Dark Space Universe (Book 3): The Last Stand

by Jasper T. Scott

  “You didn’t spend the last two hours familiarizing yourself with the controls,” Garek replied. “I’m fine. You want to do something useful? Go change your clothes for something a Faro might wear.”

  Wheeler had restored Lucien’s rank of Commander, so he was still the ranking officer on board. That meant he was in charge, but after the mutiny, Lucien wasn’t sure Garek saw it the same way.

  “I’m going to change,” Lucien replied, making it sound like his idea. Now wasn’t the time to fight over who was actually in command. “Send me a message via our ARCs if there are any new developments. Addy?” He turned and nodded to her. “Maybe you’d better show me to my quarters.”

  “Sure... follow me.”

  * * *

  Aboard the Captured Faro Shuttle

  “There’s only two rooms?” Lucien asked, looking around the pilot’s quarters. The room was cramped, with just one bed—a double, at best; a closet, and an en-suite bathroom. “What about the other doors in the corridor?”

  “Gunwells, and storage,” Addy replied.

  Lucien grimaced. “Where are we all going to sleep?”

  “You and me in here. Brak and Garek in the other room. It has two bunk beds.”

  Lucien frowned. His eyes skipped from Addy to the bed and back again. She obviously meant for them to share the bed. That would have been no big deal before he’d integrated, but now he had his wife to think about, and his relationship with Addy couldn’t continue the way it had before.

  “I can sleep on the floor,” he said. “There must be extra bedding and pillows somewhere.”

  Addy sidled up to him with a furrowed brow. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t try to stop Garek....”

  “It’s not about that,” Lucien replied.

  She grabbed his hands, her gaze searching his. “Then what is it?” She released his hands to wrap her arms around his neck, but he pulled away and took a step back. He saw the hurt and confusion flash in her eyes.

  “I’m married, Addy,” he blurted out. “We can’t...”

  Realization dawned, but the hurt in her eyes remained. “You integrated with him?”

  Lucien nodded.

  “You didn’t even ask me first!”

  “I didn’t have a chance. The other Lucien died, and Admiral Wheeler and Tyra—the Chief Councilor—both asked me to integrate. They argued that I’d be more motivated to accomplish our mission if I had a family to fight for... if I had something to lose. I agreed.”

  Addy’s lips twisted sarcastically. “So I’m not a good enough reason to fight?”

  Lucien opened his mouth to object, but the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t know what to say to that.

  She turned away and pointed to the closet. “You’ll find Faro robes and a translator band in there.”

  He nodded and went to the closet to get changed. He stripped out of the orange Astralis-issue jumpsuit they’d given him to wear in the brig, and waved the closet open to find three black Faro robes hanging inside. He took one of them and pulled it on. It adapted to fit his body, lengthening and broadening to accommodate his height and build.

  “Where’s the translator band?” he asked, turning to look for Addy. Her back was turned and she was already keying the door open to leave.

  “Look for it. It’s there.” The door slid open and she walked out.

  Lucien watched her go with a grimace. If she hadn’t actually sided with Garek before, she would now. Establishing a proper chain of command was going to be harder than he’d thought.

  Chapter 14

  Dauntless

  Crusader Ethan Ortane sat in the command control station of his star galleon, the Dauntless, listening to Serenity Talos, the High Praetor of the Paragons, explain the situation. Astralis had returned—or rather, it’s people had. His son, Lucien, had to be with the refugees. Ethan’s heart swelled at the thought of seeing him again. It had been almost nine years since Lucien had left, and they hadn’t even heard from him since.

  Ethan could feel his wife’s own eagerness radiating off her in waves from the control station beside his. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be any time for a family reunion. The refugees had returned with a massive alien invasion fleet chasing him, and all Paragons everywhere were being recalled to help defend the wormhole that was apparently the only way across the Red Line.

  “Shouldn’t Etherus be leading the charge against these Faros?” Ethan asked.

