace with the Hecate. She led the approach to the moon where Thorn knew Morgan was. The missile frigate Nimbus rode her right rear quarter, ready to give fire support, while the escort carrier Viper trailed a thousand klicks back, primed to launch her wing of Kestrel fighters on order. The Jolly Green Giant hung even further back, five thousand klicks, acting as Tanner’s reserve. It also happened to keep Bertilak clear of the battle, at least initially, because Thorn wasn’t sure what effect his being in close proximity to Morgan, his creator, might have.
“We’ve got contacts coming up on the scanners,” Osborne announced over the tactical comm net. Four large contacts rising over the gas giant at two o’clock, and three smaller ones breaking orbit from around the moon.”
Thorn glanced at the Gyrfalcon’s tactical display, which automatically repeated the Hecate’s data. The ships were of unfamiliar design, the largest being a little bigger and bulkier than the Hecate herself. They also seemed more advanced, already launching missiles, which accelerated at a stunning rate toward them.
Tanner spoke up. “I guess that counts as a failure of diplomacy. Am I correct, Acting Lieutenant Forester?”
“Firing missiles without any warnings or attempts to make contact? Yeah, I’d say so, sir,” Damien replied over the comm.
“Very well, then. All ships, weapons-free. Viper, you may launch your fighters at your earliest convenience,” Tanner said.
Thorn, are you ready for this? Kira asked in his mind.
Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?
Because you haven’t exactly had a typical father-daughter relationship with Morgan? I mean, most fights between a daddy and his little girl don’t end up creating new celestial phenomena.
Understood, yeah. Doesn’t matter. She’s our daughter, and we’re here to rescue her.
Just be careful. We have no idea what she’s been through, or how she’s going to react to any of this. Remember that I’m right here, on the Hecate.
I know. But those missiles are coming fast, so I think it’s time for you and me to earn our paycheck.
It is. Good luck. And—I love you, Thorn.
Thorn smiled. Love you too. Be safe.
Gripping his talisman, Thorn began to pull magic from the vast reservoir that filled him, an ocean of titanic potential. Kira would be doing the same. The only other Starcaster present was a relatively junior one, aboard the Nimbus. She’d focus on the immediate protection of the Task Force, and leave the heavy hitting to him and Kira.
“Mol, take us straight in to the moon, best possible speed. Don’t let anything slow you down.”
Mol opened her mouth to answer, but Trixie cut her off.
“Know what? I’m done with all this melancholy music and—well, all the rest of it. Let’s go get those bastards, and rescue your little girl!”
Music began to blast out of the speakers. Thorn smiled as he recognized it, a piece that Trixie had called one of her favorites, before a virus had wiped her personality away.
Backgrounded by the mounting power of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, the Gyrfalcon surged forward, its prow pointed straight at Thorn’s daughter.
The first missiles raced in, far too fast for the Gyrfalcon’s point defense cannon to track. Three were poised to slam into the Gyrfalcon in just a few seconds.
Thorn lashed out a roaring tendril of power, flicking each one of them to debris.
Mol jinked the Gyrfalcon anyway, and did it with increasingly wild abandon. “Trixie, how many g’s was that last skid we did?”
“Thirty-five.”
Mol glanced at Thorn. “Usually, above twenty-five g’s, we start to feel it. This is smooth as, well, my butt.”
Thorn blinked, then sketched a small salute. “And now that I know you have a smooth butt, I can die complete.”
Mol grinned back. Her point was a good one, though. As an experiment, Mol, assisted by the Hecate’s engineering department, had plugged some of the Imbrogul gravity polarizing tech into the Gyrfalcon’s systems, turning her into a test-bed. She’d done fine in trials, but this was the first test in the swirl of battle. It seemed to be working just fine, letting Mol twist the fighter through maneuvers that tested the limits of its structural integrity. Inside the cabin, though, there was no sensation of acceleration at all.
