by Jay Allan
“There you are, Kaon,” the cameraman said.
This time there was a reply. It sounded like some version of the warbling hissing language which Ethan had heard from Tova.
“Do we have to go through this exercise every time?”
More warbling.
“We’ll get you cleaned up if you agree to stop hiding.”
Warble.
Wide blue eyes appeared.
“Good,” the cameraman said, reaching for the control console again. This time pressurized jets of water shot out from the walls and ceiling. The water washed away the foam, and Ethan found himself cringing at the sight. It wasn’t so much terrifying as disgusting to look at. The creature was human-sized, naked, with a slick translucent skin that gave a clear view of its internal organs. The creature had large, round eyes the color of dark sapphire, muscular arms and torso, and a bony skull-like face, similar to Tova’s, but with light blue fins rising along the top of its head. Gills flared in the sides of its neck as it breathed. As Ethan watched, the creature bared a double row of small, serrated white teeth which looked like they might belong to a shark. Looking more carefully, Ethan saw a thin, dexterous tail restlessly lashing the ground behind the alien.
“That’s better,” the cameraman said, and zoomed in on the creature’s face.
“Freeze image,” Atton said.
Ethan sat staring intently into the wide blue eyes and translucent face of a real Sythian. “Ugly kakard,” Ethan commented.
Atton smiled. “Not going to win any beauty contests, is he?”
Ethan frowned. “Definitely not.”
“How do we know the Gors are really on our side? As far as I can tell they have a lot in common with the Sythians—language for one. It’s probably safe to assume there are cultural similarities as well. Why would they side with us, a species which they have nothing in common with?”
“Ethan, we fight our own species and for reasons less compelling than emancipation—Alec Brondi is a fine example of that. Sharing genes and culture is not enough reason to peacefully coexist. If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you side with the Gors against your fellow man in order to escape slavery?”
Ethan nodded. “I suppose I might.”
“The Gors haven’t given us away yet, and they’ve had multiple opportunities to do so. They already know roughly where Dark Space is.”
Ethan grimaced. “Revealing that was not very wise, Atton.”
“It seemed a worthwhile gamble. Trust me, the Gors are not our enemy, Ethan. They require no convincing to fight on our side, and to date, Gor-crewed ships have taken out more Sythian vessels than we did in the entire war.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it. You mentioned Tova was supposed to stay hidden—that it’s part of some sort of deal the two of you have. . . .”
Atton nodded. “Yes.”
“So none of the rest of the crew has seen her aboard? This is some big state secret?”
“In Sythian Space we staff Gor ships with a human commander and bridge crew, but the main body of the crew is made up of Gors—well, along with human nova pilots and a few human engineers to fit into the smaller crawl spaces of our ships. Due to the Gors’ physical size, they can’t perform in every capacity that we’d like, but they do enable us to run most of our ships with a skeleton crew.”
“So . . . it’s just the Defiant that doesn’t know about your pet alien?” Ethan’s brow furrowed up to his bristly salt and pepper hair.
“Not just the Defiant. Everyone in Dark Space is blissfully unaware. Bringing them into our sanctuary was not a very popular decision.”
“I can understand that.”
“They know we’re working with the Gors and that we have an alliance. They also know what the Gors look like and that their species is not really to blame for nearly wiping us out—at least not directly to blame—but that still doesn’t mean humans are eager to work with Gors. Just knowing a Gor is aboard is enough to keep most people from sleeping at night—you saw how Tova appeared out of nowhere.”
“Yeah,” Ethan nodded. “You mean that’s not some piece of tech?”
Atton shook his head. “Did you see her wearing one?”
“Point.”
“For that reason, and a few others, I’ve asked Tova and Roan to keep their presence aboard my ships a secret for now, and in exchange for keeping them cooped up, I’ve made a very comfortable home for them, or crèche as they call it—you should see the one I was constructing aboard the Valiant.”
