by Jay Allan
Verlin could see perfectly in the dark, but he still couldn’t see what had killed the second man. Another one made a run for the door. He was the next to die with something unseen grabbing his head from behind and snapping his neck like the first.
Someone fired off a random volley of ripper fire, but it hit the snow with a puff of shattered ice crystals. He was next. His scream went on and on as he was first dragged off his feet and then thrown into the freezing cold water and dragged under.
Verlin was already hurriedly backing out of the chamber to the entrance. He touched his ear to make a comm call. When the bridge answered, he spoke quickly. “We’re under attack on level 12, Med Lab! Three men down! Send reinforcements.”
The comm crackled. “Acknowledged. How many are there?”
There came another splash from the pool, but Verlin didn’t see what had caused it. He squinted into the distance and shook his head. “At least one, but—” There came a rushing whoosh of air as something ran toward him at great speed. Verlin turned to flee, but then he felt himself being lifted bodily and thrown high into the air. As he reached the apex of that toss, Verlin twisted around and fired off a shot. It disappeared into thin air, but something hissed loudly. Then Verlin hit the ground face-first with a very solid thud. A sharp pain went through his neck and nose, which had hit just before the rest of him, and he felt his awareness diming as his thoughts slipped away. He knew that he had to hold on to consciousness if he were to survive, and he fought the encroaching darkness with everything that he had. That was when he felt something sharp raking down his back, and his eyes shot open with a scream.
He heard a warbling hiss close beside his ear. “Let me go, you frekkin’ . . . !” Verlin twisted onto his ruined back and fired two more shots in random directions. Both missed. He pressed a hand to his ear to speak once more into his comm.
That was when he realized that his comm piece had fallen out when he’d hit the ground. He spotted it lying just out of reach to his right. Verlin scrambled to reach it, but something grabbed hold of his hand and crushed it, breaking all of the bones and grinding the pieces together.
Verlin screamed again, and then something very strong crushed his windpipe and he could scream no more.
Chapter 7
Tova did not look happy. Ethan wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but she hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d explained to her that Roan was trapped aboard an enemy ship. Beside him, Atton looked nervous. That was another clue that Tova was just a step away from tearing them into bite-sized chunks.
The guards flanking them with their ripper rifles casually at the ready gave Ethan only a small amount of comfort. If Tova wanted to, she could simply disappear, and it would be impossible to track an invisible target. Ethan reflected that he should have thought about that in advance and prepared something to defend against an invisible enemy.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said again. “I wish we had been able to rescue him during the evacuation, but I’m sure he’s still alive.”
At last Tova moved, but it was just a muscle twitching in her neck—then her eyes blinked and her lips parted. Ethan heard her warbling language followed promptly by the translation. “He is living,” she said.
Ethan cocked his head. “Really? You’ve spoken with him?”
“He is hurt, not bad. Humans on ship think he is dead. He thinks they are you.”
Ethan allowed his relief to show, his shoulders sagging. “Thank the Immortals. Can you contact him now?”
Tova’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Are they you? The ones who try to kill Roan?”
“No!” Ethan answered quickly.
“They are humans.”
Ethan frowned. “They are humans, but they are not with us.”
“Your species is foolish to fight itself.”
Ethan snorted. “You can say that again.”
“Why? Do you not hear well?”
Ethan shook his head. “No, never mind. The point is, we are not with them nor are they with us. You have to make Roan understand that the men on board will try to kill him or hurt him if they find him, and he needs to hide until we can return.”
“He understands this already. What else you desire to communicate?”
“Tell him we will be there soon, and that if possible, we could use his help.”
“What type of help?”
Ethan hesitated, thinking quickly. “If he can find and shut down the main reactor or the shields just before we arrive, it would give us time and the opportunity we need to get aboard.”
“When we arrive?”
“Yes.”
“When we arrive?” Tova repeated, looming closer.
