Enemy in the Dark

by Jay Allan

  “Augustin, listen to me.” It was Blackhawk again. “I know you have reason to doubt anything you hear now, and I understand your concerns about Antillean-imperial intrigues. But if you attack now, you will play into the empire’s hands. This is what they want—to sow suspicions among us, to goad us into fighting each other. Please, Augustin. Trust my judgment. Trust me.”

  Lucerne turned and looked over at Admiral Desaix.

  “Twenty seconds, sir.” The naval officer stood still, like a statue carved from cold marble. “Should I give the order to attack?”

  Lucerne looked down at the comm unit then back up to the admiral. Every bit of his vast military experience told him he should strike now. If he didn’t, his fleet would sacrifice the tactical advantage. If the Antilleans attacked first, his losses would escalate rapidly. He could even lose the battle.

  “Ten seconds, sir. We need an answer.”

  Lucerne sighed hard. “All ships stand down. Remain on alert. No one is to fire without my specific order.”

  Desaix relayed the command to the ships of the fleet, and Lucerne stared down at his scanner, watching, waiting to see if the Antilleans would back off too. If not, in about ten seconds, thousands of his people were going to die.

  Danellan Lancaster looked like hell. He was pale, and Blackhawk thought he might pass out at any moment. But that was okay. Lancaster was a flawed man for sure, but he’d come through and done what he had to do. Not only did he address Marshal Lucerne, he convinced the Antillean commander that the Celtiborians had indeed aborted their planned attack. His life had been saved at enormous cost, and now he’d repaid a portion of that debt. Tarq’s life hadn’t been lost for nothing. Indeed, millions of lives had been saved, and the Far Stars still stood strong, able to face imperial aggression.

  “Lucas, why don’t you help your father over to sick bay? I think it would be a good idea if Doc checked him out.” Lancaster’s wound had been bad, but the medic had done an impressive job. The bullet had done considerable damage, but Lancaster had been strong enough to do what had to be done.

  Lucas nodded. “Thanks, Ark. I will.” He reached his arm around his father’s back and helped him toward the Claw’s small med unit.

  Blackhawk watched the two moving slowly across the deck. He knew the conflict between Lucas and his father ran deep, but Danellan had followed through on his promise, and he’d played no small part in averting a catastrophic war. That didn’t erase years of resentment between the two, but maybe it was a start.

  Blackhawk had done what had to be done, as always, but he was still troubled. He didn’t like misleading Lucerne. The marshal was his oldest friend, and someone he’d been able to trust with his darkest secrets for decades. But there hadn’t been time to explain everything, and Blackhawk had been prepared to say whatever it took to avert disaster. He had deliberately misled Lucerne, presenting a highly edited description of events.

  Because the fact was, Danellan Lancaster had been on the verge of betraying the Celtiborians to the empire, and the marshal had a right to know the specifics.

  But Blackhawk wasn’t going to tell him.

  As long as Lucerne believed that Lancaster had been steadfast, that the information he’d received was misleading, a lot of bloodshed could be averted. So Blackhawk was going to let him continue to think that. The truth could accomplish nothing, except to weaken an already shaky alliance. And Celtiboria and Antilles had to be allies. The imperial governor was clearly a danger to the entire sector, and Lucerne’s Far Stars Confederation was more vital a goal than ever. And I can’t let Tarq’s death be for nothing.

  “Wow . . . do you look like hell.” Astra’s voice pulled him from his thoughts.

  Blackhawk turned around. He was overwhelmed with grief and guilt, but he managed a tiny smile for her. He couldn’t even imagine what a horror he was to behold. He had at least half a dozen wounds, mostly minor, but still nasty looking. His clothes were in tatters, and he was covered in blood, most of it dried by now.

  “I feel like hell too. We do what we must, but that doesn’t mean we can live with ourselves.”

  “Ark,” she replied softly, her voice soft, compassionate, “you didn’t have a choice. It’s been a shock to the crew . . . and to Tarnan. But they all understand . . . they will, at least.”

