Brak gave up and tossed his rifle aside. He unclipped the razor swords from his back and tossed one of them down at Lucien’s feet. Then he activated his other sword and held it in a two-handed grip. The blade blurred and turned blue in the glow of its razor shield. Brak snarled and stalked toward the Faro.
The alien flourished his own sword and waited. Lucien’s rifle gave a sullen click and bullets stopped streaming from the smoking barrel. He was out of ammo.
Brak reached the alien and took a mighty swing with his sword. The Faro parried easily and snuck his blade past Brak’s, grazing the Gor’s armor. Brak hissed with surprise and slapped the Faro’s blade aside.
Lucien picked up the other razor sword and activated it. Let’s see you block two swords with one, he thought as he ran up behind the Faro.
Lucien struck low, intending to slice off the Faro’s feet, but the alien leapt over his strike and simultaneously parried another blow from Brak. Without his feet on the ground, Brak’s strike sent the Faro flying backward into Lucien.
Lucien caught the alien in a one-armed embrace and sliced his blade across the Faro’s chest.
The razor-shielded sword met the Faro’s personal shield with a flash of light, and the alien spun away with a high-pitched screech.
Its bare chest was flayed open in a deep gash, and leaking thick black blood.
“So you do bleed,” Lucien said.
“A lucky strike,” the Faro snarled.
Impossibly, the wound sealed itself before Lucien’s eyes, becoming flawless blue skin once more. He gaped in shock.
Brak didn’t waste time gawking. He leapt in, his blade flashing in a series of fast attacks that forced the Faro to backpedal rapidly around the tree in the center of the square.
Lucien was about to rejoin the fray when he caught an urgent look from the green-skinned Faro. Those glowing yellow eyes communicated the slave’s deadly intent. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Lucien thought.
He ran up to the tree. The alien’s hands and ankles were tied with humming black cords—stun cords? he wondered. He swiped his sword across them in two quick strokes, and the green-skinned Faro sprang free with an angry snarl.
Having detected this new threat, King Faro leapt away from Brak. He flipped and twisted through the air, and landed facing the green-skinned slave. Just as his feet touched ground, the green-skinned alien thrust out his palms and two white-hot balls of plasma shot out.
They hit the blue-skinned Faro with a blinding flash of light, and he staggered backward—
Right into Brak’s sword. The Gor ran him through three times in quick succession, roaring enthusiastically as his razor sword flashed in and out of the alien’s chest.
Black blood bubbled from the slits in the alien’s torso as he turned lazily to face the Gor.
King Faro swung his sword as if to parry, but Brak knocked it aside easily and brought his own sword back around in a decapitating blow.
The crown fell off, and the alien’s bald blue head rolled. It came to a stop just a few inches from Lucien’s feet. Its glowing blue eyes glared up at him, the light gradually fading from its gaze.
An agitated murmur started up from the crowd of aliens in the square, and the green-skinned Faro took off, running impossibly fast for the landing pad where Garek and Addy had gone.
Lucien clipped Brak’s razor sword to his back and ran after the Faro, trying the comms as he went. “Garek? Addy?”
Comm static buzzed in Lucien’s ears. No reply.
Brak ran up beside him and jerked his chin to the distant flashes of weapons fire coming from the landing pad. That had to be them. They were in trouble.
“We’re on our way!” Lucien added over the comms. “Hang on!”
Chapter 36
Lucien clocked his speed at over sixty kilometers per hour, but somehow the green-skinned Faro beat them to the landing pad, having run even faster than that. Rather than stop there, the alien kept on going, heading straight for the hazy blue shield rising from the edge of the colony.
Lucien stopped at the base of the landing pad and glanced up. Weapons fire still flashed above the landing pad, but now Lucien could hear it, too. He could also clearly see both Garek and Addy on sensors, but they had yet to reply over the comms.
“Garek, Addy, come in!”
“We’re… pinned down,” Garek gritted out.
Lucien considered boosting up to the landing pad to help them, but that runaway alien slave had to have some kind of escape plan. Where was he going?
“Get down here and follow us!”
Garek clicked his comms to acknowledge, and although Addy hadn’t replied yet, she clicked hers, too.
Lucien ran after the Faro. Brak poured on a burst of speed and took the lead. A moment later, Lucien heard grav boosters firing and saw Addy and Garek land behind him via his exosuit’s rearview display. Lucien slowed his pace, and they caught up quickly.
“Where are we going?” Garek asked.
“Wherever he’s going,” Lucien pointed to the green-skinned Faro, now seconds away from reaching the shield at the edge of the colony.
“Looks like he’s planning to die of exposure,” Addy said. “It’s almost a hundred below outside the shield!”
A group of six Faro soldiers appeared behind them and opened fire with laser rifles. Lucien felt his back grow warm as his shields absorbed a hit. He cocked an arm up over his shoulder and fired back with his suit’s integrated lasers, but his shot splashed harmlessly off the enemy’s shields.
“It’s no use,” Garek said. “We can’t get past their shields.”
