If I don’t get to it, my fate will be the same as Dean’s. With the threat of what that meant to spur her on, Destra ran faster. The trees rushed by her in a brown, gray, and purple haze, the colors of their boles blending into a dreary kaleidoscope.
Birds tweeted and squawked around her, as if cheering her on. A wind rustled through the leaves overhead, sending a small rain of them fluttering down and bringing a choking wash of smoke to her nostrils. Destra began to cough, and her eyes started burning. She saw a fallen log lying in her path just in time to leap over it with the gurney. The gurney lifted her high over the log and then settled down gradually on the other side. Destra’s lungs began to burn, insisting she take a break, but she pressed on, feeling the back of her neck prickle with the imagined heat of the fire raging behind her and with the thought of untold numbers of Sythians racing after her.
Destra pushed the gurney faster and faster. She was so focused on watching the terrain for exposed roots and rocks which could trip her up that she didn’t notice when a large, shiny boulder appeared in the grassy clearing up ahead. When she did notice, Destra slowed her progress, digging her heels into the needles and leaves to bring the gurney to a stop before they reached the clearing. She stood staring at the silvery boulder for a moment, her chest heaving, and her mind racing before she noticed the discrepancies between the shiny, smooth surface and that of any rock she’d ever encountered. It’s a ship, she realized with a gasp.
And then she was lunging through the clearing, pushing the gurney once more, this time with the irrational hope that she might be able to get aboard that spacecraft and blast off Roka to follow her son into Dark Space. Gone were any thoughts she’d had of helping Dean. If she had to pick between two little boys, Atton won every time.
Hold on baby! she thought. Mommy’s coming.
* * *
—THE YEAR 10 AE—
The blinding brilliance of multiple explosions faded, along with the sound, and the next thing Alara heard was, “Training mission complete. Your score for this mission is 5B. You killed five Shell Fighters. Congratulations.”
Alara gaped at her controls. The stars swam back into focus, but she was still seeing spots. “Hold on—are you saying this was all just a simulation?”
The red contacts vanished from Alara’s star map, and then her squadron reappeared—all 14 of them. She even heard her comm come back to life with the chattering voices of the supposedly dead.
“You mean all this time you’ve just been frekking with me, Ethan?”
“I was only following orders, Alara. Please don’t be distressed.”
“You bet your frekking ass I’m distressed!” She keyed the comm with a defiant stab of her finger, adding her complaints to the already confusing babble on the comm. “Hoi, whose idea was this?”
“Cut the chatter Guardians,” a stern voice replied. “Anyone who’s still complaining can discuss it with the warden on the brig.” It was Guardian One. “I don’t tolerate insubordination among my pilots.” The chatter subsided and the commander went on. “This was a live drill, and yes, the only ones who knew about it were the six real pilots scattered among you green freks. We played our part, faking the screams of the dying and bowing out of the battle as soon as possible to see how you all handle yourselves in a real engagement.”
Alara listened to the commander’s explanation with a scowl. Her eyes blazed at the comm display. She held her tongue for now, but she wasn’t going to fly for that man—not now, not ever.
Commander Adari went on, “A nova is able to simulate almost any sortie, but some of you might have noticed that as your ships became damaged no pieces went flying off into space, and of course the explosions were all simulated, so you won’t have felt any kinetic forces from those blasts, regardless of your IMS settings.
“What you just experienced is a very likely scenario of what we’re about to encounter while crossing Sythian Space, so the fact that you all died in less than ten minutes is not good. But some of you managed to put up a surprising fight and even took an enemy fighter with you. A smaller number of you were able to take several enemies down. To those few I offer my congratulations—Alara Vastra and Tenrik Fanton received 5B and 3B ratings respectively. The number refers to a pilot’s kills per sortie, and the letter grade is an overall evaluation of flight skill. The more sorties you fly, the lower that number will tend to get, but hopefully, the higher your letter grade will get, since you’ll become a more experienced pilot.
“We’re now heading back to the Defiant, so fly toward the waypoint which should be appearing on your star maps. The final roster will be published tomorrow morning after all of the other candidates have gone through this scenario. Do not tell any of the other trainees what’s to come. Any breach of this confidentiality will land you in the brig—or worse. Guardian One out.”
“Frek you, Guardian One!” Alara screamed, but she didn’t send that over the comms.
“Alara, you should be aware that I’m obligated to report pilot insubordination in whatever form I may encounter it. Your comment has been filed into my mission report.”
“Frek you, too, Ethan!”
“Duly noted, but I assure you I am incapable of frekking anything, so your insubordination is wasted on me.”
“Ethan?” Alara began, adopting a dulcet tone.
“Yes, Alara?”
“Shut up.”
Chapter 15
Ethan sat discussing tactics with Deck Commander Loba Caldin inside the Defiant’s operations center.
“Sythians don’t have SLS disruptors . . . do they?”
Commander Caldin frowned. “No . . . you know that they don’t, sir.”
“Of course, I know. So why don’t we make a micro jump to cross Forlax?”
