A Dark Horizon (Final Dawn, Book 3)

by T W M Ashford

  Yeah. Full circle was about right.

  Despite the overwhelming number of refugees on board the Pelastar – almost as many passengers as Earth’s Arks, such as the Final Dawn, were supposed to have carried to the stars – Jack and Klik eventually found a spot towards the back of the ship where they could enjoy some peace and quiet.

  Comparatively, at least.

  “I’m going to die out here,” Jack groaned as the floor of the frigate rattled and jumped. “I’ve had showdowns with bounty hunters, blown up a battlecruiser and stolen secret technology from the most powerful race in the galaxy, and this is how I’m going to go out.”

  “We’re probably just being buffeted by solar winds, right?” said Klik. Crouched down beside him with her head in her hands, she was hardly a beacon of confidence.

  “How? We’re in subspace. There’s not supposed to be anything out there for us to be buffeted with!”

  “It’s not the outside of the ship you need to be worried about,” said Minister Keeto.

  Jack turned his head with a start. Keeto was leaning in the doorway and fixing him with that curious blue stare of hers. He forgot how easily an Oortilian could sneak up on you. They’d evolved amongst the icy outskirts of an Oort Cloud – though not the same one that orbited Earth’s own star, of course – where survival required quick and careful reflexes. Lucky then, that they’d grown into one of the most diplomatic species in the whole galaxy.

  And a confusingly attractive one, too. Despite their bald heads, slits for nostrils and wide, pupil-less eyes, there was something quite elegantly beguiling about them.

  “It’s not?” he replied.

  “You could have picked a better place to hide,” she said, shaking her head. “This is an old ship. And I mean really old. It still houses some pretty outdated skip drive tech, and the reactors are pretty rough. You’re sitting a couple of floors above the engine room.”

  Jack quickly rose to his feet. Minister Keeto laughed.

  “Don’t worry. If the radiation shields weren’t reliable we’d already be dead. Feel free to sit as close to it as you like… just don’t expect it to be comfortable.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” said Jack. “Has the Ministry ever thought of, erm, you know…”

  “Upgrading their fleet?” Keeto laughed again. “I’m sure they have, but who’s paying for that? You? Me? The Ministerium hangs together by a thread as it is. Half of the member worlds harbour grudges toward the other half. They’re more likely to pull their funds completely if we ask them to pay any more into the budget.”

  “Don’t want to rock the boat, eh?”

  “Not if rocking the boat sends people overboard,” she replied sagely. “But hey – it’s not like I have any say in the matter. At least we have rescue ships. Plenty of council members would prefer to scrap them altogether.”

  “You’re saying they’re not scrap already?” said Klik, sarcastically.

  Minister Keeto turned her curious eyes to the masked Krettelian.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a bright and friendly tone, “I don’t think we’ve properly met. What’s your name?”

  A trickle of sweat ran down the back of Jack’s neck.

  Don’t say Klik, don’t say Klik…

  “Klak,” she replied, bowing her head and drawing her hands up into the sleeves of her cloak.

  Jack tried to only wince on the inside.

  “Good to meet you, Klak.” Keeto smiled and turned back to Jack. “I was wondering if you might fancy taking a tour of the ship with me, Mr. Bishop. There are some great views, and I’m sure we have much to talk about.”

  “Views? We’re in subspace. There’s not much to see.”

  Keeto laughed, undeterred.

  “That is very true. But as I said, this is an old ship. She has many secrets worth sharing… as, I’m sure, do you.”

  Now it was Jack’s turn to laugh, somewhat less convincingly.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I’d – we’d – rather be alone right now. We’ve had a rough few days, if you can believe it.”

  “When we arrive in Kapamentis, then,” said Keeto, her friendly smile not faltering for a second. She gestured to the rattling pipes. “I’ll leave you to your – ahem – peace and quiet.” She went to leave and then paused as if startled by her own idea. “Apparently some of the crew are holding a card tournament down in the lower decks. Come join us if you change your mind.”

