Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  She’d never been this way before. She doubted that few people not tricked by the exercise map had, either. The Fire Swamps had a sinister reputation among the population of Code Nebula, pretty much to the point of dark folklore. The Swamps were grim. Sodden. Thick and trackless. Almost everything was neurotoxic, plant and animal venoms causing searing pain, even just with an incidental touch, that gave the vile place its name.

  Kira wanted to see the feared and hated swamps for herself.

  The trail descended steeply at first, weaving like a switchback among jagged rocks outcropping from the hillside. Eventually, though, it flattened out, still maintaining a downward grade, but a gentle one.

  As she ran, the air became thicker, warmer, more humid. Pools of blackish, scummy water appeared among the trees and brush lining either side of the trail. A damp stink of growth and decay filled her nostrils as she breathed.

  She pushed on.

  Now the light began to fail. A mist rose among the trees, which had become larger and taller, but also unhealthier—they were increasingly barren of leaves, their bark peeling and grey. Moss hung in thick skeins from their skeletal branches. Everywhere that wasn’t trail was now water, slimy black muck, reeds, ferns, or thin, whip-like plants that would make any passage through them a nightmare of tangled, woody stems.

  It was now twilight. Moss-shrouded trees marched off to the edge of visibility, before being lost in the mist. The air had become so hot and dank that sweat rolled down Kira’s face. Her feet were splashing through puddles of water on the path, now little more than a muddy track. It would, she saw, soon meander off into a few diffuse openings through the undergrowth, then vanish completely. A sudden, ear-scraping buzz announced the arrival of an insect as long as her thumb, something like a vile cross between a spider and a hornet. It zoomed in and she swatted at it, knocking it away; just that fleeting instant of contact left her fingers tingling and itchy.

  Kira stopped. All around her now was a dreary hellscape of massive, skeletal trees, sucking black mud, pools of foul water, undergrowth with jutting thorns glistening with slimy venom—and mist. Mist shrouded all of it, leaving Kira the center of a tiny island of awareness.

  As soon as she thought it, she heard a heavy snapping and wet sounds, as though something big prowled the swamps just out of sight to her right. To her left, something else uttered a long, mournful cry, rising and falling like a siren before it abruptly cut off. More of the big spider-wasps hummed around her.

  Kira waved away the bugs.

  This is the bleakest, most miserable, desolate place I’ve ever seen.

  And then she barked out a laugh, turned, and started back the way she’d come. At least swamps had atmo, unlike hard vacuum.

  Little truths, she thought, and began to run.

  Kira heard footsteps approaching, booted feet clunking against the barracks floor. She opened her eyes and saw Thorn, smiling, standing over her. After her run, she’d come back and caught some rack time, luxuriating in the sensation of gravity, clean sheets, and the kind of tired feeling you earn.

  “Wakey, sleeping beauty. Duty calls.”

  Kira wiped at her eyes, then yawned, hugely. “Duty? Thought we were just talking?”

  “Talking, sure. Or Joining, if you’d like.” There was an eagerness to Thorn in words and pose. He leaned forward, a tilt so small she almost missed it.

  She stood. “Nah. I don’t think so.”

  Thorn’s grin faltered. “You okay, Kira? The doctors cleared you, but—”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Felt well enough to go for a run, in fact. Decided to take a jaunt into the Fire Swamps.”

  The rest of Thorn’s grin drained away. “The Fire Swamps? Why? Why the hell would you want to go there?”

  “I know, right? The place is awful. As bad as I imagined it. Worse, even.”

  “Okay, well, I guess you got that box ticked then, huh? Nothing you ever have to do again.”

  “Nope, I don’t need to go back there, you’re right. Once was enough. It showed me how ridiculous the Fire Swamps are.”

  “I . . . don’t get it. Kira, what are you—”

  “I’d never seen the Fire Swamps before, Thorn. I only had what I imagined about them to go on, and that was really bad. You start hearing about them on day one as a Trainee here, about how horrible they are, about how Trainees have gotten lost in them, never to be seen again, or only found as bones, or blah, blah. It’s great Code Nebula mythology—but that’s all it is, mythology.”

