by J. N. Chaney
She needed a clear mind, though, so she ruthlessly pushed away anything that wasn’t just blank, empty thoughts. Her breathing slowed as she found the mental place she called her center, the point around which the lever of her Joining rotated. She envisioned it as the point in her mind where all of her conflicting thoughts and feelings effectively cancelled out, equidistant and neutral. In that place, Kira centered her thoughts, and feelings, and the braiding of the two in that place where Joining moved from possible to real. Kira slowed her breathing, and felt her heart rate slow in tandem.
Clear the slate, Kira. And she did.
She was ready. Kira made her awareness expand outward from her fulcrum, radiating through time and space like a pulse of radio energy. But her awareness had no mass, no physical existence at all, so it wasn’t bound by the laws of physics or the constraints of lightspeed. In what amounted to no time whatsoever, she’d found her mental destination, a particular, familiar glimmer in the mental ether, at once both light-years away and right before her, right there.
Thorn.
She knew the curves and textures of his thoughts as well as she knew those of her own skin. There was no mistaking his presence in the space their minds now shared.
Thorn, it’s me.
The glimmer didn’t change, though. It was as though she’d found where Thorn lived, but he wasn’t home.
Thorn, it’s Kira.
Except he couldn’t not be home. He was there, behind and inside that glimmer, but he was refusing to acknowledge it. He was home, yes, but he wasn’t answering the door.
Thorn, please, talk to me. Why won’t you talk to me?
Nothing.
Kira would have been worried, fretting that he’d been injured, unconscious, rendered catatonic, but she knew he was none of those things. She’d been doing this long enough to know the feel of a wounded mind. No, Thorn was doing this out of choice, walling off his thoughts behind barriers so tough and thick that even Kira, prodigious Joiner that she was, couldn’t breach them. He was, in fact, one of only a very few who could stand up to her like this at all.
The question was, why?
Thorn, please—I have to speak to you. Please answer me!
She’d heard from him only once since the Vision—a brief, panicked connection between them in the immediate aftermath of that horrific event, one that might very well have only been involuntary, a reflexive thing. Since then, nothing, no matter how hard she tried. But she needed to talk to him, needed to know he was okay, because there were reasons he might not be.
Thorn, please! Dammit, talk to me!
She tried again and again but might as well have been trying to Join with a forest slug. The mental glimmer that was Thorn Stellers stubbornly refused to open to her, to change in any way, to do anything but just exist and glimmer, tantalizingly present but so far away.
Kira finally gave up, sitting forward with a muttered curse. She glanced at the terminal on her tiny desk; she’d send a conventional message to him, but she had no idea how far apart the Hecate and the Stiletto were. It was certainly more than the twenty-five light-year limit of real-time comms, which meant her message would have to be delivered through the ON courier system. As a low-priority personnel message, that could take days, even weeks.
“Lieutenant Wixcombe, Densmore here. Report to my planning room.”
Kira glared at the intercom, but her anger faded as she stood, straightened her uniform, and squared up, firing off one last thought to Thorn, wherever he was.
When you’re ready, I’m here.
3
Thorn felt Kira finally give up and withdraw, abandoning her attempts to contact him.
Again.
Fortunately, this time she’d caught him on a down shift, when he had no duties. The last time she tried, he’d been ensconced in the Hecate’s witchport, just minutes away from a possible contact with a Nyctus incursion into ON space. It had turned out to be a false alarm, but he’d been forced to split his attention—a feat he now understood how to do, so the experience hadn’t been a loss. His inability to speak to her was born of a natural drift, and unfounded suspicions, and all of the myriad things that turn people into strangers. Kira and Thorn were no ordinary people, but they were still subject to emotions and strain. In some sense, the things that kept them together could be a wedge between them as their minds were both able to roam wide and free, hearing thoughts that were not their own. Feelings that were not their own.
Pain that was not their own.
Thorn shook his head. Stay in the moment. Stay here.
“Stellers, Tanner. Report to my planning room.”
Thorn tapped the intercom. “Aye, sir. On my way.”
As he traversed the Hecate’s corridors, Thorn reflected on the fact that he knew exactly what was wrong with him. Ever since the Vision, he’d been finding it harder and harder to maintain his focus. What should have been trivial magical tasks, things that should, by now, be as natural to him as blinking or breathing, had begun to require effort. He had to concentrate on things that should have been reflexive, and the effort was a kind of grinding, both in his mind and in the untapped well of magical energy that made him more weapon than man. Thorn was a balanced knife—a human who existed between two worlds, and at the moment, neither felt like it fit.
He braced himself as the door to Tanner’s planning room slid open, ready to find it once more a sweaty little box jammed with people. But Tanner was alone. He gestured Thorn in, acknowledged his salute, then muttered, “Stand easy, Stellers.”
“Sir, you wanted to see me?”
“I did. Tell me, Stellers, do you think you could detect a Skin?” Tanner didn’t waste words, his eyes pinning Thorn with bright intellect and will.
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve heard a few mentions of it via ’caster channels, but nothing definitive,” Thorn admitted.
“Starcaster channels?”
