by J. N. Chaney
“The Vision I had was identical to yours, right up to the end. Something happened that was different from what every other Starcaster experienced, at least as far as I know. The . . . the little girl, she spoke to me.”
Thorn’s eyes widened. “What? What did she say?”
“The final explosion just—it just stopped. Everything just stopped. The girl turned right to me, and—”
Kira had to stop for a moment. Her throat had clamped painfully tight, and tears brimmed in her eyes. She pressed on.
“—and she turned to me, and she said, ‘They will try to find the Star Pool. It will be very dangerous. But the real danger is pride. Pride makes terrible things happen.’” She took a long, slow breath. “The last I saw of her, she’d mounted a horse and rode off, straight into the blast of that last KEW, the big one, the planet-killer.”
Thorn kept staring. Kira could see his mind racing back and forth through her words, as though struggling to understand them. When he finally spoke, though, it was to focus on something Kira hadn’t even considered especially important.
“A horse?”
Kira frowned, then nodded. “Yes. A horse. I don’t think that’s—”
“Are you sure it was a horse?”
Kira shrugged and shook her head. “Yes, I’m sure. I remember it as clearly as the rest of the Vision, the same way every other Starcaster does.” She bit back a curse. “Her brain was so . . . so fried at the end. It was just her synapses firing . . . firing blanks.”
Thorn yanked a data slate out of a belt pouch and started poking at it.
“Thorn,” Kira said, then stopped again.
It was time for the hard part. The hardest part, really. Ever.
She summoned her breath and her courage. “Thorn—”
He raised the data slate and turned it to her. Its screen held an image of a virginal girl, astride a donkey, the calligraphed words Una’s Ass—
It took her a moment to place it. Right, it was the so-called nose art that had been emblazoned on the Pool of Stars.
She looked at Thorn. “You think—what, these things are related?”
“Well, star pool—Pool of Stars,” he replied.
“You were assigned to find the Pool of Stars long after the Vision, though.”
“You’re trying to make logical, real-world sense of a prophetic vision simultaneously sent by a little girl on a dying planet to Starcasters all over the League? Some of them a few dozen light-years away?”
“Alright, so what do you think it means?”
“Maybe nothing. But I think we really need to find this ship, the Pool of Stars, now.” He stared at the speed bag. “I’m going to need more info before I can do that, though. That nose art—I think it’s somehow the key. Shit, we’re magicians fighting a war against star-faring squid who happen to be psychic.” He waved his hands in disgust. “At this point, nothing tracks with who we used to be as a species. The old humanity is gone. What we are now can take something like symbols and visions seriously, because we operate outside the physical world.”
“If that’s true, then why ignore something that sounds a heluva lot like a warning?” Kira asked. “What if the kid is telling you not to go looking for the ship? What if she knows something?”
“The bigger question is, why did she send this message to you, instead of me?” Thorn cut his eyes at her, watching.
“Because she didn’t know you were going to be tasked to find that ship.”
“Neither did you. We need to figure out what makes you so special to this girl, compared to all the other Starcasters.”
Kira took a deep breath. “Thorn—”
“We’ll talk later, Kira,” Thorn said, his face closing off from her.
“Thorn, wait. This isn’t everything.”
“Later,” he called back over his shoulder. “I have to talk to Tanner, and then to Ephraim at Fleet Intel.” He stopped and gave her a grin—more like the man she’d known. “We will. It’s okay. Or, at least, it’s going to be.”
She watched him pass through the door and vanish into the corridor. She could have gone after him; hell, she could have stopped him at any time, demanding his attention. But her voice caught in her throat and she just stood and did nothing.
And she felt relief.
She’d managed to avoid the second part of their conversation, and all she felt was relief. That made her either a coward, or unprepared, and Kira was neither. Not since the day she put on the uniform.
“One step at a time,” Kira told herself, thankful that the ice had broken, or at minimum, cracked. She would shower, then eat, and then think, but in the end, she knew that the inevitable would be waiting. Just like the Nyctus.
