Caldin’s gritted her teeth. “I said stand down! They’re on our side! All of you—back to your stations!”
The Avilonians’ shield disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the men standing gawking in the entrance of the bridge began to withdraw. Caldin shook her head and turned back to the captain’s table just as Galan Rovik came up beside her.
“Your people lack discipline.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Gone were the days of strict military discipline. Now the ISSF had to take what it could get, and these days, what it could get were the dregs.
“It will not go well for them in Avilon.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Never mind. Time is short.”
“No, I want to know—if we’re going to help you, I’ll be frekked if I’m going to let you turn around and throw us to the rictans when it’s all over.”
Galan regarded her patiently. “I will vouch for you to Omnius, but we must hurry, or all of us may soon be beyond helping.”
“Fine,” Caldin replied. “Give me the coordinates.”
Galan shook his head. “You will not understand them. Show me your navigation system and I will do my best to find Avilon.”
Caldin pointed to the star map already rising out of the captain’s table. “There you go.”
Galan frowned at the map for long seconds before turning to her. “We need a common reference point. The speed of light for distance, and one of your standard orbits for time.”
Caldin arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean a year?”
Galan took a moment to reply. “Yes . . . a year.”
“How is it that you can speak our language but you don’t know our systems of measurement or time?”
“Because I use your language, but I do not use either your time or your measurements.”
Caldin shrugged and turned back to the map. She played with the controls until the map zoomed out to a scale of several light years. Then she pointed to the glowing green icon in the center of the map, which was the Intrepid. “We are here.” Then she pointed to the red icon which appeared to be right beside them. “You’re in the same place for all intents and purposes.” The red icon had a line trailing from it to the exact same point where the Intrepid was in the 3D map. At the scale she’d set, the spatial distance between their ships was so slight that it was impossible to see, so the icons had to be artificially separated.
Galan pointed to their two ships. “How many orbits would it take for light to travel between our ships?”
“You want me to tell you that in light years? We’re less than two hundred klicks away from each other.”
“It will be a very small number, but the distance between our ships was known to us before we lost power. Our forward velocities are matched unless you have begun accelerating; therefore, it is another common reference point which we can use to translate between the two systems of scale.”
“How long is this going to take?” Caldin asked.
“I am not sure. Once we know how to translate our distances to yours, we will have to translate your coordinate system to our own, but that part should not take long. Is there someone who can help explain your coordinate system and put it in terms of the distance light travels in one of your standard orbits?”
Caldin sighed. “Delayn!”
“Right here, ma’am,” he said, appearing on the other side of her.
“Help Master Rovik translate our coordinate system. We can’t leave here until we know where we have to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
“My Lord . . .”
The telepathic intrusion jolted Shondar out of his dream.
“What isss it? I am resting.” Shondar was not resting; he was drowning his sorrows in the Gasha’s dream room. He lifted the helmet from his head, forcing himself back to cruel reality. Not even the endless enjoyment which he could derive from immersing himself in his waking dreams was enough to diminish the depressing truth. They were doomed to spend five or six orbits travelling through real space just to get back to a point where they could jump to SLS once more. Even for one with a life as long as his, it was almost too much to bear. In five orbits’ time he was supposed to have been on Sythia basking in the fame and glory of his conquests. Now, he would be returning in shame.
“There is a new development. We are no longer trapped here. Our superluminal drives work once more.”
“What?” Shondar’s heart began to pound and his pallid gray skin flushed a darker shade of gray with his excitement. “You lie.”
“It is the truth, My Lord.”
“Then why do we wait? Get us out of here!”
“Where do we go?”
Shondar hesitated only a moment. “To Avilon,” he said, baring his black teeth and hissing eagerly. How quickly things changed. The glory of Avilon’s discovery and subsequent conquest would be his after all.
Chapter 23
On GK-465 the nights were dark and terrifying. No stars or moon were visible, and endless storms raged through the swollen sky. Ethan watched out the viewport as a fork of lightning split the horizon all the way down to the black, raging ocean below. The sky turned purple, as if bruised by its own violence. Then the light was gone, plunging the world into darkness once more. The roar of thunder never came, because the Trinity was travelling many times the speed of sound.
A few minutes passed in the dark. Deprived of sight, Ethan’s ears took over, magnifying the sound of the ship’s air cyclers and Alara’s steady breathing where she lay on the bed beside him. Then the world beyond the viewport grew light once more, and a red glow appeared on the horizon. Ethan frowned, wondering what it might be. Hope abruptly swelled in his chest and he sat up in bed to watch that light more carefully. Could it be the Avilonians? Was that the light of a starship hovering high above the surface of the world?
Then the angry red eye of the moon poked through a rare hole in the planet’s stormy sky, and Ethan’s hopes were dashed. He stared at that red iris for long seconds. The moon stared back, seeming to follow their ship with malevolent scorn. They were out of place. What were they doing on GK-465? No man-made object had any right to be here in a place of such emptiness. There was nothing to see and nothing to do. The planet’s barrenness mocked them, warning them away and telling them to go home. But they had no home, and no fuel to go back to it.
