by Jay Allan
They reached the growing-together of two oakal trees which marked Digger’s hideout, and Lessie hurried to trigger the camouflaged hatch in the ground. It opened with a groan of rusty gears grinding together. Peering into the hatch, Destra quickly realized it was too small for the hover gurney to fit.
“Help me get him in!” Destra said, struggling to lift the man off the gurney by herself.
Lessie turned to look with a kind of childish shock written on her face. Her features were slack with horror. She appeared to consider helping for a moment, but then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Destra,” she said, and with that she jumped into the hole.
Destra gritted her teeth and scowled. She keyed the hover gurney to settle to the ground, and then she dragged the man off and rolled him over to the open hatch, ignoring his feeble moans and flailing protests. Just as she was about to push him inside, a whir of motors started up, and the hatch began to close. Destra couldn’t believe her eyes. She lunged over the injured man’s body and grabbed the hatch, trying to force it back open, but the motors connected to it were surprisingly strong, and even fighting them with all of her strength, she was barely slowing them down.
“Frek you, Lessie!” Destra roared into the rapidly closing hole. Destra jumped back as the hatch cover shut, almost taking her fingers with it. The corner of her shirt snagged in the hatch and tore, leaving a ragged piece of red cloth to mark the ground. Destra glared at it and cursed Lessie and Digger once more. She bent down and felt around for the hatch release, but it wouldn’t respond to her touch. Somehow, while Destra had been struggling to get the man off the gurney, Lessie had rushed to the control panel below, and then she’d closed and locked the hatch.
Fuming, Destra thought about alternative ways she could get inside, but the ground-level exit which they’d used to leave the stim lab earlier that morning was all the way on the other side of the escarpment, and even if she could get to it before the Sythians found her, it would just be locked, too. She could dig her way in over here, but that would take time, and without the grav field activated, she’d fall some twenty meters to the ground and break her neck. Even then, there was still the matter of getting through the concealed doors and into the lab itself, and she had no weapons to confront Digger and Lessie besides the pistol at her hip. It would be no match for ripper rifles.
She was stuck. Destra couldn’t imagine what had prompted Lessie to lock her out, except maybe her selfish fear that bringing another mouth to feed would get them kicked out of Digger’s hideout. Whatever the woman’s motivation, Destra was on her own now. She stood listening to the roar of engines drawing near, her eyes on the sky. She couldn’t see anything, but whatever it was, it was close. Then the sound abruptly changed in pitch and volume.
It’s landing!
She didn’t have much time. Destra turned in a quick half circle under the cover of Digger’s tree, searching the sky for the source of the sound, but she didn’t see anything; Sythian ships were cloaked. I guess this is it, she thought, glancing down at the man lying at her feet on a bed of crunchy brown needles and red oakal leaves. It’s just you and me—whoever you are. No weapons, nowhere to go, and no time to get there. Survival of the fittest at its best—
Or survival of the most ruthless, she thought, eyeing the sealed hatchway and thinking about Lessie, safely ensconced in the stim lab by now. Would they watch her die on the cameras the way that they had with the unfortunate group of survivors they’d seen fleeing through the forest last night?
Destra had just one chance. She had to get back to the hover and hide under the holo sheets. Eyeing the man at her feet speculatively, she quickly thought about ways to bring him with her, but there was no way to do that without slowing herself down and attracting more attention than she wanted.
Destra frowned. She couldn’t leave him. That would make her as bad as Lessie. Casting about quickly, she spied a nearby pile of leaves at the bottom of a short hill leading away from Digger’s tree. It’ll have to do, she thought.
Rolling the man back onto the gurney and shushing him every time he moaned, Destra powered up the gurney once more and rushed down the hill to the leaves. She lowered the gurney into them and then worked quickly to cover it up. The pile was deeper than it looked, and Destra had no trouble shoveling enough leaves, dirt, and needles over both the man and his gurney so that his shallow breathing couldn’t be detected beneath the mountain of leaves. The sound of engines dwindled from a roar to a whistle and then to terrifying silence. Destra’s head snapped up, and she quickly scanned the trees, her heart pounding, her eyes wide. There was no time to get away.