8
Thorn waited as the Mystic’s shuttle clunked and bumped into place, latched to the Hecate’s docking port, and the airlock began to cycle. The frigate had finally caught up to them shortly before the destroyer started its journey to intercept the distress transmission from the Pool of Stars. Thorn had wanted to do that first, but Fleet insisted that the Hecate pick up the mission specialists assigned to the op first. It had left Tanner spending almost three days in a holding pattern, orbiting a binary pair of white-dwarf stars to save fuel.
“Do you know these people?” Tanner asked Thorn. He glanced at a data slate. “Specialists Bridmante and—Justice.” He slipped the data slate back into his belt pouch. “Specialist Justice missed his calling. Name like that, he belongs in the JAG’s corps.”
“I’ll bet he’s heard that before, sir,” Thorn agreed. “But no, sir, I don’t know them, except by name. Believe it or not, sir, Starcasters don’t all know one another.”
“What the hell do I know, Stellers?” Tanner snapped. “You could tell me you Starcasters are all a hive mind, and I’d probably believe it.”
“I can guarantee you, sir, there’s not another Starcaster out there I’d want to share a mind with.”
A rare glimmer of mischief flickered across Tanner’s face. “Not even Lieutenant Wixcombe?”
“Especially not her, sir.”
Tanner actually grinned. “Been through two marriages, Stellers. I hear you.”
“Between that and the extra bone in—”
“Wait, what?” Tanner asked, stunned. “Extra bones? You have physical changes? Why wasn’t I—”
Thorn’s sly grin caught Tanner unaware, and he snorted with laughter. “While my official position is to be a humorless martinet, that was . . . well played.”
“It never happened, sir.”
“Even better. Let’s greet our guests.”
The airlock unsealed and began to open, and the good humor vanished from Tanner’s face like someone had thrown a switch. Two people emerged, stopping and saluting smartly. One of them, a formidable woman who seemed made entirely of planes and angles, spoke.
“Sir, Specialists Bridmante and Justice reporting for duty aboard your fine ship. Request permission to come aboard.”
While she rattled off the customary verbiage of someone coming aboard an ON ship for the first time, Thorn watched both her and her companion. They were both Starcasters, but both had also been trained in secondary duties, according to their files—Gela Bridmante in linguistics and cryptography; Justice, whose first name was D’Artegal, in xeno-engineering. Their secondary skills reflected the work they’d been doing since graduating from Code Nebula, neither having, according to their files, served as Starcaster aboard an ON ship.
This was, Thorn knew, a serious point of contention in the Fleet. Some in Fleet Command thought that priority should be given to putting Starcasters in ships, many of which had none; others believed it was essential to reserve some Starcasters for high-level intel and staff work. Thorn’s sympathies tended to the former group, because a ship without a Starcaster was, in any confrontation with the Nyctus, much less capable than one with a Starcaster.
Of course, Thorn had developed a healthy suspicion, bordering on contempt, of anyone who worked in th
e shadowy world of intel. That was, he knew, probably a result of his even deeper suspicions about Alys Densmore, who had come to symbolize the whole compartmentalized, distrustful, twilight realm inhabited by the spooks. It tended to spill over, though, coloring his view of anyone from that sinister place.
Including these two.
“Permission granted,” Tanner said, returning their salutes. “This is Lieutenant Thorn Stellers,” he went on, gesturing at Thorn. “He’s the leader of this particular op. You’ll be working for him. We, of the good ship Hecate, are just his ride.”
Thorn turned to Tanner to object to that, but the Captain just turned away. As he did, though, Thorn caught a twinkle in Tanner’s eye. As he withdrew, leaving Thorn alone with the two new arrivals, it struck him how inordinately satisfying it was to have apparently earned Tanner’s trust and respect. He was, in almost every way, the exact opposite of Densmore— Tanner was honest, forthright, and had no patience for shady plots and schemes. Scheming was Densmore’s lifeblood.
