Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies)

by Jasper T. Scott

  Lucien selected an automatic laser rifle and a stun pistol; then he clipped a pair of stun grenades to his belt, as well as a pair of the deadly plasma version.

  Turning to Brak, he noted that the Gor hadn’t selected any weapons yet. Lucien scowled. “Hurry up!”

  Brak nodded wordlessly and pushed him aside to look through the options in the locker.

  Lucien imagined the blue-skinned aliens somehow finding his children and singling them out for some horrible fate. The one at the comms had somehow known his name, and it had spoken Versal. Lucien had heard the initial news reports back at the station, so he already knew to expect that, but what he didn’t know was how any of them could possibly know his name.

  Brak bent to retrieve a giant rifle from a case in the bottom of the locker.

  Lucien blinked. “You can’t take that.”

  “Why not?” Brak asked, hefting the massive weapon.

  Lucien shook his head. “Because you won’t just take out your target—you’ll also kill whoever is standing next to them. Take something smaller.”

  Brak snatched a stun pistol from the rack and clipped it to his belt. “Now I have something smaller. Happy?” Brak made no move to put the cannon back.

  Lucien frowned. “We don’t have time to argue. Just watch your aim, okay?”

  Brak hissed and bared his teeth. “Okay.” With that, he slung the cannon over his shoulder and grabbed a bandoleer of stun balls—seeker drones that would roll or fly out to their targets, latch on, and stun them into submission.

  “Follow me, and keep it quiet. We don’t want them to hear us coming.”

  Brak clicked his comms to acknowledge, and Lucien picked his way through the parking garage, sticking to the shadows behind parked hovers and support columns. Up ahead the doors to the shelter gleamed. Lucien armed his rifle, expecting to see blue-skinned aliens come boiling out through those doors at any second.

  But nothing happened, and they made it to the doors without incident. Lucien checked the control panel. The doors weren’t locked. Before keying them to open, he ran a scan of the compartments beyond. He saw an empty corridor leading to a large chamber with a blurry smear of heat signatures huddled together on tiered seats. Shelter Twelve was a concert hall when it wasn’t being used as an emergency bunker. Lucien’s sensors weren’t calibrated to differentiate between humans and humanoid aliens, but he did spot a few heat signatures down on the stage that were noticeably cooler than the rest—three cold ones standing beside two smaller warm ones. Three aliens and two small human hostages? Children?

  Half-turning to Brak, Lucien whispered, “I’m reading three potential hostiles through the doors, on the other side of a short corridor, in the auditorium. They have two hostages, so we’re going to have to stick to non-lethals.”

  Brak hissed and set his cannon on the ground. His hands free, he drew his stun pistol in one hand and a stun ball in the other. Lucien shouldered his own rifle in favor of a stun pistol, too.

  “Take cover. I’m opening the doors.”

  Brak ducked behind the bulkhead and crouched. Lucien mirrored his position on the opposite side of the doors as he keyed them open. They parted with a swish, and Lucien peeked around the frame into an empty corridor. Another set of doors stood between them and the auditorium. “Clear,” Lucien whispered, and stalked toward the second set of doors. They took cover behind the bulkhead again, and Lucien keyed open the second set of doors. As soon as they slid open, Lucien heard the sounds of children crying and adults pleading, followed by another sound—the silky smooth, androgynous voice he’d heard over the comms.

  “Welcome, Lucien! We have been waiting for you.”

  Brak bared his teeth and his muscles bulged, his body a tightly-wound spring. Lucien gave a slight shake of his head, and mouthed: no. Then he stepped into view, his pistol up and tracking...

  He found the aliens up on the stage, three of them as expected. They held their hands out to the crowd, clutching dazzling balls of light.

  Weapons? Lucien wondered. There was a giant black scorch mark on the floor between the stage and the tiered seats around it, which seemed to confirm that thought.

  The three aliens stood easily on the stage. They must have some kind of mag boots on.