“Okay,” Ethan said. “That brings me to my next question. Why bother? Why go to all that trouble to keep a few aliens aboard? I get that you need crewmen for the ships that you’re salvaging, but Tova is obviously not there to fill out your crew.”
Atton smiled. “First of all, she and Roan are our liaison to the Gors. And second, they actually are a part of the crew.”
Ethan cocked his head. “Oh?”
“We have a cloak detector aboard all of our ships. It feeds data directly to our gravidar systems, and it tells us both when there are cloaked Sythian ships present, and roughly where they are located.”
Ethan’s eyebrows rose. “That must come in handy.”
“It does. It’s turning the tide of the war for us—that in conjunction with our own cloaking devices. What most people don’t realize, however, is that the detector is not some new piece of tech. It’s built in to every living Gor.”
Ethan blinked. “What?”
“Gors can communicate with members of their species telepathically, and via the same medium they can sense their fellows at a distance.”
Ethan was taken aback. “Kavaar . . .”
“The Gors’ telepathy is apparently also how Sythian ships track and communicate with each other while cloaked. To the Gors, it’s second nature.”
“And the Sythians? Do they have this telepathy?”
Atton shook his head. “The Gors say they don’t. That’s why Sythian ships still have comm systems.”
“Okay, so we’re dependent on Tova to be our eyes in space. What about our ships’ cloaking devices? Is that a Gor thing, too?”
“No, those are tech. We reverse-engineered a Sythian cloaking device over five years ago, back when we first met the Gors. Until then it had been impossible for us to capture a Sythian vessel and study it, since the Sythians were always on the winning side of every fight, but the Gors have delivered such vessels to us freely. Most Sythian systems are an enigma to us still, but the Gors showed us how to build cloaking devices with a hybridized version of Sythian tech and ours. Our cloaking devices are not nearly as efficient as Sythian ones, so we don’t have miniature versions, but anything destroyer-sized and up is easy enough for us to cloak as long as we have the right components.”
Ethan shook his head, incredulous. Then he froze as something else occurred to him. “Wait—you said the Gors are helping you fight the Sythians to free their people, but the Sythian ships are crewed with Gors, not Sythians, so they’re helping you fight their own kind. Don’t you find that suspicious?”
“We only disable the Sythian ships. After that, they either bail out or we send our Gors aboard to free their fellows. The newly-freed slaves join our ranks, and everyone’s better off. If we were killing them left and right, of course they wouldn’t agree to help us. It’s enough that they’re surrendering to us without a fight and allowing us to capture and even destroy their ships. We don’t need to kill the slave army if we can corrupt it to our side.”
“Hmmm . . .” Ethan sat back with a thoughtful frown.
“What is it?”
“I still feel like there’s something the Gors aren’t telling you. What if they’re just using us to free themselves?”
Atton shrugged. “It’s still a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“Right up until the slaves become the masters.”
“Hopefully they’ll show some gratitude when that happens.”
Ethan snorted. “Let’s not be naï
ve.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Admiral Heston.”
“Who?” Ethan asked.
“The leader of the other human remnant.”
“Yes, you mentioned that there was another group of survivors.”
Atton nodded. “We’ll get back to that later.” Turning to the holo projector he said, “Holofield off.” The holo recording of High Lord Kaon disappeared, and the lights in the room returned to full brightness. “Otherwise, have I answered all of your questions?” he asked.
Ethan nodded slowly. “For now.”
“Good. Are you ready to answer my question yet?”
Ethan took a moment to recall what question his son was referring to, but then he remembered: Atton wanted him to take over as the Supreme Overlord. Ethan took an extra moment to consider his answer before he replied. Was he ready to take on that much responsibility? His son certainly had faith that he could, but that didn’t mean it was true.
Ethan sighed. There was only one way to find out. “When do we make the switch?”
Atton smiled. “Come with me.”
