Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “All right, what’s the password?”
Brondi recited a sequence of twenty numbers and letters. Ethan nodded, using holo card reader implant behind his ear to file away the code for later. “Thank you for cooperating, but I still need to probe you to know whether you’re telling the truth.”
“What? But you said—”
“I lied.”
Brondi bucked in the probe chair and screamed. “Help!”
“Don’t bother. No one’s going to help you,” Ethan said. He turned to someone that Brondi couldn’t see and nodded. “Go ahead, Admiral, start up the probe. Let’s get this over with.”
Brondi felt a thousand needles stab his brain all at once, and then his mind slipped into a hazy, dream-like state. The dark room and its bright, glaring light disappeared, and now he found himself standing in a small, filthy room, gazing up at a man he hadn’t seen in decades.
His father.
Brondi bit his lip and shook his head, willing the scene to disappear, willing himself to wake up. There was a mad gleam in his father’s eyes. He was drunk again. “I told ya, Al, if I still found you here when I got home, I was gonna kill you, and waddaya know? Yer still here. You must get bein’ so smart from yer mother. Immortals bless her sclutty soul.” The first blow hit him like a hammer and he went flying into the far corner of the room. “Tell me, Al,” his father said, finding him in his corner with another blow. “Why’d ya stay?”
“I . . . got . . . no place to go,” he said, trying to speak despite having the wind knocked out of him.
“Ah, no place to go. Well stayin’ here wasn’t so smart, hoi? But I bet ya think yer a real big brainy, don’t ya? A Big Brainy Brondi, first one in a long line of skriffs. Smart don’t run in our family, boy. Yer livin’ proof o’ that.”
Another blow landed, followed by another, and another as his father asked, “Why’d ya do it, son? Why?”
The questions which followed that one didn’t sound like anything his father would have asked, but Brondi answered them anyway, desperate to make it all go away.
He told them everything they wanted to know. When at last he woke up from that nightmare, he woke up screaming. The blinding light was back, stabbing him through his eyes and slicing through his brain. His head pounded so hard he thought it was about to explode. He turned away from the light, blinking tears of rage and shame. They’d seen him at his weakest. They’d seen . . .
“How’s he doing?” Ethan asked.
“He’ll live,” the admiral replied.
Brondi shook his head and moaned. “I don’t want to live!”
“Then that’s exactly why you have to,” Ethan replied. “You’re going to have to live a long, long time, Big Brainy. Admiral Heston will make sure of that.”
* * *
As they left the probe room, Ethan turned to Hoff and said, “Thank you for helping me.”
“Thank you for bringing Brondi to justice.”
“That was Alara’s work, actually, but I guess now you know that I really was forced to help Brondi.”
“Not that it excuses your actions, but I suppose you were telling the truth.”
Ethan smiled. “Yes, I was, but you weren’t.”
Hoff suddenly stopped walking, and his eyes narrowed sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Atton told me.”
“And what exactly did he tell you?”
“Everything.”
“Well, well—what do you plan to do about that?”
Ethan shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”
“Smart.”
“But—” Ethan shook his head, and Hoff’s gray eyes hardened. “You need to get on board the Tauron and find out what happened.”
“Find out what happened to what?”
“To your clone.”
“I must be missing something,” Hoff said, looking around quickly to make sure no one was around to overhear their conversation.
“I went EVA during the battle, and Atton picked me up in your corvette. You were on board, but it was your clone, not you. He insisted we drop him on board the Sythian command cruiser so he could get answers.” Hoff’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. Ethan went on, “He told us that we should look for him on the Tauron, and that Atton would know where to look. That was before Caldin blew the Sythians and Brondi’s men all to the netherworld. If your clone did find something before the ship was destroyed, and if what Atton told me about you is true, then there might still be a record of what happened on board that ship.”
Hoff nodded slowly. “You’d better keep all of this to yourself, Ortane.”
“Or else? What are you going to do? I’m already headed for death row.”
“Actually, you might be surprised what I have in mind for you.” Ethan raised one eyebrow, and Hoff went on, “Thank you for the tip, Ethan. I’ll investigate. As for you, let’s assume for now that your record will be erased. Is that enough to ensure your silence?”
“Good enough for me.”
“Excellent. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a team together.”
Ethan nodded. “Let me know what you find.”
“I can’t promise that, Ortane, but thank you.”
The admiral started off at a jog, and Ethan watched him go with a frown. Hoff turned a corner and disappeared, and Ethan shook himself. Mysteries of the universe be damned. He had more important things to deal with—it was time to schedule an operation to remove Alara’s implant.
* * *
Walking through the mangled remains of the Tauron was otherworldly. Twisted girders and beams hung down from the ceiling; severed wires and sparking conduits drifted like tentacles in the zero-G environment. Bodies and pieces of bodies floated past Hoff’s floodlights with looks of horror frozen on their battered and bloodied faces. Hoff pushed on, ignoring the carnage. So far there were no survivors, but that wasn’t surprising. The Tauron was a mess, and it would need extensive rebuilding before it could even serve as a garbage hauler, let alone a warship for the fleet, but that was for the spacebees and greasers to deal with. Hoff had his prerogatives for boarding the derelict ship.
