Atton frowned. “Okay, so why make me a ranking officer?”
“We need you. We need pilots and crew, and you’re too valuable to waste, Atton.”
They reached a pair of lift tubes and Hoff punched the down arrow. A moment later the right-hand lift opened and they stepped inside.
“Where are we going?” Atton asked.
“To the ventral hangar. We found some more survivors.”
“That’s good news.”
Hoff nodded. The lift arrived a few moments later and they walked out into a broad corridor which ran past a pair of rail car tunnels. At the end of that lay a set of wide, double doors.
They reached those doors and Hoff keyed them open. Atton blinked, his eyes trying to adjust to the size of the enormous hangar bay beyond. It was one of the venture-class hangars. Right now one of Brondi’s baron-class cruisers sat there, looking like a venture-class which had been squeezed middle. Landed beside that cruiser were half a dozen assault transports, one of which was just setting down now.
“Come on,” Hoff said, angling for that transport.
The hangar was strangely silent and devoid of the usual bustle of activity, but that was because most of the carrier’s fighters and transports were still out scanning the debris for survivors.
They reached the back of the transport which had just come in, and waited there for the loading ramp to drop. A moment later, it cracked open with a hiss, and Atton watched it slowly drop to the deck. Waiting behind that ramp was Captain Caldin, a corpsman, and a pair of medics. Caldin came down the ramp by herself. The other three followed, pushing and pulling a pair of hover gurneys. When Atton saw who was on those gurneys, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Caldin stopped before the admiral and gave a brisk salute. “Sir.”
“You found the Tauron’s bridge,” Hoff said, eyeing the occupants of the hover gurneys.
“Yes, sir. It was floating through the rubble. Everyone aboard was either cut to ribbons or turned to jelly in the crash.”
“And them?” Hoff jerked his chin to the two hulking Gors coming down the ramp, their muscular limbs hanging off the gurneys on all sides, their slitted yellow eyes shut.
“We found them stuffed inside an escape pod, still stuck inside its launch tube. The crew must have put them in there just before the crash.”
Hoff shook his head, marveling at that. “But why? Why save the Gors when they could have saved a pair of humans instead?”
“The pod wouldn’t have saved humans unless it had managed to launch before the collision, but Gors have much stronger bodies than us.”
Hoff nodded and smiled, eyeing first Tova and then Roan as they reached the bottom of the loading ramp. “This will help our negotiations with the Gors like nothing else—if they live, that is. Good work, Captain. Are they asleep?”
“Induced. Their bodies heal quite quickly when they sleep, or so they tell me. The medics will do whatever else they can.”
Hoff nodded and Caldin turned to Atton. “Who’s this?”
“Squadron Commander, Atton Ortane.”
Caldin accepted that with a frown. “Ortane?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t look like the imposter’s son,” she said.
“It’s a long story, ma’am,” Atton replied.
Caldin frowned. “I see,” was all she said to that. She looked away, back to the pair of medics as they moved Tova and Roan to one side of the loading ramp. “Get the others down here, and then we’ll take them all to the med bay together,” she called out to the medics.
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.
The corpsman came to stand beside Captain Caldin and saluted the admiral.
“Who are the others?” Atton thought to ask.
“Two pilots—one Brondi’s, one ours. They’re wearing the same fleet uniforms, so it’s tough to tell the difference between them except when they start screaming at each other.”
Atton smirked at that, but when he saw the next hover gurney reach the top of the ramp, he really couldn’t believe his eyes. Another familiar face. She began cursing at the medics and railing against the Imperium.
“This one has been out there a while,” Caldin said, looking up at the female pilot as her gurney came down the ramp. “She put herself in a hypoxic sleep to save oxygen. We found her beacon still transmitting weak distress signals. She was one of ours—piloted the transport which snuck aboard the Valiant, but . . . Brondi must have chipped her so he could use her to fight for him.”
“Gina . . .” Atton whispered.
