Starcaster
Author: J. N. Chaney; Terry Maggert
Date: 2020-09-05T18:00:00+00:00
Description: Magic. Steel. Blood. Victory. The Earth’s navy is left drifting among the stars as Nyctus ships swarm, their purpose unknown as they continue their advance, burning one system after another. Humanity's extinction seems inevitable. But on one of the forgotten worlds, a boy is left behind, and he holds a talent unlike anything the galaxy has ever known. Thorn Stellers is a mage, trained to lead and fight. With a renegade division of warriors at his side, and with weapons far different from those of old Earth, Thorn has a chance at standing up to humanity's enemies. For these mage-soldiers, armed
Publisher: Variant Publications
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

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Prologue

The Hecate’s orbit sat low enough to study the alternating cloud flow in the yellow and red banded gas giant below, but the real show wasn’t the curve of a planet filling the port viewers, it was the fleet ranged in battle formation to the front and starboard. Hecate’s captain, Laird Valmont, straightened his tunic before he could stop himself. His hand strayed to the Orbital Navy crest pinned to his lapel, and he rubbed it with a bit of jacket cuff pinched between his finger and thumb. It was a ritual movement, born from years of stay-bright medals that refused to stay bright. There was a lot of ON brass out there, commodores of cruisers and destroyers a hell of a lot snazzier than his aging frigate, and Valmont hadn’t had a chance to get his dress uniform to the cleaners. There hadn’t been time.

No telling how long he would have kept it up, fixing himself for an audience that had no reason to flip their viewers to ship-to-ship mode. The enemy was out of visual range. Long-view scans seemed to be on the fritz, tracking more movement in the rubble of the planet’s ring system than among the enemy ships. There was nothing to do but hurry up and wait.

Most of Valmont’s crew were new faces. They’d been recalled from leave, like he had. Some had been stop-lossed and returned to active duty. Bag of dicks, that’s what it was, but the ON hadn’t had a choice.

A soft cough and a whispered, “Sir?” brought Valmont back to reality.

“Lieutenant Jaune, requesting permission to speak.”

Jaune wasn’t one of the new ones. Valmont had known him since he was a baby-faced ensign. He’d moved up in rank, but the baby-faced part hadn’t changed. Some people were blessed with not having to shave, but Valmont was pretty sure Jaune’s voice hadn’t dropped either.

“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” Valmont asked. “You look a little green.”

Jaune’s jaw worked, chawing at nothing. “I don’t like being sidled up to this planet, sir. These bloaty gas ones are tricky.”

Valmont could hear the young lieutenant grinding his teeth. He was pretty sure everyone on deck could. “Let me give you a bit of advice. Might save you some dental work.”

“Advice, sir?” Jaune had stopped the teeth grinding, but a muscle in his cheek was playing hopscotch.

“Your place isn’t to question. That’s above your paygrade. Just keep your head down and do what you’re told.”

“Sir.” Jaune jabbed a finger at his personal view screen. “That’s a damn vortex. The planet’s got a pull and this position is a death trap. Once we’re in the atmosphere, it’s a toss-up. Either the wind gets us, or the pressure will.”

The deck was quiet enough that Valmont could hear Jaune gulping air—rhythmic labored pants, like a farm hound in August.

“How long have you been on duty today, Jaune?” Valmont caught the eye of one of the alternates.

The alt didn’t waste any time sliding into position next to the lieutenant. “I’ll take your viewer. Why don’t you take a break? Get your head right.”

Jaune didn’t reply, but he did slide out of his chair and let the alternate log in. Once he was logged out, Jaune slouched, hands on his thighs and head low, taking more of those noisy dog-breaths.

“If you’re going to be sick, don’t do it on my bridge,” said Valmont. “That’s an order, by the way.”

Jaune straightened and managed an, “Aye, sir.” It wasn’t crisp, but it was audible.

Drops of sweat speckled the lieutenant’s upper lip.

The alt who’d taken over leaned in to study something on the viewer and smiled. “If you’re worried about the storm and the pressure, Jaune, you’re freaking about nothing. Ammonia, methane, and hydrogen are the friendliest gasses in that thing. We’d melt before we got crushed.”

The lieutenant sprinted off the bridge so fast Valmont wondered how he did on his fitness assessment. Damn, that kid could move when he needed to.

From his perch on Jaune’s seat, the alternate stared at Valmont with a look one part admiration and three parts calculating.

“What’s your name, troop?” Valmont asked.

“Barca, sir.” He swiveled to face the viewer again and began to adjust Jaune’s settings.

“You new?”

“Aye, sir. First tour here on the Hecate, second deployment.” He was smiling again, eyes locked on the viewer, fingers sprinting on the keys.

He looked a little too comfortable in his new seat.

Valmont shook his head. “Barca, try not to run anyone else off my bridge just because you want to move up.”

“Aye, sir.” The alternate didn’t even have the grace to look sheepish.

Valmont was a firm believer that everyone should try a stint in the military. He’d seen plenty of dropouts and hard-sells make something productive of themselves, both the enlisted side and in the officer corps. The ON was a good fit for a lot of unlikely people. Even when it wasn’t, what’s a few years of service in the scheme of things? Given recent circumstances though, Valmont had to remind himself that “try it, you might like it” was peacetime thinking.

They weren’t at peace.

“In case there’s doubt floating around, the planet is there for cover if needed,” Valmont said, pitching his voice to carry. “We don’t know what we’re fighting. No one’s gotten a good look. Every skirmish, communications have been knocked out early.” There was restless movement from the crew at his words, but Valmont knew he wasn’t telling them anything they hadn’t already heard from the news vids. “If things get bad, we can dip into the atmosphere. It may throw off their tracking. But Barca here is right. Outstay our welcome and we’ll melt. If we go in, we don’t get comfy.”

Barca’s hands were flying over the keyboard as he accessed finer details about the red and orange globe filling their portside view. His grin hadn’t slipped, although Valmont was damned if there was anything to smile about.

“Sir, if the fleet runs into trouble we can’t tackle, escape pods can hide in the ring debris.”

Valmont nodded. “Good to see someone around here thinking—“

Barca cut him off. “There’s something coming from our three.”

“Let the ships on our three handle it. Scan what’s in front of you. That’s the last order given.”

“But our three—“

“Barca, my high opinion of you is deteriorating.” Valmont really didn’t want to cycle him out of Jaune’s chair. If this pattern kept up, he’d run out of crew. He glanced out the starboard wall viewer, but the angle range was hampered on the bigger viewers. “Stay in your lane.”

“But, sir…”

“Something wrong with your ears? Should I call a medic and have you scanned? I said let them handle it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir. We’ve lost the cruisers on our three. All of them.”

“What do you mean all of them?”

A proximity alert rang out seconds before a chunk of debris hit. The shield repelled it and off it tumbled, too little to do any damage. Valmont watched the mass sail past on its new trajectory. The proximity alert didn’t stop its clamor, though, and an instant later a rain of debris pelted the hull.

There was a moment of silence when the alarm cut off.

The planet’s vestigial ring system harbored a whole lot of dust, a few notable bits of rock, and a dozen lumpy moons. It had caught Valmont’s eye when they first got into position, because like Barca pointed out, it could provide concealment if things went south.

Other than that, it wasn’t much to look at. Not nearly as spectacular a view as the turbulent red and orange globe of the planet itself or the stretch of the ON fleet.

But something was happening to the ring. First dust and small chunks, and then larger rocks wobbled out of their bands. It happened slowly at first.

Valmont started to ask Barca for a scan but never got the chance. A lump jerked out of the planet’s skimpy belt and flew at them, like some invisible giant had decided to have a bit of fun with a game of catch.

The proximity alert began to wail again.

Barca turned to Valmont and shouted, “I think somebody just threw a rock at us.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

There was a thump and a shudder. The deck rolled.

Valmont had been in an earthquake once—a big seven pointer. It hadn’t been a teeth-shaker like in books and movies; instead, it felt like this, like riding a long, slow wave. At the time, Valmont had been a cadet and one of the requirements was meditative yoga. It was meant to teach inner calm and grace under pressure, but when Valmont realized the female he shared matspace with had head lice, all the class did was raise his blood pressure. The way the earthquake had rolled underfoot made him wonder if that was what the lice felt during yoga class—this smooth, undulating, massive movement. His immediate response to the quake wasn’t fear, but wonder.

Here it was, so many years later, a great deal of water under the bridge, beast of a frigate under his feet, and Laird Valmont was once again reduced to a louse in yoga class. It felt like a circle drawing to a close. He didn’t trust it.

In between bouts of static, the large viewers showed ship flotsam tumbling by.

“Sir?” Barca called. “That was the destroyer on our three. Wait—“ A shower of spacecrap smacked the Hecate bow and starboard. “This stuff isn’t just ships. A lot of it looks like ring debris.”

Valmont squinted through the static on the viewers. “Those rings are a good distance off. How did all of it get out here?”

More debris shook the ship.

“I think it’s them, sir. The enemy. I think they’re pulling it out of orbit and aiming it at us.”

“Is there an energy signature? A tractor beam?” Valmont asked.

“I scanned. Sensors aren’t picking up anything.”

The viewers held. The whole fleet was being pelted with debris.

“The enemy is throwing rocks at us? Rocks took out ON ships?” Valmont shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. We have shields. Even if the enemy can throw rocks, so what? If there really has been losses and it’s not a trick, what’s causing the losses?”

On screen, a moon jerked out of its orbit and slammed into one of the destroyers. The collision caused the ship to tumble one direction and the moon to sail off in the other. Fragments from both took out a swath of smaller ships.

Valmont staggered to Barca’s viewer. It wasn’t a dream or a hallucination; the personal-sized reader showed the same images the wall screen had. “Do every scan you can think of. Don’t just search for the usual.”

The deck crew were glued to their screens, frozen.

“Weapons,” Valmont yelled. “Online. Pulverize everything bigger than a football—that isn’t one of ours.”

A weapon tech swiveled in his chair to face Valmont. “System can’t get a lock, sir. It’s like the weapons systems are just sliding off.”

Valmont couldn’t remember the tech’s name. “Keep trying. Tell me the second you find something we can use. “

Barca broke in. “More debris incoming.” The proximity alarm was joined by two more sirens. The combo was deafening.

“Someone override those damn alarms,” Valmont snapped. “We know. Spacecrap. It’s everywhere. Shut off that racket so we can think straight.”

One of the techs—a thin, nervous woman named Purnell—raced to comply. Valmont knew she was on her first assignment and sixth month in the navy. He hoped she’d see a year.

On screen the ON fleet was in tatters. All of the bigger ships, the destroyers and cruisers, were scraps. Maybe they’d gotten escape pods off before being hit, but Valmont hadn’t seen it.

The alarms cut off with a suddenness that was even more jarring than the clamor. In the quiet, Barca’s words sounded strangely amplified. “Debris everywhere, sir. I’m not getting any life signs. None of our outgoing coms are working.” A shadow crossed the large frontal view screens—something big enough to darken them all at once. “It’s a moon, sir. It’s a ways out, but it’s closing on us.”

“Weapons?” Valmont shouted. The ship shuddered. Its movement had transitioned from a rolling earthquake to a teeth-jarring one. “This would be a good time.”

“Sir, we can’t get a lock. We can’t stop it.”

Valmont took one last look outside. So few ships were left. With all the debris, it was hard to tell what was whole and what wasn’t. “Barca, how many ships have life signs?”

“There’s something wrong with the data, sir.”

“How many did you see before the sensors went down?”

“I was only scanning wreckage, sir. I didn’t hit the functional ships.” Barca darted a glance at him before focusing back on the viewer. “The moon is closing. If we’re going to do something, we have to do it now.”

Valmont closed his eyes and then thought better of it. He forced himself to look, to take in the debris field and crippled ships that had been the ON fleet. “This isn’t working. Spin up the drive and get us out of here.”

“Sir, what about recovery? We could dip into the planet, pop out to scan and rescue, and use it for cover if the enemy starts throwing stuff at us. Just like you said.”

“No.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because someone has to live to tell what happened.”

1

Thorn Stellers had heard the term “mud-ball planet,” but he’d never been on one that tried so hard to fit the bill. Being taller than most of the planet-born workers just meant there was more of him to get smeared with muck. Even after a hard scrub, which happened less often that it should, he still had crap under his nails. After a few weeks planetside, Thorn was pretty sure his hands would be dirty for the rest of his life.

There were tar clots on everything he owned, even his off-day clothes. The slop was everywhere—in the prefab barracks-style sleeping quarters, spattered on the chow trays, and smudged on latrine walls. The air felt soupy with it. Mudflat reclamation work was a hell of a way to earn a few credits.

The pipeline they were working on had been hit years ago, during the first days of the Shino-Shield War, back when the enemy had first targeted the resource planets and left everyone scrambling. Almost two decades later, there were still countless inoperable hellholes like this—more planets than workers to dig them out. On the plus side, jobs could be had for someone desperate enough to do cold, filthy, miserable work.

“Stellers.” A voice pulled Thorn out of the fog he usually drifted in, making him uncomfortably aware of the damp clay that had found its way inside his boots, feet throbbing along to his heartbeat, and the wet-wool and armpit reek of the foreman standing next to him. “Stellers,” the voice—Thorn’s foreman—repeated. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“A what?” Thorn had half-noticed the transport pop out from under the cloud cover right about the time he’d started to trek back for shift change. He thought it was the usual Blue Alliance or Collective supplier, some freighter bringing fresh blood to supplement the planet’s local labor force, the same way he’d come here.

“Visitor.” The foreman wasn’t a fan of repeating himself. The look he leveled at Thorn for having to do so twice could have boiled mud off a pipe. “It’s an ON ship.”

“Why would the Orbital Navy do a drop on this hole?”

The foreman shrugged and pointed over his shoulder at the conjoined huts that served as both housing and chow hall. “Couldn’t say, but the military don’t send pretty girls out for a common plug.” He directed a glare at Thorn. He always had a look like he’d eaten something rancid and was trying to ignore the taste, but today the foreman looked especially bad-tempered. “Once they fly out, you’d do best to find your way off planet, too.”

Thorn’s aching feet, the foreman’s stink, and the muddy sludge around him—it all fell away. Reclamation work was last resort stuff. If he couldn’t make it here, there wasn’t much to fall back on. “But mud’s all I’ve dreamed about since I was a boy. What will I do with myself if I can’t do this?” Thorn said it like a joke, pulling out a grin to back it up. The grin fit just fine. “If this is about the card game, boss—”

“Ain’t about the cards.” The foreman nodded at the huts again. “Ain’t even about the ON lady over there waiting. Something just rubs me wrong about you. I’ve never seen someone so fresh-washed mucking pipes.”

“Wait.” Thorn held up a hand. “This is about the cards, isn’t it? There’s no rule against winning.”

“Find yourself a way off-planet, Stellers,” the foreman said, expression of mild disgust unchanged. He could have been talking about the weather, the mud, or a rock in his shoe. “The sooner we’re rid of you, the better.”

Thorn watched the man slog off through the muck and started to call out, maybe offer him a rematch on the cards, double or nothing, but decided against it. Instead, he picked his way through the mud and the damp toward whatever fresh trouble might be waiting at the hut.

* * *

The foreman was right. The ON soldier was pretty. She was also smart. She’d grabbed coffee for both of them and brought it outside the chow hall doorway so the other workers wouldn’t stare, but it wasn’t until Thorn was close enough to grab the steaming tin mug that he realized he knew her. The realization hit him hard—a forced remembrance of a time that he’d tried to forget.

“Kira? Kira Wixcombe?”

He hadn’t seen her since they were both kids at the Children’s Refugee Collective, the de facto dumping ground for orphans in the early years of the war. Unwanted kids, bad food, and despair. A perfect recipe to produce people like Thorn, who fit nowhere but lived everywhere. The flotsam of war.

She flashed Thorn a smile. She still had her dimples. “How’d you know it was me?”

“We don’t get many redheads,” Thorn replied.

Kira glanced around the mud-smeared stoop of the chow hut, the utilitarian bulk of the sleeping quarters, and the soup of the flats beyond. “Doubt the hair’s what sparked your memory. Anyone could dye it this shade.”

The coffee she’d handed him had the texture of runny grits, but it was hot. Thorn took a long swallow and stared at Kira over the mug’s rim. She was the cleanest person he’d seen since he got here, and even more surprising, she was armed—a railer at her hip, the compact, powerful weapon gleaming darkly in its synthetic holster. Though small, the personal railgun would send rounds through walls, not at them. It was a menacing touch on Kira, but it didn’t detract from the pleasant sensation filling Thorn’s body. He wasn’t working in the slop, and for the moment, that was a vast improvement over his daily life.

When he lowered the mug, he shifted his grip from the handle so he could cup it in his hands and warm his fingers. “People in these camps are happy to get two squares a day. No one wastes credits on hair dye.”

“Redheads aren’t exactly rare, Thorn. Plenty of people come by it naturally.”

Kira’s eyes were still roaming the camp and mudflats. Thorn followed her gaze. From his perspective, there wasn’t a damn thing worth looking at with that level of intensity, except for maybe him, and he was the one thing Kira’s gaze wasn’t burning a hole in.

“Redheads are rare on this planet. Prevalent shade is brown,” he said. “Protective camouflage. Blends with the scenery.”

Those blue eyes stopped roaming and locked on his. Kira arched an eyebrow and waited.

“Alright.” Thorn tried out the grin that hadn’t worked on the foreman. “I read the name tag on your uniform and put two and two together. You always said you wanted to enlist.”

Kira flashed him those dimples again and then pointed at the silver bars on her collar. “I didn’t enlist. The enlisted have to work for a living. I’m an officer.”

“Look at that,” he said and then took another long pull of coffee. “Good for you. Glad someone made it out of there, I guess.”

The wind picked up. It pelted rain against the construct material of the awning that sheltered their stoop.

The pause in the conversation felt awkward. The silence needed something, so he added, “Do you like it?”

“Hmm,” she replied, staring out at the mud again.

As an answer, it wasn’t the most positive one Thorne had ever heard, but it beat the hell out of what some of the crustier ON vets on the reclamation team had said about their years in service. “I’m guessing we owe the pleasure of your visit to some policy shift between Collective and the Alliance? They’re trying to make nice and now the ON’s responsible for surveying reclamation work. That sound about right?” Thorne asked.

Kira tapped a finger against her chin, her head tilted a bit as if in thought. “Nice place you got here, Thorn.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “You get to pick between two seasons: slush or monsoon. Lucky you to visit during slush.”

Kira took a long pull of her coffee, grimacing at the taste, and then stared down into her cup. Thorn studied her while he could. That red hair and those ice-blue eyes hadn’t changed a bit. Thorn would have known her without the name tag. Kira was impossible to forget.

But when those eyes looked back up, he saw they were chilly. Her face was a lot more closed off than when they were kids. Now, it was dark with secrets.

“I need to ask you something,” she said.

He put his grin back on and turned up the wattage. “Here we go, the woman with a plan—ask away.” Thorn reached out to clink his mug against hers.

She didn’t grin back. “Do you remember when we were kids?”

“Obviously.”

She snorted in annoyance and shook her head. “No, I don’t mean in general. I mean do you remember how you liked to read after lights-out?”

Thorn gave her a slow nod but didn’t say anything.

“Do you remember when they took your flashlight away?” Her eyes bored into his.

The mudflats and the pipeline work seemed much warmer than this short redhead in uniform next to him. Thorn looked away so he wouldn’t have to meet her stare.

“Do you remember how you made that light? It was a ball about the size of a silver dollar. You pulled it from nowhere. It floated right over your palm.”

Thorn kept his eyes fixed on his cup. Ancient history and hocus pocus weren’t where he’d expected—or wanted—their conversation to go.

“How long did it take you to recover from what the kids in the Home did to you?” Kira asked. “Have you ever tried to do it since—tried to make a light?”

Thorn dumped the dregs of his coffee into the mud that started just past the chow hall’s stoop. “As much as I’d love to reminisce, chow’s about to clear. Almost time for second shift, and I’m on doubles this week.” He stood, towering over her a bit, before meeting Kira’s upturned gaze squarely with his own. “I’ve got congealed oil to muck unless you’re here to offer me a way out.”

The coffee churned in his stomach. It had done nothing to wake him up. Thorn’s eyes felt grainy with exhaustion.

“That’s exactly what I’m here to offer,” Kira said. Those dimples flashed, then faded. Her eyes weren’t tired. They were hungry.

“Yeah?” Thorn’s snort rang harshly in the chill air. “Where?”

“Thorn Stellers,” Kira said, standing and holding out her hand. “How would you like to join the Navy?”

2

The jump plane banked so it could start its descent. Thorn leaned into his seat as they broke through a puff of cloud into clear sky and bright sun. There was a river below and a gray scramble of buildings with a stubby landing strip a little too short for comfort. Luckily, crates like this didn’t need much of a runway to take off or land.

They hit a patch of turbulence, and Thorn’s fingers tightened on the armrests. This jumper was a shorty. It could handle standard near-Earth weather conditions as long as passengers didn’t mind bouncing. When conditions were red, it was another matter—then it was better to stay in near-orbit and wait things out.

Things were far from red, but turbulence jostle was Thorn’s least favorite part of travel, especially after the relative smoothness of space. Jump planes weren’t cut out for interstellar distances, but they were standard for planet-to-planet. In the search for work, Thorn had been on more than his fair share.

Kira snored in the seat next to him. Earlier she’d slumped loosely against his shoulder, not a sensation he minded, but when she started to drool, he repositioned her so her head was against the seat instead of him. Not that drool could damage his clothes any worse than the mud and tar of reclamation work already had.

The plane hit another rough patch. Thorne tried to force his fingers to unclench. Watching the landscape unfold below helped. Not a lot of mud down there. If he got nothing else out of volunteering for the ON, at least he’d get a shower and a chance to dry out.

Kira had dragged him from ship to ship, a bewildering glut of civilian shorties and one aging interstellar transport burg reeking of fermented cabbage and satsumas. When Thorn asked her why they were crawling along on that glorified farmers market, and why they kept changing crafts, and why the hell they didn’t just use the ON jump she’d come in to hop them back to the longer-distance ship that must have brought her, she shushed him and glanced around, as if worried someone might have overheard.

For years, distance versus maneuverability had been one of the ON’s biggest headaches. Ships bulky enough to handle an interstellar drive engine had no maneuverability when they had to fight gravity and atmospheric conditions. Some of the bigger ones were too large to land planet-side at all. Until engineers could find a better drive, ships were either marathoners or sprinters, but never both.

Kira twitched awake just before they landed, wiped the side of her face with the palm of her hand, and blinked muzzily at the sun flooding the jump’s cabin.

“You going to tell me where we’re at, or is it still a big secret?” Thorn asked her.

She yawned. “Since we made it without getting killed, I guess I can.” Kira pointed outside as the plane touched down, her gesture directed to the gray mess of buildings he’d seen from the air. “Thorn Stellers,” she said. “Welcome to Code Nebula. Home of the Magecorps MEPS and training grounds.”

“What’s an MEPS?”

Kira yawned again. “Military entrance processing station. It’s what you go through to join the ON. All of us have to do it at some point.”

“This place isn’t very big. All of the ON passes through here?”

Kira snorted. “This place? Not hardly. The ON has independent MEPS stations on a bunch of worlds. But…” She started to add something, hesitated, then finally said, “Nebula is different.”

Thorn glanced out the window again. The buildings didn’t look plotted and planned like a military installation. Nothing was crisp. This looked more like a research facility on some backwater outpost planet. “It’s different how?”

“You remember that do-it-yourself night-light you got beat up over?” Kira asked. “Only a mage can make light—spells, really. You’re going to be part of the Magecorps.” She gave him a long, measuring look, then settled on staring at his face. “If you don’t flunk out.”

* * *

They clomped down a set of silicone and aluminum airstairs—Kira with empty hands, and Thorn with the only luggage he owned. It wasn’t much: a change of clothes, a handful of hygiene items, and a kid’s book.

The book was the same one that Thorne had been reading at the Children’s Home the night he was beaten up—actually, every time he was beaten, the book was nearby, if not hidden in a pocket. When Kira had seen him stuff it into his carryall, she recognized it.

She had grabbed his wrist, a strange look on her face. “That book.”

“Brought it from home,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving it here.” And he didn’t. Bringing the book made sense. It didn’t take up much room. It would have been wasted. It’s not like the other reclamation specialists would have read it. It would have gone into the trash pit the second he lifted off planet. That book was the one constant he had, hard proof of the life he’d had before war erupted and he became an orphan. He’d heard the ON required soldiers to cut ties, but he wasn’t cutting this one.

“No, I don’t think you should leave it,” Kira had said, hand still on his wrist, although her grip had softened. “There’s something about it. Something special. Keep it with you, Thorn.”

He’d tossed her a grin—that Thorn Seller’s patented special, designed to let him just get by without revealing anything real—trying to wipe the odd look off her face, but it had lingered.

Now, standing on the tarmac of an unfamiliar world, Thorn tightened his grip on the carryall handle. It was like he could see through the bag’s canvas sides, straight through to the worn cover and yellowing pages wrapped up in his spare clothes. The book’s presence was calming. It always had been.

When he snapped back to reality, he saw Kira had already stepped off. Thorn followed, lengthening his stride a few steps to catch up. When he did, she glanced at him and said, “That building straight ahead is where you’re going. Once I hand you off, the rest is up to you.” She fought a smile, the corner of her mouth quirking and her dimples dancing between visibility and non-existence, before giving in to the grin. “Try not to worry too much about fucking up. Failure is part of training.”

“You’re coming too, right?”

Kira stopped midstride. “What?”

“Aren’t you training with me?” Thorn asked. “We’ve come this far. Might as well keep the team together.”

Kira shook her head and said almost gently, “I’m an officer, Thorn. I’ve already been through training. My job was to deliver you. Your job is to—well, you’ll see.”

When she started walking again, Thorn lagged a step behind. He told himself it was because he wanted a chance to enjoy the view.

* * *

Kira placed Thorn in the hands of a bony woman with “Narvez” on her nametape and long frown lines bracketing her mouth. She wore silver double bars on her collar like Kira did. Thorn turned an experimental grin toward her, but the woman didn’t even look at him.

“What fresh idiot you bringing me now, Wixcombe?” Narvez asked Kira.

“Well…” Kira flashed her dimples. “You always yell when I bring them to someone else.”

Thorn cleared his throat. “Them? How many people have you brought here?”

Narvez looked at him for the first time.

“Ma’am,” Thorn added.

He waited for more, but the woman stood there with her lips pressed tightly and her arms crossed, saying nothing. She had a narrow face, somewhere just short of gaunt. With her mouth thinned to a line, she was a study in slashes, like someone had taken a sharp knife to a plug of clay.

He shrugged, his grin fading. “I’m not sure I—”

She cut him off by thrusting her knife of a nose in his face. “You,” she said, her voice a hiss, so he had to stay where he was, nose to nose, to catch every word, “will address her as ma’am. Lieutenant Wixcombe is not your drinking buddy. You will address me as ma’am. You will address all female officers as ma’am, and if you happen to see a male of the species, and he’s wearing officer rank, you will address him as sir. Does that sound simple enough, or do I need to write it down for you?” She pulled back, an arm’s length away, and redirected her gaze to Kira. “What did you say his name was?”

“She didn’t, actually,” Thorn said, a flare of anger piercing his usual calm. “It’s Thorn. But if you want to be drinking buddies, you can call me whatever you want.” He paused just a moment before adding, “Ma’am.”

“His name is Stellers,” Kira told Narvez.

“Stellers.” Narvez said it like she’d just gotten a mouthful of something rotten. “If you’d be so kind as to follow me for swearing in and processing.” She looked him up and down, then delivered a grin of her own. “Enjoy your attitude while you’ve got it. It’s about to be fixed.”

* * *

Twenty minutes after that, Thorn sat on a metal table in a pale blue room. He was naked. Everything about the room conveyed a flesh-creeping cold—the shade of the paint, the temperature, a handful of pastel sketches that showed the inner workings of the human reproductive system from different angles, and one unusually large poster of venereal diseases identifiable by sight. The thin paper lining on the table stuck to his butt whenever he shifted. About the time he realized the room was likely a test of some kind and he was probably being watched, someone knocked on the door.

Thorn called out, “Come in.” He stood just as the door handle turned.

A woman walked in, cute, blonde, surrounded by an air of bustle. She had a clipboard with a medical scanner fastened to it. She didn’t bat an eye when a naked Thorn stepped forward to shake her hand. She took it without changing expression, glanced at the clipboard, and asked, “Stellers, Thorn?”

“In the flesh,” he replied. “Obviously.”

She glanced at the clipboard again, unimpressed. “This is your entrance physical.”

He tapped her clipboard, and she looked up, expression still stoic.

“Kira made it sound like I already had the job.”

“It’s just a formality. The ON fixes what gets broken during training or service—if there’s anything left to fix. They’re not likely to deny for a preexisting, but they do want to know what you’re coming in with.”

“Coming in with?”

She shrugged. “Childhood trauma is fairly common in the Magecorps.”

She didn’t add much warmth to the room. For all that she was cute, and seemingly flesh and blood, she could have been a well-designed ’bot. Thorn had dropped Kira’s name, hoping for a connection of some kind—anything to tether him to this new world, and what might be a new life.

Instead, she waved him to the exam table and ran the scanner from his temple to his shoulder and then across his chest at nipple level. Every now and then, it beeped and she made a notation. She worked her way down, then back up, and front and back, without ever saying a word—except twice. Once when she asked him to turn his head and cough, and later when she instructed him to hop off the table and grab his ankles.

“I kind of prefer reclamation work,” he muttered.

“Don’t take it personally,” she said, moving around to his front again, her eyes flat with clinical regard. “We do reclamation work here, too.”

The pale blue walls seemed to muffle background noise. The stylus against the clipboard, the girl’s breath, the shush of the air circulators—he couldn’t hear any of it. It was like being stuck under an ice sheet in a frozen sea, sunlight filtering in from above.

She was scribbling notes after poking and prodding him when Thorn asked her how she liked being in the service. She blinked, puzzled for a moment, and then started to laugh. “The ON’s recruiting comedians now?”

“Apparently.”

She stepped to the door, then through as it opened. “Enjoy your sense of humor while you’ve still got it.” With that, she was gone.

3

Code Nebula was a much smaller planet than the mud-ball Thorn had spent the last few years on, so the darkness that met him as he left the medwing took him by surprise.

Narvez waited, tall and angular, with her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Her sharply angled elbows mocked a hawk’s wings. In contrast to her poise, Thorn sauntered toward her, shoulders slumped forward, hands jammed into the pockets of his oil-worn trousers. Having lived on a planet known for nothing more than mud-slush and monsoons, he’d learned to keep his head down and hands warm. He didn’t expect the sharp—and sudden—two-finger jab to the diaphragm that propelled his body upward in a desperate attempt to swallow the air he’d lost.

The woman’s lips curled in a frigid bow. “Stellers,” she hissed. “You will stand upright and at attention or I will make you stand upright and at attention.”

“I think I understand. Ma’am.” Thorn choked on his words as he recovered from the shock, keeping his anger at bay with a force of will.

Narvez stared, then turned on her heel and led him toward a small grouping of oil-shined steel buildings. She didn’t look back, assuming he would follow. He did, though he looked around, stunned at the sights.

Code Nebula was pristine. On Murgon 4, Thorn had stood out from the other workers, literally a head taller than the rest, but also because he couldn’t stop himself from attempting to clear the muck from every facet of his life. As he absorbed his surroundings now, he felt as though he was the muck they’d be wiping from their shiny black boots.

They arrived at the barracks, and Narvez directed him to the second on the right. Simple black markings above the door read “2A.” Thorn paused, a new life waiting just beyond the metal threshold, then pressed into the orderly, sterile space.

The recruit bunks somehow managed to exude the kind of cold that seeps into your bones while at the same time hinting at comfort he could only dream of. In all his years, he had never felt so luxuriously neglected. The soft white pillow beckoned to him, and he realized just how utterly exhausted he was. Kira may have slept en route, but he’d never had the pleasure. All of the plane jumping seemed to smack him in the face, and his eyes began to droop.

“STELLERS!” Thorn jolted to attention at the sound of Narvez’s voice. He didn’t remember drifting into a sleep haze.

“Ma’am?” he said, his brain lagging two steps behind his mouth.

“Your bunk is there.” She pointed with a long finger. “Near the window. Get the hell out of Rodie’s bunkspace.”

“Shit,” he grumbled. Then, as his brain finally caught up to him, he snapped to attention and flashed a brilliant smile at the serrated woman. “I mean shit, ma’am.”

Though she didn’t seem too pleased with the correction, Thorn snatched up his canvas bag and clutched it tightly as he transitioned to the correct bunk. The other six recruits in his barrack sniggered into the crooks of their elbows or behind their blankets, but Thorn didn’t pay them more than a glance. He didn’t have the energy. Until their collective laughter, he hadn’t even clocked their presence.

Narvez left him with an icy glare, and Thorn sighed away the tension as he collapsed on the edge of the mattress.

“I’m Rodie,” a nasally voice announced from much closer than Thorn had anticipated. “This is Drigo. Don’t worry about the bunk mishap. They all look the same anyway.”

Thorn grasped the man’s hand and shook it, marveling at the slight figure he saw before him.

When Kira had offered him the job, Thorn thought he was a lock. Obviously, the ON would be interested in a tall, heavily-built man such as himself. But standing before him now was a young man barely more than skin-and-bones with a head two sizes too big for his neck and glasses that made a job of sliding down the bridge of his nose.

“I…uh, yeah…” Thorn stuttered at the juxtaposition before him.

Drigo chuckled and lifted his arm to press it against the metal bed frame. “We get it, man. Don’t worry about it. The first day in Magecorps is a little freaky. Messes with your head and shit.” He had a subtle air of aggression, even when he was smiling. Thorn knew his type—as the tallest kid in every group, and on the slop crews, Thorn was made to be challenged, and usually by guys like Drigo, who thought their natural position was in the lead. They’d have to reach an understanding at some point.

Thorn dropped his head and ran his fingers through his chunky locks of blonde hair. “Magecorps.” He tested the word on his lips. It fell from his mouth naturally and somehow brought the collision of reality to the surrealism of his surroundings.

“Yeah, well, trust me, man—your head’s gonna be doin’ somersaults tomorrow.” Drigo’s bicep rippled as he gestured vaguely about the oncoming day. His physique fit the construct Thorn had created of his fellow recruits much better than Rodie’s—just about a foot and a half shorter than what he expected. What he lacked in height, he’d certainly gained in bulk, though.

Add Napoleon complex to his urge to lead, Thorn mused.

Rodie chimed in again, pushing his glasses up with a crooked finger. “That’s Val over there. She’s a beast. Then you’ve got Streya, Tuck, and Unger.” He leaned in close enough that Thorn could feel his breath against his cheek. “But if you need anything, you wanna talk to me.”

Drigo grabbed Rodie by the shoulder and nudged him gently toward the aisle between the bunks. “Yeah, yeah, let’s let the poor guy get some sleep before you start touting your goods, eh?”

The pillow on his bunk was just as inviting as Thorn imagined Rodie’s to be. Even the rough blanket couldn’t stop sleep from finding him, and soon he slipped away for the night, his body and mind finally at rest. For a while.

* * *

A resounding crack brought Thorn reeling out of sleep. His heart pounded against his chest, and he gulped to calm his staggered breath. He hardly recalled his dreams anymore, though he didn’t know why. He did know that the racing thump of his heart and beading sweat on his brow wasn’t unfamiliar. Without thinking, he reached for the book stashed beneath his pillow and ran his thumb across the cracked cover in the dark.

Just when he thought the calm had returned, another sharp, atmospheric crack sounded in the distance. This time, he saw the light that filled the room with an ethereal glow. Thorn pulled himself up by the window ledge and stared out in wonder. He had only seen that particular luminescence once before, and it had emanated from his own palm. Here, he saw the clouds alight with the spectacle.

Thorn glanced around the room. Everybody else seemed to still be sleeping. Smart. Catch your flies while you can, he knew, so he eased back down to a prone position. Despite his exhaustion, Thorn lay awake listening to the sky crackle as flashes of light splashed across the ceiling tiles.

It wasn’t much longer before the barrack door smashed open and a cyclone of cold air tore through the bunks, ripping blankets from the recruits and jolting them all awake. At the back of the room, Thorn was lucky enough to see the destruction, so he clung to his bunk, fingers in a death grip.

The slim figure in the doorway could be none other than Narvez, but right now she appeared to stand ten feet tall. Her cloak swirled about her knees as she stood silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky.

Narvez’s voice echoed above the tired groans of his bunkmates. “Breakfast in five, or none at all.” Then she was gone.

With each passing second, Thorn was missing the muck and oil of his former life.

* * *

The mess hall was far from messy. Thorn couldn’t help but marvel at the polished aluminum floors, the shiny metal chairs—hell, he could nearly see his reflection in the tray Drigo passed back to him. Bodies jostled about as they shook off the haze of fitful sleep. Men with silver bars on their jackets stood throughout the room, surveying the recruits with professional disinterest.

To say the breakfast was meager would be an overstatement. For a hard day’s labor on the pipes, Thorn could eat nearly a dozen eggs, toast, bacon, and then some. He had a feeling today would be a bit more strenuous than working pipes on Murgon 4, but what he got was two egg-like circles of protein on top of a slice of dusty bread so thin it only had one side. For his second slice of what the cook seemed to think of as bread, there was a jelly with the consistency of engine oil, smelling vaguely of burned sugar and peaches. He devoured it out of necessity but took solace from the coffee. It was hot, heavily caffeinated, and only mildly offensive.

After breakfast, Narvez led the recruits of 2A to the training grounds where they came to a stop on a running track. The sun was just starting to rise above the wooded hills in the distance, and the new officer pulled a cap on to shade his eyes.

“Recruits, at attention!” Narvez commanded.

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” Thorn was a syllable behind the rest in response as they saluted in unison.

“Instructor Burnitz, your recruits. Stellers, step forward.” Narvez tipped her head to the ginger-bearded man. “Instructor Burnitz, your newest recruit—Stellers. Good luck with this one.”

Thorn shuffled forward, uneasy with the limelight for the first time in his life. Instructor Burnitz scoffed, then sized him up like livestock. Thorn felt his anger rise, but only just.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you’re called, recruit. Get back in line.” Burnitz’s voice was all bite and no bark. Thorn could sense the danger this man held at his fingertips.

“Get ready to run, Proby,” Val whispered over her shoulder in his general direction.

Rodie’s right. Thorn raised a brow as he took in the hard lines that shaped her physique. She’s a beast.

“Recruits! Fall in!” Without another word, Burnitz started down the track with a quickness that took Thorn by surprise.

Thorn hadn’t been on a run in ages. His chest burned as they trekked through the hills and slogged through muddy banks, but he refused to fall out. He wouldn’t be that Proby. The other bunks had just caught up with them when Thorn’s legs began to falter, and his mind told him the run was over. But they continued. They must have done about six miles when Burnitz finally spoke above the gasps and moans.

“What’s the matter? We’re just over halfway there now.” Burnitz chuckled at the hopeless grunts. He stayed ten yards ahead of the rest, seemingly unfazed by the rugged terrain. “You know, I am feeling a bit shaded in these trees. Can any of you get my hat off my head?”

A few recruits started moving faster and pressed forward, but Burnitz only increased the distance between them. Now he turned and ran backward, a slight smile lifting the corner of his beard.

“Ease up, now. Run any harder and you’ll hit the ground before you hit me.” Burnitz continued to run backward, his feet finding purchase on the ground below as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

Despite himself, Thorn let out a groan. Luckily, it wasn’t heard over the retching behind him. He looked up and saw Rodie, by some act of the gods, appeared to be at the front of the pack. He had to admit, the nerd had great cardio. Thorn watched as Rodie raised his hands, running awkwardly with shoulders stiff to the front. A globe of light built in his palm and he threw it forward, but it was an awkward motion, like a fawn taking its first steps. The globe splattered against the ground and blew Rodie’s feet from beneath him. He hit the trail hard and whimpered before scampering back to his feet at the back of the pack, head down.

Burnitz chortled. “There we have it! The best of the best! Is that all you fresh bloods got? A miserable fizzing of energy that takes out the ’caster?”

All around him, Thorn saw balls of light begin to glow one by one, and each fizzled out before it could be thrown at Burnitz. He clenched his jaw and directed his eyes to the dirt, determined not to give in to his anger at Burnitz. The instructor was an asshole, but an asshole with a purpose. Thorn would avoid being one of the many. Instead, he let the anger simmer as everyone else around him failed, their magical efforts little more than an embarrassment.

“Kids, kids—we’re all going to be friends someday, but not with this terrible attitude,” Burnitz called, hoping to further break their egos. “Can’t run, can’t fight.” He sniggered. “And can’t even perform magic. Not a good way to assault your instructor and reveal your incompetence.” He lifted a brow, smiling at them, his feet still moving like pistons. “You have to understand enemy strength, along with your own ability. So far, I’m seeing neither.”

Val growled and threw her hands forward, a bright white ball of light flying from them. Burnitz sidestepped easily and the globe splintered the tree beside him.

“There we go! That’s some fire!” Burnitz lit up—literally; his eyes glowed with an electric blue. Val tried to harness the energy once more, but it only sparked.

Guess I’m not the only failure here. Thorn fought a chuckle and lost the battle. Burnitz stopped in his tracks. The recruits collided and tumbled over one another in the abrupt stop, like a train piling up in slow motion wreckage. Thorn’s legs twitched as if they itched to keep going, even as Burnitz’s eyes bore into him with that electric blue glare.