Ethan frowned, wondering why she’d repeated the question, but then he realized that she was asking when they would arrive to take back the Valiant and rescue Roan. Good question, he thought. “Tell him it will be about a week.”
“I tell him.”
“Meanwhile, we’ll need you to sit down with our chief engineer and discuss ways that the Valiant could be sabotaged, so that you can tell Roan. Would you be willing to talk with our engineer, Tova?”
She hissed. “You think we are ignorant.”
“You are—” Tova’s eyes flashed and Ethan hastened to add, “—ignorant of our technology, anyway. It will be easier for Roan to sabotage the Valiant if we tell him what to do.”
“I do this but take care that you do not offend me again. Your words are arrogant and foolish.”
“Sure,” Ethan said, waving his hand dismissively. “One more thing, Tova . . .” Ethan regretted what he had to say next. “We need to cross Sythian Space to gather reinforcements before we can rescue Roan.”
Tova’s eyes narrowed again. “You can make ship invisible?”
Ethan shook his head and Tova hissed. “This is not dangerous—is impossible,” she said.
“We have to try. For Roan’s sake and for ours. And we need your help, Tova. If we can’t make ourselves invisible we have to at least be able to detect the Sythians who are.”
Tova hissed again and this time she bared her fangs. “I help you, crazy human, but not from here. No longer from the shadows. I stay by your side so that you live to rescue the lord of my crèche.”
Ethan smiled to cover the grimace which was tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. First let me formally introduce you to the crew, and then I’ll bring you onto the bridge. You’ll have to wear a uniform of course, but we’ll have one made.”
“No uniform,” Tova said. “I wear armor.”
Ethan’s smile broadened, but inwardly he scowled. “Tova, in our society people wear clothes not armor. To live among us you must make some compromises.” Out of the corner of his eye Ethan noticed Atton shaking his head.
“I make compromise already. I don’t eat you for letting your crèche mates to capture Roan.”
“Tova, you’ll make my crew uneasy if you’re wearing your armor.”
Tova hissed again. “Then I wear nothing, but you are to make your ship dark and cold like night.”
Ethan frowned. “Don’t push me, Tova.”
“I do not push you. Do your eyes hurt in dark as mine do in light? Does your skin burn in heat?” Tova loomed closer still.
“We’ll turn down the climate controllers and the lights, but you’ll have to adapt to a slightly warmer and brighter environment.”
Tova’s eyes flared wide and she bared her fangs, hissing loudly. “You adapt to me!”
“You need us to help you as much as we need you, Tova. Think about it. Roan needs you. It’ll only be for a few days.”
Tova hissed one last time and looked away from them. “I wait to be brought to bridge,” she said.
Ethan nodded. “We’ll be back soon.” He turned on his heel and began descending the stairs with Atton. Their bodyguards kept a careful watch on Tova as they left the icy darkness of her crèche.
“You shouldn’t have been so demanding with her,” Atton
said.
“Relax, it went well. She agreed to our conditions, didn’t she?” Ethan replied.
“She didn’t agree to anything. Did you see the way she looked away from us?” The door to Tova’s crèche swished shut behind them.
Ethan frowned. “Yes, wasn’t that a sign of her giving in?”
Atton laughed. “It’s an expression of extreme displeasure. We are unworthy of her sight. In Gor society, only those who have fallen out of favor are treated that way. She does not like us at all.”
Ethan snorted. “Well, I’m not too fond of her myself.”
“It may be hard to get her cooperation.”
“She’ll come around. Her life and Roan’s are at stake, too. Meanwhile, I’d better think of how I’m going to break the news to our crew.”
“They’re not going to like her either.”
“Well, we’re all just going to have to get along.”