  Thorn frowned at her. “Kira, I think we need to get you—”

  “To a doctor? Why bother? I don’t expect he’ll actually know anything about medicine, after all.”

  “Kira—”

  “Thorn, everything is exactly how I know, or at least expect it to be. I expected the Fire Swamps to be awful, and they were—so much that they came across like a cartoon, or a description of evil swamps in some fantasy novel. I’m sure the real Fire Swamps are actually just a mundane wetland, serving as a cautionary tale for the trainees.”

  Thorn said nothing, his eyes flat.

  “Doctors can take my pulse and stuff, but they don’t know anything more than that, because I don’t. Narvez is a complete bitch, for no reason, because that’s what I think of her. Commander Spooky was a total blank, the perfect image of what I imagine a covert ops type, or a spy to be. And you—you keep being a touch condescending but friendly, just like you were back at Code Gauntlet before we—before we understood each other. And I mean just like it, because that’s my last memory of you, the one that’s been stuck in my mind since I left there.”

  “Kira—”

  But she didn’t relent. “Our escape from that squid cruiser was the dumbest of dumb luck, every step of the way. We were picked up the Andraste, because that’s the first ship that comes to mind when I think of an ON warship.” She turned to the window, looking across the barren foundation of the burned-down barracks in the distance. “And what started me thinking this way? That damned barracks. When I first looked at it, I saw it there, completely intact—and then I remembered it had burned down and, what do you know, it suddenly was.”

  She wheeled back on Thorn.

  “So all of this is exactly what I expect it to be,” she snapped, gesturing around. “We all see the world through our own eyes, filtered through our own memories and experiences, Thorn. But this all makes it literally true. This world is what I see. It is my memories and experiences.” She pushed her gaze into his. “So just what the hell is going on here?”

  Deep inside, Kira knew the answer, and it started acrid, boiling panic and fear to churn in her gut. But something else kept it clamped down, kept it from bubbling up and consuming her. It was anger. Rage, even.

  Thorn finally sighed. “It’s unfortunate this didn’t work. We had our doubts but thought it was worth a try.” He smiled. “We’re really not a cruel people, Kira Wixcombe. But there are things locked away behind your mental defenses—which really are quite formidable, by the way—that we need to know. So, now we have to do this the much harder and more unpleasant way.”

  As Thorn spoke, everything around Kira—the barracks, Code Nebula, the world itself—turned grey and colorless, then vanished like the mist in the Fire Swamps. When the last of it cleared, Kira lay on a hard table, strapped in place. Thorn stood over her.

  “We’re sorry for this, Kira Wixcombe. We really are.”

  The voice changed first, switching from Thorn’s mild baritone to a liquid burble, yet she understood. Screaming inside, Kira understood every word of the apology, even as Thorn vanished, but not all at once. His blonde hair faded, features blurring, shifting, rippling in a noisome pattern until all that was left were the tentacles. The bulbous eyes. Nubby teeth. Flashing colors on the damp skin, and the Nyctus wrapped her in a repulsive touch, arms closing over her until she could do nothing but scream until the light, like her mind, began to fade.

  16

  Projectiles hummed through the air, slash
ing through the grass around Thorn, neatly truncating the tough stalks. He had the impression of spinning blades, like shuriken, only traveling far faster than they could ever be thrown. He saw one of the Tiger Team soldiers go down in a spray of blood, but the others immediately returned fire and dashed for cover. Thorn did the same, double-tapping out railer shots as he’d been trained, then diving for a covered fire position—

  And realizing that the incoming fire was originating from the lake, not from the compound.

  Alix snapped out orders. Two of the Tiger Team members, with underslung grenade launchers on their railers, coughed out a pair of projectiles that sailed back toward the lakeshore, each detonating with an ear-splitting crack. She then ordered the Team back into the bush line they’d just emerged from, dragging their wounded comrade with them.