Thorn turned back to the two mission specialists. Both held the rank of Senior Petty Officers, which meant he outranked them. He didn’t want to let the formality of rank codify too much of his relationship with them, though. Not only was it not his style, but he also needed to learn as much as he could about these two, since he was going to be trusting them—well, a lot. Stiff adherence to the niceties of the chain of command created artificial barriers that were just going to get in the way.
So Thorn stuck out his hand. “Thorn Stellers. Aboard the Hecate, it’s expected that you’ll call me sir, of course. But when we deploy away from the ship and face possible confrontation with the squids, it’s Thorn.”
“Looks like you’ve worked with spec ops before—sir,” Bridmante said, shaking his hand. “All first names on ops and such.”
Thorn just smiled.
So did Bridmante. Thorn wasn’t sure if she was testing his commitment to OPSEC—operational security—by fishing for previous involvement with special ops. But knew she would have expected him to remain coy about it, so he did.
“Anyway, sir,” Bridmante went on. “You can call me Brid. As for D’Artegal here—”
“Dart,” the man said, taking his turn to shake Thorn’s hand. “Nice to meet you, sir. You’re pretty well known throughout the Starcaster Corps.”
“Hell, the whole fleet,” Brid added.
Thorn gave Dart a once-over. Unlike the angularity of Brid, Dart had a softer, sleeker look to him, a smooth leanness that reminded Thorn of a swimmer, or a long-distance runner. “Just a guy doing his job,” Thorn replied, offering a self-effacing smile. “Anyway, let me show you to your quarters. You’re bunking in together—if that’s okay.”
They both fell in with Thorn as he started to walk. Behind them, the Mystic’s shuttle undocked with a soft clatter.
“Racking us together? Isn’t that a little . . . edgy, for the ON?” Brid asked.
“Why, because you’re male and female?”
“That would be why, yes, sir,” Dart said, smiling. “Any other ON ship I’ve been aboard has been pretty sticky about mixed-sex accommodations.”
Thorn shrugged. “Captain Tanner is a very—” He paused. “Best way to describe it is a very results-oriented guy. He generally doesn’t care much what you do, both in your job and your downtime, as long as you deliver what he needs from you, when he needs it.”
“That’s an enlightened attitude,” Brid said. “Even for now.”
“Probably why he’s still commanding a destroyer and hasn’t been posted up to a cruiser, or a battleship,” Dart said. That brought Thorn to a sudden stop.
“He has been offered postings-up at least twice. He’s turned both offers down. Captain Tanner believes he can accomplish more for the ON as skipper of a destroyer, constantly out here in the black, hunting for the squids, than master of a big capital ship that only comes out to play for major fleet actions. I happen to agree with him.”
Thorn realized he came across as a dedicated booster for Captain Tanner with his stern words—and, to some extent, he was. But this was also a chance to test the reaction of these two to overt military authority. There was a place for Thorn to be laid-back and chummy with Brid and Dart, but not at the expense of Specialists Bridmante and Justice knowing their place relative to Lieutenant Stellers.
To their credit, they both stiffened and nodded. “My apologies, sir,” Dart replied. “Didn’t mean to sound disrespectful.”
Thorn nodded, as neutral as he could be. “Good. Now, let’s get you two settled in.”
Thorn sprawled across his rack and scrolled through the report he’d been sent by Brid, a summary of background work she and Dart had done on the Pool of Stars. It was, he had to admit, one of the best-written and most comprehensive reports he’d ever read. Somehow, it managed the dry, dispassionate tone of a typical staff report, while also managing to be an entertaining read.
More to the point, though, he hadn’t even asked her for it. Brid had just sent it to him, shortly after she and Dart had settled into their quarters. He’d planned to give them a low-ops day, to acquaint themselves with the Hecate, and here she’d already done a good day’s work.
He finished the report, went back to the beginning, and started a second, more careful read. The report had triggered more than a few questions, some to clarify the points she’d raised, others the basis for further investigation. As he did, the door chime sounded. He sat up.
