Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  Stop it, he chided himself. Don’t be paranoid.

  But he was. Brondi grimaced. Somehow he had to keep this mysterious intruder from interfering with his plans. There was a reason he was crossing Sythian Space to find and meet with Admiral Hoff and the remnants of the 5th Fleet. It wasn’t so they could sit down and have tea together.

  They reached their destination, and Brondi waved to the point team. “Open the doors.”

  One man stepped forward and keyed in a security code in lieu of waving his wrist over the scanner. Their identichips would be unreadable through their armor, and Brondi’s slicers were still figuring out how to add their identities to the security permissions list.

  The doors swished open and they stomped into the med center aboard the Valiant. Their eyes were drawn to the shifting light sculpture in the center of the room, but after only a moment of succumbing to the sculpture’s mesmerizing effects, Brondi looked away and continued through the waiting area to a long, white hallway which was barely wide enough to fit their mechs.

  Brondi led the way to the stasis room and keyed open the door. Once inside, he scanned the stasis tubes lining the walls until he found the nearest one whose control panel was lit up to indicate a live occupant. There were plenty to choose from. Brondi stalked up to the stasis tube they’d chosen and his men followed, their footsteps thudding after him.

  “All right, Doctor, collect your blood sample,” he said, turning to one of the other zephyrs.

  The people in the stasis tubes were the sole remaining survivors from the Valiant’s original crew. No doubt they’d entered stasis in a last ditch attempt to escape the virus which had spread throughout the ship, but that wouldn’t fix them no matter what treatment they’d selected from the stasis controls. The virus was too virulent to be stopped by conventional means, and going into stasis would merely delay the inevitable.

  Brondi turned to watch the entrance of the room. He half expected to see the doors open mysteriously, and then to hear his men screaming as they were overcome by an invisible foe.

  But no, he chided himself. That only happened in his nightmares. Not even a Sythian could take down a man in a zephyr—not bare-handed anyway; their armor was too strong.

  The doctor stepped up to the stasis tube and prepared a syringe to take a blood sample. This was Brondi’s master plan. With that man’s blood sample, he would add the remnants of the 5th fleet to the Valiant, and he would become the most powerful force in the galaxy—well, besides the Sythians, Brondi thought. But if they stuck to themselves and he stayed in Dark Space then everyone would be happy. At least until he could find a way to kill the skull faces once and for all.

  When the doctor was done taking his sample, he tucked it into a storage compartment in his suit and turned to Brondi. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Brondi nodded, and then they were off again, racing back down the corridors they’d taken to get to the med center. They were all nervous to be exploring the “unsafe” areas of the ship. They’d managed to at least cordon off certain places where they knew their killer—or killers—wouldn’t be hiding by using a combination of round-the-clock guards stationed at every bulkhead and lift tube along the perimeter of the safe zones. In addition to that, they’d seeded the corridors leading to those areas with anti-personnel proximity mines. Those mines had to be disabled from a distance with the right codes. And as a final layer of security, they had installed stealth detectors above every door—laser beams which if broken unexpectedly would set off an alarm. Like that they’d managed to reduce their casualties, but out here, there were none of those security measures.

  The corridor seemed to stretch out endlessly ahead of them. Now that they’d gathered the sample, Brondi was in an even greater hurry to get back. He had a bad feeling crawling in the pit of his stomach, like they were being watched.

  They reached the first rail tunnel on the way back, and one of Brondi’s men stepped forward to slap the summon car button. They waited a moment for the rail car to arrive, all of them looking around nervously.

  “I’m surprised it hasn’t tried anything. We’re on his turf,” one man said.

  “We’re wearing armor, stupid. You think it wants to get riddled with 20 mm ripper rounds while it tries to crack us open?”

  “Shhh . . .” the doctor said, looking around suddenly. “Did you hear that?”

  They stopped to listen, but all they heard was the quiet whoosh of air cyclers and the subtle hum of the SLS drives rumbling through the deck. “What did you hear?” Brondi asked.

