Destra padded across the soft white carpet to reach him. He noticed that she was holding a steaming cup of some beverage. She stopped beside him and lifted the cup to her lips for a sip. She nodded to the painting. “You recognize it?” she asked, taking another sip of her tea.
Atton turned back to look at the painting just in time to see the sun rise over the lake, bathing the scene in fiery reds and yellows, and he sighed again. “Yes, it’s home.”
Destra nodded and a faraway look crept into her eyes. “And it always will be.”
Atton covered a yawn with one hand. His mother noticed and turned to him with a smile. “You should be in bed. What are you doing up?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Neither could I,” she said, tapping the tea cup with one long fingernail. “That’s what this is for. Want some?”
Atton shook his head, and his thoughts turned back to what had brought him out of his room. The reason he couldn’t sleep. “Mom . . .” he began.
“Yes?”
“What is Hoff hiding from you?”
Destra’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I overheard you and him talking. You said he was keeping secrets, and he said it was dangerous for you to know.”
“You heard that?”
“Just before I drifted off to sleep. Mom . . .” Atton shook his head. “If he’s hiding things from you, his wife, don’t you think that’s a bad sign?”
Destra frowned. “He won’t tell me. Believe me—I’ve fought with him about it more than once.”
“So what? The Destra I knew would have made him tell her, and if he still wouldn’t, she would have gone looking for the answers herself. How can you live with him, knowing that he’s hiding things from you?”
“I try not to think about it.”
“Why?”
“For Atta’s sake.”
Atton shook his head. “What are you afraid will happen?”
“He could leave me, Atton, and I would have nothing. What am I on this fleet of his, if I’m no longer his wife? I’m nobody. I don’t even have a rank. I’ll serve no purpose, and I don’t know what would happen to me or Atta.”
“If you’re so afraid that Hoff would leave you with nothing and that he’d suddenly stop caring about you, then why are you with him? Why do you claim he’s a good man and he treats you well?”
“I don’t know that he’d leave me with nothing, Atton. That might just be my fears talking. But trust is a big issue for Hoff. He doesn’t trust easily, because he’s been betrayed so much in the past. If I betrayed his trust now . . .”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough for me,” Atton said. “Hoff could be hiding something dangerous.”
“Then why don’t you ask him about it yourself?”
“I could . . . but if you’re afraid about what he’ll do to you if you dig up his secrets, what do you think he’ll do if he finds out that you talked to me about this?”
Destra’s brow dropped deep shadows over her eyes. “That’s low Atton, blackmailing your own mother.”
“Then help me figure it out on my own, and I can leave you out of it. I heard you speaking about hidden passages earlier.”
Destra’s eyebrows floated back up. “You heard a lot, didn’t you?”
“If I could accidentally find one of those passages, that would give me a reason to press Hoff for more details that doesn’t point to you.”
Destra pursed her lips for a long moment.
“Well?”
“All right. Come with me.”
Destra strode past him, on toward the transpiranium door at the end of the hall, the one which led out into the garden. She passed her wrist over the door scanner and it swished open for her. She turned in the open doorway and beckoned to Atton. He was still standing by the light painting, shocked that she’d agreed to his demands so easily, and even more shocked that everything he’d heard in his drowsy state was real.
“We have to hurry,” Destra said.
“Right.”
Atton ran to catch up with her and they walked out into the moonlit garden together. They walked past the big tree with the swing, and Destra angled toward the dark hedge beyond. It looked unbroken, but as they drew near, Atton saw a gap, and he realized that this wasn’t the full extent of the yard. “What’s through there?” he asked.
“Hoff’s maze.”
“His what?”
“You could get lost in there for hours if you’re not careful.”
Destra stopped in the gap, and Atton stopped beside her. He caught a whiff of a familiar scent—it was sharp and fresh, exotic and almost perfumed. The hedge was real and it was made of fragrant silverleaf bushes, so named for the glossy silver color of their leaves. In the dark they looked black and forbidding.
