Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  An alarm chimed faintly through the rushing in his ears, as though from far away. The drive was about to cut off.

  Thorn slowly let his extravagant expenditure of power slow from a flood, to a rush, to a trickle. The drive spooled down, the distortion looming behind the Hecate and driving her forward receding. Now she raced along at no more than a normal pace for a drive of the type she carried.

  Another chime, and the drive cut off. What had been a featureless and dimensionless darkness around the witchport became a starfield.

  Thorn slumped back, gasping, soaked in sweat, his muscles howling with residual anguish and his teeth clenched so tightly, he had to work his jaw open in fits and starts. Controlling his expenditure of power in a deliberate way prevented him from simply passing out, as he had before. But it left him feeling no less drained.

  Still, he roused himself. Everything depended on the next message from the Nav O, who would be finding pulsars and using them to fix their position.

  “Nav here. We’re inside the envelope. We’re home.”

  Thorn pulled in, then released, a deep breath. Sweat stung his eyes, and he wiped at a drop of it clinging to the end of his nose.

  Tanner spoke. “Well done, crew. All stations, I am resuming command. Tactical, I need a picture of what’s going on.”

  “Got it, sir,” the Tac O said. “And it’s not pretty.”

  Kira snugged her harness, cinching herself more tightly into the Gyrfalcon’s co-pilot’s station. Mol had finished the pre-flight checklist, and now they just waited for the short Alcubierre hop into what seemed to be a ferocious battle—and one that the ON was losing.

  She glanced back. The Nyctus shaman was strapped to the litter tighter than the spec ops squad leader, Alix, was belted alongside on her own crash couch. She had two more of her people with her, but had only caught the name of one, Toff. The three of them all had weapons ready, trained on the squid, in case it tried to resist or hit back. None of them smiled, and none of the weapons wavered. At all.

  “Gyrfalcon, Tanner here. Alcubierre cutoff in thirty seconds. Based on those last sensor returns, it’s going to be one hell of a shitstorm out there once we’re back in normal space, so haul your asses out of the Hecate asap so we can start maneuvering.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Mol said, nodding as the hangar doors slid open. Nothing but a colorless distortion greeted them, the twisted space of an Alcubierre bubble.

  Kira braced herself. She’d unwittingly doomed the ON fleet. Now, it was time to save it.

  The drive cut off sounded, and the view abruptly switched from nothing to, as Tanner had so aptly put it, a shitstorm.

  Mol called, “Here we go!” Then she powered the Gyrfalcon out of the Hecate’s hangar. She didn’t wait for clearance to maneuver from the destroyer and immediately began to dodge with furious purpose. Their first hop, the one enabled by Thorn, had brought them close to the sector where the ON had been lured into a trap; two more hops, far shorter and more conventional, had plunged them almost into the middle of the fight. Now, flashes rippled through space around them as the two massive fleets slammed headlong into one another, filling the void with energy and violence.

  Or, rather, the ON fleet had slammed headlong into the Nyctus. The squids, in turn, had sprung their trap, and now the ON task force was hemmed in, surrounded on three sides and taking both raking and flanking fire. As Mol jinked and swung the Gyrfalcon through the raging battle, Kira watched the battered ON ships. They raced past a destroyer that had been torn in two by a KEW, dodging debris she carefully avoided looking at too closely. Beyond that, glowing plasma streamed from a battlecruiser, her drive section laid open to hard vacuum. All around them, shredded chunks of hull plate and buckled structural members tumbled amid clouds of smaller wreckage and thin arcs of vented atmosphere.

  Mol fired the thrusters hard, dodging around the nose of a corvette. The rest of the ship was simply gone. “Where are we going, Kira?” she called.

  Kira forced herself to concentrate. She needed to find—

  “There!” she shouted, pointing out the canopy in a vague direction that encompassed half the universe. “Check that, there,” she said, jamming a finger at the tactical display. “That point. A big squid battleship. Move us toward it without us dying, if you please. Hate to be late for this rendezvous.”