“Stellers, is it?” Burnitz demanded.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Thorn answered instantly. He was learning.

“I don’t recall seeing your pitiable attempt. Remove the hat from my head, recruit.”

Thorn bit back his first reply, then spoke. “I wanted to, ah…save up my energy for a legit try, sir.” A few of the recruits snorted uncontrollably at Thorn’s uncertainty and their own failures.

Burnitz grimaced back. “Not a fan of waiting. I like to get to the main event.” He tapped a finger on his rugged watch, indicating time was wasting.

Thorn was about to respond when a blast of seafoam light singed the hair at the top of his head.

“Remove the hat from my head, recruit.” Burnitz’s voice now filled the space between the trees.

Thorn’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. He chewed on his cheek and stood resilient, face placid.

“Oh, my mistake.” Burnitz began to turn forward again. “Thought you were a coward. You don’t have the fighter’s eye.” Burnitz gave him a look that slid away in disgust. “Or intellect, for that matter.”

The column of rage that boiled inside Thorn shot through every nerve in his body—a furnace of heat and energy that sizzled nerves into action before Thorn even knew what was happening. Without a thought, Thorn’s hands went up, wrapped in a malignant chorus of light, then he released it all in a single pulse of magical power that streaked forward faster than the eye could follow. The silent blast of dark, glittering energy had thrown Burnitz to the forest floor; his hat lay beside him in the dirt, curls of smoke rising from the seared fabric. Silence filled the empty space and the air burned with a sulfurous residue.

A harried breathing made the squad turn to see Narvez approaching from the rear. “Instructor Burnitz!”

“Lieutenant Narvez.” Burnitz bounced to his feet as if he hadn’t just been hit with the force of a truck.

“Which recruit?” Her inquisition was incomplete, but they all knew what she was asking.

Thorn stepped toward her before Burnitz could respond. “It was me, ma’am.”

Narvez turned to head back to the training field. “Follow me, Stellers.”

Still shocked at what he’d just produced, he fell in behind Narvez, his body gone cold with fear and uncertainty. He could hear Burnitz calling cadences as the rest of the recruits trotted on behind him.

* * *

Commander Schrader’s office was as cold as his skin was pale. Lieutenant Ashworth was already sitting in a high-back leather chair in the corner. Thorn sat in a state of rigid attention, more statue than recruit. His thoughts were simple—on the first day of training in the Magecorps, he was going to be discharged because his magic was too volatile for even the ON’s dark horse battalion. The Commander’s icy stare made Thorn hold his tongue for the moment while he sorted a response to the oncoming shitstorm.

“Commander Schrader, Thorn Stellers. Wixcombe arrived with this one yesterday.” Narvez’s hatchet-lined features went blank when speaking to the Commander.

“Bring Wixcombe to me as well, Lieutenant Narvez,” Schrader said.

“Aye, sir. Right away, sir.” Narvez hurried from the room.

Thorn stood in a cloud of uncertainty as Schrader and Ashworth sat, their eyes pinning him from two angles. After a few minutes, Narvez returned with Kira. Thorn turned his eyes toward her bright auburn hair as she brushed it neatly back away from her face and stood at attention.

“Commander Schrader,” Kira said.

“Wixcombe, what do you know of this recruit?” Schrader appeared genuinely curious, and Thorn’s nerves settled a bit at the Commander’s demeanor.

“Commander, sir, this is Thorn Stellers. I arrived at Code Nebula with him yesterday. I sought him out because I believe he will be a fine addition to the Magecorps, sir.” Kira never looked in Thorn’s direction as she addressed Schrader.

Schrader steepled his long, boney fingers. “And why do you believe that, Lieutenant?”

Kira dropped her eyes to the ground for a brief moment as she cleared her throat. Thorn could see that she was struggling with whether or not to reveal their connection.

“Stellers was…” She lifted her eyes and set her jaw with a new resolve. “Thorn was my brother at the Children’s Refugee Collective Home. He might be a little broken, but he’s a good man.”

“And you thought… what did you think, Lieutenant Wixcombe?” Commander Schrader stood and placed his fingertips against the desktop so that his knuckles bent like spider’s legs. “You thought you’d collect this boy you haven’t seen in more than a decade and bring him to Code Nebula without even holding him accountable to the trial first?”

Kira’s hair fell into her face, head dipping. “Aye, sir.”

Lieutenant Ashworth drew his breath in between his teeth. “Wixcombe, you know he must be held accountable to the trial. Why in hell would you expect to plant him directly into training without accountability protocols?”

Kira cast a glare toward the second in command. “Because I know this man. And I know what he is capable of. It may have been years ago, but he has passed the trial. A trial need only be given once.”

Schrader lifted a closed fist in the air, silencing the lieutenants immediately.

“Lieutenant Wixcombe is right, a trial need only be given once. If she says this trial has been passed, then we take her on her word.” Schrader left his cold stare on the olive-skinned man. “But all magic may become tainted through time without proper instruction. You”—his gaze moved to Kira—“have just run the risk of contaminating our entire fleet of new recruits with your carelessness.”

“Sir,” Kira began, but she was cut short when a single pointed finger was raised toward her.

“To your bunk, now, Lieutenant. Tomorrow you train with the recruits.” Schrader sat once more behind his mahogany desk.

“But Sir, I…” Kira started, but it was useless.

“Butts are for the stock of your rifle. They do not belong in my office.” The angular commander’s shadow grew against the wall and the strong bass of his voice resonated in their chests. “This man”—he pointed to Thorn—“needs to learn full control of his magic immediately. It may interest you to note that these people will be going to war with the Nyctus—and soon. You are taking that responsibility on yourself, Lieutenant. If the dog is not broken in a month’s time, you will join him on whichever slum-bucket you pulled him from.”

Kira’s eyes narrowed and Thorn could see the anger darkening her face, but she maintained her composure with some effort. “Sir, yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

With that, she turned and left.

“Now, Stellers. Is there any thought in your head of what it is you’ve produced?” Schrader turned his attention to Thorn.

“I don’t want to lie,” Thorn began but paused as he realized that even the truth was evasive. “I…felt it happening. Inside me, but I don’t know where the power came from. When we were kids, I did it so I could survive—my book from home was life to me. But as to a plan, no sir. I had none.”

“Yes.” Schrader sighed, his anger dissipating, if it had been real at all. “Magic is a reflection of our deepest thoughts and emotions. When you are so broken, your magic, though powerful, is broken as well. It will control you before you have control over it. That makes you a danger to every soldier stationed at this base. That makes you a danger in training, on the field, or anywhere else. Do not let your emotions drive your actions, for in battle that is a sure way to never return home. Use your emotions to fuel your intuitions, and then train your actions to harness that energy into a controlled force. The snake does not strike out of anger or hatred, he strikes out of necessity. And when he does, his venom is released in a carefully measured dose to neutralize the enemy and preserve himself. If the snake were to strike out of hatred, the dose would not be carefully measured, and so the snake would drain himself of his precious venom and commit himself to a deadly fate. Measure your venom, Stellers. Keep your satchel full.”

Thorn gave a cautious grin. “Got it. Be the snake. Channel the snake. Will do, sir.”

Schrader waved his hand in dismissal, and Thorn felt as though he could finally breathe as he hurried through the door to the fresh air beyond.

4

“Get those knees up.” Narvez’s heavy black boots created a trench of their own as she paced in the viscous semi-liquid that Thorn had become well acquainted with over the past few weeks. The suctioning sounds resonated as the recruits raised their knees chest high.

“Good,” Narvez murmured. “Tear them down. Then build them up.”

The only energy Thorn had left was spent tearing his feet from the mud that grasped onto his boots. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been running in place, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue to lift his legs. They felt full of lead, and a punishing heat suffused every inch of his body.

He faltered. Narvez saw. She saw everything.

Narvez came to an abrupt stop and turned on her heel to face them with a look of irritation. “Drop!”

The recruits obeyed, dropping to their stomachs in a ragged line, hands sinking into the putrid ground.

“Now push that ground away from you in half counts—Stellers, you’ll be particularly delighted at this exercise. It’s all of the pain your body can take, but you’re using whatever magical ability you can muster. Think of it as a little vacation from running, won’t you? Now! One-and-two-and-hoooollld it. Four counts.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” the troops called back at her. “One, two, three, four.”

“Now down. Half counts. One-and-two-and-hoooollld it. Four counts.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” The group response had already begun to lose its fervor.

“One, two, three, four.” Among the shouts were groans of pain and a muted sob. Magic was hard, even if you were gifted.

Narvez schooled her features into something that appeared neutral.

Thorn thought he’d left the murk behind on Murgon 4. He’d seen the pristine barracks of the research facility upon entry and assumed that was the forecast of how his new life would be. He hadn’t taken into account the minds of the Magecorps’ Sergeants and how effectively they would force him to relive his muck-strewn past. At least on Murgon 4 he got to play cards.

Thorn shook his head at the memory. “Coulda been rich by now,” he muttered to himself as he glared at the brown tar an inch beneath his nose.

The air went still as his words tumbled out, and it took him a few seconds to notice the thick black boots standing in front of him. He turned his head up slowly, looking through his raised brow as he dared not drop to the ground and give the lieutenant a reason to start the drills all over again.

“Did you speak, Stellers?” The sharp lines in Narvez’s face dug even deeper into her tanned skin.

Thorn could hear the other recruits gasping as they held their form. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” He struggled to project the response but refused to let her see his pain.

“Recruits.” Narvez turned her attention to the flagging troops. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

“Ma’am, no, ma’am,” they called back. Thorn was pretty sure a few of them were on the verge of crying. Or puking. Or both.

“Lieutenant Narvez, ma’am, if I may?” Thorn’s look of apology was mild, even regretful.

Narvez raised her brow as the silence stretched between them.

“I was simply going to comment on the sad state of your boots, ma’am. Those are not ON officer compliant.”

Thorn had only a fraction of a second to revel in the troop’s laughter before Narvez’s boot came down between his shoulders and pressed him into the mud. Above them a cloud began to swirl—far from natural, and contained only by the power of Narvez’s magical will. It took shape in seconds, growing darker and more intense by leaps and bounds. She glanced up at the unnatural structure as a sense of doom began to fill Thorn’s chest. Her face was still. Inhumanly so. And in that blankness, he sensed power.

Above her, power continued to gather, just at the edge of his senses.

Narvez’s voice rang with metallic clarity as she raised her arms to the sky. “Lay your arm out to the side, Stellers,” she commanded.

The recruits were stunned to silence. Thorn was compelled to obey.

“Fingers spread.”

A ball of light began to form in Narvez’s palm and she held it as it grew, sparking in wild, spasmodic growth. Thorn stared in horror at his fingers, spread unwillingly in the mud, wishing his arm to pull back in toward his body. When he realized he no longer had the mental capacity to control the limb, he turned to his side, grabbed the rogue shoulder with his other hand, and pulled against it. Nothing. His heart hammered against his ribs as his feet scrabbled for purchase; thoughts of his stupid mouth bringing this on to him unwelcome, bitter—and true.

The glowing globe shot from Narvez’s hand into the clouds and generated a bolt of lightning. It separated into four thin, distinct branches as it hit the ground between each of his fingers.

Narvez turned her dimming eyes toward him and lifted her boot from his back. “You can spit shine my boots later, Stellers. Thank you for your concern.” She grinned—a hideous effect on her features—and floated back to her trench, her feet skimming over the ground in a show of magical ability designed to make the recruits feel small

It worked.

Thorn threw his hand to the sky, then turned it over and back, checking his fingers for singe marks. Momentary fear still coursed through him at the sight of what true magic could do.

“Now push that ground away, recruits.” Her voice had returned to its natural grit. The recruits resumed their positions with a newly discovered motivation and continued their half count pushups.

“No, no, no,” Narvez hollered. “I said push that ground away.” She held her palms out toward them, drawing on the white-blue light once again and letting it hover in the air in front of each hand. “Push!”

Thorn regained his composure and placed his shaking fingers just above the mud. He looked up at Narvez in mild shock, then he pushed. The black cloud of shimmering energy shot from his hands and propelled him upward.

Narvez looked up at him, and for a moment her stoic demeanor faltered. The recruits stared up at Thorn in disbelief.

“Umm, a little help up here?” Thorn wobbled against the current of energy, some twenty feet off the ground.

“Release it, Stellers.” Before Narvez had a chance to complete her sentence, Thorn smashed to the ground. “Slowly…dammit.”

Thorn coughed and spat mud into Val’s shoulder beside him. “You could have led with that, ma’am.”

Val smacked him hard on the arm and wiped the mud from her skin. “Keep your filth to yourself, Proby.”

Narvez commanded their attention once more. “When you’ve all finished getting to know your own magic a little better, you can return to the mess hall for chow—then report to Instructor Burnitz for weapons training.” She turned to the back of the mud pit. “Lieutenant Wixcombe, direct the recruits and ensure each and every one of them initiates a magical push before they are dismissed. Not a pushup. This isn’t some childhood gymnastics class. I want command of their body mass against gravity, not an archaic workout.”

“Lieutenant.” Kira accepted the shift of responsibility and made her way to Narvez’s trench, kicking the mud from her boots into Thorn’s face as she passed.

Thorn couldn’t blame Kira. Because of him, she was stuck in the ditches with the rest of the grunts until he got himself under control—at the very least, he had to control his mouth. The magic would come with practice, he hoped, but his damned attitude might stop him from surviving in the program long enough to find out. Kira’s rigid form told him she was accustomed to the officer’s quarters and recruitment life—but her movements proved she could also get her hands dirty. Thorn was caught admiring the woman who he had first known as a girl.

“Stellers.” Kira wasted no time singling him out. “You’ll continue to push—with control—until every one of your squad have followed suit.”

“You know you don’t have to ask me twice.” He ran his mud-covered hands through his hair before returning to the plank position. “Ma’am.” For the next hour, Thorn pushed and released, practicing his descent and harnessing the energy that remained as he lowered himself to the ground for the next push. He felt like a leaf, caught in currents of his own making.

The food provided in the mess hall consisted of a small handful of nuts and a few cubes of cheese. His stomach roared in defiance as he chewed the last cube of pasty cheese. He dropped his tray on the conveyor and turned to see Kira standing behind him with her jaw jutting out. The childlike attitude reminded him of the days at the Children’s Home when she’d been pissed at him for one thing or another.

Kira punched him without holding back. “You dumbass.”

Thorn rubbed his shoulder. “Ouch. Tad excessive, don’t you think?”

“Get your shit together or I’ll show you what excessive is.” Kira marched off, pulling her hair tight in its frayed ponytail as she did.

Stave training was no less exhausting than the emotional breaking Narvez had subjected them to that morning. Though the planet was smaller and the resulting days shorter, these first few weeks at Code Nebula felt as though they were one continuous blur of pain and failure. Burnitz had made it his personal job to make sure every inch of Thorn’s body was covered in welts or bruises. The burly bearded man could move with the grace of a gazelle and struck with the force of a rhino. Thorn had no idea how to deflect his blows, let alone best him with the wooden planks, and Burnitz had two full decades of experience in hand-to-hand combat. He’d forgotten more than Thorn knew, and Thorn had grown up using his fists on a daily basis.

Rifle training was only different from stave training in that the ON demanded live ammunition. Luckily for Magecorps, the ON had not yet banned the use of Lifer energy—healing magic—on training wounds. That didn’t stop it from feeling like a red-hot iron rod was being projected through your skin, nor could it revive an instant death from a badly placed shot.

Thorn made his next mistake by asking the instructor a question when the recruits were marched out onto the live-fire range.

“What happens if we’re hit, sir?”

“This.” The instructor’s rifle snapped up, fired, and went back to resting position before anyone else could move. The shot cut a hot furrow through Thorn’s shoulder, leaving him lurching to one side in shock and pain.

“Hurts, doesn’t it? You’ll learn to dodge. Or you won’t. Either way, you’ll answer the most important question on my range,” the instructor said in a casual tone. He was a grizzled veteran, with eyes like black gems and a scar that split his scalp in three parts.

“What question is that, sir?” Thorn gasped as a medic began holding hands over the wound, her lips moving without sound. The healing spell worked—but it still hurt like hell.

“How do I learn to dodge a bullet?”

The day proved to Thorn and his class that gunshot wounds are the greatest teaching method ever devised. All the instructors assured the trainees that they never aimed for vital body parts. Thorn suspected they found pleasure in the soft thud of lead against those non-vital squishy bits, but with every failure to deflect a shot, the medic was called immediately. Thorn began to understand that the instructors weren’t sadists—they were trying to save the recruits from death.

Day after day, the instructors pulled the recruits from their bunks, pushed them through a paltry breakfast, tore them down physically, and then broke them mentally. When they were sufficiently depleted and broken, they would demand that the trainees perform magic with clarity and conciseness. When they inevitably failed, they broke them down once again. They worked their posts like prison guards with a penchant for punishment.

While Thorn found himself succeeding in Weapons and Tactics, he was not so adept in Clearance and Material Sciences. No matter how many times he repeated Commander Schrader’s snake analogy, he couldn’t seem to let go of simmering frustration that Burnitz and the others didn’t care what they put the recruits through, and in his darkest moments, Thorn was convinced the instructors made it personal. It didn’t matter to them that the troops were running on eight hundred kcals a day or less than four hours of sleep a night. They expected them to perform without exception. They were shaping them into war machines but treated them as if they were just that—machines.

On the training grounds near the creekbank, Instructor Hiroshi was giving some presentation about the different elements that magic could be drawn from and their manifestations, and in that moment, Thorn didn’t feel like a machine at all. He felt—tired. Hollow. His mind began to fuzz, and—

“Stellers!” Hiroshi startled him out of his daydream.

“Sir?” Thorn had become proficient in the art of snapping out of it.

Hiroshi said, “Unless you want to be the subject of my presentation, I’m going to need you to fall in with the rest of your squad.” The compact, muscular man was a Lieutenant Commander out of Magecorps, and within it, he was the foremost authority on elemental magic. Hiroshi, the recruits learned through the grapevine, had come into his power at the age of twenty, when a ship’s airlock went haywire and killed two sailors in front of him. As with many people who found magic later in life, Hiroshi needed trauma to awaken his power, which made sense given how Thorn had come to know his own magical ability.

The breeze freshened and Thorn realized he may have actually fallen asleep when he saw the recruits had moved to the field above the rocky bank.

“Sir, yes, sir.” Thorn hustled to join them, a cloud of confusion fading as he pelted up the incline, feet churning damp soil.

Hiroshi twisted his hands in a deliberate series of motions, light beginning to flare between the palms. Each mote was blue, then silver, and then they combined into a serpentine flow that danced in an unnatural sight that had once been reason enough to burn people at the stake. The rushing water slowed its current and flowed obediently upward, joining the ball of glowing matter between Hiroshi’s hands. There, the water vanished, held in a magical reservoir beyond the normal senses of humanity. With a dismissive flick, Hiroshi split the globe of light, water crashing from his palms in a torrent that sent spray ten meters in the air.

Not one recruit spoke. They were unable to in the face of such power.

Hiroshi’s black hair billowed backward with the opposing gust of wind, coming to rest around his face like a hood. “The dynamism of magic is completely in the hands of the Mage. Rodie, perform. The target cairns are downrange, and you will each destroy one of the stacks. If any rocks are still touching, you have failed. Begin.”

Rodie made the earth tremble along a well-placed line and passed his bright white energy through the cracks to dismantle the targeted cairn, each rock flying away with enthusiasm. Drigo’s power manifested in a living red flame, directed precisely to a point of earth that was left charred glassy. Val could spin a ball of blue energy into whatever caliber was necessary and hit the target cairn three hundred yards out—when the spell hit, the first stone it touched exploded in a shower of rocky fragments, some glowing like lava.

Streya seemed to pull on the very air around her and act as a conduit for the natural power of the environment. Thorn had never seen her so ominously present as when she pulled the clouds down from above her and swirled them into a cyclone, obliterating the stack of rocks. When the cyclone disbanded, the rocks flew in all directions. More than a few left their marks on the recruits, and one knocked Rodie out cold.

Hiroshi threw water from the river on Rodie to bring him back to consciousness.

“Hey, Rodie. Now that melon head of yours has a lump of its own,” Drigo said.

Hiroshi struggled to keep the smile from his face but still commanded Drigo to do fifty physical push-ups for speaking out of turn.

“Stellers, let’s see what you can produce.” Hiroshi stood near the cairn, daring him to miscalculate his attack. The atmosphere was tense, but Thorn was not.

Thorn had no trouble performing the Mage tasks. The trouble came in controlling them. He moved to the riverbank and chewed his lip in trepidation. He enjoyed Hiroshi’s teaching style. If there were an instructor he would hope not to abolish in a cloud of dark energy, Hiroshi would be the one.

He breathed deeply and concentrated. On what, he wasn’t sure. At first his thoughts swirled through his head, colliding, threading through one another in a woven skein of uncertainty and—there was something else. Under the surface, like a riptide—

It was power. And it was Thorn’s, if he could take it.

Then the image of a schoolboy pulling seven-year old Kira’s long copper hair flashed before his eyes—Kira, enduring abuse for no other reason than she was unable to defend herself. Then, not now. Thorn gathered the molecules that surrounded him, letting the anger grow to a diamond point.

He directed them at the memory of the sallow face on the boy, and he let go. The stack of rocks flew backward in a scorching blur, embedding in the trunk of a tree twenty yards away.

Silence descended, along with sprays of bark, leaves, and the feathers of some unfortunate flying creature caught in Thorn’s cone of destruction.

“Ah, well then.” Hiroshi cleared his throat, unused to being at a loss for words. “Dismissed. And remember to hydrate,” he added, warming to his position once again.

Elemental magic had a way of sapping the fluids from the fibers of your muscles. Thorn sat at the bank of the river and splashed himself with the cool liquid.

Before returning to his bunk, he caught a glimpse of Instructor Hiroshi speaking in hushed tones with Lieutenant Narvez and Commander Schrader. Lieutenant Ashworth stood nearby looking particularly sullen.

“Hey, Stellers!” Rodie had a little too much enthusiasm as Thorn entered the barrack and stripped the mud-crusted clothes from his body.

“What are you selling today, Rodie?”

“You’re gonna love it, Stellers. I’ve reeeally got the goods this time.” The lump bulging just above his left eye made Rodie look like some street urchin who’d fought off dogs for a stolen loaf of bread.

“Just get to it, Rodie.” Thorn plopped down on the edge of his bunk.

Rodie pulled a small, rectangular bar wrapped in gold foil from his chest pocket. “I’ve got the king of kings, the lord of sweets, seventy-two percent gen-you-ine choco-late!”

“I don’t really have a sweet tooth, Rodie.” Thorn lay with his face to the wall.

“Suit yourself. I was offering it to you first, but I know Drigo’s gonna go crazy,” Rodie said as he sauntered off.

Val stopped him in his tracks. “Rodie, did you just say you have-- chocolate?” Thorn turned to watch this exchange.

“I sure did, darling.” Rodie said, grinning slyly. “And it can be yours for a small price…”

“Let’s negotiate, shall we?” Val said.

“Um.” Rodie rubbed one hand over his head, face wrinkling. “See, I was gonna ask for”—he cut his eyes at Thorn, who shook his head imperceptibly—“your good graces during, our, um…upcoming trials together.”

Val lifted a brow. “Eminently reasonable of you, and forward-thinking.” She plucked the chocolate from his hand, grinning. “I applaud this kind of initiative in a squadmate.”

“Yeah, initiative,” Rodie said. “Enjoy your bar, Val.”

“I haven’t had chocolate in months. I don’t know how he gets this stuff.” Val spoke through chunks of the bar in her cheek, already halfway through the contraband treasure.

Despite the exhaustion, Thorn rose from his bed and looped a companionable arm around Rodie. “You got hustled.”

“Did not,” Rodie protested.

Val laughed, chocolate smearing her teeth. “Sure did, Rodie. It was my feminine wiles. They’re irresistible.” She flexed a forearm corded with muscle.

“Yeah. Wiles,” Rodie said slowly, but Thorn’s good humor helped him past the irritation..

“Come on, Rodie, that’s enough commerce for one day. You might get to your rack without shoes if I don’t escort you there personally.” He gave Rodie a playful shove, then turned back to Val, whose eyes were half closed in bliss. He joined Val on the edge of her bunk and held his hand out for a piece of the chocolate. She obliged.

Thorn nibbled at the square. “What brought you to the ON anyway?”

Val nodded at Tuck. “Tuck and I have been best mates for ages. We used to play Navy versus Invaders as kids. Guess we both always wanted to join up. Never imagined this is what it would be for us.”

“I couldn’t have imagined it either, but most of my ability to dream was torched in an impact crater,” Thorn said, but not in a dark way. He was practical like that.

“Where’d you get hit?” Val asked.

“Cotswolds, the main island. Nothing left but ashes now. And me,” he added, then smiled at Val for the first time—a real smile, earned by a growing sense of shared purpose. “Thanks for sharing your spoils. I’m gonna get the most sleep I can tonight.”

Thorn shuffled to his bunk and fell face down into the welcoming crisp sheets. The night brought him thoughts of home again, a flickering story of fire and loss, but even that couldn’t stop him from sleeping—a state he achieved almost instantly, and without anything more than a long, thin sigh.

For the first time in a month, the recruits were woken after the sun had risen. When Narvez arrived to lead them to breakfast, she never said a word. As they approached the mess hall, Thorn was sure his senses were failing him. He smelled the unforgettable scent of bacon.

Commander Schrader stood near the trays, a pressed black uniform neatly folded about his crossed arms.

“Congratulations, recruits.” Schrader didn’t have to raise his voice—ever. When he was present, the troops were devoid of sound. You could hear a pin drop from across the room, save for the hum of overhead lightbars.

“You’ve hit a milestone in your training. Every one of you has efficiently controlled your elemental magic, and I’m proud to report you’re now Magisters, one and all. Next stop—Starcasters.” Schrader stepped aside and his arm swooped around to reveal their prize. The troops whooped at the sight, their voices lifted in relief and joy.

Thorn began to salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs. The buffet was stacked full of sunny yellow eggs, fresh fruits, links of spicy sausage, and the mother of all holies, piles of bacon. He filled his tray to the brim and nearly stumbled over Kira as he turned to find a seat.

Kira stood with one arm behind her back. “You did it.” She handed him a piping hot thermos that held a deep aroma of dark, floral sweetness. “You got your shit together. I’m off training duty and you’ve got yourself a cup of one of the smoothest Columbian joes you’ll ever taste.”

Thorn nearly dropped his tray. “Colombian? Like, Earth Columbian?”

“That’s right.” Kira’s eyes glimmered when she saw her surprise had, in fact, astounded him.

“How did you…I didn’t think any of this roast even existed anymore.” Thorn took a sip a bit too quickly and burned his tongue. “Ah, shit.”

“This batch is one of the last, so I hope you still get a chance to taste it once your tongue cools.” Kira left him to enjoy. It would be a long time before he was treated to such extravagance again.

Over the brim of his cup, Thorn watched her walk away, her steps light with a new optimism.

Now the real work begins, he thought.

He was right.

5

Thorn twisted beneath Burnitz’s arm as he swung a hammer fist; the destination, Thorn’s right temple.

For a split second he thought he may have gained the advantage on the powerful instructor, and he jabbed his knife-wielding hand in an upward trajectory. He didn’t realize how much he had underestimated Burnitz’s agility until he was in the air on a short list for a meeting with the ground. He hit the dirt with a hollow thud and dropped the knife at his side.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Thorn wheezed.

“You look natural down there, Stellers. Like you’re in your element.” Burnitz kicked the knife away as Thorn grimaced.

Burnitz addressed the plebes. “Self-defense—fighting, to you kids—does not rely on the ability to use greater speed alone. No, instead you should watch their eyes. They tell you everything you need to know, and you can predict their actions. Then, you can enhance your advantage.” He dropped a clear bottle half-full of a mottled brown liquid on Thorn’s chest.

“Dit da jow. Become acquainted. The ancients of the old world developed this cure for bruising and to strengthen bones against breaking. The herbs used to create the salve are worth more than your weight in gold, and we’ve…augmented it…with some of our own processes.” Burnitz tapped a foot against Thorn’s ribs with enough force to get his attention. “But if you use more than a drop, I’ll break those ribs before you get the chance to toughen them up. Clear?”

Thorn opened the bottle and gagged at the noxious aroma. “Are you sure these are herbs, sir? Smells like you took a dunk in the latrines.”

Burnitz stooped and grabbed Thorn by the shirt, then he pulled him up. When Thorn was standing, Burnitz smoothed out Thorn’s uniform front and leaned in close. “I don’t like you. You’re overconfident and undisciplined, and you don’t know shit about control. Impulse control makes an officer. Good judgment makes a mage. You’re neither right now.”

Thorn chewed on that. It was better than mindless bellowing, and the truth stung him—if only a little.

“Sir, yes, sir.” Thorn had gained a bit of sense in his time at Code Nebula as to when he should call it quits. He poured a drop of the foul tonic on his finger and rubbed it into a spot on his forearm that was now blooming into a lurid bruise. The skin immediately began to tingle, and he tossed the bottle back to Burnitz.

“Thank you, sir.” Thorn threw his legs into the air and landed on his feet, then he raised his fists to the ready position. “May I have another, sir?”

At this, Burnitz grinned. “Why Stellers, I thought you’d never ask.” This time they engaged one another hand-to-hand.

Thorn attacked with a sequence of quick jabs. Burnitz parried and landed a pointed knee in Thorn’s left quad. The muscle cramped on impact, but Thorn paid it no mind. Burnitz entered a series of varied attacks with blinding speed—jabs to the ribs, one to the temple, and a meaty hand clamped down on Thorn’s shoulder, pulling outward to cause a wild spin toward the ground. Thorn dropped his arm a second too slowly and failed to block the three-punch combination, but he twisted his body hard in the opposite direction as Burnitz attempted to ground him. As Thorn turned, he drove his elbow up and was rewarded with a dull crack as blood sprayed from Burnitz’s shattered nose.

The dark red blood stood out like a burn on the instructor’s pallid skin, followed quickly by a red flush of anger. Burnitz was losing his temper. He bull rushed Thorn, taking them both in a tumble that splayed arms and legs alike as they lost footing and crashed wildly down the riverbank.

Burnitz bounced to his feet at the terminus of their fall and stopped Thorn’s descent with a savage snap kick that sent both men falling apart from the inertia.

Violence had consequences, even among the highly trained.

Thorn burned to take deep breaths, but with iron will, he masked his exhaustion. Predict the actions…he mused, as Burnitz circled to the right, trying to gain the upper bank. I can predict what I cause to happen. He let down the mask of control only slightly, wincing at the pain, then dropped his right arm just enough to make it seem he was hiding a weakness.

There. Thorn watched carefully as Instructor Burnitz loosened his defenses so slightly, it was only a fugitive moment in his expression that gave it away. The corner of Burnitz’s mouth twitched upward in victory and he directed his attack to the right side of Thorn’s torso. Thorn caught the bull-necked man’s strike with his arm and pinched his wrist against his body, turned sharply to pull him close, and smashed the palm of his hand into Burnitz’s already bleeding nose.

Burnitz was done. His pose went soft as he pulled away, shaking his head and snorting. He hawked and spat, eyes streaming tears from the vicious strike.

Thorn raised his blood spattered hands with palms outward, signaling that he was now disarmed.

Burnitz mastered his anger, but not before turning a poisoned glance at Thorn. With unsteady steps, the big instructor lumbered to the river’s edge, then he leaned down and washed his bloody face with the delicacy of a man in pain. Waving his arm at the recruits, Burnitz bellowed “Dismissed!” in a nasal twang, then turned to approach the water at the bank and waved his arm back toward the hushed recruits. “I said dismissed!”

“Sir, are—”

“Not a word, Stellers,” Burnitz said, and his voice held a note of command. “It’s only personal if you make it that way. Otherwise, it’s just business.”

* * *

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The days recycled, and Thorn had begun to lose himself in the routine. Narvez, Burnitz, Narvez, Hiroshi, bunk. Narvez, Hiroshi, Burnitz, Narvez, bunk.

The mess hall had become a distant memory as training now required the Mages to eat on the go. Breakfast was a carefully calculated macro-nutrient bar, devoid of taste, that Narvez tossed at them as they hauled ass from their bunks to the first station of the morning. Lunch would be waiting for them at the third station and was expected to be inhaled before the instructor completed directives. The days regularly surpassed dinner hours, and the remainders, whatever those may be, sat outside the locked steel doors for the recruits to collect on their way to the barracks.

Once a week they were sent to the medwing for a brief physical to ensure proper hydration and appropriate increase in muscle mass. If it was found that muscle had actually been lost, the individual recruit’s breakfast bar nutrients would be recalculated to compensate the following week. Thorn had seen cattle raised for slaughter. This was different. Cattle ate food that had flavor.

Drigo dropped to the bunk beside Thorn and exhaled. “It’s a bitch, ain’t it?” He turned to his side and propped his head up on his fist.

“If you’re speaking in generalities—yeah. It’s one hell of a bitch, Drigo.”

Drigo flopped backward, spreading his arms across the narrow bunk, but not without an exaggerated groan. “Well, yeah, I mean my body ain’t never been so sore in my life. It’s like as soon as you get used to it, they switch it up on you so you can’t ever heal.”

Tuck passed by and pounded his fist against Drigo’s. “That is exactly what they do. Keep us on our toes. That is how we become the strongest intergalactic force.” He pounded his fist against his chest in Spartan fervor. “My pain is pleasure.”

Thorn struggled to place Tuck’s accent but was too tired to care. His hard consonants made him believe he hailed from the Velorum system—Naunet maybe. A people bred for survival in the harshest of environments. Hardasses to the last person.

Drigo scoffed at their tall bunkmate. “Speak for yourself, Goldie. I ain’t into bein’ hurt to prove a point.”

Tuck ran a hand through his pin-straight blonde hair. “I pity you, small man. You don’t understand the nature of learning. It’s pain. Otherwise, it’s not learning.” He moved to his bunk and crashed into it.

“Great. A philosopher and a magician. Like we need both in one guy. Thorn, y’think we should—” Drigo began, but his only answer was the soft snore of everyone else in the barracks.

“I can take a hint.” In seconds, Drigo was snoring too, pain or no, but Thorn’s eyes flickered back open as he let the room grow still, air ripe with exhaustion and the placid noise of people driven to the edge. And beyond.

Thorn reached his callused hand beneath his pillow and felt for the cover of the tattered book he’d placed there. Satisfied, he closed his eyes, feeling the darkness as a weight that settled down like a welcome friend.

He didn’t rest long.

Barrack 2A jolted awake to the noise of heloplane engines, chaos erupting in each bunk while the recruits stumbled as they stepped into their combat boots, fatigues already on.

Instructor Hiroshi met them as they burst through the metal doorframe and tumbled outside in disarray. His face was a slab of stone, implacable but tinged with disappointment simply by seeing them fight their way to some semblance of order.

“Today is your Class practicum,” Hiroshi began. “Your mission details await you on your individual holoscreens in the heloplane. There will be no breakfast this morning. The enemy does not wait to make sure you’ve eaten. The alien scum will attack when you are least prepared. And they know exactly when you are least prepared.” At this, Hiroshi shook his head in resignation. “I can do no more than observe in this practicum. You will not see me, nor will you hear me. You will become reacquainted with the Hammer—Instructor Burnitz. Good luck, Private Starcasters. Board your planes.”

Hiroshi pulled his hood to shroud his face and spoke a few words under his breath that Thorn didn’t understand, the liquid syllables vanishing on the breeze. The tunic flickered, and he was gone.

“Okay, I need one of those,” Thorn muttered, remaining at attention. He studied the area where his instructor had been seconds earlier. Hiroshi was using an environmental cloak—invisibility, more or less—and it was just one tech item that made the corps seem like it was populated by wizards instead of soldiers who also happened to be actual wizards. “Which we are. Both.”

He broke off his amazement to board with the other soldiers. Each person strapped into their jump seat and typed a code on corresponding holoscreens. Every recruit was given their own individual task to accomplish in support of the main event; the mission overview was deceptively simple.

They would take the enemy base.

Barrack 4D was set to oppose them in this practicum. Thorn had heard they had one hell of a Hammer, but not much else in the way of magic. Still, raw force—a Hammer—was a dangerous enemy ability. Subtlety wasn’t always needed, especially if you were pounded into paste before you could cast your own spells.

The heloplane had begun to decrease in speed, the engines switching tone as they neared their target. The group had been silent for the flight, each handling the unexpected test in their own way. Some twitched. Some stared. No one slept.

Thorn made a silent decision.

He cleared his throat in that obvious way meaning a speech comes next. “I don’t have an expensive glass to tap with my fork, so listen up,” Thorn said in a bold voice. He was surprised to see that they did, in fact, listen up. All eyes were on him.

“We’ve got one chance to complete this mission and pass our Class practicum. We pass, that puts us at First Class Starcaster. We each have our individual assignments, but we’re going to have to overtake 4D’s stronghold as a team. We hit our marks, and we move forward.” Thorn tapped his fingers against his holoscreen in a rhythmic pattern and projected it between their seats. “The battlegrounds. Mark your assignments here.”

Streya was the first to ping her red dot to the screen. “Stellers, what’s our plan? We don’t have a lot of time to alter it.” She tugged nervously at her hair, looking around.

The remaining six dots had appeared on the screen, and Thorn circled pairs. “This. This is our tactic. The assignment is meant to divide us, but we will move in teams. Streya, you’ll be with Unger. Val, you’ve got Rodie. I’d apologize but we don’t have time for that. Drigo and Tuck, watch each other’s backs—you’ve got a high visibility zone.”

Streya’s hands fell to her lap, fingers braided with nervous energy. “You mean I’ve got the Joiner? He doesn’t even know his true strength yet, and I’m not sure that telepathy or even psionics of any kind will help.” She measured Unger’s impressive stature with a hint of disapproval. As a Joiner, he could meld with other minds, but it might not be useful during their test.

“Then you watch him and make sure he gets off that field unscathed, okay?” Thorn’s voice crackled with authority. As a Purecaster, he was born with magic, but many Joiners developed slowly—or even learned as their lives went on, initially unaware of their potential. The idea that a Joiner’s magic was somehow less or even weak was beyond his comprehension. In Thorn’s eyes, there was magic—or no magic. The source was irrelevant, as long as the spells were under control and things that were supposed to go boom went boom. “Unger is good. He’ll do his job.”

The heloplane hovered and began its descent. “No, no, no. This is not right.” Tuck released his straps and grabbed the cargo netting above his head. “You have no team. You’re all alone.” His eyes bored into Thorn’s, a mixture of worried envy creasing his features.

Thorn got to his feet, grinning. “It’s lonely at the top. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. We can build the team later by blending, but for now we go take this stronghold, and we don’t keep anything in reserve. I want us tapped out and victorious or we don’t deserve to be here. Agreed? They exited the heloplane at the drop zone and headed into the dense forest in admirable formation, a bounce in their collective step. Thorn’s growing command presence was a bulwark against the long days and exhausted nights. They’d earned this through long days of sweat and exhaustion, and now they had a chance to prove their worth.

As self-appointed leader, Thorn made his way silently to the crest of the hill. His assignment was to draw the Hammer away from the stronghold and neutralize him. His eyes scanned the canopy of trees surrounding the crumbling cement stronghold. The structure had definitely seen better days, as mortar speckled the ground in an array of broken chunks. The walls themselves were pitted, hemmed in moss, and crawling with vines thicker than Thorn’s wrist.

He caught sight of a strong breeze tearing through the trees to the East, nodding to himself as the pieces fell into place. He’s there. Burnitz. He’s coming.

“Now, to draw attention without appearing to want the attention,” Thorn said. “Burnitz knows me. That means he’ll try to predict what we’re going to do.”

“Which is?” Drigo asked, his feral gaze never leaving the walls.

“We make our final move, not the one Burnitz is looking for. Old tactic I picked up from a man who played games with me.”

“Think it’ll work?” Streya asked.

“I’m counting on it.”

Thorn drew on the air surrounding him, feeling his energy grow as each particle struck his senses. Heat began to build, then pressure, and then he channeled all of it into his open palms, turned up to the sky like a supplicant before an ancient temple.

The energy pulsed, glowing in a dark, shimmering void. He waited until he saw the breeze shake the leaves once more, fighting to constrain the power that begged to be released. Like a beast at the ready, he let it run free, throwing two explosive bursts into the trees fifty yards ahead of the Hammer’s trajectory. The light sizzled away, searing the air around it as it passed to impact like a pair of orbital bombs. When the thunderous sound of his attacks faded, the breeze did too, and all the leaves before them came to a stillness that seemed unnatural given the violence of a moment earlier.

After a quiet beat, Thorn worried that the Burnitz had hidden depths to his strategy, but then he saw the funnel cloud descending from the sky.

“Here we go,” Thorn growled, his bluff working to perfection. He could hear the forest creaking as trees were torn from their root systems, rising into the air in a dangerous vacuum of tortured debris.

One click in his comms device notified him that Streya had disarmed the security systems by magic or—well, it had to be magic. Thorn felt his energy gathering, but as an afterthought, because he hadn’t noticed the black cloud growing above his head. He focused on the globe of light he held in each hand as he raced toward the Hammer, flickering, hard-edged shadows dancing around him from the magical brightness.

Two clicks signified that Drigo had neutralized the Western guards. The team was moving faster than Thorn had anticipated.

Good. We’re early, he thought.

In a disjointed swirl, the cyclone reversed, releasing a maelstrom of debris, then picking it back up to whine through the air like a collection of lethal missiles.

Something had tipped him off.

