Dark Space- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Darling, I’m twenty years older than you. When my time comes, what will you do then?” Destra frowned uncertainly, and Hoff went on, “Will we each go our separate ways? Or would you still want to stay with me? Would you still want to be my wife? I’ll have a new body and a new face. I’ll be young and strong again.”

  “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. I’ll be an old woman. Would you still want to be with me?”

  Hoff smiled. “Marriage was never meant to outlive a man.”

  “Man was never meant to outlive himself,” Destra replied.

  “Touché. Now you see why you have to join me or forget.”

  Destra sighed. “I need more time to think.”

  “You’ll have it. I have to go. I’m locking the door on my way out, but I’ll be back.”

  “You still don’t trust me, do you?” she called after him.

  Hoff turned, walking backward down the hall. The light paintings cast his features in a strange, rainbow-colored light. “You did just betray my trust, Des. Not only did you discover what I was hiding, but you led Atton to it as well. Can you blame me for not trusting you?”

  Destra had no answer for that. Hoff turned back to the fore and disappeared around the corner. In his absence she wondered, Would it be so bad to live forever? Could she and Hoff really last together, forever? Her gaze found Atton, unconscious at her feet. A door swished open beside them, and Atta’s cherubic face popped out. She saw Atton and jumped back with a scream. “Mommy!”

  “It’s okay, Atta,” Destra said. “He’s just sleeping.”

  “Why is he sleeping in the hall?”

  “He was very tired, darling. Let’s go put him to bed.”

  For now, Destra had other things to worry about. Eternity could wait.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as the rest of the crew had finished watching the Interloper’s log recording, an abrupt silence fell across the bridge. No one went back to work at their stations, and no one said anything; they all looked to Caldin, as if expecting her to tell them what to do. Her gaze swept around the room and she nodded slowly.

  “This recording tells us two things. One, we are expendable—that is something we expect. Any officer is expendable in the line of duty, but this was not the line of duty. That brings us to the second thing we are to understand from this log recording—the admiral is no friend of the Imperium. Our job is to take back the Valiant from Alec Brondi, and that is what we will do, but what we do with her once we have her is another matter. Once she is under our command and Brondi is defeated, the admiral will have no choice but to accept our bid for independence.”

  Heads bobbed. No one voiced an objection to that. Out of the corner of her eye Caldin saw Adram smile. She turned to him with a warning look. “This is not an excuse for you or I to become the new supreme overlord.”

  He shook his head and his smile faded. “The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, Captain.”

  “Good. As soon as we have control of Dark Space, we’re going to hold elections for a proper body of representatives and they will appoint a new leader. Our command will be temporary. It’s time the Imperium had a legitimate government, not just the tattered remains of one.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Adram replied.

  “Ma’am! We have an incoming message from the Tauron. It’s the admiral,” the comm officer reported.

  “Put it on speaker, Grimbsy.”

  A moment later they heard Hoff Heston’s voice echo through the airy bridge. “We are ready to jump, Captain. Our tracking signal just came through the gate. It puts Brondi’s location at the edge of Dark Space, in the Firean System. Our plan is to drop out of SLS a quarter of a light year from there and have your ship jump the rest of the way to gather Intel. As soon as you know the number and position of the enemy, you will jump back and report. Then we’ll transfer an assault force to the Interloper and have you get as close to the Valiant as you can. Once you’ve had enough time to get in position, we’ll jump in with the Tauron and punch a hole through the Valiant’s shields for you. Coordinates have already been sent to your nav. Good luck, Captain Caldin. We’re all counting on you.”

  Caldin smiled. “Don’t, worry, we won’t let the Imperium down.”

  “Good. See you on the other side.”

  Caldin made a cutting gesture to her comm officer, and he killed the feed. A second later their view turned from the flashing gray clouds of the Stormcloud Nebula to the racing brightness of superluminal space.

  My loyalty is to the Imperium, she thought. Not to an admiral who turns on his own people.

  * * *

  The day passed slowly for Destra, her mind filled with conflicting thoughts and endless dread as she imagined living alone with Atta on some barely hospitable colony world. Her thoughts went from there to imagining eternal youth and immortality with Hoff, but every time she pictured that, she had to suppress a shiver.

  Atton woke up four hours after he’d been stunned, just in time for dinner. Hoff hadn’t joined them, but Destra made excuses for him, telling Atton and herself that he was probably just too busy on the bridge. The comms were disabled, so they couldn’t ask him. The truth was more likely that he no longer trusted her and Atton enough to be in the same room with them.

  Now they were in Atta’s room to put her to bed. She lay stroking Mr. Tibbins’ white fur, and singing softly, as if to put the stuffed diger to sleep. Tibbins was still Atta’s favorite of all her stuffed animals, just as another one like it had been Atton’s favorite. Destra sat on the bed beside Atta, while Atton stood leaning against the door jamb with his arms crossed and a frown on his face. Destra stroked her daughter’s hair while she stroked Tibbins’ fur.

  “I don’t want to leave,” Atta said suddenly.

  Destra frowned. “What are you talking about? Leave where?”

  Atta shrugged. “Anywhere. I heard you and Daddy talking.”

