“Frek,” Gina whispered. “Brondi beat us here. . . .”
Delayn looked up and nodded mutely; then Caldin exclaimed, “You what?! Ten to one that’s not a vaccine, Captain!” All three of them turned to listen in on Caldin’s comm call. Alara watched the commander begin shaking her head. “So you knew they were here?”
Alara frowned, watching as Caldin’s brow grew ever more-lined, and her eyes narrowed by degrees.
“I see,” was all Caldin said. “Well, thank you for being so honest. Goodbye, sir.” Caldin’s jaw muscles clenched as she closed the comm.
“What is it?” Alara asked. “What did he say?”
“He said that the Valiant arrived a few days ago. They claimed to have fled Dark Space after an outlaw fleet attacked them with a bioweapon and tried to steal their ship.”
“Motherfrekker . . .” Gina said.
“Yes, he is,” Caldin replied.
Delayn’s jaw dropped. “Brondi’s using our own story against us! How can he get away with that? We have the overlord, not him.”
Caldin snorted. “No, we don’t. Our overlord is an imposter, and apparently when the Valiant made contact, the one who contacted them was, to all appearances anyway, Overlord Dominic.”
“Where in the nethers did they find another holoskin of the overlord?” Delayn asked.
Caldin shrugged. “Maybe the same place as the first. Brondi had to have infiltrated the Valiant somehow.”
Delayn gaped at her. “By replacing the overlord with a holoskinner?”
“Maybe, but how he did it doesn’t matter right now. The fact is, our stories contradict each other, and there’s some reasonable doubt about who is who.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Alara said. “It’s obvious we’re with the fleet!”
“Is it?” Caldin turned to her. “If two Imperial vessels came to you, each of them with the same story—claiming to have been attacked by outlaws and then chased out of Dark Space—would you believe the ones who admitted to having an imposter overlord aboard, or the ones who knew nothing about the imposter, the ones who actually appear to have the real overlord. Add to that the fact that the Valiant is Overlord Dominic’s flagship, and he’s right where you’d expect to find him, and our position gets even weaker. It’s hard to believe that a ragtag fleet of outlaws could steal the biggest, strongest ship in the fleet.”
Delayn winced. “We grew complacent. That never should have happened.”
“No, it shouldn’t have, but we weren’t expecting our own race to turn on us when the galaxy is seething with aliens bent on human extinction.”
“So where does that leave us?” Delayn asked, gesturing out the forward viewport to the huddled masses below.
“Until our prisoners can be probed, we’re under as much suspicion as they are,” Caldin replied.
Alara shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“It gets worse,” Caldin went on. “Apparently Brondi gave them the vaccine for his virus.”
“Why would he do that?” Alara asked.
“He wouldn’t. I’m sure the vaccine is contaminated. He must be trying to spread his virus to the admiral’s ships, too.”
“That will never work,” Delayn said.
“Not now that there’s a reason to doubt his story and double check that vaccine, but before . . .” Caldin shook her head. “It all depends how cautious Admiral Heston is.”
Gina nodded out the viewport. “I’d say he’s too cautious for his own good. He’s imprisoning his friends and letting his enemies run free.”
“Wait a minute—” Delayn put in. “What about the Gors?”
“What about them? The admiral doesn’t trust them, either,” Caldin said.
“No, I mean, Tova and Roan—our Gors.” Delayn glanced over at Tova, but she didn’t react to the mention of her name. “I spoke with Tova before we left for Obsidian Station, and I had her tell her mate aboard the Valiant how to disable the carrier’s reactor and gravity for us. If they haven’t caught him yet, we could get him to sabotage the ship.”
Caldin’s eyes lit up. “You’re a genius, Delayn—Tova!” she waited for the alien to respond. Tova’s helmet turned almost imperceptibly toward them. “Try to contact your mate. Tell him we’re here, and we need his help.”
“I already contact him,” she said.
“What? Why didn’t you say something?”
“You are busy, so I listen and wait.”
Caldin gritted her teeth. “What’s Roan’s status?”
