by J. N. Chaney
That made Thorn stop and just gape for a moment. “Hear her? How? What’s she saying?”
he finally asked.
“I’m not sure. I hear—” Bertilak struggled for a word. “Echoes. I hear echoes,” he finally said.
“Echoes? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know! All I can tell you is that I hear echoes. It’s like I sometimes hear her words, but they’re not just coming from an unspeakable distance, they sound like they’re the memories of words spoken in the past,” Bertilak said, giving a sharp, frustrated shrug.
Thorn persisted. “So what are these words? What is she saying?”
Bertilak closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and blew out a breath. “They’re just bits here, pieces there. The last time it happened, when you found me in the corridor on the Hecate, she was saying something about doing something. Or, actually, not doing something. It’s like she was talking to someone and telling them she wasn’t going to do something. She sounded upset and angry.”
Thorn paced. “Is there anything else? A direction? A sense of where she is?”
Bertilak gave Thorn a miserable look. “No, nothing like that. I’m sorry, Thorn. I wish I could be more helpful, I really do. But I’m telling you all I can, and even this is a challenge to me. The feelings are so—they are like vapor.”
Thorn turned to regard the alien, a frustrated question forming—but he discarded it. He believed that Bertilak was telling him the truth. He might have been created by Morgan to deceive and test Thorn, but now he was his own being, capable of independent thought and action. She’d created life from scratch, introducing a unique person into the universe and then either forgetting about him or otherwise becoming isolated from him.
Thorn had let his sense of urgency in finding Morgan falter and fade since their failed attempt to find her. There was a war on, after all, and its grim reality devoured almost every waking minute. But now it came thundering back with a desperate imperative. Yes, she was still alive, and that was good news. But the damage she could do with her magic, if unchecked—
“We have to find her,” Thorn said.
“I agree completely. But we tried that once and ended up spending weeks doing nothing but traveling from one dead-end to another. We need to figure out where she is, even approximately, and then go to her,” Bertilak replied.
Thorn leaned against a bulkhead, then put his head back and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt Bertilak watching him, but the alien didn’t say anything. Thorn used the lull to simply breathe in and out a few times, calming himself.
He opened his eyes and looked back at Bertilak. “You’re right. We need to find her and then go to her.” He straightened and walked toward the airlock, to head back into the Hecate.
“Where are you going?” Bertilak asked.
Thorn glanced back. “To where I do my best work. Meantime, you keep your, uh, mind peeled for anything else from Morgan. Anything she says, even any single word, might be the missing piece we need.”
“I will, Thorn.”
Thorn reached a cross-junction, intending to turn right, but stopping. He knew what he had to do. But he had something else he had to do first.
Agreed in principle? What does that mean? Kira asked.
Once I explained the situation to Tanner, he agreed that finding Morgan and getting to her is a priority. He’s prepared to deploy the Hecate to do that, but he wants to get Fleet’s permission to detach his ship for special duties first, Thorn replied.
Thorn, there might not be time for that. If you find Morgan alive—and I’m not convinced of that, you’ll probably have to move immediately. You can’t wait for a message to get to Fleet, then a reply to come back—
I know. That’s why he’s hedging his bets and trying to get a standing approval from Fleet to do it.
You’d think it would be a no-brainer, but this is Fleet we’re talking about.
Thorn smiled. I suspect that if I make the case, Tanner will go for it. He’s an ask for forgiveness later instead of permission now kind of guy. How are things going with you, by the way?
Boring with a capital bore. But we’re actually making progress. Some of the endless bureaucratic mumbo jumbo seems to be starting to produce results. Anyway, Thorn, keep me posted about what’s happening. Damien’s calling me.
I will. I’ll talk to you later, Kira.
You will. Take care.
Thorn had the greatest access to his power when he sought to make changes to reality. He didn’t know why. He knew, in his magical instincts, that the amount of power he needed was equal to the amount he could channel. His ability was tied to the moment, leaving him with a difficult decision. He could desperately try to drive his awareness into the surrounding ether in the usual way, which might let him Scry a light-year or two around him.
