by Jay Allan
“Well, well,” Verlin said. “That is interesting. No doors? Which wall separates that area from us?”
The man turned and looked around the lab. A moment later he pointed to the wall furthest from them. There were a few mag-clamped trolleys of medical equipment stacked there. “I think it’s that one.”
Verlin walked up to it and moved one of the trolleys aside to run his hands along the wall, looking for seams. “It appears solid,” he said. “We’ll have to blast it open if we want a look on the other side.” Verlin snapped his fingers and said, “Someone get over here and make a hole.”
Another of his men came up behind him and shook his head. “We’ll need a cutting beam.”
“And?”
“We didn’t bring one.”
Verlin just stared at the man.
“Right, I’ll go get one.”
“Good,” Verlin replied. “I’ll wait.”
While they were still waiting there, a recessed section of that wall slid soundlessly aside. One man noticed the movement and turned to look. “Hoi! What the frek!” he said and whipped up his ripper rifle to cover the dark hallway which had appeared out of nowhere. “Halt! Anyone there?”
Now everyone had their rifles covering the opening while slowly backpedaling away from it. Verlin covered the entrance with his modified ripper pistol, but he didn’t back away. He’d already checked the corridor with his visual scanning implant, but there was nothing there—nothing on either the infrared or visible light spectrums. That dark corridor was very cold and very empty. There was, however, a very soft sound emanating from the open space, which his aural scanning implant detected as a movement of air. It could have simply been the warmer air of the lab meeting the colder air of the corridor and starting up a convection current.
“We need to get out of here!” one man said.
“Relax!” Verlin replied. “There’s nothing there—you!” He snapped his fingers at the man who was most visibly frightened. “Go investigate.”
“Me?” the man’s voice cracked. “Why me?”
“Because I frekkin’ said so. Now go!”
The man took a hesitant step toward the darkness. When nothing happened to him, he seemed to gather a bit more courage and he took a few more steps. The man reached the threshold and stopped. “Frek, it’s cold in there,” he said. “Do you think this was storage for some type of bioweapons?”
Verlin frowned. “I don’t know. If you get in there, maybe you can tell us.”
The man hesitated once more, and then he walked in. Verlin could see his thermal signature receding into the colder blue of the corridor. When he was just a distant red and yellow speck in Verlin’s augmented sight, the man’s voice came echoing back to them, “You have to see this!”
Verlin nodded to the rest of his team, gesturing for them to follow, and they began walking single-file down the corridor, their rifles at the ready. Verlin was the last one to enter; he heard the men ahead of him exclaiming one by one as they reached the end of the corridor. When Verlin himself reached that point, he stopped in the open doorway and gaped at what he saw. This was not some secret bioweapons storage locker. It was a carefully constructed habitat, designed to fit some creature’s native environment. The dim light, the snow and ice, and the deep blue pool of water gave clues to what kind of creature it might be, but there were too many possibilities for Verlin to hazard a guess. He watched his men fanning out through the vast chamber. One of them stubbed his toes on a block of ice and exclaimed, “Frek! It’s dark! Hasn’t anyone found the lights? Lights on!” the man tried.
“That’s not going to work, Baller,” another man said. “You think whatever animal lived in here used voice-activated systems?”
So, the overlord was keeping pets aboard his ship. Verlin nodded slowly to himself. On the surface it seemed a curious idiosyncrasy, nothing more, but then why would Dominic feel the need to hide his pets away in an unlabeled part of the ship?
As he was considering the question, Verlin’s brain registered something strange in the corner of his eye. He turned to look and saw a cutting beam lying in a puddle of water just inside the chamber. Verlin frowned down at the device and took a step forward to pick it up. It was still hot. He turned in a quick circle to determine what it might have been used for, and then he saw a molten chunk of duranium lying in the snow, cast off to the other side of the chamber. Verlin looked down the corridor to the med lab. Then he noticed that where the chamber used to be sealed with a door, now there was just a melted hole. Whatever had been locked up in here had escaped.
