Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

He stopped just inside the engineering compartment. On the Hecate, this was a cavernous compartment, three decks high and filled with machinery. The bulk of the powerplant, a fusion reactor, and the drives filled most of it. The rest was a maze of conduits and pipes, with structural members holding it all in place. It was always a bustle of activity. There was no low-ops in Engineering. In fact, the Hecate carried two complete engineering crews so that one could replace the other in a constant, twelve-hour rotation.

  This was not that.

  Bertilak’s engineering compartment was small, not much bigger than the Hecate’s bridge and a single deck high. It contained only a handful of devices, all of which were that odd shade of green—a color Thorn was already sick of—and none of which Thorn even recognized.

  Thorn studied the deck. He supposed that the bulk of the machinery, including the powerplant and drives, could be located beneath it, but that seemed like a maintenance nightmare. The whole point of engineering was to make all critical systems as accessible as possible.

  Thorn moved to the center of the compartment and turned slowly in a circle.

  No other exits, no obvious hatches in the deck under his feet, nothing whatsoever to indicate how Bertilak’s ship was powered, or propelled, or how things like heat and light were generated, or how the air was processed to keep it breathable.

  And then there was water.

  Aboard the Hecate, water was in a constant state of rationing while she was underway. Water was both heavy and bulky. It made for excellent rad shielding, but ultimately, it took up a lot of space and the ship’s mass allowance for the amount available. The recycling system was top-notch, but it wasn’t perfect. Small amounts were being constantly lost. The result was strict policies on its use, especially for things like showering. A certain amount of stink was just a fact of life aboard the Hecate. It never got too bad, and tended to fade into the background pretty quickly, but it was still very much there.

  Thorn had taken a shower just that morning. In fact, his hair was still damp. The Hecate’s showers were controlled, allowing only a total of three minutes of water use. Thorn had stood in Bertilak’s shower for almost twenty minutes, letting the hot water sluice over him. It was, he had to admit, an awesome luxury, and he only stopped when his fingers and toes had become entirely pruned.

  Bertilak’s ship just seemed too simple. Too generalized. That meant it must be some form of alien tech, considerably more advanced than the ON’s, and probably much more advanced than that of the Nyctus as well. After all, it seemed capable of what seemed to Thorn to be almost impossible feats. Detecting things outside a working Alcubierre bubble, and firing weapons powerful enough to destroy Nyctus ships up to corvette size in a single shot. And this capability was supported by sparse, simple systems, all of which could be operated by one man—

  “Thorn, there you are,” Bertilak said, striding into the engineering compartment. “Have you had your fill of my ship yet?”

  “Candidly? I’m astounded. Your tech goes in directions we haven’t considered.” He looked at Bertilak squarely. “I think we’d definitely be interested in making some sort of deal with you to get access to it—or at the very least, to learn.”

  “All in good time, my friend,” Bertilak said. “In the meantime, we will soon be arriving at our first destination together. Would you come join me on the bridge?” He leaned and gave a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t leave my AI running things for too long. I’m always afraid it will decide that it can do a better job than me and try to seize control.”

  Thorn’s eyes widened a touch. “Really?”

  “No, of course not.” Bertilak suddenly boomed with laughter. “The AI does what it’s told, nothing more.” He gestured. “Now, let’s go to the bridge and prepare to make planetfall. My entire existence isn’t just spent in deep space. I said I was a trader of sorts, and you shall see that part of my life up close and personal.”

  Thorn followed the alien out of the engineering compartment. “Planetfall where?”

  “Ah, well, that, my friend, is a surprise. And one I hope you’ll enjoy.”

  19

  Morgan decided to explore the city. It struck her she hadn’t done that yet. She had stayed close to the welcoming light of the Radiance and the sprawl of the city that she’d come to know so well. The Nyctus there all knew who she was and greeted her warmly, and the elder shaman was always nearby if she needed help or advice.

  But she’d become so restless and wanted to see more. She told the elder shaman as much, trying hard to keep her voice from sounding petulant.

  “I am concerned, child, about you traveling about on your own,” he replied. “The ocean spans all of the planet, except for at the poles and in a few places where the seafloor rises into mountains that soar above the ice on the surface. There are many hazards.”

  “Like what? Monsters?”

  The elder shaman flickered his amusement. “I’m not sure I would call them monsters, but there are some large predators in the more remote parts of the world-sea. But there are also undersea volcanoes, and earthquakes, and landslides—many things that could prove bad for a small girl.”

  Morgan scowled. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

  The shaman flashed a somewhat strained patience. “Is there any point to me trying to dissuade you?”

  “Dis—er, di-sade—”

  “Dissuade. It means to convince you not to do this.”

  “Oh. No. I’m definitely going.”

  “Of course you are. Well, you must at least allow someone to accompany you.”

  “How about you? Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I am needed here.”

  “Please?”

  “Child—”

  “Pleeeeease?”

  The elder shaman finally conceded. “Very well. We shall depart in one cycle. I’ll arrange a shuttle car.”

  Morgan gave an excited nod. A trip, with the elder shaman—she was nearly giddy with the prospect of it all, and it showed in her beaming smile.

