Witch Nebula (Starcaster Book 4)

by J. N. Chaney

  “Ouch. That’s enough, ice.” Morgan smiled, pushing away with her numbed toes, the soles of her feet tender after long moments pressed against the cap. After a moment to reorient herself, she gazed down into the depths—

  And caught the Radiance, the soft mingling of azure and emerald glow that lit the ocean in every direction, soft knurling rays of light in friendly tones of blue and green and silver. From here, she could see not just the city beneath her but, thanks to some trick of the water’s clarity, even more distant settlements. All of them were connected with lines of Radiance, but usually the water was a lot murkier than this. The Nyctus told her it had something to do with the vents and the billowing clouds of minerals they spewed into the water. As their activity waxed and waned in response to the changing forces inside the planet, the water around them became more or less cloudy with suspended sediment. Today was very clear, the clearest she could recall ever seeing, in fact.

  For a little while, she just slowly turned around and around in place, taking full advantage of this marvelous opportunity to see so much, from so far away—

  She stopped. She liked the Radiance. It was so soft, so peaceful. It was the color of friendship—of her friendship with the Nyctus of Tāmtu. The Radiance was their goodness made real, not like the other ones. Her Nyctus were good, Morgan knew, and the others were bad—all of them on the other worlds, far across the darkness between stars.

  They weren’t her friends. They didn’t live in the sedate glow of the Radiance. They were red, orange, yellow, and black. Angry colors. Unfriendly colors.

  Maybe that was why they were fighting the humans. Because they were angry almost all the time.

  She stopped and bit her lip, thinking in the deliberate way of children. Hmmm.

  Once more, she wondered what would happen if she made all Nyctus into her friends? Then maybe there’d be no war and no one else would get hurt. Not Nyctus, and not humans, either.

  But something told her that wasn’t going to be enough. Just making the Nyctus her friends didn’t mean they’d like all humans. The Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends, but they still talked about their war. Morgan did not like war. She didn’t like violence, really, or even thinking about making living things hurt.

  She bit her lip again. So what if the Nyctus had always been friends with humans? Then the war never would have happened in the first place. She could still be on Nebo with Mommy and Daddy, and nobody would be hurt or dead from the war, and everything would be right again.

  Could she do that? She knew she could change the way things were now—but could she go back and change things in the past, things that had already happened?

  There was one way to find out. Morgan dove back toward the city, intent on finding the elder shaman.

  “You want to do what, child?”

  “Go back before we were all mad and fighting,” Morgan said, “and make it so everyone’s friends with one another. Make it so they’ve always been friends, and none of this stupid war stuff ever happened. Mommy called it peace, I think, but I’m not sure. I was really little, but I think Daddy—Thorn Daddy—said the same thing in the dream. Peace. I like that word, don’t you?”

  “I approve of peace, yes. You are talking about going back in time and changing events,” the elder shaman said. The idea obviously upset him, because flashes of bright purple flickered along his body.

  “Uh, yeah. That’s right.”

  “Even if such a thing were possible, child, we have no idea what the effects would be.”

  “Everyone would be friends!”

  The shaman paused, its bioluminescence fading to a more thoughtful, introspective pulse of lights. “Imagine this,” the shaman finally said. “Imagine you go back in time. While you’re there, you kill your grandfather.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Just bear with me, child. Imagine you did that.”

  Morgan sighed. “Okay.” She’d never known her grandfather—any of them—and can’t imagine why she’d do something like that. But it didn’t make her feel much, either. Whoever her grandfathers were, they were still complete strangers to her.

  “Alright, so your grandfather is now dead,” the shaman went on. “That means that he doesn’t exist to be father to your own mother or father.”

  “Okay,” Morgan said. She still didn’t get it, but she went along with whatever the shaman was trying to explain to her.

  “So that means that your father or mother wouldn’t have been born. So—”

  Morgan kept staring.

  “What would that mean, child?” The shaman’s tone patient but insistent.

  “Uh—” Morgan bit her lip and scratched an ear. Suddenly, she brightened. “Oh, I know, I’d have a different mommy or daddy!”

  The elder shaman flashed an amused green. “It’s far, far more likely, child, that you wouldn’t exist at all. Or, if you did, you would be a different person completely. Either way, you couldn’t, or probably wouldn’t, be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather in the first place. And that means—”

  “That they’d still be alive,” Morgan said, rolling her eyes.

  “That’s right. Which means that you would be born, and would go back and kill them, but then you wouldn’t be born, so you couldn’t go back and kill them.”

  Morgan scowled. What was the shaman trying to say?

  “Oh. Wait,” she said, as the problem started to solidify. She couldn’t go back in time and kill her grandfather, because if she did, then she didn’t. But she did. But she didn’t—

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “There’s—” She shook her head. She suddenly couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Something is wrong, yes,” the shaman said. “Both things can’t be true, but both are. That’s called a paradox. And that’s the problem with going backward in time and changing things. You make now different, and that creates the paradox.”

