Witch Nebula
Author: J. N. Chaney; Terry Maggert
Date: 2020-12-27 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy
Description: On a sunny green world, a little girl watches as meteors fall, bringing death and fire from above. She isn’t alone. Thorn Stellers is there, watching, unsure of his connection and what he can do to save the child from a fate like his parents, all those years ago. Reaching across the lightyears, Thorn sets a chain of events into play that will shift reality as he knows it. For this little girl is no ordinary child, and the meteors are no accident. The Nyctus have targeted her green world for destruction, and the girl along with it. But they failed. When the Orbital Navy investigates, they find
Publisher: Rod Island

Copyrighted Material

Witch Nebula Copyright © 2020 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2020 by JN Chaney

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

1st Edition

Contents

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Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

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Prologue

For a while, she simply drifted, carried along on placid currents, and was content.

But the currents were inconstant, more so as she drifted closer to the roiling plume of superheated water erupting from one of the hydrothermal vents. It fascinated her that it could get so hot. The crushing pressure of water and ice pressing down from above prevented it from boiling, but it poured out of the vents hot enough to melt lead. Before she drifted too close and risked the infernal heat, she moved herself back toward the serene, blue-green glow of the city.

So pretty, she thought. She’d drifted far enough from the nearest buildings that she could take in the entire sprawl of it, stretching off downslope into the murky haze of distance. Tiny tentacled figures floated among the spires, going about their business. She was surprised to see so many, because today was a rest day. Today was an opportunity for contemplative reflection, followed by various entertainments. Only the shamans were meant to be active, keeping their ceaseless vigil over The Radiance, the soft, teal glow that lit the midnight abyss. She wondered why the others were so active, and it concerned her—

But—no. There was no urgency to their languid passage among the buildings. Like her, they seemed to be merely drifting upon the whims of the shifting currents, content to be taken wherever they happened to go.

She smiled. Were they trying to emulate her? She remembered that some of them had actually begun trying to breathe, of all things, flexing their torso muscles in an awkward effort to mimic her own respiration. She’d laughed at their contortions and told them stop, and they had. But now, this.

Well, there was no harm in simply floating under the surface in a state of relative peace. It was undemanding, and relaxing, and it freed the imagination to launch itself into wonderful journeys. And wasn’t that what a rest day was supposed to be about?

After a while, she drifted close enough to the nearest building to be able to peer inside the squat dome. Like the city itself, it glowed from within with that gentle, blue-green light—the same shade, she knew, as the amniotic fluids filling a womb sac. The Radiance spanned the entire planet-sea, lighting the darkness beneath the perpetual ice in a way that the Nyctus found pleasing. She’d learned that from them, just as she’d learned so many other things, and she tried to incorporate all of it into the universe she’d made. She just wanted these gentle beings to be happy, not like—

Her face darkened and she sighed out a breath of water. Tranquility and contentment reined here, as she planned. The rest of the universe was full of pain and strife and anger, emotions as dark and hot as a hydrothermal plume. On impulse, she lifted herself and rose through the water with the city falling away beneath her. In a moment, it was just another diffuse, bluish glow, one of a multitude. She could see them now, rising up the sides of canyons and seamounts, spreading across the abyssal plains.

Something jarring caught her eye. There, far off to the west, the tranquil glow of the radiance gave way to a zone of utter blackness. From that, to threads of angry, orange glare. Her eyes narrowed at the unwelcome invasion of light. She needed to find a way to fix it. But when she tried, the result was the rumbling shocks of earthquakes as the heat trapped beneath the planet’s crust sought to escape. She was forced to allow the fissure to reopen and resume spilling magma onto the seafloor. There was probably a way to correct it, but she didn’t know enough about how these things worked to safely do so.

Yet.

She continued her ascent, and the water became noticeably colder. Not surprising with the vast roof of ice now looming directly above. The ice cap was an endless expanse of blank white, except for the silvery bubbles of trapped gas, dancing with restless motion as the current moved them about. The pressure diminished as well, forcing her to tweak herself slightly, making that discomforting feeling of something trying to press its way out of her go away.

She finally reached the ice and stopped, then she pressed a hand against it. It seared her skin with its chill, so she tweaked that away, too. Now it had no temperature at all. She slid her hand across it. It was the smoothest thing she’d ever felt, utterly without texture other than a faint, rippling waviness. It fascinated her that something could be so smooth—

But she yanked her attention away from the ice and pushed it up through thousands of meters of solidified coldness, up and up and up, until it emerged onto the surface. Now, in her mind, she stood upon a vast, frozen plain shot through with enormous cracks and fissures. Pressure ridges rose like saw teeth against the blackness of the sky. It was night here, this side of the planet lit only by the cold gleam of starlight.

She shivered. Why would anyone wish to be here or—she looked skyward—up there. The world below, lit by The Radiance, was enough.

She made to withdraw, but she stopped and scanned the stars.

He was out there, somewhere.

She needed to find him. She needed to know—

“Child?”

She blinked and the starlit icescape vanished, replaced by the ice above her. The dim residue of The Radiance glowed beneath her feet. A bulbous shape drifted nearby, its tentacles gently waving in a slow, patient rhythm.

She grinned and rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to be working.”

“I was. But I finished with this phase and came to find you.”

“You’re checking up on me,” she said, making her tone accusing, but in a playful way.

“Of course. We must keep you safe, after all.”

“I am safe. Here, anyway.” She looked up at the hulking ice. “Up there, though—”

The Nyctus shaman, an elder, offered an indulgent flash of bioluminescence, more variations on green and blue. She recognized it as a sigh. “Why, if you believe it to be dangerous, does it fascinate you so?”

“Because dangerous things are fascinating, don’t you think?”

The elder shaman paused. “I suppose there is logic in that. As long as fascination doesn’t lead to obsession, anyway.”

“Is obsession like fascination?”

“Obsession means to become too fascinated by something—so fascinated you forget other things that may be important. It can even become dangerous.”

“As dangerous as the star world?”

The elder shaman flickered pulses of affirmative light. “As dangerous as the star world.”

“I don’t want to go there.”

“Well, you don’t have to. You are safe here.”

She nodded. “I know. I just—” She stopped and pressed her lips into a thin, pale line.

“Go on, child.”

“It’s him. He’s out there. I know it.”

The elder shaman again flickered agreement. “He is. But you aren’t. You were right to come here.” His skin flickered in a pattern intended to soothe Nyctus children. For her, it was just lights.

She sighed, then a stray bubble left her nostril and danced upward. “I know. But he’s still out there. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen.” She looked into the gleaming orbs of the elder shaman’s eyes. “I never told you this. But I saw something, right before it all went dark. It was an answer. But I don’t remember what it was anymore. I don’t remember the question, either.”

She felt small and foolish, the sensation breaking free within her, unwelcome. She began to cry as the enormity of her situation became clear once again. It happened now and then, moments of anguish where the alien world she drifted in felt more harsh than ever.

The elder shaman immediately flickered and flashed reassurance, then reached out with the clusters of fine, fringed tentacles that spilled over its maw. They spread in starbursts, then lifted, as those raised in benediction. The girl, her tears mingling with the cold seawater, fell against the creature with a sob. The tentacles descended and embraced her in a gentle hug.

She wanted to hug the elder shaman back, but the thing she’d been carrying in her other hand, the one she hadn’t pressed against the ice, made it awkward. She knew it was time to make a decision, so she did.

Morgan opened her hand and let the thing she’d been holding begin its long, slow fall back to the seafloor. It took a long time, fluttering against the dense, cold water in an endless spiral. Finally, after being buffeted to and fro by the eddying currents, it touched down in soft mud with a puff of debris far older than any human, or Nyctus, or war. The chill depths were dark and eternal, and there was room on the seafloor for one more bit of jettisoned memory.

And there it sat, the disturbed sediment slowly descending to cover it with a fine patina of grit. It wasn’t enough to obscure it completely, though. Although the doll’s face partly vanished behind the settling mud, the rest of it remained visible, and would until the restless currents eventually buried it.

For now, the patches crudely sewn onto its tunic threw back The Radiance as a soft gleam, highlighting the words stitched into them.

ORBITAL NAVY

She had decided to finally let Mister Starman go so she could forget about him.

The Nyctus, though, never would.

1

“I hate doing shit like this.”

Mol smirked. “Oh, you do not. You love the sound of your own voice.”

Thorn stopped and regarded her from under half-closed eyelids. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Oh, please, spare me the outrage. You have an ego the size of a red supergiant.” She raised her hand as Thorn opened his mouth to protest. “Which is fine. I’m used to it. Besides, I think it’s probably why you’re so damned good at what you do.”

“Might I remind you, Specialist Wyant, that you’re talking to a superior officer?”

Mol grinned in a most unintimidated away. “Charge me with insubordination, and you’re finding your own ride back up to the Hecate.”

Thorn held his glare for a moment, but it collapsed into a smile. He and Mol had been through too much together to stand on ceremony—and Thorn hated ceremony anyway. That brought him back to the moment, standing in the wing of the main stage in Code Nebula’s auditorium. He could see one shoreline of the sea of faces filling the seats, all freshly minted Starcasters who’d finished their recruit training and were about to be deployed for the first time.

An audience. His audience.

“Are you ready, Lieutenant Stellers?”

He turned to the voice and saw a face like a hatchet, eyes like glass glittering from either side of a straight, long nose. Thorn saluted.

“Commander Narvez,” he replied. “I am. As ready as I’ll ever be, anyway.”

Narvez had been one of his instructors when he trained here, what, five years ago now?

“So tell me, Lieutenant, what do you intend to say?”

He gave a sly smile. “Well, ma’am, you’ll have to wait for the show. Wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.”

Her gaze sharpened. She held it locked on Thorn for a moment, like she had a targeting solution and her finger on the trigger—but she suddenly relented and let a faint smile soften her face.

“I guess I can’t just browbeat you into doing what I want anymore, can I?”

“Could you ever, ma’am?”

Her smile widened. Thorn couldn’t remember the last time—or, for that matter, even if—he’d seen Narvez actually smile. It made her face look almost human. It inspired Thorn to go on.

“Actually, ma’am, I’ve got you to thank for this. You tried to keep me on the straight and narrow, at least. No one in my life has done that before.”

“Just doing what I’m paid to do, Lieutenant,” she said, starting to turn away. But she stopped herself and glanced back, her smile turning mischievous. “But I suppose I do consider you one of my success stories.”

Thorn saluted again. Narvez returned it and walked away, heading into the audience.

“Hey, sir, think you’re on,” Mol said, nodding toward the podium. The speaker, another long-time Code Nebula instructor named Fielder, was just finishing up.

“. . . our keynote speaker, who will deliver the commencement address for Recruit Course 27-A8—”

Someone in the audience shouted, “Hoorah!”

Fielder quirked his lip. “Take note, Recruit Grady, that you haven’t actually graduated from Code Nebula until after the final parade. A lot can happen to a recruit’s course report between now and then.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

“As I was saying, please welcome our keynote speaker, Lieutenant Thorn Stellers,” Fielder went on.

“Give ’em hell, sir,” Mol said.

Thorn grinned. “No worries. I’m nothing but charm and erudite wit, after all.”

He stepped into a sudden swell of thunderous applause.

* * *

“. . . a team,” Thorn said. “If you just take away one thing from what I’ve said here today, make it that. You are members of a team. No one in the Orbital Navy stands alone. Thank you.”

After a brief pause, the roar of applause washed through the auditorium again. Thorn nodded his thanks to the recruits.

Fielder, who’d been sitting with Code Nebula’s senior staff at the side of the podium, stood and shook Thorn’s hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You held them spellbound. Well done.”

Another Commander, one Thorn didn’t recognize and who must have been assigned to Code Nebula only recently, nodded enthusiastically. “Quite remarkable, really. You sure you don’t want to come on as an instructor here, Lieutenant Stellers? We could use someone who can actually keep these people quiet for a few minutes.”

Thorn smiled, but it was a thin, forced expression. All of the adulation was starting to wear on him, and even his skill as a ’caster couldn’t mask the cumulative cost of being someone else. Thorn had spent most of his life to date either as a kid, or as a nobody picking up odd jobs cleaning up what amounted to shit. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, except when he was getting into trouble while engaged in the ugly business of survival.

He shook his head. “Sorry, sir. As tempting as it sounds to spend some time here, away from the frontlines of the war, I think I’m more needed out there.”

“Spoken like a true warrior. I guess I’d actually have been a little disappointed if you’d said yes.”

So why did you ask me, then? Thorn thought. Some sort of trap—

“Come on, Stellers. We can’t dismiss these people until you’re off the stage,” Fielder said.

Thorn nodded and followed the Commander back into the wings, another round of applause following him like an unwelcome shadow.

* * *

As soon as he’d stepped out of the auditorium, Thorn quickly separated himself from everyone else—even Mol—saying he just needed a few minutes alone. He wandered off behind the building. He could hear the chatter of the almost-graduates spilling out of the other end of the building, punctuated by shouts from their instructors to “Form up!” and “Get it together, people!”

For a moment, though, Thorn was alone.

He basked in it. There was nothing but the sun, the eddies of breeze wafting around the corner of the building, and the grass under his feet. Nothing in sight but the Code Nebula rec hall across the field, the camp HQ building, and the parade square off to his left.

He slumped back against the wall of the auditorium. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone in a place that wasn’t enclosed in alloy bulkheads, reactive armor, and the void of space.

“Sir?”

Thorn blinked and turned. One of the Recruits had just popped around the corner of the building, and he skidded to a stop when he saw Thorn. The name strip over the young man’s right tunic pocket read GRADY.

“Sorry, sir, didn’t know you were here,” he said, saluting.

Thorn started to shrug like it was no big deal but realized he was still leaning against the wall. That was something that would land a pile of shit onto a Recruit here, and probably extra duties, too. He straightened and returned the salute.

“Not a problem, Recruit Grady—” Thorn stopped. “You’re mister hoorah, aren’t you?”

Grady stared blankly for a moment, then gave a sheepish grin. “Oh, yes, sir. Sorry about that. Got carried away.”

“Again, not a problem. Nothing wrong with some course spirit. Anyway, you should hustle your butt to formation, or you’re going to be spending the grad party tonight cutting the sports field with scissors.”

“Oh, it’s okay, sir. Commander Narvez sent me off as a runner to the company HQ to fetch the photographer. I guess they decided to do the final course photos outside, since it’s such a nice day.”

“Alright, well, be off with you then.”

“Sir?”

Thorn raised an eyebrow.

“I just wanted to say—” Grady started, then paused. “I mean, I think that—”

“Just spit it out, man.”

Grady took a breath. “Sir, I just wanted you to know that you’re a hero around here. We actually got one full lecture period just about you. Commander Narvez, she described to us how you moved the Fleet to attack that squid planet. That was—” He just shook his head.

Thorn grimaced. A hero. And Narvez was apparently pushing the idea. Narvez. He’d assumed she’d managed to get from hating him to just tolerating him.

Of course you could dislike someone, he supposed, and still think they were a hero.

“It was my job, Recruit Grady. It’s really no different than the job you’re going to be doing, assuming you actually graduate from here, of course. That might be up in the air if you don’t go get that photographer in a hurry.”

Grady nodded. “Yes, sir. Understood, sir. I just—it’s just that you’re a legend. You don’t meet legends every day.”

“A legend.” Thorn sighed. “Before you get too starry eyed, Grady, keep in mind that I stink when I sweat, just like everybody else. Have to keep yourself grounded in reality. That’s especially true for a ’caster. We can climb to heights that a regular soldier might not know, but we can fall a lot farther. I—what I’m saying is, don’t get swept up in your own hype, because the squids sure as hell won’t.”

“Thank you, sir. Good advice. I’ll remember that.” He saluted. “Still, sir, I got to meet a demigod today. Sorry about that term, but you can’t shift reality without creating some kind of legend. You . . . you sort of scare the hell out of us, sir, but we also want to be like you and do the things you do. That’s worth some shit from Commander Narvez.”

Thorn returned the salute but said nothing.

Grady smiled, turned on his heel, and left Thorn in silence, brooding with memory of what it meant to be more than human. More than a ’caster.

For the second time, he stood on the brink of apotheosis. This time, though, a power every bit as formidable as his own opposed him, and their clash echoed across the universe, trembling the foundations of reality—

Thorn scowled. The sun was suddenly too bright, the wind too cold. He strode away to get to a comm rig and ask Tanner to order him back aboard the Hecate.

He’d received more than enough worship for today, thanks.

* * *

Mol jumped when Thorn said her name. She’d been crouched down, fiddling with something inside the Gyrfalcon’s landing-gear well.

“I’m one of the good guys, sir. You don’t need to stealth yourself up behind me like that,” she said.

“Gotta keep in practice,” he replied.

She lowered a tool. “Didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow morning—and I expected you to be hungover.”

Thorn shrugged. “I’ve had enough grad party, I think. Being the guest of honor means I have to be on good behavior”—he made air quotes around the good— “which means I can’t get drunk, take off my clothes, and dare everyone at the party to run a naked foot race.”

“Wow, that’s really specific,” Mol said, then cocked her head to one side and grinned. “You didn’t just make that up, did you? You actually did that at your own grad party here, didn’t you?”

“There may have been clothing removed and dares issued, but I can neither confirm nor deny any of it.”

Mol slipped the tool into her utility belt. “Being the guest of honor does come with some expectations I guess, yeah. But it makes you the center of attention, too, right?” She grinned. “Come on, sir, tell me you didn’t have some cute Recruits batting their eyes at you.” Her voice turned high pitch and sing-song. “Oh, sir, you’re so strong and brave and handsome. You’re my hero—”

“Not funny, Mol,” Thorn snapped and headed for the Gyrfalcon’s open airlock. He got about three paces, then stopped and turned back.

“Sorry. Just heroed out, I guess.” He looked across the landing field, a scorched and pitted sprawl of blastcrete rendered featureless grey in the night. The lights of Code Nebula burned through the darkness, especially from the rec hall where the grad party would still be in full swing. Years ago, he’d have been leading the charge on a run to find more beer, more wine—more fun.

He missed being that Thorn Stellers. He missed being ordinary, not a hero.

Or a demigod.

The thought made him look up high in the southern sky. Right there—a tiny, diffuse patch of light. If it were visible in the sky, he could always find it, no matter where he was.

Even just a year ago, that particular patch of sky would have been dark.

Mol nodded. “If it helps, sir, when you fart in my spaceship, a hero is the last thing I think you are.”

Have to stay grounded in reality, he’d told Grady.

He gave Mol a grateful smile. Thankfully, she was damned good at making him do just that.

“Unless you want to spend the night in transient quarters, how about we head back up to the Hecate?” he suggested.

“Hey, no argument from me. They’ve got me stuck in transient lines with some auditor here from Fleet. Friggin’ guy introduced me to a whole new world of snoring.”

* * *

“One hundred out, Hecate,” Mol said, eyeing the Gyrfalcon’s flight management system.

“Concur, one hundred out,” came the clipped reply.

Thorn had been staring down at the curve of Code Nebula’s host planet. The terminator crawled across the surface, day relentlessly replacing night below.

He glanced at Mol. “Is that something new?”

“What?”

“Confirming distances to the Hecate. I’ve never heard you do that before.”

“Just trying to minimize the processing load on Trixie.”

Thorn frowned. Trixie was an AI. She was nothing but a processing load.

“Why the special treatment for her? Nobody tries to minimize my processing load.”

Mol glanced at him, then she looked back at the panel and sighed. “She’s doing it again—says she’s feeling melancholy. Ever since you brought her back, she’s had these spells.”

“Melancholy?”

“That’s the word she uses.”

“Trixie is melancholy. What does that even mean?”

“Damned if I know.”

Trixie cut in. “Melancholy means a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause—”

“No, I know what the word melancholy means. What I’m asking is, what does it mean regarding you? What does it mean for you to be melancholy?” Thorn asked.

In response, soft music began to play, but it suddenly swelled in volume. It wasn’t punk, Trixie’s favorite genre before she’d been savaged by a virus injected into her by a couple of human Nyctus agents called Skins. It was odd. A slower tempo, more orchestral, and downright meditative. But it was the lyrics that caught him, speaking of loneliness and things he felt in his bones.

Mol rolled her eyes. “This one again.” She looked at Thorn. “See what I mean?”

“Yeah, this is . . . kind of downbeat, for such a catchy tune.”

“It’s called Eleanor Rigby. It’s from some old Earth album called Revolver.” She sighed. “I hear it almost every day.”

“Trixie, can you lower the volume, please?” Thorn said.

The music faded to background, just audible over the thrum of the Gyrfalcon’s systems.

He listened to the lyrics a moment longer, then nodded. “Yeah, I’d say this counts as melancholy, alright.”

“Like I said, ever since you brought her back, she’s been like this. She might even be getting worse.” Mol fiddled with her controls, then looked back at Thorn. “Any chance you could look into it, maybe fix her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Thorn replied, settling his head back against the g-couch. The truth was, he wasn’t anxious to have anything more to do with bringing anyone back.

It just didn’t seem to work out very well.

2

Thorn had told Kira that the Danzur were fussy. He’d even used that exact word—fussy. What he hadn’t told her was just what that meant.

Fussy was the utter devotion to an oversized, labyrinthine bureaucracy that seemed to regulate every aspect of Danzur life. It meant keeping important information to themselves, even if it would be in their best interest to release it. It meant engaging in meticulous bargaining over the most inconsequential things.

It meant Kira would soon be bald from tearing her hair out—at least metaphorically, but maybe a little in real life, too.

She sat back in the chair in the quarters the Danzur had assigned her aboard their orbital platform. The accommodations were one of the few bright spots in this miserable assignment, being not just large and comfortable, but in some ways downright luxurious.

Yet another draft of their most recent attempts at a negotiation agreement glowed on the terminal in front of her. Her eyes flicked across a wherefor, passed a heretofore, settled on the second part, then glazed over. She lolled her head back and groaned.

“Kill me now.”

“This system has neither the motivation nor the means to execute violence upon your person,” a clipped voice said.

Kira raised her head and glared at the screen. “You sure about that? Maybe dispense some cyanide into my next meal?”

“This system has neither the motivation nor—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m stuck here.”

She swiveled the chair and looked out the deck-to-ceiling viewport that made up most of one wall of her quarters. She could see a wing of the huge platform, which was lined with docking ports—one of two sprawling constructs that operated as commercial hubs for the voluminous Danzur trade. Ships were plugged into half of them, mostly freighters, but she didn’t recognize a couple of them. Apparently, the Danzur had commercial relations with several other races even further away from Allied Stars space—which itself sprawled on the other side of Nyctus space.

That made Kira a little queasy. She hated having the Nyctus between her and home. Fortunately, the Danzur had a neutral relationship with the squids. They had something the squids wanted, obviously, and the squids were willing to respect their neutrality to get it. She wished she knew just what that was, but the talks she’d been attending, led by Fleet on behalf of the Allied Stars Central Administration, hadn’t even gotten close to that question yet.

She glowered at the screen again. Negotiation agreement my ass, she thought. It was a negotiation agreement only insofar as it documented the things they were going to negotiate—an agreement to work toward an agreement.

“I did not join the ON for this,” she muttered.

Cyanide was starting to sound pretty good.

“Lieutenant Wixcombe,” a voice cut in over a comm circuit. “It’s Specialist Dawson. We’ve got a Danzur named Tadrup here at the ship looking for you.”

Kira groaned again. Dawson was one of six crew who, along with her, made up the human delegation to the Danzur. Their ship, an ON courier sloop named the Venture, was docked nearby. Kira tended to split her time between the ship and the Danzur platform, since the Venture carried their classified gear, like cryptographic equipment and secure databases. The Danzur had insisted on a complete timetable of Kira’s whereabouts, since she was the ON’s delegation head, and she’d marked herself as being aboard the Venture this afternoon.

If there was one thing the Danzur weren’t, it was flexible. Kira had never married her life to a rigid timetable. Who could actually live that way? Sure, key timings and deadlines mattered, but whether she was here, in her quarters, or aboard the Venture, about a hundred meters away, should not be a big deal.

But it was to the Danzur—in an almost pathological way.

“Alright, offer my apologies to Tadrup and tell him I’ll be there in a moment,” Kira said.

“Actually, Lieutenant, he says he’ll come to you.”

Kira’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“He’s on his way right now, in fact.”

Kira stood and fastened her tunic. “Got it, thanks. Wixcombe out.”

A moment passed, then the door chime sounded. Kira gritted her teeth. The stupid chime had a shrill, ear-scraping edge to it. Apparently, the Danzur audio range was higher pitched than that of humans, so they were more attuned to higher frequencies. Kira couldn’t help wondering, though, if it might just be a negotiating ploy, putting her slightly on edge and off-balance.

She opened the door. Tadrup stood outside. Kira recognized him from the particular pattern of stripes and spots in his fur, all of which combined to make the squat alien look as though he’d been covered with smiley faces.

Now that was off-putting.

“Tadrup, my apologies. I became so absorbed in the latest version of the negotiation agreement that—”

“It is of no consequence, Kira,” the Danzur said, holding up a fingered paw in a very human gesture. “We’ve realized we have to accept that you are not as dedicated to protocols as we are.”

Kira tried not to chuckle, despite Tadrup making not as dedicated to protocols sound synonymous with failure.

She gestured the Danzur in. “Well, I apologize anyway. If I schedule myself as being somewhere, then I should be there.”

“Yes, you should,” Tadrup replied. This time, his voice held no recrimination, he simply stated it as a fact. “But, as I said, it is of no consequence.”

Kira thanked him. “So what can I do for you today, Tadrup? I’m still reviewing the agreement and have yet to consult with Damien about it. But I believe we have until tomorrow to do that.”

“You do. Damien has already made it clear that you are still in the process of doing your review.”

Damien Forester was lead representative for Allied Stars diplomatic corps and titular head of the mission. In fact, Kira had been given the effective lead role, commanding the overall effort to get diplomatic relations established with the Danzur. Damien actually functioned in more of an advisory role. She knew that the man chafed at least a little under the arrangement, which had no doubt been the result of some power mongering back and forth between the military and civilian leadership. But he had to cosign anything negotiated with the aliens, which seemed to mollify any resentment—mostly, anyway.

“I am actually here with some good news,” Tadrup said.

“Oh?” Kira gestured at a chair—a Danzur one, crafted for their particular physiology—while she took a seat on something a human could actually find comfortable. “What sort of good news?”

“Your request for divulgence of our trade relationship with the Nyctus has finally been vetted and approved.”

Kira just stared. “Really?”

“You seem surprised, which is unusual, since you initiated the request yourself.”

“Well, yes. Or no, I’m not surprised at the request itself, but—approved? Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Kira’s mind raced as though propelled by a lit fusion drive. They had put this particular request in to the Danzur just a few days after their arrival. Damien had suggested it, ostensibly so they could satisfy themselves that the Danzur weren’t engaged in selling or trading arms to the Nyctus. Citing Allied Stars diplomatic protocols as the reason was a clever ploy. The Danzur had immediately understood that all-important word, protocols, and accepted the request without any fuss.

The real purpose of the request, though, was to test the Danzur reaction to it, while also sending a signal that the humans knew they had some sort of ongoing commercial relationship with the squids. And that moment, that request, was why Kira had been considered so vital to this mission’s success. While Damien had talked, she’d eased her awareness outward, using barely a trickle of magic to empower the most subtle and least intrusive Joining she could manage.

It only gave her relatively superficial access to the Danzur thoughts, but it was enough to tell her that the aliens found the request an uncomfortable one. She’d nudged Tadrup’s mind a little harder, having already insinuated herself into it several times. There she had seen past discomfort into actual disapproval. Tadrup, she knew, intended to work against fulfilling the request. She couldn’t discern why without probing even deeper, and she hadn’t wanted to do that. She needed more time to become acquainted with the particular contours of Tadrup’s mind, the peculiar planes and curves and angles that characterized his thoughts. The better she knew those, the easier it was for her to tread among them unnoticed.

And that was fine, because his resistance was, in itself, useful information.

Discussing it afterward, Kira and Damien had both assumed the Danzur had something to hide. But here Tadrup was, with his good news.

“Well, that’s . . . wonderful news, Tadrup,” Kira said, then she kicked herself. She was no diplomat and was most definitely receiving some intense on-the-job training. But she’d done enough of the verbal and mental sparring that constituted diplomacy to know overt expressions of pleasure or disapproval were to be avoided. Unless such reactions were intended to be used to achieve some particular effect, the correct response would have been a polite but utterly neutral thank you, backed up with a bland smile. To allow an honest reaction was to give the Danzur a free view inside Kira’s mind.

“The Tribunal gave your request close consideration and determined that the disclosure was in both our best interests as our negotiations proceed.”

While Tadrup had been speaking, Kira had turned to look out the excessive viewport. At the same time, she extended a wisp of thought and brushed it through the Danzur’s mind. She sensed some misgivings, but—

More. There was an agenda deeper than this—of course, because as Kira had learned, no matter how deep a hidden agenda may be, there was always one even deeper. In order to discern what this mysterious agenda might be, though, she’d have to probe harder. That was something she could do while remaining undetected, but only by expending obvious effort.

She turned back. “You must extend our sincere appreciation to your Tribunal.”

“I will happily do so,” Tadrup replied. As he said it, he spit a dollop of saliva that splatted on the carpeted floor. Kira resisted a smile. The cultured tone of the Danzur was purely a product of the translator. Their actual speech seemed to consist mostly of guttural grunts, harsh growls, and the occasional menacing hiss. All of it tended to come out wet and sloppy—one of the most comically jarring things Kira had ever seen.

Tadrup gestured at her terminal. “You should find the response to your inquiry is already available, in fact.”

Kira crossed to the terminal to check for incoming documents and indeed found a new one. She opened and read it. It didn’t take long.

“Your sole export to the Nyctus is . . . a drug?”

“No, it’s a beverage, called krol.”

“It says here that krol has psychotropic effects,” Kira said.

“It does have certain medicinal properties, yes. They seem to be greatly favored by the Nyctus.” He held two hand-paw palms up for a moment, the Danzur version of a shrug. “We find it induces a mild euphoria but otherwise has little effect.” Tadrup bared his teeth in an intimidating way—a smile, apparently. It seemed, Kira thought, that everything the Danzur said or did appeared, to humans, as exactly the opposite of what was intended.

Not for the first time, Kira reflected that it was a good thing translators existed. If they hadn’t, she might see Tadrup as snarling, growling, and threatening to bite her instead of engaging in a calm discussion.

“Personally, I think krol tastes like—” He paused. “I’ve heard you use a word that seems appropriate here. I think it tastes like crap.”

* * *

“A psychotropic drink? That’s all the Danzur trade with the Nyctus?” Damien asked.

Kira offered him a small shrug. “That’s what they say. This drink, krol, is—” She stopped and read the screen. “Eagerly sought for acquisition by the Nyctus, to use their words. They generally receive certain agricultural products and types of ore in exchange.” She looked back at Damien. “Again, that’s what they say.”

Damien shifted in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. They were aboard the Venture, the one place where they knew they could speak without worry of someone eavesdropping. “So do you have any reason to think they’re lying?”

Kira sniffed. “Of course they’re lying. Isn’t that all diplomacy is? Telling lies and hoping they’re better lies than your opposition’s?”

“Wow. You’ve been doing this for, what, a few weeks? It took me at least a year or two to become that cynical about it all,” Damien said, grinning.

Kira grinned back. She had to grudgingly admit that, for a civilian and a diplomat, Damien was affable—which was necessary for him to be a successful diplomat. She’d expected to be working with some hidebound bureaucrat—a human version of a Danzur, basically—but he was nothing like that.

He reminded her of Thorn in many ways—if Thorn was less mercurial and more tactful, that is.

“I’ve been in the ON long enough to recognize bullshit when I see it,” she said.

Damien laughed, but it trailed off and he turned serious again. “So, this belief they’re lying—is that based on your, uh, unique talents?”

“It’s okay, you can use the word Starcaster. Anyway, to answer your question—yes, or kind of, at least. When I was speaking to him, I could tell there were things there that I wasn’t seeing. It’s like”—Kira paused, thinking of analogy— “you see a hole. All you can tell is that it’s a hole. You aren’t close enough to see how deep it is, but somehow you know it’s deep, even without checking it out.”

Damien considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I get it. And of course, in negotiations like this, there are always wheels within wheels.”

“Wheels within wheels?”

“An old diplomatic corps saying. Plans within plans. Agendas hidden inside other agendas.”

Kira leaned back, stretching minor aches from too much sitting. “Okay, yeah. That’s another of those cynical things I’ve learned about all of this. Anyway, without probing more vigorously into Tadrup’s mind, I can’t really say much more. And he puts up such a rigid façade that it even closes around his thoughts. I can almost certainly penetrate it, but it takes some effort and might be evident if I do it to his face. Bottom line—I probably could dig into what’s going on, but the Danzur might detect it.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to show that card—your abilities. At least not yet. There might come a time when it will be advantageous, but right now it would just set us back,” Damien replied.

Kira stood and glanced around the compartment, with its surprisingly plush furnishings. The Venture was, by ON standards, almost luxurious. This compartment was actually a common room, a block of space given over to nothing but the leisure of the crew. Of course, she was a courier sloop, not a warship. She’d been built to be nimble and fast, while fulfilling a range of missions, including diplomatic envoys. That meant she was also barely armed, equipped with only a single missile tube and a pair of point-defense turrets.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts. Damien’s comment about showing her abilities had tweaked her. Why?

“Kira? Is something—?”

She held up a hand. “Just give me a second.”

Her hole analogy had been apt, but it also made her realize she’d been concentrating on the hole—and ignoring the area around it.

She made herself reconsider her brief encounter with Tadrup’s thoughts, but she ignored all the implied hidden motives and focused instead on the surrounding thoughts.

Tadrup had been annoyed about . . . something. Something specific—

“He lost something,” Kira said.

Damien gave her a puzzled look. “Who lost something?”

Kira turned back. “Tadrup. He lost . . . whatever the Danzur use for currency, he lost a bunch of it. A business deal gone bad.” She gave a slow nod. “It was right there in front of me, and I was too busy focusing on the hidden, scheming stuff.”

Damien’s look didn’t change. “Okay. That’s too bad, I guess, but what does that have to do with these negotiations?”

“Whatever that deal was, he blames us for it falling apart.”

3

Thorn found himself immersed in the dream again.

It started the same way it always did. He was sitting in the co-pilot’s slot aboard the Gyrfalcon. Trixie was there, thanking him for bringing her back from oblivion. The virus Brid and Dart had injected into her had effectively scrubbed her identity away, but she was restored—almost. He rolled his eyes at the effusive, bubbly praise which, with dream logic, now had Trixie’s voice coming out of Mol’s mouth.

Thorn shook his head. “It was nothing, really.”

Mol’s face immediately darkened, and Trixie’s tone changed to her new, melancholy dreariness. “You’re right. It was nothing. Prove yourself, Thorn. Prove how good you really are. Bring your daughter back. Do that and prove you really are as good as you think you are, Mister Hero.”

Thorn gaped at the abrupt change, adulation giving way to suspicious contempt. He started to think, isn’t this what I wanted? To not be a hero anymore?

He opened his mouth to agree, or to protest that he really was as good as people thought he was? He’d moved a whole fleet, after all. He’d saved Code Gauntlet from the enormous Nyctus impactor. Who else could have done that?

He just didn’t want to be lauded for it. It was enough for him to know—

Before he could say anything, Mol and the Gyrfalcon vanished. Thorn found himself drifting through space—hard vacuum and no-g. He felt no discomfort, though, aside from a mild, pervasive chill. It wasn’t too different from an open witchport. But this time, there was no witchport, because there was no ship. It was just him, Thorn Stellers, drifting between the stars.

For a while, he was content. But there was something important. Something he needed to do.

Thorn had his talisman in hand, the battered old storybook that gave him an anchor, a link back to a time when there’d been no war, no ships, no Starcasting. It gave him a baseline against which to measure everything else he did. And now he remembered what he needed to do. It was, measured against his talisman, something massive. It was the thing Trixie had coldly challenged him to do.

Thorn would bring his daughter back.

She’d died, of course, on Nebo, when the squids bombarded the planet with KEWs. Every Starcaster had experienced her death, and vividly, through a massed psychic event still referred to as the Vision. But Trixie had been dead, and he’d brought her back. He’d even told Kira that he could bring their daughter back to them.

Now here, among the stars, it was time.

Thorn hurled his awareness into the void, an expanding bubble of consciousness that raced away from him at the speed of thought. His perception embraced the incandescent fury of stars, the gentle drift of dust and gas, and everything in between. In this version of reality, his daughter was dead. That was a truth. But it wasn’t Thorn’s truth. His truth was what he made it. His universe was the one he shaped around himself.

So, like a potter with clay upon a wheel, he began to shape and nudge creation. He drew power from the infinite reservoir of the ether, the place where magic lived. It was a task both delicate and monumental, altering all of reality to bring back into existence one little girl.

He paused, frowning. It wasn’t enough. This wasn’t like bringing Trixie back from extinction, because she was an AI. For despite all, she was a thing. Incredibly lifelike, but ultimately lifeless. Nor was this like changing the way an Alcubierre drive worked, or rebooting the universe to one where he could move fleets with his thoughts. All of those things were just matter and energy. None of them were alive.

But his daughter wasn’t just matter and energy. She had thoughts. Dreams. Things she liked and disliked, for no reason more complex than because she did. Things she had come to—or had started to—believe, others that she disbelieved. She’d begun to craft values for herself, things that would come to inform and shape her life.

Some might say she had a soul—whatever a soul was. It might just be a name for the totality of who and what a person was. It might be something more, the actual spark of life that turned matter and energy into a living, vital being. Thorn didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. He knew what he had to do.

Thorn reached out across the gulfs between the stars. He swept up handfuls of elementary particles, of the emanations of stars, of actual star dust itself. These were the building blocks, the things from which all other things were derived. When he’d gathered a vast cloud of this stuff of creation around him, he reached out again, this time for the savaged ruins of the planet called Nebo.

There. A scorched, blasted surface, bedrock scoured bare by the fury of fire and shockwaves. He remembered how he had seen it from the Hecate’s orbit, pocked with massive impact craters, some of them still glowing. But he also remembered how it appeared in the Vision, verdant and pastoral. The kind of place where a little girl should be able to grow up and grow old.

He focused now on the girl herself, in those gentle, innocent moments before the world literally ended.

His daughter.

Thorn began to knead the stardust and other things he’d drawn to himself, pushing creation into a new truth. The only truth. His truth.

Substance took form. Form evolved, becoming identity. From nothing, Thorn built everything that was, and would be, the person known as—

Morgan. Her name was Morgan—

Daddy?

* * *

Like him, she drifted among the stars. Otherwise, she was exactly how he remembered her from the Vision. She was whole. She had always been whole. That was the truth, the only one that mattered.

He smiled at her across the Void. I’m here, Morgan, he said. I’m here. Daddy’s here.

Daddy, I can’t see you!

That’s okay. I’m right here. We’ll be together soon.

It was working. He was bringing her back. He would make her whole again and, in the process, make himself whole. Make Kira whole.

Thorn grinned as bright as a thousand stars—

But it faded, like the cooling residue of a supernova.

As he shaped and chipped and carved reality, smoothing it toward the final shape he sought, he hesitated. Morgan was a Starcaster, because of course she was. How could she not be, considering who her parents were?

Daddy, where are you?

I’m here, Morgan. I’ll always be here.

But I can’t see you! I can’t find you!

We’ll be together very soon, I promise.

A Starcaster, and a powerful one. Her death had resonated through the ether, propagating across it in a wave of anguish and terror. A powerful ’caster. As powerful as he was. A Conduit, like him, and only like him. There were no other Conduits, not so far. She could accomplish great things, monumental things, with her powers—

But.

But she was just a little girl. And that was probably why the squids had killed her. They’d somehow found out about her and knew they had to strike before she got her Starcasting feet under her. Even then, untrained and unaware what magic really was, she’d managed to outright stop the Nyctus KEW strikes on Nebo. For a time, at least. Grown into a full understanding of her power, she could prove decisive in the war. The squids couldn’t let that happen. So, they’d killed an entire planet, all to kill a little girl before she ever became anything more.

Images erupted from Thorn’s memory and flashed through his mind. Some were fragmentary, like still photographs, some like bursts of video. After he’d been taken off Cotswold and placed into the care of a bureaucracy never designed to handle literally tens of thousands of orphans at a time, he’d skipped and bounced from one place to another. Every time, his uncontrolled manifestations of magical power had mired him in trouble. He started fires. He caused small floods. He caused things to fling themselves across rooms. Foster parents and orphanage staff, at first suspicious, reacted with ever-mounting fear.

Thorn would be thrown out of one place, then shuffled to another, often on a different planet. Sometimes he just ran away. Twice he found himself alone on the cold, neon streets of a vast and unfamiliar city. Sometimes he was beaten.

Once, he’d been seized and taken away by dour police in the middle of the night. He later learned that a scheme was starting to coalesce, one that would see Thorn die under apparently accidental circumstances.

It was the Twenty-Fourth Century, and he’d almost been the victim of a literal witch hunt.

And all of it had eventually led him to where Kira had found him, expecting to end his days mucking toxic sludge under cold, leaden skies.

But it would be worse for Morgan. Magic wasn’t something stuck in the transition between superstitious fantasy and hard reality anymore. Magic was well known. It might still be poorly understood, but its potential was clear. Thorn had demonstrated it himself, many times.

Morgan would be seen not as a freak of nature, to be feared and shunned and despised.

She’d be seen as a weapon.

Morgan didn’t deserve that. Morgan deserved a chance to be a little girl, to grow up, to lead a normal life.

Daddy—!

Almost, Morgan. Just a little bit longer.

Thorn began to reshape part of this new truth, nudging it from where Morgan’s inherent nature was taking it, diverting it somewhere else. He would remake her, but not as a Starcaster. Not only would he bring her back without any access to magic, but he would also take away any desire to be a ’caster. He would ensure she would live a long and happy life, because wasn’t that a father’s ultimate duty to his children?

Daddy—

Nearly there, Morgan.

Daddy—it’s different. It’s wrong. It’s wrong!

Thorn pushed harder at the clay of creation, but it resisted him more and more. Something was stiffening it, rendering it ever less pliant, making it push back against his will.

She was fighting back. Maybe not deliberately, maybe because she was driven by primal instinct to protect these things that were part of her. She was fighting his efforts, and she was very, very powerful—

Morgan, he said, fighting against the forces trying to repel his efforts, Daddy’s . . . almost there. I’m almost—

Morgan shrieked.

A shockwave rippled through reality. Thorn slammed headlong into a wall of rigid denial. His will beat against it, but he might as well have been trying to punch his way through granite.

Daddy, no—!

Thorn’s truth began to fray, starting to unravel. He hadn’t been able to seal and lock together the seams he’d created in reality. It was all just a patch, and the patch was coming loose.

Morgan, please, let me help you—

No, you’re hurting me!

Morgan’s frantic, anguished plea ripped at Thorn, tearing into his chest and slashing into his heart. He lost focus, his will faltered, and reality began to collapse like crumbling brick.

Thorn reacted as any father would, by reaching for his daughter. He focused on snatching her away from Nebo, a planet that had always existed unharmed by the war, and pulling her fully into existence just as she was.

Morgan shrieked again, a keening wail that shook the bedrock of existence.

A soundless detonation washed away the universe. Light that transcended the very concept of white engulfed him, piercing his eyes, filling his mind with nothing but blinding radiance.

Slowly, it began to fade. A pervasive glow still surrounded him, resolving into streams and veils of dust and gas like rippled curtains lit from within by the fierce glow of hot, new stars.

A nebula.

Thorn gaped at the inconceivable forces that had been briefly unleashed. Morgan had fought him, and he’d tried to overcome her resistance. The resultant cascade of power had spiraled up to a titanic blast of power and possibility. The universe had, for a moment, been able to craft its own, mindless truth, and the result had been this.

A new nebula, full of new stars. New matter, brought into existence from nothing.

Thorn slowly cleared his thoughts, then did the one thing that called to him as a father, ringing through his being like a primal call. He tried to find his daughter.

Morgan?

He heard nothing but the silence between the stars.

Morgan? Morgan!

Nothing. There was no hint that she’d ever existed. He tried to push his awareness across the void, driving it further and further, sweeping it over stars, planets, asteroids—

He pushed until his consciousness encompassed such a vast swath of reality that he could see all of it and yet see none of it.

There was no sign of Morgan. Nothing. She simply did not exist.

He had failed.

Thorn had failed to bring his daughter back. Instead, he was left with her final words to him inscribed in his mind in fire and starlight.

You’re hurting me!

* * *

Thorn tore himself out of the dream, slamming awake with a violent start. He shoved himself up in his bunk, drenched in sweat, gasping like he’d just run a race. He untangled himself from the damp sheets and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The cold touch of the deck against his bare feet steadied him, giving a specific sensation to focus on.

Only that coldness existed. That was all. It was all he had to think about. It made no other demands, implied no other obligations.

Thorn took one final deep breath, then looked around into darkness.

“Lights.”

His quarters lit up, leaving him squinting and blinking until his eyes adjusted. When they had, he stood and crossed to the tiny wash basin, then he ran the water. He cupped some into his mouth, then splashed some more onto his face. More cold to steady him.

Finally, he turned and looked back at his bed. It was absolutely uninviting—a place of dire conflict, not rest. Instead of trying to get back to sleep, he got dressed and left his quarters, heading for—

He stopped. Where aboard the Hecate was he going to go?

Thorn headed for the witchport, from where he’d be able to see the nebula he and his daughter had managed to spawn into existence. It was all he had left of her.

Thorn knew its name, even as he went to gaze upon the construct of his efforts.

The Witch Nebula.

4

Kira had just lifted her feet onto the desk. She leaned back and looked out the big viewport, taking in the stars in their vast beauty.

She needed the break. Since the revelation of the ongoing trade deals between the Danzur and the Nyctus, things had been flung at them at an unprecedented pace. It was as though, having given up one piece of information, the floodgates had been thrown open and released a torrent.

Damien just gave a thin smile, though. “It’s another tactic. They’re going to try to bury us in documents and updates and errata and appendices so that we might miss something important.”

Kira glowered. “That sounds, I don’t know, unethical? Belligerent?”

“Unethical and belligerent pretty much sum up what diplomacy is all about. The point is to try to get both sides to be a little less unethical and belligerent to one another.”

Kira shook her head. “Wow. When you said it had taken you a while to get this cynical and jaded about it all, you meant it, didn’t you?”

“Of course. Diplomacy is just another form of warfare.” Damien smiled wryly. “In some ways, a dirtier, nastier, less forgiving form of warfare. And you military types are supposed to have some sense of honor.”

Damien had gone on to prove just how adept he was in the dirty, nasty business of diplomacy. For every incoming document, he immediately requested clarifications, amplifications, and anything else that generated more work for the Danzur bureaucrats. Sure enough, after a day or so of that, the deluge slowed.

So she actually had time to put her feet up and take a break.

Kira?

She sat up. The voice humming through her mind was as familiar as her own.

Thorn?

In the psychic flesh, he replied.

His tone was flippant, but Kira could hear murkier depths to it. Stress, anger, frustration—they echoed in his words, a residue of feelings he couldn’t entirely suppress through the Joining. Not when he Joined with Kira, anyway.

It’s nice to hear from you. It’s always nice to hear from you. But . . . something’s wrong, isn’t it?

What, I can’t check in on how the negotiations with the Danzur are going?

Do you care?

Of course I care. I was one of the first to make contact with them, remember? That kind of gives me a dog in this fight. Or maybe a puppy. Can’t imagine dealing with them is like dealing with a puppy, though.

That’s not why you want to talk to me, Thorn.

There was a pause.

No, it’s not, he sent. Proof that you know me too well, even across the miles. I miss you, for what it’s worth. Nothing about this . . . this life . . . feels natural. I’m sorry, Kira.

Sorry? Her mental tone was one of genuine confusion.

For all of this. Sometimes the weight of our choices comes back to me—my choices, mostly, and you’re bearing the brunt of it, over there acting as a liaison to those opportunists.

It’s my job, and your job, too. We made this choice together. But tell me. Why reach out at this moment? Kira asked.

I had the dream again.

She nodded at the starfield. She’d suspected as much.

Thorn, maybe you should see someone. Not just to talk, but to find a solution for who and what you’re becoming, and what it all means. I care about you in ways you’ll never imagine, but I’m just—I’m an ON officer. My skills are not what you need, even though I want more than anything to help you.

There was a long pause, and the connection between them hummed, ripe with things unsaid.

Thorn broke the quiet. I’m a Starcaster who tried to bring his daughter back from the dead, and I seem to have created an entire nebula from my attempt. I don’t know if there’s a doctor out there who’s seen this kind of thing before.

You know what I mean, Thorn. You might be a Starcaster, but you’re first and foremost a man. A person who has to come to grips with his emotions—grief, anger, regret, all that unpleasant stuff. The fact it involves magic is just one of the details. The feelings are exactly the same, though. And there are people who can help you recognize them, and cope with them, and finally incorporate them into yourself, even if the source of all this is beyond anything some doctor might have imagined. Or anyone, for that matter.

You looking for a new line of work? Because you seem to understand this better than anyone else I’ve ever listened to, he said, along with a mental chuckle.