  “On time and alive. It’s practically my motto,” Mol chirped, punching commands into the Gyrfalcon’s controls. As she did, they were burst-transmitted back to the Hecate, which had swung to place her bulk between the thick of the battle and the fighter.

  “Okay, they’re acknowledging,” Mol said. She looked from the implacable array of Nyctus ships ahead, to Kira. “You’re sure about this, huh?”

  Kira nodded. She knew the slightly greasy feel of squid minds far better than she ever wanted to, and the dark thoughts of their shamans in particular. “Yeah, if we’re going to do this, there’s our best shot.”

  As Mol applied thrust and the Gyrfalcon swept off toward the target Kira had selected, the Hecate sailing alongside, Kira glanced back at Alix, Toff, and the drugged squid. Incredibly, Toff’s eyes were closed.

  “Is he asleep?” Kira asked.

  “Nope,” Toff said without opening his eyes. “Just resting. This way, if we go boom, I don’t see it coming.”

  Alix grinned. Both of the spec ops soldiers seemed entirely relaxed, which was a pretty incredible thing, given the circumstances. But Kira couldn’t help noticing a restrained menace under the casual exterior, like springs coiled up and about to be released.

  She met Alix’s eyes. “You’re clear on what you need to do, right?”

  Alix nodded. “Hopefully nothing. But if it looks like things are going wrong”—she gestured at the squid with the toe of her boot—“he’s the first one to die.”

  Kira nodded and turned back to find the Nyctus ships looming far closer than they’d seemed just a few seconds ago. Mol jinked around an ON battlecruiser, her hull scarred by blast marks and a gaping hole in her side. But she was still fighting, her rail guns and missile launchers still defiantly landing hits on the Nyctus.

  She made a promise to the unseen crew as they swept past.

  I got you into this, so now I’m going to get you out.

  Thorn wished he’d had more time to recover from bringing the Hecate back into known space. But the two subsequent Alcubierre hops that had brought them here, to the battlespace itself, lasted barely an hour. He still felt leached, like something had drained his blood and will, leaving him an echo. Or a husk.

  He opened his eyes and looked out the open witchport at the vast and violent chaos of the fleet battle raging all around the Hecate now. As he watched, rail gun shot from a trio of ON ships tore into a massive squid carrier-class, shredding hull plates in a glittering arc of plasma and debris. Before the ON ships could turn, a second Nyctus ship rolled between them, firing at what was essentially point-blank range. A titanic flare of light signaled the end of one ON cruiser, even as the other two began to pour a hail of fire on the fleeing squid ship. At every point in his field of vision, there were ships, and death, and the lights of unlimited space warfare as sailors fought and died without ever seeing the enemy up close.

  Thorn shook himself with an effort, leaving the reverie behind. He didn’t have the luxury of time. What he had was a task. A goal.

  That, he could understand.

  He clutched his talisman with the ferocity of an unbreakable promise. “Sir, I’m ready,” he said to the air.

  “Understood,” Tanner replied. “We’re keeping station on the Gyrfalcon, per the plan. We’ll do all we can to protect it, but we’re just one ship, so this mostly comes down to you, Stellers.”

  Thorn could hear the grudging acknowledgement in the Captain’s voice. Destroyers like the Hecate weren’t designed for frontal line action; they were meant to prowl the edges of battles like this one, covering the flanks of the capital ships, giving fire support and looking for target
s of opportunity. If she were to come under sustained fire from the battleship ahead, she’d be reduced to scrap in minutes.

  “Got it, sir,” Thorn said. “I’m ready.”

  “Signaling the Gyrfalcon now.”

  Mol’s voice came back, muffled and clipped by the high compression of the burst transmissions. They had to keep the squids thinking the Hecate and the Gyrfalcon were unrelated, just two more ON ships caught up in a fight for their lives. Even if the Nyctus caught their encrypted burst transmissions, there’d be nothing to indicate what they were about.

  “Roger, Hecate,” Mol said. “Stand by.”

  Thorn closed his eyes, summoned and gathered what power he could find, and shaped it into a shield, a protective cocoon of magical force enclosing the Hecate.

  Kira’s voice followed Mol’s.