  Morgan stared into the distance, thinking. The water had turned murky again. She could see only the spires of the nearest buildings around them. A few moments passed before she gave up. The shaman was right, there was no way to—

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I could go back in time and not kill my grandfather. Then there’s no . . . uh . . . pair of—”

  “Paradox.”

  She smiled. Such a funny word. “There’s no para-dox.”

  “But that’s the problem, child. You might go back in time and do your absolute best to change nothing at all, but you just being there is a change. You could get in somebody’s way and delay them by a few seconds so they miss a terrible accident that should have killed them. So they live on, and their descendants are alive today—people who never existed before. There’s no way to know what changes that could cause, including making new paradoxes.”

  Morgan sighed. This was too complicated. All she wanted to do was go back and make it so that the Nyctus and humans were all her friends, and friends with each other, so there was no stupid war. Everyone who died in the war would still be alive, and their families and friends would be happy—how could that not be better?

  “I don’t want any para-doxes. I just want to make it so that all the Nyctus are like you. So they’re all my friends. And I want to make all the humans my friends, too.”

  Now the shaman flickered violet with alarm. “You risk damaging everything, everywhere, child. You mustn’t do that.”

  “But I want to!”

  “Child, no.”

  Morgan’s eyes stung. “I thought you were my friend!”

  “I am. It’s because I’m your friend that I’m trying to help you see that you must not do this.”

  Morgan wiped at her eyes, a reflexive but pointless thing, since her tears just vanished into the water around her. “No,” she said, her voice breaking. “If you were my friend, you’d want the war to not have ever happened. You’d want to help me.”

  The shaman gleamed a soft, soothing turquoise. “I do want to help you. Of course, I do. S
ometimes helping means telling someone not to do something. Especially if it might cause lots of trouble for them, and for everyone else.”

  Morgan turned away. She’d had this wonderful, fantastic idea, and the shaman was telling her it wasn’t wonderful or fantastic at all. The thing about paradoxes seemed so weird. Certainly too weird to let it get in her way.

  She turned back to the shaman, but not to argue. Instead, Morgan reached down inside her and gathered up some of that tingly magical power—not very much, because she didn’t need very much. She only needed to—

  The shaman, for the first time since Morgan had made it her friend, glittered with furious crimson.

  “Child, no—!”

  Morgan changed things. Again, not very much. She just changed the universe a tiny bit so that the elder shaman would be even more her friend. A friend who wouldn’t lecture her or get in her way or anything like that.

  The shaman’s crimson bioluminescence faded through bright purple, then a deeper mauve, then indigo, then blue. Soon that was shot through with green, a green that was exactly the color of the Radiance.

  “You must do what you think is best, child,” the shaman said.

  Morgan looked at him sidelong. “And you won’t try to stop me?”

  “Of course not. Why would I do such a thing?” The shaman’s voice was docility itself, and it reached to Morgan, tentacles extended for a kind touch. Morgan let herself be embraced by them and just hung, for a while, in the creature’s embrace. Finally, she pulled away. She wanted to try something to make sure.

  “I want to go back in time and make all the Nyctus, and all the humans, my friends. And I want to make them friends with each other, too, so there’s no war and everybody’s happy.”

  “That is a marvelous idea, child,” the shaman said, head bobbing in agreement.

  “You don’t mind if I do that?”

  “I’m sure you know what is best.”

  Morgan grinned. “I do! And it’s going to be so good!”

  “I’m sure it will, child. I’m sure it will.”

  14

  Thorn lay on this back in the witchport, exploring his magical reserves as the Hecate prepared for its first Alcubierre hop following her frantic repairs. It wasn’t a long one, just enough for her to get away from the space where she’d fought and been damaged, a process known as clearing the datum. Tanner had been clear, in fact, about his surprise that the Nyctus hadn’t raced new forces toward them. He expected them to try to catch the Hecate before she could do that all-important thing, clear the datum. But the only sign of the Nyctus in all the time she’d been sitting here had been the debris from the battle, slowly dispersing.

  Thorn didn’t open the witchport, instead using eldritch power to extend his awareness in a huge bubble around the ship. It taxed him far more than it should have, showing how reduced his powers still were. But it also meant that there should be no opportunity for an enemy to sneak up on the Hecate the way the Nyctus had—at least not magically.

  Unless, of course, they were Bertilak.

  Bertilak was a challenge, and not just because he was too loud, too happy, too boisterous—too everything. No, it was also the fact that Bertilak and his ship were still strangely null from a magical perspective. Thorn could see the alien’s ship on the tactical repeater, but he had absolutely no sense of it in his ’caster awareness. He had assumed that he’d eventually see through whatever effect was causing it. Even thought it might be some strange, lingering aftermath of whatever the Nyctus had done to launch their ambush so close to the Hecate. But it hadn’t faded or changed at all. From a magical perspective, Bertilak and his ship simply didn’t exist.

  An alarm chimed, proclaiming that the Alcubierre drive would initiate in thirty seconds. Thorn ran through the standard checklist, making sure his little corner of the ship was properly configured for superluminal flight.

  He checked the tactical repeater again. Sure enough, Bertilak’s strange green ship hung on station a few tens of klicks away. Thorn had been relieved when the Chief Engineer declared the Alcubierre drive operational and ready, but it had been short-lived.

