Dark Space: Origin
Page 38
The temptation to head up there first and pay Brondi a visit was almost overwhelming, but there was no way he’d be able to get off the Valiant after that. It would be a one-way trip.
Hold on, Kiddie— Ethan thought as he punched in his selection. The rail car began whistling down the tracks. He sat down and watched out the windows on the opposite side of the car as the lights of passing glow panels and viewports blurred into a solid golden stream of light. —I’m coming.
* * *
Alara stood listening to Brondi bark out orders as he checked on the status of the assault teams which he’d sent out to the alien cruiser. Thousands of men were already on board the ruined halves of that ship, looking for the Sythians, but so far they hadn’t found anything. Alara wasn’t sure what Brondi was after—maybe he planned to threaten the Sythians in exchange for peace, or maybe he just wanted answers.
Everyone wanted that.
Then, just moments after the last team confirmed that they were aboard the alien ship, something unexpected happened. One of Brondi’s men came marching up to him and took him aside. Alara didn’t hear what that man said, but she heard Brondi’s side of the conversation clearly.
“What? Where are they? . . . What do you mean you just noticed, Gibbs? . . . I know we abandoned the watch stations, but someone should have noticed something before they got that far! Frek!”
Alara watched Brondi spin in a dizzy circle, as if looking for a way out. A few of his crew looked up with wide, questioning eyes, but he ignored them. Brondi’s gaze found her, and abruptly he nodded as if he’d just decided something. “Come on, Sweet Thing,” he said, walking over to her. “You and I have a date.”
Alara shook her head as he approached, and tried to affect an innocent look. “Where are we going?” she asked.
He took her by the arm and dragged her along, heading swiftly for the back of the bridge. The man who had delivered the bad news kept pace beside them, and now Alara recognized him as the sergeant who’d let her in to see Brondi. Again, the crew looked up from their stations with questioning eyes, and this time Brondi answered their unspoken questions. “Good work everyone! We’re doing well! Soon we’ll be the uncontested lords of Dark Space!” He sounded nervous. A mumble of dissent rose from the crew, but no one directly challenged Brondi to ask what he was doing.
Alara felt him suddenly pick up the pace, tugging on her arm more insistently now. He reached the doors and triggered them to open. They strode off the bridge, and the doors swished shut behind them with an ominous boom.
Brondi led them to a nearby bank of lift tubes and pressed the down arrow. Then the ship’s intercom blared to life and they heard a commanding voice say, “This is Captain Loba Caldin of the Imperial Star Systems Fleet to any and all fugitives who are still manning the Valiant. There are over two thousand navy sentinels now on board this ship. Surrender now, without a fight, and you will be granted lenience for your crimes. Fight us, and we will kill you without hesitation.”
Brondi turned to the man standing beside him. “You can help me escape, or be sentenced to the mines of Etaris with the rest. It’s up to you.”
Alara prayed that he would choose Etaris.
“Lead the way,” the sergeant said, dashing her hopes. He gestured to a nearby lift tube as the doors parted, and they all squeezed inside. Brondi selected one of the lower decks. Alara pressed herself into the furthest corner of the lift, wondering if she looked as scared as she felt. Brondi caught her eye and smiled. “Don’t worry, Sweet Thing. We’ll be okay.”
She nodded, but she wasn’t worried about running into Caldin’s forces; she was worried that they wouldn’t and that Brondi would manage to escape—with her. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to make a move soon. Her eyes darted to Sergeant Gibbs’ ripper rifle and his matching sidearm, but Gibbs was overly alert, and he noticed her looking at him immediately. He shot her a lascivious grin, and she forced herself to smile back before looking away. It might not be possible for her to resist without getting herself killed, but death would be preferable to letting these two run away with her.
* * *
Ten minutes earlier . . .
The rail car doors swished open and Ethan launched himself out and through. He raced down the corridor, and all of a few minutes later, he stood panting in the open door of Alara’s quarters, his gaze flicking between the guard lying just inside the entrance at his feet and the other one lying on the bed. Both of them were either dead or stunned, and Ethan didn’t care which. All he cared about was the fact that Alara wasn’t there. Somehow, she’d broken out on her own, and there was no way for him to know where she was now.
