by Jay Allan
Terl walked up behind her and gripped her shoulders in his big hands, massaging the knots out of her muscles. “It will be all right, Ma’am. If anyone can lead us to safety, it’s you.”
Caldin turned to him, her eyes searching his. “What makes you so sure?”
“I know you.”
Caldin smiled. “You always know how to make me feel better.”
Terl smiled back and reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand.
She leaned toward him and he took the hint, bending down to kiss her gently on the lips. She reached for his hand and squeezed it—hard—before breaking away and leading him back to the desk. She had him sit down in the overlord’s chair, and then she climbed on top of him.
“Seems like you know a thing or two about makin’ people feel better yourself,” Terl said with a grin as she leaned down to kiss him.
* * *
After a hot bowl of stew and a short vaccucleanse, Alara Vastra stumbled into her bed. She was so tired she felt like she was drugged, and her head hit the pillow like a rock. Her dreams swirled with indistinct voices and blurry faces, but every now and then she had a clear glimpse of Ethan’s smile and his sparkling green eyes. Each time she saw his face, she felt a painful stab in her heart, and she wanted to cry. He wasn’t going to be around much longer, and . . . he was married?
The version of her in the dream tried to fight that truth. She took Ethan’s face in her hands and kissed his lips furiously—possessively—as though she could steal his heart from whomever it was that he’d married.
“You love me, Ethan! You said so!”
But in the dream he merely shook his head, and Alara watched as a faceless woman came and dragged him away from her, leading him off into the darkness. Ethan gave her a sloppy salute, and she watched the deep lines of sorrow carved around his mouth crease upward in a smile. “Goodbye, Kiddie . . .”
“No!”
Knock knock knock.
Alara awoke to the sound, and sat blinking up at the bunk above her, wondering for a moment what was real and what was a dream. Her head felt thick and groggy as she sat up on her bunk and looked around. She heard a familiar groan coming from the top bunk, and she said, “Gina?”
Another groan.
“Gina!” Alara thumped the bottom of the mattress above her head with her fist as the knocking started again. “Someone’s at the door!”
“You get it! Frekked if I care,” Gina mumbled.
Alara stood up with another groan and stumbled over to the door. The lights were still turned down low so they could sleep. When she passed her wrist over the door scanner, it swished open to admit a blinding brightness to the room. Alara stumbled away from the light, bringing her arm up to shield her eyes.
“Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant?” she asked, squinting into the light to see Commander Caldin smiling back at her.
“Second Lieutenant. I’ve decided to promote you in light of your performance on the last mission.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s been twelve hours since you were debriefed.”
“Krak, I’ve slept for half a day!”
“And you look like you could sleep for another half,” Caldin remarked, “but I need you for another mission.”
“Another . . .” Alara’s sleep-clouded brain struggled to catch up.
“We’re finished with the refit, but with all the components we had to steal from the Defiant, we won’t be going anywhere soon. It’s absolutely vital that we get reinforcements before a random patrol of Sythians detects us out here. They’re bound to be looking for us after Forlax.”
Alara nodded distractedly. “So you want me to . . .”
“Fly the corvette to Obsidian Station with Tova and come back with reinforcements. Cloaked ships this time, please.”
“I . . .”
“It’s an easy mission. Just a straight shot through SLS, so you can sleep on the way, but I need my best pilots to go, just in case.”
“Who else is going?”
The commander called out over Alara’s shoulder. “Gina!” A groan was her only reply. “Get out here, Lieutenant!”
A moment later a bleary-eyed woman with short blond hair sticking out at all angles appeared in the open door. “Hoi,” she saluted weakly, and leaned heavily on the door jamb.
“Get dressed you two. You’re launching in ten,” Caldin said as she turned to leave.
“Can I take a vaccucleanse first?” Alara called after the commander.
“Launching where?” Gina asked.
But there was no reply.
Alara scowled. “Oh, frek it!”
