Into the Dark (Dark Universe Book 1)

by Jason Halstead

  “If a deal can be arranged, what trouble would there be?” Tylva countered.

  Meshelle shook her head. “Seems to me that the more we know, the more people don’t want us to know. Last time it nearly cost us our ship and our lives.”

  “Understandable, but do you really think there’s a safe haven to be had at this point?”

  “Let me guess—I should just give it to you and everyone will leave us alone?”

  Tylva’s nostrils flared and he shook his head. “I deal in knowledge, not goods. I do not want to possess such a thing.”

  “You know what it is!” Meshelle hissed. “But do you know what it can do?”

  “It’s a lost artifact that the Kesari will spare no expense to retrieve,” he growled. “If you keep it, you’re dead. If you get rid of it, and hide in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, you might live out your normal lives.”

  “That sounds pleasant,” Aden said.

  “We’ve got other plans,” Meshelle announced.

  “Don’t be fools!” he hissed. “The Kesari possess technology beyond anyone’s ability to understand or duplicate. Resist them in this and you bring ruin not only to yourselves, but to any you touch.”

  Aden reached for the Smith & Wesson and rested his hand on it. “I think we should leave now.”

  Tylva stared at him and snorted. “You’re fools. You think this is some show you can shoot your way out of? Go, be gone. But run far and run fast. It might delay your deaths a day or two.”

  Meshelle glanced at Aden and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Aden did a quick check of the men he suspected were setting themselves up to stop them from escaping. A grunt and a slash of Tylva’s hand had them relaxing and turning away.

  “Good luck and good speed,” Tylva offered as they walked away from him and out of the cantina.

  Seph joined them a moment later. Wordlessly, they lengthened their strides and marched back towards the air lock that would take them back to their ship. Aden didn’t need to look behind to know they were being followed.

  Chapter 26

  As soon as the inner air lock door opened to the Uma, Meshelle pushed through it and took off at a run. Aden hesitated and glanced at Seph.

  “What happened?” Seph asked.

  Aden shook his head. “That Devikian knew something. Not a lot, but enough.”

  “Enough for what? You’re not making any sense.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’m still trying to figure it out. He said the artifact we have is something the Kesari will do just about anything to get.”

  “Anything?”

  “Hunting us down, killing us, destroying anything or anyone protecting us. That sort of anything.”

  “That’s…scary.”

  “Yup,” he agreed. “One thing he said confused me.”

  “Tell me on the way to the bridge,” she said and led the way out of the air lock and down the hall.

  “The bridge?” Aden asked as he followed her.

  “That’s where she went, right?”

  He tilted his head to think and then grunted. “Yeah, probably. I got the feeling we need to haul ass or we’re not going to get a chance to. So we asked about the war Fluvulis told us about—between the Ampytheans and the Criknids. He said it was an internal struggle, and when we asked about the Criknids, he agreed they were a part of it.”

  “Internal?”

  “To the Ampythean empire,” Aden clarified.

  Seph frowned as she considered his words. “Is that so odd? Didn’t he tell us they were slaves or something?”

  Aden was about to respond when the PA system in the ship let out a beep, followed by Janna’s voice. “All hands, report to your stations on the zero. I repeat, cease all activities—we’re flying in five.”

  “Starbirth! Let’s go!” Seph snapped and broke into a run.

  Aden gulped and took off after her. She held the lift door for him and let him try to catch his breath as the lift rose to the bridge level. When it opened, they walked out and headed for the bridge.

  Meshelle turned as soon as the door opened. “Suit up,” she snapped.

  Aden gawked at her for a moment. “Suit up? Why?”

  “You were there—they’re coming for us.”

  “They? They who?”

  Janna turned and frowned. “You tell us,” she said. “You think he’s going to keep that to himself? He doesn’t even want it, but he’ll be happy to offer up a reward for anyone willing to come after us.”

  “He? Tylva? You really think so?”

