by J. N. Chaney
“All due respect, Commander,” Kira said, “but, so what? Even if she is still out there, in one piece, that makes her—what, a historical curiosity? Why is Fleet intel involved?”
“Because, Lieutenant,” Ephraim replied. “As I said, the Pool of Stars seems to have entered, and perhaps passed through, Nyctus space. We’re speculating that it was encountering her that alerted the Nyctus to the existence of humans in the first place. More importantly, we’ve been wondering how the Nyctus were able to so quickly co-opt humans and turn them into Skins. Either they’re really fast studies—which, yes, is a possibility—or—”
“Or they’ve had time to study us,” Thorn said. “And by us, I mean the crew of the Pool of Stars.”
“But they’d all have been dead for years!” Osborne said. “They’d be studying nothing but corpses, or what’s left of them.”
“That’s where all of this gets both interesting and a little tough to understand without an advanced degree in space-time mechanics,” Ephraim said, raising a data slate and reading from it. “Wave cascade can result in significant displacement in all four standard dimensions, from the perspective of an outside observer. From the perspective of an observer located inside the runaway Alcubierre bubble, there is no such displacement. The lack of displacement in the three spatial dimensions is both implicit in, and fundamental to, modern Alcubierre drive technology, but—”
Ephraim stopped, scowled, and tossed the data slate back onto his desk. “To hell with that. Bottom line is that from our perspective, the Pool of Stars vanished two centuries ago because of a wave cascade. But from the perspective of her crew, it’s quite possible the wave cascade means that no time passed for them at all. So, if they only emerged from the wave cascade, say, two years ago—”
“Then, as far as they’re concerned, only two years have passed since they left the year 2096,” Kira said, her voice soft with wonder.
“Indeed,” Ephraim replied. “Which means they may still be alive.”
“Which means they might be prisoners of the Nyctus,” Raynaud added. As soon as she said it, Thorn felt a sudden tension in Kira’s demeanor.
“And that brings us back to the serious matter of the so-called Skins,” Ephraim went on. “The Nyctus have somehow very quickly figured out how to co-opt humans so thoroughly that we’re not even sure if the Skins know that they’re Skins. Our scientific intel arm has been working with the Starcaster Corps to come up with possible explanations—and, so far, they haven’t. None of them believe that it would be possible for the Nyctus to do this if they haven’t had time to study and experiment on humans for longer than the war’s been going on.”
“But we don’t know that’s the case,” Tanner said. “You’re surmising that, but, like you said, you don’t know it.”
“We don’t, no,” Ephraim conceded. “It’s all really conjecture, based on what we know about the Nyctus—which admittedly isn’t all that much.”
“Sir,” Kira said. “There is another possibility. I—” She stopped and took a breath. “I was taken captive by the Nyctus, along with three other humans.”
“We’re well aware of that, Lieutenant,” Ephraim replied.
“Well, then doesn’t that offer a simpler answer? That it was . . . it was us that the Nyctus studied? That they figured out how to control humans through us?”
Thorn felt the sudden, desolate guilt and sadness radiating from Kira. It only lasted an instant before her innate mental shields slammed into place, but it was very much there.
“They did manage to control the fellow who carried the bomb aboard the Hecate,” Raynaud said. “I . . . I don’t remember his name—”
“Gillis,” Kira said. “His name was Gillis.”
Raynaud nodded and offered Kira an apologetic look. “Right. Gillis. Maybe that was an early attempt at a Skin.”
Kira offered a bleak nod back. “That’s what I mean.”
“Honestly, Lieutenant Wixcombe,” Ephraim said, “we’ve considered that. Considered it, and rejected it. You and your colleagues were all Starcasters. None of the Skins we’ve detected are. Moreover, the Starcaster Corps itself tells us that it’s unlikely the squids could establish lasting control over a Starcaster, because of—well, magic.” He waved a hand. “Look who I’m telling here.”
