Dark Space- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Atton,” the overlord said in a shivery voice, his hand rising beneath the covers.

  “Father,” the boy replied.

  Brondi abruptly plucked the cigar from his lips and dropped his feet off the desk. “Son of a . . . ! Overlord?” He watched the boy kneel beside the bed and clasp the overlord’s reaching hand in both of his.

  “We don’t have much time,” Dominic said. “Are you ready to make the switch?”

  The young man nodded.

  “Your holoskin is in the safe in my locker, and you have two spares, just in case. You’re doing the right thing, Atton.”

  The young man nodded. “I know.”

  “Med bot,” the overlord called out, and a hovering silver sphere appeared in the holo with a syringe dangling from one of its many jointed arms. Brondi watched the subsequent operation with intense interest. He saw first the young man offer his wrist to the bot and receive an injection of anesthetic, and then the bot pulled out another syringe and injected the overlord with it. The operation which followed made a small incision in each man’s wrist, whereupon their identichips were promptly switched.

  When the operation was finished, Dominic lay back with a sigh. “Immortals be with you, Atton. I wish I could be, too.”

  “As do I, Father.”

  “You will need to fake your own death. The overlord’s adopted son can’t simply go missing and no one notice.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

  “And my body?” the overlord asked. “They can’t be allowed to discover that I was a skinner, too.” With that admission, the overlord’s features abruptly shimmered and morphed into those of a man almost as old, but not nearly as vital.

  “Holy frek!” Brondi jumped up from the desk and the holo pad clattered to the floor. The holo fuzzed out and then sprang back to life. Brondi jumped back from it as though it were a snake. “Holy frek!” he said again. The overlord wasn’t the overlord at all. He was a holoskinner! Brondi was grinning wildly now, his cigar forgotten and smoldering in one hand. He shook that hand at the holo, casting off a rain of glowing cigar embers which fluttered down through the recording. “You had us all fooled, didn’t you?”

  “Would it be so bad if they knew?” Brondi heard Atton say amidst his shocked exclamations.

  “The Imperium would fall apart. It would be anarchy. . . .” The overlord paused to take a few gasping breaths. He began patting Atton’s hands. “You need to be the one to transition us to a new overlord—peacefully. He has grown old enough; it is time we had a new, younger face for the ISS.”

  “You don’t mean me?”

  The overlord just smiled. “Perhaps after some years have passed you will be able to answer that question for yourself.”

  Brondi went on smiling and gaping at the holo. What followed were mostly sentimental exchanges, but Brondi watched right up until the end. When the holo ended without further surprises, Brondi went straight to the overlord’s locker beside the bed. He opened the polished steel door and looked around for the safe. He tossed the overlord’s things aside carelessly, searching for it, but there was no safe in evidence. Then Brondi thought to check the back of the locker. He knocked on it with his fist, checking for hollow spaces. Everywhere he tested, it rang with a dull thunk, right until he got down on his haunches and tried the back wall of the bottom shelf. This time there came a hollow sound, and Brondi popped his now stubby cigar in his mouth as his lips parted in a smile. He would have to get someone to crack into the safe of course, but then . . .

  The pieces of a plan began assembling in his brain. He could rule Dark Space without even a hint of disruption to the established order—at least until it became impossible to hide what had happened aboard the Valiant. Long before then it would be easy to trick the scattered remnants of the fleet into yielding control of their vessels to him. He wouldn’t just have the Valiant. He would have it all!

  In that moment Brondi’s comm began to trill. He touched a hand to his ear to answer it, and a tense female voice began chattering in his ear.

  “Brondi, sir, we have a situation developing on—”

  “Call me supreme overlord,” Brondi interrupted, already getting used to the idea of taking Dominic’s place.

  The woman hesitated. “Supreme Overlord Brondi, we have a situation on deck 12. The bounty hunter Verlin and various members of his team have called for backup. They are under attack.”

