Accursed Space - A Dark Space Fantasy (Star Mage Saga - A Dark Space Fantasy Book 5)

by J. J. Green

  Jackson had added two more drinks and ice to the jug. He screwed on the lid and shook it with his prosthetic arm so fast the jug became a blur.

  “I knew a robot arm would come in handy one day,” he quipped as he unscrewed the lid and poured the mixture into a glass. After pushing the glass toward Carina, he turned to serve someone else.

  She sipped the cold cocktail. It was refreshing and light and not overly alcoholic.

  “I have a couple of seats, over there.” The lieutenant colonel indicated the far side of the room with a nod. “Care to join me?”

  The reason he’d asked her to come to the celebration became apparent. He wanted to talk tactics. That was fine with Carina, though she felt a little duped. She could have completed her study of the ship and they could have talked tomorrow.

  Cadwallader’s seats were next to the wall at a point where the transparent dome extended all the way down to the floor. The seats faced each other across a small, low table. To Carina’s right, the black stretched out, seemingly to infinity. As she sat down, dizziness momentarily overcame her, and she clutched the chair arm, her drink slopping dangerously.

  The lieutenant colonel reached over and took her other arm to steady her.

  “It’s quite the spectacle, isn’t it?” he asked as she regained her balance and he released her.

  “It sure is.” She took another sip of her drink and then set it down on the table. Cadwallader refilled his glass from a half-empty pitcher.

  He looked out into the emptiness of space. “When I’m aboard a starship, I sometimes forget this is what I’m traveling through.”

  The stars looked utterly motionless, though Carina guessed the Bathsheba had already built up considerable speed. The distances involved were too great for their movement to show.

  “I know what you mean,” she said.

  The lieutenant colonel continued to stare into the starscape, appearing lost in thought.

  “What’s the celebration about?” she asked. “Is it because we took the ship?”

  “Huh?” Cadwallader, returning to the present. “No. Tomorrow’s the day most of the mercs go into stasis. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to allow them to let their hair down a little. Ease their jitters.”

  “Oh, I get it. Makes sense. I confess I’m nervous about it myself.”

  He shrugged. “It’s natural. From what I understand, the odds are a tiny minority won’t wake up. Still, there are worse ways to die.” His gaze returned to the void.

  He seemed uncharacteristically pensive. Carina wondered when they were going to talk tactics.

  Suddenly, he asked, “You knew Captain Speidel quite well, didn’t you?”

  She was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to her he might want to go over old times. Cadwallader was probably the least sentimental person she knew.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she replied. “More the other way around. He rarely talked about himself, but he was a great mentor. He saved my life. If I’d stayed where I was when he found me, I would probably be dead by now.” Or enslaved, she added mentally. Stephan Sherrerr had told her once he’d been able to tell that Ma had borne a child, before he raped her and Parthenia was conceived.

  It would have been just like him to seek out her mother’s first born one day, eager to add her to his brood of mages.

  “I’ll always remember the dirty, scrawny ragamuffin John brought back to the ship. You looked like you hadn’t seen soap or a hairbrush in several years, and you smelt as bad as you looked. It took all his powers of persuasion to convince Tarsalan to take you on. He threatened to resign if she refused.”

  Carina’s throat tightened. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, you proved him right. You turned out to be a good soldier. A credit to our band.”

  “Thanks,” she said quietly. “I owe it to Captain Speidel, though. I wouldn’t be who I am without him.” A lump was rising in her throat. “He would talk to me when no one else was around, sometimes. One-to-one, giving me advice and encouragement. He was like a father to me.”

  She’d been speaking softly, directing her attention to the black, unsure even if the lieutenant colonel could hear her. When she looked at him, however, she was shocked to see his eyes wet and glimmering.

  “He was a good person,” he said simply.

  If Carina had ever doubted her suspicion that Speidel and Cadwallader had been a lot more to each other than fellow officers, those doubts were now cast aside.

  “You must miss him,” she said.

  He pursed his lips and looked down.

  She waited, leaving him to his emotions. She missed John Speidel too.

  The party was growing rowdier, which was only to be expected among the Black Dogs. With luck, Atoi was somewhere around and not too drunk to put a stop to things before they got out of hand. It would be a shame if Cadwallader was compelled to put his grief aside to deal with the unruly men and women.

  The lieutenant colonel cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen you with that young man recently. Have you two fallen out?”

  “Bryce? No, we haven’t fallen out exactly,” she replied uneasily, confused by the sudden movement of the conversation toward her love life. Was this why he’d asked her to go to the party?

  He gazed at her steadily, waiting for more.

  “I thought it was better to call things off between us.”

  “Why was that?”

  Appearing to notice her discomfort, he added, “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Yes, I do mind.

  “I just thought we would be better off apart,” she said, and then closed her lips firmly, unprepared to say any more. She didn’t dislike Cadwallader, but he wasn’t Captain Speidel. She wasn’t about to unburden herself to him about her self-doubt and dread of hurting the people she loved.

  He tilted his head, his eyes searching her face.

