“Two down,” Gina said.
“Twenty two to go,” Atton replied. His eyes dipped to the grid to watch the enemy missiles closing on them—fourteen Pirakla missiles, one for each of the Guardians, with a couple extras for good measure. His hand tightened on the flight stick and his palms began to sweat beneath his gloves. He waited until the last possible second and then pulled up hard, stomping on the right rudder pedal and throwing the flight stick to one side for a defensive spiral. He broke the missile lock almost instantly. Other Guardians pulled similar maneuvers, going evasive until the enemy warheads skipped by them and lost their tracking solutions.
Guardian Four wasn’t so lucky. Two Pirakla missiles had locked on to him, and while he managed to evade one, the other one was coming in from a different angle. It slammed straight into his starboard thruster. The rear half of his fighter flew apart in a messy hail of molten alloy. Then came a flash of light as the fighter’s dymium reactor exploded, and Atton flinched away from the glare. No ejection seat appeared on the grid in the wake of that explosion.
“Motherfrekkers!” Four’s wingmate roared.
“Keep your head in the game, Three! You’ll have your chance to get even,” Atton said.
No reply. Atton couldn’t blame him. Three and Four had been good friends, and now one of them was just gone, without even the chance to say goodbye.
The flashing gray clouds of the nebula thinned and parted to reveal glittering stars. Atton’s eyes skipped back to the grid to watch as pursuing Shell Fighters began turning back the way they’d come.
The engagement was over, and all but one of the Guardians had made it away. Atton let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and then commed the Valiant.
“Control, this is Guardian Leader reporting, be advised we have confirmed enemy contact. Repeat, confirmed enemy contact.”
The comm crackled with a reply, “Acknowledged. How many are there, Guardian Leader?”
“It looks like a whole fleet. Stand by to receive log data now.”
“Standing by . . .”
Atton punched the button to transmit his flight recorder logs and waited.
“Transmission received. Give us a moment to analyze the data, Guardian Leader.”
“Roger that.”
It wasn’t even a full minute before the Valiant replied, and this time it was the Admiral’s voice rather than that of the Valiant’s comms officer. “Attention all vessels, this is a red alert! A Sythian fleet has been found hiding in the Stormcloud Nebula. Current estimates suggest in excess of 100 capital-class vessels. Stand by for further orders.”
“Ruh-kah!” Hawkeye put in.
Death and glory. The old Rokan battle cry sounded more like a pronouncement of doom rather than a rallying call.
“A 100 cap ships—that’s it?” Let them come. We’ve got more than that with just the Gors.”
“Hoi, don’t get cocky, Seven,” Atton commed back. “We don’t know the full extent of their forces yet.”
Atton was far less optimistic about the Sythians’ arrival and what that meant. Just one month after the last battle, the Sythians were back. As far as he was concerned there could be no doubt about their intentions—
They were back for revenge.
* * *
After four hours of posturing at the edges of the Stormcloud Nebula without so much as a glimmer of the Sythian fleet which had caused all the fuss, Hoff had dropped the fleet’s readiness from a red to yellow alert, and he’d retired to the Valiant’s operations center to discuss recent developments with a few of his officers.
Hoff watched as footage from Guardian One’s nose cam played out above the long, glossy black table in the operations center. In addition to that footage, he had the footage from dozens of recon drones which he’d subsequently sent out to probe the nebula.
Footage from those drones only mirrored what the Guardians had gathered. Hoff froze the nose cam recording just as the nebular clouds flashed, revealing the enemy fleet, and then he keyed the table's built in holographics to display the most recent drone footage. He paused it in a similar place so they could visually compare the size and disposition of the enemy forces over the past four hours. Nothing had changed.
“I don’t get it,” Donali said, gesturing to the pair of holograms. “Why haven’t they moved? They have to know they’re not fooling anyone by hiding out there.”