  “Footsteps . . .” he said, moving away from the rail tunnel to investigate.

  Brondi humored him for a few seconds, and then said, “Hoi, get back here. You’re hearing things, Doc.”

  “I don’t know . . . I feel like we’re forgetting something important.”

  “Like what?”

  They heard the distant rumble of an approaching rail car. Suddenly the doctor turned to them. “Wait! Get away from the tunnel!”

  “What?” Brondi asked. “Why?”

  “We’re outside the safe zone! There’s no one else out here! The car should have been waiting for us!” The doctor turned and ran away at top speed, his footsteps booming down the corridor.

  Brondi’s eyes flew wide, and then the car arrived with a screech of brakes, and the doors swished open. They all turned as one toward the open doors, their forearm-mounted ripper cannons raised to track whatever might be lurking within, but the car was empty.

  Empty, except for a large plastiform crate sitting on the floor.

  “Frek!” one man said, backing away. “He’s hiding in the crate!”

  Brondi recognized the warning labels a second too late to stop that man from firing off a burst of ripper fire. The plastiform crate turned to swissel cheese. Brondi held his breath for a heart-stopping second, but nothing happened; then he raced up behind the man who’d fired that volley and knocked him over with a vicious swipe of his zephyr’s arm. “You dumb frek! That’s a crate full of proximity mines! Fall back!” Brondi was already backing away.

  Just then the damaged wall of the crate collapsed, sending dozens of mines rolling out toward them. Brondi turned and ran. The first mine reached the man he’d knocked over, and went off with a deafening boom. The subsequent chain reaction set off all the mines, and everyone was picked up and thrown down the corridor by a superheated rush of air. The doctor was the only one far enough from the shockwave to remain standing. When Brondi’s mech finally stopped rolling, he groaned and tested his power-assisted limbs. They still moved, but now with labored grinding sounds. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to study the damage.

  The rail car was obliterated, the corridor a molten ruin of blackened duranium and scattered rubble—and as for the man who’d set off the explosion, all Brondi could identify amidst the rubble was a boot and a gauntlet. The other two were lying face down on the deck and not moving. They’d been closer to the blast.

  Brondi gritted his teeth and roared in frustration. Now he fired off a random burst of ripper fire, pelting the debris-strewn corridor. “Frek you! Show yourself!” He fired another burst and then stood there panting with fury while he waited for a reply, but none came. He turned to the doctor and shook his head. “What now?”

  The doctor gazed solemnly back at him. “We find another way back.”

  * * *

  Atton sat blinking out at the mesmerizing swirl of SLS. He did a quick check to see how long before the reversion to real space and found that it would be almost four hours. Enough time to get some rest he supposed, but every time he tried to close his eyes, they shot open again as if loaded with springs. He couldn’t sleep. There were too many thoughts bouncing around in his head. They’d crossed just two systems, and already they’d run into enough opposition to take down six novas and nearly obliterate the Defiant.

  Atton pushed those thoughts from his head and focused on what was to come. He and the remainder of Guardian Squadron would have
enough fuel to reach the rendezvous, but not by much. Adari and his wingman in the smaller Mark II’s would be even lower on fuel by the time they reverted to real space. They’d be lucky to make it. And as for the Defiant . . . he’d seen the bad shape the cruiser had been in when it had entered SLS.

  Shaking his head, Atton let out a long, calming breath and closed his eyes once more, forcing himself to relax in preparation for sleep. He rolled his ankles and flexed his legs as much as he could in the cramped confines of his cockpit, and he grimaced at the sharp tingle of pins and needles which shot through his limbs. Atton’s eyes popped open again.

  He sighed, and asked his AI for a sleeping aid. There was nothing he could do about his squadron or the Defiant until they dropped out of SLS, and when they did, he’d need to be well-rested. Atton felt a sharp prick, and then a spreading wave of warmth which seemed to reach every corner of his being. He laid his head back and let that wave carry him into sweet oblivion.