She snapped the Gyrfalcon through a roll that made the gas giant spin through a dizzying arc, making a full circle in a little over a second. The point defense system tried its best to track targets, but finally gave up and threw an out of limits error. While Trixie cleared it, Thorn focused on the rest of the battle.
The Hecate and the Nimbus were in the thick of it. Besides high-velocity missiles, the opposing ships mounted both projectile and energy weapons. The latter were an especially big concern, flinging bolts of collimated plasma at high sub-light speed. Both of the ON ships had taken serious hits, blackened scars pocking their hulls, fragments of reactive armor trailing in their wakes. Their best defense was the swarm of Kestrel fighters from the Viper. Smaller and even more nimble than the Gyrfalcon, they were extremely elusive targets that packed a heavy punch, well above their weight. Even so, about a third of their complement had been taken out of action. Another vanished in a flash of blue-white plasma even as he watched.
Okay, Thorn was starting to worry about that. It would be the most bitter of ironies, if he rescued Morgan and lost the Hecate, and Kira along with her. Maybe he should have Mol slow down, or even turn back to help.
But he didn’t. Tanner had been adamant about that. Thorn had one job—rescuing Morgan. So he yanked his attention off the tactical display, and grimly focused on the task ahead, instead.
Mol clicked her tongue while dodging another missile. “Okay, we’ve got three assholes ahead of us. Small ships, each about twice our tonnage, but if they’re packing those plasma cannons or whatever they are—” She glanced at Thorn. “I’m good, but I’m not dodging things moving nearly the speed of light good.”
Thorn nodded. They didn’t have time to simply dodge or fight their way through those ships, and they sure couldn’t leave them behind them, while they dove into the moon’s atmosphere.
He had a sudden thought.
Kira, I could use your help.
Kinda busy, Thorn. Trying to take control of the helm of that destroyer-sized thing closing on the Hecate.
I know. But we’ll take care of two things at once.
He outlined his plan to her.
Okay, let’s do it.
Thorn redirected his magical energy, focusing it behind the Gyrfalcon, on the biggest enemy ship. His approach was simple, and blunt. He slammed a wave of confusion and disorientation through the crews’ minds, a raw blast of the crudest sort of Joining. While doing it, he glimpsed fragments of the crews’ thoughts, wholly alien, but still recognizable.
They called themselves the Bilau, and they were outraged, absolutely pissed at this intrusion into their space. But beneath it was a certain fierce glee, which boiled down to a single thought.
We finally get to test ourselves against these humans.
Whoever these Bilau were, they’d been enemies of the Nyctus. But that had changed, and they’d set their sights on the Allied Stars. Aggressive, expansionistic, opportunistic—
In other words, Mol was right. Assholes.
He didn’t feel bad, then, at sending a wave of chaos and bewildered panic coursing through the ship’s crew. It left them reeling, letting Kira move in for the second part of their one-two punch.
Riding her wave of magical might, Kira used her formidable Joining potential to seize control of the befuddled minds of the entire crew. For a moment, she was the crew, and seized that moment to have the ship decelerate as hard and awkwardly as possible, while also loosing a volley of missiles at the three ships blocking the Gyrfalcon’s approach to the moon. At the same time, she had the gunners redirect their plasma-cannon fire into their two flanking ships. The Bilau force immediately collapsed in confusion. This gave the Hecate, the Nimbus, and the Kestrels the opening they needed, all of them seizing it to pour rail-gun and missile fire into the Bilau ships. The Viper herself even joined in. The Kestrels were her primary weapon system, but she still mounted a few of her own weapons, and now she pounded away at the enemy with them.
“Bertilak, now’s the time,” Tanner said.
The Jolly Green Giant swept forward, Bertilak adding the lurid green flashes of weapons to the fray. One of the Bilau ships burned laterally and hard, trying to make a break for it. Thorn turned his attention back to the battle ahead.
Sure enough, the missiles that Kira had fired from the Bilau destroyer had distracted them. They snapped out shots from their plasma-cannons, methodically blasting the missiles apart. That took their attention off the Gyrfalcon.
Perfect.