  Brondi frowned. So there were more survivors of the plague. “Has the situation been dealt with?”

  “We’re not sure what happened. They’ve stopped answering comms.”

  “Hmmm,” Brondi’s brow furrowed. “Secure the floor. Shut down all access to that level except for one lift tube, and have an assault team waiting for me there. I’ll go investigate myself.”

  “Yes, sir—Overlord Brondi, sir.”

  Brondi tapped his ear to end the comm call and then turned to leave the overlord’s quarters. He was not happy. The ship was supposed to have been cleared of survivors long ago. Whoever had delivered that all-clear would answer for their mistake.

  * * *

  As soon as the door opened for him, Roan heard the men’s voices and their exclamations of surprise. He watched one man stagger away from the open door.

  “Hoi! What the frek!” that man said. “Halt! Anyone there?”

  The way that man held his rifle, aimed straight at him, Roan knew that the alliance had been shattered. These men were now his enemies. They had no doubt planned to keep him prisoner, but now he was out, and he would not be captured again. The rest of the men also swung their rifles into line, and Roan bared his teeth, but made no sound, standing perfectly still in the entrance to his crèche. Had they somehow seen him?

  “Relax!” a dark-skinned man said. “There’s nothing there—you!” That man snapped his fingers at another. “Go investigate.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  So they hadn’t seen him. Roan relaxed his rigid posture and listened to the ensuing exchange with great interest. His translator bead relayed the men’s words to him in his own language with the occasional nonsensical slip up—

  “Because I copulatin’ said so! Now go!” the dark man said.

  Roan wasn’t sure what reproduction had to do with this situation, but he put it down to one more thing he didn’t understand about humans. He watched one of the men creeping toward him and he pressed himself against the wall to allow that man past. Roan watched as the human walked all the way down the corridor to the entrance of his crèche and then stepped inside, exclaiming, “You have to see this!”

  Roan had to stop a hiss of displeasure from escaping his lips as the remainder of the men outside began filing in to investigate. They were invading his crèche without invitation or permission! They would pay for that insult. Roan waited until the last man—the dark man—had entered the corridor, and then he quietly followed them in.

  When the dark man stopped just inside the entrance of the crèche, Roan stepped past him and began shadowing the first one to have entered. He followed just a step behind the human and waited until he had wandered far from the others; then Roan took one long stride toward him and reached out for his head with both hands. One of Roan’s armored hands covered the man’s mouth, muffling his screams, and with a sudden wrenching motion, something popped in the man’s neck, and he crumpled to the snowy floor. Roan stood over him, waiting for him to get up. When he didn’t, Roan hissed quietly. Humans were such frail creatures.

  The others came running to see what had happened, while Roan sunk into the shadows, waiting for his next victim.

  * * *

  With his enhanced sight Verlin saw the man fall, but not what had caused him to trip. The others heard his scream, but didn’t see anything, so they were panicking.

  “Quiet!” Verlin yelled as they all hurried toward the fallen man. He was not moving. Had he slipped on a patch of ice, hit his head, and been knocked unconscious? Verlin frowned. Brondi’s men were hope
lessly incompetent.

  As Verlin drew near to the fallen man, however, he began to notice something strange. The pattern of footsteps in the snow was wrong. There were two sets of footprints rather than one, and the second set was closely shadowing the first. The shadowing pair of prints were very large. Verlin bent down for a closer look while the rest of his men rushed on blindly to see what had happened to their comrade. The prints had been made by boots.

  “His neck’s been snapped!” one man said. Another shushed him, warning that whatever had killed their squad mate was still in there with them.

  Verlin stood up and turned in a quick circle to study the vast chamber, his pistol swinging first one way, and then the other. He ignored his men’s frantic whispering. Verlin’s mind went back to the discarded laser welder and the molten chunk of door. What type of animal is bipedal, tool-using, and wears boots? he wondered. A human?

  It would have to be a giant.