  “I’m going in . . . now,” Kira said, drawing on that enormous reservoir of potential she’d discovered in herself, shaping it into a Joining she’d been practicing in her mind since Thorn first came up with this, and hurling it—

  Into the back of the Gyrfalcon, into the mind of the unconscious shaman.

  In a few seconds, they’d know if this was going to work, or if all of this had been futile, a lost cause from the start. It all came down to one thing Kira thought she’d learned about the Nyctus.

  That they weren’t some sort of hive mind.

  There were dozens of Starcasters in the ON, but Kira only knew a few of them. Most were utter strangers to her. They’d had no idea if the situation was the same for the Nyctus shaman. For all the ON knew, their shaman might be some sort of collective, sharing thoughts like the individual cells in a brain. But Kira had been given a unique opportunity—she’d been able to touch the minds of her squid captors, lifting not just information—which had proved to be mostly false—but also a diffuse understanding of the creatures themselves. Like humans, they were individuals, not some sort of shared consciousness. That in itself was an important piece of knowledge, but more immediately, it gave her an opportunity—or, at least, she was almost certain it would. Of course, she could be wrong, and squids, or at least their shaman, did share thoughts on some level.

  Well, let’s find out, Kira thought, and set about turning herself into a squid.

  She reshaped the incoherent thoughts of the drugged shaman, draping them like a veil over her own. On some deep, instinctual level, the creature’s mind rebelled, trying to expel her the way someone just punched in the face might spit blood. Kira pushed on, shoving through this primitive, hind-brain defense, and immersing herself in the shaman’s chemically induced swirl of fractured consciousness. Ruthlessly, she suppressed the creature’s identity, crushing it down into a dark, dim place, and substituted her own.

  Kira tried something simple, like opening her eyes. At least that’s what she intended to do, but the squid eyes didn’t so much open as they did reshape themselves, losing opacity as lenses slid and fluid drained away to reveal—

  —Alix and Toff looming over her, their faces radiating potential violence.

  Glad they’re on my side, Kira thought, then twitched. Oh. Shit.

  Kira was now a Nyctus shaman. Or she was shaman-ish; it was more like piloting the alien creature than actually being it. But it was close enough, and that meant step one was complete. Now for step two.

  As she reached, mentally, toward the massive enemy battleship, it struck Kira how dependent she was on Mol and Toff to keep her alive. She no longer had anything but a distant, vague awareness of her own body; it was effectively just cargo aboard the Gyrfalcon.

  Didn’t matter. Kira pushed her consciousness toward the enemy battleship—

  And was greeted with a wall of psychic iron.

  As the Hecate emerged from the ON battle line, she started to draw fire. Not much; most of the KEW’s and missiles swept past her, racing toward the capital ships. But the Nyctus made enough note of the destroyer to begin lobbing violence her way.

  Tanner rattled off orders to the Helm over the intercom, then to Tactical. The Hecate slewed and swung about, putting on bursts of sudden acceleration, then abruptly slowed again. He handled the destroyer like a fighter, dodging and weaving her through the Nyctus fire, closing on their own battle line.

  More and more incoming fire began to converge on her. A missile detonated against her reactive armor with a heavy thud. Then another. Her point-defense batteries poured streams of tracer-bright rounds in glittering arcs, tracking incoming projectiles. It was an amazing effort, made even more brilliant by the fact it was mostly working. The Hecate raced on, as though making a determined death ride straight at the Nyctus line.

  Which was exactly the point. She made herself the most obvious target in the battle. That meant the Nyctus concentrated ever-increasing fire on her, enough to saturate her defenses and then overwhelm them. That should have been enough to guarantee her fate.

  And that was where Thorn came in.

  He tensed and solidified the shield he’d created around the destroyer, becoming a living conduit for raw magical power. He shaped it into an implacable barrier, against which the savagery of the Nyctus flared, and then died.

  Wreathed in a nimbus of impacts and explosions, but otherwise unharmed, the Hecate sailed on, flying straight into hornet’s nest.