  “This is boring,” Morgan said, staring out the shuttle car’s transparent dome. “There’s nothing to see.”

  “What did you expect, child? This is the Abyssal Plain. There’s nothing here but plains.”

  Morgan sank back in her seat, crossed her arms, and gave the most dramatic sigh she could. The shuttle car made for far faster travel than simply trying to swim or float or drift, but it was still boring. In every direction, she saw nothing but a flat, endless expanse of silty sediment. Every once in a while, a rocky outcrop thrust out of it. Occasionally, there was wildlife—all manner of creatures, large and small. They scattered at the approach of the shuttle car, rendering only as half-suggested shapes and brief glimpses of sudden movement in the surrounding gloom.

  She considered telling the elder shaman that she just wanted to turn around and go home. The only thing stopping her was the shaman’s promise that, if she could be patient, there was something very much worth seeing.

  Morgan hoped so, because so far on this trip there’d been nothing worth seeing at all.

  Her mind drifted.

  She thought back to dreams she’d had while still on Nebo, before the sun fell apart and her father brought her back from wherever she’d gone. She’d dream of a ship, night after night. A complicated ship, all struts and girders and modules, apparently joined together in a dizzying jumble that made no sense to her. One thing stood out about this ship, though. There was a picture on it. It was a picture of a girl, and she was riding something that looked like a horse, but wasn’t—and Morgan knew that for sure, because she loved horses. This hadn’t been as sleek or powerful as a beautiful horse, but more awkward, even goofy-looking with its big ears. Underneath, there were the words Una’s Ass.

  Morgan had asked Daddy what an ass was. He’d started to tell her it was another name for a butt, but she’d giggled and said, “no, like an animal.” Apparently, ass was another word for donkey. And a donkey was somethin
g like a small horse, but different.

  She could see it so clearly, too, as though the clunky ship and the picture of Una’s Ass were right outside the shuttle car, pacing alongside it—

  —but I saw something right before it all went dark. It was an answer. But I don’t remember what it was anymore. I don’t remember the question, either—

  It’s what she’d said to the elder shaman not that long ago. That and—

  I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen.

  She pursed her lips. She’d definitely tried to warn her father about something. But she wasn’t sure what. It was somehow connected to the question, and its answer, that she couldn’t remember. It was something important, too. That made it even more frustrating, which was a word and idea she knew.

  It didn’t matter. She’d tried to warn him, and he hadn’t listened to her, and now he was out there, and she was here, with her friends—

  Morgan sat up abruptly.

  “What is it, child?” the elder shaman asked. “Are you unwell?”

  “I—no. I just thought of something.”

  “Do you wish to share it with me?”

  Morgan shook her head emphatically. “Uh-uh. Not yet.”

  “Very well. We will soon be at our destination, so you only need to be patient a little while longer.”

  Morgan nodded, but her impatience was forgotten. Instead, she was suddenly excited.

  Several things had just come together for her, like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place after a long time of staring at them. Shapes joined, memories merged, and somehow Morgan knew things that hadn’t been there a moment ago. An idea was complete. The edges fit.

  Thorn Stellers, her father, had brought Morgan back from wherever she’d gone, when the sun had fallen in pieces from the sky on Nebo. To do that, he must have reached back and brought her forward from the past, when she’d still be alive, to when she wasn’t. And here she was.

  And the picture of Una’s Ass bugged her. It wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be a dumb, awkward-looking donkey. It should be a beautiful horse.

  She’d asked mommy and daddy about the ship with Una’s Ass on it, and they did some checking in the archives, whatever they were. They’d told her it was from a ship that had actually existed a long time ago, one called the Pool of Stars.

  So what if she reached back into the past and brought the Pool of Stars from there, to here, and changed the picture from Una’s Ass to something better? Something like—

  A slow grin spread across her face.

  Something like Morgan’s Ride. And it could be a picture of Morgan riding a horse, instead of whoever Una was.

  And if that worked, it meant she could reach back into the past and change other things, just like she’d said to the elder shaman. Like, instead of the Nyctus being so mad and so focused on fighting their war, she could make it so they were all her friends. Just like these ones on Tāmtu.

  She smiled. That would be nice. No more war, so more killing and dying and awful things like that. Maybe she could change humans too, so they were also all her friends. Everyone could be friends with everyone else! Wouldn’t that just make everything better?

  Of course, the elder shaman had tried to tell her she shouldn’t do it, that it was a bad idea, because she might kill her grandfather or something. But she’d taken care of that, and now she knew the elder shaman would go along with her idea.

  Everyone friends, everything better—

  Her smile dropped off her lips. What about her father? Could she be friends with him? Did she even want to?

  Well, that would depend on what Bertilak told her about Thorn Stellers next, wouldn’t it?

  “We’re here, child,” the elder shaman said, slowing the shuttle car. Morgan peered ahead but still saw nothing but the bistro plain, or whatever he had called it. The endless flat expanse of nothing. There were just more endless, flat kilometers of silty sand.

  And then, there wasn’t.

  “Oh. Oh!”