Glancing down, Destra frowned at the pile of leaves. Hope you don’t mind the company.
Less than a minute later she was completely buried and working hard to quieten the too-loud rasping of her breathe and the steady drum beat of her racing heart. She could see a fractured glimpse of the outside world through the leaves, and she hoped that didn’t mean she could be seen from the outside, too.
Destra listened intently but there were no sounds besides the ones she was making. Gradually her breathing and her heart rate slowed. Minutes passed, turning into what seemed like hours.
And then abruptly, she heard rustling leaves and her eyes flicked toward the sound. It was coming from Digger’s tree. As she watched, a pair of tall, broad-shouldered bipeds appeared out of nowhere. They were covered in shiny black exoskeletons and their eyes were glowing red orbs.
Sythians.
Destra’s heart pounded. If they had life form scanners that were anywhere near as good as human ones, then her hiding place was already uncovered.
One of the Sythians looked around, while the other bent down to pick something up. He held out a ragged piece of red cloth to the other, who took it and studied it.
My shirt! Destra thought. Frek! I’ve given them away!
Both aliens stared down at the hidden hatch as though they could see straight through it to the chamber below. One of them gestured to the ground where the hatchway was, while the second went down on his haunches for a closer look.
The man beside Destra groaned, and she shushed him once more, but the two Sythians didn’t react. They were too focused on what they’d found.
Destra was torn between leaping out of her hiding place with her pistol blazing, and just leaving Digger and Lessie to the Sythians. She was more inclined to do the latter until she remembered—
Dean.
The little blond-haired boy hadn’t done anything to deserve that fate. The Sythians will eat them, she reminded herself, trying to spur her frozen limbs into action. But what about her responsibility to the man lying helpless beside her? And how would she be able to help Dean anyway? All she had was a plasma pistol that likely wouldn’t even breach the Sythians’ armor. She’d have a better chance with it set to stun, and who knew if what stunned a human would stun a Sythian? At least Lessie and Digger have rifles. . . . and by now they’ve already spotted the Sythians on the cameras, so at least they’ll have some warning.
Destra chewed her bottom lip, unable to decide what to do.
Then one of the Sythians straightened and held out his arm with an open palm. A bright purple pulse of light shot out from his palm, sounding impossibly loud in the stillness of the forest. Destra saw black smoke and orange flames rising from the ground at the Sythians’ feet. The flames grew up quickly into a raging fire that engulfed them, but they didn’t react to it. She watched through the leaves and flickering flames as one of the Sythians dropped out of sight, and she realized he’d just jumped into the hole below the tree.
They’re in, she thought.
The second one dropped away, and then all that was left was the crackling fire, racing along the ground to chew up the dry leaves and needles lying on the forest floor. Destra saw the flames racing her way, and she realized that she was about to be burned alive.
She had just a moment to debate a course of action before bursting out of her hiding place. She ha
d no way of knowing if there were more Sythians watching and waiting nearby, but she tried to ignore that possibility as she swept leaves and needles off the hover gurney to find the controls. Destra keyed the gurney to rise out of the leaves, and she started running in the opposite direction from the racing flames, pushing the gurney along in front of her. Destra wasn’t sure what lay in this direction, but she was certain that it was taking her further and further from the hover transport she’d left camouflaged by the side of the road. That transport was her only hope. If she didn’t get to it. . . .
If I don’t get to it, my fate will be the same as Dean’s. With the threat of what that meant to spur her on, Destra ran faster. The trees rushed by her in a brown, gray, and purple haze, the colors of their boles blending into a dreary kaleidoscope.