Then the moon was gone, retreating into a thick black veil of clouds. Darkness reigned once more, and Ethan held back a sigh. He turned to study the walls of his and Alara’s quarters aboard the Trinity. Lacquered wood paneling gleamed in the faint light of the room’s glow panels. Having once belonged to the decadent crime lord, Alec Brondi, the Trinity still bore the mark of his excesses. It was an old military corvette, converted to become a rich mobster’s yacht, then converted once more to be a freelancer’s trade ship—Ethan’s trade ship. The Trinity had seen a much longer life than was ever intended for her. Were the Imperium still alive and well, she would have been decommissioned long ago, replaced by a more modern model. Now humanity scarcely had the resources to maintain the ships it had, let alone build new ones, but with the Sythian occupation, none of that mattered anymore. Millions were being enslaved. By Ethan’s calculations, one in every five people would disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. He’d thought he and Alara would be escaping that fate by accepting this mission, but he’d been wrong. They’d come all this way just to find an uninhabited world which, if it came to it, wouldn’t even be hospitable enough to support the two of them. They weren’t going to be seen or heard from again either.
Ethan was beginning to wonder if Alara had been right. She’d suggested that maybe his ex-wife, Destra, had sent them out here to die. Ethan wasn’t sure if Destra were capable of such outright evil, but he hadn’t thought her capable of remarrying so soon after losing him, and yet she’d done that, too.
Shaking his head, his thoughts turned back to the problem at hand. The week leading u
p to their arrival at GK-465 had been accompanied by anxiety over how the Avilonians would react to the Trinity’s unexpected appearance at their forward base. That heart-pounding anticipation had long since faded. Now the focus of their anxiety had switched to wondering where the Avilonians were. The Trinity had spent the last four days on autopilot, grid-searching the surface of GK-465 with sensors actively scanning, and an alarm set to sound through the ship at even the faintest sign of life. So far, no alarms had sounded, and gravidar logs corroborated that. No electromagnetic radiation had been detected, and no man-made objects had been found either floating above the raging black waters, or lurking in their warm depths. The planet’s smattering of islands had been ruled out almost instantly. They were barren rocks, washed clean by frequent tidal waves. Even if some type of base were clinging to one of those rocky outcroppings, it would be immediately visible to both the naked eye and scanners.
If the Avilonians had ever used this world as a forward base, clearly it had long since been abandoned, and whatever signs they had left of their stay had been washed into the deep.
Beside him, Alara stirred. Ethan turned to look at her—her porcelain face was smooth, the worry lines which had accumulated there with the stress of the past few weeks had been swept into the unknowing bliss of sleep. Afraid to wake her with his restless tossing and turning, Ethan climbed carefully out of bed, and padded up to the doors.
Waving his hand across the door scanner, he stepped out into the corridor and walked down past the ship’s combined living area and mess hall. The luxurious appointments of the living space no longer seemed inviting to him—his gaze skipped over the opulent white sofas and matching arm chair, and he scarcely noticed the stain-resistant blue carpets or the recessed gold glow panels which came on automatically as he approached and faded as he left. Elaborate moldings at the tops of the shiny white bulkheads were just more ambient noise. No matter how luxurious the coffin, it was still a coffin.
Ethan reached the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s chair. Glowing displays, readouts, and status lights filled the cockpit with a dim, blue-green light. Beyond the forward viewport lay nothing but impenetrable black; the night was absolute. Ethan checked over the gravidar logs, just in case something actually had been detected and somehow failed to trigger the alarm. . . . But there was no sign of even the faintest blip. No indication that anyone had ever even set foot on GK-465.
Ethan tried not to dwell on the crushing weight of despair which was threatening to suffocate him. Instead he brought up his ship’s gravidar configuration on the main holo display and began playing with the settings. He doubled the range and depth and waited half a minute for the ship’s computer to finish a new scan.
Lightning split the sky once more, momentarily drawing Ethan’s gaze away from the grid.
Then the impossible happened—the alarm he’d set sounded, indicating a possible contact. The lightning vanished and his gaze was back on the grid. Neutral yellow icons were appearing en-masse, in a high orbit above the Trinity and GK-465.
How the frek? Ethan’s heart pounded with excitement. The contacts were the right size and shape to be starships, but they hadn’t been there a second ago, so where had they come from? After so much time spent searching, it almost didn’t matter how the Trinity had detected them. Ethan aborted his grid search of the planet and pulled up at almost a 90 degree angle in order to make orbit as fast as possible.
Ethan opened the comms. He was just about to hail the ships when he noticed something else. His brow furrowed and his hand drifted away from the comms. What the . . . ? Some fifteen capital-class vessels had appeared on the Trinity’s scopes, but they were all dark on the grid. They weren’t radiating anything on the electromagnetic spectrum—no engines running, no comms or sensors active, no weapons or shields—they were all derelict.
It was a ghost fleet.
The cockpit door swished open and Ethan turned, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.
“I heard the alert,” Alara said, an almost forgotten hope lurking in her voice.
