Darkest Reach

by Eric Warren

  DARKEST REACH:

  INFINITY’S END BOOK 3

  ERIC WARREN

  Part of the Sovereign Coalition Universe

  DARKEST REACH – INFINITY’S END BOOK 3

  Copyright © 2019 by Eric C. Warren All rights reserved.

  Book design and SCAS logo are trademarks of Eric Warren Author, LLC.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording, chiseling into stone, or otherwise, without the written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. For information regarding permission contact the publisher.

  Cover Design by Dan Van Oss www.covermint.design

  Content Editor Tiffany Shand www.eclipseediting.com

  Table of Contents

  Also Available

  Free eBook Prequel

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Journey's Edge Preview

  Map Piece

  Map Key

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  For you, Mom

  The Sovereign Coalition Series

  Short Stories

  CASPIAN’S GAMBIT: An Infinity’s End Story

  SOON’S FOLLY: An Infinity’s End Story

  Novels

  INFINITY’S END SAGA

  CASPIAN’S FORTUNE (BOOK 1)

  TEMPEST RISING (BOOK 2)

  DARKEST REACH (BOOK 3)

  JOURNEY’S EDGE (BOOK 4)

  SECRETS PAST (BOOK 5)

  PLANETFALL (BOOK 6)

  The Quantum Gate Series

  Short Stories

  PROGENY (BOOK 0)

  Novels

  SINGULAR (BOOK 1)

  DUALITY (BOOK 2)

  TRIALITY (BOOK 3)

  DISPARITY (BOOK 4)

  CAUSALITY (BOOK 5)

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  1

  It was like staring into his past.

  Caspian Robeaux stood, facing the only occupied cell in the brig of the USCS Tempest, watching the tall man inside pace back and forth. His dark hair was unkempt, and his hard visage reflected a hatred Cas had expected but not seen over the past few weeks. He hadn’t been down here to visit Lieutenant Page since his arrest. Now that they were only a few hours from reaching Starbase Eight again, he’d figured he better take the opportunity while he still had it.

  Once he’d entered the room Page had stood, and with a palpable sneer on his unshaven face, had locked his eyes on Cas. Page didn’t say anything, only watched Cas from the other side of the force barrier keeping them apart. He was still in his uniform, though it looked wrinkled and showed sweat stains on the chest and armpits. Cas was glad smells couldn’t penetrate the force barrier.

  He’d managed to avoid this confrontation for almost thirty days—their entire trip from Sil space back to Coalition territory. But as the moment of their arrival grew closer, he found himself drawn to the man who’d tried to betray him and his closest companion: Box, an Autonomous Mining Robot who had been with Cas ever since his exile from the Sovereign Coalition of Aligned Systems. Cas had been off the ship when Page had enlisted the help of some of the other crew that hadn’t been happy about Cas’s arrival and used them to get rid of him and Box, in the most inhumane way possible. It was a crime Cas wouldn’t be able to forgive.

  “I suppose you’ve come here to gloat,” Page finally said. His voice sounded raspy, as if he’d been shouting a lot.

  “I just wanted to—” What? What had he wanted?

  “You’re the one who should be in here, not me.” Page stopped pacing but kept his stare on Cas.

  “I’m not the one who tried to illegally disassemble a life form because of his own prejudices.”

  Page scoffed. “That thing’s not alive, I don’t care what anyone says. It’s a collection of parts built to imitate life. Disabling it would have done nothing but saved some energy.”

  Cas had known Box for over five years and to him the robot was as alive as any organic being. He had independence of thought, full autonomy and a sense of humor. “How many times do I have to tell you we’re not a threat? I didn’t want to be here anymore than you wanted me here, but like you I had a job to do. If you want to hate me for trying to help then go right ahead. It doesn’t matter to me what you think.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Page said with the same intensity. “You are a threat and you don’t even know it. A threat to this ship and you don’t deserve to be here. Anyone who violates their commanding officer’s orders and then runs away has no place on a Coalition ship. Especially not when it’s mine.”

  “It’s not yours anymore,” Cas replied, unable to keep the man from goading him.

  “We’ll see about that. Out of the two of us, I’m the one who still has his rank and his commission. Just check my record. It’s virtually spotless. What do you think will happen when I go in front of the review board? That they’ll just dismiss me?”

  “When you picked up that weapon and tried to kill Box you gave up all your credibility. You disobeyed an order from your commanding officer. I guess we’re not that different after all.” Box had told Cas about how Evie had come to his rescue, stopping Page at the last minute from shooting Box by getting the drop on him.

  Page balled his hands into fists. “The commander didn’t understand the situation. She’s been compromised because of her relationship with you.”