Thorn had to draw his team back before they joined the vortex. He could not fail. Failure meant a one-way trip back to the pipe fields and, even worse, shitty coffee. A rage filled his chest unlike any he had felt before. The black cloud above his head sparked with blue light and began to draw on the cyclone, pulling at its edges, absorbing its power and diffusing it into the lacuna sky.

Control. Not revenge. Thorn’s thoughts were short and cast of iron.

He turned his eyes slowly toward the chasm of energy above his head. Before he had the opportunity to process what he’d just created, the ground trembled beneath him and he lost his footing, the earth slipping sideways in a moving slab. Rodie. His feet continued to slip as Rodie’s magic ran wild and free—and unchecked.

Too much. The cloud disbanded and his energy dwindled. Thorn knew there were limits to how much force they could apply, and the limit was answered seconds later.

A phosphorous globe of light shot into the sky and fizzled into red streamers. The med flare. Thorn dropped his weapon to swing it on its strap behind his back and sprinted toward the cement building in the center of the valley.

Practice could wait.

* * *

By firing a defensive globe of magic toward the rubble, Val managed to save herself.

Or at least she tried. She took in a breath, but carefully. Every part of her body rang with pain, the bruising so complete she looked like her skin was changing colors.

The mass of concrete from Rodie’s idiotic loss of control had fallen on her, but in a sliding motion, its path turned by the raw power of her intervention. Luckily, she hadn’t been killed on impact. Rodie had given in to his ego and harvested too much energy before casting. He couldn’t tend what he’d produced—the quake had brought the building down when it was only supposed to crack the seal to the control room.

Again, Val groaned, then turned her head as she sensed a presence.

Commander Schrader stood over her bedside in the medwing. A cold aura emanated from his very being, and he turned to address the squad.

“Lieutenant Narvez, Instructor Hirsoshi.” His icy blue eyes pierced the officers. “It is your duty to determine proper timing of the Class practical. These dogs haven’t been housebroken yet, to sum up.”

Instructor Hiroshi came to attention. “Commander, sir, I accept full responsibility for this incident.”

“As well you should, Instructor. Your pets are gonna get us killed.” Schrader was unnaturally still, only his lips moving as he spoke. “Ernest Rodie, step forward.”

Rodie’s eyes bulged with worry behind his glasses. “Sir, yes, sir, Commander, sir.” The skinny man stuttered through his response; any bluster he’d possessed had been little more than a show and was now only a memory.

“For the crime of casting in excess of what you are capable of controlling, and nearly killing your fellow recruit, you will be given two full days of isolation in the Electromagnetic Variance chamber. She would likely have been crushed in that rubble if it weren’t for her immense capabilities as a Castle. While in EV, you will attempt to harness and control your magic while the energy variations work to pull that control away from you. You will not eat. You will remain under high frequency light waves, and you will not sleep. Is this punishment clear?” Schrader spoke with a calm that undermined the severity of the sentence.

“Sir, yes, sir.”

“Private Rodie, another point to consider,” Schrader said, stepping closer. “Do you know why your magic should be in perfect control, every time?”

“Sir, I—” Rodie began, but Schrader waved him silent.

“We don’t know what the enemy does with our dead. No one has told you that, have they? To be sure, we find some…remains in hard vacuum, but never anyone alive. The bodies are gone. We don’t bury our dead. We can’t. So when you’re reaching the mental and physical limits in the EV chamber, think about it as the best possible outcome for you in this war. For all of us, unless we achieve total victory. We don’t get the bodies back, Private Rodie, and I’m not sure we would want to. Do you understand?” Schrader’s voice was level, but intense.

“Sir, I do, sir,” Rodie said after a moment.

The Commander’s gaze swept the room. “You’re all excused. But Stellers— you stay.”

In a moment, the room was clear of recruits, leaving only Thorn and his commanding officers, none of whom looked happy.

“Lieutenants, I have half a mind to double this sentence for you. This private’s arrogance on the field is a direct result of your inability to break this squadron. This recruit is suffering a punishment that need not be given if you had done your jobs. What’s more is the power this one”—he pointed to Thorn with a long finger— “was wielding before the quake. These are recruits. Not soldiers. Not yet. That means that your petty jealousies—yes, Burnitz, I know about your issues—have no place in this program. My order is therefore simple. Shape them, or I will have no choice but to break you in their stead in order to gain the officers I need. Dismissed.”

6

The atmosphere in barrack 2A had changed since the accident. Val remained in the medwing with severe damage to her left lung. It was unclear whether she would be able to continue training at all, even with the skilled doctors and healers on staff. Magic could stabilize or even save a life—but it was no substitute for time, and that was what Val needed most.

Rodie’s light had dimmed when he returned from the EV chamber. Thorn missed his laissez-faire goods and goofy presence, but after a while it became obvious that what they were preparing for—war—was going to do far worse to them than a simple change of attitude.

Streya sighed as she braided her hair in order to control the wild locks. “It’s not right, is it, Thorn?”

“What’s that?” He was sure he knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear it from her.

“This.” She waved her arm, gesturing to the bunks. “We have one mistake, and this—this is what happens. Val is in medical and who knows when she’ll be back. Rodie is distant—he isn’t himself. Tuck is somewhere else, mentally. I feel it like magma just below the surface of a volcano. I haven’t seen Drigo’s fire blue-hot in weeks.”

“I understand, but…it’s going to get worse unless we make it better. I know hard times. This is the most difficult shit I’ve been through. And I’ve retrofitted sewage pipe in the Murgon System.”

Streya’s lip twitched at the corner. “I—worse? What the hell is the cure?”

Thorn dropped on the bunk next to her. “Cure?”

“It’s just, if this is how we live after one accident, what happens on the battlefield? What happens when we face them?”

The door banged open and Drigo brought a cloud of brooding energy into the room with him. Tuck and Rodie followed a few moments behind, and Thorn wondered how it was possible to make silence feel so loud.

Streya bounded to her feet and moved to the wall mounted café. She spoke the command for an herbal decaf and tapped her foot in triple time as she waited.

What would happen when they faced them. There was a whole lifetime in that simple question, and Thorn searched for the answer within himself. Something had to change; this lack of morale would be the death of them. He flattened his big hands on the bunk, thinking. A smile played at his lips as he saw the element missing from the team. Hell. They weren’t a team at all.

But they could be.

“What’s gotten into you?” Unger asked as he barreled past him, glancing briefly Thorn’s broad smile.

Thorn leaned forward, then clapped his hands together. “Friends, I know what we need. I’m practically psychic.” He was capable of far more than one kind of magic, but he kept that to himself for the moment. Aces were good cards to hide.

Unger’s previously determined step faltered, and he swiveled to face Thorn. “You’re what now? Is that true? I mean, I know a lot of casters are telepaths, but—“

Thorn left the bunk and opened his footlocker with a modest flourish. “No, but I may as well be. I’m good with magic, but hell, we all are. We need something else, and I know just how to find it.” He brandished a deck of cards pulled from the locker.

“Don’t look that fatal to me. You know, to the aliens and all,” Rodie said darkly.

Streya just stared. Her narrowed eyes told him she was unconvinced. “A game?”

Thorn waved everyone to the table. “A game. But not just any game. We need something to overcome a threat so vast and deep that only one power in the universe can vanquish it.”

“I…um, I’m listening. I think you’re full of shit, but I’m listening,” Streya said.

“Rodie?” Thorn asked.

“Y-yes?” Rodie’s reply was nearly a squeak.

“What kind of booze can you get me?” Thorn asked, idly.

“What kind of booze do you want?” Rodie crossed his arms against his chest, showing Thorn that he was still defensive, but at his core, a hustler. Thorn respected that.

Thorn clapped his shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Look, at a certain point in every unit’s existence, you gotta do something more than run and puke and snore. We don’t have time to forge bonds over years. So we’re going to cheat, the old-fashioned way.”

“Go on,” Rodie said, head tilted in interest.

“We’re going to get shitfaced together,” Thorn announced. “All of us.”

“Ooo,” Streya said, catching on first. “Count me in.”

“Me too. Be right back,” Rodie said, and he scampered away with renewed purpose.

Moments later, he was back—out of breath, but triumphant.

Thorn wasn’t sure how he did it, but Rodie managed to procure a gallon of rice alcohol so potent the fumes made Thorn see his dead relatives. After a cautious sniff, Thorn packed a canvas bag with the liquor, playing cards, and chocolate bars, then they headed to the medwing. It took some creative skill to find their way into the intensive care unit without being seen by the orderlies. Somehow, they made it even with Drigo bumbling through the hallways. Thorn had a sneaking suspicion he and Rodie had already shared a nip, but it didn’t matter—their infiltration was successful, if spiked with the occasional soft curse or laugh.

Val nearly killed them all when they crashed into her room, until Rodie pulled a chocolate bar from the canvas bag. Her eyes lit up and she mumbled something about forgiving everyone around the first sweet, decadent bite. As she chewed, her eyes closed in the first truly happy look Thorn had seen in weeks. Years, maybe, given where he’d come from. When she leaned to take another bar from the bag, the tube between her ribs pulled hard, snapping medical tape away from skin still marred by deep bruises.

Wincing, she pulled back and swore at Rodie in a language Thorn couldn’t identify—but they all comprehended the meaning through her tone. Rodie retreated, tossed the bar into her lap, and stooped to hide behind Drigo. Val filled her cheeks like a kid with stolen candy and then her face went still.

“Rodie.” She held her hand out for him to come and hold it. “You know that I don’t blame you for any of this. It was an accident.” She pulled him in close and whispered, “Besides, I didn’t like you before you crushed me. Nothing’s changed.”

They laughed together and Thorn could see the weight lifting from Rodie’s shoulders. This was how it should have been all along, but he’d been too busy finding ways to avoid the inevitable—they had to be a team, and he could either help stitch it together, or be part of the problem.

And the war was out there, waiting.

The card game hadn’t lasted long before they were found out. Val’s rattling cough had alerted the overnight nurses, and the bunkmates were sent scrambling through the door with dark threats chasing them. They weren’t reported, and as a result they weren’t given a punishment for the list of articles they’d broken—but two days training without sleep had been punishment enough.

Even through the exhaustion and pounding headache, Rodie was holding his head a little higher than he had the day before. Streya appeared less neurotic. And Drigo strutted with his old swagger.

Under every action, they all regarded Thorn a bit differently. He was known to them now. They were bonded, and they had a purpose.

Thorn found his mind drifting even as his body moved through the motions. Despite his raw exhaustion, he was keeping up—challenging the limits of each exercise, even, fueled by depths he hadn’t suspected. He wondered if it was possible that he had finally adjusted to the physicality of training. That, or he was so dead on his feet that he’d lost all feeling in his extremities.

Okay, so not unseen depths. Just stubborn as hell. That was good enough.

After training their bodies, Thorn pressed himself against a smooth-barked tree and hoped for a few minutes of shuteye. His head nodded forward as exhaustion washed through him, arms and legs heavy, but a catnap wasn’t meant to be. Tuck’s primal growl snapped him to attention. He leapt to his feet just in time to see the blonde demigod of a man gathering a vibrant green glowing orb behind the ginger instructor’s back.

Frantically, Thorn dove through the recruits, eyes a furious grey as dark matter materialized from the sheer force of magical will. Just as Tuck threw his orb, Thorn’s own shield spell streaked forward to blunt the attack—but even so, Burnitz was thrown forward into the climbing bars at the edge of the training course. The instructor’s body came to a sickening halt against the unforgiving steel, limbs bent at angles that no one conscious human could achieve. To Thorn’s relief, Burnitz groaned, rose, and shook his head slowly, blood spooling down his chin in a crimson stream.

“Everyone freeze. Do not move,” Burnitz said. “At all.” A background hum of building magic began to fuzz the air around them, and the recruits obeyed. Even Tuck, who had the good sense to avoid eye contact with anyone at all.

Narvez strode up without a word. The tension grew, if such a thing was possible, and the only sound Thorn could hear was a brave insect trolling for daytime lovers. Its call ended under Narvez’s booted foot as she pivoted in front of Tuck, inches from his face. “Dismissed, with two exceptions. Tuck, on my left. Thorn, on my right. March.”

Narvez and her mechanical, long strides guided him to Commander Schrader’s office. Every step was intentional, the pace without any deviation at all. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move her eyes.

In moments, they were standing outside the Commander’s office, and she still hadn’t said a word.

Narvez rolled her wrist, knuckles out, and rapped against the solid oak door with the eagle claw.

“Enter.” A muffled voice came from within.

Narvez pushed the door open with that same robotic precision, then waved the recruits forward. Commander Schrader sat behind his desk. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose and said nothing.

Lieutenant Ashworth abandoned his leather throne in the corner, choosing instead to stand at-ease near the Commander’s desk. Ashworth was, in some ways, a shadow—a cipher who existed to enforce Schrader’s will, and do it in a manner that left no room for mistakes. Kira was there in an opposite corner, but she too rose, moving smoothly across the room to grasp Tuck’s elbow while maintaining a look of such neutrality that she looked artificial. It was a rare moment in which Thorn had no desire to break the punishing silence.

Beads of sweat prickled at Thorn’s forehead in anticipation. He could have been summoned to this meeting for any number of reasons, not the least of which being a suspicion of criminal collaboration. Attacking an officer ranked among one of the few unforgivable infractions. There were no deliberate codes set for collaboration of the offense, but Thorn was sure they would come up with a sentence equal to the crime.

Schrader rubbed at his temple, giving a clear indication of the headache this troop had caused. “Burnitz, recount the events of this afternoon.”

“Commander Schrader, sir.” Burnitz stood rock solid as always, but his voice was lower than normal. “Training commenced as usual. In consecutive sparring sessions, I disarmed Private Ander with ease, as he was not fully engaged or devoted to our matches. I placed the man on his back and instructed him to remain seated through the following match with Private Rodie. I told the private that we would reconvene once his rear end was no longer sore and gave him the reasonable option to join his girlfriend in the medwing. At that point I engaged in self-defense training with Private Rodie and was hit with a blast from behind.”

Commander Schrader looked up for the first time. “You did not see the attack?”

“No, I did not, sir,” Burnitz said with barely repressed anger.

Schrader directed his attention to Thorn. “Stellers, did you witness this exchange?”

Thank the proverbial gods, they aren’t assuming collaboration. Thorn felt a ping of guilt at his relief while Tuck still awaited his fate. “Not entirely, sir.”

The Commander steepled his fingers. “I implore you to be truthful, Private Stellers. The charge for omittance is just as heavy as it would be for deceit.”

Maybe he wasn’t completely out of the ringer. “Commander, sir. I was…inattentive…at the beginning of this exchange. I did witness Private Ander cast toward Instructor Burnitz.”

“And you are certain that Private Ander was the caster?”

“Yes, I am certain.” There were no two ways around it, and Thorn hated himself for speaking against his bunkmate.

Schrader nodded in acknowledgment and turned to Tuck. “Do you deny these charges, Private Tuck Ander?”

Tuck set his jaw. “No, Commander, I do not deny the charges. I—Burnitz, he stepped outside of his rights and attacked me as a human. As a man.”

Schrader’s voice boomed as he rose from his seat and loomed above the tall man. “You have not earned your manhood, Private. You certainly, with this display of stunning idiocy, have not proven to me that you’re a human, let alone a mage.”

Thorn recognized danger when it was near, even if the Commander wasn’t yelling. He didn’t have to. A storm was gathering, right there in that room.

The Commander’s features softened. “Were you given the chance to review your new recruit handbook, Ander?”

“Sir?”

“Your new recruit handbook. Were you given a chance to review this material?”

“The pamphlet we were given upon arrival at Code Nebula?” Tuck’s Naunetian accent struggled through the soft vowels of ‘Code Nebula.’

“Yes, Ander, the pamphlet.” Schrader sighed in frustration. Tuck wasn’t the brightest recruit, but what he lacked in intelligence he made up in heart. He’d had no other dream from the day he took his first steps than to become a soldier in the Orbital Naval Forces.

“I was given a pamphlet, sir. I am not certain if I read it.”

“Lieutenant Narvez, recite the punishable offenses, page six, number four.” The Commander lowered himself into his seat once again. He pulled open a hidden drawer and removed a bottle of liquor with a glass. His fingers held it lightly, the bottle swaying with inertia as the liquor moved. The bottle was nearly full and sparkled with dust. A rare event that it left his desk drawer at all.

Narvez looked pleased to be faced with an answer she could provide without hesitation, given the legal and moral quandary before her. She projected her voice as though they weren’t all confined in the same office with the door shut. “Commander, the section reads: ‘a soldier shall not strike an officer outside of designated combat training.’”

“Oh, yes. I know the punishable offenses, sir. These are reviewed nightly.” Tuck pulled his arm against Kira’s hand. His nerves were making their presence known.

“And do these punishable offenses clarify that a soldier shall not strike an officer unless said officer has insulted his humanity, or, if we’re being truly archaic, his manhood?” Schrader waited longer than a Commander should for a response.

“No, sir, they do not.”

“Narvez, what is the sentence for committing the crime of striking an officer?” Schrader poured the liquid amber into the glass and held it up to his face in open admiration, and perhaps, under it all, a touch of resigned dread.

This time, Narvez was more subdued in her response. “The crime of striking an officer is punishable by hanging. Sir.”

Tuck tore his arm away from Kira and faced Narvez, his mouth hanging open as he struggled to find words in the common tongue. His shock was so complete, so instantaneous, that his next statement was a burble of harried Naunetian, the words slurred together in horror.

Burnitz’s head hung so low that his newly trimmed beard rested against his chest. Thorn saw a pain in his eyes he hadn’t thought existed in the hard-set instructor. It was—

No, not pain, Thorn knew. The man was angry at the waste of it all. Not at the attack. It was a senseless waste.

Tuck surged toward Burnitz, red-faced with fury. Kira and Narvez scrabbled to cling to his massive arms and held him mere inches away from the weapons instructor. Burnitz kept his chin tucked and eyes down, which only seemed to make Tuck nearly incandescent with rage.

“You! This is your fault! I will not go to the gallows for another man’s faults!” Tuck spat in the tongue that they could all understand.

Schrader sipped from his glass and waved consent to Lieutenant Ashworth. The sullen officer lifted his hand in the air, and Tuck was suddenly suspended within a cloak of energy, the curling wisps of magic lithely wrapping him in an instant.

The Commander stood. “Luckily for you, Ander, despite your inappropriate outburst in the presence of a Camp Commander, the ON is still learning to grow with the addition of the Starcasters. And there is some measure of truth to your words.”

“What does this mean, Commander?” Tuck regained the ability to speak, sensing something other than death was possible—if he could find some measure of control.

“It means that the glossary of naval terms defines ‘strike’ as the laying on of hands or attack with physical weaponry.” Schrader drained his glass, then leaned forward against the desk. “It does not currently define magic as a strike. It is only because of this that we have the option for a small amount of lenience. Naval law is unflinching in the eye of insubordination, and when such insubordination includes a direct attack on a naval officer, there is no option for a reduced sentence. This play on words allows us to sidestep the current law. When my hand in this is found out, the law will be rewritten, and you will be to blame. The next time someone is executed for stupidity of your flavor, it will be done under the aegis of Tuck’s Law. Congratulations. You don’t die today.” Schrader glanced at the clock overheard and added, “Yet. The day’s young.”

Tuck calmed, but that peace was replaced by the reality of his actions—and just how close he’d come to death. As his body began to slough away adrenaline, he gave a single nod of thanks to Schrader. In that instant, Ashworth released the spell, allowing Tuck to land easily on his feet.

Then Tuck staggered, his legs betraying him, if only for a second.

Schrader tilted his head down, shoulders lowering almost imperceptibly.

“Thank you, sir, I—” Tuck began.

“Don’t thank me just yet. We’re not done,” Schrader said.

Tuck noticed he hadn’t been addressed by anything other than his name. The realization flickered over his features, caught by everyone in the room.

Especially Schrader.

“You will submit yourself to depletion and are hereby discharged dishonorably from the Orbital Navy Starcasters.” Schrader’s sentencing resulted in a collective gasp. Even Ashworth betrayed emotion, if only for a fleeting moment. Schrader flicked his wrist for Tuck to be removed from his chamber. Kira and Narvez escorted the depleted man from the room.

Thorn had begun to follow them when Schrader addressed him. “Stellers, you will take accountability for Private Ander’s reporting to the medwing for his sentence. And Burnitz, the soldier was not incorrect. This young man’s life is worthless now, thanks to you.”

“Yes, Commander. This is my fault. I should have done more to—to shape these recruits before I built their strength. I saw the power they have, and a part of me felt an excitement I haven’t experienced since my days in the field.”

Thorn wondered when the right time would be to slip out the door as Schrader walked from behind his desk to stand directly in front of the instructor.

“Are you losing your edge, soldier?” Schrader asked.

Thorn stared at the wall ahead of him. He wished he could drown the sound out entirely.

“I may be, sir,” Burnitz admitted.

“You’re the finest weapons master I’ve had the pleasure of laying eyes on in the field of battle, Caleb. And your mental strength is unmatched. These are the skills our recruits need if they have any chance at survival against the Nyctus. You know exactly what will happen if they wield their power before they are broken. If they truecast before they are forced to rebuild themselves—they can’t. Do you understand? They’ll cook off from the power of unbridled magic, and we don’t really know what the hell will happen. We don’t have data, or history, or even a good guess as to what we’re crafting, here. So, I repeat—do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” Burnitz took a deep breath. “Which is why I would like to request a transfer to Camp Xeron, sir. I can teach weapons history to the intel troops and serve my purpose there.”

“Caleb, there is no other cadre I would trust to mold my battalion than you. You are what these soldiers need if they have any hope of survival. So if you care for these privates, you will shape them in the way they must be—or we’ll lose this war before it truly begins.” Schrader turned to face the wall that Thorn had been studying as if it held the secrets to universal peace. “Dismissed.”

Burnitz avoided locking eyes with Thorn as they both retreated from the office.

* * *

Thorn found Tuck sitting, lifeless, on the edge of his bunk. He pulled the golden-haired man up by his elbow and shook his limp hand before escorting him to the medwing to report for his depletion. Even the word sounded like a violation—which it was.

“Why am I here, sir?” Thorn asked an officer he didn’t know. The man was so blandly average, he may as well have been wearing a sign that declared him to be naval intelligence.

Watery brown eyes flicked over Thorn, and the seconds stretched into an uncomfortable lull.

“As a witness. To remember,” the man said and then turned to Tuck. “All you have to do is forget.”

He watched, in a fugue state, as the doctors strapped Tuck to the bed and connected sinister metallic nodes to his scalp. There was a legal reason for Thorn to be there as a witness, but by the second moment of watching, his skin crawled at the impending sense of violation.

Connecting the nodes took mere seconds, and they covered Tuck’s scalp in a pattern that followed some arcane pathways in his mind.

Or his soul.

When the switches were engaged, Tuck’s body convulsed in a rictus of pain so savage that foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Streams of ethereal green light were torn—violently—from his friend, each pulsation making Tuck howl ever louder in a voice contorted beyond anything human.

Thorn turned away, stomach roiling at the sight.

The duty nurse turned him back, uttering one word. “Witness.”

Thorn witnessed.

When it was done, he signed an affidavit that Tuck had been depleted and survived—barely—and it was over. Pale and unsteady, Thorn signed the affidavit with a shaking hand. He could kill the enemy with impunity, given a chance. Another human was too valuable, and to even see such a violation was at odds with who he was. With what he was.

Tuck was escorted in chains to the flight harbor, his eyes flat, lifeless, and shadowed. As he shuffled along in abject defeat, only one thought echoed in his mind.

What next?

This life was all that Tuck had known; it was everything he had ever dreamed of. He breathed for the Starcaster Battalion, but it hadn’t been enough.

Thorn returned to barrack 2A, the light of the moons guiding his way. Everything felt surreal: the still night air, the sound of the babbling brook nearby, and the light from above reflecting against the corrugated aluminum path.

Burnitz appeared nearly unscathed, if clouded with uncertainty. Val was in the medwing with a lung that was possibly permanently damaged, and Rodie received a mere ass-chewing, which meant he’d come through the incident better than anyone else.

But Tuck? Thorn kicked at the mud in front of his bunk. The man with more zeal for the title of ON Starcaster than any other recruit at Code Nebula had just been stripped of his magic, his honor, and something else beyond words. It might have been the spark of life, but Thorn knew that Tuck wasn’t just drained. He was broken. He was—a husk.

Val was not going to handle this news very well, and Thorn wasn’t sure he could give it to her. He wasn’t sure how he felt about what had just transpired either. In less than a day, his concept of what it meant to be a Starcaster had been twisted into something unrecognizable. The change left him drifting.

Thorn had never really had a fixed point in his life; at least not since the rocks started falling when he was a boy. Before he had been placed at the Children’s Refugee Collective Home, he’d lived in one of the first systems that had been targeted for elimination by the Nyctus fleet—a small, green planet of cool mists and rocky coasts. On Cotswolds, his home, Children walked to a small central school while their parents worked the ocean or prepped forestry projects among the towering native trees. It was a bucolic setting, more like a nineteenth century coastline on Earth than a colony world out among the stars.

His mother had been a geneticist; his father, an engineer. Neither had the power to stop thousands of tons of nickel and iron from turning their town into a crater. Everything he’d known was gone in one cataclysm, the land beneath his feet ringing like a bell as a mushroom cloud rose above what had once been his home.

Thorn watched his world end from the bow of a small boat as he practiced sailing in a flat, still pond five klicks away from his cottage. When the hurricane wind of impact hit his boat, it tore the sail away, hurling Thorn into the cool water as the waves of destruction raced past, above the water that protected him for just long enough.

There was nothing left of his village. His family. Or his home. Nothing except a single charred book that became his talisman of a life cut short by a race bent on war.

He spent his formative years working the slums on Murgon 2 and passing what few coins he might have collected to the Proctor. For that time, his dreams were that one day he would have enough food that he would never have to feel hunger pangs again, even as he grew tall and strong on the rations he managed to scrounge.

As he neared emancipation, the Proctor had arranged for his shipment to Murgon 4 to work the pipe fields, a job which hovered somewhere between indentured servitude and prison. For the first time in his life, Thorn had been working for himself and only a percentage of his earnings were shipped to the Proctor for his finder’s fee. But he still had no fixed point. Of his life, all he could say with certainty was that he existed, and even that was in question given his exhaustion at the end of each day.

When Kira had shown up on the mud ball and offered him a way out, Thorn didn’t even know how to hope for something better. He understood he was taking a step forward, that he would be serving in the intergalactic military forces to protect the lives that didn’t have the opportunity to serve. What he didn’t understand was what that step would come to mean to him. As difficult as training had been, this place had become his home. These people had become his family—raucous, irritating, and crude, but family nonetheless, and more connection to a human than he’d had since his days as a boy.

And now he was face to face with the realization that, one way or another, it was going to come to an end. He had finally found something to attach himself to, and it was going to be pounded to rubble, just like his home, and his parents, and his dreams.

7

When Thorn watched Tuck leave the medwing for his jump plane to nowhere, a question arose in his own mind.

What next?

He was used to hardship. He understood pain. What he tried to see was where he fit in the Starcasters now, and the uncertainty was like a physical pain he couldn’t escape. Thorn had gone from mucking oil fields to being a magician in training, but now he didn’t know what he was.

He didn’t wonder long, because Narvez approached him as he stood, watching the jump plane punch through a cloud layer thousands of meters above.

“Stellers, it’s not my policy to coddle recruits, but I do have some good news for you.” She stood next to him, eyes shielded by a hand as she too watched Tuck’s departure. Her face was utterly neutral. “Val wasn’t even the most serious injury we had this training cycle. Have you ever seen a human explode from within?”

“From—” Thorn started, but fell silent when he saw Narvez quirk her lips. For a moment, she was human.

“Yes. From within. Space and magic have two things in common—they’ll kill you without warning, and they are never truly safe. So for you to have such mild losses, in terms of human capital, is what we officers consider to be a success. We’re still learning about magic, do you understand? For the modern era of human history, magic—sorcery, call it what you will—was considered a bad thing. Now, we know it’s the only force that might save our asses from an enemy that uses their own flavor of magic to strike at us in ways the tech heads never considered,” Narvez said.

“Pardon me for asking, ma’am, but is that why we—”

“Got our fleets hammered into scrap? Watched our cities turned into craters, all without a single scanner hit from their massive ships? Yes. That’s exactly why. Instead of using metal, they use magic. They’re”—she searched for words, her jaw tight with a frustration born of combat experience—“not like us in many ways, but the only place it truly matters is in space. They’re shamans. Land magic. We’re mages—some might say sorcerers, or even conjurers. Different magic entirely. Do you see?”

Thorn was smart, and in a tumble of internal gears, pieces of an incomplete understanding fell into place. “Ma’am, I do.”

Narvez let her brows go up. “You do?”

Thorn drew in a breath to speak. “This isn’t a war like we know, but I think it’s a war we used to know.”

Narvez was quiet for so long, Thorn thought she wasn’t going to respond. Then she did, and all she said was, “Follow me.”

As they walked, she explained how many recruits were gone—most of them, in fact, and not all due to injury or incompetence. Some had simply lost the ability to cast magic, others had broken psyches, and one—although Narvez didn’t say who—had inexplicably converted their own left leg into stone.

“Not a good look for an ON officer,” Narvez remarked when Thorn made a noise of surprise.

They arrived back at the Commander’s office, but this time there was no air of dread. Something had changed in the time between Tuck’s departure and now, and it would play out on a schedule outside of Thorn’s control.

Schrader met them at his office door, and his bearing was entirely different. He still held a command authority, but when he looked at Thorn, it was with a curious appraisal that wasn’t entirely unfriendly.

“He worked it out?” Schrader said without preamble.

“He did, sir. That makes thirteen. Out of nearly ninety,” Narvez said, some of the old disgust creeping into her tone.

Thorn felt that like a physical blow.

“Exactly,” Schrader said. “With thirteen out of this class, and the failure rate only climbing, we’ll be lucky to station one ’caster with each unit. Do you know why I’m telling you this, Stellers?”

“Sir, no, sir.” Sometimes brevity was the soul of any soldier.

Schrader looked up into the iron gray sky, broken only by the odd beam of sunlight. “The Nyctus are assembling new fleets. We know this because our probes have sent back data before being vaporized. There are few things working in our favor, but among them is the fact that these new battlegroups are so distant, it would take weeks for them to arrive in our territory. That means you had limited time to realize your role. I’m pleased to say it happened faster than I anticipated, but don’t get excited. Your reward is simple. You’re going to war sooner than later.”

“Sir? Have the Nyctus attacked again?”

“They have. Three systems are gone, or at the least incapable of communication,” Schrader said with a hint of anger. “You’ll complete training, and you’ll go to war. You’ll likely die. I think you’re a powerful mage—it’s possible your magic is dangerous, even—but my hope is that you’ll take a lot of the enemy with you. How do you feel about that?” Schrader watched him, head cocked at a predatory angle.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“By all means.”

Thorn paused a beat before answering, then swept a hand over the scene around them. “Space battle has to be better than this bullshit.”

Despite his control, Schrader snorted with laughter. “Stellers, come with me. I think it’s time we gave your enemy a face.”

“Sir?” Narvez asked. She didn’t like the shift of purpose, not without knowing where it was going ahead of time.

“Dismissed, Narvez. I’ll return him in one piece.”

“Excellent, sir. I’ll be ready,” Narvez said. Her face was schooled into something so bland as to be a warning, but Schrader led Thorn away—through a corridor he’d not seen. In twenty steps, they were clearly a meter below ground and in a temperature-controlled environment. A fan whirred, the air dry and getting colder as they approached a metal door, locked to a biometric code that the Commander provided with hand, voice, and eye.

“Sir?” Thorn asked as the door swung inward.

“After you,” Schrader said.

Two humorless guards greeted them, unmoving. The left guard uttered a single phrase.

“Code in, sir.”

“Schrader Black Priority Hex One.”

The guards subsided, slightly, and Thorn followed Schrader through a second door that amounted to a thick curtain of plexiglass, one side fogged with modest condensation.

“You have ten minutes,” Schrader said, then stepped back. “After that, I come get you, and you never speak of this unless the high command asks you a direct question. Understood?”

“Yes. Of course, sir.” Thorn took a final step forward, pushing through the remaining barrier.

He stopped dead.

Rather, he stopped as dead as the Nyctus that sprawled before him on a chilled ceramic table, its tentacles drooping in repulsive disarray.

“Sweet mother of—”

“I can hear you, Stellers. We can speak through the comm unit overhead, but it’s best if you just look. And…feel. Sense it. It’s a male, officer class, taken at the Battle of the Falling Eagle—a miserable failure on our part, except for this. Use all your ability, and speak as you’re looking to share any impressions. I’ll be just outside.”

A soft click signaled the comm channel going silent, then there was nothing save the hum of the chillers and an occasional pop as the walls contracted. Thorn could see his breath in the air, and the room was empty except for the table, the Nyctus, and him.

Thorn approached as curiosity took over.

The head was bulbous, skin pale and nearly translucent over a dark section that ran horizontally into the trunk. Tentacles—two of them burned to stumps by trauma—ranged in two lengths. Four were longer, two were short, tipped with finger analogs, though there appeared to be no skeleton in the being.

“It’s like a terrestrial squid, or something close. The head has—I think the brain is bifurcated, but I can’t be sure. There are two massive organs where our heart is, and…let me look—”

Thorn lifted a delta-shaped wing of flesh that hung alongside the head, revealing a recessed hole. “Looks like it was a water jet at one point. This one has something attached, like a wire and a…maybe a transponder? Looks like integrated technology, and the flesh has grown around the device. It’s been there a while.”

Thin lines of circular sensory points ran along what passed for a face, then down between the two largest tentacles. Every finger-like appendage had the same circles on each end, and the two thickest tentacles had odd calluses on them.

“I think they can walk on land, sort of. They’re comfortable in water, but they do live on land at times.” Thorn peered closely at the mouth, which was a wide slash across the lower head structure. Inside, rounded teeth vanished into the gut, and two sharp triangles of something like plastic extended from the pale gums. “Got a beak, or something along those lines. It might walk on land, but it sure as hell looks like the squid I saw in school vids.”

There were no genitalia, or any other openings at all, but Thorn wasn’t compelled to look. What interested him was the head. He could see thick blue lines that flickered with silver highlights in the overhead lights. As he moved, the lines nearly sparkled despite the Nyctus being thoroughly dead.

“I wonder if—” Thorn placed a hand flat on one of the shimmering lines—nervous tissues, he sensed—and let his hand touch from wrist to fingertips. The skin was damp, firm, and rubbery.

Something was there.

Thorn nearly staggered as the echo of—whatever this being had been—reached out and sparked at him, like an old battery with one moment of charge left.

“He died in a rage,” Thorn said. “He knew you—we—were going to take him.” Thorn shook his head, overwhelmed by the latent hatred coursing through the Nyctus corpse. “His anger is like a picture of the moment he died. It’s written in his flesh.”

Thorn removed his hand and wiped absently at his coverall.

“Commander? Why did you show me this?”

There was a pause, then he said, “Because you’re the strongest out of all of them, and someday you’re going to meet one of these…things, and I thought you should know.”

Thorn nodded, drawing back from the corpse. “Good. Thank you, sir.”

“Have you seen enough?” Schrader asked from outside the makeshift morgue.

“More than enough. I’m wondering something,” Thorn said as he stepped back out, but not before giving the Nyctus one last stare.

“What’s that?” Schrader asked in the corridor outside. He stood, watching Thorn, but unmoving.

“Has anyone tried to read their minds?”

Schrader gave him a curious look, feigning innocence. “Now how would I know about that?”

* * *

The days grew longer as summer peaked, sunlight lingering well past the moment when Thorn was exhausted. Every morning, in the predawn gray, Narvez arrived to extract the recruits from what little sleep they may have acquired, but things were different now.

If Thorn had thought the lieutenants enjoyed the torture they delivered before, he saw that there was no pleasure in the torment they implemented now. They had a job to do, and they made it their goal to complete that task in the most inhumane way possible within the Naval Code. The most efficient of them all was Narvez, who knew that Thorn, of all the recruits, was on the edge of becoming something outside her control.

“Stellers, hold your canteen up,” Narvez barked.

Everything remained still—except for a cloud above them, which grew with stunning rapidity. In seconds, a gray mass of swirling air and rain hovered mere meters overhead, tiny bolts of lightning punctuating the monochromatic mass.

“Ma’am.” There was no anger in his answer, only acceptance.

“Ready,” Narvez said. “Elemental control. Catch the rain.”

Thorn’s canteen remained still, but his free hand waved once in a motion so fluid it looked like he was beginning a primal dance. The rain began to fall in a torrent, but by sheer force of will, Thorn held it up and shaped the water into a serpentine spiral that vanished back into the cloud it came from. In a silvery ribbon, the water came down. A faucet made from Thorn’s magical power, the storm was pushed obediently into his canteen, which never seemed to overfill.

“Stellers, what are you doing with the excess?” Narvez asked. There was an uncertainty to the question that was at odds with her previous orders. And personality.

Thorn took a long beat before responding, his face set in concentration. “It is…elsewhere. Ma’am.”

Narvez gave a single nod but said nothing. With a small wave, she cast a spell that sent blue current writhing from the earth.

A distraction, Thorn mused, but continued his unrelenting command of the storm.

The earth charge sent twitches through his muscles, but Thorn never faltered. If anything, he grew stronger, sensing the shape of his magic with a clarity that had been missing moments earlier. He was learning. He was becoming something outside the control of others.

Narvez saw this and interrupted the storm like a signal. Thorn’s canteen fell to the ground, a rivulet of water pouring out, but he flicked a hand at it, ending the spill.

Narvez stood before him, a searching look on her face. “You have power.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Thorn said as a mild tremor shook his body. The effort had taken something out of him, but he bent his knees and regarded Narvez evenly.

“Imagine doing that for an hour. Or a day. Or three days, while the enemy breaks half an Oort cloud over your magical shield. Thousands of lives—millions, really—depending on you. That’s the difference between a little cloud…and a ’caster,” she said.

Thorn said nothing, and Narvez expected nothing. She moved on, and the cloud bloomed again in petite rage.

As each recruit after Thorn failed, Narvez berated them, adjusted their form, or shook her head in disgust, but she was changed. They all were.

They’d seen the bad in Tuck. They’d seen what was necessary in Thorn. And with that dawning came a release of fear, like a collective sigh.

Leaving the training field, the recruits squelched through mud where it had been dry that morning.

“Stellers, clean that up,” Narvez said airily.

As they began to file in for chow, Thorn turned to the field, his face a febrile mask. With a word, the mud sublimated in a demonic hiss of steam and dissipated. The field was renewed.

So were the recruits.

* * *

Val was dismissed from the medwing that evening and returned to the bunk in time to share dinner with the others. What should have been a celebration was more like relief. Val had lost muscle mass and was looking thinner, but she was cheered by her relative freedom. Her short black hair had a smattering of gray—a new feature—but she managed a rare smile as the meal went on in companionable fashion.

Whatever had been their reality before was gone, and Thorn was somehow a fulcrum for the squad. Just as Val had been changed, so had Thorn, and his arrogance was being replaced by confidence in a process so natural it was virtually unnoticed.

Val began the meal with a hesitancy that faded as she sensed the change in dynamics, and by the time it was lights out, the ’casters were changed yet again. In the morning, they were to prepare for a new direction in their training, and that was the extent of their information.

Thorn’s sleep was restless that night, his mind filled with anticipation. He no longer thought of surviving training. Now, his concern was on a much broader scale.

He—and his squad—had to become lethal. They had to gain traction as ’casters and surpass the wildest expectations of their officers, because one thing had become abundantly clear in the light of Thorn’s new outlook.

Failing here meant that humanity would be that much weaker, and Thorn hated the idea of losing to the Nyctus even more than he’d detested the muddy slop of his former life.

It seemed serendipitous that Val’s first day back in training happened to be another field training day. While not a practicum, they were informed over a harried breakfast that this would be day one of pilot crafting and tactics. They were each assigned a heloplane and instructed to report to the clearing field, a buzz settling among the group at the thought of flying instead of slogging by foot. Soldiers of any era were experts in certain things; bitching being one skill that was raised to an art form in every military branch.

At the appearance of the heloplanes, no one complained.

The heloplanes flew in a formation that was no formation at all. In fact, Thorn watched with care as the helos landed in a haphazard tumble. Propwash lashed the air around the ’casters and then their orders were given according to color codes. Three teams, three colors, and Thorn was assigned yellow.

A prerecorded hologram of Instructor Hiroshi appeared in the center of the field, his spectral features remaining steady even in the tortured air. Thorn activated the audio recording and listened.

“Welcome to your first day in pilot crafting. Prepare yourselves for extreme energy depreciation. Your heloplanes are fully stocked with fluids for hydration and one thousand kcal macrobars,” Hiroshi’s avatar said, then the image disappeared and was replaced with an oversized notepad. Letters appeared as though they were being written in real time. The effect forced every recruit to pay close attention, even if they’d been inclined to let their minds wander. The tasks were blandly worded, but the overall meaning was clear.

“Your tasks are as follows,” intoned Hiroshi, as the holographic orders were drawn.

1. Maintain altitude.

2. Disable your enemy Starcasters.

3. Last person standing wins.

Hiroshi’s disembodied voice returned. “When all other teams have been eliminated, the two remaining pilots will face off in a sudden death round.”

Thorn grinned to himself. This was easier than he’d imagined.

“Sounds too easy to be true?” Hiroshi continued as though he had a front row seat to Thorn’s very thoughts. “That’s because it is. As I said…prepare yourselves. Your electrical systems will shut down in T minus ten seconds.”

