Starcaster

by J. N. Chaney

  “I’m here,” he said, then it clicked—the voice was Mol, and it was coming through the comm speaker in his cabin. “Go ahead.” He sat up, dislodging the sheet.

  “Be at the launch deck in ten. I’ve got food for you. Complete silence on the way. Captain is waiting down here. Out.” Mol cut the comm, leaving Thorn with questions and an elevated heart rate. He glanced at the chrono floating on his comms screen. 02:59.

  Nothing good happens at this hour.

  He made it into the launch bay moments later, having spoken to no one. Wearing his coverall, he’d grabbed a go-bag, sidearm, and his talisman. Nothing more, nothing less. Even without trying, he sensed the roiling presence of danger in Mol’s thoughts, and beyond hers, a general fizz of worry percolating from—

  —Captain Samuel.

  Not good, Thorn mused, then stepped through the hatch into the yawning launch bay. Mol’s delta-winged Gyrfalcon streamed frigid gas from the fuel coupling as a crew disconnected the hoses, gave salutes and thumbs up, and began to recede, taking their tools and fueling tractor with them. The small, bright orange vehicle ran soundlessly away to its cubby, the driver backing in without averting his eyes from Thorn.

  Guess they know it’s me. Now, let’s find out what the hell is going on, Thorn thought, but he said nothing, pulling up short of Captain Samuel, who didn’t look up from his comm tablet. With a grunt of disgust, Samuel swiped at the screen, then looked up, piercing Thorn with a stare.

  “Wixcombe’s ship has been…brainjacked, we think. You’re going to go get it,” Samuel said without preamble.

  To his credit, Thorn merely nodded. Scenarios—none of them good—flickered through his mind like a decaying video.

  “Can we approach in stealth, sir?” Thorn asked.

  “To some extent. Wyant’s a genius at subtlety, when she isn’t attacking headfirst. I’ve instructed her to mask the approach and survive, regardless of whether or not you get a…a psychic hit. Your orders are simple, Stellers. Find the Andraste and mark her course. We’ve got several ships missing. I tell you this because not all of command is in agreement about what to do with the Starcasters,” Samuel said.

  “Sir, if I may ask about—” Thorn started to say.

  “I’ve read your jacket in detail, Stellers. I know how you lost your family in the first bombardment, and I know what you’ve gone through. You deserve an answer, so here it is. You make me nervous because I can’t see what you do. You make me hopeful because nothing else is working in this godforsaken war, and every system we lose is millions of lives, or worse, because we can’t fall back forever. Earth awaits, and then after that, annihilation. This is my fourth decade in space, son, but it doesn’t mean I’m not willing to—” Samuel paused, thinking, then brightened. He nearly grinned. “I can learn. And I will. You’re simply new, but you’re one of us, and even if I don’t understand you, not fully, I trust you. Go find her ship, mark the course, and report immediately. We will go after the Andraste. You have my word.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Thorn saluted, feeling the captain’s emotional chaos lessen, just enough to give him hope that the Starcasters had allies who wanted them to exist. To fight. And to win.

  “We flying, or what?” Mol asked from the Gyrfalcon.

  “We’re flying,” Thorn said, climbing up the handholds. In seconds, he was beside Mol, attaching his suit cable to the ship’s AI. He’d fly copilot, but mostly he knew what was needed.

  His mind was to roam as they flew where Kira’s ship vanished, and if he could, let her know that help was on the way.

  Mol saluted the captain, who stepped back as the towline pulled the Gyrfalcon into position. Without a pause, Mol said, “Launching Bloodhound One.”

  The open bay beckoned, and with a silent pulse, massive magnets hurled the fighter into the black. Stars flared to life as Mol pulled the stick, banking hard away from the launch bay.

  “Bloodhound One, you’re clear for main engine.”

  “Thanks, Nest. Hound out,” Mol said, as the AI completed course data with a soft chime. “Here we go.”

  The main engine spun up, and the stars went dark.

  “Faster than the helos we used to train in,” Thorn said. The controls were nearly identical, but the capabilities were worlds apart. The Gyrfalcon had a railgun that could break ships, a forward laser array, and four missiles designed to punch through atmosphere for ground work, if needed. All in all, the sleek fighter was a heavy hitter, even at less than forty meters in length.