“Where do I go now?” Atton asked, gazing down the narrow path.
“To the end of the maze,” Destra said simply, as if it should have been obvious.
Atton frowned, and his eyes darted back to the rising black walls of the silverleaf hedge. “And then?”
“Walk through.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will, and even if you don’t, that’s all you’re going to get out of me. If you run into Hoff, be sure to ask him your questions, but I don’t promise that he’ll answer. He never answered me. I’d go with you, but if Hoff catches us both in the maze together, it will be all the proof he needs that he was right not to trust me.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t mention our conversation. I’ll say I couldn’t sleep and I wandered out here on my own.”
“Thank you. Good luck.”
With that, Atton turned and ran into the maze. After a seemingly endless series of twists and turns, he began to grow uneasy. He kept mental track of every left and right along the way, but he was beginning to wonder if he could remember it all. The maze seemed to go on forever, and he’d been walking for at least an hour already. He wondered if he was going in circles, or if there really was an end to the maze. Maybe his mother had just told him that to get even with him for trying to blackmail her.
Atton made another right turn, and then a left and two more rights. This time, instead of seeing more branching paths, all Atton could see was a dead end. He walked straight to the end and stared at the high wall of vegetation. Is this what his mother meant by the end of the maze? She’d told him when he reached it to just walk through. Atton walked up close enough to the hedge to touch it. He peered at it closely, looking for a way through. When he couldn’t see one, he reached out to part the dense wall of leaves—
And his hands passed straight through, touching nothing but thin air. The hedge shimmered suspiciously with that movement, and then he understood. It was a holofield.
Chapter 19
Atton walked through the silverleaf hedge, straight into a duranium corridor with dim glow strips running along the floor and ceiling. At the end of that lay a lift tube. It reminded him of his own secret passage aboard the Defiant which had led to Tova’s crèche, except he hadn’t gone to the trouble of hiding it within a maze. He’d never been that paranoid. Atton started down the corridor, and his hands began to sweat. He felt cold all over and his heart thudded in his chest. What if Hoff came back up the lift tube and found him here? What would he say? He was suddenly much less confident about demanding answers from the admiral. Anyone who went to so much trouble to keep his secrets buried would not be happy when they were uncovered. He reached the end of the corridor and hesitated with his hand poised over the control panel. He tried to open the doors without entering a code, but the control panel beeped out an error: Access Denied.
Atton frowned. He’d either have to know the code or somehow blast the doors open. He tried the control panel a second time, entering a random code. This time the lift responded and a glowing blue arrow appeared at the top of the panel. It was coming up. Atton blinked at the controls and watched the lift rise past a couple of decks before he realized that
it was impossible for that random code to have been the right one. He didn’t even know how many digits the correct code was. No, if the lift tube was coming up now, that could only mean one thing—the admiral was in it.
A sharp jolt of adrenaline spurred Atton into motion and he ran back down the corridor to the concealing holofield. He heard the lift tube chime softly with every deck it passed, the tones coming faster and faster as it accelerated. Atton passed back through the holofield and stood in the dark silverleaf maze, trying to remember how many lefts and rights he’d taken and then reverse those directions for the way out, but he couldn’t remember a thing. He’d completely lost his way. His mother’s words echoed back to him now: You could get lost for hours if you’re not careful.
Atton ran back through the maze, taking turns at random. He didn’t have to beat Hoff back, he just had to make sure they didn’t run into each other on the way out.
* * *
Ethan awoke to the sound of a woman screaming.
Where am I? he wondered.
He tried to sit up, but the warning jolt which passed through his wrists gave him pause. His hands and feet were bound with stun cords, and he couldn’t move too much without provoking a shock. Rather than try again, he just turned his head where he lay to get his bearings. The room was dark. Shattered transpiranium panels glittered on the floor beneath a row of floor-to-ceiling window frames. Far below those broken windows lay a hangar deck and a crashed upside down transport.
