Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  For the moment, however, his primary concern was getting out of the med bay and off the ship before the same thing that had happened to the crew happened to him. Ethan hurried from the waiting room, back the way he’d come. He was still naked, so he went to retrieve his clothes from the locker in the stasis room which corresponded to the number of his stasis tube. After that, he began searching the med center for survivors. The other stasis tubes were all lit up, indicating that their occupants were alive, but Ethan wasn’t about to risk letting them out. If they were in there, it was for a good reason.

  Still searching the med center, Ethan eventually found himself standing inside a vast medical supply room. But here, like everywhere else he had gone, there were dead med workers lying face down on the floor and no survivors anywhere to be seen. Ethan eyed the nearest body with a frown. If the med center had already been compromised, why were all of the medical personnel wearing hazmat suits? Maybe not everyone had been exposed … But the number of dead med workers Ethan had encountered belied that theory.

  More likely …

  Ethan’s mind flashed back to the med center doors. “Only properly authorized medical personnel may enter and leave the med center.” Perhaps the suits allowed the med workers to move freely through the ship despite the quarantine. It made sense, but Ethan hadn’t found any free suits. His eyes were drawn to the nearest body, and he shuddered with revulsion at the idea which occurred to him then.

  Before he could change his mind, Ethan got down on his haunches beside the nearest body and began unsnapping the seals on the hazmat suit.

  When Ethan pulled off the med worker’s helmet, he saw that there were no visible signs of what had killed the man. Just in case the man was merely asleep or unconscious, Ethan pressed a hand to the med worker’s forehead. His skin was ice cold to the touch, and Ethan recoiled from the body.

  “Definitely dead,” Ethan muttered to himself. He quickly finished pulling the suit off the dead med worker and then climbed into it himself.

  When Ethan returned to the entrance of the med center, now properly clothed in a hazmat suit, the doors automatically swished open for him, and he stepped out into a dimly-lit corridor. Ethan looked around, while listening to the sound of his canned breath reverberating inside of the helmet. There were a couple more bodies beyond the med center. One of them had on a white hazmat suit, while the other was clothed in a black fleet uniform. That meant the incident wasn’t limited to the med bay.

  Ethan walked cautiously up to the officer, and then he bent down to steal the man’s sidearm. On a whim, he rolled the man over, but as with the med worker he’d stolen his suit from, there were no visible signs of what had killed the officer. With a frown, Ethan stood up and started down the corridor, winding his way around to the rail car system he’d arrived on just over twelve hours ago.

  When the rail car arrived, Ethan stepped inside and found a few more dead officers slumped over in their seats or splayed out across the floor. He tried to ignore them, and instead focused on his destination. Using the directory beside the doors, he looked up the bridge deck and keyed that in—if anyone was still alive and in charge, that was a logical place for them to be. Access to the bridge was restricted, so the plague might not have had a chance to spread there. The rail car accepted his destination and quickly accelerated up to speed.

  Ethan went to find a seat as far as possible from any of the bodies inside the rail car. Even if the bridge were similarly filled with bodies, Ethan planned to check from there using the life support systems to see if there were survivors anywhere aboard the ship, and if not, he’d abandon the ghost ship in one of the novas before someone came snooping around to ask him awkward questions. His excuse that it was all Brondi’s fault was bound to sound mighty thin to a fleet interrogator, and that was to say nothing of what they’d do to him when they found out he was actually wearing a holoskin and impersonating a fleet officer.

  Brondi’s scheme had worked out just great for him. Without the Valiant in the picture, he would be rid of the vast majority of the fleet. The scattered remnant that had been stationed elsewhere would be hard-pressed to police Dark Space if some major upheaval were to take place—such as an open war between Brondi’s forces and those of the fleet.

  Ethan realized that was likely what the crime boss had been planning all along—some sort of coup d’état which would install him as the governing head of the sector. He didn’t want to be rid of the government. He wanted to be the government.

