Dark Space- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He shook his head. “Down here we don’t have the luxury of being soft. There’s more lives at stake than his.”

  Farah grew silent at that. Bretton watched the endless night of the city flicker by them in a blur of colorful light and starkly-drawn shadows. Air traffic raced ahead of them in orderly, auto-piloted lines, red tail lights shining crimson in the gloom of the under city.

  Farah turned off the autopilot and peeled away from the main artery of traffic to get to Dag’s place. Dag managed to avoid trouble with the law by living on the surface. Down there, organized crime was the law.

  Bretton set his pistol from stun to kill and withdrew a utility belt and holster from the dash compartment. He buckled the belt and holstered the weapon on his hip, looking up just in time to see them plunge down through a thick wall of filthy gray fog. The lights of the city disappeared, becoming dim, amorphous balls of light. Farah turned on a sensor overlay so they could still see their surroundings. Outlines of buildings and structures raced by, projected on the forward viewport in shades of blue and green.

  They reached the surface and flew along a crumbling street, hovering just a few feet above the ground. At this level, the buildings were mostly dark. A few neon signs or holographic displays flickered through the gloom, and some shady-looking pedestrians walked the streets. The city was always alive, even down here, but these weren’t the kind of people you’d like to say hello to.

  “You didn’t tell Dag you were coming, did you?” Farah asked.

  “No, when would I have had a chance to do that?”

  “He doesn’t like drop-ins.”

  “He’s going to have to. He owes me.”

  Farah snorted. “If you say so.” After a few more minutes of flying, she said, “We’re almost there. You want me to park on the street and wait, or should I go in with you?”

  “Can’t risk getting our ride jacked. You’d better stay. Keep her running.”

  “Sure thing. Want me to get us something to eat while I wait?”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “All right.” She pulled to a stop along a particularly dark section of the street and turned to him with her hand held out expectantly. “Twenty bytes.”

  Bretton eyed her palm. “What? You don’t have twenty bytes?”

  Farah shook her head. “I’m broke.”

  “We’re broke,” he amended.

  “You want to eat or not?”

  “Put it on credit,” he growled, opening the passenger’s side door and climbing out into the murky gray soup. Farah called something after him, but he shut the door before he heard what it was. Outside, the air was damp and cold, rich with fetid smells. Bretton took a quick look around, eyes scanning the shifting gray clouds of moisture. Neon signs from bars, nightclubs, and casinos set the fog aglow in all the colors of the rainbow, peeling away the gloom with halos of blurry light. He checked in a full 360 degrees, his hand ready on the butt of his sidearm.

  The street was deserted.

  So far so good.

  He opened the rear passenger’s side door and immediately heard Farah again.

  “We don’t have any credit left, Bret!”

  “Then we’ll eat later!”

  “Maybe we should go looking for Tara Halls instead of chasing after the way things used to be.”

  “I’m not trying to relive the glory days of the Imperium, Farah. I’m trying to fix what’s wrong with Avilon before it’s too late and Omnius decides to stop being coy about how he disposes of us Nulls.”

  Farah arched an eyebrow at him. “We don’t have any proof that he’s disposing of Nulls.”

  Bretton’s mouth curved into a smirk. “Not yet. I have to get going. Wait here and keep your eyes open, okay?”

  “Be careful.”

  Bretton nodded. “I will. If you see any trouble, send the signal. I’ll keep my head down until you give the all clear.”

  “All right.”

  Bretton drew a small grav gun from his utility belt. Aiming it at the unconscious Imperial, he picked the man up and hovered him out into the street. Bretton made his way to a rusty red door. A flickering green sign above it read, Implant-it. Dag’s legitimate side business was implanting cybernetics.

  Bretton set the Imperial down on the stairs. Stepping up to the door, he knocked twice, then once, then three times more, so Dag would know it was a friend.

  Moments later he heard a clunk as deadbolts slid aside, and then a rusty groan as the door cracked open. A pair of glowing orange eyes appeared in the crack.