Verlin turned back to his men and called out, “Fall back!”
And that was when he heard the first gurgling scream.
Chapter 6
—THE YEAR 0 AE—
In seconds, the rictans covered the distance to the open door where Destra stood. She fixed her gaze on the leader, her aim steady as it glared coldly back with dark red eyes. She was just about the pull the trigger when Digger called out, “Doc, Petra, leave it! Friend. These are our friends.”
Almost instantly the two rictans stopped scrabbling for purchase on the duranium floors and they slowed to a trot. Their snarling quieted and they settled for muted yipping instead.
Destra blinked. She kept her aim steady on the deadly predators, but watched them turn and head back the way they’d come, their barbed tails flicking restlessly as they sauntered off.
“Frek, Digger!” She rounded on him with flashing blue eyes. “You’re keeping pet rictans? Have you gone skriffy?”
He just grinned. “Scared ya, didn’t they?”
She shook her head. “You can’t train rictans!”
“They’re chipped,” Digger said, waving a dismissive hand.
Destra frowned. Slave chips were illegal, but she supposed that Digger wouldn’t care given his other illicit activities.
“Well, keep them away from us,” she said.
“Relax, they know you’re friends now. You could scratch their bellies and they wouldn’t bite.”
Destra’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded and holstered her pistol. Taking a few steps inside, she looked around. “So this is your place, then?”
“Yea.”
“Nice. No one else lives here?”
Digger shook his head. “Not anymore, but don’t worry. I have a spare room.” His eyes flicked to Lessie and Dean who were still hiding behind Destra. “Guess you’ll have to sleep on the couch so they can share the bed. Go on, make yourselves at home while I put some dinner in the synthesizer,” Digger said, starting toward the kitchen.
Destra turned to see that Lessie and Dean still stood frozen before the entrance of the stim lab.
Lessie shot a quick glance at Digger before whispering, “Are we going to stay here with those—” Lessie’s gaze darted to the dark corridor where the rictans had disappeared. “—things?” she asked.
“They’re chipped, so we should be okay.” Destra nodded to the black couch in front of the holoscreen. “Go take a seat. You two look exhausted.”
Lessie nodded, but her eyes never left the corridor. She and her son made their way into the living room, holding to each other tightly as they walked.
“What would ya like to drink? I got water, caf, stim juice, fost berry soda . . . ?”
“Water’s fine,” Destra said, answering for all of them. She was still standing just inside the entrance, her gaze wandering around the room. She turned to study Digger as he bustled about in the kitchen. The synthesizer turned on with a hum, and a delicious aroma began wafting through the room. Destra’s stomach began to rumble in response.
A minute later Digger emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray piled high with steaming bread rolls and bowls of soup. “Dinner’s served!” he said, beaming as he strode into the living room.
Destra followed him to the sofas with a frown. As she moved out of the doorway, the door swung shut behind her with an ominous boom. She turned to look at the door and thought, I guess it’s to
o late to check into a hotel. . . .
* * *
—THE YEAR 10 AE—
Alec Brondi sat in the overlord’s luxurious quarters aboard the Valiant, smoking a fat cigar, his feet propped up on the desk as he used a holo pad to snoop through Dominic’s personal documents. His techs had recently finished decrypting the files, so it was worth a look to see if the overlord had been hiding anything in plain sight.
He came to one file entitled, Legacy, and stopped. It was a video recording. Brondi keyed it for playback, and watched as a holo shimmered to life in the air above the reader. He recognized the scene immediately. It was the same room where he was sitting now; old man Dominic was lying in bed with wires and tubes trailing from under the sheets to a series of blinking and beeping machines. Brondi frowned and his eyes skipped away from the holo to find the overlord’s bed. It lay to one side of the large, open-concept space. His gaze fixed upon the holo once more as a tall, broad-shouldered young man with dark hair walked in front of the recorder.
