by J. N. Chaney
“I’ve given Beta a once-over, sir. As far as I can tell, there are no immediate threats. The sense I get is that it’s not too different from Alpha, a hydro-world that someone has drained of most of its water,” Thorn said.
The Tac O nodded. “Sensor data supports that. The specifics are different, but the overall trend is similar to the one we saw on Alpha—”
The blast door at the back of the bridge rolled open, admitting Hackett. “Talking about our destination out there?”
“We are, and I was just about to send for you, Specialist,” Tanner said, then summarized the little that they’d learned so far. Hackett nodded as he spoke.
She was still nodding when he finished. “Well, you’re going to love this part, sir. I did everything I could with that belt, but I didn’t get anything new off of it, unfortunately. So I turned my attention to the samples we collected down on Alpha. Guess what I found?”
Thorn exchanged a wince with Osborne, the Tac O. You didn’t pose a question like to Tanner and on his bridge, yet. You just didn’t.
Tanner managed an admirable restraint, though. “When my department heads report, I prefer not to have to guess what they’re going to say, Specialist.” He ended on a smile that held just a hint of menace. Hackett caught it and shifted uncomfortably.
“Sorry, sir. I found some distinctive organic signatures mixed in with all the swamp crap. They’re Nyctus.”
“Thought you’d said you hadn’t detected any signs of Nyctus,” Tanner said.
“On that belt, I didn’t. These are sporadic hits in the other samples of muck we collected.”
“What sort of hits? What are you telling us here, Specialist?”
“Well, I’d say that there are remnants of Nyctus tissue mixed in with the rest of that organic sludge. It’s mostly decomposed now, so we’re only catching traces of it here and there,” Hackett said.
“You mean those swamps down on Alpha are full of bits of dead squids?” Thorn asked.
Hackett shrugged. “That’s the most likely explanation. There could be others, I suppose, but the good folks aboard the Max Planck should be able to sort it out.”
Thorn looked at Tanner. “Sir, these were Nyctus hydro-planets—emphasis on were. Somebody’s come along, destroyed the squids, then terraformed most of the water away.”
Thorn could feel the discomfort suddenly charging the air. Someone capable of wiping the entire population of squids from two planets, and then completely reshaping their biospheres, was not someone to be trifled with.
Tanner put an elbow on each arm of his chair, then steepled his fingers and touched them to his chin. “Alright. Let’s take that as a working hypothesis. The next question, then, is who? Who did this?”
“Whoever they are, I think we want to get to know them,” the Tac O put in.
Thorn curled his lip in a frown. “They might hate the Nyctus, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll particularly like us, either.”
Tanner snapped out a single nod. “Stellers is right. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.” He leaned forward and studied the slowly expanding image of Beta on the main tactical display. “Whoever they are, they’ve put a lot of effort into terraforming these two worlds. That means they probably have designs on this system and might not appreciate visitors. Tac O, take the ship up an alert level and go active with the sensors. I want to make as much noise as possible, make sure it’s absolutely clear we’re not trying to sneak around.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Stellers, you’d better get used to living out of your witchport for a while,” Tanner said. “I want you as ready as everyone else. We only get one chance at a first contact, so if we’re about to encounter somebody new, I don’t want anything left to chance.”
Thorn stood. “Aye, sir. On my way.”
Thorn idly tapped his fingertips against his talisman and watched as Beta filled ever more of his field of view.
Like Alpha, the planet was mostly shrouded in a veil of thick fog, making it gleam so brilliantly white it almost hurt to look at it. On the surface, though, it would no doubt be as bleak and gloomy as Alpha. Whatever tech had been mounted on those pylons had apparently turned at least some of the planets’ water into vapor and loaded it into the atmosphere. According to Hackett, though, that would only account for about ten percent of the missing water. What had happened to the other ninety percent was anyone’s guess.
