by J. N. Chaney
And these squids, the millions upon millions of them, were—
The best way to describe it was dispassionate. Cool. Aloof, and in some flashes, even clinically dull. There were no sweeping trends toward any particular, collective mindset. No massed focus, no deep purpose—no aggression. It felt like a multitude of squids just going about their daily lives, working squid jobs, eating squid meals, dreaming squid dreams. The planet was rich, and bountiful, and profoundly peaceful.
And that was it.
He found no hints of military installations, or armaments production, or any sort of significant militarization at all. The planet clearly produced large quantities of food, and presumably minerals and other commodities, but that was as far as it went. This planet wasn’t just far behind the war’s front lines physically, it was also deep in the squids’ ideological rear.
Thorn let his awareness brush back and forth across the throngs of squids. They were civilians. They were parents. There were children.
Cotswold and Nebo had been similar worlds, peaceful and agrarian. And the Nyctus had obliterated them. It brought a recent conversation he’d had with Dart back into focus, shortly after their most recent battle.
These cycles of hatred, he’d said, they just go round and round, there’s lots of death and destruction—and the fire will never die.
And Thorn had replied, The sooner we can end this war, the better. And if that means pulling every living squid into the void and leaving them there to die, well, there you go. Your cycle of violence problem is solved.
Every living squid included these ones—the ones going peacefully about their lives, the war a distant rumble, nothing more. Except the food they produced fed the Nyctus soldiers. The metal ores they mined became Nyctus ships and weapons.
Thorn faced a choice, and the options were simple. Now it was time to get back home, to hand all of these observations over to Fleet, then try to convince them to send a force here, and do to this planet what the squids had done to Cotswold, to Nebo—
For a moment, Thorn lost himself in the image of Nebo and its apocalyptic fate—how it would look not blue and cloud-dappled, but the black and grey of barren rock and ash. A dead place. A place of memory, and char, and ghosts.
That moment was enough. Something sharp jabbed him in the arm.
He spun around to see Brid standing next to him, a hypodermic needle in one hand, a boarding pistol loaded with frangible rounds in the other.
“Sorry, Thorn,” she said. “But this is as far as this mission goes, at least under your command. We’ll take it from here.”
Brid, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, started tapping at the redundant controls on that side of the cockpit, using the flight management system to access—
Trixie. She was trying to access Trixie’s core programming.
Thorn didn’t hesitate. He lashed out with magical power, meaning to snuff out the consciousness of these two traitors—because that’s what they were. They were traitors. They were Skins. And somehow they’d managed to fly under the sensors anyway.
Fine. He’d render them unconscious. Or maybe dead. He didn’t care which.
Except, when he tried to shape magic into the Lifer effects that would slam the thinking right out of their minds, he couldn’t. He couldn’t make his intent and thoughts and abilities sync up. Instead, he found himself facing nothing but a growing roar of static.
Whatever Brid had injected into him, it had ripped away Thorn’s ability to do magic. In an instant, he’d ceased to be a Starcaster.
Tuck, I’m sorry I let this happen to you, Thorn thought, as the magic faded away like water into sand.
16
Kira had returned to the Stiletto with both relief and dread. Relief, because she was spared, at least for now, from having to confront Thorn any further about her awful revelation to him. Dread, because she had no idea what was happening to him. She thought about reaching out, Joining him across the vast gulf of space that separated them, but didn’t dare. She might end up intruding at the worst possible time, during a battle, or while Thorn was otherwise occupied with what could very well literally be a life-and-death situation. And wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing? Throwing him off at the most critical moment and effectively causing him to be hurt—or worse.
The Stiletto, a cruiser, made the cramped confines of the Hecate seem even more claustrophobic by comparison. As she walked along the upper main corridor that ran the length of the ship, it struck her that she didn’t even need to flatten herself against a bulkhead to pass by other crew. She did anyway, by sheer reflex, provoking a bemused glance from a pair of Petty Officers. One of them grinned.
“You just spent a spell aboard a corvette or frigate, didn’t you, ma’am?”
She smiled, then let her eyes flicker over the space around them. “Destroyer, actually.”
“Yeah, I figured. When I transferred here from a corvette, I felt like I was walking through an empty cargo hold.” He saluted, adding, “You have a good day, ma’am.”
“You too.”
She carried on, heading for the black hole. She’d fallen right back into her old job as one of Densmore’s ops staff. The black hole, named so because it was a ponderously secure cluster of compartments buried in the center of the ship, was where she spent most of her days. All sorts of ops, from the tediously mundane, to the most covert of covert ops, were formulated and monitored from there.
It was also where Densmore spent most of her time. She was Captain of the Stiletto, but she normally left commanding the ship itself in the hands of her XO. Densmore’s main focus usually fixated somewhere beyond the ship, on some ongoing operation or other.
Kira reached the event horizon—the name used by most crew—for the compartment that separated the black hole from the rest of the ship.
Other compartments just had a door or, at most, a set of heavy blast doors. But the black hole needed to be as secure as pretty much any other place in the Fleet, so would-be visitors had to enter the event horizon first, check in with the two Marines on duty, and be scanned for any contraband that might violate security protocols, such as recording devices. Just like its celestial namesake, nothing was ever supposed to come out of the black hole—especially information.