Our—what? Thorn furrowed his brows.

“10…9…8…” The voice initiated the timer sequence.

Thorn’s pulse quickened as he considered and discarded various ideas, none of which would keep his helo in the air.

“4…3…2…”

Thorn panicked.

He cast a blast of shimmering black that pushed the heloplane away from the ground, driving it higher into the sky. His control faltered and the plane began to wobble to the side, flying diagonally toward the other yellow heloplane. He wasn’t sure who occupied the vehicle, but he knew he was about to take out his teammate and handicap himself.

He closed his eyes and harnessed the power within his chest, bringing the oblong vehicle to a sudden stop. When he opened his eyes, he saw an energy globe splatter against his nav screen, the attacking plane not much further behind it. The scuffed silver heloplane that approached was sparkling with the blue-white energy, its movements tightly controlled.

Val. Thorn made a snap decision. Val was back to duty, and he would not treat her as anything less than a lethal threat. He sensed she’d demand it from him, given the chance, so he closed his eyes once again, feeling his power like an object in three dimensions. His swift exploration complete, Thorn reduced his magical output. When battle instinct screamed for more, Thorn somehow knew that subtlety could be a better answer.

With that realization, he adjusted the output and dropped like a stone, just in time for Val to streak over the canopy of his plane. Without the ability to spin quickly enough to see the wreckage, Thorn heard a collision and hoped Val had been able to slow her advance before crashing. He held his hand over the dash controls and then drew on the substances around him to reenergize the command center. He was already feeling drained, but the display flickered to life with grudging slowness. When his screen was stable, he pulled hard on the yoke to hover near his teammate, who he still hadn’t identified.

Flames shot from his partner’s hull, searing the treetops at the edge of the clearance. Drigo.

“Guess that answers that,” Thorn said, rolling possibilities around in his mind. He had Drigo. He had some magic of his own left, though Hiroshi had undersold the speed of how draining this day would be. There was already a chill settling over Thorn, deep in his bones and spreading.

With the exception of Val, the heloplanes seemed to be gathering their bearings as they overcame the temporary loss of power. Val had already disabled one purple helo and was preparing for another attack. He couldn’t grasp the depths of her sudden magical reserves, unless it stemmed from lying inert in a hospital while she’d healed.

The battle rejoined when Drigo pushed forward in a stuttering motion, his helo cutting the air spasmodically.

“Drigo, save your juice,” Thorn muttered, then resigned himself to a role as wingman.

He saw Drigo dip toward the ground, and without thinking, he sent dark energy to lift the plunging helo away from an unpleasant impact. Guess I’m a Hammer, too, Thorn thought, but again, kept it to himself.

Thorn’s body began to throb with the weight of what he held on magical will alone. Pushing two heloplanes into the air was no light duty. Drawing on such an immense amount of energy, Thorn felt the first schism in—his source? His origin of magic? It was deep within him, and until that moment in the sky, it had been bottomless.

That was no longer true.

Not only was there an end to his magic, he could feel it approaching. His heloplane began to vibrate. The tremors intensified until the ship was cavitating in a wild undulation. He tried to get a grasp on it, but the crevice deep within his source only widened.

Thorn lost focus on the second plane for an instant—

—and watched in horror as a bolt of magical energy blasted into Drigo’s hull. His helo went into the tree line, where it slashed through the canopy in a shrieking of metal. Thorn let his magic wane, but not at a rate that would send him out of control. In agonizing seconds, he lowered his own helo with a hard thump and sprinted across the clearing. One by one, everyone else did the same with varying degrees of delicacy until the entire squad was down, every ’caster pounding across the turf to reach Drigo’s wreck.

Thorn reached the wrecked plane gasping for air; not because of the distance he’d just sprinted, but because of the fear he felt growing inside of him. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew that his lack of focus caused the crash. The hole in the bottom of the plane sparked with severed electric wiring, and Thorn dove on top of the tipped metal cabin.

“Drigo!” he called, tearing at the door. “Drigo! Answer me, dammit!” The dented aluminum had locked the door into place. Thorn smelled noxious fumes wafting from the broken hull.

“Drigo—whatever you do, don’t Scorch. Do. Not. Scorch!” Of all things to avoid right then, casting fire was at the top of the list. Thorn jumped down from the cabin and searched the ground for something to pry the door open with. Rodie was the next to arrive on the scene, and he slid to a halt in the leaves.

“Rodie, get me a branch—anything—to pry the door open.” Thorn jumped back on top of the downed plane. He heard a muffled groan from inside and pounded on the door.

“Drigo, hey, buddy! You awake in there?” Thorn pressed his ear to the metal.

In his dazed state, Drigo cut loose with magical fire, and the helo burst into flames.

Thorn, blasted with incendiary heat, threw his arm up to cover his face. Drigo screamed behind the expanded door, a high wail of pain that made Thorn jerk savagely at the handle, now searing to the touch. Thorn tore his shirt off and wrapped it around the handle, then he placed both boots against the hull and leaned back like he was trying to snap the helo in two, corded muscle standing out in desperation from every part of his body.

Streya arrived on the scene, waving her hands in short, economical motions as clouds gathered overhead at her command. Instantly, rain began to sluice down in a torrent, the fat drops spitting and sizzling as their sheer volume began to lower the metal’s temperature. With a hideous whine, the door opened and Thorn saw Drigo.

Or what was left of him.

Unger took one look and turned to run to his helo to summon more help. Among the rolling smoke, Drigo sat, swaying, one arm a black mass covered by mottled shreds of fabric. Ignoring the heat, Thorn lifted Drigo out with ease, freeing him to where they could both gasp in the cleaner air some meters away from the wreck.

Drigo whimpered in pain, but it was an infrequent, hideous sound, as he was in and out of consciousness.

The Nebula emergency medical team landed in the clearing. Without ceremony, they hauled Drigo away on a stiff board without even acknowledging the recruits, but Streya grabbed the nearest medic as they passed.

“Will he—” she began, but the medic shook his head.

“I don’t know,” the medic said, but it wasn’t unkind. It was honest. Even generous that he spoke at all.

Drigo was loaded into their helo without ever regaining consciousness, and the plane leapt into the sky at fierce acceleration.

Thorn watched and swayed. He coughed a crimson spume of bubbles and noticed a raw, acrid scent overwhelming his senses.

The helo had burned, and it was loaded with deadly chemical components. Thorn knew his lungs were a mess. With each labored breath, he could sense things breaking down inside his body.

“Oh—shit. Not—” Thorn said, but his voice collapsed into a crackling wetness that sounded like thunder in his head.

He coughed again, and this time stars flashed across his vision.

In agonizing slowness, Thorn began to fall. Every limb collapsed—his body limp with betrayal as the toxins spread through his lungs, then his blood, and finally, taking his will to stand. The ground didn’t rush up, because he couldn’t see a damned thing.

All he felt was the darkness made real, and then he felt nothing at all.

He awoke in the medwing and bolted upright, yanking at his mask and tubes with desperate hands. The machines alongside his bed began to beep in an irritating rhythm, the combined alarms summoning a nurse who walked into the room with a sympathetic look but no words.

She injected something into a line that went—somewhere, Thorn only knew it led into his body. As she pushed the syringe, his vision tunneled again, like at the crash site. This was different. He was filled with a lassitude in seconds, eyes growing heavy and closing before he could open his mouth to speak.

The last thing he remembered was the alarms falling silent, replaced with a low hum as the machines resumed their steady beat.

* * *

Over the next few days, Thorn drifted in and out of consciousness.

Flashes of faces surfaced in front of him, bits and pieces of conversations swirled through his head. Commander Schrader stood over his bed, speaking in hushed tones with Narvez. Rodie and Streya visited in silence. Kira sat by his side and slipped his book beneath his pillow. Though he couldn’t read it, he took comfort in the knowledge it was there. Each time he woke, his lungs burned, until one time he regained consciousness with the late day sun filling his room.

He took a breath. And then another.

“Huh. Clean air,” he rasped.

Kira answered him from a chair nearby. She looked worn, and more than a bit worried. “You’ve healed some. It was your lungs. They were…not good. Heavy damage from the chemical fire.”

“Drigo?” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying in vain to generate some moisture. “How is he?”

Kira dropped her head, auburn hair falling in front of her face. That made Thorn try to turn his head farther, which he did, though he was stiff.

“I saw…” He fought to sit up. “Get me out of this bed. I saw his arm.”

Kira put her hand on his shoulder and handed him a small cup of water with a straw. When he took a sip, Thorn frowned slightly.

“What is it?” Kira asked.

“No flavor. I figured getting scorched would at least earn me some flavor drops.”

Kira snorted. “You get flavored water after you kill Nyctus. It’s all rather top secret, but there are five berry flavors, all with caffeine.”

Thorn grinned, although it was a creaky expression. “What do you get if you don’t kill Nyctus?”

“Artificial banana,” Kira said, arching a brow.

“So, torture. Got it. The incentive to succeed just got stronger.”

“You understand all too well. Okay, serious shit, Thorn—you’ll be out of this bed soon enough. For now, lie down and get your rest. You’ve been higher than a kite for days.” Thorn lay back and closed his eyes, nodding in agreement.

“I’m not going to lie. It was the best part of healing, if that’s what this was,” Thorn said. “But his arm? I know what I saw.”

“The arm is—it’s gone. Incinerated at the shoulder.” Kira pushed her hair behind her ear. “They think…” She sighed. “They think it was some combination of Scorch energy and a Lifer blast.”

“But that’s impossible.” He searched her green eyes, wondering if he’d heard her right.

Scorch was fire sorcery, straightforward and simple. Lifer was magic that manipulated the ability to heal, to live, and even the ’casters were learning the very communications within the human nervous system. The two things did not go together. They could not go together.

“Precisely.” Kira patted him on the shoulder.

“Kira?” Thorn asked with some hesitation.

She stopped, turned, and faced him, sensing his question was going to carry weight. “Yes?”

“Can anyone—can any of us break the rules? Combine magic?”

She paused, her lips working for a moment before answering. “Possibly. But so far, only one ’caster in the entire Navy has shown the potential to control it, and even that’s a topic of heated debate.”

“Who’s that unlucky bastard?”

Kira’s face flashed sadness, then bitter resignation. “Look in the mirror when you shave, Thorn. And heal. You’re going to need every spell for what’s coming.”

8

Thorn continued to recover.

With each passing hour, his lungs cleared. His body rallied, and then, in a final defiance, he managed to leave the anesthetic haze behind as his mind grew sharp again. As soon as he was able to stand with ease, he moved from his med unit to Drigo’s. He watched from a sculpted plastic chair as Drigo whimpered in his sleep. The bulky man’s shoulder was wrapped in bandages that slowly transitioned from stark white to rust brown. The nurses would come in and change the bandages, blocking Thorn’s view of the full catastrophe. In the time he waited, the nurses changed his bandages three times. Each process revealed a horrific scorch mark that scrawled across Drigo’s neck, like fingers clasping at him, trying to drag him from life to death.

As day turned to night, Thorn remained. He let his head rest against the wall and crossed his arms in front of his chest to keep warm. It was almost sadistic how cold they kept the intensive care units, but when a nurse came through and offered him a blanket, he declined. He couldn’t decide if it was martyrdom or stubbornness, but he sat, unmoving and chilled, watching Drigo’s body fight a secret war, one wave of pain at a time.

The doctors had chosen to keep Drigo in a medically induced hypersleep until they were able to attach his custom bionic arm. Thorn was determined to be there when he woke up—to hell with training. Injuries of this magnitude were one thing on the battlefield. When the Nyctus were attacking, there was an excuse for it—it was war. It was space combat, and it was the most lethal clash of life forms humanity could imagine. The ON had gone too far in allowing live fire skirmishes. As much as he blamed himself, Thorn blamed every officer, too, but he kept that to himself. In spite of his anger, he now saw the framework holding the ’casters together. He didn’t have to like it, but the Navy was shaping warriors armed with weapons that had once been considered fantasy—or heresy—among humans. It was only the stunning cataclysm of orbital warfare that woke long-dormant abilities in select people. Some scientists considered it a genetic Hail Mary—a last, desperate throw of the dice on the part of man, the animal, when faced with certain extinction.

Thorn parsed all of this and then made his choice. When Drigo recovered, he would ask Schrader one question—and only one.

Was there a place here for Thorn? Or would his presence lead to loss instead of victory?

* * *

Kira swept the auburn hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She opened the only drawer in her aluminum desk and pressed the hidden button above the compartment. After a brief whirring sound, a holocard dropped from the new opening into the palm of her hand.

She set the thumbnail sized square on her desktop and activated the holographic with the fingerprint of her right index finger. An image shrouded in blue electrodes came to life and danced above the table. Most of the file had been damaged, but a blip of fourteen-year old Thorn flashed into existence. In the image, he was smiling—the face of a boy crashing into manhood without anything good in his life except, maybe, for Kira herself. As the image unspooled, Thorn scooped Kira off her feet as she howled in laughter, their faces lit up in the sun of an August when the Nyctus were still a distant threat. Tumbling together, they fell into a pond, splashing wildly until Kira rose and dropped, arms akimbo and a scowl on her face. Kira’s copper hair hung in curls, which she flung to one side with all the dignity a soaked, mud-spattered ten year old could manage.

Thorn’s laughter rang out, then Kira threw a sopping strand of duckweed at Thorn, and they both dissolved into more laughter as the graphic froze, then sputtered. Kira touched a key and left the image before her, their younger selves preserved in time. Innocent, or as innocent as war orphans could be, but still relatively whole. Unspoiled. Hopeful, at times.

She sighed heavily, placed her elbows on the desk, and rested her chin in her hands.

“I hope I was right bringing you here,” she muttered, staring at the mosaic of sunlight on the forgotten pond. “And your magic. Whatever it might be.”

Ever since that night he read to her under the sheets at the Children’s Home, she’d known his talent was different. What Thorn didn’t know was that Kira had seen magic before that night. Her father was a mage and belonged to the first troop of Starcasters. There were only five, in total, during his time, and only one survived the battle at Pegasi 51. Reed Wixcombe was not among the soldiers on the returning fleet.

She should have known that Thorn was too damaged to control his energy. She should have foreseen this outcome. And yet—where there was uncertainty, there could be hope.

“Lieutenant Wixcombe?” A gentle rapping of knuckles against her door startled Kira and she got to her feet. She bumped the desk, and the holocard tumbled off. The image of Thorn went away in a fugitive gleam.

“Yes, come in.” Kira stood at attention.

Ashworth opened the door and stood just inside the metal frame. “Commander Schrader requests your presence at once.” The bland man chewed at the inside of his cheek. So, he did have human emotions.

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” Kira saluted.

Kira approached the Commander’s office with anxiety gnawing at the back of her mind. Before she had the chance to knock, the Commander called through the door as if he’d sensed her presence.

“Enter.” Schrader’s voice was particularly calm. Somehow, that made her even more anxious.

Schrader stood behind his desk with his back to Kira. A holographic map of what appeared to be the Targath System was projected against the wall, and the empty space between the stars made the room seem infinite.

And dangerous.

Kira stood to attention. “Commander, sir.” Nerves made her cough once. Discipline stopped it from happening again.

“Lieutenant Wixcombe, what do you see?” Schrader’s head tilted, but he continued to study the map of the star system.

Kira tried to channel his sense of understanding but failed. “Sir?”

“Here. Take a look.”

Kira approached, hesitant, then took up station at his side. “What do I see in the stars?”

Schrader weighed her with his eyes for the first time. “At ease.”

She dropped her hands to her side and relaxed, but only just. Her eyes were drawn to the map, each point of light lurid in the black background of eternity.

Again, Schrader gestured to the map. “What do you see in front of you?”

“I see—” Kira began, but she stopped as a sensation played at the edges of her consciousness, where she wasn’t watching. “I see a limited star system. Opportunity for expansion, sir.” The sense of being watched grew to an intensity that made her struggle to keep her eyes forward, and then—

—the situation clarified, as she realized the feeling had an identity. Commander Schrader. He was a telepath; a Joiner of some type, and a powerful one. She understood in that primal, invasive moment, and without turning his head, he knew she knew.

“There was opportunity here, once.” He raised his hand and waved long fingers in a series of motions, like sign language, but smaller and more compact. At each movement of his hand, the map changed and then finally glowed green in recognition of his command sequence. With a small rotation of his wrist, Schrader enlarged a region, and the POV sailed forward to a grouping of three planets. Tapping the air twice, he shifted the view again. Now, the map was squarely centered on the largest of the three planets. White clouds occluded parts of a blue world, streaked with green. Like Earth, but much larger.

“Hermacales.” The Commander stated the title as if Kira was supposed to know the weight that name held. “This planet was more vibrant than Earth. Full of life. Because of their potential as a threat, they were one of the first systems targeted by the Nyctus.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand…”

Schrader rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “The Nyctus identified Hermacales as a highly gifted populace and infiltrated the Planetary Government.”

“How were they able to infiltrate a government of ‘casters, sir?” Kira was becoming increasingly frustrated that she had never learned of this attack.

“A mild fever, common in the middle latitudes of Hermacales. They released a newly evolved strain—the original was known as Moonburn since it caused victims to spike fevers during the night. A number of the population fell fatally ill, but the Nyctus were not concerned with biological warfare. Their goals were far more insidious.”

Kira shuffled where she stood, wishing she could sit to calm her nerves. “How did it rake the planet then, sir? I thought the entire system was lost?”

“It was, and in a manner that was far more costly than a simple extinction event. The Nyctus used their agents to corrupt state officials—by forced insertion in their memories and subtle magical pressure. When the government panicked, the people followed. We sent endless aid to the planet, draining away critical resources to save people from something that was about as lethal as a broken toe. Weeks of flotillas, and food, and tech staff, and medical aid, all misdirected and lost by people who didn’t even know the enemy controlled their minds.” Schrader gave a short, bitter laugh. “The tactician in me admires the plan, because it set us back years, all while the people watched their planet, built over decades, fall into economic and social collapse. This happened in weeks, not years, and the cost in life and resources might never be known. When the government fell, the Nyctus attacked with a fleet so powerful that less than five percent of the planetary fleet rose to defend Hermacales. Do you understand? One in twenty ships, sailors, or marines were ready to fight. Even fewer actually did fight because of the massed orbital bombardment that hit them.”

“And what about the casters? Weren’t they…” Kira searched for a diplomatic term. “Immune, somehow?”

“Had the Nyctus not incited a panic, perhaps they would have been.” Schrader sat in his swivel chair and steepled his fingers in front of his lips. “But they played on the fear of the masses and weakened the minds of the ’casters, causing self-doubt.”

It was all coming together in her mind now. “And the self-doubt created chaos magic, uncontrollable and mutually destructive.”

“That is correct, Lieutenant.” The Commander nodded toward the map behind him. “And what you see now is a direct reflection of that.”

Kira observed the stillness before them and understood. The light of the stars shined dimly; each of the planets was surrounded with swirling clouds of darkness that choked the light from touching the surface. No jump planes zipped between atmospheres, no cities burned with defiant civilization, visible even from space. The worlds were shrouded, both in chaos magic and the quiet of a tomb.

“When a man doubts himself, it is even easier for that man to doubt others. Among ’casters, this kind of instability can make the most stable society into something quite dangerous—a mob.” Schrader’s blue eyes pinned her with the certainty of an experienced officer who knew things could get much worse than what he’d already seen. “No civilization survives a mob. And certainly not with rocks falling on them at terminal velocity.”

Kira snapped to attention once again. “Yes, sir. I might be a Joiner, but I am comfortable with my capabilities. I won’t crack, and I won’t allow my people to crack.”

“It’s not your confidence I’m concerned with, Lieutenant,” Schrader said.

Kira leaned back, moved by the bland nature of his statement. “Private Stellers.” It was a declaration, not a question.

“This latest accident is tragic—nobody is denying the scale of it.” The Commander moved from behind his desk and paced across the floor. “But it showed us something that we have never before seen in the Starcaster Battalion.” He stopped and faced her. “Did you know of his talent before you brought him to Code Nebula?”

“No, sir.” Kira then amended herself, shrugging slightly. “Well, I had a suspicion, sir. But nothing like this.”

“What suspicion was that?”

“When we were kids at the Refugee Home”—Kira paused, not wanting to divulge some of those most personal moments— “Thorn had a…a way about him. Like something untapped, under the fear when we were first taken in. We were scared, sir. Scared and alone, and we were convinced the world was ending. But even in the midst of all that, Thorn had layers. I could see it, and I was just a kid.”

Schrader stopped in his walk, facing her with a febrile stare. “You’re being evasive.”

She tried to pry open the memories, long held only between Thorn and her. “I do not mean to mislead, sir.”

“Then tell me what it is you are evading. In full.”

“I don’t have a clear recollection, sir.” As he drew up to question her again, she hurried to complete the explanation. “It started with a small ball of light in his hand, but then, in quiet moments…he could do things. I mean, to clarify, he could do anything, usually, if his stress was high, or if he was quiet. Or alone. Looking back, I never saw an end to his power, and it seemed utterly natural at the time. I didn’t realize the uniqueness until I was stationed at Code Nebula. Only then did I give any credence to my memories. I was only ten, and I know how fallible memory can be.”

Schrader grinned. “So it is true.”

She looked toward the ground and nodded. “I made the decision to track him down, sir. I had to know if my memory was correct. If he was the weapon I suspected. That we need.”

“You made the right choice, Lieutenant.” Schrader shook his head, lips pulled to one side as he considered what the confirmation meant. “But you should have come to me with your suspicions from the beginning. Thorn nearly died—you understand that, yes?”

“Yes, sir.” It was hard to look him in the eye, so she stared into the middle distance, seeing nothing but feeling the weight of her decisions.

“We cannot afford to lose a talent like that. In terms of a Starcaster Officer, he’s little more than a child. In terms of his power? He’s a bomb with limitless energy. He’s a supernova. Or more.” Schrader took his place behind his desk once more.

“I agree with you there, sir. But what does that have to do with me?”

“You are close with Private Stellers.”

“I was once, yes, sir. I think we still have some degree of connection, though we’re not kids anymore.”

“We would like for you to speak with him. He’s decided to leave the Starcasters, though he hasn’t come to me with this request yet. It’s a seed in his mind, because in his core Thorn is noble and loyal. He fears himself over all else, which is good…to a point. He’s going to ask me if he has value, but I can’t even let the question be posed. If he does come to submit his resignation because of some failure on my part to convince him otherwise, we will have no choice but to oblige by ON policy. A resignation request denied is a clear indicator of a future issue. A problem that can arise in combat, or even worse, at the moment of truth in this war. Believe me, Thorn will be at the nexus of combat every time he flies into the black.” The Commander pulled a file from a stack at the corner of his desk and thumbed through the documents. Eyes-Only dockets were the only paper files still used within the military, so Kira diverted her attention.

“What do you want me to say to him, sir?”

Schrader kept his attention on the files. “Don’t lie. I’ll never ask you to lie, but the unalloyed truth might be too much at this point. How are your diplomatic skills?”

“Rusty, but good when used, sir. We had to wheedle every meal at the home together as kids. It’s a natural response in me, now,” Kira said, with the first smile since she’d entered the room.

“How am I supposed to meet with him tonight, Commander? Fraternizing is…inadvisable, given our rules of conduct.”

“We will arrange for a meeting, off the books. Be at the East Bend of the river tonight. He’ll be there.”

“Yes, sir.” Kira stood awkwardly for a moment. “Am I dismissed, sir?”

Commander Schrader waved his hand at the door. “You are, Lieutenant.” When she was about to walk out, he added, “And Lieutenant, do not disappoint. This is the culmination of the most important and rare of things, us finding Stellers.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“A lucky break.”

* * *

Thorn was surprised to see Narvez enter Drigo’s med unit that evening, and even more stunned to see her grin easily as she sat on the bed. The lieutenant’s hard lines appeared softened even in the florescent lights of the medical room. She focused on Drigo, reaching out with a delicate touch and running her fingertips over the bandages of his shoulder. Without turning away, she spoke.

“Stellers, I need a few moments with Drigo. I’m going to help him, and the process is not for anyone else to see,” Narvez said.

“I’d rather not leave, ma’am,” Thorn said, his voice flat.

She turned, her eyes boring into his, mouth opening to lash him—and stopped. Officers had to plan ahead. Good officers planned three steps ahead, and that was what Schrader, Narvez, and Ashworth had done. The last element was Thorn himself, so Narvez did something out of character.

She smiled gently. “You will, because it’s an order. You will, because I’m speaking to you as a fellow human—I need you to trust me, Thorn. For just this moment, trust me, and see what I show you.”

“I—yes, ma’am.” Grudging, he stood, watching her. A touch in his mind, gentle but firm, and Narvez sent him a map built of memory. A riverbend, close by and with some purpose other than merely getting him to leave so she could work.

Thorn twitched as the image flooded his mind, then he twitched again at the realization that he was keeping her from helping Drigo.

This isn’t about you, he told himself . “Clear, ma’am, and thank you.”

She waved him away as her eyes went blank, power filling the space between her and Drigo. Her magic was suffused now with a sense of purpose—to heal and comfort, rather than to sow disorder and chaos. Thorn stood for a second, stunned at the complete reversal of her sorcery, then he stepped out of the room into a hallway where the air was antiseptic and there was no looming cloud of healing energy.

“To the river, then, for a quiet moment,” Thorn said, but the hallway did not answer, and his feet moved of their own accord.

He would speak to the night while Narvez waged war on Drigo’s pain. Maybe it would be enough.

* * *

The night air was brisk, the sky grazed by scudding clouds that broke the moonlight into a slow dance of shifting rays; some blue from the smaller moon, some buttery gold from the fat orb hanging higher in the west. He took his time, breathing deeply as the graveled path crackled underfoot. With a final turn, the path widened, and Thorn smelled water—a clean, sharp scent, followed by the sounds of a river at night. Water has two faces; one that is seen, and one that is heard. The moons lit a dark ribbon just ahead, occasional panes of silver breaking the busy surface.

Open space yawned ahead in the forest. A riot of flowers opened their faces to the moonlight, vines so black they seemed to steal the light around them. Only the petals glowed, unhindered by the shadows.

“I’m here,” Thorn said to the night.

“I am as well,” came Kira’s unexpected answer.

“Kira?”

“Come forward. Sorry about the ambush. I’m terrible at stealth. And diplomacy,” she admitted, stepping out into the moonglow.

“Nice place,” he said. It was. A long stone bench waited for them, close to the river’s edge. They sat as one, both turning to look at the water. “This isn’t accidental, which means Schrader thinks I’m going to leave. He’s pitching me to stay.”

Kira said nothing but let her eyes go up to the stars as she turned her head toward him.

“I’m right,” Thorn said.

“You are,” she admitted. “You always had insight. Even before you knew about your power.” She paused, crossed her legs, and leaned back on the bench. “You never asked why I’m here with the Starcasters.”

“You’re right. I never thought twice about it. Even though you were younger than me, you were never—”

“Actually younger than you? Yeah, I get that a lot. I was forty when I was twelve.” Her laughter was bell-bright and real.

“Glad we agree about that.”

Kira shrugged. “You. You’re the reason I’m here. And the war, sure, but mostly you, because of what you told me when we spent all those hours practicing something that had always been thought of as a lie. A myth. You knew magic was real and then…you showed me. And you taught me, at least something. I went away to the Navy thinking that nothing they could do to me was worse than our lives when we were young. I was right. And then they explained the real war—not what we saw back home, but the real fight. The scorched planets, the barren systems.”

He tilted his head in admission. “The thing behind the thing.”

“Exactly. It’s never what it seems. It’s what’s controlling events from the background. For us, it’s a war so vast that we can’t even imagine surviving it, let alone winning.”

“We can win,” he said simply.

“I know we can. Now, anyway,” Kira admitted.

Thorn dangled his legs above the still water. “I wasn’t wrong about you. You’ve always had that gift. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. Savvy, too, even when we were kids.”

Kira’s face lit up with a smile. “Gift. Or curse. My family,” she said, turning the word family into a slur. “You have the talent.” Her smile faded then. “My father had the talent. I might have it. Hell, I’m his true daughter. I even look like him.”

Thorn turned toward her slowly, brows rising. “He had—what? Magic? How did I not know that?”

“I never thought it mattered. We were too busy surviving that…home.” She kept her eyes on the water now. “I don’t have his level of talent. I wasn’t born to it, like he was, or at least it wasn’t a manifest part of me. I feel like it’s something I can coax out of…somewhere. Like a hidden reserve, maybe, and even then it might not be soon enough to help us in this war. That’s proof enough to me that the universe has a sick sense of humor. Sometimes, anyway.”

“There are only a few ’casters, but the need for good—great—officers is never going to go away. Not in this war. Your skills are elsewhere, maybe. Tactics, intelligence, command. Those go a long way.”

Kira looked him in the eye. “You taught me that my brain is valuable despite my lack of talent, Thorn. Even when we were kids.”

“You didn’t need me to know that.” He shook his head, teeth bright in the moonlight as he smiled. “Everyone could see that, even among all us leftovers. And now here you are, an officer, and something tells me your career will go on past this rank.”

Kira laughed. “Glad to hear that. The pay at LT sucks, so I guess we’ll have to concentrate on living long enough to get that sweet pension.”

“A noble goal. I like the whole part about living longer. It beats the hell out of a plasma cloud in some forgotten point in space.” He sobered, then added, “I hope I can control this.”

“Your power? Or the war? Big goals, if it’s the latter.”

Now he laughed, and it felt good. “I’ll start small and aim for harnessing whatever the hell is cutting loose inside me. I can feel it down—I don’t want to say in my bones, but it’s somewhere in a place that feels like it’s on the edge of my senses. Like if I turn my head slowly enough, I can glimpse my, ah…talent, but only for a second, then it’s gone. A memory. Or a taunt.” He lifted one shoulder, fingers spread on his thighs. “Do you think magic can truly be learned? Shaped, I mean?”

“I do. In fact, I convinced myself I could learn anything.” She smiled, and her next words bloomed in his head, clear and crisp. So I taught myself telepathy, reaching back to the echoes my father left for me to find. How’s it sound?

“Loud and clear—Kira, what the hell? How?” he asked, stunned. I thought telepathy was only for Purecasters. He’d responded to her without thinking.

She spoke aloud once more. “And yet here you are, a Scorch, a Lifer, probably a few other things we don’t really grasp, and now a telepath, with complete facility and ease. I watched your face. You did it like breathing. Second nature. Command has no idea what you’re capable of, and neither do you.”

Kira got to her feet and walked a few paces across the rocky surface before turning to face him. “The thing is, we need you. I need you, as a fixed point in my own past. You also happen to be the untapped fountain of—well, I don’t know. Magic, but of a kind that scares the shit out of people. Not me, though. And not Schrader, and certainly not the admiralty.”

Thorn stood slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“The Nyctus have been advancing. The recruits will be deployed soon, and we’re not ready.” Her body grew tense, and she let her eyes sweep the darkened sky as if the Nyctus would fall on them any second. “But you, Thorn, you are everything I remember you to be.”

“I’m not what you remember of me, Kira. I’m no better than any of the other ’casters here, and I’m sure as hell not ready for battle. I might—who knows? I might set myself on fire, torch a ship. I could do something you don’t have a term for, because even I don’t know what it is that I’m creating out of this power.”

She sputtered in frustration. “Who gives a damn? We don’t have options—not any longer. Whether or not you’re ready, or if you think you’ll turn a fleet to ash with wild magic isn’t the point. The point is this, and only this: it’s almost time to go to war, because there aren’t enough ’casters, and we’re losing. End of story. We lose one more big battle with our standard weps, and it’s over. The Nyctus will chew through planetary defenses with those big ass rocks, and we won’t be able to stop the volume of stone coming down on us. We have to fight, and soon. You most of all.”

He stepped toward her, pointing at the medwing. “Drigo has a missing arm. You sure it’s time to cut me loose?”

Kira reached out, took his face in her hands, and turned it up to the stars. “They’re out there, Thorn. Entire fleets of those murderous pricks, and every ship is aimed at the guts of our territory. If we win one battle—just one—we stop the bleeding, and we get room to breathe. Our shipyards are firing keels as fast as the Nyctus can turn them into scattered atoms, but we can’t replace the people. That’s where we come in. We’re the last line of offense. Not defense—to hell with defense. That’s a sucker’s bet. We can win, but we have to take the fight to them, not sit obediently and wait for the blows to land.” Her breath came short until she stilled herself with an effort.

Thorn took her hands, then let them go, uncomfortable at how easily he’d done it. “Okay. Let’s go tell Schrader to put me in a witchport and get the hell out of the way.”

“That’s the spirit. And one more thing,” Kira said.

“What’s that?”

“Burn every one of them you can see, because they’ll do the same to us if they can.”

9

Sleep came easily to Thorn that night, the scent of the river still filling his senses as he dropped away into silent rest. Despite Drigo’s condition, he felt needed. More importantly, he felt wanted, if not entirely trusted, and that was fine because he didn’t entirely trust himself.

Drigo’s arm was completed, and surgery was scheduled for the next morning to attach it to the scorched stump, now a pinking mass of keloidal scarring that would serve as a base for the elegant technology that would make him battle-ready. Thorn had worried about Drigo’s response but realized that being alive was a far cry better than the alternative, and frankly the arm wasn’t without some added benefits. It was powerful, nearly indestructible, and after glancing at the complex device, Thorn had to admit the new arm was an improvement over Drigo’s original, given his tendency to sunburn and blister.

The commanding officers had been understanding enough of Thorn’s absence from training, and he relied on that understanding for the remainder of the day. Tomorrow he would return to the field, but he needed to see his friend before he could dedicate his mind to the course materials once again. Peace, it seemed, came from a quiet moment at Drigo’s bedside.

“Does it—” Thorn began, but Drigo nearly growled at him.

“Itch? Yes. Like a friggin’ army of feverspot bugs have stung me in the forest. I might cut my own head off just so I can stop itching,” Drigo said, glaring at his bandages.

“Please don’t. I’d have to drink myself into forgiveness, and I can’t afford the hangover. Got a big war coming up.”

“I’ll hold off on the knife then, but they better get this arm on now.”

The nurses came in, all professional bustle, and Thorn was unceremoniously removed with assurance that his commander would be informed of any issues. Fighting the urge to resist their directions, Thorn heard a loud noise while standing in the hallway.

It was his stomach.

“Ah, right. Feeding time.” It had been days since he’d had a proper meal, and the mess was close enough that Thorn detected something close to coffee on the wind. “Right, then.” He went unerringly toward chow, noting the skies full of jump planes and general sense of purpose throughout the camp. Across the yard, new recruits were disgorged from a helo, their faces masks of shock as they took in the controlled chaos unfolding around them. There were less than two dozen in all.

Must be at the end of the Purecasters, Thorn thought sourly. That didn’t bode well. If what Kira had said was true—and he was almost certain it was—the ON would need battalions of ’casters to send the Nytcus back to their darkened worlds. No one really knew where the Nyctus originated, but they weren’t fans of bright stars or high grav.

The planes kept coming, and to Thorn’s relief, more recruits—infantry and ship-boarding—streamed into and out of the medwing. He wasn’t part of a mass recruitment, but this influx seemed a bit excessive, even for ON infantry standards.

His mind drifted to a life that felt so long ago. Working reclamation, he had no responsibilities but to himself. He could sleepwalk through his days, smeared in mud and low expectations. In some ways it was easier that way, but it was also a lonely, monotonous life that brought no fulfillment. Here, there was a promise of war, but also, maybe, life afterward.

Luckily, the mess hall was serving breakfast for all of the incomers. Thorn blended in well enough, but only until Kira spotted him.

She marched over to him. “What are you doing here?” Then she grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him out of the line.

“Hey now.” He lifted his tray so as not to spill what was already served. “Watch the grub. I fought a wave of wide-eyed newbies for this.”

She glowered at him. “I can pitch it in the shitcan if I want.” She looked at the tray with a gimlet eye. “Might even be saving your life. Is that…ham?”

“It used to be.” He lifted a chunk of the offending food with his thumb and forefinger. “Now, I think it’s just dangerous.”

Her shoulders relaxed at his joke. “Thorn, you can’t be here right now. You’re supposed to be in drills, anyway.”

Suddenly it dawned on him. “Last night.” He bent forward, his breath close to her ear. “Did you risk your commission for me?”

Kira looked up at him. Telling Thorn that she had been sent to convince him to stay wouldn’t be a betrayal, but it would take the shine of their conversation, and in some way, their shared history.

“No. I didn’t risk anything in speaking with you last night.” She looked around, surveying the room. “But today may be a different story.”

He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Why would you not worry about last night, but you do worry about today when we’re surrounded with witnesses?”

“The clock is ticking. That’s why. I don’t want our last conversation to be one that convinced you to go to war. We’ve got too much history for that.”

“You didn’t convince me.”

“I didn’t?”

“No, Kira. I was going to stay, and I’m going to fight. But you’re right about our history, and I’m going to need something more than simply winning the war as my goal,” Thorn said.

“Can’t offer you my hand in marriage. Not my style, and we’ve got a lot of fighting to do first.”

He snapped his fingers in mock anger. “Fair enough. I can wait for your devotion. But for now?”

“Yes, Recruit Stellers?”

He held up the ham. “Can you convince someone to cook actual meat?”

* * *

Thorn made it to the medwing just in time to see Drigo wheeled away to the surgical unit. He leaned against a wall, relieved that he’d be there when his friend woke with a new arm. He’d been a part of the accident, and he intended to be there before and after. As for during, he’d leave that to the medical team. Thorn was better at breaking than fixing, anyway.

Rodie, Val, and Streya arrived shortly after surgery had begun. The four of them waited silently in the hall. Being a military medical facility, there was no waiting room. Rodie thumbed through a deck of cards, shuffling and sorting, then shuffling again in a shushing metronome that was oddly comforting. Val bounced a thick rubber ball against the wall, testing her strength—or the wall’s—Thorn wasn’t really sure. Streya paced up and down the checkered floor. Thorn sat cross-legged, his wrists resting on his knees and his head leaning back against the white brick. He closed his eyes, using the wait to explore his magic, which was always just under his surface, like a waiting shark.

It took far less time than he expected before Drigo was wheeled out of the operating room on a silent gurney. The nurses studiously avoided any eye contact, which was frustrating.

“Ya’d think they could spare a nod or something,” Rodie groused, and everyone agreed. Other than the low hum of overhead lights, Drigo’s procession had been silent—unnervingly so. The four bunkmates scrambled to grab their jackets and coffee cups before they hurried down the hall behind the technicians. It would be a while longer before he woke up, but a surgeon relented, pulling her mask down to reveal a face as young as their own.

“I know. I’m a kid, but we all are at this point in the war,” the doctor said in a tired voice. “Everything went well. The arm is attached, working, and there were no unforeseen issues. Trust me when I say I’ve seen a lot worse.”

“From magical damage?” Freya asked, alarmed.

The surgeon—whose uniform read Booker—gave a graveyard smile. “Brought a recruit in here who’d been hit with a Lifer blast. They may as well have carried him through the doors in a bucket.” She shook her head, eyes gone blank with memory. “Drigo is fine. Will be fine, rather, once he learns some degree of synergy with the limb. It will serve him well in this war. If you’ll excuse me, I have another surgery.”

Booker turned and left, her shoes squeaking as she pivoted on the expanse of slick floor. Then Drigo groaned.

“…the hell? I f’l like shi…” Drigo’s voice was thick. “Did we win?” His lips drooped to one side. The meds were still kicking.

“Win? Oh, um, well…” Thorn said, then Drigo’s eyes cleared just a bit. He twitched in alarm. “What happened?” The question was razor sharp.

Thorn’s face fell. “I broke free, Drigo. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Drigo blinked rapidly, trying to sift memories.

Thorn lifted Drigo’s hand and placed it on his new bionic arm. Drigo’s head turned in slow motion to see the titanium alloy that had yet to be covered with synthskin. He flexed his fingers, and the hydraulics hissed in response but then went silent as they adjusted. He turned back to Thorn, eyes wide.

Val tapped her foot. “Say something.”

“Bro…” Drigo’s mouth widened to a beaming smile. “I’m a robot!”

They all broke out in laughter, and Rodie flicked the new arm like a gong. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about. A good attitude is the—”

“Dude. Rodie,” Drigo said.

“Yeah?”

“Give me a minute before you get all…” Drigo searched for the word.

“All Rodie?” Val said.

“Exactly,” Drigo agreed. “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” Rodie asked, but everyone was on alert, searching Drigo’s face for pain.

“Automatic med dose. Felt it just now,” Drigo said, eyes drooping.

“Rest now,” Thorn said, but Drigo was already snoring softly.

“I have got to get me one of those,” Rodie said as they left.

“A cybernetic arm? Or those meds?” Freya asked.

Rodie’s smile was conspiracy itself. “Both.”

* * *

Everyone went back to their duties.

Except Thorn, who walked, eyes down as he processed what Kira told him about his abilities.

Lost in the abyss of conflicting emotions, Thorn had hardly looked two feet in front of him when he collided with Kira. He caught her just before she planted her rear end firmly in the mud, then stood to attention.

“Ma’am, my apologies.”

Kira dusted herself off. “Stellers.” She nodded to move past him, barely acknowledging his presence.

“Ma’am?” Her dismissal was cold to the point of rudeness, given their conversation and life before the ON.

She turned, but only halfway. “Sorry, Thorn. It’s time to think of yourself as an officer, because that’s the one thing we don’t have. Time.”

“I will. Ma’am.” His voice was steady, features neutral.

“I know. I wish there was some other way, but there isn’t. Get ready, Thorn. Sooner rather than later, we’re all going to battle.”