  “The commander and I don’t have a relationship,” Cas said, on the defense. He hated Page for goading him, but he couldn’t stand the thought that Evie was giving him preferential treatment because of their brief history together.

  “Oh, please. I’m not blind. She never should have been the one to retrieve you from the Sargan Commonwealth. That job should have been mine. I wouldn’t have been as understanding.”

  Cas hadn’t come down here to talk about Evie. He’d only wanted…what? Closure? The odds were Page was going to prison after a court-martial, just like Admiral Rutledge. Somehow, Cas was making an impact. Ridding the Coalition of its less-than-ideal elements. Was it pride he felt at coming here? At having accomplished something?

  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” Page spat. “We’ll see who’s laughing as soon as Coalition Central hears my side of the story.”

  Cas shook his head. “You idiot. You don’t even know what you’re arguing against. Do you understand the kind of people you’re working for? They won’t hesitate to toss you in jail and throw away the key. Believe me, I know.”

  “You committed a ca
pital offense.” Page turned his back on Cas. “I’d never put my own interests above those of my crew.”

  “What about the interests of innocent people then?” Cas said, heat rising in his cheeks. “What if you were ordered to open fire on an innocent civilian ship? To capture it and eject its crew? Would you still be so high and mighty?”

  Page glanced over his shoulder; a frown spread across his face. “Is that what Rutledge ordered you to do?”

  “On a Sil vessel,” Cas replied. It had been a classified mission, and very few people in the Coalition had known about it, including Cas himself up until the moment when then Captain Rutledge had ordered him to fire on and disable the smaller Sil ship so they could capture it. The mission had been to obtain the Sil technology to bring it back to Coalition space in order to reverse-engineer it. To learn the secrets of their destructive weapons so the Coalition could build its own. The entire mission went against everything the Coalition stood for. Cas had refused his captain’s orders. And because of Rutledge’s stubbornness, it had cost the lives of twenty-four of their crew before they narrowly escaped.

  “There must have been a reason,” Page said. “He wouldn’t have given the order without a purpose.”

  Cas knew he shouldn’t be telling Page this, but he’d had enough of the man blaming him. “Rutledge was the face of those in the Coalition who wanted to get a look at the weapon systems. Build some of their own.”

  “So it was to protect the Coalition,” Page said.

  “By violating everything it stood for.” Cas ground his teeth together.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You grew up on Earth, didn’t you? Never having to worry about anyone invading your perfect home? You never woke up in the middle of the night to marauders tearing through your home, looking for fuel or food or worse. On my homeworld I had to fight every day to stay alive. I didn’t have the luxury of taking the easy way out.”

  “And yet you joined the Coalition,” Cas said. “An institution based on principles. We don’t attack civilian vessels and we don’t build weapons of mass destruction.”

  Page laughed. “Listen to you. We. Like you belong to it anymore. No, we do what we need to survive. And if that means adapting to new threats then so be it. Admiral Rutledge did what was necessary to survive. And as one of his officers you should have seen that. Instead, you saw yourself fit to make a moral judgment over something you had no knowledge about. You were a bad officer.”

  Cas screwed up his face. “I didn’t—”

  “Did you know all the facts? Or were you just going off intuition?”

  Cas hadn’t known what was going on at the time. He hadn’t known Rutledge and others in Coalition Central were trying to prepare the Coalition for future unknown threats, and they were trying to do it in the most clandestine way possible. All he’d known was his captain wanted him to fire on and disable an innocent vessel and Cas couldn’t get on board. No matter the reason. Unfortunately Rutledge’s fears came to pass when Coalition telescopes picked up an unknown alien threat headed their way a few seasons ago. Somehow Rutledge had known, or at least known they would need to be prepared. The entire reason Cas had been on the last mission had been to convince the Sil to help the Coalition. Despite the fact the Coalition had eventually succeeded in capturing one of their ships and attempting to reverse-engineer its weapons.

  It hadn’t gone well.

  “I didn’t think so,” Page said. “You disobeyed an order without knowing all the facts. And it resulted in the deaths of your crewmates. If that doesn’t define a bad officer then I don’t know what else would.”

  Cas wondered if Page was right. What if he had followed Rutledge’s order? They would have captured the ship and begun the experiments earlier. Rutledge had revealed the entire reason Cas had been chosen to be on the crew was his extraordinary engineering experience. Rutledge had wanted Cas to head up the team that reverse-engineered and constructed the Coalition version of the Sil’s weapons. As it turned out Cas hadn’t been there, so when the weapon had been tested, it had resulted in the loss of all hands on his old ship. If Cas had been there maybe he could have figured out how to make it work. Or at least prevented a catastrophe.

