But what drew his attention most of all was the lone man standing small and forlorn at the end of the gangway, his back turned to Ethan while he gazed out at the stars. The man was clothed in a distinctive, pure white uniform with gold epaulets and tassels. Ethan felt a jolt of recognition. Only one man wore a uniform like that. He walked up behind the man in white and hoped his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
As he drew near, Ethan felt a small spark of hope flicker inside of him. “Supreme Overlord?”
Chapter 15
“Overlord Dominic!” Ethan called out again, but whoever that man was, he didn’t turn around. Ethan walked up beside him, and gently turned the man by his shoulders to get a look at his face.
He was gratified to see a familiar, ancient-looking countenance—the cheeks were sunken with age, and the man’s hair and eyebrows were a brilliant white. His nose was pronounced, but thin and aquiline and hanging low upon his face. His eyes were fairly unwrinkled, as though he was too serious to have ever laughed, but his brow was etched with enough permanent furrows to portray a perpetually skeptical look. The old man’s face perfectly matched the holos Ethan had seen of Supreme Overlord Dominic over the years, and the insignia on his white sleeve also matched the part; it was the symbol of the Imperium of Star Systems, with the six gold stars of the prime worlds arranged in a circle around a clenched golden fist in the center. What didn’t match the holos was the shell-shocked look of terror in the old man’s blue eyes.
Ethan gently shook the overlord by his shoulders. “What happened here?” he asked, gesturing to the reams of dead lying slumped over their control stations all over the bridge.
The overlord’s lips began moving, but no sound came out.
Ethan shook him again. “Snap out of it!”
The overlord smiled faintly and said, “They’re all dead.” With that, he turned back to the viewport and pointed out into space. “Company’s coming.”
Ethan followed the overlord’s gesture to a faintly glimmering silver cloud which was just visible against the dark background of empty space. From a distance, he’d mistaken those specks for stars, but here, so close to the black holes which rimmed Dark Space, the stars were never so densely clustered, nor so bright. These were in-system objects, glimmering in the light of Firean system’s pale red sun. They were the glimmers of an approaching fleet.
When he looked closely, Ethan was able to pick out the more distant engine glows of the larger ships in that fleet, and he thought a few of them might be a considerable size. Ethan nodded to the approaching enemy and then turned to look at the overlord. “Bring up a magnified view of those ships.”
It took a while for the overlord to respond, but when he did, he didn’t even have to say the command aloud; the magnified view just appeared on screen as though the overlord had a command chip implanted—which, Ethan considered, was probably exactly the case.
The Valiant’s targeting computer began highlighting known hull types. It was unable to recognize most of the enemy ships, since they were cobbled together from spare parts. But Ethan was able to recognize at least two, and once he did, his jaw dropped and his gaze filled with loathing. The first ship he recognized was Brondi’s corvette, the Kavarath, and the second was his very own Atton. Ethan shook his head, unable to believe it. “That kakard! He stole my ship!”
“Where?” the overlord asked almost disinterestedly.
“There!” Ethan pointed to his ship. The SID code was still broadcasting his name for it, too. “That one! The Atton! Brondi’s come to take charge of the Valiant, and he’s brought my ship to the fight. I’m going to kill that dumb frek!”
The overlord’s wide, shell-shocked eyes abruptly narrowed, and he began nodding his head. “The Atton? That’s your ship?” The overlord’s gaze was locked on Ethan’s face, studying him rather than the approaching armada.
Ethan ignored the question and shook his head irritably. Abruptly he abandoned his tirade to search the myriad control stations behind them. “Don’t we have any guns on this crate?”
“Oh, plenty,” the overlord said, finally sounding more lucid.
“Well?” Ethan demanded. “Aren’t you going to open fire on them before they reach us?”
“The gunners are all dead.”
“There are no autos?” Ethan asked, incredulous.
“None that can be operated from here. This ship was not built for a crew of two, I’m afraid.”
“You mean there were no other survivors?”