  “Perhaps I shall.”

  Jack waited until Minister Keeto was out of earshot before speaking again.

  “Klak.” He shook his head disappointedly. “Great pseudonym. Really inconspicuous. Can’t see anyone figuring that one out.”

  “I think you’ve got an admirer,” said Klik, giggling to herself.

  “Yeah, well I don’t want one.” Jack scratched the back of his neck. “Will you be okay by yourself for a while? I think I need to go get some air.”

  “We’re on a spaceship.”

  “You know what I mean. Please don’t go wandering off anywhere until I get back. We’ll never find each other again otherwise.”

  Klik shrugged.

  “Where’s there to go, anyway?”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Following the maintenance corridors away from their secluded spot in as linear a fashion as he could – he didn’t want to get lost coming back – Jack eventually came to a large bay window set into the side of the Pelastar’s hull. This, at least, had been kept in a satisfactory condition. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a single crack in the glass.

  A metal viewing bench had been installed in front of it, not that there was much to see besides a pulsing great nothingness. He sat down on it. It wasn’t very comfortable.

  At least it was quieter sitting there than directly above the engines. And he was finally alone, if only for a moment… and so long as he didn’t count the lone automata doing maintenance work down at the other end of the long hall. It appeared far less concerned with Jack than the violent sparks spitting out from a busted electrical panel.

  Alone… alone to process everything.

  He waited for the emotions to come flooding in. He brought up thoughts of his and Amber’s wedding day, of all the other families stationed at the Sandhurst facility, even the smell of gloopy processed coffee before a long shift in The Pits, hoping to trigger something.

  Anything.

  Nothing.

  “Stop trying to force things, Jack.”

  Jack turned to look at the figure sitting beside him on the bench, then returned his numb gaze to the featureless view outside the window.

  “Oh. Hello, Amber. Looks like I’m going mad, then.”

  “As if you haven’t been mad from the start! It’s good to see you, too.”

  “You’re not real. You’re a manifestation of grief or something.”

  “Even so.”

  A long silence passed.

  “Sorry I couldn’t save you,” Jack said eventually.

  “Oh, stop being so ridiculous.” Amber groaned and rolled her eyes. “I told you to stop trying to be my knight in shining armour, didn’t I?”

  “That was when I couldn’t get us tickets on the Final Dawn. You said it would all be fine so long as we were together. But this is different. Now you’re dead.”

  “Better just me than both of us. What else did I say that morning you left? Ah, yes. I’d rather we do our part and humanity go on to survive elsewhere, than for nobody to survive at all. Well we’re all gone now, Jack. You’re the only human left – you and whatever humanity is still left in that Everett Reeves fellow, of course. I’d much rather you were alive out there in the cosmos than dead back on Earth with everyone else.”

  “I wish you were out here with me.”

  “Well of course you do. I do too.”

  Jack opened his mouth to say something, stopped himself short, remembered that this entire conversation was but a hallucination playing out in his frazzled mind, and carried on regar
dless.

  “What am I supposed to do now? Even if I can convince the Ministry to go after Everett before he does any more harm to the galaxy, what next? Where do I go from there?”

  “Whatever you want, wherever you want. There’s a whole universe in which to find yourself. You don’t always have to have a goal, you know. Sometimes it’s enough to just exist and bear witness.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me, Jack. I know what you’re like. Please don’t turn this Everett thing into another one of your crusades.”

  “But why don’t I feel anything, Amber? Why can’t I grieve?”

  “It’ll come, Jack. And when it does, let it.”

  Jack turned to look at her again, to tell her everything he wished he’d told her before.

  But he was sat on the bench alone.

  7

  Road to Bureaucracy

  To nobody’s surprise, Kapamentis was very busy.

  They couldn’t land inside of the city planet’s atmosphere, of course. Real estate on Kapamentis was far too expensive for anyone to construct battlecruiser ports on the ground, especially on the Ministry’s budget. Frigates – even smaller C-Class vessels such as the Pelastar – were expected to dock at one of the purpose-built platforms floating out in orbit.

