“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.
She had grabbed his wrist, a strange look on her face. “That book.”
“Brought it from home,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving it here.” And he didn’t. Bringing the book made sense. It didn’t take up much room. It would have been wasted. It’s not like the other reclamation specialists would have read it. It would have gone into the trash pit the second he lifted off planet. That book was the one constant he had, hard proof of the life he’d had before war erupted and he became an orphan. He’d heard the ON required soldiers to cut ties, but he wasn’t cutting this one.
“No, I don’t think you should leave it,” Kira had said, hand still on his wrist, although her grip had softened. “There’s something about it. Something special. Keep it with you, Thorn.”
He’d tossed her a grin—that Thorn Seller’s patented special, designed to let him just get by without revealing anything real—trying to wipe the odd look off her face, but it had lingered.