Birds tweeted and squawked around her, as if cheering her on. A wind rustled through the leaves overhead, sending a small rain of them fluttering down and bringing a choking wash of smoke to her nostrils. Destra began to cough, and her eyes started burning. She saw a fallen log lying in her path just in time to leap over it with the gurney. The gurney lifted her high over the log and then settled down gradually on the other side. Destra’s lungs began to burn, insisting she take a break, but she pressed on, feeling the back of her neck prickle with the imagined heat of the fire raging behind her and with the thought of untold numbers of Sythians racing after her.
Destra pushed the gurney faster and faster. She was so focused on watching the terrain for exposed roots and rocks which could trip her up that she didn’t notice when a large, shiny boulder appeared in the grassy clearing up ahead. When she did notice, Destra slowed her progress, digging her heels into the needles and leaves to bring the gurney to a stop before they reached the clearing. She stood staring at the silvery boulder for a moment, her chest heaving, and her mind racing before she noticed the discrepancies between the shiny, smooth surface and that of any rock she’d ever encountered. It’s a ship, she realized with a gasp.
And then she was lunging through the clearing, pushing the gurney once more, this time with the irrational hope that she might be able to get aboard that spacecraft and blast off Roka to follow her son into Dark Space. Gone were any thoughts she’d had of helping Dean. If she had to pick between two little boys, Atton won every time.
Hold on baby! she thought. Mommy’s coming.
* * *
—THE YEAR 10 AE—
The blinding brilliance of multiple explosions faded, along with the sound, and the next thing Alara heard was, “Training mission complete. Your score for this mission is 5B. You killed five Shell Fighters. Congratulations.”
Alara gaped at her controls. The stars swam back into focus, but she was still seeing spots. “Hold on—are you saying this was all just a simulation?”
The red contacts vanished from Alara’s star map, and then her squadron reappeared—all 14 of them. She even heard her comm come back to life with the chattering voices of the supposedly dead.
“You mean all this time you’ve just been frekking with me, Ethan?”
“I was only following orders, Alara. Please don’t be distressed.”
“You bet your frekking ass I’m distressed!” She keyed the comm with a defiant stab of her finger, adding her complaints to the already confusing babble on the comm. “Hoi, whose idea was this?”
“Cut the chatter Guardians,” a stern voice replied. “Anyone who’s still complaining can discuss it with the warden on the brig.” It was Guardian One. “I don’t tolerate insubordination among my pilots.” The chatter subsided and the commander went on. “This was a live drill, and yes, the only ones who knew about it were the six real pilots scattered among you green freks. We played our part, faking the screams of the dying and bowing out of the battle as soon as possible to see how you all handle yourselves in a real engagement.”
Alara listened to the commander’s explanation with a scowl. Her eyes blazed at the comm display. She held her tongue for now, but she wasn’t going to fly for that man—not now, not ever.
Commander Adari went on, “A nova is able to simulate almost any sortie, but some of you might have noticed that as your ships became damaged no pieces went flying off into space, and of course the explosions were all simulated, so you won’t have felt any kinetic forces from those blasts, regardless of your IMS settings.
“What you just experienced is a very likely scenario of what we’re about to encounter while crossing Sythian Space, so the fact that you all died in less than ten minutes is not good. But some of you managed to put up a surprising fight and even took an enemy fighter with you. A smaller number of you were able to take several enemies down. To those few I offer my congratulations—Alara Vastra and Tenrik Fanton received 5B and 3B ratings respectively. The number refers to a pilot’s kills per sortie, and the letter grade is an overall evaluation of flight skill. The more sorties you fly, the lower that number will tend to get, but hopefully, the higher your letter grade will get, since you’ll become a more experienced pilot.
“We’re now heading back to the Defiant, so fly toward the waypoint which should be appearing on your star maps. The final roster will be published tomorrow morning after all of the other candidates have gone through this scenario. Do not tell any of the other trainees what’s to come. Any breach of this confidentiality will land you in the brig—or worse. Guardian One out.”
“Frek you, Guardian One!” Alara screamed, but she didn’t send that over the comms.