  Meshelle sighed. “You’re naïve, even for a Terran. A man like Tylva has no loyalties except to himself. He sold the information the second we were out of sight. If it’s not his men or contract after us, it’s someone he told about us.”

  “But why?” Twyf asked from her station.

  Aden looked her way and had to wipe away the smile seeing her brought to his face.

  “The crystal,” Meshelle said. “There’s something special about it.”

  “We know that,” Twyf said. “We just don’t know what. Well, other than the star chart.”

  “Have you figured out where it’s going to take us yet?” Aden asked.

  Janna glared at him and shook her head. She triggered the PA and said, “Status report.”

  Chuck was the first to respond. “Fuel lines cleared,” he reported. “I was replacing some damaged cables and coolant lines. I need a couple of minutes to finish the work.”

  “Work faster!” Janna growled. “Garf and Amber, report.”

  “We’re taking care of things,” Amber said. “Ready to go—we just have to stock the ship’s magazines.”

  “Get to it,” Janna said. She looked at Meshelle when her sister hissed. “Oh, and suit up. We’re expecting resistance.”

  “Did Seph break another heart?” Garf asked.

  Janna cut the PA system and turned to look at Aden and Seph. “Seph, take the helm. Kessoc and Tosc are busy.”

  Seph took a step forward and then slowed. “Uh, my suit?”

  “Aden,” Meshelle snapped.

  “On it,” he said. He turned and headed back out of the bridge and down to the armory. He grabbed Seph and Meshelle’s suits and lugged them back up to the bridge. “Here,” he grunted and held up the suits.

  Janna turned to face him, sealing her light suit on the way. His eyes went to the pile of clothes on the floor beside her. Her hair twisted and relaxed. “That was quick.”

  “Never heard a woman say that before,” he mumbled.

  Twyf’s hand rose to stifle the giggle that slipped from her lips. The out-of-place sound caused Meshelle to pause as she reached for her suit in Aden’s hand. She shook her head and took it from him.

  Janna moved to the side of her chair and triggered the PA system. “Chuck, report.”

  Several seconds passed before he reported. “Three minutes.”

  Janna nodded. “Get changed now or take your chances.”

  Seph’s hand slid down her bodysuit, releasing it and allowing her to slide it down her lean body to pool at her feet. Aden’s eyes widened and he turned his head away from Seph to her sister. Twyf met his gaze and winked before she reached up to the back of her neck and released the claps on the dress she wore. It dropped to her feet and left her caramel skin glowing without any bodywear sprayed on.

  Aden heard two gasps and a lot of silence. It stretched for almost a count of three, if he’d had the presence of mind to count, before Seph hissed, “Twyf!”

  “What?” the beautiful Tassarian asked. “I have to change.”

  “Aden’s here,” Seph growled.

  Twyf looked at Aden and shrugged. “We’re in a hurry. It was only a matter of time until one of the men on the ship saw me anyhow.”

  Seph’s blue skin darkened to a purple on her face and she shook her head. She turned to Aden and glared at him until he looked away. “You’re close to proving me right about you,” she hissed.

  “Seph, hurry up,
” Janna growled.

  Seph stiffened and nodded. Aden turned to glance at Meshelle and saw her roll her eyes. She pulled off her vest and shirt and pushed her pants down before pulling on her suit. “Get below and suit up,” she said while she worked on her suit. “Grab some guns too. If they come for us, they’re going to try to disable us and board.”

  “Where is the crystal?” Aden asked.

  “I’ve got it,” Twyf said, drawing his attention back to her. She turned, her suit gathered around her waist and leaving her back bare. She bent over her station, teasing Aden with a view of her breasts hanging down but hidden from view. She straightened and held up the crystal in her hand. She glanced at her sister and sighed as she moved her other arm across her breasts and hid her dark nipples from view.

  “I’ll…I’ll get my stuff and come back to guard it. And you guys, of course.”

  “Better hurry,” Seph urged.

  “Hurry, right,” Aden agreed. “I’ll, uh, I’ll do that.”

  He heard Twyf’s giggle chase him out of the bridge and back to the lift.

