Dark Space: Origin

by Jasper T. Scott

  “How far is the ship from here? Can we get there in a hurry?”

  “You can take the lift tube right outside the front doors. Deck 24.”

  Atton let out a long sigh. “How do you feel about all of this?”

  “I’m hedging my bets, aren’t I? So whatever happens, I can deny my part in it.”

  “I wish you’d agree to come with me. Whatever’s down there, I have a feeling you’re going to have to see it for yourself. If you don’t, you might not even believe me when I tell you.”

  “Atton, there’s no way I’ll be able to deny my involvement if he catches me on the holocorders down there.”

  “I guess it all depends on whether or not you want to continue living with the secrets and the lies.” Destra frowned and looked away. Atton went on, “Think about Atta.”

  The back doors swished open, and both Destra and Atton jumped.

  “Hello,” Hoff said as he stepped outside.

  Atton smiled up at him.

  “Hello, darling,” Destra said matching Atton’s smile. “We missed you at lunch.”

  “I told you I couldn’t come. We had an emergency to deal with.”

  “What kind of emergency?” Atton asked.

  Hoff turned to him with a sarcastic smile. “I’m glad you asked. Your pet Gors were caught calling for backup.”

  “What?” Atton bolted to his feet.

  “That’s right. I caught them making unscheduled contact with their so-called crèche mates.”

  Atton shook his head. “How?”

  “While you were turning a blind eye to them, I found a way to detect their telepathy, and I detected it coming from this ship as soon as we dropped out of SLS.”

  “What? Hold on, even if your technology is perfect, he still could have been contacting a friend on Ritan.”

  “He and Tova denied all the reasonable explanations, leaving just one possibility—they betrayed us.”

  Destra gasped. “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve had both Roan and Tova put into stasis, so there won’t be any more unscheduled communications from them.”

  “I mean what are we going to do about the Gors,” Destra replied. “They’re everywhere.”

  “And they’re on my fleet,” Atton growled. “If you do anything—”

  “Then that’s your problem.” Hoff pointed at him. “If you hadn’t trusted them in the first place we wouldn’t have to deal with this mess now. For the sake of your men, I hope the Gors still make a distinction between your fleet and mine, but if not . . . the blame for their deaths sits squarely on your shoulders. I’m pulling the plug on Ritan.”

  “What?!” Atton shook his head. “There are tens of thousands of Gors on Ritan!”

  “Exactly. We’re still a few trillion short before that will make us even for the war, but it’s a good start.”

  “Are you positive they were giving us away?” Atton said. “How does your detector work? Maybe it’s not that accurate, or there was some kind of interference.”

  Hoff waved his hand dismissively. “How it works is classified, but I can assure you the technology has been thoroughly tested.”

  “Hoff,” Destra rose to her feet now, too. She walked over to him and took his hand in both of hers. “Listen to Atton. If you turn on the Gors now, thousands of men will die. At least give Atton time to tell his fleet so he can protect his men.”

  Hoff gritted his teeth and shook his head. “How do you propose we do that? With our nonexistent commnet, perhaps? I’d love to warn them, but it’s too late for that. The Gors have already turned on us, and if we don’t act now, Ritan will be overrun. Right now we have the chance to strike them fast, and strike them hard. If we have to lose a few ships for that, then count them as acceptable losses, and rather think of how many lives we’ll save by killing that many Gors.” Hoff turned to Atton and scowled. “You know that this means I was right. All along, I was right about your so-called allies. I only hope that your blind trust in them hasn’t already exposed Dark Space, or we’re about to relive the Exodus.”

  Atton shook his head. “Trust is never wrong—only ever misplaced.”

  “Well you certainly misplaced yours! Expect betrayal, Atton, and plan for it. Trust no one! If you had been doing that as you should, we wouldn’t have to take back the Valiant now, and I wouldn’t have to write off all your ships out here in Sythian Space.”

