by J. N. Chaney
He considered how he could alter the nature of reality, if there was something he could do that wouldn’t likely have any significant, unintended consequences. He raced through all the obvious options he could think of, but each time he slammed face-first into a wall of I don’t know. It would be better to lose Conveyor One than to screw up existence itself. But he wasn’t going to let that happen, either. So, he was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Besides, maybe the Hecate and the other escorts would manage to stop the heavy cruiser—
“Shit.”
The heavy cruiser, trailing a stream of atmo and shedding debris from multiple weapon hits, nonetheless managed to vomit out a barrage of missiles-- twenty-nine in all. Thorn estimated he had two, maybe two and a half minutes to stop them.
He gripped his talisman and concentrated. Simple Hammer ’castings were enough to knock the missiles off their trajectory, but after a half-dozen such attempts, he gave up. The missiles were smart enough to regain their target locks.
He switched to Scorch effects, turning magic into blasts of incandescent fury as hot as fresh magma. One after another, he burned through the casings of the onrushing missiles, destroying their motors and guidance systems. Seven, eight. Nine. Ten.
Too slow.
“Can I help?”
Thorn glanced at the figure that had suddenly appeared beside him. It was Winuk, clad in a Nyctus spacesuit. His immediate thought was, no, Winuk, get out of here. But Winuk was a shaman, capable of his own magic. Moreover, he had a deeply vested interest in keeping Conveyor One intact. He wanted to fight for his ship. Who was Thorn to deny that?
So Thorn nodded. “Yes! Whatever you can do to take those missiles out!”
Thorn turned back to the frantic task at hand. He resumed incinerating missiles, destroying four more, starting on a fifth, then realizing it had suddenly been encased in ice. Off-balance and with its seeker head blocked, it tumbled out of control, its motor burning the last of its fuel in furious but futile attempts to correct.
“Winuk, concentrate on the missiles starting at the top of the swarm! I’ll start at the bottom!”
The old shaman grunted his assent. It would be incredibly dumb if they failed to defend Conveyor One because they kept tripping over each other’s attempts to take out the missiles.
Less than thirty seconds to detonation. Seven missiles left. Six. The point-defense batteries with a clear field of fire opened up and took out one more. Now four. Three.
Two left, only a few seconds from detonation.
Thorn flung his awareness sideways, into Winuk’s mind. He could only hope the shaman wouldn’t resist or block him. He needed Winuk’s help to do what he was going to do.
A distant part of Thorn knew this was a pivotal moment. He wanted Winuk to trust him in a profoundly intimate way, by essentially letting Thorn take over his thoughts and surrender his identity. There would be no more telling moment of trust between the two peoples.
Winuk took a mental step back and let Thorn do what he needed to do.
Thorn summoned his own magic, and Winuk’s in tandem, then crafted both into a solid barrier of defiance, an impenetrable wall of magical denial. At least, he hoped it was impenetrable—
The two missiles slammed into the shimmering wall. One was pulverized to fragments, but the other managed to detonate its warhead. For a moment, the universe turned white.
Slowly, it faded, the starfield lost behind a glowing cloud of plasma vapor. The fact that Thorn was present and aware of it, and could see it, was definitely a good sign.
He blinked, then launched his senses back across the empty kilometers, toward the battle. The heavy cruiser pressed on relentlessly, Kestrel fighters swarming around and harrying it, the Hecate, and the other ON escorts racing after it. They’d soon catch it, but likely not before it managed to reload its missile tubes and fire another spread. Thorn and Winuk had expended a great deal of their magical potential and might not be able to stop another salvo.
Something shoved Thorn’s attention sideways, and he focused on a piece of debris, a ten meter-long chunk of broken hull plating spalled off the heavy cruiser by a weapon impact. Thorn glanced at Winuk and saw the shaman’s bulbous eyes staring back at him. Despite their alien depths, Thorn saw a spark of something familiar in them. It was a flicker of camaraderie. Winuk had been the one to divert his attention, and Thorn knew why even without asking.