Kira gave the stars a rueful smile. Oh, I know all the right words. I can describe the process, sure. But I’ve got my own baggage to cart around. I think I need to fix myself before I start trying to fix other people. But we share the source of this, or at least some of it. Morgan. I love her with every fiber of my being, and I know you do too. So let’s . . . try? Find a path, an answer? Something?

I want to. I know you want it, too, and I’d be a damned fool if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that if things get out of hand with my power, there’s more at stake than just our daughter. And us. I just don’t know why this keeps happening. I keep getting to a point where I think I’ve actually started to get over it, then wham, the dream happens again, and the counter resets, and I’m dripping in fear and anger all over again. Scares the hell out me, Kira. I can admit that now.

I’m sure that’s probably significant—you thinking you’ve reached a point where you can cope, and then your subconscious says, oh, no, you’re not done with this yet, Stellers!

Significant how?

Kira sighed. I don’t know, Thorn. That’s the sort of thing you need to explore in detail, with—

She hesitated.

With someone who isn’t you, Thorn said.

She sighed again. It sounds terrible, I know, like I’m just leaving you hanging. But I’m way too close to this myself. My own feelings are still pretty much a mess when it comes to this. I’m not sure if I even can help you, or if I might just end up doing more harm than good. Like I said—this is our problem, but you’re the conduit at this point. You have to explore this. My heart is sick, but I can handle it. I have to. For her. For us.

Silence, as if Thorn had cut their bond. It stretched between them again, unwelcome and chilled.

No. She could tell he was still there, could feel him, in the same way you can feel someone standing behind you.

Finally, he replied. I understand. I don’t know where to turn, but I’ll take the first step.

Kira sighed, a sound braided of hurt and exhaustion. What about attacking this from a different direction? The dream? What about that?

You mean the details? Or when it happens?

Maybe both, but let’s start with the facts. You tried to ’cast, to bring our daughter back. You got it at least partially right and complete. You brought Nebo back from the dead. The planet is there, populated by millions of people there who owe you their lives. Oh, and there are millions more, on other worlds, who had friends and loved ones that they’d lost but were then returned to them, thanks to you.

Yes. I know. And that’s—don’t me wrong. That’s fantastic. But our daughter, Morgan, wasn’t—

Our daughter wasn’t on the planet when the Allied Stars census takers went to figure out exactly who came back. Which, incidentally, must have been a new experience for them. New and maybe even terrifying.

Despite his stress and sadness, Kira felt a flash of laughter across the light-years.

Yeah, I’m sure it was. I guess there are some AS bureaucrats who weren’t happy with it, though, since they had to do all the paperwork. Millions of birth certificates might thrill the Danzur, but not our people.

Kira smirked. Overworked bureaucrats? Good.

Screw ’em, she said. If it was my call, I’d have it in print, and in triplicate.

He laughed again. You’re vicious. I like it.

Just one of my good qualities. The other glaring result of what you tried is a new nebula.

The Witch Nebula, he said. He wasn’t bragging, just stating the surreal facts.

That’s what they’re calling it. In fact, I think the plan is for that to become its new, official name. Anyway, all ’casters, everywhere, felt it come into being. I remember walking along one of the Stiletto’s corridors, heading to a debriefing, when it hit. I had to stop and brace myself against a bulkhead. It was . . . not as extreme or prolonged as the Vision, but still intense. Especially considering no one knew exactly what had happened, only that it was something huge.

But you felt more? Thorn asked.

I did. I knew it involved you and our daughter. But that’s all I knew, that other ’casters didn’t. As you might recall, I was hammering on your mental door as soon as my head cleared enough that I could ’cast again.

I do, yeah.

Do you remember the other thing you felt as the Witch Nebula came into being?

A pause.

She winked out of existence, Thorn admitted.

And we all felt that, too. Just like we felt it when she—

Now it was Kira’s turn to pause, to take a mental breath.

Just like when she died, she said. Just like in the Vision.

Silence again. Again, she could feel Thorn at the far end of it.

Thorn, I think you need to admit to yourself that she didn’t come back—that she isn’t coming back.

She was right there, though, Kira. Right there. I could feel her. I could almost touch her. Just a little more effort, just a little more time—

Thorn, you said that she resisted you.

Something did.

Something?

Another pause. Okay. Yes. It was her. She pushed back. I don’t know why, but she pushed back.

And that’s important, I think. Thorn, it might not even be possible to do what you were trying to do. It worked with Trixie, but she’s a machine.

Tell that to the people of Nebo, all back from the dead. Seemed to work just fine for them.

Well, sure—but we don’t know the details, what the rules are, or at least what’s possible and what isn’t. Maybe you can’t bring back a Starcaster. Or maybe you can’t bring back your own daughter. There may very well be reasons for it that we just don’t—can’t—understand.

It’s like she didn’t want to come back.

Kira narrowed her eyes. For just an instant, a flicker of time, she felt Thorn was holding something back from her—it was a fugitive sensation, but it had been there, and the realization hit her like a physical blow.

Maybe she didn’t want to come back, Thorn. Maybe she’s somewhere that . . . she doesn’t want to leave.

Heaven? Or some analog for paradise?

I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It might just have been somewhere she doesn’t want to leave, now. She did— She paused and took that mental breath again. She did die as a young child. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Maybe.

Thorn, is there anything you’re not telling me, here? Anything you’re holding back?

Like what? Thorn asked, but slowly, as if he was considering the angles.

Anything at all. A thought, a sensation. A fleeting moment that you can’t shake but is tied to the dream. And if you can’t then we’ll do this again, Kira said.

Do what? Rehash the loss? The distance and our reality?

That’s exactly what we’ll do. And then, we rehash it some more. I think healing takes on many forms, Thorn.

I—thank you. Just knowing that we might have a path forward is . . . it might be what I need. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, not really.

Neither do I. But we can find out together, Kira said.

That’s all I ask, and it’s more than I deserve. Thank you, Kira. For all of it.

They ended their connection, both feeling hopeful.

And uncertain.

* * *

“The latest,” Damien said, tossing a data pad onto the table. He and Kira were back in the Venture, going over the most recent overtures from the Danzur.

Kira picked up the data pad, read the word heretofore, and dropped it again with a groan. “Why? Why can’t things just be written out in plain speech? Why all the hereafters and whereupons and crap?”

“It’s the high priesthood thing.”

Kira looked at Damien blankly. “The what now?”

“The high priesthood. You’ve never heard of it? Every profession develops its own codes, jargon, descriptions of specialized knowledge, that sort of thing. It’s to prevent outsiders from being able to easily understand.”

“It makes every field of expertise a high priesthood. If you aren’t part of it and don’t know the mysteries, then you have to rely on the high priests to do it for you.”

“So, what you’re saying is that they’re protecting their turf.”

“High priesthood sounds more mysterious and interesting—protecting their turf sounds like something a street gang would do.” He shrugged. “But you’re right. They’re the same thing.”

Something on the data pad caught Kira’s eye.

“So the Danzur exported krol, and only krol,” Kira said.

“To the Nyctus, yes. That’s their single trade good.”

“Interesting.”

“As a diplomat and a born cynic, interesting is a word that gets my attention. Care to elaborate?” Damien asked, his brows lifting.

She pointed at the data pad. “It says here that the Danzur won’t do any trade negotiations for krol. It’s on their List of Excluded Products.”

Damien frowned. “A fair point, but do you think it matters that their dirty little secret—a drink that gets you high—isn’t on their open trade docket? Seems like the kind of thing that might be looked upon as a necessary evil, rather than something to be proud of. Remember who we’re dealing with. The Danzur love legalism, but they strike me as kind of prim, too.”

“Okay, but the question is—why? Everything else on this list is understandable—it’s either extremely rare or something the Danzur want to keep for their own use.”

“Kira, where are you going with this?”

She raised a hand and stood. “Why restrict us from trading for the stuff?”

“Well, because . . . I guess they want to keep trading it with the Nyctus. We may not like that, but we can’t really do much about it.” He leaned back. “Besides, like you said, it’s a drink that gets you high. It’s not like they’re trading military hardware or strategic resources to the squids. In the galactic economy, it’s one of thousands of such substances.”

“That we know of.”

Damien nodded. “True. That we know of.” He crossed his arms. “I’ve got to ask you again, though, Kira—where are you going with this?”

“I don’t know.” She put the data pad down. “This whole trading krol with the Nyctus thing just seems—” She shook her head in frustration. “It just stands out. I can’t help feeling that there’s something more to it.”

“But you have no idea what.”

“I have no idea what.” She looked at Damien. “Yet.”

He gave a thin smile. “What are you planning?”

“I don’t know that, either. But I’m going to give it some thought. It might be time to get a little more aggressive with my Joining, though. I’ve just been nibbling at the edges, and I’ve got a lot of bite left in my abilities.”

Damien grunted, then grinned. “Just do me a favor. Before you do, let me know. That way, if you piss the Danzur off, I can arrange to not be in a meeting with a bunch of them. They’re low to the ground but hefty.”

Kira gave him a thumbs-up. “That much, I can promise. No surprises. At least, not yet.”

5

Morgan found herself immersed in the dream again.

The screen door banged behind her as she came tumbling out of it, down the steps, almost falling. But she just ran on, leaving a wake of clacking, buzzing bugs. She laughed at how they bumbled and clattered off in all directions.

“Lookit! Lookit, Mister Starman! Lookit the bugs!”

She gave Mister Starman a chance to look at the bugs, then she ran on. She stopped again, though, to see if the cloud that looked like a horse might have come back. It hadn’t, and that made her sad. She then fled the heat, into the shade of the sourfruit grove that separated the house from the fields beyond it. There she sat, feeling the cool grass with her toes and talking to Mister Starman.

Mister Starman. That’s what she’d named him. But she knew his real name. It was Thorn. And he was a hero.

That’s what Mommy and Daddy had told her. Although Daddy wasn’t really her daddy—or he was, but he wasn’t her father. That was also Thorn. Thorn Stellers. No one had ever told her that. She just knew it. She wasn’t sure how, she was just sure of it, the same way she knew she had two ears, or five toes on each foot, without having to check. Her mommy was her mommy, though. Her mother. Wasn’t she?

Or could that be somebody else, too?

It didn’t matter. These people on Nebo, who were named Calie and Asher, were her mommy and daddy. They took care of her, and she loved them, and that was what really mattered, right?

She sat back, luxuriating in the cool shade, talking to Mister Starman about what they saw all around them. She finally sat up and looked through the clouds again, trying to see if the one shaped like a horse had come back. She imagined it galloping across the sky, and that made her giggle. Maybe that’s what thunder was, a mighty sky horse galloping.

A piece of the sun broke off and raced across the sky.

“What’s that, Mister Starman?”

He had no answer for her, so she just looked back up at the sky. Why was the sun suddenly falling apart?

A bang sounded from somewhere, so loud it seemed to suck some of the air out of her lungs. Morgan whimpered and jumped in the way that children do when they’re hurt—pure reaction. Pure instinct.

“What’s that?” she asked, her voice trembling. Still, though, Mister Starman just smiled, saying nothing.

She watched the sun shard fall past the end of the sky and vanish. A second later, the sky, the air, everything seemed to turn white, then fade back to normal.

Morgan gasped. Her heart pounded like a galloping horse. She needed to find Mommy and Daddy ask them what was—

Mister Starman began to glow a soft, radiant blue.

More pieces broke off the sun and plunged through the sky.

Morgan whimpered again. She didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t want any of this to happen. The sun didn’t fall apart, and thunder and lightning didn’t come from an empty sky.

She wanted it all to go away, and it did, a sudden wave of bright blue pulsing away from her to push away the terrible things that were happening.

A wall of fire as tall as the sky suddenly raced over the hills, struck Mister Starman’s bubble of blue denial, and swept over it.

“No, no, Mister Starman, make it stop, make it stop!”

Mister Starman smiled, shooting searing bolts of blue energy into the sky. Every time they touched a sun shard, it went away. Gone.

Morgan whimpered and cried, rocking as she clutched Mister Starman tightly. Salty fluid, warm and sticky, poured over her mouth. Crimson droplets spattered into the grass. She was bleeding, her nose was bleeding, and she needed Mommy—

She stood to run, and the blue glow flickered and started to die. Mister Starman tried his best, but a big sun shard, the biggest yet, fell out of the sky, turned everything white again, and—

And that was it.

Everything was dark, now. There might have been other things happening, sounds and movements, but they were lost in the darkness around her.

And then, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just an instant of it, a tiny flicker, but it was the most awful thing she’d ever felt. But that minute flicker gave way to something new, a growing spread of pale light. It was white again, but a different white. Not the white of the sun shards, not the white of that terrible flash that ended everything. This was softer, more expansive, slowly spreading and growing.

Stars. The light was stars. Thousands, millions of them. More. And they were all around her, taking shape, and now so was she.

It was all coming back. Ground coalesced under her feet as the sky above returned, brightening with the sun—grass, the farmhouse, the sourfruit grove, and the clacking, bumbling bugs busy in their simple pursuits. Her world was coming back.

Mister Starman was bringing it all back.

Except it wasn’t just Mister Starman. It wasn’t just her doll, but a real presence, a strong one that felt like a warm, tight hug. It was all around her, infusing her, infusing everything.

A voice rumbled out of the earth, the sky, from the air itself.

I’m here, Morgan. I’m here. Daddy’s here.

Morgan gasped. Daddy. Daddy was here. He’d come back from the war for her. She spun around, looking for him. But—

Daddy, I can’t see you!

That’s okay. I’m right here. We’ll be together soon.

Daddy, where are you?

I’m here, Morgan. I’ll always be here.

She spun again, desperately looking for him. But all she saw was Mister Starman, and he had started to glow a soft blue.

But I can’t see you! she said. I can’t find you!

We’ll be together very soon, I promise!

Daddy—!

Almost, Morgan. Just a little bit longer.

Where was he? Why was he hiding? What was he—

She stopped, went still.

Something wasn’t right. She was becoming more herself, more real—but somehow, the world around her was fading in and out, and every time it faded, part of her went with it. The process could only end in one way, and even a child could see that.

Daddy—

Nearly there, Morgan.

Daddy—it’s different. It’s wrong. It’s wrong!

Morgan, Daddy’s almost there. His voice strained with effort. I’m almost—

Morgan’s hand was in an iron grip, pulling away into the swirling darkness where Mister Starman’s cheery radiance flared and then began to die. Things began to pop, to separate, a series of noises that made her wince even as her hand was torn farther away, always in the blue glow of her savior. Her father.

Her tormentor.

All that connected the hand now was a tenuous thread of existence that was about to snap, and Morgan threw back her head and screamed.

Mister Starman echoed it, with a sudden flare of blue light as bright as the white light that ended everything—a curtain of punishing light that seared her eyes—

Then it vanished, and her hand snapped back into place. She was whole again.

She felt a shockwave pulse away from Mister Starman, rippling through reality, turning it as rigid as stone in its wake. But she also felt daddy pushing back, trying to undo it, trying to take her hand away again.

Daddy, no!

Morgan, please, let me help you—

No, you’re hurting me!

Morgan remembered touching the stove once. The brilliant flash of pain had made her hand jerk away all on its own. That happened again now. The shock of pain from Daddy trying to pull her apart made her jerk back, made Mister Starman flare as bright as the sun. She snatched desperately at it, trying to scoop up endless handfuls of dust and gas and anything else she could reach for in that desperation that only pure pain can bring. She threw the matter back at him, creating a titanic blast, the biggest and brightest yet. It crashed through reality, flinging away stars and planets and glowing gases like sparks from a holiday bonfire. The stars howled, Morgan screamed, and then Daddy was gone—or at least, distant.

He was still there. She could feel him searching for her.

No. She couldn’t let Daddy find her.

That meant she couldn’t stay. She had to run. There was something wrong with Daddy. He was trying to hurt her—

Mister Starman knew what to do. He made a ship for her.

She’d never been on a ship before. This one had a chair for her and a big window so she could see where she was going, and that was all. It lifted from the ground and rose into the sky, then everything blurred and she was back among the stars. The farm, the sourfruit trees, the clacking bugs, they all vanished, lost somewhere far behind her now.

Morgan began to cry.

She cried as the ship raced through the universe, flashing past stars so fast they were just smears of light, gray and fleeting.

She sobbed, like the child she was, biting her lip and sensing the things that were around her now, so different from the nothingness of before. She knew about the farmhouse, and the fields around it, and she’d been to the city once, but that was it. Everything else was just things she’d heard about or seen on the vid.

A pall of desperate loneliness fell over Morgan. Anguished, she reached out, trying to find someone, anyone, who might take her in, take care of her—

She touched something, or something touched her, as light and soft as a feather.

Who are you?

I’m Morgan. Who are you?

I’m a friend.

Morgan bit her lip. This person, whoever it was, was lying. She could tell. She could feel it, see it in the curves and bumps and wrinkles of their thoughts.

You’re not my friend. You’re bad.

How can you say such a thing?

I know it. You’re lying! You’re lying to me!

Morgan sobbed again. She had nowhere to go, no one to go to. She couldn’t let Daddy find her, not while he wanted to unmake who she was.

She stopped, frowning. “Mister Starman, I know them. I know who this is.”

She reached out with the feather-touch again. You’re the one who made the sun fall apart.

I don’t know what you mean.

You’re lying again!

This time, she felt a push. Whoever this was, they were trying to dig themselves deeper into her, further into who she was. They wanted to make her do the things that they wanted, not what she wanted.

No, I won’t let you do that, she said.

She felt something moving toward her. Something like a wave in space. A ripple. She couldn’t see inside it. It was nothing. A ripple of nothing.

It scared her, the same way the sun shards had. The sun wasn’t supposed to fall apart. Space wasn’t supposed to ripple around nothing. It wasn’t right.

“Mister Starman, I don’t like that,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t like that at all.”

Mister Starman agreed in an aura of blue. Morgan reached out and made that nothingness, and the strange, frightening ripples it made in space just go away.

As she did, she noticed that it had come from the same direction as that feather-light voice. Still riding Mister Starman’s blue radiance, she reached out to see what was there.

They were people. But not people. They were different. So different. A whole world of them. A world they called a strange name. Tāmtu. But she didn’t know what that meant, or if it meant anything at all.

But they didn’t live on Tāmtu, the way she’d lived on the planet called Nebo. They lived in Tāmtu, a secret place, far beneath thick ice layered over a warm world-ocean.

That would be the perfect place to hide from Daddy, at least until she could figure out what was wrong with him and why he wanted to pull her apart the way the sun had been pulled apart.

So you have found us, that soft voice said. Come to us. You want to be taken care of. We’ll take care of you.

It was lying again. So much lying. Mommy and Daddy got mad at her for lying. Once, they made her spend almost a whole afternoon in bed, in her room, because she’d lied about breaking a branch off a sourfruit tree. It had actually been Mister Starman with his blue radiance that did it, but it had been her idea, so it really was her fault. She’d just wanted to see if she could do it. When she finally told the truth, Mommy and Daddy hugged her and let her and Mister Starman out to play.

Lying was bad. Telling the truth was good.

You need to tell the truth.

I am—

No, you’re not! You’re not nice! Lying is wrong!

Please, just come to us—

No, she thought, but—if not there, then where? Where else could she go?

She made up her mind.

I will come to you, she said. I will, but you’re going to be nice and not lie anymore.

Mister Starman once more agreed with her and gave her as much blue radiance as she needed—enough to change these people, to take away the badness and lying and make them nice.

* * *

Morgan slowly awoke and looked around. She floated high above one of the hot vents—that’s what the Nyctus called them, and they used another word—hydro-terminal, or something like that. If she were deeper, the heat would have woken her up. This far above it, though, close to the ice, it was just a gentle warmth.

“You’re awake, child.”

She turned and found the elder shaman nearby.

“You were dreaming,” it said.

“Were you watching me?” Morgan asked, her voice tinged with suspicion.

“Of course. We always watch over you.” The elder shaman drifted closer. If it could smile, Morgan knew it would be smiling now. She smiled back.

“I know. I’m glad.”

“Were you dreaming of him again?”

She nodded. “I wish he wasn’t disappointed in me. I wish he didn’t want to change me.”

“I’m sorry, child, but I can’t speak to that. I don’t know his mind.”

Morgan’s eyes stung. She didn’t know his mind either. But she could.

The shaman flashed with soft blue-green light, trying to soothe her. It made her eyes stop hurting.

“I’m glad you’re my friend.”

“And we’re glad you’re ours. Of course, why wouldn’t we be? After all, you are the reason that we exist,” the shaman said.

6

“That’s it,” Kira said, pointing at the screen. “Right there.”

Damien leaned forward, frowning. For a moment, the only sound was the low hum of the Venture’s aircyclers. “Krol-kazan? What’s krol-kazan, aside from something I assume involves that kicking drink the Danzur export to the Nyctus?”

“It’s the key ingredient of krol,” Kira replied. “The Danzur import it because they don’t seem to have access to any of their own.” She pointed again. “Now, take a look at the import stats for it.”

Damien scrolled down the page, one of myriad tables of commercial data the Danzur had provided.

Not that they’d meant to provide them. That had been Kira’s doing. It turned out that if you Join with a minor functionary, a petty bureaucrat filling the role of a tiny cog in a vast, creaky machine, it seemed to go unnoticed. This little cog had been dedicated to his work but not particularly stimulated. He tended to drift in and out of fantasies that were, Kira assumed, pretty lurid by Danzur standards. It had been easy to take control of his fantasies and make them a little more real. The distraction from what he was actually doing meant he didn’t notice that among the requested statistics, he was also sending Kira all of the Danzur import/export data for the last three cycles.

Damien abruptly stopped scrolling and looked at Kira. “Wait. How did you get all this? I don’t remember seeing any requests for it from us, and I don’t remember seeing it coming in, either.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Probably not,” Damien said, shaking his head with a small smile. “But these Danzur keep track of everything. They audit their audits. Don’t you think they’ll eventually figure this out?”

Kira gave a sly grin. “They might. On the other hand, auditing your audits creates such a vast amount of paperwork that someone would have to actually notice it, right? And what are the chances of that happening anytime soon?”

Damien started scrolling again. “I don’t know, and that’s the—whoa.”

“I thought that would perk you up,” Kira said.

“Their imports of this krol-kazan, whatever it is, just stop.”

“So do their exports of Krol to the Nyctus, almost right away.”

Damien drummed on the table with his fingers. “So their import source got cut off. Okay, that sucks, I guess, mainly for the Nyctus—which doesn’t break my heart. But—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—so what? Walk me through the repercussions, because I’m not sure we’re on the same trail.”

“Look at when this happened,” Kira replied, pointing at the corresponding column of dates. The Venture’s computer had converted them to ON standard, so it wasn’t hard to tell when the Danzur had been cut off from their supply of the ingredient. “Right here.” She pointed at the date column.

Damien stared blankly at it, then at Kira—then understanding dawned. “That’s almost immediately after the ON destroyed that squid planet that was not too far away from here.”

“Exactly. You know what that makes me think?”

“That this krol-kazan came from the Nyctus. From that planet, in particular.”

“Bingo.”

Damien drummed his fingers again as the implications sunk in. “We inadvertently cut off a lucrative source of trade for the Danzur when we destroyed that planet. Krol-kazan came from there, and they processed it into krol, which they traded back to the Nyctus.”

“Makes you wonder why the Nyctus just didn’t make krol themselves if they had the ingredients,” Kira said.

“I dunno. They might not have had all the ingredients. Or they might not know the process, which might be proprietary or even beyond the physical limitations of the Nyctus. In any case, they obviously needed the Danzur to make it for them, and it wasn’t worth starting a war over. It would have had the Nyctus fighting on two fronts.”

Kira leaned on the table and nodded. “Which is what we’re facing if we can’t figure out a way to maintain—hell, to even develop, for that matter—good relations with the Danzur.”

* * *

When Thorn contacted her, it took a moment for her to transition from the task at hand to mental communication across the light-years. With slow, deliberate movements, she pushed back from her desk, and from the latest Danzur draft of the negotiation agreement.

Busy? he asked.

I’m deconstructing a trade war between two races who have no reason whatsoever to be in business. So, the usual. What is it?

I think I know what went wrong, he said without preamble.

With bringing her back?

Yes, and I know why. I don’t think I was there enough for her.

You weren’t—what? What does that mean? Kira asked.

She was confused, frightened. She didn’t understand what was going on. I should have talked to her more, explained what was happening. It was the mechanism of what I did that scared her, but my failure to explain it made it worse.

Thorn, she was four.

Actually, I think she was older than that when I tried to bring her back. I don’t know why, but she seemed more like an eight or nine year-old. It must have had something to do with how I visualized her, and how the magic reacted to that. I’ve aged from magic, and I should have anticipated the same for her. It’s . . . it’s too big. Magic is bigger than life, I think, and it can reshape everything right down to reality. I missed that when I dove in and tried to bring her all the way back.

Thorn—shit. That means you would have taken away four or five years of her life.

As opposed to all of it, because she was dead?

Kira sighed. True. Okay, explain an interstellar war, an alien enemy, a KEW attack, death, magic, resurrection, and not just for her, but for a whole planet, as though you’re talking to a nine-year-old child.

Okay. You see, Morgan, we’re fighting a war.

What’s a war? Kira interrupted.

It’s when two groups of people don’t agree on something, so they fight about it—

Why?

Because they might not understand the universe the same way, so that makes them—

What’s a you-knee-verse?

It’s— Thorn started, then snapped back. Kira, she’s not dumb. She’s just young, and if my instincts are right, she’s no ordinary child. Not by a long shot, Thorn said.

No. She was an eight- or nine-year-old who grew up on a farming planet. She doesn’t have the same frames of reference that you do. So you finally explain what a war is, how it’s between people who understand the universe in different ways, and you explain the universe to her, and now you tell her that we’re fighting the Nyctus, and they attacked her planet, so she asks, what’s a planet?

How could she not know what a planet is? Even an eight-year-old should know that.

My point, Thorn, is that you seem to want to treat her like a little adult, but she’s a child. A young child. Her universe really is different from yours.

Kira began to wonder if Thorn had just given up. But no, he was still there. So she waited.

I feel like I have to try, Kira, Thorn finally said. That’s our daughter. I have to try.

He sounded tired. Worn out. His thoughts, projected across the light-years, which normally rang out strong and clear, were muffled, diminished. And it wasn’t just fatigue or stress. Thorn’s magic was, at least for the time being, weakened, probably by the ordeal of trying to bring Morgan back the first time.

You don’t have to do anything, Thorn, she finally said. I miss Morgan too—of course I do. She stopped to swallow a suddenly hurtful lump in her throat. As much as I hate to say this, people lose loved ones all the time. Everybody who’s died in this war was someone’s son or daughter. Those they leave behind just have to learn to cope and then move on. That’s what I’m trying to do, because your efforts to save our daughter have galactic implications. We’re way past the damage a single family can do. We left that behind the first time you tweaked reality or pushed a ship.

Maybe I could bring them all back, Thorn said.

Kira shook her head. No, Thorn, you can’t, for so many reasons. The most immediate, though, is that you literally can’t. I can tell you’re still tapped out. If you try this again, you may leave yourself magically crippled.

But—

And we can’t afford that. The ON can’t afford to lose you, especially not to what amounts to a personal quest.

There was silence for a moment. Kira broke it.

I’m sorry. I want her back so badly it makes my bones ache. But if we lose this war, where she is won’t matter. Where we are will matter even less, because we’ll be the people who lost a war of extinction due to selfishness. We have to win, Thorn. And if we do—

Then we can try to save her later.

I know it’s horrible, and as her mother just thinking this leaves me disgusted. You understand. We both do. For now, you have to—what does Mol call it? The thing you need?

Mojo.

Right. Mojo. Try to concentrate on getting it back.

I will.

* * *

Kira found Damien waiting for her aboard the Venture, his manner eager.

“You made this sound important,” Kira said.

“It is important. I’ve spent some time putting two and two together,” Damien replied.

“Did you get four?”

“Yes, despite my field not being math. Not even close,” Damien said.

“I take it you have something more than basic math then? I’m guessing this mood isn’t due to two and two equals four?”

“Again, not quite. I know what they’re doing. They’re stalling.”

“Um, a point? Stalling seems to be what their whole society is about,” Kira said.

He raised a hand. “No. This is different. This is specific. I couldn’t figure out why the Danzur weren’t jumping at some of the trade opportunities we’ve been offering. It makes no sense. They’re traders first and foremost, so the chance to make the kind of deals we’re talking about is something they should jump at. But they’re not.”

“Again—mountains of bureaucracy, remember?”

“And again, that’s not the point.” He gestured at a data pad on the table between them. “I’ve been looking over some of the stuff they’ve given us—given us legitimately, I might add,” he said, grinning.

“And?”

“And this is where two and two adds up to that perfect four. I’ve cross-referenced about five different sets of data they’ve given us and worked out the average amount of time it takes them to go from opening negotiations to signing an agreement. It’s about one standard week.”

Kira stared. “A week? We’ve been here three times that, and we’re not even at the stage of agreeing on what we should negotiate!”

“Hence, the stalling.”

Kira looked at the data pad, then back at Damien. “Okay, what are they stalling for? What’s the end game?”

“Now that’s the question, isn’t it? But when you put this together with them losing one of their most lucrative trade deals as a result of something we’ve done, it starts to add up.”

“Four plus four is eight.”

Damien grinned again. “Sure. The Danzur had a cozy and profitable thing going on with the Nyctus. We put an end to it when we destroyed the planet that supplied the raw materials to make the stuff they traded back to the squids for what was probably a grossly inflated margin.”

“So they’re pissed at us.”

“You tell me. You’re the one who can peer into people’s thoughts and feelings.”

Kira gave a humorless laugh. “I haven’t done much peering so far, but I don’t get the sense they’re particularly pissed off at us. With aliens it can be hard to tell. It’s one thing to know that Bob the alien blob thinks your pink, hairless skin is unusual. But understanding Bob’s emotions, how he feels about it, isn’t anywhere near as easy. We tend to assume the Nyctus are always angry.”

“Because so far we’ve really only talked to them as bitter enemies.”

“Sure. And having big rocks flung at you is hard to interpret as anything but screw you.” She almost added something about how she’d been tortured by the squids, which was also pretty hard to interpret generously, but Damien knew her history and had never brought it up. Something for which Kira was grateful.

“The bottom line, though,” she went on, “is that I couldn’t say for sure that what the Nyctus are feeling is actually anger. Not as we’d understand it, anyway.”

“Well, then we have to assume the Danzur are angry about what we did—at least, in their own Danzur way.”

“Which takes the form of stalling?”

“Maybe. We are finding it really aggravating, aren’t we?”

“So, aggravation is their weapon? Sounds like weaponized pettiness,” Kira said.

Damien pushed up his lower lip in thought. “Maybe. Or maybe this is all leading up to something else. Something specific. Something intended to screw us over.”

“Like what?”

“Well, if we want to avoid a two-front war, Kira, that’s something we need to find out.” Damien offered a thin smile. “I think it’s time for you to slip the leash. I think you need to stop holding back and push deeper. You need to do some of that peering.”

7

Tanner leaned back in his command seat on the Hecate’s bridge.

“Okay, Tac O, bring up the latest SITREP from fleet on the big screen,” he said.

“Aye, sir.”

Osborne, the Tac O, tapped at his console. The image on the main viewscreen flicked to a star chart depicting the Zone, with Allied Stars space to the right and Nyctus space to the left. Thorn knew that everyone on the bridge had seen this chart so many times there was probably a faint version of it burned onto the back of their eyeballs. But this version made everybody lean forward a fraction, a little confused.

“Where the hell are the Nyctus?” Raynaud, the XO, said.

Tanner nodded. “Exactly. This is the first time we’ve detected no squid activity—and by no activity, I literally mean none—anywhere in the Zone.”

Thorn narrowed his eyes. Sure enough, there was the expected array of blue icons representing friendly forces and installations. The only red ones, the “bad guy” icons, were way off on the far side of the Zone, deep in Nyctus space. And that was unexpected. Thorn noticed that even those only marked fixed locations—fortified planets, comm relays, sensor buoys—had been marked and charted for a long time.

“The Nyctus have pulled back. Like, completely pulled back,” Thorn said.

The XO nodded. “The question is, why?”

“Maybe they just don’t have any fight left in them,” Osborne suggested. “In a war, it’s inevitable that one side is eventually going to run out of steam, after all.”

Tanner steepled his fingers. “Let’s call that the optimistic scenario. What else?”

Thorn knew the question was an open, general one. Tanner frequently engaged the bridge crew like this. He’d explained it to Thorn once in a single, to-the-point statement.

“I don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, Stellers.”

So Thorn spoke up. “They’re regrouping for another offensive.”

Tanner glanced at him. “You know, I’d usually just take that as another possibility, but coming from you, Lieutenant Stellers, I have to ask—is that just another possibility, or are you making a statement here?”

“Just throwing it out as a possibility, sir,” Thorn replied.

The discussion went on. Possible explanations for the Nyctus withdrawal ranged from Osborne’s and Thorn’s two extreme cases, and nearly everything in-between. When Tanner finally cut it off, he summed it up in another, single statement.

“So, it could be this, or it could be that, or it could be something else, but who the hell knows?”

“That sounds about right,” the XO said, nodding.

Tanner sat up. “Well, this actually makes our lives easier. If we don’t know what the right answer is, then we can’t possibly do anything about it—except what we’re already doing.”

Tanner went on to issue instructions to the Hecate’s various division heads. When everyone had acknowledged, he handed the bridge over to the XO and started for the exit. As he did, he caught Thorn’s eye.

“A moment in my briefing room, Lieutenant Stellers.”

Thorn nodded and followed the Captain into the little compartment behind the bridge that functioned as his de facto office.

“Have a seat, Stellers,” Tanner said, sitting behind the undersized desk.

Thorn did. “Am I in shit, sir?”

“Should you be?”

“I’ve probably gotten away with a few things I shouldn’t have.”

“Any of them aboard my ship?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Then I don’t care.” Tanner leaned forward. “When I joined the ON, ships generally had six functional divisions—command, helm, nav, tactical, engineering, and support. I can guarantee you that if someone had told Lieutenant Tanner there’d eventually be a new one added—Starcasting—he’d have replied with some variation of yeah, right.”

“Understood, sir. I don’t think anyone expected magic to become so much of a thing—more than it had ever been before for sure.”

Tanner leaned back. “Implying magic has been with us for a while now.”

“Probably all of human history, in one way or another. Everything from witches to wizards, paranormal happenings, ghost sightings—it’s all probably just uncontrolled manifestations of magic.”

“And now we can control them. What changed?”

“We’re not entirely sure, sir. I know we’ve got some big brains working on that higher up in the Starcaster Corps, but I’ve got no idea what sort of headway they’re making.” Thorn gave a rueful smile. “Especially against the attitude that magic is something strange and dangerous.”

“It is strange and dangerous.”

“Okay, granted, sir. But the point is, before we developed the Alcubierre drive, traveling faster than light seemed to be a complete non-starter. Go back further, and the idea of radioactivity—that a hunk of metal could be producing lethal death rays—would have sounded like utter fantasy. Before powered flight—”

Tanner held up a hand. “I get the point, Stellers.” He straightened in his chair. “Anyway, I didn’t bring you here to discuss the history of magic or the organization of the ON. What I want is your take on the Nyctus, and what they’re up to.”

“Sorry, sir, I’ve got the same information you do.”

“Now that, Lieutenant, is a bucket of bullshit, and you know it. I think we’ve worked together long enough that you owe me the courtesy of speaking honestly even if I’m not going to like the answer. Hell, especially if I’m not going to like the answer. But I’ve got a Starcaster division aboard this ship—meaning you—and I want to extract every bit of value from it I can, just like every other division. So, Stellers, what do you think the squids are up to?”

Thorn leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees.

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I haven’t been close enough to a squid to be able to Join with it for a while. Weeks, I guess. So I really don’t have much insight to offer.”

“You can’t link up with them across the miles, in a similar fashion to what you do with other ’casters?”

Thorn shook his head. “If I had some sort of personal connection to a squid, or at least knew one as a specific individual, then maybe. That’s why I can talk to Kira and Captain Densmore like that—I know them both as individuals. Their identity is kind of—it’s like a beacon shining through the ether.”

“The ether.”

“Sorry, sir, that’s what Starcasters call the place where magic comes from, and where most of it happens. It’s an old term, and not really right. It implies there’s actually a separate, physical space for magic, but it’s more of a mental one.”

“Like radio waves. They propagate through real space, but from our perspective as humans, we can’t detect them at all. It’s basically an entirely separate radio universe that exists on top of the one we can see. So we can only detect their effects when they hit a radio receiver.”

Thorn stared for a moment, then grinned. “Can I steal that explanation, sir? It’s the best one I’ve heard. Oh, and before you accuse me of blowing sunshine up your butt, I’m not at all.”

“I don’t plan to close my mind and get set in my ways until I get promoted to Admiral, Stellers. Until then, I like to think I can be open to new things. Like I said, Starcasting is something new, as far as I’m concerned, but I can at least try to understand it. And you’re damned right I’ll exploit the ever living shit out of it if it will help me win this war.”

Thorn gave a nod. “That’s music to my ears, sir. On behalf of Starcasters all through the fleet who are still hearing echoes of those old witch hunts when other officers talk to them, thank you.”

“Not looking for gratitude, Stellers, just answers. Is there anything you can offer about the squids? Maybe not direct information, but some magical perspective. I hate not knowing what’s going on over there.”

Thorn sat back. “All I can think, sir, is that after we moved the Task Force to destroy their planet, then brought our own planet, Nebo, back from the dead, they decided to pause, pull back, and think through the implications.”

“We didn’t do those things. You did, Stellers.”

“Doesn’t matter, sir. We’re all in this together.”

“Oh, bullshit. Credit where it’s due.” Tanner narrowed his gaze. “Although, I do have to wonder whatever prompted you to bring back Nebo, complete with its entire population. As an event, it’s unprecedented. As a tactic, it’s incomprehensible.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“And you created an actual nebula, with columns of gas and stars, in the process.” Tanner shook his head, still amazed at the reality of magic and how it was unfolding before him.

Thorn shifted uncomfortably. “That was an unexpected side effect.”

“Stellers, feeling drowsy after taking some meds the doc prescribed is a side effect. Creating stars and nebulae from nothing is not.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be,” Tanner said, waving him off. “I said I’d keep an open mind, try to understand, and I will. But you have to give me time to get used to the idea of creating matter, okay?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Still, that probably does make sense. You put on quite the show for the Nyctus, made them gun-shy. Best case scenario now is that it finally convinces them to come to the table and talk this war out.”

“And the worst case, sir?”

“Oh, you mean the one I fully expect? That would be the Nyctus countering with their own nasty surprise when they renew hostilities, probably in a big way.” Tanner looked at Thorn for a moment, as though deciding whether to say something else.

“Fair to say the squids know all about you, Stellers?”

“I would think so, sir. I’ve never really tried to keep myself a secret from them.”

“Which means that you are a high-value target. Maybe their highest-value target. That makes me think they might try to do something about you. So, we’re all going to have to be on guard against squid ops to take you out, especially since there may still be Skins among us. You are going to have to be especially vigilant, in the way only you can.”

“Got a massive target on me. Got it, sir.”

“Either you’re being flippant, or you have long since come to terms with this. Hoping it’s the latter,” Tanner said.

“Mostly, sir.”

“Alright. That’s all I’ve got, Lieutenant. If you do learn anything useful—hell, even anything half-assed interesting—about the squids, you let me know asap. Wake me up if you have to.”

Thorn stood and saluted. “Aye, sir. Will do.”

Thorn left and headed for his quarters. He needed to get some rest. Kira had been right about that much—he really still wasn’t back to his full ’casting powers. Not even close.

* * *

Thorn narrowed his eyes and concentrated on his target. He let his awareness sink into the intimately familiar depths of his talisman, treading the magical paths he knew so well, gathering power. When he felt he had sufficient might, he reached out with it and began to nudge and shape reality, squeezing it, kneading it, changing it to a truth—to the only truth. To his truth.

The universe changed.

Thorn relaxed, let his consciousness reassert itself inside his head, and cast a critical gaze on his target.

It looked like nothing had changed. But there was only one way to tell.

He picked up the mug and sipped. The warm, smooth bitterness of coffee washed across his tongue.

It had worked. He’d started with tea in the mug and changed it to coffee.

Because who the hell preferred tea over coffee?

He sipped coffee again, then reflected on what he’d accomplished. He’d changed a bulkhead from a shade of grey to a noticeably different shade of grey. He’d considered shocking pink but didn’t want to antagonize Tanner. Instead, he’d changed the Tac O’s socks to shocking pink, from the standard-issue grey. He’d convinced the universe that the beef stew on his plate had actually always been spaghetti, that the hot and cold water taps on his wash basin had always been the other way around, and that the place rug in his quarters was not blue, but green.

So, success.

A degree of success, anyway. And that’s what mattered.

Thorn had come to think of these little ’castings as a sort of talisman all on their own. He knew he still lacked the capacity to wield the sorts of power that brought planets successfully—and without complications—back from the dead. He fell far short of it, in fact. But keeping up with these little ’castings, these tiny nudges to reality, also kept him engaged with his ’casting, and with minimal drain. The exercises felt like sharpening a knife, and he, of course, was the blade.

They also let him drink coffee instead of tea.

* * *

Except it wasn’t enough, Thorn thought, as he left his quarters and headed for the Gyrfalcon.

He hadn’t expected to find Mol with the fighter, but she was there. Once again, she was fiddling with something up inside the landing-gear well. Thorn made sure to pointedly clear his throat when he entered the repurposed shuttle bay. He made sure to do that every time, ever since he’d startled Mol enough that she cracked her head on an ordnance hardpoint. That had caused the spillage of a little blood, and a lot of profanity.

She was craning her neck to look at whatever she was working on. As Thorn approached, she looked down, catching him square in the face with the glare of her headlamp.

Thorn squinted and raised a hand. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk! Just no more rubber hoses, okay?”

Mol grinned and aimed the light away from his face. “Don’t talk to me about rubber hoses.”

Thorn tried to peek up inside the gear well. “What the hell do you keep working on in there? I mean, I ride around in this thing all the time. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“The list of things I don’t tell you is way longer than the list of things I do,” Mol replied. “I guarantee that’s the way you really want it.”

“I believe you,” Thorn said, smiling, knowing that it was complete bullshit. Mol kept the Gyrfalcon in absolute fighting condition. For her to be repeatedly trying to fix something meant there was something genuinely wrong.

He stepped up beside her. “Anything I can help with?”

Mol glanced at him sidelong. “You’re offering to help me do maintenance? Bored, are we, sir?”

“We are. In the absence of any apparent squid threats, I don’t have a lot to do.”

Mol grinned. “Apply for some leave. No better time than during a lull like this.”

“I’d rather wait until I can coordinate my leave with Kira. And who knows when she’s going to be back.”

“She still doing diplomatic stuff at that planet we found?”

“She is, yeah—” Thorn stopped and winced as something viscous hit his cheek with a splat and oozed down the side of his face. “What the hell?”

“That’s my problem, right there. The newer models of the Gyrfalcon use electrical motivators and such to raise and lower the gear, operate atmospheric flight-control surfaces, that sort of thing. This is an earlier model that still uses hydraulics as the primary, with electrical backups. I need to get some upgrades done to her, but the heavy-duty shop time she needs is in short supply.” Another drip of murky fluid hit the deck between them. “Anyway, like I said, this is my problem. I’ve got a slow, drippy leak of fluid from that coupling, right there, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.”

“How about replacing it?”

Mol crossed her eyes. “Gee, why didn’t I think of that? I is so dumb.”

“You have replaced it.”

“Yes. Several times. So it’s not the coupling itself, it’s the socket it sits in. But I can’t replace that without replacing the entire gear-well assembly, and I can’t do that outside of a dedicated shop with some technical expertise.” She sighed. “So I tighten it and use sealant on it, and mess around with it until it stops leaking, and then it resumes leaking, and I do it all over again.”

“Mind if I try something?”

“Will it fix my leak?”

“It might.”

Mol stepped back and gestured at the gear well. “Go for it.”

Thorn stepped under the well, then he extracted his talisman and relaxed. Once more, he let his awareness fall into it. And once more he traversed the well-trodden magical pathways, the ones that carried hints of smoke and fire and fear. He sharpened his focus on the leaky coupling, applied a glimmer of magical force, and nudged into existence a new one, one imposed by his will.

One in which the coupling had never leaked.

Then he let the magic dissipate, and relaxed.

He found Mol staring at him.

“What?”

“You can use magic to fix my Gyrfalcon? How long have you been able to do that?”

Thorn held up a hand. “Before you think there’s a whole branch of magic devoted to fixing leaky hydraulics, there isn’t. Instead, I think you’ll find that this coupling has never leaked.”

Sure enough, there was no smear of hydraulic fluid on Thorn’s cheek, and no spatter of it on the deck near his foot.

“Wait,” Mol said. “You mean you did your reality-changing thing?”

Thorn nodded.

“I didn’t think you were supposed to do that.”

He gave her a conspiratorial look. “I’m trying to keep myself fine-tuned until I get all of my—” Thorn stopped, then smiled. “All of my mojo back.”

Mol smiled back, but it quickly faded. “Does that mean you can do something about Trixie?”

Thorn’s smile faded, too. “No. Or, at least, not yet. It’s one thing to fix a leaky hydraulic line, or change tea into coffee.”

“Wait, what?”

“I know, right? Who likes tea?”

“I do.”

Thorn rolled his eyes. “No accounting for taste. Anyway, I’m confining myself to little things. Me drinking coffee instead of tea, or you never having that leak, aren’t likely to lead to universe-shaking changes.”

“Aren’t likely to. That doesn’t mean they won’t.”

Thorn sighed. “Well, that’s true. I’ll put it this way—I think the tiny amount of risk is worth the reward.”

Mol cocked her head. “And what, exactly, is the reward?”

“My sanity.”

Mol blinked at that. Thorn caught himself just an instant too late. He hadn’t meant to be that blunt but had blurted it out before he could edit it into something less dire.

“You okay, Thorn?” Mol asked, dropping the sir. It didn’t bother Thorn at all. Somehow, it didn’t seem like much of a transgression from someone with whom he’d spent so much time—including at least a few near-death experiences. “Anything you want to talk about?”

For a moment, Thorn considered just spilling it all to Mol, including the things he hadn’t even told Kira. He knew full well that that was the problem—that he couldn’t get past failing to bring back Morgan. He had tried to do too much and gotten overconfident in his control over his powers. He had tried to change her into something she wasn’t, just to suit his idea of who and what she should be.

He slammed face-first into a wall of guilt and regret because she’d been so close. She’d been right there. He tried to remake her into someone that wasn’t a Starcaster, and she fought back so he lost her.

Thorn even opened his mouth to speak, but words suddenly failed him. He didn’t know what to say, or even how to say it. And how could he tell Mol something he’d never shared with Kira, Morgan’s own mother?

“I’m okay, Mol. It’s more a matter of being bored, I think. With nothing much to do, I have to keep in practice somehow, right? If I just sit around waiting for the Nyctus to do something, I’ll probably go stir crazy. That’s what I meant.”

Mol gave him a doubtful look. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’m just saying, if you need to talk, there are two seats, side-by-side, in the cockpit up there. It’s easy to talk between them.”

Thorn smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mol—”

Tanner’s voice cut him off. “All hands, battle stations. I say again, battle stations. This is not a drill, I say again, not a drill.”

Thorn exchanged a look with Mol, then headed for the exit from the bay. Mol rolled up her toolkit and went the other way, toward the Gyrfalcon’s airlock. As she did, she glanced back over her shoulder.

“This is your fault, you know,” she said.

“My fault? How? Because I changed tea into coffee?”

“Maybe,” Mol shot back, lifting a foot onto the ladder. “More likely because you said you were bored. Never say you’re bored, ’cause if you do, you can bet the universe will take care of it for you.”

8

Maybe Mol was right. Maybe the universe was involved somehow, getting back at Thorn for saying he was bored. Or maybe the universe was just offended by Thorn, over the liberties he took with it, and was lashing back. Whatever the reason, Thorn realized the deep irony that the Hecate was under attack by a Nyctus flotilla—after a long discussion with Tanner about the Nyctus likely pulling back to lick their wounds.

He clambered into the witchport, thankful that the battle station’s klaxon cut out just before he settled himself. It wasn’t easy focusing with the damned thing blaring. He activated the bridge repeater panel with a tap. It would give him essential tactical information, while also keeping him on a direct line to Tanner.

Thorn retrieved his focus and placed it on his knees, then tried to relax.

“Captain, Stellers here. I’m on-station.”

“Got it.”

Thorn just breathed in and out for a moment, centering himself. Then he plunged into the magical depths of the talisman, tapping into his reservoir of available power—

Which was still far less than he was used to. It was like gazing across the warm, shallow waters washing a gentle slope of beach, instead of staring into the deeps. Into the dark, almost unbound depths, now denied him.

He gave a mental shrug. It was what he had to work with.

Thorn tapped into a tiny fraction of the power, extended it around him, and opened the witchport. Simultaneously, he oriented himself with the repeater display so he could pick out the approaching Nyctus ships. They were still far enough away they’d be dim dots at best, but—

A diffuse patch of light snagged his attention, pulling him out of the moment and almost making him lose the bubble of containment he’d extended around himself.

By vast coincidence, the Nyctus ships were closing from only a few degrees off Thorn’s line-of-sight to the Witch Nebula.