Suddenly Ethan remembered, and he knew where he was. He was in the ruined control tower of one of the Valiant’s venture-class hangars. They’d managed to get aboard the carrier just before it had jumped to SLS, but like a right skriff he’d shot off his mouth about having been here before with Gina. Back then he had been wearing a holoskin of the pilot Adan Reese, and he’d been forced to explain to his squad mates and Gina that he’d been working for Brondi—which explained why he was now wearing stun cords. It also explained the throbbing pain in the side of his head where he vaguely recalled that Gina’s elbow had connected with his skull.
The woman screamed again, and this time Ethan heard heavy footsteps approaching. He turned away from the broken viewports and saw Alara, limned in the pale white light spilling in from the broken windows and the shadowy hangar bay beyond. Even in the dark he recognized her. She sat on a sleeping pallet beside him, looking around with wide, terrified eyes. Then the booming footsteps stopped, and they both turned to see the dark outline of a zephyr appear in an open doorway at the far end of the room. “Shut up!” the vanguard sentinel hissed.
Alara just screamed louder.
“Shhh! Shut the frek up!”
“Where am I? Who are you? Why is it so dark?”
“Alara, calm down,” Ethan said.
“My name’s not Alara, it’s Angel!” she replied.
Ethan’s heart sank. Her slave chip was working again in full force.
“Angel, huh?” the sentinel said. “Well shut up, Angel, before you bring a whole regiment of Brondi’s men down on us. They can probably hear you screaming all the way from the bridge.”
“Brondi?” Alara asked, sounding hopeful. “Where is he?”
“In his quarters, sleeping like a good little crime lord, would be my guess. Now go back to sleep.”
Ethan thought he recognized that vanguard’s voice. He guessed it was the medic who’d attended Alara’s injuries. “Exalian!” he said. “Where is everyone?”
The vanguard turned to him. “Frek, now you, too! Don’t you two get it? We’re undercover —at least I am. Just my luck to get stuck babysitting the two of you. I’m more likely to get killed here than with my squad! Look, if either of you gives us away, Brondi’s men are going to kill us. Get it? Real simple.”
“Why would they do that?” Alara asked.
“Because we’re here to take this ship back from them—that’s why! Now shut up or I’ll stun you both.”
Exalian turned and left, his mechanized footsteps thudding away. When he was gone, Alara turned to Ethan, her eyes wide and gleaming with stolen reflections of the hangar bay. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“I’m Ethan . . . don’t you remember me?” He allowed himself a small scrap of hope that she might.
“I . . . no, sorry, I don’t,” she said, dashing that hope. “I don’t usually have to remember names, and it’s too dark to see your face. Am I a prisoner, too?” she asked, nodding to his stun corded hands and feet.
“Not that I know—look, Angel, this isn’t going to make a lot of sense to you right now, but you’ve been chipped. Your name isn’t Angel. It’s Alara. Whatever you think you can remember, and whoever it is you think you are—it’s a lie. Don’t trust your thoughts or your feelings right now. Until we can get to Brondi and beat the krak out of him for the deactivation code to your slave chip, just trust me and whatever you do don’t trust yourself, okay?”
Alara was silent for a long moment. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
Ethan sighed. He didn’t think she believed him, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. Maybe when she got a look at his face she’d remember him better.
“Why are they keeping you prisoner?” she asked.
“Because they think I was working for Brondi—it’s a long story. We should get some sleep. Something tells me this will be one of the few opportunities we’ll have to do so.”
“Sure,” Alara replied. Her gaze skipped around the room until it found an empty zephyr standing in the far corner of the room. “That was mine,” Ethan said, following her gaze. “I guess Gina didn’t want to use it.”
“You were with this squad?”
“Briefly.”
“So you’re a sentinel?”
“No,” Ethan snorted. “I’m a pilot. Freelance. So are you, actually. We used to fly together.”
“It must be hard to go from piloting ships to mechs.”
