by J. N. Chaney
Thorn felt something brushing the corners of his awareness with a feather’s touch. A hint, or a ghost, more than any fully formed idea. But his curiosity would not be denied. “Where did all these rocks come from, anyway?” he asked. “Older planets that got smashed up?”
“Probably,” Trixie replied. “I’ve been trying out different models for how this system could have formed, and the most likely one—”
“That’s okay, Trixie,” Thorn said, then he reached into the pocket of his crash suit. He slipped out his talisman, the battered storybook. Traces of grit still scraped under his fingertips, despite how long he’d been carrying the little book—each touch a direct line to his own past, mired in fire and ash and pain. Particles of his old life, miniscule remnants of what the Nyctus had taken away from him. He’d probably always feel them, even if no one else ever would. They were just part of what the book was to him now.
But that wasn’t the only familiar thing.
He sat suddenly upright.
Mol glanced at him. “Something wrong?”
Thorn stared at the viewscreen. At the nav display. At the viewscreen again.
“Sir,” Brid said. “Are you—”
“Mol,” Thorn snapped. “Get us the hell out of here.”
She stared. “Out of where? This system?”
“No, this debris field. Get us out of it, now!”
She didn’t question it any further; her fingers danced across the controls, spinning the Gyrfalcon, then starting a hard burn to push her out of the debris halo by the quickest possible course. It aimed them directly at the star.
“Mind if I ask what’s going on?” she asked.
Thorn opened his mouth. “Ooh, I know!” Trixie cut in. “Some of the rocks ahead of us changed their trajectories a touch. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“She’s right,” Thorn replied, leaning back and placing his talisman in his lap, his fingertips resting on it.
“Well, shit,” Mol replied. “I didn’t even notice.” She scowled at the display. “But—yeah, Trixie’s right. About a dozen rocks somehow nudged their way onto converging trajectories with us.”
She turned to Thorn with wide eyes. “Damn. Does that mean what I think it means?”
Thorn gave a grim nod. “Yeah, it does. The Nyctus are here.”
14
Almost as soon as he said it, drives flared to life in the debris field, along what would have been their course. Thorn counted four of them.
“Two frigates and two corvettes,” Mol said. “Or whatever the squids call those types of ships.”
“Can we outrun them?” Brid asked.
Mol studied the tactical display, then shook her head. “We’ve got an edge on them acceleration-wise, but not enough to make a clean break.” She glanced at Thorn. “There’s definitely gonna be some shooting.”
Thorn scowled at the four icons now glowing on the tactical display. Intercepting trajectories extended from them, converging on the Gyrfalcon’s track. “I gather they were just hiding out among these rocks, all powered down.”
“That’d do it,” Trixie replied. “There’s enough metal in these boulders to make them blend right in.”
“Maybe they were using magic, too,” Dart offered. “Concealing themselves with it.”
“Maybe,” Thorn replied. “They definitely have at least one shaman with them. He wanted to take us out in typical squid-style, with KEWs, I guess. He got sloppy, though.”
“They probably don’t know we’ve got a Starcaster in the right-hand seat,” Mol said. “I’m assuming it was your mojo that let you see those rocks start moving, even before Trixie did.”
“Something like that,” Thorn replied.
Mol tightened the harness holding her into her g-couch. As she did, something made a soft, metallic ping.
Thorn, who’d been tightening up his own straps, looked around. “What was that?”
“Something under my butt, in this seat,” Mol said. “Maybe a spring’s going.” She smiled at Thorn. “I could take some time to check it out. Hate to have a spring poke me in the ass at an inopportune moment. You know, like combat.”
“How about we leave the routine maintenance for another time?” Thorn replied. “Besides, I think you’ll survive a poke in the cheek.”
“Says the man whose cheek isn’t the one at risk of being skewered.”
Thorn grinned but turned serious again as he looked back at the tactical display. “More than just that about to be skewered. I don’t like this combat display. It’s bad and getting worse.”
They finished cinching up crash suits, then put their helmets on and latched them into place. The visors, which they left open, would automatically snap closed if the cabin pressure suddenly dropped.