“Atton,” the overlord said in a shivery voice, his hand rising beneath the covers.
“Father,” the boy replied.
Brondi abruptly plucked the cigar from his lips and dropped his feet off the desk. “Son of a . . . ! Overlord?” He watched the boy kneel beside the bed and clasp the overlord’s reaching hand in both of his.
“We don’t have much time,” Dominic said. “Are you ready to make the switch?”
The young man nodded.
“Your holoskin is in the safe in my locker, and you have two spares, just in case. You’re doing the right thing, Atton.”
The young man nodded. “I know.”
“Med bot,” the overlord called out, and a hovering silver sphere appeared in the holo with a syringe dangling from one of its many jointed arms. Brondi watched the subsequent operation with intense interest. He saw first the young man offer his wrist to the bot and receive an injection of anesthetic, and then the bot pulled out another syringe and injected the overlord with it. The operation which followed made a small incision in each man’s wrist, whereupon their identichips were promptly switched.
When the operation was finished, Dominic lay back with a sigh. “Immortals be with you, Atton. I wish I could be, too.”
“As do I, Father.”
“You will need to fake your own death. The overlord’s adopted son can’t simply go missing and no one notice.”
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
“And my body?” the overlord asked. “They can’t be allowed to discover that I was a skinner, too.” With that admission, the overlord’s features abruptly shimmered and morphed into those of a man almost as old, but not nearly as vital.
“Holy frek!” Brondi jumped up from the desk and the holo pad clattered to the floor. The holo fuzzed out and then sprang back to life. Brondi jumped back from it as though it were a snake. “Holy frek!” he said again. The overlord wasn’t the overlord at all. He was a holoskinner! Brondi was grinning wildly now, his cigar forgotten and smoldering in one hand. He shook that hand at the holo, casting off a rain of glowing cigar embers which fluttered down through the recording. “You had us all fooled, didn’t you?”
“Would it be so bad if they knew?” Brondi heard Atton say amidst his shocked exclamations.
“The Imperium would fall apart. It would be anarchy. . . .” The overlord paused to take a few gasping breaths. He began patting Atton’s hands. “You need to be the one to transition us to a new overlord—peacefully. He has grown old enough; it is time we had a new, younger face for the ISS.”
“You don’t mean me?”
The overlord just smiled. “Perhaps after some years have passed you will be able to answer that question for yourself.”
Brondi went on smiling and gaping at the holo. What followed were mostly sentimental exchanges, but Brondi watched right up until the end. When the holo ended without further surprises, Brondi went straight to the overlord’s locker beside the bed. He opened the polished steel door and looked around for the safe. He tossed the overlord’s things aside carelessly, searching for it, but there was no safe in evidence. Then Brondi thought to check the back of the locker. He knocked on it with his fist, checking for hollow spaces. Everywhere he tested, it rang with a dull thunk, right until he got down on his haunches and tried the back wall of the bottom shelf. This time there came a hollow sound, and Brondi popped his now stubby cigar in his mouth as his lips parted in a smile. He would have to get someone to crack into the safe of course, but then . . .
The pieces of a plan began assembling in his brain. He could rule Dark Space without even a hint of disruption to the established order—at least until it became impossible to hide what had happened aboard the Valiant. Long before then it would be easy to trick the scattered remnants of the fleet into yielding control of their vessels to him. He wouldn’t just have the Valiant. He would have it all!
In that moment Brondi’s comm began to trill. He touched a hand to his ear to answer it, and a tense female voice began chattering in his hear.
“Brondi, sir, we have a situation developing on—”
“Call me supreme overlord,” Brondi interrupted, already getting used to the idea of taking Dominic’s place.
The woman hesitated. “Supreme Overlord Brondi, we have a situation on deck 12. The bounty hunter Verlin and various members of his team have called for backup. They are under attack.”
Brondi frowned. So there were more survivors of the plague. “Has the situation been dealt with?”
“We’re not sure what happened. They’ve stopped answering comms.”