  Because Bertilak was coming with them.

  “I shall come with you, as it is the only reasonable decision,” the alien had announced when Tanner and the Hecate’s senior officers met with him in the forward mess. It had been intended as a thank you and farewell sort of meeting but had abruptly changed course with Bertilak’s suggestion. “After all, your ship still requires substantial repairs. I would hate for you to once again run afoul of the Nyctus—all of my hard work would be undone, and I sense that engineering is an area I have much to share about. No disrespect intended to your honorable crew, of course.” He laughed but quickly became more somber. “In addition, I like you. All of you, and I find myself in the position of wanting you to remain safe. The Nyctus are dangerous. The galaxy is dangerous, don’t you agree?”

  Tanner and the other officers had been openly, almost effusively grateful for Bertilak’s offer to fly cover for the Hecate. Thorn had managed a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  He was still considering the Bertilak issue when the Hecate’s Alcubierre drive lit, flinging her back toward ON-controlled space. The stars shifted, and Thorn remained confused by the absence of Bertilak’s presence.

  Thorn settled into his thoughts as the ship hurtled across the black. Magic or not, I’ll find out.

  Tanner flicked off the intercom and looked around at those gathered in his briefing room. Between the XO, Thorn, the Tac O, and the Nav O, the little compartment felt even more cramped than usual. Thorn wasn’t especially claustrophobic, but if he had to spend too much time jammed in here like this, he just might have to consider it.

  “That means the drive will be ready in about twelve hours,” the XO said, smiling.

  The Captain smiled back briefly. “I see you’ve seen through our good Chief’s little ruse of doubling the time he says he needs, then completing the job in half that and looking like a hero.”

  “I know,” the XO replied. “Every Chief Engineer I’ve worked with has done it. It must come with the position.”

  Tanner turned to the Nav O. “Have you got a fix on our location yet?”

  “To within about two light-years, yes, sir. We should have it nailed down completely within the hour.”

  Thorn had to admit, it was kind of nice to not be the one responsible for throwing the Hecate into some unknown part of space. Mind you, they weren’t off in some remote spot, far away from friendly space. Instead, the Alcubierre drive had cut out late, making the Hecate overshoot her intended destination in what seemed to be an entirely random direction. They were definitely in ON space but still weren’t sure quite where. The Nav O needed to once more find reference pulsars and work out their position from those. Until the problem with the drive was fixed, Tanner didn’t want to try another hop. Any use of the drive might have the ship leaping randomly about in space, never ending up where they wanted it to.

  “Captain Tanner,” a voice cut in over the intercom. “We just had a ship drop in, about five thousand klicks off our port bow. Oh, and it’s green. It’s Bertilak.”

  Tanner’s face became a mixture of surprise and amusement. “How the hell did he find us?”

  “Good question,” Thorn said, his tone earning a sharp glance from Tanner.

  “Something to add, Lieutenant?”

  Thorn looked at him. “Just seems strange, sir. We hopped to an entirely different destination than we meant to, but Bertilak somehow still manages to find us? How?”

  Tanner turned to the Nav O. “It’s a fair question. Any ideas?”

  The Nav O thought for a moment. “Sorry, sir. No idea,” he finally said. “Maybe Bertilak has some way of tracking ships running their Alcubierre drives—”

  “Which would be yet another piece of tech I’d really like to get my hands on,” the XO said. “Just like that kick-ass weapon system of his.”

  Tanner nodded.
“XO, contact Bertilak and invite him back aboard. I frankly didn’t think he’d still be with us, but since he is, it’s time to get to know him better.”

  Bertilak swung a leg over the bench and dropped into a seat at one of the tables. They were back in the forward mess. Tanner had decided on meeting the big alien with the XO and Thorn in tow, but in a neutral part of the ship. That gave Thorn a measure of satisfaction. Everyone else was so enamored by the big green man that he’d expected him to have the run of the ship by now. Tanner still maintained OPSEC protocols, though, restricting Bertilak to only a few common areas. It didn’t seem to bother him.

  “Perfectly understandable,” was all he said, his tone amenable.

  Once Bertilak was seated, Tanner leaned forward. “My crew”—he glanced at Thorn— “are wondering how you managed to find us. Considering we ended up a long way from where we meant to be, it is an interesting question.”

  “Of course it is,” Bertilak replied. “Nor is it any great mystery. I’ve configured my ship’s sensors to lock onto the Hecate, so I’ll always know where she is if she’s within twenty-five light-years.”

  There was a moment of silence. The XO finally broke it.

  “How? How do you keep a sensor lock on a specific ship? And over such a huge distance?”

  Bertilak shrugged. “It’s how my ship’s sensors work.”

  Tanner laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the table. “And that is something we’d like to explore with you, Bertilak. You have tech that we find interesting—” Tanner stopped and shook his head. “Hell, I’ll just come out and say it. You have tech that we’d love to be able to examine, maybe even acquire from you.”

  Bertilak smiled and nodded. “Unfortunately, Captain, my ship is not for sale.”