* * *
Alara, Gina, Delayn, and Tova in her menacing black armor walked up to Brondi’s refitted corvette, newly christened the Rescue. Almost the entire surviving crew of the Defiant had come down to the auxiliary hangar deck to wave goodbye and wish them luck. They all understood how critical this mission was to their survival, and Alara felt as though their lives were a heavy burden resting on her shoulders. As they drew near to the corvette, Alara thought that from the size of it, the ship should have been able to bear them all away with room to spare, but during the commander’s farewell speech, she had explained to everyone the reason why they weren’t all evacuating in the corvette—the only space left aboard the Rescue was in the cockpit—which had even been reduced from five control stations to four, one for pilot, copilot, gravidar operator, and engineer. The rest of the space was now filled with fuel, regulators, coolant tanks, and pumps. They’d drained everything from the Defiant, pouring all their best efforts into giving the Rescue just one chance to save them all.
Even that chance was slim. Delayn had taken them aside just before Caldin’s farewell speech and told them what the commander had been holding back during the debriefing. There was a good chance the Rescue wouldn’t make it. The reactor could easily overheat and suffer a meltdown before they ever reached Obsidian Station.
As Alara, Gina, Delayn, and Tova climbed the boarding ramp to the corvette, the crew cheered and whistled, and the burden of their lives grew all the heavier. Gina shook her head as they retreated inside the corvette. “The way they’re acting, you’d think we were conquering heroes.”
Alara nodded.
“We will be heroes if we make it,” Delayn said.
The inside of the corvette was so cramped that they didn’t need to guess which way to go. There only was one. A short corridor led to a lift tube which would carry them straight up the four decks to the bridge. The ship was a giant space rocket, packed with enough fuel to atomize the Defiant if something went wrong—let alone the much smaller corvette.
“If we even hit a bit of space dust,” Gina said, catching Alara’s eye while they waited for the lift. “We’re going to make a real pretty supernova.”
“I do not understand,” Tova said. Her warbling language filtered roughly through the Gor’s helmet to their aural translators and then came out in a gender-neutral computerized voice.
Gina turned to her with a frown. “It means we might all die before we can get help.”
“I see. I do my best to contact my crèche mates before we arrive.”
“Well,” Gina gave the alien a big, false smile. “That’s why you’re here.”
Turning back to the lift as it opened, Gina shook her head and muttered, “Frekkin’ Gors. . . .”
“We do copulate,” Tova replied. “But not as often as humans.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Gina said, her nose wrinkling with disgust.
The lift took them up to the fourth level and opened directly in front of the cockpit. They started forward and the doors automatically swished open to let them through. Alara found the nearest chair and sat down, not caring whether she was the pilot or the copilot. Both control stations turned out to be identically appointed, however, allowing for one of them to sleep while the other kept watch.
Gina sat down beside her and
they began the preflight check while Tova squeezed into the gravidar station to their right, and Delayn into the engineering station to their left. They went through the preflight carefully to avoid deadly oversights, but everything checked out, and they received clearance for takeoff. The engines started with a rising roar and began rumbling ominously underfoot.
“Ruh-kah!” Commander Caldin said, her voice coming to their ears from the comm speakers as she waved to them from her podium on the flight deck below.
And then Gina turned to Alara with a grim smile. “Next stop Obsidian Station.”
* * *
Alec Brondi stood aboard the bridge of the Valiant, down by the viewports, watching the countdown to real space from the HUD relay inside his zephyr’s helmet. He’d become even more paranoid since the incident in the med center, refusing to leave the designated “safe” zones, and refusing to take off his armor for any reason. It was starting to stink inside the mech, but Brondi considered that a small price to pay. His trip had been worth it. They’d successfully isolated Kurlin’s virus from the blood sample they’d taken. Now all they needed to do was get it aboard Admiral Heston’s ships, sit back, and let nature take its course.