Or he could alter the universe into one where he, Thorn Stellers, could see into any part of it, at any time.
But he didn’t dare try that. He and Morgan had both made too many changes to creation already, and the implications of those weren’t yet entirely clear. Another could prove so far beyond catastrophic that the words to describe how bad it was simply didn’t exist.
He needed to find a middle-ground, a way to ramp up his supernatural power, but without making any significant changes to the basic stuff of reality.
So, how about insignificant ones?
Thorn placed his talisman in his lap and rested his fingertips on it. As always, hints of acrid smoke and tiny echoes of destruction hummed through his hands, his arms, into his mind. The talisman was thoroughly infused with the traumatic moment of Cotswold’s destruction, when Thorn had lost everything and everyone except for this tattered old book. Every time, the remembered pain of all that loss, filtered through the experiences of a child, reignited somewhere deep inside Thorn like smoldering embers flickering back to life. But it was a familiar pain, and he used it to anchor himself in reality at the moment of greatest change in his life.
At the moment, his enormous potential for power had awoken, and his feet had been firmly placed on the path forward, leading him to whatever conclusion the scope of his magic would deliver.
Thorn focused on the item he’d brought with him into the witchport. It was an apple, taken from the mess. But Thorn didn’t want an apple. He wanted an orange—
The XO’s voice cut into his thoughts. “All hands, the Dauntless has arrived. Stand by to receive cargo and personnel. Oh, and a load of ice cream, too.”
Despite the distant cheers he heard rattle through the Hecate over the promise of ice cream, Thorn gave the intercom an exasperated scowl. The Dauntless, a cruiser, was making the rounds of no man’s land, the space separating human and Nyctus territories. She was reprovisioning ships on forward patrol duty. Normally, the job would be done by a supply tender, but this close to squid space, every ship had to be prepared to fight on its own and not rely on escorts.
Thorn closed his eyes and concentrated his awareness into, and then through, his talisman again.
Once more, he had an apple, but he wanted an orange.
Keeping his intent in razor-sharp focus, Thorn gave the universe an experimental nudge. Or, more to point, he gave the apple an experimental nudge. He’d done this before, making miniscule adjustments to reality to keep his magical acumen tuned up. Each time, he’d felt the sudden swell of power, far, far more than he needed to change the color of his socks, or whatever it was he intended to do. And, sure enough, as he prodded at the fundamental nature of the apple, he felt that surge of vast potential, like the reservoir filling up and pressing against the dam holding it back.
Now, if he could just maintain it, remaining in this instant before it wasn’t an apple, it was an orange, and had been all along. And then channel it—
The floodgates suddenly flung open, loosing a thundering rush of magical might. It crashed into Thorn, piling up against his talisman, straining to be let loose. He bore down on it, holding it check with the
power of his will. At the same time, he began shaping it, turning it from a wild flood into something far more focused, like the stream from a firehose.
Once it had stabilized—or, at least, he’d stabilized it as much as he was going to—he let the torrent carry his perception away, into the void, a racing bubble of awareness that could, and would, eventually encompass the whole universe.
Of course, the problem was going to be focusing that. He turned his fixation on the Witch Nebula into something useful, using the image of it burned into his mind as the start of a trail, one that would lead him, he hoped, to Morgan—
Except something snagged him like a sudden shoal, slamming him to a halt. It wasn’t far away, either. In fact, it was nearly on top of the Hecate.
It was the cruiser Dauntless. Something about the approaching ship wasn’t right. It would be like seeing an image of a person with two left hands. Something would jump out as strange and incorrect, but it would take time to figure out just what. Thorn felt that now. Something about the Dauntless—no, something aboard it didn’t belong.
Thorn desperately reigned in a racing bubble of his awareness, doggedly pulling it back and reorienting his focus onto the cruiser. As he did, he felt his control over the titanic wave of magical power falter. It was no small thing, setting something so vast in motion and then trying to redirect completely in mid-thought. He managed only a single pass of his consciousness across the Dauntless before he let go, allowing the magic to cascade back into the ether.