  “How do you know my name?” Lucien demanded, his aim finding the alien in the center of the three, assuming that must be the one who’d addressed him. The alien wore flowing gray robes, and a forked golden crown that rested just above a pair of glowing, ice-blue eyes. The other two with him sported bald blue heads and flowing black robes. Their eyes also glowed—one’s green, and the other’s yellow.

  Lucien did a double take. These did not look like the technologically-advanced, space-faring aliens he’d expected. Where were their pressure suits? Their weapons?—glowing balls of who-knew-what notwithstanding. Lucien’s mind flashed back to news reports that said Astralis’s weapons seemed to have no effect against the alien boarders, and his brow furrowed, unable to believe that could be true. They weren’t even wearing any armor, let alone anything that might be analogous with a shield pack.

  “How do I know your name... well, we have met before, you and me,” the crown-wearing alien said.

  Of course, the Inquisitor, Lucien thought. His copy—original—had run afoul of these aliens eight years ago.

  “But I knew your name before we met. After all, it is my name, too.” The alien grinned and licked his black lips with an equally black tongue.

  Lucien blinked in shock. It could be a lie. But if it wasn’t, what did it mean that he shared a name with this blue-skinned monster?

  Chapter 11

  Astralis

  Whether we share the same name or not, it doesn’t matter, Lucien decided. His police training took over: keep them talking. Distract. Get into position. Lucien shrugged and edged casually closer to the aliens—Faros, he remembered they were called from the initial reports.

  “So, we share the same name,” Lucien said. “It’s just a name.” He kept his aim steady on the leader’s chest. King Faro, he nicknamed that one, noting the crown, and the fact that he seemed to be in charge of the others.

  “Oh, it’s more than that,” King Faro said. “I wonder, have you ever met a human with that name?”

  “No,” Lucien replied, and realized that it was true. He began to wonder how his parents had chosen that name, but he pushed his curiosity down. King Faro was starting to distract him. “My turn for a question: what do you want? You said you were waiting for me. You haven’t killed anyone yet, so you must have demands.”

  “Very astute of you to notice the lack of corpses,” King Faro replied. He made a gesture to one of the other aliens, and a glowing ball of energy leapt from the being’s hand. It slammed into a man in the front row with a dazzling burst of light and a sound like thunder cracking. People sitting around the man screamed as the blast knocked them free and sent them sailing toward the walls and ceiling. The man who’d been hit drifted slowly above his broken seat. His chest was a black and sunken ruin: white ribs protruded, and glittering beads of blood dribbled out and hung in the air.

  “Hold your fire, damn it!” Lucien roared, shock turning to outrage.

  “I wanted to make sure you’d take me seriously,” King Faro replied. “We’re going to play a game.”

  “No games, tell me what you want.”

  “Yes, games.” The alien said. He reached behind him and hoisted a little girl high above his head. Her hands and feet were bound with glowing cords, and a translucent patch covered her mouth, making it impossible for her to scream. Lucien recognized her instantly. It was Atara. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her green eyes wide with terror.

  No! His irrational fear that the aliens would somehow find and single out his children had just been realized. It wasn’t possible. How could they even know who his children were?

  Coincidence. It had to be.

  “Let the girl go,” Lucien ordered, hoping to hide her relation to him, but
the quaver in his voice betrayed his fear.

  King Faro grinned. “The girl? Don’t you mean, Atara? Your daughter?”

  Lucien’s blood ran cold. He knew her name, too. “You heard me,” Lucien said. “Let her go.” It took a supreme effort not to pull the trigger and shoot the alien in the chest.

  “Not so fast,” King Faro replied. “First, you have to choose. Save your daughters, or save everyone else in this room. Two lives for a thousand.”

  Lucien blinked in shock. “Daught-ers? Where is Theola?”

  “Right here.” King Faro hoisted her into view, also bound and gagged, baby blues red from crying.

  Lucien lost it. He shook his pistol at the monster standing in front of him. “Let them go!”

  “Just say the word, Lucien. I’ll let them go and kill all of the others instead.”

  “You can’t make me choose between my children and a thousand strangers!”

  Hushed murmurs spread through the room. Someone cried out, “We have children, too!”

  Another cried, “Frek him! He’s going to kill us all, anyway! We’ll resurrect when this is over.”