Thorn waved vaguely toward the captain’s comm unit. “The Starcaster Corps maintains its own sort of back channels, I guess. We talk to one another. I’m sure commanders do the same, just by different means.”
“Magically?”
“Sometimes.”
“Huh.” Tanner mulled that for a moment, then lifted his brows as he sifted the concept of a secret network. Tanner was an old hand, and the more he learned about the ‘casters, the more he understood them to be sailors with a different set of tools. “No different, I suppose, than, say, the Engineering folks, who bitch about supply and their commanders. And captains. They live to gripe about captains. For engineers, it’s an art form.”
“Starcasters would never do that, sir,” Thorn said with feigned dignity.
Tanner actually smiled. It was brief, and slight, but genuine. “Of course you don’t. You’re far too noble. But back to the matter at hand. Do you think it would be possible to detect a Skin, using your magic, but—and this is key—discretion is critical, and not for the simple reason that we don’t want them tipped off. We need our entire awareness of them, as a presence, to be utterly secret. Do you understand?”
Thorn chewed on that, knowing any magical scan could be detected by the Nyctus. If these Skins were, in fact, shamans of some kind, that meant his incursion would be like ringing a bell. “It’s possible, I suppose, sir. I assume there’d be some sort of evidence of the Nyctus tampering with someone’s mind, that a Joiner could detect. Like an echo, or a trail maybe?”
“Can you do it covertly from the ship? Or at a distance?”
“Spy on people’s minds without their knowing about it? If I was careful, yes. However, the Starcaster Code of Conduct expressly prohibits—”
“Yes, I know it does,” Tanner said, raising a hand. “And it’s a laudable prohibition, sure. Our minds are supposed to be our ultimate safe place, aren’t they?”
Thorn nodded but knew there was an implied but hanging off the end of Tanner’s words. So he said nothing and simply waited.
“Don’t worry,” Tanner we
nt on. “I’m not going to ask you to read people’s minds without their knowing about it. But I am going to ask you to read people’s minds. I need to know the Hecate’s senior officers, bridge, engineering and weapons crews are free of this . . . influence. I don’t know what else to call it, at this time, but we know that they’re not on our team. We’ll hold off on the rest of the crew, at least for now. I’ll have to create a subtle means of denying certain crew access to more sensitive areas of data, weapons, and the holiest of holies: battle plans.”
“That’s going to raise suspicions all on its own, sir.”
“We’ll be announcing that there are new security protocols introduced by Fleet. The crew will bitch and complain about them, and then get on with their jobs, the way they always do, because they know the Fleet will eventually change its mind and come up with something else.”
Despite his brooding thoughts, Thorn had to lift his eyebrows. “You’re going to blame Fleet, sir?”
“Blaming high HQs for unpopular things is a time-honored tradition, Stellers, but with two, firm conditions—one, you do it sparingly, and two, you don’t use it as a way of shirking your own actual responsibilities. In this instance, it works because we don’t want to rouse suspicions, just in case any of our crew are compromised. Blaming it on some random, nebulous directive from Fleet diffuses any questions; a directive coming from me personally is likely to have exactly the opposite effect.”
“Because the crew will think you suspect something.”
“Exactly.”
Thorn smiled at the captain’s deft planning. “Okay, sir. What would you like me to do?”
“I’m going to interview each of the senior officers personally, ostensibly to get ready for annual performance reviews. You’ll be present and will use the opportunity to—to do whatever it is that you do, to determine if they’re clean or not.”
Thorn raised a finger in question. “Aren’t these people going to wonder why I’m sitting in on all of these interviews? We’ve never done that before.”
“Another Fleet directive. I’ll make a big deal about not liking it and roll my eyes when I explain it.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly. Never underestimate the power of an irritated eye roll. Once you confirm they’re clean, we’ll explain to them what’s going on, then work with them to screen their departments.”
Thorn waved out toward the corridor, where the crew moved about in their usual bustle. “Sir, wouldn’t it make more sense just to screen suspect personnel? Anyone the squids might have had a chance to actually compromise?”
“Stellers, we have new transfers from other ships and bases. People who have been away on special missions. Hell, people who were away on leave. Without some way of independently verifying where they were while they weren’t aboard the Hecate, any of them might have been compromised. For that matter, when we stop for resupply at Code Gauntlet in a few days, we’re going to rotate in some new crew, and they’ll have to be screened.” Tanner shook his head. “No, if we try to limit ourselves to just those who we think are likely to have been co-opted, we’ll end up testing only a handful of the crew.”
Thorn had to nod at that. “Good point, sir. When did you want to begin?”
“Immediately. We’ll start with the XO—she was on leave just over a month ago—and then move on to the bridge crew. I’m going to do this in my quarters.” He glanced around at his miniscule planning room. “More room in my closet than in here. Report there in one hour.”
“Aye, sir.” Thorn started to turn to leave, but stopped. “Sir, I—” he began, then stopped, not sure how to proceed. Tanner, though, gave a thin smile.
“You wonder if I should be tested. Fair point.” Tanner’s smile widened a touch. “I haven’t been off this ship for more than a day or two for the past year. But, like I said, fair point. Feel free to read me any time. I’ll trust you to be discreet about it and not make yourself too much at home in my head. I like my personal space.”
