Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

Thorn narrowed his eyes and concentrated on his target. He let his awareness sink into the intimately familiar depths of his talisman, treading the magical paths he knew so well, gathering power. When he felt he had sufficient might, he reached out with it and began to nudge and shape reality, squeezing it, kneading it, changing it to a truth—to the only truth. To his truth.

  The universe changed.

  Thorn relaxed, let his consciousness reassert itself inside his head, and cast a critical gaze on his target.

  It looked like nothing had changed. But there was only one way to tell.

  He picked up the mug and sipped. The warm, smooth bitterness of coffee washed across his tongue.

  It had worked. He’d started with tea in the mug and changed it to coffee.

  Because who the hell preferred tea over coffee?

  He sipped coffee again, then reflected on what he’d accomplished. He’d changed a bulkhead from a shade of grey to a noticeably different shade of grey. He’d considered shocking pink but didn’t want to antagonize Tanner. Instead, he’d changed the Tac O’s socks to shocking pink, from the standard-issue grey. He’d convinced the universe that the beef stew on his plate had actually always been spaghetti, that the hot and cold water taps on his wash basin had always been the other way around, and that the place rug in his quarters was not blue, but green.

  So, success.

  A degree of success, anyway. And that’s what mattered.

  Thorn had come to think of these little ’castings as a sort of talisman all on their own. He knew he still lacked the capacity to wield the sorts of power that brought planets successfully—and without complications—back from the dead. He fell far short of it, in fact. But keeping up with these little ’castings, these tiny nudges to reality, also kept him engaged with his ’casting, and with minimal drain. The exercises felt like sharpening a knife, and he, of course, was the blade.

  They also let him drink coffee instead of tea.

  Except it wasn’t enough, Thorn thought, as he left his quarters and headed for the Gyrfalcon.

  He hadn’t expected to find Mol with the fighter, but she was there. Once again, she was fiddling with something up inside the landing-gear well. Thorn made sure to pointedly clear his throat when he entered the repurposed shuttle bay. He made sure to do that every time, ever since he’d startled Mol enough that she cracked her head on an ordnance hardpoint. That had caused the spillage of a little blood, and a lot of profanity.

  She was craning her neck to look at whatever she was working on. As Thorn approached, she looked down, catching him square in the face with the glare of her headlamp.

  Thorn squinted and raised a hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk! Just no more rubber hoses, okay?”

  Mol grinned and aimed the light away from his face. “Don’t talk to me about rubber hoses.”

  Thorn tried to peek up inside the gear well. “What the hell do you keep working on in there? I mean, I ride around in this thing all the time. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “The list of things I don’t tell you is way longer than the list of things I do,” Mol replied. “I guarantee that’s the way you really want it.”

  “I believe you,” Thorn said, smiling, knowing that it was complete bullshit. Mol kept the Gyrfalcon in absolute fighting condition. For her to be repeatedly trying to fix something meant there was something genuinely wrong.

  He stepped up beside her. “Anything I can help with?”

  Mol glanced at him sidelong. “You’re offering to help me do maintenance? Bored, are we, sir?”

  “We are. In the absence of any apparent squid threats, I don’t have a lot to do.”

  Mol grinned. “Apply for some leave. No better time than during a lull like this.”

  “I’d rather wait until I can coordinate my leave with Kira. And who knows when she’s going to be back.”

  “She still doing diplomatic stuff at that planet we found?”

  “She is, yeah—” Thorn stopped and winced as something viscous hit his cheek with a splat and oozed down the side of his face. “What the hell?”

  “That’s my problem, right there. The newer models of the Gyrfalcon use electrical motivators and such to raise and lower the gear, operate atmospheric flight-control surfaces, that sort of thing. This is an earlier model that still uses hydraulics as the primary, with electrical backups. I need to get some upgrades done to her, but the heavy-duty shop time she needs is in short supply.” Another drip of murky fluid hit the deck between them. “Anyway, like I said, this is my problem. I’ve got a slow, drippy leak of fluid from that coupling, right there, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”

  “How about replacing it?”