  Verlin’s gaze swung back to the worried knot of men standing over the body. He was about to order them to fall back again when a gout of blood erupted from one man’s chest. He didn’t even scream, but the men around him did as they were splashed with his blood.

  Verlin could see perfectly in the dark, but he still couldn’t see what had killed the second man. Another one made a run for the door. He was the next to die with something unseen grabbing his head from behind and snapping his neck like the first.

  Someone fired off a random volley of ripper fire, but it hit the snow with a puff of shattered ice crystals. He was next. His scream went on and on as he was first dragged off his feet and then thrown into the freezing cold water and dragged under.

  Verlin was already hurriedly backing out of the chamber to the entrance. He touched his ear to make a comm call. When the bridge answered, he spoke quickly. “We’re under attack on level 12, Med Lab! Three men down! Send reinforcements.”

  The comm crackled. “Acknowledged. How many are there?”

  There came another splash from the pool, but Verlin didn’t see what had caused it. He squinted into the distance and shook his head. “At least one, but—” There came a rushing whoosh of air as something ran toward him at great speed. Verlin turned to flee, but then he felt himself being lifted bodily and thrown high into the air. As he reached the apex of that toss, Verlin twisted around and fired off a shot. It disappeared into thin air, but something hissed loudly. Then Verlin hit the ground face-first with a very solid thud. A sharp pain went through his neck and nose, which had hit just before the rest of him, and he felt his awareness dimming as his thoughts slipped away. He knew that he had to hold on to consciousness if he were to survive, and he fought the encroaching darkness with everything that he had. That was when he felt something sharp raking down his back, and his eyes shot open with a scream.

  He heard a warbling hiss close beside his ear. “Let me go, you frekkin’ . . . !” Verlin twisted onto his ruined back and fired two more shots in random directions. Both missed. He pressed a hand to his ear to speak once more into his comm.

  That was when he realized that his comm piece had fallen out when he’d hit the ground. He spotted it lying just out of reach to his right. Verlin scrambled to reach it, but something grabbed hold of his hand and crushed it, breaking all of the bones and grinding the pieces together.

  Verlin screamed again, and then something very strong crushed his windpipe and he could scream no more.

  Chapter 7

  Tova did not look happy. Ethan wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but she hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d explained to her that Roan was trapped aboard an enemy ship. Beside him, Atton looked nervous. That was another clue that Tova was just a step away from tearing them into bite-sized chunks.

  The guards flanking them with their ripper rifles casually at the ready gave Ethan only a small amount of comfort. If Tova wanted to, she could simply disappear, and it would be impossible to track an invisible target. Ethan reflected that he should have thought about that in advance and prepared something to defend against an invisible enemy.

  “I’m sorry,” Ethan said again. “I wish we had been able to rescue him during the evacuation, but I’m sure he’s still alive.”

  At last Tova moved, but it was just a muscle twitching in her neck—then her eyes blinked and her lips parted. Ethan heard her warbling language followed promptly by the translation. “He is living,” she said.

  Ethan cocked his head. “Really? You’ve spoken with him?”

  “He is hurt, not bad. Humans on ship think he is dead. He thinks they are you.”

  Ethan allowed his relief to show, his shoulders sagging. “Thank the Immortals. Can you contact him now?”

  Tova’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Are they you? The ones who try to kill Roan?”

  “No!” Ethan answered quickly.

  “They are humans.”

  Ethan frowned. “They are humans, but they are not with us.”

  “Your species is foolish to fight itself.”

  Ethan snorted. “You can say that again.”

  “Why? Do you not hear well?”

  Ethan shook his head. “No, never mind. The point is, we are not with them nor are they with us. You have to make Roan understand that the men on board will try to kill him or hurt him if they find him, and he needs to hide until we can return.”

  “He understands this already. What else you desire to communicate?”

  “Tell him we will be there soon, and that if possible, we could use his help.”

  “What type of help?”