He swung his awareness back into space, fixed it on the chunk of debris, then reached out and caught it in a magical grip. Then he wound up and flung it as hard as he could into the heavy cruiser’s bridge. It smashed through armor and structural members and buried itself deep inside the cruiser with a blast of icy fog and a spray of ice crystals. This Nyctus ship had apparently maintained an aqueous environment on board, or at least on the bridge. Now bodies tumbled out of the ragged gap, slowly spinning as they froze in the cosmic cold. The heavy cruiser began to veer, its course deflected by the impact and subsequent loss of control. Thorn was tempted to finish the job and just destroy it, but Winuk’s voice sounded amid his own thoughts.
Take them alive. Please. They may yet be saved.
Thorn hesitated, then ended his Joining with Winuk and released his other ’castings. Reality rushed back in, Thorn standing on the brink of the abyss yawning beyond the hole that had been blasted in Conveyor One’s flank. He got hit with another wave of vertigo and wobbled on his feet until Winuk steadied him with quick tentacles.
Thorn, are you alright? Winuk asked.
Thorn turned to the old shaman. He and this Nyctus, someone he once would have considered a bitter enemy, suited only for death, had just cooperated to save hundreds of lives—human and squid.
And just like that, the end of the war suddenly popped into view. It was still distant, but it was there. His promise to Morgan, that he would try to save what Nyctus he could, became something attainable, even though Thorn would kill when necessary. Thorn exhaled, feeling his shoulders rise.
He smiled at Winuk. Yes. I’m fine. Better than I have been for a long time, in fact.
Despite his unexpected moment of bonding with Winuk, Thorn kept a wary eye on the Nyctus survivors taken off the heavy cruiser. There were twenty-three of them, under the command of a junior officer, since all of the bridge officers were dead. They’d been brought aboard Conveyor One as prisoners, across a motley collection of shuttles and Mol’s Gyrfalcon, which had raced out to assist in the fight along with Bertilak in the Jolly. They’d arrived too late, so they had to settle for mopping up and prisoner transport.
Mol sidled over beside Thorn. “Hey, sir. Hear you managed to win a fight without me.”
“Touch and go without you there, but I got lucky with sixteen straight kills,” Thorn said. “Excuse me, sixteen and a half. Think some other cruiser winged one, so we’ll share.”
Mol grinned, but it faded as she watched the Nyctus prisoners huddle together in a miserable-looking group. Winuk and several of the Radiant Nyctus already aboard Conveyor One were moving now to speak to them. The humans kept a watchful but respectful distance.
“I guess we’re about to see if Monsters can be turned into Radiants just by the power of persuasion,” Thorn said.
Mol gave him a wry glance. “I’m sure that sentence would mean something to somebody.”
“It would. To my twelve-year-old daughter, in fact.”
“If that was meant to be a shot, it wasn’t. She created a whole freakin’ nebula with the power of her mojo. I’m not even going to begin trying to compare myself to that,” Mol fired back, waving dismissively toward space.
Winuk stopped in front of the group of prisoners and focused his attention on the officer commanding them. They were all doing their best to look defiant and uncowed, but Thorn didn’t need to use magic to see their abject, humiliated misery.
“Do you realize what you tried to do? You tried to destroy this ship and, in the process, kill dozens of Nyctus,” Winuk said.
“This ship is a travesty!” the officer snapped back. “It is nothing but piteous charity from the humans, intended to turn our people into refugees and relocate them to wherever the air-breathers decide is most out of their way!”
“So you would rather you stay and die as the Bilau terraform the waters away from our worlds?”
“We will fight them—!”
“We have fought them,” Winuk cut in, flashing crimson with anger. “We have fought them. Every time, we’ve been defeated and more of our people have died. It is pointless.” He gestured around with his tentacles. “This is our best chance for success. Can—can you not see that?”