  * * *

  The reactor room was filled with smoke—laser welders flashed brightly in the dim red glow of the emergency lights. Ethan gazed up at the dark transpiranium dome high above the reactor, watching sparks hissing out in high arcs above the catwalk where he stood in a bulky yellow radiation suit.

  According to his chief engineer, Petty Officer Delayn, the aft shields had overloaded, sending a power surge back through the reactor which had cracked the dymium core. They were working fast to patch the core before it went critical, or before they’d have to shut the reactor down completely and drop out of SLS. An interruption like that would use up too much of their remaining fuel, and they needed that fuel to send Brondi’s corvette the rest of the way to Obsidian Station.

  “May I ask you something, sir?” Caldin said, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Of course,” he said, turning to her.

  “What was the mission you sent those two corpsmen to complete?”

  “My guards?”

  Caldin nodded.

  Ethan looked back out over the reactor core and shook his head. “You know that’s classified.”

  “We’re going to die, sir. It shouldn’t matter anymore.”

  “No, I suppose it shouldn’t,” Ethan admitted. “But why does it matter to you?”

  “One of them was my . . . lover, sir.”

  “Oh.” Ethan was taken aback. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “No one did. I just wanted to know . . . if he’s okay . . . if maybe he left a message for me.”

  Ethan hesitated. “I’ll have to check with Captain Reese.”

  Caldin looked abashed and she averted her eyes. “Of course.”

  “Don’t worry. If anyone is safe right now, it will be him.”

  No sooner had Ethan said it than an alarm went off and a sharp hiss rose into the air. A man screamed, and their eyes were drawn to see someone stumbling around on top of the reactor core, clawing at his melted faceplate. “Frek!” Ethan said. “Get a medic over there!”

  No one heard him.

  “She’s gonna blow!” someone yelled.

  “Shut it down!” Delayn yelled back.

  “Brace for reversion!”

  Ethan held on to the railing; then came a resounding bang, as someone shut down the reactor, followed by the steady hum of the SLS grinding to a halt. The emergency lights flickered inside the reactor room, and then they were all yanked off their feet as the ship was thrown out of SLS.

  Ethan picked himself off the catwalk. “Report! What happened, Delayn?” Ethan whirled around to find his chief engineer already hurrying down the catwalk toward them.

  “We almost blew the reactor wide open! We’re going to have to stay here and fix it.”

  “Frek . . .” Ethan muttered. “Where is here?”

  “By my calculations we’re about twenty minutes from the rendezvous. Maybe half a light year off.”

  “Well, hurry up and fix the reactor!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  This just gets better and better. “Factoring for this little detour, are we going to have enough fuel to send Brondi’s corvette the rest of the way to Obsidian Station?”

  Delayn nodded. “We should, yes, but we’ll have none left for ourselves.”

  Ethan grimaced. “Not like we could have made it in the Defiant anyway.”

  “It will be risky, sir. As I mentioned before there’s a chance the corvette’s reactor will overheat and blow the ship apart. Corvettes weren’t designed to make long-range jumps. Max SLS time from one system to another is around 12 hours. This trip will take about a day.”

  “So they might not make it, and we’ll have drained all our fuel just to give them the chance,” Caldin said, shaking her head. “We’ll be stranded.”

  “Yes, ma’am, that is the risk we’ll take.”

  Ethan clenched his jaw. “It doesn’t sound as though we have much choice.”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ll head to the rendezvous to pick up novas first, and then you’re free to take whatever parts you need from the Defiant to make this crazy scheme of yours work, Delayn. How long do you think before we’re patched up and ready to enter SLS again?”

  Delayn hesitated, turning to watch the teams of engineers and other crew swarming over the reactor with arc welders, and heavy ingots of duranium filler. The man who’d been burned by the reactor leak had subsided to one side of the room, with the ship’s only medic attempting to administer first aid for what were almost certainly lethal burns. Delayn grimaced. “It could be a while.”

