The light did not stop there. It went on, a silent flood turning her world the most perfect blue. A cool color, not like the broken piece of sun that spat anger as it fell.
The doll seemed to smile as he glowed, bright enough now to push the sunlight away. On the small, fabric face, a look of relentless good cheer beamed, and the sunlight began to fade, replaced by a pure blue that curved up and out in a dome of dancing energy. The temperature dropped. The girl smiled, knowing Mister Starman would make things all right. That was what he did.
A boiling wall swept over the distant hills and raced toward the farm. Everything vanished behind it, leaving only hazy visions of scorched ground and tattered trees, their bark and leaves flashing into ashes as the lethal procession vaulted forward, inevitable as the wind. In just a few seconds, it washed over the blue glow—and was deflected, around and up, until the farm and the grass and the orchard were just a bubble of unchanged calm encased in roiling fire.
It only lasted a brief moment, then raced, trailing tongues of flame that slid across the bubble, seeking a way inside. The sky returned, but it was different—pale, shimmering, shot through with more pieces of the sun, all of them streaking with blasts of thunder toward a colossal, black cloud now rising and spreading from beyond the hills.
“No, no, Mister Starman,” the girl shrieked. “Make it stop, make it stop!”
Mister Starman happily obliged. Streams of blue radiance shot up from the bubble, reaching for the sun shards like grasping hands. Each time they touched one, it simply vanished, poof, gone. But there were more, there were always more. To the girl, the sun was falling apart, and she wondered if anything would be left behind. She was a brave girl, but the thought of endless dark touched her fears, and she clutched the smiling doll even tighter.
Something warm and wet slid across the girl’s lip. It tasted of salt, and the way the old scrap metal daddy kept in a bin behind the barn smelled. Trembling, she touched her mouth, then pulled her finger away. It was crimson. It was blood. Her nose was bleeding.
No.
Mommy. She needed mommy.
The girl drove herself to her feet, meaning to run back to the house, find mommy, and get her to make all of these horrible things stop. As she did, the shimmering blue light faltered.
It was replaced with a searing white glow. The girl spun around to see that one of the sun shards hadn’t been sent away by the blue light, and now the errant piece of fiery debris fell toward her in a long looping arc. It was the biggest by far, swallowing most of the sky.
The girl began to cry harder, a hiccupping sob that shook her shoulders as the sky kept falling, and the world flared into ruin everywhere except in the bubble of deepening blue light.
Mister Starman smiled and tried to help, tried to gather some of the blue light, or so the girl thought—she could tell he was trying to make everything right again. But he didn’t have enough time, and the fragment hurtled to the ground spitting red and orange sparks, the air around it scalded to furnace heat.
The white light filled her eyes, and the doll said nothing. Neither did she, and the world rang like a bell, mortally wounded from the falling pieces of sun.
Thorn!
Stellers! Stellers, what’s wrong?
The voices drifted out of the light that had become everything, everywhere. A white so bright it filled his head, displacing coherent thought. He recognized the words, Thorn, Stellers, what’s wrong, but couldn’t attach any meaning to them. They were just sounds—noises that meant something, but he couldn’t discern what. There was only the light. The world was made of light.
Stellers! Shit, infirmary, crash team to the mess hall!
Okay. Okay. Those words—they did mean something. He was Stellers. Infirmary was—a place. Crash team—
The meaning of crash team flickered tantalizingly close, then vanished behind a wall of pain.
“Stellers, look at me! Look at my eyes!”
Thorn groaned. The light had become pain. It filled his head completely. There was nothing else, just pain.
His pain. But also the pain of others. A multitude of minds shared this agony with him. Some were familiar. One, though, was unmistakable.
Kira.
She was screaming. It was like the dreams and visions he’d once had of her, when she was taken by the Nyctus and nearly killed. Except this time he was screaming right along with her, his vocal chords straining to the point of shear.
“Stellers, dammit, look at me!”
The voice rang through the pain like a whip crack, cutting it apart, revealing a face looming over his. Through the pounding agony, he recognized it.
Tanner. Captain Tanner. Commander of the Hecate.
“Stellers! Can you hear me?”
Thorn nodded, or thought he did. Tanner’s face resolved as that infinite white pain gradually receded, like a tsunami slowly draining back out to sea. More details swam into view. Pipes and conduits lined the ceiling, beyond Tanner’s face. People moved around. Voices—
“Stellers, nod if you can hear me.”
Thorn did. This time, he felt muscles contract, and his field of vision moved.
The white agony had faded into the edges and margins now, a painful nimbus that haloed everything Thorn could see. Even that was subsiding now, and Thorn nodded again.
“Sir—”
“Stellers,” Tanner said. “Don’t try to move.” He turned to—someone, but Thorn couldn’t see who. “Where the hell’s that crash team?”
“Right here, sir,” someone called. There was a clatter as more people appeared—off duty crew in various states of dress, a security team, grim with purpose, and now medics with crash bags slung over their shoulders, a stretcher floating along on grav repulsors.
“Okay, Stellers, these people are going to take care of you. Don’t—”
“Sir—”
“—try to move. Just stay still, they’ll—”
Thorn shook his head this time. “No. Sir. We—” He had to stop and swallow, his voice scraping against his throat like shards of glass. “Nebo.”
“Nebo. What about it?”
“Nebo—” Thorn levered himself to his elbows. He lay on the deck in the mess, the dinner of passable stew he’d been eating spattered across the bench where he’d been sitting, dripped onto the deck plates beneath in slow, gooey dollops. “Nebo,” he tried again. “Attacked. It was—”
“Attacked? Nebo was attacked?”
Thorn nodded.
“How do you know?” Tanner shook his head. “Never mind. Look who I’m talking to.” The Captain gestured the medics forward and stepped back, activating his personal comm. “Nav Officer, calculate the flight parameters to Nebo and get them verified by Engineering. I’ll be on the bridge in ten. Be ready to fly then.”
“Aye, sir,” the Navigation Officer replied.
One of the medics clamped a diagnostic tap around Thorn’s wrist. The other handed him a disposable wipe. “Your nose is bleeding, sir,” she said.
Thorn sniffed and caught that unmistakable tang of blood in the back of his throat. As he wiped at his nose, Tanner returned to his side. “Okay, Stellers, while these good folks do their job, you’d better tell me what’s going on.”