Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  He dipped again into his magic, then reached out with it, feeling beyond the closed hatch, into the space behind it.

  There. Right there.

  He gestured at the Ratings Mess. “In there. It must be all of them, too, because I’m not getting any sense of Skins anywhere else aboard the ship,” he said. He doubted his voice would carry through the closed hatch, but he kept his tone low and quiet anyway. The two Marines nodded, and one stepped back a few paces and spoke quietly into a comm.

  When he was done, he turned back. “So, sir, how do we do this? Are these Skins going to fight back?”

  “We should probably expect the worst,” Thorn replied. He saw the two Marines reach for their sidearms, but he raised a hand.

  “Let’s wait on that. If there are other members of the crew in there, I’d really rather them not end up in the line of fire,” Thorn went on.

  “Okay, so what’s the plan, sir?”

  Thorn tapped a finger to his chin and considered it. They needed a way to get control of the situation before the Skins even knew what was happening. Maybe their best option would be to wait for backup from more of the ship’s Marines. That would take time, though, because most of them were deployed to protect critical parts of the ship—ironically, from the Skins. And Thorn didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to get all three of them, or at least all three of the ones they knew about, at once.

  He glanced at the two Marines’ rank insignia. A Sergeant and a Lance-Corporal. That gave him an idea.

  “Would you two normally eat in this mess?” Thorn asked them.

  They exchanged a look, and the Sergeant spoke up. “Normally? No, sir. But we both have, if we happen to have duty in this part of the ship, so it wouldn’t seem too out of place.”

  “Okay, good. Here’s what I’m thinking,” Thorn said. “I wander in, play the lost visiting officer, and identify our targets. You go in before me, take up position—just two people having a meal—and we take them down before they can get mixed in with the other crew. Clear?”

  The two Marines nodded their understanding, then Thorn moved out of view while they entered the Mess. They did so chatting and laughing, as though just two guys sitting down for a bite to eat.

  Thorn gave them a few minutes to get themselves seated. He used the opportunity to infuse his senses with magic, enough—he hoped—to let him discern which crew in here were the Skins. He kept himself close to the edge of allowing the magic to simply dissipate, though, not wanting his focus to be too far away from the here-and-now when he walked in.

  He opened the door and strode confidently in, then wandered around, looking increasingly bewildered. As he did, he swept his enhanced awareness across the dozen or so people already inside, which included the two Marines, who were sitting at a table to his right, and—

  Right there. Three Ratings, two men and a woman, sitting at a table on their own, to his left.

  Thorn ambled in their direction but stopped a few paces away. He looked confused for a moment, then turned to the three suspected Skins.

  “Excuse me, I’m new to the Dauntless. Is this not an Officers’ Mess? Did I steer myself wrong?” he asked them. As he did, he glanced at the Marines, who both stood, apparently going for coffee, but continuing to watch sidelong.

  The woman looked up, a bland smile on her face. “Sorry, sir, this is a non-coms mess. The nearest Officers’ Mess is—”

  She stopped as she made eye contact with Thorn. Her eyes went momentarily blank, then recognition flooded them.

  She recognized Thorn. He wasn’t sure how, but—shit. He hadn’t counted on that.

  The woman immediately leapt to her feet and raced toward the other exit, which probably led into the Galley that served it. The man on the far side of the table flung his coffee cup at Thorn, standing as he did. Thorn instinctively raised a hand to shield his face, the cup bouncing off it, hot coffee splashing and scalding his chin. The nearer of the two men took advantage of the fleeting instant to lunge and tackle Thorn, bearing him backward, hard, onto another table. Napkins and condiments containers were ripped from the clamps that held them in place and went clattering across the floor.

  The man atop Thorn raised a knife that seemed as big as a broadsword over Thorn, about to drive it down. Thorn tensed, leveraging himself against the table in a desperate bid to throw the man off him, but even that brief lag was about to cost him his life.

