Donali cocked his head to one side, and his real eye narrowed thoughtfully. “You discovered something?”
“More than one something.”
“I’m listening.”
Hoff took a deep breath. “They didn’t steal the idea from us, Donali. They are us. And we are them.”
Donali slowly shook his head. “What? You’re saying I’m a Sythian?”
“Not quite. Humans are their evolutionary ancestors. Origin, the lost world where humanity supposedly began, isn’t in the Adventa Galaxy, Donali. It’s in the Getties Cluster, and its real name is Sythia.”
Donali’s jaw dropped and his real eye grew wide and round. “That’s not possible. You’re making that up.”
“I wish I were. We’re not fighting aliens at all. We’re fighting a more evolved version of the human race. A genetic experiment in longevity.” Donali’s mouth began moving, but no words came out. Hoff went on, “That’s not all. Our resident traitor, Captain Adram, was implanted with a cloaked Lifelink implant like the one we discovered in Kaon’s brain. He was, for all intents and purposes, another iteration of Kaon himself. He revealed the Enclave to the Sythians, Donali, meaning Dark Space is the last surviving refuge of humanity, and now that the Sythians know where it is, time is running out. We are facing extinction.”
Donali clamped his mouth shut and pursed his lips. After taking a long moment to process that his head jerked suddenly into a nod, as if he’d just decided something. “There is one way out, sir.”
Hoff’s eyebrows elevated slowly. “Evacuate?”
“No. Get help.”
“There is no help, Donali. We’re all alone. We’ve already recruited the Gors and the ex-cons in this sector, but it won’t be enough. Before he died, Adram told me that the Sythians are making slaves out of us now. In all likelihood when they return we’ll see the refugees from the Enclave, all of them turned into Sythian slaves like Adram. We’re badly outnumbered, and what’s stopping the Sythians from sending reinforcements from the Getties? Adram told me there are quintillions of them, Donali. What they sent to conquer us was probably just meant to test the waters. By a happy coincidence it was enough to wipe us out.”
Donali sighed. “It does look grim, but we aren’t alone. You’re forgetting Avilon.”
“The Immortals?” Hoff sat back in his chair and considered it.
“Why not? There are trillions of them, too. You said it yourself. And their technology is more advanced than even the Sythians’.”
“I haven’t been to Avilon in over 30,000 years. They would execute me if I went back.”
“Would they even remember you?”
“Yes. Besides, what makes you think they would help us now, after they stayed out of the entire war? If they’d wanted to help, don’t you think they would have helped when they could have saved trillions of us with their intervention rather than just the few million survivors hiding out here? No, in all likelihood they thought it was justice that the Sythians wiped us out—justice for the war we started which drove them into hiding.”
“They can’t seriously hope to stay hidden forever. The Sythians will find them.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“Admiral.” Donali’s artificial eye bored into Hoff’s brain with the pinpoint accuracy of a laser sight. “It’s our only hope.”
Hoff spent a moment drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair before giving his reply. “I’ll give it some thought. Meanwhile, you should go hit the rack. I’ll schedule some tests in the med bay for you just to put your mind at ease.”
“All right,” Donali nodded, rising from his chair. “Ruh-kah, sir,” he said with a salute.
“Ruh-kah.” Death and glory. Hoff returned the salute and watched his executive officer (XO) leave the operations center. When Donali was gone he slumped back into his chair with a sigh.
Donali was right. Making an alliance with Avilon was their only hope. Failing that, perhaps the Immortal Avilonians would accept a few million refugees. . . .
Something told Hoff that even if they would, he wouldn’t make the cut. Immortals have a long memory. He told his family that he’d left because he could make a better life for himself in a society where he didn’t have to compete with other immortals, but the truth was he’d been forced to leave for advocating the heresy that people should be allowed to choose whether or not they wanted to live forever. Ultimately, he’d been forced to flee Avilon before he could be executed for his beliefs.
