Dark Space: Avilon

by Jasper T. Scott

  Bretton was incredulous. “This is the resistance’s secret weapon? A warship without guns? I feel like I’m the captain of a garbage hauler!”

  “We can’t hope to defeat either Omnius or the Sythians in a straight fight,” Picara replied.

  “No, I can see that.”

  “I meant that it won’t make a difference how many guns we have, Captain. It’ll never be enough.”

  Bretton shook his head.

  “Sir! Conventional comms are working, but I can’t hail the Baroness without revealing us to the enemy,” the comms operator interrupted.

  “Are we out of range of the enemy?”

  “A few ships have been drifting closer to us since we arrived. They’re not far out of range,” sensors replied.

  Bretton’s eyes fell on the glowing blue star map projected above the captain’s table. “Drifting closer?” He eyed the disposition of enemy forces on the grid. Suddenly he noticed what the sensor operator was talking about. A small group of Sythian warships had broken off from the main formation and was taking a very circuitous route to get to the Baroness. If Bretton didn’t know better, he’d say they were maneuvering to get closer to his ship.

  “Sensors, get me vectors on those ships.”

  A moment later vector lines appeared on the grid. Current and projected headings appeared as green and red arrows respectively. Those arrows turned slowly around the red icons of enemy contacts like the hands of old-fashioned clocks. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Bretton to see that the vectors were all subtly shifting in their direction.

  “That’s impossible,” Captain Picara whispered. “There’s no way they can see us.”

  “They can’t detect their own ships when cloaked, let alone ours,” Farah added.

  “So how are we detecting them?” Bretton replied. “Obviously the tech is out there to be discovered. Omnius has it. Maybe now the Sythians do, too. It would explain how they followed the Baroness from Dark Space. We assumed they have a traitor on board. I wonder if there isn’t a simpler explanation.”

  Picara shook her head. “We’ve been hiding under their noses for months. We still have a ship hiding in Dark Space. The Emancipator should have come under fire by now if the Sythians could see her.”

  “Maybe, or maybe they’ve just been watching us to see what we’re up to. It’s not like two ships are much of a threat to them. In either case, we need to know if the enemy can see us. Engineering—please confirm the status of our cloaking shield.”

  “Engaged at 100%, all sub-systems green.”

  “Are we releasing any radiation? Comms? Engines?”

  “Nothing that’s getting by the shield, sir.”

  “The enemy is launching fighters!”

  Bretton saw a large swarm begin pouring out from the main formation, zeroing in on the Baroness. A smaller swarm poured from the ships vectoring in on them.

  “Why haven’t they jumped to SLS?” Farah whispered, her eyes on the Baroness. “They’ve had more than enough time.”

  “There’s a lot of obstacles in this nebula,” Captain Picara said. “It’s playing havoc with sensors. Maybe they don’t want to risk running into something.”

  Bretton began nodding. “That, and they don’t know they’ve been followed. The Sythians are still cloaked. Sensors—how long before the enemy reaches firing range?”

  “ETA five minutes for the first squadron,” the sensor operator replied. “The others aren’t far behind. . . .”

  “If we power energy shields now, they’ll see us for sure,” Captain Picara said. “We might be jumping at shadows.”

  “Any chance the traitor that we brought on board is communicating with the enemy to give our position away?”

  “We would have detected that. Besides, he’s sitting in the middle of a quantum disruption field. Nothing’s getting in or out of that. It’s your call, Admiral,” Picara said, “but we may not survive a volley from them even with our shields raised.”

  Bretton eyed the approaching contacts on the grid. “Gunnery! Can we remote detonate those dymium grenades of yours?”

  “No, sir, but they have proximity sensors.”

  “Good enough. Find a squadron of Shells that isn’t moving around too much, behind the leading edge of the fighter wave, and then launch a handful of grenades as close as you can get them to the target.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Two minutes to firing range!” the sensor operator declared.

  Bretton watched the grid without blinking, his eyes intent upon the enemy as he waited.