The Nav O’s voice hummed out of the intercom, which Thorn kept on the bridge channel so he could stay plugged in to what was going on. “We’re going to have to assume a pretty high orbit, sir. There’s a lot more rocky debris ringing Beta than there was Alpha.”
“Confirm that, sir,” the Tac O put in. “About forty percent more debris, in fact. Must be the remains of a moon or something. Probably smashed apart by whoever, or whatever, attacked this system.”
“Probably part of their terraforming,” Hackett put in. She’d taken up residence in a corner of the infirmary, which was both one of the best-protected parts of the Hecate and the closest thing the ship had to laboratory facilities. “Moons cause tides, and that might have interfered with what they were trying to do to these planets.”
“A moon gets in your way so you destroy it? Harsh,” the Tac O said.
Tanner cut in. “More to the point, another reason to treat this situation very, very seriously, if our unknown agents are able to reduce whole moons to rubble. Stellers, anything to add?”
“No, sir. I’ve tried ’casting around the system to see if I can scry out any sign of either the Nyctus or our planet-shapers. There’s nothing.”
“Huh. So they came here, wiped out the Nyctus on both planets, destroyed these planets’ moons, set up their terraforming gear, stripped away most of the water on both, then packed up and left,” Tanner said.
“Almost sounds like they were more interested in screwing over the Nyctus than actually claiming these planets for themselves,” Hackett offered.
“I like these guys more and more by the minute,” Osborne said.
Tanner wasn’t having it. “Again, Lieutenant Osborne, we can’t assume that just because they’re enemies of the Nyctus, they’re going to be all friendly with us. So keep your attention glued to your station, if you please.”
“Aye, sir,” the Tac O replied, his tone suitably chastened.
Thorn stopped drumming his fingers on his talisman and closed his eyes, once more flinging his awareness into the void. He sensed the nearest of the rocky fragments hurling around the planet, but nothing else. Pushing further, his attention brushed past more hunks of debris, focusing on the planet itself—
Wait.
Thorn pulled back and expanded his arcane view of the space around the Hecate. There was something there, something that tickled the back of his mind with a sudden jab of potential danger. It was diffuse, vague, and hard to pin down. But it was there.
“Captain Tanner, there’s something happening,” he said.
“There are lots of things happening, Stellers. Can you be more specific?”
“Trying, sir.” He swept his sorcerous gaze back and forth across the planet and its halo of debris, then scowled. There was definitely something out there, something that represented a possible threat. But it was just on the very edge of his senses, like catching a fleeting glimpse of something down a darkened corridor. Frustrated, he infused his detached awareness with more magical power, sharpening it.
He sighed. “Sorry, sir, all I can tell you is that there’s something out there, and it’s not especially friendly.”
“Let’s come to full battle stations, power up the reactive armor, and go to weapons free,” Tanner said. A warning klaxon sounded, and Thorn heard distant commotion as the Hecate spooled herself up to her highest level of alert readiness.
“Captain Tanner, Bertilak here. I think I see Thorn’s something. Check out the debris field, pretty much on the equator, about five thousand klicks ahead.”
Thorn glan
ced at the tactical display repeater. Three red icons had suddenly popped into existence.
“We’re being lit up by surveillance scanners,” the Tac O said. “No targeting scanners yet—no, wait, cancel that. Targeting scanners have gone active.”
“Deploy countermeasures,” Tanner snapped. An instant later, the Hecate trembled as a pair of missiles with decoy warheads leapt from her tubes. They began to burn away hard and fast, broadcasting across the EM spectrum to try and blind whatever was tracking them.
Thorn made himself ignore the sudden thrill of tension and focus on the task at hand. Instead, he focused his attention on the three red icons.
Weapons platforms. Three of the larger debris chunks had been excavated and fitted with missile launchers and some sort of beam weapon.
Thorn bore down hard with his magic, driving his full focus at the nearest of the platforms. Arcane power howled through his talisman, and he shaped it into a potent wedge of force, a massive expression of Hammer magic. It tore across the void as quick as thought before slamming into the fortified rock and knocking it tumbling.
