by J. N. Chaney
“Sir, this isn’t about fraternization. It’s—” Kira struggled for the right words. “It’s about Thorn—Lieutenant Stellers. He’s closed in on himself. I’ve tried talking to him via Joining, and he refuses. Just now, when I saw him down at the airlock, he didn’t seize the opportunity, so to speak, and that’s a problem for all of us.”
“All of us?”
“Yes, sir. He’s more than a simple gun you point at squid, and I think we both know it. This isn’t like having just anyone start suffering from burnout, or whatever’s happening to him. He’s a Starcaster—and a powerful one. Probably the most powerful around, at least right now. Maybe ever. That’s no ordinary weapon. That’s someone who can turn the war, and he can’t do it without being clear with me, not as a fellow officer, but as what—as who—we are, to each other. I know you have reservations about magic in general, sir—hell, I do, and I’m a Joiner. What I’m asking for is the chance to bring him back from this drift. From this place where he might lose his edge at the worst possible time, and all because I didn’t do everything I could to tell him the truth. About me. About his family. And maybe most of all, about the future.”
Tanner leaned back, his diamond gaze focused on Kira. She knew the man, had worked for him, and respected him immensely. She wanted to go on speaking, to give Tanner the entire picture, but couldn’t. Not before she’d finally had a chance to talk—really talk—to Thorn, anyway.
The penetrating silence went on. Kira started to deflate. Tanner was going to order her off his ship, tell her to start behaving like an ON officer and not some love-sick schoolgirl, because that’s what she was sure he thought this was about. Kira missed Thorn, desperately needed to talk to him, to be with him—
Which suddenly seemed so pathetic, even if it was just an outward appearance, that she opened her mouth to withdraw the request, then just be on her way.
But Tanner spoke first. “I’m going to approve your request, Wixcombe. I’ll contact Captain Densmore and work out the details. She owes me a favor or two, so I’ll call at least one of them in.” He leaned forward. “Temporary assignment, Wixcombe, not permanent. We’ll call it a cross-posting, come up with some operational reason for it to keep Fleet’s personnel branch happy.”
Kira blinked. “Oh. I—” She shook her head. “Thank you, sir.”
“Will there be anything else, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir,” Kira said, then stopped herself. “Actually, yes, sir, there is. Why did you change your mind?”
“Don’t normally explain my decisions to subordinates, Wixcombe, unless I think there’s good reason for it.”
“I understand, sir. But you were going to say no, and then you said yes. All due respect, sir, but I worked for you long enough to know that you don’t do things on a whim. And I know I’m being presumptuous as hell, here—”
“Lieutenant Stellers is an integral member of my crew,” Tanner cut in. “In many ways, he’s the reason the Hecate has the combat record she does. That’s because he’s a powerful Starcaster, just like you said.” Tanner leaned back again and sighed. “Honestly, I hate it. I hate that magic has become such a fundamental part of how we wage war. Magic is almost impossible to understand. It’s a huge factor in our ops planning, even though not all that long ago it didn’t exist outside of fairy tales. The rules around how it works aren’t clear, and seem to change. War was already a damned messy affair before magic came along, and now it’s a whole lot messier because of it.”
“Sir, the Nyctus—”
“Are the reason for it, I know. They use magic, and they’ll kick our asses with it if we don’t out-magic them right back. I get that. I hate it, but I get it, so I just get on with the job.” Tanner rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers, then sighed. “All this is to say, Wixcombe, that while magic is here, and here to stay, it has made my life a whole lot more difficult. I absolutely rely on Stellers to be my expert on the subject, and to do all the magical things he does to help us win battles. But I agree with you—there’s something wrong with him.”
“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking—what makes you say that? What have you seen?”
