Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “Problem, Wixcombe?”

  She kept a poisonously cool glance leveled on Thorn. “Sorry, sir. Lieutenant Commander Stellers was letting his mind wander. I just wanted to ensure he remained attentive to his duties.”

  Tanner stared for a moment, then understanding dawned and he nodded. “Ah, I see. Well, if you need to ensure he remains properly attentive in the future, you have my permission to do whatever you need to. That’s as long as you don’t break him, of course. We still need him to fight this war.” He looked at Thorn. “Stellers, eyes on the prize.”

  Thorn rubbed his ribs absently and gave Kira a sweet smile.

  “Always, sir. Always.”

  “Did you have a hand in this, sir?” Mol asked, handing Thorn a data pad with a set of orders displayed on it. She’d caught up with Thorn and Kira just outside the officers’ mess and seemed excited, albeit in a subdued sort of way, and a little baffled.

  Thorn scanned the data pad’s display. “Oh, wow. So your Gyrfalcon is going to be one of the first ships to be outfitted with the new drive and anti-grav tech,” he said, smiling, but his smile faded when he saw Mol’s face. She wasn’t angry or otherwise unhappy, but she didn’t look especially thrilled, either.

  Thorn cocked his head to one side. “It is great, isn’t it?”

  “It’s going to take me out of the line for however long the work takes. And then, I’m going to be flying an experimental ship, which is going to mean all sorts of monitoring and reports and bureaucratic shit. And new tech often breaks or needs tweaking and adjustments, which is just more time out of the line.” She gave an obviously annoyed shrug. “So is it great? You tell me, sir.”

  “Well, you are being trusted with the state of the art in ON military tech. You’re being trusted not just to use it, but to test it. You’re a damned good pilot, Mol, who not only gets the best out of her ship, but always seems to get a little more. If anyone can put this stuff through its paces, it’s you.” He gave her a wry smile. “Let’s put it this way. You don’t give mediocre pilots your newest, slickest stuff. Hell, you don’t even give it to the good ones. You give it to the best ones.”

  Mol finally offered a reluctant smile. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a damned good salesman, sir? Or is it a damned good bullshitter?”

  “A little from column A, a little from column B,” Thorn said, laughing.

  Thorn returned her salute, then entered the officers’ mess, where the warm, spicy smell of lunch beckoned. But his shouted name made him stop and turn again. He started to scowl in annoyance, until he saw it was Tanner.

  It was Thorn’s turn to salute. “Sir?”

  Tanner stopped. “You’re going to visit your daughter, Stellers. You and Wixcombe.”

  Thorn just stared. “Sorry if I’m repeating myself, but, sir?”

  “Let’s just say that Fleet was deeply impressed by her insights into the battles the Nyctus have fought, that our intel shop didn’t even know about. Like Messier-4, for instance. And even more importantly, her knowing about that prototype drive. Like it or not, she’s made herself into a—well, valuable intelligence asset barely begins to describe it. However, I made it clear to Admiral Scoville that you and Wixcombe would not be at all impressed with us subjecting her to the usual intel debriefing and analysis routine. I’m assuming that’s correct?”

  “Damned right it is, sir.”

  “Damned right indeed. Anyway, Fleet has agreed that the best ones to debrief her would be the two of you, her parents.”

  Thorn crossed his arms and moved aside as a group of Code Nebula officers walked past and into the mess, saluting Tanner on the way. He waited until they’d passed by to speak.

  “Sir, she’s a kid, and our daughter. She’s not just an intelligence asset to us—”

  “No, of course she isn’t, and I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But I have to put my practical hat on here, Stellers. She does know things about the squids that we never even suspected. We are fighting a war against them, one that’s been dragging on for years now, has cost untold lives, and that we’re heartily sick of having to fight. We all want to end this war, which is why there’s still talk of courting the Bilau, and—”

  Thorn sighed and held up a hand. “I get it, sir. And I’m sure not going to say no for a chance to spend some time with Kira and Morgan.” He looked down at his feet. He was about to do something he’d never done before. He could only hope Tanner would understand and wouldn’t just blow him off or get offended.