  Morgan stared, not comprehending. Then she gasped. And then she shrank back from the view, even while trying to get a better one.

  The world disappeared.

  The featureless plain abruptly stopped at the base of a wall of rock, which led to more rocky ridges and cliffs that rose like steps, each hundreds of feet high. But it wasn’t that that had made her gasp and shrink back. The shuttle car powered through a notch in the rocky cliffs, which was leading them to nothing.

  Literally, nothing. The world just disappeared. It ended. Ahead of them was nothing but water all around.

  The shuttle car swept over the rocky lip of the last ridge. Morgan looked down and saw a vertical wall of rock plummeting into the abyss, vanishing into the gloom. There was nothing else.

  “Oh.”

  It was all she could say before she had to pull her gaze back from that endless plunge into darkness. Her stomach had suddenly twisted and tightened, and her head felt light as feathers.

  “Are you alright, child?”

  “What happened to the world?”

  The shaman glittered with bright amusement. “The world is still there. The water just gets very, very deep here. What you see below is called a trench.”

  “What’s a trench?”

  “Well, Tāmtu may seem like a solid and unchanging place, but it’s actually a restless world. In some places, lava erupts onto the surface of the sea-floor, making new hills and mountains and adding land to the planet. But there’s only so much lava down there. It can’t keep erupting forever and making the planet ever bigger and bigger. In some places, then, old land is pulled back down into the planet’s interior, where it melts and becomes new lava. This is one of those places.”

  Morgan stared down into the endless depths. Her head still tingled, and her stomach still twitched. But she was able to make herself keep looking, keep watching. Her eyes kept trying and failing to find something, anything to latch onto.

  It was like looking into the sky, only doing it while looking down, instead of up.

  “So old rock gets pulled down into this trench and becomes lava, and that becomes new rock—uh, land?”

  “That’s right. It’s called plate tectonics, but you don’t need to worry about the complicated name. Think of it more as recycling.”

  Morgan looked at the shaman, then back outside. Old rock becoming new rock. So Tāmtu was doing just what she’d been thinking about before they passed over the lip of the world. Rock from before—a long, long time before, she knew from other conversations she’d had with the Nyctus about how old Tāmtu was—was being made into new rock now.

  The old was becoming the new.

  “Does it go down forever?”

  “No, child, of course not. There is a bottom to this trench. It is”—the shaman consulted the glowing instrument panel in front of him— “twelve kilometers, more or less, beneath us right now.”

  Morgan just kept staring. She knew twelve kilometers was a long way, but she couldn’t really imagine it.

  “You sure it doesn’t just keep going forever? Like, maybe into space?”

  “Yes, I’m certain, child.”

  “How come? Have you been down there?”

  “No. No one has. The weight of the water above you would crush you long before you even reached the bottom. Even this shuttle car, which is designed to withstand a lot of pressure, would last one or two kilometers and then would simply be squashed.”

  “Oh. And we’d be squashed, too?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Morgan once more stared into the depths.

  “Now then, child, I think that’s enough for today.” The shuttle car started to turn around to go back the way it had come.

  “Wait,” Morgan said. “I want to go down there.”

  “I just told you, child, that we would never survive.”

  “Sure we will. I’ll make sure.” She turned to look at the shaman. “Wouldn’t you like to be the first one to see what’s down there?”
/>   “I—” the elder shaman began, then paused. He shuddered, and ruddy pulses of bioluminescence glared amid his otherwise placid teal glow.

  Morgan narrowed her eyes. She wanted the shaman to take them down there. She’d protect them. But she might have to change the shaman again, make him even more cooperative—which might make him boring. She’d tried that with another Nyctus, making him into someone who always did as he was told, but she soon got tired of it. She wondered what had happened to him.

  But only for a moment. She turned her attention back to the elder shaman, but the crimson flashes had faded.

  “If you want to do this, child, you must find a way to prevent us from being crushed by the great pressure.”

  “That’s easy,” Morgan said, then she gathered up handfuls of magic and used them to change the universe into one where this shuttle car couldn’t be wrecked by anything, ever. It was a whole new truth, but it was the truth that Morgan wanted. Her short fingers waggled in satisfaction, and it was done.

  She slumped back in the seat. Changing the universe made her tired. Still, she smiled at the elder shaman. “Okay, we can go down there now.”

  “Of course we can, child. There is nothing that can harm this shuttle car.” His tone, although gentle, was a little chiding, as though this was just something obvious, something that had always been true.

  “Huh. It’s just dirt!” Morgan said, glaring at the seafloor.

  It had taken a while, but they’d finally fallen all of the way to the bottom of the trench. Morgan wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but she expected to see something. This was just more flat plain, like the enormous one sprawling above them. If anything, it was even more featureless, even more boring. At least above, there were bits of life here and there—coral reefs, creatures of different types, some big, weedy plants. Down here, there was nothing at all.

  Even the water didn’t look any different.

  “I thought you said the water down here would be so heavy it would crush anything,” Morgan said.

  “I did. And it is. If we weren’t in this shuttle car, I can assure you, we wouldn’t last more than an instant. We’d be squashed into little blobs.”