Ethan slammed the nearest wall with an armored fist. “Frek!”
The noise caused the man on the bed to stir. Ethan took one look at his loosened belt and blew a smoking hole in his chest. He didn’t want to know how that man had come to be lying on Alara’s bed with his belt half off, but he was willing to bet it wasn’t because he’d felt like taking a nap.
Ethan’s gaze found the guard lying at his feet, and he considered sending another soul to the netherworld, but that man wasn’t moving. Just in case, Ethan kicked him with his boot, but still nothing. With that, he turned and ran, heading back the way he’d come. When he reached the rail car tunnel, he hesitated to choose his destination from the ship’s directory. He could head up to the bridge to get revenge on Brondi, or back to the hangar.
The hangar won. Atton was waiting for him, and Brondi would be a one-way trip.
The rail car whistled; lights blurred. Ethan’s heart pounded, and his head swam dizzily as he watched a golden stream of light race by the windows in the opposite side of the rail car. He’d been running on adrenaline since leaving the Last Chance to rescue Alara, and now it was fast seeping away, leaving his body a cold and shivery mess. By the time he reached the hangar bay where they’d landed, he was bathed in a cold sweat. His injuries had pushed him to the brink. He’d lost a lot of blood before Atton had attended to his injuries, and now as he ran toward the Last Chance, his feet faltered and his eyes grew dim. The corvette became nothing but a blurry shadow against the distant, fuzzy blue shields of the hangar.
The next thing he knew, Ethan lay blinking up at the ceiling of the Last Chance with his son hovering over him. He turned his head to see that he was lying on a bed in the corvette’s sleeping quarters. “What happened?” he asked.
“You passed out,” Atton said, grinning broadly.
“Why’s that got you grinning like a rictan?” Ethan asked.
“Good news—that’s why.”
“Yea? What’s that?”
“Caldin’s on board with a whole army of sentinels. I just caught her on the comms asking Brondi’s men to stand down—or else.”
Ethan sat up, blinking furiously. “No joke?”
“No joke.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Just a few minutes.”
Suddenly, Ethan began to hope that maybe everything was going to work out fine after all. His shoulders sagged, and he sighed. “Thank the Immortals—or . . . well, I guess we should thank Caldin. Frek—that’s going to take some getting used to. Now what?” Ethan asked, looking around.
“I guess you didn’t find Alara.”
“No, but she must be on board somewhere.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll find her.”
A flurry of footfalls reached their ears, and both of them turned to see a man and a woman go racing by—followed by second man, bearing a rifle and wearing the matte gray armor of a sentinel. “Hoi!” that man said, skidding to a stop in the hall and turning toward them. The three bronze chevrons insignia on his shoulder plate marked him as a sergeant. “Is either one of you the pilot of this transport?” he asked.
Atton stood up and saluted the sentinel. “I am.”
“Good. Come on, we’re blasting out of here.”
Atton shook his head, startled. “What—why?” he asked.
“You haven’t heard? The Imperials are here.”
Atton reached for his sidearm, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The sergeant brought his rifle into line, and said, “Halt! You’re one of them! Hoi—Brondi! I’ve got a pair of Imperials over here.”
“A pair of what?”
Ethan felt a stab of shock, and his limbs began to shake with fury. Brondi is here, and he’s trying to escape on our ship! Ethan cast about for his rifle, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight. His eyes flicked to the sidearm holstered at Atton’s hip, but the sergeant covering them caught Ethan’s eye and shook his head.
“Draw it real slow and kick it over to me.”
Atton did as he was told, and the sidearm skittered across the deck.
“Gibbs? Gibbs! What are you muttering about?” Brondi called. They heard footsteps and a moment later the diminutive crime lord appeared standing in the doorway. His mouth gaped open in a grin. “Ethan? Is that you?” Brondi asked. “Well, well, it’s a small galaxy, after all, isn’t it?”