The overlord gave him a blank look, and Ethan sighed. “If you don’t know, query the ship’s life-support systems!”
“Right,” the overlord said, and abruptly a holographic representation of the Valiant with the decks exposed appeared hovering in the air before them. The diagram was peppered with thousands of tiny red dots. The overlord began shaking his head, and turned to Ethan with a return of the shell-shocked look he’d been wearing a few minutes ago. “They’re all dead.”
Ethan squinted up at the image, watching for a green speck to appear which would signify that someone was alive aboard the ship, but that didn’t happen. The red dots were so thick that it was impossible to see anything in between. Even the bridge deck where they were was a solid wall of red. “Wait a minute,” Ethan said, realizing what they were missing. There should have been at least two green dots on the bridge, but the diagram wasn’t precise enough to display each individual crewman with a dot. The sheer masses of red dots must have been overlaying the few sparks of green which represented the living. “Zoom in.”
The overlord complied, and the image they were looking at grew larger, quickly looming over them. There were over one hundred floors on the carrier, and all of them were crowded with red dots. Not even one of them was green. But then Ethan saw it—
“There!” Ethan pointed to a lonely green speck. “Magnify that area, and bring up a tally of the living and the dead.”
Two numbers flashed up beside the hologram, one in green—double digits—the other in red—five figures. Ethan tried to focus on the green number, and then on the rapidly growing number of green dots which appeared as the overlord zoomed in. “Hoi!” Ethan exclaimed. “We have 97 crew members among the living—counting us, I guess.”
The supreme overlord shook his head. “How are we supposed to mount a defense with 97 men on a ship that requires a crew of over 50,000?”
Ethan turned to the old man with a patient smile. “Doesn’t the Valiant carry two venture-class cruisers?”
Overlord Dominic began nodding slowly, and his eyes sharpened with resolve. “One of them is out on a mission, but yes.”
“That leaves one for us. Those cruisers can get by on a crew of just over 200. I’m sure we could manage on a skeleton crew of 50 and launch a few nova squadrons while we’re at it.”
The overlord snapped into action, hurrying down the stairs from the gangway to the control stations below. “You’re right.”
Ethan followed the overlord. “So, disable the quarantine and tell the survivors to meet us in the ventral hangar. The Valiant is not going down without a fight.”
“My thoughts precisely,” Dominic said, already keying the ship’s comm system to life.
DEFIANT
Chapter 16
“This is Supreme Overlord Dominic, to any survivors who can hear me aboard the Valiant. As you may or may not already know, we are in a state of emergency quarantine. The epidemic which swept through the ship only hours ago has left us devastated, taking the lives of almost everyone aboard. We are the sole survivors. But it appears this was only the prelude to a full-scale attack. We have an enemy fleet incoming, ready to take advantage of our weakness. In order to mount an effective defense, we will fly out aboard the Defiant. I am disabling the quarantine now. Meet me in the starboard ventral hangar bay. We launch in fifteen. Dominic out.”
Ethan watched the overlord close down the comm, and abruptly the dim emergency lighting of the quarantine was replaced by a comparatively-blinding
brightness as glow panels all over the bridge brightened. A second later, the red alert sirens came on, and the lighting switched back to a dim, but now red glow.
“Let’s go,” the overlord said, striding back from the comm station to the gangway above their heads.
Ethan kept pace beside him. “You think we have fifteen minutes before that fleet arrives?”
“If they want to land to take this ship, they still have to blast their way into one of the hangar bays. The hangars’ shields should hold them out long enough.”
The doors at the back of the bridge automatically swished open for the overlord, and Ethan followed him through. Dominic stopped at the nearest lift tube. Abruptly he turned to Ethan and smiled. “I suspect you know who I am, but we have yet to be formally introduced. I’m Supreme Overlord Altarian Dominic.”
Ethan nodded and stuck out his hand. “Second Lieutenant Adan Reese.”
The overlord hesitated. “Lieutenant Adan Reese of the Rokan Defense?”