  He reached the armory in record time and scrambled into his armor. The vision of Twyf pretending to be modest was burned into his eyes. Was this her way of torturing him, or of trying to test her sister to see if she’d accept him?

  “Fuck!” he hissed as the lower half of his suit clamped down on him and on his finger. He jerked it free and watched blood well up in the skin that had been pinched. He sucked the blood free and forced thoughts of Twyf from his mind. Focusing on her, as beautiful and pleasant as she was, was too distracting. He had a job to do.

  He returned to the bridge with weapons bristling from his suit. The women glanced at him and Twyf was quick to say, “Not so quick this time?”

  “I’ve got my reputation to look out for,” Aden quipped.

  Janna smirked while Twyf laughed. She turned back to her station and let her hands float across the controls. “We’re not the only ones leaving. I don’t have any direct intercept courses, but there’s a lot of potential.”

  “Keep tracking,” Janna barked. She hit her comms system and asked, “Chuck, how long until we can go into the dark?”

  “Black box needs another ten or fifteen minutes to charge. I’ve had it plugged in for a long time...I didn’t think they could store this much energy. This is either the longest ride I’ve ever seen or...well, I guess I don’t know.”

  “You’re supposed to be one of the best. I don’t want guesses—figure it out,” Janna snapped.

  The radio remained silent for several seconds before Chuck said, “My estimate is that we’re in for a long ride, but I’ll be able to tell you more once we go dark.”

  “Captain,” Seph said and glanced back to make sure she’d taken Janna’s attention away from the Argossian. “We’d have to burn hard to be in a safe distance in fifteen minutes. We took on some fuel, but that would drop us into dangerous levels for tactical maneuvering.”

  “Understood. Go normal burn for now. We’ll ride it out until someone gives us a reason not to.”

  They flew away from the station in silence, each person studying their displays and leaving Aden and Janna watching everyone and everything. The display windows on the bridge had been fixed. The caved-in roof had been hammered back into place, but still needed a lot of work. Twyf was the first to break the tension.

  “Active scans,” she reported. “One…three…now four of them. And launches from the station and all of them changing their heading towards us.”

  “Transfer them to my station,” Meshelle requested.

  “Transferring…done. You should have them.”

  “Got them,” Meshelle agreed.

  “They’re headed for us? How far and how long until intercept?”

  “Five minutes at current velocities. If we increase our burn, we buy more time.”

  “Unless they increase their burn,” Janna muttered. Her hair twisted around itself. “Okay, give me eighty percent burn and let’s see what happens.”

  “Eighty percent burn,” Seph agreed and reached over to slide her fingers up on the panel of her display.

  Aden turned and stared out the windows on the aft side of the bridge. The lights from other craft and the station began to recede faster. After a minute passed, Aden found four lights amid the darkness that seemed to remain almost stationary. The only difference was that they began to grow brighter.

  “Pursuing craft are closing,” Twyf reported.

  “Can’t you shoot them or something?” Aden asked.

  “We can defend ourselves,” Janna said. “But an open attack in public space risks a whole lot of consequences.”

  Aden scowled. “Won’t they have the same problem?”

  “They would,” she agreed and then added, “But odds are good they’ve already paid whatever they need to in order to get out of it.”

  Aden scowled and shifted his grip on his rifle.

  “Seventeen minutes to the first superluminal launching spot,” Seph said.

  “Chuck?” Janna demanded.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe less.”

  “Go with less,” she growled.

  “Captain!” Twyf shouted. “I’ve got...well, I’ve got some unusual contacts.”

  “What is it?” she barked.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted and continued fumbling with her controls to try to figure it out. Aden couldn’t stop himself from walking behind the captain’s chair to Twyf’s station and staring down at it.

  “Don’t get in her way,” Janna growled.

  Aden ignored her and studied the readings. “Looks like fluctuations from a ship coming out of the dark,” he noted.

  Twyf grunted. “I know, but I don’t see a ship.”