  The rail car arrived at the bridge after a few minutes of travelling through the network of tunnels which traversed the ship. The doors opened, and Ethan stepped out into a short, broad gray corridor lined with pipes, glow panels, and lift tubes. The double doors at the end of the corridor were jammed open with a half-crushed trolley full of hazmat suits and the remains of the suited med worker who’d been pushing that trolley.

  Ethan walked up to the doors with a grimace. He stepped over the body to climb up onto the trolley and from there into the bridge. On the other side of the doors he found himself standing on a long silver gangway leading out to a vast array of forward viewports which stretched several stories high and wider than a seraphim-class corvette was long. Out those viewports he saw the Firean-Chorlis space gate and the Firebelt Nebula beyond, while below the gangway he saw a few dozen dead officers slumped over the twenty plus control stations of the vast warship.

  But what drew his attention most of all was the lone man standing small and forlorn at the end of the gangway, his back turned to Ethan while he gazed out at the stars. The man was clothed in a distinctive, pure white uniform with gold epaulets and tassels. Ethan felt a jolt of recognition. Only one man wore a uniform like that. He walked up behind the man in white and hoped his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

  As he drew near, Ethan felt a small spark of hope flicker inside of him. “Supreme Overlord?”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Overlord Dominic!” Ethan called out again, but whoever that man was, he didn’t turn around. Ethan walked up beside him, and gently turned the man by his shoulders to get a look at his face.

  He was gratified to see a familiar, ancient-looking countenance—the cheeks were sunken with age, and the man’s hair and eyebrows were a brilliant white. His nose was pronounced, but thin and aquiline and hanging low upon his face. His eyes were fairly unwrinkled, as though he was too serious to have ever laughed, but his brow was etched with enough permanent furrows to portray a perpetually skeptical look. The old man’s face perfectly matched the holos Ethan had seen of Supreme Overlord Dominic over the years, and the insignia on his white sleeve also matched the part; it was the symbol of the Imperium of Star Systems, with the six gold stars of the prime worlds arranged in a circle around a clenched golden fist in the center. What didn’t match the holos was the shell-shocked look of terror in the old man’s blue eyes.

  Ethan gently shook the overlord by his shoulders. “What happened here?” he asked, gesturing to the reams of dead lying slumped over their control stations all over the bridge.

  The overlord’s lips began moving, but no sound came out.

  Ethan shook him again. “Snap out of it!”

  The overlord smiled faintly and said, “They’re all dead.” With that, he turned back to the viewport and pointed out into space. “Company’s coming.”

  Ethan followed the overlord’s gesture to a faintly glimmering silver cloud which was just visible against the dark background of empty space. From a distance, he’d mistaken those specks for stars, but here, so close to the black holes which rimmed Dark Space, the stars were never so densely clustered, nor so bright. These were in-system objects, glimmering in the light of Firean system’s pale red sun. They were the glimmers of an approaching fleet.

  When he looked closely, Ethan was able to pick out the more distant engine glows of the larger ships in that fleet, and he thought a few of them might be a considerable size. Ethan nodded to the approaching enemy and then turned to look a
t the overlord. “Bring up a magnified view of those ships.”

  It took a while for the overlord to respond, but when he did, he didn’t even have to say the command aloud; the magnified view just appeared on screen as though the overlord had a command chip implanted—which, Ethan considered, was probably exactly the case.

  The Valiant’s targeting computer began highlighting known hull types. It was unable to recognize most of the enemy ships, since they were cobbled together from spare parts. But Ethan was able to recognize at least two, and once he did, his jaw dropped and his gaze filled with loathing. The first ship he recognized was Brondi’s corvette, the Kavarath, and the second was his very own Atton. Ethan shook his head, unable to believe it. “That kakard! He stole my ship!”

  “Where?” the overlord asked almost disinterestedly.

  “There!” Ethan pointed to his ship. The SID code was still broadcasting his name for it, too. “That one! The Atton! Brondi’s come to take charge of the Valiant, and he’s brought my ship to the fight. I’m going to kill that dumb frek!”

