Dark Space- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  The Valiant’s hangar swelled until it was all they could see. It was an enormous, yawning space, empty but for a few novas lined up along the far wall. Alara watched the pale blue fuzz of static shields carefully, in case it suddenly brightened and became more opaque, signifying the presence of the ship’s more powerful beam and pulse shields.

  Then a flicker of movement caught her eye and she saw a transport go rocketing past theirs with a simulated roar of engines. The blue glow of its thrusters was bright enough to make their viewports polarize, and Alara read the white numerals on the side of that ship—02. Then the comms crackled with, “Ruh-kah! What’s the matter, AT One? Can’t find the afterburners?”

  Gina smirked and keyed the comms for a reply, but she never got the chance. The hangar shields abruptly flared a brighter blue, and Shuttle Two ran straight into them. Their eyes were dazzled by the explosion. The simulated roar which boomed and rattled through their sound system was deafening.

  “Frek!” Gina yelled, pulling up hard to clear the hangar.

  Alara watched the carrier’s hull blur by underneath them in a terrifying rush. Illuminated viewports turned to blurry streaks as they jetted past dozens of decks in an instant. Alara clutched her armrests and gritted her teeth in anticipation of the inevitable collision. Instead, Gina fired the grav lifts and bounced them off the hull. Alara felt her stomach drop with the sudden change of direction, and all the blood rushed to her toes, leaving her blinking spots and listening to the ringing in her ears. Her head lolled and she felt like she was about to faint.

  “The Valiant’s shields are up!” Gina yelled into the comms. “No sign of weapons powering yet.”

  “Roger that, AT One.” Alara saw that the speaker was Inferno One, the squadron leader of their nova escort. “We’re reading their SLS spooling.”

  “This is mission command, do not let the Valiant make a run for it.”

  “Affirmative, command,” Inferno One replied. “AT One, we’re gonna try to overload the shields on one of those hangars. They’re not at full strength yet, so we still have a chance to get you in.”

  “Ready when you are. Which hangar . . . ?”

  “Port ventral. Looks like it’s seen some damage, and shields are weaker there.”

  Gina clicked the comm to acknowledge and then looped over the top of the carrier to the hangar on the other side.

  Alara felt her stomach lurch again, but this time upward as they dove back down the other side of the ship. She saw red and her head began to throb. She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Sorry about that,” Gina said, looking over at Alara. “I guess you’re not used to the G’s yet. It takes a trained nova pilot to appreciate the thrill. I’ll dial up the IMS.”

  “Thanks,” Alara managed weakly. “Why aren’t they firing on us?”

  “Hoi, don’t jinx us, Kiddie. Maybe they can’t find the triggers. Whatever the case, it’s a good thing.”

  Alara watched the blue glow of hangar shields appear below them, growing rapidly closer. She saw fresh, unpainted hull plates where the hull had been patched.

  Gina hauled back on the throttle. “Any time now, Infernos . . .”

  “Torpedoes away!”

  Alara looked up to see a dozen bright silver streaks go jetting out toward the Valiant—and them.

  “Frek,” Gina muttered and hauled back more on the throttle. “They may as well be shooting at us!”

  A second later, the torpedoes slammed into the hangar shields with a blinding starburst of light, eliciting another roar from the transport’s sound simulator.

  “Ruh-kah! She’s wide open for you!” one of the Infernos screamed.

  A big chunk of debris flew at them and bounced off their forward shields with a noisy hiss, adding some downward drift to their momentum. After that, their shields were in the yellow, at 48%.

  Gina grumbled, “Skriffin’ nova jocks. . . . You hit me with a piece of shrapnel!” she yelled into the comm.

  “You’re welcome, princess,” Inferno One replied. “Next time you can kiss my ass.”

  Alara saw a half a dozen novas go roaring toward the Valiant at an unsafe speed only to pull up at the last second and bounce off its hull with grav lifts.

  “What are you waiting for?” Inferno One said. “You’ve only got a few seconds! Get in there!”

