Caldin nodded. Comms reported another message from the Tauron, but it was little more than a repetition of what the admiral had said before. They were now a quarter of a light year from Brondi’s position—assuming the crime lord hadn’t moved since they’d received a signal from the imposter overlord’s tracking device. Now they were to jump the rest of the way and perform a recon of the area. With the Interloper’s cloaking device, recon wouldn’t be a difficult mission for them.
“Undock us,” Caldin ordered.
The temporary docking rings which held them to the Tauron let go, and they drifted away at a modest 45 KAPS—roughly equivalent to meters per second, per second. The nav officer brought them onto their pre-assigned jump trajectory and accelerated up to 999 m/s, the safe-entry speed limit for SLS. Cloaking was engaged, shields were deactivated, and then their real space drives were shut down. The nav officer began an audible countdown to SLS. When it reached zero, space flashed brightly and began to swirl once more.
A timer appeared on the captain’s table, giving their ETA. It counted down from an hour and a half. Caldin spent that time the same way that she’d spent the last six hours—lost in thought, observing an acute, ear-ringing silence. Her men were also unusually quiet, focused on the mission, or perhaps apprehensive about what they would find. Then space was back, and Caldin’s gaze dropped to the captain’s table to see what Brondi had prepared for them.
She gaped and blinked at the grid, suddenly no longer worried about what Hoff’s reaction would be to their coup d’état, and instead worried whether or not they’d live long enough to assert their independence.
“Gravidar! Report! How many ships are we looking at? What class are they and what are their relative strengths—I want a tally!”
“Yes, ma’am,” the gravidar officer replied.
A moment later, the report she’d requested flashed up above the captain’s table. As she scanned the shimmering, holographic list of ships in the area, her worst fears were quickly realized. “The admiral will have to abort this mission,” she said.
“If you think he’s going to run, you don’t know him,” Adram replied.
“He doesn’t have a choice.” Caldin pointed to the tally of 46 SLS interrupter buoys which their scanners had detected. When her finger graced that line of the report, the buoys were highlighted on the grid, and a geodesic sphere made up of scattered red points appeared around the Valiant. The radius of the sphere meant those buoys would pull them out of SLS more than 250 klicks from the carrier, far out of maximum beam range. As if that weren’t bad enough, Brondi had laid minefields in front of the interrupter buoys, and set everything up just before the exit gate along the jump lane leading from the entrance of Dark Space. If the admiral had been naïve enough to use the jump lane, they would have been yanked out of SLS straight into the middle of those mines. And just in case they survived that, Brondi had more than 500 fighters to swarm all over them and finish the job.
“At least we know the layout of Brondi’s defenses now, so we can avoid the mines and find a way through,” Adram said.
Caldin shook her head. “There is no way through. We have to drop out of SLS far out of range and slow down to clear the mines or find a safe path through. Even if we get through unscathed, the admiral’s hit and fade won’t work. He’ll be trapped by the minefields on the other side of the Valiant and swarmed to death by enemy fighters.”
“I guess we’d better leave Dark Space to Brondi, and deal with Hoff ourselves at some later date.”
“We can’t do that either.”
Adram gave her a small smile. “Leave it to the admiral, Captain. He might not be morally equipped to lead, but his grasp of strategy leaves nothing to be desired. I’ve never seen him come out on the losing side of a battle yet, but after this one, he’ll be in no shape to deal with us.”
Caldin held Adram’s gaze for a long moment. His dark eyes shone with an unsettling light, and that small, predatory smile of his was enough to make her shiver. Caldin wasn’t sure what Adram’s real agenda was, but she knew one thing for certain—
He was not to be trusted.
* * *
Atton awoke to the sound of raised voices and a little girl crying. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and stared up at the shifting pattern of light on the ceiling. “I don’t want to go!” she cried.
“You don’t have a choice, Atta. It’s too dangerous for you to stay,” a familiar male voice said.
“No! I don’t want to go!”
“Shh, Atta, listen to your father.”
Atton sat up, wondering what was going on. A moment later his door swished open.
“Lights!”
Abruptly the room was brightly lit. Atton winced against the glare.
“Get dressed,” Hoff ordered as he strode in.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re about to jump into battle. Brondi is much better prepared than I had hoped, and it’s too dangerous for any of you to stay. I’m sending you three to the enclave.”
Atton climbed out of bed and went to pick his clothes off the deck where he’d left them in a messy pile the night before. “If you’re that worried about what we’re up against, then you need my help,” he said as he pulled on his pants.
“Your help?” Hoff echoed.
“I’m a good pilot, and a decent commander. Put me in a cockpit. Let me fly a shuttle at the very least.”
Hoff frowned. “I’m short of ships—not pilots.”
“You must have an extra ship of some kind that could use a pilot.”
“It’s too dangerous, Atton,” Destra insisted.
He looked up from buttoning his shirt to see his mother standing in the open doorway. Atta was hugging her mother’s legs and peeking out warily between them.
“I’m not going to run and hide when I could make a difference in this fight,” Atton said.
Destra set her jaw and crossed her arms as she looked to Hoff for support. “I’m not leaving him again. Either he goes with us, or we’re staying, too.”