  Ethan hesitated, thinking quickly. “If he can find and shut down the main reactor or the shields just before we arrive, it would give us time and the opportunity we need to get aboard.”

  “When we arrive?”

  “Yes.”

  “When we arrive?” Tova repeated, looming closer.

  Ethan frowned, wondering why she’d repeated the question, but then he realized that she was asking when they would arrive to take back the Valiant and rescue Roan. Good question, he thought. “Tell him it will be about a week.”

  “I tell him.”

  “Meanwhile, we’ll need you to sit down with our chief engineer and discuss ways that the Valiant could be sabotaged, so that you can tell Roan. Would you be willing to talk with our engineer, Tova?”

  She hissed. “You think we are ignorant.”

  “You are—” Tova’s eyes flashed and Ethan hastened to add, “—ignorant of our technology, anyway. It will be easier for Roan to sabotage the Valiant if we tell him what to do.”

  “I do this but take care that you do not offend me again. Your words are arrogant and foolish.”

  “Sure,” Ethan said, waving his hand dismissively. “One more thing, Tova . . .” Ethan regretted what he had to say next. “We need to cross Sythian Space to gather reinforcements before we can rescue Roan.”

  Tova’s eyes narrowed again. “You can make ship invisible?”

  Ethan shook his head and Tova hissed. “This is not dangerous—is impossible,” she said.

  “We have to try. For Roan’s sake and for ours. And we need your help, Tova. If we can’t make ourselves invisible we have to at least be able to detect the Sythians who are.”

  Tova hissed again and this time she bared her fangs. “I help you, crazy human, but not from here. No longer from the shadows. I stay by your side so that you live to rescue the lord of my crèche.”

  Ethan smiled to cover the grimace which was tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. First let me formally introduce you to the crew, and then I’ll bring you onto the bridge. You’ll have to wear a uniform of course, but we’ll have one made.”

  “No uniform,” Tova said. “I wear armor.”

  Ethan’s smile broadened, but inwardly he scowled. “Tova, in our society people wear clothes not armor. To live among us you must make some compromises.” Out of the corner of his eye Ethan noticed Atton shaking his head.

  “I make
compromise already. I don’t eat you for letting your crèche mates to capture Roan.”

  “Tova, you’ll make my crew uneasy if you’re wearing your armor.”

  Tova hissed again. “Then I wear nothing, but you are to make your ship dark and cold like night.”

  Ethan frowned. “Don’t push me, Tova.”

  “I do not push you. Do your eyes hurt in dark as mine do in light? Does your skin burn in heat?” Tova loomed closer still.

  “We’ll turn down the climate controllers and the lights, but you’ll have to adapt to a slightly warmer and brighter environment.”

  Tova’s eyes flared wide and she bared her fangs, hissing loudly. “You adapt to me!”

  “You need us to help you as much as we need you, Tova. Think about it. Roan needs you. It’ll only be for a few days.”

  Tova hissed one last time and looked away from them. “I wait to be brought to bridge,” she said.

  Ethan nodded. “We’ll be back soon.” He turned on his heel and began descending the stairs with Atton. Their bodyguards kept a careful watch on Tova as they left the icy darkness of her crèche.

  “You shouldn’t have been so demanding with her,” Atton said.

  “Relax, it went well. She agreed to our conditions, didn’t she?” Ethan replied.

  “She didn’t agree to anything. Did you see the way she looked away from us?” The door to Tova’s crèche swished shut behind them.

  Ethan frowned. “Yes, wasn’t that a sign of her giving in?”

  Atton laughed. “It’s an expression of extreme displeasure. We are unworthy of her sight. In Gor society, only those who have fallen out of favor are treated that way. She does not like us at all.”

  Ethan snorted. “Well, I’m not too fond of her myself.”

  “It may be hard to get her cooperation.”

  “She’ll come around. Her life and Roan’s are at stake, too. Meanwhile, I’d better think of how I’m going to break the news to our crew.”