“Nothing overt. Stellers is continuing to do his job competently and well. But . . . it’s there. You don’t get to command a ship without learning a few things about people along the way. Stellers is starting to show some cracks. Hairline cracks, barely noticeable, but cracks nonetheless. Now, again, I need Stellers, and I need him whole and intact. I can’t use any crew member who can’t do their job, and that’s doubly true for my Starcaster. If he finally cracks and falls apart, though, not only am I left without a Starcaster, I may be left without a ship. Having someone who can move asteroids suddenly lose it—” He left the thought on a shrug. “Anyway, now that you’ve told me about your concerns regarding Stellers, I’m even more worried. So I need you to help me with him, Lieutenant. I need to know if he’s good to carry on, or if I need to find a new Starcaster for the Hecate.”
Kira’s eyes widened. “Wait—sir, are you asking me to spy on Thorn?”
“I’m asking you to do your job as a ON officer, who puts the welfare of the Fleet and the state ahead of all personal considerations. You know Stellers better than anyone, I’d venture, and you’re also a Starcaster yourself. That makes you the best candidate to do this. In some sense, you’re the only candidate for the job. You knew him when he was Thorn, and that matters to someone who’s endured that kind of trauma. You were there.” He cleared his throat once and looked away. “We’ve all been scarred by this war, Wixcombe, but the pain came earlier for some of us. As much as anyone can know Stellers, I think—no, that’s not true. I know you understand him, even if things are frosty right now.”
“Frosty? Sir, I—”
He held up a calming hand. “It’s my job to read people. You use minds. I use information and what I can see.” Tanner leveled that keen gaze on her again, then his eyes softened, but only slightly. “I’d point out, Wixcombe, that you came to me, asking for temporary assignment to the Hecate so you can spend time with Stellers. I’m granting your request, but under my terms. If you can’t do that, Lieutenant, then the airlock is that way,” he finished, pointing down to his right.
“Sir, aren’t you concerned about my objectivity in all this?”
“Should I be? Are you telling me that you, an ON officer, would be unable to put the mission first?”
Kira took a slow breath, suddenly remembering a conversation she’d had with one of the instructors at Code Nebula when she returned there for upgrade training.
. . . we can’t compromise what truly matters—the mission, the instructor, a Lieutenant-Commander named Fielder, had said. Whatever mission we’ve been given, it takes absolute priority over everything else. The mission is the only thing that matters. The outcome of a battle, a campaign—hell, of the entire war might hinge on the mission you’re given. Do you understand that, Wixcombe?
She’d respected Fielder, just as she respected Tanner. And both had the same message—the mission has to come first.
“No, sir. If I have any concerns about Lieutenant Stellers, I’ll share them with you,” Kira finally said.
“Good. Find out what’s going on in his head, Wixcombe. He’s holding something back.” He pinned her with a commanding stare, and Kira, for all her talent, felt young in that moment. “Just like you are. So if those things are related somehow, Lieutenant, I’m trusting you to reconcile them.”
The gleam of knowing in Tanner’s eyes stuck with Kira long after she’d saluted him and left the Hecate to retrieve her kit. She’d have thought he might have some latent ability for Joining, but not everything came back to magic. No, Tanner was really just that sharp, and he’d admitted as much to her, but she was so wrapped up in her own issues, she’d let it slide by.
Won’t do that again, she thought.
After all, he’d just taken a poorly conceived, almost desperate plea from Kira to come aboard the Hecate, turned it into
a crucial assignment, and now expected her to do the right thing in carrying it out. Tanner was a genius among officers, and she was learning to trust him through sheer force of his being insightful—and correct.
Duty came before all else. Even pain.
Which reminded her, as she passed through the airlock, past the hard scowl of the Marine she’d managed to bypass, of something her father had once told her, while she was still a teenager. You could tell what the right thing to do is, her father had said, because it’s almost always whatever sucks the most.
5
Once more, Thorn squeezed into Tanner’s planning room aboard the Hecate. The ship was a day out from Code Gauntlet, in company with her sister ship, the Circe, escorting a pair of fuel tenders to a replenishment point a few light-years into the no-man’s land separating human and Nyctus space, popularly known as the Zone.
