Starhawk Read online

  Novels by Jack McDevitt

  THE HERCULES TEXT

  ANCIENT SHORES

  ETERNITY ROAD

  MOONFALL

  INFINITY BEACH

  TIME TRAVELERS NEVER DIE

  with Mike Resnick

  THE CASSANDRA PROJECT

  The Priscilla Hutchins Novels

  THE ENGINES OF GOD

  DEEPSIX

  CHINDI

  OMEGA

  ODYSSEY

  CAULDRON

  STARHAWK

  The Alex Benedict Novels

  A TALENT FOR WAR

  POLARIS

  SEEKER

  THE DEVIL’S EYE

  ECHO

  FIREBIRD

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  STANDARD CANDLES

  SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

  OUTBOUND

  CRYPTIC: THE BEST SHORT FICTION OF JACK McDEVITT

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2013 by Cryptic, Inc.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62668-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McDevitt, Jack.

  Starhawk / Jack McDevitt.—First Edition.

  pages cm. — (A Priscilla Hutchins novel)

  ISBN 978-0-425-26085-2 (hardback)

  1. Women air pilots—Fiction. 2. Science fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.C3556S73 2013

  813'.54—dc23

  2013027437

  FIRST EDITION: November 2013

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1 was originally published in a slightly different version as the short story “Waiting at the Altar” in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2012.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  For Joyce Barrett

  and the Freedom Riders

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Les Johnson of NASA, to Rania Habib at Syracuse University, to David DeGraff of Alfred University, and to Walter Cuirle. Also my special appreciation to Frank Manning, formerly of NASA, and my son Christopher McDevitt for advice and technical assistance. Any blunders are on my plate. I’m also indebted to Ginjer Buchanan, my editor, and to Sara and Bob Schwager for their contributions. To my agent, Chris Lotts. And as always to my wife, Maureen, who continues to serve as in-house editor and general inspiration.

  Prologue

  Union Space Station (“The Wheel”)

  Wednesday, June 17, 2195

  PRISCILLA WAS SITTING in the Skyview, enjoying a grilled cheese, her notebook propped up on the table. But she wasn’t reading. The room-length portal had, as usual, stolen her attention. She was looking down at the Asian coast. Clusters of lights, like distant stars, sparkled in the night. Shanghai was down there somewhere, and Singapore and Calcutta.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said a familiar voice. She looked up. Leon Carlson, one of the engineers, was smiling at her. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Sure.” She glanced at the chair on the opposite side of the table, moved her notebook out of his way, and he sat down. “It’s good to see you again, Leon.”

  The smile widened. “And you, Priscilla. How’s the training going? You do your qualification flight yet?”

  “No, I’m still a few months away.”

  “You must be looking forward to it.”

  “More or less. Actually, it’s a little unnerving.”

  “You’ll do fine.” He glanced out at the lights. “I’ve never been able to get used to it.”

  “Me neither.” He was tall and blond with blue eyes. And he looked pretty good. She took another bite out of her sandwich while he ordered. “How long have you been up here, Leon?” she asked.

  “Two years. I’m getting near the end of my assignment. They’ll be sending me back down to Toronto in a few weeks.”

  She was sorry to hear it. “That’s home?”

  “Yes. I—” His eyes locked on something behind her. He frowned, and a shadow crossed his face.

  “Anything wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  She looked around. Three people were being seated at a table. A trim, formal-looking woman, and two guys, one middle-aged and overweight, the other tall, gray, and bent, with a neatly trimmed beard.

  “Who are they?” she asked, keeping her voice down.

  He hesitated. “The guy with the beard is one of those Kosmik yo-yos. He’s going out to Selika to help with killing everything off.”

  “Oh.” She turned back to him. “You mean the terraforming operation.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I was working on the Sydney Thompson yesterday. Getting it ready for the flight. There are seven of them going. I assume the other two are also part of the operation.”

  “I get the impression you don’t approve of what they’re doing.”

  “Priscilla, when they’re finished turning the atmosphere over, they’ll have killed everything on the planet.” His voice was getting loud. “They talk about creating a special
place for us, but they’re taking down an entire world to do it.”