  He sighed softly, but he didn’t reply. There was no point in discussing it. He would take the guilt for Tarq’s death to his grave. He knew why he’d done it, he understood how many lives had hung in the balance. But in the end, none of that mattered. Not to him at least, not in the place where he judged himself, where justification and remorse were of little value.

  He stood for a few seconds just looking at Astra. God, she’s beautiful. And capable too. In another time, another place . . . He didn’t know if Kandros’s surprise attack would have succeeded if Astra hadn’t shown up just in time, but he knew there was a good chance she had saved his life.

  “I never thanked you for coming all this way to warn me.” He smiled at her. “Or scolded you for taking such a crazy chance.”

  “I’ll always come when you need me, Ark. You should know that.”

  “Astra . . .” His voice turned dark and serious. “I need to tell you something. In private. Let’s go to my quarters.”

  She looked back at him, a quizzical expression on her face. “If that was a pickup line, I know you can do better.” She immediately regretted the attempt at humor. She wanted to make him feel better, but now wasn’t the time.

  He forced a brief smile and gestured for her to follow. When they got to his quarters, he closed the hatch behind them. “This is something I’m going to tell the others too, something I’ve kept to myself for far too long. But . . . I wanted to tell you first.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and motioned for him to sit next to her. “You can tell me anything, Ark. I hope you know that.”

  He saw her gesture, but he remained standing, facing her from a meter away. “You say that, but that’s because you have no idea what I’m going to tell you. No,” he said, knowing she was about to protest, “hear me out. Your father knows this, but he’s the only one. I don’t even know why I told him. It was years ago. He helped me when I desperately needed it. Maybe I felt I owed it to him. Or I had less to lose then.”

  She stared at him silently, her eyes soft, warm.

  “I am not Arkarin Blackhawk.” He just started speaking, blurting it out suddenly. No amount of planning and delay was going to make any of this easier. “At least, that is not the name I was born with. It is one I took from another man. A man I killed.”

  He tried to keep his face turned toward her, but he felt an almost irresistible urge to look away. He knew what he was going to tell her would change how she thought of him, and he couldn’t bear to watch that in her eyes.

  “There was an imperial general, Astra. His name was Frigus Umbra. He served the current emperor’s father, and he was the iron fist of imperial will. Wherever there was resistance to the empire’s rule, Umbra came, and he brought death and destruction on a scale almost unimaginable. He didn’t just crush rebels, he left a mark that would last for centuries, a terror so profoundly imprinted on the collective soul of a people that men yet unborn would still feel its effects.

  “He was pitiless, merciless, unable even to feel human emotions it was said. Like a computer he was, a creature who existed only for war, only to serve his dark and brutal master. There were rumors about him, stories—speculations. But his origins were a mystery, shrouded in the secrecy of an ancient imperial breeding program. Umbra was conceived in a laboratory, the genetic material cultivated over centuries from the cream of the nobility. He was not the first general to be bred in that laboratory, but he was the newest, and the most capable.

  “For years, Umbra was the scourge of the empire, and he brought unspeakable horror to the enemies of the emperor. And then, one day, he disappeared, and he was never heard from again.”

  He forced himself to loo
k back into her eyes. He could see the moistness, the tears building up. She knew what he was going to say, but still it took all he had to force the words.

  “I am Frigus Umbra.” He held her gaze, watching as the tears welled up and slid slowly down her cheeks. He expected her to look away, or to get up and flee the room, but she just sat and looked back at him. And, against all his expectations, he saw in her expression the last thing he’d expected.

  Compassion. Urging him to continue. With a shuddering breath, he did.

  “I was raised from birth to be the perfect imperial general. I was conditioned for years, indoctrinated into the service of the empire. I knew nothing else but to serve, to root out and destroy any who challenged the power of the imperial dynasty. And for years, that is what I did.