Thorn took a breath and reasserted control. It took some time and effort, though—far more than it normally would or should. The containment bubble was something he should be able to pretty much fire and forget, usually requiring almost no conscious thought to maintain at all. It made his stomach twist a little. Was he really that weak? Had changing even tiny aspects of reality, like tea into coffee, or the color of the Tac O’s socks, dissipated that much of his capacity?

Thorn took a long, slow breath, then let it out, recentering himself. He had to stay in the moment, ignoring the Nebula and his limited capacity for magic. Ignore all of it and focus on the task at hand.

Tanner’s voice broke in over the intercom. “Tac O, time to range?”

“Two minutes to maximum missile range. Four point five minutes to rail gun range. Five point five to particle beam range.”

Thorn glanced at the trajectories depicted on the repeater. The fact that four Nyctus ships were so close mystified him. They were essentially in open space, with nothing nearby that could have hidden them. And one of them was a destroyer of the Hecate’s size, too.

“Stellers,” Tanner said. “How did they get so close to us undetected? Magic?”

Thorn released a breath. “I’m still running on low, sir, so I can’t afford the power to check. Not without leaving me short for battle.”

“Don’t do that. We’re badly outgunned here as it is.”

Thorn’s gut twisted another notch. Tanner was counting on him to help offset the squids’ numbers. For the first time in a while, Thorn’s confidence that he could do that faltered.

“Sir,” he said. “Far be it from me to offer tactical advice, but why not just do an Alcubierre hop and withdraw?”

There were other Captains in the ON, Thorn knew, who would take a suggestion to retreat as something not far from mutiny. Tanner, though, was far more pragmatic.

“Love to. However, the drive’s off-line for at least another fifteen minutes. The Chief Engineer was working on it and has to bring it back up to power. Wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d detected these assholes sooner, like we should have.”

Thorn couldn’t help hearing an edge to Tanner’s words, a hint of recrimination. Although what amounted to a squid ambush had nothing to do with Thorn, he obviously suspected it involved magic in some way. Thorn was an easy, even if unfair target for his frustration.

“Understood, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

Thorn glanced at the repeater. Four ships, including a destroyer, a frigate, and two corvettes. The Hecate was a match for any one of them and could likely take on both corvettes and pound them into scrap. But all four?

Badly outgunned indeed.

Thorn would try to change that. He once more let his awareness fall into his talisman, then radiate outward, focusing on the incoming Nyctus ships. His thoughts brushed against the cold, alien minds of the squids—

Wait.

Cold and alien, yes. But these squids were different, somehow. He wasn’t sure how, but these Nyctus were definitely different. Another sect, maybe? A different religion, to the extent they had anything that could be called a religion? It was something about how they viewed the world, a distinctly new flavor of thought processes, open to him for discovery. He explored their offerings, gathering what he could in bits and pieces, and concluded that their sect was irrelevant—they were the enemy.

Thorn let his awareness sweep across the enemy ships, but decided that now was not a good time to get fancy. Drawing power from his reservoir, it grew shallower still. He used some of it to tighten his focus on the lead ship. Thorn felt the lines of the destroyer and sought out the containment generator for its fusion reactor. There was nothing subtle about this. He would try to bludgeon the containment into collapse, because some jobs required nothing more than a hammer.

Thorn grinned, flexing his magical focus. A bigger hammer.

His effort might lead to an explosion, but it would more likely just trip safeties and scram the reactor. Either way, it would take the destroyer out of the battle, at least for a time, and dramatically even the odds.

There it was—the bounded fury of the fusion reaction howled away within its magnetic prison. Again, Thorn didn’t plan to be subtle. He simply focused power on the containment system, his intent to make it fail, at least enough to initiate a scram—

A powerful blast of denial slammed into him, the will of a shaman backed up by magical might. Thorn’s awareness was pushed away from the reactor and back into the void.

Gritting his teeth, Thorn called up more and more power, desperately trying to jam his perception back into the Nyctus ship. He had to find a weakness, a vulnerability of any type, and exploit it.

But he couldn’t. The shaman had created a nearly impenetrable wall of repudiation, keeping Thorn at bay. Worse, his power was dwindling by the moment, the shallow lagoon of potential about to drain dry.

He finally gave up. He simply didn’t have the strength to attack the Nyctus directly. The best he could do would be to prowl around the edges of things until an opportunity presented itself.

“Missile range now,” the Tac O said, truncating Thorn’s frustrated thoughts. “The Nyctus have just fired their own missiles—I count twenty-two on the way.”

“Return fire,” Tanner said, and Thorn could hear the tension in his voice.

Twenty-two incoming missiles would swamp the Hecate’s defenses. Unless Thorn could figure out some way to prevent it, his ship was about to be pummeled, and hard.

* * *

The Hecate shuddered under another hammer blow, the blast of the missile strike trembling the ship from top to keel. The reactive armor deflected most of the warhead’s impact, but Thorn still heard damage alerts sounding.

“Damage control to section seven alpha,” Tanner said, his voice over the intercom as impassive as ever. The man didn’t panic. Ever, even in the face of an attack that felt wildly imbalanced to Thorn, who trusted Tanner to find a solution, regardless of the odds.

Another missile detonated close by. The starfield slewed as the Hecate wheeled hard, trying to keep her orientation relative to the incoming attacks optimized for defensive systems. The point-defense batteries spewed almost constant streams of tracer, streaks of light lashing out like reaching fingers, trying to clutch and destroy onrushing ordnance.

“Stellers, Tanner here. Anything you can do?”

Thorn took a shuddering breath. He was tapped out. He could barely manage to defend the Hecate’s crew from the mental onslaught of at least three Nyctus shamans. The fact that Tanner had appealed to him to do something spoke volumes about the deep shit into which they’d plunged.

“I am so sorry, sir. I’ve done all I can,” he replied.

Which has basically been nothing.

Despair draped itself over Thorn like a funeral shroud. He’d tried to bring his daughter back from the dead, and failed. Instead, he’d lost her completely and, in the process, diffused and diminished his magical potential so much that he was now probably one of the weakest Starcasters in the Corps. He felt confident that would change, that his power would come back, in time—but time had all but run out.

He couldn’t even bootstrap his magical potential up the way he had in the past, rewriting reality to make himself more powerful. He’d tried. It hadn’t worked. Changing tea into coffee he could do, but that was about all he could do.

The Hecate slewed again. This time, something slammed into her hard enough to make the ship ring like a gong. More damage alerts blared.

“Decompression in sections eight alpha through nine delta. All hands evacuate.”

Something—probably a squid rail gun shot—had hit the Hecate hard, wounding her badly.

Thorn took another shaky breath, trying to desperately to concoct anything—

Mol in the Gyrfalcon shot past the witchport, flying close formation with the Hecate, trying to act like an additional point-defense battery for her, as well as providing a second target for the squids. It had worked, but it wouldn’t matter. The best thing Mol could do would be to bug out.

“Stellers, Tanner here.”

He was on a private channel. Thorn’s stomach flipped completely.

“Sir?”

“Unless you have something up your sleeve, in about two minutes I’m going to order the Chief Engineer to blow the reactor and scuttle the ship. I have absolutely firm orders that you are not to fall into the squid’s hands.”

Thorn closed his eyes, then opened them. “Understood, sir.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’d rather be turned to plasma than end up a captive of those bastards.”

“Sir,” Thorn said, licking his lips. “It has been been an honor, a privilege—”

“Hold that thought, Stellers,” Tanner snapped. “Another ship has just hopped onto our sensors. Stand by.”

Thorn flicked his attention to the repeater. His desperate hope was that it would be an ON ship. Preferably a big one. His mind-numbing fear was that it would be big, alright, but also Nyctus.

But it was neither. The Hecate’s tactical systems didn’t recognize it and, when Thorn zoomed in the image, neither did he.

For one thing, it was green.

The new arrival raced in at high speed. The two Nyctus corvettes swung onto an intercept course and began a fast, head-on approach. The green ship, whatever the hell it was, didn’t seem large, being smaller than either of the corvettes. Thorn expected this to be brief, but ultimately not much help. Whoever this was should just break off while they still could and make a run for it, rather than trying something heroic.

Thorn glanced away from the repeater—then back again, as it flared with lurid, emerald light. The glow enveloped one of the Nyctus corvettes, and then it wasn’t a corvette anymore. It was just an expanding cloud of debris. A few seconds later, the second corvette suffered the same fate.

“Holy shit.”

It took Thorn a moment to realize he was the one who’d said it.

When he looked back at the repeater, he saw that the remaining Nyctus destroyer and frigate were turning hard. They altered their trajectories away from the newcomer while pumping out another salvo of missiles at the Hecate. They were apparently intent on finishing her off before making their escape, but another of those dazzling flashes of green energy engulfed the missiles as they launched. Part of that blast also hit the frigate, opening a gaping hole on its port side. A second later, both Nyctus ships vanished, flinging themselves away from the battle at superluminal speed.

“All hands, priority damage control,” Tanner said. “Engineering, you’ve got five minutes to get me a list of what’s still working. Comms, raise our green friends out there and get them plugged into a channel. As long as they don’t decide we’re their next target, I should probably thank them for saving our asses.”

* * *

It took Thorn a while to reach the bridge from the witchport. He had to route himself around some battle damage, a section of the Hecate’s forward port quarter that had been breached by a missile strike and was now sealed off. He ended up taking a shortcut up one of the cramped access ladders that traversed the ship vertically, giving access to the various power distribution nodes coming off the main buses. The alternative was to go all the way back to near midships, then pick his way forward again. The ladder brought him up one deck short of the bridge, so he had to detour partway back anyway. By the time he arrived, he found Tanner in conversation with whoever was crewing their strange, green benefactors.

Tanner saw Thorn enter and raised a hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have to deal with something of some urgency. If you could wait a moment—”

“Please, Captain Tanner,” a smooth baritone replied from the comm. “Do whatever it is that you need to do. We’re in no hurry.”

“Thank you,” Tanner replied, and pointed at the Comm O, who put the channel into standby mode. Tanner turned to Thorn.

“What happened, Stellers?”

Thorn swallowed and glanced around the bridge, uneasily aware of the number of people in earshot. Tanner immediately shook his head.

“Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, Lieutenant. I expect all of my division heads to be able to give me an accounting of what worked and what didn’t. You’re no exception. We all need to know why your magic fell short this time, so we can contingency plan around it. You know, in case our squid friends decide to come back with reinforcements.”

Osborne, the Tac O, caught Thorn’s eye and offered what was meant to be a reassuring nod. Thorn acknowledged it briefly, then turned back to Tanner.

“Some of the ’castings I’ve done lately have drained me, sir, and I haven’t had enough recovery time.” He offered Tanner an apologetic look. “For the time being, you should probably plan as though my contributions to any fight are going to be pretty limited.”

Tanner held Thorn’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Understood. Now, let me ask you this—is there anything you can tell me about our green rescuers out there?”

Thorn pulled open the cramped jump seat, his usual spot when he was on the bridge, from the bulkhead where it was stowed. “Give me a moment, sir, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Tanner nodded and turned his focus back to other matters, which seemed to be a dozen different problems, all of which he had to juggle at once. Not for the first time, Thorn found himself marveling at the man’s ability to take in information, digest it, and spit back orders, all in a few seconds.

But he pulled his attention away from the drama swirling around the Captain, instead pulling out his talisman and centering himself around it. He’d recovered a tiny bit of his potential and used that to push his awareness beyond the Hecate’s wounded hull and into—

Nothing.

Thorn frowned. He pushed a little harder, expanding his perception like an inflating balloon. He dug deep and kept at it, until his awareness had expanded beyond the strange, green ship.

Still nothing. It was as though the other ship and its crew didn’t exist at all.

Still frowning, he ended the scrying and looked back at Tanner.

“Sir?”

Tanner raised a finger, finished snapping out direction to a soot-stained Petty Officer from a damage control party, then turned to Thorn.

“Go ahead.”

“I get nothing, sir.”

Tanner paused a beat, then nodded and started to turn away. “Okay then—”

“No, sir,” Thorn went on. “I literally get nothing. As in, nothing at all, just empty space. Magically, there’s nothing and no one out there.”

The older man turned back, fixing him with a hard stare. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. It means that either there’s someone or something aboard that ship powerful enough to Shade it even though it’s sitting right in front of us, or it somehow just doesn’t interact with magic at all.”

“Okay. So what are the implications?”

“Well, sir, since this is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this, I don’t really know what the implications are. This is something entirely new.”

“Huh.” Tanner looked back to the main viewscreen, holding the image of the unknown ship. “Can’t deny that whoever they are, they were here when we needed them. Also can’t deny it makes me more than a little uneasy that we apparently know nothing whatsoever about them. We’ve got nothing in our tactical or cultural databases, and now you can’t even sense them with your magic.”

Thorn shook his head. “I have to be honest, sir. This feels like some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . a setup of some sort.”

Tanner tensed. “I thought you said you couldn’t detect these people, or whatever the right word is for it.”

“I can’t, sir.”

“So what makes you think it’s a setup?”

“I . . .” Thorn began, then trailed off. “I don’t know, sir. I can’t point to anything specific. It just feels wrong, somehow.”

“Stellers, when anyone else says that I tend to give it the weight it deserves, which usually isn’t much. Maybe the XO, maybe the Chief Engineer when it comes to the powerplant and drives and the like. But that’s about it. When you say it, though, I have to follow up—”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m not getting this from magic. At least, not that I’m consciously aware of. It really is just a feeling.”

Tanner nodded. “Well, just park that feeling for now, Stellers.” He glanced at the Comm O. “Reopen the channel.”

The Comm O gave a thumbs up.

“This is Captain Tanner. My apologies for the delay, but as you can appreciate, we’re pretty busy over here.”

“I understand,” the resonant voice replied. “Your ship clearly took some serious damage. I hope that you are able to get underway, and get help from your own people.”

“We should be,” Tanner replied. “In the meantime, are you in a particular hurry to get anywhere?”

“We are not.”

“Very well then, I would like to invite you aboard the Hecate. The least we can do is offer you some hospitality for helping us out here.”

Thorn glanced at Tanner, who returned the look sidelong, but said nothing.

“I would be delighted to visit your ship, Captain Tanner.”

“We still haven’t recovered our Gyrfalcon—that’s the fighter keeping station off our starboard side. I can have it shuttle you—”

“No need. I will use our own shuttle. As you said, you’ve got a great deal to do, and I don’t want to get in your way.”

“We appreciate that. I’ll have our Chief Engineer work out the docking details with you.”

“Thank you. I will be ready when he contacts me.”

The Channel Open indicator flicked off. Tanner gave the Chief Engineer his instructions, then turned to Thorn.

“Alright, Lieutenant, let’s see how your feeling plays out when you get face-to-face with whoever the hell this is.”

“Sir?”

“As soon as the Chief Engineer works out where they’re going to dock, you and I are going to be the reception committee.”

“Aye, sir,” was all Thorn said. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more going on here than it appeared.

Of course, maybe Tanner was right. A feeling was just that—a feeling.

Besides, when wasn’t there more going on that it seemed?

9

Thorn had to work hard at not gaping when the pilot of the green ship stepped through the airlock and into the Hecate.

Correction—when he ducked through the airlock. He stood a full head taller than Thorn, Tanner, and the two members of the Honor Guard the Captain had arranged for their visitor. The Honor Guard, Thorn knew, was less about honoring and much more about guarding. But even the two seasoned Ratings couldn’t help simply staring at their guest as he straightened.

He was alarmingly tall. He was also bulky and muscular, with tendons like steel cables smoothly sliding beneath his skin as he moved.

His green skin.

Thorn caught himself staring, then shifted his features to a neutral look of thanks.

In every respect, he looked like a man—an unusually large and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.

Except for the green part.

Every bit of his exposed skin—since he wore only trousers and a loose vest, there was a lot of it—was a similar shade of green to his ship. He wore sandals, so Thorn could see that even his bare feet were green. And he had no apparent body hair, the overall effect of which was to make him resemble an enormous green mannequin, albeit bulging with corded muscle.

Their visitor stopped and stared for a moment, tracking his head left to right to take in the little tableau inside the Hecate’s airlock. Besides his minimal clothing, a number of odd gadgets hung from a broad belt around his waist. Any of them might have been weapons, although none were obviously so. Thorn noted the somber, almost grave expression on the alien’s face and braced himself in case there was trouble. He felt the two Ratings doing the same.

Then the green face split into the brightest, broadest grin Thorn could imagine, revealing teeth that were—

Thorn blinked. He’d expected some shade of green, but what he got was gleaming white.

“My friends,” the big green man said, flashing that flawless grin. “I am Bertilak, and I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.” Every word the man uttered was laden with enthusiasm that fell just short of shouting.

Tanner offered a smile. “And I am Captain Tanner, of the Allied Stars Orbital Navy. Welcome aboard the Hecate.”

The man stuck out a big green hand in what was obviously an invitation to shake it, which Tanner did. Their size difference made the effect disconcertingly like a child solemnly shaking the hand of an adult.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” Bertilak said. “I have heard of your people—hoomans, correct?”

“Humans, yes,” Tanner said. “And you are?”

“I already told you. Bertilak.”

“Right. I was hoping you would tell us the name of your people.”

“Bertilak.”

Tanner glanced at Thorn. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m confused. Is Bertilak your name, or the name of your people?”

“I am Bertilak. I am, in fact, my people.”

“I see.” Tanner nodded. “Well, welcome aboard my ship. I’m afraid that, as a warship, we’re not really configured for a lot of diplomatic niceties.”

“Ah, what niceties matter among the civilized peoples, captain? If we have air, and water, and food, we are in an enviable position. This is the opinion of Bertilak.”

Thorn watched Bertilak as he spoke. Every movement, every gesture, every word and tone was just a little exaggerated. A touch theatrical, a smidgen over the top. It was like watching an enthusiastic amateur playing his first speaking role just a little too hard.

Thorn didn’t trust him—not one bit.

“Well, Bertilak, this is Lieutenant Thorn Stellers,” Tanner said. “He’s one of my officers, and he will act as your liaison and guide while you’re aboard the Hecate.”

Thorn started to shoot a glance at Tanner but cut it off as his hand vanished into Bertilak’s massive green fist. He waited for bone-crushing power, but for all of his obvious size, power, and enthusiasm, the alien’s handshake was surprisingly restrained, almost gentle?

“I am pleased to meet you.” Bertilak’s smile faltered. “Lieutenant? Thorn? Stellers? Which should I call you?”

“Thorn is fine.”

The smile flared back to full power. “Thorn it is, then. I approve of your economical speech.”

“Lieutenant Stellers will escort you to the mess—a word that describes much of my ship right now, unfortunately.” Tanner’s diplomatic smile returned. “And it’s back to dealing with that mess I have to go. Before I do, though, allow me to once again thank you for your assistance. The crew and I are deeply grateful.”

Bertilak shook his head. “Bah! Thanks are unnecessary. I merely came to the aid of a ship in distress, the same way I’m sure you would have if I’d been the one in need.” Bertilak’s grin turned sly. “Besides, I owed those water breathers an ass-kicking. The last time I tried to deal with them, they took my cargo, then withheld payment on some stupid technicality or other. And I couldn’t do much about it, because they vanished back into hiding beneath the ice. Bertilak can tolerate many things, as the universe is filled with endless new experiences—but cowardice is to be avoided. Or punished, if Bertilak is given the chance to do so.”

Something struck Thorn as Bertilak spoke. Their comms weren’t doing any translating. The big, green man was speaking as fluently as any human.

“You’re a trader,” Thorn said, “so I gather you must do a lot of business with humans. Because you speak our language so well.” He gave an appreciative smile that he hoped came across as sincere.

It apparently did. “I do, and kind thanks. I much prefer to speak a language than rely on translators. The lack of nuance is . . . simple. And as a trader, nuance is among the tools I need to succeed.”

Tanner’s personal comm chimed. He glanced at it, then looked back at Bertilak.

“There are some things I need to attend to, I’m afraid. Thorn will take care of you. Incidentally, how large is your crew? I don’t know if we can accommodate more than—”

“Crew?”

“Yes. The crew of your ship.”

“You’re looking at it, friends. I am Bertilak, and I am the crew.”

Thorn tried to keep his bland smile from collapsing into a frown completely. “You’re alone?”

“Well, not right now, if we chose to be pedantic. As of now, I am with friends, and thus, hardly alone,” Bertilak stated, as if this was obvious.

Tanner exchanged a glance of entreaty with Thorn. “Lieutenant Stellers will have you well in-hand, I’m sure,” the Captain said, his comm chiming again. “Right now, though, I really have to get back to—”

“Your ship, yes. They are mistresses, these ships, that constantly demand our attention, eh?” The big man offered Tanner a sly grin and an exaggerated wink. “Even when we would rather be engaged in more interesting things. But taking care of the things that care for us is a necessity. I understand your need to be elsewhere, Captain, and thank you for the courtesy of explaining your tasks.”

Tanner smiled and nodded. “Yes. Mistresses. Well, this one does demand my attention. I’ll speak to you shortly. Until then, Lieutenant Stellers can provide you with our hospitality and thanks.” The Captain took Thorn’s salute, then strode away.

“Now, then, Thorn Stellers, where shall we go? What shall we do?”

“We will go to the mess. I’ll give you a tour of the ship along the way.”

“Except for the secret parts, of course. This is, after all, a warship.”

“Secret parts?” Thorn asked blandly.

“Every ship has secrets,” Bertilak said, the sly look returning. “Everyone has secrets.”

Thorn struggled to keep his expression flat. Despite the good humor bubbling in his voice, Bertilak’s words somehow put him on edge. It reminded him of how, at one particular power setting, the Hecate’s Alcubierre drive hummed with a harmonic that made Thorn’s teeth vibrate. Bertilak was that harmonic embodied, albeit infused with hearty cheer.

He gestured for Bertilak to walk with him. “Except for the secret parts, yes.”

* * *

Bertilak strode along the Hecate’s corridors with a surprisingly light step for such a big man, and an infectious grin that none of the crew could seem to resist. They all grinned back, despite the desperate race to get the ship functional enough to get underway again. Many offered their thanks.

Bertilak took it all with good humor, an effusive grin, and much laughter. Thorn felt more than a little obscured by the big alien’s sheer force of personality. Even the Honor Guard had taken to offering frequent smiles and chuckles at Bertilak’s robust antics.

The big alien finally stopped at a corridor junction just short of the mess and turned to Thorn, gesturing at their Honor Guard. “Thorn, my friend, you do not need these people here to watch over me. I am no threat whatsoever, as I would like to think I’ve demonstrated by now. That is a precedent, as you might say, and my behavior shall not change.”

“That sounds like exactly the sort of thing someone who was a threat might say,” Thorn replied, smiling.

Bertilak laughed loud enough to make the conduits ring. “Well played, sir. I am glad Captain Tanner made you my overseer. I find a lack of humor to be tedious beyond belief.”

Thorn glanced at the two Ratings, who simply stood nearby, waiting. “You two can go and help out with the ship. I’ll take care of Bertilak—my good friend, here.”

The senior Rating saluted, and the two walked away. Thorn led Bertilak to the mess.

It was one of the few places in the Hecate that wasn’t currently a bustle of activity. The ship had suffered surprisingly few casualties for the pummeling she’d taken—about two-dozen crew were injured, but no one had been killed. None of the casualty treatment had spilled over from the infirmary, leaving the mess ready for use as a makeshift medical facility, but not currently needed as one.

Thorn gestured for Bertilak to sit at one of the tables. He did, somewhat awkwardly levering himself into a seat meant for a much smaller bulk than his.

“I would happily offer you some refreshment,” Thorn said, “but I don’t know your dietary requirements. Also, most of the food services systems are offline right now.”

“That’s fine,” Bertilak said, raising a huge, green hand. “I am quite happy to simply sit and get acquainted with my new friends.”

Thorn sat across the table. “I thought you said you had dealt frequently with humans before.”

“Ah, but not your sort of humans—the military sort. I’ve dealt with many traders, as soldiers can be less likely to engage with a simple trader. Like me.”

Thorn nodded. While he wasn’t aware of many human traders operating outside of space patrolled by the ON, it could certainly be possible. He decided to leave it for now.

“‘Bertilak is an interesting name,” he said. “Is it old Earth French?

“It might be. I don’t really know.”

Thorn nodded but found Bertilak’s casual acceptance of the possibility yet another bit of oddness. He knew about old Earth languages? “I suppose it probably wouldn’t be,” Thorn said. “You don’t look Terran, after all.”

“Because I’m green?”

“That’s one reason, yes.”

“There are others?”

Thorn smiled and shook his head. “No, not really. You actually look Terran in pretty much every way except for being green. And big.”

“Well, Bertilak’s not the name my parents gave me. That was something you wouldn’t be able to pronounce, and for our purposes, Bertilak will do nicely.”

Thorn smiled again. “That’s fine.” He glanced around the mess, his gaze landing on the coffee dispenser. “Have you ever had coffee?”

“Have I? I most certainly have. Caffeine is among the wonders of our galaxy. And others, I suspect.”

Thorn nodded and turned to the dispenser. As he did, he summoned a glimmer of magic and let his awareness drift away—not far, of course, only so that it encompassed Bertilak.

Nothing. From a ’casting perspective, the colorful—both figuratively and literally—alien might not as well even exist.

Thorn wasn’t sure what to make of that. The idea of a race of aliens essentially transparent to magic had a slew of implications. It could be a threat, or beneficial, depending on how they might align themselves. He’d have to suggest to Tanner that they get to friendly space as soon as possible, ideally with Bertilak in company.

“This seems to be a fine ship, with a fine crew,” Bertilak said, looking around.

Thorn turned, a cup of coffee in each hand, and went back to the table. “It is. Personally, I think it’s the best in the Orbital Navy.”

Bertilak’s grin remained in place. “I suspect every crew believes that about themselves and their ship. Pride can be an issue, but not when the pride is used as a tool to augment naval capability. Or morale.”

Thorn nodded and sipped coffee. It struck him that the coffee he created to replace tea was better by a longshot. Of course, that was coffee as he envisioned it, so it would be, wouldn’t it?

“Are you far from your, ah, home space?” Thorn asked.

“I have no home space,” the alien replied. “Or, rather, maybe I do. It’s wherever I happen to be, so my location is my home.”

“I see. Okay, what I mean is, the space from which you originated. Where you were—” He was going to say born, but wasn’t sure if that would even apply. “Where you first came into existence. Where you’re from.”

Bertilak gave a genuine frown. “I’m not sure. I’ve always been where I am, or at least, that’s all I can remember. I admit this seems a bit opaque, but my memory only extends so far, and I have no burning need to seek further answers.”

“Ah.” Thorn sipped coffee. Was Bertilak being truthful, and he didn’t know, or was he being deliberately evasive? Without being able to Join, Thorn had no way of knowing, aside from the usual telltales of honesty. But those were human qualities, which might not apply to the alien. Either way, it would be tough to tease out of his almost constantly bubbly, effusive manner.

He decided to try a different approach. “Bertilak, where did you—”

A soft chime sounded. Bertilak glanced down at one of the gadgets hanging from his waist. “A message from my ship,” he said. “My apologies, but may I have a moment to deal with this?”

Thorn cocked his head, suddenly suspicious. “I thought you were alone on your ship.”

“I am. This is from my synthetic.”

“Synthetic?”

“Yes. I suppose you would call it an artificial intelligence.”

“Ah, okay. What’s its name?”

Bertilak looked confused. “Name?”

“Your AI. We have an advanced one aboard the Gyrfalcon, the smaller fighter we carry about the Hecate. She’s named Trixie.”

“I’m sorry, Thorn, but she? She has a name? Why?”

“Because she’s basically almost sentient.”

“My synthetic is a machine, nothing more,” Bertilak said. “In any case, if I may have a moment.”

Thorn nodded, drained his coffee, and stood. “Once you’re done, or if you need me in the meantime, I’ll wait outside for you.”

The grin flashed back to full power. “I thank you.”

Thorn turned as the door to the mess slid closed behind him, and stared at it.

He was still convinced that something was off, and in a way that was outside even his unusual set of life experiences. Moreover, his concerns would have trouble finding traction with Tanner or the crew based solely on a vague unease. Bertilak had saved all of their lives, then proven to be a strange, but decidedly charismatic figure of ebullient good humor.

And that just made Thorn all the more suspicious.

I’m a cynic. But in the end, cynics are always right, Thorn mused.

* * *

Tanner looked around his briefing room, going from face to face.

“Thoughts about our new friend?”

“Seems harmless enough,” Raynaud, the XO, said. Her voice was more taut than usual. Somehow, during the battle, she’d taken a blow to the head and now had a bandage wrapped around it. She’d eschewed any sort of painkillers, though, declaring she needed to keep her wits about her until the Hecate was back in friendly space.

“You wouldn’t think that if you were the Nyctus, ma’am,” Osborne, the Tac O, said. “We’ve reviewed the logs from the battle, especially focusing on Bertilak’s shots at the squid ships. We have got no idea what sort of weapon he was using—only that it seemed to be a direct energy system of crazy power output.”

“I saw. Two shots, two dead squid corvettes,” the XO put in. “Love to get me some of that kinda firepower.”

Tanner nodded. “Agreed. That’s something we can nudge our way toward, though. Frankly, Bertilak owes us nothing. It’s very much the other way around, in fact. So we’re not in a position to start prying much—yet, anyway.” He turned to Thorn. “Stellers, what about you? You spent the most time with him.”

“Aye, sir, I did. And . . . I don’t know. He doesn’t react with magic, and I find that deeply unsettling. Even a rock has some degree of interaction with the energy of magic—more if it’s got interesting elements inside, but to be a black hole where magic fails to report back? Troubling,” Thorn said with a shake of his head.

“None? To clarify, not a glimmer when you apply your skills to his ship?” Tanner asked, incredulous.

“No, sir. None. Just like his ship, Bertilak effectively doesn’t exist, as far as magic’s concerned.”

“Something else it would be nice to dig into,” the XO said. “Having magic-immune allies against the squids would be huge. It might even turn the war.”

Thorn crossed his arms. “Maybe. The trouble is, we don’t know anything about him or his people—and that’s if his people even exist. He claims he’s the only one of his kind he knows, and his speech patterns indicate gaps in his own self-awareness.”

“He had to come from somewhere,” the Tac O said. “There must be a race of big, green, anti-magical aliens out there, maybe even further beyond Nyctus space than the—er, what’s that race called? The one we’re talking with right now?”

“The Danzur,” Thorn replied, which immediately made him think of Kira. What insight would she have about Bertilak? Could she know something, maybe picked something up from the Danzur about his race?”

“All of this is what-if’s and conjecture,” Tanner replied. “Stellers, why don’t you just ask him and leave the oblique tactics to the spooks?”

“I’ve tried, sir. Three times, I tried to engage him in conversation about his past, his people, his origins, his ship—and every time, something seems to pull him away.”

Tanner leaned back in his seat. “What sort of somethings?”

“Twice, it was the AI—what he calls a synthetic—aboard his ship. The third time, it was the Tac O here.”

Osborne scratched an ear. “Hey, I saw him ahead of me in the corridor and wanted to personally thank him for pulling our ass out of the fire.”

“I don’t think that counts as a mysterious interruption,” Tanner said. “Unless, Stellers, you’re telling me there’s more going on here than we realize. For instance, are you suggesting that he somehow influenced Lieutenant Osborne to interrupt you?”

Thorn sighed. “No, sir. Or, if he did, it wasn’t in any way I could see or sense.”

“So we’re back to you and your feelings again.” Tanner patted the air, allowing a small smile. “Not that they aren’t valid.”

“Sorry, sir. I wish I had something more concrete, but all I’ve got is a healthy dose of my own, deeply ingrained suspicions.”

“You’re the only one, then,” the XO said. “He seems to have charmed most of the crew. I’ve seen him walking through the ship, talking and laughing as though he’s been aboard for weeks, not just a few hours.”

“He does have a certain appeal to him, I must admit,” Tanner said, then he glanced at Thorn. “But you obviously disagree.”

“I’m not saying he’s not a blast of good humor. No, he definitely is,” Thorn said. “I respectfully ask you to be alert. That’s all.”

“Stealing your limelight, maybe?” Osborne muttered.

Thorn fired a glance at the Tac O. “If you’d like to lay dead on a morgue table after fighting with magic, be my guest. I’d love the help.”

“Enough,” Tanner snapped. “Might I remind you that you are standing in your Captain’s briefing room, with your Captain present. Now, with that in mind, gentlemen, please proceed. I’d like to see where this goes.”

Thorn looked at Osborne, who looked back. Neither said anything.

“Excellent choice,” Tanner said. “Now, if you two want to go and work out this dick-waving contest during a sparring match in the gym, fine. Until then, keep them firmly in your trousers. Do we have an understanding?”

Thorn and Osborne both nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Now that that’s been firmly and irrevocably settled, we have a ship to get back underway, folks. To your duties. And Thorn? Don’t take my silence for acceptance of Bertilak at face value. I’m a born cynic as well, but I hide it under my excessive charms.”

“Aye, sir,” Thorn said, stifling a laugh.

“Carry on, then.” Tanner turned away in dismissal, leaving Thorn with his suspicions.

10

Morgan was bored.

Drifting on gentle currents beneath the icy mantle enclosing Tāmtu had been fun. Living underwater—even breathing the stuff—and otherwise poking around the sprawling submarine towns and cities had also been fun. The endless expanse of sea-bottom was a playground to rival anything on Nebo, but that sensation was long gone.

The novelty of it all had worn off. The Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends, all of them recognizing her and greeting her warmly. But Morgan was starting to find answering them back just as warmly was getting tiresome. She didn’t want to annoy her new friends, but they all had things they had to do, places to go, other Nyctus to meet. This bustle of complicated activity was what kept the towns and cities running, kept the Radiance that illuminated the abyss lit, and kept the Nyctus civilization on Tāmtu generally working. She understood that.

But it was boring.

She tried to spend more time with the younger Nyctus, but it wasn’t the same. Morgan knew enough about how people worked that she understood that children turned into grown-ups. But she also knew that children were just like grown-ups, only smaller. It was different with the Nyctus, though. Their babies started out like fat, pinkish worms, which then changed into spindly things with little tentacles. With no legs, and no obvious way to communicate or do anything at all but swim around randomly, little Nyctus were worse than boring. Only when they reached what the Nyctus called second birth did they become recognizable as actual Nyctus. As soon as they did, they basically turned instantly into grown-ups and graduated back to those boring—sure, important, but still boring—grown-up things.

So she could try to amuse herself among pinkish slugs, or apparently mindless larvae, or among the grown-up Nyctus who had so many other things to do—

“I can tell that you’re troubled, child,” the elder shaman said.

Morgan turned from the glowing city sprawled a thousand meters below her feet and looked at the shaman with a frown.

“I’m bored.”

“What would you like to do?”

“I don’t know.” Morgan bit her lip, thinking about it. “Are there other places?” she finally asked.

“There are—many other places.” A tentacle lifted and pointed in a random direction. “Over there is another place. And there’s another place right beyond it. And—”

Morgan couldn’t help giggling. “Yeah, I know that. I mean, are there other places like—” She paused, struggling to express herself. The elder shaman just waited.

“Like this,” she finally exclaimed, sweeping her hands all around. “Like, up there, out there, above the ice and the sky!”

“You mean, are there other planets.”

“Er—planets?”

“Worlds like this one, but far away, orbiting other stars.”

Morgan pondered that. It made sense. Nebo had been another planet. But it also wasn’t quite what she meant, either. Her limitations as a child left her seeking words outside her experiences.

“Are there places like that,” she ventured, “where more Nyctus live?”

“Ah, I understand. Yes, there are. There are many other worlds where the Nyctus live.”

“Can we go there?”

“It isn’t that easy, child. You would need a ship to travel to them.”

“I made a ship once.”

“Yes, you did. That was how you got here.”

“I could do that again.”

The elder shaman flickered with quick, bioluminescent pulses, a sure sign of alarm.

“We have discussed this, child. It’s very dangerous, for many reasons. You must stay here, where you’re safe. That is why you came to us, after all. To be safe.”

Morgan deflated. “I know. I’m just—”

“Bored. Yes.”

She nodded.

The elder shaman stared for a moment, then reached out a tentacle.

“I have an idea. Come with me, child. There’s something I want to show you.”

* * *

Morgan gasped at the wonder of it all.

“It’s beautiful,” she muttered, then she turned to the elder shaman with a frown. “What is it?”

“It’s a map.”

Morgan kicked her feet in a way that had become second nature to her, swimming around the sprawling display of colorful lights, all dots and lines and swirls.

“What’s a . . . a map?” she called back.

“It’s a picture,” the elder shaman replied. “Of places. It shows us where those places are, and in what direction, and how far away they are from other places.” Ripples began to shudder rhythmically along the shaman’s body, driving it toward, and then into, the vast map.

Morgan looked around her. The map filled an enormous, domed chamber that was attached to another series of domed chambers. All together it was called The Conclave—which meant nothing to Morgan, aside from it being the place the grown-up Nyctus went to do whatever grown-up Nyctus do. The Conclave had something to do with running the city, or maybe all of Tāmtu. She wasn’t really sure which and didn’t really much care, either.

This map, though—this was something special.

It filled the enormous dome, probably a hundred times bigger than Morgan. Maybe a thousand, or a million. It was enormous, in any case. It would take Morgan at least a whole minute, and maybe longer, to swim from one side of it to the other.

That made her curious, so she did just that—started swimming. With decisive, strong kicks, she pulled herself into motion, hands fluttering to steer as she moved forward.

Bright points of light drifted past her. There were words beside them, some different for each of the little lights, some the same for all of them. For instance, one of those same words for each was Population, with a number beside it, but it was a different number for each one. Glowing lines connected many of them, but not all. And there were other, less well-defined things. Misty wisps and fuzzy glowing splotches were also labeled with words she didn’t recognize.

She found her attention drawn to one of those diffuse spots of light, pulsing brighter than the others. For Morgan, different was good.

The shock of pain from Daddy trying to pull her apart made her jerk back, made Mister Starman flare as bright as the sun. She snatched desperately at that pain, using its energy to scoop up endless handfuls of dust and gas and anything else she could reach to fling at Daddy as hard as she could. Another titanic blast, the biggest and brightest yet, crashed through reality, flinging away stars and planets and glowing gases like sparks from a campfire.

“Child?”

Morgan jumped and looked around. She’d been staring at that one glowing smudge of light. The words beside it said Anomaly 87409-AAB, Aberrant Stellar Nebula, first observed . . . and then it gave a date and a time. There were other numbers, too.

“Child?” the elder shaman said again. “Is something wrong?”

Morgan tilted her head, still staring at Anomaly 87409-AAB, then pulled her gaze away and turned to the shaman. “Nope. I just—” She looked around, taking in the map that now sprawled all around her. “It’s so pretty!”

“It is. However, this is what I wanted to show you,” the shaman said, drifting a few meters back, then reaching out a tentacle and touching one of the points of light. It immediately flashed, and another picture appeared, a smooth, white sphere, covered with a fine network of dark cracks. The word beside it was Tāmtu. Many more words and numbers popped into existence all around it.

“This is where we are. This is Tāmtu,” the elder shaman said, then he gestured at the picture of the cracked sphere. “This is what our planet looks like, if you were to go into space and see it from far away.”

Morgan nodded. “I sorta remember. When I was coming here, I sorta remember seeing that.”

The shaman gestured with another tentacle, then touched another point of light. The picture of Tāmtu, and all of the words and numbers around it vanished, then a new picture and new words and numbers appeared around the second point the shaman had touched. The word beside this one was Pelagus.

“And this is a different world from Tāmtu. If you wanted to travel there, this map would show you what direction you had to go, and how far away it is.”

Morgan giggled. “That’s dumb. It’s, like, as far away as my toes are from my nose.”

Amusement flickered along the elder shaman’s body. “Like I said, this is only a picture. Pelagus is actually very, very far away from Tāmtu. If you shone a beam of light from one to the other, that light would take over five whole years to make the trip.”

Morgan stared. She knew that light traveled very fast, so if it took it five whole years, then it must be hundreds of kilometers away.

Another thought cut off her amazement. She stared at the picture, at a sphere. This one was blue and brown and covered with swirls of white cloud.

“Do other Nyctus live there?”

“They do. There are many large cities, just as there are here.”

“But there’s no ice.”

“Not all planets are covered with ice like Tāmtu is,” the shaman said. “On this one, the air is much warmer, so most of the heat comes from the planet’s star.”

“You mean the sun?”

The elder shaman flickered softly with indulgent patience. “Yes, the sun. Most of the heat on Pelagus comes from the sun. Here, on Tāmtu, it mostly comes from inside the planet, through the vents.”

Morgan stared at Pelagus. “I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like not having ice over me.” She reached back for Tāmtu and touched it, making the picture and numbers and such for Pelagus to go away, and Tāmtu’s to reappear. “I’m way happier here.”

“I’m glad, child.”

Morgan was happy, she realized.

But also bored.

“Do you talk to the others?”

“The others?”

Morgan swept her arm around. “The other planets. The other Nyctus. Do you talk to them?”

A strange shiver shook the shaman, as though he was angry? Upset? Afraid? Morgan wasn’t sure, but before she could ask, the shaman replied.

“Not since you arrived here, child, no.”

“Oh. So what about the ships? The ones that keep showing up in the sky, above the ice?”

“The ships?”

“Yeah.” She pointed up. “Up there. Ships come, sometimes. I make them go away.”

“Go away how?”

“Just go away. I don’t like them. The Nyctus on them are mad. They’re not friendly like you here on Tāmtu. I don’t like that, so I make them go away.”

Morgan thought about that. The ships had started coming not long after she arrived. First small ones, then bigger ones. One really big one and three smaller ones had eventually shown up. Morgan had made them go away, too, and there’d been no more ships since.

Another shiver ran through the elder shaman. At the same time, quick flashes of angry crimson shot along the length of its body. But that soft turquoise glow of the Radiance immediately replaced them, and the shaman relaxed again.

“If more ships come, child, please tell me before you make them go away.”

“Why?”

“Because they may want to talk to us.”

“But they’re mad. They’re not my friends, like you.”

“It’s because we’re your friends that we care about you, child. But we also—”

He shuddered again.

“—we also do not wish to harm our own people.”

Morgan sighed. “Okay, fine. But if they’re mad, they can’t come under the ice. I won’t let them.”

“Very well.”

Morgan swam off, amusing herself by touching points of light, flashing up pictures of planets, some entirely water, some a mix of water and land. There was another covered with ice, and still another that seemed to be entirely shrouded in some sort of thick mist. It held her interest for a while, but eventually she got bored again.

Her attention drifted back to Anomaly 87409-AAB. She floated over to it—

Another titanic blast, the biggest and brightest yet, crashed through reality, flinging away stars and planets and glowing gases like sparks from a fire. A flame of creation. Or pure violence, made from will.

Why had Daddy done that? Why had he tried to change her, to make her into something she wasn’t?

She wanted to know. She needed to know that she could trust him before she ever talked to him again. That’s why she had done what she had, why she’d—

She stopped, staring at Anomaly 87409-AAB but without really seeing it. She had an idea.

Morgan reached down inside herself and tugged at the glittering power she found there. She scooped imaginary handfuls of it up, then looked around and threw the energy, glittering and granular, all around her. Motes of potential raced outward, stopping when each one touched one of the little lights marking the Nyctus planets. From there, they all shot upward together, like a shower of sparks from an ancient forge, but much, much more powerful. They swept through the ice, into the sky, into space beyond, and scattered as if powered by a will that was wild and free.

Now she had to concentrate a little harder. It would be easier with Mister Starman helping her, but she didn’t like him anymore. Frowning, she pushed the motes on and on, letting herself experience each one separately, but also all of them together. They flashed through space as quick as thought, each one finally reaching the same planet it had touched on the map. As each mote arrived, Morgan had a momentary vision of that place. Images and impressions thundered into her mind. She had to work hard to keep it all sorted out, and she eventually lost track. They all smeared together into a blur of nonsense, visions of one place superimposed on or mixed with others. Finally, with a growl of frustration, she gave up and just let the motes flicker and die.

It left her with a headache and a thin curl of blood wafting from one nostril. It also left her with nothing but a confusing swirl, like someone had thrown a whole bunch of still images into the air. She’d tried to look at each, and remember where and what it was, before they all hit the ground. But now it was a jumbled mess.

She sniffed, pulling water through her nose. She briefly tasted the blood, harsh and metallic, but she ignored it and focused on the one thing she really did want to know.

And there it was. Out of all the Nyctus, on all of the planets shown on the map, only the Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends. Only they were the soft, blue-green of the Radiance. All of the other Nyctus—every single one of them, everywhere—were flaring orange-red. They were mad, all of them. They weren’t her friends at all.

Morgan turned in place, slowly taking in the map spread around her. The elder shaman said something, but she was too busy looking at where all the angry Nyctus were.

She wondered if she could change them. She wondered if she could make all of them nice, like the Radiance.

She wondered if she could make all of the Nyctus her friends. Whether they wanted to be her friends or not.

11

But they’re mad. They’re not my friends, like you—

Thorn flung his eyes open and sat up.

“Lights.”

He looked around as the lights came on.

Sweaty sheets, his rack on the Hecate—

He swung his feet to the floor. “I am so tired of waking up like this,” he said to his shirt, which was currently draped over the back of the chair attached to his miniature desk.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Please restate your question or order.”

Thorn scowled at the voice. For reasons that he still didn’t understand, when compared to Trixie, the Hecate’s AI was like a data pad compared to a supercomputer. He’d heard it had something to do with security but couldn’t imagine what.

“Just forget it,” he said, then he glanced at the time and groaned.

“There’s zero-dark-thirty,” he muttered, “and then there’s a time to be awake that truly sucks.” He glanced up. “Don’t you agree?”

“The answer to that question is purely subjective,” the AI said, its voice clipped and efficient.

Thorn smiled a humorless smile. “Machines are so dumb.”

The AI didn’t respond.

Thorn sank back and sprawled across his rack, his head and shoulders against the bulkhead, his legs and feet dangling off the side. This time, the dream had been even more vivid, more real. Usually they were half-glimpsed impressions of his daughter, Morgan being somewhere—although he wasn’t sure where, beyond it being only dimly lit by bluish light. This time, though, he had a firmer notion of her being somewhere specific. It was somewhere underwater, and there were—

Thorn sat up. Shit. There were Nyctus with her. Nyctus all around her. The images were jarring, and well beyond anything he could even begin to understand.

He’d already talked this out once with Kira, describing his recurrent dreams about Morgan. He couldn’t forget that he’d likewise had flashes and impressions of Kira, many of them in his dreams, when she was being held captive by the Nyctus, and wondered if Morgan might actually be alive—somewhere, wherever that somewhere was. In the reality of his life, lines were blurred because of magic, and even he, a Starcaster of rare power, couldn’t work through the details on his own.

Thorn sighed. “Maybe I do need counseling.”

“Do you want to open a request for access to medical services?”

“No,” Thorn snapped, cutting the AI off.

For a while, he just lay across his bunk, trying to feel tired enough to go back to sleep. Eventually, he gave up and got dressed. He had no particular destination in mind, so he just wandered the Hecate’s corridors. It wouldn’t take him long to cover the entire ship, but it was better than just brooding in his rack.

* * *

During dark watch, as the period that constituted night aboard the Hecate was called, ops were normally at a low ebb. The Duty Watch Officer would have command, with only essential stations manned throughout the ship. At most, there might be bustles of localized activity, as engineering crews sought to take advantage of the fact that most of the crew was asleep to get much needed work done in parts of the ship that were normally busy. Thorn actually enjoyed occasionally wandering the Hecate during dark watch. Enjoyed the relative peace, with his only companion the thrum and rumble and soft hiss of the ship’s inner workings.

Not so during this dark watch, though. Voices rose, punctuated by the occasional shout as damage-repair parties hurried about. Behind them all was the flare of welding arcs, the rattle and clatter of repairs underway. Sleep could wait until repairs were complete.

Thorn stepped around a pair of Ratings working on an open conduit and reached a corridor junction. He’d meant to turn left but stopped as a voice boomed out from his right.

“I mean sufficient in the nicest possible way! Please, gentlemen, don’t take my words the wrong way!”

Thorn recognized the speaker before even turning. It was Bertilak.

Thorn looked around the corner. The big alien stood with the new Chief Engineer and one of his Petty Officers, looking into an open access hatch. The Chief, a man named Delfino, ran a big hand over his bald pate, dark eyes looking up at an unusual sight—Bertilak. Thorn thought Bertilak had gone back to his ship, but here he was, even larger than life than he remembered.

Thorn started to pull back, meaning to find another way around, or even to just head back to his rack. But Bertilak turned and saw him. His green face split into a broad grin.

“Thorn, my friend. Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Bertilak asked.

Thorn allowed himself an inward sigh, then walked around the corner and joined the little group. “I feel bad about sleeping when most of the rest of the crew is working,” he said.

Bertilak hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Ah, the mark of a true leader. Always thinking of his subordinates. I would do the same, but I have none. At least none that I know of.”

Delfino, irascible as always, crossed his arms and stared glumly into the open access port. Thorn saw electronic and mechanical stuff. He wasn’t an engineer, so he had no idea what it did. Aside from nothing, at least right now, given how much of it was pitted and scorched by heat or fire. “Be awfully damned convenient if our true leader here could magic up some replacement components for this power regulator.” He looked at Thorn. “Or can you?”