  “You’re going to fire the first shot,” Farah said, slowly nodding.

  “I don’t see how that helps us assess their threat level,” Captain Picara put in.

  “It might get them to open fire prematurely,” Farah explained. “Right now, they’re trickling out towards us. The fighters will reach firing range before their capital ships. If they think the jig is up, those Shells might start firing right away rather than wait for the big guns to get into position first. We’ll survive some small arms fire from the Shells with our shields down, but the big guns could take us out in one volley.

  Bretton turned to regard Farah with a smile. “Exactly. When did you get so good at reading my mind?”

  “About the same time I became a wise ass, sir.”

  Bretton gave a snort of laughter.

  “Grenades away!” gunnery reported.

  Bretton watched the grid intently. A small burst of light flared in the middle of the enemy fighter formation, taking almost a dozen Shell Fighters off the grid as it faded.

  “Nine down!” sensors reported.

  Bretton held his breath, waiting.

  “The first squadrons have reached firing range with us,” sensors reported.

  Long seconds passed and nothing happened.

  “Guess they can’t see us after all . . .” Farah said.

  Then, suddenly, the onrushing waves of enemy fighters de-cloaked and the grid came alive with sparkling purple waves of Sythian Pirakla missiles.

  “Frek me!” Farah exclaimed.

  “Shields!” Bretton bellowed. “Helm—take evasive action! Comms—see if you can hail the Baroness. By now they should have detected those enemy fighters, but at least let them know who we are and ask them if they need any help. Maybe this time we can agree on jump coordinates and set up a rendezvous.”

  A chorus of Yes, Sirs, reached his ears. Bretton watched with a grimace as red enemy contacts began brightening all over the grid. The Sythians were all de-cloaking and powering their shields. The cloak and dagger phase of this engagement was over, but Bretton couldn’t take any satisfaction in that. The Baroness and the Tempest were horribly outnumbered.

  Bretton’s eyes skipped to the Baroness, watching a much larger wave of fighters rushing toward them. The enemy wasn’t in range of them yet, but they would be soon.

  Suddenly he noticed something. The Baroness’s icon on the grid was still dark.

  Farah was the first to voice that concern. “They haven’t raised their shields yet. What are they waiting for?”

  Bretton made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. “Comms—are they responding to our hails?”

  “Negative, sir. Nothing yet.”

  “They’re not maneuvering or accelerating, sir,” sensors added.

  “What, you mean they’re derelict? What do they think they’re doing?”

  “As far as we can tell, they are still under power, sir,” sensors replied.

  Bretton waited a few more seconds. Veins pulsed in his temples. He felt an impatient heat rise around his collar. “Come on . . . raise your shields, damn you!”

  “The first fighters are in range of the Baroness. Opening fire!”

  Bretton watched, breathless, as waves of sparkling purple missiles raced toward the unshielded hull of the Baroness.

  And still they didn’t raise their shields.

  “They’re going to be obliterated if we don’t do some
thing.”

  “Frek it . . . Helm! Plot a micro jump into the path of those missiles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Captain Picara said. “They’re not responding or maneuvering. For all we know they’re dead. You plan to sacrifice us for a ghost ship?”

  “No, I’m going to buy some time while I teleport over there and take command of the Baroness myself.”

  “What if the ship has suffered a catastrophic failure? There’s no quantum junction on the other end. You’ll be trapped on board as she goes down.”

  “The resistance needs a real ship, Captain. One with real weapons. We can’t afford to lose the Baroness without a fight.”

  “Even if you get her working, with just two ships against an entire Sythian fleet, we don’t stand a chance.”

  Bretton was already turning to hurry down the gangway and off the bridge. Farah hurried to keep up beside him. “Helm, how are those jump calculations coming along?”

  “Almost ready, sir. . .”

  “I need an ETA!”

  “Thirty seconds!”

  The timer appeared before Bretton’s eyes and he nodded in approval. “Good.” He reached the doors leading off the bridge and stopped there to turn to Captain Picara. She was just half a step behind him. “You’re in command while I’m gone, Picara. With any luck I’ll be back soon.”