Kira just nodded again, but Thorn didn’t need Joining to tell she wasn’t convinced. He resolved to move their quiet discussion up in time, but a more pressing question hovered in the planning room now.
“Sir, where are you going with all of this?” Thorn asked Ephraim. “You specifically asked me to attend this meeting, so I assume you have some sort of plan that involves me? Or, at the least, some aspect of my ability?”
Ephraim nodded. “Fleet wants to find the Pool of Stars, if she’s still out there and intact. If she’s fallen into Nyctus hands, they want to know that. And if they have her crew, and any of them are still alive, they want to know that, too. Ultimately, they’re hoping this will provide some answers regarding how the Nyctus are turning humans into Skins.”
“At the risk of sounding kind of callous,” Tanner put in, “why not just take one of the Skins into custody and study one in the flesh? We’ve done far worse. It is, after all, war.”
Thorn glanced at Tanner. He was right; it did sound callous. Since they didn’t understand the Skins, they had no idea how human they really remained. Studying one might be tantamount to killing it.
But he got it. This was war, and war was a callous thing.
“We’ve identified five Skins now, and we are doing our best to screen for more without unduly alerting anyone. Fortunately, in war time, people are willing to put up with all sorts of scrutiny, including some egregious violations of their privacy, in the name of security. So we’ve built some extra vetting procedures into our standard security screening.” He waved helplessly in the face of this breach of trust. “Until then, Fleet has decided to just keep the Skins we know about under observation. We’ve manipulated regular personnel movements to move them into areas where they don’t have access to critical systems or data—or, if they do, it’s data we want them to see.”
“That is one hell of a risky game,” Raynaud said, shaking her head. “Wouldn’t we usually just round spies up?”
“Eventually, we will,” Ephraim replied.
Thorn leaned in. “Again, sir, this is all really interesting, but—”
“But I said we want to find the Pool of Stars, or at least learn what happened to her,” Ephraim said. “That’s going to be your job, Lieutenant Stellers. You’ll continue using the Hecate as your base of operations. Captain Tanner will be sent full orders shortly. Effective immediately, this will be the priority mission for you, and for the Hecate. We’re also going to send some missions specialists to work with you. The frigate Mystic will be departing shortly with them aboard and will rendezvous with you to transfer them over.”
Thorn felt himself agreeing, but the enormity of the task suddenly loomed over him, like a massive wave about to break. The idea forming before Thorn meant taking the Hecate deep into Nyctus space, and possibly even into regions unknown—all to find an ancient ship that may or may not have been destroyed two hundred years ago.
For good measure, the ship might be in control of vicious squid who were masters at twisting humans into unwitting spies.
Thorn took a calming breath, feeling the inner reserves of magic rippling in anticipation of future use. Being hit by a breaking wave was fine, as long as you were able to come up for air and keep swimming afterward. Otherwise, you drowned.
“Understood, sir,” was all Thorn finally said. He felt Kira looking at him but kept his gaze fixed doggedly on the screen—
Which switched from Ephraim’s image to that of a ship.
“This is the Pool of Stars. She was a big deal back in her day,” Ephraim voiced over the image. “So there’s a lot of imagery and video of her. We’ll be sending along a complete package—plans, schematics, details of
her crew, everything we can dig up.”
Thorn stared at the image, a series of boxy modules held together by an open latticework of girders. Conduits snaked across every exposed surface; a small forest of antennae protruded from points all over her awkward shape. The Pool of Stars looked more like a half-constructed building than anything recognizable as a ship.
“Holy shit,” Osborne said. “Hard to believe anyone would be willing to fly in that thing.”
“They put an Alcubierre drive on that?” Raynaud asked, then glanced at Osborne. “To use your word, Lieutenant, that was damned ballsy.”
“She was cutting edge tech in her day,” Tanner replied. “I’m sure that her crew would look back at the ships that carried the very first humans into space and say the same thing about them.”
Thorn leaned in closer to the image. Something had caught his eye. “Can we zoom in on her bow,” he asked, pointing to a blurred area. “There’s something there.”