  The high praetor shook her head, sending her long, straight black hair skipping over her shoulders. Ethan saw the skin around her piercing rose-colored eyes tighten, and her lips formed a grim line. She was visiting a neighboring system, which was how they were able to conduct a real-time conversation.

  “We’ve petitioned Etherus for help, and He’s gone to speak with the Etherians on our behalf, to ask them for volunteers to man their fleets in our defense... but after Astralis sold them out, or thought they did, I doubt they’ll be eager to help us.”

  Ethan scowled. “But we’re not the ones who sold them out. We didn’t even know what was happening! And besides, even if they all die, Etherus will just resurrect them back in Etheria, so they’re not actually risking anything.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” the high praetor replied. “Regardless, you have your orders. Our entire fleet will be joining the defense, including all the facets of New Earth. We’ll break it up into its individual facets and use them to help hold our lines. That will more than double the strength of our fleet.”

  “There’s trillions of civilians on board New Earth!” Ethan objected, as if the high praetor didn’t already know that.

  “The facets are heavily armed and shielded, and we’re going to need the extra firepower.”

  Ethan shook his head. “The facets have all of our resurrection centers. If they’re destroyed...”

  “We’re well aware of the risks, Crusader. The facets will sit safely behind the lines and use their long-range beam cannons to join the fight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more fleets to contact, and time is short.”

  “What about our allies in Laniakea? This is their fight, too.”

  High Praetor Serenity Talos nodded. “They’ve been contacted. So far seven of them have agreed to send ships to help us, but not enough to make a difference. They’re sending token forces of barely a few hundred vessels each.”

  “What? That’s absurd!” Alara objected, joining the conversation for the first time. “Any one of them should be able to send several thousand ships without breaking a sweat—not several hundred.”

  The high praetor’s gaze shifted to Alara. “They’re afraid if they send more, their neighbors will take advantage of their weakness and attack—particularly since we’re withdrawing all of our forces from their current peace-keeping missions.”

  Ethan grimaced. Laniakea was far from unified, with the strongest species all vying for dominance, and humanity in the middle, keeping a tenuous peace. “So we’re on our own,” he concluded.

  “Yes. Get your fleet to the rendezvous, Crusader. There’s no time to waste.”

  Ethan nodded. “Aye, ma’am.”

  And with that, the high praetor vanished from the main holo display.

  Ethan turned to the Helm. “Confirm receipt of rendezvous coordinates and begin calculating our jump.”

  “Coordinates received,” the officer at the helm replied. “Jump calculating.”

  “ETA?” Ethan asked.

  “Eight days, three hours,” the helm replied.

  “Carry on. Comms, inform the rest of the fleet about our change of orders and send them the coordinates. Have them begin calculating their own jumps.”

  “Yes, sir,” the comms officer replied.

  Ethan turned to his wife and executive officer next. “We’ll see Lucien soon,” he said in a quiet voice. “One week.”

  “Eight days,” she replied with a sigh. “I’m going to kick his ass when we do see him.”

  Ethan nodded grimly. “Not if I kick
it first.” He shook his head. “They never should have left. Etherus warned them not to. Now they’ve put us all in jeopardy.”

  Alara frowned at him, her violet eyes skeptical. “Maybe you should leave the ass-kicking to me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he replied.

  “If you didn’t have a family to think about, you’d have signed up for Astralis’s mission yourself—and don’t try to deny it. Lucien got his rebel spirit from someone, and it wasn’t me.”

  Ethan snorted. “I suppose Trinity got her level-headedness from you, then.”

  Alara smiled and patted his shoulder. “And her good looks,” she added with a wink.

  “What? You don’t think I’m good looking?”

  Alara studied him with an appraising eye. “Rakish. Scruffy. You’d look okay if you took the time to shower and shave off that beard.”

  “Scruffy!” Ethan burst out and absently ran a hand through the over-grown stubble on his cheeks. “And what’s wrong with my beard? You said it made me look distinguished.”