  “When?”

  “When you came in this morning. He said that if you wanted to leave, you could take me and go, and he wouldn’t stop you.” Atta looked up with bright gray eyes. “I don’t want to go, Mom. Daddy needs us.”

  Destra felt her resolve crumble as she looked into her daughter’s eyes, and suddenly she knew what she had to do, whether it was the right choice for her or not. “Don’t worry, darling. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Good. Tibbins doesn’t want to go either.”

  Destra smiled. “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  After they’d put Atta to bed, Atton and Destra sat in the living room, talking quietly.

  “Would it be so bad to live forever?” Destra asked. “I could watch my grandchildren grow old and their children’s children, too.”

  “And what are you planning to tell them about that? They’ll have to know, too, and you know what that means.”

  Destra frowned. “So what if they did know? I don’t understand why Hoff’s so afraid to tell people. They don’t all have to become like him. They just have to respect each other’s differences.”

  “No, Hoff’s right about one thing. Not everyone will accept his way of life. It raises too many uncomfortable questions about our existence, and what exactly it means to be human—not to mention the societal implications, which are immense. According to the admiral, we’ve already fought one war over this, and I can see why. If we’re not careful; there’ll be another.”

  “Why? Why can’t people just let each other be?” Destra asked. “It’s not as though cloning yourself hurts anyone.”

  “Assuming the clones are raised without any awareness, no one is directly harmed, no, but in a society like that, only the clones would actually be able to compete. Anyone who refused that way of life would be so far behind that they could never catch up in just one lifetime.”

  “So why not implant everyone? Give them all the knowledge they need without having to learn.”

  “Our brains don’t work well that way, and we already do that t
o some extent. People buy skills all the time, but it only ever makes them second-stringers at what they do. At the end of the day, you still need the real experience, and I suspect that’s the difference. Hoff’s experience is real.”

  “There are solutions, Atton, and if not we’ll find them.”

  Atton shrugged. “Maybe we already found those solutions a long time ago, but there’s one thing you can’t fix—what about children? Even if only a small percentage of each new generation decides to become immortal, that’s still an infinite growth curve—unless you tell the clones not to have children and limit everyone else to a quota.”

  “I don’t know, Atton. Those concerns are a long way away. For now, our species could use a faster growth rate. We’re almost extinct. It could be exactly what we need right now.”

  Atton sighed. “Well, you’re right about one thing, we don’t have to solve all of those problems now. We’re not deciding whether or not to let everyone in on Hoff’s secret, we just have to decide whether or not we want to be a part of it.”

  “Do you?” Destra asked, her eyes searching his carefully.

  “Just so we’re clear, this is not a way to be immortal—it’s just a way to copy our society from one generation to the next—and that could be either very good, or very bad. So you’re asking me if I want a copy of myself to live on. I’m not sure I’m that narcissistic.”

  “What if cloning yourself doesn’t create two separate instances of the same person, what if it just creates two windows into the same soul?”

  Atton smiled. “There’s an argument that could go on forever.”

  “There’s only one way it can . . .” Destra let that thought hang between them for a long moment before she added, “It would be nice to have the time to get to know the son I had to abandon.”

  “I’d like that, too.”

  “But?”

  “Why are you suddenly in favor of this?”

  “I have a family to think about—not just myself—and if becoming a clone is what it takes to keep that family together, then I’ll do it. Hoff is not perfect by any standard, Atton, but he loves us, and I have a feeling his one fatal flaw will vanish if I do decide to join him. Maybe I’ll be the first woman who ever has.”

  “You have no way of knowing that.”

  “No, I don’t, but even if I’m not the first, I can make sure I’m the last.”

  Atton smiled. “I had no idea you were such a romantic.”

  Destra smiled back. “Ask your father sometime about how we met.”

  “I will. I guess you don’t want to get back together with him then—with Ethan.”

  “He and I spent more time apart than we did together, and under circumstances which changed us both dramatically. We grew into different people, and if things had been different, maybe we’d still be together—happily married—but you can’t live in the past. You have to let it be and move on.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “So tell me—what are you going to do?”

  Atton shook his head. “I still need time to think. Maybe I’ll choose to forget and you can remind me about all of this existential krak when I’m older.”

  “There’s a lot that can kill you besides old age, Atton.”

  “I’ll die either way.”

  “But your clone will never know the difference, and he’ll be grateful that you gave him the chance to live. At least if some future version of me grows bored of it, I can always opt out,” Destra said.

  Atton nodded. “And I can always opt in.”

  * * *

  Caldin stood on the bridge, her eyes locked on the reversion timer as it reached sixty seconds. It was the middle of the night cycle, but everyone was ready at their stations now. Caldin had ordered her crew to rotate out for a few hours’ sleep, but she doubted anyone had actually managed to sleep in the alien environment. Caldin shuddered to think about what passed for sleeping quarters aboard the Gor cruiser. She hadn’t even gone to look. Even if she’d been back aboard the Defiant, sleep would have kept its distance from her tonight. There was too much on her mind. Instead she’d stayed up, watching superluminal space whirl brightly around the simulated-transparent bridge dome, her thoughts whirling with it. Every now and then, her gaze would flick up to see the mighty keel and prow of the Tauron, stretching out almost endlessly above them with bristling cannons and glowing viewports. It was an intimidating view, and it made her wonder about what was coming. She imagined that mighty battleship floating through her mind’s eye—blackened and broken, shot through with holes, a forgotten derelict from an old and senseless power struggle.