  Ethan frowned. Without being near a working gate relay, they couldn’t send a message to the Guardians to let them know what had happened.

  Suddenly there came a bang and the emergency lights went out, plunging the ship into utter darkness. Ethan felt his stomach lurch, and the weight on his legs and spine was abruptly lifted. His feet lost traction on the deck and he began to float free of the catwalk.

  “Hoi!”

  “We’ve lost IMS!”

  Ethan flailed in the dark for anything solid to grab on to, but there was nothing within reach. He listened to the rising tumult as his crewmen shouted out confusing and contradictory orders, bumping into walls and each other.

  We’re derelict, Ethan thought with rising horror. Of all the ways he’d imagined them dying—drifting quietly and alone in the cold dark void of deep space had not been one of them. This is the real Dark Space— he thought as he listened absently to Delayn snapping orders for the crew to use the grav guns on their belts to pin their feet to the deck—being stranded without power in the vast emptiness between the stars. . . .

  DERELICT

  Chapter 22

  Kurlin awoke in darkness. The air was still and terribly cold. He tried to sit up, but his head slammed into something hard and unyielding. He winced and tried to quell the rising panic in his chest before it swept away his ability to reason. He tried to push against the cold, glass-smooth surface above his head. It yielded and swung away, letting in a welcome rush of warm air. Kurlin shivered with the sudden change in temperature, only now realizing that he was naked. His mind pieced the clues together and he realized that he’d been put in stasis. A second after that, he realized why. The overlord had done it to shut him up.

  Kurlin scowled, and stepped out into the darkness, but he found as he pushed out of the stasis tube that there was no gravity on the ship. He floated freely across the room until his shins slammed into something hard, and he tipped face first onto a soft mattress. He bounced off and began floating above the bed, his hands flailing and grabbing handfuls of the sheets for purchase.

  And then, suddenly, the darkness was replaced with a blinding red light. The emergency lights. Kurlin blinked and squinted against the sudden brightness, and he now noticed that he was floating three feet above a bed, white sheets billowing and trailing from his hands like a giant jelly fish as he drifted through the air.

  Then the IMS came back online and Kurlin fell to the bed with a whump.

&
nbsp; Shaken, he stood up and looked around. What had happened? Why had the lights and IMS been offline? How long had he been asleep?

  Unsure about the answers to any of those questions, Kurlin quickly hunted through the unfamiliar surroundings for his clothes. He found them strewn all over the floor, no doubt having floated there from somewhere else during the power failure. It didn’t take Kurlin long to recognize where he was. The overlord’s quarters, he thought grimly. But where’s the overlord? Kurlin looked around warily, but there was no one else in the room with him. Having confirmed that, he hurried to get dressed. Not bothering to pull on his socks, Kurlin strode over to the overlord’s desk and keyed the holoscreen to life. Using it to log into his netmail account, he quickly found the message which he’d left pending. The time was 0920 hours—which he estimated meant that he’d been in stasis for almost fifteen hours. It was now late morning. Kurlin was grateful that he hadn’t awoken to find the overlord enjoying a late breakfast in his room.

  That imposter had demonstrated his unwillingness to cooperate by stuffing Kurlin into the stasis tube, and if he found Kurlin awake and running around freely on his ship, he might have found a more permanent way to shut him up. Kurlin had only one recourse now.

  He stabbed the key to send his message over the ship’s commnet and then hurried out of the overlord’s quarters. He was still barefoot, and the floor was cold, but there was no time to waste. Until the message was discovered by enough people that they could take action to overthrow the imposter, he was going to have to find his wife and daughter and get them to hide with him somewhere aboard the Defiant.

  But where? he wondered. Where wouldn’t the overlord think to look? Remembering the stasis tube where he had just spent the better part of the last day, Kurlin thought he had an idea. He would hide in the place the overlord would least expect to find him—

  The stasis room.

  After all, who would go straight from one stasis tube to another?