  “Don’t do this, sir. Even if you can save her, we can’t beat an entire fleet of Sythians with just two ships. We have to go now. The Baroness is forfeit.”

  “The Baroness isn’t on her own, Picara. I’ve been crunching some numbers in my head. Based on how long it took for the Baroness to drop out of SLS and how far she travelled in that time, she was deliberately traveling slower than she needed to. That’s how the Sythians caught up to her so fast. They haven’t improved their jump tech.”

  Picara shook her head, still not getting it.

  Bretton saw the timer reach ten seconds and decided to cut his explanation short. She’d have to connect the dots for herself. “The Baroness was flying out of Dark Space with an entire fleet of rebel Gors, Captain, and none of them had any reason to suspect that they’d been followed, so why should they outrun their allies?”

  Bretton turned back to the bridge doors. He snapped his fingers to the pair of guards standing there. “You two, with me. We don’t know what we’re going to find on the Baroness.”

  The timer reached zero and a bright flash of light suffused the deck. Bretton waved his wrist over the door scanner and the bridge doors swished open to reveal the glossy golden dome of the quantum junction.

  “Incoming!”

  “Brace!”

  Bretton braced himself on the door jamb and turned back to see a swarm of purple stars come spinning out of the flashing gray clouds of the Stormcloud Nebula. They had just enough time to gasp before those missiles slammed into the bridge. The explosions were blinding, and a simulated roar rumbled through the sound in space simulator. The deck shuddered underfoot.

  “Shields at 67%!” engineering reported.

  Bretton winced. “Gunnery! I assume you’re in charge of the junction? Get me onto the bridge of the Baroness. Now!”

  He didn’t wait for a confirmation of that order, instead he rushed into the dimly-lit concourse outside the bridge. A split second later the golden dome of the junction rose on four shimmering pillars of light, and he ran in. Once Bretton was standing in the center of the glowing green circle beneath the dome, he turned in a quick circle to see who was standing there with him. There was Farah, checking the charge on her sidearm, flicking off the safety; and the two guards he’d ordered to join them, both hefting old Imperial ripper rifles and looking nervous. Bretton unstrapped his own sidearm and then the quantum junction began to drop over their heads.

  “Ruh-kah,” Bretton whispered in Imperial Versal.

  The guards, both Avilonian-born gave him curious looks, but Farah sent him a tight grin, and replied in Versal, “Just like old times, Captain.”

  “Hoi, that’s Admiral now, Commander.”

  “With all due respect, frek you, sir.”

  * * *

  “Torv . . . What is this?” Destra gaped at the bodies strewn across the deck.

  He spoke to her, but again, all she heard was alien hissing. Reaching up to her ear, she found it as naked as the rest of her, and she shivered, noticing how cold it was in the stasis room.

  “Give me a second,” she said, and hurried over to the lockers. Her translator would be there with her clothes. She kept half an eye on the Gor as she went, half-expecting him to attack her at any moment. What had he done? She hoped it was some big misunderstanding.

  Destra reached the locker with her stasis tube’s number on it, and opened it. She pulled out a neat stack of her clothes and personal items. The first thing she did was fit the combination translator and comm piece into her ear; then she began hurriedly getting dressed.

  While she was still getting dressed, Torv stalked up to her. Destra’s heart pounded in her chest, even though she knew that the Gor would have eaten her already if that had been his intention.

  “Torv, please explain this,” she tried again.

  More hissing. This time it was accompanied by a translation. “I tell you already, my Matriarch. We are forced to take control of this vessel.”

  “You killed them?!”

  “They sleep.”

  Destra shook her head. “You turned on us.”

  “We have no choice, Matriarch. Your people refuse to honor you as they should. Their disrespect is a dishonor to their creche and all who belong to it.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  “We steal weapons and use the sleep setting. Now they sleep.”

  “You stunned the entire crew?”