  “We’re the limitation,” Mol said. “Even with our suits, there’s no way we can wind out the engine. We’d be pasted. That’s one area we can outrun the squid, anyway. They’re softbodies, and even with a hardened suit, they need to get us early if they’re going to get us at all. That’s why the bastards are so insistent on hammering planets with rocks. No chasing.”

  “Never thought of that.” Thorn considered the implications. If the Nyctus couldn’t pull twelve G’s, then—

  “Command already tried every trick to get the enemy to chase us. They won’t, unless they’ve got a trap set. But I like the way you’re thinking. Trixie, set the stick for auto and give me a weapons check. Then kill any extra electronics. We have a guest aboard, and he’ll be using a…ah, sensitive instrument to track the Andraste.”

  “Done,” came the mellow female voice.

  “Your ship’s named Trixie?” Thorn asked, grinning.

  “She knows all the tricks, so....” Mol shrugged. “Saved my ass often enough. And for an AI, she doesn’t rob my combat systems of power. This design is only a year old.”

  Thorn looked around. The cockpit was sleek, minimalist, and dark, lit only by the paired screens before them. There were two physical sticks, and little more to get in the way. “I like Trixie.”

  “I like you too, Specialist Stellers,” Trixie said.

  “Flirt. That’s enough. Oh, dispense two bulbs; coffee, sugar, stims in mine, no stim in Thorn’s,” Mol said.

  “Done,” Trixie said. A side panel slid open, revealing two opaque bulbs of coffee. “Left side is for our guest.”

  “Thanks,” Thorn said, pulling at the bulb. The coffee was hot, sweet, and strong.

  “Mmm. Okay, time to make our first jump. On my command. Go,” Mol said.

  Once again, the stars went dark, but this time there was a subtle purpling at the edge of his senses. The stars returned, and his vision cleared.

  “We’ve covered.” Mol looked, then gave a small shrug. “All of the distance to their last known position, and then some. About three lights past it, actually.”

  Thorn didn’t have to reach out—he sensed her. Kira.

  “She’s here. What’s the closest system?” Thorn asked.

  Trixie flashed an image on screen. “Red Nine,” she said. “Enemy held.”

  “Not just enemy, but a major stronghold. That’s why the Andraste came out to take a sniff. There’s a Nyctus Spindle out here, filled with the sneaky bastards,” Mol spat.

  “Spindle?” Thorn asked.

  “Long station, lots of rings. We think they fill some with water, spin it up at different speeds to give the squid a place for—well, whatever the hell it is they do. We know it ain’t engineering, because they’re sitting on one big idea: throwing rocks. Other than that, the Spindles seem to be a locus for ship traffic and comms. Maybe even troop transfer points.” Mol squinted over at Thorn. “Hey, can you, uh, sense her? Wixcombe?”

  “She’s here.”

  “Need me to shut up?” Mol asked.

  “Give me a moment, but yeah. That helps.” Thorn closed his eyes, reaching out to the bright point where Kira’s presence trailed away like a diminishing scent. Bloodhound is right, he thought.

  Thorn? It was Kira—distant, troubled, a note of fear.

  I’m here. Where are you?

  Running like hell. We’re cooking off the engines and about to lose reactor containment. The Nyctus sent some kind of fast attack team. There are three of t
hem, small, mean as hell, lots of rocks to throw. They’ve even got a front laser array, Kira said.

  How soon before they close?

  Twelve minutes, and they’ll have us bracketed. I’m running for the gravity well of a supermassive gas giant, but...

  I can see you. Sit tight. And Kira, have your crew get away from the controls. Set everything on auto.

  You sure?

  Trust me. They do not want to get in the way of what I’m doing, Thorn said.

  “Stellers, what the hell?” Mol asked. “You here?”

  “I’m here. Permission to address Trixie?”

  “Sure. Trixie, code ingress; Stellers, Thorn. Active now,” Mol said.

  “Acknowledged. I’m listening, Specialist.”

  “Mark that massive gas giant, and target a point just beyond it for our nav path. Max speed now, and then kill all external radiation,” Thorn said. He turned to Mol. “I’m going to punch through the Nyctus using their own weapons, and I don’t know if I can do it with background clutter.”

  “Be my guest. Trixie, run silent,” Mol said.

  “Quiet as a whore in church, ma’am,” Trixie said.