Hoff turned back to Atton and shook his head. “Under those conditions I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, and your mother’s right. It is too dangerous.”
“Chip me then.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Make me like you, and then even death can’t touch me, right?”
Hoff held his gaze for a quiet moment.
“You’re going to have to chip all of us, Hoff, and then send the backups to the enclave,” Destra said, “because I’m not leaving without him.”
Hoff turned back to her. “No one can be sure that we don’t still die when we transfer, so I’m not taking the risk if I don’t have to. You’re all going, and that’s final.”
Atton took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Fine. Who’s going to pilot the ship that’s taking us to the enclave? Don’t tell me you’re sparing someone you’re about to need against Brondi.”
Hoff smiled. “Not exactly, no. I’m going to take you.”
Destra’s brow furrowed. “You’re abandoning your command?”
Atton gave a slow smile. “Couldn’t resist it, could you? The chance to be in two places at once.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“What’s he talking about, Hoff?” Destra asked, sounding suddenly frightened.
Atton turned to his mother just in time to see a familiar man appear beside her in the open doorway. “We need to go, Des,” he said.
Destra recoiled from the voice, and Atta ran away screaming. “Hoff!” Destra’s gaze skipped between the two identical men, and her face stretched into a rictus of horror. “What is this?”
Chapter 26
Both men wore the exact same spotless black uniform with white piping and the three gold stars’ insignia of an admiral. Destra couldn’t believe her eyes. This was beyond anything she had prepared herself to deal with. Just a few hours ago she’d decided to join her husband’s mad existence, but she had neve
r imagined that something like this could happen. There’s two of them! she thought, looking from one to the other and back again. She couldn’t blame Atta for running away screaming. Even though she understood what she was seeing, and her daughter didn’t, Destra was tempted to run away screaming, too.
“Hoff, you’ve gone completely skriffy.”
The admiral standing inside Atton’s room turned to give her a grim look. “I’m sorry you feel that way. If it helps, remember that you’ve already been with two of us, so adding a third shouldn’t be that hard. Go with him. He’ll take you to the enclave.”
“This is ridiculous!” Destra burst out. Her eyes kept flicking between the two clones, unsure of which one she should address. “What are you going to do when you come back for us? Flip a coin to see who gets to be my husband and Atta’s father? Or maybe you’ll take turns?”
Hoff smiled sadly, and his gray eyes filled with a subtle sheen of moisture. “You’re assuming that I am coming back.” He turned to address his clone standing in the doorway. “Even if we win this fight, I won’t get in your way, and you won’t see me again. They’re as much your family as they are mine.”
“I appreciate your sacrifice,” the clone said. He took Destra’s hand, and she tried to jerk it away, but he held her fast. “Don’t make me stun you, Des,” he warned.
At that, she gave in. “I’m never going to join you now, Hoff,” she said, blinking tears. “And I’m never going to forgive you!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” the one holding her replied.
“You’d better go with them while you still have the chance, Atton,” the one standing closest to Atton added.
“What about Atta?” Destra demanded. “Are you going to threaten to stun her, too?”
“If I have to.”
“Why would you let her see this, Hoff? She’s just a child.”
“She’s the child of a clone, and sooner or later she had to find out.”
Atton snorted. “Good luck explaining that to her.”
“You’re a heartless kakard, Hoff,” Destra added.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” he replied.
“So am I,” Destra said, nodding slowly. She wiped away her tears with the back of the hand which Hoff’s newest clone wasn’t squeezing with bone-grinding force. So am I.
* * *
Atton was forced to walk in front of Hoff's clone the whole way. The moon in the artificial sky overhead did nothing to lighten the black walls of the silverleaf maze. Little Atta was surprisingly quiet. Whatever her father had said to her before he’d said goodbye had dried her stream of tears and replaced her frightened, darting eyes with a wide and vacant gaze. By contrast, his mother’s expression was grim and determined.
“Where are you taking us?” Destra asked.
“To your transport.” They reached another fork in the path, and Hoff barked out to Atton, “Left!” At the next turn—“Right!” And then—“Another left!”
A few more minutes of that, and they reached the end of the maze. Atton stopped at the concealing holofield and waited there. All of a second later Hoff poked him in the back with his sidearm. “Keep moving.”
Atton smirked as he walked through the seeming wall of silverleafs to the hidden passage on the other side. “You know, you don’t have to march me along at gunpoint.”
Hoff gave no reply, but when they reached the end of the corridor, he holstered his gun and stepped up to the control panel to reactivate the lift tube. Atton considered attacking the admiral while he was distracted, but then he remembered how easily Hoff had deflected his last attack and he thought better of it. Once the lift was reactivated, Hoff gestured for Atton to enter first.
“Still don’t trust me, hoi?” Atton said.
“No more than I have to,” Hoff replied, stepping in after him.
Then something completely unexpected happened.
The admiral must have seen the look of shock cross Atton’s face, because he abruptly spun around to look, but it was too late. Destra had picked up one of the discarded pieces of the lift tube doors which Atton had cut away the previous day, and now she swung that heavy sheet of duranium with all her might.