  Now the Nyctus were fixated on putting an end to this upstart destroyer, whose wild charge had begun to pull in more ON ships. The Hecate was becoming the tip of a massive wedge, aimed at the heart of the Nyctus battle line making up the right flank of their surprise attack on the Fleet.

  In the vast confusion, a lone Gyrfalcon attracted almost no attention at all. A single fighter just wasn’t important enough; it couldn’t, after all, swing the battle by itself.

  Kira met the barrier the enemy shamans had erected around the battleship and her consorts, a solid wall of denial intended to keep any psychic intrusions by their enemy at bay.

  But Kira wasn’t an enemy. She was a Nyctus. The barrier barely registered her awareness as it passed through. There were, after all, many good reasons to allow the shamans to commune among themselves, and she was just one of the gang.

  Kira’s mind entered the bridge of the massive Nyctus ship, and with the grace of a dancer, she brushed against the minds of the crew, including three shamans imperiously watching the battle unfold. One of them spared her a thought, its tentacles waving in lazy, unconcerned arcs.

  Bored. The bastard is bored, Kira thought, a spike of hate searing her mind. She iced it and moved on, returning to her diamond focus. Like fog rolling downhill, Kira continued her quest, tasting the moment and finding it to her liking. This is it, she knew. This was the moment. If the squid recognized her as one of its fellows that shouldn’t be here, who’d been lost days ago in a minor skirmish in the Zone, then the deception would fall apart. Kira braced herself, mind flowing, shimmering—invading.

  Do you have a purpose for this contact, or are you simply here to share in the glory, brother?

  Kira resisted a surge of relief. She spoke with the nerves of a junior officer, unsure but opportunistic.

  I’m concerned, she replied. The enemy seems to be making a determined counterattack.

  The speaker was imperious and brusque. It matters not. This battle is won. The humans are already all dead. They just haven’t realized it yet.

  The shaman’s attention wandered off to the battle, to the apparent death ride of the ON fleet. As it did, and he lost focus on Kira, she pounced.

  She ruthlessly tore the squid’s thoughts apart, leaving it reeling. It gave her the moment she needed; she’d planned to have it psychically attack the bridge crew, hoping she had enough power to overcome them and seize control of the ship, at least briefly. But she saw a better way.

  Near the shaman stood a warrior, a guard on-station against the admittedly remote possibility of an enemy boarding action. While the shaman staggered, she flicked out a tendril of thought, punching it into the warrior’s relatively weak mind.
/>   Now, let’s see how much power I’ve actually got.

  Kira now controlled three squids: the drugged shaman aboard the Gyrfalcon, the second shaman aboard the battleship, and the warrior. Her power waned, but she tapped the last of it as a drunk tips bottle, feeling the satisfying lurch in her pool of magic.

  I have enough for this.

  She raised the warrior’s blade gun, pumped two rounds into the second warrior on the bridge, then proceeded to gun down the shamans and the rest of the bridge crew, sparing only two—the ones she’d recognized from their thoughts as the helm and gunnery officers.

  I’ll be needing you in a moment, friends.

  The tidy discipline of the bridge collapsed into chaos and gore. But Kira wasn’t done. She turned the blade gun on the warrior, remorselessly forcing it to kill itself, then poured the rest of her power into seizing control of the two remaining squids.

  The battleship’s massive batteries smoothly reoriented, slewing away from the approaching ON ships. Their massive barrels now pointed at—

  —their own ships.

  Alarms immediately began to sound, automated safety systems activating to prevent a friendly fire disaster, but the gunnery officer knew how to override them—and so, therefore, did Kira.

  The alarms went silent. A few seconds later, the battleship opened up again, pouring broadsides into the Nyctus ships around it even as Kira commanded the helm to start the huge ship swinging. The engines howled to full burn as well, driving it toward a flanking battlecruiser.

  That’s good. All ahead full, Kira said, and the Nyctus she controlled gave a squeak of fear.

  Thorn grunted as enemy fire slammed into his shield, an endless tsunami of psychic impacts as real as if they were striking his flesh. His grip on The Hungry Trout was so tight the cardboard bent inside his palm. He couldn’t endure this much longer, was almost spent—