Kira stepped in and stopped at the booth containing a dour, stone-faced Marine. She held up her security badge so it could be registered and checked in. At the same time, she knew that the personal scanners were running.
“Lieutenant Wixcombe,” she said, turning to face the inner door leading into the black hole itself. “Badge ID 7658.”
The Marine glanced at the terminal in front of him, then turned back to her. He didn’t open the inner door.
“Sorry, ma’am, but that badge has been revoked.”
Kira sighed with the long-suffering tone of someone who understood naval inefficiency. Friggin’ bureaucracy. “I was away on—well, leave for a while. Just get hold of the Duty Officer inside, they’ll clear me through.”
The Marine shook his head. “No can do, ma’am. Message here says you are denied access to the black hole, effective immediately.”
Kira’s brows shot up. “Denied on whose authority?”
“Captain Densmore, ma’am. In fact, there’s a note here that you’re to report to her immediately.”
Kira rolled her eyes. Densmore. Great. So this was another mind game, or Densmore was just pissed that she’d taken a few weeks off and spent them aboard another ship.
She stepped aside, knowing that arguing with this Marine would be like trying to debate a bulkhead. With a polite nod—or at least as polite as she could manage, Kira cleared away, privately seething as she tried to collect herself for the coming conversation.
She hit the intercom. “Wixcombe to Captain Densmore.”
Densmore’s reply was almost immediate, as though she’d been waiting for Kira to contact her. “Lieutenant Wixcombe, welcome back. I’d like to see you in briefing room one, please.”
; Kira felt a flutter of uncertainty. What the hell? Densmore had her own briefing room inside the black hole. It was where Kira invariably ended up meeting with her. Briefing room one, just behind the bridge, was mainly used for matters involving the Stiletto herself, like Captain Tanner’s cramped little compartment jammed in behind the bridge.
“On my way, ma’am.”
When she arrived at briefing room one, Kira was surprised to find Densmore wasn’t alone. She had the ship’s Master-at-Arms present—a slab of a man who held weight-lifting titles across the fleet—along with two Marines. Her stomach dropped like a sack of wet sand. This couldn’t be good.
“Have a seat, Lieutenant,” Densmore said.
Kira sat. “What’s going on, ma’am?”
Densmore’s face was as grave as Kira had ever seen it. “Lieutenant, I’ve come into possession of evidence that you have been engaged in espionage on behalf of the Nyctus.” She spread her fingers on the desk, then lifted a hand to point down at the mirror-clean surface. “You’re being placed under arrest. Now, I wanted to do you the courtesy of doing this in a private location. The Master-at-Arms will escort you to the brig. These Marines will assist him, if necessary. Will that be necessary, Lieutenant?”
Kira’s mind spun. Espionage? Arrested? Was Densmore compromised, and this was her way of sidelining Kira? Did this have something to do with her trip to the Hecate? Had it pissed off Densmore that much?
Did this have something to do with Thorn?
Arrested?
Kira finally found some mental traction and shook her head. “No, ma’am, it won’t be necessary.”
Densmore nodded. “I didn’t think it would. But I am trusting you here, Lieutenant, and giving you a lot of leeway. Far more so than I probably should, in fact, given your abilities as a Joiner. I should be having you sedated, or even removing your ability to engage with magic. I’m not going to do those things. Please don’t make me regret it. If I have to, you’ll be tranked and trussed. Clear?”
Kira just nodded, a fugue state descending on her as reality mixed with raw disbelief. Like a sleepwalker, she began to move, each step forgotten as her boot hit the deck, and in a moment, the world of five minutes earlier seemed like a distant place indeed.
Kira sat, because there was absolutely nothing else to do.
The Stiletto’s brig was a simple affair, two cells opening off a short corridor. The cells were exactly three-point-five meters by three, a fact Kira knew not because she was that familiar with the ship, but because she’d paced it out, over and over. With each step in the cell, Kira felt her anger grow.
A spy. The simple accusation left her dizzy with rage. It was anathema to who she was—to what she was, and where she’d come from over the years. Scrapping for survival, chasing ghosts from her mind, and trying, along the way, to help Thorn, the boy who had grown into a man with a power that chilled Kira to her core.
Right up until the moment she remembered he was theirs.
She leveled her breathing for the hundredth time, letting each exhalation out in a measured beat, and then the door opened to reveal Alys Densmore, her face a curious mix of emotions. Densmore waved to someone outside, and the door closed behind her. They were alone, and the silence stretched.
“I’ve been trying to sense if you’ve been trying to use Joining at all,” Densmore said. “I haven’t detected it.”
“You asked me not to, ma’am.”
“I know. And I appreciate it.” Densmore gave a thin smile. “Incarcerating Starcasters accused of serious crimes is one of the many issues Fleet still hasn’t resolved. Our power goes beyond locking up some Rating who got drunk and decked an officer over a bar bet. We’re an unknown quantity.”
Kira shrugged. “Not my problem, and I’ve never considered it.”
Densmore sighed. “Neither have I.”
