Ethan watched the hangar deck below milling with ground crew as the carrier’s autopilot guided his fighter to an empty berth. Ground crews were bustling around the landed fighters, performing routine maintenance, and in some cases major repairs. Ethan frowned, confused by what he saw below. He’d been under the impression that the fleet was running out of fighters, but here, in just one of the carrier’s six hangars, there was at least a full wing—six squadrons—which was considerably more than the reported two squadrons that were supposedly on active duty at the Dark Space gate. Either they were being lied to, or these were all of the grounded fighters that weren’t fit for use anymore.
Ethan considered that he should probably take it for granted that they were being lied to. After all, the overlord was ordering excursions beyond Dark Space into occupied Sythian territory, while telling everyone that the gate was safely sealed.
Ethan’s nova fighter settled down with a thud-unk on the deck beside a heavily-carbon-scored interceptor which had deep furrows gouged out of its sides and a black, ragged hole where the canopy should have been. Ethan wasn’t sure what had happened to that fighter, but it was a fair bet that the pilot hadn’t survived.
Ethan pressed the canopy release and the transpiranium bubble rose slowly with a hiss of equalizing air pressure and pneumatic pistons. A cool breeze swept in from the hangar, bringing with it the acrid smell of reactor coolant, thruster grease, and laser gas. Ethan crawled out of the cramped cockpit and hopped over the side of his fighter. He heard magnetic clamps locking around the landing struts of his nova. Those clamps would keep his ship from sliding around in the event that artificial gravity should fail.
Ethan stood on deck looking around dumbly for a moment, listening to the sounds of multiple thrusters spinning up or cooling down, of ground crew hollering at one another over great distances, and of the hangar’s PA system blaring with a message for a Lieutenant Briggs to report to the quartermaster’s office.
While Ethan took all of that in, someone came up behind him and slapped him on the back. He turned around to find himself staring down at a medium-height woman with dark blonde hair and angry amber eyes. Her face was hard, but not unappealing.
“I guess I owe you a drink for saving my ass back there.”
This had to be Gina, Ethan decided. “Don’t mention it. Where is Firestarter?” Ethan asked, trying to make Guardian Three’s call sign sound natural to his ears, but nothing he said sounded natural to his ears. His vocal synthesizer was faithfully mimicking the voice of the dead nova pilot whose identity he had stolen.
“He’s arguing with a flight mechanic about a jammed-up laser cannon. We’d better go. We’re due for debriefing in the Lieutenant Commander’s office.”
Ethan nodded absently. “Lead the way.”
Gina turned and wordlessly began winding a path through the endless rows of scorched and battered fighters. Ethan eyed each fighter with a frown as they walked past. “Guess we’ve been running into more opposition than I thought. Either that or someone’s been playing with the Valiant’s beam cannons again.”
Gina turned and gave him a funny look. “These are salvage from the war, Adan; you know that.”
Ethan nodded and tried not to meet her gaze. “Right, just trying to crack a joke, Gina.”
She snorted. “Well, stick to your real forte. Jokes never were a part of your repertoire.”
“So what’s my real forte, then?”
Gina shot him a dry look. “Shooting and frekking everything that moves.”
Ethan grinned wryly. “I’m not sure if that was meant to be a compliment, but thanks.”
“Right, well since making conversation isn’t a part of your aforementioned skill set, let’s leave it at that.”
“What did I ever do to you, Gina?” He asked. Ethan was curious about how things had ended between Adan and Gina.
Gina turned to him with patiently raised eyebrows. “Really? You’re going to ask me that? You know damn well what happened.”
Ethan shrugged. “We don’t have to be enemies.”
“We don’t have to be friends either.”
With that, Ethan decided to drop it. She was right. He wasn’t here to make friends—quite the opposite.
They reached the far wall of the hangar bay and Gina preceded him into a waiting rail car. A handful of ground crew and pilots piled in with them, including Guardian Three, who walked up to Ethan with a smirk and said, “Looks like you’re losing your touch, Adan.”