“Perhaps things have changed in the last 30,000 years?” Hoff wondered aloud. Based on what he had seen from the Avilonians when they’d agreed to provide aid to the Enclave, a lot had changed. They were now employing mortals in their fleets, for one thing, a fact which suggested that perhaps the societal change which Hoff had been lobbying for all those years ago had finally come to Avilon. For all he knew, he was responsible for those changes, and they’d hail him as a hero. Either that, or they’ll give me a nice public execution. . . .
I suppose there’s only one way to find out.
* * *
Master Commander Lenon Donali sat undergoing rigorous scrutiny in med bay. He was busy playing the part of a loyal officer who was horrified by the possibility that he might have been captured and turned into a Sythian agent without his knowledge.
The truth was, he was fully aware, and he was equally aware that these tests would reveal nothing. No technology known to either man or Sythians could pierce a cloaking shield, and the only mark the Sythians had left on him was in the form of a small, cloaked implant. The rest of their tampering could only be discovered with a mind probe, and the admiral would never authorize something that dangerous unless he had proof that his XO was a Sythian agent. Mind probes could kill a person in under five minutes, fifteen at most.
“I’m going to inject a hunter probe. It will travel through your bloodstream, looking for foreign objects,” Doctor Elder said.
Donali turned to offer the younger man a smile. “Of course. You should know I do have one cerebral implant. It’s to help me with my memory after the accident which took my eye.” He reached up to tap his glowing red optic. The implant he was referring to was actually his Lifelink implant. The cloaked Sythian implant would not be revealed by a hunter probe or any other.
“I see,” Doctor Elder replied.
“The admiral can confirm that if you like.”
“No, that’s all right. Whatever we’re looking for, I’m sure it won’t be hiding in plain sight.”
Donali nodded and watched the doctor prepare the hunter probe, filling an implanter syringe with a clear solution that no doubt contained billions of nanites. Donali switched his focus from the syringe to the doctor himself. Doctor Elder was young, perhaps thirty human standard orbits old. His smooth, youthful features and his startling magenta eyes must have made him a hit with women.
Donali’s own face was marred by an artificial eye and the faint tracks of old scars from the accident that had taken the real one. That glowing red optic had earned him the nickname “Bug Eye” while in med school.
The sharp prick of a needle yanked him back to the present as the hunter probe was injected into the back of his neck.
“There, now just relax while I take readings from the probe,” Doctor Elder said.
He did as he was told. A few minutes later he passed the hunter probe test with a clean bill of health. Over the course of the next two hours, he passed a dozen more probes and tests, all of which came back negative for signs of Sythian tampering.
Three hours after he’d walked through the med bay doors, he left by those same doors with a smile on his face. Humanity was now convinced that he was not working for their enemy.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
When Commander Lenon Donali reached his quarters he locked the door behind him and immediately cloaked himself to send a message to his handler, High Lord Kaon.
“My Lord, the humans suspect me, but there is no t
est they can perform to reveal what I am.”
“Good. Do nothing to make them suspicious. You have one month to find the location of Avilon before we come.”
“You are coming?” Donali asked, surprised that he hadn’t been told about that before the Sythians released him.
“Our human crews are trained and ready. The Lords are decided. Dark Space has a resource we now require urgently—slaves.”
“I see. . . .”
“If we are to conquer Avilon, we must be able to bring all our forces to bear with reliable, human crews, not rebellious Gors.”
“Yes,” Donali nodded. “You are right.”
“Of course we are,” Kaon replied. “Now hurry and find what you are there to discover. Do not disappoint us, human.”
“I won’t,” he replied, but Kaon had already broken the telepathic connection. Donali de-cloaked himself and stood staring out the viewport in his quarters at the distant gray clouds of the Stormcloud Nebula. The Sythians were coming, but this time they wouldn’t come to kill and destroy; they would come to establish a new order with humans feeding them crew for their fleet. The day was coming where he would no longer have to hide; he would be but one of many millions of human slaves serving the Sythians. Donali smiled, and the Stormcloud Nebula flashed with a spark of lighting.
That day couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter 3
One month later . . .