It hit Hoff in the side of the head with a hollow-sounding smack! He staggered, and Atta began to scream again. Destra didn’t give him a chance to recover. She hit him again and he went spinning into the side of the lift tube and bounced off. Hoff turned in a dizzy circle, blood streaming from a gash above one eye. “I was right not to trust,” was all he managed to say before he collapsed to the floor.
Destra dropped the piece of metal with a noisy bang, and took a quick step back, her eyes wide and locked on her husband’s unconscious form, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. Atta’s cries snapped her out of it. “Daddy?” she said in a small voice, trying to squeeze past her mother to get to him.
Destra grabbed her and turned her away from the scene, shushing her frantic questions. “Why did you hit him? Is he dead?”
“No darling, he’s not dead. He’s just sleeping. Remember he wanted to take us away, but we don’t want to go away, do we? We’re going to stay and help your father, but he wouldn’t let us, so that’s why we had to put him to sleep.”
“But he’s not really Daddy, is he? He told me he is, but . . .”
“Shhh,” Destra cooed.
Atton looked on with a growing sense of unreality setting in. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Hoff hadn’t trusted his wife to know his secret because he was afraid of how she’d react. Now, having seen his mother’s reaction, Atton couldn’t say he blamed the man. He’d known his wife very well.
“Atton,” Destra said, snapping him out of it. “Come on.”
He shook his head. “Hoff said there was a ship waiting below. It must have weapons and shields.”
“Atton . . .”
“I can’t just do nothing! If Brondi wins . . .”
Destra sighed. “You’re as stubborn as your father. Go. I’m not going to stop you.”
“You might want to come with me rather than be around when Hoff wakes up. He’ll never trust you again.”
“He never trusted me to begin with, and I could have killed him. The fact that I didn’t should tell him something. You leave Hoff to me.”
“Which one?”
Destra hesitated, her eyes back on the unconscious clone. “You’d better take that one with you. You’ll need his credentials to get aboard the transport.”
“Then what do you want me to do with him?”
“Tie him up for now. We can figure out that part if you . . .” Destra swallowed hard and shook her head. “When you return.”
“Right. Take care of yourself, Mom,” Atton said as he selected deck 24 from the lift control panel.
“You too, son. I love you!”
He looked up and smiled, opening his mouth to reply, but whatever he said was stolen by the wind as the lift dropped away.
* * *
Hoff returned to the bridge scant minutes before the Tauron dropped out of SLS. Relief radiated from his the crew like a palpable force. They’d been trying to reach him on the comms for the past half an hour while he’d been busy dealing with his family emergency.
Things hadn’t gone the way he had hoped, but he wasn’t surprised by Destra’s reaction. She would come around, although unfortunately, he wouldn’t get to see that. Even if he survived, he couldn’t complicate matters and return to vie against himself for his family. It made no sense. Instead, he would stay in Dark Space and lead humanity there. Eventually he’d find a new persona for himself—a new body, and a new life.
It was almost enough to make him want to give up and die, but he’d been down this road many times before, and as ever, he had a job to do. As long as there were still criminals like Brondi or Sythians and Gors to fight, he would have a reason to carry on.
Hoff forced himself to focus on something other than that brooding train of thought. The Tauron was now just five
minutes from her reversion to real space, and he needed to be ready for it. Their battle plan was simple, but there were a million things which could go wrong.
Upon analyzing intel from the Interloper, they’d found just four safe paths through the minefield which surrounded the Valiant—three leading in, and one leading out. Of those three approach vectors, only two would be possible to line up with the exit vector on the other side, and one was a better approach angle than the other.
Preliminary calculations predicted that their window of opportunity would be tight. Hoff planned to drop out of SLS just a few kilometers from the edge of the interrupter buoys and then roar through the minefield at their top acceleration of 70 KAPS. At that speed it would take just a minute and a half for them to close to within 25 kilometers of the carrier, which was their maximum effective beam and torpedo range. By that point they’d be moving at over six kilometers a second, and the helmsman better have already adjusted their course to avoid a collision. They would have between three and four seconds to overwhelm the hangar shields. Then the Interloper would have approximately fifteen seconds to get inside before the carrier’s port shields equalized and they would have to make another pass. But there could be no second pass. The Tauron wouldn’t survive it. Everything came down to timing.
The narrow entrance and exit of the minefield was another problem they’d have to address. Brondi hadn’t even left enough room to escape the minefield himself. The gaps he’d left were only large enough for fighter wings and small capital ships. Nothing the size of the Tauron was going to make it through unscathed, so they would have to be sure they shot all of the mines along their entry and exit vectors before they got too close, and depending how powerful the mines were, they could still suffer damage—not to mention how much damage they’d take from the hundreds of fighters and the odd dozen capital ships which Brondi had scraped together in the last day and a half to defend himself.
If they got past all of that, they would still have to deal with the carrier’s own defenses. For the most part the Valiant was designed to defend itself from fighter attacks, but there were a handful of capital-ship cracking beam cannons to worry about—not the least of which was her main cannon, a massive corona XL which could punch a 60 meter-wide hole in an unshielded hull at 50 klicks.
Dark Space: Origin Page 29