Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  “Trainee Wixcombe.”

  Kira jumped, turned quickly, and smacked her face on a table leg. Muttering a curse, she looked up, saw it was Lieutenant Commander Fielder, then immediately got up and snapped to attention.

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  Fielder studied Kira for a moment, black eyes gleaming in the middle of his deep brown face, his cheekbones high and angled. The man came from some high-rad world—maybe Fremont, where Kira heard the population had to literally take shelter from the midday sun or risk serious UV burns.

  He kept studying her. Kira found herself wanting to shift and fidget under that uncompromising gaze, but Fielder finally relented and broke the tension.

  “At ease, Trainee.”

  Kira snapped herself to the at-ease stance, which, she’d long ago learned, was only slightly less taxing than standing at attention and had very little to do with ease at all.

  “Wixcombe,” Fielder said. “Tell me what happened today.”

  Kira squashed a frown. Fielder was probably referring to her little sojourn during the psychic navigation exercise with Rainer—unless he wasn’t, and it was an entirely different kind of mistake she’d made. She decided to stay noncommittal. “Sir?”

  “Playing dumb really pisses me off. You know damned well what I mean.”

  Okay, he must mean the incident with Rainer. “When Trainee Rainer and I determined that the correct path wasn’t the one she’d seen marked on a map in the company orderly room, we wanted to ensure no one else made the same error.”

  “Seven people did, though, and ended up in the Fire Swamp.”

  Kira winced. The Fire Swamp, a dismal stretch of sodden low ground along the river bordering Code Nebula, had nothing to do with heat or flames. The name came from the fact that everything that lived there, from plants to bugs, literally seemed to ooze powerful—and exceedingly painful—neurotoxins.

  “They were ahead of us, sir,” she said. “We weren’t in time to stop them.”

  Fielder nodded. “So some of what happened to these people was out of your control.”

  “It—yes, sir, it was.”

  Where was Fielder going with this? For that matter, what brought him to the platoon office at oh-dark-thirty in the first place?

  Fielder looked at a document on the clerk’s desk. He turned it slightly, examined it, then turned back to Kira.

  “Trainee Wixcombe, it is at this point in the course that we assign Trainee Squad Leaders. Platoons will be divided into three squads, with a Trainee leader responsible for each.” He moved slightly so he could look Kira in the eye. “You will be assuming command of Number One squad in our platoon, effective at reveille.” He picked up the document. “This shows the breakdown of personnel in each squad. You’ll need to review it so you know who’s in your squad and can get them turned out for morning PT in”—he glanced at the time—“four hours and eleven minutes.”

  Kira blinked in surprise. She could think of at least a half-dozen members of the platoon that had performed better than she had, almost across the board.

  But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t her place to question.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll try not to let you down.”

  But Fielder’s face showed not even a hint of pleasure. “Do not thank me, Trainee Wixcombe. I have done you no favors here. If anything, you should be cursing me—and believe me, you will.”

  Kira stared for a moment. “Sir, I—” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Leadership is a burden, Wixcombe, not a reward. A privileged burden, but a burden nonetheless. I have just placed the lives of nine other individuals in your hands. You now have custody over the well-being of someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. Someone’s son, or brother, or best friend—you get the idea.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And it gets worse, Wixcombe. Your instinct will be to protect these people. And that’s good. It’s a damned fine instinct.” His eyes lost focus for a second, then snapped back with a small turn of his head. There were memories nipping at his heels. “There are times when it’s going to be the wrong instinct.”

  His confession wasn’t kind, but it felt generous. “I’m sorry, sir, again—I don’t understand.”

  Fielder regarded her with a look of professional curiosity, and for a moment, his mental shield—a formidable construct, towering over and blocking access to his thoughts—faltered, as though a gate had been briefly cracked open. Kira sensed pain, and loss, and regret, and then the gate slammed shut again. Even Fielder was human, at his core.

