“You’ll open them, and that’s an order!” Graves bellowed.
“You’re not yourself, sir.”
“What the frek are you talking about?”
“It’s all over the news. The records in the Res Center proved it. Stand down, General.”
“Stun him!” Graves ordered, but the bots standing beside him made no move to obey that command. “Did you hear me?”
“You are under arrest, General,” the sergeant said. “Your command privileges have been revoked. Raise your hands behind your head and—”
Graves launched himself at the sergeant and grabbed the man’s rifle.
“Shoot him!” the sergeant yelled. All six bots opened fire, and flurry of crimson lasers converged on Graves from the front and back. It was over in an instant, and Graves fell with a thud. Thin black tendrils of smoke rose from his corpse.
The sergeant stared at the general’s body in shock. Maybe he’d forgot to say stun him instead of shoot him. Bots were nothing if not literal-minded.
Whatever the case, Graves was no longer a threat. Brak turned and ran back the way he’d come. There were still two others to catch—Chief Ellis and Admiral Stavos.
Brak decided to go for Ellis first. The Marines on the bridge would take care of Stavos.
* * *
Astralis
Abaddon sat scowling in his living room as he watched the news. Both Garek and Nora had failed. It wouldn’t be long before Marines or police came up to his penthouse to arrest their Chief Councilor.
Abaddon walked through his living room, up to another holoscreen, this one displaying a painting. He removed it from the wall and set it aside, then he waved his hand over the wall behind the painting. The air shimmered, revealing a cloaked safe.
He typed in his combination and opened the safe; then he reached past a stack of worthless valuables and data wafers to retrieve an illegally modified pistol and the Faro comms unit he’d used to speak with Katawa.
Abaddon took both the pistol and the unit and sat down at the head of the dining room table, with a clear view of the hallway leading to the front door. He toggled the pistol’s illegal overload setting and laid it carefully on the table beside him.
The Faro prisoners in the stasis rooms weren’t much of a liability—they only had pieces of the overall plan, and their thoughts were all encoded in Faro, not Versal, but he and the other humans were another matter. A rigorous mind probe would reveal everything. He couldn’t allow them to take him alive. Hopefully Stavos and Graves would take similar precautions.
Abaddon hurried to configure the comms unit to make contact with the Faro fleet that was shadowing Astralis.
Once contact was established, he spoke into the device—in Faro, not Versal, so that no would know what he’d said.
“This is Abaddon,” he said. “Myself and my other instances have been discovered, but the lost fleet is on its way here. Do nothing until you detect its arrival. Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged,” the reply came back a moment later.
Before Abaddon could say or do anything else, his front door burst open. He calmly lifted his pistol from the table and aimed it at his own head.
But no Marines or police came storming in. Abaddon frowned, hesitating with his finger on the trigger. What are they waiting for?
Then he felt the air beside him stir, and a cold hand grabbed his wrist, prying the pistol away from his head.
Abaddon turned and saw the air shimmering to reveal a familiar gray-skinned, skull-faced monster.
The Gor.
Abaddon wasn’t strong enough to resist him in this pitiful human body, but he didn’t technically need to aim the weapon while it was set to overload. “Goodbye,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
The weapon exploded in his hand, and everything vanished in an agony of heat and light.
* * *
Astralis
Tyra bounced Theola on her knee while she filled out a report at the police station. The poor baby hadn’t eaten anything for a long time.
Someone gasped and Tyra looked up. Everyone in the station had stopped what they were doing to watch the holoscreen on the far wall of the station. The headline read,
Terrorists Vindicated, and Leaders Exposed as Res. Center Explodes
It was Tyra’s turn to gasp. The bomb went off?
Someone turned up the volume, and everyone watched as clips of Ellis’s memories played, thoroughly incriminating him, followed by memories from Admiral Stavos and General Graves that exposed them, too.
They watched as first Director Helios and then her father, Marine Sergeant Garek Helios, tried to detonate Joe Coretti’s bomb to cover up the evidence. The bomb turned out to be a fake—only to explode minutes later while reporters swarmed around Lucien and a Marine sergeant outside the center.
Tyra’s heart froze in her chest and her blood ran cold, watching as Lucien dropped to the ground a spit second before the shock wave hit. It flattened the news crews, and the scene turned blurry with flying debris. As soon as the shock wave passed, the scene snapped back into focus, and Tyra saw her husband being pulled to his feet by the Marine who’d been standing beside him.
EMTs came rushing in from waiting ambulances to attend the wounded while firefighters jumped down from their trucks and ran out with hoses to put out the blaze. At least they’d been ready for this outcome.
But Tyra hadn’t. She slowly shook her head, unable to put words to the horror bursting inside her. Even Theola’s hungry cries had subsided.
Lucien was safe. Theola was safe. Their leaders had been exposed and were probably just about to be arrested. The crisis was over, but a new one had just begun: the Resurrection Center was gone. That meant a lot of things, but right now it meant just one thing to Tyra: it meant that Atara was never coming back. It meant that her eldest daughter was dead.
Chapter 50
Astralis
Lieutenant Commander Wheeler paced up and down her cell in the brig, wondering what kind of trial she could hope to get with Faros in charge of Astralis.