  “Then I met Blackhawk. The real Blackhawk. He was a rebel, or at least he had gotten involved in the revolution on Deltara.” Memories he’d long fought to suppress were flooding into his mind. “The battle was over, the rebel armies broken. The survivors were fleeing, trying to get families out of the city before we destroyed it.”

  Astra was sitting silently on the bed. Her face was wet with tears, but she held her gaze on Blackhawk, listening to every word he said.

  “I was in my headquarters, directing the . . . completion . . . of the operation. For some reason that is still unclear to me, I walked out of the command post. I ordered my guards to stay behind. I wanted to be alone for a few minutes. I’d only intended to go fifty or a hundred meters, but I wandered deeper into the city, farther from HQ. I turned and walked into a half-wrecked building. There was a man there, and a woman behind him, holding a small child.”

  Blackhawk fell silent. He was telling Astra things he hadn’t allowed himself to think of in twenty years. He felt as if he was tearing open old wounds. He wanted to stop, to turn and run from the room, but he tried to force himself to continue. He couldn’t imagine what Astra was thinking, how her love was turning to shock . . . and revulsion.

  She stood up slowly and took a single step toward him. “Tell me, Ark,” she said softly. “Finish your story.” She reached up and put her hand on his cheek. It was smooth and warm, and her touch was gentle.

  He took a deep breath. “I had ordered the rebels massacred, Astra. All of them. But in that instant, I couldn’t carry out my own directive. I saw this man, crawling through a nightmare of death and destruction, trying only to save his family.”

  He forced himself to lift his eyes and look back at Astra. “I was going to let him go”—he swallowed hard—“but then he heard me, and he reached for his gun. I didn’t want to shoot him, but my reflexes acted on their own, the training, the instinct.” His fists were clenched and shaking, but he kept his eyes on Astra’s. “I shot him. And I watched him fall to the ground in front of me—in front of his wife and child.”

  Blackhawk’s voice had been thick with emotion, but now it was dead, almost monotone. “I had ordered the slaughter of millions, but now I was horrified at the prospect of this one man’s death. I leaped toward him, turning him over. I intended to help him, to take him back to the field hospital, but I could tell immediately the wound was mortal. He looked up at me and told me his name and asked me to let his family go. I had been pitiless my entire life, with layer after layer of psychological conditioning reinforcing my icy coldness. But now the thought of this man dying roused feelings I had never had before.

  “He begged me again to spare his wife and child, and I promised him I would just before he died. They were crying and clinging to him, and I pulled them away, told them to flee. My mind was reeling. I didn’t understand what I was doing. All I knew was I wanted to save these people. I tore them from his body and thrust them into the street, screaming for them to run, to escape before my soldiers found them.”

  He held Astra’s gaze like a lifeline. He kept looking for the condemnation, the hatred he had expected, but there was nothing there but sadness . . . and sympathy.

  “They died, Astra. They didn’t make it thirty meters before one of my kill squads gunned them down. I screamed for the soldiers to hold their fire, but it was too late.

  “It felt like a sledgehammer came down on me. I couldn’t breathe; I didn’t know what to do or where to go. The soldiers were just following my orders—Blackhawk’s family died because of me. I just turned and ran. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. I just knew I had to get away. I fled the city. I hid for days, without food or water. I was tormented, and it became worse every moment as memories came back, all the terrible things I’d done.”

  Blackhawk was shaking, his legs wobbling. The wave of recollection was almost more than he could bear. “I’d broken my imperial conditioning, Astra, though I didn’t know what was happening then. Something about the shock of watching that man and his family die reached down to me, to the man underneath thirty years of relentless indoctrination. The guilt was overwhelming, not just for Blackhawk or for those killed on Deltara, but for the millions dead in my campaigns. For the brutality of the regime I’d fought so hard to preserve. It all hit me at once.”

  He breathed deeply, raggedly. “I kept running. I ran for so long. Aimlessly, hopelessly, until finally I made my way to the Far Stars. I found service with a few smugglers and pirates. I was a mess. Until I ended up on Celtiboria . . . and met your father.”