  Torv heaved his mighty shoulders. “All who resist. Others choose not to. We watch them while we wait for you to take command.”

  “What about the captain?”

  “He kills several Gors who try to reason with him. I take his life myself. He can no longer disrespect you, creche mother.”

  Destra swallowed hard and nodded. “What is our position in space?”

  “We are no longer in the light stream. My creche mates arrive soon.”

  Destra spared a glance for her daughter, still trapped in a stasis tube, the glass frosted so that she could only make out a hint of Atta’s face. All the other stasis tubes in the room were likewise occupied. The Gors had timed their coup well, waiting until the majority of the crew was already asleep.

  “We need to get to the bridge, Torv,” Destra said. Waking Atta would have to wait for a more convenient moment.

  “Lead us, my Matriarch. I make sure no harm comes to you.”

  Destra took off at a run, dodging the fallen bodies of stunned corpsmen, medics, and sentinels on her way to the exit. She grimaced as she accidentally stepped on one man’s leg. He didn’t even stir. Passing her wrist over the door scanner, she ran out and down the corridor. Glancing over her shoulder, she was just in time to see Torv cloaking himself. She grimaced and looked away, feeling her skin prickle with unease.

  The Gors had seen Captain Covani as a threat and taken matters into their own hands, effectively taking over the ship so that they could put her, a Gor-friendly leader, in command. She should have felt flattered, or maybe encouraged by that vote of confidence, but she couldn’t help thinking about the late captain and wondering . . .

  Am I next?

  Destra felt a stab of regret for Captain Covani. She hadn’t been responsible for his death, but she felt guilty anyway. She’d argued the Gors’ case, but as it turned out . . . He’d been right to fear them.

  Destra reached the nearest bank of lift tubes and rode them all the way up to the bridge. As she left the lift tube and hurried down a short corridor to the bridge, she listened for Torv’s footsteps. The only ones she heard were her own. Maybe she’d lost the Gor along the way . . .

  As she reached the
doors to the bridge, the deck shuddered under foot, and something below decks groaned ominously. Destra’s eyes flew wide and her breath froze in her chest—

  They were under attack.

  She passed her wrist over the scanner, and the doors swished open. The scene that greeted her on the other side was shocking. A huddled group of officers stood at the Captain’s table surrounded by half a dozen armored Gors. A few glossy black helmets turned her way; the sunken eye sockets of their skull-shaped helmets glowed bright red in the dim emergency lighting.

  Destra hesitated, arresting her momentum before she stumbled into them. Were they expecting her? Then the air shimmered ahead of her and Torv appeared. His unarmored gray torso blocked her view, and she heard him begin hissing at the others.

  “The Matriarch arrives! Show her the respect she is due!”

  The armored Gors bowed their heads to her as she approached.

  Encouraged by that, Destra squared her shoulders. “Release them,” she demanded, pointing to the huddled group of officers. If she was supposed to be an authority figure for the Gors she would have to act the part.

  The circle of Gors opened up and their human prisoners walked cautiously out, eying their captors.

  Destra stopped one of them, grabbing him by the arm. “Where is the captain?” she whispered.

  The man regarded her with wide, glassy eyes.

  “Lieutenant!” she snapped.

  He blinked and turned to point at a bloody corpse lying on the deck beside the captain’s table.

  Destra eyed Covani’s body with horror. He looked like he’d been mauled by wild animals.

  The deck shuddered again, and a damage alarm sounded, bringing Destra back to the moment. “Everyone to your stations!” she called out, clapping her hands together.

  The crew scrambled down from the gangway. Destra turned to Torv and gestured blindly to the Captain’s corpse without looking at it. “Have your men clean up their mess, please Torv. It’s bad for morale.”

  Torv turned to hiss something at the armored Gors, and they carried Covani away.

  Destra turned in a quick circle, surveying the crew. Fortunately the captain was the only one dead, so she wasn’t missing anyone. There didn’t appear to be an XO on deck, however. She walked up to the Captain’s table, trying to ignore the sticky smears of blood around it.