“Alara, you should be aware that I’m obligated to report pilot insubordination in whatever form I may encounter it. Your comment has been filed into my mission report.”
“Frek you, too, Ethan!”
“Duly noted, but I assure you I am incapable of frekking anything, so your insubordination is wasted on me.”
“Ethan?” Alara began, adopting a dulcet tone.
“Yes, Alara?”
“Shut up.”
Chapter 15
Ethan sat discussing tactics with Deck Commander Loba Caldin inside the Defiant’s operations center.
“Sythians don’t have SLS disruptors . . . do they?”
Commander Caldin frowned. “No . . . you know that they don’t, sir.”
“Of course, I know. So why don’t we make a micro jump to cross Forlax?”
Caldin shook her head. “First of all, because it would take us five minutes to calculate the jump—five minutes without maneuvering, travelling at slow, SLS-safe speeds. Even if they didn’t kill us in that window of opportunity, they’d detect our drives spooling, and they’d line up obstacles along our jump trajectory—maybe even cloaking mines. No sooner would we jump to SLS than we’d run into whatever trap they’ve laid and blow up.”
“Then we should jump in short of the system gate, accelerate up to a high speed, and roar through the system in real space, going so fast that they can’t possibly catch us.”
“If we drop short of the gate it will take more fuel to cross the system, since we’ll need to open our own exit wormhole, and the Sythians could still line up mines and ships on our flight path.”
“So we fire the guns ahead of us as we go.”
Caldin shook her head. “Might not be good enough if they have a wormhole ship.”
“A wormhole ship?”
Caldin frowned and her head cocked ever so slightly to one side. “As you already know . . . the Sythians have been taking jump gates from systems they don’t want or need, cloaking them, and then attaching them to some of their larger ships. Since the ships and gates are invisible to our gravidar while cloaked, we can’t hope to avoid running straight into the invisible wormholes. All they need to do is wait until they see we’re going too fast to slow down or abruptly change course, then they jump one of their wormhole ships straight into our flight path. At that point, one of two things will happen—we run straight through the wormhole and our safeties knock us back to real space, busting us to near-zero velocity, or else maybe we’re going at a nice,
SLS-safe speed and they get to send us wherever they want before we even have the time to blink.
“They’ve also taken to placing wormhole ships in front of existing system gates, so that just when we think we’re going through a charted gate, instead we’re catapulted through a cloaked wormhole that sends us straight to a nice little minefield that they’ve laid just for us.”
Ethan wasn’t actually aware of any of those tactics, but he was getting tired of Caldin’s obstructionist attitude. “Well, maybe we can just stay here forever and leave Dark Space to the crime lords.”
Caldin held his gaze for a moment, her expression unrelenting, but then she sighed. “You’re right. I recommend we drop out of the gate as planned, using the element of surprise as best we can, and cross the system as fast as possible from there.”
“That does seem to be our best chance.”
“Is the recon flight back yet?”
Ethan nodded. “Taylon’s clear. I’m about to review the trainees’ scores and the commander’s choices for his squadron. If you’d like, you can do it with me, but I already know from Commander Adari’s debriefing that all of the pilots except for two in the first batch of trainees qualified with ratings of B or higher.”
“Not too bad, I suppose. The cut off for a nova pilot is a ‘B’ rating, so the trainees must be fairly skilled.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Based on those results I told the commander to test the other candidates on the sim deck rather than in the novas, so that we can get going. We need to cross the Taylon System before any enemy ships drop by to ruin our day.”
Caldin nodded. “Who made the roster? No one we can’t afford to spare I hope.”
“I haven’t had a look yet; why don’t you check the mission report first and tell me what you think.” Ethan passed her a holo pad with the report already selected. Caldin brought it to life with stab of her finger, and a list of names complete with pictures, test scores, and instructors’ notes appeared hovering above the pad. Caldin scanned through the list quickly, and Ethan watched from the other side, unable to read anything because the text was all backward from his perspective. He did recognize a few of the pilots’ faces, however—