  The overlord’s wide, shell-shocked eyes abruptly narrowed, and he began nodding his head. “The Atton? That’s your ship?” The overlord’s gaze was locked on Ethan’s face, studying him rather than the approaching armada.

  Ethan ignored the question and shook his head irritably. Abruptly he abandoned his tirade to search the myriad control stations behind them. “Don’t we have any guns on this crate?”

  “Oh, plenty,” the overlord said, finally sounding more lucid.

  “Well?” Ethan demanded. “Aren’t you going to open fire on them before they reach us?”

  “The gunners are all dead.”

  “There are no autos?” Ethan asked, incredulous.

  “None that can be operated from here. This ship was not built for a crew of two, I’m afraid.”

  “You mean there were no other survivors?”

  The overlord gave him a blank look, and Ethan sighed. “If you don’t know, query the ship’s life-support systems!”

  “Right,” the overlord said, and abruptly a holographic representation of the Valiant with the decks exposed appeared hovering in the air before them. The diagram was peppered with thousands of tiny red dots. The overlord began shaking his head, and turned to Ethan with a return of the shell-shocked look he’d been wearing a few minutes ago. “They’re all dead.”

  Ethan squinted up at the image, watching for a green speck to appear which would signify that someone was alive aboard the ship, but that didn’t happen. The red dots were so thick that it was impossible to see anything in between. Even the bridge deck where they were was a solid wall of red. “Wait a minute,” Ethan said, realizing what they were missing. There should have been at least two green dots on the bridge, but the diagram wasn’t precise enough to display each individual crewman with a dot. The sheer masses of red dots must have been overlaying the few sparks of green which represented the living. “Zoom in.”

  The overlord complied, and the image they were looking at grew larger, quickly looming over them. There were over one hundred floors on the carrier, and all of them were crowded with red dots. Not even one of them was green. But then Ethan saw it—

  “There!” Ethan pointed to a lonely green speck. “Magnify that area, and bring up a tally of the living and the dead.”

  Two numbers flashed up beside the hologram, one in green—double digits—the other in red—five figures. Ethan tried to focus on the green number, and then on the rapidly growing number of green dots which appeared as the overlord zoomed in. “Hoi!” Ethan exclaimed. “We have 97 crew members among the living—counting us, I guess.”

  The supreme overlord shook his head. “How are we supposed to mount a defense with 97 men on a ship that requires a crew of over 50,000?”

  Ethan turned to the old man with a patient smile. “Doesn’t the Valiant carry two venture-class cruisers?”

  Overlord Dominic began nodding slowly, and his eyes sharpened with resolve. “One of them is out on a mission, but yes.”

  “That leaves one for us. Those cruisers can get by on a crew of just over 200. I’m sure we could manage on a skeleton crew of 50 and launch a few nova squadrons while we’re at it.”

  The overlord snapped into action, hurrying down the stairs from the gangway to the control stations below. “You’re right.”

  Ethan followed the overlord. “So, disable the quarantine and tell the survivors to meet us in the ventral hangar. The Valiant is not going down without a fight.”

  “My thoughts precisely,” Dominic said, already keying the ship’s comm system to life.

  DEFIANT

  CHAPTER 16

  “This is Supreme Overlord Dominic, to any survivors who can hear me aboard the Valiant. As you may or may not already know, we are in a state of emergency quarantine. The epidemic which swept through the ship only hours ago has left us devastated, taking the lives of almost everyone aboard. We are the sole survivors. But it appears this was only the prelude to a full-scale attack. We have an enemy fleet incoming, ready to take advantage of our weakness. In order to mount an effective defense, we will fly out aboard the Defiant. I am disabling the quarantine now. Meet me in the starboard ventral hangar bay. We launch in fifteen. Dominic out.”

  Ethan watched the overlord close down the comm, and abruptly the dim emergency lighting of the quarantine was replaced by a comparatively-blinding brightness as glow panels all over the bridge brightened. A second later, the red alert sirens came on, and the lighting switched back to a dim, but now red glow.