His voice activated the zoom function, causing the image to expand and focus on the prow of the ship. That meant the largest and forward-most of the chunky modules, which Thorn assumed contained the bridge and crew hab.
“There,” Thorn said. “That, right there. Some sort of marking or insignia. What is that?”
He pointed at a cartoony painting on the side of the module of a virginal woman in white, sitting primly sidesaddle on a donkey. Beneath her chastely crossed ankles the words Una’s Ass were written in a flowing, cursive script.
“It’s your lucky day, Lieutenant,” Ephraim said. “You’ve got a guy briefing you who can actually answer that question. I’ve long had a passion for ancient military tech, and especially for the air-breathing flying machines of the Twentieth Century. That, my friend, is nose art. Crews painted nose art on their machines for a whole bunch of different reasons, everything from personalizing their particular craft, to offering very visible, and often pretty rude defiance to their enemies. Mostly, though, they did it for luck, believing that it would give their machine a personality, one that would fight right alongside them. Early ON ships used to do it, too, honoring traditions from those ancient wars.” He smiled. “This is a pretty tame example, frankly. Some of it was quite, um, raunchy.”
“They did it for luck?” Thorn asked.
Kira was the one who answered, her gaze on Thorn.
“Doesn’t look like it worked.”
6
They waited for the Mystic to arrange a rendezvous with the Hecate and transfer whatever mission specialists were coming to work with Thorn, and Tanner decided to use his newfound freedom once they were done escorting the fuel tenders. He had the navigation officer use the frigate Specter’s data to determine where they could intercept the ancient distress call; the Pool of Stars was a mystery, but not without some known data points from which the crew could work backward.
It wasn’t much of a navigational problem; since they knew the exact rate at which the message was traveling—the speed of light—and when and where the Specter had encountered it, working out an intercept point wasn’t tough. The tough part was the fact their destination was a point almost three quarters of the way across the Zone, alarmingly close to Nyctus space.
“We could wait a few years,” Raynaud offered, “and give the signal time to reach safer space.”
Tanner gave her a look, but she just smiled and shrugged in response. But it nudged discussion in the direction of what was becoming an increasingly evident elephant in the room.
The Nyctus were gone.
“Okay, of course they’re not gone,” Tanner said. “Intel is still detecting activity over there, so the squids are somewhere on their side of the Zone. Since their attack on Nebo, there’s been virtually no evidence of Nyctus activity any closer to ON space.”
“Maybe we hurt them a lot more than we thought in that last fleet clash,” Osborne suggested. “Maybe they’re off licking their wounds somewhere.”
Thorn narrowed his eyes at the star chart depicted on the main view screen on the Hecate’s bridge. They’d found absolutely no evidence that anyone aboard the ship was a Skin, so Tanner felt more comfortable moving tactical discussions out of his cramped planning room and onto the more spacious bridge.
Thorn crossed his arms. “I don’t think so,” he said, thinking of the battle Osborne was alluding to. It had been a trap set by the Nyctus, an ambush intended to catch and destroy most of the ON fleet. Arriving at the last moment, the Hecate and Mol’s Gyrfalcon had carried Thorn and Kira respectively to where they’d been able to disrupt an entire Nyctus flank with magic, forcing their withdrawal from the battle. “I was there. We drove the squids off, but we didn’t rout them. All we really did was stop them from destroying our fleet.”
“So what the hell are they up to over there?” Raynaud asked.
Tanner gave his head a slow shake. “That’s the question of the day, now, isn’t it?”
Thorn shook his head at the Rating sitting across the mess table from him. “No, I don’t think the Nyctus have all died, crewman,” he said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
“You sure, sir? You can . . . you know, tell stuff like that, using your magical powers, right? I heard that the Nyctus all died off.”
“To a plague,” another Rating said.
“Actually, I heard it was a bio-weapon, one we developed. And now the brass are worried it might backfire and infect us, too.”