  When she maintained her silence, he said, “The black is a lonely place, Carina. If you find someone who’s right for you and who believes in you, you should hold onto them. The opportunity may never come along again.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” she said tightly. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  The corner of his lip lifted in a sad smile.

  It was time for a change of subject. “I was wondering what we might come up against during the voyage?” she asked. “I don’t know a lot about the Geriel Sector.”

  “I probably don’t know much more than you. Perhaps we made a mistake in putting Lomang and Mezban into stasis so early. They might have been able to tell us what we can expect.”

  “Honestly, I’m reluctant to continue Enthralling Lomang. If you do it too much it can permanently damage the person’s mind. But I guess I could have tried it with Mezban.” She winced at the thought of using the Cast on the woman. Her fury afterward would be stupendous.

  “It’s too late now anyway,” said Cadwallader. “Whatever happens, we’ll have to face it the best we can. I also haven’t discounted the possibility of the Sherrerrs tracking us down.”

  “You think they would come all this way just to avenge Sable Dirksen’s death?”

  “Maybe. It depends how much she meant to them.”

  “Should I ask Darius to Cloak the ship?” She hadn’t asked her brother to perform his special Cast for a long time, imagining they must have left the evil clan behind weeks ago.

  “Would he be able to Cloak a ship this size?” the lieutenant colonel asked in turn.

  “I’m not sure.” And it would be impossible to tell if Darius had managed to do it, as well as draining for the little boy to regularly make such powerful Casts.

  “I think the odds of a Sherrerr attack are remote,” said Cadwallader. “We’ll have to take our chances.”

  “I guess so.”

  Carina hoped that if an attack were to come, it would happen in the next eight months, before she went into Deep Sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After the crowded, noisy conditions o
n the Duchess, life aboard the Bathsheba had been an escape into silence and solitude even before the majority of the Black Dogs went into stasis. Once that part of the plan had been enacted, it became possible to pass entire days without encountering or hearing a single soul, which was exactly how Carina liked it.

  Not that she didn’t miss her siblings or Bryce, but her experiences had taught her that, in one way or another, she was a danger to them. The damage she’d done to their lives was irrevocable: Bryce had left his family and was journeying into a risky and unknown future and her siblings believed they were some kind of mage-soldiers who had an obligation to fight in every battle they encountered. Little Darius had nearly died, too, and it was all because of her.

  If she couldn’t persuade them away from the paths she’d set them on, the least she could do now was to keep her distance from them and avoid causing more damage.

  As the days wore on and the Bathsheba crossed the galactic wilderness where star systems were few and habitable planets fewer, her days developed a set routine. She would wake early during the active shift and check in with Cadwallader for the latest updates—invariably there was little to report. Next she would work out, shower, and eat. Then she would tour the ship, checking the airlocks and the Deep Sleep chamber that held Mezban and her troops. Though the Black Dogs’ techs had done a great job of familiarizing themselves with a deeply unfamiliar system, Carina still believed it might be possible for a Geriel Sector native to override the ship’s computer without triggering an alarm.

  After eating lunch alone at one of the many secluded food printing stations, she would spend her afternoons sifting through information in the vessel’s database. She used the imperfect translation system the ship had developed with Lomang’s help and, as time progressed and she grew more bored, she began to teach herself the new language. Her understanding increased accordingly.

  One day, as she was digging deeper and deeper into the oldest archives, she came across a document entitled Origins. Scanning the text, she saw many words the computer couldn’t translate but her new knowledge enabled her to guess the meanings of some of them.

  Carina’s eyebrows rose as she read. Assuming that the measurement of time in the Geriel Sector roughly corresponded with Standard Time, the vessel dated back fourteen hundred and seventy-one years. It hardly seemed possible. Perhaps the people who built the ship measured time differently from the system she knew.

  The next part of the text related to why the Bathsheba had been built.

  The first appearance of (untranslated) is not recorded, but every century their numbers increased. They took the young worlds first, where life had barely begun. Our ancestors observed their practice but did nothing, imagining (untranslated). Then they came to our planets, bringing (a word Carina guessed might mean ‘illness’ or perhaps ‘disease’). We tried to reason with them, telling them their presence was a danger to us, but they did not listen. They told us their world was old and dying and they had nowhere else to go. This was not true. They had not even filled the first planets they settled on. It was only their greed that drove them on.

  More (untranslated) continued to arrive. We tried to repel them, but our efforts were unsuccessful. Their weapons pierced us and burned us. Before that time we did not practice warfare. We had no technology or (Carina figured the word here meant ‘strategy’) to protect ourselves or fight back. As the years passed and we lost more and more battles and more land to the invaders, we learned new methods and invented weapons of our own. We also developed the (untranslated).

  We began to win. We began to kill the (untranslated). We took back some of our land, but for generations the wars have continued. Warfare is now all our children know and all they can expect.

  But some of us do not wish to fight.

  We cling to the ways of our forebears.

  We seek a new (something like ‘road’).