  Mol crossed her eyes. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that? I is so dumb.”

  “You have replaced it.”

  “Yes. Several times. So it’s not the coupling itself, it’s the socket it sits in. But I can’t replace that without replacing the entire gear-well assembly, and I can’t do that outside of a dedicated shop with some technical expertise.” She sighed. “So I tighten it and use sealant on it, and mess around with it until it stops leaking, and then it resumes leaking, and I do it all over again.”

  “Mind if I try something?”

  “Will it fix my leak?”

  “It might.”

  Mol stepped back and gestured at the gear well. “Go for it.”

  Thorn stepped under the well, then he extracted his talisman and relaxed. Once more, he let his awareness fall into it. And once more he traversed the well-trodden magical pathways, the ones that carried hints of smoke and fire and fear. He sharpened his focus on the leaky coupling, applied a glimmer of magical force, and nudged into existence a new one, one imposed by his will.

  One in which the coupling had never leaked.

  Then he let the magic dissipate, and relaxed.

  He found Mol staring at him.

  “What?”

  “You can use magic to fix my Gyrfalcon? How long have you been able to do that?”

  Thorn held up a hand. “Before you think there’s a whole branch of magic devoted to fixing leaky hydraulics, there isn’t. Instead, I think you’ll find that this coupling has never leaked.”

  Sure enough, there was no smear of hydraulic fluid on Thorn’s cheek, and no spatter of it on the deck near his foot.

  “Wait,” Mol said. “You mean you did your reality-changing thing?”

  Thorn nodded.

  “I didn’t think you were supposed to do that.”

  He gave her a conspiratorial look. “I’m trying to keep myself fine-tuned until I get all of my—” Thorn stopped, then smiled. “All of my mojo back.”

  Mol smiled back, but it quickly faded. “Does that mean you can do something about Trixie?”

  Thorn’s smile faded, too. “No. Or, at least, not yet. It’s one thing to fix a leaky hydraulic line, or change tea into coffee.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I know, right? Who likes tea?”

  “I do.”

  Thorn rolled his eyes. “No accounting for taste. Anyway, I’m confining myself to little things. Me drinking coffee instead of tea, or you never having that leak, aren’t likely to lead to universe-shaking changes.”

  “Aren’t likely to. That doesn’t mean they won’t.”

  Thorn sighed. “Well, that’s true. I’ll put it this way—I think the tiny amount of risk is worth the reward.”

  Mol cocked her head. “And what, exactly, is the reward?”

  “My sanity.”

  Mol blinked at that. Thorn caught himself just an instant too late. He hadn’t meant to be that blunt but had blurted it out before he could edit it into something less dire.

  “You okay, Thorn?” Mol asked, dropping the sir. It didn’t bother Thorn at all. Somehow, it didn’t seem like much of a transgression from someone with whom he’d spent so much time—including at least a few near-death experiences. “Anything you want to talk about?”


  For a moment, Thorn considered just spilling it all to Mol, including the things he hadn’t even told Kira. He knew full well that that was the problem—that he couldn’t get past failing to bring back Morgan. He had tried to do too much and gotten overconfident in his control over his powers. He had tried to change her into something she wasn’t, just to suit his idea of who and what she should be.

  He slammed face-first into a wall of guilt and regret because she’d been so close. She’d been right there. He tried to remake her into someone that wasn’t a Starcaster, and she fought back so he lost her.

  Thorn even opened his mouth to speak, but words suddenly failed him. He didn’t know what to say, or even how to say it. And how could he tell Mol something he’d never shared with Kira, Morgan’s own mother?

  “I’m okay, Mol. It’s more a matter of being bored, I think. With nothing much to do, I have to keep in practice somehow, right? If I just sit around waiting for the Nyctus to do something, I’ll probably go stir crazy. That’s what I meant.”

  Mol gave him a doubtful look. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’m just saying, if you need to talk, there are two seats, side-by-side, in the cockpit up there. It’s easy to talk between them.”