10

All he had left of home was the book.

The cover was tattered, and the bottom corner gone. Smeared with ash and grime, the title faded to a color so dull, it left no hint of the book’s former glory. Thorn knew every inch of it, and the cover, and even the torn page—259—and he touched that page like a talisman—which it was. The Hungry Trout and Other Stories could be felt, but not really seen, each letter more a memory than a shape on the seared paper cover.

Since the day the KEW took his home—his town, too, and his life along with it—the book was all he’d had. It was all he could salvage from the smoking hole of his former life, and now, under the alien light of twin moons, he opened to a random page and began to read. There was little comfort in his actions, but it was comfort, nonetheless.

I never should have stopped reading it.

Thorn tucked the book into his jacket pocket before reporting for training. He would read between instructions, or he’d never have time to read at all. Some touch of home was better than none, so he vowed to steal moments for reading while Drigo healed for another week. After that, Drigo could return to training, not as the same person, but as something more. Drigo would be a man with rare motivation.

And a perfect whetstone for Thorn’s magic. Again, he made a vow, but this time it was to be prepared for what Drigo might bring to the practice field. Anger, Thorn knew, could turn magic into a wild thing beyond the control of even a seasoned warrior, and the recruits were far from seasoned. They were, as Thorn and Drigo knew, dangerous.

But they could also be assets.

Even Burnitz seemed to take a softer approach with him. During stave training, Thorn sensed—not hesitation, but consideration on Burnitz’ part. Thorn was hit less often during stave training, though no one would consider Burnitz as being kind. If anything, the cynical part of Thorn’s mind said Burnitz was being prudent. An untrained—and lethal—element on the field was something to shape, not crush. The behavior made Thorn more receptive to quiet instruction. Where Burnitz had once bellowed, he now gave direct, practical advice on specific movements, each comment driving Thorn closer to an ideal combat form.

The new form of instruction took root.

Thorn was landing blows with regularity, and when the last session concluded, he was instructed to wait, as all soldiers did at one time or another, so he stood in the sun, reading his book and thinking of nothing at all.

“Stellers,” came Narvez’s voice, crackling with command.

“Ma’am?” He stowed the book, standing to attention. A second officer trailed Narvez, her bearing the polar opposite of anyone in command Thorn had seen thus far.

“This is Captain Leblanc. She’s here to begin your Clearance training, and if you want to succeed, you’d better pay close attention,” Narvez said.

“Ma’am,” Thorn said, accompanied with a crisp salute. Behind him, the other trainees rattled into formation, their uniforms making sounds of multiple salutes.

The captain had blonde hair pulled back so severely it gave her a look of mild surprise. Her cheekbones were high, her uniform black, and her pose one that verged into sleepiness.

Captain Leblanc did not stand at attention. She was the least militant officer that Thorn had ever laid eyes on, and for a moment, he felt a sense of disconnect. How did that person become a captain?

“Soldiers.” Leblanc stood with her legs hip width apart, knees slightly bent. For a moment, Thorn wondered if she was going to sit cross-legged on the ground. “I will lead you in your Clearance training today. Our individual sessions have given me the understanding necessary for this intensive training. Prepare for a deep psychological disruption.”

Thorn felt himself try to frown. He’d concluded, wrongly, that the individual sessions were Clearance training. The thought of his shared secrets being told to the entire squad left him with a pit in his guts. Fears, especially personal ones, were something Thorn kept to himself. To share them in the Home meant to be even more vulnerable to the other children. It was a lifelong habit born of hard lessons that Thorn kept his fears buried.

It was survival. It had always been about survival.

As if she sensed his unease, Leblanc continued with her instruction. “What you see before you will be your experience alone—an experience tailored to the weaknesses you carry. I am not your enemy. I am your ally. Your fears, however, are most certainly your enemy, because they can be used against you, or worse.”

Rodie raised a hesitant hand. “Ma’am?”

“Speak, please,” Leblanc said. Her tone was inviting, even if her facial expression remained one of shock.

“How? Our fears, that is, ma’am. How can they be used against us?” Rodie asked.

Leblanc began an easy walk along the front of their formation, her steps light. “A superb question. If fear has no tangible mass, then how does it manage to kill so many ON soldiers? The answer is quite simple. A weak mind, paralyzed by fear, becomes a weapon pointed not just at you, but the people around you. You can and will fail in the moment of truth because of fear.” She paused in front of Thorn. “Or childhood trauma.” She walked on, stopping in front of Rodie. “Or a sense of inadequacy. All of these are wedges, forced into the place where your power and discipline reside, and once they have a way in, you have no way out. Do you understand? This training is not about you. It’s about how your flaws will impact every single member of the battlespace, and how you plan on mastering that uncertainty. Starting right now.”

Narvez stepped forward and stood next to the captain. “This is the single most important training exercise we are able to give you to prepare for fighting the Nyctus.” The battle-hardened lieutenant dropped her mask and betrayed a plea for cooperation with her eyes. “If you are unfortunate enough to be within range of Nyctus mind control, this is the closest simulation to representing the horrors you will endure.” The willowy woman retreated, her face a scowl as she sifted memories of previous battles. Even the most tone-deaf recruit sensed her anger was born of experience, and Narvez scared the hell out of almost everyone.

That fact alone made every recruit stand a bit taller, and lean forward just that much more.

Thorn felt a pressure building inside his skull, and the world around him began a slow, dreamlike shift. In place of the blonde Captain and sharp Lieutenant, a little girl in a pink floral nightgown stood in front of him. Her sandy brown hair was braided into pigtails, and she held a floppy stuffed rabbit under one arm, a blue thread trailing from the hem of her dress.

“They’re coming, Thorn!” the girl cried, reaching back to him as she ran away, her feet a near blur. She pulled his hand toward a tall farmhouse, the roof glowing gold in the late day sun. “You have to save them,” the girl—no, not a girl, his sister, Bettani, piped at him in her child’s voice.

His heart clenched, his breath grew short, and he ran, his feet flying over rows of earth turned in the field that hemmed the south side of their farm. There was a low rise, then a ditch, filled with broken rock and the odd still pool, and then—

Home. He pelted forward, driven to see if they could be saved. If he could be saved.

In the sky above, an unholy noise grew from distant rumble to a roar, the massive rock splitting atmosphere in a boiling cloud of heat and light. The angle was sharp, the impact sharper, and Bettani vanished in a scalding blaze of white, only to reappear as he fell, faceup in the field. Thorn sensed the book in his pocket, and grass, and a small pebble digging into his shoulder. Bettani leaned over, her face twisting into hysteria.

“Why aren’t you doing anything, Thorn? They’re dying. Burning. All of them. Can you hear it?” Bettani asked, even as the roaring fire began to drown out all sounds except for the apocalypse brought down from the sky. Thorn’s chest bucked with a sob, but he ran his thumb over the book, now in his hand somehow, and the fire from above began to fade.

So did Bettani.

Reality flickered, then stabilized. Then the dream world was no more, and his mind, once more, was his own. He knew this was true because of the coppery tang in his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue, but if anything, that only helped flush the invasive visions from his mind.

“You’re not my sister,” he stated with conviction, and the last outline of Bettani shattered, leaving behind nothing except a deep-seated pain, pulsing just below Thorn’s brow.

“Thorn!” Kira rushed down the bank to his side and pulled him up to his feet.

“That was…intense.” He sat up, but slowly, trying to shake off the effects of a powerful telepathic assault.

“This is my least favorite portion of the curriculum.” She brushed off her pants and breathed deeply. “I was terrified you wouldn’t come out of it. Sometimes, people don’t.”

He shook his head, still feeling pressure inside his skull, but it was fading.

“Not fast enough,” he murmured, groggy.

“Oh, the hangover? It fades.” Kira shrugged, her eyes gleaming with relief. “Takes a bit, but it does. And I’m glad you’re coming back this fast. It’s a good sign for…for later.”

Kira smiled, stood, and pulled him to his feet among the groans and odd cough of every recruit coming out of their own private hell. “They’ll all have a story to tell. I once heard a ’caster say his dead uncle forced him back into high school. Can you imag—oh, shit.” Overhead, a silver line streaked across the darkening sky. “No, no, no. Captain?”

“This can’t be,” Leblanc hissed, pulling another recruit up from the ground.

Kira’s head whipped sideways to track the object. Another bright point flared into existence, then two more. “They found the base.”

Explosions hammered the ground, sending waves of debris skyward as the base was methodically reduced to ashes.

“KEW,” Leblanc shouted, leading the wobbly recruits across open ground. “On me,” she barked, as everyone followed in varying states of readiness. In seconds, the recruits were running at full tilt, their recovery complete as Leblanc led them to the armory.

They didn’t get far.

Thorn watched in horror as a hailstorm of bullets tore through the grass in front of them. Streya screamed as she hit the ground, blood spraying from her shoulder in a looping arc. She rolled twice, arm flopping.

Kira grabbed him by the arm as he changed trajectory from the armory toward Streya. “No! Thorn, you have to leave her! We have to get to the armory. We need weapons and suppressing fire!”

“Can’t,” he grunted, pulling away from Kira and ramping up to a run.

“Thorn, if you try to save her, you’ll just get both of us killed! Stay to the tree line and keep your damned head down.” On cue, rounds howled overhead, chopping trees apart with efficient brutality.

“Get my weapons, too,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Keep to the trees! I’ll meet you at the armory.”

Bullets continued to whine overhead, but Thorn wove with the desperation of the hunted. He slid to Streya’s side, causing his book to tumble out into the bloody earth. With one arm, he rolled Streya over; with the other, he grabbed his book. A heave and she was up on his shoulder, his adrenaline cooking off at a stunning rate.

“Gotcha,” he muttered, but Streya said nothing. Blood spooled away from her. “Shit, she’s ventilated.” Heart hammering against his ribs, he began to run and drew on the atmosphere around him, harnessing a cloud of dark shimmering matter. He held the attack ready, like a drawn arrow, wiping blood from his eyes—Streya’s—then wiping the sticky mass on his leg. His thumb brushed the book’s cover, peeking from his pocket—and the world stuttered.

“The hell?” he said, still running, but his steps slowed. Streya seemed light. “No-- lighter,” he corrected, then touched the book again. Overhead, his spell swirled, an unformed mass of endless violence, waiting for his command.

Streya coughed, crimson arterial blood leaving her mouth in a red mist, but there was a pause in the rounds flying by. Not silence, but…an interruption.

Thorn touched his book, brushing fingers over the pages as Streya grew lighter still. “Show me,” he commanded. When nothing happened, he released his spell, adding, “Show me the truth.”

Silence.

Without opening his eyes, Thorn felt sunlight and a breeze. No hint of char or blood or war in the air. He opened his eyes, already beginning to sense what was waiting.

Captain Leblanc smiled knowingly, though her eyes remained shrouded by a glowing orange light. Thorn released his remaining energy, the spell sublimating with a soft crackle.

“I knew that your induction would need to be multi-leveled when I saw the depths of your…pain, Stellers. From what happened.” Her voice resonated with power. This was not the same woman from moments earlier.

Thorn looked around to see the dazed faces of the other recruits. They stood, swaying, in her thrall. Some cried. Some raged in silence, and some were merely still, their bodies a mockery of what they’d been at the start of the test.

He was the first to be released from her telepathic hold.

“Keep that talisman close to your side, Stellers.” Leblanc’s face was eerily still. “No trainee has ever pulled themselves from dimensional training that fast.” She searched his face, then gave a small nod. “Or with such clarity.”

Thorn looked down at the book in his hands. Talisman. Yes. That was the word. The book was more than a memory made real. It was a steady point—an anchor for his power. For his sanity.

He sidestepped through the hypnotized troops and made his way to a fallen tree at the edge of the forest, it’s roots a cathedral of gnarled fingers. Narvez appeared at his side without a sound. He barely twitched.

“Your performance was impressive,” Narvez said.

“I—thank you, Lieutenant,” Thorn mustered. This sight of Narvez left him wary, and her neutral look did nothing to disabuse him of that.

“I know a fighter when I see one,” she said, walking away to join the captain without another word. He could see that Leblanc appeared drained, her face a wan circle of pale flesh. The enormity of her telepathic control came with a high cost, which told Thorn that she was built of far tougher stuff than her laconic bearing suggested. He found himself wondering what the recovery from such a task would entail, and was glad he didn’t need to find out. As to his own power, it was still there—brooding, vast, and unscathed, even after releasing a spell large enough to crack the false reality of Leblanc’s immersive magic.

Dismissed, Thorn began the slow walk to his bunk. By the time he made it, every cell in his body felt heavy—or light, as if hollowed out by the force of his own will. He staggered inside, only to hear Rodie’s light snoring.

“Damned good idea,” Thorn said, and in seconds he collapsed, but not before checking the sky once more for bright silver things, falling on his head for eternity.

11

The routine was becoming easier, and Thorn’s confidence was building with each wake up. Instead of fearing his magic, he was learning to live with it—to shape it in ways that made power seem like a natural extension of his own will. A part of him that belonged, not something to be hidden from the other kids at the home.

He kept The Hungry Trout on him at all times, and began to excel in areas that had been out of reach mere weeks before. Now, Clearance and Material Sciences came easier to him, as he finally concluded that making war would be the hardest thing he’d ever do. Not just using magic, because it was a given that his power was dangerous and costly.

But war against the Nyctus was going to be unlike anything else in his world. Humans weren’t built to kill. They could kill, given training, and there was even the odd enthusiast among his peers, but in truth, killing another sentient being wasn’t a default setting. Thorn considered this as his power grew, learning that inside himself he found a core shut off from the rest of the world. It was a secret place—a combat awareness—that he could invoke, given the time to tap into it.

But even the delay between thoughts and spells was fading, just as his need to physically touch his book. Now, he could merely sense the book, and his well of power would yawn open, a roiling mass of unformed energy waiting for his command.

Captain Leblanc had called him to her jump plane once more before moving on to whatever her next assignment was, and she was not the same person he’d met on the field that first day. Leblanc’s face was sallow, her eyes sunken over hollow cheeks and a look that fell between haunted and raw exhaustion. Thorn was sure now that recovery was far worse for her than it had been for the trainees.

“Stellers.” She spoke as if her throat was swollen, the words dusty.

“Captain, ma’am?” He stood at attention, eyes clocking her office. It was sparse, with odd things—like a brass plate, candles slumped in the middle, and the skull of a small animal, its jaw in an open leer.

She smiled, and even that gesture was an echo. “Have a seat, soldier.”

He dropped into a chair, noting the cushion. It smelled of dust and sunshine. “You lead a life of comfort, ma’am,” he said.

Her laugh was brighter than her smile. “Some things travel with me. I need the familiarity in order to…remain focused. And to recover, which I’m sure you’re seeing now. Think of me as a shepherd. I can only control so many in my flock before I need rest. Power—real power, like what you have—is at the utter edge of our control. It’s like a science so new that you’re as likely to die as you are to triumph in pursuit of its application. So, you get this,” she said, waving at her creased uniform. With a dismissive flick, she sent a crumb of energy bar falling to the floor.

“You didn’t call me here just to bask in this richness, did you, ma’am?” He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning into the conversation.

Leblanc exhaled slowly. “No. I did not.” She fell silent, measuring him again.

“I’m unsure—” Thorn began, but she waved him silent. With an effort, he could see her push the exhaustion back. Thorn knew that look. He’d seen it on his own face, mucking oil day after day, trying to find a reason to get up. To go on.

“Your talent is rare. It might even be unique. Hell, I’m almost sure it is, but I haven’t seen every Starcaster yet, although one scenario will ensure that I do.”

“You mean if we lose, ma’am?” Thorn asked.

Her brows lifted in surprise. “How do you figure?”

Thorn gave a small shrug but spoke, heedless of what he had to say. She outranked him, but soon they’d be in the same war, together. “If we lose, we all die, and there won’t be any more Starcasters. So you’ll have seen us all.”

“Quite right. Ugly, but true.” Leblanc turned more toward him, her eyes brightening. “Show me something. Form a light in your palm. Your right hand, please.”

Thorn said nothing but turned his hand upward and willed a small globe of light into being. The light stayed still, only varying slightly from white to blue.

“Excellent. Now extend the light into a column, quickly, but when it becomes, oh, a meter long, turn it at a right angle, then stop.”

Thorn did as requested without any effort. The beam shot up and bent at a perfect ninety degrees, ending in a hard point between him and the captain. “Like this, ma’am?”

She nodded, smiling. “Congratulations. You’ve just figured out space combat with magic.”

He looked at the light, head tilted in an effort to fully understand. “We’re fighting around corners? Ah, ma’am?”

Leblanc shook her head, standing to point at the glowing end of Thorn’s magical projection of will. “In a sense, but more importantly, we’re fighting in four dimensions. The fourth being time.”

“I’m…not sure—”

“Missiles and lasers. Ships and magic. All at different speeds. All in the battle space, making raw chaos out of what begins as an orderly fleet. Do you see?” Leblanc asked.

“Oh.” One word from Thorn as the concept unfolded in his understanding. “Oh. But, Captain, why can I—not sure how to say it, but why can I feel the math, so to speak? I don’t have to think about it. I can just direct my spells and know where they’ll go, and what they’ll hit.”

Captain Leblanc pointed at him, smiling. “End your spell—ah, good. A silent, clean conclusion. And now you grasp why your ability is unique. Not everyone can do this, and not with any degree of speed. You have multiple forms of magic, and a near instantaneous implantation of them without fear of a wild shot—no, don’t interrupt me. You’re not the same ’caster you were, and when you leave, you’ll be even more different. You can have an enormous effect on this war if you do what I tell you.”

“I’m listening, I think. Ma’am.”

“You think?”

“I don’t know what my limitations are. At some point in my life, I was immortal, or at least I thought so, ma’am. I know I’m not, so if you tell me something I can’t do, well, I’m not going to bullshit you.”

“Good. Then listen, and hear every word. There are three things that you must do in the next few weeks before you graduate training if you have any hope of bringing us closer to victory. One, let go of the negativity and self-doubt that plagues you. Your past does not define you, but it can control you if you allow it. Leave it.” She held up two fingers. “Two, keep the use of your talisman pure. It is meant to clarify your power for control, not to enhance its force. And three, stop fighting the flow of energy. Controlling the craft is like coexisting with an avalanche. You have to swim with the flow if you expect to keep your head above the snow.”

“That’s not what I expected, ma’am.”

“Nor are you what I expected. But here we are, and in a short while you’ll be in a witchport staring down the barrel of a Nyctus fleet, wondering why that feel-good bullshit your Captain told you isn’t helping to kill the enemy. Let me assure you—it will,” Leblanc said.

“Then I believe you, ma’am, because I don’t want to die or get my people killed, and I sure as hell don’t want to lose,” Thorn said.

“Lose the war or lose at all?”

Thorn grinned. “At anything, ma’am. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of being at the bottom of the pile.”

“Then you know what to do. Don’t be at the bottom. Be in front.” Leblanc stood, smoothing her uniform, and she looked more animated than earlier. “Dismissed. Stay pure, Thorn, but get ready for violence. It’s coming.”

“I’m counting on it, ma’am.”

* * *

Thorn left the captain’s quarters with questions—and more purpose.

Drigo returned to training that day with a positivity that was contagious. The synthskin of his bionic arm was indistinguishable from his other arm, save for an odd smoothness that looked at odds with his rugged exterior. The only visible scar from his accident was the scourge of black spider veins across his chest. Drigo claimed he liked the natural tattoo, but Thorn was still coming to terms with the daily reminder of his mistake.

Leave it, Thorn told himself. So he did, for the moment.

While Burnitz had tempered, Narvez’s methods seemed only to intensify in the weeks since the dimensional exercise. Thorn felt her eyes on him all the time. If he stepped sideways, she was there. If he relaxed, she was there. Narvez carried an air of natural suspicion toward Thorn that made them both uneasy, as if a magical catastrophe was always seconds away. It wasn’t, but there was no way in hell Thorn was going to tell Narvez the good news. If he was in misery, then a little uncertainty couldn’t hurt the tall martinet as she drove the recruits closer to graduation.

Thorn found himself taking greater risks in training exercises and trusting in his ability to perform—in part, because of his talisman. That’s how he thought of it now, as calling it a book was too simple; too bland. In the charred pages, he found a point of focus his magic could rotate around, creating a kind of inner power that separated him from the other recruits even more. With his continued success, he found that his comrades were also trusting in his abilities at a higher rate. The team was starting to become just that: a team. They began to lose the need for speaking, moving as a single unit, their spells going from a disjointed wall of magic into something more surgical.

They were more than just powerful. Now, they were lethal.

Instructor Hiroshi led the troop to the simulation chamber, their collective steps heavy. It had been a hard day already, and the antiquated hangar didn’t bode well for whatever came next. The building had been updated with blast shields and fire-retardant materials to provide some amount of safety, even in the presence of Scorches who were still learning the difference between spellcasting and wanton destruction.

A state-of-the-art digital immersion platform had been integrated into every cell of the wall. It was capable of projecting an infinite number of battle sequences. Thorn presumed that the reason they hadn’t been permitted to use the simulator previously was the ON’s concern for money, plain and simple. New ’casters broke things, and the screens looked expensive.

Naturally, they were, so unleashing fire around costly tech was a sure sign that the end of training was in sight.

“Think we can melt this place?” Drigo asked, voice low.

Hiroshi, who had been pointing out potential scenarios, heard him. Without breaking stride, the instructor said in a cheerful tone, “You can pay for the building with your ass. Given the size, feel free to melt this place to the foundation. We’ll have money left over. Are you ready to join us, or do you need more PT to properly ready your mind, Drigo?”

“No, sir. There will be no melting, sir,” Drigo snapped out.

Hiroshi clapped his calloused hands together, smiling. “Excellent. Then listen to your assignments and let’s go—and one small detail. If you detect a hum, or—”

“A hum, sir?” Rodie asked, his voice rising in concern.

Hiroshi gave him an oddly patient smile. “Yes, a hum. You’ll sense something between machine and mental invading your senses, but you’re not to fight it or concern yourselves. That’s the neural bath working to translate your magic into simulations that look and feel real. You can use telepathy, and the navy can use technology. Between the two, we get…this. It’s real in every way. Understood?”

“Aye,” came the ragged agreement. The recruits looked around, with Val’s sharp eyes picking out one, then two, and then several small projectors positioned around the space. The neural bath—or net, or whatever it was—covered every angle.

Hiroshi went on, comfortable in his role. “You’ve all been aboard a ship. You’ve all been schooled in how a ship works, and what to do. But this is different. This is about command and control. Not just the parts, and mechanics of a warship. This is—it’s a kind of magic unto itself. That’s what it means to use your familiarity aboard the ship. You know the space. So show us that you understand how to use it. I’m tagging you with your ranks and assignments. We begin now.”

Thorn was assigned Captain for their first simulated battle—held aboard a simulated battleship, no less. Val was his first Lieutenant, Rodie his second. Drigo was their designated weapons detail, and Streya sat to interpret the nav screen. A number of recruits from other bunks were given maintenance duties. While all functions of the battleship worked in theory, the ship wouldn’t actually move, but the immersion platform used realistic responses to any hits the ship may take. Each hit would add yet another level of authenticity to the overall experience, as well as a psychological impact on the crew.

The mission was simple enough: locate and defend the civilian planet. But most importantly, survive. Points would be given according to defensive efficiency, but a passing score would be granted to any surviving squadron.

Thorn felt surprisingly comfortable as he stood at the helm of the ship. He directed Val to initiate engines, then turned to Rodie.

“Lieutenant Rodie.” Thorn was in full character now, his commands and tone crisp. “Determine the proper course to Varroc 2 with Lieutenant Streya, and input the course parameters.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Rodie’s response was serious to the point of being clipped. Even though it was a simulation, the battle already felt real.

“Troop 2A.” Thorn said, tugging idly at a sleeve. “Prepare for liftoff.”

The engine flared to life as Rodie called to Streya, “Lieutenant Streya, any obstacles in our projected course?”

“Lieutenant Rodie, I’m clocking a meteor shower at the following location—sending coordinates now,” Streya said, sharing the data with a flick of her finger. Recommend avoiding light speed travel in this region, though I maintain it will be passable at coasting speeds.” Streya kept her eyes on the displays in front of her as she spoke into the comms. Her fingers dashed across the virtual screens, occasionally pausing to touch an actual point on the angled console before her.

Thorn turned, noting the location. “Lieutenant Streya, keep in mind that there are people on Varroc 2 who are relying on our protection. Find a faster way. They need us.”

“Aye, Captain.” Streya’s eyes narrowed as she studied the screens. She initiated a command sequence to compare multiple routes and dialed the calculations rapidly into the system.

Thorn leaned against the override controls. “We’re losing valuable time and fuel, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir. I maintain the given route as the most time-efficient course.” Streya spoke with confidence.

“You sold me. Lieutenant Rodie, input the course command.” Thorn straightened, relying on his navigation officer. Then he made his actual decision. “But keep us above light speed.” The team froze for a moment, then turned as one to regard him.

“Sir?” Streya asked, the question carrying far more meaning than one word.

“Keep us at speed, Lieutenant, and send the details of that meteor shower to my comms. Call me when we’re within two quadrants.”

Streya paused, torn between an order and her own knowledge of astrogation. “Yes, Captain.” Her answer was simple. The fallout might not be.

The battleship thrummed as it began to move, a deep basso suggesting immense power. Thorn performed the mandatory pre-takeoff announcement, and the squadron prepared for the preliminary jolt that came with light speed initiation.

Thorn’s stomach fell away as the drive effects began to take hold, every inch of his body rebelling at the unnatural sensation. Behind him, someone retched, swore softly, and then went silent.

“Steady yourself. The field is stronger than a transport or passenger ship,” Thorn said, not looking back to see who was sick. He spoke for everyone’s benefit, as military engines were far more powerful than any tub running from system to system. In truth, his own guts were turning to water, but he dug deep to hold himself in check.

Around them, the digital galaxy came to life, and stars of every color began to blaze away in an endless deep.

“If it feels real, then it should look real. Steady on your stations,” Thorn said.

“Captain,” Streya called out to him. “We have contact. Nyctus signals, closing hard.”

Thorn’s stomach had adjusted to the compression drive, so he walked to her station at a steady pace. If nothing else, he’d look like he had his shit together. “Show me.”

“Yes, sir—here and here.” Streya pointed at two small groupings of moving dots on the display. “They’re really moving.”

“Are we sure these are Nyctus ships?” Thorn felt a twinge of nerves, despite knowing it was a virtual battle. The trust he was trying to build was anything but virtual.

“Ninety-eight percent certainty, sir.” Streya nodded.

“What could the other two percent be?” Thorn asked.

“Radar malfunction, Captain. Which I don’t believe to be the case.” A red notification flared into existence on her screen. “We are within two quadrants of the meteor shower, sir. Your command?”

Thorn stepped to Rodie’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maintain speed, Lieutenant.”

“Captain?” Rodie asked, his fingers poised over the display.

“Maintain. And watch. Streya…display updated data on the meteor shower. Big screen, if you please,” Thorn said. His hand brushed the talisman without thinking, but no one noticed. Not even him.

Thorn fell completely still, and the crew followed suit, watching him turn inward, his eyes gone flat with an effort. In the place between places, Thorn’s power began to coalesce, turning empty space into something far more crowded.

His magic had a form. And that form had force behind it.

“Captain?” Rodie asked, but Streya hissed at him to be quiet. The seconds stretched, and something—not real, but not unreal, either—bridged the space between stars, shoving against the meteors.

“They’re just rocks,” Thorn muttered, his eyes flickering with strain.

In his mind’s eye, Thorn rearranged the meteors, turned his vision to will, and cleared a path. At speed. The tumbling mass of ancient debris pressed on his reserves of power, the effort dotting his brow with sweat. He shook, if only for a second, then broke through into a calm place beyond the turbulent moment of seizing control over the natural world.

With a force of will none of the other recruits could fathom, Thorn plowed the row as the big ship streaked forward, its path clear save for residual grit.

“Streya,” he said, his voice a distant echo in his head. “Nav update.”

“Captain. Ten seconds to contact with the meteors.” Streya’s fingers anxiously danced over her console.

Rodie reached for his own controls to kill their velocity and then drew back, flinching at Thorn’s command.

“No,” Thorn cracked. “Steady on, Rodie. Steady on. It’s okay. I have them.”

“Three seconds, Captain.” Streya’s voice wavered, but she kept on. “Two. One. Contact.”

Thorn gasped as he released the meteors, invisible tendrils of his power vanishing out in the black. The battleship streaked through the clearing, bolting out into clear space in less than a second.

They weren’t entirely clear.

As a ripple of excitement passed through the crew, the simulation revealed just how dangerous space could be. A lone rock clanged into the battleship’s hull, raking through two compartments and shearing an entire suite of navigation tech from the port side. Instantly, the ship began to roll, stars whirling by in a smear of confused light.

Thorn hissed in defiance at the instant disaster, pulling hard at his power to recapture control over the wildly spinning ship.

Nothing. He wasn’t tapped—he was on pause, if only for a few seconds, but it was long enough to lose the ship.

“Rodie!” he shouted over the chaos. “Disengage light speed!”

Alarms screeched through the cabin, and the ship spoke calmly over him. “Code Yellow. Damage to the secondary fuel core. Code Yellow. Damage to the secondary fuel core.”

“Can’t access the control panel, sir!” Rodie struggled against the force holding him to the wall. He was pinned, his face pale from the vicious effects of their spin.

“Cast, Lieutenant! Direct the energy precisely!” He saw Rodie’s eyes go wide at the realization that it would be magic, not engineering, that might save them.

Rodie closed his eyes, jaw working nervously. He pulled on his own energy stores and sent a tremor through the control panel, effectively disengaging light speed with the short circuit of the screen. The ship began to slow, then the emergency Vernier rockets kicked in, burning their chemical fuel in seconds as they bled off velocity through fiery muscle.

The stars, too, slowed. Then they stopped, and a tomblike stillness fell on the bridge—over all of them, except for Streya, who coughed twice, her eyes bright with sick relief.

“Streya, location.” Thorn was getting a handle on the situation, but a gnawing suspicion told him he’d just lost the team any bonus points for effective defense.

Streya dragged herself to the navigation controls and analyzed the data for a couple of seconds. “We’ve spun off course by about three quadrants. We’ve got Nyctus setting up formation at Varroc 2.”

“Silence those alarms and secure the ship,” Thorn said. He addressed Val, who held a hand over her stomach, still in the throes of motion sickness. She didn’t look happy—but then, Val wasn’t made to be happy. She was made to fight.

“Ideas, Lieutenant?” Thorn asked.

“Yeah.” She grimaced. “Kill the engines two minutes ago.”

Thorn leaned in, his voice low. “Sir. For the moment, you’ll use the proper term. Just because you’re about to spill your guts is no reason to act like an amateur.”

She looked down, jaw tight. He was right and she knew it, so all she did was shake her head. “No, sir. I’m effectively out of ideas.”

The clock was ticking, and Thorn stroked his chin, thinking. “Lieutenant, how are your reserves?”

“Of magic? Ah—sir?” Val asked.

“Exactly. Are you capable of casting?”

“Sir, I am,” Val answered, her expression neutral. She might even be curious, if she wasn’t trying not to puke.

“Then report to the engine bay. Cast what energy you may have into the secondary fuel core, and spare no amount of your power. All your energy, down to the last, Lieutenant.”

Val stood and sketched a salute. “Aye, Captain.” She hustled from the command bay, face thoughtful.

“Drigo.” Thorn spoke through his comm. “Stand by. Weapons ready. And that means us, too.”

“Aye. Weapons ready, and…so are we. Sir.” Drigo rolled his head and flexed both arms—real and synthetic. He was ready, and judging by his expression, he was buying what Thorn was selling.

“Streya.” Thorn stepped to the nav displays and pointed to a position behind Varroc’s moon. “Recalculate the course for a direct trajectory to this location. A quiet little place, out of the way, don’t you think?

“Sir, yes sir.” Streya dashed her fingers across the controls while murmuring a stream of data to Rodie, who typed even as he was listening.

Rodie spun his chair when Streya finished speaking. “Course loaded, sir.

“Fast. Good work,” Thorn said.

“You pay me to be fast, sir, not just witty,” Rodie said.

“I’ll issue a bonus for that one. Who’s next?” Thorn asked, smiling.

Val raced back into the command bay. “Secondary fuel core is reenergized, Captain.”

“You’re even faster. Make that two bonuses. Initiate sequence, Rodie. Let’s go. We’ve got a planet to save from the big guns. Or rocks.” Thorn held tightly to the override control this time. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. The battleship hurtled away, turning hard into an orbit that seemed to brush the moon. As they dug deeper into the gravity well, rear scans lit up in an array of colors.

The Nyctus weren’t closing on the planet. They were there.

“All stop,” Thorn said, touching Rodie on the arm. “I want to—”

The screens flared into light so brilliant it had a weight. Then the light faded, leaving—nothing.

No planet. No moon. No radar shadow to hide in. Nothing but debris, and even that was little more than glowing dust. A whole world—and moon—dust. Like in the beginning.

“The Nyctus can’t build,” Thorn spat. “Only destroy.”

The walls flickered. The stars vanished.

Hiroshi’s voice came over the comms devices in their ears. “Mission failure. Report to the training field.”

Drigo patted Thorn on the back, despite their abrupt failure.

“It was a good attempt, Cap.” He clung to their ranks from a moment ago without a thought. “I’m just sad I didn’t get to send any Nyctus to hard vac.”

“Same. Shit, we had them. This was designed to kill us. To kill the world,” Thorn growled, then he began trudging away toward the waiting officers, who resembled nothing more than a gathering of angry judges. Which they were. After stony silence, it was Ashworth who spoke into the gathering moment. “Follow me, Stellers.”

Thorn followed.

The door to Ashworth’s office closed without a bang, but a click—a sound so mild, but carrying a wealth of meaning.

“Recruit Stellers,” Ashworth said. “Reflect on your decisions this afternoon in the simulation practice. Carefully, I might add.”

Narvez, who was in the corner, merely stared at Thorn, saying nothing.

“Sir.” Thorn stood to attention, gathering his thoughts. “I…I used my power to clear a meteor field, in order to gain speed. To gain time. I failed. I was able to control all of the rocks except for one—I appreciate the sim reflecting that attempt on my part but don’t know how you did it. However, the one rogue asteroid struck us and sent us into a spin. I have no one to blame but myself.”

Ashworth smiled with a knowing air. “And how did that decision serve your purpose?”

“Not well, sir, if that’s what you’re asking,” Thorn said.

“It did not serve well, indeed. An understatement of rare quality. I saw the effects of your spin—brought on by your decision to ignore the one person on the bridge who could navigate a ship. Interesting command choice. Naturally, when I say interesting, I mean stupid, or perhaps even homicidal.” The First Lieutenant touched his desk, fingers splayed like a spider. “And what was the outcome of your…executive decision?”

Thorn kept his eyes level despite heat rising in his face. “The civilian planet of Varroc 2 was lost to the Nyctus.”

“And the enemy fleet?”

“The attacking fleet escaped, sir.”

“Without a single shot of engagement, I understand.” Ashworth clasped his hands behind his back and pressed his chest forward. “Is this correct?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct.”

“A team of Starcasters in the Orbital Navy is deliberately chosen with an array of expertise, Stellers.” Ashworth’s deliberation seemed genuine. “As an officer in training, it would be wise of you to place trust in the advice of your flight squad. Executive decisions should be reserved for reactive emergencies, not proactive battle plans.”

Thorn gave a quick nod. “Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant Narvez.” Ashworth sat behind his desk, signaling that the meeting was over. “Explain the concept of cause and effect for Stellers, if you please. I find your creativity to be—um--”

“Fitting, sir?” Narvez offered.

Ashworth knocked his knuckle against the desk, smiling. “That’s the term. Fitting. You truly are accurate.”

Narvez smiled, lifting her nose as she savored the moment. “Stellers, you’re about to become an expert in Hygienic Engineering, and you’ve only got a week to master it—or you’ll repeat the education process. I say this without any undue joy, because if I’d listened to my crew, I wouldn’t be here coddling self-destructive idiots like you. In any field, let alone Hygienic Engineering.”

Thorn couldn’t hold back the question. “Hygienic Engineering, ma’am?”

Narvez smiled, and it was the look of a serpent. “You’re going to clean the shitters, and you’re going to make them shine like the stars themselves.”

12

The simulations of the following weeks went decisively better than their first run. Thorn relied on his team, and in turn they began to rely on him. Time was the one thing they didn’t have, because the Nyctus continued their advance, chewing at distant systems with weapons that left few survivors and even fewer answers.

He eyed himself in the mirror as he buttoned up his dress blues. The brass buttons shined in the florescent light of the communal bathroom, and Thorn realized he was no longer a kid. Who he’d been—under the covers of his bed, feeling adrift—was as distant as the war’s front. His body had changed, along with his mind. His will.

But most of all, his core ability had become something wholly different.

Thorn was a Starcaster. Ten years earlier—hell, five, if he was right—the term hadn’t existed. The war was now in its third decade, with the last five years being little more than a bloodbath as humanity watched the sphere of worlds shrink with each massive Nyctus push. He was a Starcaster, and an officer, and even more importantly, a human. And his training was nearing the end.

Wandering to the barracks for the last time, Thorn knew that of all the things in that building, only one mattered, and it was nestled in his pocket. The talisman didn’t leave him. Clothes were temporary, as were weapons, because he was the weapon, aided by the intense aura of magic imbued in the charred pages of a childhood book. It was hard to recall the feelings he had upon arrival at the base; all he was able to muster was a faint remembrance.

Everything was different. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, even if it meant leaving the husk of his earlier life behind without a backward glance. That, he knew, was something he could do.

Val and Streya smashed through the door into the bunk, an air of breathless relief around them.

“We made it,” Thorn said simply.

Streya smiled. Val nodded, slowly, processing the reality of their moment.

“Now, the real work,” Val said, and there was an echo of something bitter in his words. They understand reality, and the math was not on their side. They would die. All of them might die inside a week if the Nyctus continued to target Starcasters with ruthless efficiency.

That silenced them as a group, so their walk to graduation was more like the march of the damned. There was no triumph, not at first, then Schrader gave a small nod as the former recruits began to line up in the main hall. There was room to spare around them.

“Thirty-nine,” Schrader said, his voice rattling off the walls. “We began with…far more than that.” He paused. “There’s no time for melancholy memory. There is only here and now. And the war. I say this with complete confidence—you’re ready.”

Schrader began pacing, marking their faces as he passed by. No one spoke. The air hummed with the unknown.

“I became a soldier before we knew magic existed, even though it was living inside me. There were no words for what I was, only the knowledge that I was real. My power was real, and so is yours. We know…we know much more now, but we also understand the Nyctus to some extent. Our magic and theirs are not alike. Let me repeat—your power is different from theirs. They are vicious, and aggressive, and even relentless, but I believe, as your commander, that our abilities are superior. This is where you take a stand. From this moment, you will be officers. I’m going to tell you an ugly secret—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is your will. It must coalesce into something harder than the heart of a star. And just as hot. You will be alone, at the bow of a massive ship being hurled into the teeth of an enemy that has known nothing but victory. You’ll be alone in your witchport, with the black stretching before you, and that’s when it will happen.”

“What, sir?” Thorn heard himself ask.

Schrader turned to regard him, his eyes serious but not angry. “Fear. You’ll fear the enemy. And failure. And for some of you, your own power.” Schrader held out his hand, and Ashworth placed the first Starcaster insignia in his palm. As he spoke, Schrader pinned the bronze symbol on one new officer after another—Val, looking serious, Streya and Rodie relieved. Then the rest, until only Drigo and Thorn remained.

“Don’t lose control of yourself. Ever. This war isn’t personal, despite how you might feel,” Schrader said to Drigo, who looked thoughtful but nodded in thanks. The salute he offered Schrader was crisp, and then it was Thorn’s turn.

He pinned the bronze rocket-and-stars on Thorn and then took a small step back, appraising him. “I tell you the opposite, Stellers.”

“Sir?” Thorn asked, confused.

“Hold nothing back. Burn them from the black, and don’t ever limit yourself. I know what you can do. We all know. Now, the Nyctus have to understand that our species has…certain advantages…that they don’t,” Schrader said.

“I—yes sir?” Thorn tried not to make it a question, but it was.

Ashworth chimed in. “You scare the shit out of the Nyctus, but they don’t know it yet. They’re single-school ’casters. Earthers, mostly, throwing rocks and being—”

“Inelegant,” Schrader cut in. “Your power is what they fear most, because it’s something they can never have. They hoped to wipe us out with the KEW barrages, and they came damned close. They failed. Now, they’re grinding us to dust, but that ends now. Which is why the next bit of news is, I’m sure, most welcome. Lieutenant, if you please?”

Ashworth addressed everyone with a genuine smile. “Most of you will have two days to raise hell in the casinos at Tuscolum, and it’s our unofficial position that you not wear anything identifying you as a Starcaster.”

“How’re we gonna get laid then, sir?” Rodie said, earning a round of laughter.

“For you, Rodie, I’d start with a bag over your head,” Ashworth said, and the room erupted. Ashworth patted the air for silence and went on. “I’m sure some of you want to get laid. But I bet all of you would like to screw the casino for a few thousand creds at the card tables. Am I correct?”

More cheers erupted, and even Rodie brayed with laughter.

“Remember, be subtle, be sly, but shake those bastards down with our blessings. Fight well, and dismissed,” Schrader said, thronged with new officers as he shook hands and clapped shoulders.