It wasn’t particularly sexy work for a warship, but it was essential; all ships required helium-3 to fuel their fusion reactors, so the forward replenishment points, or FRPs, were an important factor in maintaining an ON presence in the Zone. It saved having to withdraw forces all the way back to the various bases for immediate resupply of critical combat supplies. There would likely have been one or two arsenal ships in company as well—specialized freighters loaded with expendable munitions, such as missiles and mines-- except no one was doing any shooting, so there were no munitions that needed topping up.
Assignment to one mission didn’t preclude being involved in others, though, as Thorn knew they were about to find out. Tanner had called him in response to some urgent transmission from Fleet. He arrived in Tanner’s planning room to find the XO and the Tactical Officer already there.
“Sir, reporting as ordered,” he said, saluting Tanner. “I—”
He stopped as the door opened again and Kira entered.
“Sir,” she said, saluting. Thorn caught a quick, sidelong glance directed his way. He carefully ignored it.
That Kira had been able to wrangle an assignment aboard the Hecate—even a temporary one—gave Thorn pause and made him confront some of his simmering confusion about the gulf between them. It could easily make him suspect Tanner and Densmore of collaborating on it, but they were consummate professionals, and he didn’t think his connection to Kira took precedence over the fighting readiness of an entire ship.
“She’s on a special assignment,” Tanner said, seeing the suspicion on Thorn’s face. “Is there a problem, Stellers?”
“There’s—” Thorn started, then shook his head. “No, sir, no problem. It was just . . . a surprise.”
“You’re the ones who convinced the powers that be to assign her to Captain Densmore’s command. And you don’t work around Alys Densmore for long before you’re involved in some scheme or other. It’s in her nature,” Tanner said, then leaned back in his chair, face inscrutable. “I’d suggest you make peace with Wixcombe.”
“We’re not at war, sir.”
Tanner smiled, and it was the face of a man who knew combat and relationships were neighbors at times. “Of course not. Dismissed. For now.”
“Yes, sir,” Thorn said, weighing Tanner’s words. He slipped from the cabin, while around him, the business of war went on, regardless of the disconnect he felt with Kira. It wasn’t easy dodging someone aboard a warship to begin with, and the Hecate wasn’t exactly a battleship. It made his life more difficult, at a time that difficulty was inconvenient.
And that meant that avoiding Kira wasn’t going to happen, and Thorn knew that just then, the gears of fate were nudging him in the right direction. There had been a gap, like two ships in a dock, their own inertia either pulling them apart, or pushing them together for an inevitable collision.
He was connected to Kira in ways the ON could never understand. He was also, in his own way, fearful of her. She alone understood what made him. Where he’d been.
How he had been forged in the ashes of a disaster, his ability awakened by a blood price so horrific that for years, Thorn suspected he would never be able to relate to another human, at least not in any normal sense. From orphan to sullen field worker—
—to Starcaster. And now, a shaper of the rules that made ships fly on thought, and war possible with pure will. He was a dangerous, uncertain thing in a galaxy made of known quantities, and for that and many other reasons, Thorn had pushed Kira away.
I fear myself. Thorn felt his mouth twist in disgust. He shook his head, looked to Kira, and reached his decision. Problems are only hard up until the point of decision. After that, they’re easy. He did the one thing he could to begin building a bridge back to her. He smiled, and it was sad, honest, and hopeful, and Kira understood. Whatever had gone on before the Vision, Thorn would erase it. And it started right in that moment, with a simple look.
“Alright,” Tanner said, breaking Thorn’s epiphany. “I’ve got Commander Ephraim from Fleet Intel on the line. He has something he wants to discuss with us—and, more specifically, with you, Lieutenant Stellers.”
Thorn stared. “Fleet intel, sir?”
Tanner tapped a control. The viewscreen mounted on the bulkhead behind his desk lit up with the image of a lean, surprisingly weather-beaten man with a patchy beard, sitting against a neutral background. “I’ll let Commander Ephraim explain.”