  We, the (untranslated), built this space vessel (untranslated – clearly it was Lomang or maybe an earlier owner who had named it Bathsheba) to escape the invaders and the endless conflict. We will find a new world, a young planet, far from conflict and unnecessary death. We will settle there, practice the ways of the past, and live in peace.

  Carina sat back from the screen, amazed and intrigued by what she’d read.

  Live in peace.

  The people who had built the colony starship sounded like mages. And the vessel’s surfaces self-repaired, unlike any other ship she’d known. Was that ability due to a long-forgotten Cast?

  Was it possible that the first mages who had left Earth had settled in the Geriel Sector? Had they remained there for thousands of years, living peaceful lives, until usurpers arrived and drove them from their homes? Maybe she’d been wrong about Ostillon being one of the first—if not the first—planet her ancestors had settled.

  If mages had manufactured weapons and fought back against the invaders, that was an aspect of her culture that was new to her. The more she thought about it, it didn’t sound like something they would do, and, except for the self-repairing feature, she hadn’t encountered anything else about the Bathsheba that reminded her of her clan.

  What seemed more likely was that the Bathsheba’s builders and original passengers were from a different nonviolent group of people. Perhaps they had also left Earth during the early days of galactic colonization, and then later their settled worlds had been invaded by a later wave of more aggressive humans.

  A horrible thought struck: had the newcomers deliberately passed on the infection? It would be an effective way to commit genocide, destroying the members of another civilization in order to take over their living space.

  At least it appeared that all the events described in the database document had happened long ago. She didn’t relish the idea of journeying through a war zone.

  Nevertheless, the information could be important.

  She comm’d Cadwallader. “Are you busy?”

  “I have only twenty-five bored soldiers to command aboard a ship in the middle of nowhere,” he replied. “What do you imagine I would be busy doing?”

  “A simple ‘no’ would also work,” Carina replied. “I found something interesting. I’m sending it to you, and I’m coming up for a chat.”

  ***

  She hadn’t seen the lieutenant colonel in several weeks. His uniform was as crisp and neat as always, though the mercs she encountered occasionally around the ship were beginning to look sloppy and unkempt. She guessed it was hard to maintain high standards when the soldiers had very little to do. No dangers threatened them as far as they knew, and the ship looked after itself.

  Morale was probably slipping, too—inevitable when you had a group of young, active men and women and nothing much for them to expend their energy on. It was just as well they would all be entering stasis in a few weeks.

  Cadwallader looked up from his interface screen.

  “I’m supposed to understand this?”

  She’d forgotten she’d figured out the meaning of many of the words the computer hadn’t translated into Universal Speech.

  She gave him a rundown on what the text meant.

  “That is interesting,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the screen. “But this all happened ages ago, right?”

  “I think so, but I still don’t have a clear understanding of their chronometry.”

  “So it might still be relevant to us?”

  “I guess it’s possible these wars are going on even now.” Carina paused as another potential concern popped into her mind. “There’s something else—the Bathsheba’s a massive ship. Not the kind of vessel that would be forgotten easily, even if she was built a long time ago. What if the original people who built her want her back? What if she’s spotted and recognized?”

  “In all the vastness of an entire galactic sector? That’s very unlikely. On the other hand…” He strummed his lips. “…I don’t like the sound of the aggressive race. They could have spread across the entire sector by now. I
suppose it wouldn’t hurt to increase the numbers out of stasis at any time. The troops won’t thank me. It’s going to mean more years awake for everyone. But it’s better than being slaughtered while in Deep Sleep.”

  “I wonder if Lomang, Mezban, and the rest are descended from the invaders?” Carina wondered aloud.

  Cadwallader shrugged. “There’s no point in speculating. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Lin. I’ll think on it.”

  She left.

  It was getting near dinner time. Usually in the evenings, after eating she would retire to her cabin in an otherwise-unoccupied residential section in a remote corner of the ship. There, she would spend the evening meditating and mentally rehearsing the Strokes, the Characters, the Seasons, the Map, and everything else Nai Nai had taught her.

  Certain things, like the Map, had no real significance any longer, yet she found comfort and peace of mind in repeating the habits of her childhood.

  Somewhat lost in reverie as she thought about the ancient war and the Bathsheba’s builders, Carina almost didn’t notice a movement ahead of her, where the corridor opened out to make room for an elevator tube.

  When she looked more closely at the spot where she thought something had suddenly disappeared, it was empty.

  She halted, her heart beginning to race. Sweat prickled on her skin.

  What had she seen? Had enemies managed to board the ship?

  Her hand moved to her side instinctively, but she wasn’t carrying a weapon. As non-military personnel she wasn’t required to and she’d gotten out of the habit.

  Her elixir flask remained by her side, however. Removing it from its holder, she comm’d Cadwallader.

  “What?” came his usual terse reply.

  “I think we may have—oh, shit!”

  Darius had stepped out from around the bend in the corridor.

  “False alarm,” Carina went on to the lieutenant colonel.

  She sank to her knees as the little boy walked slowly closer, dragging his feet and looking down.

  “Sweetheart, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  When he reached her, Darius lifted his head to meet her gaze.