  Gina pushed the throttle forward and thumbed the afterburners for good measure. “I hope I’m not that annoying when I’m flying a nova,” she muttered.

  The tail end of Inferno Squadron flew in and bounced off the Valiant’s hull, and then Alara heard a familiar stuttering roar, and gold streaks of ripper fire began streaming out the side of the carrier. Two of the Infernos exploded almost instantly, and a third was clipped in the thrusters, sending it spiraling into the side of the carrier. The Valiant’s shields flashed brightly with the impact and the resultant explosion seemed to fizz—as Gina had put it—along the carrier’s shields in a rippling wave of fire.

  “Frek!” Gina said as she yanked the stick from side to side, weaving toward the open hangar in an evasive pattern. A few rounds hissed against their shields and Alara watched the shields drop another 10%.

  “She was playin’ dead!” someone yelled.

  “Let’s give her another face full of fire, boys!” Inferno One replied.

  “Negative, Infernos!” command replied. “All units abort and get back to the Tauron. You’ve got less than thirty seconds till the Valiant jumps away.”

  “Roger that.”

  “What?” Gina blurted just as their momentum carried them through the hangar shields. The recovering shields roared against theirs in protest, and for a moment all they could see was dazzling blue brilliance. . . .

  “Shields critical,” the computer warned.

  Then they were through and rocketing for the back of the hangar. The ship’s gravity yanked them toward the deck, but Gina’s hand had been ready on the grav lifts, and she was fast enough to prevent an instant crash.

  “Hold on!” Gina yanked back on the throttle until it was in full reverse and deployed the air brakes for good measure. The roar of their engines became deafening. “Still not going to cut it!” Gina said. “Extend the landing skids! We need some friction to slow us down.”

  Alara dropped the skids with a krrr-thu-thunk, and Gina brought them down close to the deck until they heard the skids make contact. Sparks flew out below them. Friction with the deck slowed them quickly. Then one of the skids abruptly snapped off, and the shuttle’s nose hit the deck. The hiss of duranium scraping against their shields was deafening. A split second later, their shields gave out with a bang, and that hiss became a thunderous screech as their transport scraped all its paint off on the deck. Alara began to feel vibrations bleeding through the IMS to rattle her teeth. Gina tried to balance their landing with the grav lifts, but she must have overcorrected, because the back end of the shuttle abruptly lifted up, and in the next instant they were screaming as they flipped over and landed on their roof. Now they were hanging upside down, watching sparks fly between the roof of the shuttle and the deck as they skidded backward. The vibrations grew stronger and stronger until Alara could feel herself being pressed into her flight chair.

  “IMS is failing!” Gina gritted out.

  And then they slammed into the back wall of the hangar, and both of them were thrown hard against their flight chairs. Something inside the cockpit exploded, and a piece of shrapnel clipped Alara in the head.

  Darkness swallowed her whole.

  * * *

  Admiral Heston slammed the captain’s table with his fist as the Valiant jumped to SLS and her icon winked off the grid. “We were that close!” he made a small gap between his fingers.

  Commander Donali nodded. “Almost, sir.”

  “We lost three novas and a transport for that.”

  “Sloppy piloting, sir. They knew the Valiant’s guns could have been live. Just because they didn’t detect weapons powering doesn’t mean t
hey should have let their guards down.”

  Heston glared at the three dimensional star map rising out of the holo table, watching as his units fled like disorganized rabble. “How does one scruffy band of outlaws cause so much trouble?”

  “Perhaps we’re underestimating them, sir.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Sir,” a new voice reached Hoff’s ears, and he looked up to see his recently-appointed tactical adviser, Deck Commander Loba Caldin staring at him.

  “What is it, Commander Caldin?”

  “We’re missing a transport.”

  “Another one? That makes three novas and two transports. Do you have any more bad news for me, Commander?”

  “The battle logs show no record of the missing transport being destroyed, sir, and it appears that Inferno Squadron was helping them get inside one of the hangars before the Valiant opened fire.”

  “Are you saying they might have made it aboard?”

  “That’s the only conclusion I can draw from the data, sir.”

