Chapter 9
Ethan couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to put his wedding ring back on after the holoskin. It was an old habit by now for him to wear the ring. He’d always considered it a kind of good luck charm, but now it was about to get him into a lot of trouble.
“Wedding ring?” he echoed. “Is that what this is?” He made a show of examining the simple silver band on his left ring finger.
“Yes, Adan, that’s exactly what it is. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. What, are you hoping that women will prefer a married man?” Gina shook her head. “That’s twisted, even for you, Skidmark. Where did you even find that? Rare to see a wedding band at all these days.”
Ethan decided to stick with naïveté as an excuse. “An old storekeeper on Forliss Station sold it to me. He said it would bring me luck.”
Gina snorted and narrowed her eyes. “And since when did you become superstitious?”
Another wrong move. Ethan turned to her with what he hoped to be a disarming smile. “Hey, what’s with the interrogation? I thought you just wanted to buy me a drink. It’s beginning to sound suspiciously like you want to get to know me better. Maybe you had an ulterior motive for offering that drink. Hoping to get into my pants, are we? All you have to do is ask, Gina.”
That did it. Ethan watched Gina’s expression turn from curious to furious in a matter of seconds. “You know what, you’re right.” She rose from her bar stool, taking her beer with her. “Enjoy your drink, Adan.” With that, she turned and stormed off, leaving him alone at the bar.
Ethan took another sip of his black maverick and caught a nasty grin from Egrit. “Someone’s not getting any tonight,” the bartender said, chuckling.
Ethan was about to reply that he wasn’t looking for any action, but then he remembered he had to stay in character, so he cocked his head and gave a haughty smile. “Don’t be too sure about that. I’ll have who I want, when I want, and how I want them—two or three at a time if it suits me. I don’t have to ask nicely, because they’re already begging.”
Egrit burst into gruff laughter. “Same old Skidmark!” He turned away, shaking his head, and Ethan smiled. It seemed like he’d managed to nail down Adan’s character perfectly. The boy had obviously been insufferably arrogant and rude with everyone around him. If he’d had redeeming qualities, Ethan wasn’t sure what they might be.
Taking advantage of the peace and quiet, Ethan mentally pulled up his dossier again and searched for directions to Adan’s quarters aboard the Valiant. After a few minutes, he realized that there was no mention anywhere in the file of where Adan stayed. Ethan frowned. If he wanted to rest and get cleaned up, he was going to have to ask someone where his quarters were—and wouldn’t that be a dead giveaway. Or, he could just get horribly drunk and feign amnesia.... Why not? He’d be buying drinks on Adan’s tab. At least that way he’d get something back for the pain of extracting his identichip and implanting Adan’s in its place.
Ethan signaled to Egrit, who was busy serving an attractive looking woman at the other end of the bar counter. She caught his eye and smiled. Ethan was taken aback by that and rather than returning her smile, he looked away, embarrassed.
Then he remembered who he was supposed to be and he chided himself for responding so out of character, but it was too late. He tried for the bartender’s attention again, and this time he succeeded. Egrit walked up to him, and asked, “Yea?”
Ethan nodded to his beer and offered his wrist to Egrit. “Keep them—” He suddenly broke into a fit of coughing as his throat began tickling maddeningly. He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse now even to his ears. “Throat must be dry. Keep them coming,” he said, tapping the side of his beer.
The bartender frowned at him. “You don’t sound too good, Lieutenant. Maybe you should go get some rest.”
“No, I’m fine. Get me another drink and I’ll be even better.”
Egrit snorted. “Whatever you say, Skidmark.”
* * *
Alara watched Brondi offer her that gaping smile of his. “Either you’re planning to eat me, or you’re happy to see me,” Alara said as she walked up to the cell door.
“So charming,” Brondi said from the other side. “Your talents are being wasted in here, Sweet Thing. I could have you making more sols per hour than most people make in a week. What do you say? I’ll even let you have your pick of which of my pleasure palaces you’d like to work in.”
