This Starry Deep Read online

  “Just call me Jonah, son, I’m retired.”

  “Captain Madison—”

  “Jonah,” I repeated.

  “Captain Madison,” he insisted, “I am calling to inform you that your commission is being reinstated.”

  “Bull. I’m retired,” I turned to Shae and shook my head, the frustration in my eyes easy to read. “You can’t call me back up. What the hell is going on?”

  “Sir, I am not at liberty to discuss that at length on an unsecured channel.”

  “Then call me back on a secured line. My unit can handle it. I’ll wait.”

  “Very well, sir,” he said, and he hung up.

  I turned to Shae, throwing my hands up in anger. “They want to call me back up!”

  “Easy, Soldier,” she said, rising to cross to my side. She rested a hand on my shoulder as the phone rang again.

  I hit the side of the earpiece to activate the call and braced myself for the static tweet of a secure line. It came and I winced in spite of myself. Those things were loud.

  “Captain Madison,” Mills started, without waiting for me to greet him this time, “the situation is grave.”

  “It always is. Son, just tell me straight what’s going on and why Hodges didn’t call me himself.”

  “General Hodges,” he said, stressing the man’s rank, “is busy, Captain.”

  “Fine. What’s going on that you think it’s a good idea to bother an old man during lunch?”

  “Captain Madison, sir, our entire system is about to be wiped out by an invading force.”

  “Well now, that we probably should discuss,” I told him, raising an eyebrow at Shae.

  Chapter 2– Shae

  JONAH KEPT HIS EYES on me while he started to pat down the desk near the phone. He grabbed the second earpiece and tossed it at me underhand–I snatched it out of the air, fitting it in place quickly. I flipped it to monitor-only so the mic would pick up no noise and stood, watching Jonah.

  “Captain Madison,” I heard a young voice say, “we have credible reason to believe that a full-scale invasion force is moving in from out-system.”

  “Define ‘credible,’” Jonah said. I could hear the sigh in his voice and reached out to touch his arm. The kid on the other end was obviously nervous. Besides having to deal with a Big Event, he’d gotten suckered into calling on the reluctant cavalry. Not a great place to be in that early in his career. Still, if it didn’t drum him out, it would help forge him into someone worthwhile.

  “We’ve lost contact with King Seven, sir, all contact. As well as Bulk, Athena Fourteen, and Mast’s Prayer. All within the last three months,” the kid said. He was holding it together pretty well.

  “They’re all far spun from things. That far out, can you discount natural occurrences?” Jonah looked to me and I shrugged. Both were possible. Planets that far from the center of things had gone dark before. Natural occurrences of all types can arrange for that, it didn’t have to be anything sinister.

  “We think so, sir. We’ve had reports of brightly colored ships across a growing number of planets, and not long after each reported incursion there have been multiple missing-persons reports.”

  “And they line up?”

  “Excuse me, sir?” the kid asked with a growing agitation.

  “The missing people line up exactly with these incursions?” Jonah asked.

  “We think so,” I could almost feel his nod.

  I wandered away from Jonah and grabbed up the remains of lunch. No matter which way this fell out, I knew from experience that lunch was over. We were either about to go back to war or we would solve it from here, but either way we wouldn’t be sitting down to relax again for a few hours, minimum. I kept the earpiece in to hear exactly how things fell out.

  “You think so?” Jonah asked. I put the pitcher of tea away and glanced out to where Jonah stood, looking at the sky as he talked. He liked to stare toward whoever he was talking to.

  “Captain Madison, sir, the data are listed as credible,” the voice on the other end repeated.

  “In other words, you aren’t allowed to see the actual hard data.” I laughed at that. I remembered when we were younger and Jonah had been issued top-secret documents that I wasn’t cleared to see. Treason, they threatened, if it was known I stole a look at them. Except we were married and working on the case together. Sometimes they trip over their own feet making up rules.

  “No, sir, I’m not cleared for that.” Exactly.

  “Great,” Jonah groused. “And the ships?”