Not a fair one. That’s for sure.
She stopped at the door to her room and looked out the window into the hall. How long had she been in here? They’d taken away her ARCs, and she’d been stunned when she arrived, so there was no way to know.
As Wheeler was wondering about that, a Marine sergeant appeared and unlocked the door. She frowned at him as the door slid open.
“Time for my trial already? Or are we going to skip straight to the execution?”
“Neither, ma’am. You’re being reinstated as the acting CMO.”
Wheeler wondered if she’d heard correctly. “Say again, Sergeant?”
He launched into a quick summary of events in the center, then said, “We need you on the bridge, ma’am. There’s some concern that the Faros know where we are and might already be on their way.
Wheeler nodded. “Let’s go.”
She followed the sergeant out and back through the brig. Noting all the empty cells, she asked, “What happened to the admiral and General Graves?”
“The admiral shot himself before he could be arrested. Graves was caught trying to reach the Faro prisoners in stasis and he was killed in the struggle.”
“And Ellis?”
“Dead. Fired a sidearm on overload while a security officer attempted to arrest him.”
Wheeler grimaced. “So we have no one to interrogate and no records to study in the center. We have no idea what they were planning!”
“No, ma’am.”
They took an elevator up to sub level five hundred, and then spent another minute walking to the bridge itself. Wheeler endured routine scans at the entrance of the bridge and then breezed in.
“Commander on deck!” the sergeant who’d escorted her announced.
A female officer with bright golden eyes turned from the holo table on the upper deck of the bridge and saluted—Lieutenant Ruso, chief engineer. A pair of maintenance bots were on th
eir hands and knees beside her, scrubbing a bright red bloodstain off the deck.
“Who has the conn?” Wheeler demanded.
“That would be me, ma’am,” Ruso replied as Wheeler approached.
“At ease, Lieutenant. Give me a sitrep,” Wheeler said.
“The bridge is secure, as is the rest of the ship—as far as we can tell. Marines and security forces are on high alert and on the lookout for more enemy agents. We’ve re-engaged outbound comms jamming—but not before a comms burst was detected going out from Chief Ellis’s penthouse. We intercepted the message, but...” Ruso broke off, shaking her head. “We can’t tell what it says. It’s in the Faros’ language.”
“Probably calling in reinforcements,” Wheeler said.
Ruso nodded. “We just plotted a jump to a nearby system. We’ve been waiting for you to arrive before we executed.”
“Show me.” Wheeler nodded to the holo table.
“Yes, ma’am.” Ruso turned to the table and made a pinching motion with her thumb and forefinger. The display zoomed out until the green wedge of Astralis disappeared, and a glittering map of nearby stars took its place. One of them was highlighted with the yellow diamond of a nav waypoint.
Ruso selected that star and read the system summary. “Six planets, none habitable.”
“Moons?”
“Fourteen that we’ve detected so far, but there’s likely more that we can’t see hiding behind the planets.”
“Without a spectral analysis there’s no way to be sure that they’re not habitable,” Wheeler mused.
Ruso nodded. “And if one of them is habitable, it could support a Faro colony.”
“Habitable planets, or not, they could still be there with a self-contained facility or space station.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Which means we’re not going to learn anything else from here. Execute the jump.”
“Aye, ma’am—helm, execute jump!”
“Jumping...” the nav officer replied.
The bridge flashed white, dazzling Wheeler’s eyes. Details of her surroundings gradually returned, and she barked out, “Sensors, report!”
“Clean sweep! No contacts!”
Wheeler let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Good. Helm, get ready to plot another jump.”
“Aye, where to, ma’am?”
“Stand by...” Wheeler gestured to the holo table, zooming out and checking stars at random. She found one with just one planet and six moons at the edge of the galaxy where they were currently situated. The planet was too far from its star for it to be habitable. “System lima seven tango alpha mike november dash eleven,” Wheeler replied.
“Aye, Commander... plotting jump,” the helm replied.
“If this system is safe, why plot another jump?” Lieutenant Ruso asked.
“Just in case we’re followed,” Wheeler replied. She turned in a circle to survey the bridge—her bridge. As the ranking naval officer on board, this was now her command, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d stolen it. The admiral was dead, and with the Res Center gone, he wasn’t coming back—nor were General Graves or Chief Councilor Ellis, or any of the others who’d died.
“Where’s Councilor Ortane?” Wheeler asked, turning back to Lieutenant Ruso.
The other woman shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“See if you can contact her for me. She’s in charge of the executive branch now that Ellis is gone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ruso replied, and hurried from the holo table to the comms station.
“And someone get me my ARCs!” Wheeler demanded. She was starting to feel naked without them.
“Aye, Commander!”
Turning back to the holo table, she summoned a map of the system where they were now—L7RT-6. A system of six planets and their moons. Wheeler checked them one by one to find that they were all lifeless balls of rock, ice, and gas. The ice world might not be entirely lifeless, but close enough.
She grimaced and shook her head. If the Faros didn’t show up, this system was going to be their home until they figured out what to do. Would the council decide to go back to their original mission of exploring the universe and risk more encounters with the Faros?