Alara found her hands closing in white-knuckled fists around the bars of her cell. “You’d have to implant me with a slave chip before I’d ever agree to that.”
Brondi cocked his head suddenly to one side, as though he’d just had an epiphany. “Why, that is a novel idea! I do believe I’ll take your advice, thank you.”
Alara felt dread and horror welling up inside of her, threatening to burst forth in a scream, but she clamped down on it, unwilling to give Brondi the satisfaction. Instead, she just glared at his loathsome, pudgy face, willing his head to explode. “What about Ethan’s bargain? I thought you were going to release us once he got your information for you.”
“Oh, yes, Ethan! About him ...” Brondi’s grin turned even nastier and his wild, bloodshot gray eyes sparkled madly. ”He’s not coming back, Sweet Thing.”
Alara’s face became stricken. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you see the story Ethan gave you was not entirely true. I did send him to sabotage the Valiant so I could be rid of the fleet’s perpetual meddling in my affairs, but ... that was never going to work.” Brondi shook his head sadly.
“Ethan would never agree to do that.”
“Actually,” Brondi said, raising a finger to silence her objections, “he did, but it doesn’t matter. Not even Ethan knows what he’s really doing aboard the Valiant, and it’ll be too late by the time he figures it out. Right now your boy toy is a walking time bomb, just waiting to explode.”
“What you mean?” Alara demanded. She rattled the bars of her cell, and Brondi’s mouth gaped in another smile.
“Feisty! That’s going to come in handy in your new profession.”
“What have you done to Ethan?”
Brondi shook his head sadly. “The better question is, what am I about to do to you?” Brondi gestured to someone just out of her line of sight, and a pair of men came into view. One of them held a wicked-looking chip implanter, while the other held a stun pistol—and he was aiming it at her.
“Say goodbye, Alara. When you wake up, you’ll be going by Angel.”
Alara opened her mouth to scream, and she turned to run, but there was nowhere to go. The stun bolt hit her in the back with an electrifying jolt, and her muscles went to jelly. Before she even hit the floor, everything faded to black.
Chapter 10
As Ethan was ordering his third maverick, a group of half-drunk pilots strolled up to him at the bar. One of them pulled out the bar stool next to him and hopped up. Ethan spared him a grumpy look. It was Ithicus Adari, Guardian Three. The others stayed back, whispering and shushing each other, standing there looking stupid with knowing grins pasted on their faces. Among them was Gina. Their eyes met briefly, and Ethan saw that hers glittered with something dark and ugly. Ithicus draped an arm over his shoulder and said, “Hoi there, Skidmark.”
“Hoi brua,” Ethan said drily.
“Don’t suppose you’d like to join us for a short sim run.”
“Mmmm, I’m tired. I think I’ll just stay here.”
“Let’s make it interesting,” Ithicus said, ignoring him. “Sythians versus the ISSF. How about ... the Rokan Defense. You command the ISSF and I’ll command the Sythians. You say you’re a 5A rating and you have a natural instinct for command—” A few snorts of laughter erupted from the group of pilots standing behind Ethan, and Ithicus shrugged his big shoulders. “Well, here’s your chance to prove it, Skidmark. You’ll have an advantage that the Rokans didn’t. You’ll know that the invasion is coming.”
“Okay.” Ethan nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Ithicus’s grin flickered, surprise showing through. Obviously the whole thing had been a bluff to somehow irritate Adan Reese, but Ethan was not Adan. Ithicus recovered smoothly and his expression became smirking. “Want to make it interesting?”
Ethan frowned. He wasn’t sure what he was getting into, so betting on the outcome was a bad idea, but what did he really have to lose, anyway? “What do you have in mind?”
“If you beat me, I’ll switch places with you on your next rotation. You can stay in Dark Space on patrol, while I go to the frontlines. If you lose, you take a double shift out there and I take your patrol duty.”