  “We have not yet captured one, Captain. It’s only a matter of time, of course, but from their design, they are unknown to any records we have.”

  “So let’s see,” Jonah said, “you have some planets out on the fringes who have stopped talking to you, and some new ships flying around on rare occasion. When those ships show up, you have an increase in missing-persons reports from the planets those ships scout near, and from all of that you draw credible reason for a full-scale system invasion?”

  “Ye-yes sir,” the kid’s voice broke, but I knew something he didn’t. Jonah couldn’t resist a good invasion, theoretical or not. There were enough blocks in this one that stood up at a decent angle to make me interested. If I was interested, then I knew Jonah would be as well. I headed back to the bedroom and started to access the lock-closet that led to the weapons and supply stores. Time to start taking a current count of what we had on hand and what we would need to requisition. I knew, at the least, I would need new grenades. The ones downstairs were underpowered by today’s standards.

  “Not interested,” Jonah said harshly in my ear, and I dropped my hand to my side, starting to turn back toward the outside of the house.

  “Excuse me, Captain Madison?” the kid asked. Good question, kid: what the hell what Jonah playing at? I didn’t know, but I intended to.

  “You heard me. This is thin. I’m retired. I don’t do thin.”

  “But, sir—”

  I stood in the doorway and glared at the back of Jonah’s head until he felt it and turned to face me. He shook his head at me once, curtly. It just made me angrier.

  “No. Have Hodges call me back himself if it’s so blasted important. But this is flimsy and far from anything you need me for. I’m sorry to send you back empty-handed, son.”

  “Captain Madison—”

  “Don’t argue with me, son,” Jonah said, staring at me. That man did not know what he was playing with. Correction, he knew full well what he was playing with, which made it all the stranger.

  “But sir, it wasn’t a request. I have orders from the General here and—”

  “And he can come serve them himself,” Jonah cut him off, “with all of the data in hand, or he can damn well leave me alone. This call is terminated.”

  He took the earpiece out and set it down. I grabbed my own and yanked it out, throwing it onto the table. We stood there and stared at each other for a moment, as if daring the other to make a move.

  Jonah and I didn’t fight that much; we worked together better than anything. But still, in life, there are times when eyes don’t meet, and sometimes when that happens you need to hit at them until the swelling helps them line up again.

  The thing was, under my anger was concern. This wasn’t like Jonah, not at all. I tried to think of another time he’d refused a commission. It had happened, sure, but over much bigger stuff than this seemed to be.

  We were both retired. We had done far more than our share of time, and it was over. But that wasn’t exactly a new situation. Six or so years ago we got called back in. Goodness, was that really six years ago? It felt a lot more recent until I gave it some turning over.

  Even so, I didn’t like this. We stared at each other and his cold blue eyes tightened as he considered what to do next. He ran a hand through his hair, stopping to rub his scalp for a second, thinking. I crossed my arms and just stood there, staring.

  “Shae,” he said after a while, “I don’t know why
you’re so upset.”

  “Yes you do, Jonah. Yes, you really do.”

  “Look, you heard Mills, too. They think they might have a problem.” He shrugged, as if that explained everything.

  “Oh so now he’s ‘Mills’ and not just ‘son’?” I asked, giving him a light laugh.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jonah scowled down at me. His six-foot-four frame towered over my own five-foot-ten, but I could match him in attitude any day of the week.

  “When he’s an annoyance to you he’s just ‘son,’ but when you need to suddenly puff him up a little bit, make him someone to listen to, he gains his name back. Jonah, it’s an old habit, and it doesn’t work with me.”

  “I’m not playing any sort of game here, Shae,” he insisted.

  “Whatever. Look, there’s no reason we can’t go check it out, anyway.”

  I started to turn away, my arms still crossed, but he caught me by the shoulder and held me there. I didn’t resist, letting him turn me back to face him. His face grew solemn and he glanced up before looking back down at me.