Ethan followed him to the door, and both of them turned their holoskins back on before leaving the office. From there they proceeded to the lift tubes and down through the ship until they reached the overlord’s quarters. Inside, there was already a med bot waiting with a syringe full of anesthetic.
Ethan noted that with a snort of laughter. “Seems like you were one step ahead of me.”
“I knew you’d accept,” Atton said, already undoing the gold buttons of his white uniform.
“How’d you know that?”
“I accepted, and a son’s zeal doesn’t stray far from his father’s ideals.”
“An old Rokan proverb. I wasn’t sure I had any ideals, Atton.”
“Come now, Dad. We both know Destra Ortane wasn’t a stupid woman. She wouldn’t have agreed to marry just any outlaw.”
“I suppose not,” Ethan replied, stripping out of his uniform and then rolling up the sleeve of his undershirt to present his wrist to the med bot. He winced as the needle went in and then he shook his head. “And my wrist was just starting to feel better . . .”
Atton laughed. “Maybe you’ll want to have the blood sample taken from your other arm.”
“More needles?”
“I need to alter the Imperial records so that what’s on file for the overlord matches your actual DNA, blood type, and other markers. We’ll need to update the database over the ‘net as soon as we get back to Dark Space, and out here in Sythian Space we’ll have to send the updates to each of our ships individually, by messenger, since there is no commnet.”
“Sounds like you have everything covered.”
“The only thing we can’t fake with altered records is your approximate age, which can be determined from a sample of your blood. I’ll restrict access to those tests, but if someone gets suspicious they can always conduct the tests by hand.”
Ethan nodded. “Well, hopefully no one gets suspicious.” He winced again as another needle went into his arm to take a blood sample. Ethan eyed the hovering med bot. “You like poking me, you blood-sucking little kakard, don’t you?”
The bot gave no reply, but whirred away on its grav lifts to deposit the sample and pick up a scalpel. The bot returned to his side, apparently waiting for something.
Atton nodded to him and then pointed to a nearby chair. “You’d better sit down over there. If your arm isn’t steady while he works, he might cut the wrong thing.”
Ethan headed to the indicated armchair. “Wouldn’t want that, would we, Pokey?”
The bot elicited an indecipherable beep, and Ethan grinned up at it as he sat down in the chair. “So you do speak.”
Another beep.
“His vocals are damaged,” Atton explained. “I like bots better that way.”
Ethan frowned and looked away. The bot set to work, tying a tourniquet around his arm, disinfecting his skin, and laying down surgical sheets before bringing the scalpel into line. Ethan turned back to watch the bot cut a bloody line across his wrist. Seeing the med bot expose dark red muscle and bone white tendons, Ethan’s head swam dizzily. He grimaced and laid his head back against the chair, silently counting backward from 100 to distract himself until it was over.
100 . . . 99 . . . 98 . . .
* * *
—THE YEAR 0 AE—
Destra walked through the forest. Leaves, needles, and snow crunched underfoot. Here the snow was a thin patina on the colorful autumn leaves and old brown needles. The forest arced out over their heads in splashes of color, leaving shady patterns on the ground. It was as though winter hadn’t fully come here yet. Up ahead, Digger led the way, while Lessie and Dean kept pace beside her.
“What are we doing here?” Dean asked in a small, whiny voice. “I want to go home.” He was tired from all the walking, and Destra was willing to bet he hadn’t had enough sleep.
She turned to him with a smile. He couldn’t have been much older than her own son, Atton. “We’re going to play hide and seek.”
Dean shot her a suspicious look. “My mom says I can’t talk to strangers.”
Lessie shushed him with a tousle of his blond hair. “She’s not a stranger, Dean. She’s a friend. She and Digger are going to keep us safe.”
“Safe?” Dean asked, looking up at his mom with squinty eyes. “Safe from what?”
Destra smiled. “Safe from the people looking for us. We can’t let them find us, because then we’ll lose.”
“I don’t care!” Dean said. “I want to go home.”
