Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within

by Jasper T. Scott

  What that meant was that both of their copies—originals—aboard the galleon were still technically twenty-two years old. There were probably many more new developments in their lives here on Astralis than there were in their lives aboard the Inquisitor.

  Despite that, one question remained: what had happened eight years ago to bring that alien fleet bearing down on Astralis? And who were those aliens? What did they want? Why had they been so hostile? Astralis hadn’t run into them again since that time, but they had deliberately kept a low profile.

  A tone sounded from the comms and a 3D hologram sprang to life on the viewscreen directly behind the comms station, revealing the bridge of a star galleon. Tyra saw herself sitting in the captain’s chair at the center of the galleon’s bridge. Sitting beside her was none other than her husband, Lucien.

  Tyra grinned and waited for her introduction. If nothing else, Lucien’s proximity to her on the bridge suggested that the sparks had already begun to fly between them.

  “I am Chief Councilor Ellis. On behalf of Astralis, welcome back, Captain Forster. We have much to discuss. Please land your galleon in hangar bay forty-seven. Meanwhile, I have someone here who’s eager to speak with you—councilor?” Ellis turned to her and nodded, to which Tyra stepped into view of the holocorder.

  “It’s... you,” Lucien said, glancing at the identical copy of her sitting in the captain’s chair beside him, and then back.

  Tyra fought to contain a giddy smile while the copy of her on the screen stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief.

  “I’m a councilor?” Captain Tyra asked.

  Tyra inclined her head to herself. “We stopped sending out expeditions after yours almost got us all killed.”

  The captain nodded slowly, acknowledging the wisdom in that. By now she and her crew would know better than anyone about the dangers of exploring.

  Tyra’s gaze flicked between Lucien and the captain, wondering if their relationship was strictly professional.

  “What is it?” Lucien asked. “You keep looking at me like there’s something you want to say.”

  “It’s just a shock for me to see us in this context.”

  “Us?” the captain echoed.

  Tyra hesitated. “I suppose you’re going to find out before you integrate your memories, anyway, so there’s no reason I can’t tell you.”

  “Find out what?” Lucien demanded.

  “We’re married, Lucien. With two kids. Atara and Theola.”

  “You’re what?” a woman that Tyra didn’t recognize demanded as she stood up from the comms station on the Inquisitor’s bridge. Tyra recognized the woman’s jealousy in an instant, and her smile vanished as she eyed this other woman with a reciprocal flash of her own jealousy. This woman and Lucien were obviously some kind of couple.

  The captain held up a hand to forestall further revelations. “Councilor, perhaps you’d better wait to tell us more. You’ve all been living our lives without us for the past eight years while we’ve been in stasis. I’m sure a lot has happened that will seem strange to us.”

  “Of course... you’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything,” Tyra replied, sweeping her reaction under the carpet of a smile. “I apologize. It will be easier to understand everything that’s happened after you integrate, and our memories become your memories, too.”

  “Agreed,” the captain said.

  Tyra inclined her head to them. “See you soon, Captain. Astralis out.”

  As the transmission ended, Tyra felt the ache spreading in her chest, and a knot tightened in her throat, making it hard to breathe.

  So much for destiny. Given the choice between that other woman and me, Lucien chose her. Did that mean their marriage was a sham? Were they together by convenience or by accident? Tyra’s logical brain took over, rationalizing the situation: no one was really destined to be together. The idea of two souls somehow reaching across time and space to be together was a childish notion for untrained, and uneducated minds. Romance is two parts chemistry, and one part opportunity. A simple equation of attraction plus availability.

  Tyra had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed that Ellis had disappeared without a word. She turned in a circle, scanning the operations center for him. There was an urgent bustle of activity, and a sudden hush in the room. Ellis was leaning over the sensor operator’s station, his mouth agape.

  “It’s not possible,” he breathed, his voice a strangled whisper. “Double check those sensor profiles!”

  “I’ve already triple-checked them, sir. There’s no mistake. They’re exactly the same type of ships we encountered eight years ago.”