Ethan’s brow furrowed. The frontlines? he wondered. What frontlines? “Ah ... sure, but you have to give me odds. Everyone knows the Rokan Defense was an impossible fight to win.” Ethan didn’t actually know that, but it was a fair bet. He didn’t know anything about what had happened on Roka IV. He’d been mining for dymium on Etaris at the time, and he’d only heard about his world falling to the invaders after the ruins there were already cold.
Ithicus nodded. “That goes without saying, Skidmark. No one wins the Rokan Defense. You just have to beat my command and tactical ratings from my last run through the mission as the ISSF.”
Ethan swirled the last of his black maverick around in the bottom of the bottle, contemplating the black depths of the beer before downing it in one last swig.
“What do you say?” Ithicus pressed.
Ethan set his bottle down with a thunk and turned to his squad mate with a thin-lipped smile. “You got yourself a bet, brua, but you’re going to regret it.”
Ithicus matched Ethan’s smile. “We’ll see about that.”
* * *
All of a 20 minutes later Ethan was standing on the simulated bridge of a venture-class cruiser. He’d taken a few minutes while the simulator’s holo field was energizing to review a few of the comments and mission reports made by other pilots in order to properly familiarize himself with the mission, and now he felt at least reasonably confident that he could make a good accounting for himself—whether or not he’d beat Ithicus Adari’s scores was another matter.
Ethan looked around the bridge. He was surrounded by other officers, some real, and some AIs. Before him lay the captain’s table, a holo table standing on a raised walkway that ran between the half a dozen different control stations on the bridge—three to his left and three to his right. Those control stations fed the captain’s table with a continuous stream of data, and there, overlaid on a glowing blue grid, Ethan was given an overview of the Rokan system and the forces under his command. Ethan spun in a slow circle on the deck, nodding to a few of his bridge crew as they stared expectantly at him.
All of this was intensely familiar. It evoked strong memories from his childhood, back when his only cares in the world had been his grades in school and girls. Back then, when he’d had something called “free time” he’d spent it hanging out at Roka City’s sim center with his friends, running and re-running simulated fleet actions, which were of course all pure fiction—the real ones were classified. Those missions had been created for the solitary purpose of entertainment. Ethan had been the commander of a venture-class cruiser on more than one occasion, and although the recreational sims did appear to have some distinct differences from this one, most of what he saw around him on the bridge was the same.
Ethan walked up to the captain’s table and ran a hand along the smooth black border of the glowing blue grid. This was the whole reason he’d become a pilot, and the whole reason he had a 5A rating today. He’d earned his 5A rating in sims long before he’d ever had a chance to earn it for real. Back then he’d had big plans for his life; on more than one occasion he’d imagined himself becoming a fleet admiral, commanding an entire flotilla of ISSF warships. That was before hard times had hit—before his mother had become sick. At age 17 he’d been faced with the choice of dropping out of school to get a job or watching them both starve, which wasn’t really a choice at all. Once he’d dropped out, there was no going back. No fleet recruiter would take a high school dropout—not back then, anyway.
At first he’d just run the odd courier mission, flying a small flitter around Roka City—no questions asked. He never got to see the cargo, which always fit into a small black carrying case, but he was strictly warned to stay away from authorities. His cover had been that he was a rich young man, spoiled to excess, and just out joyriding, looking for girls to pick up. He’d never been searched, but there’d been a few close scrapes when he’d had to lose pursuing patrollers in the winding canyons and multi-leveled streets of Roka City. Once his employment agency realized what a good pilot he was, they had him running interstellar hops. Before he knew it, he was making enough money to pay for more than just food; he was paying for his mother’s expensive medical treatments and making it look like she was cashing in on a pension she didn’t know she’d had. He’d even had enough money left over after all of that to store up a significant rainy day fund, which had eventually been what he’d used to buy his house with Destra, to make a life for them and Atton. He’d had a good run like that, smuggling stims for over two decades before he’d finally been caught.
