“You’re introducing us all as if we’re still your crew, but we’re not, and in a sense we never were. We have no recollection of each other or any of the time we spent together on the Inquisitor.”
“That’s correct,” Admiral Stavos put in, “but we’re hoping to change that.” He went on to explain what Lucien already knew about the proposal to send out clones to explore the universe.
“Woah, back that krak up,” Garek said, holding up a hand to stop the admiral there. “You don’t actually want us to go. You want our clones to go?”
“That’s correct, but make no mistake, thanks to the Judicial Department’s ruling on the matter, your clones will have to sync their memories with yours every time they return, so you will ultimately acquire all of the same experiences as them and vice versa. You will essentially be living two lives in parallel, one here on Astralis, and one out there among the stars.”
“Waa-how! That’s all kinds of frekked up,” Tinker said.
“Please mind your language, Mr. Ferakis.”
“Fine. It’s all kinds of sexed up. That better?”
Admiral Stavos scowled.
Tinker turned to the rest of them. “What if we get all depressed after we sync because we’re still waking up every day to our dull little lives?”
“It’s better than living our dull little lives without even the memory of adventure,” Addy replied. “This is the chance of a lifetime, and it’s the whole reason we came on this mission. As far as I’m concerned, it’s about time we found a way to get back out there. Where do I sign up?”
Admiral Stavos smiled. “Now there’s the explorer’s spirit we’re looking for. What about the rest of you?”
Addy looked around the table.
“I’m in,” Garek said.
“Likewisss,” Brak hissed.
“Aww, sex it, I guess I can always pop some pills or start smoking glow. Sign me up, too.”
“You may go back to cursing now, Mr. Ferakis,” Admiral Stavos.
Tinker just grinned.
“I is deciding to be joining this mission,” Troo said next.
“That just leaves you, Mr. Ortane.”
All eyes were on Lucien once more. His wife’s words echoed through his head, urging him to consider the consequences of his choice.
“Commander?” Captain Forster prompted. “I’d be hard pressed to find a better XO, but I will if I have to.”
Lucien gazed back into the Captain’s blue eyes—his wife’s eyes. Less than an hour ago they’d been pleading with him not to join this mission, and now here she was asking him to go for it.
Tinker’s right, Lucien decided. This is all kinds of frekked up...
Ultimately, he found he had to agree with Addy: it was the chance of a lifetime and there didn’t appear to be any kind of downside to it. “I’m in,” Lucien said, nodding once.
Captain Forster grinned. “There’s the Lucien I know.”
And love? he wondered. Under different circumstances they’d ended up falling in love and getting married. How much of that potential had they explored while they were crewmates aboard the Inquisitor?
“That settles it,” Admiral Stavos said, nodding. “Chief Ellis is working with the council to draft the legislation for all of this as we speak. If all goes well, we’ll be able to send out the first Galleons within a month. That will give us enough time to grow a new clone for Garek, who recently used his to resurrect after being killed by the Faros.”
“You don’t have to wait for me, sir,” Garek put in.
Stavos nodded to him. “We aren’t, but I’m glad that you’ll be able to join us all the same.”
That caught Lucien’s attention. “Us...? Are you coming with us, sir?”
Stavos grinned. “I wouldn’t miss it for the universe.”
“I thought Captain Forster was going to be in command.”
“She is—of her ship. We’re sending out the galleons in pairs for better security this time. Captain Forster will command the Retribution, with you as her crew. I’ll have command of the Harbinger, as well as the overall mission.”
Lucien began nodding. “I see.”
“This is going to be one for the history books,” Stavos went on.
“Sex yeah!” Tinker blurted out.
Everyone turned to glare at him.
“What?” Tinker asked innocently.
“I understand why the Faros kill you,” Brak said.
Jalisa chuckled, and Addy laughed with her.
“So do I,” Stavos said, his blue eyes glittering with amusement.