  King Faro inclined his head to that. “Wrong. I will abide by your decision, Lucien. But that man is correct about one thing: you’ll all be resurrected, so what does it matter who I kill? Really, it’s just a question of suffering. Would you want your children to go through the trauma of death—no matter how brief? Wouldn’t you rather spare them that?”

  “Why me?” Lucien demanded. “What the frek does it matter? What do you care who lives and who dies?”

  “I don’t, but I do care about your choice. It is of personal interest to me. Nature versus nurture.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lucien said.

  The alien shrugged. “I already know what I would choose...” King Faro replied. “But your choice—” the alien broke off suddenly, his mouth forming an O of surprise and pain as he rocked forward on his heels, as if he’d been kicked in his spine. Both of Lucien’s children broke free and drifted off behind the aliens, bobbing through the air and heading backstage at a rapid rate.

  Lucien blinked. His children shouldn’t have been able to move through the air like that. Then he saw the pair of mag boots walking by themselves across the stage, and he realized what was happening. Brak had stripped naked, using his cloaking ability to creep up behind the aliens and steal Atara and Theola away. The boots hadn’t cloaked with him, but they were easy enough to miss.

  Lucien snapped out of it, and fired a stun bolt at King Faro’s chest. It was a direct hit. Electric blue fire crackled over bare blue skin, but the alien’s body didn’t convulse as Lucien expected. Instead, King Faro recovered with a scowl and turned to watch as Lucien’s daughters disappeared backstage.

  The alien gestured to one of his guards. “Get them back—alive! And kill the one who took them.” The black-robed alien inclined its head and ran backstage.

  Lucien ran after him, discarding his apparently useless stun pistol in favor of the laser rifle dangling from the strap around his neck. He fired a flurry of dazzling red lasers at King Faro as he ran after his kids. Three bolts hit, splashing crimson fire across the alien’s chest—again to no effect.

  “You can’t hurt me,” the alien said, and held out a glowing hand to track Lucien. “But I can hurt you. Stop where you are, or I’ll do it myself, and then I’ll kill everyone else—your daughters included.”

  Lucien skidded to a stop. A sharp pang of despair stabbed his heart, and it took a physical effort to look away from the spot where Brak had taken his daughters off the stage.

  A stampede of metallic footsteps sounded behind Lucien, and he saw King Faro’s gaze drift to the entrance of the shelter. “I was wondering when you would get here!”

  Three squads of Marine bots piled into the concert hall, accompanied their human sergeants.

  One of the sergeants nodded to Lucien and said, “Back away from the stage, sir.”

  Lucien hurriedly side-stepped to get out of their line of fire.

  “Get down from the stage with your hands above your heads!” the same sergeant barked, now speaking to the aliens.

  “Like this?” King Faro asked, raising both hands slowly, his palms glowing.

  Someone shouted a warning. Too late. Two shimmering balls of energy leapt out and hit the sergeant in the chest. Explosions boomed and the room flashed white. When the glare faded, the sergeant’s body appeared bouncing off the far wall of the room, his armor a blackened, molten mess.

  The Marines opened fire with a thunderous roar, but King Faro was no longer standing on the stage. The black-robed alien who’d been standing beside him took the brunt of the barrage. Laser fire rippled across his chest, and bullets sprayed shrapnel as they exploded on some unseen shield. Then someone shot a pair of AP rockets—

  Skrsssh...

  The explosion boomed, and the alien’s chest burst open in a spray of black blood. The imparted momentum shattered the mag-lock of the alien’s boots, sending it tumbling backward.

  Lucien scanned the room for King Faro, using his helmet’s sensors to aid his eyes. After just a second, he found the alien’s cold heat signature standing up on the tiers of seating amidst the crowd.

  “We’re going to play a new game!” King Faro said, and hoisted a young boy above his head. “The soldiers leave, or I kill the boy.” The kid kicked him in the throat, but the alien didn’t even blink. “Well, Sergeants? What do you say?”