Thorn gave his head a shake. “I’m trying to conserve my powers in case we need them again in a hurry. Captain’s orders. If it’s a critical system, don’t you have spares?”

“We do. Four of them. Unfortunately, a runaway power surge took out five of them before the safeties kicked in.” He scratched at his trim beard. “Bertilak here thinks we can work around the damage. He thinks our tech is sufficient to handle the load if we just bypass the main regulator, plug the critical systems into the back-up processor, and reconfigure—”

He stopped, his eyes narrowing, then going wide.

“Wait. That would work if we can power the processor from an external source.” He turned to the Petty Officer. “Go get a portable generator. We can configure it to keep the processor powered up without frying it.”

The woman stared for a moment, then understanding dawned. “That’s brilliant,” she said, before turning and hurrying away. “Back shortly!” she called over her shoulder.

“I swear, Bertilak here is a fountain of good ideas,” Delfino said, shaking his head. “Never would have thought of powering it externally instead of trying to do it off the main bus if you hadn’t suggested this.” He smiled at Bertilak—a facial expression Thorn just wasn’t used to seeing on the dour Engineer—and shook his head. “You probably just saved us a good two hours trying to 3-D print replacement components.”

“I am always glad to be of service,” Bertilak proclaimed, looking pleased with himself.

It made Thorn want to scowl, but he held it in, a neutral expression covering his features.

Movement behind him made Thorn turn. Another pair of Ratings had appeared, hauling a length of conduit. “Excuse me, sir,” one of them said to Thorn, his voice straining slightly under the load, “but you’re kinda in our way.”

Thorn stepped aside and the Ratings struggled past him, lugging their burden to wherever it was needed.

“You know, Lieutenant,” Delfino said, “if you’re not actually involved in repairs, then it’s probably best if you go back to your quarters.”

Thorn blinked. Determined to not take it as an insult, he opened his mouth to apologize, but the Chief Engineer turned back to Bertilak. “There’s another problem I’d love you to take a look at, if you could,” he said to the alien. “There’s a harmonic in the fusion reactor that’s pulling down its efficiency. The whole reactor apparently came a little loose from one of its mounts during the battle. We braced it back down, but this harmonic won’t go away, and I’m leery about running the drive at full power while it’s happening.”

Bertilak nodded. “By all means, let’s see what we can do for you.” He glanced back at Thorn, offered a friendly smile and a wink, then turned and followed the Chief away.

Thorn abruptly found himself alone. And not just alone, but—

“Excuse me, sir!”

Thorn pressed himself against the bulkhead as another Rating hurried past, cradling a power coupling.

Not just alone, but in the way.

* * *

Thorn sat jammed into the Captain’s briefing room, a faint glower on his face, as the XO finished up her summary of the crew’s repair efforts.

“Bottom line,” she said, “is that we’ll be able to fire up the Alcubierre drive in about four hours, give or take a bit. Chief Delfino says he’ll have a firmer estimate in about an hour.”

Tanner leaned back as far as the cramped space allowed. “Last I heard, it was going to be another eight to twelve hours before we could say goodbye to this miserable little piece of the universe. Not that I’m complaining, but what changed?”

“Bertilak is what changed,” the XO said. “According to the Chief, he spent most of dark watch helping out with what turned out to be about a hundred good ideas.”

“Starting to wonder if there’s anything that guy can’t do,” the Tac O said.

Before he could stop himself, Thorn gave a derisive snort.

Tanner turned to him. “Something to add, Lieutenant?”

“I just get a little nervous over the fact that Bertilak seems to know so much about our tech. So much in fact that he seems to know it better than we do.” He swept a skeptical look around the gathering. “Doesn’t anyone else find that a little strange?”

“He’s saved us literally hours of work, Lieutenant,” the XO said.

“And that was after saving our butts from those squid ships,” the Tac O added.

Thorn hesitated. “That’s something else that seems strange—those four squid ships were able to get so close without us detecting them.”

“Okay, I’m listening. The same thought had occurred to me,” Tanner said, then he turned to the Tac O. “Lieutenant Osborne, have you had a chance to follow up on that yet?”

He nodded. “As much as I can, sir, without sitting down and doing some detailed analysis of the sensor logs. It might be some sort of cloaking tech, but—” He glanced at Thorn.

“And you still don’t think magic was involved,” Tanner said, turning back to Thorn.

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t sense anything. In any case, Shading normally isn’t perfect. It works best on someone who’s entirely unaware. The more they’re looking for trouble, the more likely they are to see through even the best Shade. And I’ve been told that we were constantly doing full, spherical scans.”

“But it’s possible,” Tanner said.

Thorn gave a grudging nod. “Yes, sir. I guess it’s possible.”

“What do you suspect is going on here, Lieutenant?” the XO asked. “You’re obviously suspicious, but about what, exactly?”

Thorn leaned forward, searching for the right tone. “It’s just too coincidental—too neat. First we were ambushed by a group of squid ships that somehow got really, really close without us knowing it. Then Bertilak shows up out of nowhere just when we’re on the ropes, saves the day, and now proves to be a genius when it comes to fixing our ship.” He shook his head. “Again, am I the only one who finds that strange?”

Tanner leaned back again, his gaze on Thorn.

“Well, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. However, I recognize your concerns, Lieutenant Stellers, and will make sure we keep an eye on Bertilak while he’s on board.” He sat forward again. “And, on that note, I think we’re done here. We’ll do another of these little meetings in two hours, at . . . eleven hundred hours. XO, I’d like all Division Heads present, so we’ll commandeer the forward mess.”

“Aye, sir, roger that.”

“Stellers,” Tanner went on, “I’d like you to stay for a moment.”

Thorn, who’d been starting to his feet, now sat back down. Raynaud and Osborne both glanced at him curiously as they left.

“Alright, Stellers,” Tanner said when the others were gone. “What’s going on here?”

“Sir?”

“You ask if you’re the only one who finds everything that’s been going on strange. The answer is, of course not. It’s all strange as hell. But so is using the power of magic to deflect a mega-KEW from Code Gauntlet, or to move an entire fleet across hundreds of light-years. This whole war is strange. So what, specifically, is your issue with this situation? Call it my need to know details.”

Thorn sighed. “I don’t know, sir. I get that, on the surface, anyway, it all seems on the up-and-up. But there’s just something about it all, something that feels . . . off.”

“Off.”

“Aye, sir.”

Tanner settled back. “And off is as specific as you can be.”

“Without inventing words, that’s as close as I can get, and believe me, sir, I’m trying to find specific data to address, despite your willingness to indulge my instincts.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Tanner asked. “The Starcaster has a feeling—not that they haven’t helped in the past—but he can’t give me a direction. You’re aware of my love for evidence? It’s a Fleet training issue, but damned if I can break free of needing facts.”

Thorn sighed again. “Once more, sir, I don’t know. Just be careful, I suppose.”

“Ah. Be careful. Unlike the rest of the time, when we’re all careless and sloppy.”

“No, sir. That’s not what I mean.”

“Stellers,” Tanner snapped, then he paused and resumed in a more measured tone. “Thorn. Have to be honest—if anyone has been off lately, it’s you. Ever since whatever happened when that Witch Nebula popped into existence, you haven’t been quite yourself.”

All Thorn had told anyone is that he, like all other Starcasters, experienced the birth of the Witch Nebula as an eldritch shockwave that had rippled through the ether. Technically, that was true. He just left out the part about it happening while he was trying to bring his daughter back from the dead. The Starcaster Corps had concluded that the formation of the Witch Nebula was somehow also related to the rebirth of Nebo, but again, Thorn had stayed silent about the details.

His reasons were good ones. But he also understood where Tanner was coming from. He had been off ever since. How could he not be? Bringing Morgan back enough that he could talk to her, almost touch her, only to lose her again—how could that not leave him feeling off, both magically and emotionally?

But he couldn’t tell Tanner any of that, could he?

“There’s something you’re holding back,” Tanner said flatly. “Something you’re not telling me. And that’s a problem, Stellers.”

Thorn needed to tell Tanner something.

“I just haven’t felt right since the Witch Nebula appeared, sir,” Thorn finally said. “I’m doing my best to recover from it, but it’s taking more time than I thought it would. It’s not just my magical state of being. It’s beyond that.”

Tanner stared at Thorn for a while, his look an appraising one. Finally, he spoke up.

“Stellers—Thorn—my second posting as a Lieutenant was aboard the Conqueror, as Junior Tactical Officer. The Captain was a hell of an imposing man—loud, larger than life, but he had competence leaking out of him. He was a rising star in the ON, seemed to be destined for Admiral. Everyone just assumed he’d have his own flag someday. And then, he wasn’t. To this day, I have no idea what happened. He did something, or said something, or pissed in the wrong person’s porridge. Anyway, whatever it was, it took him completely off the radar. Overnight, he went from a rising star to a bitter has-been. Last I heard, he’d taken an early buyout.”

“Sir, why are you telling me this?” Thorn asked.

“Because, Lieutenant, I’m keenly aware of the fact that you shot up to prominence virtually out of nowhere and have accomplished some amazing things. Again, you saved Code Gauntlet and hundreds of lives there. You were instrumental in pulling the Fleet out of the fire when the squids set up that massive ambush. You’ve brought the war to the squids in a way that the ON, by itself, never could—you’ve been a rising star.” He leaned forward. “So I’m telling you this to suggest that maybe you’re feeling like your star has stopped rising and just got stuck. And having Bertilak explode onto the scene has given you something upon which to vent your frustration.”

Thorn stared. “Sir, are you saying I’m—what, resentful of Bertilak?”

“Are you?”

“No, but I’m suspicious, and I trust my gut,” Thorn countered.

“Stellers, give me a piece of evidence, something objective and real, that Bertilak is a threat, or even just a problem. Anything. You’re my Starcaster and a member of my crew, so I’ll believe you.”

Thorn thought for a moment.

What, exactly? What had Bertilak done that would constitute a threat or a problem? He’d shown up in dramatic fashion to save the Hecate at the last minute, sure—but Thorn had been on the receiving end before when the Hecate had saved him and Mol. He’d thought they’d been beaten by the Nyctus after they destroyed one of the squids’ orbital platforms, but he hadn’t resented the Hecate for saving them.

But Bertilak? He’d not only saved their collective asses, but then he came aboard and charmed the crew, proving himself to be gregarious, witty, insightful, and damned good with tech. He’d asked for nothing in return—

“He seems too good to be true,” Thorn said, but even he had trouble believing it.

Tanner gave a thin smile. “He’s too good to be true isn’t much of a criticism, Lieutenant, without something to also say how and why.”

“I know, sir.”

Tanner shifted in his seat, then smiled, and it was a paternal expression. “Go think about it, Stellers. And don’t forget your assigned duties while you do. When you’re ready to present evidence, I’ll listen. You’ve earned that much.”

Thorn stood. “Aye, sir. I—” He finally just shook his head. “Thank you, sir.”

He left Tanner’s briefing room and headed for the witchport. The Captain wanted him to maintain a magical watch around the Hecate until she could get underway again. That much, at least, he should be able to accomplish even with his powers still mostly choked off.

As he made his way forward, though, he couldn’t get past what Tanner had implied, which distilled down to Thorn’s need to be at the center of things, not existing as a support staff for an alien with opaque motives.

He would watch Bertilak, and he would be alert. For now, that was all he could give, because Morgan was out there, and the war was still hot, and Thorn’s tank of power was still perilously low.

12

“Have you seen the latest?” Damien asked, barging into the Venture’s common area and waving a data pad.

Kira winced. Now what?

She took the data pad that Damien held out and read what was on the screen—an ON intel report. She felt her mouth falling open the further she read but didn’t think to close it.

She finally looked up. “This is real?”

Damien shrugged. “No reason to believe it isn’t.”

Kira checked the transmission time stamp. They were well beyond the range at which real time comms with the Fleet was possible, so the message had been in transit for almost eight hours. Working backward, Kira quickly reasoned that the report must be describing events that happened a day or so ago.

She’d had three meetings with a number of Danzur, Tadrup among them, and not one of them had even hinted at what the data pad was telling her—that the Danzur had seized two planets on the edge of Allied Stars space. Neither was inhabited, but both were relatively resource-rich and considered part of the AS strategic inventory. Only the fact they were so far forward, and therefore exposed, had prevented any exploitation of them so far.

“These planets are in our space!” Kira said.

“They are, yes,” Damien replied. “But the Danzur claim that we’ve got no actual presence on either of them. Their argument is about position. Since the planets are at the edge of our space, they can dispute our ownership of them. Smug, but effective as an argument, and not one that we’re prepared for. Not now, anyway.”

“Seized as compensation toward reparations,” Kira read aloud, then she tossed the data pad onto the table. “Reparations for what?”

“If you read on, you’ll see that they’re blaming the ON for—” He picked up the data pad, scrolled, then also read aloud. “For unreasonable blockage of trade with the Nyctus, particularly for krol-kazan, an essential component of a lucrative, value-added industry—blah, blah, blah.”

“In other words, we wiped out that Nyctus planet and it’s costing them commercially, so they’re pissed off about it,” Kira snapped.

“I think that about sums it up.”

Kira stood and paced. “That’s ridiculous. We’re at war with the Nyctus. Are we supposed to worry about—shit, about their trading and commercial relationships before attacking them?”

“Well, my answer to that would be of course not. But my answer doesn’t matter,” Damien said.

Kira stopped a few centimeters from a bulkhead, took a moment to reign in her anger, then turned back. “So what do we do about it?”

“I’d recommend sending a diplomatic missive to the Allied Stars Xeno-Affairs Department,” Damien replied. “Tell them our understanding of what happened and ask them not to go off half-cocked. Specifically, ask them not to do something stupid like confronting the Danzur militarily. I mean, those planets might be part of our strategic inventory, but we’re not using them at the moment and don’t have any plans to use them any time soon. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”

“Wow.”

Damien blinked. “Wow?”

“Yeah. Wow. Can I ever tell that I’m a soldier and you’re a diplomat.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed, but he smiled. “Oh? And how’s that?”

“Because my gut reaction is screw ’em, let’s take those planets back and show these asshole aliens who’s boss.” Kira crossed her arms and smiled ruefully. “Your gut reaction, on the other hand, is to do the smart thing.”

Damien grinned. “Smart? Maybe. All I know is that it’s the best way for me to avoid getting drafted and finding myself hugging the dirt, fighting for control of some uninhabited hunk of rock.” He glanced at his fingernails. “My manicure would never last.”

Despite herself, Kira laughed out loud.

* * *

Kira glanced sidelong at Damien. “Okay, I’ve read this twice now and have no idea what it’s trying to say.”

Damien glanced at the door to the meeting room. Tadrup should be walking through it any minute to discuss these latest developments.

He turned back to Kira. “What part don’t you understand?”

“Uh, the part between the beginning and the end,” she said. “Why say marmalade when you can say jam?”

Damien just stared for a moment. “What?”

“Why say marmalade—what? Haven’t you ever heard that before?”

“I’d have remembered if I had,” Damien said. “To put it another way, what the hell are you talking about, and why not say jelly?”

“Okay, you’ve got a third path. Point for you, but my meaning is to keep the words simple when you can,” Kira said.

“You’ve clearly never been a diplomat. It’s like we get paid by the syllable when writing comms,” Damien said, smiling. The door behind him began to open, revealing Tadrup and another pair of Danzur functionaries. “Showtime,” Damien muttered.

Tadrup began snarling, hissing, and spitting. “Greetings, my friends,” was what came out of the translator. “I trust you have had an opportunity to review our latest proposal, version seven point seven point one. You will likely notice that it has changed substantially from version six point eight point five. We believe, given the inclusion of new material, that it warranted a complete version change.”

“You’re referring to the part you obviously added to justify seizing two Allied Stars planets,” Kira said, her tone blunt. She felt Damien glance at her, but she kept her gaze fixed on Tadrup.

It gave her no small satisfaction to see the Danzur taken aback. “You—” he began, then he leaned toward one of his functionaries and hissed something. The other Danzur nodded and left. Clearly, they’d caught the Danzur off guard. They probably thought word of the seizure of the border planets hadn’t arrived yet—and equally probably planned to use that information in the same way that it had just been used against them. One of the parties had been knocked off their game as expected. It just wasn’t the humans.

Damien capitalized on the aliens’ moment of discomfiture. “It’s somewhat disappointing, Tadrup, that you didn’t see fit to discuss the matter of your reduced trade with us before acting so precipitously. We’d be more than happy to add some form of enhanced Allied Stars trade with you to offset any losses resulting from our ongoing war with the Nyctus.”

Because there are going to be a lot more of those losses coming, Kira thought but didn’t say.

“My apologies,” Tadrup said, “but the Central Council wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with your military forces. They undertook this operation without informing anyone who wasn’t absolutely required to know, including me. Accordingly, I was only recently informed of this myself.”

“You wanted to avoid a military confrontation with us by invading our space and seizing our territory?” Kira said, but Damien cut her off.

“What Kira is saying, is that if we had had an opportunity to discuss this with you beforehand, no such move on your part would have been necessary. The risks of such a confrontation could have been avoided.”

“Does that risk still exist?” Tadrup asked.

“In such complex and evolving situations such as this, risk of unintended clashes between military forces is always a factor,” Damien said. “That’s why we seek to avoid them.”

Kira looked down at her data pad and pretended to read it, while Damien and Tadrup continued their intricate diplomatic sparring. Satisfied that Tadrup’s attention was safely off her, she drew a small amount of magical potential from the surrounding ether, then channeled it through her mind like conduits guiding electrical power, using them to establish a psychic link between her and Tadrup. She worked carefully, only slowly increasing her presence on the fringes of the Danzur’s mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d reached out and touched the aliens’ thoughts, but this was the first time it was in earnest, and not just an experiment to make sure she could even do it in the first place.

The babble of Tadrup’s thoughts rose like the murmur of an unseen crowd. Even more than those of humans, Danzur minds hummed with both conscious and unconscious activity on multiple levels. Kira couldn’t comprehend how a Danzur could get through their day, or even make sense of the world around them. They lived with such a clamor of thoughts, feelings, considerations, understandings, biases, and just general mental babble. But what Kira found a confusing slurry of psychic noise was just the way things worked for the Danzur. It meant Kira had to wallow in the onslaught of mental images and impressions, struggling to make sense of it all. She needed to find his current thoughts, which would revolve around the seized planets, and should therefore be prominent, at the forefront of his mind—

Thorn Stellers.

Kira reeled back. Of all the things she’d expected to find in Tadrup’s mind, Thorn’s identity had definitely not been one of them.

She pulled back her thoughts before she ended up betraying herself, then just sat for a moment, mind racing. Why the hell was Tadrup thinking about Thorn? Why was he so prominent in Tadrup’s mind? Had she let something slip about him? But, no. One thing she’d been meticulously careful about had been not mentioning anything about the ON, including its organization, deployments, ships, and personnel—especially Starcasters, Thorn foremost among them. Not only would it be an egregious violation of operational security—OPSEC—it risked giving the Danzur additional leverage against them.

The Danzur knew about Thorn, of course. He’d been part of the group that had made first contact with them. Tadrup himself hadn’t actually met Thorn when he’d been here, she knew, but he figured prominently in the Danzur’s thoughts. Far more so than simply knowing of him would explain.

Kira needed to talk to Damien, now. She could think of only one way that wouldn’t arouse undue suspicion among the Danzur. Once more, she gathered power and focused it on the Venture, which was docked only a hundred or so meters away from where she sat. She immediately touched the mind of one of her crew and grabbed the man’s thoughts, then she shaped them into something else, a new imperative.

Damien turned to Kira. “What do you think? Is there any way we can—”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a voice cut in over their comm. “A message has just arrived for you and Mister Forester. It’s marked priority alpha.”

Kira felt Damien look at her, but she just tapped her comm. “We’re on our way.” She turned to Tadrup. “My apologies, but priority alpha means—”

“That we must recess so you can attend to this,” Tadrup said. “Yes, I quite understand. Let us convene again in one hour.”

“Thank you,” Kira said, then she headed for the Venture, Damien at her side.

“I wonder what the hell this is about,” Damien said, his voice pitched low. “Hopefully, it’s not that shots were fired. I mean, we’re guaranteed diplomatic immunity per our initial agreement with the Danzur, but you never know with aliens.”

Kira narrowed her eyes but said nothing until they were safely aboard the Venture. Even then, she took a moment to fling a veil of magical denial around the ship. This was a specialized sort of Shade, isolating the ship not just from electronic and other mundane intrusions, but psychic ones, too. Not that the Danzur seemed to have any ability to use magic.

But maybe they did and just kept it well-hidden, and that’s how they’d learned about Thorn.

“Okay,” Damien said to the Rating who’d called them. “Where’s this urgent message?”

The man just stared. “I don’t know, sir.”

“You—what?”

“I don’t know. There isn’t one, as far as I know.”

Damien stiffened. “Then why did you—?”

“That was me,” Kira said as her Shade effect firmed up. She had to keep a glimmer of her attention on it to maintain it, but not enough to be a problem. In fact, she thought, she’d better get used to having to do this if the Danzur could somehow access their thoughts.

Damien turned to her. “You?”

“Yes.” She turned to the Rating. “And I’m really sorry. I made you call us up. I needed to get us out of there.”

“You . . . made me do it, ma’am?”

“Yes, I did. It’s not something I’d ever do unless it was really urgent.”

The Rating curled his lip. “Huh. Kinda wondered why I was telling you about a message that didn’t exist.” Kira waited for him to be outraged, but he just shrugged. “Hey, if you can do that, ma’am, there’s this Petty Officer back at Code Gauntlet that owes me some money but doesn’t pay up.”

“Hardly an interstellar emergency,” she said.

“But whatever this is about is?” Damien asked.

Kira nodded. “Tadrup was thinking about Thorn Stellers.”

“Thorn Stellers—you mean, the Starcaster?”

Kira nodded.

Damien gave her a blank look. “Okay. What was the context?”

“I don’t really know,” Kira said. “Danzur minds are basically alien, so they’re not easy to understand. All I really got was Thorn’s identity and some sort of connection to this trade dispute.”

“He was involved in first contact with the Danzur,” Damien said, “so it’s probably not surprising.”

Kira shook her head. “It’s more than that. He figures prominently in Tadrup’s mind, and it’s not just some sort of historical interest. He’s important to Tadrup now.” She stared for a moment, thinking. “Someone must have revealed something about Thorn to him.”

“Well, I only know Stellers by reputation, and even then, not in any sort of diplomatic context.” Damien glanced at the Rating. “Maybe one of the Venture’s crew?”

The Rating held up his hands. “Wasn’t me, sir or ma’am. I’ve exchanged maybe a dozen words with these Danzur the whole time we’ve been here.”

Kira nodded. “This isn’t the Venture’s first run around the planet doing this sort of diplomatic thing. I’d be surprised if any of her crew let anything slip.” She sighed. “It’s not like this is a hard science, but Tadrup’s thoughts just didn’t have that sort of feel to them, that one of us had said something out of turn. There likely would have been some sense of one of us attached to Tadrup’s thoughts. If he’d heard it from me, for instance, there’d be something of me associated with it. That’s especially true if I’m sitting right in front of him.”

“Unless Tadrup was just told about Stellers by another Danzur, right?”

Kira shook her head. “This isn’t like chemistry—put this together with that and get this third thing every time. So I can’t say that’s not the case, no. Hell, for that matter, I can’t say for sure if the Danzur might actually have some type of magical or psychic power that we just don’t know about.” She paused, considering that, but finally shook her head. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s it. I think Tadrup got information about Thorn from someone else.”

“A spy, maybe? Somewhere in the ON?” Damien asked.

“How about the Nyctus?” the Rating said, and they both turned to look at him. He immediately looked sheepish.

“Oh, uh . . . sorry, ma’am, sir. Guess I was just thinking out loud.”

“It’s a good thought, Rating,” Kira replied. “Actually, a very good one. The Nyctus know all about Thorn. He’s probably at the top of their hit list, in fact.”

“The implication of that is pretty disturbing,” Damien said.

Kira nodded. “Yeah. It means that there are ongoing relations between the Danzur and the Nyctus—and that Thorn somehow sits in the middle of them.”

* * *

Damien nodded across the table at Tadrup. “I think this is acceptable. We’ll stipulate to bullet points one through six, and eight through fourteen. I think we need to do a little more work on seven, and fifteen through eighteen.” He smiled. “But it’s the closest we’ve ever been to agreeing on what we’re going to discuss.”

“Perhaps,” Tadrup replied.

“Perhaps?”

“The situation is constantly evolving,” the Danzur said. “We should still consider these provisional.”

Damien leaned back. Kira leaned forward. They’d anticipated this in the wake of their conversation aboard the Venture about Thorn. The Danzur were either playing them and the Nyctus against one another, or worse, they were in league with the Nyctus and were just stringing them along.

So, it was time to hit back.

“Does this evolving situation involve Thorn Stellers?” Kira asked, her voice mild.

Tadrup’s mouth opened and closed. “I . . . am not sure what you mean. Who?”

“Tadrup, please,” Kira said. “Let’s not waste one another’s time. We’ve received information that you’re interested in Thorn Stellers, and we have a pretty good idea why.”

Okay, that last part about the why was a lie. But it had been Damien’s suggestion to include it. You could often get complete information about something out of someone if you could convince them somehow that you already knew part of it. It made perfect sense and underscored why Damien was here—he was really, really good at this diplomatic stuff.

Tadrup just sat for a moment. One of his underlings leaned in to whisper, but he waved the other Danzur off.

“Very well, then. Thorn Stellers represents a problem. He was responsible for the destruction of our trade in krol with the Nyctus. It is for his actions that we are seeking reparations.”

“The Nyctus are our enemies,” Kira said. “We’re at war with them. We’ve got no choice but to take every opportunity to attack and defeat them.”

“We accept that as true,” Tadrup said, “but also as irrelevant. Your conflict is of no concern to us. The effects of it, however, are.”

Kira glanced at Damien. She couldn’t help the sinking feeling that these negotiations had just slammed into a wall of stubbornness, and maybe even duplicity, and that the whole mission was about to fail.

Which would be a disaster. The ON would be hard-pressed to fight on two fronts.

“There is, however, a relatively easy way of resolving this matter,” Tadrup went on, suddenly looking and sounding a little more controlled.

“What would that be?” Damien asked.

“Allow us to take Thorn Stellers into custody. We will consider that sufficient reparation. At that point, we will withdraw from the disputed space and conclude a treaty with you that specifies respect for territorial boundaries, non-aggression, and the basis for a full trade agreement.” Even for a Danzur, he looked smug.

It took Kira a few seconds to realize that Tadrup had actually just said that. When she spoke, there was no outrage, just disbelief.

“Take Thorn into—what? Why?”

Tadrup’s dark eyes gleamed back at Kira.

“Why, to hand him over to the Nyctus, of course.”

13

Morgan once more drifted directly beneath the ice, but upside down this time, her small feet pressed against the rough, frigid ice that hemmed her world. She wanted to feel the ice, to know it—and the sensation was something new. It wasn’t pain, not yet, but she liked the way the ice stretched away as she hung there in the dark and quiet of her watery home.

“Ouch. That’s enough, ice.” Morgan smiled, pushing away with her numbed toes, the soles of her feet tender after long moments pressed against the cap. After a moment to reorient herself, she gazed down into the depths—

And caught the Radiance, the soft mingling of azure and emerald glow that lit the ocean in every direction, soft knurling rays of light in friendly tones of blue and green and silver. From here, she could see not just the city beneath her but, thanks to some trick of the water’s clarity, even more distant settlements. All of them were connected with lines of Radiance, but usually the water was a lot murkier than this. The Nyctus told her it had something to do with the vents and the billowing clouds of minerals they spewed into the water. As their activity waxed and waned in response to the changing forces inside the planet, the water around them became more or less cloudy with suspended sediment. Today was very clear, the clearest she could recall ever seeing, in fact.

For a little while, she just slowly turned around and around in place, taking full advantage of this marvelous opportunity to see so much, from so far away—

She stopped. She liked the Radiance. It was so soft, so peaceful. It was the color of friendship—of her friendship with the Nyctus of Tāmtu. The Radiance was their goodness made real, not like the other ones. Her Nyctus were good, Morgan knew, and the others were bad—all of them on the other worlds, far across the darkness between stars.

They weren’t her friends. They didn’t live in the sedate glow of the Radiance. They were red, orange, yellow, and black. Angry colors. Unfriendly colors.

Maybe that was why they were fighting the humans. Because they were angry almost all the time.

She stopped and bit her lip, thinking in the deliberate way of children. Hmmm.

Once more, she wondered what would happen if she made all Nyctus into her friends? Then maybe there’d be no war and no one else would get hurt. Not Nyctus, and not humans, either.

But something told her that wasn’t going to be enough. Just making the Nyctus her friends didn’t mean they’d like all humans. The Nyctus of Tāmtu were her friends, but they still talked about their war. Morgan did not like war. She didn’t like violence, really, or even thinking about making living things hurt.

She bit her lip again. So what if the Nyctus had always been friends with humans? Then the war never would have happened in the first place. She could still be on Nebo with Mommy and Daddy, and nobody would be hurt or dead from the war, and everything would be right again.

Could she do that? She knew she could change the way things were now—but could she go back and change things in the past, things that had already happened?

There was one way to find out. Morgan dove back toward the city, intent on finding the elder shaman.

* * *

“You want to do what, child?”

“Go back before we were all mad and fighting,” Morgan said, “and make it so everyone’s friends with one another. Make it so they’ve always been friends, and none of this stupid war stuff ever happened. Mommy called it peace, I think, but I’m not sure. I was really little, but I think Daddy—Thorn Daddy—said the same thing in the dream. Peace. I like that word, don’t you?”

“I approve of peace, yes. You are talking about going back in time and changing events,” the elder shaman said. The idea obviously upset him, because flashes of bright purple flickered along his body.

“Uh, yeah. That’s right.”

“Even if such a thing were possible, child, we have no idea what the effects would be.”

“Everyone would be friends!”

The shaman paused, its bioluminescence fading to a more thoughtful, introspective pulse of lights. “Imagine this,” the shaman finally said. “Imagine you go back in time. While you’re there, you kill your grandfather.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Just bear with me, child. Imagine you did that.”

Morgan sighed. “Okay.” She’d never known her grandfather—any of them—and can’t imagine why she’d do something like that. But it didn’t make her feel much, either. Whoever her grandfathers were, they were still complete strangers to her.

“Alright, so your grandfather is now dead,” the shaman went on. “That means that he doesn’t exist to be father to your own mother or father.”

“Okay,” Morgan said. She still didn’t get it, but she went along with whatever the shaman was trying to explain to her.

“So that means that your father or mother wouldn’t have been born. So—”

Morgan kept staring.

“What would that mean, child?” The shaman’s tone patient but insistent.

“Uh—” Morgan bit her lip and scratched an ear. Suddenly, she brightened. “Oh, I know, I’d have a different mommy or daddy!”

The elder shaman flashed an amused green. “It’s far, far more likely, child, that you wouldn’t exist at all. Or, if you did, you would be a different person completely. Either way, you couldn’t, or probably wouldn’t, be able to go back in time to kill your grandfather in the first place. And that means—”

“That they’d still be alive,” Morgan said, rolling her eyes.

“That’s right. Which means that you would be born, and would go back and kill them, but then you wouldn’t be born, so you couldn’t go back and kill them.”

Morgan scowled. What was the shaman trying to say?

“Oh. Wait,” she said, as the problem started to solidify. She couldn’t go back in time and kill her grandfather, because if she did, then she didn’t. But she did. But she didn’t—

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “There’s—” She shook her head. She suddenly couldn’t make sense of it.

“Something is wrong, yes,” the shaman said. “Both things can’t be true, but both are. That’s called a paradox. And that’s the problem with going backward in time and changing things. You make now different, and that creates the paradox.”

Morgan stared into the distance, thinking. The water had turned murky again. She could see only the spires of the nearest buildings around them. A few moments passed before she gave up. The shaman was right, there was no way to—

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I could go back in time and not kill my grandfather. Then there’s no . . . uh . . . pair of—”

“Paradox.”

She smiled. Such a funny word. “There’s no para-dox.”

“But that’s the problem, child. You might go back in time and do your absolute best to change nothing at all, but you just being there is a change. You could get in somebody’s way and delay them by a few seconds so they miss a terrible accident that should have killed them. So they live on, and their descendants are alive today—people who never existed before. There’s no way to know what changes that could cause, including making new paradoxes.”

Morgan sighed. This was too complicated. All she wanted to do was go back and make it so that the Nyctus and humans were all her friends, and friends with each other, so there was no stupid war. Everyone who died in the war would still be alive, and their families and friends would be happy—how could that not be better?

“I don’t want any para-doxes. I just want to make it so that all the Nyctus are like you. So they’re all my friends. And I want to make all the humans my friends, too.”

Now the shaman flickered violet with alarm. “You risk damaging everything, everywhere, child. You mustn’t do that.”

“But I want to!”

“Child, no.”

Morgan’s eyes stung. “I thought you were my friend!”

“I am. It’s because I’m your friend that I’m trying to help you see that you must not do this.”

Morgan wiped at her eyes, a reflexive but pointless thing, since her tears just vanished into the water around her. “No,” she said, her voice breaking. “If you were my friend, you’d want the war to not have ever happened. You’d want to help me.”

The shaman gleamed a soft, soothing turquoise. “I do want to help you. Of course, I do. Sometimes helping means telling someone not to do something. Especially if it might cause lots of trouble for them, and for everyone else.”

Morgan turned away. She’d had this wonderful, fantastic idea, and the shaman was telling her it wasn’t wonderful or fantastic at all. The thing about paradoxes seemed so weird. Certainly too weird to let it get in her way.

She turned back to the shaman, but not to argue. Instead, Morgan reached down inside her and gathered up some of that tingly magical power—not very much, because she didn’t need very much. She only needed to—

The shaman, for the first time since Morgan had made it her friend, glittered with furious crimson.

“Child, no—!”

Morgan changed things. Again, not very much. She just changed the universe a tiny bit so that the elder shaman would be even more her friend. A friend who wouldn’t lecture her or get in her way or anything like that.

The shaman’s crimson bioluminescence faded through bright purple, then a deeper mauve, then indigo, then blue. Soon that was shot through with green, a green that was exactly the color of the Radiance.

“You must do what you think is best, child,” the shaman said.

Morgan looked at him sidelong. “And you won’t try to stop me?”

“Of course not. Why would I do such a thing?” The shaman’s voice was docility itself, and it reached to Morgan, tentacles extended for a kind touch. Morgan let herself be embraced by them and just hung, for a while, in the creature’s embrace. Finally, she pulled away. She wanted to try something to make sure.

“I want to go back in time and make all the Nyctus, and all the humans, my friends. And I want to make them friends with each other, too, so there’s no war and everybody’s happy.”

“That is a marvelous idea, child,” the shaman said, head bobbing in agreement.

“You don’t mind if I do that?”

“I’m sure you know what is best.”

Morgan grinned. “I do! And it’s going to be so good!”

“I’m sure it will, child. I’m sure it will.”

14

Thorn lay on this back in the witchport, exploring his magical reserves as the Hecate prepared for its first Alcubierre hop following her frantic repairs. It wasn’t a long one, just enough for her to get away from the space where she’d fought and been damaged, a process known as clearing the datum. Tanner had been clear, in fact, about his surprise that the Nyctus hadn’t raced new forces toward them. He expected them to try to catch the Hecate before she could do that all-important thing, clear the datum. But the only sign of the Nyctus in all the time she’d been sitting here had been the debris from the battle, slowly dispersing.

Thorn didn’t open the witchport, instead using eldritch power to extend his awareness in a huge bubble around the ship. It taxed him far more than it should have, showing how reduced his powers still were. But it also meant that there should be no opportunity for an enemy to sneak up on the Hecate the way the Nyctus had—at least not magically.

Unless, of course, they were Bertilak.

Bertilak was a challenge, and not just because he was too loud, too happy, too boisterous—too everything. No, it was also the fact that Bertilak and his ship were still strangely null from a magical perspective. Thorn could see the alien’s ship on the tactical repeater, but he had absolutely no sense of it in his ’caster awareness. He had assumed that he’d eventually see through whatever effect was causing it. Even thought it might be some strange, lingering aftermath of whatever the Nyctus had done to launch their ambush so close to the Hecate. But it hadn’t faded or changed at all. From a magical perspective, Bertilak and his ship simply didn’t exist.

An alarm chimed, proclaiming that the Alcubierre drive would initiate in thirty seconds. Thorn ran through the standard checklist, making sure his little corner of the ship was properly configured for superluminal flight.

He checked the tactical repeater again. Sure enough, Bertilak’s strange green ship hung on station a few tens of klicks away. Thorn had been relieved when the Chief Engineer declared the Alcubierre drive operational and ready, but it had been short-lived.

Because Bertilak was coming with them.

“I shall come with you, as it is the only reasonable decision,” the alien had announced when Tanner and the Hecate’s senior officers met with him in the forward mess. It had been intended as a thank you and farewell sort of meeting but had abruptly changed course with Bertilak’s suggestion. “After all, your ship still requires substantial repairs. I would hate for you to once again run afoul of the Nyctus—all of my hard work would be undone, and I sense that engineering is an area I have much to share about. No disrespect intended to your honorable crew, of course.” He laughed but quickly became more somber. “In addition, I like you. All of you, and I find myself in the position of wanting you to remain safe. The Nyctus are dangerous. The galaxy is dangerous, don’t you agree?”

Tanner and the other officers had been openly, almost effusively grateful for Bertilak’s offer to fly cover for the Hecate. Thorn had managed a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

He was still considering the Bertilak issue when the Hecate’s Alcubierre drive lit, flinging her back toward ON-controlled space. The stars shifted, and Thorn remained confused by the absence of Bertilak’s presence.

Thorn settled into his thoughts as the ship hurtled across the black. Magic or not, I’ll find out.

* * *

Tanner flicked off the intercom and looked around at those gathered in his briefing room. Between the XO, Thorn, the Tac O, and the Nav O, the little compartment felt even more cramped than usual. Thorn wasn’t especially claustrophobic, but if he had to spend too much time jammed in here like this, he just might have to consider it.

“That means the drive will be ready in about twelve hours,” the XO said, smiling.

The Captain smiled back briefly. “I see you’ve seen through our good Chief’s little ruse of doubling the time he says he needs, then completing the job in half that and looking like a hero.”

“I know,” the XO replied. “Every Chief Engineer I’ve worked with has done it. It must come with the position.”

Tanner turned to the Nav O. “Have you got a fix on our location yet?”

“To within about two light-years, yes, sir. We should have it nailed down completely within the hour.”

Thorn had to admit, it was kind of nice to not be the one responsible for throwing the Hecate into some unknown part of space. Mind you, they weren’t off in some remote spot, far away from friendly space. Instead, the Alcubierre drive had cut out late, making the Hecate overshoot her intended destination in what seemed to be an entirely random direction. They were definitely in ON space but still weren’t sure quite where. The Nav O needed to once more find reference pulsars and work out their position from those. Until the problem with the drive was fixed, Tanner didn’t want to try another hop. Any use of the drive might have the ship leaping randomly about in space, never ending up where they wanted it to.

“Captain Tanner,” a voice cut in over the intercom. “We just had a ship drop in, about five thousand klicks off our port bow. Oh, and it’s green. It’s Bertilak.”

Tanner’s face became a mixture of surprise and amusement. “How the hell did he find us?”

“Good question,” Thorn said, his tone earning a sharp glance from Tanner.

“Something to add, Lieutenant?”

Thorn looked at him. “Just seems strange, sir. We hopped to an entirely different destination than we meant to, but Bertilak somehow still manages to find us? How?”

Tanner turned to the Nav O. “It’s a fair question. Any ideas?”

The Nav O thought for a moment. “Sorry, sir. No idea,” he finally said. “Maybe Bertilak has some way of tracking ships running their Alcubierre drives—”

“Which would be yet another piece of tech I’d really like to get my hands on,” the XO said. “Just like that kick-ass weapon system of his.”

Tanner nodded. “XO, contact Bertilak and invite him back aboard. I frankly didn’t think he’d still be with us, but since he is, it’s time to get to know him better.”

* * *

Bertilak swung a leg over the bench and dropped into a seat at one of the tables. They were back in the forward mess. Tanner had decided on meeting the big alien with the XO and Thorn in tow, but in a neutral part of the ship. That gave Thorn a measure of satisfaction. Everyone else was so enamored by the big green man that he’d expected him to have the run of the ship by now. Tanner still maintained OPSEC protocols, though, restricting Bertilak to only a few common areas. It didn’t seem to bother him.

“Perfectly understandable,” was all he said, his tone amenable.

Once Bertilak was seated, Tanner leaned forward. “My crew”—he glanced at Thorn— “are wondering how you managed to find us. Considering we ended up a long way from where we meant to be, it is an interesting question.”

“Of course it is,” Bertilak replied. “Nor is it any great mystery. I’ve configured my ship’s sensors to lock onto the Hecate, so I’ll always know where she is if she’s within twenty-five light-years.”

There was a moment of silence. The XO finally broke it.

“How? How do you keep a sensor lock on a specific ship? And over such a huge distance?”

Bertilak shrugged. “It’s how my ship’s sensors work.”

Tanner laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the table. “And that is something we’d like to explore with you, Bertilak. You have tech that we find interesting—” Tanner stopped and shook his head. “Hell, I’ll just come out and say it. You have tech that we’d love to be able to examine, maybe even acquire from you.”

Bertilak smiled and nodded. “Unfortunately, Captain, my ship is not for sale.”

Tanner held up a hand. “I understand that. I’m not proposing to purchase your ship. I was thinking more of a partnership agreement of some sort. Maybe—and I’m just thinking out loud, here—we could offer you preferred trade access throughout Allied Stars space in exchange for an opportunity to study your tech.”

Now it was Bertilak’s turn to hold up a hand. “Captain Tanner, you may have noticed that I am less concerned with the structure of your society, and by association, your military. Is it fair to assume you’ve seen this?”

“It is,” Tanner said.

“I am Bertilak. I am my own island in a sea of stars, and thus, I am bored.”

“You’re . . . bored?” Tanner’s brows shot up, but he did his best to remain crisp and professional.

“Yes. Bored. Your probe into how to best leverage my ship is . . . cumbersome. Not unexpected, but still, not what I hope for as I move from star to star, ever seeking distraction. It may be that I have a proposal to fit both our needs, though it will not be standard. Not by any measure of your Orbital Navy,” Bertilak said. He was watching Thorn as he spoke.

“I’m listening,” Tanner said, head tilted. He was openly curious, and Thorn didn’t like the direction they were heading.

“A wager.”

“A wager? What sort of wager?”

Bertilak leaned forward. “You and I will fight. If I win, I will bring you aboard my ship, and we will travel together, and you can learn whatever you wish about my technology. If you win, I shall give you a free run of my ship now and spare you the miserable experience of being my traveling companion.”

Silence hung in the air. Thorn saw the XO’s eyes widen. Tanner just stared. “Fight?” he asked. “As in physically fight one another?”

“Well, we could take up firearms and shoot at one another, but I don’t think that actually being seriously injured or killed would suit either of us. We’re not animals, you know.”

“I appreciate the offer, Bertilak,” Tanner said, sitting back, “but I’m afraid I must decline. I can’t simply leave the Hecate and take off to parts unknown with you—even if there is a certain appeal to it.”

“There is?” Thorn muttered, and Tanner shot him a glare.

“Would you be willing to take on Bertilak, Lieutenant Stellers? I understand that you’re quite the capable hand-to-hand fighter, and you’ve made it clear that you find him more than a little fascinating.”

“You do?” Bertilak said, grinning widely. “I am flattered, Lieutenant, and I mean that sincerely.”

Thorn looked from one to the other. “You’re proposing that I fight Bertilak, sir? I’m a Starcaster, not an engineer. Me traveling with him would be—I’d be a glorified observer, in truth.”

“That only matters if you lose,” Bertilak said, his grin widening even more. “Do you expect to lose, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a good point,” Tanner put in. “If you beat him, we get full access to his tech right away.”

“That sounds like a good deal,” the XO said.

Thorn shook his head. “Sir, this is . . . crazy. You’re proposing I fight Bertilak over his tech?”

Tanner’s gaze bore into Thorn’s eyes. “Why not? Even if you lose, and you become Bertilak’s guest for a time, it will give you an opportunity to learn other things about him—things that you’ve admitted are quite unique.”

Bertilak’s eyebrows shot up. “Ah, and what unique things would these be?”

“Lieutenant Stellers has observed that his magic doesn’t seem to interact with you or your ship at all,” Tanner replied. “Given the reliance of the Nyctus on their own use of magic, that could prove pretty damned useful.”

Bertilak’s grin faded a touch. “I knew that you exploited this thing you call magic in pursuit of victory in your war, but I had no idea that I am allegedly immune to its effects. Now that is interesting.”

Thorn turned to Tanner, determined to keep an imploring tone out of his voice. “Sir, I think my time is better used here, aboard the Hecate.” The situation—absurd as it was—was spiraling out of control.

“Again, you’ll only leave the Hecate if you lose,” Tanner replied.

Thorn drew in a breath through his nose, eyes going up to the ceiling. “Yes, sir, I get that. But—”

“Look at this way, Lieutenant,” Bertilak said, “it will give you something useful to do.”

Thorn stopped, turned, looked squarely at the alien. “Clarify that for me, Bertilak. Now, if you don’t mind.” Spots of color rose on Thorn’s cheeks, and Tanner shifted in his chair, sensing an open anger in the Starcaster that was a new and disquieting side of him.

Bertilak gave Thorn a sympathetic look. “I understand that you have been . . . less than capable lately. I don’t presume to understand the reasons why, but this would give you an opportunity to contribute a great deal to your war effort.”

Thorn just sat, staring as the alien trash-talked him in front of the captain. It was, Thorn had to admit, a surreal moment. A column of resentment erupted inside him. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. He’d done some amazing, entirely unprecedented things to advance the ON cause, and he’d paid for it with his blood and years off his life.

And now it was all being called into question—granted, in a glib, personable tone, but still—he was slyly being called a coward, and a useless one at that.

Thorn finally found his voice, clearing his throat to buy a moment as the heated response cooled on his tongue. His words were replaced by something only mildly less aggressive, a fact that Tanner saw at once.

“Fine,” Thorn snapped. “I accept this idiotic, primal challenge. I’m going to whip your ass, and then I’m going to watch as our crew unbolts your ship down to the frame, and there won’t be a fu—”

“We get the point, Stellers,” Tanner interrupted, smoothly ending the rant before it could really gain altitude.

Bertilak laughed and slapped the table, his face split by a smile of comical proportions. “The fighting spirit is here! I knew you had it in you, friend. I believe you have a gymnasium aboard your fine ship—when you are ready, I will meet you there, and we shall settle our wager with a clean brawl and clear hearts.”

Thorn looked at Tanner and the XO, but there was no help from them. So he sighed, took the measure of Bertilak once more, and felt his anger begin to rise all over again.

“Bet on it, you big green bastard.”

* * *

Thorn pulled off his training shoes and socks and stood, limbering up with the practiced ease of someone who had been in a fighting circle once or twice. Thorn was a seasoned fighter who used every part of his body to win.

In short, he fought dirty and made no apologies for it.

As an orphan who was small, he’d learned to be quick. When he gained height and strength, he learned to be ruthless.

The gym was empty, except for Osborne, who regarded Thorn with a gentle amusement at the absurd nature of what was about to happen. A fight. An actual fight, and one that had massive implications for the war effort—and Thorn’s career.

Osborne, who had a secondary duty as the ship’s sports and fitness officer, chose to retreat to a wall, where he stood, watching the door for Bertilak’s arrival. The rest of the crew not involved in repairs, or other ship operations, would watch the fight through the intercom’s vid-link, since the gym was much too small to accommodate many spectators. Osborne had wisely decided that, given that they had no idea how wildly the big alien fought, they also had no idea how safe it would be to be near the combat.

And so, Osborne hugged the wall, hands on hips and eyes darting with unusual speed from Thorn, to the door, and back to Thorn, who stepped into the middle of the gym, his feet silent on the padded floor. He wore a black gi he’d picked up during the Hecate’s last stopover at Code Gauntlet. The loose-fitting top and trousers were far better for sparring than the regular gym gear he used to wear. More importantly, Thorn fancied the outfit gave him a persona outside his role as a Starcaster. Clad in black, Thorn was a simple fighter—a man waiting on his role in a contest, and doing so with an expression so bland as to be unreadable.

Osborne turned to Thorn. “Technically, Bertilak’s late,” he said, checking the time. “He has another three minutes, and I guess he forfeits.”

The door slid open and Bertilak strode in. “Did I hear something about forfeiting?” The alien grinned at Thorn. “Have you decided you wish to join me on my travels after all, my friend, so we can just forego the fight completely?”

Thorn shook his head. “You wish. I only hope you aren’t too lonely once you start on your way.”

Bertilak laughed, removing his vest and the belt still hung with myriad gadgets. He kicked off his sandals and padded toward the center of the gym. “Two competing versions of reality, eh? Well, let’s see which of us can make theirs ring with truth, shall we?”

Thorn stopped short. Was Bertilak making some sidelong reference to Thorn’s magic? Thorn had never explained any of the details of how he did the things he did—so who had? Or was there something more going on here?

“Thorn, you ready?” Osborne asked.