Lucien couldn’t help feeling apprehensive now that he knew Stavos would be commanding his mission. For whatever reason, he didn’t trust the admiral after the Faros had touched him. But he’d been cleared for duty by a mind probe and the subsequent comparative analysis. Besides, if Stavos or any of the others had somehow been corrupted by the Faros, they would have called in a Faro fleet by now.
Lucien leaned back in his chair with a sigh, and allowed his suspicions to drift away. He was just being paranoid.
Chapter 30
Mokar: Underworld
They touched down in the still-smoking crater that the Specter had punched in the bottom of the pit. Heat radiated through Lucien’s faceplate, scalding his skin and threatening to suffocate him.
“Shields up and weapons out!” Lucien said, his voice booming as it echoed off the sheer rock walls. Lucien armed his lasers, and the weapon barrels slid up out of his gauntlets with a whirring click-click-click.
“Way ahead of you,” Garek replied, his voice echoing back.
As soon as Lucien activated his shields, the heat abated, and his suit’s cooling system took over, making it easier to breathe. He swept his headlamps in a slow circle to get his bearings. Black rocks shone in the light, and gravel crunched under foot.
“Where to now?” Addy asked.
Lucien’s lamps flickered over the opening of a passage, visible just over the rim of the crater. “Over there,” he said, pointing and taking a step in that direction.
“Hold up,” Garek replied. “Let’s scan each other first. If we’re carrying tracking devices we might be able to detect the signals.”
Garek scanned Lucien with a flickering blue fan of light and spent a moment studying the results on his HUD.
“Well?” Lucien demanded.
“There’s a problem...” Garek said.
Lucien was already imagining the worst. “What is it?”
“There’s no signal, and I’m not detecting any foreign bodies inside of you besides your AR implant.”
“So there’s no tracker?” Addy asked.
“Try scanning me,” Garek suggested.
Addy did so, and Lucien took his cue from that and scanned her while they waited. The results flashed up on his HUD a few seconds later.
“Same thing. Addy’s clean.”
“Thanks, I took a shower this morning,” Addy replied.
“Ha ha.”
“Garek’s clean, too,” she said. “Either Katawa isn’t tracking us, or he is, but we can’t detect it.”
“The trackers could be cloaked,” Lucien suggested. “The Gors are all born with self-replicating cloaking implants—that’s how they can cloak themselves without armor.”
“It could be cloaked,” Garek agreed, “but we’d still be able to detect the tracking signals.”
“Unless they’re not actively transmitting,” Addy said. “The trackers might be sophisticated enough to wait until we go through the gateway before they broadcast our location.”
The beams of light from Garek’s headlamps bobbed. “If that’s true, then there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“We could do something if we had a comms jammer,” Addy said.
“Or a spaceship,” Garek pointed out. “While we’re playing that game we may as well wish for an entire fleet. The lost Etherian fleet, maybe?” His mouth twisted sardonically and he shook his head.
Lucien si
ghed. “Whoever planned this, they really frekked us over. I can’t see a way out. All we can do is hope the gateway takes us somewhere far enough away that Katawa won’t be able to follow us before we can go somewhere else.”
“That’s not much of a hope,” Addy said. “Especially not since we know how fast Faro jump calculations are.”
“It’s all we’ve go—”
“Shhh!” Addy whispered sharply. She turned slightly, looking at something, and stood perfectly still. Lucien followed her gaze. Bits of ash and debris fluttered down through their headlamps, but otherwise there was nothing to see—just more black rocks and gravel.
“What is it?” Lucien asked.
“Switch to comms!” Addy said, her voice no longer echoing, but canned by the limited acoustics of her helmet.
“What’s going on?” Lucien snapped back over the comms while casting about with his headlamps and sensors.
“You didn’t see that?” Addy asked.
“See what?” Lucien demanded.
“There’s nothing on sensors,” Garek added.
“It was up there,” Addy insisted, pointing to the rim of the crater.
“What was?”
“I don’t know.... a light. Something glowing.”
