“I offer my congratulations. Your endurance improves. Now you are able to handle a level five simulation. Perhaps you would like to try a level six?”
Kaon flicked another switch and Hoff’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. Conscious thought evaporated. Now the flames were cooking his entire body at once. He couldn’t see through the acrid smoke, or even breathe. His eyes felt like they were about to explode.
Then the pain eased somewhat and he could think again.
“Where is Avilon?” Kaon repeated.
Hoff’s mouth was dry and he had an excruciating headache which made it difficult to think let alone speak, but he managed to get out a strangled whisper, “Go frek yourself.”
“I am physically incapable of copulating with myself.”
Hoff saw movement out of the corner of his eye which he thought might have been Kaon walking up next to him, but he didn’t have the energy to lift his head and check. Then the alien warbled something close beside his ear. Hoff felt his head was about to explode. He irrationally wished it would and that the shrapnel would kill Kaon.
“You know, Hoff,” Kaon went on. “Your stubborn resistance is ultimately futile. We know about the mission you sent to Avilon to get reinforcements.”
The relentless pounding in Hoff’s head intensified as he struggled to understand what he was hearing. “What mission?” he demanded.
“Feign ignorance, human, but you are too late. Your very own Commander Lenon Donali is on that mission, and despite your best efforts to prove he is on your side, he is in fact a loyal slave. Soon he finds Avilon and tells us where it is, whether you reveal the location to us or not.”
“What mission?” Hoff screamed, pouring all of his residual agony into that question. The Sythians were messing with him. Donali wasn’t a traitor. There was no mission to Avilon!
“Very well,” Kaon replied. “The longer you deny it, the longer you must suffer.”
Hoff heard Kaon walk away, back to the control panel of the torture rack. “It is time for you to try a level seven simulation.”
Kaon flicked a switch, and the agony returned, but this time with blinding force. Hoff literally couldn’t see through the pain. All he saw were streaks of light and color. His nose stopped registering smells, his ears picked up nothing but a high-pitched squeal of white noise. There was no room left in his consciousness for anything but the pain.
His heart beat so hard in his chest that it should have stopped, but it couldn’t. The torture rack was designed to keep a subject alive. Hoff’s heart had been supercharged with chemicals, nanites, and drugs, and the same went for his brain. No heart attack, stroke, or aneurism would end this torment, which meant the pain would go on forever.
Hoff began to scream curses at Kaon and all Sythians everywhere. He couldn’t hear what he said, but it was more to distract himself than anything else. When he tired of cursing the Sythians, he switched to railing against humanity and the universe in general. Nothing good existed in the universe. A place with so much pain could never be good. It was a cursed place. Nothing mattered. Nothing was important anymore! All that mattered was ending the pain. Hoff screamed something else, and this time the fabric of his universe was torn, and his torment eased. The eternal ringing in his ears quieted enough that he could hear what he was screaming—“Thstop! I’ll thalk! Thstop it!”
Belatedly he realized that the pain had stopped, but he was still left shuddering with the residual effects. His wrists and ankles felt like they were on fire, and when he opened one bleary eye to look, he saw why. The metal manacles which bound him to the torture wrack had torn bloody furrows in his skin.
He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs only filled halfway with air before coughing up blood. It splattered to the deck, landing in a puddle of his own filth which had accumulated at his feet. Hoff tasted the warm tang of blood welling up in his mouth, and he spat it out on the deck. That was when he noticed that his tongue was flopping about strangely in his mouth. He’d bitten straight through it in several different places, and the tip seemed to be missing altogether.
“I am listening, Hoff,” Kaon said, sounding like he was a great distance away.
So Hoff told them. His shredded tongue didn’t make it easy to get the coordinates right, but the Sythians let him down off the rack and handed him a stylus and a digital pad to write on. When he was done, he fell out of the chair where they’d seated him, and lay on the glossy black deck in a tangle of heavy limbs. It felt like every bone in his body had been broken. He tried to move, but his muscles were too weak. A fierce determination to rise to his feet bubbled up inside of him. He wanted to show the Sythians that they hadn’t broken him. Miraculously, his determination overcame the pain and exhaustion, and he stumbled to his feet.