  Or would have, except a hard, flat shot snapped out, and a fist-sized chunk of the man’s head exploded in a shower of gore. The knife did come slamming down, but Thorn was able to dodge it, catching a nasty cut on his left biceps. He kept going, shoving the dying Rating off him and lunging to his feet. The second man also now wielded a knife and was rushing around the table, coming for him.

  Thorn flung out his hand, loosing a blast of Hammer magic that slammed into the man like a wrecking ball and snapped him back against the table. He rushed in to follow up, shouting “Don’t shoot!” at the Marines, desperate to keep this man alive. Before he could intervene, though, the corrupted Rating reoriented his knife and slammed it point first into his own eye. Thorn heard the eyeball pop, then a rough, scraping sound as the blade slid across bone on its way into the man’s brain.

  Thorn arrived in time to watch the life fade from the man’s other eye. “Shit!”

  As soon as he said it, the rest of the Mess erupted in chaos. Other Ratings, who’d yanked themselves away from the sudden explosion of violence, began pounding toward the exits. They were greeted by more Marines, who quickly got them under control and began ushering them out.

  The Marine Sergeant appeared beside Thorn, holstering his sidearm. “You okay, sir?”

  “Yeah. Neither of these two are, though,” he snapped, looking from one corpse to the other.

  “Didn’t think you especially wanted that guy stabbing you. But if that was wrong, and you getting gutted was part of the plan, my bad,” the Sergeant said, giving Thorn a thin smile.

  Thorn blew out a frustrated sigh. “Not being skewered was definitely better than the alternative, Sergeant. Thanks.”

  A commotion arose from the direction of the Galley. A trio of Marines shoved their way in, restraining the Skin woman who’d fled at the outset. Behind them came an imposing man with burnished skin, intelligent eyes, and a set of Captain’s bars.

  “Lieutenant Stellers, I presume. Welcome aboard the Dauntless,” the man said, sticking out his hand and grinning a terawatt grin.

  Thorn nodded. “My pleasure, sir. Sorry for not reporting to you immediately, but I kind of co-opted the two Marines you sent to meet me and got right to work.”

  “Not a problem, Lieutenant. Now, I guess you’ve got some more work to do,” he said, glancing at the struggling Skin.

  “Sir?”

  “Why, you can help me figure out just what’s going on inside that squid-touched brain of hers, of course.”

  9

  Her name was Dolahey. Thorn watched her, still struggling despite being strapped to a table in the Dauntless’s aft infirmary, which had been cleared of everyone except for a single doctor and a nurse to assist. They had no idea what imperatives the Nyctus might have implanted into Dolahey’s mind, so if she managed to harm herself, Kenyatta wanted medical attention immediately on-hand to deal with it.

  “You said this woman recognized you. Do you know her?” Kenyatta asked, while he and Thorn stood a few paces away from the straining woman.

  Thorn glanced at her. “No, sir. Certainly not that I can recall, anyway. I glanced over her personnel file, and I honestly don’t see anywhere where we might have crossed paths. I did notice that she took thirty days of leave about two months ago, so that’s when the squids probably took her.”

  “Well, let’s find out what she knows,” Kenyatta said, gesturing for Thorn to follow him to the restrained woman.

  “Rating Dolahey, we have a few questions for you,” he said.

  She responded with a string of putrid curses. Kenyatta g
ave Thorn a theatrical glance. “Oh, my. I’ve been in the ON for nearly thirty years, and even I’m not used to language like that.” He turned back to the woman. “Are you sure you don’t want to cooperate, Rating? Just answer our questions? Because if not, then I guess it’s back to Fleet intelligence with you, and we’ll let the good folks there deal with you. To clarify, I say they’re good, but what I mean is invasively thorough. They’ll get to know you in ways you can’t imagine, even based on such . . . colorful language—as what you just displayed.”

  The woman shot back a feral grin. “You . . . and your childish threats, Captain. I know your precious laws. You can’t do anything to me without due process.”

  “Well, you got me there. Your status as an ON Rating protects you under the Fleet Uniform Code of Justice. You’d be entitled to legal counsel, protected from self-incrimination, all of that sort of thing—and rightfully so, I might add.”