Thorn shook away his moment of surprised suspicion and nodded. He stepped toward the center of the gym and stopped a few paces away from Bertilak. As he did, he found himself keenly aware of how much the big alien towered over him. Thorn was going to have to win this fast, because a drawn out fight would probably favor Bertilak, especially if he were able to get his greater mass and longer reach into play.

“Alright, you both know the rules,” Osborne said. “Any questions?”

Thorn shook his head. “Nope.”

“I have one,” Bertilak said. “For Thorn. Why don’t you like me?”

Thorn just stared, blinking. Not what he’d expected, but still, the question was oddly insightful, given how excessive Bertilak appeared to be.

Osborne stepped back and shouted, “Fight!”

Bertilak’s smile faded. “It’s a simple question. Why don’t you like me? Ever since I came aboard this ship, you’ve mistrusted me. I don’t understand.” His face had gone completely somber, even grave, by the time he’d finished speaking. It was unsettling and gave Thorn pause.

Strange time to want to do this, Thorn thought, but whatever. “I just think—”

It was all he got out before a massive fist slammed into his face like a meteor strike.

Thorn reeled backward, greenish light and a shrill whine filling his head. Desperately, he raised his hands to block any more blows, but a fraction too late. Another huge fist crashed into his stomach, doubling him over.

Thorn gritted his teeth and charged, lashing out with his own fists, trying to shove himself deeper inside Bertilak’s threat range, frantically hoping it would minimize the alien’s ability to bring those huge fists into play. At the same time, he kicked up and out, his foot connecting with something that felt like a slab of ablative armor. Still, Bertilak grunted with the impact, giving Thorn a faint hope that he might be able to—

A grip like a hydraulic vice snapped closed around Thorn, then it lifted him and smashed him down against the padded deck. The hit drove the breath out of Thorn with a heavy oof and left him momentarily stunned.

Through watering eyes, Thorn saw Bertilak back away. The big alien was grinning again, apparently content to wait for Thorn to get back up.

So Thorn did, levering himself up to his knees, then clambering back to his feet. The whine shrilling away behind his eyes had abated some. He raised his fists, then licked at something warm and sticky smeared across his lips.

Blood from his nose, which was probably broken.

Thorn shook his head. “Sucker punch, huh? That”—he licked away blood again—“says a lot about you, Bertilak.”

The alien looked anything but apologetic. “The universe is an unforgiving place.”

Thorn launched himself, trying to land a sucker punch—actually, kick—of his own. Thorn’s best trick was his ability to kick high, something he’d honed over years of fighting his way through orphanages, foster placements, and shithole planets as he labored alongside what amounted to little more than criminals. More than once, he’d ended a fight with it.

It almost worked.

As Tanner sometimes observed, almost was good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear warheads, but not something like this. Thorn’s speed and power caught Bertilak by surprise, but he was just a little faster. The alien dodged back, at the same time snapping his hands out to grab Thorn’s foot and shove it to one side. The unexpected change in his momentum left Thorn fumbling. He pitched backward, catching himself with an outflung hand so he didn’t end up completely on his back again. But Bertilak had already reversed direction and bore in, driving Thorn to the mat with his weight.

Thorn struggled for a moment but couldn’t shift the alien off of him. Worse, Bertilak was able to get his hands free, while keeping Thorn pinned with his legs long enough to wind up and deliver a massive blow—

To the mat beside Thorn’s head.

Osborne’s whistle blew. Bertilak immediately stood and backed away, stretching out a huge green hand to help Thorn stand.

For a wild instant, Thorn considered just saying screw it and flinging himself at Bertilak, sucker punching him the way the alien had done to him. But he choked back his outrage and accepted the offered hand. Bertilak pulled him to his feet like he was lifting a child.

“Ready?” Osborne said, raising a hand to resume the fight.

Thorn started to tense—

But he relaxed, released a breath that tasted of blood, and shook his head. Instead, he offered his hand to Bertilak to shake.

“You’re conceding?” Osborne asked, his eyebrows arched in surprise.

Thorn nodded, wincing as he did. “I might be stubborn, but I’m not stupid.” He wiped at his nose with his other hand. “I might still be able to win this, but I’m not sure . . . what shape I’d be in at the end of it.”

Bertilak laughed and shook Thorn’s hand. “I am glad to see your ability to adapt, given the fact that I like you. It would serve little purpose to come aboard my ship for some interesting adventures, only for me to spend most of the time caring for a wounded hero whose condition was due to his endless valor.”

Thorn returned to where he’d left his clothing and grabbed a towel that he used to dab at his face. It came away with multiple smears of blood. As he gathered his things, he shot Bertilak a sidelong glance.

The sucker punch aside, Thorn knew—after grudgingly admitting it to himself—that Bertilak was simply too powerful for him to defeat in hand-to-hand combat. He had Thorn outmatched in every way; moreover, he seemed ready for Thorn’s moves in a way that either meant light-speed reflexes, or—

Something else.

And if there was something else, something Bertilak was hiding, he needed to find a way to figure out what it was.

The door slid open, admitting Tanner and Raynaud, the XO. They congratulated Bertilak, then crossed the gym to Thorn.

“You’ve made some of the crew very happy, Lieutenant,” the XO said.

“Some of the crew?”

“The ones who bet against you.”

Thorn dabbed at his face again, grimacing as bright spots of pain lit up—mostly his nose, but also his right cheek and temple, and the left side of his jawline. “There were actually people betting for me? Remind me to buy them a beer.”

“The real risk takers,” Tanner said. “And not many of them, apparently.”

Thorn sniffed and coughed a bit as he swallowed more blood. “Nice to have the confidence of the crew,” he muttered darkly.

Tanner, though, shook his head. “No need to be all sour about this, Stellers. In fact, conceding the way you did showed some character that I think impressed a lot of your shipmates.”

“Even the ones who were hoping to see a lot more blood,” the XO put in.

“So, Thorn, you are welcome to come aboard my ship when you are ready,” Bertilak said. “Once the Hecate is back underway, we’ll start our own journey together. I must admit, I am quite excited, as this is all a new thing for us. For me, that is.”

Thorn looked at him, eyes still unfocused. “Yes. I’m giddy.”

Bertilak just laughed.

Tanner smirked and shook his head. “There’s one thing that’s certain, Stellers.”

“What’s that, sir?”

The Captain turned and looked at him, a twinkle in his eye. “Better you fighting him than me.”

15

Kira stared at the Danzur standing in front of the door to her assigned quarters. “What do you mean, I no longer have access?”

“It is the direction I’ve received,” the alien replied. “These quarters have been reassigned. I’ve been instructed to take you to new accommodation.”

Kira decided not to argue as it would be a pointless waste of breath. She’d had enough experience with the Danzur. “Fine,” she snapped. “Lead the way.”

The Danzur nodded and started along the corridor, Kira following. They descended a short flight of steps into a dingier, more mechanical-feeling part of the orbiting platform, another corridor lined with pipes and conduits. The Danzur opened a compartment and gestured inside.

“This is your new accommodation,” he said. “The door has been keyed to you by facial recognition.”

Kira peered inside. She saw a spartan bed, a table, a chair, a terminal—and that was it. There were no viewports, just blank bulkheads lined with yet more of the ubiquitous conduits. One of them hissed, carrying some fluid or gas with a faint, teeth-vibrating harmonic whine.

“This is it?” she asked.

The Danzur nodded, then turned and walked away.

And that was that.

Kira’s quarters aboard the Stiletto weren’t much, just a typical junior officer’s berth—and they were still larger and better appointed than this.

The Danzur were clearly sending her a message. Okay, so this set the tone for it, and not a good one.

She wondered what the message itself said.

* * *

“What do you mean they won’t see us?” Kira ground out, rubbing the bridge of her nose with two fingers.

Damien shrugged. “I’ve got two messages into Tadrup. He hasn’t responded to either of them. In the meantime, I have gotten several messages, basically empty statements saying nothing, just bureaucratic gobbledygook.”

“Bureaucratic gobbledygook? So, just regular Danzur conversation, then.”

“There was one notification updating us on our docking fees.”

“Docking fees? For a diplomatic mission?”

“Well, at least our diplomatic credentials haven’t been rescinded. That’s something, anyway.”

“We need to talk to Tadrup.”

“Which is why I’ve been trying to message him,” Damien replied. “I’m open to suggestions, though.”

Kira looked around the Venture’s interior. The little ship suddenly seemed like a safe place of refuge—but a terribly vulnerable one. It would only take a matter of minutes for the Danzur to seize control of it if they wanted to. And even if they undocked and tried to just run, they’d likely never survive the transit through Danzur-controlled space long enough to fire up the Alcubierre drive—

Unless Kira Shaded the ship, which she could do. The result of all that would, of course, be the end of the diplomatic mission, and quite likely the start of some severely tense relations with the Danzur, if not outright war.

She sighed. “We need to try to get these talks back on track.”

“Agreed. We’ve already used most of our resources, though. We don’t have much clout left. Well, except for Thorn Stellers.”

Kira shot him a glance. “You’re not serious.”

“About handing him over? Of course not. I’d like to think that that’s not how we do business.”

Try as she might, Kira could see no situation that ended with them handing Thorn over to an enemy. But who knew what might happen if the situation got desperate enough.

“I suppose we could try to sweeten the pot of trade deals,” Damien said. “I mean, I do have a little more latitude to do that without going too far out on a limb.” He glared at the deck. “I just don’t think it’s going to help. The Danzur want something from us, something we haven’t yet offered them.”

“Yeah. Thorn.”

“Not necessarily,” Damien replied. “It’s an outrageous request, and they have to know it’s an outrageous request.”

Kira crossed her arms. “You’re assuming they think like we do. Maybe dealing in lives is just another form of . . . I don’t know, commerce, or trade, or whatever to them.”

Damien shrugged. “Possibly. But I don’t think so. There’s nothing in the background briefing materials suggesting it, and I can’t think of anything we’ve seen since we arrived that would really indicate it, either.” He shook his head. “No, they must know we’d never agree to hand over not just a citizen, but an ON officer.”

“And a Starcaster,” Kira said. “Quite likely the most powerful Starcaster at that.”

“Mind you, I suppose there is a risk that we’re misreading them, in which case their next move would be to take us hostage and offer to exchange us for Stellers.”

Kira shook her head. “Not going to happen. At least, not while I can still put up a fight.”

Damien gave her a narrow-eyed look. “That might be our ace in the hole, you know.”

“That might—what?”

“We’ve never actually come out and said that you’re a Starcaster—it’s not something the Danzur need to know. But they obviously know about the existence of Starcasters, probably from the Nyctus.”

“Okay.”

“Well, if the Danzur suspect that you’re a Starcaster, they might be leery of making any sort of direct move against us.”

“Sure, but for how long?”

“Long enough for us to do what we’re going to do next.”

Kira gave Damien a puzzled glance. “Which is?”

“Ah, well,” Damien replied, “you see—I have absolutely no idea. I was hoping you did.”

* * *

They eventually decided that the best approach was a direct one of their own. If the Danzur were leery of Kira because they suspected her of having unknown powers, then they would use that to their advantage.

“I’ve set up a meeting with Tadrup,” Damien said. “When we said we were willing to talk about Stellers, he grudgingly agreed.”

“Well, that’s good,” Kira said. “It at least gets our foot in the door.”

“He won’t be available.”

“I thought you just said you’d set up a meeting with him.”

Damien nodded. “I did. But he’ll send some underlings. It’s going to turn out that some other pressing business will be keeping him away.”

Kira had to shake her head. “Why? What would be the point?”

“It lets them keep the initiative—control the flow of events,” Damien replied.

“Have I mentioned that I hate these diplomatic mind games?”

“More than once.”

“Okay, fine,” Kira said. “So what do we do about it?”

“Make sure Tadrup shows up.”

“Wow. What a great idea. The question is, how do we do that exactly?”

Damien smiled. “Well, that’s where we take advantage of that spooky Starcaster reputation you have.”

* * *

Kira simply sat and waited for Damien to finish his diatribe.

“Frankly, we find it inappropriate. Unacceptable. As a diplomat, I’m offended—dare I say angered at such a wanton display of crude behavior, well beneath the commonly held value structure of a people who are known to grasp just what it means to be civilized.” Damien drew in another breath, finger pointing skyward as he launched into his next statement, cheeks colored red with anger. “Tadrup agreed to this meeting, so it’s only reasonable, I think, for Tadrup to be here, unless my understanding of language has deteriorated overnight!” Damien barked.

Wow, Kira thought—damned fine performance. Damien was really pulling out the big diplomatic guns here, and the hand gestures were a nice addition. Damien looked like an orchestral conductor bellowing at his wayward performers, and the whole image worked.

The Danzur across the table just nodded, though, too seasoned to take the bait. “I understand, and sympathize. Unfortunately, the situation is beyond his control. He asked me to assure you that he would make himself available as soon as he could.”

“We’d appreciate speaking with him now,” Damien replied.

The Danzur underling stared back at him. That was Kira’s cue.

She summoned magic to her, then crafted it into a tendril of suggestion, one that would allow her to shape the Danzur’s thoughts like potter’s clay. It helped that this Danzur was just a functionary. A complete lack of imagination made her task that much easier. She nudged and tweaked the alien’s thoughts as they formulated yet another empty answer to Damien’s statement.

“I will go and get him,” the Danzur said, voice flat and oddly hollow as he stood to leave the meeting room. The alien seemed a little hesitant, a lingering residue of free will, but Kira didn’t care. She was beyond tired of these Danzur and their petty, scheming bureaucracy, and it was time to flex her power.

“Thank you,” Damien said, smiling broadly.

He glanced at Kira but said nothing. The plan was for them to wait in silence, since the Danzur presumably had the meeting room bugged.

But Kira turned to Damien. “I do like working with Tadrup. He’s been really helpful.”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“You remember,” Kira said, winking, “when he gave me that thing—well, it’s been damned helpful. We wouldn’t be this far without that data, and as for the upper hand in those contracts? Without him, no way.”

Damien smiled, so blandly as to be robotic. “Oh that. He’ll be rewarded. Not sure how, but—"

The door slid open. Tadrup entered, followed by the Danzur who’d just fetched him.

“I understand that you are reconsidering your position regarding Thorn Stellers,” Tadrup said.

Damien gave Kira a curious—and prearranged—glance. “I don’t know what you mean, Tadrup. We simply asked to meet with you to resume negotiations for a way forward.”

Tadrup shot a quick glance at the other Danzur. “I was informed that you had changed your minds about handing over Stellers to us.”

“I’m sorry, Tadrup, but no,” Damien said. “We merely wished—”

“Enough!”

Tadrup’s single word cracked like a gunshot. Kira had seen it coming, a growing tension in his thoughts, like a balloon expanding, stretching, finally reaching its breaking point.

“You are wasting my time,” Tadrup said, his translated voice now closer to the snarls, hisses, and growls of their actual speech than Kira had ever heard it. “I’m sure you believe you’re being clever, but you’re not.”

“Tadrup, we are—” Damien began, but it was Tadrup’s turn to push on, accepting no interruption.

“Dealing in bad faith is what you are doing. We have made our position clear. Deliver Thorn Stellers to us and we will conclude an agreement with you. Otherwise, we will be at war.”

“Tadrup, there has to be some other—”

“No! There isn’t! There is no other way that we are willing to accept!”

Kira kept as much of her mind as she could on the physical conversation, but she focused most of her concentration on his thoughts. She watched them, feeling them, as Tadrup’s mind formulated ideas and crafted them into words.

“Tadrup,” Damien said, “a war between us benefits no one except the Nyctus. It weakens both you and us, making it that much easier for them to prevail.”

“We have had nothing but favorable, and quite lucrative dealings with the Nyctus,” Tadrup shot back. “They have proven themselves to be honest and dependable. All that your race has done is harm our relations with them. If anything, we would formalize our alliance with them and take up arms against you.”

“Tadrup—” Damien started.

“No! The Nyctus are right! Humans are a pox on the galaxy!” Tadrup leaned in, all pretext at diplomacy apparently gone. “You have four days to confirm that you are going to produce Stellers. At the end of that time, if you do not, then your diplomatic credentials will be revoked, and you will be treated as intruders in Danzur space.” He settled back again. “So I would suggest that you think long and hard about whether you should still be here for that eventuality.”

Without another word, Tadrup stood and walked out, the other Danzur following.

Silence hung for a moment, then Damien blew out a breath. “Well, that was emphatic.”

Kira nodded. It seemed inevitable now that their negotiations would fail and her first involvement in diplomacy would probably also be her last.

16

Thorn tossed his shaving kit into his bag last so it would be the first thing he unpacked. It was an old habit by now, packing it in reverse order of how soon he was likely to need something. It brought to mind a forty-five minute lesson back at Code Nebula, overseen by Narvez, in which Thorn and his fellow recruits had been taught how to pack their gear. He remembered thinking at the time just how stupid that was—they were actually taking time to show adults how to fold up t-shirts and roll socks to pack them away. But it was just another of those little things he’d come to appreciate about the military, that a professional soldier was actually made of a multitude of small, specific skills—

The door chime sounded. Thorn turned and opened it, and his eyes went wide when he saw it was Tanner.

“Sir, what brings you slumming it into junior officers’ territory?”

“First of all, Stellers, I don’t need to explain why I choose to visit any part of my ship. Second, I don’t consider visiting any part of my ship to be slumming it. Did you catch the emphasis on my ship, Lieutenant?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

He stood aside so Tanner could enter his quarters. The Captain nodded at the door. “Close that.”

Thorn did, then he turned to Tanner and waited. The man was obviously here to say something to him, and if he’d learned anything in the ON, it was to let the captain speak when he was good and ready.

“I know what you’re thinking, Lieutenant,” Tanner said. “That I owe you an apology for what’s gone on with Bertilak.”

“I hadn’t thought that at all, sir.”

“Good, because I never do anything without a reason. It’s in my nature, as I abhor wasting time and effort, and above all else, the lives of my people.” Tanner gave Thorn’s bruises a searching look. “As to a little violence, well, I’m not above cracking some eggs to make an omelet, as the saying goes.”

Thorn curled his lip, wincing around his bruised face as he did. “My head does feel rather egg-like. Or at least my face does, sir. But—you don’t like wasting time, and you still came here to not apologize for encouraging me to get in the circle with an unknown alien? Sir?”

“No, I came here to tell you why I’m not sorry and what I expect from you. None of this is being done on a whim, Stellers, as I’ve explained. Bertilak clearly has knowledge and tech that would be extremely useful for the ON to possess. Other than that, we know almost squat about him. He claims to be the only being of his type, but that’s unlikely, if not impossible.”

“So, you want me to find out more about him, sir?”

“Damned right. Everything you can. And what better way than spending some time alone with him aboard his ship?” Tanner handed over a data chip meant to be plugged into a data pad. “Also, on here you’ll find a series of crib notes from the Chief Engineer about what to look for when you’re flying with Bertilak, and what technical questions to ask him.”

Thorn nodded. “Got it, sir.”

“That’s not all, Stellers. I have another reason for sending you away with our big green friend. And it’s got nothing to do with his origins, or his species, or his tech. It’s about you.”

“About me—” Thorn began, then he gave Tanner a perplexed look. “Sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

“Stellers, I’ve seen you with your magic powered down more than once. When you inadvertently flung the Hecate halfway across creation and couldn’t use your powers for a while after . . . I get it. After something big your power gets depleted and you need time to recharge. Do I have that right?”

“More or less, sir.”

“Well, this is different. Your magic—your mojo, as I’ve heard Wyant call it—seems to be stuck in a position like a scrammed reactor. You don’t seem to be bouncing back this time. Ever since that Witch Nebula appeared, you’ve been sitting in the bottom of a trough, and you can’t seem to get out of it. Have I got that right?”

Thorn started to speak but cut himself off. Tanner’s insight was right on the money—much more so than he expected from the Captain. He’d always assumed that Tanner saw him as a black box. Put in an order to do something magical at one end and get a magical effect out the other. He’d never appreciated that the man gave that much consideration to what Thorn actually did.

But of course he did. If there was one thing Thorn had learned about Tanner, it was that he was fervently devoted to his crew. All his crew.

So Thorn finally nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s . . . complicated. It goes back to the destruction of Nebo, and—” He stopped and shook his head. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Don’t need the details,” Tanner said. “What I need is a Starcaster in top working order. Right now, I don’t have that. So, I’m hoping that some time away from the Hecate with Bertilak might give you some perspective. You’ll have no other humans around, no specific ON duties—you’ll be free from the environment aboard this ship that, let’s face it, is all about conformity and being part of a team. Stellers, I think you need some time away from that—some time to be yourself.”

Thorn just stared at Tanner. The Captain’s insight into his magical affliction hit awfully close to the mark despite Thorn keeping most of what it was about to himself. Not for the first time, Thorn wondered if there was more to it than just an especially perceptive man. Maybe he had some rudimentary capacity for Joining—

But Thorn cut that line of thinking off. Attributing everything to magic diminished the fact that Tanner was just a damned good commanding officer.

“I appreciate that, sir,” he said, nodding at Tanner. “I get what you’re saying, and you may be right. Some time away might be what I need.”

“Just remember that it’s temporary duty, Stellers. If you and Bertilak hit it off, and you decide that flying around space with him is what you want to do—well, I’ll come looking for you with an arrest writ for desertion in hand.” Tanner’s eyes twinkled with the threat, making Thorn grin.

“Understood, sir. I can honestly say, though, that the chances of me becoming star buddies with Bertilak are . . . small.”

Tanner headed for the door but paused before he left.

“You never know, Lieutenant. Opposites attract and all that, right? Just think, your exploits might be shown to students someday.”

“I’d rather not be known as a sidekick to a green alien who bellows all the time, sir. Bad for my image.”

Tanner favored Thorn with a rare smile, then said, “Work on surviving and learning. Leave shaping your legacy to me. You get us this tech, and I’ll have statues of you in every port.”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

Tanner left, and Thorn felt the weight of his unwanted mission push down even harder. Starcasting, it seemed, meant being a detective as well.

* * *

As he made his way to Bertilak’s ship, Thorn considered—not for the first time—whether he should contact Kira and let her know what was going on. On one level, it made sense. She had every reason to be interested in what Thorn was up to and would probably find this particular little jaunt amusing. On the other hand, Thorn taking off with an alien of some unknown species, who was essentially a complete stranger, might just make her worry, and he had to consider how much of his need to tell her was tied to his own desire for commiseration. As to causing her worry, that certainly wouldn’t help her do her own job.

He rounded a corner and paused to let a Petty Officer striding purposefully somewhere with thunder on her face pass by. Somebody, somewhere was in the shit and would soon know it in no uncertain terms. In the time-honored tradition of soldiers everywhere, Thorn’s first thought was, Glad it’s not me.

He carried on, his bag resting on his shoulder. As he did, he thought again about Kira and—

Okay, Thorn was lying to himself. It was partly about not worrying or distracting her unduly. But it was more about the simple fact that Thorn was embarrassed.

He’d let his emotions get the better of him. It was as simple as that. Whether Bertilak had known how to push his buttons or just lucked into it didn’t really matter. Thorn had let his gnawing guilt over his daughter, his frustration with his own diminished powers, and the general stress of the war get to him. He’d lost his cool with Bertilak, and in so doing had violated a cardinal rule he’d learned long ago as an orphaned kid. It was an important rule, too. Maybe the most important.

Don’t pick a fight unless you’re sure you can win.

He turned the last corner before the airlock. Ahead, he saw the docking port of Bertilak’s shuttle, and paused.

He’d let his ego get the better of him. Again, regardless of whether it had been planned by the big green alien or had just turned out this way, it came down to the same thing. Thorn had picked a fight with an opponent of unknown strength and ability, and here he was.

He should have just kept his mouth shut.

* * *

Bertilak had already boarded his ship to prepare for departure from the Hecate. He’d left the shuttle in automated mode, making the crossing from the destroyer to the strange green ship under its own volition. Thorn waited for the brief trip to end. The shuttle finished clunking and banging against Bertilak’s ship as it docked, and with a soft hiss the airlock pressurized. As the door slid open, he saw a corridor extending ahead of him to a t-junction. The decks and bulkheads were the same green as the ship’s exterior. It certainly looked like an alloy not too dissimilar from that composing most of the Hecate—except for the being green part, anyway.

“Thorn, my friend. Please, come aboard, and welcome.” The greeting was pleasant and sounded genuine, though it was naturally twenty decibels louder than it had to be. Bertilak was consistently exuberant, if nothing else.

Bertilak had just appeared at the junction, beckoning Thorn forward. He thanked the big alien and stepped over the open hatch. Thorn was immediately struck by a sense of—bigger. Everything about the interior of Bertilak’s ship was larger than the Hecate, which only made sense given the alien’s size. Thorn realized that Bertilak had spent his time aboard the Hecate hunched over, ducking beneath things, and maneuvering his way through spaces he must have found too tight, as well as poorly designed.

The converse was true here. Thorn felt like he was aboard some sort of luxury liner, with the ceiling well above his head, and the corridors about fifty percent wider than those of the Hecate. It was both refreshing having so much space to move around in, and off-putting—well, to have so much space to move around in.

“Thanks, Bertilak. Good to be here.” To his surprise, Thorn spoke the truth.

“Oh, no it’s not. At least, not entirely.” The big alien grinned. “I know that you don’t especially want to be here, and you certainly aren’t looking forward to traveling with me. For now, you’re overcome with the newness of this and are more amenable to the experience. Perhaps this will change as you see what things we can do out there in the stars.”

Thorn gave a rueful smile.

“Guilty as charged,” he replied. “But, it was a fair wager, and I lost—sucker punch or not—so here I am. And, yes, this is new.”

“Your honor is above reproach, then, and here you are,” Bertilak agreed, his grin widening. “Now allow me to show you to your quarters, and then we will prepare to get underway.”

Thorn followed Bertilak. There wasn’t much, it turned out, to the crew compartment of the ship, probably a dozen compartments at most. Bertilak opened one of them and gestured inside.

“Welcome to your new and temporary home, Thorn,” Bertilak said. “I hope you find it to your liking?”

Thorn walked in and looked around.

Compared to any quarters he’d ever had with the ON, this was positively palatial.

He had an enormous sprawl of space, containing one of the largest beds he’d ever seen. Cushions were heaped and piled about, and there was a huge wardrobe, into which the entire contents of his bag would easily disappear. And there were actual wall hangings, tapestries of heavy, brocaded cloth decked out with soothing, abstract designs. The air held a faint smell of spices unknown to Thorn’s ON palate.

“This is—” Thorn began, turning another circle. “Well, I’m stunned.”

“Is that approval? Because if not, there are two other—”

“No, no! This is—yeah, it’s fine, Bertilak. More than fine, in fact.”

“Excellent. Well, I will leave you to get settled in. When you are ready, please join me on the bridge. Simply follow this corridor all the way forward.” The big alien started to turn away.

“Bertilak?”

He stopped and turned back with a questioning look.

“Why do you have this compartment?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve been pretty clear that you fly alone. You’ve also said that you are, as far as you know, the only member of your race,” Thorn said, dropping his bag on the bed with a thump. “But you’ve got this compartment all decked out for habitation, and seemingly with furniture scaled to, ah, your particular needs. And you say you’ve got two more compartments like this?”

“Just because I tend to fly alone doesn’t mean I don’t want others aboard my ship,” Bertilak replied. “Sometimes I carry passengers. And sometimes I have Orbital Navy Lieutenants temporarily become my indentured crew. Like now.”

Thorn scowled and started to react, but Bertilak just laughed and raised a hand.

“I am joking, of course. Well, not about the paying passengers part. Having quarters such as these available means that I can carry passengers on very short notice.”

Thorn nodded. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. Well, I’m going to get settled in. I’ll come to the bridge shortly.”

Bertilak nodded and left.

Thorn just stared at the door after it closed.

Paying passengers? Maybe.

But as Thorn looked around the room, he couldn’t help noticing that it looked entirely unlived-in. Everything from the bedding to the cushions looked absolutely new—not a wrinkle or even a hint of a stain. There was a museum-like air to everything in the room, making Thorn feel like an interloper rather than a guest. Or unwilling crew.

Of course, that didn’t mean much. Maybe Bertilak was just a fastidious housekeeper. But it was another one of those little things that nagged at Thorn, joining the growing list of things that just seemed odd about this whole situation. It was, he thought, like being able to see all the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but not the picture it was supposed to assemble.

The thought energized Thorn. Okay, here he was, whether he liked it or not. He might as well make the best of it. That would start with finding out who Bertilak was and what really made him tick, and that would begin at the heart of the ship. The bridge. Thorn knew you could fake a stateroom, but as to the heart of a starship, there was no avoiding the functionality and use of engineering.

It was time to see what Bertilak flew and how he flew it.

* * *

Thorn stopped in the entrance to the bridge and looked around, once again brought up short by the scenery.

It was nothing like the bridge of the Hecate or any other warship he’d been on. Those were busy, purposeful, and full of tech—consoles, screens, repeaters, all of the miscellaneous stuff required to monitor and control something as complex as a big ship and all of its systems. This, on the other hand, was—

Not like that at all.

Bertilak sat in a chair—not even a crash couch, but what literally looked like a simple chair—before a single console, facing a large viewscreen. A second chair sat to his right.

And that was it.

Bertilak turned. “Ah, my friend, welcome to our bridge. Please, come in, make yourself comfortable. We’re about to get underway, and you’ll need to secure yourself for our initial transit. I’m certain this is a process you’ve done time and again, despite your unusual abilities?”

Thorn crossed to the extra seat and sat down. He saw now that there was a little bit more to the ship’s bridge—two consoles were mounted on the rear bulkhead, sporting displays that looked to be depicting nothing but abstract shapes, some spinning, some morphing and flowing languidly from one configuration to another. It might have been useful information—but not to Thorn, who found the assembly to be somewhere between an art installation and a fever dream. Nothing was static, and nothing was easily discernible as hardware.

Tanner’s voice cut in. “Bertilak, this is the Hecate. We’re ready to get underway. Have you got Stellers all squared away?”

“He’s sitting right beside me,” Bertilak replied, glancing at Thorn. “He looks excited to be on the cusp of this remarkable journey we’re about to share, truly.”

Tanner’s reply was dry as a bone. “I’ll just bet he does. Stellers, you try to restrain your enthusiasm.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Alright, we’re thirty seconds from lighting up the Alcubierre drive,” Tanner said. “Safe travels.”

“And to you, Captain,” Bertilak replied, irrepressible good humor in every syllable.

Thorn watched the Hecate. She hung in space, now a few hundred klicks off, an imposing presence against the starscape.

And then she was gone.

Thorn had literally blinked and missed it. Not that there was much to see when a ship lit its Alcubierre drive. Some people claimed they caught the briefest flash of either dazzling blue or deep crimson from Doppler-shifted particles, depending on whether the ship’s trajectory was toward or away from the observer. Thorn didn’t buy it. For him, a ship just always seemed to wink out of existence.

“Well then, Thorn,” Bertilak said. “With the Hecate gone, I see no reason to hang about this little bit of space, as glorious as it might be.”

“Glorious?”

Bertilak beamed his supernova grin. “Of course. All space is glorious, simply because it exists. As a virtually unlimited resource, open space is one of the true miracles of our universe.” Bertilak wasn’t just enormous, green, and loud. He appeared, to Thorn’s chagrin, to have a poetic streak as well.

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it,” Thorn said, hoping that there wouldn’t be any long diatribes about the wonder of it all.

“So, in the meantime—” Bertilak began, then he stopped and his grin faded. “Thorn, my friend, you look so unhappy. Do you miss your ship so much already?”

“What? Oh no, that’s not it. I just realized I need to know something about your ship that it never even occurred to me to ask about.”

“And what’s that?”

Thorn looked earnestly, almost desperately, at Bertilak. “Please tell me it has a toilet.”

17

The High Shaman watched as the last of the Caucus entered the vast Hall of Assembly. Iridescent bursts of bioluminescence punctuated the gloom beneath the great dome. Most of the flashes and flickers were ones of curiosity or puzzlement, likely because of the sudden and emphatic nature of the summons they’d received. More than a few were tinged with alarm, though. The last time the Caucus had been assembled so hastily, it had been to announce the destruction of Kuvor by a vicious sneak attack by the vile humans.

Good, the High Shaman thought. Let them fret for a time. It would make them more receptive to the measures he was planning to put to the Caucus. Fear was an excellent motivator, after all.

The last of the Caucus took their places, and the High Shaman moved to a place over the precise center of the dais that soared up from the Hall’s floor. Around him, in a complete circle, ranked galleries stepped progressively upward, giving the interior the shape of an inverted cone. The center of the dais—and the official center of the Nyctus Star Empire—was the place known as the Focus, marked by a simple and rather unremarkable piece of rock—the Truth Stone. Custom held that any who occupied the Focus must tell the truth and be assumed to be telling the truth by all present. To speak from anywhere else on the dais was to signal potential duplicity—which could, in some cases, be very useful.

But not today. The High Shaman waited for the full attention of all 412 Delegates, ensuring he floated directly above the Truth Stone as he did.

Silence.

“I speak the truth,” the High Shaman said, his voice carried by cunningly designed acoustics through the water, to be heard by every Delegate as though they stood right next to him.

“You speak the truth,” came the massed reply.

“Welcome to this special session of the Caucus. I realize that many of you greeted the news of its convening with apprehension, but I make no apology for that. Once more, we face a dire and insidious threat from the humans.”

Crimson waves of anger swept in ripples across the ranks of Delegates, and there was a rising tide of murmuration, punctuated by anger and fear. The High Shaman waited for it to subside—then waited a moment longer, letting the weight of his pause rest on the collective presence of those gathered. He wanted the Caucus to continue their worrying just a little bit more. He knew there would be speculation about what had happened, especially with the horror of Kuvor still fresh in their minds. An experienced leader, he knew to never waste a good crisis. The newness of their racial anger would be a tool like no other, and the High Shaman intended to exploit every hyperbolic moment of the Nyctus rage—for his own use, of course.

He was a politician. Not a saint.

The High Shaman went on when he had exhausted the moment. “I realize that many of you expect the worst. We do not, however, face another atrocity such as the humans perpetrated at Kuvor. We have something potentially even more dire, even more of a threat to the Star Empire, to confront.”

There was another series of ripples, more vigorous and long-lasting. The High Shaman again let it play out. The more unsettled and fearful the Delegates, the better, and their mindset was ripe for the picking.

“Several cycles ago,” the High Shaman continued, “we lost contact with Tāmtu. At first, we were not concerned. Tāmtu is far enough away from the Focus that delays in communications are not uncommon. However, it soon became clear that this was no simple lag. Instead, it seemed that Tāmtu had simply stopped communicating with us. Of course, at that point, we feared the worst.”

Another wave of apprehension swept through. Again, the High Shaman let it run its course, but this time, he flashed his own colors of understanding. Too much threat could overwhelm the crowd and make them ignore the reward. That was an error he would not make.

“Accordingly, a ship was dispatched to determine what was happening. It disappeared. So did a second ship, and then a squadron of warships. All simply ceased communicating, just as Tāmtu itself had.”

“More human treachery!” a Delegate shouted, provoking a chorus of responses.

The High Shaman took careful note of them all. He still wasn’t sure how many of the Delegates had chosen to align themselves with the pacifist movement known as the Reconciliation, which advocated for peace with the humans. It unsettled him to note that there seemed to be more speaking out against the exclamation of human treachery than the last time the Caucus had convened. That meant the Reconciliation may be gaining ground. The High Shaman briefly turned his attention to his Chief Advisor, who flashed back a quick acknowledgement. The actions and reactions of each of the Delegates would be noted, and later analyzed, to determine how much effort must be invested in dissipating this growing pressure to cease hostilities with the humans and enter into dialogue.

It wasn’t a problem—yet. The purpose of the Caucus was to provide a forum for the people’s representatives to speak freely, without the usual restrictions of caste. But too much willingness to adopt a more peaceful stance with the humans risked undermining everything the High Shaman and his own circle had been working toward. It might soon prove to be necessary to introduce stronger measures and begin using words such as disloyalty, or even treason.

“It is, indeed, human action that has isolated Tāmtu from the rest of the Star Empire. But the planet has not been destroyed, or even attacked, at least in a conventional sense. As near as we can tell, all of the Nyctus there are perfectly fine. They are simply changed.”

“Changed in what way?” a Delegate called out.

“Yes, spare us your dramatics, High Shaman, and speak the truth demanded by the Stone!”

The High Shaman recognized the second speaker, of course. Satu, a Delegate from the planet Areru, was an outspoken critic of the war effort and one of the rallying figures for the Reconciliation. Unfortunately, she was also powerful, having built a formidable network of allies and like-minded supporters. Soon, he would have to do something about her.

“They are changed,” the High Shaman said. “By the young human female known as Morgan.”

There was a moment of silence as the Caucus took this in. Bioluminescent shock and confusion flickered through the Hall. Satu finally broke the eerie stillness.

“How is that possible? You assured us that she had died on the planet called Nebo! That was the whole purpose of the attack. You assured us that the wholesale extermination of the humans there was necessary to ensure her death. We brought the wrath of the humans back upon us, and now the population of Kuvor is dead. Now you tell us it was for nothing? All of those lives—”

“It is not that simple,” the High Shaman cut in. “There are still aspects of this we don’t understand. She was dead. We confirmed that by her sudden and complete absence in the Firmament.” The Firmament was where real lives could be seen, and felt, and counted. It was the living space of the Nyctus, a place where their psychic energy was as tangible as their flesh. To a race like the Nyctus, the Firmament was of equal importance to the ground they walked on—or swam over.

“And yet, you say she is somehow on Tāmtu, and has changed our people there,” Satu shot back. “What does that even mean, changed?”

Another chorus of shouts rang out, accompanied by strobing flashes of angry confusion. This time, the High Shaman didn’t wait for it to subside.

“Yes, she was dead. Now, she is not. Her presence in the Firmament is suddenly clear again. Moreover, the planet Nebo is once more intact and populated, as though we never destroyed it.”

“But how is that possible?” someone exclaimed, fear saturating every sound of their question.

“We believe we are seeing the hand of Stellers in this,” the High Shaman replied. “He has brought Nebo back, and, in the process, brought Morgan back as well.”

This time, the stunned silence was absolute. Finally, a single voice spoke.

“How could he contravene death?”

“We don’t know,” the High Shaman said. “We’re aware, of course, that Stellers is a profound threat. He was, after all, responsible for the destruction of Kuvor. But it would appear that his ability to move an entire fleet great distances represents only a part of his powers.”

“There!” Satu shouted, leaning over the balustrade lining the gallery where she had her place. “There is the reason that we must seek another way of dealing with the humans. In the face of such power—”

“Stellers is only one man,” another Delegate shouted, cutting Satu off. The High Shaman noted this with satisfaction. This speaker was a reliable ally. “He cannot be everywhere, or do everything.”

“Are you even sure about that?” Satu shot back. “And what if there are other humans with such powers? For that matter, why should we lend credence to anything you are saying here today?”

“The High Shaman occupies the Stone of Truth. Are you suggesting that he flouts what it represents?”

“Of course not. But there is a stark difference between lying and merely being wrong,” Satu replied, then turned back to the High Shaman. “And, so far, you have been wrong repeatedly. You said the war would be brief, that the humans would not stand for a protracted conflict. You said that the bombardment and destruction of human worlds such as Nebo would compel them to back down. You said that the trap prepared for the human fleet through our operative high in their command structure would convince them to sue for peace. None of those things have come to pass. Instead, our warriors fight and die, Kuvor is an irradiated ruin, our use of the Firmament against the humans has proven that they are as strong as us, and perhaps stronger. So again, High Shaman, why should we find you credible?”

The High Shaman had to resist a bioluminescent display of anger. “Whether you find me credible, Satu, is entirely up to you. And, yes, I admit that the course of the war has not progressed as I’d originally envisioned. However, the humans have a single point of failure, one that has become our priority to neutralize.”

“Stellers,” a Delegate said.

Agreement flashed across the Caucus, tinged with both anger and anxiety. The name Stellers had become evocative of untold and fearful power. It was, the High Shaman thought, a name with which to elicit a fear response in larvae.

“Yes,” he said. “Stellers. And, to the end of neutralizing him, we have several courses of action underway. The humans seek peace and cooperation from the Danzur. We have managed to leverage our operatives on their Ruling Council to deny such an agreement with the humans, unless they hand Stellers over to them, whereupon they will transfer him to us.”

“Do you really believe the humans will agree to that?” Satu asked. “Would we agree to hand over one of ours to them? If the roles were reversed and it was you, High Shaman, that the humans were demanding to be handed over, do you expect that we would do so?”

“If it was up to you, Satu, then I’m sure the answer to that question would be yes, without hesitation.”

Despite the tense and confrontational atmosphere, amusement flickered among the Delegates. It gratified the High Shaman that only a small number of the Delegates remained, like Satu, impassive.

“In any case,” the High Shaman went on, “I do not actually expect the humans to hand Stellers over to the Danzur, no. More important is that there is no successful alliance between them and the humans. When it comes to dealing with Stellers, we have a far more powerful weapon.”

“And what is that?” Satu asked, her voice tinged with skepticism.

“The girl, Morgan.”

After a moment of silence, a Delegate spoke. “You said that she is responsible for changing our people on Tāmtu.”

“And I’ll ask again, what does that mean? How have our people on Tāmtu been changed, High Shaman?” Satu asked.

“They are no longer in communion with the rest of our people. The girl, Morgan, has somehow made them into something else. It would appear that they are loyal to her, and are keeping her safe and well.”

“And our ships? The ones that have been lost? Was that the doing of our changed people?”

“We don’t know, but we don’t believe so. We believe that that, too, was the doing of Morgan.”

“As was the occurrence of the new nebula,” one of the High Shaman’s advisors said. “We discerned that both she and Stellers were involved in its creation.”

Another Delegate leaned forward. “So Stellers is immensely powerful, and Morgan is immensely powerful. Both are able to move fleets, create stars—to change reality itself. What possible hope could we have against that?”

“Very little,” the High Shaman said.

Once more, there was silence. Again, Satu broke it.

“So you admit, then, that this war is a losing proposition, and it is time to approach the humans in the spirit of peace.”

“No. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Satu flashed her frustration. “That makes no sense. You would have us fight against powers we cannot match, merely to pursue a war we can’t win? Is your ego so large, High Shaman—so large and fragile—that you cannot admit defeat, even when it’s painfully obvious?”

“But we are not defeated,” the High Shaman replied. “In fact, we have an opportunity to deal with both Stellers and Morgan at once, to save our people on Tāmtu and deliver a final, crippling blow against the humans.”

Luminous flickers, both intrigued and skeptical, flashed around the Caucus, accompanied by a faint murmur of conversation. The High Shaman pressed on.

“Morgan is powerful but also immature for her species. Her thoughts are pliant. After much consultation with my Advisors, we have concluded that it would be possible to reshape her thoughts in a way that would not be possible with a mature human, based on a concept we know they identify as neuroplasticity—a complex word for a repulsive species trait, I might add. You may recall the report given here regarding the human female, Wixcombe, who proved utterly intractable despite our best and most concerted efforts. Were Morgan to be similarly mature, this would probably not be possible. As it is, her age is a boon to us.”

“So you propose—what?” Satu said, her tone and luminosity both doubtful. “To influence Morgan’s thoughts sufficiently to change Tāmtu back to its natural state? To release our people from whatever she has done to them?”

“Yes,” the High Shaman replied. “But we would go beyond that. There is some relationship between her and Stellers that we don’t understand. However, we believe we can continue to influence Morgan, turning her from adversary to neutral party, and then to ally.”

“You’re suggesting that we ally with a human? And an immature one, at that?”

The High Shaman flashed an amused but strained patience. “Only in a manner of speaking. In fact, she would become our operative, what the humans refer to as a Skin.”

“To what end?”

The High Shaman paused for dramatic effect, sensing this moment as the critical one. He would either convince the Caucus, or he wouldn’t.

“To destroy Stellers, of course, and, in the process, destroy herself. And once that is accomplished, the two most potent obstacles to our victory will be removed.”

The silence went on and on. Slowly just a few, then many of the Delegates glinted their approval. Satu and her closest collaborators abstained, but it didn’t matter. The support for the High Shaman’s proposal was overwhelming.

18

Thorn had been immensely gratified to find out that Bertilak did indeed have appropriate hygiene facilities aboard his ship, including a toilet. Of course, that raised other questions. Like why would the outsized alien have human-scaled plumbing? Thorn decided to leave the questions unasked for the moment. He decided to be as cooperative with Bertilak as he could be, hoping to leverage the alien’s effusive good humor into a more open relationship between them. After all, what he ultimately wanted from Bertilak was information, so it only made sense to make the alien as comfortable with him as possible.

“So, captain, a question?” Thorn said, stepping onto the spartan bridge.

“Ask, friend.”

“Where the hell are we going?” Thorn waved vaguely at the expanse of black.

The alien swept a hand toward the viewscreen, which depicted nothing, just the blankness of an Alcubierre bubble. “That way.”

“That way.”

“That’s right. You’ll note that we have plenty of room.”

“Well, if I remember my intro nav course, we can go about thirteen billion light years that way, and then we’ll run out of universe.”

“Ah, will we?”

Thorn blinked at that. “I don’t know. That’s just how big I’ve been told the universe is. And who am I to doubt the astrophysicists who are all definitely smarter than me?”

“Bah, you sell yourself short,” Bertilak said as Thorn sat down. “You are not a stupid man, Thorn Stellers, although I note that you enjoy staying below the radar, as some humans might say. I think this is by design.”

“Saying that someone’s smarter than me isn’t the same as saying I’m stupid,” Thorn replied, forcing a smile. “How’s that for boundless confidence?”

Bertilak laughed. “True. But that shows the importance of being precise. These specialists may be better educated and experienced in their fields, but that doesn’t make them necessarily smarter than you.” He glanced at Thorn sidelong. “I’m sure an astrophysicist would say the same about you when it comes to magic, no?”

“Possibly,” Thorn said. “I just—”

An alarm sounded, cutting him off. Bertilak turned back to his controls.

“We aren’t alone, it seems,” he said. “There is a ship ahead.”

Thorn deliberately said nothing. There was no technology he was aware of that would allow a ship inside an Alcubierre bubble to gather information about anything outside of it. That was the whole point—the drive generated a tiny, separate universe around the ship. It was a limitation that the ON, the Nyctus, and anyone else who used a similar drive for superluminal flight simply had to work around. And there weren’t, as far as Thorn knew, any other ways of traveling faster than light.

So if Bertilak had some tech that would allow him to scan normal space from inside an Alcubierre bubble, that by itself would offer the ON a massive advantage.

As he peered at the panel in front of Bertilak, all he saw was more of the flowing geometric shapes and a bunch of controls that amounted to little more than flashing, colored lights. If Bertilak was able to derive useful information from it, Thorn couldn’t see how.

“Can you tell what sort of ship it is?” he asked.

Bertilak narrowed his eyes. “Let’s find out, shall we? I do not enjoy surprises that are not culinary in nature.”

“Culinary?”

“I like food that looks like other things. That is pleasant. This? No.”

Bertilak tapped at the controls. A few seconds later, the starfield reappeared as the ship returned to normal space. A dim point of light in the distance gradually grew larger as they approached it.

“It’s a Nyctus vessel,” Bertilak said, looking at Thorn. “Badly damaged and broadcasting a distress beacon.”

* * *

Thorn studied the zoomed image of the Nyctus ship. It was a frigate. She’d been badly pummeled in a recent fight and bore the scars. Her bow had been opened, ragged holes and gaping rents had been torn in her hull, and she seemed to only have power in the rearmost part of the ship, probably the engineering section. The rest of her interior had either been destroyed or laid open to hard vacuum.

“No debris,” Thorn said, frowning.

Bertilak glanced at him. “Should there be?”

“There’s no debris. I’ve been in enough battles to know that it doesn’t take long for space to get filled with debris—pieces of ships, pieces blown off of ships, expended missiles, escape pods, all that sort of thing. But I don’t see any here.”

“There,” Bertilak said, pointing at his enigmatic displays. “There’s your debris, over there.”

Thorn returned a blank look. “What I see is a bunch of circles spinning inside each other on your screen there. If that says there’s debris out there somewhere, I’m sorry, Bertilak, but I can’t—”

Bertilak nodded. “Yes, I forget that you wouldn’t be familiar with these instruments.” The big alien fiddled with the controls, and the image on the main viewscreen changed. It now showed a debris field about a hundred klicks across, fragments of shattered alloy and hull plating slowly tumbling across a few tens of klicks.

Thorn stood and walked up to the display. “Looks like they managed to move the ship this far, probably to get clear of that mess.”

Bertilak switched the view back to the stricken Nyctus vessel.

“You said they’re broadcasting a distress signal?” Thorn asked.

“Correct,” the alien replied, tapping yet another incomprehensible display. “That, and minimal life support are the only returns I am seeing from my scans. At face value, that indicates a ship on the edge of being dead.”

“They must have been hit by an ON patrol,” Thorn said, staring at the image of the battered ship. “Not sure why they didn’t finish her off.”

“Should I do it for them?” Bertilak asked, hands posed like a musician waiting to strike the first note.

“Bertilak, do your”—he gestured at the panel— “instruments tell you if there are actually any squids still alive?”

“Yes. Four, all in the engineering section.”