Caldin shook her head. “First of all, because it would take us five minutes to calculate the jump—five minutes without maneuvering, travelling at slow, SLS-safe speeds. Even if they didn’t kill us in that window of opportunity, they’d detect our drives spooling, and they’d line up obstacles along our jump trajectory—maybe even cloaking mines. No sooner would we jump to SLS than we’d run into whatever trap they’ve laid and blow up.”
“Then we should jump in short of the system gate, accelerate up to a high speed, and roar through the system in real space, going so fast that they can’t possibly catch us.”
“If we drop short of the gate it will take more fuel to cross the system, since we’ll need to open our own exit wormhole, and the Sythians could still line up mines and ships on our flight path.”
“So we fire the guns ahead of us as we go.”
Caldin shook her head. “Might not be good enough if they have a wormhole ship.”
“A wormhole ship?”
Caldin frowned and her head cocked ever so slightly to one side. “As you already know . . . the Sythians have been taking jump gates from systems they don’t want or need, cloaking them, and then attaching them to some of their larger ships. Since the ships and gates are invisible to our gravidar while cloaked, we can’t hope to avoid running straight into the invisible wormholes. All they need to do is wait until they see we’re going too fast to slow down or abruptly change course, then they jump one of their wormhole ships straight into our flight path. At that point, one of two things will happen—we run straight through the wormhole and our safeties knock us back to real space, busting us to near-zero velocity, or else maybe we’re going at a nice, SLS-safe speed and they get to send us wherever they want before we even have the time to blink.
“They’ve also taken to placing wormhole ships in front of existing system gates, so that just when we think we’re going through a charted gate, instead we’re catapulted through a cloaked wormhole that sends us straight to a nice little minefield that they’ve laid just for us.”
Ethan wasn’t actually aware of any of those tactics, but he was getting tired of Caldin’s obstructionist attitude. “Well, maybe we can just stay here forever and leave Dark Space to
the crime lords.”
Caldin held his gaze for a moment, her expression unrelenting, but then she sighed. “You’re right. I recommend we drop out of the gate as planned, using the element of surprise as best we can, and cross the system as fast as possible from there.”
“That does seem to be our best chance.”
“Is the recon flight back yet?”
Ethan nodded. “Taylon’s clear. I’m about to review the trainees’ scores and the commander’s choices for his squadron. If you’d like, you can do it with me, but I already know from Commander Adari’s debriefing that all of the pilots except for two in the first batch of trainees qualified with ratings of B or higher.”
“Not too bad, I suppose. The cut off for a nova pilot is a ‘B’ rating, so the trainees must be fairly skilled.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Based on those results I told the commander to test the other candidates on the sim deck rather than in the novas, so that we can get going. We need to cross the Taylon System before any enemy ships drop by to ruin our day.”
Caldin nodded. “Who made the roster? No one we can’t afford to spare I hope.”
“I haven’t had a look yet; why don’t you check the mission report first and tell me what you think.” Ethan passed her a holo pad with the report already selected. Caldin brought it to life with stab of her finger, and a list of names complete with pictures, test scores, and instructors’ notes appeared hovering above the pad. Caldin scanned through the list quickly, and Ethan watched from the other side, unable to read anything because the text was all backward from his perspective. He did recognize a few of the pilots’ faces, however—
One in particular.
Ethan’s eyes widened and he snatched the pad away from Caldin so he could get a better look. He found himself staring into the bright violet eyes of none other than Alara Vastra.
“What is it?” Caldin asked, frowning at him.
Ethan shook his head. “No, it’s nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing. Alara can’t be allowed to fly! She was in no condition to become a nova pilot, and even if she were—even on her best day she wasn’t a good enough pilot to survive what’s coming. He noticed that her score for the mission had been the highest of the group—5B—but he dismissed that with a shake of his head. Flying a recon mission is very different from flying in real combat.
Something began niggling in the back of Ethan’s mind, but he ignored it and continued paging through the mission report to see if there were any more surprises. When he reached the bottom of the report, he read Commander Adari’s conclusions and suggestions for whom should join the squadron, but when Ethan read the final line of the report, his eyes goggled.
The trainees performed surprisingly well, considering their lack of experience and the fact that this was a blind combat simulation in live novas—
Suddenly Ethan realized what it was that had been niggling. Alara’s rating was 5-B! The number referred to the number of kills she’d scored. For a recon flight that number should have been zero.
—None of them realized that the enemy contacts weren’t real, and although they didn’t work effectively as a team, they did manage to take out a total of fourteen enemy fighters to their eight, and they did this while outnumbered more than twenty to one by enemy forces. My recommendation is that all the pilots who scored at least one kill in this mission should be considered for permanent reassignment to Guardian Squadron.
Ethan couldn’t believe it. The commander had sent Alara, fragile as she was, into a blind combat simulation! Ethan had to work hard to control himself. He wanted to punch the table with his fist and throw the holo pad at the opposite wall.
“Overlord Dominic, sir? Is something wrong?” Caldin asked, her eyebrows drawing together with concern.
Ethan shook his head and pushed his chair away from the captain’s table. Standing up from the table and turning to her, he said, “Go to the bridge and plot a course to the gate. I’ll be with you soon.” Ethan was already on his way out of the operations center.