  Thorn smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mol—”

  Tanner’s voice cut him off. “All hands, battle stations. I say again, battle stations. This is not a drill, I say again, not a drill.”

  Thorn exchanged a look with Mol, then headed for the exit from the bay. Mol rolled up her toolkit and went the other way, toward the Gyrfalcon’s airlock. As she did, she glanced back over her shoulder.

  “This is your fault, you know,” she said.

  “My fault? How? Because I changed tea into coffee?”

  “Maybe,” Mol shot back, lifting a foot onto the ladder. “More likely because you said you were bored. Never say you’re bored, ’cause if you do, you can bet the universe will take care of it for you.”

  8

  Maybe Mol was right. Maybe the universe was involved somehow, getting back at Thorn for saying he was bored. Or maybe the universe was just offended by Thorn, over the liberties he took with it, and was lashing back. Whatever the reason, Thorn realized the deep irony that the Hecate was under attack by a Nyctus flotilla—after a long discussion with Tanner about the Nyctus likely pulling back to lick their wounds.

  He clambered into the witchport, thankful that the battle station’s klaxon cut out just before he settled himself. It wasn’t easy focusing with the damned thing blaring. He activated the bridge repeater panel with a tap. It would give him essential tactical information, while also keeping him on a direct line to Tanner.

  Thorn retrieved his focus and placed it on his knees, then tried to relax.

  “Captain, Stellers here. I’m on-station.”

  “Got it.”

  Thorn just breathed in and out for a moment, centering himself. Then he plunged into the magical depths of the talisman, tapping into his reservoir of available power—

  Which was still far less than he was used to. It was like gazing across the warm, shallow waters washing a gentle slope of beach, instead of staring into the deeps. Into the dark, almost unbound depths, now denied him.

  He gave a mental shrug. It was what he had to work with.

  Thorn tapped into a tiny fraction of the power, extended it around him, and opened the witchport. Simultaneously, he oriented himself with the repeater display so he could pick out the approaching Nyctus ships. They were still far enough away they’d be dim dots at best, but—

  A diffuse patch of light snagged his attention, pulling him out of the moment and almost making him lose the bubble of containment he’d extended around himself.

  By vast coincidence, the Nyctus ships were closing from only a few degrees off Thorn’s line-of-sight to the Witch Nebula.

  Thorn took a breath and reasserted control. It took some time and effort, though—far more than it normally would or should. The containment bubble was something he should be able to pretty much fire and forget, usually requiring almost no conscious thought to maintain at all. It made his stomach twist a little. Was he really that weak? Had changing even tiny aspects of reality, like tea into coffee, or the color of the Tac O’s socks, dissipated that much of his capacity?

  Thorn took a long, slow breath, then let it out, recentering himself. He had to stay in the moment, ignoring the Nebula and his limited capacity for magic. Ignore all of it and focus on the task at hand.

  Tanner’s voice broke in over the intercom. “Tac O, time to range?”

  “Two minutes to maximum missile range. Four point five minutes to rail gun range. Five point five to particle beam range.”

  Thorn glanced at the trajectories depicted on the repeater. The fact that four Nyctus ships were so close mystified him. They were essentially in open space, with nothing nearby that could have hidden them. And one of them was a destroyer of the Hecate’s size, too.

  “Stellers,” Tanner said. “How did they get so close to us undetected? Magic?”

  Thorn released a breath. “I’m still running on low, sir, so I can’t afford the power to check. Not without leaving me short for battle.”

  “Don’t do that. We’re badly outgunned here as it is.”

  Thorn’s gut twisted another notch. Tanner was counting on him to help offset the squids’ numbers. For the first time in a while, Thorn’s confidence that he could do that faltered.

  “Sir,” he said. “Far be it from me to offer tactical advice, but why not just do an Alcubierre hop and withdraw?”

  There were other Captains in the ON, Thorn knew, who would take a suggestion to retreat as something not far from mutiny. Tanner, though, was far more pragmatic.