Ethan raised an eyebrow. If the overlord knew about him, his performance had been better than he’d realized. “Yes.”
“Impressive scores. A pleasure to meet you, Adan.” With that, the overlord accepted the handshake, but their hands missed, and the overlord grabbed him by the wrist instead. The overlord’s grip fastened directly over Ethan’s bandages, and he winced from the pressure.
“I’m sorry,” Dominic said with a small smile. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”
The lift tube arrived to take them down and they stepped inside as the doors swished open.
Ethan shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You’re pretty strong for an old man.”
The overlord quirked an eyebrow at him. “And you’re pretty soft for a young one.”
“Fair enough,” Ethan said, watching the overlord punch in a floor number—deck nine. Suddenly, the floor dropped out from under them, but Ethan felt only the slightest sensation of falling as the lift tube dropped almost 100 floors through the ship’s artificial gravity in a matter of seconds. The doors opened a few seconds later, and they walked out into a broad concourse which lay directly before a massive wall of transpiranium. Beyond that, they could see the starboard ventral hangar bay with the pristine gray hull of a venture-class cruiser clearly visible on the other side. The ventral hangar was truly massive to accommodate the 280-meter-long cruiser.
Ethan whistled his appreciation. “There’s the elegance to this beast’s brawn! Right where you’d expect to find it—hiding under her skirts.”
The overlord smiled. “Indeed. Normally there would be another one right behind us.”
Ethan turned to briefly gaze through a matching transpiranium wall to the empty port ventral hangar bay. After a moment, he turned back to the starboard hangar and walked up to the transpiranium wall to get a close look at the cruiser lying there. He couldn’t help but run his hands along the cold transpiranium barrier separating him from the ship on the other side, as if to caress the vessel’s rugged lines. “Whenever I see that ship, I see the ISS. I see 10,000 years of accumulated civilization. I see the endless beaches and crystal blue waters of Hanlay; the urban utopias of Advistine, Gorvin, and Clementa, but most of all I see the soaring, snow-covered mountains of Roka IV, the skies purpling just before a storm; I see the canyon cities and the glacier parks....” Ethan turned from the transpiranium to find the overlord standing beside him, looking at him curiously. Ethan shook his head sadly. “And then I try to imagine it all gone, but I can’t. I wasn’t even there when the Sythians invaded. I can’t imagine what one of them looks like or sounds like. Of course, I’ve seen the holos of the war, like everyone else, but they don’t seem real.”
The overlord smiled. “You speak of Roka IV as though you’ve been there.”
“Roka was my home.”
The supreme overlord raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You’re a Rokan? What a coincidence, so am I.”
Ethan turned to the overlord with a frown. He hadn’t realized the overlord had been a Rokan. In fact, he felt quite sure that the overlord was supposed to be from Advistine. “You mean you lived there for a few years?” Ethan asked.
“No, I was born there, Adan, just like you.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say I was born there. I said it was my home.”
“Oh—” The overlord’s smile faded. “My apologies, I just assumed. . . .”
Ethan nodded. So the overlord was actually from Roka. Advistine must have just been the official line—it would be more politically advantageous to be from a place which the majority of your public could relate to. “Were you there to watch Roka fall?” Ethan asked.
The overlord shook his head. “No, like you I also have to struggle to imagine that the galaxy as we once knew it is gone.”
“Well, at least you saw some of the war.” Ethan turned back to the transpiranium, his eyes glazing over as he looked out the hangar to the starless void of Dark Space beyond. “You witnessed the destruction,” Ethan said distantly. “You know what it is we ran from. I keep thinking that someday my sentence in here is going to end, and I’ll wake up back in my bed to find that this has all just been a bad dream.”
