“I’ll be back soon, Kiddie . . .”
“I love you!” she heard herself say.
“I love you, too, Alara.”
Suddenly she knew who he was. The memories came rushing back—countless hours spent by that man’s side, co-piloting the Atton in Dark Space. He was Ethan—her best friend, her partner, and . . . She opened her eyes slowly and shook her head. “You . . .”
Ethan’s gaze flicked to the guard standing beside her and then back.
“You two know each other?” Terl asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Alara recovered smoothly. She turned to Terl and shook her head. Looking back to Ethan with a disgusted scowl, she said, “No, it’s just shocking to see who the overlord really was.”
Terl nodded.
Alara started toward Kurlin’s cell once more, but then she turned back to the guard standing behind her. “Do you think I could have a moment alone with my father?”
“Uh . . .”
“It’s okay—” She looked up and nodded to the roving black eye of a holocorder. “—you’ll have a record there in case you’re worried.”
Terl frowned. “I guess it’s okay, but don’t be long.”
Alara nodded and covered a yawn with one hand. “I’ll pass out if I stay too long. Need to hit the rack soon.”
The corpsman turned and walked off the brig. Alara watched him go and waited until the doors had shut behind him before turning to Ethan once more. She walked up close to the bars of his cell, being careful to keep her back to the nearest camera.
“Kiddie . . .” he whispered.
Using her body to shield the gesture, Alara put a finger to her lips, and then she fished around in her pocket for a holo pad. Bringing it out, she typed in a message, and then turned it so Ethan could see.
I remember you. We used to fly together. You were the overlord all this time?
Ethan smiled and nodded.
She typed in something else and turned the pad once more.
You said you loved me. Is that true?
Ethan hesitated, but then he nodded again.
What were you doing impersonating the overlord?
Ethan gestured for her to pass the pad to him through the bars. She turned her body to shield the movement from the holocorder, and then passed the pad through the bars. He spent a long moment typing something and then he turned the pad so she could see.
It’s a long story. They’re going to use a probe on me when we get to Obsidian Station, so you’ll find out then—assuming the information isn’t classified.
Alara’s eyes flew wide, now remembering what Caldin had said about saying goodbye to her father. That meant she’d have to say goodbye to Ethan, too. Alara took the pad back from Ethan and typed.
I’m going to get you out.
He shook his head.
I love you, Ethan. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that. I can’t leave you here. I’ll find a way.
Ethan gestured for the pad again, and he wrote: You can’t help me now. I know you love me, Kiddie, but you want something I can’t give you. My heart still belongs to my wife.
Alara frowned and reached for the pad once more. Now she wrote, You’re married??
The door swished open once more and Alara hurried to tuck the pad back into her flight jacket before turning to see Corpsman Terl come bustling in with the warden. Neither of them looked amused.
“Hoi, get away from that prisoner!” Terl said. “You’re not authorized to speak with him.”
Alara shook her head. “I wasn’t speaking with him. I was just trying to decide if I recognized him from somewhere.”
“And?” Terl asked as he reached her side.
Alara shook her head and glanced back at Ethan. “It’s just déjà vu. Being chipped makes it hard to decide what’s real . . . and what isn’t.” She held Ethan’s gaze as she said that last part, and she saw his eyes flash with hurt and sympathy. How could I have been stupid enough to fall for a married man? Alara wondered. The more she learned about her previous life, the less she wanted to go on living it.
“Well hurry up and pay your respects to the doc. I’m not leaving you alone in here again.”
“Of course. I’ll just be a moment,” Alara said and walked up to Kurlin’s cell. She found him sleeping on his bunk, so she woke him by rattling the bars of his cell.
He looked up with tired, bloodshot eyes, and then his eyes flew wide and he jumped up from the bed. “Alara! You’re safe!”
“Yes,” she smiled.
He hurried to the bars of the cell and reached for her hand. Alara endured the old man’s clammy touch for a few seconds. She still didn’t remember Kurlin as her father.
“Now I can die in peace,” he sighed.
“Don’t say that . . . you’re not going to die.”
Kurlin smiled wanly and shook his head. “My dear, sweet little girl, if I don’t die when they probe my mind, they will kill me when they see what’s locked inside of it.”
“We’re all dead men,” Captain Reese interrupted from the cell adjacent to Kurlin’s. Alara turned to meet the captain’s blue eyes. He’d been watching her the whole time.
Alara shook her head, and Terl grabbed her by the arm. “That’s enough fraternizing. We need to go.”
“Goodbye, Alara!” Kurlin called.
Alara looked back over her shoulder and smiled at the old man. “Goodbye, Dad.”
Kurlin’s eyes grew moist with that acknowledgement. She didn’t feel the truth of those words, but he was on death row, so it was the least she could do. She caught Ethan’s eye as she left, but he looked away, and then so did she. There wasn’t anything further to say. He’d said it already: he was in love with someone else—his wife! Alara couldn’t and wouldn’t compete with that. She shook her head, still reeling from the revelation of who the green-eyed man from her dreams was, and how stupid she’d been in her previous life.