  Besides – most of the refugees weren’t staying.

  Jack and Klik regrouped with Minister Keeto by the crew airlock, far away from the tens of thousands of passengers being shepherded to the various other frigates docked nearby which would, in turn, relocate those passengers across the galaxy. In another few hours, the Pelastar would also leave – it was due back at Proxima Delta to pick up the next wave of survivors.

  Even though Jack hadn’t taken her up on her offer of either a ship tour or a game of cards, Keeto welcomed them both with her usual airy pleasantness.

  “How was your trip?” she asked as they approached. “Manage to get much rest?”

  “None,” Jack replied.

  “Me neither.” She pushed a chunky button beside the airlock door. “I’m five hundred and twenty-six credits better off, though.”

  The air around Jack shifted as the doors opened. There was oxygen on both sides, of course – the majority of galactic species breathed the stuff, and those which didn’t were expected to bring their own ventilation equipment – but the air inside the Pelastar felt somehow heavier and staler, as if it wasn’t being cycled around enough.

  He followed Keeto into the airlock corridor beyond and found himself immediately disoriented. The entire docking structure was made of glass – or something much hardier but equally transparent, at least – which gave Jack an unobstructed panoramic view of the spaceport. A second frigate was docked about a mile to their right. Above him – and this is what made Jack feel the most queasy – lay the dark, neon-lit planet known as Kapamentis. Everything looked upside-down, like he was stood on the ceiling. Drones busied themselves tirelessly below his feet, inspecting and refuelling the Pelastar’s underbelly.

  “We’ll need to take a shuttle down to the surface from here,” said Keeto, hurrying ahead. “We’re a little late as it is. This way.”

  Jack and Klik followed her along the cylindrical glass corridor, trying not to get too distracted by the mind-boggling view. Klik struggled the hardest. She pressed her hands up against the glass in awe as personal cruisers and speeders rocketed past and cargo crates were loaded from one transport ship onto another. Jack shuddered at the pairs of grubby prints she left behind. He’d hate to be the automata responsible for keeping these corridors clean.

  About a minute’s walk later – which, thanks to Klik, took closer to a minute and a half – they arrived at the first fork in the glass tunnel. Keeto directed them down the path curving to the left. Because of the station’s transparent design, Jack could already make out where they were headed.

  A dozen spheres were docked close to one another in two rows of six. Each was about three, maybe three-and-a-half metres in diameter. Their rears could be identified by a single propulsion thruster; smaller exhausts for landing and changing course jutted out from the rest of the pods in such a way that they resembled stubby sea urchins. Their chrome paintwork sparkled under the docking station’s floodlights.

  “Our own private shuttle?” Jack’s eyebrows rose. “The Ministry spoils us.”

  “Don’t let your head grow too big.” Minister Keeto tapped an authorisation code into a keypad beside one of the pods and the large, domed door on its front hissed open. “They come with the docking bay rental. Hop in.”

  Klik fidgeted with her cloak in the doorway. Jack wondered if it was the cramped conditions that made her nervous or if she simply didn’t think the pod was safe. The council meeting wouldn’t wait for them, however. He ushered her inside as gently as he could.

  It was cramped, but only by starship standards. Aside from the keypad and emergency override switch on the inside of the door, the only feature of note was the plush, red, leather-backed bench that curved around the back half of the pod. A soft, warm glow emanated from within the walls and ceiling.

  Jack sat down and his whole body relaxed. Compared to the steel and copper-alloy seats on board the Pelastar, the pod’s cushions felt like heaven.

  Klik climbed onto the bench to Jack’s right and tucked her knees up under her chin. That left the rest of the bench free for Minister Keeto, who ducked into the pod and typed in a code to shut the door after her.

  She sat down closer to Jack than was entirely necessary and offered him an excited smile.

  “This is my favourite part,” she said.

  “Eh?”