The other two platforms opened fire, a barrage of missiles pouring from both and racing toward both the Hecate and the Jolly Green Giant. At the same time, beams of energy lashed out, two striking Bertilak’s ship, two more locking onto and destroying each of the decoy drones.
Thorn heard Bertilak curse, then winced as a searing emerald flash engulfed the missiles streaking toward his ship, turning them to vapor. The Hecate opened fire in turn, missiles speeding back toward the platforms. Again, Thorn forced himself to stay focused on his own task.
“I’ve got the third platform,” he said, his voice tight with the effort of summoning, shaping, and releasing magical power. He struck the third platform with another Hammer blow, starting it into a fast spin. Thrusters fired, trying to get it reoriented.
“I don’t think so,” Thorn hissed, summoning more magic. He didn’t hold back this time, though, letting the power flow through his talisman and into him, gathering it like drawing a deep breath. When he felt it begin to leak into reality as flickers and bursts of mystical potential, he crafted it into an arcane battering ram, then loosed it at the platform, which had already almost stabilized itself.
The prodigious blast of magical force crashed into his target hard enough to vaporize rock in a searing flash. The impact shattered the asteroid-sized debris fragment, sending chunks of it spinning off in all directions. A second later, a secondary explosion—probably a reactor losing containment—turned the space around the wrecked platform searing white. It faded, revealing nothing but still smaller chunks of rock enveloped in a cooling halo of vaporized minerals.
Thorn gasped out a breath, opened his eyes, and sagged a bit. He needed a moment to recover before striking out at another of the platforms. He’d just thought that when the Hecate’s point defenses opened up, pouring streams of hypervelocity projectiles into space. Onrushing missiles began to die, shredded by the destroyer’s defensive barrage. A few seconds later, a heavy impact thudded the deck under him as something hit the Hecate and triggered her reactive armor. A beam of coherent energy raked across her upper hull, scouring off ablative protection in a shower of glowing flakes and vapor.
Ready or not, Thorn readied himself to dig back into his magic and lash out again at their attackers. He started to let himself sink back into the familiar, arcane depths of his talisman, but another hit on the Hecate, not far from the witchport, slammed him against a bulkhead. On raw instinct, Thorn drove his perception on a wave of magical compulsion out into the void around the Hecate. Another wave of missiles was inbound, only seconds from impact. The point defenses couldn’t stop all of them.
So Thorn did.
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, hardening his bubble of awareness into a solid shield of denial. In rapid succession, the incoming missiles slammed into it, shattering into spinning clouds of debris as they struck what amounted to a solid wall.
Thorn gasped again, his eyes opening in time to catch a dazzling green flash. One of the platforms, already damaged by the Hecate’s missiles, died to a powerful burst of fire from Bertilak’s ship. The Hecate, in the meantime, had closed to rail-gun range of the remaining platform and opened fire. Although their range was relatively short, the rail guns delivered the greatest destructive energy by far, their depleted uranium projectiles accelerated to fantastic velocities by the big electromagnetic mass drivers. Thorn felt the characteristic thump-thump-thump as the weapons opened up, pouring shots into the last platform. It responded with return fire the tactical repeater tagged as maser shots, and a few more missiles, streaking from whatever launchers remained operating.
Brilliant impact flashes rippled across the rocky surface of the platform, gouging out great chunks of half-molten debris. Thorn steeled himself to dig down into his magic again, but the rail-gun shots finally found their mark. The massive rock containing the platform suddenly split apart, ancient fault lines in the substrate failing. Another missile slammed into the Hecate, and then the battle was just—
Over.
Thorn took a deep breath. Tanner was calling for damage reports and SITREPS on the intercom, and it struck Thorn that the Captain had been speaking the whole time. His firm but methodical voice had been the backdrop to Thorn’s ’castings. And speaking of time, how long had that all lasted?
Just over ten minutes, according to the tactical repeater. Thorn sniffed and shook his head. He felt like he’d just run a marathon.