Gasping, Thorn flung open his eyes. For just a moment, he’d been aware of every piece of the Dauntless, every component, every one of her processes humming away, the endless thermonuclear explosion that was her fusion reactor. He experienced the ship practically down to its very molecules. More to point, though, had been her crew. In a way that actually made Thorn cringe, he’d seen into the hearts and minds of every soul aboard the cruiser. Although only for an instant, Thorn had nonetheless known the thoughts, passions, aspirations, and fears of every member of her crew. Putting the moral and ethical implications of such an intimate intrusion aside, even if it had been unintended, had revealed just what was wrong with the Dauntless.
Three of her crew were Skins. The Nyctus had agents aboard an ON warship.
“Are you sure?” Tanner asked.
“In this case, sir, one-hundred percent. The way that I found out was, well, incidental to something else I was trying to do.”
Tanner leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg on his opposite knee. His briefing room behind the Hecate’s bridge was just big enough to give him enough space to do that. “You were trying to find your daughter.”
“Yes, sir. I was using a different approach, one that would let me draw on a lot more magical power. I just happened to find the Skins aboard the Dauntless while I was doing it,” Thorn replied.
Tanner opened his mouth, but the Tac O’s voice cut in through the intercom. “Captain Tanner, the Captain of the Dauntless is requesting an update on the reactor problem we apparently have.”
Tanner glanced at Thorn. “Fleet SOP forces all ships to maintain a minimum safe distance from any ship with reactor instability.”
Thorn had noted Osborne’s words, the reactor problem we apparently have. “Do we have an unstable reactor, sir?”
“Of course not. But if I stall much longer, Captain Kenyatta’s going to have to alert Fleet, and they’re going to start asking questions, maybe dispatch a deep-space repair tug.” Tanner narrowed his eyes in thought. “Tac O, my compliments to Captain Kenyatta, and please ask him to stand by for a Code Alpha-Echo Six message.”
“Aye, sir.”
Thorn had no idea what that was, but there were lots of things Tanner would be privy to that a lowly Lieutenant wouldn’t, Starcaster or not.
Tanner looked at Thorn. “That should get his—”
“Galen, what the hell is going on?” a gruff voice suddenly said over the comm.
“Sorry, Chikere, I needed to get you onto a private comm channel. Assuming you’re alone,” Tanner said.
“You said Alpha-Echo Six, so of course I’m alone.”
“I’ve got Lieutenant Thorn Stellers with me.”
“So you’re not alone. On an Alpha-Echo Six. Something must really be wrong.”
Thorn stared, mystified. Tanner gave a quick, thin smile. “Sometimes Captains want to talk to one another one-on-one. That’s what Code Alpha-Echo Six is for.”
“The last time someone gave me a Code Alpha-Echo Six, it was because they wanted to borrow money. By the way, if you ever loan anything to Ely Braunsher aboard the Sirius, just kiss it goodbye.”
Tanner actually grinned. “Good to know.”
“So I’m assuming this is something really important if you’ve let a Lieutenant in on our little secret.”
“Oh, it is. And by the way, Stellers, you’re speaking to Chikere Kenyatta, Captain of the good ship Dauntless, and the only man who’s ever beaten me in racquetball more than once,” Tanner said.
“More than once, as in every time,” Kenyatta said, chuckling.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Thorn said.
“Stellers. You’re the Starcaster, right? The one that’s moved practically the whole damned ON halfway across the universe, if you go by what I’ve been told.”
“The truth is a little less spectacular than that, sir,” Thorn replied.
“It always is. Now, what the hell is this all about? Galen, you don’t really have a wonky reactor, do you?”
“No, I do not. The problem is actually aboard your ship, Chikere.”
Tanner nodded for Thorn to explain.