Thorn offered the Captain an appreciative nod. Tanner had just told Thorn he trusted him implicitly, which buoyed him with a sense of pride.
“Discretion is my mission, sir, in the event I ever do scan you.”
“Excellent. I see you understand the concept of plausible deniability,” Tanner said.
“I do now, sir,” Thorn said, smiling. “But what about me? I’ve been on more than a few extended missions into Nyctus space, some of them with just me and Specialist Wyant aboard her Gyrfalcon.”
Tanner gave a wintry smile, and for a moment, he looked tired beyond his years. “If you’ve been compromised by the Nyctus, Stellers, then we’re all screwed.”
Thorn flopped into his rack without removing his shirt, or even his boots. Fatigue tugged at him around the edges, telling him to close his eyes, relax, just take a few minutes—
He blinked himself back to something closer to alertness. He hadn’t expected repeated Joinings to be so draining.
Thorn sighed. It wasn’t the Joinings he’d been doing on Tanner’s behalf—which had, thankfully, uncovered no Skins aboard the Hecate, unless they were Ratings in a non-critical department. He’d get through the rest of those tomorrow but doubted they’d find anyone who’d been compromised.
Fortunately, the Hecate’s crew was small compared to that of a big capital ship like a battlecruiser—which made him wonder how they could possibly ensure security against Skins aboard those massive beasts. By the time a Starcaster got through the entire crew, they’d have to start at the beginning again, given the number of transfers and leave rotations—
But it wasn’t the Joinings themselves, which were mentally demanding, though not enough to leave him this dragged out. No, this fatigue came from inside his own mind, which had slumped into a chaotic mess of overlapping thoughts and unaccountable feelings. Between the two, Thorn knew he was changing. After years as an orphan, he’d found a home in the navy, but now his job was wearing him down from the inside out.
“It’s better than slinging mud, but worse than the coffee I drank while slinging mud,” he said to the ceiling. The thought of bad coffee made him wince, and that brought a pang of awareness about what he was missing, and why. He began to count missions on one hand, and then two. Then, he mined the memories and found—
The missions weren’t overtly lethal. The whole war, in fact, had devolved into a weird, simmering series of border raids and odd clashes. Nyctus ships were rare. Their fleet was unseen. Their attack on Nebo had been the most presence Thorn had seen or heard of in months, if not over a year.
“I don't miss seeing the squid, no matter how charming they are. And now I’m talking to myself.” He stretched a bit, found the position wanting, and moved again. “Not sure I like myself enough to be my only friend.” That made him laugh, then the heart of his worry thumped to life in one thing, one image, one memory.
The Vision.
And there it was, of course. It wasn’t about being sick, or scared, or traumatized by battle, and he knew that. It was about the Vision, and his dream about Tuck, and neither of those were things he’d wanted to delve into very deeply. Those things did scare him, in a profound way.
Especially the Vision. Seeing Tuck torn apart all over again was a clarion call to hidden pain, but it had faded, because it had to. It was only a dream, in one sense—gruesome, brutal, and heavy in his senses, but only a dream.
No, it was The Vision that left him here, untethered in a sea of memory, free of purpose, and missing Kira, though he would not admit it. Not yet.
Watching the destruction of Nebo from the perspective of a little girl was wholly unnatural. Of course. There couldn’t be any joy in experiencing the final, terrified moments of an innocent child. Thorn knew full well such a thing would naturally be traumatic, a wrenching enough experience that even hardened combat veterans would probably have trouble dealing with it.
He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. “No mud. Still better than Murgon-4,” he said, and it was.
A damned sight better.
He stopped and stared at the toes of his boots.
A question had just occurred to him, one so obvious he couldn’t understand how he couldn’t have thought of it before. An abyss yawned before him, darkly beckoning to his sense of needing to know.
Who was that little girl?
Thorn had to stand. Of course he wondered who the girl had been. She’d obviously been a nascent Starcaster—and a powerful one, at that. The Starcaster Corps speculated that the Nyctus had attacked Nebo specifically to kill her, which had all sorts of terrifying implications on its own. For instance, how had the squids learned about her in the first place?
The doll was a mystery. The patches on it were not. It was an ON figure, clutched by a child who was far too young to grasp what such symbols meant, and as Thorn began to pull the knot apart, questions led to few answers, but a growing sense of unease at his ignorance about the child.
Why now?
His instinct was reflexive. His desire to follow through was—less so.
“Time to see Kira. There are things to know.” He didn’t relish her knowing gaze, but he understood that if he wanted to know what happened on Nebo, it started with the Vision, and it ended with Kira.
Kira, don’t answer. Know this. I’m on my way.
The stars listened, and Thorn stood, ready to find out what came next.
4
Kira was tired of explaining why, if she was on leave, she was sitting in transient quarters in Code Gauntlet, awaiting the arrival of the Hecate. Personnel on leave didn’t hang around military installations, eating military food and sleeping in military beds. They returned home to see family, or went to resorts or casinos, or just dove into a pool of booze and only resurfaced when their leave was done.