  Thorn’s world had been reduced to a few square meters; all he could see was grass. The bizarre blade rounds still buzzed overhead, slicing off greens stalks that bled sap onto Thorn’s body armor.

  “Thorn,” Alix shouted. “Pull back to the bush line!”

  “Will do!” he called back, “Just as soon—"

  He trailed off. Against the snap of railers, the buzz of the fearsome blades, and the occasional blast of a grenade near the lakeshore, Thorn didn’t hear something else, but he experienced it.

  From the compound, to his right and behind him, rose a psychic clamor—a shaman gathering power, prior to releasing it in some sort of eldritch working. But something similar, if a little less distinct, simmered down near the lakeshore.

  There were two shamans here.

  And now, the whole expedition teetered on the brink of disaster. Alix and her Tiger Team were good, but they were no match for a pair of squid shamans.

  Thorn wasn’t sure he was, either. If he wasn’t, then this was all going to go to shit pretty fast.

  Which meant he had to Shade himself and the Tiger Team from the psychic influence of the squids, while also fending off any magical attacks, and through it all look for an opportunity to take one of the shamans alive.

  One. That was the key.

  Something rose into Thorn’s view by the lake, over the grass and silhouetted against the sky—a shimmering, silvery column of water. At the same time, a wave of psychic force slammed into Thorn from the direction of the compound, brutal, hard, and raw.

  He had to equalize this battle, and fast.

  “Alix, pull back!” he shouted, yanking the mag from his railer and tossing the weapon away.

  “Not gonna leave you—”

  “Do it! Not far, stand ready to come back!”

  “Will do.”

  Thorn turned back just in time to crash headlong into chaos.

  The Nyctus were making an all-out effort to blitz them and win fast, without giving Thorn and Tiger Team Three a meaningful chance to respond. Thorn drew in power with the speed born of desperation, then hurled it back out as a shield against the mental assault from the shaman in the compound. He winced as some of the powerful attack leaked through, like light around a closed door. Compulsions clawed at his mind, trying to find purchase and turn him on his companions. He recrafted his defense into a slippery morass, like grease, against which the squid’s attack slid and deflected.

  At the same time, the column of water bent toward him, about to become a battering ram. The logical thing to do was block it, but that would use up whatever capacity Thorn had left—and he knew that playing defense was a losing strategy. Instead, with his remaining strength, Thorn sent out a psychic pulse, gritting his teeth through a suddenly pounding headache, looking for—

  There. Not the shaman by the lake, but one of the squid soldiers with him. He buried his will, his awareness, into the squid’s mind, ruthlessly brushing aside the creature’s identity and turning it into an extension of his own will—practically his own body.

  Gripping the blade gun, he turned and opened fire, the shuriken-like projectiles spitting out of the weapon directly toward the shaman.

  With the last of his own volition, Thorn leapt hard through the grass, toward—nothing, just a random direction. A second later, the water-hammer slammed like a battering ram into the spot he’d been a second before; the impact flattened grass and blasted a muddy crater into the ground. The impact did catch his left foot, making his ankle flare with incandescent pain.

  The agony almost broke his already fractured concentration. In a few seconds, the shaman in the compound would batter through his defenses, which would be the end of things. But Thorn focused on the soldier he’d co-opted; the shaman by the lake had already started a frantic ’casting to try to wrest control back, but just a fraction too late.

  Whirling blades bit into the pale flesh, vivisecting the alien and dropping it into chunks that wriggled and fell still.

  Thorn thudded hard into the grass, finishing his leap. The combined shock of landing, and the white flash of pain in his ankle conspired to make his psychic redoubt falter and crack. The shaman in the compound pounced, driving its consciousness into his, shoving it away into the far regions of mental oblivion, and Thorn couldn’t stop it. For an instant, he lost control, the shaman a sudden and darkly triumphant compulsion manipulating him like a puppet.

