Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  He stared Ugeel directly in the eye as he asked it. The Danzur replied with just as steady a gaze.

  “I recommend the Hub Club. It’s not the biggest bar in FreeFare, but it’s certainly the one with the most character, and the best if you’re looking to find something useful to do with your time.”

  Thorn smiled and nodded. “Thanks. We’ll leave Damien and Mol here for now so you can start getting them dressed out. They can come find us when they’re done, and we’ll send the next ones to you.” Thorn straightened and looked at the others. “Meantime, let’s go check out this Hub Club, see if we can make ourselves useful.”

  5

  Thorn had been to his share of bars, everything from upscale places made of polished wood and attitude, to downbeat dives where your feet stuck to the floor. At first glance, the Hub Club seemed to be somewhere between the two extremes.

  They entered and stopped, taking the place in—dark, starkly furnished in things made of metal, the air a dank mix of stale booze, some sort of pungent smoke, a stew of organic stinks, some of them human, all edged with a hint of desperation. Music with a heavy, thumping bass-line thundered out of speakers the size of monoliths stacked around the edges of the place.

  Densmore shouted something. Thorn couldn’t hear her over the music, so he pointed at his ear and shook his head.

  I said, isn’t this charming, she said, her voice bypassing the music and streaming straight into his brain.

  Thorn smiled at her and shrugged, then led them toward the bar, a round edifice at the center of the broad, circular compartment. Ugeel had specifically said the Hub Club wasn’t the biggest bar on FreeFare, which was surprising. It was certainly larger than most Thorn had seen.

  FreeFare really was a big place.

  They reached the bar. A Philomek bartender scuttled over to them. Through some trick of the sound, the music didn’t overwhelm their voices here the way it did further away from the bar.

  “Help you?”

  Thorn hadn’t had much to do with the roughly avian Philomek. He’d been briefly introduced to them when he and Bertilak visited the Imbrogul for the first time. They specialized in organic goods, rare woods, exotic spices, and more basic foodstuffs, and they had a close trading relationship with the Imbrogul. Thorn had found them kind of brusque, even reclusive, but otherwise really didn’t have much of an impression of them.

  Thorn nodded at the Philomek and shouted back. “Yes, you can help us. First, a ten credit tip if you lower the volume on that music to—”

  The alien immediately reached under the bar and fiddled with something. The pounding roar of the music subsided some.

  “—something more reasonable,” Thorn said, grinning.

  “Hey!”

  A chunky human trader with greasy skin and even greasier hair had stood from his table, and now stumbled up to the bar. “Hey, I paid you hard coin to keep that music good and loud!” He glanced at Thorn, his eyes bleary. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m the guy who just paid even better money to have the music turned down.”

  “Hell with that, here,” the man blurted out, tossing a few more credit chips onto the bar. “Crank it back up!”

  The Philomek reached for the chips, but Thorn slapped a hand down on top of them. “Whatever he pays you to raise the music, I’ll pay you one more than that to keep the volume down,” he said to the bartender.

  The greasy trader pushed himself close to Thorn, putting himself and his considerable stink of booze and body odor deep inside Thorn’s personal space. “You think you’re some kinda hotshot, tough guy piece of shit, huh? ’Cause you wear that ON bullshit?”

  Thorn wrinkled his nose at the man’s stink but made himself smile. “I’m going to give you five seconds to back off.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you’ll find yourself on the deck, crying like a little kid. Five.”

  “Screw you—”

  “Four.”

  “Why don’t you—”

  “Three.”

  The man wound up and swung at Thorn.

  Thorn had time to roll his eyes as the clumsy punch drove at him. He caught it, twisted the man’s wrist, then slammed out a vicious chop with his other hand that dropped the man to his knees. A kick sent him flopping to the grimy deck. Surprisingly, the man did burst into tears. It wasn’t a good look for him.

  Kira leaned in beside Thorn. “Hope you don’t mind. I used Joining to make him cry.”

  Thorn glanced at her. “Wow, that’s mean.”