  Astra’s hand was still on his face, and he put his own on hers. “He helped me to see, to understand. To find my way toward being a good man, or at least acting like one. Blackhawk had broken my conditioning, and I took his name. I have been running from my past ever since.”

  “Ark, you are a good man. You were no less a victim of the evil of the empire than those your soldiers slaughtered. What they did to you, when you were a child—a baby—it is unthinkable. I can’t imagine the pain inside you.”

  Her eyes gazed into his, and she continued, “But I also can’t imagine how you could think I would hate you. How could you not understand that I love you? That I always will?”

  “I love you, Astra. More than you can imagine. And now you understand why we can never be together.”

  “I understand no such thing, Ark. I told you I don’t care. Whoever you were, whatever they did to you to make you into that, that’s not you anymore.”

  “But it is me.” Blackhawk’s voice was grim. “I still feel it, Astra. In battle, when there is danger. The coldness, the feeling of the predator. It’s all still inside me. That is why I cannot join your father and lead armies. The power would destroy me, make me back into what I once was. I would seek to stay true, but the brutality is still there, waiting to get out. I would start as a freedom fighter, but I would become a tyrant.”

  “Then don’t join the battle. You can retire to Celtiboria. You don’t need to have an active role in the confederation.” Her voice was halting, as if she was trying—and failing—to convince herself of what she was saying, even as the words came from her mouth.

  He tried to force a smile, but his sadness overwhelmed it. “That is a pleasant fiction, but we both know it won’t work. I am involved now, probably more than I should be. Do you really think I could sit by while you face crises every day and do nothing? I would begin by trying to help, but it is still there, Astra, the voices, the old compulsions. I fight them, and I am their master. But they feed on power, and sooner or later, they would wear me down, take control. And you never want to see me like that. And to sit at your side, at the top of the Far Stars Confederation . . . it would destroy me.

  “You are your father’s daughter, his only child. Your future is to rule, to serve the people of the Far Stars, and carry forward your father’s dream. Millions will have better lives because of you. Would you walk away from that? Could you?”

  “But, Ark . . .”

  “Please, Astra. Don’t. What are you going to say? You know what I am telling you is the truth. I can’t risk becoming what I was. Not for anything. Not even for you. And what about y
ou? Am I wrong? Or are you no more willing—no more able—to walk away from your duty, even for love?”

  She started to say something again, but then she closed her mouth and just looked back at him sadly. Blackhawk returned her gaze, and he knew she had decided. However much she might want to leave her responsibilities behind, to spend her life bouncing around the Far Stars in the Claw, it was something she could never do. She had strings pulling her just as he did. Their lives weren’t their own; they owed too much to others. Blackhawk was running from a past he might never escape, one that might even claim him in the end. He would die before he became again what he had once been. And Astra’s debt was to the future, to make certain her father’s dream didn’t die.

  They stood looking at each other for a long time. Finally, Blackhawk said, “Accepting the truth about me, knowing you still see enough in me to love . . . that is worth more to me than anything else in my life.” He pulled her back into a tight hug, and for just an instant he forgot everything and felt her warmth against him.

  “But now we all have work to do. The empire is still out there. We may have averted this crisis, but there will be another—more than one . . . and soon.” Blackhawk closed his eyes and thought about the softness of her skin, the scent of her hair. He knew better than anyone what was coming, the danger and intensity of the struggle they faced. But that was for tomorrow. For just this brief time he wanted to forget it all, and to pretend Astra could be his, that they could live a normal life together. He felt her face pressed against his chest and her hands gripping his back, clinging to him—and he knew she felt the same way.

  EPILOGUE

  BLACKHAWK LOOKED OUT OVER HIS CREW. THEY WERE ALL assembled, sitting around the lower deck, watching him with inquisitive eyes. He’d called them together, and they had come. Even Tarnan, who seemed to stumble about vacantly over the last few days, was there now, attentive. Blackhawk’s tone, the look in his eyes—they left no doubt this was something serious.