“We found them . . .” Ethan said slowly.
“What?” Alara’s eyes flew wide and she broke into a broad grin. “That’s amazing! We’ve got to . . .” She trailed off as she realized that Ethan’s expression didn’t match her enthusiasm. “What is it?”
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know. They’re all dark. There’s no sign of life in any of the ships we detected.”
“Maybe that’s why they were so hard to detect?”
“I doubt it. They just appeared out of nowhere.”
“Are you saying they have cloaking shields?” Alara asked as she sat in the copilot’s station beside him.
“No, well . . . I don’t know.”
“Have you tried hailing them?”
“I was about to when I realized that they probably won’t hear us if they’re drifting without power.”
“You won’t know until you try.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to bring us in for a closer look.”
“Don’t get too close . . .” Alara warned. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I, but I don’t see how they’re a danger to us. How are they going to shoot us? Stick their heads out the airlocks and throw rocks?”
Alara smiled and warmth bled into her violet eyes as she turned to speak into the comm. “This is Alara Ortane of the Trinity. We are low on fuel and require immediate assistance. Please respond if you receive this message.”
The comms crackled and popped with static as the Trinity roared through the planet’s upper atmosphere. Clouds and stormy skies yielded to the diamond sparkle of stars. Ethan set visual auto-scaling to 500% and suddenly the Avilonian fleet appeared in the distance. Their ships were oblong and rectangular, white and glowing with reflected light from the system’s sun, which was just now peeking over the horizon of the planet below.
“There’s no response,” Alara said, turning to him with wide violet eyes. “What should we do?”
“I’m going to get us closer to one of those ships.”
“What for?”
“We’re going to board them.”
“I don’t see any open hangars . . .”
“So we make one.”
“That’s a nice way to ask for help—we tried knocking on your door, but you didn’t answer, so we decided to break it down.”
“Maybe they need our help?” he suggested. Alara looked dubious, and he shrugged. “Either way, we don’t have a choice. I don’t see any other starships around here that might hail from the Avilonian Empire.”
“You’re right, but we’re not going unarmed.”
“You’re not going at all,” Ethan replied.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to be in the cockpit with the thrusters hot and ready for a getaway. If I don’t come back, or if you suddenly lose contact with me, you take off and get as far from here as you can. Look for a habitable world.”
“I’m not leaving you behind, Ethan, and you’re not going alone.”
But half an hour later, when Ethan had finished cutting a hole in the nearest derelict vessel’s hull, Alara wasn’t standing beside him in the airlock. She was waiting at the pilot’s station, staying in touch with him via comms.
“You better come back here in one piece, Ethan Ortane, or I’m going to rip you apart myself.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you sweetheart me.”
Ethan grinned behind the faceplate of his vac suit and began playing with the settings on his grav gun. He set the gun for a heavy load, and then targeted the glowing, red-hot circle he’d cut in the outer hull of the Avilonian ship. Holding down the trigger, he heard a metallic groan, followed by a hiss of molten metal dripping down to the hermetic seal which had extended from the Trinity’s main airlock. Ethan hoped those molten beads of duranium or whatever other alloy the ship’s hull was made of didn’t burn a hole through that seal and into space. He was wea
ring a vac suit, but that didn’t mean he’d survive sudden depressurization of the airlock.
“Everything all right down there?” Alara asked.
“Just fine . . .” Ethan replied as the glowing hot circle of alloy popped free and began drifting toward him. He set it down on the floor. That done, he turned to peer into the shadowy hole he’d cut. Unable to see anything clearly, he drew his sidearm and snapped on the scope light. A regular ship’s deck appeared below. The Avilonian ship was oriented so that its deck lay dead ahead, rather than down as it should have been.
“I’m going in.”
“Are you sure? Is it safe?”
“I’ll find out soon enough.”
“Ethan!”
He jumped down into the ship and bounced back off the deck before he could turn on the grav field emitter on his belt. The ship’s artificial gravity was obviously offline along with everything else.
“I’m going to see if I can find the crew . . .” Ethan said as his feet touched the deck once more. Walking within his own personal bubble of gravity, he made his way slowly through the dark, abandoned corridor where he now found himself.
“What do you see in there?”
Ethan panned his scope light over the walls and ceiling. “Nothing unusual so far,” he said, noting shiny white walls, gray ceiling, and the silvery deck under his feet.
“Does it look like one of our ships?”
“Hoi, Kiddie, hold on . . . I’m looking.”
“So you found us at last,” came an unidentified voice.
Ethan whirled around. Turning on his helmet’s external speakers, he called out, “Who said that?”
“Ethan?!” Alara interjected in a panicky voice. “What’s going on?”
“I did.” This time the voice was right beside Ethan’s ear.
Startled, he spun toward the sound, his finger already twitching on the trigger of his pistol. He glimpsed something bright and glowing which came swelling out of thin air. Then came a whoosh and something heavy hit him in the chest, throwing him backward. Ethan hit the opposite wall of the corridor with a bang and slid to the floor with a groan.
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