As soon as Ethan had revealed the startling news about what had happened to Hoff’s clone, the admiral had put together a small team of engineers and jetted over to the Tauron. He’d left Commander Caldin in charge of search and rescue operations and told her to open a dialogue with the Gors. Meanwhile, Hoff had his own search and rescue operation to conduct. With everything going on, he’d completely forgotten to go looking for his clone, and loose ends could be dangerous if left untied. He needed to get access to his data center and his cloning facility. He had to find out if his clone had been revived, and if so, what had happened aboard the Sythian command cruiser.
Perhaps that clone had found answers to some of the myriad questions which had haunted humanity ever since the invasion. Who are the Sythians and what do they want for starters.
Hoff pressed on through the twisted corridors of his ship, occasionally using his cutting beam to open up corridors which had completely collapsed or been blocked with rubble. With all the debris it was hard to see where he was going, or even to recognize where he was, but he had a feeling he was getting close.
His comm piece crackled. “Admiral? Are you all right? You’re getting a bit far from the expedition.”
“I’m fine,” Hoff replied. “Give me another hour, and I’ll find my way back to the hangar.”
“All right, but don’t forget to check in.”
Hoff frowned and clicked his comm to acknowledge that before ending the transmission. He felt like a child out past his curfew, but he had refused an escort. It would have made sense to have a team of engineers with him in such a potentially unstable environment, but he couldn’t afford to have them find out about his secret. It was bad enough that Destra and Atton knew—and now Ethan, too.
After another twenty minutes of struggling through the dark, broken corridors of his ship, Hoff
found what he was looking for—his lift tube. It was still mostly intact. The lift itself was missing, but since gravity was out, all he had to do was dial down the field strength on the grav gun hooked to his belt, and then jump.
Hoff floated down past deck after ruined deck, using his grav gun to direct his fall between jutting beams and the jagged edges of crumpled bulkheads. Hoff saw the lift tube coming up fast below his feet, and he dialed down the grav field strength some more. His feet touched the roof of the lift, and he bent his legs to absorb his remaining momentum. Using his cutting beam, he sliced a hole in the roof and dropped down.
The cloning lab was a mess, but at least it was a recognizable mess. Glow panels still flickered down here, and the artificial gravity gave a weak, but perceptible tug. That meant that Hoff’s backup generators were still running—a good sign.
The clone tanks in his med center had broken open, spewing blue nutrient fluid everywhere. Stasis tubes had broken away from the walls and fallen over, others were cracked and dark, the clones inside them now dead. None of the tubes were open, however, which was a bad sign. His helmet sensors told him that there was no breathable atmosphere, so if his clone had been revived down here, he would have woken up to find himself trapped inside a stasis tube that refused to open due to the vacuum on the other side. That clone would have suffocated to death.
Hoff grimaced and shook his head. Looking to his right, he found his data center still flickering with rolling waves of blue light. The glossy black meditation sphere at the end of the catwalk which led out into that data center was apparently also intact. Hoff felt a spark of hope, and eagerness drove him on. He passed through the entrance of the data center and walked down the narrow catwalk, his eyes scanning the far walls of the hollow sphere. Those walls only shone with half of the lights that they should have, indicating that many, if not most, of his memories would be inaccessible now.
When Hoff reached the mediation sphere, he placed a palm against the glossy black side of it and waited, hoping it still had enough power to respond. For a moment, nothing happened, but then the sphere spun, revealing an opening which had been hidden underneath. Hoff walked inside and strapped himself into the high-backed black chair inside the sphere. The walls of the sphere were transparent from the inside, giving Hoff a magnificent view of his data center. He watched the lights undulate around the room for a moment before he swiveled his chair to face the control station behind it and booted up the meditation sphere. He began searching for the most recent data set in the database.
To his surprise, that data set was just a few hours old. One of his clones had in fact tried to revive in here, but the operation had failed, and he was listed as deceased. Hoff spent a moment parsing through the data set to find the clone’s last half hour of life; then he configured his data center for a memory walk and routed the sounds to his helmet so he could hear despite the vacuum inside the data center. With everything now ready, he stabbed the button to start his journey into the not-so-distant past.
The transparent walls of the mediation sphere shimmered and then suddenly Hoff was standing inside a Sythian ship, in a room filled with glowing purple portals in the floor and ceiling. Just a few minutes later, a dark shape floated down from the ceiling, and Hoff heard himself say, “Hello, Sythian. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
Then he saw a flash of white teeth, and heard a familiar voice say, “So have I, Admiral.”
If Hoff hadn’t been strapped into his chair, he would have fallen out of it. He shook his head. It couldn’t be.
And yet it was. It was Captain Adram. Hoff sat and listened with horror and fascination to the explanations which followed. So this is what immortality leads to, he thought, a vile, twisted perversion of life.
He shook his head. It had to end. He’d had his doubts about immortality before, but now he was sure—man wasn’t meant to live forever.
* * *
Three hours later . . .