They entered the lift tube at the end of the long, dark corridor which they’d taken to reach Tova’s crèche. The guards entered behind them, and Ethan watched as they turned to cover the entrance of the lift, presenting their backs to him. They were the same guards that knew Dr. Kurlin had created the virus which had killed almost everyone aboard the Valiant. Ethan spent a moment eyeing them before turning to Atton. “We have some reassignments to make, don’t we?” he said, nodding sideways to the guards in the lift.
Atton caught his meaning and nodded. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
Ethan smiled. “Good. We need everything to go smoothly over the next week.”
The lift arrived with an almost imperceptible jolt that spoke of a better-functioning inertial management system, and then the doors swished open, and a welcome blast of warm air entered the lift. Ethan realized from the way his face started tingling that his exposed skin had begun to go numb in Tova’s crèche.
They exited the lift behind the guards. One fell in behind Ethan and one in front. As they walked, Ethan wondered about the time, and the hour flashed up as fading green digits before his eyes—18:33—fed to him by the holo card reader implanted behind his ear. It was getting late. “Why don’t you go speak to the doctor about testing the crew,” Ethan said, speaking to his son. “You can make crew reassignments just before we leave. I’d like things to remain the way they are when Tova officially comes aboard the bridge,” Ethan explained, thinking that it would be nice to have a few bodyguards around, even if only for another day.
“All right,” Atton replied.
“I’ll meet you at the operations center at twenty hundred hours. We’re going to draw up a plan of action and introduce Tova to the rest of our bridge crew. Maybe you can help me come up with a way to break the news that we have a Gor aboard?”
Atton shook his head. “Doesn’t matter how you decorate krak, no one is going to be happy you’re bringing it aboard.”
Ethan snorted. Now that Atton had given up his role as the supreme overlord, much of his genteel bearing and manners had fallen away, and Ethan realized what a good actor his son had to be to have kept up such an elaborate façade for so long. He shot Atton a speculative look as they walked, and for just the briefest moment he wondered what other façades his son might be keeping up.
* * *
Ethan watched Deck Commander Loba Caldin pull up a chair to the captain’s table inside the Defiant’s operations center and sit down. Already sitting at the table were Atton, in the guise of nova pilot Adan Reese; First Lieutenant Ithicus Adari, the ranking nova pilot among the survivors who’d escaped Dark Space; Petty Officer Delayn, chief engineer aboard the Defiant; Corpsman Goldrim, the gravidar officer; Petty Sergeant Damen Corr from the helm; Deck Officer Gorvan, the weapons chief; and finally . . . Ethan struggled to remember the comm officer’s rank and name. It flashed up before his eyes a second later. Deck Officer Grimsby. Atton had given him a list of names and their associated holos so he could get to know his crew. Ethan had promptly loaded it into the holo card reader behind his ear to help him transition into his role as overlord. The implant had a significant degree of artificial intelligence, so it was able to read his thoughts and even see what he was seeing in order to provide a two-way interface between his brain and whatever information he had loaded into it. If he’d had the necessary dictionaries and heuristics on a holo card, he could have even used his implant to provide a simultaneous translation of Tova’s language.
Ethan noticed the assembled officers hugging themselves or rubbing their hands together to keep warm. A few were even starting to shiver. It was freezing inside the operations center.
“Why’s it so cold in here?” Commander Caldin asked.
Ethan turned to her with a smile. “I’ll explain that in a moment.” Turning to address the entire room, Ethan folded his hands on the gleaming transpiranium-topped holo table and nodded to the assembled officers. “I’ve called you all here to help formulate a plan of action going forward and to brief you on what’s to come. First off, I’d like to establish our command structure. I’ve decided to promote Lieutenant Ithicus Adari to Lieutenant Commander and permanently assign him as Guardian One.”
Ithicus smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
Turning to him, Ethan went on, “Your first task will be to put together as many working novas as you can for your squadron and then find pilots for them. You will be able to draw on the entire 72 surviving crew members of this ship as candidates for nova training. We’re going to take any spare novas as well as any supplies we find aboard the Stormcloud Transfer Station before we leave.”