  “We didn’t give you a timing for that nav course today. You finished when you finished. But what if we had? What if you had had just enough time to get from that clearing where you figured out our little ruse, to the completion line? What would you have done about the people coming along behind you then?”

  Kira hesitated. She wasn’t sure what the right answer was here, or if there even was one. She decided to go with the one that sounded the best, coming from a new squad leader.

  “I would have stayed anyway, sir, to make sure our people didn’t go the wrong way.”

  Fielder nodded. “I’m sure you would have. And that would have been the wrong instinct, the wrong thing to do.”

  That drew Kira into a direct gaze with Fielder, which trainees studiously tried to avoid out of sheer self-preservation. His stare had a weight to it. “Sir, but in the ON we don’t leave anyone behind."

  “Oh, that’s bullshit. Yeah, sure it sounds good, inspiring, comforting for our people.” He held up a hand. “And don’t get me wrong. We will do everything we possibly can to bring our people home, alive or—” He hesitated, and Kira thought she now sensed some of that pain she’d seen darken his face. Kira did the only thing she could in front of an open mental door where she was unwelcome, or undeserving. She withdrew and averted her eyes.

  Fielder squared himself again and repeated his admonition. “Alive, or dead,” he went on. “But we can’t compromise what truly matters: the objective. Whatever task 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?”

  Fielder’s sudden, febrile intensity surprised Kira, and in his words she sensed that he needed her to accept it. So she nodded quickly, even though she wasn’t entirely convinced he was right. Some missions might need to be aborted, because they simply weren’t worth the cost in lives.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” she said.

  Fielder kept his gaze locked on hers for a moment, then turned away.

  “You now have four hours and seven minutes to prepare your squad for morning PT, Wixcombe.” He glanced down. “This floor will do as is, so you are dismissed. I suggest you rest and prepare so you can use the time remaining to you wisely.”

  Kira acknowledged, then quickly withdrew. As he hurried back to the barracks through the predawn chill, though, she kept coming back to Fielder’s final words.

  . . . so you can use the time remaining to you wisely.

  He’d obviously meant the four hours and change until reveille and PT. But then she saw that strange intensity in his dedication to the mission, that almost pleading note in his voice, and found herself wondering how much time she had left in the war. In her life.

  Maybe even with Thorn. But first, to victory, and that started with her squad. She glanced at her chrono. Four hours and three minutes to go.

  Up next: rack time, Kira mused, and for the first time in a day, she smiled.

  6

  The alarm rattled Thorn partly awake; he blinked, or thought he did, anyway, being caught halfway between a dream, in which an alarm had jangled, and—

  And what? He blinked again. He was dreaming, just dreaming about an alarm—

  His eyes flew open, leaving him staring into darkness. But the alarm didn’t stop.

  Reality intr
uded, unwelcome and harsh. Thorn flung the covers aside and exploded out of bed. Light immediately flooded the room, making him wince, and he blinked fast against the glare. He threw the door open and looked into the corridor; other junior officers, barefoot and rumpled, looked around at one another.

  But the stunned instant of surprise slammed to a halt as everyone began grabbing clothes and boots, and jamming the minimal amount of clothing on before rushing off to duty stations if they had them, or blast shelters if they didn’t.

  Thorn had joined them, pulling on socks, t-shirt, and pants, then grabbing his boots and the rest of his crash kit to get to his own assigned blast shelter. As he did, he nearly slammed headlong into another Lieutenant, a sallow-faced young man wearing only the lower half of his fatigues.

  “What’s going on?” the other man asked, his eyes wide as portholes as he bounced on one foot while pulling a boot onto the other. “This a drill, or the real thing?”

  Thorn shrugged. “No idea. This is a Forward Operating Base, though—”

  “Specialist Stellers, report to CIC,” an automated voice cut in. “Specialist Stellers, report to CIC.”

  Thorn glanced up at the ceiling, dawning realization on his face. “This is it.”