  “But I need something, sir. I need a promise.”

  Tanner, who’d just been waiting for Thorn to go on, crossed his arms. “Not used to negotiating for things that amount to orders, Stellers. What sort of promise?”

  “I need a promise that no one else will try to contact Morgan, to debrief her, or do any such spook things. It has to be me or Kira, and no one else.”

  Thorn raised his head and made himself look right into Tanner’s eyes as he spoke. He hoped they’d developed enough of a mutual respect that he could presume on this man, his superior, to have his back in this.

  Tanner held the stare for a moment. “Stellers, I will pass this condition you’re stipulating to Fleet. And I’ll tell them that if they can’t accept it and adhere to it, they can shove their biggest carrier up their ass and find themselves another Commodore. And then, I will come find you, because I’ll be looking for work. I suspect I’ll have most of the crew of the Hecate with me.”

  Thorn hesitated because he saw nothing but earnest sincerity in Tanner’s eyes. Failing to speak, he stuck out his hand on impulse. Tanner shook it.

  “Think that by now, Stellers, you’ve earned it.” Tanner’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Although, just to be clear, you’re out of chances to slap conditions on the orders I give you. From here on, I expect nothing but blind, unquestioning obedience. Do I make myself clear?”

  Thorn saw the faint smile spread across Tanner’s face, the mischievous spark dancing in his eyes. He smiled back and nodded.

  “You got it, sir. You order me to jump, I’ll be asking how high? on the way up.”

  Tanner’s face returned to its usual, dispassionate, not-quite-a-frown. He gestured at the mess. “Join me for lunch, Stellers?”

  “Glad to, sir.”

  12

  Kira clasped her hands together, placed them against her cheek, and batted her eyes at Thorn. “Oh, Lieutenant Commander Stellers, you’re so brave and strong and handsome, and such a dangerous man, too.”

  Morgan laughed and snorted, her mouth filled with yams.

  Thorn waved a hand at her to close her mouth. “It was nothing like that at all. She was strictly professional.” He spooned up another helping of mashed yams but paused with it partway to his mouth and offered a sly smile. “She did think I was dangerous, though, didn’t she.”

  Kira blew a raspberry, and Morgan laughed again. From further along the table, Asher, Morgan’s adoptive father, joined in with a chuckle of his own.

  “Women love us dangerous men, Thorn, and don’t you forget it,” he said.

  His wife, Calie, looked at Kira. “The most dangerous thing this man does is make me wash his socks.”

  Morgan made a disgusted sound. “I know, right? Ewww.”

  Thorn joined in the laughter around the table. He had to admit, the vagaries of chance had given them damned fine foster parents for Morgan. Asher and Calie had two kids of their own, both serving in the ON. One of them had died aboard the Centurion, a ship whose destruction Thorn had helped investigate. The other was, as far as they knew, still alive, working a staff job at Code Gauntlet. Their loss of one child, and undoubted worry over the other, hadn’t hardened them or made them bitter, though. Even though they each had at least twenty years on Thorn and Kira, and could be more like the indulgent grandparents, they treated Morgan like their own child. They were firm and fair, and didn’t let Morgan’s ability to literally reshape reality get in the way of maintaining some pretty strict
boundaries. Most importantly, they clearly loved her, and she loved them, and that’s what ultimately mattered.

  Kira, still laughing, shook her head. “I do have to admit, this Doctor Gaust is one, ah, striking woman, so I can’t say I blame Thorn for being at least a little attracted to her.”

  “It’s like I say. Married, not dead,” Asher put in.

  “You’re just making it so that when you meet some super-handsome guy, you’re covered,” Morgan said, giggling.

  Kira’s smile widened. “See? My daughter understands the need for planning.”

  The dinner carried on in much the same vein, which was perfectly fine with Thorn. Until he’d experienced it, he hadn’t realized just how comforting it was, how nice it was, to simply be a family. That would end tomorrow, when he and Kira dug a little deeper into the things that Morgan knew, even if—and especially if—she didn’t realize she knew them. Tonight, though, was about this. It was about lighthearted, nonsense chatter around the dinner table.