  Thorn snorted, then drew his focus to a fine point, seeing the Nyctus ships. They were somewhere south of a corvette, but sleek, fast, and unscathed. Their reactors hummed with good health, and Thorn decided that was where he would start.

  A Nyctus engineer stood in front of the control panels for a cooling tower that lay sideways, liquid helium coursing through the system. Thorn caressed the alien mind—felt its fear—and then nudged a…well, it wasn’t a hand. More like an appendage with nodules on the end, but it could punch a command prompt. Since Thorn couldn’t read Nyctus, he settled on a more inelegant solution. He brainjacked the Nyctus, made it smash its head against the screen, and then repeated the process until a viscous fluid leaked from torn, rubbery skin—

  —And the screen was a pastiche of wildly dancing characters, all colored in beautiful crimson red.

  Guess the Nyctus use red for danger, too, Thorn said.

  And blue for normalized systems. What did you do? Kira asked.

  You’ll see. Nyctus ship two seems to have developed a leak.

  Looking in on the Nyctus engineer, Thorn watched in fascinated horror as the cooling tower began dumping liquid helium, which splashed, shattered, and destroyed everything it touched, including all three of the hapless engineers. The reactor began to whine—a high, mournful sound of dying animals, but captured by the vibrating ceramics of an engine that finally detonated in a spectacular flash of scalding light.

  Splash one, Kira said. Did you—what did you do?

  The same thing they did to your ship. Did you regain control?

  We did. They ’jacked three crew, killed our comms, and sent us on a near fatal path into an asteroid field. We lost two people. The third might never—I don’t know if she’ll live. Or speak, even if she does, Kira said.

  They can wipe us like hard drives, I think, Thorn said. Back to work. I’m finding ways in. They’re so used to being dominant, they’re sloppy. Okay, I’m in. The third ship is crewed by a…not sure what to call them, but I get an image of a higher skill level, like a master. I’m turning the second one if I can.

  Thorn found his target in the main central passage of the second Nyctus ship—a younger mind, elastic, but still utterly alien. He got echoes of resentment at another crew member, this one taller, bulkier, prone to stern lectures in their curious, burbling language. The young Nyctus hated being spoken to like a...ah, that was the word. Swimmer. Thorn collected sonic memories of the taller Nyctus flashing its colors in anger, the cells changing from red to gray as fast as an eyeblink, all punctuated with the occasional liquid sounds.

  You can always count on teenagers to be pissed at their parents, Thorn told Kira, then he reached deep into the young Nyctus and tried a simple, brute-force attack. He seized control of the arms and made the young alien reach out, open an airlock, and blow the entire atmosphere out in a blast of icy flakes. The inner bulkheads failed, and the water interior shattered outward, gutting the second ship, which began a reckless tumble as its crew died, exposed to hard vacuum and flying debris. Two down. The third is beyond me. We need a more traditional fight.

  My weapons officer has twenty-six birds left, and we’ve got all sixty rounds in the railgun, Kira said. Our lasers are ready, too.

  Flip your ship and begin braking hard against the gravity well of that gas giant. And send all your intel to us in a databurst, then send it to me as an image. I won’t let you die, Kira, but we can’t fail.

  I…I know. Sending now. Do we open up on the Nyctus? This gas giant is going to crush us in less than four minutes if we don’t skip off the atmosphere.

  “Trixie, quick and dirty, what’s the point of no return for Kira’s ship?” Thorn asked.

  “Four minutes, twenty seconds, give or take,” the AI answered.

  “Can she flip back in time to accelerate out?” Mol asked.

  “No need. I can’t crack the third ship’s crew, and they’re too small for a sure kill as Kira’s heading down that well. Only one thing to do,” Thorn said, his lips pressed in a thin line. An incipient headache began, spreading across his temples. “Not the time—oh, shit.”

  “What is it?” Mol asked. “Thorn—your nose—it’s bleeding.”

  “Probe. The Nyctus aren’t waiting around for me to—” Thorn vomited explosively, head banging against the bulkhead as a spike of pain ripped his mind apart.

  Thorn? Are you—Kira sent.

  Thorn gripped the arms of his seat, knuckles white, hands twisted like claws. His back arched in a rictus of pain, and he kicked the floor in a spasmodic beat with one foot.

  The bastard has me, he thought.