  “Hello, Dag.”

  “You brought me a client?” a deep voice growled. The orange eyes flicked to the man lying on the steps.

  “That’s right.”

  The door swung wide, and Dag reached out of the shadows with a long, over-muscled black arm. He picked the Imperial up by his flight suit and dragged him inside. Bretton followed, closing and locking the door behind them.

  “You got the bytes?”

  “You owe me, remember?”

  Dag grunted and turned away. Bretton followed him through the gloom, careful to watch his step. Dag could see in the dark thanks to the augmented reality contacts he wore. Bretton eschewed them just for the bittersweet memories they evoked from Etheria.

  They walked from the dark, cluttered foyer to another door, this one flanked by a glowing blue control panel. Dag stepped up to it and typed in a key code. The door popped open with a hiss of escaping air. A crack of light appeared between the door and the jamb, and when Dag opened it, the light flooded out, dazzling Bretton’s eyes.

  They walked into a small antechamber with two sliding glass doors. The first one swished open for them as they approached, while the second remained closed. The walls glowed brightly and steam hissed from the ceiling.

  “I want you to de-link him,” Bretton said, suddenly realizing he hadn’t been very specific about calling in his favor.

  The door shut behind them, and the hissing from the ceiling grew more insistent. The room filled with a sweet-smelling mist that would sterilize them for the operation room beyond. Dag was wearing a simple green gown, baggy enough to hide his muscle, but not his size. He made the taller-than-average man dangling from his hand look tiny.

  “He’s unlisted,” Dag said as the sterilizing mist stopped hissing into the room. “That usually means he’s not linked. . . .”

  “Trust me, he is.”

  Swish. The inner door opened.

  They passed from the antechamber into a locker room with hooks, hangars, and racks. On one of the hangars was a simple green gown like the one Dag wore, a see-through cap to keep stray hairs on Bretton’s head, and a pair of slippers.

  “Get changed,” Dag said. Even though his head was bald, he donned a cap, too.

  “Where did you find him?” Dag asked as he busied himself with undressing the unconscious Imperial.

  “He wandered into a Psycho den and sat down to eat his lunch.”

  “Stupid or suicidal?”

  Bretton shook his head. “Neither. He’s not from here. Check the markings on his suit. He’s an Imperial.”

  “That’s unusual . . . He know he’s gettin’ de-linked?” Dag asked as they finished getting changed. Now their patient was wearing a blue gown and a see-through cap of his own. No slippers, though. Dag picked him up and slung him over one shoulder like a sack of vegetables.

  Here Bretton had to twist the truth. “He has no desire to become an Etherian.” How could you want to be something before you knew what that something was?

  “All right.”

  They walked to the end of the locker and passed through a final door into a brightly-lit room full of shining metal. In the center of the room was a naked gray table where Dag gently laid the Imperial down. That done, he reached up and grabbed an overhead light attached to a jointed-metal arm. Dag positioned the lamp over the man’s head and then turned to an adjacent display and control console. He spent
a moment configuring it before a fan of light flickered out from the lamp, passing from the top of the Imperial’s head to the base of his neck and back up again.

  Dag studied the holographic display that appeared above his control console. “Looks like he’s got two Lifelinks. You want ‘em both disabled?”

  “What?” Bretton shook his head and walked around the foot of the table to see what Dag was talking about. A three-dimensional map of the Imperial’s brain was on the screen. Two small blue spheres glowed bright amidst a sea of other cerebral structures. The implants were sitting one beside the other, one slightly larger than the other. “Which one is Omnius’s?”

  Dag pointed to the smaller one. “The other one is made with materials that I’ve never seen used in a Lifelink before. It might not be a Lifelink, but it’s in the right place.”

  “Any chance we can connect to it and see what’s inside?”

  Dag turned to him with a furrowed brow. “That’s quite an invasion of privacy.”

  “What do you care?”

  “Just makin’ sure your conscience lets you sleep at night.”

  “I’ll sleep like a baby.”