No sooner had he regained his footing than something cold and wet splashed across his face. He woke up with a gasp, his arms and legs flailing to fight some unseen assailant. That was when he realized that he hadn’t risen to his feet after all—he’d passed out.
Warble.
“Get up, Hoff,” the translator in his ear ordered.
Hoff saw Kaon standing over him, his translucent skin seeming to glow in the low light of the Sythian warship. The alien’s wide blue eyes caught stray light from the room, reflecting the glossy black walls and floor, making them appear like twin pools of endless shadow.
Hoff tried to rise to his feet, but his torn and battered muscles refused to obey, just as they had in his dream. Then a pair of strong hands seized him, carrying him over to a coffin-sized chamber which was leaning at an angle against one wall. Hoff began to struggle and make blubbering noises with his swollen tongue.
Then a hateful warbling reached his ears, followed by the translation, “We are pleased that you choose to cooperate, but now we must verify what you tell us.”
Hoff couldn’t believe it. He’d been tortured for what felt like an eternity, and now after all of that, they were just going to use some kind of mind probe on him to find the location of Avilon for themselves anyway. “Ffwhy?” he spluttered, spraying blood into the coffin.
Kaon answered, “Why torture you? I tell you the answer already—I come here for revenge.”
* * *
Captain Caldin watched the reversion timer on the captain’s table until it reached ten seconds. “Here’s hoping we didn’t come all this way for nothing,” Caldin said.
“Indeed,” Master Commander Donali replied from beside her.
“Engineering, have you double-checked our cloaking shield?” Caldin asked, her eyes finding the back of Deck Commander Cobrale Delayn’s head. His short gray hair and sickly-pale skin made him easy to pick out, even at a distance.
“Yes, ma’am,” Delayn replied.
The reversion timer reached five seconds and the countdown became audible, booming out from the bridge speakers. Caldin’s gaze turned to the fore to watch the bright star lines and streaks of SLS. “Three, two, one . . .”
The streaks of light vanished, abruptly replaced with stars and space. Dead ahead was Ikara, the planet where Hoff had once based his refugee enclave. The world was brown, streaked with bright blue and dotted with patches of muddy red. Due to a local species of algae the red patches were actually lakes and seas, while the blue was the planet’s native vegetation. The world wasn’t exactly hospitable, but it was temperate and the air was breathable, so there was a chance that some had survived the Sythian attack and fled into the Ikaran jungles. This was the alleged reason for their journey—to look for survivors—but Caldin knew the real reason was to give Commander Ortane a chance to do whatever it was the admiral had sent him out here to do. All she knew was that his mission was critical to humanity’s fight against the Sythians. She didn’t know why, or what that mission entailed, but she didn’t have to. She had her orders, and Commander Ortane had his. She would simply have to trust that those orders were the right ones.
“Report!” Caldin called out.
“All systems gr
een,” Donali replied right beside her ear as he checked the captain’s table. “Jump successful.”
“Gravidar, what do we have out there?”
“Debris, ma’am. Lots of debris.”
Caldin frowned. “Human or alien?”
“Both.”
The captain turned to her temporary XO, Master Commander Donali, “Have your Gors checked the area for cloaked ships?”
“Give me a moment to contact them,” Donali replied.
Caldin waited while Donali used his comm piece to make a call to the troop bay where his Gors were staying. A few minutes later he turned back to Caldin and shook his head. “All clear.”
She nodded and turned to her comm officer. “Comms, have both Guardian and Renegade squadrons launch and start grid-searching the planet. Someone must have escaped.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the comm officer replied.
Caldin turned to watch the grid. Just moments after she’d given the command, she saw Nova Fighters streaming out the back of the Intrepid, roaring out the twin launch tubes in wing pairs. Peripherally, she noted another blip appear on gravidar besides those novas, but it flew out the side of the ship rather than the back. That blip was Commander Atton Ortane’s transport, the Emissary.