  “Trust no one?” Destra echoed thoughtfully. “Not even your wife?”

  Hoff just looked at her, but his ire was undiminished by the fire now flashing in his wife’s eyes. “I trust you more than anyone, Des—and you know that—”

  “More than Donali?”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I’ve been burned before, Destra! The closer someone is, the easier it is for them to stab you in the back. Don’t push me, Des. That only raises my suspicions.”

  Destra smirked and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to go help HTX set the table.” As she brushed past her husband, she said, “You’d better stay out here, Hoff. I’ll be handling knives, and you know how easy it would be for me to stab you if you were to wander too close.”

  Both Atton and Hoff watched her leave. As soon as the door swished shut behind her, Hoff turned to Atton with thoughtfully narrowed eyes. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what the two of you have been talking about while I’ve been gone.”

  “Finding someone else to blame for your mistakes isn’t going to fix them.”

  Hoff smiled. “Be careful, Atton. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

  “No? I think I have a pretty good idea, actually. You’re a coward.” Hoff’s eyes flashed, but Atton barreled on. “You don’t trust anyone because you’re afraid. Scared to death, even of your own wife.”

  “That’s none of your business,” Hoff growled.

  “She’s my mother. That makes it my business.”

  “Watch your step, boy. You’re treading on very dangerous ground.”

  Atton smiled back. “So are you.”

  Chapter 22

  No one talked over dinner. Hoff contented himself with the silence, but he couldn’t help noticing how far away his wife and daughter sat, all the way at the opposite end of the dining room table. Atton sat with them, leaving four empty seats on Hoff’s end of the eight seat table. Unimpressed by their petulant solidarity, Hoff left and returned to the bridge. When he reached the bridge, he found his XO still on deck, supervising the minutiae of running the ship. Hoff nodded to the commander as he approached. “All’s well?”

  “Yes, sir. I wasn’t expecting you here . . . is everything all right, sir?”

  “Just fine, Donali. I thought we could go over strategy now that the Gors are no longer going to be there to serve as a link between us and the Interloper.”

  Donali nodded. “What do you suggest for our new plan of attack?”

  “We drop out of SLS a quarter of a light year from Dark Space, and then send out the Interloper by herself to gather intel. We wait for her to return with the intel, and then we send her back out, loaded with as many sentinels as we can fit on board. After that, the rest is the same—she sidles up to one of the Valiant’s venture-class hangars, and then we jump in as close as we can get and make a quick pass to knock out the hangar shields. Brondi won’t even see the Interloper slip inside, and we’ll roar safely underneath the carrier, running away at top speed. A quick hit and run.”

  “What about their SLS disruptor field?”

  “Carriers like the Valiant can knock ships out of SLS at 20 to 50 klicks. We can cover that kind of distance quickly enough using our novas to screen us from enemy fighters. We might take a bit of damage, but we only have to make one pass. Coordination will be difficult without the Gors, but if the Interloper does her part, it should work just the same way, and it will certainly be easier than trying to take on the Valiant in a straight fight.”

  “I suspect we would lose if we tried.�
��

  “Indeed we would.”

  They spent the next half an hour working over the details of their battle plan, but the sheer simplicity of the plan didn’t call for so much contemplation. Hoff was just trying to keep his mind off other things, and soon that became apparent.

  “You should get some sleep, sir,” Donali said.

  Hoff shook his head. He had no intention of returning to his quarters to bask in his wife’s tense, stony silence. “It’s early yet, Commander. When was the last time you had a drink? A real drink?”

  “Sir, under the circumstances I’m not sure we can allow ourselves that kind of indiscretion.”

  “On the contrary, Donali. These are the only circumstances by which we can. We have a long jump ahead of us, and no Gor ship we’ve ever encountered has SLS disruptors. Call a condition green for the next few hours. Our men deserve a break—and so do we.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donali said, frowning. He turned and nodded to the comm officer. “Set readiness to condition green.”

