In the next instant space shimmered and a lavender-hued ship de-cloaked right in front of them. A wave of alien missiles spun out toward them before Caldin could even react. “Evasive action!” she said.
The comms crackled with the Interloper’s reply, “Negative, Defiant, our mission cannot be compromised. We’ll send someone back for you in case you survive.”
Caldin shook her head, incredulous. “So you’re just going to leave us here?” She heard the sounds of a struggle in the background. It sounded like Delayn.
“Restrain that man! I’m sorry, Defiant. We did what we could.” And with that, the comms went silent, and the Interloper disappeared from the star map, cloaking once more.
The first of the enemy warheads hit their bow with a bright flash of light and the deck shook underfoot. The lights dimmed as the shields took most of the available power to absorb that hit, and Caldin traded horrified glances with the nearest crewman—Deck Officer Gorvan, the weapons chief. He seemed frozen with shock, his eyes wide and his eyebrows raised, as if asking her what he should do.
“Return fire!” she shouted.
* * *
—THE YEAR 3 AE—
Destra stood on the steaming, glassy black plains of a recently cooled magma field. The residual heat of it was enough to keep the ice back—for now. She stared up at the stars, watching as one which was far larger than the rest, moved quickly across the sky.
It must be a meteor, she thought.
She saw it begin to glow, lighting up the night as it hit Ritan’s upper atmosphere, and then came the sonic boom of its passage. A frigid wind raised hairs on the back of her neck, and she turned in a quick circle, to make sure nothing was creeping up on her while she stood mesmerized by the rare event.
There were no rictans on the ground that she could see—not that she could see very well—and as for predators hunting her from the sky, she would hear the loud whoosh of wings just before one of the giant bats descended on her, and that would give her at least a few seconds’ warning.
Thanks to them, however, the rictans mostly left her alone. Months ago she’d discovered a bat cave at the end of an icy canyon. She’d harvested enough guano there that she could mask her scent whenever she left home—home was the Sythian shell fighter she’d landed in. That alien spacecraft was her only sanctuary on the desolate netherworld which was Ritan. She remembered sleeping with Hoff inside that bubble of relative warmth and safety. Every night they’d slept together on the same improvised bed and held each other close for warmth and reassurance. Now she slept alone, shivering and afraid, waking up every hour with her eyes wide and darting, searching the shadows for some unseen predator.
By her count it had been almost a month since Hoff had been killed by rictans, but it was hard to tell without a sun to divide the days from the nights. She hadn’t been the same since he’d died. She’d buried him under a mound of snow and rocks, but rictans had dug him up the next day and finished what they’d started. If only she and Hoff had found the bat cave together. That guano would have saved his life.
Since Hoff had died she’d become even skinnier, if that were possible. Hoff had been the hunter, but now it was up to her, and it wasn’t easy to get the ever-blunting point of her bone spear through the tough, hirsute hide of the ice walkers. It was even harder to drag one of them to a place of safety where she could skin and gut her kill. She’d always been the one keeping watch while Hoff had done that.
With a grimace, Destra turned away from the falling meteor and limped back to her sanctuary. The injuries she’d sustained from the rictans that had killed Hoff still haunted her. The dark silhouette of the shell grew on the horizon. Ritan was always dark. Sometimes, she’d wake up on a particularly smoke and ash-clouded day and step outside to find that it was too dark to even find her hand in front of her face. On days like that she’d wonder with a sudden, cold sweat of panic if she were going blind.
The faint light inside the shell belied that, but her tendency toward irrational, paranoid, and even outright crazy thoughts grew with every passing day.
Suddenly, the world flashed with blinding light and deafening sound, and she had another irrational thought—Ritan was exploding around her. Destra blinked spots out of her eyes and forced herself to focus on the bright and shining hull of the shell which had been her home for the past three years. It shouldn’t have been bright or shining in the perpetual darkness of Ritan, but now the mirror-clear hull of the fighter’s “shell” was glowing as bright as a sun—not that she could remember what suns looked like. Besides that hallucination, there was also the loud roaring in her ears which grew louder and nearer by the second.