The rail car started forward with a subtle jolt and quickly accelerated up to a blinding speed. The walls of the rail tunnel blurred by them with bright streaks of light from passing glow panels, and Adan watched as Gina keyed a destination into the holoscreen mounted beside the doors of the rail car. Passengers were busily taking seats along the sides of the car, and Ethan followed suit, sitting down beside Guardian Three. He strapped in and then spared his squad mate a quick grin—just as he imagined the cocky Adan Reese might do.
Ithicus Adari glared back at him. He was large and well-built like Ethan; he had short, thinning black hair that lay flat against his head and a slowly pulsing blue tattoo peeked out from under the left sleeve of his flight suit. Ithicus also had a haggard, well-lined face which Ethan estimated made the man about five years his junior—though Ethan had to remember that his holoskin was actually projecting the image of a twenty-one-year-old. Ithicus had a square jaw, a crooked nose, and an angry gleam in his honey brown eyes. The man was obviously mean-tempered and he’d had his nose broken at least once, which couldn’t have been an easy feat for a man his size.
“Losing my touch?” Ethan repeated with an accompanying snort. “Not likely.”
“You almost got nailed by friendly fire, and you kept drifting out of formation. You forget how to fly or something?”
Ethan gritted his teeth. He’d only had a couple hours in the cockpit of a nova, and he was still getting used to the controls—the sensitivity, the idiosyncrasies of his particular fighter, and the raw, barely-contained power of a high-performance fighter versus his old sluggish Atton. The difference with his transport was that every maneuver had had to be exaggerated, but with a nova, just the slightest twitch of the controls could send him into an end over end spin. It was definitely an adjustment. Of course, he couldn’t say any of that.
Ethan shrugged. “Guess I’m just tired, brua.” Brondi’s dossier on Adan had contained a list of more juvenile vocabulary for Ethan to work into his regular speech. He hoped it didn’t sound as strange to those who knew Adan as it sounded to him.
Guardian Three smirked and looked away.
An automated voice sounded inside the rail car. “Coming up on, Pilots’ Center.”
Gina rose from her seat to grab hold of one of the vertical bars which ran down the center of the rail car. Ithicus rose, too, and Ethan groaned as he levered himself out of his chair. His muscles were cramping from having been cooped up in a nova cockpit for so long.
Gina looked him up and down and smiled. “You all right there, old timer?”
“Just fine, thanks.”
The rail car slowed to a stop, and Ithicus nodded to the doors. “Let’s go.”
They spilled out into a broad corridor with subdued blue and white glow panels and shiny gray and black walls. Broad silver and gray pipes were tucked up against the ceiling and running down the center of the corridor. These were electrical conduits, water, sewage, and air ducts. Aboard fleet ships no one bothered to hide things away for aesthetics’ sake.
The corridor was for the most part deserted, except for a janitor bot up ahead, polishing the floors with a monotonous whirring sound. They passed countless bulkheads and doors, all of which were labeled with black plates that glowed with bright blue descriptions: numbered simulator rooms, the officers’ mess, a rec hall called “The Basement,” which was roaring with a muffled ruckus from the men and women inside, and then came training rooms and lecture halls, followed by offices labeled with the names an
d ranks of various commanders to whom they belonged. The transpiranium panels in the doors of those offices and training rooms were all dark, all but one, whose golden light spilled weakly into the corridor. It was here that Guardian Three led them. The glowing door sign read, Lieutenant Commander Rangel. Guardian Three stopped to rap smartly on the door, and it opened automatically to let them in.
They piled into the small office beyond the door and stepped up to a shiny white desk as the door swished shut behind them. Sitting behind that desk was a small man with an angular face and an intense blue gaze. Absent from that gaze was the usual spark of warmth which betrayed a person’s humanity. He was clothed in the typical black with white trim uniform of the fleet. The rank insignia on the upper left sleeve of his uniform was the characteristic gold chevron of a lieutenant commander with a silver nova fighter in the middle. Behind the commander was a broad viewport which showed a dawning blue-white slice of the planet Firea far below.