“Okay,” Mol said, her gaze fixed on the tactical screen. “They’ll be in decent firing range for typical squid missiles in about fifteen seconds, plus or minus five seconds based on possible acceleration. Gonna be tight no matter how hard we drive.”
They waited. Sure enough, all four Nyctus ships launched missiles, the projectiles lunging at them far faster than they could accelerate away.
“This is where it gets interesting,” Mol said, whipping the Gyrfalcon through a one hundred and eighty degree spin, then ramming the drive to the firewall. Inertial dampening systems wiped away most of the sudden surge of g’s, but all of them were still pressed hard into their seats.
In less than a minute, Mol had brought the Gyrfalcon to a complete stop and started her acceleration in the opposite direction, toward the squid missiles. Thorn knew what she wanted to do—run at the missiles head-on, dodge them, then leave them unable to come about after them by the time they ran out of fuel. But they’d need more velocity if this was going to work.
“Mol,” Thorn said. “Stand by to go faster.”
She looked at him but just nodded in understanding. “Not going to turn down some help.”
Thorn let his awareness sink once more into his talisman. He caught flickers of fire and smoke and fear imprinted on its tattered pages, but he had long ago learned to ignore them. Instead, he shoved his perception outward, until it again encompassed the Gyrfalcon. The Nyctus used magic to accelerate rocks into deadly KEWs, something that should smash the projectiles to gravel, but didn’t.
Thorn decided to borrow their technique.
He kept his focus on the Gyrfalcon but let the rest of the universe fade away. For a moment, the fighter hung in a bubble of Thorn’s awareness, mimicking the way an Alcubierre drive worked. Now Thorn crafted magic into a hard push against the bubble, an application of Force magic that would have slammed against the Gyrfalcon like a battering ram. Instead, the fighter itself felt no push at all—but the bubble of space around it did.
Thorn maintained the effect until it felt right. Spacecraft flight was all about mathematics and equations; magic, though, was about doing something until it didn’t need to be done anymore. Like a series of tumblers, his ability clicked into place, and the Gyrfalcon leapt forward, defying everything that resembled physics in a blur of light.
He let go, releasing the effect. The magical power leaked away, exposing his mind to the physical world once again. His awareness snapped back into his head, inside the fighter. He took a breath, and then another, lungs pumping like bellows as his body adjusted to the physical demands of a magical task.
“You know,” Mol said, “I’m starting to think we don’t even need engines anymore. You just gained us a few thousand meters per second of delta-v, in, like, no time. Between that and moving around between stars—”
“Yeah, well, let’s hang onto the engines, just in case,” Thorn said, forcing himself to relax and catch his breath, still shaking off the efforts. He glanced back at Brid and Dart, and saw them sitting in the g-couches, taking in the show. Dart gave him a thumbs up, but they were mission specialists and otherwise really had nothing to do—
Which made Thorn wary.
He tossed the thought aside. “I
’ll see if I can help dodge those missiles,” he said to Mol, pointing at the tactical display. He tapped three of the icons depicting the incoming ordnance, now just over a minute away. “These ones here. That should give you some room to maneuver.”
“Roger that. I’m just going to assume they won’t be there, when we are.” She shot him a wry glance. “Because, if they are . . .”
She didn’t need to finish.
The missiles raced closer. The Nyctus ships, driving along behind, broke into two pairs, each with one of the larger, frigate-like ships, accompanied by one of the corvette-class. The pairs diverged their trajectories, but also cut their drives. Like the missiles, if they just engaged the Gyrfalcon in a high-velocity, head-on pass, they’d get only a few seconds of engagement time, then they’d have to come about and try to give chase. At that point, the fighter would be long gone, well outside their possible maneuver envelopes. This way, they could keep firing solutions on the Gyrfalcon a lot longer, engaging from both flanks.
“Missiles in thirty seconds,” Trixie said. “Whatever you’re gonna do, you should do it soon!”
