Into the Dark (Dark Universe Book 1)

by Jason Halstead

  “No! The light’s making it,” Twyf cried out.

  Aden nodded. “Right, but there’s too much ambient light. We need a spotlight.”

  “Oh, okay,” she mumbled.

  Tosc strode across the galley with his long legs and passed his hand over the light controls. The light from the windows in the four doors kept the room from being pitch black, but it was dark enough walking wasn’t safe.

  “Garf, that better not be your hand,” Amber growled a second later.

  Garf chuckled. A bright light burst out of the spotlight in his hands and blasted into the floor. He held it up. “Figured this would be more your style?”

  Meshelle and Janna both laughed. Amber fumed and looked away. “Keep your furry hands to yourself.”

  “Don’t know what you’re missing. Takes a lot of man to be this hairy,” Garf said.

  “Garf, bring that over here.”

  Garf huffed and handed Aden the light. He held the crystal out and then directed the beam of light straight into the crystal. Colors and sprinkles of light spotted the floor and walls. Twyf gasped and studied it. She moved, ducking under the colorful lights and walking back and forth.

  “There,” she muttered and pointed. “I think that’s—no, what’s that line for? There should be some dots here—are there? It’s so faint. And that’s missing there. I mean, if that’s what it is.”

  “Huh?” Aden asked.

  Twyf turned to Tosc. “Do you see it?”

  “A bunch of dots and colors? Sure.”

  Twyf shook her head. “I think it’s more, but I’m not sure. We need a stronger light.”

  “Don’t got anything stronger,” Garf mumbled. “Could hook up a laser, but that might cut it up.”

  “Take the lenses out of focus,” Aden said. “That way it will be powerful, but won’t burn.”

  Garf grunted and walked out of the galley to the east.

  “Where’s he going?” Amber muttered.

  “Laser cutter,” Aden guessed. “Easier to modify.”

  Twyf kept walking back and forth and staring at the ground. She’d point and mutter and then move on. Tosc watched her and began to show interest in the pattern of lights on the ground in spite of himself. Aden held the crystal steady and waited.

  “There’d better be a point to this,” Meshelle muttered.

  Garf reentered the room and walked up to Aden. “You want to hold that?”

  “While you shoot it with a laser drill? Uh, no!”

  Garf grinned and held out a long pair of insulated tongs. Aden tucked the light between his knees and grabbed the tool. He fit the crystal and then held it out for Garf. The Devikian raised the drill and pointed it at the crystal. “Ready?”

  “Twyf, step back. You too, Tosc,” Aden warned.

  As soon as they were clear, Garf pressed the button that activated the laser. The red-hued beam struck the crystal and caused a flash of brilliant light to burst out of it and leave them all seeing spots. Aden grunted and held still, afraid that if he moved, Garf might burn him. He blinked his eyes until the room began to come back into focus. Bright lights floated in his vision, causing him to shake his head and blink some more.

  “Holy shit,” Amber breathed.

  The others offered curses in their languages as their eyes adjusted. Twyf was the first to put intelligent words to what she saw: a three-dimensional image floating in mid-air. “I knew it! I was right! It’s a chart. They put a map in the crystal!”

  “That’s a map?” Garf asked.

  Twyf reached out and put her hand in the display. She traced a line and then turned to a distant cluster of stars. “How is this even possible? This is us here, and that’s a system a long ways away. I don’t even know how far.”

  “What’s so hard to believe?” Meshelle asked. “Other than you figuring out there’s a star chart in this crystal.”

  “It’s here, with us. Tracking us, I mean,” Twyf said.

  “It’s moving as we move,” Tosc agreed. He pointed at the end of the line. “This here is us, moving this way. The way the line points is moving laterally.”

  “Okay, so where’s it pointing?” Janna asked.

  Twyf frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s a long ways. A really, really long ways.”

  “That direction is coreward.”