  “Let’s go,” the overlord said, striding back from the comm station to the gangway above their heads.

  Ethan kept pace beside him. “You think we have fifteen minutes before that fleet arrives?”

  “If they want to land to take this ship, they still have to blast their way into one of the hangar bays. The hangars’ shields should hold them out long enough.”

  The doors at the back of the bridge automatically swished open for the overlord, and Ethan followed him through. Dominic stopped at the nearest lift tube. Abruptly he turned to Ethan and smiled. “I suspect you know who I am, but we have yet to be formally introduced. I’m Supreme Overlord Altarian Dominic.”

  Ethan nodded and stuck out his hand. “Second Lieutenant Adan Reese.”

  The overlord hesitated. “Lieutenant Adan Reese of the Rokan Defense?”

  Ethan raised an eyebrow. If the overlord knew about him, his performance had been better than he’d realized. “Yes.”

  “Impressive scores. A pleasure to meet you, Adan.” With that, the overlord accepted the handshake, but their hands missed, and the overlord grabbed him by the wrist instead. The overlord’s grip fastened directly over Ethan’s bandages, and he winced from the pressure.

  “I’m sorry,” Dominic said with a small smile. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”

  The lift tube arrived to take them down and they stepped inside as the doors swished open.

  Ethan shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You’re pretty strong for an old man.”

  The overlord quirked an eyebrow at him. “And you’re pretty soft for a young one.”

  “Fair enough,” Ethan said, watching the overlord punch in a floor number—deck nine. Suddenly, the floor dropped out from under them, but Ethan felt only the slightest sensation of falling as the lift tube dropped almost 100 floors through the ship’s artificial gravity in a matter of seconds. The doors opened a few seconds later, and they walked out into a broad concourse which lay directly before a massive wall of transpiranium. Beyond that, they could see the starboard ventral hangar bay with the pristine gray hull of a venture-class cruiser clearly visible on the other side. The ventral hangar was truly massive to accommodate the 280-meter-long cruiser.

  Ethan whistled his appreciation. “There’s the elegance to this beast’s brawn! Right where you’d expect to find it—hiding under her skirts.”

  The overlord smiled. “Indeed. Normally there
would be another one right behind us.”

  Ethan turned to briefly gaze through a matching transpiranium wall to the empty port ventral hangar bay. After a moment, he turned back to the starboard hangar and walked up to the transpiranium wall to get a close look at the cruiser lying there. He couldn’t help but run his hands along the cold transpiranium barrier separating him from the ship on the other side, as if to caress the vessel’s rugged lines. “Whenever I see that ship, I see the ISS. I see 10,000 years of accumulated civilization. I see the endless beaches and crystal blue waters of Hanlay; the urban utopias of Advistine, Gorvin, and Clementa, but most of all I see the soaring, snow-covered mountains of Roka IV, the skies purpling just before a storm; I see the canyon cities and the glacier parks…” Ethan turned from the transpiranium to find the overlord standing beside him, looking at him curiously. Ethan shook his head sadly. “And then I try to imagine it all gone, but I can’t. I wasn’t even there when the Sythians invaded. I can’t imagine what one of them looks like or sounds like. Of course, I’ve seen the holos of the war, like everyone else, but they don’t seem real.”

  The overlord smiled. “You speak of Roka IV as though you’ve been there.”

  “Roka was my home.”

  The supreme overlord raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You’re a Rokan? What a coincidence, so am I.”

  Ethan turned to the overlord with a frown. He hadn’t realized the overlord had been a Rokan. In fact, he felt quite sure that the overlord was supposed to be from Advistine. “You mean you lived there for a few years?” Ethan asked.

  “No, I was born there, Adan, just like you.”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say I was born there. I said it was my home.”

  “Oh—” The overlord’s smile faded. “My apologies, I just assumed…”

  Ethan nodded. So the overlord was actually from Roka. Advistine must have just been the official line—it would be more politically advantageous to be from a place which the majority of your public could relate to. “Were you there to watch Roka fall?” Ethan asked.