  Priscilla didn’t like the idea very much either. But the experts were saying that Selika would be an ideal place for a colony. For a second Earth. The world was still undergoing severe problems with climate, global population was pushing its limits, and fanatics with bioweapons continued to leave a lot of people with a desire to retreat to somewhere else. Kosmik was denying the charges, insisting that the kill-off simply wasn’t happening, but adding that even if it was, it would be a price well worth paying for a backup world.

  A staring contest developed between Leon and the two men. “But that’s okay,” Leon said, getting still louder. “As long as we have a place to hang out. That’s all that matters, right? If we have to butcher a lot of stuff, well, those things happen—”

  She heard a chair move. (The chairs, of course were magnetized, to prevent their floating off the deck.) The fat guy had stood up. He was holding on to the table, but his eyes had narrowed, and he was showing teeth. He was bigger than she’d realized. A linebacker type.

  “Don’t,” she told Leon, who was also getting to his feet. “Sit down.”

  He ignored her. “You got a problem?” he asked the fat man.

  The restaurant was about half-full, but they had everyone’s attention. The host was watching them nervously.

  “You idiot,” said the fat man. “Years from now, people will be thanking us for what we’re doing.” He was standing his ground, challenging Leon to act. Or sit back down.

  Priscilla got up. Her inclination was to put both hands on Leon’s chest to restrain him, but she’d have had to let go of the table to do that, not a good tactic in a near-zero-gee environment. “Please stop,” she said, speaking to both.

  The host hurried over and assured everyone, including the two potential combatants, that everything was all right and he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to call security.

  Leon and the fat man continued to glare. The woman at the other table said something, and the man with the gray beard reached over, grabbed the fat man’s sleeve, and tugged him back into his seat. Some of the tension dissipated, and Leon also dropped back into his chair.

  “The problem,” Leon said to her, still making no effort to keep his voice down, “is that people don’t know what’s going on.” He reached for her notebook. “May I borrow this?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But go easy, okay?”

  He brought up a forest scene. Trees were shrunken and desiccated. “This is Selika,” he said. And they weren’t really trees. Never had been. Not in the way Priscilla thought of trees. They were rather, or had been, an odd combination of animal and vegetable, large animated plants that had spread their leafy tendrils toward the sun when they were not swaying gently in the shifting winds. They weren’t beautiful in the manner of a pine or a eucalyptus. They were a bit too unsettling for that. In fact, although she didn’t like to admit it even to herself, they made her hair stand on end.

  “They’re not dangerous,” Leon said. “There aren’t any flytraps on Selika. Or pitcher plants or anything like that. As far as we know, there’s no carnivorous vegetation of any kind.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. But they were spooky all the same. She’d seen them before, of course. As virtuals. Their sheer animation was enough to rattle her.

  “You should see Selika from orbit,” Leon continued. “The vegetation has all turned gray. It used to be a lush, green place. Now what they have would make you sick. The skies, when we first went there, were filled with bags and birds and capos. They’re now almost empty. Like the forest.”

  She heard a struggle beginning behind her. And a woman’s frustrated voice: “For God’s sake, Bernie, sit.”

  Then a male: “Let’s just get out of here.” Priscilla resisted the impulse to turn around.

  Leon, of course, was watching them. “They’re leaving,” he said.

  But there was a final round: The fat man, Bernie, took a step in their direction. “How the hell do you know anything, moron?” he said. “You ever been there? Or do you just watch HV?”

  Leon stayed in his seat this time. “I’ve been there,” he said. “I built your operational center. Which I will regret for the rest of my life.”

  Bernie’s companions marched him away and left the host looking both annoyed and relieved. As they went out the door, two guys arrived and began talking with one of the waiters. Presumably security.

  The host joined the conference, but they took it outside.

  “You know,” said Leon, “there were warnings. Kosmik knew in advance this would probably happen. There are several people doing research on an alternate method. But the corporates don’t want to wait.”

  Priscilla nodded. “Too much money involved, I guess.”

  “Yeah. We wouldn’t want Kosmik to lose its investment.”

  “So why is it happening? What’s killing everything, do you know?”

  “I’m not an expert, Priscilla. But, as I understand it, if you screw around with the atmosphere, change the oxygen-nitrogen balance even a little, you can expect consequences. They hired a lot of experts to explain how there’d be no problem, that the life-forms would be just fine.” He couldn’t restrain the bitterness. “And I helped them.”