  Janna stood up and moved closer to the three-dimensional lights. “Coreward? You mean, towards the center of the galaxy?”

  “Yes,” the Lermian said.

  “What’s at the end of that line?” Janna wondered.

  “And why did the squid want this so bad?” Aden asked.

  Janna glanced at Aden and then turned to study the chart again. She nodded slowly. “I want it.”

  “Janna!” Meshelle hissed. “We need to repair and rearm. We can’t just chase across the galaxy because you’re curious.”

  “Actually, we can,” Janna said. “I’m the captain.”

  Meshelle’s eyes narrowed and her hair slithered against her scalp.

  Janna smiled and nodded. “When we drop out of the dark, let’s follow that map.”

  “What if it’s a trap?” Meshelle challenged.

  “Then they’re trying to trap the Kesari,” Janna said.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Aden said.

  Janna turned and tilted her head. She nodded. “Yes, that’s good. I like it.”

  “This is a bad idea,” Meshelle growled.

  “Then maybe, for once, you can prove you’re right. You and your mercs can fight your way out and save the Uma. You’ll have your victory one way or another.”

  Meshelle snorted. “I’m not saying this to prove you’re wrong; I’m saying it to save your hide. Not just yours—all of our lives!”

  Janna shrugged and spun away. “A crystal like that is pretty special. Wherever it takes us, if there’s more like it or other artifacts from this forgotten civilization, we stand to make enough money we’ll never have to work again.”

  “I’m in,” Tosc said.

  “Me too,” Garf agreed.

  “We’re all in,” Meshelle said. “But we need to all be ready. Go and get your armor and weapons fixed, then check with Chuck on the shuttle. Twyf, inventory our ammo.”

  Twyf stiffened and, after a lingering glance at Aden, she turned to look at Janna. The Vagnosian nodded. “Do it. I’ll relieve Kessoc on the bridge if anybody’s looking for me.”

  Aden watched her go and then turned and saw Twyf watching him. She offered a quick shrug and turned away to follow orders. Aden swallowed his words and turned to Garf. “You can stop with the laser anytime now.”

  “Oh, right, sorry,” the Devikian said. He released the button and plunged the room back into a gloomy darkness.

  Chapter 23

  “My sister warned me not to do this.”

  Aden tried to lift his head up and whacked it on the bottom of the metal support strut in the shuttle. He cursed and lay his head back down until the fancy colors faded from his vision.

  “Oh! I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to surprise you. Are you okay?” Seph asked.

  Aden slid out from the service duct he was working on in the shuttle and sat up. He focused on staring at her face, not the dark blue jumpsuit that hugged her torso and thighs. “Not my first bump. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay,” Seph said. “Thanks to you, I hear.”

  Aden waved it off. “Just doing my job.”

  She shook her head. “No, you weren’t. Your job was to be a hired gun and to do what Meshelle tells you. From what I remember and heard since, you took over when Meshelle was hit and made sure we kept moving and all got out safe.”

  “I was trained to believe you never leave a teammate behind.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Naive and impractical, but as long as you’re on my team, I’m willing to overlook that.”

  Aden wasn’t sure if he should laugh or try to argue with her. Before he could figure out which was the better path,
she continued.

  “So like I was saying, my sister warned me not to come and thank you.”

  “No thanks needed,” Aden said. “I was just doing what felt like the right thing.”

  “Well, the right thing saved my life. Now I owe you. How can I pay you back?” Seph reached up to the seal on her jumpsuit and ran her finger down it, causing it to part, and began to peel it away from her skin between her small but well-formed breasts.

  Aden’s breath caught in his throat. He shook his head and looked away. “You can start by sealing that suit back up. Really. I don’t need that.”

  “Who said anything about need? This is about want,” she purred.

  Aden coughed. “I’m...I’m good there, too, thanks. Really, Seph. I didn’t save you to get in your pants.”