  * * *

  Ethan’s hands flew over the controls in a familiar rhythm as he led his squadron through a series of basic flight maneuvers. To say that they were green was an understatement. Gina was the only one with any aptitude for flying, and that was likely because she was already a trained pilot, which just went to show, there were some things a slave chip didn’t or couldn’t change. There was always a trace. The other pilots flew only marginally better than the sentinels which they’d been trained to be, and Gina flew only a few letter grades worse than she used to.

  “Frek, he’s doing it again! Devlin Four, keep the frek away from me! You’re going to tear my wing off.”

  Ethan sighed. “It only looks that way, Three. Four—maintain a strict distance at all times.”

  “I am, LC! Five keeps wandering my way and I have to compensate in the other direction!”

  Greenies. All of them. “This mission is over. We’re returning to the Valiant to get some more sim time. I’m coming about. Try to keep up.” Ethan stepped on the right rudder pedal and brought his Nova around back the way they’d come. The icy surface of Firea hove into view. Lying to one side of that, against the night side of the planet was the Valiant, her lights glittering like a million tightly-packed stars. Range to the carrier was just over 250 klicks. Brondi had Devlin Squadron flying back-to-back patrol missions on the outskirts of the perimeter he’d set up, meaning that they would be among the first to encounter Admiral Heston’s forces when they arrived. Then the life and death struggle would begin. Kill or be killed. Ethan hadn’t decided which was worse.

  It was hard to believe that he was back where he’d started—being blackmailed into working for Brondi in order to protect Alara. So far Brondi was holding up his end of the deal and keeping his men away from Alara, but Ethan knew better than to rely on that. He and Alara had to escape somehow. Maybe when Hoff came and the battle was in full swing there would be an opportunity for Ethan to slip away and rescue her—assuming he wasn’t embroiled in the middle of a dogfight at the time, and assuming he could find some way to rescue Alara despite the fact that she didn’t want to be rescued.

  It was a hopeless situation. Ethan’s gaze dipped to study the star map on his main holo display. The sheer number of enemy forces arrayed there was startling. In the last day since they’d arrived in Dark Space, Brondi had managed to summon over a dozen small and medium-sized warships to the Firean System, along with whole wings of fighters. Space was alive and buzzing with over 500 fighters—more than 40 squadrons of novas and junkers. There wasn’t even room for all of them to land at once, so they were flying endless, rotating sorties to provide a protective screen for the Valiant. And that five-kilometer-long gladiator-class carrier was not so defenseless herself. Ethan remembered that the admiral’s flagship had carried just one squadron of novas, and he fervently hoped that Hoff had put together a big enough fleet to take the Valiant down. Ethan hadn’t seen such a display of force since the old glory days of the Imperium, and it was frightening to think that the return of those days might come under Brondi’s rule.

  If Hoff didn’t recover the Valiant soon, Dark Space was about to grow much darker.

  * * *

  Atton slept in late and crept out into the hall as he had the previous morning. This time he couldn’t hear hushed voices coming from the living room, but HTX4 was buzzing around in the kitchen again. Atton followed him out into the main living area just in time to see Hoff rise from the dining room table. Destra was there, too, but sitting at the opposite end of the table.

  Hoff looked up and smiled as Atton approached. “Good morning. I was just headed to the bridge, so I’ll leave you and your mother to gossip about me in my absence.”

  Atton shook his head as the front doors swished shut behind the admiral. He pulled out a chair on the sliding rails which bolted it to the floor and sat down with a sigh. “Is your husband always so grumpy in the morning?”

  “He suspects something, Atton.”

  “All the more reason for us to act quickly.” He saw his mother’s hesitant expression and frowned. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. We’re not going to get another chance at this. It’s now or never, Mom.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind about that,” Destra said. “I’ve decided to come with you.”

  Atton blinked. “What? What changed your mind?”