Wheeler frowned. Whatever people said about Etherus, his deity or lack thereof, one thing was certain: he’d kept everyone inside the Red Line safe from the Faros. If it were up to her, Wheeler would take them all back to the Etherian Empire and never leave again.
Chapter 51
Astralis
—TWO MONTHS LATER—
Acting Chief Councilor Tyra Ortane stared at the woman lying on the bed beside hers—a woman with dark hair, bright blue eyes, and an intimately familiar face. It was the same face she saw in the mirror each morning. The woman lying beside her was none other than Captain Tyra Forster. She’d never taken Lucien’s surname, because she’d never married him. She was the captain of a ship that no longer existed, part of an expeditionary force that had been disbanded years ago.
The expeditionary forces had almost been reformed and redeployed thanks to Chief Councilor Ellis, but after everyone had learned who Ellis and the others really were, all of their decisions had been cast into doubt. No clones would be sent out to explore ahead of Astralis, and all the recent changes in legislation had been repealed—including the judiciary department’s early ruling that Captain Forster and Councilor Tyra Ortane were distinct individuals and allowed to remain as such. The ruling was seen as a dangerous step toward whatever the Faros had been planning.
That was what brought both Tyra and Captain Forster to this probe room in Winterside General, waiting to be integrated. Of the two, Captain Forster was in better shape, so her body had been chosen to house both sets of their memories, a fact which made this whole process doubly unsettling for Tyra.
“It’s going to be fine,” Lucien said, squeezing her hand.
“Mama!” Theola declared and pointed to Captain Forster. The captain flashed a troubled smile. Lucien shook his head and redirected Theola’s finger to point at Tyra. “No, that’s Mama,” he said.
“Not for long,” Captain Forster added ruefully.
“You’ll both still be you,” Lucien insisted, glancing between them. “You’ll just have a bunch of new memories that you never knew you had.”
“I know,” Tyra said, “but it’s still unnerving.”
“Tell me about it,” Captain Forster said.
Lucien nodded and looked away. Councilor Tyra followed his gaze to watch as probe technicians scurried around, checking readouts on their equipment. Doctor Fushiwa came over and nodded to her. “We’re ready to begin, Councilor.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Councilor Tyra asked.
He nodded, blinking his orange eyes and smiling. “Perfectly safe.”
She regarded him dubiously. This was the same doctor who’d first performed the mind probe on Atara a few months back. Following the analysis of that probe, he’d subsequently cleared Atara of any suspicion. That didn’t instill a lot of confidence now.
Tyra winced at the memory of what had happened to her eldest daughter. If Doctor Fushiwa had dug just a little deeper with that probe, Atara wouldn’t be sitting in the hospital’s psych ward right now. They would have been able to restore Atara immediately from her backups in the Resurrection Center—backups that no longer existed thanks to the late Joe Coretti.
Despite rigorous searches of the Coretti brothers’ apartments, homes, and business establishments, Joseph Coretti was nowhere to be found. If he had somehow built his own resurrection center as Lucien believed, authorities had yet to find it—or Joe. So far it looked like he’d actually plotted to kill himself, or at least, that the bomb had gone off by accident, but Tyra agreed with Lucien. Joe was out there somewhere, probably with a new face and a completely different body, having just pulled off the perfect crime.
“Councilor?” Doctor Fushiwa prompted. “Do you need a moment?”
; Tyra shook her head. “Let’s get this over with.”
The doctor nodded and turned to the other bed. “Captain?”
“What she said,” Captain Forster replied.
A probe technician walked up beside Captain Forster’s bed and injected a sedative into her arm. He injected Tyra next. She squeezed her husband’s hand hard as the needle went in, and he smiled reassuringly at her. She took that smile with her as her eyes closed and darkness fell inside her mind.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up in another room, under a warming blanket, with Lucien sitting beside her and Theola running around the room giggling.
Tyra struggled to sit up. Memories swirled, pieces of a life she’d never lived. Her time on the Inquisitor felt real. All her memories leading up to that felt real. But the life on Astralis with her husband Lucien and her two daughters felt like something she’d watched in a holovid. The memories didn’t feel like hers.
“Tyra?” Lucien asked, jumping up to stand beside her bed and grab her hand. “How do you feel?”
She frowned up at him. “I feel fine, Commander Ort—” She stopped herself there. “Sorry. I mean, Lucien.”
His brow furrowed with concern. “You don’t remember me.”
“I do, but...” she trailed off, unable to express the confusion she was feeling.
The door to her room swished open and Theola stopped running around to watch as Doctor Fushiwa walked in.
“I see you’re awake,” he said, smiling as he approached.
Lucien turned and jerked a thumb at her. “That’s not my wife.”
“No?” The doctor turned to her. “You don’t remember your life here, Councilor?”
“I do, but it doesn’t feel like my life.”
“Ah. I understand.”
“So explain it to me,” Lucien demanded.
“She’s in a fugue state, not uncommon after this type of procedure. A similar period of confusion follows resurrections. You surely remember something like it when you were resurrected, Mr. Ortane?”
Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within Page 38