Thorn refocused his awareness back through his talisman. This time, the target of his magic was the Nyctus, so he drew on the old pain embedded in the substance of the book, using it to sharpen his perception, and thereby his control. Once more, he pulled magical power to him and imposed his will on it.
Three missiles, each tracking the Gyrfalcon with mechanical determination.
Let them.
Thorn superimposed a temporary new reality over each of the three missiles, so that each saw one of the others as the fighter. Their guidance systems, locked onto the Gyrfalcon, dutifully adjusted their trajectories to intercept the target they’d been assigned, and Thorn learned something critical. Magic could alter material abilities, not just the material itself.
Two detonated in rapid succession, the twin blasts smashing the third to wreckage.
Mol had already jinked the Gyrfalcon aside, hard enough to fling them all to one side against their harnesses.
“Trixie, rail gun!”
“Coming up!”
The Gyrfalcon shuddered as her rail gun opened up, spitting hyper-velocity slugs at one of the remaining missiles, blowing it to whirling scrap. Trixie shifted targets and took down a second missile. She tried to refocus the weapon and track a third, but a warning chime sang through the cabin.
“Damn it, got a jam,” Mol snapped. The third missile, the one Trixie had meant to be the target, was the only one that remained a threat. And it was just seconds away from detonating, less than a klick way.
Thorn braced himself. “This is gonna hurt.”
Mol cursed and rotated the Gyrfalcon ninety degrees, pointing her aft end at the missile. At the same time, she firewalled the drive. A plume of superheated plasma poured from her exhaust, slamming the fighter through a lateral acceleration that made her groan deep in her structure. Thorn’s head snapped back against the g-couch, suddenly two or three times as heavy as it should be.
The missile exploded. The drive plume dissipated some of the blast effect coming directly at the Gyrfalcon. Whatever did manage to slam into the fighter hit her most solid parts—exhaust bells and backing plates, all tough alloy designed to shrug off the incandescent fury of the plume.
Thorn still felt like someone had kicked him in the head, back, and hips all at once, his spinal column a dancing stack of bones. The Gyrfalcon lurched and wobbled, settling back into a smooth course as Mol regained control.
“That was fun,” Brid said in a voice that certainly didn’t sound like someone having fun.
“Well, if you liked that, you’re gonna love what’s coming next,” Mol replied, without taking her eyes off the instruments. “Because we’ve still got to fight our way through four ships, each of them bigger than us.” She glanced at Thorn. “You’ve already done a lot, but if you could help out with this part too, that’d be nice.”
Thorn squared, locking his eyes on the tac display once again. The only way they were going to manage this was by focusing on one pair of the Nyctus ships. That meant the other pair needed to be taken out of action. He considered how he could do that—
But could think of only one way. It would leave him drained, unable to influence the battle any further. He said as much to Mol.
“You and Trixie are going to have to get us through the other two,” he said.
She gave a quick nod. “Trixie, this is going to be a lot harder without that rail gun.”
“Had to cycle it three times, but I just cleared that jam,” Trixie said. “It should be good now!”
Thorn glanced at the rail gun’s status panel, and it flicked from red to green. “Excellent. Back in business.”
“Any way we can help?” Brid asked.
Thorn turned. “Have you guys ever used magic during a space engagement before?”
They glanced at one another, then Brid shook her head. “Afraid not.”
“Then this isn’t the time to start, unless Mol asks for help. Otherwise, just sit tight and hang on so you don’t start working against her,” Thorn said.
Brid and Dart both gave another thumbs up, their motion nearly twin-like, and Thorn turned back to the battle, eyes narrowed as he felt the simmering presence of magic fizz through his bones.
“We’re going to fight through the pair on the left,” Mol said.
“Got it,” Thorn replied, shifting his focus to the two ships off to the right of their course.
For a third time, he sank his awareness into his talisman. This time, he embraced the echoes of terror, and loss, and lonely despair imprinted into it, using them to drive away any uncertainty—or compassion. What he was about to do had nothing compassionate about it.
Thorn’s perception raced out of the Gyrfalcon, into the empty nothing that was space. Grimly, he pushed his focus on, until it finally touched the two Nyctus ships that were his targets.