  “Last night. I told myself that maybe he’s just keeping military secrets. But Hoff’s philosophy to live by is trust no one—the closer someone is, the easier it is for them to stab you in the back. With an attitude like that he could be hiding anything and everything.”

  “I’m glad you woke up.” Atton pushed out his chair.

  Destra shot him an anxious look. “Aren’t you going to eat something first?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no time. We have to go now.”

  * * *

  This time when the Tauron dropped out of SLS, space wasn’t black and full of glittering stars; it was dark and gray with actinic flashes of light which would have sounded like thunder if you could have stuck your head out an airlock and still lived to tell about it. They’d dropped out of superluminal space in the middle of the Stormcloud Nebula. The pervasive gray clouds of charged particles and the constant buzz of static discharging was enough to shield anything within the nebula from prying scanners, and for over a decade, the Stormcloud Nebula had kept the entrance of Dark Space safely hidden from Sythians and Gors alike. Admiral Heston just hoped that it hadn’t all been for nothing. Even if the Gors didn’t know exactly where Dark Space was, as Atton said, there was still the matter of taking the sector back from Brondi. He was beginning to wonder at the wisdom of attempting that with just two ships, but the Interloper was their secret weapon. One pass on the Valiant’s hangar and the cloaked cruiser would slip inside with a legion of fully-armed and armored sentinels.

  Hoff turned away from the viewports to look over his crew. There were a dozen crew stations on the bridge of the Tauron, thirteen counting the captain’s table where he and Commander Lenon Donali oversaw the running of the old battleship from a bird’s eye perspective.

  “Gravidar, is the Dark Space gate active?” Hoff asked as it appeared, glowing like a bright blue eye through the murky gray nebular clouds.

  “Yes, sir; it appears to be. Do you think they left the door open on purpose?”

  “If they did, then it’s mined. Nav, plot a parallel course. Make sure it’s still a safe distance from the nearest event horizon. We don’t want to get sucked into a black hole.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Engineering, raise shields to maximum. If we hit a stray mine or two, we need to be sure we live through the experience.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is it people—the last leg of our journey.” Heads bobbed around the bridge, and Hoff paced up to the captain’s table to find Donali frowning down at the grid, his expression grave, his real eye wide and startled. “What’s
wrong?” Then Hoff saw what his XO was looking at and his jaw dropped open.

  Hoff spun around, his face livid. Behind him, steadily advancing out from their ship was a glittering yellow wave which indicated another unexplained tachyon burst. “Comms! Put me through to the med bay immediately! And get a squad of sentinels down there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Betrayal is lurking around every corner, it would seem,” Hoff muttered as his comm trilled. A moment later the chief medical officer answered, but Hoff didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Where are the Gors?”

  “In stasis, sir . . .”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Lie sir?”

  “One moment.” Hoff muted the channel and pointed to his security officer, Sergeant Thriker. “Get me eyes on that deck. I want to see the Gors in their stasis tubes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hoff unmuted the channel. “You were saying, Deck Officer?”

  “I was saying they haven’t been taken out of stasis since they were put there, sir.”

  A moment later Sergeant Thriker reported he’d isolated the correct holocorder. Hoff gestured for him to display it on the main viewport. A moment later the viewport shimmered and a holo of Tova and Roan appeared. They stood upright in matching stasis tubes, their skull-like faces clearly visible through the blue-tinted transpiranium.

  “That’s impossible,” Hoff whispered. The Gors weren’t conscious, so how were they sending telepathic messages? Do they communicate in their sleep? What other possible explanation could there be?

  “Sorry, sir? What’s impossible?” the medical chief asked.

  “I’ll get back to you in a moment,” Hoff replied and ended the comm call.

  “Perhaps we have a stowaway?” Donali asked.

  “If we do, then why haven’t our displacement sensors alerted us? Moreover, how has no one noticed? If we have a stowaway, he can’t be cloaked. You said we can’t detect tachyon radiation from a cloaked source.”