  Dolahey’s wild grin just widened.

  But Kenyatta raised a hand. “Or you would be, except I think I can treat you as an enemy combatant. So, that makes you subject to Fleet Policies for Prisoners of War instead. That means no legal counsel, no protections from self-incrimination, and I can interrogate you to obtain—what is it again? Oh, right, intelligence of immediate military interest. That unties my hands a lot more.”

  “You’re trying to frighten me? You don’t. Your kind doesn’t have the balls to do what has to be done to win this war,” she hissed.

  While Kenyatta confronted her, Thorn watched her closely. There wasn’t anything fake in her tone or expression about what she was saying. She meant every word of it, which meant her squid brainwashing must have insinuated itself into her psyche both intimately—and deeply. He touched his talisman and let magic begin to coalesce around it, but he waited for Kenyatta to crack open her shell of denial. Yes, he could probably bludgeon his way through it magically, but the squids might have implanted some ultimate fail-safe that would stop her heart, or something similarly fatal.

  “Frighten you? Why, not at all. I’m just musing out loud about what to do with you. And, you know, it occurs to me that you’re an ON Rating, who's actually an enemy combatant but is trying to hide it while working against ON interests. So, that makes you—”

  Kenyatta allowed a dramatic pause, then looked straight into the woman’s eye. No semblance of good humor remained on his face. Instead, it had gone as hard and cold as the ice of some ancient comet.

  “That makes you a spy. And spies aren’t entitled to any protections at all. Now, since I suspect that the squids have messed up your head enough that you simply won’t be able to answer any of my questions, there’s not even much point in trying. I’m a busy man and have better things to do with my time.”

  Kenyatta leaned in again. “So all that’s really left to say is that I’m going to order you to be summarily executed, Rating Dolahey. The only value you have left to me is as an example to my crew of what treachery entails.”

  Thorn tensed. Yes, the woman was a Skin, but she was also a human forced into the role by the Nyctus. They might be able to deprogram her—

  But Kenyatta looked at Thorn and winked.

  Then he walked away. “Lieutenant Stellers, thank you for your assistance today. You can return to your ship,” he called over his shoulder.

  Thorn glanced back at Dolahey. The woman’s grin had gone brittle, and her gaze was fixed on Kenyatta’s retreating back.

  Thorn didn’t hesitate. While she was distracted from him, he rode a wave of magical compulsion into her mind, sliding through sudden gaps in the psychic barriers the Nyctus had erected and racing through her conscious mind. Through the Joining, he caught jagged, strobing flashes of her sudden fear of being executed, swirls of desperate uncertainty about what to do next, and behind it all, the lurking, sinister motivations that prevented her from simply giving in or giving up. He aimed for the latter and kept going, plunging deeper into her subconscious.

  It was, Thorn thought, like walking through a recently fire-ravaged forest, or the aftermath of an earthquake. The scorched trees and broken buildings were recognizable, but also wrong. That’s what the Nyctus had done here. They’d scoured Dolahey’s mind of its own volition, substituting their own twisted compulsions. Thorn recognized it as a human mind, but it was like seeing the wake of disaster. It was wrong.

  But Thorn didn’t linger over the obscenity of an otherwise innocent mind corrupted and weaponized. Instead, he drove on, gleaning as much as he could from the shattered remnants of Dolahey’s subconscious mind. One memory in particular stood out, starkly. Thorn zoomed in on it and then the nightmare world inside this woman’s head shuddered and shook. Pressure quickly piled up on Thorn’s intruding perception, forcing him to exert more and more magical force to counteract it. The squid defenses were reorienting themselves, isolating Thorn and trying to eject him from Dolahey’s thoughts.

  Instead of fighting it, though, he relented and backed out, letting the Nyctus implants slam shut behind him.

  Thorn opened his eyes. Kenyatta had apparently called over the doctor and nurse, who stood on either side of him, ready to catch him if he fell. He smiled and shook his head.

  “I’m okay. That just took a little more concentration than I thought it would,” he said.