“Hmmm,” Brondi’s brow furrowed. “Secure the floor. Shut down all access to that level except for one lift tube, and have an assault team waiting for me there. I’ll go investigate myself.”
“Yes, sir—Overlord Brondi, sir.”
Brondi tapped his ear to end the comm call and then turned to leave the overlord’s quarters. He was not happy. The ship was supposed to have been cleared of survivors long ago. Whoever had delivered that all-clear would answer for their mistake.
* * *
As soon as the door opened for him, Roan heard the men’s voices and their exclamations of surprise. He watched one man stagger away from the open door.
“Hoi! What the frek!” that man said. “Halt! Anyone there?”
The way that man held his rifle, aimed straight at him, Roan knew that the alliance had been shattered. These men were now his enemies. They had no doubt planned to keep him prisoner, but now he was out, and he would not be captured again. The rest of the men also swung their rifles into line, and Roan bared his teeth, but made no sound, standing perfectly still in the entrance to his crèche. Had they somehow seen him?
“Relax!” a dark-skinned man said. “There’s nothing there—you!” That man snapped his fingers at another. “Go investigate.”
“Me? Why me?”
So they hadn’t seen him. Roan relaxed his rigid posture and listened to the ensuing exchange with great interest. His translator bead relayed the men’s words to him in his own language with the occasional nonsensical slip up—
“Because I copulatin’ said so! Now go!” the dark man said.
Roan wasn’t sure what reproduction had to do with this situation, but he put it down to one more thing he didn’t understand about humans. He watched one of the men creeping toward him and he pressed himself against the wall to allow that man past. Roan watched as the human walked all the way down the corridor to the entrance of his crèche and then stepped inside, exclaiming, “You have to see this!”
Roan had to stop a hiss of displeasure from escaping his lips as the remainder of the men outside began filing in to investigate. They were invading his crèche without invitation or permission! They would pay for that insult. Roan waited until the last man—the dark man—had entered the corridor, and then he quietly followed them in.
When the dark man stopped just inside the entrance of the crèche, R
oan stepped past him and began shadowing the first one to have entered. He followed just a step behind the human and waited until he had wandered far from the others; then Roan took one long stride toward him and reached out for his head with both hands. One of Roan’s armored hands covered the man’s mouth, muffling his screams, and with a sudden wrenching motion, something popped in the man’s neck, and he crumpled to the snowy floor. Roan stood over him, waiting for him to get up. When he didn’t, Roan hissed quietly. Humans were such frail creatures.
The others came running to see what had happened, while Roan sunk into the shadows, waiting for his next victim.
* * *
With his enhanced sight Verlin saw the man fall, but not what had caused him to trip. The others heard his scream, but didn’t see anything, so they were panicking.
“Quiet!” Verlin yelled as they all hurried toward the fallen man. He was not moving. Had he slipped on a patch of ice, hit his head, and been knocked unconscious? Verlin frowned. Brondi’s men were hopelessly incompetent.
As Verlin drew near to the fallen man, however, he began to notice something strange. The pattern of footsteps in the snow was wrong. There were two sets of footprints rather than one, and the second set was closely shadowing the first. The shadowing pair of prints were very large. Verlin bent down for a closer look while the rest of his men rushed on blindly to see what had happened to their comrade. The prints had been made by boots.
“His neck’s been snapped!” one man said. Another shushed him, warning that whatever had killed their squad mate was still in there with them.
Verlin stood up and turned in a quick circle to study the vast chamber, his pistol swinging first one way, and then the other. He ignored his men’s frantic whispering. Verlin’s mind went back to the discarded laser welder and the molten chunk of door. What type of animal is bipedal, tool-using, and wears boots? he wondered. A human?
It would have to be a giant.
Verlin’s gaze swung back to the worried knot of men standing over the body. He was about to order them to fall back again when a gout of blood erupted from one man’s chest. He didn’t even scream, but the men around him did as they were splashed with his blood.