Guardian Three, Ithicus Adari, stopped in front of the commander’s desk and saluted. Ethan and Gina gave their own salutes, to which the commander nodded and said, “At ease. Report.”
Ithicus spoke first: “Four pirates jumped us at the Chorlis-Firean gate while we were waiting for repair crews to check out the gate’s comm relay. The array was riddled with holes from ripper cannons. The pirates were armed with the same. It’s a fair bet they took out the array. The pirates had established a temporary base on one of the asteroids in the Firebelt Nebula, no doubt to stand by and wait for one of our convoys. They must have taken out the comm array so we’d be deaf to hear any distress calls. Adan joined us at the start of the fight, and we managed to destroy two of the enemy fighters and clip another one before they ran. The pirates’ base was rudimentary, but sentinels recovered a small amount of useful equipment and supplies before demolishing it.”
The commander frowned and began rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Good. Any signs of the pirates’ affiliation?”
Ithicus shook his head. “They covered their tracks well.”
“Hmmm. We’ll have investigators look over the confiscated material for clues. Dismissed,” the commander said with a wave of his hand. They began turning to leave, but Vance shook his head and pointed at Ethan. “Not you.” Ethan stopped and turned back to the commander’s desk.
Once the others had left, the commander raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. Taking that as his cue, Ethan spoke up. “I was on my way back to the Valiant when I stumbled on Guardians Three and Four. They were already under attack, so I joined the fight. The rest is as Three already said.”
The commander shook his head. “I’m not interested in any of that. I want to know what happened to your mission and why you’re back here without your wingman.”
“My mission was a fair success, sir.”
The commander’s ice blue eyes narrowed. “So you tracked down Lieutenant Gerbrand’s killer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he’s dead?”
“Not exactly. The killer is a bounty hunter named Verlin.”
The commander waved his hand impatiently. “One of many aliases. I already know that; we sent you on this mission with that information. What else did you find out?”
“He’s working for Brondi.” That wasn’t actually a part of Ethan’s cover story, but it was true, and it would help maintain his cover better than the lame excuse he’d been given. Moreover, he gained some small personal satisfaction from selling Brondi down the river.
“Brondi, hmmm? Not too surprising. Well, then what are you doing back so soon? Your mission isn’t over.”
“I was unable to pursue the bounty hunter further. He retreated aboard Alec Brondi’s corvette, and I felt it would be better not to follow him without backup. I tried to comm the Valiant for further orders, but the comms weren’t getting through.” Ethan went on, “When I realized the commnet must be down, I went back to the rendezvous with Six, but his fuel lines were jammed, so I left him on Forliss Station to make repairs while I came back here to refuel and report.” In reality, Six was also dead, also killed by Verlin.
“Interesting.” Vance steepled his fingers under his chin, and his angular features grew even more vulturine as he contemplated the news. “Well, I’ll file your report, and we’ll see what command has to say, but if all of that is true, and Brondi has taken to openly opposing the fleet, he’s going to be in for more trouble than he’s bargained for.”
“Yes, sir. May I be dismissed now, Commander?”
“Of course. You sound like you could use some downtime. Your voice is a little strange.”
“Strange, sir?” Ethan asked.
Vance nodded. “Like you’re hoarse. You sure you’re not coming down with something?”
Ethan hesitated before shaking his head. “Not that I’m aware of, sir. I must just be tired.”
“Well, barring any emergencies, I’m taking you off active duty until Six returns with his report, so go get some rest. We don’t need you making the other pilots sick. Dismissed.”
Ethan nodded and turned to leave the commander’s office. He let out a long sigh as the door swished shut behind him. Damn you, Brondi, with all your millions of sols, you couldn’t afford to get me a better vocal synthesizer? My voice is a little strange? That can’t be good. He would just have to speak as little as possible until his mission was over.