Suddenly her mind seemed to grasp what was happening and she realized that both the light and sound were coming from behind her. She spun around to look and saw a bright point of light drawing steadily closer and larger on the horizon. It was the meteor she’d been watching earlier, except that it was no meteor. It’s impossible, she thought. I’m dreaming. Wake up, Destra! Damn you, wake up! The worst dreams were the ones where a rescue came, because when she finally woke up, she was still alone in the dark on Ritan. Those dreams haunted her more than any nightmare of Sythians, rictans, or bats—they were just another reminder of a rescue that would never come.
The light became so bright and all-consuming that Destra couldn’t watch it anymore. The sound was horrendous, but now growing softer. She heard a th-thunk as the ship settled to the ground in front of her, and she just stood there, shaking her head. It wasn’t real. Don’t believe it, Destra! Don’t! It’s not real. It’s never real. Don’t fall for this again. . . .
Then she felt someone shaking her by her shoulders, and she opened her eyes to see a man—a very familiar man—gazing at her with fire burning in his gray eyes. “Where is Hoff?” he asked.
Destra shook her head. She tried to work enough moisture into her mouth so that she could speak, but no words came out when her lips moved. She hadn’t had to use her voice in over a month.
“Where is the admiral?” the man demanded, shaking her again.
It was impossible. I must be dreaming, she thought as she stared into the lovely gray eyes of a ghost. Her gaze flicked over his decorated black ISSF uniform with white piping and gold stars’ insignia, and then back up to his rugged face. She wasn’t sure why he was looking for the admiral. He was the admiral.
“Oh, Hoff, you died,” she said. She reached out to cup his cheek with a dirty hand, and tears welled in her eyes.
Hoff’s gaze softened. “Who are you?”
It couldn’t be him. He didn’t even remember her. “I’m Destra . . . Destra Ortane,” she said, wiping her cheeks as her tears fell. “Don’t you remember me, Hoff?”
“Are there any others here with you?”
Destra shook her head.
“Well, let’s go. At least I didn’t come all this way for nothing,” Hoff said as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders to guide her toward the light.
Destra went willingly, still wondering when she was going to wake up, but so far this was unlike any dream she’d ever had. When she stepped aboard the waiting corvette and followed Hoff’s ghost to the ship’s med bay, she began to wonder. She reached the med bay in a daze and was forced to sit while the doctor checked her over. When he stepped in front of her to examine her more closely, she saw that one of his eyes was red and glowing, and she jumped up from the table. “Stay away from me, Sythian!”
The doctor frowned and Hoff turned to watch her backing away with his eyebrows raised. “It’s an artificial eye. Sit down.”
Destra stared at the doctor for a long while, her chest rising and falling quickly, fists clenched and shaking. The man smiled reassuringly at her. “Come on,” he said, and patted the examination table beside him. “Let’s finish checking you over.”
After another moment, she walked hesitantly back to the examination table, but her eyes never left his face. When he didn’t suddenly turn into a hissing Sythian, sh
e relaxed somewhat and sat down on the table.
“She’s delirious with hunger,” Hoff said.
“Yes,” the doctor replied. “From the look of her, it’s a miracle she’s lived this long.” He forced Destra to lie down while he inserted a catheter in her wrist. The sharp prick made her wince, and a moment later she felt a cold trickle of fluids entering her body. She gasped, her head spinning where it lay on an impossibly soft pillow. She’d forgotten what a pillow felt like.
“She’s badly malnourished,” the doctor said.
“Finding food with the proper nutrients can’t have been easy.”
“Indeed . . . what about the transmission we heard?” the doctor asked. “She claimed you were with her.”
“As I said, Lieutenant, she’s delirious. Maybe I met her briefly before or during the war, but as for why she felt the need to invent a fictional story that fixated on me in particular . . . that’s your department.”