“All our Novas are away, Captain,” the comm officer said, “as well as one assault recon-class transport with priority clearance.”
“Good,” Caldin nodded. “Let’s—”
“Contact! Bearing K-76-43-27 by T-55-01-16.”
“Red alert!” Caldin called. The alarm sounded almost immediately, followed by the lights on the bridge dimming to a bloody red. “Recall our fighters. Helm come about and set course 180 degrees from enemy contact’s heading. Throttle to 100%.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Caldin whirled on Donali and jabbed a finger in his chest. “Didn’t you say we were clear?”
“The Gors told me they cannot sense anyone out there.”
“So what’s that?” Caldin demanded, jerking a thumb toward the red mass of enemy blips which was appearing on the grid.
“A trap . . .” Donali replied slowly, his real eye widening suddenly.
“More contacts inbound!” Gravidar reported. “De-cloaking at K-32-41-26; 10-6-14, and 41-2-89 . . . they’re surrounding us, Captain.”
“They don’t even know where we are! How can they surround us?”
“They can see our fighters,” Donali whispered.
Caldin turned back to the captain’s table to see it for herself. Red enemy blips were swarming all over the grid at impossibly close range. It was almost as though the Sythians had known they were coming. She watched her Nova Fighters retreating from the enemy, leaving one green blip all alone to face the onslaught—the Emissary. Frek! Caldin cursed. She couldn’t let Commander Ortane be killed. Getting him out here had been the whole purpose of the Intrepid’s mission.
“Comms, belay those orders—send our fighters back out there. Have them cover that transport.”
A scattering of acknowledgments came back from her crew. Donali appeared in her field of view, leaning over the captain’s table and staring at the grid. He caught her eye with his real one and gave her a knowing look. “The admiral told you,” he whispered.
Caldin sent him a thin smile. “Told me what? I’m just looking after my own, Commander.”
“Of course.”
“Engineering—on my mark, get ready to de-cloak.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mark! Engage pulse and beam shields.”
The Intrepid’s icon brightened on the grid, and a few dozen blips began changing their headings in response to the cruiser’s appearance.
“Helm, reset our course. Follow the Emissary until she jumps to SLS. Weapons—lay down covering fire as soon as they get in range.”
“You’re going to fight?” Donali asked, looking and sounding astonished. “There are at least 20 battleships out there.”
“Yes,” Caldin nodded. “I believe there are.”
“If just one of them gets in range of us, we’re dead.”
“Then let’s make our deaths count for something. Ruh-kah, Commander.”
Donali gave her a blank, disbelieving stare. After a moment he began to nod. “Ruh-kah,” he said softly.
Chapter 12
Atton sat behind the Emissary’s controls, his features awash in the blue glow of the transport’s holo displays. Twin engines rumbled through the deck underfoot with a comforting hum. Countless stars sparkled beyond the cockpit canopy. Atton flexed his gloved hands on the flight yoke and began slewing his ship to port by applying a bit of pressure to the left rudder pedal. He felt nothing from the maneuver, so he dialed the inertial management system down to 98%. Now the transport’s acceleration pushed him gently against the back of the pilot’s chair. Dead ahead, a blue ring appeared on his HUD, which was his SLS entry waypoint.
Soon—a matter of another two days’ journey through SLS—Atton would reach Avilon. It was hard to imagine what the sector would look like. If there were trillions of humans hiding out there as the admiral had said, then it would be teeming with life. Atton tried to picture an immortal city, but it was hard enough to picture a mortal one. The only populous cities in Dark Space were on Karpathia, and even those were ramshackle by comparison with the ones that had existed before the invasion. Back then, Atton had been just seven years old, and he hadn’t yet had a chance to see the galaxy.
A sharp tone sounded from the cockpit speakers, pulling Atton rudely from his thoughts, then came a red alert siren, and Atton sat suddenly straighter in his chair.