“Razor swords can,” Lucien said, grimacing as his shields absorbed another hit. He still had Brak’s sword, but he couldn’t afford to stop and fight in close quarters with half a dozen Faros. “Let’s put some distance between us,” Lucien decided. “Activate your grav boosters.” Not waiting to see if the others would follow, he blasted off the ground and soared high above the street. He dodged and wove, up and down and side to side, zigzagging to stay out of the enemy’s sights. That plus the smaller profile he now presented, with his feet facing the enemy, made him hard to hit. Bright golden lances of enemy lasers streaked by harmlessly to all sides.
Up ahead, the runaway slave reached the edge of the colony’s shields and barreled straight through. Brak ran through after him, while Lucien, Garek, and Addy flew out over the alien’s head.
As soon as they were through the shield, Lucien felt the cold clawing through his exosuit. Far below, the slave ran on across open terrain, undaunted by the cold or the change in atmosphere. The blue-skinned guards chasing them stopped when they reached the shield and stood just inside of it, firing out with increasingly poor accuracy.
“Where are we going?” Addy asked, flying up beside Lucien.
“There!” Lucien pointed. Something was materializing in front of the green-skinned slave. Matte black and ovoid, it looked like an escape pod of some kind. How long had it been there, cloaked and hiding in plain sight?
Lucien flew down, landing beside the pod just as the alien reached it. A door opened in the pod, and the Faro barked at them in his guttural voice, gesturing urgently for them to go inside. Laser fire splashed on the pod’s hull, emphasizing the urgency of the situation. They had to trust him.
Brak went first, followed by the rest of them. Elbows poked into Lucien’s ribs on all sides. Clearly the pod had been designed for just one or two occupants. The alien slave joined them in the pod and shut the door. He pushed by them to reach a control panel on one side and hurriedly tapped a series of holographic keys with alien symbols.
Lucien grimaced as he listened to the sounds of enemy lasers striking the pod all around them. He could feel the heat radiating through the hull via his haptic sensors.
“What’s taking him so long?!” Addy demanded.
“There’s no way we’re going to run a blockade in a ship this size,” Garek said. “One shot from a cruiser’s cannons and we’ll be vaporize
d.”
Brak hissed with displeasure. “We should go back and fight.”
Lucien frowned, hoping there was more to this escape plan. The slave stepped away from the control station, and turned to face them. He bared sharp white teeth at them in an evil-looking grin, and Lucien shivered, suddenly wondering what the alien had done to be tied to that tree.
A rising whirr filled the air inside the pod.
Addy grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Lucien…”
A bright flash of light dazzled their eyes, and the whirring noise abruptly stopped. The green-skinned alien pushed by them and opened the door to the pod.
Addy sucked in a noisy breath and Lucien blinked in shock at the scene beyond the pod doors. Instead of seeing a rocky, ice-covered planet beneath a dreary gray sky, or even the hazy blue shield dome of the alien colony they’d just fled, they saw that they were now inside of a large room with scuffed metal walls and floors, exposed conduits in the ceiling, and broad, blank viewports along the far wall.
“It was a quantum junction,” Lucien realized, stepping out of the pod after the slave. “We just jumped somewhere else.”
Chapter 37
It was the perfect getaway plan. Quantum jump drives wouldn’t work inside of a magnetic field, or inside of an enemy’s jamming field, but quantum junctions worked just fine.
“How is that possible?” Addy asked.
Lucien glanced at her. “We’ve had the technology to jump through jamming fields from one junction to another ever since we met Etherus. The Faros have even more advanced technology than us, so it’s no surprise that they can do the same thing.”
“No, I mean that—” Addy pointed to the wall of blank, floor-to-ceiling viewports in front of them.
Holo displays? Lucien wondered. Or maybe they were on a planet and it was a particularly dark night. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Look closer…” Addy replied as she walked up to the viewports.
Lucien followed her with a frown, keeping half an eye on the green-skinned Faro. He was busy retrieving something from a nearby storage compartment.
“There,” Addy pointed as she stopped in front of the viewport she’d chosen. Lucien saw a pinprick of light where she was pointing, and then two more, far from the first one.
“Stars?” Lucien asked. “We’re on a spaceship?”
“Why are there only three stars?”
She made a good point. “The others could be occluded by something—a dark nebula?” he suggested.
Addy nodded slowly. “Must be.”
Brak and Garek joined them at the viewport.
“A good place to hide,” Garek commented. “If we can’t see out, then others can’t see in.”
The green-skinned alien said something in its guttural voice, and Lucien turned to see it holding a handful of U-shaped metal rings. The alien placed one of them around its head, above its pointed green ears, and the device lit up with a ring of lights. Then he handed one of the other devices to Lucien.
“What is it?” Addy asked.
“Some kind of translator, I think,” Lucien replied, turning the device over in his hands a few times to make sure it wasn’t dangerous. He’d have to take his helmet off to put it on. He checked the atmosphere inside the ship first. It was breathable, and no airborne pathogens were detected, so Lucien twisted off his helmet and set it down at his feet. Then he placed the ring of metal around the back of his head, above his ears, as he’d seen the Faro do.
The alien growled something else, but this time Lucien understood it perfectly.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“You’re welcome… what’s your name?” Lucien tried.
“Oorgurak.”