“Where are you going?” Caldin called after him.
“I need to speak with Commander Adari!” Ethan called back.
* * *
Alara sat watching the Guardians’ juvenile antics from a couch in the furthest corner of the pilot’s lounge. The lounge was much smaller than Aurora’s, and the pilots had to be their own bartenders, but at least they couldn’t get kicked out for throwing a raucous party. Besides that, on a yellow alert it was the only place close enough to the hangar for them to celebrate and still be able to scramble to their fighters in five minutes.
Alara’s arms were crossed, and she looked distinctly unimpressed. Shouts of laughter and camaraderie were rising in the air, and even as she watched, the group of pilots sitting at the bar broke out in song, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, their drinks sloshing over the rims of their mugs in golden rivers of fizz as they swayed to the off-key melody they sung. There was no alcohol being served, but the non-alcoholic equivalents seemed to have induced insobriety anyway. This was a celebration for the trainees, but Alara refused to take part. They tricked us! she fumed. Had everyone forgotten so soon?
She saw a flicker of a black flight suit in the corner of her eye, and felt a hand on her shoulder. The couch sagged, and Alara turned to see who’d sat down beside her. She found herself face to face with her wingmate from the mission, Captain Reese.
“What?” she said.
The captain frowned at her and removed his hand from her shoulder. “Why don’t you join us?” he asked, taking a sip from a mug he held in his other hand.
“Yes, and make an even bigger fool of myself than you already have. No thanks.” She had broken into tears when they’d finally landed on the Defiant again. The flight engineer who’d been the first to greet her as she’d come down the ladder from her cockpit had assured her it was just a delayed reaction to the stress, and not to feel embarrassed; then she’d thrown up on his boots, and he’d suddenly become much less sympathetic. Alara shook her head to clear away the memory.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Alara,” Adan said, “but you should know it wasn’t my idea.”
“No? You let me think it was real just like everyone else. That’s just as bad.”
“I had no choice. It was the commander’s orders.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“Alara . . .” he reached for her shoulder again, but she shrugged him off and stood up, walking away. “Alara!” he called after her.
“Leave me alone, Captain. I’m going to hit the rack.”
Just as Alara reached the entrance of the lounge and began raising her wrist to pass it over the door scanner, the doors swished open, and she turned to see the overlord storming in, flanked by two guards. The overlord’s pale blue eyes met hers, and he said, “Stay here. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Alara watched as the overlord stalked up to Commander Ithicus Adari where he sat singing at the bar with a group of trainee pilots. The overlord tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting his song.
“Hoi there, sir!” Adari said, grinning broadly. “Care to join us for a drink?”
“I think you’re celebrating prematurely, Commander—or should I say Lieutenant.”
Alara began to smile now, too, as she watched Adari’s smug grin fade.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“That stunt you pulled. Conducting a blind combat simulation in the cockpits of real novas. Not only did I not authorize that, but did it occur to you how dangerous that could have been?”
“I thought the benefit outweighed the—”
“It outweighed nothing! What if your pilots had gone running off in all directions, fleeing for their lives and making emergency SLS jumps into the middle of frekking nowhere?”
Silence fell across the lounge.
“The AIs would have stopped them,” Adari said.
“Would the AIs have stopped them from running into
each other and us in their frenzy to escape an enemy they thought was real?”
“I . . .”
“Would it have stopped them from ejecting from their fighters when they thought they were about to die?”
“Well, no, but—”
“How long do you think we’d have had to spend here recovering those pilots and their fighters before moving on to the next system? Those delays might have cost us the Defiant.”
“I thought that a blind combat simulation was the best way to evaluate the trainees in the shortest time possible.”
The overlord waved his hand dismissively. “How about the mental strain you put on already badly over-stressed officers?” Alara saw him turn and point to her. “Did you know that that pilot over there, who you rated as 5B, and considered the winner of your little sortie, is currently a mental patient aboard the Defiant? She doesn’t know who she is, let alone remember how to fly!”
“With respect, sir, I think her results say otherwise. She was the only pilot to make five kills, and she was the last one standing.”
“I don’t care! Get her off the roster. And as for you, you’re relieved of command, Adari. Your XO will take charge of this squadron from here on out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alara saw the overlord turn once more, and now he pointed to Captain Reese who was still seated on the couch that she’d vacated.
“And you! Show my guards to their new assignments and then get to the bridge. We’re leaving the nebula now.”
With that, the overlord strode back to where Alara stood gaping at him from the entrance of the pilot’s lounge. “Come with me,” he said, hauling her roughly by the arm. She stumbled along beside him in a daze. “I’m taking you back to your parents’ quarters.”
“What?” Alara dug in her heels and yanked her arm free of his grasp. “No.” The overlord turned to look at her with blazing blue eyes. His chest rose and fell quickly with the force of his fury. She shook her head, suddenly feeling more sure of herself. The last few hours snapped into focus and now she had a whole new perspective—a new purpose besides agonizing over who she was and who she wasn’t. “I’m not going back to them,” she said, crossing her arms.
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