  Dag snorted. “Let me see what I can do.” He walked over to another console and began peppering the control panel with commands. Another holographic display appeared in the air. As Dag studied it, he slowly shook his head. “This one’s encrypted with some type of hieroglyphics.”

  Bretton went to read it over Dag’s shoulder. As soon as his eyes parsed the first line, a cold chill swept through him from head to toe. He stood staring at the screen, his mouth agape, his dark eyes wide.

  “What?” Dag asked, turning to see Bretton’s shock.

  “It’s not scrambled. That’s Sythian.”

  Dag’s glowing orange eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits. “He’s a human.”

  “Not anymore. If I had to guess, I’d say the Sythians used that implant to turn him against us.”

  “Then we should break his neck while we have the chance,” Dag said. Daggert wasn’t a former citizen of the Imperium, but Avilonians had no love for the skull faces either.

  “No . . . I have a better idea,” Bretton replied. He’d been hoping to glean vital information about the war and the state of the galaxy beyond Avilon, to maybe find something the Resistance could use, but now he had something even better than a survivor from the war—he had a Sythian agent.

  “Where did you find this guy?” Dag asked.

  “I told you, in a Psycho den.”

  “Well, he can’t have been on Avilon long. If he had, he’d know better.”

  “Let’s go on a mind walk before you de-link him.”

  “Full immersion or audio-visual?”

  “Audio-visual. I need to be objective about what I see.”

  Dag passed him a shiny black helmet with no visor and directed him to sit in a nearby chair. Bretton walked over to it and sat down. He placed the helmet over his head and everything turned a soulless black.

  “What are we looking for?” Dag asked.

  “Let’s try the last two hours of recorded memory. I want to know how he got here and what he’s been doing.” A moment later a glowing green number appeared before Bretton’s eyes, counting down from five.

  The countdown reached zero, and suddenly Bretton found himself flying high above a burning city. The sky was alive with streaks of fire and tumbling debris. The city was Celesta. Sythian ships rained like confetti from the sky. Bretton watched, wide-eyed as the battle unfolded. The Null Zone was completely cut off from any news from the Uppers, so this was all news to him. The Sythians were attacking Avilon, and they were being routed.

  Bretton watched as his viewpoint shifted, diving toward the burning city and a gaping hole in Celesta’s shield. Over the next few minutes he got to see exactly how the Imperial Sythian agent had reached the surface of Avilon and eventually stumbled into a den of Psychos. The mind walk ended as the Psychos beat the man senseless.

  Bretton removed the helmet to find Dag staring at him. “The Sythians found us,” the de-linker said.

  “We turned them back.”

  “For now. You saw what they did to Celesta.”

  The implication of that was left unspoken between them. If the Sythians could get past Avilon’s orbital defenses once, maybe they could do it again, and this time, finish the job.

  But having a Sythian agent’s mind at their disposal gave them a unique advantage—they might be able to see what the Sythians were planning.

  “I’m going back in,” Bretton said. “We need to see what else this guy knows.”

  Chapter 6

  Six Sythian High Lords and Lady Kala stood in a circle in a dark room. In the center of the circle was a glowing orb on a low pedestal. The orb was tied to the Agmar’s long-range communications array. It pulsed with crimson light as the comm array searched the vastness of space for another like itself.

  Suddenly the orb glowed a solid red, washing the lords in a bloody light. A cool, silken voice slithered into the room: “What news of our conquests? Has the human pestilence been eliminated yet?” On the heels of that voice, a hologram flickered to life above the orb. It was Shallah. Cloaked in a dark uniform, his rubbery, translucent skin was all but hidden from view. Only his face remained visible, a spider’s web of blue veins beneath his skin. He was of the same sub species as Kaon—a Quarn.

  As the most senior of the lords, Kaon stepped forward and dropped to one knee before Shallah. “We make progress, Supreme One. We now control the human refuge known as Dark Space and their people are replacing the Gors as crew for our warships.”

  “But?”

