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  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 w
ar. 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.