  Heston’s grizzled eyebrows floated up. “Which transport?”

  “AT One, sir.”

  Hoff smiled. “Vanguards—the first ones in and the last ones out.”

  “The only ones in,” Caldin added.

  “Well, these ones have certainly earned their badge. Ethan Ortane is on that shuttle,” Hoff mused, rubbing his chin.

  Caldin frowned. “The holoskinner? That’s not very encouraging, sir.”

  “On the contrary, it’s an unusual boon.”

  “A boon, sir?”

  “Yes, a helpful thing. . . . anyway,” Hoff shook his head, annoyed with himself for using such an antiquated word, and with her for interrupting him. “I had Ethan implanted with a tracker to keep an eye on him. If Brondi thinks he’s getting away from us, he’s badly mistaken.”

  Commander Donali shook his head. “The tracker won’t be useful as long as they’re in SLS, and without the commnet to send faster than light communications, it’ll be useless when they drop out of SLS, too. We’d have to know where Brondi is headed and meet him there in order to receive any signals from the tracker. In other words, we’d have to be able to find them before we can find them. That’s a painful irony, sir.”

  “Ah, but we do have a working commnet, and we do know where Brondi is going.”

  “We do, sir?”

  Caldin began nodding. “Dark Space. We have a working commnet inside the sector.”

  Hoff inclined his head to her. “Correct. Brondi won’t flee deeper into Sythian Space. His safest bet is to head back to Dark Space where he can muster some kind of defense, or merely hide in whatever rat hole passes for his headquarters—and that, my dear Commander Lenon Donali, is how the tracker will help us to find the Valiant. As soon as we get to Dark Space, we’ll start receiving signals from Ethan’s tracker via the gate relays, and we’ll be able to pinpoint Brondi’s location.”

  “Shall I plot a course to Dark Space?” Donali asked.

  “Not yet.” Hoff turned to Caldin. “Do you think that Tova and Roan can be trusted, Commander?”

  Caldin hesitated. “I would personally never trust a Gor.”

  Hoff smiled. “I like you, Caldin. Keep that up and you might just make it back to Captain.”

  “That would be an honor, sir.”

  “Nevertheless, those two pet Gors of yours have already been to Dark Space, so there’s no danger in us taking them back, is there?”

  “I suppose not. . . .”

  “I’m not confident we can overwhelm the Valiant’s novas and whatever ragtag fleet Brondi will have mustered to defend himself. I’d have to bring my whole fleet to bear, and that would take weeks—not to mention it would leave the enclave undefended. The Gors can help us to shortcut that process and save a lot of lives.”

  “I’m not sure I see how Tova and Roan will make the difference in that equation,” Caldin replied.

  “I’m afraid I don’t either,” Donali said. “Two Gors will never be enough to take back the Valiant.”

  “But that’s where you’re wrong,” Heston said. He turned to stare out at space and the dark, distant specter of Fortress Station. “We’re going to use them to communicate between this ship and the Interloper while it’s cloaked. The Interloper will trace Ethan’s tracker signal to its source, sidle up close to the Valiant, and wait beside one of the venture-class hangars. Then they’ll call us in, and we’ll blow a hole in the hangar shields for them to get inside.”

  Donali’s real eye widened. “Brondi will never see it coming.”

  “Literally.”

  “I agree. It’s a good plan,” Caldin added.

  Hoff turned to her with a smile. “I’m glad you agree, Commander, because you’re coming with me to pitch it to the skull faces.”

  Caldin’s nose wrinkled with distaste. “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 15

  Tova’s slitted yellow eyes flicked from Commander Caldin to the admiral. She reached up to grip the bars of her cell in two large gray hands and began warbling at them. A moment later, the portable translator which Caldin held in her palm translated Tova’s warbling language into a gender-neutral facsimile of Imperial Versal. “You ask me to help you but offer nothing in return. Why should I agree?”

  Admiral Heston spread his hands and smiled. “If you help us, it would go a long way to establishing the level of trust we need to extend the human-Gor alliance to my enclave.”