“Oor-gu-rak,” Lucien repeated awkwardly. There’d been no translation for that, so he had to mimic the sounds the alien made as best he could.
“Yes, and who are you?”
“My name is Lucien,” he said.
The alien started visibly and snarled, revealing those pointed white teeth once more.
“Don’t piss him off,” Garek warned.
“Lucien,” Oorgurak said slowly. “How did you come by this name?”
“It was given to me by my parents,” Lucien replied. “It means light-bringer in my language.”
“I know what it means. The word is different in Farosien, but the meaning is the same.”
“Is that who was whipping you? The Faro who calls himself Lucien?” he asked, noting that the black furrows he’d seen on Oorgurak’s chest in the square were now mysteriously gone.
“Yes. He goes by many names. He is the destroyer of worlds. The evil one. Death. Abaddon. You are not… in league with Abaddon, are you?”
“No.” Lucien grimaced, suddenly wishing he could change his name.
“I suppose it would make little sense for you to attack Abaddon if you were on his side. Unless your plan was to sneak aboard this station so you could kill us all in our sleep…”
“If that was my plan, then I’d know better than to use his name.”
“True, and you did agree to wear a mind-reader. You would not have done this if you had something to hide. I will call you Lux to avoid further confusion. I suggest you do the same, lest you arouse others’ suspicions.”
Lucien nodded. “Lux it is.”
Oorgurak passed out the rest of the translators, and the others removed their helmets to put them on.
“Where are we?” Addy asked.
“We are aboard Freedom Station,” Oorgurak replied.
“And where is that?” Addy pressed.
“At the end of everything.”
“The end of everything?” Lucien echoed.
“The last star before the great abyss that separates our universe from the one on the other side.”
Lucien thought back to what they’d seen upon arriving at the cosmic horizon—a vast swath of stars and galaxies leading up to an empty void that stretched as far as the new cosmic horizon, and no doubt much further still. Tyra and Pandora had hypothesized that it might be the trough behind the next wave of galaxies and stars, and Oorgurak seemed to be confirming that now. There was just one problem with that.
“We can’t have jumped all the way to the… great abyss,” Lucien objected. “We were billions of light years from there.”
“Unless the jump was pre-calculated,” Garek suggested.
Oorgurak inclined his head to Garek. “Yes.”
Lucien glanced back at the quantum junction they’d stepped out of. “If that’s the case, then we could easily be followed.”
“The junction was designed to destroy itself after I used it,” Oorgurak said. “No one will follow us.”
“How did it get there?” Addy asked.
“My people left it as part of an attempt to rescue me.”
“And who are your people?”
“Former slaves, members of the Marauders.”
“Hold on,” Addy interrupted. “You said there’s another universe on the other side of the… great abyss. How do you know it’s there? We can’t see it, which means there’s no visible light reaching us from there. And how can we see three more stars from here if we’re at the last one?”
“They are ghosts,” Oorgurak said. “Stars whose light we can see, but which no longer exist. As for the universe on the other side, I know it exists, because I was there when it was created. Now, enough questions. I am tired and hungry. We can continue this discussion while we eat. Please follow me. You are honored guests here on Freedom Station.”
Chapter 38
Green-skinned Faros were everywhere, walking the corridors of the station, but they weren’t the only species present. Lucien saw at least twenty different species of aliens before they reached the mess hall. Some were humanoid, while others were far more exotic—like the slowly inflating and deflating white balloon creatures that floated down the corridors, bouncing blindly off the walls.
In the mess hall Oorgurak led them to a self-ser
vice food counter. They each took a tray and selected the least strange-looking utensils from those available. Lucien chose a spoon and tongs.
They must have stood out in their bulky exosuits, but none of the other aliens in the mess hall paid much attention to them. That either meant that they’d seen humans before, or that they’d seen so many different aliens that seeing an unfamiliar species was nothing new. Lucien guessed the latter.
He looked around while he waited in line to serve himself. Here all of the aliens were at least humanoid. That made seating arrangements less complicated, but he imagined there had to be other mess halls on the station to cater to the more exotic aliens.
As they reached the serving counter, Lucien watched Oorgurak to see what he would choose from the exotic-looking dishes of food steaming under the heat lamps. Oorgurak went for something that looked like chopped raw meat and paired it with something else that looked like mashed taber root—if taber root were green. Both dishes smelled horrible, but Brak seemed to approve of the chopped meat, and piled his plate with it.
Lucien passed on anything that looked or smelled bad, which was everything. That left him with an empty plate and a grumbling stomach near the end of the serving line, so he settled for a dish that looked vaguely like pasta with red sauce. It didn’t smell half bad either. Not wanting to risk any of the alien beverages, he poured himself a cup of water to go with the meal, and went to find Oorgurak.
The Faro was already seated and everyone else was there with him. Lucien dragged a chair over from an adjacent table and sat on the corner between Addy and Brak. They made space for his tray, but there was zero elbow room.
As soon as he was seated, Lucien asked the question that had to be burning in everyone’s brain. “You said you were there when the universe was created.”
Oorgurak nodded as he scooped a spoonful of bloody meat into his mouth.
Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Page 23