  “Love to. However, the drive’s off-line for at least another fifteen minutes. The Chief Engineer was working on it and has to bring it back up to power. Wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d detected these assholes sooner, like we should have.”

  Thorn couldn’t help hearing an edge to Tanner’s words, a hint of recrimination. Although what amounted to a squid ambush had nothing to do with Thorn, he obviously suspected it involved magic in some way. Thorn was an easy, even if unfair target for his frustration.

  “Understood, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Thorn glanced at the repeater. Four ships, including a destroyer, a frigate, and two corvettes. The Hecate was a match for any one of them and could likely take on both corvettes and pound them into scrap. But all four?

  Badly outgunned indeed.

  Thorn would try to change that. He once more let his awareness fall into his talisman, then radiate outward, focusing on the incoming Nyctus ships. His thoughts brushed against the cold, alien minds of the squids—

  Wait.

  Cold and alien, yes. But these squids were different, somehow. He wasn’t sure how, but these Nyctus were definitely different. Another sect, maybe? A different religion, to the extent they had anything that could be called a religion? It was something about how they viewed the world, a distinctly new flavor of thought processes, open to him for discovery. He explored their offerings, gathering what he could in bits and pieces, and concluded that their sect was irrelevant—they were the enemy.

  Thorn let his awareness sweep across the enemy ships, but decided that now was not a good time to get fancy. Drawing power from his reservoir, it grew shallower still. He used some of it to tighten his focus on the lead ship. Thorn felt the lines of the destroyer and sought out the containment generator for its fusion reactor. There was nothing subtle about this. He would try to bludgeon the containment into collapse, because some jobs required nothing more than a hammer.

  Thorn grinned, flexing his magical focus. A bigger hammer.

  His effort might lead to an explosion, but it would more likely just trip safeties and scram the reactor. Either way, it would take the destroyer out of the battle, at least for a time, and dramatically even the odds.

  There it was—the bounded fury of the fusion reactio
n howled away within its magnetic prison. Again, Thorn didn’t plan to be subtle. He simply focused power on the containment system, his intent to make it fail, at least enough to initiate a scram—

  A powerful blast of denial slammed into him, the will of a shaman backed up by magical might. Thorn’s awareness was pushed away from the reactor and back into the void.

  Gritting his teeth, Thorn called up more and more power, desperately trying to jam his perception back into the Nyctus ship. He had to find a weakness, a vulnerability of any type, and exploit it.

  But he couldn’t. The shaman had created a nearly impenetrable wall of repudiation, keeping Thorn at bay. Worse, his power was dwindling by the moment, the shallow lagoon of potential about to drain dry.

  He finally gave up. He simply didn’t have the strength to attack the Nyctus directly. The best he could do would be to prowl around the edges of things until an opportunity presented itself.

  “Missile range now,” the Tac O said, truncating Thorn’s frustrated thoughts. “The Nyctus have just fired their own missiles—I count twenty-two on the way.”

  “Return fire,” Tanner said, and Thorn could hear the tension in his voice.

  Twenty-two incoming missiles would swamp the Hecate’s defenses. Unless Thorn could figure out some way to prevent it, his ship was about to be pummeled, and hard.

  The Hecate shuddered under another hammer blow, the blast of the missile strike trembling the ship from top to keel. The reactive armor deflected most of the warhead’s impact, but Thorn still heard damage alerts sounding.

  “Damage control to section seven alpha,” Tanner said, his voice over the intercom as impassive as ever. The man didn’t panic. Ever, even in the face of an attack that felt wildly imbalanced to Thorn, who trusted Tanner to find a solution, regardless of the odds.

  Another missile detonated close by. The starfield slewed as the Hecate wheeled hard, trying to keep her orientation relative to the incoming attacks optimized for defensive systems. The point-defense batteries spewed almost constant streams of tracer, streaks of light lashing out like reaching fingers, trying to clutch and destroy onrushing ordnance.