  Kenyatta waved off the doctor and nurse, then gestured for Thorn to follow him. The two Marines standing guard inside the infirmary, in clear view of Dolahey, snapped to and saluted as the Captain passed, taking Thorn into the corridor outside.

  “Well?”

  Thorn sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, sir, but that’s the first time I’ve been that deep into a Skin’s mind. Let’s just say it’s . . . not a pretty sight, what the squids did to her.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant. Let’s just move past that for the moment, though, okay?”

  Thorn took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. Anyway, there was quite a bit there, but it was all just bits and pieces, like watching a bunch of images go flying across a screen. The one that kept repeating, though, was a star system with three suns. It figures prominently in her subconscious mind. Something truly traumatic happened to her there. She remembers something about a ship, or maybe it’s a space station, and there were cells, and water tanks—”

  Thorn rubbed his eyes again. “Part of what happened to her there was torture. There’s no other way to put it. The squids tortured her. I think it was to break her down, to make her vulnerable—”

  Thorn cut himself off. His voice had started to rise in pitch, getting louder as a sudden surge of anger ignited inside him. It flared up, a furnace-hot flame of fury, rising into a thick, choking smoke of outrage. He balled his fists, suddenly wanting to hit something.

  “You know, Lieutenant, when one of my officer’s is obviously consumed with anger, I send them off to work it out somewhere, like in the gym. But when said officer can make things burst into flames, and explode, and similar such things, and all just with the power of their mind—let’s say it makes me nervous,” Kenyatta said.

  Thorn took another deep breath. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just—it’s not her fault. The squids broke her, then basically reprogrammed her into a tool. I didn’t see what her ultimate mission was, but I’m sure if she were able to, she’d have eventually tried to destroy your ship and kill everyone aboard. Kill her crewmates. Not because she wanted to, but because those bastard squids gave her no choice.”

  “Well, considering Rating Dolahey was a Reactor Tech in Engineering, it’s probably just as well you flushed her out when you did,” Kenyatta replied.

  Thorn gave the Captain a wide-eyed stare. A Reactor Tech. Shit.

  “Anyway, tell me about this trinary star system you saw. Could you pick it out of a lineup?” Kenyatta asked.

  “I think so, sir. Distinct colors. Two blue-hot and young, and a dying red in between them. Ironically, it was really quite beautiful,” Thorn said.

  Kenyatta activated his comm. “XO, I’m sending Lieutenant Stell
ers to the bridge. He has a star system, and I want you, the Nav O, and anyone else you need to call, to help ID it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Thorn saluted, and Kenyatta started to turn back toward the infirmary. Thorn spoke up as he did.

  “Sir, you wouldn’t really execute Dolahey, would you? None of this is her fault.”

  Kenyatta made a pfft sound. “No, of course not. I’m just going to see if I can get her to reveal anything else that might be useful. Meantime, when we leave here, the Dauntless is making a straight shot back to friendly space. We’re going to hand her over to Fleet Intelligence for more interrogation, and then deprogramming, if they can manage it. And I hope they can. She was good people.”

  Thorn gave a forlorn nod. “Aye, sir. Just from seeing what the squids left of her, I could tell that there’s some of that good people left in there.”

  Thorn kept his eyes on Tanner but gestured to the Hecate’s main viewscreen behind him. “The system has some awkward catalog number, but it’s known as the Three Sisters. I was able to work that out with the help of the Nav O and the Astrogation shop on the Dauntless.”

  “And there’s some sort of squid facility there for creating Skins?” Tanner asked.

  “Pretty sure, sir. That’s how Dolahey remembered it, anyway. I’d say it’s where the squids converted her.” He had to bite back another flash of anger over that word, converted. It was like describing changes to a piece of equipment, not a human being.

  Tanner put his forefingers together and touched them to his chin. “Captain Kenyatta has informed Fleet, and they’ve already come back to us with a Warning Order. We’re to prepared to launch a raid into that system, to confirm what’s there. If we can do something about it, we will. And if not, we’re to gather as much information as we can for a follow-up operation.”