  “They followed us for eight years?” Councilor Ellis demanded. “Who in the netherworld are these people?”

  A split second later the room’s speakers crackled with, “Red alert! Action stations, action stations! This is not a drill. We are under attack by a hostile alien fleet. Repeat, red alert! This is not a drill!”

  A battle klaxon roared in their ears, and Councilor Ellis turned to her in horror.

  Tyra gazed blankly back, her mind racing. My children... I have to get my children!

  The intercom crackled once more: “Attention all citizens, this is Admiral Stavos, we are under attack by a hostile alien fleet. If you find yourself near the outer hull, please proceed along emergency evacuation routes to the nearest shelter as calmly and quickly as possible. Keep all emergency lanes and corridors clear for Marines and repair crews. Violators will be stunned without warning. I repeat, we are under attack, please proceed along emergency evacuation routes as calmly and quickly as possible. This is not a drill.”

  It took a physical effort for Tyra to stop herself from running out the doors of the operations room to go find her family.

  Chief Councilor Ellis crossed over to her and grabbed her arm, shaking her lightly to get her attention. Her eyes darted from the exit to look at him. Lucien was with the kids. He would know what to do. Her job as councilor of Fallside was to coordinate the evacuation efforts and emergency response teams in her city.

  “We need to go!” Ellis yelled to be heard over the ship’s blaring klaxons.

  Tyra nodded. “Lead the way!”

  Chapter 6

  Astralis

  Lucien was at home, eating lunch at the breakfast table with his daughters when the red alert came. For the first few seconds he was too shocked to move; he just sat there listening to Admiral Stavos’ subsequent call for the evacuation of the ship’s outermost compartments. When both announcements were over, all was silent, but for the distant screaming of Astralis’s civil defense sirens.

  “Aliens are attacking us?” Atara asked with all the seriousness of a child who suddenly didn’t sound like one.

  Theola’s baby blues flicked to her sister, and then back to him. She was sitting in her high chair, sucking her thumb.

  “Dad?” Atara pressed. “What are we supposed to do?”

  He was busy asking himself the same thing. His job as the chief of security in Fallside was to help coordinate the evacuation from the ship’s outer compartments to its shelters, and to keep the population from losing their heads in the crisis. But his job as a father was to keep his children safe, and he couldn’t just leave them at home alone. First things first, he had to get his children to the nearest shelter. They’d have their own provisions for childcare, which would free him up to do his job.

  An incoming message trilled inside Lucien’s head, conveyed directly to his brain by his augmented reality implant. A priority comms icon flashed on his ARCs. He mentally answered it.

  Deputy Laos’s gaunt face appeared in the top right of his field of view. He looked stricken. “Chief! We need you back at the station. It’s chaos out there. We have looters all across the ship, and reports of shots being fired in four different hangar bays.”

  “What?” Lucien shook his head. “Why the hangar bays?”

  “People are trying to steal ships and escape. Last one who trie
d that was a councilor, if you can believe that. We’re taking him into custody as we speak.”

  Lucien blinked in shock. “No, I can’t believe that. He should be setting an example for everyone else right now, not abandoning ship.”

  “Yeah, well...” Laos trailed off. “Just get back here, Chief. We need you. People are scared.”

  Lucien nodded. If people were trying to flee the ship, and a councilor was leading the charge with a gun, things had to be really bad out there. What weren’t Astralis’s leaders telling them? “I’ll be there as soon as I can get my kids to the nearest shelter.”

  “The nearest shelter to your location is in Hubble Mountain, Chief—number twelve.”

  Lucien nodded. “Thanks, Laos. See you soon.” He ended the transmission and turned to Atara. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

  “Where?”

  Lucien lifted Theola out of her chair. She gave him an oblivious smile, and he smiled tightly back.

  “We’re going to the shelter. You’ll be safe there.”

  “Is mommy going to be there?” Atara asked.

  “No.”

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “But you will be, right?”

