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.”
Chapter 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?”
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