They walked off the brig, and the door swished shut behind them. The warden went back to his desk, and Corpsman Terl eyed the elderly warden as he put his feet up on the desk once more and went back to reading on his holo pad.
“You been watching the security feed?” Terl asked, his eyes narrowing once more.
The warden looked up and smiled. “Of course,” but he didn’t even glance at the holos rising out of his desk, and the sound was muted on all the feeds.
“I want to see your holo logs since the prisoners arrived.”
The warden’s brow furrowed. He was a petty officer, probably a career washout to be so old and still such a low-ranking officer. Under any other circumstances, the warden would have been a ranking officer, but there was no one else they could spare from the crew to nursemaid the brig. “Is something wrong?”
Terl frowned. “Just get me the logs on a holo card. I’ll be back for them soon.”
* * *
Commander Caldin sat in the Overlord’s office watching the security holos from the brig with Corpsman Terl standing over her shoulder. He fast-forwarded to a certain spot, and then played back the recording. “There—” he said, “listen.”
“What’s going on?” Kurlin asked, and then he turned to see the imposter overlord staring at him from the cell opposite his, and his jaw dropped. “You! Who . . .” The doctor trailed off, shaking his head. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m the imposter, Kurlin.” The doctor just gaped at him. “That’s right—shocking.”
“How . . . ?”
“It’s a long story—one which the mind probe will soon discover.”
“They’re going to probe us?” Kurlin asked, his eyes widening.
“Why, are you afraid they might turn you into a vegetable? Vegetables can’t be tried for their crimes. You’d be better off.”
“He’s right, Kurlin,” Captain Reese said.
Kurlin shut his mouth with a scowl and turned to look at the wall between him and the adjacent cell. “Who are you?”
“The one who s
aved your bony ass.”
“I don’t understand,” Kurlin said, shaking his head.
“Who do you think put those guards in stasis? They were the only ones who knew about you besides us.”
“Why . . . why would you do that?” Kurlin asked.
“Frekked if I know. Seems like I should have let them kill you.”
Kurlin looked away, back to the imposter overlord. “Who is he?”
“He’s my son.”
Terl froze the recording there and Commander Caldin turned to look up at him with wide, blinking eyes. “They’re related? Who is this man?” The recording was frozen on the imposter’s face, showing his features clearly.
Terl shook his head. “We don’t know who he is yet. Without access to the net in Dark Space, the databanks are skriffy. I thought Alara might’ve recognized him when she went to say goodbye to her father, but she said it was just her mind playin’ tricks on her.”
“Hmmm.”
“You think she’s lying?”
Caldin shrugged. “Maybe she does recognize him, or maybe she only thinks she does. In either case she won’t be a reliable witness. The doctor, however . . . clearly he does recognize our imposter, and he is still in his right mind. When we subject him to a mind probe we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Terl nodded. “Yes.”
“Meanwhile, we have more pressing concerns.” Caldin pushed away from the desk and stood up with a sigh. “We need to finish refitting the corvette and get help before the Sythians find us and make all our power-squabbling pointless.”
Caldin walked up to room’s viewport and gazed out into the starry blackness of space. “This is the darkest things have ever been.”
Terl walked up behind her and gripped her shoulders in his big hands, massaging the knots out of her muscles. “It will be all right, Ma’am. If anyone can lead us to safety, it’s you.”
Caldin turned to him, her eyes searching his. “What makes you so sure?”
“I know you.”
Caldin smiled. “You always know how to make me feel better.”
Terl smiled back and reached up to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand.
She leaned toward him and he took the hint, bending down to kiss her gently on the lips. She reached for his hand and squeezed it—hard—before breaking away and leading him back to the desk. She had him sit down in the overlord’s chair, and then she climbed on top of him.
“Seems like you know a thing or two about makin’ people feel better yourself,” Terl said with a grin as she leaned down to kiss him.
* * *
After a hot bowl of stew and a short vaccucleanse, Alara Vastra stumbled into her bed. She was so tired she felt like she was drugged, and her head hit the pillow like a rock. Her dreams swirled with indistinct voices and blurry faces, but every now and then she had a clear glimpse of Ethan’s smile and his sparkling green eyes. Each time she saw his face, she felt a painful stab in her heart, and she wanted to cry. He wasn’t going to be around much longer, and . . . he was married?
The version of her in the dream tried to fight that truth. She took Ethan’s face in her hands and kissed his lips furiously—possessively—as though she could steal his heart from whomever it was that he’d married.
“You love me, Ethan! You said so!”
But in the dream he merely shook his head, and Alara watched as a faceless woman came and dragged him away from her, leading him off into the darkness. Ethan gave her a sloppy salute, and she watched the deep lines of sorrow carved around his mouth crease upward in a smile. “Goodbye, Kiddie . . .”
“No!”
Knock knock knock.
Alara awoke to the sound, and sat blinking up at the bunk above her, wondering for a moment what was real and what was a dream. Her head felt thick and groggy as she sat up on her bunk and looked around. She heard a familiar groan coming from the top bunk, and she said, “Gina?”
Another groan.
“Gina!” Alara thumped the bottom of the mattress above her head with her fist as the knocking started again. “Someone’s at the door!”