They were, for a moment, happy, and that was good enough. Thorn was swept away in the tide of relief, and then he was outside, looking up at the sky as it purpled to night. A ship blazed away to the north, its orbit heading out of system, and then the sky was calm again.

Kira was waiting.

“Hey. Dinner?” Thorn asked. There was a spread laid out before the jump planes began taking everyone into orbit.

“Got something better,” she said, holding out a silver flask. It looked impossibly old.

“Thirty-year-old whiskey in a two hundred-year-old flask. The last taste of home before we—” Kira said, then stopped. “Specialist Stellers. A salute to you.” She tipped the flask, drank, then handed it to him.

“Sounds weird. Why not lieutenant or, I don’t know, something a little less—”

“Special?” Kira asked, laughing. “Drink up. My plane leaves soon.”

He sipped and then smiled. “Peat. And meadows. I miss that,” Thorn said.

“Then make sure you come back to it,” Kira said.

“I’ll do my best. Why do I feel like there’s more?”

She took out an envelope and opened it to reveal orders. “Because there is. I’m going active.”

“Kira. You’re not a ’caster. Not yet. Where are—“

She smiled, eyes scanning the page. “Captain. Of the Pleiades. I’m getting a ship.” Her face had the bittersweet cast of someone who’d just gotten bad news of the kind you can’t avoid.

“Captain? I mean, you’re capable as hell, but…a ship? Isn’t the Pleiades a defensive frigate? You’ll be knee deep in the shit, Kira. You’re safe here, you can help win by—”

“Safe? You’re shitting me, right? Safe? Thorn, Code Nebula isn’t just a target. It’s the target, and no, I’m not safe within ten lights of this rock. At least on my own bridge I’ll be mobile, and I can fight back. Here, we’re just watching the skies, wondering when the rocks are going to fall.”

“Again,” Thorn said.

“Again.”

He nodded and then faced her, mere inches away. “You’re going to be a true leader, Kira. You led me out of that hellhole, and you’ll do it again. I’m sorry I didn’t just cheer.”

“It’s okay. I’m a bit stunned myself. We’re bleeding officers, so it’s not as if they have a lot of choice. I’ll—like you said, I’ll do my best.”

Thorn put his arms around her, and she stiffened, then went soft. “Thank you. For everything. I’ll see you out there.”

“Same. Meet me in the black, over the debris of a Nyctus fleet. We’ll be even then.”

“Deal.”

* * *

The jump plane from what had become more of a home to him than any other since Cotsworlds was a bumpy one. The upper-atmo chop was rough, leaving his teeth rattling after the first short hop. It took two additional jump planes before he docked for the last portion of his journey to Tuscolum, where he transferred to a grand, lumbering starship of enormous proportions. By then, Thorn hadn’t slept—not really—in thirty-six hours, and his eyes felt like sandpits. He staggered onto the massive ship, bag over his shoulder and looking for a bed.

“Specialist Stellers?”

Thorn turned to find the speaker. It was a small, fastidious woman near his age, her uniform sporting an offensively yellow badge that read ASK ME in bold letters. Underneath her apparent job description was the name L. Vigorito.

“Um. Yes?” Thorn said, slow to respond. He was nearly swaying. Compared to training, this was a new kind of challenge.

“I’m your liaison. I know you’re beat. Follow me to a private lift,” she said, and Thorn was convinced those were some of the sweetest words he’d ever heard. In seconds, they were in a small elevator, moving at an alarming speed. It stopped without a sound, and the doors opened to reveal a passage that was both carpeted and lit in tastefully dim globes.

“Huh. This is new,” Thorn said.

“If you mean comfortable, then good. It’s meant to be. You’re just here,” she said, opening a door to reveal a cabin that was five times the size of his bunk space on Code Nebula. “I’m Laris. Our comm system will find me if you need anything, but I’ve ordered a Quiet Room for the next six hours. After that, move about the ship as you’d like. Do you need anything?”

“I—no. Thank you, Laris. I hadn’t really—”

“Expected this?” Her smile dimmed. “We know where you’re going, sir.”

“Sir?” Thorn asked her, his eyes measuring the young woman again.

She paused at the door. “Not all of us are in uniform, Specialist. Sometimes, we travel quietly in case there are…problems delivering our assets to the front.” Her smile was bright but tinged with iron. “Rest well. Then eat. They’ll feed you if you stand still for more than a minute.”

Thorn grinned as he began slumping to his bed. “Copy that.” His eyes closed, and for once there were no dreams. There was nothing waiting for him but sleep.

* * *

The starship was full of civilians, and Thorn felt out of place. He hadn’t even seen a civilian in months. Strolling among them, he felt self-conscious at first but then understood that his uniform meant something to all of them. He was a symbol of hope. Among the people he swore to defend, his posture was wrong, his words were crisp, and his steps too fast, but they looked at him like he was doing everything right, and in an hour of exploration, he relaxed. He wandered. He ate—everything, at any time—and even managed to fall asleep in a chair alongside the incomprehensible luxury of an enormous swimming pool.

Then, he did the only logical thing a soldier considers when he’s not on duty. He slept more.

A soft chime woke him, and for a moment he felt the kind of dislocation that only drool-inducing sleep can bring.

“Yes?” He sat up, his head fuzzed from what felt like a week of sleep.

“Arrival, Specialist. Fifteen minutes to high orbit and you can go downworld,” Laris said over a hidden speaker.

“Thank you. Can I—”

“Open your door, please.”

Thorn fought the blanket and took halting steps to the door, only to see it open without his touch. Laris stood there with a rolling tray of every known food substance in the civilized galaxy. “Hungry?”

“Holy—yes. How’d you know?”

She rolled the tray in, holding up one hand and counting off points. “Subject is male. Subject is young…sort of, and subject just got done with weeks of hard training. Therefore, subject will be hollow, and only food can help.” She quirked a brow at him, then added, “Along with other things, of course.”

Thorn was already stuffing a sausage roll in his mouth, but he paused at that. “Laris, I believe you’re being lewd. Not that I mind. Training was…singular in its purpose.”

She laughed, revealing excellent white teeth. “When you get to the casinos, you’re doubtless going to skin their tables for about ten or twenty thousand creds in the first hour. Don’t.”

“Don’t?” he mumbled around a sweet roll.

“The pit bosses will pick you off like snipers. Go slow, don’t drink too much. I recommend one water to every drink, then two waters per drink after midnight. Trust me, you won’t sleep. Then, when you’re up big, they’ll send in the talent to cool you down.”

Thorn took a long pull of coffee and rubbed at his neck. “I take it this talent has long legs and red hair?”

“What is it with men and redheads?” She blew a breath at her own dark locks, then smiled. “Regardless, yes. Long legs. Smiling, laughing—you’ll be so funny, every joke will hit—and then you’ll be at a different table and losing. Don’t do it.”

“You care if I win?”

“No. I care if you draw the attention of the casino staff, which can lead to problems, which could possibly—”

“Make me late to the war. Got it. I’ll behave,” Thorn said.

Laris laughed. “I doubt it. But welcome to Tuscolum. Do watch your head as you disembark, won’t you?”

“Aye,” Thorn said, and after a shower and shave, he found himself descending to the planet on a transport crowded with babbling tourists and the occasional pocket of dour traders. Laris had seen him off with a delicate touch. He knew for certain that she was far more than regular Navy. She was an intel agent of some stripe, and she was damned good at her job.

Tuscolum’s surface was covered from sea to sea with towering skyscrapers and bustling flight paths; the calamitous dance of aircraft made Thorn nervous as his transport wove deftly through the chaos. Thorn had never seen anything like it. Cotsworlds was a rural planet, most of its inhabitants surviving as ranch owners and farm hands. The Children’s Refugee Collective Home had been situated on the outskirts of a major city, but Thorn was allowed into the city only for work, and even then he remained close to the Home. Murgon 4 was a mud-ball. Nobody wanted to live there, let alone develop it into a major trade post.

“Well, this is new,” he said as the cityscape rose into sight. Every single direction was a sprawl of lights and motion, smeared to a silvery gleam by their descent.

The lower he descended into the City, the more difficult it became to view the billboards of the upper levels. Of course the ON hadn’t splurged to set him up in a nicer hotel. He checked into his room and felt the need to inspect the area for unwanted bunkmates. The facility might not have been top shelf, but it appeared clean enough, and with a whispered command the single window went dim, casting him into a world of permanent midnight. He slid into the bed and wasted nine more hours of leave doing nothing more complicated than snoring.

Waking, he felt a frisson of uncertainty. Tuscolum was outside his door. He was no longer on Murgon-4, and his status as a mudhumping laborer was long gone. Dressing in the only good clothes he owned other than a uniform, he stepped out into the city, stomach simmering with nervous energy.

“Time to skin the house,” he said, then laughed. Thorn was the least criminally minded person he knew. If he made it through a full hand of cards without sweating, he’d call it a win and go for an actual steak.

He didn’t walk far. In fact, he didn’t walk at all. A moving sidewalk carried him up a small incline before ending at massive doors leading to a casino so gaudy, it fairly throbbed with neon light.

“This’ll do.” Thorn went inside, schooling his features into a mix of wide-eyed rube and hopeful idiot. A spot opened at a table playing sevens, so he sidled up, waved his card over the reader, and cashed in for almost all the money he had to his name.

The dealer was friendly. The table was packed—all nine chairs taken, and more money on each card than Thorn had ever seen in one place.

Thorn let the cards fall.

Then, he let his power roam, sensing each hope being broken as cards went high or low, cracking any chance of a win in one, then three, and then all of the players except him, the dealer, and a woman wearing nothing more than streamers and heels. She winked as he tapped for his last card, his smile impossible to contain.

Here comes the jack.

The dealer smiled broadly, confident—the woman frowned, as Thorn saw an image from her mind. Ah. There’s where the last king went.

Thorn turned his cards and watched the dealer’s face collapse. “Close.”

“Winner to the gentleman,” the dealer said, his smile tight. Thorn watched him sweep the digital chips, a small screen glowing with the winning haul. Nearly four thousand credits on one hand.

Shit. Too big. “Cashing, please. A hundred for you,” Thorn said, rising. A sweating man with three chins quickly took his chair, thick hands twitching with nervous energy. Or fear.

The dealer gave a polite nod, mollified, then watched as Thorn left at a sedate walk, parting the crowd to find another game. The woman who’d lost watched him go, smiled, then pulled out her card and ordered more wine. I’ll find him later, she thought.

Flattered, but no need, Thorn said, watching her twitch with shock over his shoulder.

She covered her mouth, laughing, then threw a conspiratorial wink his way. Sometimes, near misses were as good as successful hunts.

Thorn found another table offering Threedeck, a poker variant he’d seen on Murgon-4. This time, he paid attention to the bets, knowing that a huge win might bring attention. He threw two hands, won one, and then let the dealer think he was bust on the fourth. When the bets were down, he did the math and knew it was a heavy pot, but he vowed it would be his last hand.

“Winner, to the gentleman. I believe that’s three big wins tonight.” The dealer—a tall, slender woman named Bann—made a subtle motion to her left. Time to get him off my table. Hope they send Vee, Bann thought. An image of Vee flashed through her mind—long dark hair, tall, pale. A witchy vibe that would be impossible to resist among the glittering neon and pulsing noise.

Take that, Laris. Not a redhead, Thorn mused, then stood, repeated his tip to the dealer, and took his winnings in a transfer to his card. The small chirp of transfer made him grin, and he walked away from the table before Vee could descend on him to defend the casino profits.

Although, if he was honest, it wasn’t a bad way to lose a hot streak.

He went to a restaurant, sat by himself, and ordered an actual steak. Laris had been right—it was the reward he needed, and counting his illicit winnings was even better when accompanied with a piece of meat that cost a month’s pay. When he fell into bed some hours later, worn from the city and noise and lights, he saw a blinking icon on the flatscreen.

Kira.

He touched the screen, and her face came to life. She was smiling, like she could really see him.

“This is expensive, so I don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “I bribed a comms officer to send this before we go pluslight, so I’ll just get to it.” She drew in a breath, and her face took on a purposeful glow. “Don’t die in this war, Thorn. Don’t. Die. I won’t either, because I…I don’t want that to be the end. Of everything, I guess, but of knowing you. Find me, or I’ll find you. Clear the skies of Nyctus, and I’ll be waiting.” She looked away as someone uttered something in urgent tones. “Drive is powering up. Gotta go. Stay alive and then find me, Thorn. You’re all I have of my past.”

13

Most ships had one Starcaster, if any. They were largely autonomous for long stretches of time—a sort of limbo until the fleets clashed and planetary defenses filled a system with lethal ordnance.

That meant when Thorn arrived on the battleship ON Apollo, he did so alone, and without any special recognition. If anything, he was roundly ignored until he was finally greeted by a harried Petty Officer with two different colored eyes and an abundance of nervous energy. He offered his name as Slaughterbach, then turned and nearly bolted down the passage.

“Follow me, sir, and welcome aboard. Captain wants you on the bridge after you stow your gear.”

They paced through the ship like they were being chased, Slaughterbach keeping a running commentary about the ship, the crew, the Nyctus, and anything else that happened to occur to him. After an exhausting trip, he stopped in front of a gray door that narrowed at the top.

“Where are we?” Thorn asked.

“Bow, sir. Close to your, uh—close to where you do your thing, that is. See the blue line on the wall? Follow it to the bridge. I gotta get back.” Slaughterbach was gone in a second, leaving Thorn to wonder just what the hell had happened.

The quarters were small but tidy, with a bunk, chair, desk, and—to Thorn’s surprise—private head. The shower was small enough to cause claustrophobia, but it was his, and that was an unexpected bonus. He dropped his bags, squared himself away in the small mirror, and stepped out to go meet his Captain.

To his surprise, Slaughterbach was waiting.

“Change of plans, sir. You gotta eat first. Cap’s kind of a stickler—you’ll understand, soon enough—are you hungry? It’s breakfast time. Not sure where you came from?”

“I could eat,” Thorn said, following Slaughterbach.

“Good, sir. Let Cap see you do it. He thinks hungry sailors can’t fight. He’s right, you know. Here we are.”

Thorn could smell chow before he saw the double doors, which were open to let a stream of people in and out in two orderly lines. Most of the crew had eaten, so a light crew sat at tables, eating and drinking coffee. Low, friendly conversations stopped when Thorn came in, but the sound buzzed back to life as he took a tray and began filling it. There were eggs and bacon and biscuits and even real milk, which made Thorn blink in case he was dreaming—along with every other kind of food he’d never had as a kid.

So far, so good.

When it was suitably covered with food, he picked a seat, Slaughterbach in tow, but the young Petty Officer made another apology and bolted away.

Thorn began to eat, looking around in curious appraisal. Then Captain Samuels walked in, speaking easily to the crew as he filled his own tray and sat down, coffee cup balanced in one meaty hand.

Thorn stood. It was time to meet his future.

“Captain?” Thorn approached and saluted uncertainly. “Stellers. I just arrived, sir.”

The captain’s eyes scanned him, but not in an unfriendly way. “You’re the Starcaster, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Samuels waved at the food, then motioned for Thorn to grab his tray and join him. When Thorn settled in, Samuels pointed to their trays. “An army, it was said, moved on its stomach. I believe that is only partially true.”

“Sir?”

“We travel in starships. We fight with our minds and bodies. If we don’t eat, we don’t fight. It’s that simple. The myth that tough soldiers come from hard conditions is just that—a myth. So, we eat. We train. And we do all of these things without fail, because we get exactly one opportunity to engage and defeat the Nyctus, on average.”

“Sir, you mean…most ships don’t survive engagement?” Thorn asked, lowering his fork.

Samuels shook his wide head, the scalp covered with short black stubble. His eyes were impenetrable black, but he had a presence that was more positive than punishing. “Some ships don’t even make it through first contact. The Nyctus aren’t just sledgehammers. They’re clever. We can discuss that more later. For now, eat, then come to the bridge and see me. Your witchport is open and ready to use, though I pray to the stars that we don’t need you just yet. We’re still getting used to the idea that something other than a missile can kill the enemy.” He beetled his brows, leaning forward. “You can kill the enemy, can’t you?”

Thorn considered his words carefully. “In the right situation, I can kill them all.”

Samuels sat quietly for a moment, chewing. “Houdini.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

Samuels put his own fork down and folded his hands. “The Houdini. It was a near-Earth frigate that got off the luckiest shot in naval history. One missile, three kills. That’s the last time an ON ship has punched above her weight, and it was only because a missile tech sent a fast-burner through the weakest point on a Nyctus dreadnought—and out the other side, clipping two more in the command modules and creating the biggest implosion you’ll ever see. That’s how rare it is for us to clear a battlespace, so when you say all of them, you have my attention.” He resumed eating, then finished quickly while Thorn chewed, waiting for something else to answer.

Nothing came up, because Samuels cleared his plate, stood, and told Thorn, “Come to the bridge. Let’s talk about luck.”

Then he was gone, and the clatter of a mess rang in Thorn’s ears as he wondered how long he would live on a ship that needed luck more than it needed magic. He was woolgathering when he became aware of more company.

A petite woman with dark skin and hair so black it may have been blue sat herself across from him at the otherwise empty table, settling easily as if she already knew him.

She leaned forward on her elbows, grinning. “You’re new.”

Thorn wiped his face and extended a hand. “Stellers, Specialist, Starcaster division.”

The woman tilted her head. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“I suppose not. Thorn Stellers, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Mol Wyant, same.” Her grin faded, but the tilt remained to her head. It gave her an avian aura.

“Well, Mol, what’s your MOS?” Thorn turned his coffee cup around, idly.

“Thirteen Ten ON. I’m a pilot.”

“How long have you been flying under Captain Samuel?” He sipped the coffee, wincing. It was body temp—an affront to all who love caffeine.

“I’ve had the privilege of calling Samuel my Captain for three years.” Mol gave a sharp nod, as if driving it home that the privilege was real.

“Sounds like he’s a good Captain with a good crew.” Thorn stood then went to return his tray to the waste conveyor, where it clanked away into a hidden disposal.

“Great.” She touched his shoulder for emphasis. “The word you’re looking for is great. Welcome to the team, Stellers.” Her eyes searched him, perhaps looking for rank, then she turned away with a polite nod.

“Thanks,” he told her, earning a wave as she vanished into the passage.

Thorn smoothed the wrinkles from his uniform and reported to the command deck. Captain Samuel stood at the helm, his broad shoulders hunching forward over the controls as if the weight of the world sat upon them.

“Captain Samuel?”

“Ah, Specialist.” The captain addressed him without turning. Around them, the bridge was a quiet buzz of orderly work, screens and consoles casting light of many colors across the dark walls. At various stations, staff looked down, or up, or into nothingness, their virtual gear held in place by small headbands.

“Yes, sir.” Thorn cleared his throat. “Reporting for duty, or just reporting. I’m unsure at this point.”

The captain looked up at him with a raised brow. “It’s duty, make no mistake. You’re a lot more gifted than our first ’caster, so I have some questions.”

“First, sir? You had another Starcaster?”

“We did. Briefly. Didn’t take. You’re different, though—all of you are, compared to the first few years. Then, we didn’t know what we needed out here, against the Nyctus. Thought we could turn rocks and throw them back.” He sighed, and it was a long sound of frustration. “The Nyctus are a heluva lot more devious than that, even if brute force is their preferred technique. Let me show you something.”

“Yes, sir.” Thorn stood quietly, watching the captain’s fingers dance over a virtual keyset. Samuels waved him forward to look at the images that were now hovering on a screen too small for anyone to see except them.

Thorn moved to the control panel and saw that the captain had been reviewing enemy fleet locations. Samuels swiped the flat panel forward to project a 3D hologram of the three separate maps, their borders twined together across distance and the galactic plane.

Samuel pointed to the map farthest to the left. “This was documented two months ago.” His finger moved to the right, indicating the static image in the middle. “Three weeks ago.” He zoomed in on the live radar furthest to the right. “And this is what we’re seeing now.”

Thorn’s heart sank. The alien battle fleet in the third live feed had increased from a couple of scout vehicles two months ago—to three immense carriers, battleships, more than twenty smaller craft, and at least five bulky shield ships, their distinct outline needed due to the cargo they carried. Each of the shield craft would be packed with defensive armor of varying types. As he watched, the vehicles remained chillingly inert. He could have taken the image to be a still had he not seen the jump planes zipping between the two planets.

The fleet still sat a good distance from the twin planets, so Thorn didn’t think that an attack was imminent. However, the sudden change in convoy structure told him that an attack wasn’t just forming up, it was close to launching. He’d seen enough sat recordings of battlefields where the ON had been scoured to dust, and this was no different. Someone was about to get hit. Hard.

“Where is this, sir?” Thorn asked. It was apparent these planets were well populated, given the amount of system traffic.

“Too far for response by the Apollo.” The captain shook his head. “But within our jurisdiction. We’ll have to deploy the closest units capable of withstanding a battle of this magnitude.”

Thorn resisted the urge to reach out and enlarge the screen. “And what units are those, sir?”

“That’s not the largest of my concerns, Stellers.” The captain nodded toward the enemy fleet as he spoke. “They’re not in battle formation. They’re just hanging there. Waiting.”

“What do you mean it’s not a concern? Can we—rather, can I have an effect on this fight, sir?”

The captain turned to face him, leaning back against his chair. “I didn’t say it’s not a concern, Stellers.” He gave Thorn a neutral look. “I said it’s not the largest of my concerns.”

“What is the largest of your concerns, sir?” Thorn was bewildered that the captain was so calm. The people on these planets were going to die if they didn’t play defense with the fleet—and soon.

The captain pressed a button on the panel behind him without turning to look at the changes it caused. He crossed his arms as the two stagnant images blipped into nonexistence, and twelve new live feeds populated in a semi-circle across the front of the helm. Each feed showed the same presence, alarmingly still, in twelve new locations. Each solar system was populated with active civilizations.

Thorn could say nothing. The enemy wasn’t attacking a system. They were attacking across a front.

“This, Stellers.” The captain’s jaw rippled in frustration. “This is the largest of my concerns.”

Thorn reacted at the cellular level, every old hurt in his life flaring into the here and now. “Are these all within our jurisdiction, sir?”

“Yes, they are.” Captain Samuel’s eyes narrowed, but he let the newcomer run with his thoughts, for the moment.

“Have there been reports of similar activity in other jurisdictions, sir?”

“Short answer—no.” The captain turned to survey the holographic monitors once more, saying nothing, cupping his chin in one hand.

“That’s what they’re waiting for, then,” Thorn said. “We can’t—I mean, I can’t pry open a Nyctus mind at this distance, and I’m not sure I’d want to, but I think we’re looking at something different.”

“Clarify, Stellers.”

“They’re expecting us to react to the immense presence in this jurisdiction by calling for aid from others. It’s the logical reaction.” Thorn tapped on each of the feeds, zooming in and inspecting the fleets before moving on to the next. “Are there any outliers, sir?”

“Outliers how?”

“Nyctus ships within the jurisdiction that are not positioned for imminent attack?” Thorn posed the statement as a question, though he had more than a suspicion. The captain sensed it as well. “The enemy doesn’t just park. At least, not that we saw in training materials. I yield to your experience here, it’s just that—

Samuels leaned over the control panel, holding up a hand. “Here.” He cleared the live feeds and enlarged an image of fifteen small attack ships with one carrier sitting in deep space, their formation preparing for lightspeed.

Thorn asked, “That trajectory. Can you plot it?” He looked around for the nav officer.

Slaughterbach sat at the nav chair, his fingers nearly a blur. He imported the static image of the outlying fleet and demarcated the sharp angles of the Nyctus ships, then added an overlay based on any anomalies between the two points.

The air in the command deck felt sticky with angst. The crew fought the urge to gather around Slaughterbach as the system calculated the outcome. If there was a clock in the room, Thorn would have heard it ticking, even though the data compiled in the span of two breaths.

The navigation screen flashed green around the edges, and a simulation displayed the calculated course in exponential speed. The end of the route was a small, mottled brown and green planet directly in the path of the fleet’s trajectory.

Thorn studied the planet and those surrounding it. “Enlarge that image, sir?”

“Sleuth,” Samuels said. The seated nav officer turned his bi-colored eyes up toward him with an expectant glance. “Throw it on the big wall.”

“Sleuth, sir?” Thorn asked softly.

“A lot shorter than Slaughterbach, and the kid has a nose for the Nyctus,” Samuels said, lips curled slightly.

For the second time that morning, Thorn’s gut clenched.

“Corporal, can you tell me what I’m looking at?”

Sleuth displayed the planetary details with a flick of his wrist.

No. Thorn read the words. It can’t be.

Code Nebula.

His blood roared, feet moving of their own accord to the comms, where he tapped an open channel to find Kira—somehow, some way, he had to tell her—

They’re going to attack Code Nebula.

“Stellers!” He heard Captain Samuel’s command on the third attempt. “What are you doing?”

“That’s my base camp, Captain.” Thorn let his hand drift away, then stared at it. “My—all of my people. The officers and crew I know, or knew. It’s where the Starcasters are made.”

“I know that, Stellers.” Samuel grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down forcefully. “You’re not going to warn them. Do you know why?” The question was generous. Samuel didn’t owe Thorn a thing. Not yet.

Thorn felt his shoulders fall. “Because the Nyctus would know. Sir.”

Samuel gave a slow, deliberate nod. “In about a minute. They’ll punch through our codes, or just brush the edges, and they’re not stupid. They’ll know. And more importantly, they can go early, before we could even get in orbit to defend your base.”

“So what do we do, sir? I know what it takes to make a ’caster. I was there. The classes are small, and—well, I was told that you needed me to have a shot at winning. So if I’m a glorified weapon, that makes Code Nebula an armory that has to be protected.”

“I don’t know what the best answer is…yet.” He took a chair, spun toward Thorn, and leaned forward as the entire bridge watched their exchange in tense silence. “But they’re not going to make the move until they know we’ve mobilized against their façade of infantry units. You sold me on that. It’s a feint, and it’s designed to siphon off our fleet, to get us out of position.”

“Sir, I can reach them. At Code Nebula,” Thorn said into the silence. There were audible snorts of derision, but Samuel quelled them with a look.

“Tell me,” the captain ordered.

Thorn spread his hands out, fingers splayed on his legs. “My telepathic range is—well, we don’t know what it is. But it’s deep, and I don’t get tired. I have a, I guess you’d call it a reserve. I might be able to reach someone on Code Nebula, but only if I’m utterly focused.”

Samuel cut his eyes to the bow. “The witchport is waiting, then. You came here to use your power, and we know the Nyctus are fighting outside our usual methods. Go, and ready yourself. You’ll need a suit for the hard vac in case you lose control of the bubble. There’s one waiting in your quarters. Gear up, get in the ’port, and clear your mind. If you want to save the base, and maybe us—go. Direct order, Stellers. I can’t claim to understand what you do, but I sure as hell know how I’m going to use it.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be ready,” Thorn said, saluting and retreating even as his mind began to fill with the oncoming task. Telepathy was one thing. Telepathy beyond the stars was another.

The captain was true to his word. A battlesuit of dark fabric hung, waiting in his locker. He took his talisman, dressed, and began to leave, turning for the lead part of the ship where only a Starcaster could go. One of his skills wasn’t just magic, but the creation of a wall—invisible, unbreakable, and filling the open witchport so he could be present at the leading edge of his ship as it attacked.

Or defended.

As he opened the door to leave, an icon blinked on his wallscreen. A message.

“Play message,” he said. Instantly, an image fizzed into existence and he saw Val’s square head, a smile ear to ear, and Rodie pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning into the center of the screen.

“Hey, Stellers!” Val waved. “Would you believe I got stuck with this guy for the rest of…oh, I don’t know, eternity?”

Rodie shoved his shoulder into hers and snorted. “I got the goods. She ain’t leaving. She’s hooked on coffee, chocolate, and clean socks. I got her right where I want her.”

Val laughed and shoved Rodie out of the screen. “We just wanted to check in on you and see how you’re doin’?” She looked worried, which was new, but she was also more—real. There was less bluster, and more actual human. It was a good look.

Rodie appeared again, leaning in so his oversized head took up a majority of the screen. “Yeah, man, miss you! Let us know you’re okay.” Rodie leaned in even closer, covering the side of his face with his hand to block Val’s view of his moving lips and whispered, “And tell me about all the babes on Tuscolum. I gotta know if the hype is real!”

Val smacked the skinny man on the shoulder. “We got booted to Vega 7, hardly a hop away from Code Nebula. Rodie’s disappointed he still won’t be using his rank insignia to bring the girls to the bunk any time soon.”

Rodie nodded, his eyebrows arching upward with no disagreement. They both laughed before the recording cut out and Thorn was left to silence once again.

The pieces fell into place, and Thorn left his quarters in a near run. If Val and Rodie were in the Vega system, then they were close enough that Thorn could reach them before the Nyctus could pound Code Nebula into memory. That left the problem of telepathy over enormous distances—it was unlikely to work, and the stakes were too high. Before he could continue his thoughts, Thorn burst onto the deck, black witcharmor rippling under the soft lights.

The commotion in the room stopped. Everybody turned to him expectantly.

“Quite an entrance, Stellers,” Captain Samuel said. “I take it you have news?”

“Two Starcasters are stationed at Vega 7. I trained with them. I can get a warning to them.” He drew a diagram on the holopad in front of him. “But we need to sell the Nyctus on us mobilizing to defend their attacks, without giving away what we know. It’s a fine line, I know, but I can do it, and I don’t need telepathy. At least, not at this range. I’ve got something a little more traditional.”

“Coded message,” the captain said, tilting his head. “Correct?”

“Exactly, sir. I know the Nyctus don’t have a full command of our language, at least not the nuances. They sure as hell won’t get an open code between squaddies who are fresh out of training.”

Captain Samuel looked around the bridge, noting the open faces. Thorn had them listening. “Go on.”

“We mobilize, sir.” Thorn projected his diagram to the center holograph and spun it as he explained. “I’ll send code to my old squad with directives. Specialist Rodie is there. I have no doubts he’ll decode my intention.”

“That part of your plan is clear. Tell me about the mechanics of it.”

“What we’ll tell them is to take a civilian jump plane to Code Nebula.” Thorn zoomed in on the jump plane traffic between planets in the system. “The Nyctus will assume this is a routine recruit plane, dumping a load of newbie ’casters.”

The captain pulled at his chin. “Again, a plausible move. And then?”

“From there, Rodie and Val can discreetly inform Commander Schrader of the attack, and they can plan an evacuation.”

The captain scoffed. “As soon as they evacuate that camp, these thirteen planets will be obliterated.” He gestured to the feeds behind him.

“Not if the evacuation is handled with precision, sir.”

“How precise? Bear in mind, we’re arriving late to the party, or not at all if the Nyctus attack across a broad front. If they do, our presence won’t matter to Code Nebula or the target systems. We’ll be overmatched, and I won’t put my ship in that position.”

Thorn pulled a chair, then sat and began to sketch on the holopad in wide, dynamic strokes. “Captain Leblanc can shade the planet for just long enough that we can get the evacuating ships to a nearby planet—in system. Since we know the Nyctus will be, ahh—”

“Raking her mind for information. Call it what it is, Stellers. The Nyctus can crack any of us, given enough time and effort. That’s why we’re losing this war. One of the reasons, anyway. No info security.”

“They can and they will, sir. I’m counting on it. And Captain Leblanc is incredibly powerful. I’ll ask her to sell the Nyctus a lie—a battleship fleet squadron so powerful that not even the Nyctus planetbusters could take them out. That projection will fry regular scans, too, so the Nyctus will see two ghosts, not just one. They’ll buy it, sir, and we can evacuate while they call for help. Or bug out.”

“And how do you plan to notify Captain Leblanc of this?”

“Easy.” Thorn leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “She’s been inside my head. Now I just need to get into hers.”

“And what about the defensive action here, in this jurisdiction?” Captain Samuel remained unsatisfied about that small detail, though his face betrayed a plan. He was a seasoned officer who’d just been given a weapon he’d never fired before. It was time to take Thorn out for a spin.

“Well, we mobilize, sir.”

Captain Samuel stared at him. “How, and from where?”

Thorn saw the dilemma, but he was so used to thinking in situational terms, he’d limited his own vision. The answer hove into sight, a mirage that became real as he approached it.

“Everywhere, sir.” He set his jaw. “This is no longer a battle. This is the war.”

14

Thorn stood before the walls between him and open space. He paused, his exposed hand on the control panel. It was keyed only to his identity, with an override for the captain.

Beyond were the stars. And the Nyctus, somewhere out there, waiting. Moving. Burning and crushing worlds as they advanced, their reasons known only to themselves.

The door opened. Thorn stepped into the small airlock and heard it cycle, followed by a soft chime. The second control pulsed green, waiting for his touch. He re-gloved, took a hissing breath from his suit, and opened the witchport to the endless black.

It was a circle, with rounded walls so dark they drank light. The floor was textured—not soft, but not too firm. He sat down, eyes glued in open awe at the yawning chasm of stretching away. Few stars were visible, and even they were moving steaks of muted light, with the occasional brief flare of a white or blue giant, still young and hot.

Thorn had to know if he could reach Captain Leblanc telepathically before any of his plan could be initiated, so he let the nothingness wash over him, drawing inward like a blanket of dark. As the universe closed in, his mind pushed out, gaining traction with each distant heartbeat in the corner of his senses that still identified him as human.

For the moment, he was a pure being of magic, his power unfolding, exploring, and finding the possibilities to its liking. Thorn smiled. This was what it meant to be a Starcaster. Not the mud and the sweat, the fear and exhaustion. He was—home.

Close bubble, he commanded the witchport system, sensing but not seeing the protective shield lock in place. Thorn removed a glove, felt nothing except cool air, and then took off his second glove. With hands that shook, if slightly, he removed his helmet, exposing himself to the killing cold of open space.

The shield worked. It was the absolute bleeding edge of human tech, not suitable on large scales for a ship, but good enough to close Thorn off from the empty oblivion beyond.

He drew in a long breath—cold, dry, but fresh enough. It was time to work.

Thorn’s hand wrapped around his talisman, and the energy inside him drew down to a point so fine it could pierce the sky. As the book warmed in his hand, he reached out, picturing the shape of Captain Leblanc’s mind—its whorls, and power, and delicacy. She was a ’caster of rare ability, with a signature distinct as her own fingerprint.

Neural connections sparked and fizzed out in the distance, a spiderweb of chain reactions that led him inexorably toward a point in space. It was…bright. Familiar. He had begun to move toward it when a wall slammed shut, violent and cold.

Stellers. What gives you the right to invade my mind uninvited?

Captain! Thorn sent, a flush of apology coloring his thoughts. It’s working. I—apologies. I am—

If this is about your ego, you’ve just ended your career. Now, choose your words carefully. Why are you here? Her words were chilled, and not by the distance between them.

Not ego, ma’am. Danger.

Go on.

The Nyctus are moving in force, and I need to warn Code Nebula. They’re about to be crushed, Thorn sent.

After a pause that seemed far longer than it was, her voice returned, curiously flat. Since you wouldn’t defy your commander on the first day, I can only conclude that you need to warn Code Nebula outside our comms. Who do you have in mind?

Val and Rodie, they’re nearby, Vega system. But that’s only part of it. Your ship is critical. He sketched the plan, repeating certain parts as their connection pulsed in and out of clarity.

After another pause, she sent an answer. My ship will engage the enemy as you suggest. Tell your captain to use you as he sees fit. This message must be sent to all available ships, and immediately. Is this understood? Tell Captain Samuel to implement Bulwark. Just one word. Bulwark. He’ll understand.

Yes ma’am.

One last thing. You’re in the witchport?

I am, ma’am.

Drop the shield, she said without hesitation.

Ma’am?

Your shield. Drop it.

But won’t—wait. You planned this. I’m supposed to. . .to control my atmosphere? My body?

Yes. You can and you will. The shield draws far too much power, whereas you have power to spare. This was always the plan. Drop it, and let your power take full command. I’ll listen, but our connection will fade soon enough. Do it now.

I—yes ma’am. I will. I mean, I am.

Thorn pushed away fingers of dread that clawed at his spine, breathing deep as if he was readying to dive into deep water. The fear was present, but it was only that. Fear.

Shield down, he commanded.

There was no change, and he fought a gasp—then let his own energy fizz through him, its presence as old as the stars, coming to rest in his veins, his chest. His bones.

Thorn?

Ma’am. I’m in space, I guess.

You are. And now, your training is complete. You are a Starcaster. We are meant for something other than the land, Thorn. We are meant to fight among the void. Are you ready?

I am.

Signing off, then. Tell your captain, Bulwark. Send a coded comm to your friends. See you at the fight.

Her presence didn’t fade. It simply ended, and he was left in the witchport, alone, open to the black and ready to fight.

Moments later, he stood in his quarters, adjusting to the shift in reality. The witchport was—he felt more connected to himself, whereas in the spartan room he would call home, he saw only things. Each object, like his bunk, his desk, and even the smooth, dull gray walls, was real.

With three long breaths, he was able to enter himself, coming back across the miles to focus on the task at hand.

Subterfuge.

A lie worked best when it was protected by the truth, so, turning on his comms, that’s exactly what he did.

Let the Nyctus twist, he thought, forcing a grin on his face. The screen flared to life, and he commanded the ship’s AI to begin recording.

“Hey, guys. Sorry I didn’t comm sooner, but it’s taking some getting used to, this whole thing about being an actual officer. Tried to sleep earlier but kept having those damn dreams again—like in Dimensional training, where everything gets wiped out and you can’t do anything about it. You know how prophecy can be when you’re an amateur magician.” He laughed, but kept his eyes utterly flat; the two halves of his face may as well have been different people. “I’d invite the captain and everyone else along for a little hellraising—be nice to see the camp empty while we live it up, even the recruits. Who cares if Code Nebula is there when we get back? We’ll be too hungover to care. Might even win a few hands at the tables. I tried my luck. Funny, didn’t think it would be so easy to clear out a table. Thinking about going back in two days, before the crush really hits. Busy time in our jurisdiction.”

He flashed two fingers, then gave the ship’s signal for enemy imminent, but it was so subtle he surprised even himself.

“Gotta wrap this up. I’ve got unwanted guests here. You know how it is—someone always knocking on the door. Behave yourselves, and take a trip if you can. Sooner the better. I’ll see you offworld.”

He cut the comm and sat, staring into nothing. It had to be enough.

Captain Samuel sat at the helm, his pensive figure reminding Thorn of Commander Schrader. The captain sat with his head to the side, chin in palm and one finger pressed up against his lips. A cloud of consideration hung around the man.

Captain Samuel looked up, a wintry smile creasing his face. “And now, we do that thing we’re best suited to. We wait.”

They waited. While the ship hummed around them, Thorn and the captain sat, barely speaking, both aware of the enormous gamble they were taking. The situation was out of their hands, a condition that didn’t rest well with either man.

Three hours had passed when Thorn received the message indicator on his holopad and opened it, holding a momentary breath before touching the read icon. He’d returned to the bridge, waiting in tense silence for just this moment.

Val and Rodie appeared, close to the camera, both wearing expressions of forced joy.

They responded in flat tones. “We received your message, Cap.” Rodie removed his glasses and wiped the fog from the lenses. “Think we’ll take a quick trip to see our old home. Kinda missing it right now. Wish everyone was here with us, instead. Who knows? We’ll ask Schrader if he can give everyone a pass. Be nice to clear out and live a little.”

Val put her hand on Rodie’s shoulder. “I’m sure the Commander will be happy to know those dreams are coming true for you. You always did look ahead.”

They signed off, smiles fading as the screen went dark.

Instantly, Captain Samuel jumped into action. He called a meeting of battleship captains across the territory with an emergency code, the time set for five minutes from that moment. Thorn watched the man, more than a little in awe of his swift decisions. When Samuel moved, things happened, and even though Thorn’s hands were damp with sweat, he took some solace in watching the captain work.

This was sure to be the largest scaled attack in Thorn’s lifetime, and he would be on the absolute sharp end of it, exposed to space with only his power to hand. The thought chilled him, but then he brushed a thumb over his talisman, knowing that there was more to this fight than mere missiles and armor. This battle would be where humanity punched back—and with a weapon that, until now, the Nyctus had held all to themselves. There had been Starcasters aboard ships, but never enough to wield as an offensive force, and if Thorn was to believe Captain Leblanc, there had never been anyone like him.

There had been dozens of battles before this moment, nearly all of them ending with the Orbital Navy turned to glowing slag, the lost souls frozen and dead among stars that neither cared nor interfered in the petty warfare of living beings.

Thorn meant to change that.

The joint captains responded to Samuel’s announcement with mild doubt, then anger, then acceptance, all in the span of minutes. They were seasoned professionals, and even though many of them knew the attack was tantamount to suicide, they agreed because that’s what soldiers did.

They obeyed. They fought. They died.

The ship’s air was charged with nervous energy as the crew tried to sleep. The Nyctus would know—at some point—which ships were on the move, but the Apollo remained on station per the plan. Waiting was the most unnatural thing for a warship, but the crew managed their collective energy with the help of officers who kept them tethered to their task.

It was 03:40 ship’s time when Samuel called Thorn to the bridge, somehow knowing his ’caster would be awake.

Thorn arrived, saluted, and stood, looking at the bustle around him. “It doesn’t look like midwatch, sir.”

Samuel smiled, waving a battered coffee mug at his crew. “Little sleep tonight, I think. Nerves are tight, and you’re here. Some of us don’t understand what that means, and we won’t until we see you in action. This is all new to them—and even me, if I’m being honest.” Captain Samuel turned a bright eye to Thorn. “Do you think you can turn any of the Nyctus away?”

Thorn paused, forming an honest answer. “I know I can move things, sir, but that’s not my concern.”