“What the frek?” he muttered, his eyes flicking over the glowing blue grid rising out of his main holo display. There were dozens of red contacts appearing all around him—Sythian analogs. They’d just run into an enemy fleet. Soon those capital-class warships would begin pouring Shell Fighters into the void, and Atton wasn’t stupid enough to think they would ignore him.
He pushed the slider up past the stops and into the red. His afterburners would run out of fuel in a few minutes, but hopefully he’d get up enough speed before then that the Sythians wouldn’t be able to keep up. Atton tuned his comm system to listen in on the Guardians’ channel. He immediately heard a stream of chatter begin pouring in.
“I’ve got incoming!”
“Bogeys at five, eight, and two o-clock.”
Atton picked out Gina’s voice next, “Orders are to return to the Intrepid, Guardians.”
“We’ll never get back to her before they reach us! We’re already up to speed.”
“Orders are orders, Six. The Captain’s planning to run, not fight. Look at those odds.”
The chatter quieted as the Guardians took in the seriousness of their situation.
“Roger that, Lead,” someone said.
Atton turned down the volume on the comms and studied the grid once more. No Shell Fighters had appeared yet, but he suspected they were cloaked and would remain so until they reached firing range with their targets. Then he saw the Intrepid de-cloak in response to the Sythian fleet, and he frowned. Why would the captain de-cloak her ship? The only reason he could think of was that she intended to stay and fight, but the Intrepid didn’t stand a chance by herself against such superior numbers.
A crackle of static caught Atton’s attention, followed by: “ . . . new orders. We are to . . .” He turned up the volume and heard, “. . . the Emissary at all costs. Repeat, protect the Emissary at all costs.”
Atton frowned and shook his head. That was him. And that was why the Intrepid was sticking around to fight. The captain was risking everything to give him a chance to get to Avilon. He was about to key his comms to tell mission control that he didn’t need an escort, when another series of sharp tones sounded from the cockpit speakers, drawing his attention back to the glowing blue grid on the main holo display. A few dozen blips had appeared between him and his SLS entry point. Shell Fighter analogs.
“Frek me,” Atton whispe
red. “I guess I do need an escort.” He targeted the nearest enemy fighter and checked his time to target. The nav calculated eight minutes until he reached that fighter, ten until he should reach his SLS entry waypoint. Atton adjusted his trajectory by a few degrees to keep the Sythians guessing, and then he set his throttle to full reverse. He had to start slowing down now if he were going to reach the SLS-safe entry speed limit in time for his jump. If he wasn’t flying at 999 m/s or less when he entered SLS, his ship would be torn apart by the gravitational forces.
In the next instant his comm buzzed with a direct message from Guardian One.
“Iceman, what the frek? My sensors show you slowing down.”
“I have a jump plotted at ten klicks out, Tuner,” Atton said, using Gina’s call sign.
“That’s lovely. I don’t suppose you noticed the red cloud of krak headed your way?”
“I see it.”
“So you thought you’d slow to a crawl and make it easier for them to tag you?”
“The jump is our priority. Once I’m away, you can bug out, too. Until then, we’re all stuck. Follow your orders and I’ll follow mine.”
Gina clicked her comm to acknowledge that, and Atton went back to focusing on the task at hand. She was right. It made no sense for him to slow down, but keeping his speed up would only delay his jump, and time was critical. If he delayed the Intrepid unnecessarily, the cruiser would be obliterated by those enemy battleships. She couldn’t jump away until he did. So somehow he had to stick it out, dodging Sythian missiles and lasers until he could jump to SLS. No problem, Atton thought, eyeing the approaching wall of enemy fighters, now only six klicks away.
He thumbed over to Hailfire missiles and began lining up the nearest Shell in his targeting reticle. Suddenly a loud roar thundered through his SISS (sound in space simulator). He turned to look out the side of his canopy just in time to see a pair of Nova Fighters go rocketing past him to greet the enemy fighter wave. That pair was followed by another, and then another, and then nine more wing pairs, until both squadrons of Novas were flying out ahead of him, their triple thruster banks lighting up the space ahead of him like a string of blue festive lights.
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