Caldin turned back to him with a frown. “Yes.” Then her gaze turned to Hoff. “That woman is a very distinguished officer, Admiral. More veteran than any I can name, and I can personally vouch for her record. She’s no traitor.”
Hoff nodded. “No, I’m sure she isn’t.”
Gina reached the bottom of the ramp and she turned to glare at the admiral. Hoff smiled back. “What ya lookin’ at frek face? Think yer real frekkin’ special cause you’re an admiral? Well frek you! I’m gonna melt that smile off yer face with a plasma rifle—real slow and painful.”
Hoff blinked, taken aback by her vitriolic. He let out a short bark of laughter, and then one of the medics stepped forward with a syringe, and Gina tried to wriggle free of the straps tying her down to the gurney. “Hoi!” she said as the needle went in. She struggled more, muscles and tendons bulging with the effort to break her bonds. Unable to free herself, she settled for spitting at her attending medic instead. He flinched, but injected her anyway, and she abruptly relaxed against the gurney, her eyes rolling back in her head.
“As I was saying, try not to judge her yet, sir.”
Hoff smiled. “I’m not going to judge anyone, Captain. We’ve all done our share of wrong, and if we’re going to work together and rebuild—then all of us, including the Gors and Brondi’s men need to put the past behind us.”
“Including Brondi’s men, sir?” Caldin said, her eyes narrowing to slits.
Hoff nodded. “Yes.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” she said suddenly.
“What is that, Captain?”
She shook her head. “I should ask you in private, sir. It’s about Captain Adram.”
“Ah, yes. Very well.”
Atton and the corpsman stood watching as the two of them walked away, out of earshot. Atton strained his ears to listen, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. They spoke for a long time, seconds dragging on into minutes, but at the end of that discussion, Hoff smiled, and Caldin gave a stiff salute. She returned to help take the last of the survivors to the med bay with the corpsman.
Hoff stepped up beside Atton and placed a hand on his shoulder. They watched as the injured officers and Gors were led away. “What was that about?” Atton asked.
“Ordinarily, I would say it’s classified, but you already know about some of it, and the rest is something we’re all going to have to know about soon.”
Atton listened as the admiral explained about the human traitor and Sythian agent, Captain Adram, about his attempt to organize a coup using log recordings of the destruction of Obsidian Station, and finally, about the unfortunate fate of everyone in the enclave, including Fortress Station and the remainder of Hoff’s own fifth fleet.
Atton frowned. “They might not all be dead. We have to send a mission out there to check. How many colonists and refugees were there?”
Hoff shook his head. “Over a hundred thousand, Atton.”
“Frek.”
“I suspect my fleet ran when they realized they were outnumbered, and Fortress Station might have arrived after the battle, so at the very least it may have survived. We’ll send out a search and rescue as soon as things are resolved here with the Gors and Brondi’s men.”
Atton nodded. “Good. You’re really planning to work with Brondi’s men?”
“We don’t have a choice. Half of Dark Space has a record, and we need the criminals as much
as the honest citizens. We’re going to wipe the slates and see who reforms and who doesn’t. Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“Guess things look different when you’re one of the ones who frekked up,” Atton said.
“You’re going to have to watch how you speak to me, Commander, if you want to be a part of this fleet, but yes, things do look different when you’re on the other side of the bars. Come—by now Alara should be awake and I need to speak with your father.”
“About what?” Atton asked as they turned and strode for the exit.
“I’m going to offer him a commission, too.”
Atton smiled. “I don’t know if he wants to be one of your subordinates, Hoff.”
The admiral shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not, but I could use another capable pilot. Let’s see, shall we?”
* * *
One hour earlier . . .
Ethan walked into Alara’s room, leaving his family outside—his old family. Atton was grown, Destra had moved on with Hoff. Now it was his turn to move on.
“Ethan!” Alara said, her big, violet eyes finding him as he approached.
“Hoi, Kiddie,” he replied. He elbowed past her parents and leaned over the bed to kiss her on the cheek. “How are you doing, beautiful?”