He imagined that he’d wake up back on Roka IV, lying beside his wife Destra. He had nightmares like that. But then he’d wake up and realize that the dream had been a good one and it was reality which was the nightmare. In those dreams his son Atton would come running in and jump on the bed. He’d tell them that they had to get up or they’d miss it. Miss what? He’d say. The avalanche! Atton would reply. Then Ethan would groan and roll over like he always did. There was an avalanche every other hour on Roka, thanks to the mining in the mountains. Soon as the miners woke up, they started blasting, and then the snow came cascading down from those rigid peaks. Ethan smiled sadly. Then Atton will ask me to take him gliding, and I’ll remind him that he has to be at least 10 before he can go gliding with me.
Ethan sighed. “I wish I could see Roka again, the way it used to be.” He wasn’t just talking about the cities and the landscape, but the overlord couldn’t know that.
Ethan felt a hand land heavily on his shoulder, and he turned to see the overlord staring at him intently, his blue eyes shining with suspicious moisture.
“I know,” Dominic whispered. “Immortals willing, we’ll see it all again someday.”
“Right,” Ethan nodded. “Someday.” But he was never going to see his son again. Or his wife. There was no someday that could bring them back.
A few seconds later, they heard a screech of brakes and the swish of doors opening which drew their eyes to the far end of the concourse and the rail car tunnel there. They watched as the first pilots began streaming into the concourse.
“By the Immortals, I don’t believe my eyes! Is that the overlord?” one of them asked.
“I think so,” another said.
“I haven’t seen him in years!”
“We saw him just yesterday in the holocasts.”
“I meant in the flesh.”
The group stopped before the overlord and stood at attention. “Sir!” They saluted as one.
“At ease,” Dominic said. “How many of you are there?”
One officer took a step forward and said, “Twenty-three, sir.” The rank insignia on his shoulder marked him as a Lieutenant Commander. A second later, Ethan recognized him as none other than Vance “Scorcher” Rangel. Ethan’s gaze quickly skipped over the group of assembled officers and he found four more familiar faces: Gina, Ithicus, Deck Commander Loba Caldin, and the curly blond-haired pilot named Taz. Ethan frowned. Most of the survivors were nova pilots.
The overlord appeared to notice that, too. “Nova pilots to my left,” he said, gesturing with his left hand. “Starship crew to my right,” he went on, gesturing with his right. “Engineers and technicians in the middle.”
Once the assembled officers had been divided, Ethan noticed that there were only two crewmen and one engineer in the entire group.
/> The overlord shook his head. “Well, we have a few squadrons of novas here, but not much else.”
“Let’s wait for the others to arrive,” Ethan said.
That was when Gina chose to speak up. “Adan, what are you doing up there?” The overlord turned to her. “Sorry, sir, but you should know that he’s a nova pilot, not a command counselor.”
“I’ll decide what he is and what he isn’t, thank you.” The overlord’s gaze moved on as another rail car arrived and spilled men and women into the concourse. The overlord called out once more as they approached, telling them to divide into nova pilots, engineers, and starship crew. Now there were just over fifty officers assembled, fully twenty of whom were nova pilots.
Dominic turned to Ethan. “How much time has passed?”
“Ten minutes, sir.”
“They have another five, then.”
By the time the third rail car arrived, all 97 survivors were assembled in the concourse, and six more minutes had elapsed. “That’s it,” the overlord said. And as if to punctuate that pronouncement, a violent explosion rocked the deck beneath their feet and rumbled ominously through the walls around them. Ethan saw the transpiranium wall of the starboard hangar jitter with residual vibrations, momentarily blurring his view of the venture-class cruiser beyond. Everyone turned to look out the empty hangar on the opposite side of the concourse just in time to see a whole squadron of Brondi’s junk fighters begin pouring bright yellow ripper fire into the port hangar’s shields. Lying in wait just beyond those shields were an old beat up troop transport and Brondi’s gleaming black and silver corvette.
The overlord turned back to his crew. “Looks like we’re out of time. Anyone with even partial experience in bridge control systems, follow me. Nova pilots, head to the hangar aboard the Defiant and get ready to launch. Sentinels, you can either come with us or stay back to slow them down, but I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to come back for you. Engineers to the flight deck with the pilots. Ruh-kah!” Death and glory.
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