“He is well.”
“Good. Great. Ask him if he remembers how to sabotage the carrier like we told him to.”
They waited for a tense minute before Tova spoke again. “He is there. He says he already does what you ask.”
Alara frowned, trying to understand the Gors’ strange grammar. They had a habit of speaking in the present tense for everything. “You mean he has already sabotaged the ship?” she asked.
“The ship is damaged.”
“Do they have power?” Caldin asked.
“They do not.”
“Good! Thank you, Tova. Well—” Caldin sighed, turning back to Alara and Delayn. “Hopefully we’ve at least bought some time for the admiral to find out the truth.”
* * *
Admiral Heston stood waiting inside the arrival lounge of Fortress Station’s main hangar. The station was operated by the Fifth Fleet Remnant (FFR), not the ISSF, so it was a safe place to receive the Interloper with its precious cargo.
The station was their staging point and rendezvous to coordinate joint operations with the ISSF. It lay on the far side of Ritan to hide it from any Sythian passersby on the space lane between Roka and Advistine, but Heston was less concerned that they’d be detected by passing Sythian ships than he was that the Imperium’s telepathic Gor “allies” on the surface of Ritan would start broadcasting their location to any Sythians close enough to hear.
The question of whether or not the Gors could be trusted was an even greater concern for Dark Space. That isolated sector was home to a large human remnant, and the overlord was relying on the Gors to be an early warning system in case the Sythians ever found them and came boiling into Dark Space with a fleet of cloaked ships. That early warning system wouldn’t have been necessary if they’d had the sense to stay hidden. Now they could detect cloaked Sythian warships, but only if the Gors deigned to tell them the enemy was coming. That placed far too much power in the Gors’ hands for Heston’s liking. The overlord had left all of Dark Space at their mercy, and there was something badly off about them. They didn’t act like slaves—absent were the obeisant attitude and broken will that he would have expected from a race of slaves. For all anyone really knew, the Gors were their own masters and the Sythians didn’t exist. Where was any proof to the contrary? One would think a slave ship full of Gors would have at least one Sythian taskmaster to keep them in line, but no, the Sythians were supposedly all hiding on gigantic command ships which stayed cloaked behind the lines, directing battles from a distance.
The only Sythian anyone had ever seen was High Lord Kaon of the Sythian First Fleet, and as for their command control ships—the 30-kilometer-long behemoth-class cruisers—those had never even been glimpsed by human eyes. Images of them came straight from the Gors.
It was all too circular for Heston’s liking. Everything began and ended with the Gors, including Kaon. He had been captured and delivered to the overlord as a gesture of good will, a way to cement the alliance between humans and Gors, but Dominic had taken that bait far too easily. Heston had met Kaon on multiple occasions, and like the Gors, there was something suspicious about him. During the year that Kaon had been held captive at Obsidian Station, the alien had revealed precious little about anything—and not for want of torture or interrogation. Kaon could recite the Gors’ story well enough, but he shut right up when pressed on certain topics—like why the Sythians had invaded, or what they had against humanity.
Either Kaon was par
ticularly strong-willed, or else he only knew what he had been told. The overlord’s interrogators had cut off Kaon’s cranial fins, severed his tail, broken his webbed hands and feet—all of that and not a peep. Oh, he’d made plenty of noise, but he’d refused to answer the really important questions. He’d just become violent and incoherent.
Heston had asked the overlord to subject Kaon to a mind probe, but Overlord Dominic insisted that the risk outweighed the gain. Early probes of the Gors had killed them almost immediately, and Dominic assumed the same would be true of a Sythian. Kaon’s DNA was very closely related to theirs, which was an argument in favor of that theory, but careful study of Kaon’s cells had revealed that his body, although it seemed weaker than that of a Gor, was far more evolved, and distinctly stronger. While the Gors could theoretically live for about 60 years, Kaon’s oldest cells were already more than five hundred years old, and there was every indication that he could live for another five hundred.