He turned and found a nearby chair, Alara’s mother’s chair—but she nodded to him, indicating that he could take it. Kurlin glared, and Ethan smiled thinly back. They hadn’t put aside their differences, and they’d probably never be friends, but at least Darla liked him for her daughter. Ethan plopped the chair down next to the head of Alara’s bed and sat down so he could stare into her big violet eyes properly and drink her in. He wanted to make sure that his was the first face she saw when she woke up after the procedure. Removing her slave chip wasn’t particularly involved or dangerous—now that they had the deactivation code—but Ethan would wait by her bedside for however long it took for her to wake up. The medics couldn’t drag him out of here. He was determined to spend every moment with her that he could.
“I’m fine,” Alara said. “How are you?”
“The doc said I’m lucky none of the shrapnel made it to my heart, and apparently a few pieces just barely missed major arteries. The consensus is that I’m a very lucky skriff.”
Alara let out a long, slow breath. “We all are.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for coming back for me,” she said.
“I didn’t find you.”
“No, but you tried.”
Ethan sighed, and his hand found hers. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. “You would have done the same thing for me, Kiddie.”
“Maybe not, not while I thought I was Angel the playgirl, anyway.”
Ethan shook his head. “You’re not going to have to worry about that again.”
The attending medic walked up on the other side of Alara’s bed with a syringe and waited patiently for them to give him the go-ahead. Ethan looked up, and Alara turned to the medic with a hesitant look. “You’re sure there’s no risk?”
“None. You’ll fall asleep for a little while, and when you wake up, you’ll still remember everything, but you won’t have to worry about another crisis of identity, or false memories interfering with your real ones.”
Alara turned back to Ethan. “You’ll stay here until I wake up?”
He smiled. “I’m never going to leave you again, Kiddie. I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. We have a life to get on with—together.”
Alara’s big eyes filled with a bright sheen of moisture. “Then I’m ready,” she said. “I think I’ve been ready for this my whole life.”
* * *
The medic leaned over to inject Alara with the syringe. Her eyelids grew heavy and slowly drifted shut. She imagined a small cabin in the woods on a world with clear blue skies and leafy green trees. The chimney of that cabin was alive with gray wisps of smoke, a crystal clear river flowed by in front, and two young children raced around the cabin, a boy and a girl, both of them squealing with delight as their father chased them. The children looked somehow familiar. When Alara caught a glimpse of the father’s face, she understood why, and she smiled. An hour later, when her eyes cracked open, that smile was still frozen on her lips and that scene still fresh in her mind.
“What are you smiling about?” Ethan asked, his eyes bright and green like the forest from her dream.
Her smile broadened and she gave a sleepy sigh, “You. You’re the father, Ethan. . . . we’re going to be so happy.”
Ethan grinned. He leaned over her bed and cupped her face in one big, callused hand. “I know,” he said, and with that, he leaned in the rest of the way and kissed her on the lips. Her lips moved softly against his, and they drank each other in, basking in the warm fragrance of each other’s breath.
Epilogue
One week later . . .
Ethan grinned, and his hand tightened on the flight stick as he flew out the Valiant’s main hangar bay in Brondi’s freshly-refitted corvette. The blue fuzz of the hangar’s shields faded, replaced with the familiar starry blackness of Dark Space.
The comms beeped with an incoming message and Ethan punched the button marked transmit/receive.
“Good luck, Ethan.” It was Hoff.
“You, too,” he replied. “Thanks again for the ship.”
“After leading us to Brondi and catching him before he escaped, it was the least I could do for you two. Besides, amnesty for everyone, remember? That includes ex-husbands of the woman I love.”
Ethan nodded. “Fair enough. Makes me feel bad now.”
“Bad?”
“Well, just don’t look inside any of your closets until the rictan pups have calmed down.”
“The what?”
“He’s joking,” Destra said.