  Thorn’s stomach clenched again, but there was nothing in his body to eject. He rolled forward, trying to relieve the pressure on his skull—

  —and found a point. A location. A small patch of calm in the storm. You can’t reach me everywhere. I’m not like you, he told the Nyctus officer, but there was no answer-- only a new wave of hideous contortion in his mind, so Thorn leaned, shook, and found the place where the wind and waves couldn’t batter him—and he pushed back.

  It was known in the ’casters that you were never more vulnerable than in the depths of a hard spell. Since telepathy and psychokinesis are the purest forms of magic, they were a crack in the armor that could not be avoided.

  Sometimes clever is too clever. Let’s try cheating.

  Thorn went on the offensive, seizing control of four Nyctus limbs, and forced the officer to methodically strangle himself. When the Nyctus realized what was happening, he stood, spitting water and saliva in a furious torrent—but Thorn merely pulled two tentacles away—one held a comms pad—and jammed them into the soft crown of its bulbous head, feeling the screen shatter into sharp debris. The pieces slashed deep, laying the alien open, but the tentacle did not stop, grinding down into the brain without mercy until the Nyctus spasmed once, then twice, and died.

  Kira, railgun. Thirty rounds in staggered timing, Thorn said.

  The Andraste’s main gun spoke, sending a furious volley up range at the Nyctus pursuit vessel. The first four rounds missed.

  The fifth did not.

  A bloom of light was all that remained of the Nyctus seconds later, and Thorn sensed Kira’s cathartic relief.

  Turn and burn, Kira. You have twenty seconds to—

  Already firing engines at max rate. It’s going to be tight. Lot of planet under us, Kira said.

  A ping sounded in Trixie’s speakers. “We have the data package,” the AI intoned.

  “Not good enough. I want the sender, too,” Thorn said.

  He stood from his chair and reached toward the screen, where Kira’s ship struggled against the inexorable reality of physics. Sometimes, the universe wouldn’t lose, and nature was meant to be.

  “Thorn, they’re going into a dive. I’m showing a reactor
about to cook off,” Mol said, somber as a judge.

  Can’t fight nature. But I’m not natural. I’m beyond that, Thorn raged, hands pressed against the black screen where a small, silver bar began slipping toward the globe of swirling orange, white, and blue. Kira.

  We’re losing her, Thorn.

  Kira, close your mind down.

  What?

  Do it. Now. Please.

  I—okay. Kira’s tone was braided with panic and trust.

  Thorn touched his talisman, reaching deep inside the well of power that flowed through his body, crashing and tumbling like a wild river. He didn’t need to move a ship. Not really. He needed to give it a nudge. A small one.

  He pushed. Not up, but sideways. He envisioned the massive ship sliding along high clouds, the howling winds hungry, but denied their prize as the Andraste rolled, came about— engines thrumming as they neared their limits—

  We’re gaining altitude. Reactor holding at 103%, falling now. 101.9. 101. Escape velocity now, at angled orbit. Thorn felt Kira’s nerves shatter with sickened relief. How?

  I’ll explain in front of command. We’ve been doing it all wrong, Kira. You don’t have to push a ship. You convince it to move, just a little.

  And if you do?

  Well, in space, a nudge on a nudge on a nudge is—

  Holy shit. Delta V without an engine, Kira said.

  That’s what they did to us, Kira. Why we couldn’t find them. The Nyctus coasted to our worlds and dropped those damned rocks. All shamans, no engineers. No wonder we—I mean, no wonder we lost so many people. We never knew.

  A pause, then Mol touched Thorn’s arm. “Sit down. I’ll help you clean up. We’re going home, and the Andraste is coming with us.”

  Thorn fell back in his chair, spent. “Sounds—”

  He was asleep, hands hanging limp, his body soaked with sweat.

  “Follow us, if you please,” Trixie told Kira’s ship.

  Below them, the gas giant whirled, then small sparks of light flared as the Nyctus ship debris hit atmosphere, and in a moment they were gone.

  18

  “Unpack data,” Captain Samuel told the ship’s AI. He stood in his cabin with Thorn, Kira, and a thin, dark man named Levitt, who wore the rank of commander with a natural ease. Levitt leaned against the desk, eyes focused in febrile intensity on the scrolling images from Kira’s flyby in Nyctus territory.