Ethan walked down the corridor to the rail car tunnel at the end, punched the summon car button, and waited for the next car to arrive. He needed to retreat to his quarters for a vaccucleanse and to formulate a plan to sabotage the Valiant. Ethan watched as the control panel beside the doors to the rail tunnel ticked down the ETA for the next car. After a moment of idle contemplation, he realized that he didn’t even know where his quarters were, so he pulled the mission data card Brondi had given him out of his pocket and slotted it into the input just behind his right ear to examine the contents of the card more privately than a holo reader would allow. That implant had come in handy over the years. It was essentially a small computer which fed data straight to his brain.
As he searched the document, Ethan heard someone shout out behind him, “Hey, Skidmark, aren’t you going to let me buy you that drink?”
Ethan mentally closed his link to the data card and turned to face Gina. She walked up to him with a sarcastic smile. “I like to pay my debts. Who knows, maybe I’ll even give you tips to help you lure some unsuspecting sclut to your quarters for the night.”
“Really? You’d do that for me? I’m touched, Gina.”
Her expression became exasperated and she stopped a half a dozen feet away from him. “No, you depraved pervert. Just a drink. Come on.” Not bothering to insist further, she turned on her heel and walked back the way she’d come.
Ethan hesitated, considering her offer for a moment before deciding to follow her. He broke into a light jog to catch up, and then he flashed Gina a winning smile. She rolled her eyes and looked away.
He supposed it couldn’t hurt to mingle a bit. After all, he’d need to gather some information about the Valiant in order to properly sabotage it. The people to talk to in order to glean that information would almost certainly be pilots and engineers, all of whom he would find inside the ship’s rec halls.
They reached the rec hall they’d passed earlier called “The Basement,” and Ethan stepped up to the control panel to key the door open. The door swished aside to reveal a large, darkly-lit room with a ceiling full of uncovered pipes. The walls were filled with floor to ceiling holoscreens and dark gray furniture was arrayed before them. Small knots of pilots were lounging there, drinking and playing games. A long, elliptical bar counter stood in the center of the room, and on the other side of that, Ethan glimpsed a padded arena where a group of pilots were busy battling each other with small, remote-controlled assault mechs while dozens of others looked on and cheered for their favorites to win. Ethan followed Gina up to the bar, and they sat down together.
Gina r
aised a hand to call the bartender over. “Egrit!” The bartender turned and nodded to her. He was a scary-looking man with a bald head, multiple glowing blue and red tattoos on his arms and face, and a few spiky subcutaneous piercings in his knuckles. Ethan felt like he’d met a dozen men just like Egrit during his time on Etaris.
“Yea?” Egrit asked.
“Two black mavericks,” Gina said, and offered her upturned wrist to the man. He grabbed her wrist none too gently and passed a wand over it before turning to a cooler behind him and pulling out two frosty transpiranium bottles filled with bubbling black beer. Black mavericks were brewed from heavily fermented Forlissan Black Grass and Chorlisean Wheat. The result was a meal in a bottle that could knock you out cold if you weren’t used to it. Ethan wondered that they were even allowed to serve such potent drinks to pilots, but he supposed that they weren’t on the active duty roster, so it didn’t matter much.
Gina raised her beer and held it out to Ethan for a toast. “To another day among the living.”
Ethan raised his own beer and clinked his bottle with hers. “To not being dead,” he replied and took a sip of his Maverick. He reveled in the strong, bittersweet flavor of the beer. It had been a long time since he’d had the sols to afford more than water. When he set his beer down, he noticed that Gina hadn’t taken a sip of hers yet. She was frozen with the bottle halfway to her lips, staring at him with eyebrows raised and a look of utter perplexity on her face.
“What?” Ethan asked.
She nodded to his left hand which was still clamped around his bottle of beer. “Since when do you wear a wedding ring, Adan?”
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