  Alara shrugged and smiled. “Only because it hides the wrinkles.”

  “Wrinkles!” Ethan did a double-take. “I don’t know why I take this abuse.”

  “Because you married me.”

  Ethan snorted and shook his head. Their banter was a nice reprieve from the seriousness of the situation. They were about to fight a technologically superior enemy with trillions of ships. The Paragons’ entire fleet only numbered in the tens of millions of capital ships, most of them star galleons. Add to that the few hundred ships their alien allies had managed to spare, and the odd one thousand Etherian vessels already guarding the wormhole, and they didn’t even come close to matching the forces arrayed against them.

  Even with the narrowness of the wormhole, it didn’t take a mathematician to figure out that it would only be a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.

  There’d better be more to this plan, Ethan thought. He frowned and looked up, out the Dauntless’s holo displays to his and Alara’s Fleet, the One Hundred and Tenth.

  Silver specks beetled across the black, schooling together like fish. Their fleet was comprised of exactly one hundred star galleons, each with its own complement of two dozen fighters. Ethan had always thought of the 110th as a powerful armada, and they’d proved that time and again through the years, but now Ethan saw their fleet for what it really was: a pinch of sand, scattered in an infinite black sea.

  And the Faros are the tidal wave coming to dash us against the rocks.

  Chapter 15

  The Lost Etherian Fleet

  Twenty Minutes Until the Faro Armada Arrives...

  “This is Chief Councilor Tyra Ortane to the commander of the Faro armada. We have just learned that your stated target, Etheria, remains unreachable.” Tyra paused and then went on to explain everything that Etherus had told them. When she finished, she concluded, “Under the circumstances, we will allow five of your vessels to cross the Red Line so that you may independently verify our claims. We will ensure their safe passage through our territory, but if any additional ships are sent, it will be seen as a violation of our peace treaty and a declaration of war. We await your response.”

  Tyra ended the recording there, and sent the comms probe from her control station. Tyra was back on the bridge at the Gideon’s comms station. Between her, Colonel Drask, and Admiral Wheeler, they were in complete command of the ship. The admiral had appointed new officers to the control stations vacated by Garek, Addy, and Brak, but they were still learning how to use them.

  “The probe is away, headed for the wormhole,” Tyra announced. That probe would have to carry her message through to the other side of the wormhole, since no comms signals could cross the Red Line.

  “Good. Now we wait,” Wheeler replied.

  “What if they refuse to accept our terms?” Colonel Drask asked.

  “They’ll accept,” Admiral Wheeler replied.

  “And what happens when they find out that we’re telling the truth?” Drask pressed.

  “Then Etherus’s prediction will likely be fulfilled and the Faros will turn on us,” Admiral Wheeler replied. “They might think they can somehow draw Etherus and the Etherians out by threatening us.”

  Drask snorted. “Then they obviously didn’t get the memo: Etherus isn’t going to help us.”

  “He’s already helped us by telling us how to defeat Abaddon,” Admiral Wheeler said. “There’s an old story about a man sitting on his roof during a flood. The water is rising all around him and then a hover car with rescue workers comes by to save him, but he turns them away, saying that he’s waiting for God to save him. The man drowns. The moral of the story is—”

  “That God doesn’t exist?” Tyra suggested, half-turning from her station to face the admiral.

  Wheeler frowned. “No—that God helps those who help themselves. All we need to do is buy Commander Ortane enough time to accomplish his mission, and that’s what these latest negotiations are for.”

  Drask looked skeptical. “Even if they find the Forge, we still have to find a way to destroy it, and with all of our forces pinned down and trapped inside the Red Line, that might not be possible.”

  “One problem at a time, Colonel. We can’t fret those details until we have more information.”

  Tyra grimaced. The colonel was right—even if Lucien managed to find the Forge, destroying it presented a whole new set of challenges. Etherus had given them an impossible task.