  Was she making the right choice? What if the admiral really had destroyed Obsidian Station for the common good? She had no way of knowing whether or not capturing Kaon had been worth the sacrifice. Would she have made the same choice in his position? Would Admiral Heston agree to a peaceful resolution and allow a new leader to be appointed in Dark Space, or would he insist on taking command of the sector himself?

  Would it even come to a fight?

  Caldin’s gaze turned to Adram, standing beside her at the captain’s table, hands clasped behind his back, head up and eyes staring out at space. He’d stayed up, too, keeping her company while the others had come and gone, taking their shifts to watch over the bridge. She wondered about him, about his motives. Was he looking out for the Imperium’s interests and those of humanity, or for his own? Could she trust the log recording she’d seen, or was it a fake?

  The timer reached zero, and whirling streaks of light turned to static stars and pale wisps of nebular clouds. Here the Stormcloud Nebula was thin and did nothing to blot out the stars. After so long spent staring at the dizzying swirl of SLS, Caldin had trouble focusing on the static backdrop.

  “Jump successful,” Delayn said. “All systems green.”

  Caldin nodded. Comms reported another message from the Tauron, but it was little more than a repetition of what the admiral had said before. They were now a quarter of a light year from Brondi’s position—assuming the crime lord hadn’t moved since they’d received a signal from the imposter overlord’s tracking device. Now they were to jump the rest of the way and perform a recon of the area. With the Interloper’s cloaking device, recon wouldn’t be a difficult mission for them.

  “Undock us,” Caldin ordered.

  The temporary docking rings which held them to the Tauron let go, and they drifted away at a modest 45 KAPS—roughly equivalent to 45 meters per second, per second. The nav officer brought them onto their pre-assigned jump trajectory and accelerated up to 999 m/s, the safe-entry speed limit for SLS. Cloaking was engaged, shields were deactivated, and then their real space drives were shut down. The nav officer began an audible countdown to SLS. When it reached zero, space flashed brightly and began to swirl once more.

  A timer appeared on the captain’s table, giving their ETA. It counted down from an hour and a half. Caldin spent that time the same way that she’d spent the last six hours—lost in thought, observing an acute, ear-ringing silence. Her men were also unusually quiet, focused on the mission, or perhaps apprehensive about what they would find. Then space was back, and Caldin’s gaze dropped to the captain’s table to see what Brondi had prepared for them.

  She gaped and blinked at the grid, suddenly no longer worried about what Hoff’s reaction would be to their coup d’état, and instead worried whether or not they’d live long enough to assert their independence.

  “Gravidar! Report! How many ships are we looking at? What class are they and what are their relative strengths—I want a tally!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the gravidar officer replied.

  A moment later, the report she’d requested flashed up above the captain’s table. As she scanned the shimmering, holographic list of ships in the area, her worst fears were quickly realized. “The admiral will have to abort this mission,” she said.

  “If you think he’s going to run, you don’t know him,” Adram replied.

/>   “He doesn’t have a choice.” Caldin pointed to the tally of 46 SLS interrupter buoys which their scanners had detected. When her finger graced that line of the report, the buoys were highlighted on the grid, and a geodesic sphere made up of scattered red points appeared around the Valiant. The radius of the sphere meant those buoys would pull them out of SLS more than 250 klicks from the carrier, far out of maximum beam range. As if that weren’t bad enough, Brondi had laid minefields in front of the interrupter buoys, and set everything up just before the exit gate along the jump lane leading from the entrance of Dark Space. If the admiral had been naïve enough to use the jump lane, they would have been yanked out of SLS straight into the middle of those mines. And just in case they survived that, Brondi had more than 500 fighters to swarm all over them and finish the job.

  “At least we know the layout of Brondi’s defenses now, so we can avoid the mines and find a way through,” Adram said.

  Caldin shook her head. “There is no way through. We have to drop out of SLS far out of range and slow down to clear the mines or find a safe path through. Even if we get through unscathed, the admiral’s hit and fade won’t work. He’ll be trapped by the minefields on the other side of the Valiant and swarmed to death by enemy fighters.”

  “I guess we’d better leave Dark Space to Brondi, and deal with Hoff ourselves at some later date.”

  “We can’t do that either.”

  Adram gave her a small smile. “Leave it to the admiral, Captain. He might not be morally equipped to lead, but his grasp of strategy leaves nothing to be desired. I’ve never seen him come out on the losing side of a battle yet, but after this one, he’ll be in no shape to deal with us.”

  Caldin held Adram’s gaze for a long moment. His dark eyes shone with an unsettling light, and that small, predatory smile of his was enough to make her shiver. Caldin wasn’t sure what Adram’s real agenda was, but she knew one thing for certain—

  He was not to be trusted.