Destra Heston stood outside Alara’s room in the med bay. She watched through the transpiranium viewing window with Hoff, Atta, and Atton as Ethan walked in. Alara’s parents were already there, standing beside her bed and fussing over her. She looked up and smiled when she saw Ethan, and he dropped a quick kiss on her cheek before pulling up a chair and sitting down beside her. He grabbed her hand and raised it to his lips for another kiss.
Destra felt a brief echo of something—jealousy perhaps—but it quickly passed, replaced by a bittersweet feeling of joy. She was happy for Ethan—happy that Alara was back and finally safe, happy that her slave chip was about to be removed so there would be no more relapses . . . and she was also happy for herself. She was happy that she didn’t have to feel guilty anymore, because Ethan and Atton were both fine.
Destra turned and smiled up at Hoff. He met her gaze and smiled wanly back. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“Complete,” she said and stood up on tip toes to kiss him on the lips. “Happy.”
“Are you sure?”
Destra hesitated. “No more secrets?”
“None.”
“No more clones?”
He shook his head. “Never again.”
“Then yes, I’m sure,” she said, wrapping an arm around his waist and leaning her head on his shoulder. We’re going to grow old together, and die together—” Her head turned and found Ethan’s and Alara’s tightly clasped hands. “—just like them.”
Atton turned to his mother with a smile. “I guess now I have two families.”
“But only one mother, right?” Destra asked.
Atton laughed. “Alara is young enough to be my sister, Mom.”
“And I’m old enough to be your grandfather,” Hoff added.
“No, you’re old enough to be anyone’s grandfather.”
“What is everybody looking at?” Atta asked, bouncing on her toes to see through the windows. “I don’t see anything!”
Atton scooped her up and placed her on his shoulders so she could see.
Destra smiled. “I think you already have a sister, Atton.”
“Wow . . .” Atta marveled as her head scraped the ceiling. “I’m tall!”
“Tall as a Gor,” Atton replied, and then he turned to look at Hoff. “Speaking of which, how are negotiations going?”
The admiral shrugged. “We’re still sorting out who’s responsible for what. Now there can be no doubt about their loyalties, but we have to convince them of ours. There have been a lot of casualties on both sides, and at this point the only thing anyone can do is try to prevent more. The fact that the Gors are even willing to talk with us after Ritan means that they understand that, too.”
Atton nodded. “You’re lucky that they’re so understanding.”
“Humanity is lucky.”
“You were so sure that they were against us,” Atton said, not willing to let it go just yet. “Sometimes the simplest answers are the best ones, hoi Hoff? They’re simple because they’re true.”
“Sometimes,” Hoff conceded.
“Yes . . .” Destra appeared to think about that for a moment, and then she turned to her husband with wide, curious eyes. “Speaking of answers, what was it that you found inside the Tauron which changed your mind about immortality?”
Hoff hesitated. “That’s more than I think any of us are ready to hear right now.”
Destra shook her head. “No more secrets, remember?”
Hoff’s gray eyes found Atta, and he said, “I’ll tell you all later, in a more appropriate moment. Suffice it to say, the Sythians are not the aliens we thought they were, and immortality is not the innocent technological breakthrough I thought it was.”
“What do you mean by that?” Atton asked.
“If the Sythians aren’t the aliens we thought, then what are they?” Destra added.
Hoff took a deep breath before he replied. “They’re just like us, and we’re all the same—all fighting for exactly the same reason.”
Atton shook his head
. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Destra said. “What reason?”
Hoff’s gaze didn’t stray from Atta. She noticed his scrutiny and turned to him with a broad smile. “Look at me, Daddy!” she said. “I’m even taller than you!”
Hoff smiled, and belatedly answered his wife’s question. “We’re fighting for our families, Des—we’re just fighting to survive.”
Destra frowned, but Hoff’s comm piece trilled before she could reply. Hoff touched his ear to accept the call. “Yes . . . I see. That is good news, Lieutenant. . . . No, I’ll go personally to welcome them. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Atton shook his head. “Welcome who?”
“We’ve found a few more survivors, Squadron Commander.”
“Squadron Commander?” Atton shook his head.
Hoff smiled and reached out to squeeze Atton’s shoulder. “Come with me. I’ll explain along the way.”
Atton set his sister down and went with Hoff. Destra watched them go, already knowing what they would talk about. She and Hoff had already spoken about it. The Valiant was Atton’s home. It was all he’d ever known. He was a capable commander and an excellent pilot. Cutting him loose would be a mistake, especially now when they needed fleet officers more than ever. Besides that, she wanted Atton close. She’d missed too much of his life already.
As Atton and Hoff left, she heard her husband say, “How would you like your own nova squadron?”
* * *
Atton’s eyes widened as he heard the Admiral offer him a real officer’s commission with the fleet. “My own squadron? What about the trial? What about my crimes?”
“You’re not the only criminal we have to deal with, Atton. There’s your father, Alara’s father, Brondi’s men who surrendered in exchange for leniency, and even me . . . we’re all waiting in line for the airlock or Etaris, and right now humanity can’t afford to lose any more people. I have a plan to deal with that, but for now just know that there won’t be a trial for any of us. The only man who we’re going to make answer for his crimes is Alec Brondi.”
Dark Space: Origin Page 39
