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  “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 flun
g 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,” Schrade
r 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.”