  * * *

  Aboard the Captured Faro Shuttle

  Five Minutes Until The Faro Armada Arrives...

  “How long until we can jump out?” Lucien asked quietly. The Faro shuttle’s cockpit was dark and quiet, devoid of the usual hum of engines and life support. As soon as they’d crossed the wormhole, Garek had cloaked the shuttle and powered down everything except for passive sensors and the navigation computer. Ever since then, they’d been cruising with their momentum. It was slow going, but eventually they’d reach the edge of the Red Line’s interdiction field.

  By then, hopefully the Faros still wouldn’t have arrived, and they’d be able to power up the shuttle’s jump drive to get away. If not...

  “Ten minutes to reach the edge of the field, give or take,” Garek replied.

  “And the Faros?” Lucien said. “How long before they get here?”

  “Without active sensors, there’s no way to tell how close they are, but if you ask me, they should already be here.”

  Lucien directed his attention to Addy. She’d taken Brak’s place at the co-pilot’s station. “What about the probe that followed us out? Is it still broadcasting the Chief Councilor’s message?”

  “Looping on repeat,” Addy replied.

  “So maybe the Faros are thinking about what to do next?” Lucien suggested.

  A chime sounded somewhere in the cockpit.

  “Looks like they’re done thinking,” Garek said. “We’ve got contact: five ships headed for the wormhole, just like the councilor ordered.”

  Lucien leaned over Garek’s shoulder for a look at his displays. Sure enough, five blips had appeared on the middle holo display. “Those are Etherian ships,” Lucien said, noting the familiar stream-lined shapes of their hulls. “Five out of the ten that we gave them. Looks like they accepted Tyr—the chief councilor’s terms.”

  Garek nodded. “Looks like.”

  “Can they see us?” Lucien asked.

  “They’re not reacting to our presence,” Garek replied.

  “Why send Etherian ships?” Addy asked. “Why risk five of the ten most valuable vessels they have?”

  “Maybe they think Etherian ships have a safe way to jump from one side of the universe to the other?” Lucien asked.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past Etherus to be holding out on us,” Garek replied.

  Addy shook her head. “Unless he outright lied about the other side being made of antimatter, I don’t think the Etherians have some secret way of t
raveling from one side to the other. You can’t take matter ships to the other side without them being annihilated.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Lucien said. “Space is a vacuum. The particle density of deep space is so minuscule that you’d never even notice the matter-antimatter annihilations going on around you. The Faros could potentially still attack Etheria if they can find a way to cross the great divide at the rim of the universe, or whatever barrier is at the center. What they definitely can’t do is conquer or enslave the Etherian people. That would require close contact. But they could bombard Etherian planets from extreme range.”

  “Why bother?” Garek asked. “All they have to do is crash a few of their ships into the atmospheres of Etherian worlds. The annihilation of that much matter would release so much energy it would probably blast their atmospheres into the next solar system and crack the planets in half. Every ship in their fleet will become a planet-busting super weapon.”

  Lucien felt horror twist inside of him with Garek’s conclusion. “Maybe we should warn the chief councilor to back out of the negotiations.”

  “Here we go again...” Garek said.

  “They need to know that Etheria might still be at risk! Etherus told us how to beat the Faros, and with the wormhole restricting entry to Laniakea, our forces should be able to hold them off long enough for us to find the Forge.”

  Garek swiveled the pilot’s chair to face him. “And then what? How are we supposed to destroy it?”

  “Etherus didn’t tell us to negotiate with the enemy for a reason. If the Faros could be dissuaded by simple diplomacy, don’t you think he would have told us to do that instead?”

  “Not if he’s hiding something—like the fact that Etheria really can be reached, and they really are in danger.”

  “Maybe because if we knew that, then we wouldn’t agree to defend them,” Lucien suggested.

  Addy turned around now, too. “If Etherus lied to us, then he deserves what’s coming.”