The stars shone with a dazzling brilliance, like glow bugs trapped on the other side of the Nova Fighter’s cockpit canopy. Atton Ortane stepped on the left rudder pedal, causing his fighter to slew in that direction as its triple bank of thrusters vectored and maneuvering jets fired.
A gray veil swept across the stars as the Stormcloud Nebula came into view. That nebula lay shrouding the entrance of Dark Space, keeping the way hidden from passersby. Unfortunately, the Sythians already knew where it was.
“Form up, Guardians. Line abreast formation, stagger 50 klicks.”
A handful of acknowledging clicks came over the comms, along with a, “Roger that, Commander,” from his wingmate, Gina “Tuner” Giord. Atton looked out the side of his cockpit to find an amplified representation of her Nova flying right beside him. He watched her fighter arc away until it reached the specified 50 klicks from his own, becoming little more than a magnified speck which glinted in the distance like an oversized star.
The Guardians were lined up one beside the other as they approached the nebula, cutting a wide swath with their sensors, such that they’d have an extra 600 klicks sensor range from one end of the formation to the other. While inside the nebula their sensors had a 65-klick range, meaning that each member of the squadron would only be able to see at most two of their squad mates on gravidar—his or her wingmate and the fighter immediately on the other side. To get around that, they had chain-linked their comms to periodically ping the fighters beside them, conveying coordinates. Upon receiving the ping, each Nova would automatically add its coordinates to the transmission and then pass it on until all 12 members of Guardian Squadron had reported in to each other. That would happen every five seconds, allowing them to see each other’s positions on gravidar with a five second delay. If one link in the chain went missing, however, then the two sides of the formation would be completely cut off from each other.
It was a dangerous formation, but as one of 12 recon squadrons, their job was just to find the enemy and report back to the Valiant, not to find and engage them. Hopefully, if they ran into any trouble, at least one of them would escape to report back what they had found.
Atton’s fighter plunged through the leading edge of the nebula and the nose of his Nova was swallowed by wispy gray clouds. The stars disappeared behind those clouds, and a flash of discharging static caused the star map on the main holo display (MHD) to shudder and turn to snow. Atton heard the simulated boom of thunder rumble through his cockpit a moment later, and he gave a wry smile. The SISS (sound in space simulator) could be a little too realistic at times. He didn’t need misleading audio cues right now. Between the appearance of clouds and the sound of thunder, he was apt to start maneuvering like he was in atmosphere rather than space.
A heavily distorted commcast came through the dash speakers. “SC . . . I think I’m picking something up out there.” It was Gina again.
Atton frowned and keyed his comm with a mental command. Not everyone had a command control implant (CCI) to access thought-activated software suites, but not so long ago Atton had been using a holoskin to pose as the Supreme Overlord of the Imperium, and the ability to control computer systems without needing to touch them had been a part of that role.
“I don’t see anything on my scopes,” Atton replied.
“It was just a brief blip,” Gina said. “Showed up for maybe half a second after that burst of static.”
“Probably just distortion, but mark the spot on your nav to be safe. Attach coordinates to the ping and we’ll investigate.”
“Yes, sir.”
Second Lieutenant Gina Giord was Atton’s XO and his only friend in the recently-reformed Guardian squadron. It was hard to make friends with half the squadron senior to him in both rank and experience. His only legitimate claim to lead the squadron was his unusually high 4A pilot’s rating. But whatever legitimacy his skill gave him, it was overshadowed by the fact that his stepfather was Admiral/Overlord Heston. Atton could almost hear his squad mates whispering about him behind his back. He was probably the youngest squadron commander in the history of the fleet, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason he was the SC was because of his connections.
Atton frowned. Even Gina wasn’t immune to thinking that way, but at least she didn’t try to hide it. “You’ve got to earn their respect, Atton,” she liked to remind him. “Prove that you’re the right man for the job and they’ll fall on their swords for you. Until then, you’re going to have to pretend you’re hard of hearing.”