  The other officer stomped his foot firmly into his boot. “Well, good luck with whatever the hell’s going on,” he snapped, then hurried off, feet pounding with the desperation of oncoming battle.

  Thorn turned and rushed the other way, heading for the Combat Information Center. He had no idea why he was being summoned there; he had no assigned duty post at Code Gauntlet, which meant he was supposed to take station in a particular blast shelter and wait out the alert. His station was aboard the Hecate, but she was still in dry-dock, powered down, partly disassembled, and still at least three days from being ready to fly.

  He rushed along, just carrying his boots for now in the interest of speed. He dodged around and pushed past other personnel racing for their own duty stations or blast shelters, clad in everything from little more than underwear to full battle-rattle body armor. A tense purpose hummed in the air, telling Thorn this probably wasn’t a drill. Something very real—and maybe lethal—was happening, and he’d been summoned right into the very middle of it.

  The electric tension thrumming through Code Gauntlet was only magnified in the CIC. Thorn entered, then paused to finally pull on his boots since it only seemed right to be properly dressed in the operational heart of the FOB.

  “Stellers, forget making yourself handsome and get your ass over here,” a voice snapped. Thorn followed the whip-crack voice through the bustle and hum of the CIC to find Commodore Scoville, the Ops O, waving him over. The man was, of course, impeccably dressed.

  Thorn did as instructed and padded across the CIC in his socks. He noted more than a few personnel in various states of undress rushing past him with data slates or sitting at workstations, chattering away into comm circuits. It made him feel a little less conspicuous, but also made him wonder at the number of personnel that had been caught asleep. Code Gauntlet, as he’d said to the Lieutenant he’d nearly run down in the corridor, was supposed to be a forward operating base, emphasis on the forward part.

  Based on the mild chaos around him, forward was exactly where he was.

  “Stellers,” Scoville said. “Turns out you’re one of only two Starcasters currently here at the FOB, and the other is shipboard, on the Aquila, getting underway. That puts you on the spot.”

  Thorn dropped his boots to the deck beneath a workstation. “On the spot for what, sir?”

  Scoville gestured at the primary situation display. “For that.”

  Thorn studied the display, a smear of tactical and operational information. He was still new enough that he had to take time to decipher it. He recognized Code Gauntlet at the center as well various icons scattered about, showing the locations and trajectories of ships and patrols, and—

  “Oh. Shit.” He pointed at an angry red icon representing enemy activity. There were a bunch of those scattered along the far left of the display, reflecting the Nyctus side of the Zone, the no-man’s-land between two combatants. This one, though, was far closer to Code Gauntlet and was closing fast. “That’s an enemy—something, I’m sorry sir, I’m still getting used to these tac symbols.”

  “Tell me about it,” Scoville said. “We’ve gone symbol crazy and need to winnow these down. But not right now.” The Commodore turned to Thorn. “Right now, that symbol is our problem. It’s a rock. A big one.”

  Thorn took two steps, avoiding a workstation, then studied the data portrayed alongside the icon. “That’s—wait. Is that its mass?”

  “It is. One-point-seven times ten to the tenth metric tons. That makes it the size of a small mountain.”

  Thorn just stared. A mass that big was unprecedented in terms of weaponized rock used as KEWs by the Nyctus. That led to a slew of questions, beginning with the rock’s origin point and just how the Nyctus had hidden something that big, and that fast.

  “Can we stop it?” Thorn asked, suddenly aware of why he’d likely been summoned to the CIC. “I mean, with our weapons, point-defense—?”

  “We just ran a simulation,” Scoville cut in. “Best case scenario is that, using every last bit of ordnance we can, we can chip away at it, spall off a bunch of debris, and reduce it to one big chunk surrounded by a bunch of smaller chunks. That’ll spread the destruction over a much larger area instead of making it a single, direct hit on the FOB.”

  Thorn considered the display. “Will that really make any difference?”

  “Instead of being entirely vaporized by the impact, we’ll be mostly vaporized.”