Thorn sighed as he studied the wreck. Thanks to radiation shielding and all of the structural bracing holding the powerplant and drives in place, the engineering sections of most ships were probably their toughest parts. These four squids must be the engineering crew, or what was left of them, who’d managed to take refuge in the only part of the ship still holding atmosphere and heat.

For a moment, he tried to imagine what it would be like if the Hecate had been pounded to scrap with only her engineering compartments still intact, crew trapped inside. They’d know little or nothing about what was going on around them and would only be able to huddle in the fitful darkness. They’d be desperately hoping for rescue, terrified that safeties were going to fail, or the powerplant would suddenly explode. Or maybe worse, the lights and air processors dying, leaving them alone in the dark, the atmosphere getting ever more stale, their breath starting to form clouds of frozen mist—

“Thorn?”

He turned to Bertilak, nightmarish imaginings still hovering nearby.

“Should I simply destroy this vessel and then we’ll be on our way?” Bertilak said. “I ask for your input here, as you are now part of this ship.”

Thorn took a breath and nodded. Living a nightmare or not, they were still squids “Yes. Go ahead.”

Bertilak stared back at Thorn for a moment, then reached for his panel—

“Wait.”

Thorn blinked as Bertilak turned again to look at him, surprised at his own word. The alien just waited.

Thorn stared at the smashed remains of the Nyctus frigate.

—huddle in the fitful darkness, desperately hoping for rescue—the atmosphere getting ever more stale, their breath starting to form clouds of frozen mist—

“Can you tell if there are any other Nyctus ships nearby?” Thorn asked. “Any close enough to respond to their distress call?”

Bertilak looked at his instruments, then nodded. “About four light-years distant, a Nyctus patrol. They’re on their way here.”

“How long?”

“About three hours, at their current velocity.”

Thorn nodded, making a mental note that Bertilak couldn’t only scan outside of an Alcubierre bubble, he could scan ships inside them—and up to at least four light-years away.

“Thorn, do you want me to destroy this Nyctus ship, or not?” Bertilak pressed.

Thorn sighed, rich with disgust. “No. Let’s just leave them and hope that one of them doesn’t turn out to come up with some war-winning scheme.”

Again, Bertilak just watched Thorn for a moment. “Are you sure?”

“I am.”

“What about looting her? There might be some useful items aboard.”

Thorn shook his head at the wreck. “I doubt it.”

“There is in the engineering section. The fuel alone would save me having to replenish for a good, long while.”

Thorn gave Bertilak a hard look. “You seem really determined to find a reason to screw with these squids.”

Bertilak grinned. “It isn’t about them. You see, I’m an opportunist. And this is an opportunity.”

“So, if I wasn’t here, you’d just scavenge whatever you could and let the squids die?”

The alien lifted his lower lip, considering the question. “Maybe. It would depend on my mood. I might even rescue them myself.”

“Bring four squids aboard this ship? Yeah, I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“I leave it up to you.”

“Why? Why are you asking me to make the call here?” Thorn asked.

“It only seems appropriate. You are my guest, after all. I wouldn’t want to leave this place with you carrying a burden of either second guessing yourself or regretting what we do here.”

“Oh, that’s probably going to happen anyway, no matter what we do.”

Bertilak raised an eyebrow but merely waited.

Thorn finally shook his head. “Let’s just leave them. If they survive until their friends get here, good for them. And if they don’t, well, they understood the risks of warfare and now they can live—and die—with that decision.”

“Very well. We shall be on our way then,” Bertilak said, tapping at his controls. A moment later, the Nyctus derelict vanished, replaced by the featureless void of an Alcubierre bubble.

* * *

Morgan drifted around the vent, trying to peer inside. The elder shaman said there was molten rock deep within it, which she thought would be very interesting to see. The trouble was that the heat was just too intense. Most of the plume of superheated water jetted straight up, but enough seemed to mix with the surrounding water to make even it uncomfortably hot. She could get close—but not close enough.

Of course, she could fix that. She could just change—

I’m here.

She stopped and pulled back from the vent.

Are you with him?

I am.

Did you do the test thing?

I did. He chose to spare the Nyctus.

Really?

Really, yes.

Morgan blinked, surprised. She hadn’t actually expected Bertilak to report that. So this was unexpected.

Did you try to make him kill them? All of them?

She could sense Bertilak’s frown across the void. Make him? As in, force him to do it, even if he didn’t want to? That does not really fit with what you wanted me to do.

No, not like force him. You know, tell him to do it.

You mean convince him.

Convince?

Yes. Persuade him. Use words to make him want to do it.

Oh, okay. Yeah, convince him. Did you try to do that?

Not really. You made it clear that you wanted it to be his choice.

Morgan glowered at the nearby vent. Occasionally, it puffed out a murky cloud of something like fine, shimmering sand. The elder shaman said it was minerals, and that some vents spewed out lots of minerals all the time. Apparently, the Nyctus could collect those minerals and use them to make stuff.

I did want him to decide, yeah, she finally said. I just didn’t think he would let them live. I wonder why he did?

I think it’s because he put himself in their place. If he were trapped the same way the Nyctus were, what would he want someone to do if they found him?

Morgan bit her lip and glared at the vent, which had suddenly coughed out a thick, billowing stream of minerals. The dark, roiling cloud spread overhead, then began to rain back down. Morgan held out her hand and watched the dark grit slowly accumulate on her palm.

So he passed, she said.

He did, Bertilak replied. You sound disappointed.

Morgan looked at the dusting of grey across her palm. The little grains actually sparkled in the dim glow of the Radiance, a tiny, flickering light show. She smiled at it for a moment, then brushed her palm clean and drifted back from the vent, extracting herself from the thickening mineral haze around it.

Well, a little, she said. If he was bad to those Nyctus, then I could just keep hating him. But now I don’t know.

Perhaps another test?

She nodded. Yeah. Yeah, a really hard one, this time. One that’s really gonna force him to be either good or bad.

What do you want me to do?

Morgan just drifted for a while, considering it. Eventually, she brightened.

Ooh. I know.

* * *

Thorn wandered Bertilak’s ship from stem to stern. The big alien didn’t seem to care, apparently quite content to let him explore freely.

Thorn didn’t learn very much.

He stopped just inside the engineering compartment. On the Hecate, this was a cavernous compartment, three decks high and filled with machinery. The bulk of the powerplant, a fusion reactor, and the drives filled most of it. The rest was a maze of conduits and pipes, with structural members holding it all in place. It was always a bustle of activity. There was no low-ops in Engineering. In fact, the Hecate carried two complete engineering crews so that one could replace the other in a constant, twelve-hour rotation.

This was not that.

Bertilak’s engineering compartment was small, not much bigger than the Hecate’s bridge and a single deck high. It contained only a handful of devices, all of which were that odd shade of green—a color Thorn was already sick of—and none of which Thorn even recognized.

Thorn studied the deck. He supposed that the bulk of the machinery, including the powerplant and drives, could be located beneath it, but that seemed like a maintenance nightmare. The whole point of engineering was to make all critical systems as accessible as possible.

Thorn moved to the center of the compartment and turned slowly in a circle.

No other exits, no obvious hatches in the deck under his feet, nothing whatsoever to indicate how Bertilak’s ship was powered, or propelled, or how things like heat and light were generated, or how the air was processed to keep it breathable.

And then there was water.

Aboard the Hecate, water was in a constant state of rationing while she was underway. Water was both heavy and bulky. It made for excellent rad shielding, but ultimately, it took up a lot of space and the ship’s mass allowance for the amount available. The recycling system was top-notch, but it wasn’t perfect. Small amounts were being constantly lost. The result was strict policies on its use, especially for things like showering. A certain amount of stink was just a fact of life aboard the Hecate. It never got too bad, and tended to fade into the background pretty quickly, but it was still very much there.

Thorn had taken a shower just that morning. In fact, his hair was still damp. The Hecate’s showers were controlled, allowing only a total of three minutes of water use. Thorn had stood in Bertilak’s shower for almost twenty minutes, letting the hot water sluice over him. It was, he had to admit, an awesome luxury, and he only stopped when his fingers and toes had become entirely pruned.

Bertilak’s ship just seemed too simple. Too generalized. That meant it must be some form of alien tech, considerably more advanced than the ON’s, and probably much more advanced than that of the Nyctus as well. After all, it seemed capable of what seemed to Thorn to be almost impossible feats. Detecting things outside a working Alcubierre bubble, and firing weapons powerful enough to destroy Nyctus ships up to corvette size in a single shot. And this capability was supported by sparse, simple systems, all of which could be operated by one man—

“Thorn, there you are,” Bertilak said, striding into the engineering compartment. “Have you had your fill of my ship yet?”

“Candidly? I’m astounded. Your tech goes in directions we haven’t considered.” He looked at Bertilak squarely. “I think we’d definitely be interested in making some sort of deal with you to get access to it—or at the very least, to learn.”

“All in good time, my friend,” Bertilak said. “In the meantime, we will soon be arriving at our first destination together. Would you come join me on the bridge?” He leaned and gave a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t leave my AI running things for too long. I’m always afraid it will decide that it can do a better job than me and try to seize control.”

Thorn’s eyes widened a touch. “Really?”

“No, of course not.” Bertilak suddenly boomed with laughter. “The AI does what it’s told, nothing more.” He gestured. “Now, let’s go to the bridge and prepare to make planetfall. My entire existence isn’t just spent in deep space. I said I was a trader of sorts, and you shall see that part of my life up close and personal.”

Thorn followed the alien out of the engineering compartment. “Planetfall where?”

“Ah, well, that, my friend, is a surprise. And one I hope you’ll enjoy.”

19

Morgan decided to explore the city. It struck her she hadn’t done that yet. She had stayed close to the welcoming light of the Radiance and the sprawl of the city that she’d come to know so well. The Nyctus there all knew who she was and greeted her warmly, and the elder shaman was always nearby if she needed help or advice.

But she’d become so restless and wanted to see more. She told the elder shaman as much, trying hard to keep her voice from sounding petulant.

“I am concerned, child, about you traveling about on your own,” he replied. “The ocean spans all of the planet, except for at the poles and in a few places where the seafloor rises into mountains that soar above the ice on the surface. There are many hazards.”

“Like what? Monsters?”

The elder shaman flickered his amusement. “I’m not sure I would call them monsters, but there are some large predators in the more remote parts of the world-sea. But there are also undersea volcanoes, and earthquakes, and landslides—many things that could prove bad for a small girl.”

Morgan scowled. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

The shaman flashed a somewhat strained patience. “Is there any point to me trying to dissuade you?”

“Dis—er, di-sade—”

“Dissuade. It means to convince you not to do this.”

“Oh. No. I’m definitely going.”

“Of course you are. Well, you must at least allow someone to accompany you.”

“How about you? Why don’t you come with me?”

“I am needed here.”

“Please?”

“Child—”

“Pleeeeease?”

The elder shaman finally conceded. “Very well. We shall depart in one cycle. I’ll arrange a shuttle car.”

Morgan gave an excited nod. A trip, with the elder shaman—she was nearly giddy with the prospect of it all, and it showed in her beaming smile.

* * *

“This is boring,” Morgan said, staring out the shuttle car’s transparent dome. “There’s nothing to see.”

“What did you expect, child? This is the Abyssal Plain. There’s nothing here but plains.”

Morgan sank back in her seat, crossed her arms, and gave the most dramatic sigh she could. The shuttle car made for far faster travel than simply trying to swim or float or drift, but it was still boring. In every direction, she saw nothing but a flat, endless expanse of silty sediment. Every once in a while, a rocky outcrop thrust out of it. Occasionally, there was wildlife—all manner of creatures, large and small. They scattered at the approach of the shuttle car, rendering only as half-suggested shapes and brief glimpses of sudden movement in the surrounding gloom.

She considered telling the elder shaman that she just wanted to turn around and go home. The only thing stopping her was the shaman’s promise that, if she could be patient, there was something very much worth seeing.

Morgan hoped so, because so far on this trip there’d been nothing worth seeing at all.

Her mind drifted.

She thought back to dreams she’d had while still on Nebo, before the sun fell apart and her father brought her back from wherever she’d gone. She’d dream of a ship, night after night. A complicated ship, all struts and girders and modules, apparently joined together in a dizzying jumble that made no sense to her. One thing stood out about this ship, though. There was a picture on it. It was a picture of a girl, and she was riding something that looked like a horse, but wasn’t—and Morgan knew that for sure, because she loved horses. This hadn’t been as sleek or powerful as a beautiful horse, but more awkward, even goofy-looking with its big ears. Underneath, there were the words Una’s Ass.

Morgan had asked Daddy what an ass was. He’d started to tell her it was another name for a butt, but she’d giggled and said, “no, like an animal.” Apparently, ass was another word for donkey. And a donkey was something like a small horse, but different.

She could see it so clearly, too, as though the clunky ship and the picture of Una’s Ass were right outside the shuttle car, pacing alongside it—

—but I saw something right before it all went dark. It was an answer. But I don’t remember what it was anymore. I don’t remember the question, either—

It’s what she’d said to the elder shaman not that long ago. That and—

I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen.

She pursed her lips. She’d definitely tried to warn her father about something. But she wasn’t sure what. It was somehow connected to the question, and its answer, that she couldn’t remember. It was something important, too. That made it even more frustrating, which was a word and idea she knew.

It didn’t matter. She’d tried to warn him, and he hadn’t listened to her, and now he was out there, and she was here, with her friends—

Morgan sat up abruptly.

“What is it, child?” the elder shaman asked. “Are you unwell?”

“I—no. I just thought of something.”

“Do you wish to share it with me?”

Morgan shook her head emphatically. “Uh-uh. Not yet.”

“Very well. We will soon be at our destination, so you only need to be patient a little while longer.”

Morgan nodded, but her impatience was forgotten. Instead, she was suddenly excited.

Several things had just come together for her, like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place after a long time of staring at them. Shapes joined, memories merged, and somehow Morgan knew things that hadn’t been there a moment ago. An idea was complete. The edges fit.

Thorn Stellers, her father, had brought Morgan back from wherever she’d gone, when the sun had fallen in pieces from the sky on Nebo. To do that, he must have reached back and brought her forward from the past, when she’d still be alive, to when she wasn’t. And here she was.

And the picture of Una’s Ass bugged her. It wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be a dumb, awkward-looking donkey. It should be a beautiful horse.

She’d asked mommy and daddy about the ship with Una’s Ass on it, and they did some checking in the archives, whatever they were. They’d told her it was from a ship that had actually existed a long time ago, one called the Pool of Stars.

So what if she reached back into the past and brought the Pool of Stars from there, to here, and changed the picture from Una’s Ass to something better? Something like—

A slow grin spread across her face.

Something like Morgan’s Ride. And it could be a picture of Morgan riding a horse, instead of whoever Una was.

And if that worked, it meant she could reach back into the past and change other things, just like she’d said to the elder shaman. Like, instead of the Nyctus being so mad and so focused on fighting their war, she could make it so they were all her friends. Just like these ones on Tāmtu.

She smiled. That would be nice. No more war, so more killing and dying and awful things like that. Maybe she could change humans, too, so they were also all her friends. Everyone could be friends with everyone else! Wouldn’t that just make everything better?

Of course, the elder shaman had tried to tell her she shouldn’t do it, that it was a bad idea, because she might kill her grandfather or something. But she’d taken care of that, and now she knew the elder shaman would go along with her idea.

Everyone friends, everything better—

Her smile dropped off her lips. What about her father? Could she be friends with him? Did she even want to?

Well, that would depend on what Bertilak told her about Thorn Stellers next, wouldn’t it?

“We’re here, child,” the elder shaman said, slowing the shuttle car. Morgan peered ahead but still saw nothing but the bistro plain, or whatever he had called it. The endless flat expanse of nothing. There were just more endless, flat kilometers of silty sand.

And then, there wasn’t.

“Oh. Oh!”

Morgan stared, not comprehending. Then she gasped. And then she shrank back from the view, even while trying to get a better one.

The world disappeared.

The featureless plain abruptly stopped at the base of a wall of rock, which led to more rocky ridges and cliffs that rose like steps, each hundreds of feet high. But it wasn’t that that had made her gasp and shrink back. The shuttle car powered through a notch in the rocky cliffs, which was leading them to nothing.

Literally, nothing. The world just disappeared. It ended. Ahead of them was nothing but water all around.

The shuttle car swept over the rocky lip of the last ridge. Morgan looked down and saw a vertical wall of rock plummeting into the abyss, vanishing into the gloom. There was nothing else.

“Oh.”

It was all she could say before she had to pull her gaze back from that endless plunge into darkness. Her stomach had suddenly twisted and tightened, and her head felt light as feathers.

“Are you alright, child?”

“What happened to the world?”

The shaman glittered with bright amusement. “The world is still there. The water just gets very, very deep here. What you see below is called a trench.”

“What’s a trench?”

“Well, Tāmtu may seem like a solid and unchanging place, but it’s actually a restless world. In some places, lava erupts onto the surface of the sea-floor, making new hills and mountains and adding land to the planet. But there’s only so much lava down there. It can’t keep erupting forever and making the planet ever bigger and bigger. In some places, then, old land is pulled back down into the planet’s interior, where it melts and becomes new lava. This is one of those places.”

Morgan stared down into the endless depths. Her head still tingled, and her stomach still twitched. But she was able to make herself keep looking, keep watching. Her eyes kept trying and failing to find something, anything to latch onto.

It was like looking into the sky, only doing it while looking down, instead of up.

“So old rock gets pulled down into this trench and becomes lava, and that becomes new rock—uh, land?”

“That’s right. It’s called plate tectonics, but you don’t need to worry about the complicated name. Think of it more as recycling.”

Morgan looked at the shaman, then back outside. Old rock becoming new rock. So Tāmtu was doing just what she’d been thinking about before they passed over the lip of the world. Rock from before—a long, long time before, she knew from other conversations she’d had with the Nyctus about how old Tāmtu was—was being made into new rock now.

The old was becoming the new.

“Does it go down forever?”

“No, child, of course not. There is a bottom to this trench. It is”—the shaman consulted the glowing instrument panel in front of him— “twelve kilometers, more or less, beneath us right now.”

Morgan just kept staring. She knew twelve kilometers was a long way, but she couldn’t really imagine it.

“You sure it doesn’t just keep going forever? Like, maybe into space?”

“Yes, I’m certain, child.”

“How come? Have you been down there?”

“No. No one has. The weight of the water above you would crush you long before you even reached the bottom. Even this shuttle car, which is designed to withstand a lot of pressure, would last one or two kilometers and then would simply be squashed.”

“Oh. And we’d be squashed, too?”

“Oh yes.”

Morgan once more stared into the depths.

“Now then, child, I think that’s enough for today.” The shuttle car started to turn around to go back the way it had come.

“Wait,” Morgan said. “I want to go down there.”

“I just told you, child, that we would never survive.”

“Sure we will. I’ll make sure.” She turned to look at the shaman. “Wouldn’t you like to be the first one to see what’s down there?”

“I—” the elder shaman began, then paused. He shuddered, and ruddy pulses of bioluminescence glared amid his otherwise placid teal glow.

Morgan narrowed her eyes. She wanted the shaman to take them down there. She’d protect them. But she might have to change the shaman again, make him even more cooperative—which might make him boring. She’d tried that with another Nyctus, making him into someone who always did as he was told, but she soon got tired of it. She wondered what had happened to him.

But only for a moment. She turned her attention back to the elder shaman, but the crimson flashes had faded.

“If you want to do this, child, you must find a way to prevent us from being crushed by the great pressure.”

“That’s easy,” Morgan said, then she gathered up handfuls of magic and used them to change the universe into one where this shuttle car couldn’t be wrecked by anything, ever. It was a whole new truth, but it was the truth that Morgan wanted. Her short fingers waggled in satisfaction, and it was done.

She slumped back in the seat. Changing the universe made her tired. Still, she smiled at the elder shaman. “Okay, we can go down there now.”

“Of course we can, child. There is nothing that can harm this shuttle car.” His tone, although gentle, was a little chiding, as though this was just something obvious, something that had always been true.

* * *

“Huh. It’s just dirt!” Morgan said, glaring at the seafloor.

It had taken a while, but they’d finally fallen all of the way to the bottom of the trench. Morgan wasn’t sure what she expected to see, but she expected to see something. This was just more flat plain, like the enormous one sprawling above them. If anything, it was even more featureless, even more boring. At least above, there were bits of life here and there—coral reefs, creatures of different types, some big, weedy plants. Down here, there was nothing at all.

Even the water didn’t look any different.

“I thought you said the water down here would be so heavy it would crush anything,” Morgan said.

“I did. And it is. If we weren’t in this shuttle car, I can assure you, we wouldn’t last more than an instant. We’d be squashed into little blobs.”

“I wonder what that would be like.”

“I’d rather not find out, thank you.”

Morgan laughed, a silvery sound. “Yeah. I don’t want to do that, either.” She looked around at the featureless sand illuminated in the soft glow of the shuttle car’s lights, then sighed. “Well, this is boring again. Let’s just go home.”

A glittering light caught her attention, pulling it back into the surrounding gloom.

“What’s that?”

Something swam into view. Something massive.

Something horrifying.

A fat, round body, like a massive worm. A rounded, gaping maw filled with row upon row of jagged teeth. No eyes, just lights, a series of them surrounding that maw, gleaming softly.

That maw alone had to be half the size of the shuttle car.

Morgan whimpered. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know, child,” the elder shaman said. “There are many secrets here in the great depths. This is one of them.”

Morgan braced herself, expecting the creature to attack, to begin gnawing on the shuttle car. She scooped up magical power, ready to make it stop—

But the creature veered at the last second and swept past overhead. It seemed to go on and on. Morgan could only see it because of the shuttle car’s lights. Aside from the glowing spots around its mouth, the big worm-thing was just a featureless black. That seemed so deliberate, like there was a specific reason for it. She asked the elder shaman about it.

“There is no light at this depth,” the shaman replied. “There’s never any light here, in fact. So creatures are attracted to light when they see it. That’s likely why that creature came to investigate us, because we have our lights on.”

“Okay,” Morgan replied, narrowing her eyes. The elder shaman was saying it as though it should answer her question. But she didn’t get it.

The elder shaman flickered his indulgence. “Think about that, child. Creatures are drawn toward light. They don’t see that monster’s black body, but they do see the lights around his mouth, so they move toward it.”

“Oh. Oh, I get it. They get eaten.”

“That’s right. It’s a lure.”

“A lure?”

“Yes. A way of drawing someone or something in close, to a place where you want them to be.”

Morgan nodded but said nothing else. The elder shaman started the shuttle car back up the long climb to friendlier depths. That was fine. Morgan had seen enough today.

Besides, the idea of a lure intrigued her. It could bring someone close to where you wanted them to be.

She could use that.

20

The High Shaman glinted his satisfaction. The report was succinct, and clear, and most importantly, said exactly what he wanted it to say.

“Our operatives among the humans have done excellent work,” he said. “When they are no longer useful to us, please ensure they’re terminated as quickly and painlessly as possible. They’ve earned it.”

The High Shaman’s Deputy Chief Advisor flickered agreement. “I agree. It’s the least we can do for them. Now, what about the substance of their report? It’s quite shocking, isn’t it?”

The High Shaman glanced at the Deputy Chief Advisor. The title was a meaningless one. He was actually the High Shaman’s Spymaster. The High Shaman had learned long ago that the key to taking and retaining power wasn’t strength, or power, or even resources. It was information. Accurate information allowed for the exploitation and defeat of stronger opponents, with smaller amounts of pressure applied at decisive points in time and space. It allowed for a slow but steady accumulation of influence. The result was that the High Shaman could count on the support of the Caucus when he needed it. After all, if certain Delegates didn’t fall into line, then unfortunate things about them might become known.

The High Shaman flashed agreement. “Shocking is an understatement. We already knew that Stellers and the girl, Morgan, were linked somehow. But father and daughter? Do we know this for certain?”

“With reasonable confidence, yes,” the Spymaster replied. “Morgan has the power to have changed our people on Tāmtu into something they aren’t, and have never been before, but she’s otherwise naïve in the way of all immature beings. She hasn’t thought, or simply isn’t aware, that we’re able to Scry into the minds of our people even if we can’t gain entry to her thoughts. And that has revealed much.”

“And the girl hasn’t discerned that we’ve landed a ship on Tāmtu? Are we certain of that?”

“The leader of the expedition insists that the Shading effect on the ship was never breached. The girl never even attempted to. Again, in the way of the immature, she apparently tends to only focus on those things that she finds interesting and ignores everything else.”

As the Spymaster spoke, the High Shaman swept his attention around the meeting chamber, his sanctum. He’d erected a powerful ward around it to prevent anyone from prying either acoustically or by Scrying. But the Spymaster’s mention of his operatives being able to surreptitiously peek into the minds of their corrupted brethren on Tāmtu prompted him to make sure.

He turned his attention back to the Spymaster. “But you don’t know that she’s unaware, and this may simply be misinformation.”

The Spymaster scintillated with amusement. “I must remember this, should I ever become High Shaman.”

The High Shaman flared with dangerous radiance. “Remember what?”

“That being forever immersed in plots and schemes risks exposure to a hefty dose of paranoia.”

“You believe I’m paranoid?”

“I mean it in the most respectful way.”

“I’m sure you do,” the High Shaman said. “In any case, need I remind you that there have been fourteen attempts on my life since I assumed office? Fourteen times, someone has deliberately tried to kill me to open the way to this office for themselves or some patron. Fourteen attempted assassinations tend to make one cautious. If you prefer to call it paranoia, well, do that. I don’t care.”

“You make a compelling argument, High Shaman. After all, when everyone really is out to get you, paranoia is merely smart thinking.”

The High Shaman gave the Spymaster a suspicious look. “I am reminded that four of those attempts remain unsolved. And, just a moment ago, you alluded to you becoming High Shaman. Are these things related?”

“Of course not. If I had wished you dead, then you would be dead.”

The High Shaman flashed a mix of surprise and concern. “Is that meant to be comforting?”

“No. It’s simply the truth. Fortunately, I have no interest in the office of High Shaman. I am quite content to be the power behind the office.”

“Is that what you are?”

“Of course.”

A moment of tension hung between them, then the High Shaman relented. “You’re right. If anyone could successfully kill me, it would probably be you.” He pulsed with suspicion. “Although, you are a liar by nature. Why should I believe that you have no interest in my office?”

“Because everyone’s always trying to kill you. That is not my idea of a happy or fulfilling life.”

The High Shaman hung silent for a moment, then burst into flashes and sparkles of humor, what amounted to uproarious laughter among his kind.

“You are refreshing to deal with, Spymaster. For an inveterate liar, you can be remarkably honest.”

His good humor faded, though, as he turned back to the report, glowing in a softly illuminated globe hovering over the table. “And now, we come back to this. I will put my paranoia aside and accept that it’s true, at least for the moment. So it is good information. The question is, what do we do with it?”

“Clearly, Stellers and Morgan represent the most powerful of all human shamans, and quite likely the most powerful anywhere,” the Spymaster said. “They have transcended the normal limits of magic acumen.”

“I think that’s safe to say. He moves entire fleets and recreates destroyed planets. She makes stars and nebulae, and changes the fundamental nature of an entire planet of our people. Having said that, she would appear to be the more powerful of the two.”

“I agree.”

“And then there is this,” the High Shaman said, touching a block of text with a tentacle, highlighting it. “This being Bertilak? She has apparently created him and dispatched him to find her father, Stellers. Why?”

“We aren’t as certain about this. Very few of our corrupted people on Tāmtu even know about this. It took a great deal of Scrying to learn this much.” The Spymaster drifted closer to the table. “I have a theory, though.”

“Go on.”

“It would seem there was some sort of conflict between the girl and Stellers. We don’t know the nature of it, but it seems to have been a major and traumatic event in the girl’s life. We speculate that she created Bertilak as a way of spying on her father—or perhaps even of punishing him.”

“Now that is an interesting theory,” the High Shaman said, flickering thoughtfully. “If there is some sort of schism between the girl and her father, it gives us something to exploit.”

“Exactly.”

“However,” the High Shaman went on, “there is another possibility.”

“Oh?”

The High Shaman highlighted another section of text. “Here. This section suggests that the girl indeed had some sort of clash with her father and fled, then took refuge on Tāmtu, for some reason that we just can’t discern. Whether she selected Tāmtu deliberately or simply stumbled upon it, we don’t know.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might,” the High Shaman replied. “But at the moment, it doesn’t. What does is the fact that the girl seems to be considerably more powerful than her father. And yet, she is hiding from him. And then she sends a constructed being, this Bertilak, to interact with him. So she may be spying, or she may intend to punish him—but she also might be seeking to test him.”

“Test him?” the Spymaster asked. “Why?”

“She is his daughter. Conflict has driven them apart. It stands to reason that she would want to heal the rift between them. So she remains in hiding and sends this created being out to spy on and test her father. The ultimate goal may be to repair her relationship with him.”

“That would be a problem,” the Spymaster said.

“The two of them reconciling and potentially joining forces? It would be catastrophic. We must not allow that to happen. Indeed, we must seize the opportunity to widen the rift between them and try to turn the girl to our side.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

“It will,” the High Shaman agreed. “But difficult is not impossible.” He flickered in thought for a moment. “We must maintain close watch on the girl. When the opportunity finally presents itself, we will have a limited period of time in which to act.”

“And what opportunity would that be?”

“I have no idea. That’s why we must maintain a close watch. Your team on Tāmtu must remain undetected. It’s absolutely essential.”

“I understand. I will ensure that they do as well,” the Spymaster replied. “In the meantime, there is one other matter I must bring to your attention.”

The High Shaman waited.

The Spymaster called up another report. “This is from our operative among the Danzur. Apparently, our efforts to stymie the human attempt to enter into an alliance or treaty with them have borne much fruit. They are barely a cycle away from having their diplomatic credentials revoked.”

“No,” the High Shaman said.

The Spymaster flashed his confusion. “No?”

“No. If the human diplomatic mission is brought too precipitously to an end, that will free the human woman named Wixcombe to do other things. And, as we’ve discovered, she is almost as big a problem as Stellers and his daughter.”

The High Shaman thought back to the reports he’d received while Wixcombe had been their captive. She had proven utterly immune to Scrying or any other sort of mental influence or control. The High Shaman himself had traveled to her place of imprisonment and probed her mind. He’d found it to be encased in an implacable barrier, one through which even his formidable power couldn’t pass.

“If she remains among the Danzur, pursuing diplomacy, she is removed from involvement in other matters. And she represents an unpredictable, chaotic factor. We don’t truly understand her powers, nor how she escaped our most secure facility. So I would rather she remain where she is—making futile attempts to gain the confidence of the Danzur.”

“So what would you have us do?”

The High Shaman considered the report. “We will offer the Danzur full compensation for their lost trade. Tell them . . . tell them that we don’t wish to see them get pulled into this war, that we only have their best interests in mind, something like that. However we manage it, I want the Danzur to remain out of the war. I also want them to keep Wixcombe busy.”

“I gather you don’t believe the humans would hand over Stellers to placate the Danzur, then,” the Spymaster said.

“Do you?”

“Oh, no. It was a clever bit of turmoil to introduce into their discussions with the Danzur, though. And who knows, perhaps they would have fallen for it.”

“I suspect that Stellers may have objected—and he certainly has the means of doing so.”

“Turn him against his own, beloved Orbital Navy? That would be quite the achievement.”

The High Shaman didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he just gleamed his distraction as he thought about that. He’d never taken the idea of the humans handing over Stellers seriously, so he’d never even considered the idea of turning him against his own people. Could they?

A germ of an idea flickered into existence.

“That would be quite the achievement, yes,” the High Shaman said. “Yes, it would indeed.”

21

Kira couldn’t believe how much she’d missed these quarters. The new, shitty ones she’d been assigned had always been either too hot or too cold. On top of being too cramped. And too noisy with the hiss and swish of fluids and gases flowing through pipes and conduits that seemed to snake along behind every bulkhead. Too uncomfortable for it to be accidental. It was as though they were specifically designed to be as discomfiting as possible—which they probably were. After all, if you were going to try to leverage some advantage during negotiations, what better way than to make sure your opposition was tired and cranky?

She got it. On the battlefield of diplomacy, coarse sheets and noisy claustrophobic compartments were weapons. After all, it would be rude to decline the hospitality of your hosts. That was why Kira had resolved to actually live in the quarters to which the Danzur had downgraded her, instead of staying aboard the Venture in much more comfort.

So what had changed? Why had the Danzur suddenly and without explanation moved her back to her original, much more pleasant quarters?

For a moment, she didn’t care. She dropped her small amount of baggage on the bed—which now by itself seemed as large as the crappy quarters she’d just vacated—and luxuriated in the palatial surroundings.

Her indulgent enjoyment only lasted a moment, though, until the question reasserted itself. What had changed? Why had the Danzur relented?

For that matter, did this mean negotiations were back on, or were they still on a deadline for having their diplomatic credentials revoked in—she checked the time—less than twelve hours?

She needed to talk to Damien.

The door chime sounded, and she answered.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Kira said, as Damien stepped into the compartment. “I was just thinking about you.”

He smiled. “I’m flattered, Kira. Is this the start of something beautiful?”

“Kind of full of yourself, aren’t you?,” she said, grinning back at him as she flopped into a chair as soft as a cloud. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.” She closed her eyes and stretched out.

“A diplomat, full of himself? Say it ain’t so,” Damien said, and Kira laughed. He sat down across from her. “What have you heard?”

She opened an eye. “Nothing. All I know is that there I was either sweating or freezing, I don’t remember which—all the discomfort kind of blurs together. Then a Danzur showed up, all obsequious-like, and told me I was moving back in here.” She glared. “Oh, thanks for that sojourn in accommodation hell, by the way.”

“This is technically an ON mission and you’re the head of it. It would have been rude not to use the quarters you’re offered. It’s essentially saying ‘oh, by the way, you’re terrible hosts’ and that their hospitality sucks.”

“But they do suck, and they are terrible hosts.”

“You do realize we’re probably being bugged?”

Kira sat up, then looked at the ceiling and raised her voice. “Good! I’ve had more than my fill of bullshit diplomatic head games anyway.”

Damien smirked. “Well, that should help our cause.”

“Do we even still have a cause, though?” Kira asked.

“Well, here you are,” Damien replied, gesturing around. “You’re back in the nice diplomatic digs. There must be a reason for that.”

Kira sat back again. “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s just some bureaucratic foul up. You can’t have as much officious crap going on as the Danzur do without some of it occasionally screwing up.”

Damien’s lip twisted a notch. “Sure, why not? Let’s insult their institutions on top of it.”

Kira waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t think it matters. I think the Danzur have made it very clear that they’re not actually interested in—”

The door chimed again. Kira exchanged a look with Damien, then stood and answered it.

It was Tadrup.

Kira started to assemble something suitably diplomatic to say, but she suddenly thought to hell with it. “Hello, Tadrup. Come to throw me back out of these quarters and into something else? Maybe a bed stuck in an airlock this time?”

She could hear Damien wince behind her. Again, she didn’t care. Either the mission was a failure and they’d be boarding the Venture to get clear of Danzur space before the deadline of losing their credentials, or they wouldn’t. Short of unleashing a tirade of bitter vitriol on Tadrup, or actually trying to insult him—two things she wasn’t far off doing—she couldn’t imagine that the situation could really get much worse.

Tadrup laughed.

“My most profuse apologies,” Tadrup said. “I’m afraid we acted precipitously. May I come in?”

Kira stepped aside and gestured the Danzur in. Damien greeted him, then shot Kira a look as Tadrup took a seat.

She returned an ambiguous smile. “So, Tadrup, you say you acted precipitously. What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that we based our actions on old information. Since then, new information has come to light.”

“About what?”

“About this entire situation. We regret our rashness. Therefore, I would like to formally apologize to you.”

Kira narrowed her eyes. So this wasn’t just a screw-up. The Danzur had suddenly swung from hostile, back to friendly, and now they were apparently interested in continuing negotiations.

“And we are happy to accept your apology, Tadrup,” Damien said, then stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some things to attend to in preparation for our departure.”

“You’re leaving us?” Tadrup asked.

Kira rolled her eyes.

Damien just gave a nod. “Well, of course. Our diplomatic credentials are to be revoked in a few hours so we want to be clear of your space by then. We believe that the integrity of sovereign territory is very important.”

Kira hid a smile. Damien was good, she had to admit. In one sentence, he’d managed to both show respect for the Danzur and admonish them for seizing the two Allied Stars planets. He’d also effectively objected to the loss of their credentials and generally shabby treatment as a bonus.

Tadrup clearly got it, too. “We could not agree more. Which is why I am pleased to inform you that, once more, because of incomplete information, you were done an injustice. We no longer have an intention of revoking your diplomatic status, and we are pleased to invite you to remain in Danzur space as our honored guests.”

Kira could have waited for Damien to offer a suitably diplomatic reply, but impatience over the whole ridiculous diplomatic dance made her speak up. Being tired and grouchy blunted her interest in subtlety and finesse.

“I don’t think so, Tadrup,” she said. “I think you made your position pretty clear regarding our relations with you. I think we’ll just be on our way, taking the news of your rejection of our good faith offers back with us.”

“No, please. As I said, new information has come to light that makes it clear our previous stance was incorrect. I did apologize.”

Kira glanced at Damien, who’d just sat back down, apparently content to see where Kira was taking this. She caught a glimmer of worry from him that she might yet screw this up, but once more, she simply didn’t care.

“And an apology is a big deal in diplomatic circles, I know,” she replied. “But let’s be clear on something here, Tadrup. If we are going to restart our negotiations, then we need an assurance that you’re not going to suddenly reverse course on us again and demand that we leave your space—oh, and no, I will not move back into those awful quarters you apparently repurposed out of a greasy machinery locker.”

Tadrup tilted his head. “I am prepared to agree in principle, of course, but we must retain the discretion to protect our interests.”

“Fine,” Kira said, activating her comm. “Wixcombe to Venture. Prepare to get underway. We’ll be leaving within the hour.”

“No!” Tadrup’s voice was filled with genuine alarm, a true error in diplomatic practices.

Kira stopped. “Venture, stand by.”

“Standing by.”

“It is not necessary for you to leave, Kira. We will stipulate to maintaining a positive negotiating environment with you.”

“I’m curious, Tadrup,” Damien said. “What changed? What new information did you come into?”

While Damien talked, Kira brushed her awareness against Tadrup’s. She didn’t want to probe too far, but she could readily sense his surface thoughts. They revolved around Kira not leaving, and negotiations not ceasing.

Tadrup fired up his bureaucratic double-speak. “The new information is related to matters that had originally prompted us to seek to break off negotiations, but which, when combined with new information—”

“You called us a pox, Tadrup,” Kira said. “You said you were going to ally with the squids to—how did you put it? To take up arms against us?”

“Kira, I—”

“No,” she snapped. “It’s time for the diplomatic, bureaucratic bullshit to take a break. I’m a soldier, so I’m used to speaking like a soldier.” She really was fed up and didn’t care if she insulted Tadrup, or anyone else, in the process of venting about it. “And this soldier has this to say—you threatened us with war, implied an imminent threat if we didn’t leave your space according to a deadline you arbitrarily set—oh, and you stuck me in that miserable little closet that you laughingly call quarters.”

Damien gave a thin smile. “Not how I would have put it, Tadrup, but you have to admit, Kira’s right. You’re asking us to overlook some egregious issues.” Tadrup opened his mouth, but Damien held up a hand. “Having said all of that, though, we aren’t opposed to reopening negotiations. But only, as Kira says, if they’re going to be conducted in good faith.”

“Which means,” Kira said, “no more of the officious crap, the requests and forms and applications.”

“But it’s how we do things,” Tadrup protested. “To just set it all aside—”

“You don’t have to set it all aside,” Damien put in. “We’re prepared to conform to your systems, your way of doing things, but only as long as you’re prepared to accommodate us more than you have been.”

Tadrup nodded. “That’s agreeable, of course.”

Kira had turned to look out the big viewport. A Danzur ship was passing slowly by, thrusters puffing, apparently about to dock somewhere further along the platform. She ignored it, though, and kept her focus on Tadrup.

He wasn’t happy about this. He’d been instructed to be accommodating, to mend relations with the humans, and wasn’t pleased by it. He was just following orders—but those orders had obviously been a pretty abrupt and comprehensive reversal of the hardline position they’d previously taken.

A stance Tadrup himself had enthusiastically endorsed.

Kira turned. “Tadrup, what have you got against us?”

The Danzur stared. “What? Why, I’ve got nothing against you.”

“Bullshit,” Kira snapped. “I can tell you don’t like us. It’s written all over your face. Why?”

Kira felt Damien tense but ignored it and kept her full attention on Tadrup. She was a little embarrassed by how much pleasure she took in seeing the Danzur diplomat actually starting to squirm.

She could see him sorting through possible replies. Kira just waited.

Tadrup finally gave up and spoke plainly. “I had extensive commercial investments in our trade with the Nyctus. When your Orbital Navy destroyed their planet, I lost everything.” He drew himself up. “So, yes, I admit it. That definitely doesn’t make me favorably disposed to you.”

“Why would your government assign someone with such an obvious—and, I’ll grant you, understandable—bias against us to negotiate?” Damien asked. “And why did you agree to it?”

“I don’t pretend to relish this task, conducting these negotiations,” Tadrup said. “But it was assigned to me, and it is therefore my duty to carry it out. As a soldier, Kira, I’m sure you understand that.”

She nodded. “I do. And thank you for being honest—finally.” She nodded again. “I get it. We’re given things to do that we don’t particularly want to do. But then we do them to the best of our ability, and in good faith—don’t we, Tadrup?”

He nodded. “Yes, we do.”

“So why the change of heart? What is the new information you received?” Damien asked.

“And what about the reparations you were so determined to have us pay to you?” Kira added.

“Reparations have been made,” Tadrup replied. “Generous reparations, at that.”

Damien smiled. “In other words, your losses were made good. You got your money back.”

“In essence, yes.”

Kira was frowning, though. “Generous reparations were made? When? By whom?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say,” Tadrup replied, then held up both paws. “And before you react badly to that, I hasten to add that that’s not some arbitrary position or bureaucratic—what was the word you used, Kira? Bullshit?”

Kira almost smiled at that. The word sounded strange coming from the Danzur, even through the translator. It shouldn’t be a surprise, though. It was likely every race had the concept of bullshit in their culture and language. It was, Kira thought, pretty much inevitable that any species that became sentient probably developed the idea of bullshit pretty early on.

But she didn’t smile, because Tadrup’s words had some disturbing implications. If the Allied Stars had made reparations, then how? And when? And why wouldn’t they involve or even inform their own diplomatic mission here? One glance at Damien showed that he was obviously wondering the same thing.

But who else could have made reparations on the Allied Stars’ behalf?

“Well, this is all very positive news, Tadrup,” Damien said, standing. “Kira and I have some things to discuss, now that we’re talking to you again, and—”

“Yes, of course,” Tadrup replied, also standing. “I will make arrangements to get our meeting schedule reactivated and brought up-to-date. Until then . . .”

Tadrup turned for the door.

“Tadrup, wait,” Kira said. She caught a sharp, warning glance from Damien out of the corner of her eye, but there was something she wanted to try.

The Danzur turned back. His attitude was genuinely tense. Despite having had his losses apparently made good, Tadrup obviously still wasn’t happy about these events. She needed to try probing his thoughts more deeply, but not right now. She was still pretty pissed off herself and couldn’t be sure that none of that would leak across a Joining and alert the Danzur.

“You want to show us that you’re going to deal in good faith, right?” Kira asked.

Tadrup nodded. “Of course.”

“And you’re saying that full—I think you even said generous—reparations have been made, correct?”

Suspicion crept into Tadrup’s manner, but he nodded again. “Yes. All is forgiven.”

“I’m so glad. However, I think a true demonstration of good faith is in order.”

“What would you suggest?” Tadrup asked, his wariness even more acute.

“Relinquish your claim to the two planets you seized from us,” Kira replied flatly. “Renounce whatever designs you might have had on them and formally recognize them as Allied Stars territory.”

Damien stiffened. Kira knew this was a blunt way of approaching diplomacy, insofar as she wasn’t really being diplomatic at all. Once more, she didn’t give a shit. But there was more to it than that. She wanted to see what Tadrup’s reaction would be.

“I—” Tadrup began, then he stopped and shook his head. “It’s not my place to commit to such a thing. I will, however—”

“Raise the matter immediately with your Central Council in order to get this particular bit of unpleasantness resolved?” Damien said, jumping aboard Kira’s train of thought.

“After all,” Kira added, “you’ve had generous reparations made so you no longer have a reason to keep up your incursion into our space, right?”

“I will bring the matter to the attention of my superiors immediately upon leaving here,” Tadrup said, doing everything short of actually sighing out loud in frustration. “I will have an answer for you.”

“Within twelve hours?” Kira said. “That would be wonderful, thanks.”

Tadrup’s bland stare, the all-purpose expression of a diplomat, slipped for a moment. Kira saw anger, bordering on outrage, but it vanished like a light flicked off. “I will do my best to have an answer for you shortly.”

Kira was tempted to push, to see if she could provoke Tadrup into saying something he didn’t intend or otherwise reveal something useful, but Damien cut her off.

“Thank you, Tadrup. We look forward to resuming our negotiations with you very soon.”

Tadrup nodded and left.

When he was gone, Damien looked at Kira. “Well, I have to return to the Venture. Would you care to join me?”

She nodded. “Right behind you.”

* * *

“I am just not cut out for this diplomacy stuff,” Kira said, dropping into a seat aboard the Venture and stretching out her legs. “I definitely prefer looking at my enemies through a gunsight, not across a meeting table.”

“Um, not so fast, Kira,” Damien said. “I wouldn’t write off your skills as a diplomat too quickly.”

“You’re kidding, right? I was anything but diplomatic with Tadrup.”

“Believe it or not, diplomacy isn’t just endless compromises and insincerely flattering words. Sometimes, you have to be firm. And you were definitely firm.”

Kira leaned her head back and sighed heavily. “Let me put it this way. I don’t like this diplomatic stuff. It’s just not how my mind works. I’ve been taught to solve problems as tactical challenges—maneuver, firepower, countermeasures, that sort of thing. This verbal sparring just wears me down.”

“Well, I’ve got one observation,” Damien replied. “If you plan to advance in the ON and become a Commander, or even a Captain or an Admiral, then diplomacy is going to be a big part of what you’re going to have to do to be successful. Hell, I spend at least half of my diplomatic effort to balance agendas and schemes, interests, and motivations . . . all inside the Allied Stars bureaucracy. The ON isn’t going to be any different. However—and I say this slowly, so you grasp the importance—you have a natural grasp of the value that contrast can bring to the negotiating table.”

“Lieutenant for life doesn’t sound half bad, and I was always good at playing good officer, bad officer.”

“You’ll get a way better pension as an Admiral, though.”

Kira smiled. “Admiral Wixcombe. Yeah, right. Anyway, what do you think is going on?”

“With Tadrup, or the Danzur generally?”

“Both, I guess.”

Damien stretched out his legs. “I don’t know. I’ve got no idea what sort of reparations were paid.”

“So there are no other channels open between the Allied Stars and Danzur? Things going on in the background we don’t know about?”

“If we don’t know about them, then how could I say?”

Kira hissed in frustration. “Fair point, but you know what I mean.”

Damien nodded. “I’m sure not aware of any back channels between us and the Danzur. More to point, it would be unheard of. Running some sort of back channel with a party, while having a formal diplomatic mission deployed to deal with that party, but keeping your own mission in the dark? It makes no sense to do that, because how do you stop everyone from working at cross purposes?”

“So what the hell kind of reparations were made?”

“I’ll get a diplomatic signal cranked up to send back home. It’s going to take a while to get an answer, of course.”

Kira nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll do some signal cranking of my own.”

* * *

Kira allowed herself the indulgence of sprawling across the voluminous bed in her quarters. She luxuriated in the vast expanse of fine, smooth fabric—something like silk, but thicker and more supple. It was decadent, something she’s rarely experienced since joining the ranks of a navy engaged in a life-or-death struggle of galactic proportions.

It was also three times the size of her rack aboard the Venture. Okay, so maybe there were some perks to these diplomatic missions.

Still not enough to offset the aggravation, though.

Kira closed her eyes, breathing in and out slowly. Having the Danzur spy on her doing this was of little concern. From their perspective, she’d merely be silent and still, apparently taking a nap. Of course, there were other implications to being surveilled that actually did bother her—there was a reason she still changed and showered aboard the Venture. She doubted the Danzur would have much interest in the human body, but she really didn’t want to find out that she was wrong about that the hard way, and her natural shyness—a product of the collective home—lingered like an old habit.

When she’d fully settled into her center, she threw her awareness into deep space. She rode a wave of her magic like an expanding shockwave, the bow shape growing wider with each passing second. Fortunately, she knew she could concentrate most of her attention across a limited arc. It was unlikely that Thorn would be anywhere but back in the direction of Allied Stars space and the Zone.

Thorn?

It was just a shout into the ether. Thorn would hear it and reply. That would snap the link closed between them. As far as she’d been able to tell, no other Starcasters, nor anyone else sensitive to magic, would be able to overhear it. Her intent was only to speak to Thorn, and it seemed that magic honored that intent.

Except he didn’t. She got no response at all.

Thorn, are you there?

Silence.

Thorn, somehow the Allied Stars or the ON made reparations to the Danzur, but we don’t know anything more. Do you? Can you find out?