And now, now all of that seemed like a dream—like those memories belonged to someone else’s life, not his. Ethan began absently studying the grid, forcing himself back to the here and now. He had a bet to win.
At his disposal he had four cruisers, including his own, six destroyers, and dozens of nova squadrons, all of them spread out and combing the system with active sensors for an invisible enemy, but space was too vast to pick up the muted signatures of heavily cloaked Sythian vessels, and Ethan had read the mission reports from the other pilots who’d gone through the sim before him—no patrols had ever found Sythian ships before they’d wanted to be found. Also from the mission notes Ethan knew which way the Sythians were coming from, and when, but he had just a few minutes to gather his forces into a unified front before the Sythians would strike, and gathering his fleet in that time would be impossible at relativistic speeds.
“Comms, have our vessels make short SLS jumps to the following coordinates....”
The XO interrupted him before he could speak. “What about our fighters?”
Ethan shook his head. “No time to collect them. We’ll have to do without them for a while.”
His XO snorted. “A while? The battle will be over by the time they get here. It would be better to go evasive now and fall back to Roka while the other ships collect their novas.”
Ethan ignored the advice. “Falconian to 9-4-9.” He waited a beat for the comm officer to relay the command. “Borealis to 9-4-4.” Again he waited while the comm officer spoke softly into his headset. “Tretina to 4-4-4.” Those were his other three cruisers. He also had half a dozen guardian-class destroyers to collect. “Make the destroyers line up at 10-4-1, 10-4-2, 10-4-3, and so on.”
The comm officer went on relaying the orders into his headset, and Ethan turned the other way, to his chief engineer. “Set our shields to maximum, all front and sides, and increase weapons power. Rob engines to do so and set shipboard systems to emergency power only.”
The engineer nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Helm, kill thrust.”
“Kill thrust
, sir?”
“Yes, we’re not going to outmaneuver an enemy we can’t see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ethan caught a look from his XO. “Traditionally commanders have done well to keep engines powered,” she said. “The Sythians have a hard time keeping up with their slower drives, and their weapons have a shorter range than ours.”
“True, but until we know where they are, we can’t be sure we won’t be running straight into a trap.” That was another thing Ethan had gleaned from the previous pilots’ mission reports. “They need their cloaking devices to get close to us, and I’m not going to help them do that faster by roaring around blindly at full speed.”
“Hmmm,” Ethan’s XO said, but she left it at that. He didn’t recognize the blonde-haired woman who was his second-in-command, but from the gold chevron on her sleeve and the silver icon of a venture-class emblazoned over it, he realized that she was a Deck Commander, and that meant she outranked him by a considerable margin. For the purposes of this mission, however, Ethan was in command. He turned away from her to address his gunnery chief. “Guns, have all of our pulse lasers and beams standing by. On my mark I want them to begin a firing pattern on low power. Have them fire a volley every five seconds, staggered. I want them firing in all directions at once. Don’t hit our own, but make sure they each sweep their guns to cover a fifteen degree arc. Paint three overlapping circles of fire around us, and keep those circles moving so we cover as much of space as possible. We’re sounding out the enemy, so have them on the lookout for any direct hits, lasers and beams abruptly disappearing into nothingness, bits of debris flying out of deep space—that sort of thing. The minute any one of them sees something strange, have them flag it on the grid.”
“Yes, sir,” the weapons officer said.
Ethan could sense his XO glaring at him again, so he turned to face her with a patient smile. “Yes, Deck Commander Caldin?”
“We’ll run flat out of energy before the enemy even gets here. What’s more, they’ll see us shooting and simply stay back out of range until we’re spent. By the time we’re out of charge they’ll swoop in and de-cloak all around us, blasting us to bits while our guns are still recharging. We won’t have a single joule of laser energy left to shoot them with.”
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