  Thorn cleaned the last food off his plate and was a little sad to do it. Beef marinated in a sourfruit sauce, mashed yams, mixed veggies, and steaming-fresh rolls were a homemade feast compared to the institutionally bland food he’d become used to aboard ON ships or on ON bases. He already knew there were no seconds because that had been his second helping. He leaned back with a contented sigh.

  “That was amazing,” he said.

  Calie returned a bright smile. “Thank you. Now, Morgan, dishes.”

  She curled her lip and sighed. “Okay.”

  Thorn started to stand. “I’ll help her—”

  “You will not,” Calie snapped. “That’s Morgan’s chore. And you’re a guest.”

  Thorn considered arguing, but something in Calie’s look told him there’d be no point. He sat back down and offered Morgan an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, kid. I tried.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what it’s like, being a farmworker and all,” she said, sticking out her tongue at Calie as she did. Morgan dodged back, grinning, as Calie swatted at her, then carted dishes off into the kitchen.

  “You two have done such a great job of taking care of her,” Kira said.

  Asher said nothing, just gave a small, modest shrug. Calie leaned forward, though, clasping her hands around her coffee cup. “She’s a wonderful girl. Given who she is and what she’s been through, she could have been something very different.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Asher said, leaning back and clasping his hands across his stomach.

  Calie glanced at him and nodded. “She could have been, well, difficult—” She stopped and looked from Thorn to Kira. “Look who I’m talking to. You’re both famous Starcasters, and Thorn, you literally brought us all here on Nebo back from the dead.”

  “Thanks for that, by the way,” Asher said.

  Thorn smiled, abashed. “Any time.” He turned serious, though, and looked back at Calie. “Actually, most of the thanks for the person she’s become has to go to you guys. She is a powerful ’Caster, and she did go through hell thanks to the Nyctus. But when we visit here, we see a happy girl growing into a happy young woman.”

  “You two are definitely doing something right,” Kira said.

  “Yes, well, we need to get this war ended so she can be where she belongs—with you and Thorn,” Asher said.

  Calie offered a sad smile. “When that day comes, we’ll miss her terribly. But she belongs with her real parents.”

  Thorn smiled. When that day comes.

  He hoped to live to see it.

  Kira consulted her data pad, then leaned over the porch railing and looked up into the starry sky. “We should be able to see it any second, just a couple of degrees above the small moon.”

  Morgan peered up alongside her. “I don’t see anything. Oh, wait.” She pointed. “There. Is that him?”

  Thorn followed her pointing finger. A tiny point of light slid across the sky, its trajectory perfectly straight and constant. “I think so, yeah.”

  “It is,” Kira said. “That’s the Jolly.”

  “So how come Bertilak didn’t come down with you guys? How come he stayed up in orbit?” Morgan asked.

  “He was worried he’d just get in the way, I think. He wanted this visit to be about, um, us. Our family,” Kira replied.

  “Yeah, sure, but I think he’s part of our family, too, isn’t he? He shouldn’t be up there all alone.”

  Thorn watched the tiny dot race across the sky and quickly vanish into the dying glow of the day. From Bertilak’s point of view, the sun would be rising again, of course.

  They had invited him to join them on the surface. But, as Kira had said, he’d refused, citing a desire to let the family be the family. That was probably part of it, sure, but Thorn wondered if Morgan being his creator had something to do with it. Was meeting her like meeting a god for him?

  Thorn wasn’t going to push it. Mol had brought them here, with the Jolly in company. Now Mol was gone, back to Code Nebula to have the Gyrfalcon upgraded with the new tech. But Bertilak had been determined to just remain in orbit.

  “It’s like he’s watching over us,” Morgan said.

  Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Closer by, night bugs had started to hum lazily, attracted by the lights on the porch. The night was warm, and still, and fragrant with the rich organic smells of the farm.

  “He is watching over us. Or, more to point, he’s watching over you, Morgan. That’s what he does,” Kira said.