Brondi smiled behind his helmet and turned to Captain Thornton, who was now cloaked in a holoskin that made him look exactly like Overlord Dominic. “Are you ready?”
The captain nodded. “I am,” he said, in the gravelly voice of the overlord himself.
Amazing, Brondi thought. It sounds just like him! They’d managed to produce a decent vocal synthesizer based on recordings of the overlord’s voice. The only thing they couldn’t do was fake up an identichip for Thornton, but they wouldn’t need that to gain the admiral’s confidence. Showing up in the overlord’s flagship looking and sounding just like him would be more than good enough.
The Valiant dropped out of SLS directly above Ritan, and Brondi smiled down upon the dark world below. “Gravidar, report!”
“I have . . . nothing on scopes.”
“What?” Brondi blinked. “What do you mean nothing?”
“Wait, there is one contact. She’s small. Looks like a guardian-class destroyer. They’re hailing us.”
“Good. That must be them.” Brondi turned to Captain Thornton. “It’s time for you to shine.”
The captain nodded and turned to the viewports with hands clasped behind his back. He wore the white uniform of the overlord, recently tailored to fit his slightly taller frame. “Put them on screen,” the captain said.
Suddenly their view of Ritan was replaced with the larger-than-life face of a very haggard-looking man. He appeared to be 50-something.
“Supreme Overlord, what are you doing so far from home?”
Thornton sighed. “It’s a long story.”
The man on screen folded his hands on the desk before him and nodded. “I’m listening.”
Captain Thornton dutifully explained the story they’d come up with. An outlaw fleet had attacked them with a devastating bio weapon—a virus. The Valiant had developed a vaccine before it was too late, but not before their now vastly-under crewed ship had been forced to flee Dark Space by the enemy fleet. Thornton was quick to point out the damage to their port side as proof of that engagement—damage which they’d actually suffered while fleeing Sythians.
At the end of their long, sad story, Thornton revealed the good news. They’d saved some of the vaccine so that Admiral Hoff could inoculate his crew against the deadly virus—just in case it spread.
“Well,” the man speaking with them sighed. “That’s unfortunate. Of course your crew could still be contagious, so we’re going to have to keep our distance, but you can jettison the vaccine in an escape pod and I’ll be sure that it gets to the admiral so he can distribute it to the fleet.”
Brondi was upset to hear they weren’t talking with the admiral himself, but happy that it seemed like the man they were talking to had bought their cover story. He’s even going to spread the virus for me! Brondi thought.
“We’ll be in touch, Dominic.” And with that, the holo call ended and Brondi was left grinning smugly out at space. Soon he’d have a whole fleet under his command! Now he just needed to find a crew for it. Perhaps he’d open recruitment offices when they got back to Dark Space. . . . Yes, Brondi nodded. Dreams of a truly free Imperium safely tucked away in Dark Space, patrolled and ruled by a powerful fleet under his command swirled through his head.
Brondi turned from the viewports to address his crew—
That was when the deck rocked violently under his feet. Brondi fell against the viewports. The thunk which sounded from that impact rang painfully in his ears, and then the lights flickered and went out. Suddenly Brondi felt his feet drifting free of the deck. He snapped on his zephyr’s floodlights just in time to see the ceiling rushing up to greet him. He bounced off with a hollow-sounding thud and then turned to see the rest of his crew floating above the deck, their arms and legs flailing as they cursed and shouted at each other. Brondi twisted his torso the other way to see Captain Thornton floating in a globular pool of his own blood. “Captain!” he yelled.
But Thornton didn’t respond.
* * *
Roan heard the distant boom of the explosion, and he grinned inside his helmet. The lights went out, and then the gravity failed but Roan could manage in zero G just fine using his armor. His suit auto adjusted its grav field to keep his feet rooted to the deck and simulate a steady 1.25 G’s, which was the gravity on his home world, Noctune.