“Stellers? You still with us?” Tanner asked.
Thorn stared at the intercom for a second. “Oh—yes. Yes, sir. Sorry about that. Big magic like that takes it out of me. But I’m here.”
“Glad to hear it. Good work during the battle.”
And that was it. Tanner moved on to other matters.
Thorn smiled. He’d destroyed one of the platforms singlehandedly, then stopped a volley of missiles from hitting the ship. And for that, he got a good work from Tanner.
But that was okay. A good work from Tanner somehow felt more satisfying than a formal kudos from the Fleet Commander himself.
5
Thorn looked into the void.
Literally. He stood in the Gyrfalcon’s airlock, ready to launch himself into space. Mol already had, and now she approached the rock’s surface, a tether trailing behind her. Once she got it anchored, Thorn would have a lifeline—again, literally—to carry him across to their objective.
“You okay, sir?”
Thorn did an awkward turn in his vac-armor to look at the young man suited up behind him. His name was Habpanowitz, though everyone just called him Hab, and he was a newly minted Petty Officer from the Hecate’s engineering division. Thorn had actually attended a small party thrown for him in the crew mess when he was promoted—holy crap, had that only been four or five days ago?
Thorn gave a thumbs up. “I’m fine. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly an EVA enthusiast, but yeah, I’m okay.”
Hab put his helmet against Thorn’s and spoke, using conduction rather than the comm to carry his voice. “Don’t worry, sir, EVAs still rattle the shit out of me, too.”
“Part of your job is working outside on the hull. Hell, I saw you out there helping replace reactive armor modules just yesterday.”
Hab’s reply was rueful. “And I was queasy the whole time. I’ve just never quite been able to get over my void fright. I know it well. That’s how I know you’re feeling some of it, too. You’re giving off the same oh shit am I really doing this vibe that I do.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only to a fellow sufferer, sir. And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
Thorn laughed. He didn’t think he suffered the old spacer affliction called void fright as much as Hab thought he did, but it was still definitely a thing. The fact that Hab had to deal with it, while still doing his job, impressed Thorn deeply. He pulled his helmet away to give Hab a broad grin and another th
umbs-up.
“Okay, ready over here,” Mol said.
Thorn turned back to the tether. The rock that was their destination was another of the weapons platforms. They’d uncovered three more, two of which they’d been forced to destroy outright. Tanner had asked Thorn to try and disable the third one so they could study it. Several deliberate applications of Scorch and Hammer magic in rapid succession had done just that, crippling the reactor that powered the platform and leaving it dark and dormant.
Or so it appeared. Worse than the void fright was Thorn’s lingering suspicion that the thing was somehow playing dead and would spark back to violent and destructive life in a rapid-fire hail of missiles—
“Lieutenant Stellers, sir, I did send out the engraved invitations some time ago. But if you haven’t received yours yet, rest assured you’re still invited to haul your ass over here,” Mol said.
Thorn snapped his own safety tether to the line Mol had secured. “Show some respect there, Wyant. You’re talking to a superior officer.” He pulled himself out of the Gyrfalcon’s airlock and began hand-over-handing his way toward Mol.
“Oh—what’s this? Is the tether coming loose at this end? Oh, no!”
“Not funny, Mol,” Thorn snapped.
“Who’s superior now?”
Thorn curled his lip and resolved to short-sheet Mol’s bed. Or fill her boots with shaving cream. Yeah, that was better.
Although he had to admit that Mol’s sardonic humor helped take the edge off both the lingering void fright and his gnawing certainty this damned weapons platform was just pretending to be dead. He wondered if that had been her point.
Pfft. This was Mol. Of course it was her point.
It only took a minute or so before Thorn’s boots touched the rugged surface of the platform’s rocky enclosure. Hab arrived a half-minute after that. The three of them stood on the rough surface, to the extent that you could stand on anything that exerted virtually no gravitational pull.
