The elder shaman immediately flickered and flashed reassurance, then reached out with the clusters of fine, fringed tentacles that spilled over its maw. They spread in starbursts, then lifted, as those raised in benediction. The girl, her tears mingling with the cold seawater, fell against the creature with a sob. The tentacles descended and embraced her in a gentle hug.
She wanted to hug the elder shaman back, but the thing she’d been carrying in her other hand, the one she hadn’t pressed against the ice, made it awkward. She knew it was time to make a decision, so she did.
Morgan opened her hand and let the thing she’d been holding begin its long, slow fall back to the seafloor. It took a long time, fluttering against the dense, cold water in an endless spiral. Finally, after being buffeted to and fro by the eddying currents, it touched down in soft mud with a puff of debris far older than any human, or Nyctus, or war. The chill depths were dark and eternal, and there was room on the seafloor for one more bit of jettisoned memory.
And there it sat, the disturbed sediment slowly descending to cover it with a fine patina of grit. It wasn’t enough to obscure it completely, though. Although the doll’s face partly vanished behind the settling mud, the rest of it remained visible, and would until the restless currents eventually buried it.
For now, the patches crudely sewn onto its tunic threw back The Radiance as a soft gleam, highlighting the words stitched into them.
ORBITAL NAVY
She had decided to finally let Mister Starman go so she could forget about him.
The Nyctus, though, never would.
1
“I hate doing shit like this.”
Mol smirked. “Oh, you do not. You love the sound of your own voice.”
Thorn stopped and regarded her from under half-closed eyelids. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Oh, please, spare me the outrage. You have an ego the size of a red supergiant.” She raised her hand as Thorn opened his mouth to protest. “Which is fine. I’m used to it. Besides, I think it’s probably why you’re so damned good at what you do.”
“Might I remind you, Specialist Wyant, that you’re talking to a superior officer?”
Mol grinned in a most unintimidated away. “Charge me with insubordination, and you’re finding your own ride back up to the Hecate.”
Thorn held his glare for a moment, but it collapsed into a smile. He and Mol had been through too much together to stand on ceremony—and Thorn hated ceremony anyway. That brought him back to the moment, standing in the wing of the main stage in Code Nebula’s auditorium. He could see one shoreline of the sea of faces filling the seats, all freshly minted Starcasters who’d finished their recruit training and were about to be deployed for the first time.
An audience. His audience.
“Are you ready, Lieutenant Stellers?”
He turned to the voice and saw a face like a hatchet, eyes like glass glittering from either side of a straight, long nose. Thorn saluted.
“Commander Narvez,” he replied. “I am. As ready as I’ll ever be, anyway.”
Narvez had been one of his instructors when he trained here, what, five years ago now?
“So tell me, Lieutenant, what do you intend to say?”
He gave a sly smile. “Well, ma’am, you’ll have to wait for the show. Wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.”
Her gaze sharpened. She held it locked on Thorn for a moment, like she had a targeting solution and her finger on the trigger—but she suddenly relented and let a faint smile soften her face.
“I guess I can’t just browbeat you into doing what I want anymore, can I?”
“Could you ever, ma’am?”
Her smile widened. Thorn couldn’t remember the last time—or, for that matter, even if—he’d seen Narvez actually smile. It made her face look almost human. It inspired Thorn to go on.
“Actually, ma’am, I’ve got you to thank for this. You tried to keep me on the straight and narrow, at least. No one in my life has done that before.”
“Just doing what I’m paid to do, Lieutenant,” she said, starting to turn away. But she stopped herself and glanced back, her smile turning mischievous. “But I suppose I do consider you one of my success stories.”
Thorn saluted again. Narvez returned it and walked away, heading into the audience.
“Hey, sir, think you’re on,” Mol said, nodding toward the podium. The speaker, another long-time Code Nebula instructor named Fielder, was just finishing up.
“. . . our keynote speaker, who will deliver the commencement address for Recruit Course 27-A8—”
Someone in the audience shouted, “Hoorah!”
Fielder quirked his lip. “Take note, Recruit Grady, that you haven’t actually graduated from Code Nebula until after the final parade. A lot can happen to a recruit’s course report between now and then.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
“As I was saying, please welcome our keynote speaker, Lieutenant Thorn Stellers,” Fielder went on.
“Give ’em hell, sir,” Mol said.
Thorn grinned. “No worries. I’m nothing but charm and erudite wit, after all.”
He stepped into a sudden swell of thunderous applause.
“. . . a team,” Thorn said. “If you just take away one thing from what I’ve said here today, make it that. You are members of a team. No one in the Orbital Navy stands alone. Thank you.”
After a brief pause, the roar of applause washed through the auditorium again. Thorn nodded his thanks to the recruits.
Fielder, who’d been sitting with Code Nebula’s senior staff at the side of the podium, stood and shook Thorn’s hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You held them spellbound. Well done.”
Another Commander, one Thorn didn’t recognize and who must have been assigned to Code Nebula only recently, nodded enthusiastically. “Quite remarkable, really. You sure you don’t want to come on as an instructor here, Lieutenant Stellers? We could use someone who can actually keep these people quiet for a few minutes.”
Thorn smiled, but it was a thin, forced expression. All of the adulation was starting to wear on him, and even his skill as a ’caster couldn’t mask the cumulative cost of being someone else. Thorn had spent most of his life to date either as a kid, or as a nobody picking up odd jobs cleaning up what amounted to shit. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, except when he was getting into trouble while engaged in the ugly business of survival.
He shook his head. “Sorry, sir. As tempting as it sounds to spend some time here, away from the frontlines of the war, I think I’m more needed out there.”
“Spoken like a true warrior. I guess I’d actually have been a little disappointed if you’d said yes.”
So why did you ask me, then? Thorn thought. Some sort of trap—
“Come on, Stellers. We can’t dismiss these people until you’re off the stage,” Fielder said.
Thorn nodded and followed the Commander back into the wings, another round of applause following him like an unwelcome shadow.
As soon as he’d stepped out of the auditorium, Thorn quickly separated himself from everyone else—even Mol—saying he just needed a few minutes alone. He wandered off behind the building. He could hear the chatter of the almost-graduates spilling out of the other end of the building, punctuated by shouts from their instructors to “Form up!” and “Get it together, people!”