  Thorn had to marvel at the man’s aplomb in the face of impending obliteration. If anything, he sounded more annoyed than terrified.

  The Commodore turned to face him squarely. “In other words, conventional military force isn’t going to work. We’ve got just over seven hours until that thing hits somewhere inside the red circle.” He gestured at a secondary display that depicted the planet’s surface with potential impact area. Code Gauntlet was close to the center. “That means we can get the planetside part of the FOB about two-thirds evacuated before we lose it, along with at least four ships currently stuck in drydock—including your Hecate. The geostationary orbital part will survive, but by itself it’s not much more than a refueling station. So, Starcaster Stellers, any ideas?”

  Thorn stared at the display, trying to absorb the horrific information it was portraying in stark, dispassionate icons and data. A mountain-sized piece of rock, hitting in just over seven hours—

  “How did we not see them accelerating this thing at us?” Thorn asked.

  “We didn’t see it coming because it didn’t originate in this system,” Scoville replied. “As near as we can tell, the Nyctus accelerated it to that velocity, then somehow used something like an Alcubierre drive—a big one—to bring it here. They were able to conserve that original velocity, so when they returned it to sub-luminal flight, it was still moving like you now see it.” Scoville shook his head. “That’s something to worry about once we’ve dealt with the immediate problem, which is not having that thing come down on top of us. And that brings me back to my question. Stellers, do you have any idea what to do about this? Because if not, then you need to get to Transit Bay Delta, get your ass aboard the Janus, one of the evac ships, and haul it out of here.”

  “Sir, I’m not going to run away—”

  “You’ll do as you’re told,” Scoville said with iron authority. “Current orders are that we preserve Starcasters, if at all possible. And now I find myself asking the same question for a third time.” The Commodore’s face was set, jaw tight. “Don’t make it four.”

  Thorn turned back to the display. “Is there any actual imagery of this thing?”

  “There is,” Scoville said, nodding to a Petty Officer at a workstation. The woman, her expression tense, nodded curtly and tapped at her console. A window popped
open on the primary display, framing a jagged chunk of rock, starkly lit by sunlight that cast knife-edged, midnight-black shadows across its rugged surface. Without anything to give scale, it could have been a fist-sized piece of rock held at arm’s-length or a mountain-sized slab of rock traveling at high sub-light speed.

  “Does that help?” Scoville asked.

  Thorn stared at the image and offered an absent nod. He walked a few paces closer to the primary display, concentrating on the onrushing projectile.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop it, sir, even with the help of another Starcaster,” he said. “It’s just too big, has too much kinetic energy.”

  “Got to be honest, Stellers, I don’t care what you do to it, as long as it doesn’t hit this FOB.”

  On instinct, Thorn reached for the talisman in his shirt pocket. He touched nothing but t-shirt, which gave him a small jolt, but without a word, he turned, walked back to the tunic he’d dropped by his boots, and retrieved his book. Holding his talisman absently, he returned his attention to the display, eyes bright with interest.

  “Stellers, is that a children’s storybook you’re holding?” Scoville asked.

  Thorn shook his head. “No, sir. It’s a talisman, pulled from the ashes of the orbital strike that killed my family. It has . . . meaning. And power, in a sense.”

  “Fine. I don’t care if you have to strip naked to do what you do.” Scoville gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You don’t have to strip naked to do it, do you?”

  “No, sir. Not my style. I’m not even comfortable in socks on your bridge.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  A few taut chuckles floated from among the Ratings and Officers working around them. Thorn took note of it, another of those finer points of good leadership—make your people laugh, if you can.

  He turned back to the image. Taking a deep breath, he cleared his mind as much as he could, trying to let the background chatter and hum of the CIC fade into a pervasive smear of white noise. He then split his attention between the massive chunk of hurtling rock and the cool hardness of the old book. He tried to imagine what it would feel like to be touching the surface of the colossal projectile. It wouldn’t be smooth, like the old, well-handled cardboard. It would be—