  “Yeah, there is. If we let them call us back at every dropped hat they find in the road, we might as well not have retired in the first place,” he said. I caught a note of sadness in his voice, but dismissed it in annoyance.

  “And maybe we shouldn’t have!” I yelled at him. I was just a girl when we first left planet, together, and never looked back to wonder if it’d been the right move. Now suddenly he was looking back and sounding like he saw nothing but dust back there.

  “We’re old, Shae! Look around you!” he yelled back. Then he took a deep breath and calmed down. “Damn, I’m not as fast as I was and I have to work twice as hard to keep in shape. It’s time to let them grow up and take care of themselves. We can’t have the entire military as our children.”

  I heard the words, I realized the truth in them, but I didn’t like it. Not at all. Besides, my own anger wasn’t quite spent yet and he was pissing me off. “Not that we treated our actual child like one, either,” I shot back.

  “You raised him, too, baby,” he said, as a slow grin spread across his face.

  “Maybe we both did a shit job at it.”

  “Maybe!” he said loudly, as the grin fell away fast. “Except you know damn well we did a great job, and Newt’s a great kid.”

  “He really is, huh?” I shook my head. Mud was terrific and he might not have been ours by birth, but he was ours. And Jonah was right, the old soldier. Our little newt had grown into a strong man.

  “Yeah, he is. And we’re old. And maybe we should act it for a change, not run off guns blazing for once, and let the people who do our jobs now do them. For a change. Just to see what happens.”

  “I don’t like this, Soldier.”

  “I know, baby. I know. No one wants feel old.”

  “I didn’t until now.”

  “I have for years.”

  “Then why let it stop you now?” I asked. My anger was gone and that note of sadness in his voice was back. But the question was an honest one.

  “I...because it’s time, Shae, all right?” he answered.

  “All right,” I answered.

  Except it wasn’t all right, it wasn’t even half right. He refused to go, felt old and unneeded. I knew better, and I wasn’t going to let him wallow in his own self-imposed uselessness, wasting away. It wasn’t right, not for either of us.

  I patted his hand and left him outside to stare at the sky and think a while. I knew he would stay there, giving me space as much as needing it himself. I kicked off my gray slippers and padded around barefoot on the cool stone floor.

  The thing of it was, I couldn’t just force him to go. Not directly. But if I left without him, well, that would get him going. I would need some time; pulling together an excursion package without being noticed by your own husband is a bit of work. But not the roughest work ever, it’d just slow me down.

  That kid, Mills, would report back to his boss and it would take a few days before they thought to call again. And I knew Hodges would call again, this time in person, to try and talk Jonah into the trip. I also knew Jonah would say no, again. So I had to be ready.

  When Hodges called, I would be ready to run a trace on the signal. That was crucial. If I offered to go myself, without Jonah, they would say no. It was an oversight, and a stupid one, but I held no rank. They couldn’t really call me in solo. With Jonah I was a freelancer, part of his team and accepted. But solo? Solo I hadn’t bothered accepting a rank. I hadn’t felt the need.

  Now I did, but I couldn’t fix that right away. I’d get around to it. Probably once I was up on Hodges’ ship. Given the nature of his offer, I figured his command-class ship was nearby. No further out than Mars. I could rent a skimmer to get that far without worry. But the command ship would be cloaked, on principle, and guarded.

  One did not simply walk in the front door of a command ship. Not without explosives and a secure force of at least ten people who knew what they were doing. The explosives I could drum up; the people would be a different problem. But, I reminded myself with a laugh, I wasn’t invading them, I was going up to offer my own help. Which meant I could go up to the front door and ring the bell. If I could get myself that far. But no.

  Getting in the front door without asking always proves a point about your usefulness. They couldn’t say no once I did that. We’d both worked that game before. It was almost expected, I assumed. And I didn’t want to disappoint.

  So that was it, that was the plan. Wait about a week and then sneak off, heavily armed and prepared, break into a hidden command-class cruiser and offer my services. Once I was signed up, Jonah would follow. And he’d see it had been the right move all along. Sometimes I had to drag him in into realizing his own needs. It worked out.