  “Yeah. I think he’d stay in orbit here all the time, doing just that, if we let him. But he’s like the rest of us in thinking that the best way to keep everyone safe, you included, is to end this war,” Thorn said.

  Morgan turned, half-leaning, half-sitting on the porch railing. “That’s why you’re here, huh? To find out more stuff about what I know, about the Monsters and things?”

  Thorn immediately shook his head. “No. Or, yes, that’s why the ON sent us here. But, as far as I’m concerned, no. I’m here to see my daughter, to spend some time with her.”

  “We are going to be asking you some questions tomorrow,” Kira said. “But for tonight why don’t we just go for a walk?”

  She held out her hand. Morgan took it, and Kira led her down the steps from the porch.

  “Take us to your favorite place to go at night,” Kira said as Thorn followed.

  “That would be bed.”

  Kira laughed. “Okay, never mind the night part.”

  “I usually just go sit under the sourfruit trees, where it’s nice and shady when it’s hot.” Morgan bit her lip, then brightened. “Oh, I know. Let’s go this way.”

  They started in the direction she’d pointed. Thorn glanced back, noting the Marines preparing to follow them. A full squad would never let them get more than a couple of hundred meters away from them. Of course, Thorn and Kira between them could probably muster many times the firepower any Marine squad could, but they had a job to do, and they were going to do it.

  “Dad, how come you don’t make your own Bertilak?” Morgan suddenly asked, glancing back as they walked between the barn and the orchard.

  “How come I—what?”

  “You should make your own Bertilak. I made my Bertilak to be as strong as he needs to be. I think I wanted him to be strong enough to take care of everyone and everything he ran into.” She gave a sheepish shrug. “Mostly including you, I guess.”

  Thorn exchanged a glance with Kira. Bertilak had been one of the things they’d been meaning to ask Morgan about, in fact. But this explained why Bertilak and, by extension, the Jolly, always seemed up to whatever challenge they had to face. Thorn remembered fighting Bertilak, once, in the Hecate’s gym, to settle a wager the alien and Tanner had made. Thorn made himself supremely skilled in unarmed combat through his teenage years and into his adulthood. It was the only way to survive the hard, uncompromising life he’d expected to live after being orphaned on Cotswold.

  But Bertilak had been just a little be
tter.

  It had always been like that. The Jolly turned out to be as fast or as nimble as the situation demanded, its weapons strong enough to do whatever they needed to do. Bertilak had likewise been strong, quick, or smart enough to get the job done. But she’d created him when she was much younger. He and Kira had agreed that one of their foremost duties to Morgan was teaching her to use her enormous powers responsibly, and with due care to the outcome. She’d made one Bertilak. What if she made ten? Or a hundred? Or a hundred thousand?

  “Making another Bertilak, or someone like him, is a really complicated matter, Morgan,” Thorn finally said. “There are a lot of good reasons not to do it.”

  “Like what?”

  Thorn held up his hand. “You know what, kid? We’ll have this conversation, you, your mom, and me. Just not tonight. Tonight we’re just out for a walk, as a family.”

  “Okay.” Morgan’s smile was visible even in the gloom.

  They walked on in silence for a moment, hearing nothing but their own footsteps, the distant rattle of a vehicle plying some rough, dirt track, and the occasional hiss of a fitful night breeze through the sourfruit trees. Thorn glanced back again. He knew the Marines were still there, but he couldn’t see or hear them. He’d have to compliment Fenton, their company commander, about that.

  Morgan led them to a small, placid creek that wound across the southwestern corner of the farm. The ground here was fallow, mostly sand, but it had allowed the creek to really meander, turning and coiling back on itself in tight bends. A native tree vaguely reminiscent of weeping willows clung to its banks, drooping their fronds until they trailed in the water. Virtually no undergrowth grew among them, leaving the impression of stout columns and wispy tapestries, as though they traversed some ancient temple in the growing double moonlight. Thorn thought it was somehow charming, placid, and eerie all at once.

  “I like coming here sometimes,” Morgan said, stopping and crouching beside the water. “Dad—Asher—never brings the machines down here. Neither do any of the neighbors. So it’s always like this.”