Hoff grimaced and turned to his XO. “They don’t have to fool anyone. We’re already foolish enough without them having to do anything.” Out of the corner of his eye, Hoff noticed his stepson, Atton, fidgeting. He turned to the boy with his bushy eyebrows raised. “Is there something you’d like to say, Commander?”
Hoff saw the boy’s eyes skip sideways to the Gor commander who sat watching the humans from the far side of the table. Following his stepson’s gaze, Hoff studied the Gor. She had her thick arms planted on the table. Her glossy black armor reflected the blue glow of the holos, while the glowing red optics of her helmet turned first one way and then the other, looking from one human to the next as if trying to decide who she should eat first.
That Gor was none other than High Praetor Tova. Hoff didn’t completely trust her, but he had allowed Tova into the operations center to discuss the latest developments with the Sythians for the simple reason that she was currently commander-in-chief of the human-allied Gors, and technically right now she held more power in her icy hands than Hoff did. If the alliance broke down, the Gors had enough ships in the sector to wipe out the Imperial Star Systems’ Fleet in a matter of minutes. So, Hoff had to make nice and show the Gors that humanity could be trusted.
Atton turned back to Hoff and nodded. “Well, sir, it occurs to me that for all we know, the enemy fleet could have arrived days or weeks ago, and this is just the first we’ve seen of them. Our nebular patrol only started a week ago.”
“If that’s true, why wait in the nebula? Why haven’t they attacked us yet?”
An alien warbling answered from the far side of the table and was conveyed a second later by the simultaneous translators they each wore in their ears. “They wait to catch us when we try to leave,” Tova suggested.
All eyes turned to her, and Hoff asked, “What do you mean when we try to leave?”
“They expect us to run, not to stay and fight.”
“You’re suggesting that this is a blockade . . .” Hoff mused, steepling his hands beneath his chin. “I agree. Based on what we know about the Sythians and their aggressive nature, the only reason they’re not attacking us is because they’re not sure they can win.”
Hoff noticed his XO begin nodding slowly, and a light of understanding dawned in his one good eye. “They’re waiting for reinforcements.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I am afraid they’re doing, and that’s why we’re all assembled here now. Humanity can’t hope to stand against the Sythians in a straight fight. If they manage to bring all five of their remaining fleets to bear, we are finished.”
“Not if we help you,” Tova said.
Hoff forced a smile. “We appreciate your people’s support, Tova, but even with your people, we are little more than a match for just one of the Sythians’ fleets. Even if we assume that we can turn some or all of the Gors aboard their ships to our cause, we have to consider the additional problem that Sythians have begun to crew their ships with human slaves, and we are apparently much more loyal than Gors.”
Hoff allowed a moment for that to sink in before he went on. “Besides all of that—there’s still a whole galaxy of Sythians waiting in the Getties Cluster. Based on the reported size of their population and the fact that they came here just to find more room for that population, the fleets they sent to conquer us were likely just the tip of the serpent’s tongue.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” Atton said.
“Our reconnaissance efforts have been non-existent until only very recently, thanks to Sythian cloaking shields and our lack of the same. For all we
know there could be more than a hundred fleets on their way to Dark Space right now.”
Grave silence followed that statement.
Tova was the first to break that silence. “You speak death upon us. Do you say then that we do not survive this?”
“No. Commander Donali has recently brought it to my attention that we do have one hope of survival. It’s a long shot, but it might just even the odds.”
Tova cocked her large, armored head. “And what hope is that?”
“We have to go to Avilon for help.”
“Avilon?” Tova asked.
“It’s a lost sector of humans that the Sythians overlooked during the invasion. Humanity hasn’t had direct contact with Avilon for millennia, although they did provide some aid to my refugee enclave before the Sythians wiped it out. Not much is known about the Avilonians, but what we do know is that they are numerous, they are immortal, and their technology is far more advanced than either the Sythians’ or ours.”
“These . . . immortal humans know of the Sythians and the war?” Tova asked.