  Except he had no weapon, and his own magic was, for the moment, all but exhausted. With a burst of frustration, the shaman realized he’d taken control of what amounted to an ordinary, unarmed man. But that wouldn’t last, as the shaman fought for complete and lasting control, forcing Thorn to roll in the grass, digging deep in a desperate struggle to fight off the attack, to fight to even remain who he was—

  And then it was all just gone, the effect vanishing, like an intense fever suddenly breaking. It was as though the shaman had just given up and stopped his own magical attack.

  For a moment, Thorn just lay there, gasping. Then something buzzed overhead. Shit. The remaining squid soldiers, including the one he’d taken control of, were still near the lake, and were now closing on him. He might have fended off the squids’ magic, but their wicked blade guns would chop him to pieces as effectively as they had the shaman.

  “So friggin’ tired of knives,” Thorn muttered, watching a stream of whirling blade rounds hiss overhead. He tried to get back to his feet, but his ankle failed in a blast of pain, and he pitched back into the grass with a groan. The squids’ fire intensified, rapidly coming closer. Above him, their glittering rounds sang a song of merciless intent, cutting the air with keening whistles.

  A massive shadow swept overhead. Thorn found himself gaping up at the belly of the Gyrfalcon as it thundered over him. A second later, the point-defense cannon roared, churning the ground between Thorn and the lake into geysers of mud and gory fragments of Nyctus organs.

  Thorn rolled over, levered himself to his knees, and scrabbled around for his railer. It took a moment in the tall grass, but he finally found it, snapped a new mag into it, sucked in a breath that tasted like mud and looked around bleary-eyed, in pain, and happier than he’d been in years.

  “Alive,” he said, then held his railer out in a hand that wavered from sheer exhaustion. “Alive.”

  The Gyrfalcon completed a tight, graceful turn over the lake and zoomed back toward the mining compound. Thorn saw no more squids down near the lake shore; instead, starting about ten meters away from him, a swathe of ground had been battered into muddy craters by the point-defense cannon firing in ground attack mode. He spun back toward the compound, railer raised, sucking in both a real breath and a magical one, ready to block, or at least blunt, another attack from the squid shaman.

  The gate swung partway open. Thorn braced himself, wincing around his wounded shoulder and ankle, lined up a shot, then lowered the railer. Alix had poked her head through the gate, giving a thumbs up.

  Mumbling dire threats at the Nyctus in general, Thorn dragged himself to his feet—or actually foot, because his injured one would bear almost no weight without sending a blast of pain rocketing up his leg. After unloading his rail
er, he turned it into a makeshift crutch and hobbled his way toward the gate.

  “Think you broke it, sir,” Toff said, eyeing Thorn’s swollen ankle.

  “I didn’t break anything. It was the damned squid with its water hammer,” he shot back. Waves of pain radiated from his purpling ankle. Toff held Thorn’s boot, which suddenly looked far too small to fit back onto the swollen joint.

  Thorn lay in the shadow of one of the buildings in the compound, watching as the Tiger Team hefted a litter holding the second, more powerful squid shaman. Alix pointed at the gate, and the Gyrfalcon squatting in the grass beyond it, its idling engines rumbling away. She watched as it was loaded aboard the fighter, then moved to join Thorn and Toff.

  Thorn squinted up at her. “How’s your teammate?” He was referring to the Tiger Team soldier who’d been gunned down at the outset of the firefight, their only casualty, thankfully.

  Well, aside from Thorn himself, with his punctured shoulder and smashed ankle.

  “Stable. That squid blade glanced off his thigh armor, right up into the joint at his waist. One-in-a-million fluke, but there you go.”

  Toff had finished applying a liberal coating of first-aid spray on Thorn’s ankle, mainly to dull the pain, and was readying a bandage. “Odds don’t matter in combat,” he said. “Things happen or they don’t.”

  “Interesting way of looking at probabilities,” Thorn said. “But you’re right.” He turned back to Alix. “So, just how the hell did you manage to get inside here and incapacitate that shaman? That whole battle was, what, maybe thirty seconds?”

  Alix grinned. “More like almost four minutes from first contact.”

  Thorn blinked. “No.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Time doesn’t matter in combat either,” Toff put in, carefully wrapping the bandage around Thorn’s ankle and foot.