  The seductive smile on her face faded and was replaced with a perplexed frown. “Terrans are all about fucking. Almost as much as Devikians and Lermians. Well, Lermians when they aren’t trying to prove they’re the best hunter in the universe.”

  “Well, yes, Terrans do enjoy that,” he admitted. “But I’d rather you were just my friend.”

  Her eyes widened. “You prefer men?”

  “What? No!” Aden sputtered. “I—look, you’re beautiful and desirable and from what I’ve heard, good enough in the sack to make me forget everything else in the world. But the thing is, there’s somebody else.”

  She frowned. “Amber?”

  “Somebody else,” Aden repeated.

  “Amber’s not the kind of woman to tie herself down to one man,” Seph warned. “If you’re setting your heart on her, you’re going to get hurt.”

  “I thought you twisted men around your fingers to get what you needed?”

  “And women,” Seph agreed. “I made that choice long ago. I know how to do it, and I see how other people are. Tassarians are very empathic creatures. Some even say we are so good at it that it’s a limited form of extra-sensory perception. I know you want me, but I also know that you won’t let yourself have me. So now I’m in a strange place. You want me to be your friend, so I’m trying to warn you about Amber. A friend would do this, right?”

  Aden chuckled. “Someone with your talents doesn’t know how to be a friend?”

  Seph smiled. “Ironic, isn’t it? I have my sister, but she is just that: a sister. We are all that is left of our pod. Other than her, I have the people on this ship, my coworkers. And the people I meet who I have to twist around my finger, as you put it.”

  Aden winced. “Yeah, sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be. It’s true. I’m not an innocent person, Aden. I’m not a good person. I’m a person who does whatever I need to do to get the job done.”

  “You’re kind of scaring me.”

  She tilted her head and offered a ghost of a smile. “Don’t friends do that, too?”

  She turned and climbed the ladder back into the belly of the Uma. Aden watched her go, admiring her skintight jumpsuit before she disappeared from view. When she was gone, he shook his head and sighed. Aden had to shut his mouth when he realized he didn’t know what to say to her, or about her. He shook his head and turned to look at the wall of the shuttle.

  He needed to get back to wiring up the controls for the new turret that Chuck was mounting under the nose of the shuttle. The turret had a pulsed particle cannon set up in it—a special weapon Chuck had been working on in his spare time that could melt through armor and drive energy into the bowels of an enemy ship. What it could do to a living person, on the other hand, was beyond gruesome.

  “Aden?”

  Aden spun at the sound of Twyf’s voice. He moved to the bottom of the ladder and looked up. She was staring down at him from the open air lock. “Hey! I’m right here. What’s up?”

  “Can I come down?”

  “You can. Do you want to take the ladder or jump and let me catch you?”

  Twyf giggled and lowered a foot onto the ladder. She climbed down and turned to see Aden standing inches from her. She gasped as her golden irises shrank to take him in.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he warned.

  Twyf bit her lip and glanced up. She shook her head and looked at him again.

  “Why not?”

  She reached up and grabbed his jacket before pushing and propelling him back across the shuttle floor several steps. Aden risked a look back and saw he was about to run into a wall. He pushed back enough to stop and looked at her. “What was—mmph!”

  Aden recovered and wrapped his arms around her to pull her in. He pressed his lips into her and teased her tongue with his. She moaned and squeezed her hands against his chest before pushing against him and forcing herself away. “Not now,” she whispered.

  Aden glanced around. They were alone; Chuck was outside the shuttle. “Seems like it might be fun to me.”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” she said. “Okay, maybe you do. But Seph just left and she had a funny look on her face.”

  “Funny?”

  “You didn’t…”

  Aden shook his head. “No, I didn’t. She offered just about anything, but I told her there was somebody else and I wouldn’t do that.”

  “She looked…I don’t know, strange. Thoughtful maybe. Annoyed? I don’t know.”

  “She said you two were the only survivors from your pod? Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  “It never came up,” Twyf said. She shrugged. “I don’t talk about my past much. Or my family.”