  “Yeah, but look around you.”

  Thorn did. Other patrons now stared at them with wary, and somewhat resentful, awe. The Philomek bartender leaned over the bar and glared down at the fallen, weeping trader.

  “Bisko here usually gets his way,” the alien said.

  “Not this time, he doesn’t,” Thorn replied.

  While they were ordering drinks, Thorn noticed three of the toad-like Astarti off by themselves, huddled around one of the tables he’d just realized were fastened to the deck. In fact, all of the furniture had been securely bolted down. Even the ashtrays were screwed into the tables. Moreover, drinks were served in cups made of some soft, pliant plastic. Nothing in the bar could be readily weaponized.

  He glanced down at Bisko, who’d dragged himself back to his feet and was now stumbling for the exit, shooting venomous glances back at Thorn and his companions as he did. Other patrons just sneered and laughed at him, which spooled up the man’s bitter hostility that much more.

  “You were here less than two minutes, and you already made an enemy,” Densmore said.

  Bertilak laughed and gestured around. “I know. In a place like this, Thorn should have been able to make at least one enemy a lot faster than that!”

  Thorn, though, kept his eyes on the three Astarti. All had been injured and were bandaged in various ways. Thorn glanced at the bartender. “We’ll also have a round of whatever those three are having,” he said.

  When the drinks were poured, Thorn, Kira, and Bertilak each picked up one, then they made their way to the Astartis’ table. The three aliens looked alarmed as they approached, but Thorn just smiled and plunked a drink in front of one of them.

  “Everything’s good, no problems here. I was just hoping we could sit with you three for a minute,” he said.

  The Astarti looked at the drink, then back to Thorn. “What do you want?”

  Thorn swung a leg over an empty chair and sat down. Kira sat at the last empty place. Densmore and Bertilak, unprompted, simply stood nearby and kept their attention on the rest of the bar—and potential trouble.

  “I’m curious as to what happened to you guys. You were obviously in a scrap.”

  “And why does that interest you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  The Astarti gave Thorn’s ON insignia a pointed glare. “Yeah, it does matter.”

  “We’ve got zero interest in your business dealings. We’re simply looking for information to help us prove or disprove something. Now, I see three of you sitting here, swaddled in bandages, it’s obviously for a reason. That reason might be of interest to what we’re looking for. Or it might not.” Thorn pulled his lips to one side, then tsked. “Only one way to find out, yeah?”

  Kira pointed at one of the Astarti’s arms, which gleamed with dried first-aid spray. “That looks like a flash burn. I’m thinking a plasma flash. You didn’t get that in a bar fight.”

  Densmore’s voice rang in Thorn’s head. The one you’re talking to is worried about some cargo delivery he can’t make because their ship is damaged. They need—a self-distributing power coupling, but they can’t find one here on FreeFare.

  Thorn glanced at Densmore, but she’d kept her eyes on the rest of the bar as she spoke. It was one thing to use Joining to pry open the thoughts of an enemy. But these Astarti were more like innocent bystanders, which made it feel just wrong.

  On the other hand, though, they needed results, and they needed them so
oner rather than later. Of course, that was really nothing more than a different way of saying the ends justify the means, an argument which had always bothered Thorn. It was, however, pretty much Alys Densmore’s basic philosophy of life.

  He shook the thoughts away. This was not the time for ethical introspection.

  “So a plasma flash could come from the failure of, say, a self-distributing power coupling. Those are probably hard to come by on short notice, especially for a specific model of ship,” Thorn said.

  The Astarti’s eyes widened. “They are, especially when the damned manufacturers use proprietary parts.”

  “I think we can scare one up for you.”

  The Astarti’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know about that?”

  “Again, does it matter?”

  “Again, what do you want?”

  “Just to know what happened to you. That’s it. Nothing more.”

  This might be a dead-end, Stellers, Densmore said. And you just promised a specific spaceship component to these people, which I assume you intend to create by ’casting, and that—

  Well aware of all that, ma’am. Now, if you’ll excuse me, he said, cutting her off as the Astarti began to talk.