Attempts to increase the longevity of humans through bioengineering and nanotech had eventually hit a wall at around 150 years. Beyond that, medical science and transplants could extend a human’s life by another 20 to 30 years, but no human had ever broken the bicentennial barrier. The idea that there was a sentient species which could live more than five times that long both excited Hoff’s interest and raised his suspicions. If humans and Sythians were roughly equal on the technological battle field, all cloaking devices aside, then how could Sythians be so far ahead on the evolutionary battlefield?
Hoff was eager to discover the truth. He had argued that Kaon could take a mind probe if his body was that strong, while Dominic had counter-argued that despite slow progress, they were still gleaning information from Kaon, and until that stopped, there was no point using a probe on him. No risk, no profit, Hoff thought with a tired smirk, but he was done pressing the point with the overlord.
A small, bright ellipse grew steadily larger as it flew toward the hazy blue shields of the hangar bay where he waited. A few minutes later, Hoff could make out the mirror-clear hull and the tear-dropped shape of the Interloper. They were two days late returning from their mission. Captain Adram had sent a scout back to explain the delay before he’d detoured to rescue the Defiant, but Hoff would have preferred if they’d come back to Ritan first. Their mission was far too important for them to take unnecessary risks.
Hoff sighed. There was nothing to do about it now—it was garbage out the airlock. He’d have to reprimand Captain Adram for it later. His comm piece trilled, interrupting his thoughts—Incoming call from Captain Cathrall of the Destine.
He touched his ear to answer. “Yes?”
“Admiral, we have a situation.”
“What’s wrong?” Hoff’s muscles tensed as he anticipated the worst.
“The Valiant has powered down, sir. They’re drifting toward Ritan, and they’re not responding to our hails.”
Heston frowned. That wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting to hear. “You’re telling me that the overlord is about to crash into his own training facility?”
“His current trajectory would put his landing more than a thousand klicks from the Isharian Flow, but if they do crash into the surface it will be an extinction level event. The academy might survive since it’s underground, but radioactive fallout will destroy the ecosystem on the surface.”
“No sign of what caused this sudden power failure? They weren’t attacked?”
“No, sir, not unless the attack came from within.”
“Perhaps the Gors have already bitten the hands that feed them. Keep trying to get the Valiant on the comms. Meanwhile, send a shuttle to investigate with a squad of mechs and engineers. Make sure the engineers are wearing hazmats and that they go through decontamination when they get back. Also, double check for Gor stowaways. We don’t need an outbreak of either that virus or the Gors on our fleet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will, sir.”
“Good. Heston out.” The admiral stood staring in silence once more, now watching as the Interloper sailed into the hangar. The thin blue membrane of static shields at the opening of the hangar shimmered as the cruiser passed through. Hoff shook his head, his thoughts still on the overlord’s predicament. He and Dominic might not have seen eye to eye about the Gors, but they were still technically on the same side. Humanity couldn’t afford to lose a ship like the Valiant.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” Hoff wondered. No sooner had he asked himself that question than his comm piece trilled once more—Incoming call from Captain Adram of the Interloper.
“Hello, Captain,” Hoff answered. “You’re back—finally.”
“Yes, we’ve just pulled into the hangar.”
“I know. I’m watching you come in. I assume your mission was a success?”
“It was, sir.”
“And the unscheduled rescue?” Hoff’s tone became testy.
“That’s why I’m calling you, sir. We have a political situation on board.”
“Political?” Heston’s grizzled eyebrows drooped toward his nose. “How so?”
“I have the overlord on board.”
“Last I checked the overlord was aboard the Valiant, Captain.”
“Yes, sir. He is.”
“Then?”
“The overlord we have on board is an imposter, sir—a holoskinner.”
Heston blinked, taken aback. “Well, well, that is interesting. . . . so the real overlord is still aboard the Valiant where he belongs?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. The crew we rescued has a very similar story to the one we heard from the Valiant, but in this version of events the Valiant didn’t escape; it was captured by the outlaws.”
“And we’re just going to take their word for that? Who’s the source of this information?”