“They do.”
“Then they do not care for your people or their fate. They watch you all die, and they do nothing. They are no longer your créche mates.”
“Perhaps they didn’t care enough to get involved during the war,” Hoff agreed, “but now we have to change their minds. We need to make them realize that their survival is also at stake. If the Sythians have hundreds of fleets just like the initial seven that destroyed us, then even the Avilonians’ superior technology won’t be enough to save them when the Sythians find out where they are hiding.” Hoff turned to his stepson. “I’m sending you as my envoy, Atton. You will go alone, out of respect for the Avilonians’ desire to remain hidden, and you will go to their forward base, not their actual location. If they know that their secret is safe with us, they might just trust us enough to listen to what we have to say.”
Atton was silent for long seconds. For a moment Hoff was afraid his stepson was going to refuse the mission or raise the obvious objection that someone else more suited to the diplomatic role should go as his envoy instead, but all Atton said was, “When do I leave?”
“In a few hours. We’re sending you aboard the Intrepid. She’ll be cloaked so the Sythians don’t see her leave. The Intrepid’s official mission will be to look for survivors in the Enclave. As soon as you get there, Atton, you will leave aboard an assault recon-class transport which I have prepared for you. No one else on board except for Master Commander Donali will know the details of your mission, and even he won’t know the coordinates of your destination. Nevertheless, he will be standing by with a team of Gors, and you will be able to contact him for extraction if you need help. I don’t expect the Avilonians to greet you with violence—that is not their way—but we’ll be prepared either way.
“Tova—no offense, but your people who will be going along for the mission will have to stay in stasis until the Intrepid jumps to SLS. We don’t want them to accidentally give us away.” Hoff could have sworn Tova’s eyes narrowed, but of course he couldn’t tell what her naturally-slitted eyes were doing behind her helmet’s glowing red optics. Something about the way she became so abruptly still, however, set Hoff’s nerves on edge.
“Accidentally?” she asked.
Hoff smiled thinly and keyed off the holograms hovering between him and Tova so he could watch her more carefully. “Of course. My understanding is that your créche mates can detect one another telepathically, even through cloaking shields.”
“That is correct.”
“I am also given to understand that your people cannot always control when they are sending telepathic signals to each other, and that as soon as a telepathic signal is received, both the sender and recipient can locate one another.”
Tova was silent for a long time—so long, that Hoff thought perhaps the silence only seemed long to him. Then he heard Donali clear his throat and finally Tova spoke, “That is correct,” she said. With that she looked away to the far corner of the room, as if Hoff had just offended her so deeply that he was now unworthy of her sight. In Gor culture that meant he’d fallen out of favor with her.
Hoff frowned, but he decided to ignore the tension between them for now. Turning back to Atton, he said, “Any questions?”
“Just one—what if the Avilonians don’t want to help us?”
“Then . . .” Hoff hesitated. “We’re all going to die here.”
Chapter 4
Ethan Ortane stood on a grassy field behind the Vastras’ house, watching the rolling green hills of Forliss ripple in the wind. The long grass came alive wherever the wind touched it, making it seem to flow from the foothills of the Astral Mountains like a river. Now setting above those mountains was the bright blue orb of the Alissan System’s sun. The setting sun had turned the planet’s usually misty blue sky to a cold turquoise shot through with glowing ribbons of gold that were high-flying wisps of cirrus clouds.
Ethan stood there, mesmerized by the beauty of it, lost in his thoughts. A lot had happened in the past few months. Ten years after the war and his sentence to Dark Space had separated him from his wife and son, he’d found them both again. Now his son was grown, and his wife, Destra . . . she had remarried and given birth to a daughter who was already seven years old. Ethan frowned. It was ironic. He’d waited for his wife—mourned her loss for ten years, thinking that she had died in the invasion—but she hadn’t waited more than three years for him.