  Beside them, Captain Adram was quiet and subdued as he craned his neck to gaze up at the two-meter-high alien. For her part, Caldin glared up at Tova with undisguised suspicion.

  “The alliance no longer existsss,” Tova hissed. “I am not stupid. Your overlord is to be eaten by his crèche mates. He is no longer a lord.” Tova shook her head. “Do not lie to me, Admiral.”

  “Very well,” Heston inclined his head. “I’ll grant that you are very smart, Tova, so I’ll do you the courtesy of telling you the truth. Right now I have no reason to believe your people’s story or trust the Gors at all, and I am now in command of all the human survivors. You are right to say that the alliance no longer exists, and the reason for that is very simple—whether you were slaves or not, you pushed our race to the point of extinction, and most of my people can still remember that. Any one of my officers can close his eyes and still see Gors marching in their black armor. There is a lot for us to forget before we can fight alongside you.”

  “Then you say that we are always to be your enemy?”

  “No, I’m saying that we cannot trust you or your people yet, but if you can help us now, and more in the future, then we will gradually overcome the prejudices of the past. Your people surrendered three warships to us—that was a step in the right direction. Helping us to re-capture the Valiant will be another.”

  “Then I agree to help you, humans—for my people’s sake—but take care that you do not reject us forever.”

  “Duly noted,” Heston said.

  “Release me,” Tova demanded.

  “One moment, Tova. Can you explain all of this to your mate and get him to cooperate, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “We will release you when he has also agreed to help. You are no good to us on your own.”

  “You release me now. Roan agrees to help.”

  Hoff raised his eyebrows. “That was fast. You have already spoken to him?”

  “I do not need to. Roan does what I ask. He trusts. Humans need learn from that.”

  “We trust, too, Tova.”

  “You, do not.”

  Hoff’s eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”

  “You stink of fear, but hide it deep.”

  Hoff snorted and waved vaguely to one of the sentinels who’d escorted them into the brig. “Let her out.”

  Turning to Captain Adram beside him, Admiral Heston said, “Junior Captain, Adram, you will be serving under Captain Caldin as her XO aboard the Interloper. Caldin—you’ll take Tova and your crew with you, and I’ll
take Roan aboard the Tauron.” Behind him, Hoff heard Tova’s cell slide open, and he had to resist the urge to turn around to keep an eye on her.

  Captain Adram’s eyebrows beetled. “Junior Captain, sir?”

  “In light of your questionable judgment of late, it won’t hurt for you to serve under a distinguished officer like Captain Caldin to give you an example of what a keen instinct for command looks like.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope to live up to that, sir,” Caldin said. She’d just been promoted up three pay grades, skipping both of the ranks in between to surpass even the admiral’s own XO, Master Commander Donali.

  “I’m sure you will, Captain. My understanding is that you were demoted over a misunderstanding to do with the Gors.” At that, Hoff saw Caldin’s eyes dart up to Tova, and he realized the alien likely didn’t know Caldin had killed one of her people. “There won’t be any such misunderstandings in my fleet, just so long as your personal feelings don’t get in the way of our objectives.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, sir. I assume this means that my crew and I are no longer under suspicion.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “What about the trial and the prisoners?”

  “There’s an old saying, Captain—follow the running man. Brondi is our running man. The trial will be suspended until we can capture him and subject him to a probe. Your prisoners will be placed in stasis until then—no sense wasting valuable supplies pandering to their needs.” Hoff turned from her to Adram. “Speaking of supplies—I believe you have some which you need to transfer off the Interloper to make room for Caldin and her crew?”

  “Yes, sir. Where shall I put the supplies?”

  “Send them over to the Destine. Captain Cathrall can take them to the enclave while we’re away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now we had better finish making preparations for our trip or all the keen instincts in the galaxy won’t avail us.”

  “Avail, sir?” Caldin asked.

  Hoff frowned. “Help, Captain. It means help. I’m going to give you some homework for the journey—a lexicon. Study it.”

  “Yes, sir.”