“Which way do we go?” Brak interrupted.
Lucien found the Gor a hundred meters away, up on the rim of the crater. “It was light from Brak’s headlamps reflecting off something,” Garek suggested.
“I guess that’s possible....” Addy said.
Lucien turned his attention to Brak. “Did you find any other paths leading out of here?”
“Many,” Brak replied.
“Hang on, I’m coming up for a look,” Lucien said, and blasted off the bottom of the crater with his grav boosters. He flew in an abbreviated arc and touched down beside Brak with a loud crunch of gravel. Sweeping his headlamps from side to side, Lucien saw no less than five tunnels leading away from the rim of the crater.
Garek hovered up silently beside them, and touched down just as quietly, his caution betraying his twenty years of experience with the Paragons. “Scanners show those paths connect to a larger network,” he said. “Some kind of labyrinth.”
“A maze,” Addy said as she touched down beside them with another noisy crunch.
“It’s hot in there,” Garek added.
“It’s already hot,” Addy replied. “Over 350 K.”
“Well, it gets a lot hotter in those tunnels. I can only get readings up to a couple klicks from here, but we’re talking at least 400 K.”
Lucien grimaced. “That’s over a hundred degrees Celsius. I guess we’re not going to find any water down here, then.”
Garek nodded. “On the bright side that means we’re less likely to find anything alive down here.”
Lucien shook his head. “That’s not much of a bright side. Our suits have limited cooling capacity. We can’t stay down here for more than...” He queried his suit’s systems to project how long they could last in a 400 K environment.
“We’ve got about twelve hours before our cooling systems shut down,” Garek said just as Lucien got the same result on his HUD.
“We’ll run out of air before then,” Addy said. “In just under six hours.”
“The air’s breathable down here,” Lucien said. “We could open up our vents and run it through suit filters.”
“That would overload our cooling capacity in minutes!” Addy said.
“Those might be the minutes we need to make a break for the surface,” Lucien countered.
“Well, we’re wasting them arguing about this,” Garek replied. “Pick a tunnel and let’s go.”
Lucien checked his scanners and pointed to the one that seemed the longest and least winding. “That one,” he said, his eyes still glued to his sensors.
“Wait...” Addy whispered and pointed. “Look...”
Lucien followed that gesture and promptly sucked in a breath. He was just in time to see a glowing ball of light with hundreds of luminous tentacles darting into one of the other tunnels.
“Did you see that?” Addy asked. “Tell me someone saw it this time.”
“I saw it,” Garek said.
“That’s one of those Polypus creatures we met eight years ago,” Lucien said. “What are they doing all the way out here on Mokar?”
Garek shook his head. “If they’re extra-dimensional beings as we suspect, then time and space might not mean the same things to them as they do to us. Two points halfway around the universe from each other might look close to them.”
“They helped us the last time we met them,” Lucien said. “They might be trying to help us again.” As if to confirm his thoughts, the creature bobbed back into view, and hovered briefly in the entrance of the tunnel that it had darted down. “Look!”
“I think it wants us to follow it...” Addy said.
“What if it’s a trap?” Garek asked.
“We’re already in one,” Lucien said. “What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s go,” he said, and started toward the glowing creature.
***
Mokar
Just as they were about to reach the entrance of the tunnel, the Polypus darted inside.
“Don’t let it get away!” Garek said, breaking into a run.
Lucien poured on a burst of speed, spraying gravel as he ran. He reached the tunnel entrance first and found the Polypus hovering just inside, waiting. As soon as he entered the tunnel, it zipped away. Lucien boosted his suit’s power-assist to keep up. The creature darted around a bend in the tunnel and he careened into the wall with his momentum.
“Damn it!” he muttered as he bounced off into the opposite wall. He managed to keep running, but it was all he could do to keep the Polypus in sight. It kept darting out of view, around the next bend. “Slow down!” he called out over his external speakers, hoping the thing would hear him—but even if it did, how would it understand?