“Come in.”
The door opened, revealing—
Brid.
“Sir,” she said. “I was just wondering if you had any questions about the report I sent you.”
Thorn blinked. “Uh . . . I do. Or at least I will. I just finished reading it and was going to make some notes—”
He stopped, staring at her. “You’re a Hammer, right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Not a Joiner.”
Brid laughed. “Didn’t have to read your mind to figure you’d have questions, sir.”
“No, I suppose you didn’t,” Thorn replied. “Well, like I said, I’ll make some notes, including some questions, and we can discuss them—let’s say tomorrow, at oh-nine-hundred. Until then—”
“Sir,” she interrupted. “I wonder if I could have a moment of your time.”
“Of course. Come in and close the door.”
She did. “Sir, I just wanted you to know that Specialist Justice and I—” She searched for the right words, found them, and smiled with warmth. “We’re thankful that we got to share a cabin.”
Thorn gave a slow nod. “Ah. Well, I think it’s safe to say, that’s not the reason. We only had one room left available for Petty Officers, so—”
“No, I get that, sir. And don’t worry, it’s not like Dart and I will be, ah, broadcasting our status. I just wanted to make sure, in case you caught wind of anything, even from our postings prior to coming here—”
“I said Captain Tanner was results-oriented. So am I. Just don’t let it become a problem.”
“Don’t worry, sir. You’re in the ON long enough, you get the knack of keeping things under the sensors,” Brid said.
“Fair enough,” Thorn said.
It was something he and Kira had always been very careful about, confining their more energetic social activities to periods of mutual leave, and even then, generally away from ON installations. Not that they hadn’t considered it; the thought had even flickered through his mind recently, since Kira had come aboard the Hecate—
Of course, they should probably work on just talking to one another, actually communicating, first. It was something they’d never been good at.
He yanked himself out of his reverie. “Is there anything else, Specialist?”
“No, sir.”
“Carry on, then.”
After she was gone, Thorn turned back to her report. He reached the first bit he’d highlighted, and started to assemble a question—
She’d shown u
p at his door, right at the very moment he’d been thinking he needed to talk to her.
Coincidence, of course. And yet, something tickled Thorn, like a minor itch whose location he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
He finally gave up and dove back into the report. Fleet confirmed that Brid and Dart had been screened, to confirm they weren’t Skins, before being deployed. They’d been aboard the Mystic, and now the Hecate, ever since. Still, Thorn resolved to do a little digging of his own, just in case—
He sat back. No. The perfect person to do it was right here, aboard the Hecate—the most powerful and capable Joiner he knew.
He tapped the intercom. “Kira, Thorn here.”
“I was just going to call you, ask you to go to dinner.”
“Dinner? Yeah.” Thorn replied. “Dinner would be good.”
“You want me to look into their minds?” Kira asked, her food momentarily forgotten. “Do you think Skins could actually have slipped through all the screening Fleet would have done?”
Thorn sucked air through his teeth, lips pulled back, but he said nothing. He and Kira had brought dinner to his quarters, which didn’t make for the most comfortable dining. She sat at his desk, while he sat on his bunk, his plate on the fold-away tray-desk combo that he could swing out of the wall. The only thing resembling private dining aboard the Hecate would be Tanner’s exclusive privilege, his cabin actually big enough to have a table with two chairs.
Dinner with the Captain had one of two connotations—either the invitee was about to be praised for something well done, or even informed of an award or promotion; or they were in shit for some reason, but not in a way that warranted formal punishment under the Orbital Navy Code of Discipline and Conduct.
“I’ve got no idea how good a job Fleet did,” Thorn replied. “I’d just like to satisfy myself that these two are on the level. I’m the one who has to work with them, potentially even travel, go on ops alone with them—not Ephraim or anyone else.”
“Densmore,” Kira said.
“Yeah, Densmore, too. So I was hoping—”