The warning screech of a siren jerked Atton back into the moment. It was his enemy contact siren, a part of the fighter’s threat detection system (TDS). Atton’s eyes dropped to the glowing blue star map, searching the grid for whatever had triggered the siren. There was nothing there.
Activating his comms, he said, “Be advised, Guardians, something just set off my TDS.”
“My scopes are clear, are you sure?” Guardian Seven said as soon as Atton’s message had been passed down the comm chain.
“I’m sure. There’s definitely something out there.”
Atton kept his eyes glued to the three dimensional grid, searching for even the faintest glimmer of a red enemy blip.
Boom. Thunder rumbled through the cockpit speakers once more, and Atton looked up reflexively to make sure that it was thunder and not one of his squad mates exploding. When his gaze reached the horizon, his jaw dropped. The gray clouds of the nebula were flashing almost continuously with discharging bursts of static electricity, and through the luminous tendrils of that lightning Atton saw the dark, ovoid outlines of Sythian ships in the distance. Not one or two of them, but an entire fleet, with countless capital-class vessels. At the center of the formation, like the queen bee in a hive, lay the Sythians’ command cruiser, a 30-kilometer-long behemoth-class cruiser.
“Motherfrekkers . . .” Atton whispered. The Sythians were everywhere.
“Contact, contact!” Guardian Three screamed from the other side of Atton’s Nova. His TDS wailed in the next instant with another enemy contact siren.
“Contact confirmed,” Atton said into the comm. “Break and run, Guardians!”
“I’ve got incoming!” Gina screamed. Atton saw what she meant an instant later. Just now appearing on the gravidar were two squadrons of Sythian Shell Fighters. The Guardians were coasting toward them at a modest one klick per second, while the approaching Shell Fighters were barreling on at over three and a half klicks per second. With 80 klicks between them, Atton’s rangefinder indicated that the nearest Sythian fighte
r would reach them in under 20 seconds. Nova Fighters were considerably faster than Sythian Shells, but even if they turned around now and accelerated in full overdrive in the opposite direction, it would take the Guardians more than 24 seconds to match the Sythians’ current vector and velocity, and that was if the alien fighters didn’t ignite their own thrusters to speed up.
Atton didn’t need to get his Nova’s AI to crunch the numbers for him to know that they would be forced to engage the enemy.
“All right, listen up, Guardians,” Atton said as he stomped on his right rudder pedal to head back the way he’d come. He pushed his throttle up past the red lines and into overdrive. “Reduce stagger to five klicks, inverted V. We’re going to redline it all the way back to the Valiant. I want to see you all racing out ahead of me. Guardian Two and I are going to hang back at the tip of the V and cover your retreat.”
Static hissed through the comm, followed by, “You can’t cover our retreat against 24 Shells! We’re better off sticking together, SC. We can take ‘em!” that from Guardian Seven, Horace “Hawkeye” Perkins, the resident hot shot and smart mouth of the squadron.
“And what about the thousands waiting behind them?” Gina, Guardian Two, snapped. “The commander wasn’t making a suggestion, Hawk.”
Atton heard a sullen click as Horace acknowledged that order in as trite a way as possible.
“Are you ready, Gina?” Atton asked, now on a private comm channel with his wingmate.
“Hoi, if you want to see the netherworld so badly I could always put a ripper round between your ears when we get back. You don’t have to go all heroic on me.”
Atton smiled. “What if I want some company in the afterlife?”
“Commander . . .” Gina’s tone filled with mock astonishment. “Are you asking me on a date?”
“Sure, why not,” Atton chuckled. “We can order some flaming cocktails and follow them down with brimstone chasers.”
“Sounds delightful.”
Atton’s eyes dipped to the star map. He eyed the nearest red blip on the grid and watched the pair of numbers beside it. The number on the left put his range to that Shell at 26 klicks, while the number on the right put time to reach it at seven seconds. It would probably be just five before they reached firing range. Atton peripherally noted Gina’s fighter boosting along right beside his, while the rest of the squadron arced out on either side of them, forming the two sides of the V.
04 Dark Space Page 3