Nothing.

Kira frowned. He wasn’t ignoring her. She’d become attuned enough to Thorn’s presence in the ether that she could tell if he was out there, somewhere, and simply choosing to ignore her. Of course, it might be for good reason, if he was enmeshed in something complex or dangerous. But this was different. There simply wasn’t any sense of him even existing—

Thorn?

She sat bolt upright, inadvertently breaking her concentration and abruptly ending her attempted Joining.

Not even a hint of Thorn, not anywhere in the ether. She couldn’t find a trace of the most powerful Starcaster she knew. That meant that either someone or something out there was powerful enough to block access to him—

Or Thorn Stellers was dead.

22

Thorn groaned.

“I wish I was dead.”

He sat up, gingerly lowered his feet to the floor, and took his head in his hands. He then took a moment for self-examination. He wore a tunic and shirt, underwear, and, for some reason, a boot and sock on one foot, the other being bare.

He continued his personal assessment. His body ached in every joint, a shrill whine filled his ears with a piercing white noise, and his head—

Oh, yes. His head.

Someone had replaced his brain with a throbbing brick of agony. He could feel it pounding behind his eyes, like an irritating harmonic from a fusion reactor in need of tuning. Pain—less pain—more pain—less pain—more pain—

He heard someone moan. It was him.

He felt a metallic rush as the door slid open.

“Thorn, my friend, how are you?”

Thorn shrank back from Bertilak’s booming voice. “Please, Bertilak, keep it down to a dull roar, okay?”

The alien laughed but at least tried to restrain himself, with only modest success. He saw Bertilak’s enormous green feet cross to a chair and heard him sit down—but he didn’t look up, because that would involve moving his head, and that was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“I’m sorry, Thorn, but you can’t carry on the way you did last night and not pay the price for it.”

Thorn levered his head up so he could look at Bertilak. “As I recall, you were carrying on just as much as I was.”

“Ah, but I’m used to it, and in terms of mass, I am both heavier and denser than you. A fact that carries some weight when it comes to revelry, if you’ll pardon my pun.”

Thorn lowered his head again, ignoring Bertilak’s irritating use of humor, and his breathing, and even the presence of his enormous green feet, which were close enough for Thorn to see without moving at all. He could well believe Bertilak’s assessment. Everyone at this strange, lonely outpost seemed to know Bertilak. Even in the bar, all he had to do was order the usual, a feat that Thorn considered to be the result of many trips to the same watering hole, to quote an old commander at Code Nebula.

Fringe was, Thorn had to admit, a remarkable place. Located just outside Allied Stars space, but still well away from the demilitarized zone, Fringe answered to no one.

And that was the point. No one even seemed sure who’d first established the place—a waystation for smugglers, a refuge for those on the lam, and a generally freewheeling, rambunctious place where the rules were simple: you pay your debts, you don’t rat on anyone, and you never, ever ask anyone about their past.

And all of it happened aboard an orbital platform, in the sense that it was platform-like and it orbited the relatively benign moon of one of the most violent gas giants Thorn had ever seen. But the similarity with other orbital platforms Thorn knew about, like the one serving Code Gauntlet, ended there. Someone had dropped the hull of an old bulk carrier into orbit, stripped out the drives, kept the powerplant running, and turned it into a makeshift space station. Someone else had come along with a smaller derelict ship and strapped it to the bulk carrier, then someone else had done the same. Eventually, the place known as Fringe came into being, a shabby mishmash of ships, hulls, and cargo pods, all bolted together into a single, sprawling thing. There was no better word for it, Thorn thought. Fringe was definitely a thing.

It also reminded him of other places he’d been, although in bits and pieces, not as a whole. The bar where he and Bertilak had done most of their carousing, for instance, was strongly reminiscent of a place on Seagram’s Planet where he’d once taken leave.

Which raised another question. How did the ON not know about this place? Or, maybe they did and just kept it under wraps. For that matter, given the sorts of trade that went on here, everything from pale grey markets, to the blackest of black ones, maybe the ON did know about it and just let it do its thing. Before he joined, Thorn had been around enough shady types and places to know the score. Places like Fringe had some advantages, not the least of which was tending to congregate all the rogues, rascals, and reprobates in one place. It made it easier to keep any eye on them.

Bertilak’s feet reappeared in Thorn’s field of view, which was still pretty much stuck on a spot between his own. “Thorn, I know you feel unwell.”

“Oh, I passed unwell a few light years back. I’m well into shitty, believe me.” He dragged his gaze upward again. “I’m no lightweight. What the hell was I drinking?”

Bertilak laughed, making Thorn wince. “What weren’t you drinking? You were the life of the party—the life of the life of the party, even. Color me as surprised as anyone to find that you could sing,” Bertilak said, holding out a cup.

“Color me your color. Because that’s how I feel.”

“Drink, friend. It’s a remedy, and it will help you immediately. It’s tailored to your blood chemistry, and—”

“Shh. I’ll drink it, if only to keep you from talking,” Thorn said. He took the cup, sniffed, made a face, then drank it—and felt his lips begin to rise in alarm. “Was that hair of the dog? Smelled like the muck on Murgon-4, but with the added stench of death.”

Bertilak shrugged. “Maybe they’re the same thing.”

Thorn grimaced. He didn’t really think Bertilak would try to get him to drink hydrocarbon sludge, but the alien was still something of an unknown.

“I haven’t yet steered you wrong, Thorn. Trust me on this.”

Thorn sighed again and finished the mug, his throat working mechanically as the thick, noxious goo began to go to work. He’d tried many hangover cures before, only a few with even mild success, so he expected this one to be no different. Still, get hungover enough, and you’d do anything to—

Thorn’s eyes widened. A soft warmth radiated from his stomach, rolling through his guts, his chest, then into his limbs, and finally his head. As it filled him, it completely washed away all traces of the night before.

Thorn looked up at Bertilak. “Holy shit.”

The alien grinned. “What did I tell you?”

Thorn stood. No aches, no pounding head, no wonky stomach. His mouth no longer tasted like an ashtray.

“I’ll say it again. Holy shit. Bertilak, why haven’t you put that on the market? You’d make a fortune!”

“If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to appear as a miracle worker in moments like this, now would I?”

Thorn chuckled. “I guess.” He looked at the dregs clinging to the inside of the mug. “Still, you’re sitting on a mountain of wealth here, my friend.”

“I thought you were more interested in my tech, my sensors and weapons and the like.”

“Who the hell needs those when you’ve got this?”

“Well, since you seem to be back on your feet, why don’t you get dressed? We’ve got work to do here at Fringe.”

“What sort of work?” Thorn asked, putting the mug down and reaching for his trousers. “For that matter, why are we here, Bertilak? You were pretty determined to be all coy about it last night.”

“I still am. However, once you get dressed and have had some breakfast, all your questions will be answered.”

Bertilak left. Thorn watched him go, then finished dressing.

Breakfast. Now there was something he’d assumed he’d just skip this morning, because nothing he’d have eaten would’ve stayed down for long. Now, though, he was ravenous.

He glanced at the mug as he strapped up his boots. An instant, almost perfect hangover cure. Was there anything Bertilak couldn’t do?

* * *

Which was a question still plucking at Thorn as he followed Bertilak through the maze of nearly identical twisting passages and compartments that made up Fringe. Some of it was still devoted to actual operations, housing generators and energizers, power converters and air processors. Fringe was still an orbiting platform, if a bizarre one, and had to maintain attitude control and a livable environment. The bulk of the place, though, seemed to be devoted to storing and moving cargo, or to debauchery, without much of a transition between the two.

They threaded their way among some crates and saw clothing scattered around the deck. Thorn’s gaze followed a trail of hastily flung-around trousers, shirts, belts, socks, and eventually underwear. The trail led around the corner of a stack of cargo pods, around which drifted an awful lot of pretty distinctive noise. He glanced at Bertilak, who just grinned and shrugged.

Thorn agreed. He really didn’t want to know and just followed Bertilak onward.

Eventually, the big alien stopped. “We’re meeting several, um, individuals just ahead. Please, let me do all of the talking. Oh, and no questions,” he said.

Thorn cocked his head. “Individuals? Who are they? What are you going to be talking to them about?”

“Now what did I just say.”

“I thought you meant don’t ask them any questions,” Thorn replied.

“Ah, technicalities and loopholes. You’ll fit right in here.” Thorn noted it explicitly didn’t answer his questions, but Bertilak had walked on before he could speak. He followed the big alien through a tight hatch into another compartment, this one apparently a repurposed cargo module. It was set up like another bar, with tables and chairs bolted to the deck. Thorn noted that the ashtrays were fastened down on the tables, and all the food and drink was served in flimsy, plastic containers. None of it could be weaponized during a brawl.

Which would be fine, if not for the fact that the two people glowering at them as they entered were already armed to the teeth.

A man and a woman, both looking as hard as ablative armor. He had a scruffy beard, a sneer, and a pair of massive handguns strapped to his waist. She wasn’t much different, aside from the beard.

“Bertilak, you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” the man snapped. “And time is money.”

Bertilak laughed and reached into a pocket. “Ten minutes? Here.” He tossed a single coin, a microcredit, onto the table. “That should cover ten minutes of your time, Garlen. You can owe me the change.”

Thorn followed Bertilak to the table, warily, taking in all of their surroundings the way one did when stepping into a new watering hole for the first time. Aside from him and Bertilak, and the man apparently named Garlen and his companion, there was one other man jammed behind a table covered with empty plastic cups. A gruff-looking bartender watched them all suspiciously from behind a pile of crates set up as a bar.

Bertilak sat down at the table, Thorn beside him. “So, Garlen, who’s your friend?” he asked.

The woman sat up. “I can speak for myself, thanks. Name’s Keely.”

Bertilak grinned. “And this fine gentleman is Thorn Stellers.”

Garlen scowled. “Looks like a cop. Are you a cop?”

“A cop? No. Not a cop.” Thorn considered telling him he was a Lieutenant in the Orbital Navy, but he decided to hold back until he knew just what the hell was going on here.

“So, what then? You’re some sort of aw-thor-it-ee figure, that’s for sure.” Garlen said it that way—aw-thor-it-ee, each syllable drawn out for emphasis and dripping with suspicious contempt.

Thorn sighed and prepared himself for a fight. He figured he and Bertilak should have this, but just in case, he touched his charm, his grubby old book, which was tucked away in his jacket’s inner pocket.

But Bertilak leaned forward, muscles bunched in menace. “Thorn is my friend and new partner, Garlen, and that’s all you need to know.”

Keely glared. “Sorry, but—”

Bertilak stood. “Fine. Thorn, these people don’t want our business, so let’s find some who do.”

“Just wait a minute,” Garlen said, raising a hand. “You can’t fault us for being careful, Bertilak. There’s a lot at stake here.”

“Most of it illegal,” Keely put in.

Garlen looked at her. “There are parts that aren’t illegal?”

She laughed.

Thorn shot Bertilak a glance as the big alien sat back down. A lot at stake, and illegal. What the hell was Bertilak up to?

“Alright, we’ll stay and keep talking. But I’m vouching for Thorn. And that should be good enough, right, Garlen?” Bertilak said.

The man gave a grudging nod. “I guess.” He suddenly raised his voice. “Mind you, I don’t like talking out in the open like this, where just anyone can hear it, you know?”

The bartender snorted out a resigned sigh and came out from behind the bar. He collected the bar’s only other patron, the barely conscious man now slumped in the corner, and bundled him out through the hatch. Before he left, he paused and turned back.

“This is going to cost me business, Garlen,” he said, glowering. “At least a hundred credits worth.”

“I’ll give you five hundred if it’ll shut you up.”

The bartender gave him a gap-toothed smile. “Don’t burn the place down,” he said, then left and closed the hatch.

“Now then, how about we get down to business. Bertilak, I’ve got some good stuff this time around. Think you’ll be damned interested in it,” Garlen said.

Keely leaned forward, a glare hardening her face. “You’ve got some good stuff, Garlen? Remember how you got your hands on it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Force of habit, sorry. We’ve got some good stuff.”

Bertilak glanced at Thorn, his expression one of warning. “Alright, and what, exactly, would this good stuff be?”

Garlen answered by pulling a battered data pad out of a belt pouch, tapping it, then dropping it on the table. Its screen was smeared with something. Thorn didn’t want to know what. It showed a schematic, one that Thorn didn’t immediately recognize.

“Particle cannons. Three prototypes, never deployed. The Calusians were trying to work out the bugs,” Garlen replied.

Keely tapped the grimy screen. “They never could get them to work properly, mainly because they were being sabotaged. These ones were supposedly scrapped.”

Thorn stared around the table. Particle cannons? Weapons? These people dealt in illicit arms? Bertilak dealt in illicit arms? It was a direction he hadn’t expected, because Bertilak verged on being goofy, with his oafish presence and boundless positivity. Weapon merchants—at least the ones Thorn had seen—were dark shadows in any room, no matter how many lights were glowing.

“I need a moment to speak to my friend,” Bertilak said, standing and gesturing for Thorn to follow him.

Thorn followed him out of the bar compartment, holding his tongue until the big alien had closed the hatch.

“What the hell, Bertilak? These are, what, black market arms dealers? You’re a black-market arms dealer?”

Bertilak smiled. “Now you see why I asked you to step out here.”

“Instead of being honest and telling me up front.”

“If I had, would you be here now?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t be on this little jaunt with you at all. This is illegal, Bertilak. The ON arrests traders for this sort of thing.”

“It would probably count as unethical, too. Even immoral,” Bertilak put in.

Thorn just stared at him. “Immoral? Bullshit. It’s unconscionable. Do you know what these people do with shit like this? They kill children. They kill—”

“Children? The weapons are not intended to kill children,” Bertilak protested.

Thorn’s bark of laughter was loud and harder than steel. “Are you serious? How naïve are you? Once these are out of your big, green hands, every weapon you sell can and will be used to kill whatever is in the way. Of course innocents will die. It’s what happens when you sell hardware to people who have a cause and don’t care who gets hurt. Why would you do this?”

Bertilak grinned. “For the money. There’s a lot of it involved. A lot. That’s what those high stakes we were talking about really are,” he said.

Thorn was apoplectic, his fingers tapping across the talisman in a barely suppressed need to ’cast. “So who are these people, Garlen and Keely?”

“Traders, like me.”

“Traders.” The word was a curse. And more.

“It sounds much better than arms dealer, or smuggler, don’t you think?” Bertilak offered.

Thorn shook his head in utter disgust. “I can’t have any part of this, Bertilak. None. I’m an ON officer. I might be wearing civvies, but it doesn’t change my sworn duties, and even more importantly, I’m a human. I won’t give you an assist on stacking the bodies of people who aren’t soldiers. Hell, I wouldn’t even do it if it was strictly to be used on military targets.”

Bertilak’s grin faded, and he gave Thorn a thoughtful look. “Does it change things if I tell you how much we stand to make from this job? That it’s three million, five hundred thousand credits, which I would of course split with you—sixty for you, forty for me?”

Once again, Thorn briefly lost his words. Three point five million credits was nearly a lifetime of pay for him. Sixty percent of that would be a fortune. It wasn’t that he desperately needed the money for anything, at least not right now. But he wouldn’t be a soldier forever, and ON pensions were notoriously thin.

He finally just gave Bertilak a look of confused surprise. “Forty percent for me. Why? I’m just your passenger.”

“To buy your silence, of course.”

“You really aren’t worried about the ethics or morality of this, are you?”

“I don’t make money off of ethics or morality.”

Thorn scrubbed a hand through his hair. “So why didn’t you hand Tanner an invoice for saving the Hecate?”

“Because there are good reasons to ingratiate myself with the Orbital Navy. Contrary to everyone’s image of the roguish, romantic outlaw, the best way to stay in this sort of business is to cultivate good relationships with the authorities.”

“Bertilak, look— “

The alien cut him off with a raised finger. “I’m sorry, Thorn, but I didn’t ask you to step out here to ask for your permission or get your approval. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t do something stupid, like announce that you were an ON officer. If you’d done that, we’d be having a very different conversation with Garlen and Keely right now.”

“So you expect me to go back in there with you, sit down, shut up, and watch as you negotiate to move three prototype particle cannons.” Thorn stopped, cocking his head. “I’m assuming the Calusians aren’t just throwing these things on the market because they can’t get them to work. So, from whom are these being shipped, exactly? And to whom?”

Bertilak crossed his arms. “No idea.”

“So these things could end up being used directly against the ON.”

“Or by it. Your Hecate uses a transceiver design for some of its scanners that definitely came from our friends, the Calusians. I know, because I’m the one that moved it to a human dealer in Allied Stars space.”

Thorn scowled and turned away. Bertilak could be lying. Or not. But it didn’t matter. Never mind the moral or ethical quandaries. Without at least knowing where the particle cannons were going, he couldn’t go along with this.

“I’m sorry, Bertilak, but like I said, I can’t be part of this,” Thorn said, turning back. “It’s not up for discussion. I’m out. And if I had a big enough gun, I’d end this entire deal right now.”

“I understand. And believe me, I admire your commitment to doing what you believe is right, even though it’s going to cost you your share of this deal and any future access to my tech. With such devotion to your principles, you won’t need it to win this war anyway. So, I will drop you off at the nearest neutral planet as soon as I can. You should be able to find your way home from there.”

Thorn suppressed a sigh. Shit. That was a part of this he hadn’t considered. Bertilak’s tech was the priority. Never mind Bertilak’s stupid wager. The tech was the main reason he was here at all. How did three particle cannons of unknown power and effect stack up against the amazing tech he had aboard his ship? He’d one-shotted Nyctus corvettes and frigates, and could operate sensors through an Alcubierre bubble, something physics said wasn’t even possible.

Plus, one million, four hundred thousand credits.

Nope.

It was illegal under Allied Stars law. The ON stopped commercial ships and inspected them for contraband, and it arrested traders found with it. And that was despite Bertilak’s assertion that ON ships were equipped with systems that were, at one point, contraband themselves. And what if these particle cannons were potent weapons and ended up in the hands of the Nyctus? They’d apparently only failed because someone was sabotaging them, probably so they could later peddle them on the black market.

More fundamentally, he found himself flashing back on all the sacrifices people had made to keep the Allied Stars and the ON intact, to uphold the things they stood for. That included the law that Bertilak was about to break.

This time, Thorn did sigh. “I think that’s best, Bertilak. I’m sorry, I really am, but you’re asking me to compromise too much here, and I know you handed my ass to me in the circle, but I’d like you to think of yourself as lucky that I don’t go past simply bailing on this idiocy.”

“Very well. I’ll tell Garlen that you are attending to something else. You should return to my ship, because we’ll be leaving here as soon as the cargo is aboard.”

Thorn nodded once and threaded his way through the convoluted passages of Fringe, heading for Bertilak’s ship. Along the way, he found himself wondering just how and when he’d grown such a well-developed conscience.

* * *

Thorn considered stealing Bertilak’s ship and just taking it back to ON space. As a bridge officer aboard the Hecate, he’d had enough cross-training on the essential basics of nav and helm to fill in during emergencies. If the alien’s ship had been at all similar, he could probably have worked it out. And if he couldn’t, there was always magic.

But the strange controls of Bertilak’s ship meant nothing to him. And his magic was still too depleted to offer him the sort of power he’d need to make the ship controllable, much less fling it magically back into ON space.

So he just lay in his expansive and comfortable bed—which he would really miss, by the way—and brooded, waiting for Bertilak to return.

He was doing the right thing. But was he doing the correct thing? The best thing for everyone involved?

He heard a thump and sat up. Bertilak appeared a few minutes later.

“We’re about to get underway,” the big alien said.

“I didn’t hear you loading anything aboard. How small are these friggin’ particle cannons anyway?”

“The deal fell through.”

“It did? What happened?”

“I decided to give it a pass.”

Thorn stood. “Oh? Why?”

“Because, my friend, it would appear that I have caught a bad case of scruples from you.”

“Um, sorry?”

Bertilak laughed. “Don’t be. Now, my friend, let us go to the bridge and decide where we are going next. We have a three point five million credit loss to make up, and time is wasting.”

23

Once more, I’m here, Bertilak said.

Morgan opened her eyes. She’d been drifting, resting, floating over a featureless stretch of the abyssal plain. The city was just a diffused spot of glow in the far distance. She’d decided to do the thing she was going to do here, away from the distractions of hydrothermal vents and bustle of the Nyctus as they went about their daily routine. Here, there was nothing. Just silence, broken by the occasional mutter and grumble, sounds so low-pitched they were just on the bottom edge of her hearing. The elder shaman had told her those were the sounds of Tāmtu itself, the planet shifting about, like someone trying to find a more comfortable position. Apparently, the periodic thrums and rumbles traveled through the water really well, much better than they would through air.

No distractions. Just the restless movements of the planet, a featureless expanse of silty sand, and the serene water. And now, Bertilak.

What do you want?

You wanted me to test Thorn again. I did.

Oh. Right. Okay.

Once again, he passed.

Morgan’s face creased in a frown. Are you sure?

I am. I tempted him with as much as I could. Bertilak went on to describe what he’d done, and how Thorn had responded to it. So he wasn’t just giving up the money, he was ready to give up access to the technology he so badly wants for his people. He’s actually a very honest man.

No, he’s not. He’s not honest at all!

Well, your experience with him might be different. In mine, though, he’s devoted to doing what he thinks is right, Bertilak said.

Morgan balled her fists. But he’s not! He was mean to me! He tried to change me into something I’m not!

I believe you. But maybe, even then, he was trying to do what he thought was right.

Why? He wanted to change me! How could that be right?

I’m sorry. You’d have to ask him yourself. And maybe you should do that. Maybe he thought he had a good reason to do what he did. Maybe you should find out why he wanted to change you—

Go away. I don’t want to talk to you anymore right now, Morgan snapped. She was wrapped in a moment where her youth was writ large over her words, her actions—her tone.

As you wish.

Bertilak’s presence vanished from Morgan’s mind. The whole exchange left her angry, bereft of any sense of victory over Thorn. She’d wanted Thorn—not her—to prove how terrible a person he was. She’d wanted him to lie and cheat, to do bad things, because that’s what he was, a bad man. It was why she’d made Bertilak and sent him to find him and test him.

But it wasn’t working out that way. Bertilak’s second test had been a good one. She’d told him to offer Thorn so much money and stuff—just so much—to do something bad that he wouldn’t be able to resist. Then she’d have her proof, and she could do whatever she needed to do next. But Thorn wasn’t playing his part properly. He kept doing the right thing. He kept being a good person.

So why had he been mean to her? Daddy on Nebo was her daddy. He was a good and honest man, and she loved him. But Thorn was her father. She should be able to love him, too. But she couldn’t, because he’d tried to take away everything that made her special.

Why?

She relaxed her fists, which were starting to ache. Fine. He was good. He was honest. He just didn’t like her. He didn’t like how she was and wanted her to be something different. There couldn’t be any right or good reason for that, no matter what Bertilak said.

Fine.

It took Morgan some time to calm down. She couldn’t do what she’d come here to do if she were mad or upset. She just floated for a while, watching that distant Radiance, listening to Tāmtu mutter away to itself, and the occasional far off sound of creatures hunting, or being hunted.

Fine.

Morgan nodded to herself. She’d calmed down enough, she thought. She was ready now to do what she’d come here to do. She was going to change things not just in the world now, but in the past, starting with the Pool of Stars. She was going to change the picture on it from Una’s Ass to Morgan’s Ride. If she could do that, then she could do anything. That included making it so the Nyctus wouldn’t be bad and wouldn’t want to fight their stupid war. They’d just be her friends.

She actually felt a swell of pride, knowing that she was being a big girl now. Not a little kid, and not like mommy, but something in between.

With a self-satisfied smile, Morgan closed her eyes, relaxed, and let her awareness drift down into that place deep within her, where the magic simmered away.

So she needed to change the universe, but in the past. The first step was concentrating on that picture of Una’s Ass. Despite the gravity of her moment, she snickered, then tried to school her features into what she thought an adult would do.

“That’s better,” she muttered, feeling her face grow stern. Sifting memories, she recalled the painted image on the strange ship, and it came to her in bright, rich detail. It was, in fact, the only part of the Pool of Stars she could recall in any detail. The rest of the ship was just complicated stuff, struts and girders and machines, none of which meant anything to her. But the picture of that woman, Una, riding that clunky donkey, loomed in her thoughts like she was staring at it right now.

So that was the first step. Change the universe so she could reach back through time and—

Huh. Wait. She knew the Pool of Stars had gone missing mysteriously. All the people on it had died. What if she made it so that, instead of going missing back then, it just existed now? What if the Pool of Stars could travel through time, making its way through the days and years and centuries the same way it traveled through space? The elder shaman had even once told her that time was like—it was like the size of something. Everything had a height, and a length, and a width, and then it also had something similar, except made out of time.

“Hmph.”

Morgan kind of got it. The elder shaman had called it all dissenting, or demolitions, or something like that. Anyway, there were four of them, and time was one.

So she changed her mind. Instead of just reaching back into the past and changing the Pool of Stars so the picture was Morgan’s Ride, she’d bring the Pool of Stars forward and change it right here. That would be better, anyway. After all, what was the point of changing the picture to a new and cool one like she imagined, her riding a beautiful horse, if it was just going to be lost anyway?

Besides, if she did that, making it so that instead of getting lost, ships came to the present, then none of those people would die. The people aboard the Pool of Stars would still be alive, and so would the rest from every ship that made it to now instead of disappearing. They’d be happy, and they’d have her to thank for it.

Morgan dug down into the deep pool of magic that shimmered away inside her, then she drew it up and projected it out, causing it to shape the universe to a new truth.

To her truth.

In her universe, ships like the Pool of Stars didn’t just go missing. They instead jumped through time, to the present day, with their crews alive and well. The Pool of Stars in particular would come to where Morgan herself was—

Oops. Wait. She didn’t intend for the Pool of Stars to literally come to where she was, here under the waters and ice of Tāmtu. That would be dumb. The ship would appear in space, near Tāmtu, close enough that she could get the Nyctus to take her to it, so she could see and admire the new artwork on it. She’d also be able to talk to the crew, to tell them what she’d done. They’d be so happy.

Morgan let the magic go, feeling it dissipate like puffs of smoke on a stiff breeze. She bit her lip, concentrating, reshaping her intent for the universe. Then she drew up magic again and started to craft a reality that conformed to her truth.

One in which ships and people could travel through time.

Right away, though, she found herself having to force her way forward, like swimming into one of the strong currents that swept through Tāmtu’s ice-locked seas. The universe didn’t want to give up its grip on time or let her change how it worked. She dug deeper, gritting her teeth, a throbbing pulse starting and growing behind her eyes.

Her awareness didn’t just sweep through space. Now it swept through time itself.

Her focus was the Pool of Stars, or, more properly, the picture of Una’s Ass. She held the image fast in her mind, using it like a beacon. Her consciousness swung to and fro through the years, hunting for it. She knew it was out there, somewhere and somewhen—

Ah. There. She saw it in the remote, temporal distance. She allowed herself to be drawn to it, the way the flicker moths were drawn to the lights of the farm on Nebo at night. And just like that, the Pool of Stars was right there, hanging against a starscape, about to depart on its maiden, and doomed, voyage.

The image of Una’s Ass zoomed in, filling her awareness. Okay, the first thing to fix was that. She knew exactly how she wanted Morgan’s Ride to look, right down the particular colors of the horse she’d be riding. For instance, it had a white blaze on its forehead, a startling splotch of brightness against its dark coat.

But nothing happened. She could see Una’s Ass, but she couldn’t change it.

Oh. Wait. Right. She hadn’t actually changed the universe yet. Her awareness was in the past, but that was it.

She drew up more magic and began to shape it according to her desire, the clay of creation feeling good in her small hands. The Pool of Stars started forward in time, traversing it the same way it would fly through space. Now Morgan had to strain, exerting her will to overcome the inertia of creation. Apparently, the universe didn’t like having time change the way it worked. Again, her head began to throb. Wisps of blood drifted from her nose. She was making headway, but it was so hard. She needed a touchstone, something upon which to focus her efforts and channel her power. It was like when daddy watered the sour-pod trees, back on Nebo. If he didn’t use a hose, the water would just splash all around the pump. The hose let him make the water go where he wanted it to.

She bore down harder, grinding her teeth. She had something like that, didn’t she? Hadn’t there been something that she’d used? It was suddenly all so cloudy, her memories blurry. A face? A sewn patch? Words that said Orbital Navy?

It didn’t matter. It was working. The Pool of Stars had begun to cross time, blurring through the years, part of it still rooted in the past, and part of it now in space, above Tāmtu—

Like a fat rubber band stretched too much, time snapped back, pulling the Pool of Stars with it. Grimly, she dug deep into the magic, drawing more and more to her. Much of it was wasted, though, and simply dissipated around her in swirls and eddies and bursts of lost eldritch potential. She just drew up more to replace it. Blood swirled around her face, and her whole body hummed and tingled, like thousands upon thousands of little electric shocks rippled through her.

Again, the Pool of Stars began dragging itself across the decades.

The ship began to merge with now, more and more of it fading from then, from the past. It was working. She could even see the picture of Una’s Ass, and not just in her memories. As the Pool of Stars became more and more real in the present, it grew more solid and persistent in Morgan’s awareness. She could see it now, the clunky, boxy shapes of its struts and modules blotting out the stars above Tāmtu—and Una’s Ass, the silly girl and her sillier donkey, was right there. It was real, and she could see it, could almost touch it.

The past still clung to the ship like cobwebs, though, holding it back from coming fully into the present. Morgan pushed and pulled, trying to shake it finally free. Time was stubborn, though, not wanting to surrender its normal, linear nature, where second followed second, minute followed minute, effect followed cause. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get the last of the ship’s existence to join with this one, this new one, where she wanted time travel to be something you could just do. She finally began hammering at the obstinate bonds of reality, like daddy swinging his axe to cut a dead branch off a sour-pod tree. If she pounded at them enough, they should finally break.

Unconstrained magic howled around her now, a wild, unfocused storm of it that turned Tāmtu’s water to ice, to steam, to swirling foam, shot through with bursts of bluish flame and dazzling lightning bolts. But she doggedly refused to give up. She’d come too close to changing Una’s Ass to Morgan’s Ride. It wasn’t about testing her ability to move things through time anymore. This was about her getting what she wanted. The universe would obey her, it was as simple as that.

It was about that stupid picture of that stupid donkey. She hated it.

“Horses are way prettier,” she muttered, arms waving as she worked.

Only a few strands of cause-and-effect held the Pool of Stars back now. Morgan felt like her head was going to burst, but she forced herself to keep at it, not give up, and bludgeon the cosmos into submission. There were few things more unyielding than the fabric of a universe, but one such thing was the will of a child who knew how to manipulate magic. Another strand of causality snapped. Another. Now only a few isolated facts held the Pool of Stars back, the last dregs of its existence in the past.

Unfocused magic roared around her, scooping enormous craters out of the abyssal plain below her, out of the ice far above. Chunks of it rained down, plunging through the plumes of sand and silt that she’d dredged up from the ocean floor. Terrified sea creatures—fearsome beasts only moments before—darted around, their instincts overwhelmed by the light and sound and chaos.

If only she could gather all of that wasted magic to her, using it to finish what she’d started. If she’d been able to do that, she knew, this would have been over and done by now. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know how.

Only one tendril of history remained. The Pool of Stars had been mankind’s first foray into faster-than-light travel. That truth, more than any other, rooted the ship in the past. For some reason Morgan didn’t understand, severing that last bit of reality was harder than all the rest. It was as though the universe desperately fought back to prevent something truly terrible from happening.

But Morgan didn’t care. She raised her magical bludgeon, poured power into it, and made to hammer it down as hard as she could, finally freeing the Pool of Stars from his historical bondage. Do that, and her truth would be the right one, the only one.

The tortured water around Morgan flared as bright as the sun, squandered magic shining so brightly it lit the ocean daylight bright, its radiance shining out to every horizon.

Before Morgan could break this last bond of time, though, a wall of compulsion slammed into her, an avalanche of magical imperative that swept over her like a tsunami, and Morgan’s body shook.

Silence fell as the debris began to settle, currents slowing to a stop. In the middle was Morgan, her body drifting, hands spread.

Eyes closed.

24

Thorn wasn’t sure if he should dislike Bertilak, or even hate him, as the opportunistic smuggler and part-time arms dealer he was, or like him for not letting greed get the better of his conscience. On top of that, there was the fact that Bertilak had become a welcome part of the Hecate.

Thorn hated to admit it, but Tanner had been right. Thorn had been jealous of Bertilak’s easygoing popularity among the crew. He’d tried to convince himself that he hated the attention, the adulation for the things he’d done for the war effort. He was better than that. Didn’t need it. Was happy being who and what he’d always been, Thorn Stellers, a lonely orphan who grew up mucking toxic shit from the ruined surface of contaminated planets, his fingernails black with the stuff.

He was wrong, though. Thorn had to grudgingly accept that a good part of him accepted and even craved being needed, being appreciated—so different than his years as a forgotten soul who didn’t matter to anyone at all. All his life, Thorn had never needed anything except himself, and to learn otherwise now was discomforting.

“No man is an island. Not even you,” he told himself. He was shaving, and doing a thorough job of it. He didn’t need to shave, but he wanted time and routine in order to process what he would say to Bertilak.

It was some consolation that he had convinced Bertilak not to proceed with the particle cannon deal. And he’d done it not by shaming or sermonizing to the big alien, but by example. He’d walked away from a deal that would have made him rich, and that might have cost him access to Bertilak’s formidable tech. If nothing else, his moral code held when it mattered most. Tech, he could find. Innocent lives were much harder to protect, even with his unusual abilities. With a final swipe of the razor, he began to wash his face and towel off, steam rising from the sink.

Satisfied that he could face Bertilak, Thorn joined the alien on his bridge.

Bertilak sat with his enormous feet propped on the console, perilously close to the controls. It made him feel that some sort of mishap, or even disaster, was only one toe-cramp or itchy foot away. The casual nature Bertilak took toward astrogation was, if nothing else, consistent with his attitude about almost everything—except money. That, Thorn knew, had Bertilak’s attention.

Thorn stopped and looked around the bridge. “What’s her name?”

“Whose name?”

Thorn gestured around them. “Your ship. It suddenly struck me that you’ve never told me its name.”

“Name?”

“Yeah. My ship’s called the Hecate. What’s yours called?”

Bertilak smiled. “I call it my ship, because that’s what it is. Is it essential to give it a name?”

Thorn thought about how he’d asked Bertilak the name of his AI, his pretty much silent partner in running his ship. The idea of naming it had apparently struck the alien as odd. It seemed to be the same for his ship as a whole.

“Essential? Well, no, I guess not. It’s more customary.”

Bertilak’s smile didn’t waver. “I must admit, I got the sense that you and your crew considered your ship—the Hecate—to be more like a person than a machine. But it’s not. It has no personality. It’s just a collection of systems and sub-systems and components that let you live and travel and fight in space.”

“Yeah, of course it’s that. But it’s also more. When you spend enough time with a machine, especially a ship, you get fond of it. It kind of does become like another member of the crew, or even a friend.” Thorn touched the console. “You come to rely on it as much as it relies on you.”

Bertilak dropped his feet to the floor and laughed. “Thorn, my friend, somewhere beneath that grumpy exterior of yours dwells the heart of a poet. Very well, then. What shall we name my ship?”

Thorn smiled back. “It’s not really my place to say, Bertilak. You should be the one naming your ship, not me. After all, you have to live with it.”

Bertilak’s laugh died into a thoughtful, narrow-eyed look directed squarely on Thorn. “Tell me, Thorn, should the name reflect the thing, or should the thing accommodate the name?”

“I don’t understand.”

Bertilak thought for a moment. “Suppose you were going to name this ship. What name would you give it? And don’t think about, just say the first thing that—”

“The Jolly Green Giant,” Thorn said.

“The Jolly Green Giant, eh? Why?”

Thorn shrugged. “It’s something I heard years ago. Don’t even remember where. But it seems to fit, right? You laugh a lot, so you’re jolly. And you’re green. And you’re big, so, yeah, giant.”

“The Jolly Green Giant.” Bertilak said it slowly and deliberately, as though tasting the words while they passed through his mouth. Finally, he nodded. “It’s a good name. I like it. You obviously chose it because it reflected me and my ship.”

“I did, yeah.”

“So, indulge me for a moment. Suppose you had a name you loved. It was absolutely perfect. You’re anxious to name something whatever it is, it’s that good. Trouble is, you can’t find anything that it fits. You finally realize that you’re going to have to make something fit it. And, of course, you can, being a—Starcaster, that’s the right word, isn’t it? Would you?”

Thorn kept his face blank. He wasn’t used to such introspective, theoretical musing from Bertilak. Why was he, to use his word, indulging in it now?

Curious, and more than a little wary, Thorn decided to play along. “I don’t know. I guess it would depend on the circumstances. What the name was, and what I was considering changing. I’m not casual about my ability, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But you would consider changing something’s fundamental nature to fit this perfect name.”

Thorn kept working at keeping his poker face intact. “I get the impression you’re fishing for something here, Bertilak. Why are you asking me this?”

“I am curious about the way you see the world, Thorn, my friend. How much you might change it to suit your needs, or desires. Again, you’re in the somewhat unique position of being able to literally do that,” Bertilak replied.

“I have no need or desire to change very much, unless it’s something related to fighting the Nyctus. Then, I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

“I understand you resurrected an entire planet after the Nyctus destroyed it.”

Thorn felt suspicion show on his face. He couldn’t help it. There was some sort of subtext to Bertilak’s words that he wasn’t picking up. He suddenly felt like he needed to be very, very careful.

“Nebo, yeah. I was involved in bringing it back to life.”

“I assume it was your home planet, and that you were seeking to restore your friends and loved ones.”

“No. My home planet was Cotswold.”

Bertilak cocked his head, his expression becoming curious. “Ah. And it, too, was destroyed by the Nyctus.”

“It was.” Thorn crossed his arms. “Why are you suddenly interested in this? In what, exactly, am I indulging you here?”

Bertilak held up a hand. “Just bear with me, please. So why Nebo? Why not Cotswold, or any of the other planets the Nyctus have attacked? Why not all of them?”

“It just worked out that way,” Thorn said, looking away.

“So there was something about Nebo in particular—”

“Bertilak, I’d rather not delve into this any deeper. This is all classified stuff, and despite our unusual situation, I do have to maintain military decorum. I really can’t discuss it, and it’s best to leave it at that,” Thorn said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. There were, indeed, some aspects of Nebo’s resurrection that were classified. Production output, for instance, that contributed to the Allied Stars war effort.

But the more compelling reason he wanted to drop it wasn’t about the war at all, of course. It was about Morgan, and the Witch Nebula, and all the cataclysmic events that had cascaded from his attempt to bring her back. Nebo had just been a side-effect.

“I understand. I only have one more question,” Bertilak said.

“What’s that?”

“Who was it, on Nebo, that you were really trying to bring back?”

Thorn had to turn away to cover his reaction, a mix of shock, anger, and fear. Bertilak knew something, or thought he did, anyway. It might have been some power or ability that Thorn just hadn’t detected, or maybe some aspect of his strange technology. Or maybe the big alien was just that perceptive.

Thorn turned back, his eyes flat, voice cold. “The answer is both classified and irrelevant.”

Bertilak stood, a thin smile on his face. “I think, my friend, that you brought Nebo back from the dead because you were trying to bring someone who was on Nebo when it was destroyed. It must have been someone you loved very much. A dear friend. A lover. A child.”

Thorn kept his face blank. “Fishing won’t help you, Bertilak. Not now, and not in an hour. Not even in a year. I’ll still be an officer in the ON, and my commitment will be the same.”

Bertilak pressed on, ignoring Thorn’s reply. “Whoever it was—did you try to bring them back as they were, or did you try to change them? Did you try to make them fit the world as you envisioned it?”

Thorn stared. Somehow, he knows about Morgan.

For a moment, Thorn fought a quiet war with the muscles of his face, schooling them into a blank expanse that gave nothing away—and kept the roiling waters of his guilt well away from the keen eye of an alien who was making some excellent guesses.

Or reporting what he knew.

“I’ve never tried to change anyone,” Thorn said evenly. “To repeat, you’re asking questions of a military nature. You kicked my ass in the circle, but that only goes so far in terms of what you’re entitled to know. Are we clear?”

Bertilak’s face was inscrutable, but he answered. “We are.”

Thorn turned and left, his back straight, but he felt Bertilak’s eyes on him, and for just a moment, he wondered if his guilt would ever stop making him feel hollow inside.

* * *

If he had to spend most of the rest of his time with Bertilak in his quarters, at least he’d be comfortable.

He sprawled on the bed, his hands behind his head. That strange interaction with Bertilak had left him more than a little unsettled. The alien knew. He knew. Thorn had no idea how, or why Bertilak had chosen to dig into it now, but Bertilak knew.

He released a long sigh. He didn’t want to be aboard this ship, apparently now named the Jolly Green Giant, any longer. He didn’t want to be around Bertilak and his knowing manner. He wanted to be back aboard the Hecate, amid her familiar surroundings, the comforting rigor of her repetitive ship-board routines, the no-nonsense pragmatism of Captain Tanner. In fact, he would talk to Bertilak about it. Tell him that he wanted to disembark as soon as possible, at an Allied Stars planet, or at least a neutral one. He’d tell Tanner he did his best to work with Bertilak, but the alien just didn’t have anything to offer them. He’d lie, say that he refused to share his tech—

“Thorn Stellers?”

The flat voice truncated his thoughts. It took Thorn a moment to realize who, or rather what it was. It was Bertilak’s unnamed AI. Thorn had heard the voice maybe a half-dozen times during his time aboard the Giant. The rest of the time, it seemed, the AI was content to just sit and do whatever it did in the background.

Thorn sat up. “What’s up?”

“Bertilak needs your assistance.”

Now Thorn stood. “Why? Where is he?”

“On the bridge.”

Thorn considered just saying to hell with it and letting the big alien take care of whatever problem he faced himself. But he didn’t. Not only was this request from the AI unprecedented, but there was also the chance that it was something dire or dangerous, and Bertilak genuinely needed his help—maybe to keep them both alive.

Thorn went to the bridge and found Bertilak sitting in his seat, slumped over, his head in his hands.

Okay, this wasn’t right.

“Bertilak, what’s going on?” he asked.

The alien lifted his head and gave Thorn a mournful look.

“It’s your daughter, Morgan. I’m afraid she’s in terrible danger.”

25

“Are we actually making any progress here, Damien? Like, any at all?” Kira asked.

Damien leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. He seemed to ponder the question. Kira waited, the only sound the soft rumble of the Venture’s machinery.

She finally leaned back. “I guess the fact that it’s taking you so long to come up with an answer is the answer.”

Damien smiled. “Not necessarily. It’s just that it’s a complicated question.”

“Uh, no, it’s not. ‘Are we making any progress’ is pretty straightforward.”

Now Damien laughed. “Sometimes I forget you’re not actually part of the diplomatic corps, Kira. There are no straightforward questions in the world of diplomacy.”

“Then answer me like you’re answering a soldier. Which you are, I might add,” Kira said.

“Okay. Yes . . . and no.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

Damien, still chuckling, waved her off. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But it still really is the best answer I can give you. Yes, we’re making progress, insofar as we’re still here and still talking to the Danzur. But also no, we’re not making real progress toward signing something with them. Or, if we are, we can measure it in millimeters.”

“So at what point do we just give up and go home?”

“We don’t.”

“Damien, if we’re wasting our time here, then let’s just say that and move on.”

Damien shook his head. “As long as we’re talking, we’re not at war with the Danzur. So, believe it or not, every hour we’re here, engaged in what to you must seem like endless talk and bureaucracy, is another hour we don’t have to redeploy part of the fleet to a second front against these guys. And that, I want to emphasize, would be a disaster.”

“Disaster is a pretty strong word,” Kira said. “The Danzur aren’t that strong.”

“Hey, I’m not making this up. Feel free to call out the latest encrypted traffic from back home. Pay particular attention to the assessment from your bosses at Fleet. They’ve done extensive wargaming, and they’ve come to the conclusion that having the Danzur open a second front would force the Allied Stars to sue for peace—and on their terms, not ours. I don’t need to tell you that’s far from our intentions. We need to call the tune in any negotiations, let alone a glorified surrender instrument.”

Kira had admittedly fallen behind in terms of keeping up with the most recent diplomatic traffic from home. In fact, she’d come to count on Damien to encapsulate it for her. There was just too much information, coming in too fast, for her to be able to absorb it all, and it was in such shades of gray that at times she wanted to scream. Never had she imagined an entire job description devoted to telling such beautiful lies, and yet, here she was, right in the middle of it.

There was also the matter of Thorn. Her abject fear that he might be dead hadn’t lasted long. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally sensed a flicker of him in the ether, as familiar as the hint of his voice in a nearby passage. Thorn was out there somewhere, but for reasons she couldn’t fathom, she just couldn’t reach out to him. Some stubborn barrier, a pervasive psychic static, seemed to be blocking her. She’d tried to burn through it, but to no avail. Who or whatever was causing it was much stronger than she was, which probably meant it was Thorn himself. Whatever he was up to, he obviously didn’t want to be disturbed while doing it. Still, it was another distraction from the task at hand.

“It’s that bad?” she finally asked.

“Sure seems so.”

“And when were you going to tell me this?” She held up a finger. “And don’t say you were trying to spare me or anything like that, or so help me I will kick your ass in a most undiplomatic way.”

Damien managed to look suitably hurt. “I’m definitely not in the business of sparing you, Kira Wixcombe. This latest message traffic only came in an hour or so ago. I’m telling you about it now because this is the first chance I’ve had.”

“Oh.” Kira grimaced. “Shit. I’m sorry, Damien, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Understood, and don’t worry about it. Instead, let’s focus on what it means.”

“What it means is that we can’t let the Danzur enter the war.”

Damien nodded. “It does. The question is, how to accomplish that? I can’t help but feel that the Danzur might be playing nicer with us, but they’re still not playing straight, even in the game of statecraft. They’ve got some other agenda for trying to drag this out and keep us here.”

“But what?” Kira asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what we’ve got to figure out, and fast.” He gave Kira a weighty look. “I know you’ve been holding back. Maybe it’s time to stop doing that.”

“Holding back . . . from using Joining?”

“That’s right.”

“That might help us a lot. Or it might make everything go sideways. It depends on the Danzur, and if they’re able to tell what I’m up to. If they are, then they could turn against us pretty fast.”

Damien spread his hands. “I’m open to suggestions, then.”

Kira leaned back and looked up at the overhead above her. “I’ll let you know if I have any.”

* * *

Kira didn’t.

She and Damien tried different approaches with Tadrup and the other delegates over the next couple of days, but nothing seemed to gain any traction. The Danzur were extremely good at taking the most innocuous-sounding thing, the vaguest statement, or the most off-handed comment, and turning it into long bouts of fruitless discussion. They fetishized reports, loved meetings like Kira liked cake and coffee, and found endless joy in codicils, which gave them a chance to revisit everything that had been discussed in the previous hours or days.

They remained experts at talking at length without actually saying anything, and when Kira thought they were about to take a breath, some other functionary would step in—politely, of course—and say the dreaded phrase if I may add something here, for clarification. Damien was usually able to refocus things, but it took time and effort, and the uncertainty was wearing on them. They were two oars pulling against a current that was slow, but wide and steady.

Kira read the diplomatic transmission they’d just received, then lowered it and scowled at Damien. “A deadline? The Allied Stars Council is giving us a deadline?”

Damien returned a helpless look. “Apparently, they’re holding back a large reserve fleet as a hedge against the Danzur suddenly turning against us. That’s forced the ON to stay on the defensive against the Nyctus, despite the fact that they still seem to have gone dormant. And that’s driving everyone crazy back home, especially in the senior ranks of Fleet. They desperately want to launch an offensive before the Nyctus finish doing whatever it is they’re doing over there.”

Kira handed the document back over to him and slumped into one of the Venture’s seats. “Yeah, I get that. They’ll be worrying that the squids are going to suddenly come across the Zone with new tech or tactics, or even new magic. They want to hit them before they’re ready.”

“Which makes sense, sure. But with all those reserves tied up, it appears they can’t. Anyway, they’ve given us five days, and that’s it. Once that time elapses, we’re being recalled.”

“But why? What good does that do? It leaves the whole question of the Danzur hanging open. They’re still a threat. It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Oh, I suspect someone, somewhere has a cunning plan, and we’re just a small part of it,” Damien replied.

“Cunning plan my ass. What they’re really saying is that the ON brass are only prepared to keep that reserve fleet dawdling around in the rear for five more days, and then they’ll attack the Nyctus anyway,” Kira snapped. “In other words, they’re going to throw the dice and try to defeat the Nyctus fast, as a way of keeping the Danzur out of the war.”

“That would be risky,” Damien said, pulling at his chin. “If it works, though, it would be brilliant, and it would leave the Danzur out in the cold.”

“Sure, and if it doesn’t, we suddenly find ourselves facing a second front with nothing available to defend it. Or, for that matter, even if we do win against the Nyctus, we might be so depleted in strength that the Danzur will swoop in anyway, just to grab some territory,” Kira shot back.

Damien scratched his cheek, thinking. “I guess their reasoning is that the Danzur are a threat, but not an existential one. They don’t seem interested in exterminating us the way the Nyctus do. So we risk taking the hit from them to accomplish the bigger goal.”