Thorn noticed that an icon hovered in the bottom-right corner of the screen, indicating that the transmission was encrypted. And it wasn’t just standard encryption, used for all routine military traffic; this was high-level, weapons-grade encryption, the kind only used for things most secret or sensitive.
“Alright, people,” Ephraim said, “We’ve come into possession of some intel that we need to follow up. Are any of you familiar with the name Pool of Stars?”
Thorn shook his head, as did Kira and the Tac O, a serious man named Osborne who kept his red hair shaved almost to his skull. Raynaud, however, nodded with the sage air of a naval historian.
“She was the first Alcubierre-capable ship humanity ever developed,” she said. “As I recall, she successfully managed some short trans-light journeys during her trials, but the first time she was deployed on a long flight, she disappeared.”
“Correct,” Ephraim replied. “She was launched almost two hundred and five years ago, now. She’d been equipped with the very first operational Alcubierre drive, and as your XO says, was involved in flight trials when she vanished. Engineers at the time knew there were potential problems with the Alcubierre drive in its first iteration and were investigating solutions when they lost the ship.”
“Wave cascade,” Tanner said.
“That’s right,” Ephraim replied. “So, when—”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Thorn cut in. “But—not an engineer here. What’s wave cascade?”
“Early Alcubierre drives had a tendency to run away, potentially sending ships further—and much faster—than was ever intended,” Tanner said. “We’ve got governor systems on modern drives that prevent that—in extreme cases, an automatic cutoff will collapse the Alcubierre wave and return the ship to normal space. The loss of the Pool of Stars was a major impetus to solve the problem.”
“So she was destroyed?” Kira asked.
“That’s been the assumption all along,” Ephraim replied. “We didn’t know for sure, because an uncontrolled wave cascade could very well have sent her so far out that any distress messages from her still wouldn’t have made it back to human space.”
“They had a trans-light drive, but no way of communicating faster than light speed?” Osborne said. “Ballsy.”
“I’ll say,” Raynaud said. “Imagine being about to activate that drive, to travel even a single light-year, and knowing that if something goes wrong, it’s going to be a minimum of one year before anyone else even knows about it.”
“The sort of people who willingly do that are a special breed for sure,” Tanner said. “But I doubt that you’ve called us up just to discuss the history of spaceflight, Commander.”
> “Indeed. Like I said, it had been assumed that the Pool of Stars had been lost, and likely destroyed. Well, the lost part is certain, but the destroyed part, not so much.”
“She’s been found?” Thorn asked. If so, that would be an amazing discovery, he knew, even if he wasn’t a subject matter expert in spaceflight. The very first Alcubierre-capable human ship—
Ephraim shook his head. “No, we haven’t found her. But, about two weeks ago, the frigate Spectre was doing a forward patrol in the Zone. She’d traversed all the way across and actually poked her toes into Nyctus space. While she was doing that, she detected a weak radio transmission, one that clearly didn’t have a natural origin. She was able to clean it up enough to tell it was a human source—but one either deep inside, or even beyond Nyctus space.”
“It was from the Pool of Stars?” Thorn asked. “What did it say?”
Ephraim shrugged. “Not much. It was an automated distress beacon.” He curled his lip; as he did, Thorn realized that what he’d thought was leathery skin from long exposure to the elements was actually scarring. At some point, Ephraim had been seriously burned. It wasn’t unusual for personnel injured in the line of duty to be assigned to staff jobs in headquarters, if they could still produce but were no longer suited for frontline deployments. It was a stark reminder that the effects of the war propagated far beyond the simple duality of just life and death.
“What’s the point of a distress beacon on a trans-light ship that doesn’t have trans-light comms?” Osborne asked.
“It’s called being hopeful, Tac O,” Tanner said. “The alternative is to have no beacon and just give up hope altogether.”
Osborne nodded in the silence that followed, letting the enormity of such danger settle over them all.
“Anyway,” Ephraim went on. “This tells us that the Pool of Stars was still intact when she returned to normal space—or at least intact enough to transmit this message. It means she may very well have survived and might even still be out there.”