Machinery. Mechanical process, electronic systems, the flow of electrical current, the stellar roar of nuclear fusion—
He ignored it all. It was just noise. What he sought was right there.
Thorn seized thoughts that weren’t his, alien and mostly just an abstract jumble, and yet still familiar. They were thoughts shot through with purpose, with cruel and deadly determination. They were the thoughts of the squid commanding the bigger of the two ships.
Thorn latched onto those thoughts, and—
They killed my family.
They killed my daughter.
A roaring flame of rage kindled in Thorn. He rode it, a tide of incandescent hate, and began to push his sphere of influence outward, spinning like the disc of a youthful star system. At the front of this column of will, Thorn drew the power to him, through him, and into every fiber of his being, knowing it belonged there among the threads of his soul.
He was alive. He was, even there in the blackness, at home.
Thorn pulsed with the strength of a magic so ancient it tore at the nature of space, and in that terrible awareness, he could sense thoughts—
—the Nyctus. Their minds, open to him. Their hearts, filled with fear at the battle going far differently than they imagined. They were used to victory—swift, sure, and total—and this upstart ship with the rogue magician made them nervous, deep in places where they hid forbidden concepts like loss and cowardice.
Their fear fed Thorn. The magic made him vengeance incarnate, and with the inexorable power of a neutron star, Thorn reached into the depths of their ships and pulled.
Confusion, stunned shock—terror—all of these and more shrieking in the void as Thorn shifted from ghostly presence to fearsome reality, if only for a flashing second of unalloyed magical destruction.
But it was enough. More than enough, really.
Thorn yanked himself away, his consciousness falling back in on itself like a collapsing star. The Gyrfalcon’s cockpit slammed back into existence around him with, for him, an audible whoosh as the blood
sang in his ears. Thorn sucked in a desperate gasp of air, fell back, and tried to remember how to breathe.
“Uh—”
He rolled his head toward the sound, not easy in his crash helmet. Mol stared back, her eyes wide and white all around.
Behind him, he heard Brid say, “Holy shit,” in a tone more breath than voice.
Thorn blinked, shook his head, then glanced at the tactical display. An inset window held a zoomed image of the two Nyctus ships Thorn had just ravaged with magic. Myriad small objects drifted and tumbled around them.
Their crews. All of them, from each ship. Thorn had moved them all into space.
He just watched the bodies drift. It was one thing to experience it in the visceral moment, from atop a soaring pillar of magical power. To see his handiwork this way, though—the stark reality of it, detached from the ’casting itself—
They killed my family.
They killed my daughter.
Thorn looked at Mol. “I’ve killed as many of the bastards today as I can. The rest of them are up to you, Mol,” he said, his voice a dry rasp.
She stared an instant longer, then nodded and threw her focus back into the battle.
“Glad you’re on our side,” Mol muttered.
The two remaining Nyctus ships slowed their approach, their maneuvers becoming cautious, almost tentative. Thorn knew why. They’d seen what happened to the companion ships, so they knew that a powerful Starcaster was aboard a quarry they’d considered easy prey. The shaman who’d been trying to line up a KEW ambush back in the debris cloud had woven a magical barrier around them, desperate to keep the Starcaster’s horrifying power at bay.
Thorn smiled, mirthless and cold. Yes, be afraid. Be very afraid, you monsters.
Mol made a satisfied sound as she closed in. A single Gyrfalcon fighter against a pair of much bigger ships should still be a hard, tight battle, whose outcome was far from certain. But Mol seized the moment, capitalizing on their fear, launching a quartet of missiles and racing in behind them. The squids finally opened fire, but the multiple targets diffused their effort; Mol dodged, spun, and rolled the Gyrfalcon, nimbly avoiding what fire did try to target the fighter. She knew she had to move fast, turning the clash into a knife fight, the type of battle the Gyrfalcon did best. Any moment, that shaman was going to realize that the fearsome Starcaster had utterly exhausted themself and recraft his own power into something far more offensive than a simple, protective shield.