The creature raced on, not slowing down or stopping. Lucien glanced at his sensors to keep track of it, but of course the Polypus didn’t appear on his sensors. He did, however, spot the others running up behind him.
“Don’t let it get... out of your sight!” Garek panted over the comms.
“Why’s it going so fast?” Addy asked.
“Perhaps it knows that our air is limited,” Brak said, sounding barely winded.
“Or else it’s trying to get away,” Addy suggested.
“If it—” Lucien interrupted himself as he ricocheted off another bend in the tunnel. He glimpsed the Polypus darting down the rightmost of three branching paths, and he raced to follow. “If it were trying to get away from us, it would fly through the tunnel walls,” Lucien finally said.
“Good point,” Addy said, breathing hard.
In their initial encounter aboard the Inquisitor, the Polypuses had proven they could fly through walls, thanks to their extra-dimensionality. They were like ghosts, non-corporeal, but somehow capable of interacting with the three-dimensional universe when they wanted to—such as they had done to remove the timer implants in their brains.
They ran on for what seemed like hours, until Lucien’s legs felt numb, and his lungs were screaming for him to stop. Sensors showed that Addy and Brak had fallen behind by about fifty meters—though in the Gor’s case that was probably because he was keeping an eye on her.
“Where is it?” Garek asked as they rounded another corner only to find that this time the Polypus was nowhere to be seen. Lucien slowed his pace, almost tripping over his own feet. “Don’t slow down!” Garek roared, and ran by him. Lucien let him go, and stopped to lean on the nearest wall and catch his breath.
Garek rounded the corner up ahead, and skidded to a sudden stop. “The frek...?” he trailed off.
“You found him?” Lucien asked.
Garek said nothing; he just stood there, frozen.
Seeing Garek’s reaction, excitement stirred in Lucien’s veins, spurring him to life. He poured o
n a final burst of speed and caught up fast—only to go skidding to a stop just as Garek had. Now he could see what had given Garek pause, and he was equally shocked.
They were still standing there by the time Addy and Brak caught up to them. Addy gasped at the sight.
At least three different tunnels came together where they now stood. It was a high-ceilinged chamber several hundred meters across, filled with the broken remains of colorful stalagmites and stalactites. The rocks shone red, blue, and orange in the light of their headlamps, but none of that was what had given them pause—scattered amongst that colorful rubble were hundreds and hundreds of bodies.
Some of them wore black suits of Faro armor, while others wore nothing but rough-hewn black and gray Faro robes, their bare blue skin exposed where their robes ended. An entire Faro army had died down here.
Lucien shook off his shock and walked up to the nearest corpse with his heart beating in his throat. It was a blue-skinned Faro, not wearing any armor. The body was half-buried in rubble, but from what he could see of it, it was in pristine condition, with no obvious signs of decomposition. He half-expected the Faro to leap up and attack him, but the body didn’t so much as twitch. Then Lucien saw why—
It was headless.
“They must have died very recently,” Addy whispered as she came to stand beside him. “They haven’t even begun to decompose.”
Lucien frowned. “We can’t assume that. Oorgurak told us that Abaddon and the Elementals modified themselves to the point that they don’t need exosuits or armor to survive in extreme environments like this one. That might also mean that their bodies don’t decompose.”
Garek joined them, holding a severed blue head. “This one looks like an Abaddon to me,” he said.
Lucien examined the familiar features of that head and nodded slowly.
“How can we tell how old the bodies are if they don’t decompose?” Addy asked.
“Carbon dating them might still work,” Garek said. “Let me see...” A fan of blue light flickered out from Garek’s helmet, passing briefly over the head he was holding. “Damn it,” he sighed after just a moment.
“What?” Lucien asked.
“We can’t use carbon dating, because we don’t know what the proper ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 is for a living Faro. I can tell you what the ratio is right now, but that’s meaningless without a baseline to compare it to.”
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 47