Awkward silence. Kira leaned on the mesh door. “Ma’am, I assume you’re going to accuse me of a crime? Unless you’re just here to gloat? Doesn’t seem like your style, and I’m not sure what you would be gloating about.”
Densmore pursed her lips. “When you cleared out of the Hecate, the quarters you were using were, as usual, cleaned and prepared for future use. During the course of that, a data-rod was discovered, hidden away, apparently, in an air vent.”
Kira stared. This was all new.
“When Captain Tanner had it analyzed,” Densmore went on, “it turned out to contain information related to the Pool of Stars, and the mission to investigate it. It was all information you had access to. Moreover, the downloads can be traced back to audit logs in the Hecate’s file system that show your user id.”
“Ma’am, I was assigned to assist with that mission by Captain Tanner—with your concurrence, if you remember.”
“I do remember, yes,” Densmore said, holding up her hand. “Frankly, you piqued my curiosity when you decided to take your leave aboard another ON ship, one to which you then got yourself assigned on temporary duty. It seemed like a way of doing an end-run around normal administrative protocols because you wanted to get off the Stiletto that badly.”
“Ma’am,” Kira said, “that wasn’t it at all—”
“No. Apparently, it was so that you could get close to the operation to find the Pool of Stars, and do some espionage of your own.”
Kira’s cheeks flushed hot with indignant anger. “Ma’am—"
“Wixcombe, you were taken captive by the Nyctus. By your own admission during your debriefings, they were able to get inside your head, so much so that they were able to make you experience a wholly made-up reality.” Densmore put her hands on her hips. “You have to admit, this makes you look guilty. Hell, maybe you weren’t even aware of what you were doing. We still don’t know how Skins actually work—”
“I did not go to the Hecate to insert myself into some op!” Kira shot back. “Outside of a mention in some history class back in school, I’d never heard of the Pool of Stars!”
“You know what?” Densmore said. “I want to believe you. I really do. But it’s really just your word against some hard evidence.”
“I had nothing to do with that data rod. Full stop.”
“How do you explain it, then?”
“I—” Kira started, then shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t know. Someone must have planted it there.”
“Who?”
“The obvious answer, since I know it isn’t me? Someone who wanted to frame me. A Skin, probably. There’s got to be a Skin aboard the Hecate, and instead of tracking them down, we’re here.”
Densmore crossed her arms. “The trouble is that you appear to be right. There was a Skin aboard the Hecate.”
Kira paced away from the door, then back. “Ma’am, if I was a Skin, why would I leave the data I’d stolen on the Hecate? For that matter, why would I leave the Stiletto in the first place? I had pretty much unrestricted access to the Black Hole. What I could have taken from there is far more valuable.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know what the significance of the Pool of Stars might be to the squids. As we don’t really understand the squid, their concept of what’s valuable might be so alien to us as to be incomprehensible, no matter how much we share in terms of war goals. They want to win; so do we. As to why they would handle an asset in this way, I don’t know, and I’ve been at this for a long time.”
Kira sat back on the bunk and slumped her head against the bulkhead. “I am not an espionage asset, ma’am,” Kira said, her tone suddenly dulled by fatigue and despair. How ironic, she thought, that she, Thorn, and Tanner worried that Densmore might be a spy for the Nyctus, and here she was, on the outside of the cell looking in at Kira—
Kira sat up. Could that be it? Could Densmore actually be a spy, despite Kira long ago convincing herself she wasn’t? Was she the one contriving to frame Kira, to get her out of the way?
“Did you just think of something, Lieutenant Wixcombe?” Densmore said. “You looked like you had a sudden realizatio
n.”
“I—” Kira began, but caught herself. Was she really going to accuse Densmore of being a spy, even a Skin, from inside the brig?
She shook her head. “No, ma’am. Nothing of consequence.”
Densmore stepped close to the door. “Lieutenant Wixcombe—Kira—I want to help you. I really do. But I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me what you know.”
Kira stared back. Tell Densmore—what? That she’d gone to the Hecate to tell Thorn about their daughter? That was the most personal of personal information. But it might also be the only explanation that would stick.
And it wouldn’t matter if Densmore really was a spy.
Her thoughts tumbled over and over. For Densmore to have set her up, Tanner would have to be in on it, and she couldn’t believe that. Tanner, a Skin?
No, wait. It didn’t have to be Tanner. It just had to be someone aboard the Hecate, someone who would have planted that data rod on Densmore’s behalf. Someone like—
Some like those two Mission Specialists, Bridmante and Justice—Brid and Dart. Kira had caught wind of the fact that they’d worked for Densmore in the past.
And Thorn and Mol were on the far side of Nyctus space with those two right now.
Kira abruptly stood. She was going to have to take some chances here. That included letting Densmore know things that she really had no right to know.
“Ma’am, I am going to be honest with you,” she said. “You won’t like it, of course, but that’s hardly relevant right now.”
Densmore narrowed her eyes. “In this job, I rarely like the things I hear. I’m listening.”
Kira nodded. “Okay. Okay.” She took a breath, steeling herself, and started talking.
“Remember that little girl in the Vision? The one on Nebo?”