“What is your concern, then?”

“I want them to implode. I want to kill the Nyctus in their cradles, or whatever it is they sleep in. I don’t even want them piercing our jurisdiction, and when my friends get onsite, I want us all to roll the Nyctus back and leave no survivors. If we can’t do that, then everything I went through in training doesn’t matter much.”

Samuel whistled softly, then chuckled. “Mild goals, Stellers. I like a soldier who keeps their dreams realistic.”

“I try, sir.”

“Then try this, if you would, Specialist. Hypothetically, how do we—using your ability, if need be—how can we keep the Nyctus from going early? Hold them in place for a few hours, or, optimally, an entire day?”

Thorn paused, letting the problem unfold. He knew his part, and ability, but he didn’t know what the fleet was capable of in possible solutions to their problem. “Sleuth, can you run a scenario for me?”

“Yes, sir. Parameters?” Sleuth asked, turning from his station. Pale light made him seem nearly translucent in front of the flickering screens.

Thorn sketched his concerns, and Sleuth began to load datapoints, shaping a simulation that unspooled at ten times normal speed.

“Fail, fail, and—success, sir. Third time’s a charm,” Sleuth said, watching the icons blink blue and green. “I make it seventy-one percent that your suggestion will hold the Nytcus in place. You were right, captain.”

“He was?” Thorn asked.

“You’ve just confirmed my own suspicions. Thought I’d get a second opinion, just to see where we stand. Alright, captain to crew—marking order three as our new plan. Shared in-ship, but hold for general fleet release.”

“Aye,” came the reply from across the bridge as heads lowered to send commands.

“I’m covering six systems with battleships and their escorts. If they buy us time, they’ll also thin the herd as we sit tight and give Code Nebula a head start on clearing out. If they don’t, then we all die today, unless you have something to say about it,” Captain Samuel said, matter-of-factly.

“They will, sir. And I know I will,” Thorn said. He turned a palm up, pulling a small globe of vivid dark energy into life. It crackled with malignant fury, then vanished at a silent command. “I belong on this ship, sir. This is your doing—I feel useful. I have a purpose beyond just surviving, I think.”

“Good. Because I intend for all of us to survive.” After a long pull of coffee, the captain looked at his wristwatch—an archaic affectation. The orange face was surrounded by buffed metal, scarred and worn. “You’ve been here for a little over nine minutes, and yet—”

“Sir?”

“I don’t detect any evidence that you’ve eaten breakfast.”

“I—yes, sir,” Thorn said, fighting a smile. “To chow, then?”

“I recommend it with the utmost urgency.” Samuel tapped his watch. “You can set my body by my desire to have eggs and coffee, as any good captain should. I’d recommend you get a watch, too. A nice nod to our ancient traditions, when gears and steel ruled our lives, instead of chips and drives.”

“I’ll take it under advisement, sir. Where, ah…would I acquire a watch like that?”

“Like this one? Unlikely. This was manufactured on Earth in 1966, and was intended for divers who, for some reason, went underwater with metallic bottles of air strapped to their backs. The definition of insanity, if you ask me. Give me a massive, nuclear powered warship filed with deadly weapons. Much homier.”

“I couldn’t agree more, sir. I’m thinking of putting an armchair in my witchport.”

“That’s the spirit.” Samuel gestured to the galley with his mug. “Off you go. Fuel up and then come back here. I think we’re in for a long day.”

Mol appeared, looking as if she had just struggled to break away from her bed. “Morning, Captain. Need anything? I’m all in for the French toast today.”

“See, Stellers? She understands how we fight. I’m good, but thank you. Take Stellers with you and make sure he eats,” Samuel said.

“Aye, sir. To the gills with food,” Mol said, turning and waving Thorn to follow.

“Does my heart good to see this kind of preparation,” the captain said.

“French toast?” Thorn asked.

Mol smiled, leading the way. “We’re not animals, Specialist. We just fight that way.”

* * *

Kira sat at her desk, tapping the comms, checking compulsively for a message indicator that she knew wouldn’t be there.

Where are you, Thorn? Something was wrong, and it went beyond simple intuition. It was a visceral sense—maybe her first true hint at becoming more than just a Joiner.

The door swung inward, and she jumped to her feet in a defensive reaction. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing barging in here like this?”

She saw the specialist ranks on their uniforms—Starcasters, but it took her a moment to identify the faces as two of Thorn’s classmates. “What is it? Is Thorn alright?”

Val stood at attention and addressed her. “Lieutenant Wixcombe. Thorn is alright. But we need to speak with you and the other officers, highest priority. Can you meet us in the Commander’s quarters?” Rodie’s face was a mask of tension, but he said nothing.

Kira stood without hesitation as the sense of foreboding within her spiked. “I can and will.” She lifted her voice to the room AI. “Officer’s channel alert. To Commander’s office, double time.”

Seconds later, Kira, Val, and Rodie were silently waved forward as Schrader placed a small, silver disc on the floor of his office. He motioned for silence, tapped the disc with one foot, and waited. A small light pulsed green on the device.

“We’re clear. Speak freely and with urgency, Specialists. What is it?” Schrader said without preamble.

“Sir, can the Nyctus—” Val began, but Kira pointed to the disc.

“Scrambler. Makes a hash of anything, and even if the Nyctus could penetrate this deep into our collective presence, they’d be damned fools to do it. Taking on this many senior ’casters is a short trip toward cooking off your nervous system, even for those ruthless bastards.”

Kira felt a flood of relief, even as she stood, listening to Rodie and Val speak. Her flare of anger faded as it became clear that sending two newbie officers was, in fact, the right move.

“Sir, the Apollo is on standby, and Captain Samuel has already begun moving assets into position. To be blunt, the Nyctus are massed for an attack like we’ve not seen in some time,” Val said.

“He’s sending them to buy time,” Schrader said, and Ashworth gave a grim nod of agreement. The base commander stood up quickly, pointing to the door. “Time we don’t have. We go through the base, with the scrambler. Word of mouth only. Go-bag and weapons, nothing more. Doubletime, starting now.”

Rodie carried the scrambler with them as they moved through the camp, informing soldiers and enacting evacuation protocols. The hum of shock turned to furious activity as Val, Schrader, and Rodie made their way through the troops—Ashworth and the other officers were dispatched to begin similar preparations, as well as round up any additional arms that could be had. Despite arriving early, the general chaos of an evacuation took up the extra time, and when the hangar was filled with shuffling, nervous troops, the time for Captain Leblanc’s shading distraction was getting close to hand.

“There are stores onboard the carrier, but not much,” Kira said. “Let’s hope she breaks orbit clean. The nearest resupply is three days out.”

“We won’t need three days. We’re not going far, and we’re not waiting around. Move out,” Schrader said, lifting his voice. He turned to address Val and Rodie once everyone began loading onto their designated ships. The hangar was a seething mass of people and gear, despite being executed on short notice. “You’ll take the third fighter—Wixcombe and Narvez are in unit two, and Hiroshi is paired with Burnitz in the other. I want comm silence until we’re clear of the system. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Val answered.

“Good. These fighters punch way above their weight, and we can’t lose them if we have to form a convoy to jump systems. If you get in trouble, let us handle it. For a carrier, the Hippogryph has damned fine railguns and enough mounts to cause some trouble, but her fighter wing is undergoing refit. We’ve got ’casters of some strength on hand, and we’ll use our power to clear a path, so when I tell you to keep the fighters close, I mean it. Saddle up. Let’s go,” Schrader said, turning away to bark orders at a pair of recruits carrying a sled loaded with fuel canisters.

Val and Rodie jumped into one of the three fighter ships on base. They didn’t have need for many at Code Nebula, since it was highly classified and the risk factor for engagement was low. Hiroshi piloted another with the ginger-bearded Burnitz in the gunner seat. Kira controlled the third with Narvez to her side. The three ships flanked the carrier above and to each side as they blasted through the atmosphere, shredding clouds with a bowshock until they reached the blackness of space.

“Lieutenant Narvez,” Kira said in their fighter, keeping her eyes on the skies. “I appreciate you being in the chair.”

“Constance.” Narvez’s profile created a black shadow against the light of the system’s sun. “My name is Constance.”

Kira peeled her eyes from the route and looked at Narvez, grinning. “Constance. I never took you for a Constance.”

The deep frown that usually scored her face lessened. “I wanted to hear somebody call me by my given name before—whatever is going to happen, happens. So, I’m Constance, although Connie works too.”

Narvez only had time for a glance—a matte black shape hurtling toward them at killing speed—before the fighter rocked sideways with the impact. A searing light erupted, but she pulled hard on the stick, away from the carrier’s looming bulk.

“No—hell no. My stick,” Kira barked, holding on as the cabin bucked. “Control wing is torched. Missile strike or a KEW.” She pulled hard at the stick again, leaving the massive carrier behind them. “Connie, target that ship. Now.”

“Got them,” Narvez said, taking the weapons control into her hands. She spoke directives to the targeting software, augmenting the AI that was already tracking the Nyctus craft, which burned hard to affect an escape. Without atmosphere, her casting powers were useless except for any harnessed energy she may have, and that might not be enough.

A missile would have to do. Sometimes, you had to kill Nyctus the old-fashioned way.

“Bird’s away,” Narvez said, as the fighter shuddered. A silver line of plasma led her eyes as the missile accelerated almost too fast for the eye to follow. In seconds, the missile punched clean through the Nyctus drive, causing a catastrophic implosion. Seven more Nyctus ships broke out of pluslight, their drives lighting up the scanner.

“Escorts, are you seeing this? Eight hot, minus one—shit, they’re targeting the Hippogryph. To the carrier at maximum drive. If you’ve got a spell loaded, this is the time to cook it off. They’re under the—”

The second Nyctus ship blossomed into a ball of expanding gas, and now Hiroshi’s voice came over the comms. “They are vulnerable to our magic. Target what you can. The carrier is opening up gun mounts,” Hiroshi said in calm tones.

“Copy that.” Narvez touched off a second missile, the bird missing, but detonating due to a proximity fuse that sent another Nyctus ship into a wild curve, wobbling and leaking gases. “Can you reach them?”

“I can now,” Kira said, vocalizing the autocannon for a thirty-round burst. The shells turned the spinning enemy into hot debris, but not before the remaining Nyctus began to rake the Hippogryph with something that looked like a railgun, but far wider at the barrel end.

Sparks and fires erupted along the big carrier’s port side, and then her mounts began blazing away with so many small point-defense guns that space seemed to ripple. One, then two of the Nyctus exploded, one going on to tear a ten meter gash in the port landing bay, sending looping arcs of coolant into space as a snowstorm of red flakes.

“They’re…trying to break me,” Narvez said, clutching her head as an unseen Nyctus shaman invaded her mind.

Kira didn’t hesitate. She pulled a kill switch on Narvez’s controls and steered directly at the nearest enemy, a silent howl of pain in her skull at the Nyctus hammered at her psyche with wave after wave of probing telepathic hatred. She flickered in and out of reality, looking deep into the minds of any Nyctus that wasn’t buttoned up against a counterattack.

She found one.

Like a cracking dam, Kira flooded the space, sending the Nyctus into just enough of a panic to buy her time for another pass. The engine howled as their fighter turned, every screen a wild cacophony of dire warnings. The Nyctus were spiraling closer to the carrier, soundless weapons lancing out to chew at the big ship’s armor.

“They’re using KEW shit up close. Smaller versions,” Kira said.

“Gotta pick off the—” Narvez began, but choked on her words as Hiroshi and Burnitz turned directly into a fusillade of KEW strikes flying at impossible velocities. Their fighter was torn into shrapnel and then faded behind them as they completed their turn.

One Nyctus remained—the one that killed Hiroshi and Burnitz.

“Connie,” Kira said, eyes bleak and hot with anger, “turn them into vapor.”

A pair of missiles flickered out, slamming into the fleeing Nyctus ship. The enemy died, even as another alarm began shrieking in their fighter, and then Kira hit the override and all was silent once more.

“Rodie, you clear?” Kira asked.

No answer.

“They’re flying right there—hey— no, no no—” Kira said, voice rising in desperation.

“Are they compromised?” Narvez asked. “Sure looks like it.”

“Val! Rodie! Answer me, or we will fire!” Kira barked, but the other fighter only banked harder, right toward the belly of the carrier.

“I can’t kill a student,” Narvez said. “And there’s no way of knowing—”

A single missile lanced out from Val and Rodie’s ship. In less than a second, it drove deep into the carrier’s steel heart, exploded, and tore the massive ship in two.

“No—” Kira muttered into the dark. The Hippogryph began to implode, section by section, lighting up Val and Rodie’s ship in bright relief. “I have no choice. I have to take them out.”

“No you don’t,” Narvez said. “Look.”

A Nyctus battleship bathed them in scanners, but it was the spike of pain from their shaman’s that made Kira pull the stick hard as she kicked them to full power. With a barrage of KEW, the Nyctus turned Val and Rodie into a flare and then nothing at all.

“Time to go,” Kira said, flashing away like a frightened animal who’s seen the hunter’s weapon.

“Are they all gone?” Narvez asked, her voice weak. She sat, numb, watching the display. The Nyctus weren’t following them.

“Too small to matter,” Kira said, answering the unspoken question.

“Where are we heading?” Narvez asked.

Kira said nothing but set a course and took her hands off the controls, studiously looking away from the screens. “Wherever we can, Connie. We’re on our own.”

15

“Stellers, you’ll want to see this.”

The captain stood, hands clasped behind him as scenes of battle played out on three walls of the bridge.

“Sir? Where is this?’ Thorn asked.

“Everywhere,” Samuel said. He sounded tired, but his eyes were hardened to a focus that had weight. “Every system we’ve deployed to is under attack. Parker, send live footage to all screens as of now; Estgaard, if you please.”

The view shifted immediately, revealing a fleet of Nyctus ships, their dark hulls slipping through the inner rings of a massive green world surrounded by rings.

“Estgaard? That’s—it’s a lot closer than I expected, sir. For this point in the battle,” Thorn added.

“The Nyctus changed doctrine. Watch,” Samuel said.

Two enemy battleships bracketed a heavy cruiser, her point defense systems blazing away in a standoff action. On an unseen signal, the Nyctus ships belched KEW’s in a wave, nearly fifty shots hurtling toward the human ship—the Queen Nzinga, Thorn recalled—without any fear of friendly fire. The Nzinga began to blossom fiery outgassing as her shields went down, then a second wave of enemy fire blasted her center apart in a nova-like explosion.

“Captain, look,” Thorn said, pointing behind the expanding cloud that had been four hundred souls only seconds earlier.

The second Nyctus battlewagon had taken heavy damage from her sister ship. A huge venting of gas and fuel ignited, collapsed, and blew four sections of the ship into space, the shimmering cloud of debris glittering like freshly fallen snow in a stiff wind.

“They’re on suicide runs, sir?” Sleuth asked, his face a mask of horror.

“I don’t think so. It looks like they’re willing to take some damage to open up a system. We don’t know of a drone craft that large, so it’s got to be crewed,” Samuel said. “Enlarge the aft view, please. There—see it?”

Thorn did. There were bodies jettisoned from the ship, some whole, some in pieces, their segmented hardsuits gleaming from the detonations and internal fires onboard the wounded Nyctus vessel. “That’s the first I’ve seen of them.”

“Who, the enemy?” Captain Samuel asked, brows lifting.

“Yes, sir. I mean, we were shown hard data at Code Nebula, and as a kid I saw the vids. But still, not like this.” As Thorn spoke, a Nyctus suit was torn apart by a flying piece of jetsam, the stolid alien cut nearly in two. Its guts trailed away like a ribbon, then it was incinerated by an errant laser. The large, long head was left behind, spinning lazily, cut off from the ashes of its body.

“An engineer, and likely a female, given her size. Good riddance. Their engineers pull double duty as spellcasters when they’re in large scale assaults,” Sleuth piped. “Um, sir. Sorry.”

“No apology needed. We’re here to do the same thing they’re trying to do to us. If we see it happen on a small scale, it doesn’t change the outcome,” Captain Samuel said. “Enlarge scene three, please.”

The images, sent by a drone sitting at a safe distance from the battle, were crisp enough that Thorn could see a squadron of ON fighters wheeling away from a crippled Nyctus frigate. As the human pilots turned in unison, the fourth fighter broke hard right and began unleashing every weapon it had.

The shots—missiles and railgun—struck two ON craft, shredding both before they imploded into violent clouds of gas.

“Sir, one of our fighters has gone rogue. It’s—” Sleuth sounded stricken, his fingers flying as he worked to draw the images even closer without losing resolution. The rogue vanished in a ball of plasma as a Nyctus corvette sent three KEW’s in a killing salvo, each rock nearly a hundred kilos in weight. “He’s gone, sir. And the Nyctus corvette is damaged. Two fighters closing in, sir.”

“Good hunting,” Samuel said, then he gave a terse nod as two missiles thundered into the corvette, cracking her open along the keel. “Damned fine shooting. Still doesn’t explain why that fighter went—“

“Captain, I have incoming comms from multiple assault groups.” The speaker was a Petty Officer named Benton, her dark hair tucked up under a headset keyed to multiple comm channels.

“Give it to me quick and dirty. Any of them pushing back?” Samuels asked.

“Plenty, sir. I make…eight of thirteen on the advance, or holding positions. Three are not responding to any contact at all, and two groups—both around that binary system at Epsilon 2470—are now engaged in point-blank action due to massive magical interference from the Nyctus. Our ’casters are holding them—one moment, sir.” Benton nodded, listening, then her lips pressed into a thin line. “Sending to your private comms. Captains Herlich and Kumatso are presumed lost, along with all hands. There are three surviving craft from the entire system. Epsilon is in Nyctus hands, sir.”

“That’s how fast it happens,” Samuels said softly.

“Unger,” Thorn said.

“Someone from your class?” Samuel asked. He touched Thorn’s shoulder.

“Yes, sir. He was with Captain Herlich, I think.”

“They all died on the ground. The fight went planetside, according to what I’m seeing. Nasty business. Thorn, this is going to happen a lot more. Are you ready? For what comes next?”

“I am, sir,” Thorn answered. He might never be ready to die, but he was damned sure ready to fight.

“Go clear your head. We’ll be engaged soon enough, if this thing gets out of hand. That’s an order,” Samuel said, nudging Thorn away from the buzz of voices as reports continued to stream in.

“I will, sir.” Thorn stepped away, eyes down. There was nothing else to do.

Except for one small detail.

Kira.

The witchport seemed less ominous as he sat, legs crossed and staring into the inky expanse of space. He considered Kira’s feel, and the shape of her mind, and then—

Thorn. I’m here.

It worked! Thorn’s words rang with triumph in his own head. Too loud?

Hell, no. I’m stunned we can connect at this range, but it must be—well, it’s us, I think.

Good. Kira, are you alright?

He felt her sigh more than heard it. Physically, I’m fine. Her thoughts cracked and then steadied. I couldn’t stop them, Thorn. I couldn’t save them.

Who?

Val. Rodie. Barnett. So many. All gone. Commander Schrader didn’t get to issue orders, but he had a deadman’s switch set up for a databurst. They knew where we were, Thorn, and I don’t know how. One of the Nyctus turned Val, and it was her fighter that took out the carrier—not the Nyctus, not really, Kira sent. Her words were colored with naked fear. If the Nyctus could hijack ’casters, then—

We can’t be on the ships, Kira. Not until we find out how to slam the door on the Nyctus incursions. If our minds aren’t safe, then no one is safe.

I know. But what becomes of us?

The Starcasters? Thorn asked.

Witches. People with talent. The gift. What becomes of us? We’ve got a target on us if it turns out that we’re the weak link?

Thorn paused, thinking, letting his power reach across the miles and sending thoughts of reassurance to Kira like an undercurrent.

Command will want answers, and we have none. We held at most of the planets, but I think Captain Leblanc’s effort fell short. Everyone was exposed, but it still doesn’t answer what you asked. I don’t know what will happen, Kira, but we’re too valuable to sit on the sidelines.

We might be too dangerous to live, Thorn. What if the admirals panic? They’re not exactly flexible about us, even though the Nyctus are using power like ours. And winning.

The hum of stars filled Thorn’s senses, and he fought the urge to reach for Kira, all those miles away. We need a win, Kira, and we need it now.

How? Kira asked.

Let me handle that. You stay safe. We bought some time with all this blood.

The dead paid that price, Kira said.

Then it’s up to us to get it all back, Thorn said, and his thoughts simmered with unkempt rage.

I hope I’m ready.

Thorn sent an image—him, smiling, his face bright with agreement. We will. I can feel it.

16

Kira was quickly assigned to a new ship, the venerable Andraste, a battleship that had survived three major engagements since going active four years earlier. As a Joiner, the Admirals assumed it would be less likely that the Nyctus could trace her location.

Purecasters were another issue.

The admiralty feared Nyctus tracking enough that rumors were spreading through the fleetnet at a speed no ship could have achieved.

Along with her new ship, Kira was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, which led her to the act of standing in a cabin all her own, with a private head and sheets that looked like they were made of something other than sandpaper.

“Nice place,” she said, but the walls said nothing.

She sat at the desk and slid a digital encryption drive open with her personal voice command, then used her thumbprint.

“Onscreen,” she said. The AI obliged, and her orders—the first as a commander—flashed up, accompanied by a map. “Huh. I’m a spy.”

The mission was simple, and it had nothing to do with Starcasters. It was a flyby of Nyctus territory, at low speed as the squadron of ships spat disposable, stealthy drones into Nyctus space, all for the purpose of ’jacking whatever comm data they could find. It was a good way to get killed, but an even better way to find out where the Nyctus were going next.

The plan did little to calm her fears for Thorn, or—and this was the looming issue—silence a sense that the ON was in the process of falling back into a defensive war. Humanity had been in retreat since the Hecate got kicked back, and her first mission felt like laying groundwork for more of the same.

But before she could change the entire fleet doctrine, she had to meet her crew.

“Lieutenant Commander?” The baritone voice sounded from behind Kira, and she realized her door was still open.

“Yes?”

“The ship has been primed, and crew is at their stations. Main engines are ready at one hundred percent.”

“Excellent. Call the crew to the deck. Time to get to know each other.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The officer turned to leave.

“Lieutenant?” Kira called. “What’s your name?”

“Ellerby, ma’am.” He was short, powerfully built, and baby-faced, despite broad hands and a head that sat directly on his shoulders. There was no spacer’s tan, but he wasn’t exactly pale, either. He looked fresh up the well, and Kira wondered how many of her crew were green.

After he left, Kira rolled her head and rubbed at her aching neck. The ache had come on shortly after the Nyctus had tried to get into her head, and it hadn’t gone away since. Like a permanent hangover, there were echoes of their invasive touch, leaving her violated in a sense she couldn’t quite reconcile with—well, with anything. The Nyctus anatomy wasn’t unknown, but their lingering power from the use of shamanistic magic was an utter mystery. The throbbing left her mouth inexplicably dry, so she filled and drank two cups of water, back to back, pushing the metallic taste away.

I’m ready, Kira thought.

In the mirror, a young officer stared back. A mild case of nerves faded as she squared her uniform and gave her reflection a single nod. “If we can’t win with magic, we have to find a way to win with steel.” Onscreen, she saw the crew filling their stations. “Screens off. Commander to the bridge.”

The room went dark. Kira stepped out and pulled the door behind her with a final click.

The bridge was a short distance, and Kira arrived to find every face turned toward her steps. She greeted them with a friendly look, then took up her station at the elevated back where she had optimal views of all the data.

“As you all know by now, I am your new Lieutenant Commander, Kira Wixcombe. I fought in this past week’s battle against the Nyctus, and my fighter was the sole surviving vehicle among my squadron. That means I’m either lucky or good. I can live with lucky, because as we all know, luck is the only force in the universe that can be shared.” A smattering of grins greeted her statement, and she began walking around, nodding politely to each crew member.

Their faces were an array of emotions, although—and this pleased Kira—no one was afraid. Tense, yes, but no fear on the outside. She could live with that, because she didn’t want stupid crew. She wanted capable crew who understood that fear was a natural extension of the shitshow brought on by war with the Nyctus. “I belong in the chair, and you belong in yours. We’re professionals, and I expect some nerves at first while we shake off our…let’s call it uncertainties. If you’re nervous, good. Brave and dumb is no way to die out in space.”

There were more grins and a few laughs, some colored with the sound of relief. She had them now.

“To sum up, I’m on a short winning streak against the enemy. I intend to keep it going. But first and foremost, I want you all to understand a ship is nothing without its crew, and every task on a battleship is equally as important as the next. So I want you all to feel comfortable coming to me if you need anything. This is the part where I tell you my door is always open, but it’s not. On the rare occasions where I grab shuteye, I’m instructing Lt. Ellerby to have anyone who wakes me up flogged at the nearest opportunity. Lt. Ellerby, do we still flog people in this Navy?”

“I can arrange something, ma’am,” he said, grinning. The crew smiled at her now, following Kira as she completed her circuit of the bridge.

“Excellent. Only in egregious cases, of course, but we will have discipline. And coffee, and sleep when we can get it. Who’s in charge of the beans?” Kira asked.

“Ma’am, that would be me,” said a small wiry man, his hair tightly curled and nearly orange. “Petty Officer McMahon. I handle the roasting of coffee and other occasional tasks pertaining to the mess.”

“Outstanding. Are you the baker as well?” Kira asked.

“Ma’am?” McMahon looked confused.

“Do we have a baker on board?” Kira asked, surveying the room.

A hand went up, but with hesitation. “Ma’am, I, ah, baked a little?”

“Your name, please?” Kira asked. The woman was tall and painfully thin, but elegant. She had bronze skin and enormous dark eyes.

“Petty Officer Souza, ma’am.”

“Pleasure to meet you. As of now, you have a second job. Bread. We will eat well on this ship. I’ve arranged for certain supplies to be brought in—you’ll find them labeled and ready. We will have excellent coffee, even better bread, and we will never eat the same thing twice unless it’s spaghetti, because the sauce gets better over time. I will not fight those murderous squid on an empty stomach. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Souza said, with a broad, brilliant smile.

“If you add the orders stay alive and kill Nyctus, you now have my entire approach to command and battle. Are we clear?” Kira asked.

The entire bridge answered as one. “Aye, ma’am!”

Kira sat down, and the chair fit. “Helm. Per our course, kick it.”

* * *

Things went quiet after the Nyctus attack.

There was no evidence of enemy resurgence, so Thorn spent more time in training with Mol, learning what it meant to be Orbital Navy without magic.

“It sucks,” Thorn summed up.

Mol shrugged. “Not everyone gets to do things the easy way.”

“You think magic is easy?” Thorn asked, incredulous.

Mol gave a small shrug. She was pulling gloves on, waving Thorn into a combat mat. “Easier than this.”

Thorn stood, hands on his hips, head tilted in disbelief. “I think you’ve misunderstood…well, all of me.” He gave an expansive wave, then began pulling his own gloves on. He wore nothing on his feet, like Mol, although their practice gear was different. She opted for a single-piece robe in an ancient design. Thorn wore loose shorts, no shirt, and an expression of mild amusement.

“I’d adjust my attitude if I were you. I’m not just a stone-cold killer in the pilot’s chair. I’m a ground combat instructor,” Mol said, eyes flashing. She smiled, but it was chilly.

Thorn gave a small bow. The other crew were slowing down or falling silent. In the gym there were fifteen people training hard, but they all stopped to see what Thorn could do.

Or not do.

As a ’caster, he was of limited use after the battle. That meant he needed to be a supernova of skill in some other field, and the way Mol regarded him with a raised brow and half smile, it didn’t look like she found him threatening.

“Begin,” Mol said.

A second later, she was rolling to a stop, sucking wind and looking up at Thorn’s extended fist.

“Um,” she gasped.

“Um, indeed.” He pulled her to her feet and she waved him off. “The hell?”

“Try again?” Thorn asked. Now everyone was watching.

“Need a minute,” Mol said, pressing one hand to her ribs.

“I can go,” came a light, mellow voice. The speaker was a guy nearly Thorn’s height but heavier in build. He had a sleepy expression, but his movement radiated menace. He wore combat shorts, a faded blue shirt with Cyrillic lettering, and gloves. A trained fighter, at minimum. Also, a possible problem to most people in the gym, given their expressions of respect.

“Good,” Thorn said. “Stellers, Starcaster.”

“Voinich, Ground Forces. This is my gym.”

“I thought it belonged to the ON,” Thorn offered mildly.

“Not when I’m in it,” Voinich said in a tone so flat it seemed robotic.

“No broken bones, now,” Mol said.

“No promises,” Thorn answered.

Voinich narrowed his eyes but stayed calm. A seasoned pro. “Begin,” he said.

His left hand lashed out in a blur—

—to strike air. Thorn moved to the right and delivered a whistling punch to Voinich on the nape of his neck. As Thorn turned, he saw Voinich collapse, his eyes drifting around aimlessly.

Thorn knelt, checked the man’s pulse, then pushed everyone back. “Mol, did you think that being raised in a shithole collective home made me soft?”

Voinich groaned. “Friggin’ orphans. Always dirty as hell.”

“Not dirty. Creatively violent by necessity, is my preferred descriptor. Ready to stand?” Thorn asked Voinich, who shook his head.

“Guess I sort of forgot that part. Thought your, ah, magic was all you had,” Mol said by way of apology.

“It’s still with me. I didn’t use it, but it’ll never go away. It’s who I am, I think, no matter what command wants me to be,” Thorn said.

Voinich sat up, waving away the helping hands of other crew, who regarded Thorn with a mixture of respect and suspicion. “You gonna come fight it out with us as a boarding crew? Ground based? What now?”

“I don’t know. I’m a risk, maybe, and I won’t put anyone else in the line of fire because I leak psychic energy. This”—Thorn made fists— “is what I have for now.”

Mol smiled and then winced. “It’s good enough for now.” She glanced up at the chrono. “Time to go. Where you headed, Thorn?”

“Bridge, but not until I smell less like…” Thorn seemed to hunt for a word.

“A farm animal?” Mol offered, grinning.

Thorn inhaled and raised a finger. “No. It’s…victory.” He bowed and left, and even Voinich laughed.

* * *

Thorn reported to the command deck as usual and was greeted by the captain at the helm, his position dead center of a buzzing sea, filled with quiet, competent actions. The air was active but not desperate. The captain leaned over a comm, rubbing at his chin.

“Sir,” Thorn said, moving to the captain’s side.

Samuel stood, eyes flashing across the comm screen one last time, as if reluctant to leave—or believe—what he was seeing. “Interesting development here, Stellers.”

“I’ve learned that interesting is rarely good, sir.”

“Then you’re already a seasoned veteran,” Samuel said, pointing to the screens. “A battleship has been deployed to investigate a possible Nyctus command center.” The captain rubbed at his chin again, but this time it was even more absently, like a card tell, but revealing something more important than a mere hand of poker. There was danger, or at the minimum, a complication. Both were bad, especially given the ON record.

“Investigate with weapons or scans, sir? I find both can honor the intention of that order, if not the letter of it.”

Captain Samuel gave him a wintry smile. “Now I know you’re getting salty. They’re instructed to locate the target area, observe, and report. Nothing more drastic than data, although that’s a dicey proposition when the Nyctus are peeling open our, ah—well, we’re exposed in ways we hadn’t considered. This is riskier than I’d care to see.” Samuel swiped away the comm, then sent coordinates—very specific coordinates—to the helm.

“Observe and report doesn’t sound—oh. At what range, sir, if I may?” Thorn watched as the helm worked.

“They want the Lieutenant Commander of the ship to bypass the Nyctus defenses, deep scan the facility, and return with a detailed 3-D of the alien command post.” Samuel threw the Nyctus post image onto the panel for Thorn to review.

“Sir, forgive me for being obtuse, but…how?” Thorn shook his head. “Is this within our jurisdiction, sir?”

“I’m told the Lieutenant Commander is capable of telepathic shade—a female caster…Wiccum, Wixco…”

“Wixcombe.” Thorn’s breath caught, but he schooled his face into something close to neutral.

“That’s the one.” The captain dragged the image to display a direct route between the Apollo and the designated coordinates. “Yes, it’s within our jurisdiction, and yes, we’ll assist.”

“I thought the Admirals didn’t want any Starcasters wielding the craft?” Thorn’s confusion—and worry—were mounting with each passing second. This wasn’t just dangerous; it was a contradiction of the muddled policy anyone could see coming. The Admiralty was in a state of confusion about ’casters, their risk, and the reward that might come from using them in battle.

“This Wixcombe, you know her?” The captain gave Thorn a searching look. “She’s a Joiner. They’re assuming the Nyctus can’t track Joiners.”

“Assuming.” Thorn kept his hands loose, letting the rising tension drain away—or at least trying to. Even as a junior officer, he knew a bad call when he saw it. Punching through Nyctus defenses for something that amounted to a fishing expedition wasn’t just low reward. It was damned near suicidal, given the ON weakness to brainjacking by Nyctus shamans. “What if they’re assuming wrong?”

“My thoughts exactly, Stellers.” Samuel took his seat, lifting a battered coffee mug and taking a wincing sip.

“This could be provocation and a guaranteed loss, sir. And Lieutenant Commander Wixcombe’s ship could be taken prisoner without the Nyctus firing a rock.”

Samuel regarded him with a blank expression. “Both correct.” He fell silent as a means of inviting Thorn to continue.

“Have the Nyctus ever taken prisoners before?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Thorn did his best not to betray any concern. “Who knows what they’ll do to them?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Let’s hope this Wixcombe is as good as they think she is.”

Thorn knew Kira and believed in her ability to make good decisions. But the Nyctus were another issue. “If I may, sir?” He looked toward the bow, and his quarters, as an ensign refilled Samuel’s mug. The captain was almost languid when he tilted his head toward the door, and Thorn was walking toward his bunk—and Kira—before realizing the captain had given him silent permission to contact her.

“Huh,” Thorn said to himself. Captain Samuel got a lot done without saying anything at all, sometimes. “Another lesson.” Everything was a lesson out here in the black.

He lay in his bed and pulled the book from beneath his pillow, then he set it on top of his chest. Best not to use the ’port unless it was strictly ordered. This would become the new ritual. If the Nyctus couldn’t trace Kira, they certainly couldn’t trace him either.

Or so he thought. It was a risk, but his power as a Starcaster was outside the aegis of anything humanity had ever used to fight a war. That meant his instincts were more honed to the reality of magic, tracking magic, and winning a war with power beyond natural science.

At least, that’s how he was going to play it. He drew his power to a point, seeking the shape of Kira’s mind. He didn’t look for long.

Lieutenant Commander, huh? Thorn’s smile colored his mental casting. You’ve earned it.

Thorn! You shouldn’t—this might not be safe. Not with your power. Her answer was almost instantaneous, the words clear.

How else do you expect me to reach you?

Oh, I don’t know, by comms so I can see your face like a normal human being. He could hear the comic frustration in her voice.

Not nearly as fun. This is better. And, I think, safer.

It’s not supposed to be fun. Laden with emotion, he caught her image. She was alone in her cabin, at the desk, meal tray before her.

Is that actual bread?

You can see me? She twitched, briefly disrupting the image. Like ripples in a pond, then, her face stabilized, though the cabin remained—unfocused. Does command know you can do this? She recovered quickly.

Can’t everyone? All the Starcasters, I mean?

Thorn, are you joking? This is—it’s next level. It’s unprecedented. This isn’t simply using magic. You’re spanning a distance with imagery. And it’s immediate, Kira said. You have to tell your captain, and then—

I will. Then what? he asked.

I’m wondering how we can use this. You heard about my next objective?

Yeah. It’s a shitstorm. Why can’t they use hardened drones and send the data to a relay? Even at the massive distance, and in a means not known to humans—or at least not widely known—Kira could hear his anger.

The Nyctus. The squiddies are capable of frying drones if they can see them, and we can’t risk getting nothing. So, we’re going in, and we need to scrape as much data as we can. Draw your own conclusions about what comes next, she said.

You’re on the way then, and without the help of any ’casters. What the hell is command thinking?

That we’re losing, Thorn. And we need a lucky card.

Bullshit to that. We have a lucky hand. We’ve got Starcasters, and command got spooked from one sneak attack on our minds. Billions have died, and we’re abandoning an entire division because the old guard can’t adapt? Thorn seethed.

I’m confident in my strength. You know that. But we don’t know what the Nyctus can and cannot trace, so we’re not going in without some magical cover. Shit, I can’t get used to saying that.

Magic?

Yeah. It’s real, and it lives in me—not like you, but it’s growing. It can be learned, Kira said.

True. How much cover can you provide? Can you shade the ship and keep the Nyctus at arm’s length, at least?

Yes.

Then what does your gut tell you about being tracked? Thorn asked.

My gut tells me that it has nothing to do with whether or not I’m a Joiner. I think they have a hard time identifying telepaths, and yes, command overreacted. She moved in his mind’s eye, then settled again, her eyes unfocused. He felt like a voyeur, but it didn’t trouble him. She knew they were connected, and the shape of her mind was a cool blue—colored with agreement, nervous energy, and even—

—she missed him. At least a little.

Does command grasp the concept of shade? Do they really get it? Thorn asked.

Maybe. A sigh echoed across the miles. Maybe not. They don’t seem to understand that you—and even me, and the Joiners—aren’t just battering rams. We can be subtle, too. That’s our advantage over the squid. We don’t need rocks.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to drop a few on their heads. If they even have heads, Thorn said.

They do. Just soft. Might bounce off them, the bastards.

Thorn sent her the equivalent of a telepathic snort, earning a smile in his mind’s eye. Right. Forgot they’ve got—heads, if you want to call it that, they’re just so damned ugly I tried to block that particular memory. Regardless, travel safe, and Kira?

Yes?

The thing about shade is that you don’t have to be powerful. You just have to be constant. You understand? Thorn asked.

I do. Pace myself.

Good. I’m here if you need a boost. I think—wait. No. I know that things are going to change, in here, Thorn said.

Where?

In my—whatever this reservoir of power is. It’s not the same as it was a month ago, or even a week. I’m unfolding, Kira. I can feel it, and that means that I can try to reach you if your shade falters. Know that I’m here, though all the miles lie between us. Know that, and stay constant, Thorn said.

I do, and I will. We’re not done with magic yet, Thorn. Not now, and not ever. Until the war is done.

Thorn let the signal start to fade, like a long goodbye. Aye, commander. Thorn out.

17

“Stellers,” came a voice.

He awoke instantly; a longtime habit developed in the children’s home. Heavy sleepers didn’t fare well among the casual cruelty of displaced, angry youths.

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

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

Nothing good happens at this hour.

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

—Captain Samuel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Done,” came the mellow female voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Spindle?” Thorn asked.

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

“She’s here.”

“Need me to shut up?” Mol asked.

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

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

I’m here. Where are you?

Running like hell. We’re cooking off the engines and about to lose reactor containment. The Nyctus sent some kind of fast attack team. There are three of them, small, mean as hell, lots of rocks to throw. They’ve even got a front laser array, Kira said.

How soon before they close?

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

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

You sure?

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

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

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

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

“Acknowledged. I’m listening, Specialist.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thorn? Are you—Kira sent.

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

The bastard has me, he thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fifth did not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re losing her, Thorn.

Kira, close your mind down.

What?

Do it. Now. Please.

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

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

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

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

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

And if you do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18

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

“A Spindle?” Levitt asked, his voice mellow, calm.

“That’s what it’s called, sir. Holds a high value for the Nyctus, judging by how hot things got when we broke for the clear,” Kira said.

Levitt merely grunted at that, watching as ship traffic poured in and around the Nyctus base. “Stop right there. Back up five seconds, freeze, isolate,” he told the AI. “Captain? Are you seeing what I am?”

Captain Samuel peered at the screen and nodded, slowly. “I’m no expert in Nyctus command structure—”

Levitt snorted at that. Nobody understood the Nyctus forces beyond a bare minimum. Their secrecy was a strength.

“—but a ship accompanied by six fighters and what looks to be a troop carrier? I’d say that’s a jump command post, up close and personal. There’s an admiral on board that Spindle, or whatever passes for one in the Nyctus Navy.”

“Concur,” Levitt said, and his voice took on an oddly formal tone. “Do you agree?” He fixed Kira with his dark eyes, waiting.

“I—well, I do, sir. At a bare minimum, it’s something high-value, and it confirms my suspicions about this Spindle. It’s not a simple relay, or a hot cot. I’d say we have a regional command,” Kira concluded.

“Agreed. Kick it upstairs, then. Take Stellers with you to Fleet Command,” Samuel said.

“Sir, um—” Kira began. Her hesitance was born of training. You didn’t walk into Fleet every day, and certainly not with intel that could change local history.

“You’ll be fine. They’re smart people who want to win. Tell them the truth, and answer everything they ask. And let Stellers run free with his thoughts—I know, it’s against every instinct you have, but do it. They need to know ’casters are useful, and that any victory is going to come by using magic as a hammer against the Nyctus.” He looked at the display again, where a Nyctus ship was imploding, courtesy of Thorn’s stunning power. “Leave within the hour. Dismissed.”

“Sir,” Kira said, saluting.

“One more item, Wixcombe.” Commander Levitt held up a hand, stopping her. “Did you feel like the Nyctus knew you were coming?”

She considered it, then shook her head. “No, sir. Not at all.”

Levitt smiled at Captain Samuel, who dipped his head in agreement. “Told you. That’s our second break, and believe me, we’re going to drive a fleet through that crack if they’ll let us.”

“Should I report on this, ah, break, sir? Or breaks, though I don’t know what the first one is,” Kira admitted.

“No need. I’ll send this along immediately via fleetnet. And as to the first break, that happened the moment Thorn Stellers was able to…to do what he does,” Commander Levitt said cryptically.