  “What happened was, we were attacked.”

  “By whom?”

  “Was it the Bilau?” Kira asked.

  The Astarti shook his head, hissing in pain as he did. “No. We don’t know who it was. The ship that attacked us didn’t match anything we recognized.”

  “They came at us pretty damned fast, though,” one of the other Astarti put in.

  “So we ran. And I’m not too proud to say it,” the first Astarti said. “Anyway, it was after we overcharged the engines that the power coupling blew. Between that and the hits whoever attacked us got in, well, here we are.” He gestured at his injuries, and those of his fellows. “We were able to cobble together enough of a repair to get us here, but FreeFare’s the end of the line for us, if we can’t get a replacement coupling.”

  “Which you just promised us,” the third Astarti snapped, his wide-set eyes fixed on Thorn with a hard, flat gaze.

  “A promise I’ll be keeping, trust me,” Thorn replied.

  “You’re lucky whoever was attacking you didn’t run you down after that coupling blew,” Kira said.

  “That’s the strange part. They could have, but they didn’t. Once we were able to start running, they broke off.”

  “And we’re not the only ones it happened to,” the second Astarti put in, gesturing at another table on the far side of the bar. Sure enough, the figures sitting around it were just as beaten up, flash-burned, and bandaged as these Astarti.

  This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Bilau, Densmore said. Are you sure you want to chase down pirates, Stellers?

  Not particularly keen on it, no, ma’am. But there’s something about this that intrigues me.

  I’ll grant you that. Trouble is, the intriguing things can be worthwhile to run down or a complete waste of time. And the only way to find out which is to try and run it down.

  You advocating we do that, ma’am?

  Densmore glanced his direction, her smile sly. You’re the boss here, Stellers.

  Which means I wear it if this proves to be a bust.

  Or get the credit if it works out.

  So what’s your recommendation, ma’am?

  Densmore’s smile became briefly more genuine. Once more, you’re the boss, Stellers. You’re currently at the top. And you know what they say about the top. It’s lonely up there.

  “Do you find our situation amusing?” the first Astarti asked, its gaze like cold glass. Thorn hadn’t even realized he’d been chuckling.

  “What? Oh, no. I don’t find your situation funny at all. Mine, though, is funny as hell,” Thorn said.

  Densmore grinned and looked away.

  Kira looked at the far table of injured spacers, then back to the Astarti. “So where, exactly, did all of this happen, anyway?” she asked.

  The Astarti looked at one another. “A power coupling. Within one day.”

  Thorn nodded. “Done.”

  The Astarti glanced at one another again. The other two finally made affirmative noises and gestures, and the first one looked back at Thorn. “The Ghosts,” he finally said.

  “The Ghosts. What ghosts? What about them? Who are they?” Thorn asked.

  “Not who. Where. That’s where these attacks are happening. In The Ghosts.”

  Thorn leaned back in his seat. He didn’t need Joining to know that, wherever these Ghosts were, these Astarti were terrified at just the thought of them.

  Which meant, he thought, that was exactly where they needed to go.

  6

  Morgan plodded down the steps from the farmhouse door, then she stopped and squinted across the yard. Her dad had his attention buried in the inner workings of a tractor parked just in the shade of the south sourfruit orchard. She heard a clang, then a curse, and smiled.

  Okay, he wasn’t her dad. Thorn Stellers was her dad. In a way, though, this man was, too. Her foster dad. But she was still quite fond of him and was happy to accept him as her father while Thorn and Kira were away.

  Movement in the orchard caught her eyes, and her smile became a frown. A pair of Marines had been patrolling on the far side of the orchard and were on their way back to their bivouac, having been relieved. She had very mixed feelings about the Marines being here. On the one hand, they did make her feel more secure. On the other, she resented them having to be here in the first place.

  And, of course, she was pretty sure that she could take care of herself. Kira and Thorn had made it abundantly clear that she had to refrain from using her powers, unless it was an extreme emergency. But if it was, she suspected she could probably do way more harm to anyone trying to attack the farm, or even Nebo itself, than the Marines ever could.