“You get it! Frekked if I care,” Gina mumbled.
Alara stood up with another groan and stumbled over to the door. The lights were still turned down low so they could sleep. When she passed her wrist over the door scanner, it swished open to admit a blinding brightness to the room. Alara stumbled away from the light, bringing her arm up to shield her eyes.
“Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant?” she asked, squinting into the light to see Commander Caldin smiling back at her.
“Second Lieutenant. I’ve decided to promote you in light of your performance on the last mission.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s been twelve hours since you were debriefed.”
“Krak, I’ve slept for half a day!”
“And you look like you could sleep for another half,” Caldin remarked, “but I need you for another mission.”
“Another . . .” Alara’s sleep-clouded brain struggled to catch up.
“We’re finished with the refit, but with all the components we had to steal from the Defiant, we won’t be going anywhere soon. It’s absolutely vital that we get reinforcements before a random patrol of Sythians detects us out here. They’re bound to be looking for us after Forlax.”
Alara nodded distractedly. “So you want me to . . .”
“Fly the corvette to Obsidian Station with Tova and come back with reinforcements. Cloaked ships this time, please.”
“I . . .”
“It’s an easy mission. Just a straight shot through SLS, so you can sleep on the way, but I need my best pilots to go, just in case.”
“Who else is going?”
The commander called out over Alara’s shoulder. “Gina!” A groan was her only reply. “Get out here, Lieutenant!”
A moment later a bleary-eyed woman with short blond hair sticking out at all angles appeared in the open door. “Hoi,” she saluted weakly, and leaned heavily on the door jamb.
“Get dressed you two. You’re launching in ten,” Caldin said as she turned to leave.
“Can I take a vaccucleanse first?” Alara called after the commander.
“Launching where?” Gina asked.
But there was no reply.
Alara scowled. “Oh, frek it!”
* * *
Alara, Gina, Delayn, and Tova in her menacing black armor walked up to Brondi’s refitted corvette, newly christened the Rescue. Almost the entire surviving crew of the Defiant had come down to the auxiliary hangar deck to wave goodbye and wish them luck. They all understood how critical this mission was to their survival, and Alara felt as though their lives were a heavy burden resting on her shoulders. As they drew near to the corvette, Alara thought that from the size of it, the ship should have been able to bear them all away with room to spare, but during the commander’s farewell speech, she had explained to everyone the reason why they weren’t all evacuating in the corvette—the only space left aboard the Rescue was in the cockpit—which had even been reduced from five control stations to four, one for pilot, copilot, gravidar operator, and engineer. The rest of the space was now filled with fuel, regulators, coolant tanks, and pumps. They’d drained everything from the Defiant, pouring all their best efforts into giving the Rescue just one chance to save them all.
Even that chance was slim. Delayn had taken them aside just before Caldin’s farewell speech and told them what the commander had been holding back during the debriefing. There was a good chance the Rescue wouldn’t make it. The reactor could easily overheat and suffer a meltdown before they ever reached Obsidian Station.
As Alara, Gina, Delayn, and Tova climbed the boarding ramp to the corvette, the crew cheered and whistled, and the burden of their lives grew all the heavier. Gina shook her head as they retreated inside the corvette. “The way they’re acting, you’d think we were conquering heroes.”
Alara
nodded.
“We will be heroes if we make it,” Delayn said.
The inside of the corvette was so cramped that they didn’t need to guess which way to go. There only was one. A short corridor led to a lift tube which would carry them straight up the four decks to the bridge. The ship was a giant space rocket, packed with enough fuel to atomize the Defiant if something went wrong—let alone the much smaller corvette.
“If we even hit a bit of space dust,” Gina said, catching Alara’s eye while they waited for the lift. “We’re going to make a real pretty supernova.”
“I do not understand,” Tova said. Her warbling language filtered roughly through the Gor’s helmet to their aural translators and then came out in a gender-neutral computerized voice.
Gina turned to her with a frown. “It means we might all die before we can get help.”
“I see. I do my best to contact my crèche mates before we arrive.”
“Well,” Gina gave the alien a big, false smile. “That’s why you’re here.”
Turning back to the lift as it opened, Gina shook her head and muttered, “Frekkin’ Gors. . . .”
“We do copulate,” Tova replied. “But not as often as humans.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Gina said, her nose wrinkling with disgust.
The lift took them up to the fourth level and opened directly in front of the cockpit. They started forward and the doors automatically swished open to let them through. Alara found the nearest chair and sat down, not caring whether she was the pilot or the copilot. Both control stations turned out to be identically appointed, however, allowing for one of them to sleep while the other kept watch.
Gina sat down beside her and they began the preflight check while Tova squeezed into the gravidar station to their right, and Delayn into the engineering station to their left. They went through the preflight carefully to avoid deadly oversights, but everything checked out, and they received clearance for takeoff. The engines started with a rising roar and began rumbling ominously underfoot.
“Ruh-kah!” Commander Caldin said, her voice coming to their ears from the comm speakers as she waved to them from her podium on the flight deck below.
Dark Space- The Complete Series Page 45