And she had married Admiral Hoff Heston of all people. As fate would have it, Hoff was now the Supreme Overlord of Dark Space, and Ethan was forced to admit how much better off Destra was without him.
It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but he had done all right for himself. During the years he’d spent mourning for the family he thought he’d lost forever, his copilot, Alara Vastra, had stood by his side helping him through the darkest of those days. She’d been waiting for him to recover enough to notice her. Years had passed like that, with him too blinded by his grief to notice much of anything.
Finding Destra alive and married to another man had been just the slap in the face he’d needed to snap him out of it. Not long after that he’d proposed to Alara and she’d accepted. He was just glad that it hadn’t been too late to return her affections. Now that he looked back on all those years he’d spent feeling sorry for himself, he realized just how much time he’d wasted longing for an idealized version of his old life.
Now he was about to start a new life, and tonight was the night before it would begin—the night before the wedding. Ethan smiled. It seemed like a dream. Alara was beautiful. With her flowing dark hair, wide violet eyes, slender hourglass curves, and porcelain skin she was the envy of any man, but aside from that superficial appeal, she was also the sweetest and most faithful woman he’d ever known. Of course she has to balance that sweetness by being a hot-blooded firebrand.
Ethan sighed. In times like these, he had to force himself to remember all the good things. It was easy to forget those things when she was freezing him out with a stony silence or going on the attack with flashing eyes and barbed tongue. He’d known she was an emotional woman when he’d met her, and all through their tension-filled partnership as freelancers he’d seen that side of her, so he’d known what he was getting into. He suspected that fire was part of what attracted him to her—she didn’t take krak from anyone.
“Hoi, are you trying to get away from me out here?”
Ethan started at the sound of Alara’s voice. He slowly turned to face her. She stood a dozen feet away with her hands planted on her hips, her violet eyes narrowed, and her dark hair glowing gold in the light of the setting sun. He forced a smile and shook his head. “No, Kiddie. You’re not that scary,” he said with a wink, and then turned back to watch the sunset.
Alara replied with a snort of laughter, and Ethan heard the grass rustling against her black leggings as she came to stand beside him. “You know . . .” she began. “You’re
going to have to stop calling me that when we have kids.”
“Hmmm?” Ethan turned to her with a dumb look. “Oh—the nickname. Well I’m sure I’ll get at least a few more years’ use out of it,” he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders.
“A few years? You want to wait that long to have kids?”
“Well . . . yes. Just because we’ve got our own ship now doesn’t mean we’re rich.” Hoff had given them that ship—perhaps because he felt guilty for stealing Ethan’s wife, or perhaps because Destra felt guilty, and she’d convinced Hoff to do it. Whatever the reason, Ethan didn’t care. A seraphim-class corvette was nothing to sneeze at. It was exactly what he and Alara needed to start their life together. Of course Alara’s father thought it was exactly what they needed to sell in order to start their life together.
“You don’t need to be rich to have kids, Ethan, and the last time I checked a corvette like ours is worth a small fortune, so technically, we are rich.”
“It’s an asset, Alara. We can’t eat it. We have to use it to make some profit before it’ll be of any use, but don’t worry, we will, and in a year or two we’ll have enough saved up that we’ll be able to buy that house we talked about, or maybe a habitat on a station if you prefer. Once we have that, then we can think about starting a family.”
“That’s one option. . . . Another option might be for you to consider my father’s offer.”
“What, sell the ship and go work for him in the agri corps as a freighter pilot? I’ll just be a glorified babysitter for an AI. Those freighters are almost entirely automated. Not the most exciting job in the world. And where does that leave you? Stuck on some planet raising our kids all by yourself, waiting patiently for me to return once or twice a week and spend some time with you?”
“It’s not ideal, I agree, but maybe after a few years you could transfer to a desk job. I’m sure my father could help you with that. Then you would be home every night.”
Ethan snorted. “A desk job. That sounds even better than babysitting an AI.”
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