  “Why? I don’t know much about your people. Is that normal?”

  “Seph and I have been through a lot,” she said. “Raiders captured us not long after we’d grown our legs. We were considered adults, or adult enough to be sold as slaves.”

  Aden’s eyes widened. “What happened? I mean, I want to know, but not if you don’t want to tell me.”

  “I’ve never talked about it to anyone. Seph, a little, but not much. She wanted me to forget it.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean to pry.”

  “No!” Twyf breathed. She searched his eyes and nodded. “I do. I want to tell you. I want you to know. I want to share my…my…”

  “Life?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But more. My pain.”

  Aden winced and nodded. “I’ll listen.”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out. “The raiders sold us. All of my siblings were sold off, one or two at a time. Always to bad people, most of them Criknids.”

  Aden winced. Criknids liked Tassarians for one reason: their flesh was considered a delicacy.

  “Seph and I played together the most and were the closest among all seven of us. She seduced some of the raiders and—”

  “Wait,” Aden interrupted. “Some of them? More than one?”

  Twyf nodded. “Four. A Lermian, two Devikians, and a Terran.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Not all at the same time,” Twyf added.

  Aden shook his head. Same time or not, he couldn’t imagine something like that. It did, however, remind him of Seph’s claim that she was the kind of person who did whatever she needed to do to get the job done.

  “So she made a deal with them, but she had nothing to barter with except her body. She kept me safe and arranged for us to escape,” Twyf continued. “We’ve been together our entire lives and she still feels like she has to protect me.”

  “Someone that dedicated? That’s a good person to have on your side.”

  “And it’s someone we have to be careful about,” she said.

  Aden frowned. “Why?”

  “Because she’s like me: we don’t trust anyone except each other. Especially people who want us. We—all Tassarians—have a feeling about people. We’re good at seeing them and knowing what they’re going to do, or at least how they feel.”

  “Empathic,” Aden said, recalling Seph’s admission.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “So can’t she sense that I want nothing but the best f
or you?”

  “Words and even feelings only mean so much. Actions, over time, show true character.”

  Aden sighed. “Okay, um, so what does that mean, exactly? I’m okay with proving myself over time to her. I admire her dedication to your well-being.”

  “It’s more than that,” Twyf said. “If you show too much interest, she will push harder and harder to keep me safe.”

  “How? Why?”

  “Because that’s all she knows. I’m all she has. All she trusts. She made sacrifices and gave up a part of herself to keep us alive.”

  Aden nodded. “I did ask her for something. A way to pay back the debt she thinks she owes me.”

  A shadow of doubt passed over Twyf’s face. “What?”

  “I asked her to be my friend.”

  Twyf’s lips parted and then she let out a laugh that she quickly stifled. “That explains it!”

  “Explains what?”

  “Why she looked so out of sorts! That was brilliant!”

  “Uh, then—mmph!”

  When Twyf pulled herself off him, she bit her lip and looked at the ladder again. She looked back at him. “I need you. Soon.”

  Aden nodded. “I’d like that.”

  “Finish this and come to me,” Twyf said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Waiting where?”

  “Your cabin,” she said.

  Aden grinned. “I’ll get this wrapped up and be right behind you.”

  Twyf winked at him. “Behind me, in front of me, beneath me, on top of me, and probably a few others we’ll figure out as we go.”

  Chapter 24

  “Look sharp!” Meshelle snapped as she walked into the galley. “We’re burning hard for the Argillar station. ETA is forty minutes.”

  “That is a hard burn,” Tosc said.

  “We’re in a hurry,” Amber said. “If we could follow Fluvulis, he can follow us.”

  Tosc’s growl rumbled in his throat.

  Seph walked out in a form-fitting black bodysuit. Aden had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t just a sprayed-on second skin. She mixed up a quick drink and then moved to stand next to him. She hesitated before sitting down and offering a simple, “Hi.”