  With a sudden lurch downwards, the pod was thrown free from its magnetic clamps. Jack’s stomach did a somersault. Klik let out a muffled yelp and clutched at the bench; Minister Keeto only laughed. Their shuttle levelled out barely a second later as it left the artificial gravity of the docking station.

  “And down we go,” said Keeto, leaning back against the bench with her arms crossed behind her head.

  The main thruster on the rear of the pod ignited and followed its automated route towards Kapamentis. Outside the small porthole in the middle of the door, the planet and its busy, ever-shifting exoskeleton of ships and space stations grew steadily bigger.

  Despite her nerves, Klik was too mesmerised by the view not to stand back up and stare out the window. Even after a mere three months in space, Jack had seen that view a great many times before. It was amazing how easily you could get used to such things.

  “Will this shuttle take us straight to the Ministry?” he asked.

  Minister Keeto opened one blue eye.

  “To the building itself? Gods, no. These taxi pods only go back and forth between registered taxi ranks, unfortunately. Lucky for us, there’s one just around the corner from the Ministry headquarters. We’ll be about a five minute walk away when we land. We’re cutting it fine, but we should make it.”

  “And you’re sure they’ll listen to me this time?”

  “I promised I’d get you the chance to tell them what you know. I can’t promise that anyone will listen to you or take you seriously. But after what’s just happened in Proxima Delta, I suspect they will. Are you okay?”

  Klik hadn’t moved from the window since getting up. She jumped at Keeto’s unexpected question and hurriedly tore her gaze away.

  “Hmm? Sorry?”

  “I asked if you were okay.” There was genuine concern in Minister Keeto’s voice, but Jack caught a hint of suspicion too. “Forgive my rudeness, but to which species do you belong? Raider from the Black Rock, perhaps? A type of Ghuk subspecies? I’m having trouble placing you, and given my job I like to think I’m quite the expert…”

  “She just doesn’t get out much,” said Jack, pretending to laugh. He desperately changed the subject. “So do you live here on Kapamentis, Minister Keeto?”

  She turned her friendly smile back to Jack while Klik sheepishly returned to her spot on the bench beside him.
<
br />   “Born and raised. Eighth district, second quarter. My parents emigrated here from their Cloud about two years before they had me. The apartment I have now isn’t on Kapamentis itself, though. I actually rent a place in one of the resort moons.”

  “Resort moons?” Jack thought of the many neon space stations sparkling in the Kapamentis night sky. “Aren’t they full of casinos and stuff?”

  Keeto laughed.

  “Sure, but they have proper residential communities too. The fact that most of those residents are gamblers or tourists is irrelevant. The commute to the Ministry is actually quicker than if I lived down in the city, and at least I’m never short on something fun to do.” She squinted and pretended to scrutinise him. “Besides, who are you to talk? Don’t you live on that mining ship I saw?”

  “The Adeona? Yeah, I used to. But she’s gone. I guess that makes me homeless now.”

  They spent the rest of the journey down in awkward silence.

  The taxi pod’s arrival was a lot less dramatic than its departure. It slowly descended into the circular bay determined by its autopilot, opened its domed door to let the three of them out, and then waited patiently for its next customer.

  Jack, Klik and Minister Keeto made the rest of the short journey on foot. It wasn’t far. Despite the city planet’s abundance of skyscrapers, Jack identified the Ministry headquarters before they even landed.

  Black and shaped like a gigantic pyramid, it was hard to miss.

  “The Ministerium of Cultured Planets,” said Klik, slowly reading the colossal alien letters carved above the door. “Sounds fancy.”

  “Sounds like a mouthful,” said Jack. He pulled Klik to one side before heading in. “Now stick close to me and stay quiet, okay? This place is full of politicians and diplomats. If any of them start to suspect who or what you really are…”

  “Then I’ll be on a transport ship back to Paryx faster than I can say ‘glory to the Mansa Empire’. Head down, mouth shut. I get it.”

  “Jack? Klak?” Minister Keeto waited anxiously by the doors at the top of the steps. “We really don’t have time to stand around chatting, I’m afraid.”