  Aden frowned and kept looking for a pattern. “We couldn’t see the Kesari ship either, remember?”

  “I know,” Twyf said. “I’m worried.”

  “Could it be a ship heading into the dark?” Janna asked.

  Twyf stared at her display and shook her head. “Maybe, but I doubt it. The gravity waves aren’t right.”

  Aden tried to snap his fingers and remembered he had his suit on. “Radiation! Look for that!”

  “What?”

  “The captain tore them up pretty good,” he said. “All their engines damaged or disabled—there’s no way they could fix all of that in the time they had. Maybe they can scramble our sensors, but they can’t hide something that’s leaking from them.”

  Twyf clamped her mouth shut and nodded. She bent over her desk and focused on searching for new patterns in the data scrolling through the display.

  Aden tilted his head as a new idea came to him. “Maybe you should look for what’s not there.”

  “Space is a vacuum,” Janna snapped. “There’s a lot not-there than there is there.”

  Aden shook the words from his head. “Yes, but if we could hit the area with a couple different scans from different angles, we might be able to define the field where something is blocking the sensors.”

  “No,” Janna said. “I’m not letting the shuttle head out. Whoever’s on it wouldn’t survive after we go black. And we wouldn’t have a shuttle then.”

  “True,” Aden admitted. He watched Twyf work and looked up into the star-spotted spacescape out the window. “Could we bounce a signal off something? Any rocks or ships or planets nearby?”

  “You’ve got a lot of ideas for a dropout,” Seph pointed out.

  “I like to keep my options open.”

  The blue-skinned pilot groaned in response.

  “Don’t worry, I think I got it,” Twyf said. She glanced up at him over her shoulder and said, “Those were really good ideas, both of them.”

  “What have you got?” Janna demanded.

  “Not what, who,” Twyf said as she transferred her findings to the holographic display near the front of the bridge. A scrambled outline of a spaceship took shape. “It’s the Kesari ship. I used the different energy patt
erns bleeding from it to paint an outline of them. No significant details available, but they did find us.”

  “Starbirth,” Janna cursed. She nodded and reached for her comms system. “Chuck, as soon as you can. Tosc and Kessoc, stand by.”

  “Stand by for what?” Aden wondered aloud.

  “You’ll see,” Janna said. “Twyf, bearing and rate of close?”

  “They’re accelerating from their entry point. We’ll close in twenty minutes at present velocities, about the same time we’re eligible to go superluminal,” Twyf said.

  “That’s cutting it close,” Meshelle mumbled. “Too close. We can’t maneuver in the final seconds and they’ll be able to launch at us.”

  “Closer than a shaved Tassarian,” Janna replied to her sister.

  “A shaved Tassarian?” Aden mumbled.

  “We don’t have any body hair,” Twyf whispered to him.

  “We shoot first?” Meshelle asked, ignoring the distracted pair.

  Janna shook her head and slapped her comms button again. “Tosc and Kessoc, we need your surprise!”

  Silence stretched on through the bridge for several seconds. It was ended when the bridge door slid open and both Lermians walked in, each wearing their armored suits. “We finished, but it’s untested,” Kessoc announced.

  “What is?” Aden asked.

  A sharp glare from Meshelle silenced him.

  “It’s going to drain the ship’s batteries fast. Ten, maybe twelve seconds is all it will give us. All other electrical systems will be down during that time.”

  Janna nodded and asked, “Will it interfere with the black box?”

  “No. And we’ll be able to recharge off the engines,” Tosc said. “But without the time, supplies, and expertise to build up a subsystem to hold a dedicated charge, it’s wired in direct to the main power grid.”

  “Wiring? I could help,” Aden offered.

  Kessoc hissed. “No time, Terran. And it’s technology owned by the Lermians.”

  “Just trying to help,” Aden muttered.

  “Noted,” Tosc responded.

  Aden raised an eyebrow in surprise. That was one of the closest signs of appreciation or respect he’d gotten from the furry hunter outside of their occasionally shared workouts.