“Okay, hold on a second,” Thorn said, raising a hand and his voice. “These are rumors, people, and not very good ones.”
“You know what they say, sir,” an Engineering Petty Officer put in. “If you haven’t heard a rumor by end of shift, start one.”
This time, Thorn did roll his eyes. “If only everyone waited that long.”
Thorn studied the mess, now a far different space than when he’d come aboard. The officers normally ate in their own, but Tanner had, some months ago, repurposed the officers’ mess for storage—anything that could be removed from the magazines, that wasn’t actually a weapon, was now stored in there, meaning the magazines could squeeze in more munitions.
The move had been accompanied by the usual muttered grumbles and cursing. The officers weren’t especially happy to mess-in with the crew, but it went the other way, too. Having the officers around forced a tense formality among the Ratings and Petty Officers that was only just starting to abate. To help, the officers normally sat at separate tables, but Tanner had stood down all but critical crew functions for a day to give the Hecate’s people a break before they launched into the far-flung reaches of the Zone.
So here Thorn was, jammed in with a table full of enlisted personnel who seemed to think this was the perfect time to float every outlandish theory about the Nyctus for his review.
“Rumors are just that—rumors,” Thorn said. “What we know is that the squids have gone quiet. But they’re still out there, hunkered down in their own space. We’re not sure why. And we assume that they’ll eventually be back. That’s it, that’s all, people. Unless Captain Tanner says anything different, any stories you hear are just unfounded rumors, got it?”
The Ratings all nodded and muttered, “Yes, sir.” The Petty Officer just grinned.
“There you go, sir. You’ve finally put an end to rumors in the Orbital Navy. Who’d have thought it would be so easy?” His grin fell, replaced by a look of cherubic innocence that was, no doubt, utter bullshit. “Kinda makes you wonder why no one thought of it before.”
Thorn glared at the Petty Officer. “I mean this with the deepest affection and respect, Petty Officer, so don’t take it any other way.” He smiled. “Screw you.”
The Petty Officer laughed.
After dinner, Thorn started back to his quarters. He technically had the same day off everyone else did, but he didn’t intend to use it for leisure. The voluminous orders transmitted from Fleet were a maddening combination of intricate detail and broad, unanswered questions. He needed time to read and digest them.
Thorn drew to a stop rounding the corner, nearly colliding with—
Kira.
“Hey,” she said. They were inches apart, the frost thawing with each passing second. That was good.
“Kira. Hey.”
“Isn’t this the part where you explain how you’re too busy to talk and run away?”
Thorn started to bristle—but then, he didn’t. Because she was right, and his views had changed since his decision. She just didn’t know it yet.
So he smiled. “Yeah, I deserve that. But so do you. Before the Vision—”
“Thorn, we need to talk. But not here, in a—”
They both paused and moved aside as a Rating pushed past them, muttering, “Excuse me, sir, ma’am.”
“In a random corridor,” Kira went on. “I’ve got a meeting with the XO that I’m going to be late for in about one minute.”
“Yeah, I have to dig into those orders I got,” Thorn replied. “Seems like it’s a day off for everyone else.”
“Not off,” Kira corrected him. “Low ops.”
“Right. Low ops. Not for the officers, though.”
“That’s why we get paid the big bucks.”
He smiled. “Really? When does that start?”
“Twenty-hundred, Thorn. I’d say in your quarters or mine, but I don’t think Tanner would be impressed. Anyway, I’ll find a quiet spot.” She met Thorn’s eyes directly. “Please be there, Thorn.”
He sighed, then smiled again, and this time, she saw it reach his eyes. “I will.”
She nodded, then pushed around him, heading for her meeting. Thorn carried on to his own quarters, and the intentionally vague orders that awaited.
Thorn had to stop and turn around. He needed to see Tanner, to discuss and clarify particular points of Fleet’s orders, but the conversation he’d overheard, drifting out of a machinery compartment, was something he couldn’t ignore.