“It probably made her feel better to think she was marooned with an admiral rather than all alone. Well, I’m sure she’ll be more lucid when we get her back to health.”
“I’m sure she will. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, we need to get back to the Tauron—goodbye, Destra.”
She saw the admiral’s smiling face appear above her. That smile is wrong, she thought. It didn’t have the sardonic twist that she was used to, and his cheek didn’t bear the old rictan scar which should have caused it. “I’ll see you soon,” the admiral said, and his face disappeared. “Take good care of her, Donali.”
“I will. I’ve administered a sedative, so she should fall asleep soon.”
Destra heard the admiral’s footsteps receding, followed by the sound of a door swishing open and then shut. She saw the doctor appear above her. He smiled. “Let’s see what we can do to fix you up, shall we?” The man was perhaps forty, with receding black hair, and distinguished features, but all she could see was that horrible red eye, glowing and winking at her every time his real eye blinked.
Would he try to hurt her? She felt her eyelids grow heavy and her thoughts become sluggish. What if the doctor killed her so he wouldn’t have to share his food and supplies with her?
Destra felt her heart begin to pound and heard a nearby monitor beeping frantically in time to her pulse. The doctor reached out and placed a cool hand against her forehead. She flinched at his icy touch.
“You have a fever. Try to relax. I’m going to conduct a routine body scan to make sure there’s nothing serious amiss, okay?” She tried to shake her head, but it barely moved. “Shhh . . .” the doctor cooed.
Destra watched a bright blue eye snap on overhead with an ominous humming sound. Without warning it cast a swath of shimmering light over her from head to toe and back again.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” the doctor asked.
Destra managed a groan. She had to fight to keep her eyes open.
“Now, let’s see what we have here . . .” she heard the doctor say, followed by the sound of a chair rolling across the deck. “Oh, my . . .” he said. “That can’t be right.”
Destra’s eyes flickered open and she saw the doctor turn from a nearby holoscreen to peer suspiciously at her. “Weren’t you alone on, Ritan?” he asked.
“No . . . told you . . .” she said sleepily. “I was with Hoff.”
“Well, you must have been with someone, hoi?” He laughed lightly. “Don’t worry, we’ll sort it all out, but for now you’d better rest.”
Destra’s eyes drifted shut once more in response to that suggestion.
“That’s right. . . .” the doctor continued, “go to sleep.”
Despite not wanting to, Destra did fall asleep, and that was when she finally realized—
It had all been real, and she really had been rescued.
Chapter 3
—THE YEAR 10 AE—
Alara stood on the bridge of the Interloper, gazing out at stars. The bridge viewport was one unbroken dome stretching from floor to ceiling, with all of the crew stations arrayed in a circle on the glassy black deck of the alien cruiser. Even with a human crew, the ship was dark and cold inside. When she’d asked about that, one of the crew had told her that the captured cruiser had vast limitations when it came to heating and illumination, because the Gors didn’t need either to be comfortable. When they’d first tried to remedy that, the inside of the hull had begun throwing off distracting reflections, and some of the alien tech had begun to malfunction.
Alara shivered and hugged herself, listening with half an ear to Captain Adram speaking with the Defiant. She stopped paying attention almost immediately. Now that they’d been rescued, her thoughts turned inward to focus on her own world of problems—to focus on Ethan. The more she thought about him, the angrier she became, both with him and herself. He was married. How could she have allowed herself to fall for someone who was married? And why would he keep a woman who was obviously in love with him so close if he wanted to protect his marriage? Maybe they’d had an affair. Thanks to the slave chip, Alara’s brain was programmed not to take offense at the idea of an affair on a moral basis, so she took offense on a personal one. Ethan had been toying with her—using her!—and he hadn’t even been paying her for that privilege. It was enough to make her want to execute him herself. He’d used her feelings for him; he’d taken everything from her and given nothing back, he’d—
Alara’s thoughts were interrupted as she heard Delayn raise his voice and start screaming incoherently. She turned to see him being restrained by two sentinels. Delayn struggled and railed at them, spitting in one of their faces. “Cowards! You can’t abandon them! For frek’s sake—fight!”