Thorn reached out with a vast, magical grip, and squeezed space close to the enemy ships. He drew on his memories of redirecting the massive rock that had threatened to destroy Code Gauntlet, remembering how the Alcubierre drive had distorted space just so. He didn’t have an Alcubierre drive to work with this time, but the actual mass involved here was trivial. So he’d do this using raw magic alone.
Thorn kept squeezing space time, fashioning reality into a funnel, whose open end pointed directly at the gas giant. The narrow end, hundreds of thousands of times smaller, encompassed the three Bilau ships. The fearsome radiation from the gas giant, which normally spread in all directions evenly, became channeled into Thorn’s spatial distortion. For a few seconds, all of the radiation streaming away from the gas giant’s entire near hemisphere was concentrated into a volume of space just a few klicks across.
At first, nothing. Then the three Bilau ships began to glow, rapidly heating to white heat. Clouds of vaporized hull and components streamed away from them like the tails of comets. Then, in rapid succession, each one exploded as its reactor containment failed.
Thorn gasped and released the effect, slumping back in his seat. Okay, that had kind of kicked the shit out of him.
“You okay?” Mol shouted over In the Hall of the Mountain King, now blaring into its crescendo.
“Fine! Just keep going!”
The Gyrfalcon raced through a fading, expanding cloud of vapor that had once been three Bilau ships, and plunged into the moon’s atmosphere.
“There!” Thorn shouted, pointing.
The fighter zoomed toward a landing pad elevated over a swamp. A long walkway connected it to a cluster of buildings, but a huge chunk of both pad and walkway were gone. Now, a nearly perfectly circular crater full of water had taken their place.
Figures surrounded the crater, firing pulses of blue plasma into the water, which hissed and boiled. Thorn could see them striking a shimmering hemispherical bubble protruding above the water, that flashed and flickered with discharging energy. A few desultory blasts of energy shot back at the Bilau, but Thorn could tell that his daughter was nearly done.
“I don’t think so,” he hissed, and lashed out with magic of his own, cracking it like a whip that ripped through the Bilau, forcing them to flee or take cover.
He unbuckled his harness
and clambered out of his seat. “Keep us steady, right over top of her, Mol!”
“Trixie and I got this! You just go get your little girl!”
The Gyrfalcon skidded to a halt over the crater, its engines thundering to keep it aloft. Bilau plasma bolts poured in, a few striking the hull with fierce detonations before Thorn was able to cast a veil of denial around the fighter. He smacked the airlock control, cycling it open.
The roar of the Gyrfalcon’s engines filled the cabin with a steady thunder. Dank, fetid air washed in through the open airlock. Thorn looked down, and saw that Morgan had finally reached her limit. She was sinking out of sight, into the crater’s murky depths.
“No!” Thorn shouted at the universe, reaching down with a Hammer ’casting, grabbing his daughter, and lifting her toward him.
Blackish water and mud streamed from her as she rose. The Bilau poured in ever-increasing amounts of fire that slammed against Thorn’s shielding, making him wince. He fought, desperately, to keep up the protective effect, while lifting his daughter the twenty meters from the swamp below.
Something began to throb behind his eyes. Searing pain ripped through his neck and throat. He just bore down even harder.
A few meters away, Morgan’s eyes fluttered open and met his.
“Mister Starman?”
“I’m here, little girl—”
A single plasma bolt ripped through the shield and detonated against the Gyrfalcon’s hull with a blinding flash. More followed, rocking the fighter. Thorn yelped in stunned pain, and Morgan started to fall back toward the swamp.
She screamed.
A second later, the world turned white.
Silence, slowly refilled by the roar of the Gyrfalcon’s engines. Thorn caught Morgan, halted her fall, then began to lift her again.
“Holy shit,” Mol breathed.
Thorn glanced away from Morgan. For kilometers in all directions, the swamp was simply gone, scoured down to bedrock. Murky water rushed in, refilling the space that had once been a Bilau star-port. There was no more shooting, because there were no more Bilau left to shoot at them.