Ethan smiled. No I’m not. He’d caught a sentinel with the pups last night. They’d been Brondi’s pets, and the sentinel was going to toss them out an airlock, but it had seemed cruel and unnecessary to do that. They were too young to be dangerous. Fleet regs said no animals on board—fleet regs be damned. Ethan took them from the sentinel, saying he’d adopt them. Instead, he’d smuggled them into Hoff’s closet last night at his and Alara’s farewell dinner.
The admiral had offered him a commission—wing commander—but Ethan had politely declined that offer. After pretending to be an officer, and then the overlord, he’d realized military life wasn’t for him. Besides that, he didn’t want to spend any more time around Hoff than he absolutely had to. The fleet would get along just fine without him.
“Hoi, don’t forget to visit sometimes,” Atton added in the background. “It’s not like we’re in another sector or something.”
“I want to talk, too!” Atta said, shouting to be heard.
Muffled laughter bubbled from the comm speakers and Ethan smiled. “I won’t forget.”
“Goodbye, Ethan,” Destra said.
“Goodbye,” he replied, but the note of finality in his voice was not unkind. Alara cut the comm channel and Ethan set a course which would take them deeper into Dark Space.
He and Destra had agreed to part as friends. Ethan suspected that they always would be at least that much to each other, but never anything more. Now they both had someone else; they both had a fresh start—and so did humanity.
Dark Space was safe for the time being, thanks to the Gors’ support. They had agreed to stay and help guard the sector in exchange for sanctuary. Dark, icy worlds like Firea which humans couldn’t easily use were a virtual paradise for them. Moreover, Hoff had agreed to help the rest of them escape slavery and bring them to Dark Space as refugees. With that, and the surprising revelation that the bridge crew of the Tauron had used their final moments to save two Gors—the alien warriors had agreed to forget about Ritan, and a new alliance had been formed.
The Tauron was being salvaged; Brondi’s forces had been offered a regular fleet salary and commission as part of Hoff’s amnesty program, and most of t
hem had accepted. In Dark Space, criminals were usually criminals because they didn’t have a choice—something Ethan could relate to very well. With that understanding, Hoff had offered everyone in Dark Space a chance to join the amnesty program, to have their records swiped clean and start over with legitimate work—everyone except for Brondi. He was back on Etaris with the worst of Dark Space’s criminal population, serving a sentence of 400 consecutive years hard labor, and undergoing therapy sessions in which he was forced to come to terms with his abusive father and his impoverished childhood. That was punishment enough all by itself.
So far, everyone had managed to put aside their differences in the interests of going forward and rebuilding from a position of strength. Not everyone liked the idea of redeeming criminals by making them the new guardians of the sector, but nevertheless, Hoff’s new motto that, “we’re all the same, no one better, no one worse,” went over well with everyone.
The overtures of peace and forgiveness had, however, stopped with the humans in Dark Space and the Gors. Sythians were still enemy number one, and as for the immortal humans hiding out in Avilon . . . they were still a well-kept secret. The admiral hadn’t decided what to do about them yet, but Ethan hoped the Sythians managed to find them and that they would wipe one another out.
As for Ethan and Alara, they’d go back to doing what they were best at, and this time, they didn’t owe any debts on their ship. Hoff had given them Brondi’s old corvette, and Deck Commander Cobrale Delayn had overseen the modifications himself. The seraphim-class corvette had been turned into the perfect trade ship, and it was ten times the vessel that the Atton had been. Bridge control stations had been consolidated down to just two—one for the pilot, and one for the copilot. The ship’s long-range capabilities had been kept as an option if Ethan wanted to fill the cargo hold with fuel, while the gun turrets and military-grade shields had been restored. The drive system had been rebuilt with a new top acceleration of 125 KAPS, making the ship almost as fast as a nova fighter. It would be the perfect ship with which to flit around Dark Space as a freelancer—as freelancers, Ethan corrected, turning to admire his beautiful copilot.
Dark Space: Origin Page 40