  Shallah always seemed to know what Kaon was about to say even before he said it. That sixth sense of intuition had been an integral part of his rise to supremacy.

  “But . . .” Kaon realized that as the messenger he now shared in the shame of Lord Shondar’s recent defeat at Avilon. “We find another human refuge. They are many, and they are strong. We cannot best them.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Kaon explained how Lord Shondar had been sent with half a fleet to scout the lost human sector of Avilon and report back. Shondar had found the sector in the midst of a crisis, the Avilonians’ fleets temporarily disabled, and he’d seized the chance to decimate them. Then the Avilonians’ defenses had come back online unexpectedly, tearing Shondar’s fleet apart. He’d even lost his thirty kilometer-long command ship, the Gasha. It had been hiding in low orbit behind a cloaking shield, but despite that, the Avilonians had somehow found and destroyed it anyway.

  When Kaon finished explaining, he expected a harsh rebuke, or perhaps to be summarily stripped of all rank and title. After all, this was the second command ship he had lost in the past few months.

  Instead, Shallah replied, “So these Avilonians can see through our cloaking shields. . . . It would appear that they are a more formidable foe than the Imperium was.”

  “Yes, Master. They are.”

  “You do not contact me merely to burden me with the shame of your defeat. . . .” Shallah intoned. Kaon’s head hung low, bowed in obeisance, his face mere inches from the cold deck. Nevertheless, he felt the Supreme One’s eyes on him as surely as if he could see Shallah’s cerulean irises. “You make contact to beg for reinforcements.” The Supreme One’s voice dripped with condescension. “Have you no honor left?”

  “There is no honor in defeat, Master. If we face these Avilonians alone, we go to our deaths.”

  “Yessss, so it would ssseem. How many more clusters do you need?”

  “As many as you can spare, Great One.”

  “It is that serious?”

  “I fear if we do not defeat them soon, they may one day travel to the Getties and defeat us.”

  Shallah laughed at that. “Do not overestimate your new foe. If you can hold out for the next orbit, you shall have a hundred new clusters. I trust that is sufficient force for you to prevail?”

  Kaon’s mind balked at th
e thought of managing a hundred fleets. Throughout the invasion he had managed just seven, but he decided that more could only be better, not worse. A doubt lingered in his mind. “How will you crew such a vast armada?”

  The Sythians’ savage slave army, which had earned them the human pejorative—skull faces—had become unreliable of late, taking an entire fleet and disappearing with it as soon as their command ship had been destroyed. That fleet had been none other than Kaon’s First Fleet, and the command ship had been his. After that, Kaon had decided to replace the Gors with human slaves, harvested from Dark Space.

  When Shallah had heard about the Gor rebellion, his reaction had been similar. He’d retaliated by purging their icy home world of Noctune, killing their women and their children.

  “For now we shall crew them with the future colonists of the Adventa Galaxy. Once we strip Avilon of its defenses, we shall begin harvesting it for a new slave army to replace them.”

  Kaon inclined his head. “May it be so, Master.”

  “There is something else you want to say.”

  “Yes, Great One, forgive me, but . . . the Avilonians may come soon. Far sooner than a standard orbit, and I fear our defenses cannot hold them.”

  “I have a few clusters close by. They were assigned to begin spreading colonies in the Adventa Galaxy, but I suppose that must now wait.”

  Kaon’s twin hearts began beating faster. “How many clusters, Master?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “How many can you spare?”

  “I shall send them all, lest mere humans be allowed to best my Lords for a third time. Expect the first clusters to arrive soon. They come bearing a new weapon for the war.”

  “A new weapon, Master?”

  “Yesss. For now, it shall remain a surprise. I trust you will not fail me again. . .”

  “No, Great One. We shall not!”

  “Then on to victory! For glory!”

  “For glory!” the six Lords and Lady Kala chanted as one.

  Shallah ended contact from the other side and his hologram disappeared. The bloody hue in the room faded as the glowing orb became a shiny black pearl. A faint lavender light remained, which was enough for their sensitive eyes to see by.