Ethan had to hold back a laugh. “Not really. You just have to step into the armor and it does the rest. Piloting ships requires finesse and skill, but piloting a mech is just like walking—even easier, because the mech even does that for you. It’s all power-assisted.” Ethan yawned. “That’s why starship pilots call them stompers, because any clumsy old skriff can run around in a mech.”
“I didn’t know that. . . .” Alara said.
Silence fell in the broken control tower and Ethan’s eyelids grew heavy. “Kiddie—” he began.
“Where did you hear that name?” she interrupted, sounding startled.
Ethan smiled, and he realized that not all was lost. She still had a few memories to cling to. “That was my nickname for you, back when we were pilot and copilot of the Atton. Our old freighter. Remember now?”
“Yes . . .” she said, nodding slowly. “I think I do.”
Something about her words sounded off. “I’m glad,” Ethan said, deciding not to contradict her amnesia any more for now. “Look, try to get some sleep. I’m sure it will all be much clearer to you after you’ve had a good night’s rest.”
“Okay,” Alara replied. “Good night.”
“Good night.” Ethan allowed his eyes to drift shut and willed himself to sleep. It wasn’t as hard as it should have been, making him wonder if Gina had hit him harder than he thought. . . .
An indeterminate amount of time passed, and then he opened his eyes to see Alara lying beside him, close enough that he could see the flecks of silver in her bright violet eyes. She reached out and caressed his face. “It’s okay,” she said. “Shhh. . . . everything is going to be all right.”
“I know it will, Kiddie.” Ethan tried not to choke on the lie.
Alara smiled, and then she turned and climbed out of bed. “You’d better get up, or you’re going to miss the ceremony.”
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “What ceremony?” He sat up and watched Alara walk around the foot of the bed, wearing nothing but a diaphanous blue night gown which shimmered in the low light and gave a teasing view of her n
aked body underneath. The room was like any of the hundreds of cheap rooms they’d rented in cut-rate habitats on neglected stations throughout Dark Space.
Alara cast another smile over her shoulder and she winked at him. “The marriage ceremony, you old skriff.”
Something stirred in Ethan’s chest, a long-forgotten feeling of warmth, and he grinned. “We’re getting married?”
Alara laughed girlishly.
“Wait, where are you going?” Ethan asked, noticing that she’d reached the door. “You can’t go out like that.”
Alara ignored him as she passed her wrist over the door scanner. The door swished open, and Ethan’s grin faded. His whole body went cold and he shook his head. “No. . . .”
Alara turned back to him, still smiling. “I’d like you to meet the groom—Admiral Hoff Heston. Hoff, this is Ethan.”
“Hello, Ethan,” he said, stepping inside.
“Why?” was all Ethan could manage as he tried to work moisture into his suddenly dry mouth. “It was supposed to be us, Kiddie.”
Alara shrugged and looped her arm through Hoff’s. “Did you think I was going to wait for you forever?” She giggled once more, and Hoff added a booming laugh of his own.
Boom.
Ethan’s eyes shot open. He stared up at the dark ceiling, watching a strange orange glow flicker and dance across it. He heard a metallic thud and then heavy footsteps pounding away. In the next instant, his sleep-clouded brain picked out the crackle of flames responsible for the flickering glow on the ceiling. He turned toward the light and sound. It was coming from the entrance of the control tower. Where was Corporal Exalian? Had Brondi’s men found them? Alara! Ethan thought. He turned to look beside him, and found nothing but an empty blanket where she had been lying earlier. Then he noticed that the spare zephyr was gone, too. Frek! Ethan thought, and suddenly he understood why Alara had asked him about piloting mechs. He rolled over and crawled sentinel-style across the deck, making slow progress and occasionally feeling a sharp warning jolt from the stun cords which bound his hands and feet. By the time he reached the entrance, the flames were already burning low, but acrid smoke had begun pouring into the control tower. Ethan coughed and his eyes burned, but he pushed on. Fear drove him faster. Fear that he would be trapped in the control tower by the blaze, and fear of what he would find when he reached the entrance.
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