Ethan smiled. “Too small for you. You’re done, Brondi. The Valiant is overrun with sentinels.”
“Yea? Hoi, why do you think I’m leavin’?” Brondi turned to the man covering them with a ripper rifle. “I’ve changed my mind, Gibbs. Let’s save these two for later. I want to take my time killing them.”
“What’s going on?” a familiar voice asked.
Ethan’s blood ran cold. No!
Alara appeared in the doorway behind Brondi, looking confused. Brondi turned to her with his gaping smile and said, “Look who we’ve found, Sweet Thing! Do you know who this is?”
Alara’s big violet eyes hardened in a scowl as they found Ethan. “That annoying nova pilot you kept letting in to see me?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Brondi said, turning back to Ethan with a smug grin. “He’s just some annoying pilot. You don’t mind if we kill him, do you, Alara?”
Alara shook her head. “Not at all.”
Ethan was so shocked that he almost missed seeing Alara steal Brondi’s sidearm. In the next instant, she turned it on the sergeant and shot him in the face. He collapsed to the deck in a pile of jittering limbs, stunned, and Brondi turned with sudden horror to see Alara aiming the gun at his face next.
“What are you doing, Sweet Thing?!” Brondi sputtered.
“You’ve been calling me Alara for the past half an hour,” she said. And with that, she pulled the trigger.
Chapter 36
By the time Caldin stormed the bridge with admiral Hoff’s sentinels, everyone had already laid down their guns. What was left of Caldin’s bridge crew from the Interloper took charge of the crew stations while dozens of sentinels fanned out, binding Brondi’s men’s hands with lengths of stun cord. Not one of them resisted, and Caldin would grant them leniency as promised. Whether or not the bulk of Brondi’s men would have surrendered if they had been given the chance, Caldin didn’t know, but she suspected it had been so easy to take the Valiant precisely because they had left.
Now as she turned to look around the bridge, she realized that Brondi wasn’t among the men they’d captured, and that brought a fresh scowl to her face. “Comms, ask if anyone has encountered Alec Brondi.” She walked up to the nearest of his men and grabbed him by an elaborate earring which dangled from one ear. “Where is he?”
“Oww, ouuwww!” the man yelped. “Lemme go!”
“All right. Talk.”
“He left just before you asked us to surrender. I think he knew what was coming.”
“Power up the hangar shields!” Caldin said, whirling around. “And get me teams in all our hangar bays. I want them cleared and secured immediately. Gravidar! If so much as a speck of dust flies in or out of this ship, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Caldin walked up to the captain’s table and stared down at it, eyeing the drifting halves of the Sythian command ship. She noted that their residual momentum had carried them more than twenty kilometers away from the Tauron, while the battleship’s momentum had been entirely negated by the collision, and it had more or less stayed in the same place.
“Comms, hail what’s left of the admiral’s forces and tell them the good news. Have them start looking for survivors. Weapons—open fire on the remains of the Sythian command ship. Let’s not give them a chance to recover or escape.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
One of Brondi’s men spoke up suddenly, “Hoi! We’ve got people on board that ship!”
Caldin turned and held the man’s gaze for a long moment before she spoke. “Then that makes us even. I had people on this one.” With that, she turned to her weapons chief and nodded. “Open fire, Deck Officer Gorvan.”
With that, the deck began booming and rumbling underfoot and Caldin looked out the forward viewports, out over the topside of the mighty Valiant to see hundreds of dazzling red beams and lasers go shooting out toward the remains of the Sythian command ship. Streaking waves of missiles and torpedoes followed that first volley as the energy weapons took a break to recharge. Brondi’s remaining fighters and cruisers didn’t seem to realize what was happening, and they didn’t even react. They probably assumed the alien cruiser had been evacuated already. Caldin looked back to the captain’s table to see enormous flaming chunks of the enemy cruiser break free and float away like slow-moving meteors. Then their main beam shot out, aimed for the dead engines of the behemoth. The explosion which followed ruptured the back half of the ship and tore the front into flaming pieces. A cheer went up from her bridge crew, and Caldin smiled, watching as the flames died in cold vacuum. “Now, we can talk. Open a channel to Brondi’s remaining forces. Tell them to stand down or we’ll have the Gors finish what they started.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Caldin eyed the buzzing clouds of enemy fighters and the odd half a dozen remaining capital-class warships. A moment later comms put through a message from a Captain Ocheron, and Caldin received it with a smile. “Hello, Captain,” she said. “The Valiant is now back under Imperial command. Would you like to discuss the terms of your surrender?”