  I grabbed a bag and dropped a few hand blasters into it. Little things, not much battery or punch to them, but they were worth lugging. I would have to find those new grenades and sneak them home, somehow.

  I stood there, staring at a mirror and grinning at my own reflection, and started to plan in earnest.

  Chapter 3– Mud

  THE SONIC BLAST SHIMMERED the air near my head. It missed me, but the problem with sonic weapons boils down to the wave spread. They didn’t have to hit you directly. The left side of my head felt squishy as I fell against a nearby wall. Sonics wreck your sense of balance, they feel like someone scraped your skin with a palm full of tiny needles, and they have a tendency, for me at least, to leave you feeling ... soft.

  Luckily, none of the effects last long without a direct hit. Unluckily, even a short duration was longer than I had to recover. All four of the Reclaimers moved toward me at once, fencing me in, my back quite literally to the wall.

  “Guys,” I said, my voice deep and lumpy, “can’t we discuss this? I know a good bar a few levels down.”

  Their leader shook his wide, flat head and croaked a laugh. “Exile-traitor, there is nothing to discuss.”

  I wondered if he practiced that kind of line in the mirror at night when his men weren’t looking. Probably. Hurkz who worked for their Off-world Reclamation Project tended to be deficient in humor and oration skill. They lacked wit, but made up for it in perseverance.

  This group, or ones like it, had been after me for a while now. Ever since I hit the Hurkz age of adulthood. Twenty-seven Earth years, roughly, but Hurkz had its own rotational speed and solar orbits to worry about. Me, I counted Earth years. I was raised there, mostly. And that was the crux of the issue.

  I stopped thinking of the past and considered how I could end up with a future instead. I leapt, arms outstretched, and grabbed the sonic shooter’s shoulders. We went down together, but I made sure he was on the bottom, taking all the force we managed to sum up between us on the way down. I rolled, catching a glimpse of the other three, and took the shooter with me as I did. He made good cover - they didn’t want to harm their own man, after all.

  I tucked up, my feet pla
nting solidly against the shooter’s chest, and shoved. He described a pretty arc as he flew right into one of his teammates. I took the second or two worth of confusion to get my own feet under me and run.

  I had to get off the station, that much I knew. As long as I remained aboard I was too easy a target. One place - even a large one, if contained - is too easy to deal with. Open space – that’s another matter.

  I ran down a hallway, knowing it led ... somewhere. Well, somewhere I wasn’t, and certainly somewhere my pursuers weren’t, so that made it a better bet than anything else I had.

  The corridor was well lit and brightly marked; the station’s designers didn’t want anyone getting lost. That was fantastic unless you were trying to get lost. I kept running, keeping an eye out for any decent-sized pool of shadow. Nothing caught my eye. I kept moving, my legs pistoning.

  The hallway cut a sharp right turn. I took it, of course, and noticed the glowing sign cut into the wall as I moved past it. I was six levels up from the space dock, and on the wrong spiral arm of the station for my own ship to boot. Right then, running the whole way and avoiding the Hurkz stopped being viable.

  I dropped and rolled to a halt, shedding momentum and changing direction as I did. Popping up, I slapped at a door panel, trying for access. The door opened and I slipped inside, knowing that the Hurkz team would be close enough to hear the door seal shut after me.

  The room stood dark. I adjusted my goggles, resettling them over my large eyes, and took the few seconds I had to think. What I needed was a plan of some sort. Something beyond getting to my ship and getting off the station. If they caught me, it would be a long, painful trip to Hurkz followed by a short, painful execution.

  Hurkz can camo themselves, to a degree. Their - well, our - skin may be a solid, unreflective midnight black, but there are markings along our skin that secrete light-activated chemicals. Those markings stand out in neon colors, but they’re also what gives us the ability to camouflage ourselves. Each family has their own set of markings, given to them by evolution to help avoid predators in the distant past.