  “What about the colonists? I wouldn’t think they’ll want to live in a place where everything’s gone.”

  “Hell,” he said, “they probably wouldn’t have liked the native life anyhow. They’ll bring their own German shepherds and house cats and oak trees and sycamores and hedges and never know the difference.”

  * * *

  PRISCILLA’S JOURNAL

  I couldn’t help thinking about all those old science-fiction stories from the early years of the space age. There were always aliens showing up who wanted to kill everybody and take over the world. Turns out maybe, we are the aliens.

  —June 17, 2195

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, November 3, 2195

  THE COPPERHEAD WAS floating through the fogs of transdimensional space, somewhere between Fomalhaut and Serenity Station, which is to say it was well off the more traveled routes. Priscilla Hutchins, the acting captain, was half-asleep in the pilot’s seat. The actual senior officer, Jake Loomis, had gone back to the passenger cabin, where he might have drifted off, or was maybe playing chess with Benny, the AI. Soft music drifted through the ship. The Three Kings doing “Heartbreak.”

  Priscilla was vaguely aware of the humming and beeping of the electronics and the quiet flow of air through the vents. Then, suddenly, she wasn’t. The lights had gone out. And the ship bounced hard, as if it had been dropped into a storm-tossed sea. The displays were off, and the warning klaxon sounded. Power down.

  “System failure,” said Benny, using the slightly modified tone that suggested he’d also suffered a cutback.

  Emergency lights blinked on and cast an eerie glow across the bridge. The ship rocked and slowed and accelerated and rocked again. Then, within seconds, all sense of motion stopped. “Did we jump back out, Benny?” she asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  Jake’s voice came loud and subtly amused from the cabin: “Priscilla, what happened?”

  She knew exactly what had happened. This was one more test on her qualification flight. There was no danger to the Copperhead. Nobody was at risk other than herself.

  “Engines have shut down,” said Benny.

  “Engines off,” she told Jake. “Power outage.”

  The navigational display flickered back to life, and the stars blinked on. She couldn’t see anything through the ports, of course. They were all blocked by the heavy shielding that protected the Copperhead against radiation. They’d used it for Priscilla’s certification flight because the mission had included a visit to Palomus, which was located in the Wolf 359 system. Wolf 359 was a flare star. The shielding covered every piece of Plexiglas in the ship. The lander was also shielded.

  Jake appeared at the hatch. “You
okay, Priscilla?”

  “I’m fine.” The misty transdimensional universe that provided shortcuts across the cosmos had vanished, replaced by the vast sweep of the Milky Way. “We’re back outside.” That would have been automatic. During a power failure, the drive unit was designed to return the vehicle to normal space. Otherwise, the ship risked being lost forever, with no chance of rescue. “Benny, is there an imminent threat?”

  “Negative, Priscilla. Ship is secure.”

  “Very good.” She turned to Jake, who was buckling down beside her. He was middle-aged, low-key, competent. His voice never showed emotion. Forbearance sometimes. Tolerance. But that was all. “You want me to send out a distress call?”

  “Where would you send it, Priscilla?”

  “Serenity is closest.” It would, of course, be a hyperspace transmission. The station would know within a few hours that they were in trouble.

  “Good. No. Don’t send. Let’s assume you’ve done that. What’s next?”

  * * *

  THERE WASN’T ACTUALLY that much else to do. She asked Benny for details on the damage and was told where the problems lay and what needed to be done before restarting the engines. The electronics had gone out because the main feeding line had ruptured. She went down into the cargo hold, opened the access hatch, and explained to Jake how she would have managed the repairs. He asked a few questions, seemed satisfied with her replies, and they started back topside.

  They were just emerging from the connecting shaft when Benny came back on the circuit. “Priscilla, we’re receiving a radio signal. Artificial.”

  She looked at Jake. And smiled.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not part of the exercise.”

  That was hard to believe. But even though the ground rules allowed him to make stuff up, he was not permitted to lie about whether a given occurrence was a drill. “What’s it say, Benny?”

  “I have not been able to make a determination. The signal, I suspect, is greatly weakened.”

  It made no sense. There wouldn’t be anybody out here. They were light-years from everything.

  While she hesitated, Jake took over. “Benny, can you get a fix on it?”

  “Within limits, yes.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”