Captain Ocheron was big and burly with a thick black mustache and a shiny, bald head. He looked furious. “If you’re planning to send us back to Etaris, the answer is we’d rather die.”
“If you and the remaining ships surrender, Captain, then we can talk about a more amicable arrangement. If not, then we’ll disable your ships and have the Gors board you.” She shrugged. “They can decide your fate; I don’t care if they eat you all alive.”
It was a bluff. Caldin didn’t know if the Gors were even interested in working with humans anymore, or if they were just trying to figure out where to go with their ships now that the Sythians didn’t have a control ship to stop them from running away.
Bluff or not, it worked. “All right, you win,” Ocheron said, “but on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“If we go back to Etaris, Brondi comes with us.”
“I think we can arrange that. Power down your shields and prepare for boarding.”
Ocheron nodded. “Very well.”
The comm officer cut the transmission, and Caldin turned to her crew. “The surrender is official,” she said.
Another cheer rose up from the men on the bridge. Amidst their cheering, Petty Officer Goldrim at the gravidar suddenly called out, “Ma’am! I’ve got a few dozen escape pods on my scopes. . . . Looks like they’re from the Tauron.”
“Well? What are you waiting for? Send out a recovery team!”
“Yes, ma’am. They’re heading for Firea.”
Caldin shivered. They’d be hard pressed to find a more inhospitable planet than that ball of ice. “Comms—hail those pods.”
A second later the comm officer replied, “No response.”
Caldin frowned. “Let me try, Corporal,” she said, striding down from the gangway to the comms station. Once there, she waited for the sentinel corporal who she’d pressed into
service as her temporary comms officer to put her on speaker. He gave her a thumbs-up sign and she said, “Unknown escape pods, this is Captain Loba Caldin of the Interloper. The Valiant is back under Imperial command now, and the battle is over. You have nothing to fear. Please respond.”
A moment later, the comms crackled, and a familiar voice replied, “Caldin? I can’t believe you actually did it! Have Brondi’s forces surrendered?”
Caldin blinked at the comm board, taken aback. “Admiral Heston? Is that you? We thought you’d gone down with your ship!” She heard a little girl crying in the background and she smiled. “It sounds as though your family is with you, too.”
“Yes,” Hoff replied. “We’re all fine—and I would have gone down with my ship, but an old friend changed my mind at the last minute. Think you can send someone out here to pick us up? It’s a bit cramped in here.”
Caldin smiled. “It would be our pleasure, sir. Stand by for rescue.”
* * *
When Brondi awoke, he awoke in darkness. A bright light snapped on overhead and he winced away from the glare.
“Hoi!”
He tried to move, but found that his hands and feet were locked securely into cold, unyielding manacles. He sat in an uncomfortable chair with life support systems beeping and buzzing around him. Brondi turned his head, looking first one way and then the other, but he couldn’t see anything through the blinding light which shone in his face.
“What is this? Where am I?”
Abruptly someone familiar stepped into the light, and Brondi’s eyes flew wide. “You again!”
Ethan gave a slow smile. “That’s right. Did you miss me?”
“What do you want?” Brondi spat.
“I want to probe your petty, twisted brain until I find the code to deactivate Alara’s slave chip.”
“Fine, you win. You don’t have to probe me for that. I’ll give it to you! Look for my holopad in the overlord’s quarters and unlock it with the password. In there you’ll find a list of the encryption codes I used for all my slave chips.”