“Sure. But it more reflects how the military thinks, not the diplomats. Go big or go home. Throw the dice. End the war by Christmas.”

“End the what?”

Kira smiled. “Sorry. It’s an old joke. The surest way to guarantee a war is going to drag on and on is to say that it’ll be over by Christmas. Of course, Christmas was a bigger deal back then, when we were only living on a single planet. So it kind of falls flat today, I guess.”

“I get the point.”

“So what do you want to do?” Kira asked.

Damien sighed. “Honestly, Kira, I’m just about out of ideas. If you’re counting on me to come up with something, then you’ll get to enjoy those swanky quarters of yours for another five days, and then we’ll be going home.”

“Yeah, I know. Joining. Speaking of throwing the dice,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well, what it comes down to is this. We throw the dice here and maybe manage to keep the Danzur out of the war completely, or we can let the Fleet throw the dice and just hope they don’t do too much damage when they do enter the war,” Damien replied.

Kira stood, crossed her arms, and walked to one of the viewports. She stared out at the sprawling vista outside, which included most of the orbital platform, and the luminous blue-green expanse of the Danzur’s home planet backdropping it. It really was pretty spectacular.

She was also getting sick of it.

“Well, as much as I like those quarters, I really don’t want to spend any more time here than I have to.” She turned back to Damien. “Fine. I’ll start pushing with my Joining. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out Tadrup and his people aren’t actually stalling us, and they just enjoy bureaucracy.”

“Or, if they are stalling us, knowing why would be nice.”

Kira nodded. “It sure would. I do have one suggestion, though.”

“What’s that?” Damien asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Let’s put the Venture on ten minutes notice to move out. Because, if this goes wrong, we’re going to want to be able to haul ass out of here.”

* * *

Kira settled herself into a more comfortable position, wishing she had access to a sensory deprivation rig. She’d experimented with one back at Code Nebula, a sealed tank full of neutrally buoyant fluid, heated to body temperature. Just hanging there, weightless in the silent blackness, wearing nothing but an air mask and enough clothing to cover her modesty, had been an amazing experience. People apparently used it to delve into their own subconscious, usually for therapy, but sometimes just for entertainment. For Kira, though, it had allowed her to focus her Joining in a way she’d never before managed. She’d gone flying through the ether, borne on wings of a shimmering magical force, soaring and swooping here and there, into first one mind, then another. It had taken almost no effort at all, and the collective effect had been nothing short of electrifying.

Here, aboard the Venture, the best she could manage was a rack in a darkened room. The ship’s Chief Tech had been able to reduce the local gravity enough to reduce her weight. It left her resting lightly on the bed instead of bearing her full weight down onto it. So that, plus stripping down to her underclothes, was as sensory deprived as she was going to get.

Kira took a deep breath and let herself sink into her reservoir of magic, immerse herself in it, then sync her awareness with it and let it radiate outward in tendrils that snaked away in elegant possibility. Her perception immediately expanded, sweeping over the Venture’s crew, and Damien—

He stood out like a beacon in the darkness. Familiarity did that, turning an otherwise cold and distant presence into something warm and comfortable. Before she could move on, something caught her.

Damien was there, his thoughts clear and linear, which surprised her, given his chosen occupation. His mind was complex, but his path was not—he radiated competence, a tinge of frustration, and a general sense of industrious will, applying his intellect to one aspect of their problems, then another. After a moment, she’d seen enough, and her presence felt voyeuristic.

Kira let her consciousness continue sweeping outward, soaring through the orbital platform. She grazed the minds of myriad Danzur, but they were like dim, flickering bulbs to her. She didn’t know them, hadn’t ever interacted with them, so she could see only their most superficial thoughts. Out of curiosity, she picked three at random and, one after another, pushed deeper into the consciousness of each. It gave her a chance to test herself against a Danzur mind, while also giving her a peek into their motivations. After all, if there was some grand conspiracy at play here, then any, or even all of these aliens might be in on it.

These three weren’t, though. Two were just ordinary individuals going about their routine, their concerns and motives rooted firmly in whatever task or problem they were facing—one had to figure out why a fusion reactor was running hotter than it should, while another seemed fixated on a disagreement with his superiors. The third was a little more interesting. Kira delved deeper into her mind and discovered a treasure trove of ambitious bitterness. She was hungry for promotion but was being repeatedly denied. Of course, it was everyone else’s fault because her performance was top-notch.

Kira backed out. There was nothing to learn from her besides her own petty and somewhat narcissistic concerns. She pushed on, seeking the one mind that should practically ring like a gong among the Danzur.

There. Tadrup.

Kira reigned in her expanding thoughts and put her focus on Tadrup. She applied magic carefully, slowly increasing the pressure behind her own awareness. It was, she’d once told a class of recruits at Code Nebula, like electrical current. Her perception was the amperage, the actual stuff of Joining, while magic was the voltage, the force enabling it to enter the minds of others. The trick was to apply just enough of the magical voltage to get the depth of entry she wanted, but not so much that she triggered arcing—spillover effects that would alert her subject to what she was up to.

Tadrup’s current concern, his most immediate thoughts, were focused on her and Damien. That wasn’t surprising, nor was it very useful. Kira worked her way in a little deeper, applying a gentle nudge of magic, then another. She passed further into his mind, where the interesting stuff would be.

Stall them.

There. Kira zoomed in on that thought. Tadrup had been told to stall them. Why?

Stall them for as long as possible. Keep Wixcombe from—

Tadrup’s thoughts abruptly changed trajectory, and Kira hastily fell back. Had he sensed something? Detected her?

No. Someone had entered Tadrup’s office. Another Danzur. She watched as Tadrup’s superficial thoughts morphed and changed in response to what the other alien was saying. It was something about some bureaucratic thing or other. It meant nothing to Kira, but Tadrup’s reaction certainly did.

He loved this bureaucratic shit. Loved it.

She pushed again, re-entering his deeper thoughts. Against the clamor of whatever this particular task was all about, she could feel Tadrup’s satisfaction. Bureaucracy was order. It made sense of a chaotic universe. The right form, filed at the right time and in the right way, made it all make a little more sense. It actually gave Tadrup a feeling of fond, warm stability, and a sense of control. Kira didn’t get it, but she didn’t have to.

Okay. Gingerly, she probed deeper, trying to latch back onto that thought about stalling, and apparently stalling her in particular. Tadrup’s distraction as he dealt with other Danzur made it a little easier. More of his thoughts were focused elsewhere, thinning the amount of his conscious mind she had to burrow through.

Stall them.

Especially Wixcombe.

Wixcombe must be kept away.

Kira allowed herself a mental frown. Away from what?

Tadrup didn’t seem to know. He’d been given his marching orders—delay and stall the human diplomatic mission and keep her there, away from something, somewhere. He hadn’t been told why, though.

Wait.

There was something else, something deeper. Kira had to draw upon more magic, carefully crafting a sliver of her own awareness into a tendril of inquiry, one that would reach even deeper into Tadrup’s mind.

Wixcombe must be kept away.

It was part of the deal for reparations.

Paid by the Nyctus.

The Nyctus want her delayed.

The Nyctus. They made Tadrup uneasy. Frightened him, even. It was—

Their magic. It made the Nyctus powerful. Enigmatic. Dangerous. They must be respected. Placated.

A sudden surge of anxious awareness engulfed her. Tadrup had sensed something. He’d feel as though he was being watched, that someone lurked nearby, spying on him.

Kira bailed out of his mind, then let her Joining dissipate, the magic that powered it draining into the ether. Her consciousness snapped her back to the here and now, and she blinked into darkness.

“Lights.”

She blinked again as the compartment illuminated. The low gravity made her take a little longer to get dressed. She didn’t want to spin herself into a bulkhead, or accidentally slam herself into the overhead. She deliberately took her time, then made up for it by hurrying off to find Damien.

* * *

“So the Nyctus want the Danzur to delay you here,” Damien said.

“That’s how Tadrup understands it, yeah,” Kira replied.

He drummed his fingers on the table in the Venture’s common area. “Why? Why is it so important to the Nyctus that you stay stuck here?”

“I don’t know. I’m a Starcaster, but my focus is Joining, not combat magic. That’s definitely more of Thorn’s thing.”

Damien looked at her. “I understand that you and Stellers pretty much saved the fleet from a Nyctus ambush a few years back. It was the two of you working together that did it, right?”

“Well, it wasn’t just us. It was also Captain Tanner and crew of the Hecate, and Mol Wyant, a kick-ass fighter pilot.”

“Let’s put aside the modesty, shall we? The point is that you and Stellers worked together and undid a lot of the squids’ hard work in trying to trap and ambush a big chunk of the ON, right?”

“I guess so, yes. I was able to Shade what we were doing—that means hiding it, magically. While that was going on, Thorn led the charge in the Hecate’s witchport, using just about every type of magic you could imagine against the Nyctus. He’s a Conduit, which means he’s not restricted to one type of magic.” Kira’s voice trailed off into a thoughtful look. Damien just waited for her to go on.

“Wait. You’re saying that the Nyctus want to keep Thorn and me apart?”

“It’s a theory.”

“Sure, but it just brings us back to why. Why are they so focused on keeping us apart that they’d pay off the Danzur? As far as Tadrup is concerned, they made good on all of his losses, which probably means they made good on everyone’s,” Kira said.

“If we knew the answer to that, we might have the one important piece of this puzzle we’re obviously missing,” Damien replied.

“I have to talk to Thorn.”

“I thought you said he was unavailable, locked away behind some sort of barrier.”

“I did. And he is. I’m just going to have to find a way through it.”

Damien nodded. “Okay. What then?”

A slow smile spread across Kira’s face. “Well, the Danzur seem to be afraid of the Nyctus magic. Maybe they need to see what some real magic looks like.”

“How are you going to arrange that?”

Kira stood. “Leave it with me. In the meantime, keep Tadrup busy. Tell him I’m doing something else and can’t meet with him for now. Let him be on the receiving end of some stalling for a change.”

26

It took Thorn a moment to register what Bertilak said.

Morgan.

In terrible danger.

He blinked and shook his head, like he was trying to clear away mental cobwebs.

“Clarify that?” he asked. The fact that Bertilak had just named his daughter was only just starting to register.

“Morgan. I just communed with her. She’s being attacked. By the Nyctus.”

Thorn strode forward and grabbed Bertilak by the shoulders. “What the hell are you talking about? What do you know about Morgan? How do you know about Morgan?”

“I—” Bertilak began, then stopped, looking helpless.

“Tell me! What the hell is going on? Where’s Morgan?”

“I don’t know! She’s out there, somewhere.” Bertilak gave a vague wave. “I only speak to her by communing. She wanted it that way.” His actions were far different from the confident, boisterous being Thorn had known until moments earlier, and that set alarms ringing—for Thorn. For Bertilak, his shift seemed to make him into another life form; one that had withdrawn and been reduced.

Thorn shoved his face into Bertilak’s. “What do you mean? Where’s Morgan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is she?” Thorn yelled.

“I don’t know! She didn’t want me to know so I couldn’t let it slip out, because she doesn’t want you to know where she is!”

Thorn locked his gaze onto Bertilak’s. He would have driven himself into the alien’s mind like a sharpened spike, ripped it open, and found out what he knew. If he could. But he couldn’t, because from a magical perspective, Bertilak still didn’t exist.

But the alien also wasn’t lying. Through the misery on his face, Thorn could see that Bertilak was telling the truth. He did know about Morgan, but he didn’t know where she was.

Thorn hung on the edge of hyperventilating. Of hitting Bertilak—or hitting something. Instead, he took a deep breath, then let it out. At the same time, he let his awareness sink partway into his center, touching his focus and using it to find some calmness amid the stormy swirl of emotions that suddenly gripped him.

He let go of Bertilak and stepped back. “You had better start talking, Bertilak. Now. And you’d better not leave anything out.”

Thorn could hear the flat menace in his own voice. So could Bertilak. The big alien winced, then nodded.

“Fine. She was very clear that I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything. But something’s wrong. She’s in some sort of danger. So I’ll tell you.” He took a deep breath.

“Morgan is alive. She survived her confrontation with you. But she fled because you tried to change her. You tried to make her into something she wasn’t.”

Thorn eased out a breath. “Go on.”

“She found refuge . . . somewhere. I honestly don’t know where. She thought that if I didn’t know where she was, I couldn’t give it away.”

Thorn stared. “Wait. I don’t understand. How could you have talked to her if you don’t know where she is? Did she have access to some sort of comms?”

“No. Like I said, I commune with her.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“I speak to her mind-to-mind.”

“So you’re a Starcaster? You can use magic?”

Bertilak shook his head. “No. It’s just in my nature.”

“Damn it, Bertilak, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The big alien stood and started to pace. “You don’t get it, do you? I can commune with her because she made it work that way.” He spun and faced Thorn. “She created me, Thorn. From scratch. I didn’t exist until shortly before the Nyctus attacked the Hecate.”

“She . . . made you?” Thorn just stared again. “Why?”

“To test you. She’s obsessed with you, Thorn. Ever since she learned that you’re actually her father, she’s been fixated on you. But she doesn’t understand why you tried to change her.”

Thorn sat down. “I was trying to do what I thought was best for her. If she wasn’t able to use magic, if she was just an ordinary little girl growing up on Nebo—” He ended on a desolate shrug. “I was trying to help her.”

“So you were playing at being a god? Trying to reshape this girl into something that suited you?”

“Says the guy who was apparently created out of thin air.”

“She’s a child, Thorn. You’re not. She doesn’t really understand the consequences of what she does. You do. Or, at least, you’re supposed to.”

Thorn had been staring at the deck between his feet. Now he looked up. “Wait. She created you.” He swept a hand around the bridge. “All of this—a ship full of tech, an alien who understands and can talk about space flight, and smuggling, and arms dealing.” He sat up, suspicion tightening his face. “Why am I having a hard time believing that?”

Bertilak smiled, but it lacked any of his usual humor. “Look around you, Thorn. Look at these controls and displays. They’re meaningless, just nonsense.”

“So?”

“So, I’m made to reflect who and whatever I interact with, especially you. Some of this is taken from your own memories and experiences, which then get filtered through the perceptions of a child.” He pointed at the pilot’s station. “That looks like a control system of some sort, but what it really is, is what Morgan thinks you think a control station looks like. You understand something about some of the Hecate’s control stations, but deep inside, you find them intimidating, even a little incomprehensible. Now, pass that through the mind of a little girl, and you get this.” He sniffed. “It looks very sophisticated and technical, but it doesn’t really do anything.”

“So how the hell do you control this ship?”

Bertilak sat down, facing Thorn. “I just do. It works because it does. Because, just like me, Morgan made it that way. I am the operating system.”

Thorn sighed. On one level, he wondered why any of this surprised him. If Morgan was powerful enough to alter reality, then changing it into one where Bertilak and his ship existed was easy to understand. It was also a horrifying use of magic, one that could have cataclysmic consequences. But, like Bertilak said, she was a child.

On a more fundamental level, Thorn found it all so unbelievable. He was a Starcaster, he’d changed reality himself, but he still found this hard to accept. Maybe it was that the idea of actually creating life from scratch such a soul-shaking thing that he just couldn’t accept it.

Except wasn’t that what he had done? He’d created—okay, recreated—Morgan from scratch. And he’d tried to change her into something she wasn’t while doing it. That didn’t exactly give him the moral high ground here, did it?

It did explain a lot, though. For instance, why Bertilak and his ship seemed utterly immune to magic. It must have something to do with the fact that they were magical creations themselves. And why this improbable ship was able to exist and operate at all. Again, it was because it was a magical construct, which worked simply because it did. Morgan had made it that way.

Thorn finally shook his head. The ethics and implications of all this were massive, but they’d have to wait. “So if you can commune with her, Bertilak, then do that. Find out where she is, so we can go and help her.”

“I can’t.”

“Damn it, you said she was in danger!”

Misery darkened Bertilak’s face. “I didn’t say I won’t. I said I can’t. As in, I’m not able to. She stopped communing with me. I’ve tried to reach her, but she just won’t respond.”

Thorn’s head dropped, his gaze falling to the deck again. If what Bertilak said was true, then she may very well be dead again. And that meant that, for the second time, Thorn had come close to saving his daughter, but fallen short. The realization made his throat hurt, his eyes sting.

“She’s not dead, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Bertilak said.

Thorn’s head snapped back up. “How do you know? You said she’s gone.”

“Again, you’re not hearing me. I said she won’t answer me. She’s still there, she just won’t respond. It’s like trying to talk to someone through a closed door. I speak, but they don’t answer. I don’t know if it’s because she can’t hear me for some reason, or she’s just decided to not answer.”

So she wasn’t dead. Or so Bertilak said, anyway. But if that was true, then it gave Thorn a slender lifeline of hope, one he now used to haul himself back from the brink of complete despair.

“Okay. Okay. So she’s still alive, was in danger, and probably still is. You don’t know where she is, and she won’t talk to you.” Thorn rubbed his eyes. “Did she say anything about what sort of danger she was in?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Shit. If we knew even that much, maybe we could—”

Thorn stopped, struck by a sudden suspicion. “Hang on. You said that she created you and sent you to test me. So the Nyctus attack on the Hecate, the damaged Nyctus ship, the smugglers on Fringe—was any of it real?”

“The first attack by the Nyctus against the Hecate was. I was looking for a convincing way to announce myself to you. Saving you and your ship from the Nyctus seemed like the perfect opportunity. The rest of it though?” Bertilak gave another humorless smile. “That was all fabricated.”

“Does Fringe even exist?”

“It does now.”

Thorn hissed in anger, then shook his head at the enormity of Morgan’s ability. The damage Morgan might be doing to reality was already beyond understanding, but she had no way of knowing that. Like Bertilak said, she was a child. But she was also a child with Thorn’s capacity for magic. She was a Conduit and might be an even more powerful conduit than he was.

She hadn’t ended the universe yet. But she might.

Thorn yanked his attention back from the possible end of creation and put it back on Bertilak. “So how do I know this is real? How do I know this isn’t another test?”

Bertilak rested his hands on his knees. “I wish it were, Thorn. I really do. But it’s not. This was never meant to happen. I have no idea what to do now.” He looked squarely into Thorn’s eyes. “I’m lost. I have no purpose beyond testing you.”

“So what were you going to do when the testing was done? When Morgan was satisfied that she’d learned what she wanted to know about me?”

Bertilak’s face became as cold and empty as the starscape on the viewscreen.

“I don’t know, Thorn. I really have no idea. I don’t think she did, either.”

* * *

Thorn paced the bridge. He couldn’t sit down. He needed to keep moving because it was the only way he could keep his racing thoughts in some semblance of order.

Bertilak sat at the pilot’s station, saying nothing. Thorn wasn’t sure what the big alien was thinking. At the moment, he didn’t care. Or he did, because he felt profoundly sorry for Bertilak, a person created for a specific purpose, but with no history, no memories, no family or friends, nothing. But he couldn’t dwell on that right now.

What Thorn needed was—

“Kira,” he said.

Bertilak looked at him. “What about her?”

“I need to talk to her.”

“Oh. She’s actually been trying to talk to you.”

Thorn slammed to a halt. “What?”

“She’s been trying to talk to you. Or, actually, commune with you, I guess.”

“And you’ve been stopping her?”

Bertilak nodded.

“Why?”

“Because it was what Morgan wanted. She wanted you to be alone with me and never talk to anyone else, except when you were being tested.”

“And you just went along with that?”

Bertilak stood. “You still don’t get it, do you? I did it because I had to. It’s my basic nature to obey Morgan, because she made me that way.”

Thorn had come to accept that everything Bertilak had told him was true. So why doubt this?

“Can you let me talk to her, or commune with her, now?”

Bertilak sighed. “I shouldn’t, because my last instruction from her was to not let you. But she gave me enough free will to do things independently, so yes. Yes, you can talk to Kira now.”

Thorn forced himself back into the seat he’d occupied. “Okay. This is going to take some time and effort. I’m still not back up to my full magical potential.”

Thorn, please answer me!

Thorn reeled under the impact of what amounted to a psychic shout.

Kira?

Thorn?

Believe it or not, I was literally just going to contact you.

A vast flood of relief washed over him. Thorn! Holy shit, finally! Where are you? What the hell’s going on?

Thoughts tumbled through Thorn’s mind. It took him a moment to get them all to line up in something even resembling a coherent order.

Okay. This is going to take some explaining. I need you to be patient and not interrupt until I’m done. Okay?

This doesn’t sound good.

It isn’t, Thorn replied, then took a deep mental breath and went on. I’m on a ship with an alien named Bertilak, sort of—on loan. He is not an actual alien. He’s a construct, wholly made from magical energy and willed into reality by our daughter.

What?!

It’s Morgan. She exists, she has a deep anger directed at me, and she’s in danger. Right now. She created a watcher, and now she needs me. She needs us, Kira, and any anger you harbor will have to wait. I can’t make you forgive me, but I can ask you to see this as what it is—our daughter needs us, and right now.

Silence. Thorn waited.

And kept waiting. He knew Kira was still there, but she was saying nothing. Maybe she had nothing to say. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to Thorn anymore.

I—

It was all Kira managed before she went quiet again. Thorn just kept waiting.

I don’t know what to say, Thorn. I honestly don’t know what to say. This is going to take me time to digest.

I know. Of course it is.

I don’t even feel anything about it. Not yet. I mean, I think I should probably be heartbroken, or furious, or terrified, or wallowing in sympathy for you, but I don’t feel any of that. I’m just numb, she said.

Again, I get it. Kira, take all the time you need—

I can’t. We can’t. I’ve been a toy for the Danzur, who are working with the Nyctus. Everyone is our enemy, Thorn, and for now, I want to put anything from the past—

Can we set it aside, Kira?

Yes. And we will. She matters more. We matter more, and the ON, and humanity. Thorn, we can’t afford a second front. But if Fleet moves its reserves to attack the Nyctus, and they get bogged down, there’ll be nothing to stop the Danzur. On the other hand, if they keep the reserves where they are, then there’s just not enough force available to give us a realistic chance of defeating the Nyctus at all, never mind quickly. And we could still end up fighting the Danzur.

Thorn had to work at not howling in rage at their options, but he calmed himself, if only for a second, and found his voice. So we’re screwed.

Unless we can think of a way of swaying the Danzur. The trouble is, we have no leverage over them. The Nyctus have a hell of a lot more influence here than we do, mainly because the Danzur are awed, even frightened, of their magic.

Thorn started to agree but stopped.

Something tickled the back of his thoughts. There was something there. He couldn’t quite see it, couldn’t quite get a mental grip on it, but it was there, dancing at the edge of his cognizance, a bright solution to their mortal dilemma.

Kira, do you think if we could prove to the Danzur that our magic is stronger than that of the Nyctus, it might change their minds?

Um. She paused. Maybe? I don’t know. How would we do that, though? I’m the only Starcaster here, and there’s no time to get another one here before Fleet’s deadline. I’m good at what I do, sure, but it’s not exactly the stuff of shock and awe. That’s more your department.

I know. Look, Kira, I’m going to sign off here. I have an idea, but I need some time to process how to proceed. It’s—I need clarity and a small window of time, and I swear to you, we can do this. Are you with me?.

Yes, came her instant answer. But I have to ask. What about our daughter? She’s out there somewhere, alone and in danger. That will not stand, Thorn. We both know it. I can feel your connection to her. It’s more powerful than anything the Danzur or Nyctus can grasp.

Thorn shook his head, sick with simmering rage.

We don’t know where she is and have no way of finding her. Meanwhile, the Danzur situation’s on a very short, very fast clock. So we’re going to concentrate on that, because that threatens the whole ON. Hell, it threatens the whole of the Allied Stars. As for Morgan, we’re just going to stay the course we’ve been on since she was born, and trust that her ability is well beyond any current threat. I know this in my bones, Kira, and our only concern is something far bigger than even her.

Bigger than Morgan? Kira asked, tone ripe with derision.

Yes. We have to trust in her control, for now, because if we’re wrong, she can end the universe as we know it.

Thorn?

Yes?

Find an answer. Then, let’s go get our daughter.

* * *

“Why green?” Thorn asked as he settled himself into his seat beside Bertilak.

“What do you mean?”

“Why did Morgan make you green? And big?”

A hint of the big alien’s familiar, infectious grin returned. “I guess she thought aliens are supposed to be green. As for the big part, well, I guess she wanted me to be impressive.” Bertilak gave Thorn a sidelong look. “Did it work? Am I impressive, Thorn?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. I’m impressed all to hell, believe me, and I’ve moved a fleet with my mind. You are . . . more than impressive, friend.”

Bertilak laughed. It actually made Thorn smile. Since learning about the alien’s true nature, Thorn found himself sympathetic toward him. Bertilak’s story resonated with him. He was someone with no past, only a present and, one hoped, a future. It made him see Bertilak in an entirely different way, through a lens of possibility made whole by the power of a young girl.

“Well, then. You said you had an idea. Might I ask what it is?” Bertilak asked. “Because I assume it’s doing more than just floating here in the middle of nothing.”

“It is. At least, I hope so.”

“Hope so?”

Thorn sighed. “I know what I want to do, but I don’t know if I can do it. I need access to my full magical potential, but I’m still not there. The reservoir is still way too shallow. I need to figure out how to refill it.” He leaned back in the seat. “And I’ve got to do it pretty damned fast.”

Bertilak stared at the viewscreen for a moment, then turned to face Thorn.

“I don’t think this is about how much you exerted yourself, my friend. I don’t think your magic is depleted, and you’re just stuck waiting for it to recover, or recharge, or whatever you would call it.”

Thorn’s gut reaction was to brush off Bertilak’s words and get on with figuring out what he had to do, but he bit back his retort. The alien was effectively made of magic. He may very well have insights that might elude even another Starcaster, even if he didn’t know why. So he just nodded. “Okay. Go on.”

“I think this is about you, Thorn. I think you’re holding yourself back from reaching your full magical potential.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Really.”

“What makes you say that?”

Bertilak raised an eyebrow. “Well, how long has your magic been depleted?”

“Since I tried to bring Morgan back.”

“Tried and failed.”

“Well, apparently not, as it turns out.”

“Sure, but you didn’t know that. As far as you knew, she was gone. You’d lost her. From your perspective, you’d failed her. Failed her again, in fact, because I’ll bet you blamed yourself for not saving her the first time, when the Nyctus attacked Nebo,” Bertilak said.

Thorn sat up. Bertilak was heading into uncomfortable territory, but Thorn resolved to accompany him, at least as far as he could. “I didn’t know she was on Nebo when the Nyctus destroyed the planet. Or I did, thanks to the Vision, but I had no idea she was my daughter.”

“It doesn’t matter, Thorn. You’re an excellent officer, and an excellent Starcaster. But you’re also excellent at blaming yourself for things you couldn’t possibly have known about.” Bertilak shook his head. “Morgan died on Nebo. You blamed yourself when you found out you were her father, even though you didn’t know it. You tried to bring her back, and failed, and blamed yourself for that, even though you couldn’t have known she was the one who stopped you, and that she’d actually survived. And now you blame yourself for not being able to help her, even though you again didn’t know she was alive, and now don’t have any idea where she is.”

Thorn stared into Bertilak’s eyes. He couldn’t deny any of it.

“Am I close?” the alien asked, a faint smile playing on his face.

“Yeah, you are.”

“Believe it or not, Thorn Stellers, you are not responsible for everything that happens in the universe. There are things that have happened that you had no way of influencing. There will be many more things happening that you can’t possibly affect.” Bertilak leaned in, pushing his words at Thorn. “You aren’t the center of the universe, Thorn. Not all events revolve around you. I think that the sooner you accept your limitations, the sooner you’ll be able to start trying to overcome them.”

For a while, Thorn watched the starfield on the viewscreen. It was the universe, sprawled out before him, blackness going on, if not to infinity, then damned close.

“You need to stop blaming yourself, Thorn. Until you do, I think you’ll be stuck here, in the middle of nothing, unable to change or influence anything at all. You’re a ghost. A husk. You look like Thorn Stellers, but you aren’t. Not really.”

Thorn kept staring at the viewscreen. He couldn’t see the Witch Nebula, because it was outside the screen’s field of view. But he knew exactly where it was. Currently, it was off to his right, and down.

It always loomed in his thoughts, hovering on the edge of his consciousness. It didn’t matter where Thorn was, or what he was doing. He always knew exactly where the Witch Nebula was.

And that, he knew, was the problem. The Nebula had become like an anchor, weighing him down and dragging him back. As long as it lurked in the fringes of his awareness, he’d never be able to do what Bertilak was telling him to do. The alien was right. Thorn had to get himself unstuck from that awful moment immediately after the Nebula’s creation, when he knew he’d lost Morgan. Until he did, he’d forever be mired in that instant of horrified realization, of self-doubt and guilt and regret.

Thorn pulled out his talisman and held it against his chest. He focused on the contact between flesh and tattered cardboard, between then and now. Once, he was a lost, lonely, and frightened kid, who only ever found one, true friend in Kira Wixcombe. He scraped and scrimped and dragged himself through life, doing the best he could with who and what he was. You were dealt a hand, and you played your hardest with it, maybe not winning the game, but not losing it, either. You didn’t get to pick the cards, and no one got to pick them for you.

But that was exactly what he’d done to Morgan. He’d tried to stack her deck. Sure, he had the best of intentions, but what did they say about the road to hell?

Magic began to thrum and surge through Thorn’s fingertips, a tingle of potential, waiting to be unleashed. Ironically, it was far more than he needed for what he was about to do.

“Bertilak, I’d like you to start spinning the ship. Get it tumbling at random. As fast as you can,” he said.

He kept his attention on the starfield but felt Bertilak looking at him, puzzled. “Why?”

“Please. Just do it.”

Bertilak hesitated a moment, then fiddled with the controls. Thorn wondered if that was even necessary, or if the ship just did what Bertilak wanted it to. But he escorted the thought out of his mind. It didn’t matter.

The starfield slid to one side, then twisted and slid again. Thorn could feel the Witch Nebula gyrating around him, then above his head, to the left and forward, and now beneath his feet, to the right. He made himself concentrate, instead, on his talisman, his focus, that union of flesh and paper, of thought and substance.

“Faster, Bertilak. Spin it faster.”

The spiraling starfield became a blur. Thorn doubted any other ship could spin and tumble so quickly. Now the Witch Nebula was itself a blur, spinning around him so quickly that he couldn’t track it. He knew about where it was, but that was all.

Time. Thorn reached down through his focus and drew a glimmer of magic up, into it, and back through it. He would use it to change a very small and specific part of the universe. He’d use it to change himself.

Thorn swung his attention onto his smeared awareness of the Witch Nebula, let it rush wildly through his thoughts for a moment, then neatly snipped it away.

He let out a breath, opened his eyes, and looked at Bertilak. “Okay, that should be good.”

Bertilak slowed the ship’s gyrations, then finally stopped them.

Thorn thought about the Witch Nebula. It was still out there, that much he could feel. But he had no idea where it was.

Bertilak gave Thorn a puzzled grin. “Well, that was fun. Mind if I ask what it was all about?”

In answer, Thorn pulled magic from that deep reservoir and launched it into space ahead of the Jolly Green Giant. It erupted in a dazzling display of raw, unfocused power, spangled brightness raging wild among the cavernous dark.

Thorn let it go on, allowing the magic to pass through him and vent into space.

He smiled. He’d plumbed that reservoir deeply but still hadn’t hit bottom.

Not even close, Thorn mused.

“Okay, very pretty, but it doesn’t really answer my question,” Bertilak said.

Thorn ended the effect with a thought and turned to the alien.

“That, my friend, was about listening to the wise advice of a very smart man. A very smart, large, green man.”

Bertilak’s full grin switched on, its infectious cheer illuminating Thorn like radar. “Well, I’m flattered. Absolutely confused, but flattered.”

Thorn put away his talisman, then put a hand on the big alien’s shoulder. “I’m not perfect, Bertilak. I’m just a guy trying to do the best I can. Sometimes, I’m going to screw up. And that’s okay.” He smiled. “That’s what that was all about.”

“You’re a complicated man, Thorn Stellers.”

“The operative word there being man,” Thorn replied. Not a hero, not a god. A limited, imperfect man.

“So what now?”

“Now, Bertilak, we try to save the ON from a war on two fronts.”

“Okay. And how, exactly, are we going to do that?”

Thorn’s smile turned sly. “By scaring the ever-living shit out of someone.”

27

Kira nodded as the last member of the Venture’s crew stepped aboard. Once she was inside the ship, Kira hit the comm.

“Okay, that’s everyone. Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

“Aye, ma’am,” the pilot replied. A few seconds later, the Venture shuddered as she released her docking clamps. Thrusters rumbled in a brief burst as she backed away from the Danzur station, gaining distance before starting to maneuver.

Kira watched through the airlock’s tiny viewport as the docking adapter receded. She saw only swirling motes of frozen air, but no other movement. Most notably, the point-defense batteries mounted on the Danzur platform remained pointed away from the ON sloop.

She watched a moment longer. The view was appropriate. The Danzur fell steadily away, becoming ever more remote. It was a perfect metaphor for their chances of peace with the aliens.

Kira sealed the inner airlock and returned to the cabin. Damien had already strapped in.

“Don’t suppose the Danzur had a last-second change of heart, did they?” she asked.

He gave her a wry look. “If they had, I’d be telling you to take us back and dock.”

Kira nodded, then she sat down and strapped in. She made herself as comfortable as possible, ready to ’cast. The ON deadline was still a few hours off, but Tadrup had made it clear that he considered their departure from the platform to mark the formal end of negotiations. Their diplomatic status should still guarantee them safe passage out of the system and back to ON space, but Kira didn’t trust the Danzur not to try something underhanded. After all, they were supposed to keep her here as long as possible. The Venture, on her own, would last maybe five minutes in a fight with any sort of warship. Maybe. So if the Danzur decided that keeping her here could include destroying the Venture, there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Their only hope would be her ’casting. She’d already decided her best bet would be to Shade the Venture and hope she could maintain it long enough to be able to fire up the Alcubierre drive.

A little deeper in her thoughts was another, far more terrifying scenario. The Danzur were in league with the Nyctus. Suppose they decided that she’d be a powerful bargaining chip, taking her alive, then offering her to the squids in exchange for something, anything, it didn’t matter what.

Yeah, that wouldn’t be happening. Kira had resolved to destroy the Venture herself before letting the squids take her alive again.

“I’m sorry, Kira,” Damien said.

She glanced at him. “For what?”

“For not making this work.” He smiled again, but it was thin and bleak. “In case you’ve ever wondered what failure looks like in the world of diplomacy, well, this is it.”

“Oh, for—Damien, if we’ve failed here, then we’ve failed. Both of us.”

“Eh, you weren’t looking for a career in the diplomatic corps anyway, were you?”

“Not at all. And after this, definitely not at all. I’ll be happy to get back shipboard, where all I have to worry about is being blown to bits.”

Damien laughed, but the pilot’s voice cut him off. “Ma’am, three Danzur ships have just burned hard out of orbit. They’re going to intercept our course in about thirty minutes.”

“Please tell me they’re freighters or something.”

“A light cruiser and two destroyers.”

“Hear that? That’s the sound of diplomatic credentials being revoked,” Damien said.

Kira nodded. “Yeah. Shit. Okay, this is where it gets complicated.” She called up the pilot. “Can you evade them?”

“Been running the numbers, ma’am. Best I can do is delay their intercept by about ten or fifteen minutes. The Venture’s fast, but not fast enough, I’m afraid.”

“Do your best,” Kira replied.

“Always, ma’am.”

She couldn’t help smiling. Even in the face of impending disaster, the pilot’s voice was calm, methodical, and professional. It was just too bad they didn’t have a bunch more of him, aboard a whole bunch more ships.

“So what do we do?” Damien asked. His sedate tone impressed Kira even more than that of the pilot.

“Well, I’m going to try to Shade us. That should make us effectively invisible,” she replied.

“Oh. Well, that sounds encouraging.”

“You’d think so. The trouble is that it doesn’t make us immune to hits. If the Danzur are really determined to take us out, they can just figure out the biggest volume of space we could possibly maneuver through and fill it with ordnance. I can make it so the Danzur themselves can’t see us, even on the sensors. But I can’t trick a missile’s guidance system, because it doesn’t have a mind to Join with.”

“Well, that was a brief, exciting moment of optimism,” Damien replied.

“We might get lucky,” Kira offered.

“Let’s hope.”

The pilot lit the Venture’s fusion drive and started powering her away from the Danzur station, fast. Kira told herself that the pilot was good, the ship was quick and nimble, and she could Shade the ship. All those things together might be enough to get them out of this—

She eased out a breath. Except no, they probably wouldn’t.

“I’ve enjoyed working with you,” Damien said.

She smiled. “Same.”

Damien looked away, then back. “You’re more than a soldier, Kira. Don’t forget that, if your path continues beyond this moment.” He sighed, then gave her a small grin. “I hope it does. This ends my moment of melancholy.” His face brightened, and he laughed, long and loud, his face suffused with unalloyed joy.

“What?” Kira asked, bewildered by his outburst.

“I once had a lady friend who was into restoring and watching these ancient vids stored in archives. Some of them go back a few hundred years. There was one—a really awful one, I might add—that had this line in it.” Damien screwed up his face and made his into a nasal whine. “You’ll never take me alive, copper!”

Kira snorted. “I like the sentiment, despite it being a bit before my time.”

“Only one thing left to do now,” Damien said, eyes flickering out at the cruel reality of hard vacuum.

“We wait,” Kira said.

Damien nodded, then sighed. “We wait.”

* * *

“Three tens,” Damien said.

Kira sniffed and put her hand down. “Pair of Jacks. I drew nothing but shit.” She spoke the words, but in a kind of fugue state—Morgan was out there, and even the distraction of cards couldn’t pause the drumbeat of maternal worry. Morgan, we’re coming for you. Kira looked up, schooling her features into a relaxed state.

Damien chuckled. “Okay, so you owe me, let’s see. You owe me one hundred billion trillion credits.”

“Put it on my tab.”

Kira checked the time. The Danzur intercept should be happening in about ten minutes. She raised a finger to Damien. “We’ll have to leave the game there. I’ve got some Shading to do.”

Damien nodded, and she settled back. This almost certainly wasn’t going to do any good, but—

“Lieutenant Wixcombe?” the pilot said. “We’ve just picked up—holy shit.”

Kira sat up again, glancing at Damien. “What? What is it?”

“Sixty-three—no, wait, sixty-eight ships just appeared in-system. Warships, all of them.”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “Kind of overkill for one courier sloop, don’t you think?”

Kira sighed. “I’m thinking it’s the Nyctus. Shit.” They’d have come with shamans, wielding far more magical might than she could ever even dream of.

“You’d be wrong about that, Lieutenant,” the pilot cut in. “It’s the ON.”

She and Damien exchanged another look, this time of disbelief.

“Ma’am, I’ve got Admiral Scoville on the comm for you,” the pilot said.

Kira’s eyes never left the display. “Um. Okay. Put him on.”

“Lieutenant Wixcombe?” The new voice was gruff and snappy.

“Here, sir.”

“What’s your status?”

“We’re okay. Just—” She stopped and shook her head. “Sir, pardon my language, but what the hell is going on?”

“We’re paying a little goodwill visit to the Danzur with the Reserve Fleet. We’d have called ahead to let you know but didn’t really have the time. There’s someone else who can explain.”

“Hey, Kira.”

Her eyes widened. “Thorn?”

“Yeah. I brought some help for your negotiations.”

Kira unstrapped and clambered into the cockpit, peering over the pilot’s shoulder at the tactical display. It was full of ships, led by the massive bulk of the battleship Arcturus, carrying Scoville’s flag.

“Thorn, what the hell? Are you trying to start a war with the Danzur?”

“Not at all. You’ll notice that none of our ships have their weapons powered up or tracking sensors online. Like Admiral Scoville said, this is just a goodwill visit.”

“Ma’am, those three Danzur ships are pulling back. Fast.” The pilot tried to stay as professional as ever, but he couldn’t keep the gleeful relief out of his voice. Kira certainly didn’t fault him for that.

“I’ll bet they are,” Kira said, smirking, but the smirk, like her confidence, felt hollow. Morgan. Again, her name muscled into her thoughts.

Damien poked his head into the cramped cockpit. “Hey, Kira, guess what? Tadrup’s on the comm. He’s rather anxious to talk to us. Imagine that. A chatty Danzur.”

Kira smiled down at the tactical display, portraying the ponderous might of an entire ON fleet. She imagined the Danzur seeing the same thing, and then imagined their reaction.

“What did you tell him?”

“That we’d get back to him,” Damien replied.

“And we will. Eventually.” She grinned at Damien, who returned it.

“You sure you don’t want to join the diplomatic corps? You seem to have an instinct for it.”

Kira shook her head and gestured out the forward viewports. “Nope. Those are my people, out there."

Thorn’s voice came back on the comm. “Kira, Admiral Scoville has been invited aboard the Danzur orbital platform for a formal greeting ceremony. How about I meet you there?”

Kira opened her mouth to say, sure, absolutely, but stopped when the lead ship of the ON fleet caught her eye. It was small, of an entirely unfamiliar design—

And green.

And that’s where Thorn’s transmissions were coming from.

“Thorn, where are you right this moment?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s one of the things we need to talk about.”

Kira nodded, staring at the lurid green vessel. “One among many.”

* * *

Thorn settled himself into one of the sumptuous seats in Kira’s diplomatic quarters, which had been quickly reassigned to her. “Diplomats have better chairs. And everything else,” he added, tapping the chair’s arm as his face darkened. Every moment, thoughts of Morgan intruded into his reality, even though he knew that her power met or exceeded his.

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, believe me,” Kira replied.

Thorn had already given her the backstory. While Admiral Scoville met with the Danzur, Thorn had taken her aside and summarized everything that had transpired with Bertilak, the alien that had apparently been fabricated out of magic by Morgan. He’d described how, after regaining his full magical potential, he’d used it to transport himself and Bertilak back to Code Gauntlet, then hastily met with Scoville. Fortunately, he had enough credibility with the Admiral to convince him that the best way to bring the Danzur in line was to show them what the ON could do.

He’d done it by once more moving a fleet, this time right into the Danzur’s system. Without any warning whatsoever, almost seventy warships, including thirty capital ships, had suddenly popped into existence on their literal doorstep.

“You said the Danzur were awed and scared by the Nyctus magic. I deduced that a show of force—the kind that isn’t based on technology—would make them see the light, so to speak,” Thorn said.

Kira stretched out her legs. “I think you succeeded. Hell, having that fleet just materialize like that scared the shit out of me. I thought it might be the Nyctus.”

Before Thorn could answer, the door chimed. Kira opened it, and Damien entered. He stopped when he saw Thorn.

“Lieutenant Stellers, I presume,” he said.

Thorn stood and stuck out his hand. “I prefer Thorn.”

When introductions were done, they all sat again. “I just came out of Scoville’s meeting with Tadrup. The Danzur are almost panting to resume negotiations and get them resolved in a timely manner.”

Kira rolled her eyes. “So, sometime between now and never.”

“Actually, Scoville’s given it one week, and then he says the ON will assume talks have failed.”

Kira’s eyes widened. “Then what?”

“He didn’t say. He didn’t have to. Tadrup assured him a week was more than sufficient.”

“What a little weasel.”

“Tadrup? More like a little bear, actually, but I get the point,” Damien said, laughing. He turned to Thorn.

“Tadrup also asked for a meeting with you. The Danzur would like to meet the man who can move entire fleets around with his thoughts.”

Thorn sniffed. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I might look like I’m all here, but honestly, I’m spent. My nerves are fried, my daughter is, ah, displaced, and every moment I worry that I’ll break down because that innocent girl—my flesh and blood—isn’t here. With us. Where she should be.”

“The Danzur don’t need to know that,” Damien replied. “And as to Morgan, I can’t fathom your pain. I mean that. But for now, I think we’ll keep you a mystery to them. You’re this larger-than-life figure of power and menace in their eyes. It doesn’t hurt that the Nyctus made such a big deal about you.”

Thorn’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“We’ll get to that. For now, I just want to take a few minutes and bask in the glow of this new friendship we have with our Danzur hosts,” Kira replied.

Damien grinned. “Hey, that almost sounded diplomatic.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

* * *

“I understand that Captain Tanner wants you back aboard the Hecate,” Bertilak said.

Thorn nodded. “So it appears.”

“I shall miss having you aboard the Jolly Green Giant, my friend.”

“Oh, you’re not going to be rid of me that easily. I plan on finally taking some of the leave I’ve got coming. I was kind of hoping to spend it with you, if you’ll have me,” Thorn replied.

Bertilak stared a moment, then grinned. “There will always be place aboard her for you, of course.”

Thorn raised a hand. “I’m not really talking about a pleasure cruise here, Bertilak.”

The grin faded. “No. Of course not. We must find Morgan.”

“Yeah, which is why—” Thorn began, then stopped when Kira appeared, poking her head hesitantly into the Jolly Green Giant’s bridge.

“I heard voices and followed them. My apologies for not asking for permission to come aboard,” she said.

“Pfft, we don’t stand on ceremony here. Please, be welcome aboard my ship.”

Kira walked onto the bridge, still wary. Thorn gave her reassuring smile, then turned back to Bertilak.

“That’s what I was about to say. Kira’s going to join us, at least for a while,” Thorn said.

“By all means! Welcome, Kira Wixcombe!”

“Kira, I’d like to introduce you to Bertilak. He’s—” Thorn cocked an eyebrow at the big alien, then smiled. “He’s a good friend.”

Bertilak looked at Thorn, his expression deeply grateful. He held it for a moment, then nodded once and turned to face them both.

“Now then, my friends, we have work to do.” The big alien clapped his hands together. “Where shall we begin?”

Epilogue

For a while, she simply drifted, carried along on placid currents.

As she drifted, she dreamed.

She was once more desperately trying to bring the Pool of Stars into the here and now, so she could refashion the artwork painted on its hull. Una’s Ass would become Morgan’s Ride, a beautiful horse replacing the ugly donkey. Her dream made real, replacing an old image, outdated, crude, and alien. Morgan was a human, and yet, she was not. She was many things, all contained in a small body with a mind that had no limits, just like her power.

It might have worked. She’d gotten so close. She’d almost managed to sever the last bond of time that held the ship in the past. A moment longer, and she’d have succeeded.

But it was in that moment that the Nyctus struck. The massed minds of a hundred shamans, joined in unison, had unleashed a barrage of power through the ether, driving into Morgan’s mind like a spear into flesh. She’d reeled under the assault, but even then, she had managed to hold her own for a time, stunning the seasoned enemy with the sheer depth of her power. The clash of magics sent the Pool of Stars flickering in and out of existence. It had been here, in the present, then it had snapped back to the past, before her power dragged it forward again.

Time itself began to unravel.

And still she might have won the day, except that Bertilak had chosen that most critical moment to contact her, with the news that Thorn Stellers had failed his third and final test. It had only distracted her for an instant, but that instant had been enough.

The Nyctus had driven their thoughts deep into hers, reshaping them in a violent sculpting that was part violation, and part artistry. In the process, their identities merged with hers, the combination leaking across her faltering links to the Pool of Stars. It snapped back into the past one, final time, and as it did, Morgan felt what happened to the crew. As the door of causality snapped closed on the past, and time reasserted itself, she heard them howling in agony, could sense their bodies becoming gelatinous, their limbs becoming tentacles. The comingled presence of her own thoughts, and those of the Nyctus invading her mind, imprinted itself on them.

She could feel their hatred radiating across the centuries, as hot as a volcanic vent.

Morgan knew where the Nyctus had come from, and the reality sickened her.

“Child?”

Her eyes snapped open. The light that flooded them was no longer the comforting blue-green of a womb sac. It strobed an angry orange-red, filling Tāmtu’s depths with a harsh, unforgiving light, like the glow of lava, freshly emerged from the punishing depths of a tortured world. She turned to the voice, her face expressionless and flat.

The same flame-colored lights crackled and sparked along the elder shaman’s body. He’d lifted his tentacles, but there was nothing beneficent about the gesture. It was all about menace, about power and domination.

A second Nyctus swam forward and handed Morgan the doll she’d once called Mister Starman.

“You know who this represents, child, don’t you?”

She stared at the doll and nodded, then regarded her creations. I made you, she thought, giving each Nyctus a searching look. I made you like I made Bertilak. Like I can make a world. Or a universe.

“Now then, child. What is your purpose?”

She looked at the doll a moment longer, then lifted flat, empty eyes to the Nyctus and spoke without hesitation. She was young, but she was not without guile. They would learn.

They would all learn.

“To kill Thorn Stellers.”

Around her, the Nyctus flashed their approval, and Morgan stayed as silent as the depths. Soon, there would be time enough for truth.

But not yet.

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Have you read the bonus story “Spark to Flame” yet? Set in the Starcaster universe, your free copy is just a click away.

Visit: jnchaney.com/spark-to-flame to download.

About the Authors

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author and has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him online at www.jnchaney.com.

He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

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Terry Maggert is left-handed, likes dragons, coffee, waffles, running, and giraffes; order unimportant. He’s also half of author Daniel Pierce, and half of the humor team at Cledus du Drizzle.

With thirty-one titles, he has something to thrill, entertain, or make you cringe in horror. Guaranteed.

Note: He doesn’t sleep. But you sort of guessed that already.