“Sir, I’ll be brief. While using my, ah, abilities, I detected the signatures of three Nyctus skin agents aboard your ship. This is absolutely certain, and moreover, no one aboard your ship knows. That I can tell you as well.”
“Absolute certainty, Stellers?” Kenyatta asked.
“No doubt, sir. Like I told Captain Tanner, there’s usually some doubt. But not this time. The way I did it was—”
Kenyatta cut him off, all business. “I’ll take your word for it, Lieutenant. Do you know which three members of my crew we’re talking about here?”
“Unfortunately, that I’m not sure about. There are definitely three whose minds contain buried imperatives planted there by the Nyctus. I wasn’t able to keep the effect working long enough to sort out exactly which ones, though. If I hadn’t been doing what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all, that’s how deeply the squids implanted their mental controls. If it makes you feel better, though, I’m reasonably sure you’re not one of them.”
Tanner raised an eyebrow. “Reasonably sure? That the Captain of an ON cruiser isn’t a Skin?”
“Well, I’m not, but I understand where Stellers is coming from on that. Although, how do you know it’s not me, but you don’t know who it is?”
“Because, sir, there’s a definite pattern of authority and deference aboard an ON ship. Whoever these Skins are, they’re mostly associated with the deferential side of things. The one person not deferential to anyone aboard the Dauntless would be you, sir,” Thorn replied.
Tanner gave a quick, sharp nod. “I’m convinced. So that leaves us with three Skins somewhere aboard the Dauntless who need to be dealt with before you launch on any other ops, Chikere.”
“Stellers, could you find these bastards if you came aboard the ship?”
“It would be easier, sir, yes. But I’d have to dig pretty deeply into the minds of your crew to find them—a lot more deeply than I’d normally be comfortable with.”
“War’s hell, Lieutenant,” Tanner put in.
“What he said. Let’s get you over here on some pretext and then you do whatever you have to do to smoke these assholes out,” Kenyatta said.
Thorn glanced at Tanner, who nodded again.
“On my way, sir.”
Thorn stopped at a corridor junction. His escorts, a pair of Marine
s, stopped with him and took up watchful positions, their heads swiveling from side-to-side. Thorn wasn’t just thankful for their wary protection. Without them, he’d probably be hopelessly lost by now, wandering the myriad corridors and compartments of the Dauntless.
Sure, it might have quite the same airy openness and rambling sprawl of Bertilak’s ship, the Jolly Green Giant, but the big cruiser was still way more expansive than the Hecate.
One of the Marines glanced at Thorn. “Anything, sir?”
“Not yet,” Thorn replied, reaching once more into his magic, then using it to feel along each of the corridors. The Nyctus brainwashing was obviously buried too deep in the Skins for him to sense at a distance, at least with any accuracy. All he could do was keep trying to maintain an idea of its general direction, by keying on the simmering, malign intent of the compromised crew members. Thorn wasn’t sure if these Skins were even aware that they’d been subsumed by the squids, or if they were sleeper agents, awaiting activation by some trigger.
It was, he thought, as though he could hear a strange and disturbing noise somewhere in the distance so he had to walk around trying to first localize it, then locate it.
Thorn turned toward one corridor, then to another. Then back to the first. There.
“This way,” he said, gesturing for the Marines to accompany him.
They were clean, at least. Thorn had done a deep dive into their minds but found nothing to hint at Nyctus influence. There’d been a lot of other things, too, but he’d been determined to ignore it. These two Marines were people, with their own quirks and imperfections, none of which were Thorn’s business. Still, he couldn’t quite put all of it out of his mind, which left him in the uncomfortable position of knowing things about these two Marines that he really shouldn’t.
The experience actually offended him. The squids did this to people all the time. It was fundamental to turning them into Skins in the first place. And it was vile and wrong.
Thorn abruptly stopped outside a compartment. NON-COMMISSIONED PERSONNEL - FORWARD MESS was stenciled on the door, with an alphanumeric string beneath. That would be a combination of section, deck number, and compartment number, a standardized way for describing every location aboard an ON ship.