The officer didn’t respond right away. Instead, he seemed to be doing—something. Thorn couldn’t make out what, but he opened his mouth to sound the alarm anyway. Before he could, though, a gunshot snapped out, echoing against the decks and bulkheads of Conveyor One. The Nyctus officer toppled to one side, a wicked blade clattering against the deck plates.
Mol lowered her sidearm as ON security closed in. They had their weapons trained on the rest of the Nyctus prisoners, their detachment commander shouting to search them again, and thoroughly.
“Saw something gleaming, figured it probably wasn’t something good.” She shrugged as she holstered her sidearm. “Didn’t think there was time to raise the alarm. Besides, it was just a squid.”
Thorn thought about speaking but decided that, if at all, he would have a quiet word with Mol later. Just because he’d had a revelation about how humans and Nyctus could actually not just coexist, but cooperate, it didn’t mean other humans would accept it anywhere near as quickly. Hell, it had taken staring down death, in the form of a barrage of incoming missiles, to make Thorn even begin to realize it. Now was not the time to start preaching about it to other members of the ON.
Winuk joined them. His scarlet anger had faded into the mottled greys and blacks of sadness.
“Thank you,” he said to Mol.
“How the hell did he get a knife past security, anyway?” Mol asked. “This some trick your people can do, hide stuff away? Or was it mojo—er, magic?”
“Neither. He simply inserted it into one of his dorsal tentacles to conceal it. The pain must have been excruciating.” Winuk’s anguish deepened as he said it. “Some of us will never swim in pure seas again, I think,” the shame and sadness in his voice echoing his somber bioluminescence.
“You don’t have to swim for them, Winuk. You are not their keeper,” Thorn said. As he did, that path he’d started to walk with Winuk became a little more distinct, that distant end of the war a little closer.
He realized he could not only accept the Nyctus, but he would also, in time, be able to forgive them. Not all, of course. But at least some of them.
Forgive the Nyctus. The thought felt even more alien than the squids themselves. And yet, there it was.
18
Thorn slid gratefully into his rack aboard the Hecate. Once, this had been his pretty much permanent home, the place where he knew he’d be resting his head almost every night. These days, though, he scattered his sleep across different beds—the Jolly, Mol’s Gyrfalcon, Code Gauntlet, Code Nebula, the Memphis, Nebo, and probably a few other places he’d simply lost in the blur.
It was nice to be home. Or home-ish.
He took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes.
Then snapped them open again as the Hecate’s battle stations alarm ripped apart the darkness. Muttering a blistering stream of curses, he reached for his boots—only to catch the time. He’d been asleep for nearly four hours. It sure as hell hadn’t felt like it.
Reynaud’s voice rattled over the intercom. “All hands, battle stations. I say again, battle stations. This is not a drill. I say again, this is not a drill.”
Thorn yanked his sidearm out of its locker and jammed it into its holster. As he did, he mused—briefly—on how much Reynaud sounded like Tanner, her voice a calm, measured, near-monotone. That was what happened when you trained and worked under the best. They rubbed off on you. And Tanner really was the best.
The instant Thorn thought it, a new voice came over the comm.
“Stellers, Tanner. Report to my CIC.”
Thorn had exited his quarters and started for the witchport, but he reversed course and headed deeper into the Hecate. He found Tanner in the repurposed cargo bay that was his CIC, his staff already at work, tapping at terminals and chattering softly into comm sets. Tanner gestured him over to the big tactical display.
Thorn clumped over to him, one boot still not properly strapped up. Tanner looked like he’d just come off parade. Did the man ever actually sleep, or did he just sit, perfectly groomed, waiting for the next calamity to happen?
“Thoughts?” Tanner asked.
Thorn unceremoniously lifted a foot onto the edge of a console and strapped up his errant boot. As he did, he peered at the display. What he saw made his eyes go round, driving the last dregs of sleep from his brain.
“Nyctus, sir? Attacking Code Gauntlet? They’re insane!” Thorn said, stomping his foot back on the deck.
“Not as insane as you might think. Contrary to that squid who understood their fleet to only have thirty-odd ships left, they’ve got—hell, a lot more,” Tanner said.