“The commander of the ship, a Commander Loba Caldin.”
“Caldin . . . the name sounds familiar.”
“She commanded the overlord’s expedition to the Getties, sir. Back then she was Captain Caldin.”
“Ah . . . yes, now I remember. So she’s been demoted since then. What was the reason for her demotion?”
“From the files we downloaded from the Defiant, it seems that she was demoted for subjecting a Gor to a mind probe and killing him, sir.”
“A woman after my own heart.”
“Apart from that incident, she’s been a reliable officer. As for her story about the imposter—the rest of her crew supports it.”
“Very interesting. We’ll talk more about this when you come aboard, Captain.”
“Yes, sir—there’s one more thing, sir. We captured three more Sythian cruisers while conducting our rescue mission.”
Heston’s eyes widened. “All by yourselves? You were not authorized to take your ship into combat, Captain. . . .”
“They surrendered without a fight, sir.”
“Kind of them to do so. Did they realize they were surrendering to us rather than their ISSF allies?”
“As far as I can tell from talking to Tova, the Gor liaison from the Defiant, the Gors are aware of the political upheaval. They’re concerned that the Imperium is now leaderless and their alliance is in jeopardy. The unconditional surrender seems to be some kind of peace offering. She’s hoping we’ll consider joining the alliance.”
“I see, and what did you tell this Tova?”
“I told her we can’t promise anything, but it will be taken into consideration.”
“How very vague of you.” Heston smiled. “Good. What have you done with the ships and their Gor crews?”
“We left the ships and their crews with the Defiant. The Gors bailed out as usual, but we didn’t have room for them and I didn’t think you’d want me to bring them aboard, so we stowed them aboard the Defiant before we rescued her crew.”
“I assume you checked your ship for stowaways.”
“Yes, we’re clear. I’ve also isolated the human su
rvivors in our hangar bay.”
“Excellent. You were wise to be cautious. We don’t need to accidentally bring a band of outlaws aboard. I’ll tell Dominic’s forces here to go back for their ship and their allies. Rescuing Gors is an ISSF prerogative. Finish what you have to, Captain, and then come meet me in my office. Meanwhile, have our subject escorted to the probe rooms, and make sure no one sees him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll see you soon. Don’t keep me waiting. Heston out.”
The admiral stared out the viewports of the lounge a while longer, his gray eyes flicking over the smooth, mirror-clear hull of the Interloper.
The overlord a holoskinner . . . he thought wonderingly. And what about the other overlord aboard the Valiant? Is he the real Altarian Dominic? If not, then had the overlord always been a holoskinner? Was he one of them? In some ways it would make sense if he were. Heston had always suspected something about the old man. The curious part, however, was the holoskin. With some prior planning, there were more permanent ways of hiding.
He must have come to the position recently, Hoff decided.
Heston was going to have to be very careful about probing the imposter, just in case. It would make no sense for him to accidentally reveal the truth in a public trial. People can only handle the truth in small doses—give them too much and they’ll kill you.
Chapter 7
Ithicus awoke with a gasp, and his back arched involuntarily against the hard surface where he lay. Everything was dark. His arms and legs were secured. Ice began crawling through his veins, and he collapsed, shivering in the dark. Through the fog in his brain he could hear the steady whoosh of air cyclers, and the droning hum of superluminal space. The ice crawling through his veins reached his heart and he groaned as his chest began to ache and burn. Then the pain subsided, and his eyes drifted shut.
He saw a flash of light and heard a fast-dying roar as explosive bolts blasted his canopy away and his flight chair ejected into space. Then came a painful silence as he sailed through the vacuum. Ithicus gazed down on the flowering explosion that had been his wingmate, Guardian Four, and then he saw his own nova fighter go rocketing toward the odd dozen Sythian missiles which were still tracking it. Those spinning purple stars quickly reached his needle-nosed Mark II and provoked another brilliant flash of light and accompanying cloud of fire. The flames quickly faded from an angry red to a pale, translucent gold, and then they died all together as their fuel abruptly dissipated and ran out.
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