  She also suspected Kira and Thorn both knew that, which is why they weren’t too fussed about letting her stay here, on Nebo, in the first place.

  But that made Morgan chew her lip in thought. Why hadn’t the Monsters, the dark and dangerous Nyctus, tried to come after her again? For that matter, what did they do when they weren’t coming after her? She assumed they’d be off fighting the Orbital Navy, and that’s where her mom and dad, Kira and Thorn, were. That’s why they had to leave her here. But she wasn’t sure that was the case. And now the question intrigued her in a strange, compelling way. It was as though the question really wanted Morgan to find an answer to it.

  She turned and headed for the Marine bivouac, a small sprawl of prefabricated buildings sitting in a hollow on the west edge of the farm. She ambled up to the sentries standing guard at the top of the hollow. The sentries, in turn, waved to her, and one of them came forward. He was a Corporal. Or Morgan thought he was, at least. She was only just now starting to sort out the bits and bobs on their uniforms that said what rank they were, what division or battalion or whatever it was called they belonged to, and their medals. And there were lots of those. Of course, these Marines had apparently seen a lot of combat and were really good at it. She’d heard them called ee-leet, and she knew the word, but not how it applied to them as soldiers.

  “Hello, Morgan. Everything okay?” the Corporal asked.

  “Yeah. I was just looking for Major Fenton.”

  The Corporal turned and nodded to one of the other sentries, who ran off, down into the hollow. He reappeared a moment later, Major Fenton with him.

  “Hi, Morgan. I understand you’d like to talk to me,” he said.

  “If you’ve got a minute.”

  He smiled. “You’re the reason we’re here, so yeah, if you need a minute, you’ve got it.”

  “I’d like to see the war records,” she said.

  Fenton’s face became a puzzled frown. “War records?”

  “Yeah. Someone must be, you know, writing it all down. What happens. And when. And where. All the battles and stuff. I’d li
ke to see that stuff.”

  Fenton rubbed his chin. “Well, we don’t have much of anything like that here. We basically just keep records of what we’ve been doing. And that’s all classified.”

  “Classified?

  “That means a lot of it’s secret stuff that you can only see or read if you’ve got permission to.”

  “Oh. Okay. How do I get permission?”

  Fenton crossed his arms. “It’s not really that simple, I’m afraid. To get permission, what we call clearance, in the ON, you need to pass certain background checks, to make sure you’re not a security risk. You also have to have a need to know whatever it is you’re reading.”

  “But I do need to know it.”

  Fenton offered an indulgent smile. “Tell you what, I’ll call up to the Apocalypse. That’s the big cruiser orbiting the planet. Maybe her Captain can help you out.”

  Morgan narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why do I think you’re just trying to pass me off to somebody else?”

  The sentries laughed. “She’s a sharp kid, sir!” the Corporal said.

  Even Fenton smiled. “She is. And yeah, I am, actually. But I really can’t help you, Morgan. Maybe the folks up there can.”

  But they couldn’t. The Captain of the Apocalypse, a slim, fussy man named Ruden, unhesitatingly quoted articles and sections and such from regulations, all to say, “no, I’m sorry, I can’t give you any of that information.” Morgan asked to speak to someone else, someone who could just work around all those sub-paragraphs and clauses, but she ran into a blank wall there, too. She might be the reason they were all there in the first place, to protect her. But while she might be one of the most powerful ’casters in existence, they all saw her as a kid. She was just supposed to stay out of the way and play silly kids’ games, and do silly kids’ things, and just stay out of trouble.

  Now, Morgan brooded in the shade of a sourfruit tree. She hugged her knees to herself, trying to think a way past the implacable barricades intended to seal her up on Nebo, like she’d been put in prison.

  She felt her eyes widen. Prison. How many times had the Nyctus, the Monsters, locked her up? Sure, she might be a lot more comfortable and safe in this prison, but it was still a prison, wasn’t it?