“What’s going on?” Alara asked, her brow furrowing.
Captain Adram turned to point at her. “Restrain her, too, and get them off my bridge!”
Alara saw two more sentinels closing in on her, and she touched her ear to make a comm call to Gina. The call went through just as the two men seized her. “Gina! The Sythians are here! They’re attacking the Defiant and the Interloper is going to abandon them! We—”
One of the men holding her yanked the comm piece from her ear and said, “That’s enough of that.”
* * *
The deck shuddered underfoot, and Commander Caldin heard something groan in the superstructure of the ship. She held on to the Captain’s table with both hands, watching as their view of space tilted away from the streaming purple lines of Sythian missiles, but their trajectory was changing too slowly to dodge the incoming warheads.
“I said evasive action!” Caldin called out as another pair of spinning purple stars slammed into the forward viewport with a boom. She winced away from the accompanying flash of light.
“Maneuvering thrusters are damaged!” the helmsman replied. “We can’t evade anything like this.”
A pair of shell fighters screamed toward the bridge. Turrets swiveled and tracked them with a steady stream of red dymium lasers, but the alien fighters dipped and wove, and the lasers lanced by without effect. As Caldin watched, those fighters dropped another pair of missiles. Two more purple stars streaked toward the forward viewports and impacted a second later. The bridge shields hissed, flaring with a blinding light. The alien fighters roared out overhead, provoking a peal of simulated thunder from the bridge’s sound system. The brightness faded from the viewport just in time for Caldin to see another volley of alien missiles slam into the bow, provoking multiple explosions.
“Decks 15 through 17 are venting atmosphere!” engineering reported. “Bulkheads sealing.”
Caldin watched her ship’s air running out into space on bright jets of fast-dying flames. “Where’s our Nova pilot?” she asked suddenly, her eyes scanning the grid. They’d launched their last nova fighter to recon the Interloper as it had approached. That had been just a few minutes ago, but it seemed like hours. Time was passing like molasses dripping through a funnel. A moment later, Caldin found their nova, running away in full overdrive a
t 186 KAPS.
“He’s fleeing from the engagement, ma’am!” Petty Officer Goldrim at the gravidar replied in the next instant.
Caldin shook her head. “Are there no loyal officers left in this damn galaxy?”
“I’m detecting his SLS spooling. Should I try to order him back here?” Grimsby asked from the comms.
“No, leave him! Let cowards die as cowards live—alone.”
The deck shuddered once more, and the lights dimmed. Caldin felt herself grow abruptly lighter as the IMS flickered, but then gravity was back in full force. “Weapons! Get all our gunners on the beam cannons. If we can’t live through this fight, we might as well take a few skull faces with us!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Helm! Set course for K-21-11-98. Let’s take down the straggler.”
The helmsman nodded, and Caldin watched as their view panned to port and the smallest of the three Sythian ships came into view—a frontrunner-class destroyer at just over 70 meters long. It was less than a tenth the size of the Defiant, but with their ship damaged and undermanned, it would be a challenge to take down even that small destroyer, let alone one of the larger cruisers which was attacking them on their port side. Distant thunder sounded as more missiles impacted.
“Shields in the yellow, dropping below 50%,” engineering reported.
“Gunners ready?” Caldin asked.
“Almost, ma’am!” weapons replied.
“Tell them to hurry up, Gorvan!”
Caldin tapped her foot while she waited, watching as their last nova winked off the grid, jumping to SLS.
“In position!” Deck Officer Gorvan said from the gunnery station.
“Open fire!” Caldin ordered.
Four red dymium beams lanced out from the forward cannons, followed by a volley from the eight blue dymium beams on their starboard side. All twelve cannons drew shimmering lines across the destroyer’s shields, but no fire or debris spat out from the enemy ship. The combined volley lasted for just a few seconds before the cannons depleted their charge.
Dark Space: Origin Page 4