  Chapter 12

  Astralis

  Tyra could hear the thudding of heavy cannon fire and the high-pitched screeching of lasers even through the heavy blast doors of the bridge. A squad of bots and their sergeant stood behind those doors, weapons raised and waiting for the enemy to come bursting through.

  “We’re taking heavy losses,” General Graves reported from the holo table. “We’re down five squads and we’ve only taken down one enemy.”

  “One squad?” Tyra asked.

  “No, just one,” Graves replied.

  “What about our reinforcements?” Ellis asked in a panicky voice. “We have a lot more than five squads of Marines on this ship!”

  “They’re all too far away to reach us in time, and they have their own lines to hold.”

  “If this line falls, none of the others are going to matter,” Admiral Stavos added. “Have the reinforcements fall back to the nearest quantum junctions and jump here now! We’ll try to buy them some time.”

  “Yes, sir,” Graves replied.

  Tyra watched green dots winking off the table as a group of seven red dots stormed the bridge. Wink, wink, wink...

  Now the odds were even. Seven to seven.

  Seven to six—one of the enemies fell.

  Zero to six—all of the remaining Marines went down as the enemy reached point-blank range. Tyra imagined shimmering alien swords cutting the marine bots and their sergeants to pieces.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  All eyes turned to the doors of the bridge. The alien’s were knocking.

  “Put me in touch with them!” Admiral Stavos ordered.

  The comms officer nodded. “You’re live, Admiral.”

  Admiral Stavos spoke, his voice echoing out over the ship’s intercom. “This is Admiral Stavos, we have hundreds of squads incoming as we speak. You won’t stand a chance against them. Surrender now, and I promise we will be merciful.”

  Silence answered that ultimatum, but Tyra spotted the red dots on the holo table backing away from the bridge.

  “They’re leaving!” Ellis said, his voice cracking with relief.

  “No,” Graves whispered. “They’re not.” He pointed to the map. The red dots had stopped moving a fixed distance from the doors.

  BOOM! The doors shivered and glowed brightly at the seams, as if struggling to hold back a fire-breathing dragon.

  “Here they come!” Graves roared. “Take cover!”

  BOOM! The doors exploded in a fiery rain of shrapnel. Tyra hit the dec
k, using the edge of the holo table to hold herself down. A molten orange sheet of metal whizzed through the space where her head had been a second ago.

  Weapons fire screeched, and blinding flashes of light tore through the bridge with deck-shaking booms. Marine bots clanked as they dodged and fell. Waves of heat swept over Tyra and an acrid smell filled her nostrils. She risked raising her head to look.

  Smoke swirled in the entrance of the bridge, and the squad of Marine bots who’d been standing there floated in a cloud of glowing shrapnel. Their sergeant drifted with them, his face a rictus of horror and pain behind the shattered faceplate of his helmet. It was Sergeant Ikes.

  A group of blue-skinned aliens stormed in, swatting away broken pieces of bots like flies. One alien strode to the fore. He wore gray robes and a golden crown. Tyra was surprised to see how human he looked, but his hairlessness and glowing blue eyes were decidedly alien.

  “Where is the one who calls himself Admiral Stavos?” the alien demanded in a smooth voice. His accent was strange, but he spoke Versal clearly enough.

  “Here,” Stavos said. Tyra craned her neck to see him stand up from behind the holo table.

  “Who else is in charge?” the alien asked.

  For a moment no one replied. Then the alien thrust out a hand in the direction of the nearest control station. A ball of light shot out and exploded with a blinding flash of light a deafening boom. The control station flew apart, and the man sitting there went flying over the railing to the far wall of viewscreens.

  Tyra felt something hot and sharp bite into her thigh, and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out.

  “I’m in charge of the Marines,” General Graves said, also standing up from behind the holo table, his sidearm in hand, but not aimed.

  “Anyone else?”

  Tyra raised her hand and gingerly climbed to her feet, making sure to keep contact between her mag boots and the deck. “I’m the councilor of Fallside.”

  “Councilor... this is like a lord?” the alien inquired. His voice was gender neutral, but his facial features were decidedly male. “Yes... you are a civilian leader. Where is your king? The one who calls himself Chief Councilor Ellis?”