“One hundred and fourteen ships total, sir,” a nearby Lieutenant Commander cut in. “Only sixty-eight are actual Nyctus warships, though. Another thirty-one look like repurposed transports and other auxiliary craft. And the other fifteen are—”
The man stopped. Tanner shot him a glance. “What have I said about dramatic pauses in my CIC, Piers?”
“Sorry, sir. The AI’s having trouble giving us a firm ID on them because they all seem to be different hull designs,” the staff officer replied.
Thorn pulled out his talisman and looked at Tanner. “Sir, if I may?”
“Didn’t bring you down here for your sparkling wit, Stellers. Do what you need to do.”
Thorn smiled quickly, then shoved his attention through the talisman, beyond the Hecate’s hull, and into space. He swept it out and across the inbound Nyctus fleet, which had been arranged in two roughly equal squadrons. The fifteen unidentified ships were in the second, more distant of the two, as was the biggest of the Nyctus ships, an enormous battlewagon probably half again the mass of a battleship. He ignored it for the moment and concentrated on the motley collection of unknown ships. He flicked his awareness from one to the next, scanning the minds of the crews to see if he could gain some sense of who they were.
Some Nyctus. But also Danzur. And Philomek. And Owath. Even a smattering of Bilau. But they were mixed up among all of the ships, each of which rang with its own psychic character, the accumulated mental reverberations of their crews over time. Not only were they unique, but the impressions also soared up to emotional highs, plunged into emotional lows, and were shot through with more than a little jealousy, greed, and deviousness. This was different from warships, whose psychic signature tended to be more uniform, one of muted conformity punctuated by brief bursts of strong emotion, the echoes of battles.
Thorn ended the ’casting, blinking as the hard reality of the CIC came thundering back into place around him. He turned to Tanner.
“Sir, those other fifteen ships are mercenaries,” he said.
Tanner crossed his arms. “Mercenaries? That’s interesting, and not in a good way.”
“Can confirm, sir. The AI pulled specs from the Allied Stars criminal database. Eleven of those fifteen ships have outstanding warrants,” Piers, the staff officer, put in.
“And the other four just haven’t been caught yet,” Tanner said, nodding at the screen.
Thorn followed his gaze. “Sir, if the Nyctus are hiring mercenaries—”
“Then they’re desperate. The question, though, is to do what, exactly? They’re still woefully outgunned by the Third Fleet, most of which is here, at anchor. And that doesn’t even count Code Gauntlet’s fixed defenses,” Tanner said.
“No, they are not. That’s probably why they’re in the second wave of the attack.”
Piers cut in again. “Sir, Admiral Scoville on the comm.”
Tanner nodded. “Yes, sir?”
“Galen, there’s something peculiar about this attack.”
“Damned right, sir. Stellers has confirmed that a chunk of the squids’ second wave is mercenary ships,” Tanner replied.
“Yeah, we got that as well,” Scoville replied. “How long until you can get your squadron underway?”
Tanner glanced at the tactical display. “We’ll be crossing the start line in just over fifteen minutes, sir.”
“Good. I want you to take your squadron out to the far spinward flank and work your way back toward the squids’ second line. I do not want you to get decisively engaged. Stand-off attacks only. The rest of Third Fleet is going to form up on the Arcturus and take these bastards head-on.”
“Mind if I ask, sir, what you’re thinking here? Keeping us apart from the battle?” Tanner asked.
Scoville’s reply was frank. “I’m not sure. There’s just something about this that doesn’t feel right. I want you and your ships to act as an operational reserve, at least for now. You still have Stellers and Wixcombe aboard, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. And their daughter. She was due to head back to Nebo the day after tomorrow.”
“Perfect. Wait for my order to engage, Galen.” Scoville’s eyes twinkled. “Or do what I know you’re going to do, which is to engage anyway, when you feel the time is right.”
“You know me too well, sir.”
Scoville grinned, then the comm flicked off.