Ithicus blinked. “Nova training takes three years, sir. You’re not seriously suggesting we spend that kind of time out here before we move on, are you?”
Ethan shook his head. “No, you’ll have until tomorrow night.”
“That’s less than two days!”
“Do you have a problem with that, Commander? If so, I may need to reconsider your promotion.”
“No, sir, but with respect, sending unqualified pilots up in our birds will just give the enemy more targets to shoot at.” Ithicus shook his head. “They’ll die and take our fighters with them.”
“I’m not asking for unqualified pilots. I’ve already been skimming the databanks and it appears that many of the officers we have aboard started their careers as pilots and when they got older or wiser they moved on to crew and command positions. There are also a fair number of officers, including myself, who have become good pilots as sim-flyers and hobbyists. Among those, find the best candidates you can, train them as well as you can in the time that you have, and use your own discretion as to whom should fly which missions, but in an emergency I don’t want to have any empty cockpits, understood?”
“Understood.”
Ethan turned to look across the table at his son, Atton, though he was actually staring into the face of Atton’s holoskin, Adan Reese. “Lieutenant Adan Reese has recently demonstrated a keen instinct for command, and so I’ve decided to promote him to Captain and assign him as the new XO of the Defiant.”
Ethan didn’t miss the way Loba Caldin’s blond eyebrows quickly shot up and then fell, dropping a curtain of shadows across her narrowing indigo eyes. From the way her jaw had clenched she looked like she wanted to say something.
“Caldin,” Ethan said, addressing her. “You will be my tactical adviser and the acting XO when Adan is not on deck.”
“Yes, sir,” she nodded, but she did not look happy. Neither did Ithicus, and both were sending Atton icy stares, angry that he had been promoted straight from lieutenant all the way to captain, effectively out-ranking both of them.
“Good. Now that we all understand our roles, we can discuss a plan of action. Petty Officer Delayn—” Ethan turned to the man and gazed into the watery blue eyes of the Defiant’s chief engineer. Cobrale Delayn was at the tail end of what could be considered middle-aged, with gray hair cropped military short, and plenty of wrinkles and lines to mark the years. He had a very pale skin, making him look sic
k, but that was just because he was a Worani, and Woran never saw any real sunlight peeking through its perpetually dark and rainy skies. “—assures me that repairs will be completed, as best they can be, within the next two days. By then our systems should be mostly in the green and we can move out.”
Everyone nodded their heads and Ethan went on, “My plan is to proceed from here directly to Obsidian Station in the Advistine System, which is our nearest staging point out here in Sythian Space. There we will gather our forces for a counter-attack on Dark Space and the Valiant. Unfortunately, we can’t simply comm them from out here, since there aren’t enough working gate relays in Sythian Space for us to send comm messages, and without the commnet, the only way we can communicate over interstellar distances is by direct messenger—or by an alternate form of comms . . . which brings me to introduce the final member of our bridge crew.”
Everyone looked at Ethan expectantly, and he went on, “You’re all aware that we have an alliance with the Gors.”
Delayn hesitated. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you ever seen one?” Ethan asked of the entire group. He noticed his son was frowning, but the others looked confused. “Yes,” Caldin said. “We’ve all seen the Gors. You know that, sir.”
Ethan nodded. “Then this won’t come as such a shock.” He turned to look over his shoulder at the door of the operations center. He called out a command for the door to open, and then said, “Tova, you can come in now.”
Suddenly, out of thin air, Tova appeared in the doorway, her broad shoulders completely blocking the width of the door. She was slouching so that her head wasn’t cut off by the entrance.
Ethan heard a collective gasp from the assembled officers, and he nodded to them. “I’m sorry, she startled me this morning, too.”
Caldin frowned. “I didn’t know we have a Gor aboard.”
Ethan turned to the alien. “Tova come inside.”
She turned to him with her yellow eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Make room dark first.”