  Lucien grimaced and went down on his haunches beside Theola. “I will be there, but first I have to take care of a few things.”

  “What things?”

  “I have to make sure nobody gets hurt right now. They’re scared and they’re doing stupid things. Daddy’s job is to keep them safe.”

  “But I’m scared, too!” Atara said, with tears springing to her eyes.

  Theola picked up on the mood of their discussion, and she made a frowny face, just about to burst into tears herself.

  Lucien flashed a silly grin at his one-year-old and began bouncing her on his hip. Theola’s frowny face vanished and she was smiling again. Turning back to Atara, Lucien adopted a more serious look and reached out with his free hand to wipe the tears from Atara’s cheeks with his thumb. Her long black hair, bright red lips, and delicate, feminine features were all the spitting image of her mother. “I need you to be a big girl now, Atara. Can you do that for Daddy?”

  Atara gave no reply; her lips quivered like rose petals in the wind. “You’re strong, Atara. Just like your mother.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not like her. I’m like you.”

  Lucien frowned. He didn’t have time to address that. “Like me, then. Daddy’s job is to protect the people in Fallside. Your job is to protect your sister. Do you think you can do that?”

  Atara nodded, and wiped away the rest of her tears with the back of her hand.

  Lucien flashed her a grim smile and kissed her on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you.” He got up from his haunches and pulled Atara along to the garage. He was halfway there before Atara suddenly stopped walking, and their arms pulled taut like a tow-rope.

  “What about Theola’s things?” Atara asked.

  Lucien blinked. He’d completely forgotten about the diaper bag. “Can you go get that for me, honey? I need to get her bottles ready.”

  Atara nodded and took off at a run. Ten minutes later they were all seated in the back of the family’s hover car. “Take us to us to Emergency Shelter Twelve as fast as possible.” Lucien said, speaking to the car’s driver program.

  “Right away, Mr. Ortane. Please buckle up to avoid any accidental injuries,” the car replied.

  Lucien hurried to buckle his seat’s four-point harness. Atara did likewise, while the garage door finished opening. Theola was already buckled in her car seat and sucking away on her thumb.

  Before the garage door had even finished sliding up, the car raced out of the garage and up into a sunny blue sky. It was a deceptively beautiful day, not a cloud in sight—except for the alien invasion bearing down on us, Lucien thought, as he gazed worriedly up at the faint glinting lights from the viewports in the floor of Level One. He half expected to see that sky shatter and cave in on them, only to get sucked back out in a gust of depressurizing atmosphere. He winced at the thought. If that actually happened, millions of people were going to die.

  The car tilted suddenly to one side, banking sharply on its way back around to Hubble Mountain. Blue sky slid up and the rippled blue surface of Planck Lake took its place as the car went side-on with the ground. Lucien instinctively reached for the nearest safety rail, but when he didn’t feel the anticipated tug of gravity, he let go and reached for Atara’s hand instead. The G-forces from that turn had been all but eliminated by the car’s inertial management system.

  “Are we going to die?” Atara asked, while gazing out the window at the water and trees sweeping by below.

  Lucien could still hear the muted howling of civil defense sirens. “No, honey, we’re going to be just fine. This will all be over soon.” He gave Atara’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “You promise?” Atara asked, her eyes wide and fraught with terror.

  Lucien would have said or done anything to make her feel safe again, but a little voice whispered, warning him not to make promises he couldn’t keep. He pushed those doubts down and nodded convincingly. “I promise, Atara.”

  She nodded back, having bought the lie.

  Chapter 7

  Astralis

  “Let’s go, let’s go! Double time!” Footsteps ricocheted down the corridor like bullets, Marine bots mostly, with their immobile expressions and glowing holoreceptor eyes.

  The enemy was landing troop ships on Astralis’s relatively defenseless upper hull. It wouldn’t be long before they cut a way in. The battle was not going well.

  Garek grimaced between gasps for air. He’d gone soft. Then again, it had never been easy keeping up with machines.