Kira knew not to go fishing for information, so she followed her instincts, saluted again, and spun on her heel. She needed her go-bag, Thorn, and time to think. The war wasn’t just around them. It was waiting in the future, and she knew her role would be right in the thick of it all.

* * *

Their transfer pilot was a dour ginger rockhopper named Argyle; his spacer’s tan ended just above his pale, red eyebrows, making him appear to be in a constant state of squinting. Raised on the big asteroids around Tau Ceti, he had long fingers and hands, and when he spoke, it was in the clipped accent of his home system.

Thorn said little, watching Argyle work the panel with near robotic efficiency, but then they launched, and the silence stretched, grew fat, and then grew odd.

Argyle began to hum, and it was so tuneless, it was an affront to their ears.

“You okay?” Thorn asked.

Argyle gave them a sly grin, then flicked his eyes at the screen. “Two minutes, nine seconds. A near record.”

“A record? For being out of tune?” Kira asked.

Argyle snorted. “Close. For tolerating me being incapable of being, um...melodious. At all. It’s a bet I make with myself, sort of as a way to make passengers feel comfortable.”

“You mean your singing is worse than the chair?” Thorn asked, looking pointedly at the hard seat he was in. “I slept in an oil reclamation field. This is worse.”

Argyle laughed, and Kira joined. “Older model shuttle, but don’t let her interior fool you. The seats might be utter shit, but the engines are flawless.”

Thorn’s face twitched as they finished their jump, and the stars shifted. “Good, because we’ve got company.”

“How did you—shit, two contacts—no, I make one, just a weird signal,” Argyle said, fingers flying over keys as he sent FleetNet a sitrep. The shuttle was ninety thousand klicks out from a hab wheel that dwarfed anything Thorn had ever seen; around it, silver points of light indicated a fighter defense that looked serious.

But they were too far away to help.

“One is better than two,” Thorn said, feeling a calm sweep through him, welcome and—it gave him courage. No, confidence. That was the term. “Confidence,” he said.

“What?” Kira asked. “Bad time for affirmations, Thorn. Gotta fight.”

“I am,” Thorn said.

Argyle looked askance at them both, wrestling the stick to no avail. “I need time to launch missiles on a longer arc. Can’t get at that ship from directly behind us; it’ll sidestep and we’re screwed.”

The shuttle was fast, but it maneuvered like a brick. The Nyctus ship was closing at a stunning velocity. Whoever the pilot was, they’d picked the right vector. They would have a firing solution on the shuttle in less than ten seconds, far too distant to use the ON ships as active partners in the small shootout.

“Thorn?” Kira asked him, but her voice was miles away. He was falling inward, letting the howl of stars fill his mind as he looked, touched, and sensed everything about the Nyctus pilot—

—and there she was.

Scared. Angry. Seasoned.

She was a veteran, and her quiet rage at being sent on the hunt alone percolated through her thoughts, poisonous and ripe to use. Thorn felt—then saw—a long series of shells—no, combat medals. She was decorated.

He reached in and bent her will to him. So many kills. So long an ink trail, dark with your success. How bright your lights flash in the waves, striking fear in the hearts of the landwalkers. This is beneath you.

Yes! It i—the Nyctus pilot began to agree, then clipped her thoughts with a blast of willpower so hard it felt like Thorn had struck steel, face first.

All that space. Open. Like the waves, where you belong, Thorn said.

Psychic laughter, then a wave of hate. Clever. Not clever enough. My—a word, not translated, but an image of a flaming rock—seeks you even now. The beauty of my math is beyond your understanding.

Try me, waverider. You may be surprised at what I know.

There is no place for your kind among the stars, human. You are as children, without purpose of path. Beaching yourselves on the reality of galactic power. I will—what is this?

Thorn turned an eye to Argyle, who grinned. “Birds away. Glad you kept it talking.”

Those are called missiles. Harlequins, to be exact. Heluva pop. Goodbye. You will never taste the waves again, Thorn said, as the missiles stuck home, and the Nyctus ship was reduced to cooling gases in a cloud.

And then the cloud was gone, too.

“Shuttle, nice shooting. Didn’t see the squiddies in this close. They follow you?” came a voice on the comm.

“One did. Not for long. I’ve got the ’casters aboard. Permission to approach?” Argyle asked.

“Granted, and we’ll fly you in. Welcome to Fleet, Starcasters.”

“Glad to be here,” Kira said. “Even more glad Stellers is here.”

“I’ll bet. Follow along, kids. We land in two minutes,” the pilot said. “I’m Torval, by the way. That’s Kuprinov over there, flying like she’s on vacation.”

Kuprinov told Torval where he could stick her foot, but nicely.

“Thanks for the company. Shuttle out,” Argyle said, smiling. “Fun group.”

“Let’s see how fun they are after we dump our reports,” Kira muttered, but then Fleet got closer, Argyle got busy, and Thorn looked like he wanted to sleep, the lucky bastard.

Sometimes, Kira hated being senior to him. Like now.

* * *

“Stellers, I can’t help but notice that you’re a bit confused as to what’s happening,” Admiral Maynard said in a slow, matronly drawl. She fit her voice. Whatever Thorn had been expecting, she wasn’t it. Short, slightly plump, and with the air of a grandmother, her bright green eyes and silver hair were offset with freckles, a warm smile, and a calm demeanor. She wore little insignia on her uniform, and carried nothing but a battered green notebook with an actual ink pen clipped to the cover.

“Yes, ma’am,” Thorn answered.

They were walking along the second ring, alone, and Thorn got the feeling that was by design. Every other area at Fleet had been a hive of activity. Here, there was nothing except the stunning view—the entire wall was clear and looked out over the streams of naval traffic. Every few meters, a small fruit tree or flowering bush grew, mounted to the wall in a bulbous pot. The air smelled more alive than anything Thorn had experienced onboard a ship, and after a moment of walking, Thorn felt himself relax.

“Yes, it’s designed to make you comfortable. I’m an admiral, not an interrogator, though some of my colleagues are both. I prefer more archaic methods of planning,” Maynard said. If she was faking the whole grandma persona, it was damned good. An air of calm surrounded her, even when she lifted the green notebook and showed it to Thorn. “I’m told you have one of these.”

Thorn was confused, but only for an instant. “Ah, yes, ma’am.” He pulled his talisman and handed it to her. “I didn’t realize you were—”

“An officer cursed with some magical ability? Yes, I am—have been since well before such things were accepted as real. I’m more than twice your age, and I remember a time when magicians were regarded as hustlers. Or worse.”

She took the talisman, feeling its heft. “A lot of power here. And in you,” she said. “Where did it come from?” She held the book out to him.

Thorn took it and tucked it away, then he followed as the admiral began walking again. Outside, a small warship flashed three coded lights and burned away at maximum acceleration, only to be replaced by two more identical craft. Fleet was busy.

“Cotswolds. My home. Or, it was, ma’am.”

“And the book came from?”

“The crater of my home, ma’am. It was the…the only thing I could save. Ma’am,” Thorn said.

A long pause ensued, then the admiral stopped and waved at a larger ship out in the black, its running lights blinking blue. “Fueling. But what they don’t know is, there’s not enough fuel in the universe to do what we need.”

“I respectfully disagree, ma’am,” Thorn offered.

She lifted a brow, but her face remained—amused. “Please, explain.”

Thorn said nothing but turned and faced the ship, now a klick away, stationary. It was a missile frigate of newer design, some two hundred meters in length. Thorn stared hard at the trio of fueling lights, their constant blue glare pointed slightly away, toward the star.

The lights turned green, then red. Then one turned blue, and two remained green. Then they all went dark for a short interval, before returning to their calm, steady blue.

Admiral Maynard stood utterly still, watching Thorn.

“Ma’am, if you’ll watch the ship?” he said, sounding distracted.

“I will.”

Thorn leaned toward the clear wall until his forehead touched, hands limp at his sides. His face was devoid of any expression, save a small furrowing of his brow, but that faded as something began to tickle at Admiral Maynard’s awareness.

The ship moved. One meter toward them.

Then it moved back.

Thorn broke his concentration with an apologetic grin. “We don’t need fuel, ma’am. We need people like me. And we need a lot of things to throw at the Nyctus.”

Maynard let a breath hiss from her nose, eyes bright with a pastiche of fugitive emotions. “Sweet merciful—I wish he could be here to see this.”

“Who, ma’am?”

“Einstein. Albert. An old scientist. He would have loved this, I think,” she said, grinning broadly. “He knew the universe was wild and unknown, and this would—well, it confirms that no one knows everything. Or even anything, really. When did you learn that you could manipulate large objects?”

“When I was getting Kira—excuse me, Lieutenant Commander Kira Wixcombe—her ship was being chased and brainjacked, and I sort of, ah, ended that operation by the Nyctus,” Thorn said.

Admiral Maynard regarded her right hand, where a thick white scar crossed the entire back and thumb. “My own present from the Nyctus. Shrapnel from a magtrain engine. We were hit bringing in ore from the Lookout Mountains on Antioch. I was one of three survivors.”

“On the train, ma’am?”

She gave a small, sad shake of her head. “Antioch. My children died there, frozen in an icy crater. We never went back to mine there again. Too many ghosts. And bones.” She sighed, then squared on Thorn, her jaw set. “Until now, we’ve been thinking in big terms. Huge fleets. Massive set battles over systems with dozens of worlds. An entire press, front to front, and we’ve been losing. We’ve given up nearly two hundred light years’ worth of breathing room, and all it’s gotten us is more empty hulls and a lot of death notices to sailors who aren’t coming back.”

“How do I fit in, ma’am? I’ll do anything you ask. I’m not scared of dying. I was more or less dead for a long time.”

“We’ve all felt like that. I’ll tell you a secret, Thorn, although admirals aren’t supposed to have feelings. I ache for my children. For my husband. My home. I have since the day it happened, and I know you understand. That’s why we’re here, discussing this. Because you’re going to fight a kind of war—for now—that goes against everything we’ve tried to this point. Where we went big, and failed, we will now go small in hopes of two things,” she said.

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

“I know you will, because I asked you, and because you want the same thing we do. The two things that I want to see are a victory and fear.” The Admiral angled her head to look up at Thorn. “Do you understand?”

“I do, ma’am, because I felt it. Victory makes sense because, well, we want to win. But fear—that, I get. You want the Nyctus to lay awake, looking at the skies and wondering if this is the night the fire comes down.”

“Exactly. Let them die inside every time something streaks across the sky. Let them stew in their fear until it gnaws them to a husk and their officers start making mistakes. Weaken the root, and the tree falls. That’s what we’re going to do, and you’re the axe. You leave with Wyant and Wixcombe in four hours, and you’re not going to attack the Nyctus command post.”

“I’m not? Uh, ma’am?” Thorn said. He was in new territory, but a thrill began seeping through his bones at the prospect of a real fight. And real victory.

“No.” Maynard pointed lazily toward a red star that was pulsing with fiery light. “There. No planets, no main bases, but something a lot more…personal.”

Thorn stared, trying to recall the star’s name, but failing. He grunted, a wicked grin creeping onto his face. In that moment, he was far gone from the uncertain officer who’d stepped into the long corridor with a friendly admiral. “Family.”

“Yes. In a manner of speaking. The Nyctus are highly structured in their family groups, and fiercely dependent on their own history. There’s a…repository, of memories, tended by young Nyctus officers who are being trained to remember.”

“Indoctrinated, ma’am. That’s the word I would use,” Thorn said, with respect.

“A far better word. We think some three dozen elite Nyctus families have their best and brightest there, sort of a finishing school for a race who are convinced that killing thirty billion humans is their birthright. I want you to crack the station open, spill them into hard vacuum, and film it. Can you do that for me, Lieutenant Stellers? Can you do it as a first step?”

Thorn turned and saluted. “I can, and I will, ma’am.”

Admiral Maynard stared up at him and smiled. “What are your thoughts right now, in one word, Lieutenant?”

Thorn didn’t hesitate. “Finally.”

19

“Three jumps, three attacks, and hopefully, making the squiddies ink in their pants,” Mol said.

“If they wear pants,” Kira added.

“Just get me in front of them,” Thorn said.

He was a different man than he’d been days earlier. After seeing the hope—real, open hope—in Admiral Maynard’s eyes, Thorn understood that he wasn’t just an expensive tool to be thrown into the Nyctus war plans.

In reality, Thorn was the best, last chance humanity had to push back, and the weight of it sat easily on his shoulders. If they could succeed, then the war moved on. If he failed, Thorn likely wouldn’t be around to see it all come apart.

“We’re an hour out from the…I think it translates as End Lesson, but that might be a bit shaky,” Mol said, reading a datastream Trixie was scrolling up for them as final prep.

“The translation is solid to nine of ten, Mol,” Trixie said.

“Why not just say ninety percent? Or ninetieth percentile?” Thorn asked.

“She’s going through this dialect thing. Caught her playing old earth videos from something called the Victorian Era, and she’s been insufferable ever since,” Mol said, rolling her eyes.

“M’lady,” Trixie intoned, “my reactor is optimal. Ready for turndown in three—two—one—we’re silent and cold. Per your instructions, I’m cutting all radiation.”

Kira snorted, then tipped an imaginary cap. She’d seen the vids as well.

“Thanks, luv,” Mol said. “You’re up, Thorn. We’re coasting in at thirty percent of light, but I’ll use the snowflake drive to slow us and cut toward the target.”

The snowflake drive was a gas jet used as an attitude rocket; it left sparkling debris behind in the form of frozen gases that dissipated almost immediately. It was the quietest method for sneaking up on something in space, unless you could be both stealthed and free of acceleration.

“Mind if I add something to our arrival?” Thorn asked Mol. Kira gave him a sharp look, then it turned curious. As a Joiner, she understood something of his power, but Thorn was growing beyond the man who’d arrived at boot camp covered in muck and anger. He pushed a blond lock away, focusing his eyes in the middle distance. Without asking for further permission, Thorn closed his eyes and waved his left hand in a dreamlike pass through the air before him.

Outside, the stars vanished.

“Holy shit,” Mol whispered.

“Yeah, that,” Kira added.

Thorn opened his gray eyes, face nearly devoid of emotion. “Knock, knock.”

The stars fuzzed back into existence, and a bright point began to grow between the local star and their viewscreen.

“Thorn, what did you do?” Kira asked.

“I wove a shadow around us, and then made it—I made it one-way. Now they’ll see nothing, at least nothing until it’s too late. Just like it was for us, back home,” Thorn said, his tone savage.

“For all of us,” Mol added.

The Nyctus base drew closer, and as it did, the design began to grow more complex with each passing second. It was no mere space station. It was a globe, with something in the middle—something reflective.

“An ocean. Or a pond. They brought something from home with them,” Thorn said.

The silvery globule moved about in a perfect sphere of clear material; it was divided by long, opaque corridors that ended in habitats. At the northern pole of the station, a wide-mouthed launch bay was filled by ships, none of them in motion.

“Caught them sleeping,” Kira said.

Thorn shook his head gently. “Not sleeping. Singing.”

“You can…you can hear them? At this range?” Mol asked. Her eyes widened with a hint of fear at Thorn’s ability, revealed in his casual statement. The Nyctus base was nearly sixty thousand klicks away, but somehow he was listening to them. It was voyeuristic and powerful all at once, and Mol wasn’t sure how that made her feel.

But then, the squid hadn’t cared about how humans felt as the fire came down. They just kept dropping rocks.

“What will you do?” Kira asked.

Thorn made a gesture asking for quiet, then pointed closer to the station. “Can we bend in, fifteen degrees? I need us to pass by up close and personal.”

“Why?” Mol asked.

“Is it safe?” Kira asked, peering at the display.

“It is,” Trixie said.

“Okay, change course, Trixie,” Mol said. “Follow Thorn’s call.”

“Done,” Trixie reported. “We’ll pass by close enough to see their faces. Or whatever they’re called.”

“Good,” Thorn said, then closed his eyes again, but this time he stood, leaning forward on his toes. His eyes flickered under the lids, busy at something only he could know. Sweat began to bead on his forehead, lips twitching as if he held back a song too terrible to speak aloud.

Trixie’s hull began to sing.

It was a deep, bass note, slowly building until Mol and Kira felt it rattling in their teeth, but they said nothing, nor did Trixie. Thorn leaned further into his pose, lifting a hand, then both, and then drawing his fingers together into fists so savage his knuckles cracked like gunshots.

To their right, the Nyctus globe began to wobble. Warning lights flared to life along the exterior supports, and the ships—once dark and still—began to pulse with navigation beacons, red and white, then a constant flashing red.

The Nyctus sprang to life at the unseen and unmeasurable attack.

Too late.

Kira dropped to one knee, hands flying to her head from a pain so brutal she thought the Nyctus were ’jacking her. But she was wrong. It was a side effect of Thorn’s blunt force assault on every Nyctus mind, along with something else. He was attacking the globe itself, twisting two small ports apart to reveal a gap. It was a small hole, as holes went—a half meter across, but in space that was more than enough to let hard vacuum pull the water out and beyond its glassine corral.

Einstein isn’t here to see it, but then he might not want to, Thorn mused.

The globe shattered, and Nyctus began to howl into the void, their psychic screams filling Thorn’s mind with savage delights.

“Thorn—what the hell…they’re—” Kira said, voice trailing away in shocked horror.

“Exploding. They’re, um, freezing and exploding?” Mol said, asking no one and everyone.

“Explosive decompression is unusual in certain situations, but it would appear that the Starcaster has chosen a decisive means to finish this objective,” Trixie said. It was the most officious tone she’s ever used, and Mol turned to regard the console with suspicion. “Trixie, what’s going on?” She cut her eyes at Thorn, who began to relax as the concentration drained away from his body.

“This is the first true victory I have seen. I find that unusual,” Trixie said.

“So do I,” Mol said, watching as the Nyctus shattered, one after another, their bodies mixed into the maelstrom of outgassing and hard debris. The globe was no more. The entire station was—pieces. A swirling cloud of components, glittering in the light of a star that had been—until moments earlier—a safe place for the next generation of Nyctus conquerors.

Thorn’s eyes opened, slowly. He surveyed his work, face neutral. “It worked.”

“What kind of magic?” Kira asked.

“All of them, I think. I’m not sure I know the term, but I could feel the water, and their presence. I could have ’jacked one of them, or maybe more. They were too…complacent. They felt safe,” Thorn said.

“Trixie, any outgoing comms? We need to know if they got off a message,” Mol said.

“None detected. Should I jump to the next objective?” Trixie asked.

“Yes. The squids will find out about this soon enough, and it’ll go through their fleet like wildfire. That’s what we wanted, but I’d rather not be here when the cavalry arrives,” Mol said. “Ready, Thorn? Kira?”

Kira merely nodded. Thorn sat down, fingers drumming on the arm of his seat, then gave a slow nod of his own.

“Trixie, let’s go. Next stop, The Keels,” Mol said.

The stars turned to a smear of light, then went out, and the dead Nyctus were only a memory, left far behind.

* * *

Trixie held them in a stable point some seven hundred million klicks out from a blue-white star that bathed the system in hot light. The ship was pointed inward toward a small, barren world with no atmosphere, deep dust, and scores of canyons filled with hard black shadows.

As Mol fired the engine, their scanners were able to detect what waited at the location known simply as The Keels. On the opposite side of the planet, a dozen or more ships floated in various states of completion, some little more than hard shells. The largest ship under construction was a carrier, its massive keel nearly a thousand meters long. Three tugs nudged the engine system into place, and when it was positioned, Trixie’s long-range scope showed dozens of robotic fabrication units working furiously to attach everything before microgravity could push them apart. Bright lights flared, white hot, and then the scope moved on to a smaller ship nearing completion.

“Is that a frigate? Looks too big, but I don’t know,” Kira said.

“Gotta be three hundred meters or more. Cruiser?” Mol asked.

Two lines of ejection ports ran along the ship’s entire length—the Nyctus could launch dozens of KEW’s at once with the design, both in space or high orbit. That kind of massed fire could take out any ship in the ON, as well as flatten a city of medium size.

“They’re not changing tactics. Just more of the same,” Thorn said with disgust. “Consistent that way.”

“How do they carry so many…I guess, rocks? Is that it? Just rocks?” Mol asked.

“I see a laser array, and maybe missile ports at the bow, but there’s no reason for the Nyctus to change. Think about it. As far as they’re concerned, the war is almost over. It’s a matter of time for them,” Kira said.

“Not anymore,” Thorn said. “Same plan as before, but I’m going to use the ships themselves as weapons. They’ve got a delicate balance going on with so much mass attached to that pier.”

“Think you can do this and make it look like an accident?” Kira asked.

“That would be a hell of an advantage,” Mol added.

Thorn rubbed his jaw, head tilted as he considered the ships. Tiny dots flitted about—workers, robots, maybe both—and there was a general busy feel in the image. “Maybe we will try that. I mean, I will. What if—never mind, I think I know what I want to do. Or at least try.”

“Tell me,” Kira said, putting a hand on Thorn’s arm. His eyes were unfocused again as he worked through scenarios that used magic to create chaos among the Nyctus.

“Hard propellant in the thrusters, I think. This calls for Scorch as a discipline,” Thorn said.

“Ah,” Kira said.

“Ah?” Mol asked. “Ah what?”

“Fire is bad. Fire inside a rocket is even worse. Those transfer units look like they’ve got a lot of mass—maybe a ton or more. Instead of being subtle, I’m going to be, ah…” Thorn said, then waved vaguely.

“Make something go boom at high speeds?” Trixie offered helpfully.

“Yes. Just like that. Thanks, Trixie. I knew you would understand,” Thorn said.

“What do you need?” Kira asked Thorn. She continued to survey the screen, making estimates of the Nyctus firepower. The number of ships meant that if Thorn could, taking this system out would leave a hole in the enemy offensive capability.

And less offense meant less defense.

“Yes, it is,” Thorn said.

“Did you read my mind? Without permission?” Kira asked him, but she was only mildly irritated.

“Didn’t have to. If this works, then, yeah—whatever is behind this place becomes a target. We have a way into Nyctus space, once I—well, let me work. And if anything goes wrong, Mol needs to save Trixie,” Thorn said.

“Told you he was sweet on me,” Trixie chirped.

“Easy, tramp. He’s thinking about all of the data and intel you’re collecting,” Mol said.

“Whatever.” Trixie sniffed. “But, yes. I’ll send it ahead in a databurst just in case.”

“Good,” Kira added. “Thorn, do you need quiet?”

He nodded, then held up a finger. “Actually, can I try something different?”

“Sure. I’m just your ride for this, but we’d better do it fast. We won’t be unseen for long,” Mol said.

“I’m going outside,” Thorn said.

“What? Why?” Kira asked, alarmed.

“Just a hunch. Let me suit up and hover about…say, no more than fifty meters away. Then have Trixie go quiet. Okay?” Thorn said.

Mol shrugged. “It’s all new to me, but sure. Suits are behind you. Yours is number three.”

“Thanks,” Thorn said, standing and stepping away to the locker where suits were held. He stripped to the waist, revealing his hard, angular frame, dotted with small scars from years of living as a refugee in his own world. In a moment, he was clad in the black suit and helmet, his faceplate a perfect silver mirror. Thorn was gone, replaced with a shape, a suggestion—the only unique part of him was the bulge where his talisman rested in a chest pocket.

He stepped through the lock, only his breathing making a sound on the comms, and when Trixie cycled the opening closed, Mol and Kira held their collective breath until he appeared, hovering in front of the ship like a wraith.

“Quiet now, please,” Thorn said.

Trixie followed Mol’s keyed command, and the ship went dark. Beyond, the Keels were fizzing with activity as the Nyctus went on about the business of war, unaware of Thorn’s presence as he swept his gaze over them—

—and found his target.

The Nyctus engineer flew slowly along the carrier’s length, about ten meters away from the outer hull, using a simple harness and suit. There was a canister of solid fuel, long with an unexpected bonus—two large batteries for a welding unit. The torch hung at the Nyctus’ belt, unused, as the alien went slowly along, examining the long connection of two massive hull plates.

There.

Two columns. Two tanks. Sixty kilos of compressed propellant in search of a spark.

I can be a spark.

Thorn reached out, his consciousness wandering, righting itself, and becoming something more than a formless presence. He drew focus on the tanks and connected to them through a line so clear and bright it was more real than the local star, pulsing hot white in the distance. He let the magic break free—out of control, away from his guiding hand, and the small, diamond-bright point of Scorch magic ignited the fuel in one tank, and then the second.

Both of the Nyctus’ hearts spiked with panic as it began to accelerate away from the Keels at high speed. A covered tentacle reached for the control pad, but Thorn was there, guiding the alien digits away with a surprisingly gentle intrusion.

Out, away, and then back, Thorn said to the Nyctus, drawing a mental image of a long arc that would result in terrific velocity at the end. Despite Thorn planning a burn of nearly sixty seconds, there would be over half of the fuel left in both tanks—turning the Nyctus into a flying bomb going more than two hundred meters per second. Between the gear, and the tanks, and the delta-V, wherever the Nytcus hit would be vaporized.

That meant Thorn had to select the target carefully. So he did, nudging the Nytcus’ control digit to fly directly at the massive engines just installed on the carrier. With thousands of tons of fuel and other incendiaries, the result would be spectacular.

The Nyctus fought Thorn, to no avail. Images of a watery home with curling ramps that ended above the surface filled Thorn’s mind, followed by a series of flickering, panicked thoughts—the stars above the same home. A collection of carved shells, their surfaces pearlescent and dancing with natural luminescence—then a human spacesuit, the legs torn off. The suit was spread out like a trophy and whatever reservations Thorn had about cold-blooded murder vanished in a puff of exhaust as the second tank ignited fully. In the brainjacked Nyctus vision, the Keels shifted from an orderly series of ships. At the growing velocity, each hull became part of a silvery forest, drawing closer with each second as the relentless chemical burn went on.

Gonna be going even faster than I thought, Thorn mused.

The Nyctus began a silent howl of agonized frustration, knowing it—he—had been ’jacked, and by a human, no less. Thorn switched views for a moment, experiencing the last seconds of flight before jumping away, back to the safety of his own sight.

The engineer struck dead center of the engine assembly, and it was followed by an incandescent white light as the carrier vanished into molten debris. The explosion raced along the Keels like wildfire, smashing each ship into splinters or slag. The last keel shattered into three main parts, each section tumbling away as they crushed Nyctus engineers with their runaway mass. The central anchor point separated as well, and the entire storm of metal and Nyctus corpses continued to deteriorate in a series of small flashes.

“Thorn?” Mol asked in a small voice.

“Yes?” he answered, not looking away.

“Are you…okay?” Mol reached out as if she could reach him, then drew back.

He focused on her, his gray eyes inscrutable. Then his lips curled, and whatever demon had been inside him took leave. Thorn came back, but Kira and Mol were forever changed.

“I’ll be alright,” he said. Cracking his back, he then turned his head to and fro, loosening the muscle gone rigid with concentration. “I knew revenge would come with a price. It always does.”

“Where did you learn that?” Kira asked him, one eye on the cloud of Nyctus debris.

Thorn’s answer was soft. “Nowhere. I taught myself. Just now.”

20

Stellers?

Um…yes? Ma’am, I mean?

The voice was unknown to him, but it was human, female, and powerful. A Starcaster at minimum, and not a Joiner.

I’m relaying your change in orders, per Admiral Maynard. She asks that you consider them carefully, because the target has changed. Instead of destroying something, we want you to seize it.

Ma’am? Brainjacking? And, no disrespect, but how do I know Admiral Maynard is even involved in this?

He heard ghostly laughter, then a pause. She told me to be ready for that question, and her answer is this: if you don’t finish this mission, but you somehow survive, she’ll slap you silly with her green notebook. Twice, if necessary.

Thorn laughed richly, imagining Admiral Maynard reaching up to bop him with the notebook. Copy that, ma’am. What’s my mission?

Read these coordinates in Lyra, and commit them to memory. There’s a ship underway at low speeds for now. You will intercept, take control, and bring the ship with you by way of a jump. You’ll likely be followed, the woman said.

Ma’am? Won’t that defeat the purpose of ’jacking the ship?

Ordinarily, yes. But we’ll be waiting. More specifically, the entire fifth fleet will be waiting to turn the Nyctus chasers into scrap. They won’t have a chance, and for once, we’ll be the hunters. Your job is to keep that ship in one piece, along with the crew.

The…the crew? Ma’am? I’ve never ’jacked more than one squid at a time. Not sure I can—

It’s a tug run, with less than two dozen crew. You don’t have to control them all. You only have to control the bridge. If you must, eliminate any Nyctus who try to scuttle the ship, or redirect outside our cone of control. Understood?

Yes, ma’am. But, one thing—Thorn twitched as an image came to his mind, free of static or distortion.

It was a ship unlike anything he’d ever seen. Five rows of thirty gunports, what could only be masers of a power an order beyond human technological ability.

You understand, then. Those guns—and that maser—will remove all doubt in any battle. We grab this boat, we save years of research. We miss, and we’re back to nipping at their heels. Can you do it, Stellers?

Thorn paused, but not because he was uncertain. It was quite the opposite. He knew he could.

Yes, ma’am. I can.

Good. See you at the debriefing.

You won’t be there? At the handover? Thorn didn’t even know who she was, but it still seemed worth asking.

I will, but you won’t notice me. I’m always just under the radar. Godspeed, Stellers. Fleet out.

* * *

“And we’re supposed to steal a whole ship?” Kira asked, voice oozing disbelief.

“Well, not the whole thing. Just the—well, yes. The whole thing, but it’s a small crew, and they’re on a maintenance run, I think.” Thorn spread his hands in surrender.

Mol looked at him as if he’d been struck in the head. “You want Trixie to take us to a point in the galaxy where we’re going to lurk, like some ancient train robbers?”

“I like their style, and yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Thorn said.

“Jump is plotted,” Trixie said. “Ready?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mol protested, but the stars vanished in a lurch, replaced by a new view. Lyra, and dead in the middle of it, too.

“You treacherous little—”

“Admiral Maynard’s orders, Mol. Sorry,” Trixie interrupted. “Oh, and here comes your ship, by the way. Might want to get ready. There are several escort ships alongside our target, and they don’t look friendly.”

Kira looked stricken. “What the hell is that?”

Thorn glanced at the data, then Trixie made the image sharper. “It’s the last ship they’ll ever need, if we don’t grab it.”

“Are those masers? The size of a corvette?” Kira asked. The maser assembly was eight meters across, at minimum.

“Yes. And that’s why I need to—shit, Trixie, kill the noise. They’re probing me,” Thorn snapped.

“Quiet ship now. All yours,” Trixie said. Kira and Mol fell into a tense silence as Thorn shook out his hands and reached across the distance, unsure of what to expect.

Before the command screen stood a pair of Nyctus, speaking about the engines, the ship, and their general boredom with the entire process. The female was slightly younger, and it was her mind probing around out of a general curiosity. Thorn resisted her intrusion, seized one tentacle, and drew her weapon—a wicked looking curved blade, clearly with some traditional design in mind.

Under Thorn’s control, she slashed the other Nyctus pilot across his bulbous head, laying the soft tissue open in hideous spray of clear fluid that quickly turned inky black. The Nyctus officer fell with a wet gurgle, then the bridge erupted in chaos.

Thorn directed the brainjacked pilot to do one thing only: jump her ship to a point just inside the local star’s gravity well. She obeyed and punched the coordinates on her alien screen just before another Nyctus fired its sidearm at her, shearing her hearts into tattered debris.

“And…jump,” Thorn told Trixie.

The stars didn’t move so much as they twitched. Trixie only shifted some eight hundred thousand klicks, and when they burst into position, they weren’t alone. The Nyctus ship was alongside, mere kilometers away. In front of them, the might of the fifth fleet spread out, guns at the ready as three Nyctus cruisers gave chase, emerging with their KEW ports open and laser arrays in firing position.

“We can’t duck, can we?” Kira asked.

“Be nice if we could,” Mol said. Behind them, the fleet opened up, and she took a second to marvel at how exquisite a space battle could be when you weren’t the one getting shot at. Flickering beams and streaking missiles raced away from the fleet, pouring hatred onto the three Nyctus cruisers, which tried desperately to break formation in order to fight on.

For the Nyctus, they had everything but time.

The lead ship vanished when six missiles hammered into its bow, tearing deep into the ship even as it accelerated into the salvo.

“Splash one,” Thorn said, keeping a mental tab on the chaos aboard his target ship. Every time a Nyctus approached the controls, he ’jacked another and attacked. Under his tutelage, the Nyctus bridge was an ongoing civil war with no winners.

“And two,” Kira said, as the second chase ship warped, split, and detonated in a searing light. “Damn fine shooting.”

“They’ve got a ’caster onboard. She gave the missiles a nudge,” Thorn said.

“Glad to hear it. Have they—whoa, what the hell—” Kira spat.

The third ship broke at an impossible speed, making for the Nyctus ship Thorn was fighting to control.

“Think he’s going to scuttle—”

Thorn waved Mol off. “Not if I can—I have him.”

Kira and Mol watched in open-mouthed amazement while Thorn narrowed his eyes, leaned to one side, and waved a hand, as if he was a conductor of a ghostly orchestra. The third Nyctus ship vanished with the telltale flash of a jumpdrive.

“Where did he go?” Mol asked.

Thorn cut his eyes toward the star. “Somewhere in the middle of that.”

“Heluva way to go. Not that they don’t deserve it,” Mol said.

“They sure do,” Trixie added.

Thorn gave a terse grin, then refocused on the target ship. “If I can—shit. There’s a—” Thorn’s voice trailed away as he leaned against the console, sweat springing to life on his face.

“Thorn?” Kira asked.

“Telepath. Powerful,” he said. His voice was low, skin ashen.

“Can I help?” Kira asked, unsure if she could even survive contact with a Nyctus like that.

He reached for her hand. His fingers were slick with sweat, and he swayed with an invisible effort as he and the Nyctus fought a secret war. Thorn’s fingers crushed her hand and then—

—I have you, Thorn told his enemy.

You have only death. I will sing my victory to the tides, your blood and mind a prize of—

Don’t you ever shut up? Or does your arrogance never sleep? Thorn asked, even as he found what he was looking for.

A memory.

He pushed forward into the alien mind, seeing a crack where the Nyctus shaman held the one thing he could not admit to anyone else.

You’re ashamed, Thorn said.

I feel no shame at killing your kind. You are animals, incapable of swimming even as well as children. You are—

Not humans, you fool. You killed a…sister. Yes. I can see it. And no one knows. Well, until now. I know.

Silence, then—I will skin your body and leave the—

The Nyctus never saw the young ensign approach from behind. She was weak, and easy to control. Thorn made her use two tentacles to drive the—it was called a wingshell, the knife—into the telepath’s hearts, slashing back and forth until the deck was slick with black, inky blood, and then the ship was Thorn’s.

“Fleet command, sending a ship your way,” Thorn said over Trixie’s open comm.

“Appreciate it, Starcaster. Leave the engine running. We’ve got plans for this one.”

Thorn gave a weak grin and collapsed. “Tell the admiral we’re coming home.”

Epilogue

All of the officers were there, waiting. Thorn stepped into the room, any sense of awkwardness long gone. He inhabited the Starcaster role now, and it was a part of him. Stitched together from years of fear and a lust for revenge, now that he had power, he found it wasn’t exactly to his liking. It was—a necessity. A tool, albeit something within him. He took no joy in the death of each Nyctus, because tasting their cold, ruthless minds left him ever grateful that he was a human and capable of mercy.

That didn’t mean he would be merciful.

“You leave us with an unusual problem, Specialist.” The speaker was Admiral Wynne, a man with watery eyes and a hangdog expression. He sat, unmoving, among other officers who were part of a process that would ultimately answer the great question before them.

What to do with Thorn?

And, more specifically, the Starcasters.

“Sir?” Thorn asked, though he knew what the admiral meant.

Commander Schrader, still nursing wounds from the attack on Code Nebula, leaned forward on the gleaming table, his face conflicted. “Imagine finding a sword—a sword so sharp that nothing can stand before it. Now imagine fighting your way through the enemy, only to find that no matter how many times you swing this weapon, you’ll never be able to cut them all down. That’s where we stand right now, Stellers. You are—lethal. Beyond belief, and for now, you seem to have no delusions of grandeur. Your motivations are as pure as we could hope—”

Thorn bristled at that, but Schrader patted the air in a conciliatory gesture.

“My apologies to the memory of your family. And your world. I speak only to your…to the purity of your motivation, and the problems it causes,” Schrader said.

“Your trauma might have made you, Thorn, but we won’t cause other people to endure what you had just to win this putrid war,” Admiral Maynard said with unusual ferocity. “You have my personal guarantee.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I believe you,” Thorn said.

Kira cleared her throat, bending every eye to her. “If I may?”

“Please,” Admiral Wynne said, waving her to speak.

“Thorn has more ability than anyone can imagine, because we’ve never seen his talent before. That means he’s not only a—well, his power spans all of the styles, or schools, or whatever we choose to declare these destructive abilities. But I think he has something else to give. It’s not exactly hidden, but we haven’t considered it yet because we’re too busy pointing him at the enemy like a missile and then counting the dead,” Kira said.

“If you’re suggesting he teach, I must stop you right there, Wixcombe. He’s far too valuable on the front. Sorry, Stellers,” Commander Schrader said with a hint of actual apology.

“No sir—I mean, yes, he can teach, but not in the way of our instructors, and not in any style you would recognize. I think that…well—” Kira hesitated, looking to Thorn, who gave a small nod. “I’ve known Thorn since we were kids, so I have an advantage of sorts.”

“You mean you understand him?” Admiral Wynne asked.

“No, sir. I mean, I know him, as a…as a presence. As a mind. And he knows me. He can communicate with me over incredible distances, like any telepath, but it’s more than that. He can see me while we’re speaking, and I think it goes well beyond that. I’m only a Joiner, but I think he can train me by—what term do we want to use, Thorn?”

“Gift. I think it’s a gift, or gifting. It’s like permission to come aboard, but when I leave, I’ve drawn you a map to a place in your ship you’ve never been, and you never knew it existed. I think I can make our Navy stronger, but only if you keep the Starcasters together and let us fight as we will. I understand why we do things a certain way, but why should we keep doing that if so many people are dead?” Thorn asked everyone.

The silence stretched, gravid with unspoken admissions that Thorn just might be right.

“And you think these…gifts…can be inserted into other minds? Like a memory?” Maynard asked. Her eyes were bright with hope.

“I do, ma’am,” Thorn answered.

Silent until that moment, a pale woman with dark eyes, high cheekbones, and an air of near religious intensity floated away from the wall, where she’d been leaning in an unobtrusive pose of feigned indifference. She wore overalls and no rank, but something about her set Thorn’s teeth on edge. He caught an image from her thoughts.

Spy.

“Specialist Stellers, we’ve not met in person. For the purposes of this meeting, you may call me Captain Densmore.” Her smile was perfunctory, but her eyes were alive, drinking in his details. Thorn gave her a level look, then sensed the probe at a distant edge of his mind. He slammed the opening shut, seeing Densmore twitch—then cover it up almost instantly.

“If you visit my mind without invitation again, I’ll turn you into a walking corpse,” Thorn said in a conversational tone. Then realization dawned on him. He knew her.

Schrader and Maynard laughed, but Kira gasped in alarm.

“Told you he was strong,” Schrader said. “You’d do well to tread lightly, Alys.”

Alys—Densmore—looked satisfied with her fishing expedition. “I had to know for certain. I don’t take anything on faith since we’ve been on the losing end of this war.”

Thorn felt his anger rise, then put it away with an effort. “I meant what I said. Ma’am. And it’s good to see you in person, despite the tone. My apologies. You’re a strong telepath, and it’s my pleasure not to disappoint Admiral Maynard and her green notebook.”

“You told him that? Shame, Alys,” Admiral Maynard chided.

She shrugged but did so while smiling. “And I do apologize. I’ve suspected that the Starcasters have hidden depths, because we don’t know much about any of this. Ten years in and we still have infantry commanders who think the Nyctus use satellites to pound us into rubble.” She sighed in disgust. “You killed more Nyctus than the entire fleet, and you’ve done it in three attacks. If you think you can share your abilities, I’ll be the first to open my mind to you, but I suspect you have other plans.” Densmore glanced at Kira, who flushed red at the suggestion.

“My plans are simple, ma’am. I’ll do what fleet tells me, and Mol Wyant will put me close enough to Nytcus operations so that I can torch them. Then, one day in the future, some squid will get lucky and kill me.” Thorn shrugged. “I don’t want to die, but I plan on taking a lot more of them with me before I do. If Kira—excuse me, but that’s how I think of her—can be there fighting, it will be because at some point, I was able to share this ability with her. And I know I can. I don’t know when, or how, but it will happen.”

Admiral Maynard stood, smoothing her uniform as she picked up a thin file and placed it carefully before Thorn. “Go ahead, open it.”

Thorn did.

He whistled softly and glanced up for confirmation. When the admiral nodded, he went back to reading, then turned the pages so Kira and Mol could see.

A hundred targets, spread all over Nyctus space.

“Lotta work to do,” Thorn said, smiling. “Any gas in the tank?”

Mol grinned. “Tank’s full.”

Thorn beamed at Kira, then they rose, along with Mol.

“With apologies, may we be on our way? Busy days ahead,” Thorn said, saluting.

You have no idea, came the thought, as Alys quirked her lip.

Neither do the Nyctus, Thorn sent.

* * *

Keep reading to continue the story in HEX DIVISION.

Table of Contents

- Connect with Terry Maggert
- Starcaster
- 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
- Epilogue