  It wasn’t right. The Coalition wasn’t like that, at least he had believed that back then. He’d since discovered the Coalition was just as corrupt as any other massive space-faring organization, they just hid it better behind messages of peace and goodwill. It was the whole reason he’d fled to the Sargan Commonwealth as soon as he’d been released on parole. At least the Sargans didn’t pretend they were something they weren’t. The Commonwealth was a massive crime syndicate and everyone knew it. You expected them to try and kill you. Up until his parole Cas never would have thought the Coalition capable of such a thing.

  But was working to make a corrupt organization better than leaving it in the hands of those who would only make it worse? After all, not all the trillions of citizens of the Coalition were bad people; most didn’t even know what was happening within the inner politics of the system. Cas had been a Lieutenant Commander on a starship and even he hadn’t known. But instead of staying to help combat the corruption, he’d fled. And all the innocent souls who were part of the Coalition didn’t deserve that. They deserved to have someone fight for them; to stay inside the system and work from within to make it better. Wasn’t that what he’d tried to do from the beginning?

  “Not so sure of yourself anymore, huh?” Page smirked. “Like I said, let’s just see what happens when the review board hears my side of it.”

  Cas knew it wouldn’t matter. Evie would back him up and all the evidence pointed to Page disobeying orders. The Coalition couldn’t sweep that under the rug. The Tempest had become too important in regards to the encroaching threat. Even now they were due for a stop-off on Eight before moving on to the next leg of their assignment.

  “I hope it was worth it,” Page called as Cas moved to leave, pressing his finger against the pad beside the door. “I hope setting the program back a couple years and getting all those people killed was worth an eased conscience.”

  Cas ignored him, allowed the door behind him to slide shut, cutting the man off. Once in the corridor Cas closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Well?” The voice made Cas jump as his eyes shot open to see the robotic body of Box standing beside him. He could be scary quiet when he wanted to be.

  “Well what?” Cas asked, trying to keep his heart from thrumming out of his chest.

  “What did he say?” Box asked, his yellow eyes blinking in anticipation.

  Cas narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be on duty?” Over the past few weeks Box had ingratiated himself to the ship’s doctor and had provisionally become part of the medical crew. Just until they left again. Though he seemed to enjoy the work more than anything else Cas had seen him do.

  “I took a lunch break.”

  “You don’t eat.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t get a break?”

  Cas couldn’t help but smirk. “He’s as dickish as ever. He agrees with Rutledge; can you believe that?”

  Box turned toward the door, though he didn’t go through. “Considering he tried to have me disassembled…yeah, I can. Even though I’m practically a doctor now, I have a strong urge to reach through that force barrier and choke the life out of him.”

  “Don’t let Xax hear you talk that way; she’ll take you off-duty for sure.” Cas moved away from the door and down the hallway. Page’s words rang through his head. What if he hadn’t disobeyed orders? How might things be different? “How long until we reach Eight?”

  “Two hours, fifteen minutes.” Box fell into step beside Cas.

  “Sounds like the perfect amount of time to visit the bar.”

  2

  As Cas made his way down the corridor all he could think about was how he shouldn’t have had three firebrands in a row. But he’d needed something to help take the edge off. Page had wormed his way under
his skin and he didn’t need to facilitate the first meeting between the Sil and Coalition Central with his head full of antipathy.

  Of course, being drunk wasn’t much better. And he still couldn’t get Page out of his head. He paused, leaned up against the wall and pressed his forehead to the cool metal. He closed his eyes and took a few breaths. How had he allowed things to go this far? How had he let the Coalition trick him back into working for them? After everything they’d done. After Rutledge and then Kathora. If he’d been smart he would have stayed in Sargan territory; leaving Evie to fend for herself.

  But he hadn’t. And now he was an integral part of protecting trillions of lives.

  “Captain?”

  Cas snapped his eyes open and pulled away from the wall to find Zenfor standing before him. Even though he’d seen her almost every day since she’d agreed to come over to Tempest from her ship, she was still intimidating. She stood two-and-a-half meters tall, and her skin had a purplish-blue hue. Her short, dark hair fell to the sides and her penetrating gray eyes, with specs of light seeming to dance inside, surveyed him. What was strange was, if you squinted, she could almost look human. Out of all the species Cas had ever met, the Sil were closer in appearance to humans than most others. Which was something of a miracle since they were isolationists in a deep part of space nowhere close to any human settlement. Even Zenfor herself told him they occupied more than one dimension at a time; a trait no other species possessed.

  “No one has called me that in a while,” Cas replied, blinking too much but trying to clear his vision.

  “I heard Commander Diazal say it the other day. Are you not a captain?”

  “I was,” he replied. “But my ship was destroyed trying to retrieve the Achlys. The ship that had stolen your technology. You can just call me Caspian.”

  “I am sorry for the loss of your ship, but not for the destruction of that abomination. Are you ready?”