  His squad arrived at the end of their assigned corridor and the bots found cover positions behind bulkheads, crouching and leaning out to aim their weapons at the doors where the enemy was expected to come through.

  Garek was a sergeant, which supposedly meant this particular horde of metal was his to command, but they didn’t seem to need commanding. Each of them was faster, stronger, and tougher than him. They weren’t made of hollow exosuit shells with soft, meaty centers. Bots were all shell, no meat.

  The circular sensor display in the top left of Garek’s HUD flashed in warning as red dots began pouring in just ahead of their position, on the other side of the bulkhead doors. “Get ready!” he snapped over the comms.

  His squad replied with a flurry of acknowledging comm clicks. Their aim never wavered. Their guns never trembled. Not like his arms, which were already growing tired from aiming the cannons in his suit gauntlets.

  We’re not ready for this, Garek thought. He wasn’t the only one who’d gotten soft during the past eight years of insular bliss. It wasn’t unusual to see navy officers warming stools in Astralis’s bars at four o’clock in the afternoon—or even three.

  For the first time, Garek understood the wisdom of automating all the lower echelons in the military. Bots weren’t prone to the attrition of easy living.

  A molten orange circle appeared near the base of the doors; the sharp, shimmering tip of some kind of blade protruded from that spot. A molten line raced across the doors until it drew a full circle. Then came a bang as something hit the doors from the other side. The doors bulged inward, moving on hinges of liquid metal. A crack appeared, and Garek saw movement on the other side. Bang!

  The doors fell, revealing a smoke-filled corridor beyond. “Open fire!” Garek yelled, even as his arms jackhammered with golden streams of thudding cannon fire. Red HUD shading marked enemy targets through the smoke. His squad fired with ruthless precision, their bullets splashing against red-shaded targets.

  The enemy came walking through amidst a noisy hail of shrapnel. Garek kept expecting to see one of them fall, muscles spasming in agony, but as the smoke cleared, Garek saw no bodies—only erect, bipedal aliens, and they wore no armor. Instead, each of them wore antiquated black robes, and pristine blue skin showed where sleeves, lapels
, and hems ended. Glowing eyes pricked through the smoke, casting about curiously, as if bored with the noisy tirade of cannons.

  “AP cannons having no effect,” one of the bots reported on the command channel. “Switching to explosive rounds.”

  Garek’s squad stopped firing, a momentary pause while they switched out regular magazines for explosive ones. Garek’s ears rang with the echoes of gunfire as he hurried to do the same, all the while wondering: why are they just standing there? And why don’t they have any weapons?

  As one, the aliens raised their hands, palms out, as if to say: stop, don’t shoot!

  Garek blinked in shock. Maybe they’d got it all wrong. Maybe these aliens weren’t hostile. Maybe they came in peace. Maybe we were the ones who fired the first shots eight years ago.

  “Weapons hold!” Garek ordered, a split second before his squad would have opened fire. Garek stood up and stepped out of cover. He held his hands up, palms out, like he saw the aliens doing, and switched his comms to external speaker mode. “We don’t want to fight you,” he said. “This is a peaceful vessel on a peaceful mission of exploration.” He didn’t expect the aliens to understand him, but he hoped they’d be able to infer something from his tone of voice.

  One of the blue-skinned aliens turned to him. This one wore gray robes rather than black. It had glowing, ice-blue eyes, and wore some kind of luminous gold crown on its head, while the others flaunted hairless blue scalps. The one with the crown made a gesture to his fellows, and they lowered their palms. Then it stepped to the fore.

  “Hello, Garek,” it said.

  Garek flinched. “You know my name?” And on the heels of that: “You’re speaking Versal! How...” He shook his head, uncomprehending. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Lucien,” the alien said.

  Garek’s eyebrows shot up as that name clicked into place. Lucien Ortane was the chief of security in Fallside. What was an alien doing with his name? In his experience most alien names were an un-pronounceable series of clicks, chirps, and growls.