“You can’t go home,” Lessie replied, her voice cracking on that last word.
“Why not?” Dean insisted.
Lessie abruptly stopped walking. “Because home is gone! It’s blown up! That’s why!” She stood there panting and staring at her son while he stared back at her with wide eyes and a trembling lip.
Destra frowned. She turned and bent to one knee in front of the boy. “Look, I can see there’s no fooling you, Dean. You’re a smart kid, so I’m going to be honest with you. It’s time for you to grow up now; it’s time for you to be a man. Do you understand?”
Dean hesitated before nodding his head.
“Good. Then here’s the truth: everyone’s homes are gone, Dean. There’s nothing left. Everyone who hasn’t already left Roka in a spaceship is being hunted by very bad things, and they’ll kill us unless we hide from them.”
Dean’s face paled again, and back was the shell-shocked look Destra had seen in the hover, but all things considered, he seemed to be holding it together better than his mother. “What things?” the boy asked.
“Hoi! You three coming? We’re here!”
Destra turned to see Digger waiting for them at the top of a short hill; the sun shone down through the trees to silhouette him in an angelic gold light.
“We’ll be there in a minute!” Destra called back. Speaking to Dean once more, she said, “Come on, be brave little man. Your mother needs you to be.”
Dean bobbed his head once and then turned to his mother, who was still standing where she’d stopped, watching them with a faraway look in her wide, staring eyes. “Come on, Mommy,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “I’ll protect you.”
Something rose up inside of Lessie and shook her out of it when her son’s hand touched hers. Her expression softened, and she looked suddenly immensely relieved, as though the burden of lying to her son had been just more than she could bear. She turned to Destra with a shaky smile. “Thank you.”
Destra shook her head. “Don’t mention it. We’d better go.”
They hurried to catch up with Digger, and he greeted them with a frown to show his displeasure. “No more unscheduled stops, or I’ll leave you all out in the cold.”
There was something about the petulant twist to Digger’s lips that Destra didn’t like, but she ignored it and nodded to the unremarkable stretch of forest which lay before them, sprawling down the o
ther side of the small knoll which they had climbed.
“Where’s your hidey hole, Digger? I just see more trees.”
The man smiled and his face stretched enough to provoke a trickle of blood from the gash running down the side of his cheek. “Exactly.” He turned and nodded to the tree which they were all standing beside. It was a particularly large burnished oakal. The bole was a smooth grayish purple, covered in places with stringy blue moss. Digger began walking around the base of the tree, and Destra followed, her hand drifting to the sidearm she’d acquired from the hover before they’d left it at the side of the road. Unfortunately, she’d been unable to come up with a good reason to keep Digger from taking a weapon, too, so she hoped he wasn’t leading them into a trap.
As they rounded the base of the tree, Destra saw that the tree was actually a growing-together of two separate oakals, and the hollow in between somewhat resembled a cave. Digger walked into that hollow space and bent to one knee, as if to pick something off the ground. She heard a hiss of escaping air and saw a square of leaves and dirt begin to rise—it was a hatchway. Bits of moss trickled from the leading edge of it.
Destra nodded. “I’m impressed.”
Digger turned to them with a smile while taking a few steps back toward the open hole.
Destra raised a hand to warn him. “Digger, look out be—”
He fell soundlessly into the hole. Destra rushed up to the open hatch and gazed down into a deep, dark space which smelled like peat moss and old mushrooms.
“Digger?” she called, and her voice echoed back to her.
“Jump in!” he called back, his voice echoing, too. “It’s perfectly safe!”
Destra frowned, and turned to look at Lessie and Dean as they appeared to one side of her. Both of them gazed uncertainly into the dark hole now, too. Abruptly they saw it illuminated and Digger peering up at them, holding a glow lantern in one hand.
“Hmmm,” Destra mused.
“Spectral!” Dean said. “Can I go next?”
“I’ll go first,” Destra said, and with that, she jumped into the abyss.