Roan had done everything he could to take back the Valiant, but they had finally made it impossible for him to hunt any more. After being almost killed by mines—twice—while trying to get to the surviving crew members, Roan had finally understood that there was only one option left, and he had thought back to the plan Tova had laid out for him to sabotage the ship before reinforcements arrived. They’d asked him to shut down the main reactor and destroy the IMS—which is exactly what he had done.
Tova had warned him that the humans would eventually use grav guns and field emitters to regain their footing, but without power on the ship, they’d have to venture out to fix the reactor and the ruined IMS, and that was what Roan really wanted. He’d laid a few traps of his own along the approaches to those areas of the ship.
Roan hissed inside his helmet and bared his teeth. It was time to hunt again.
* * *
Alara, Gina, and Delayn fell into a routine, the hours blurring together with the same dull monotony of napping, eating emergency rations, and taking turns to stay awake and nursemaid the Rescue. Someone had to constantly watch the reactor’s coolant levels and core temperature. If the coolant dropped too low, or the core temperature rose too high, they would have to make an emergency stop to let the reactor cool. In between watching the reactor, they studied the time till reversion. The SLS timer was like the timer on a bomb—which was exactly what it felt like. It felt like they were riding inside a giant bomb. In her mind’s eye Alara saw it explode in a magnificent flash of light and sound which could be seen streaking across the night sky, clear from one side of the galaxy to the other.
And then, that was exactly what happened. Alara saw the flash of light and heard—
“Wake up, Kiddie!” Someone was shaking her. “Wake up!”
She groaned and sat up to see the maddening, bright swirl of SLS fade to a much more tolerable pattern of tiny pinpricks of light.
“Where are we?” she asked, suddenly disoriented. Gina stopped shaking her, and Delayn answered her question.
“The core was getting too hot, so I dropped us out to let the reactor cool. Meanwhile, we can see if we’re close enough now for Tova to contact her fellow skull faces. “Tova?”
“I try . . . wait.”
They held their breath, and then Tova’s gleaming black helmet turned to them. “I cannot. They are silent.”
“What do you mean they are silent?”
“Their voices too far for me to hear.”
“So we’re not close enough yet.”
“Perhaps.”
Gina nodded and she and Alara got up to stretch their legs while they waited for the reactor to cool. They spent the time pacing around the small bridge, periodically checking on the core temperature while Tova sat still and silent at the gravidar station. Half an hour later the temperature had fallen enough for them to risk another jump. Alara sat down with a sigh, and when the stars dissolved into star lines and streaks of light once more, she had to swallow a scream. This had gone on too long. “How far away are we?”
“Three hours,” Delayn answered.
“Let’s just finish the trip. Tova can try to contact her people again when we arrive—or not—I don’t care. I need to get aboard Obsidian Station and out of this ship soon or I’m going to go skriffy.”
“Sure,” Gina said.
Alara tried to calm her racing heart enough to get back to sleep. Eventually, with the timer running down from two hours, she managed to do just that. She dreamed of a faceless army of black-armored soldiers marching across a dark field of equally black glass. Their glowing red eyes turned to her as one, and then they began shooting deadly purple stars at her. As the missiles swarmed toward her, the aliens began to chant in a deep, computerized voice, “Ten, nine, eight, seven—”
Alara woke up, suddenly realizing that what she was hearing was the countdown to real space. “We made it?”
The timer reached one, and they watched the star lines return to pinpoints of light. Alara’s gaze dipped to the star map, searching for the station, but all she could see was a clump of asteroids marked in gray icons on the grid.
Gina punched her star map. “Frek you!” she screamed.
“Where is it?” Alara asked. She shook her head, unable, or unwilling, to understand what she was looking at. “What is this?” She pointed to the gray icons on the star map.
Gina turned to her, a solemn look on her face. Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Neither of them could. After coming all this way, exhausting all their fuel and taking all of the hopes of the Defiant’s crew with them, they’d finally made it to Obsidian Station.