“We hide until you or your mate tell us it is safe to reveal ourselves.”
“Good. I’m sending your créche mates aboard the Valiant to board the Baroness and leave while they still can, but as for the rest of your people currently serving aboard our ships and throughout Dark Space, they’ll have to cloak and hide until we can find some way to rescue them. Make sure they don’t reveal themselves unless forced to do so. The Sythians will kill any Gors they find.”
Roan bowed his head. “As you command, My Lord.”
Hoff quirked an eyebrow at that, but decided not to question the honorific. If the Gors began to respect him as their leader, so much the better. “One last thing—I need at least one Gor you can trust to stay aboard the Baroness and facilitate human-Gor relations. Someone who can serve in an advisory role to my staff.”
Roan nodded. “I send my créchling.”
Hoff was surprised to hear that Roan had a child, but there was no time to inquire about it. “Good. Have him board the Baroness and wait. My wife and daughter will be aboard soon. They will depart the Valiant before we officially surrender.”
“I tell him.”
Hoff nodded and they left the operations center together.
By the time Hoff reached the auxiliary bridge, he found most of his crew already seated at the appropriate control stations. Here the viewports were simulated rather than real, but otherwise the auxiliary bridge was just a slightly smaller version of the real one. Hoff walked up to his XO, Deck Commander Akra, where she stood leaning over the captain’s table. When he appeared beside her, she turned to him with a grim smile and gave a quick salute.
“Admiral,” she said.
“Commander, you may take your seat at the helm. We’re moving out.”
“Yes, sir. Where to?”
“Set a waypoint as far from the Gors as we can possibly get within the next 20 minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, already on her way down the stairs from the gangway and the captain’s table. Hoff turned to his comm officer. “Lieutenant Hanz, contact the rest of our fleet with the coordinates the commander sets for us, and then get me an audience with the Sythians.”
“Yes, sir . . .” Hanz let his voice trail off curiously. Hoff knew what Hanz had left unsaid. He wanted to know the plan to deal with the Sythian threat. All of Dark Space wanted to know that, but they would have to wait. Hoff could only imagine the scale of the riots which would erupt when the citizens of Dark Space realized that he had surrendered to the Sythians.
Just five minutes later Lieutenant Hanz turned to look up at Hoff and nodded. “Connection established with the Sythian command ship,” he said. “Transmitting in three . . . two . . .”
The main viewport shimmered and then stars and space were replaced with the pale gray face of High Lord Shondar. The Sythian bared his sharp, glistening black teeth in an ugly imitation of a smile. “I see your fleet leaving the Gorz. Doesss this mean we have a deal?” Shondar hissed.
“It does,” Hoff replied. Everyone on the bridge abruptly stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at their leader with looks ranging the gamut from astonishment to outrage. Deck Commander Akra rose to her feet and turned to glower at him, but to her credit she said nothing.
Shondar’s ugly smile grew so wide that his sallow cheeks nearly disappeared. “You are wise, Admiral.”
“I have terms. My people will not be harmed.”
Shondar blinked his glowing white eyes. “We agree not to harm them. What else?”
“You will allow us to maintain our sovereignty.”
Shondar made a sissing sound which was probably laughter. “Too much. No.”
“Fine.” Hoff had known that was a long shot. “It is enough if you agree not to harm us.”
“I like a reasonable human.”
“Go get your slaves. We will not stop you.”
“Nor could you. We sssee you ssoon,” Shondar hissed. With that, the transmission ended, and Hoff turned from the viewscreen to answer his crew’s collective outrage and fear. He couldn’t tell them his real plan. In fact, he couldn’t even allow himself to remember it, and soon he wouldn’t be able to. It was not safe for them to know there was still hope, so Hoff chose to reinforce the appearance that there was none.
“How could you, sir?” Commander Akra demanded, her pale blue eyes searching his face with the stubborn hope that perhaps he had just lied to the Sythians.
Hoff met her searching gaze. “In war, it is not wise to give a superior foe an excuse to kill you. You beg him for mercy and hope you find some.” Turning from her to address the rest of his crew, he said, “We are all at the Sythians’ mercy, as we have been since they came to our galaxy. I understand if you hate me for this, but the chance of survival is always better than the certainty of defeat. Lieutenant Hanz, set condition green, and tell all of our forces to stand down.”
“Yes—” The comm officer was interrupted before he could finish acknowledging the order. “Incoming transmission! It’s from the Sythians.”
“Sir!” The gravidar officer called out. “The Gors have just disappeared from our scopes. They’ve cloaked!”
Hoff had to suppress the urge to smile. “Put the Sythians back on screen, Lieutenant.”
The main viewport shimmered once more, and Shondar was back. “What are you doing, human? You said we could have the Gors.”
Hoff shook his head. “I said we wouldn’t stop you from going to get them.”
“Then why are they cloaking?”
“To hide from you, I would assume.”
Shondar hissed. “You warned them!”
“Anyone with one iota of sense could see your intentions toward them—and ours for that matter, when we left them all alone. But I don’t see what your problem is, Shondar. Why don’t you just use your own Gors to locate them for you?”
Shondar’s glowing white eyes narrowed. “We do not have Gors.”
“Oh, yes . . .” Hoff feigned a look of dismay. “It’s unfortunate you decided to kill all of your slaves.”
“Yesss,” Shondar hissed. “Very unfortunate. Have your fleet arrest its momentum and prepare for boarding.”
Hoff nodded and bowed his head. “Of course. It will be done, My Lord.”
The transmission ended, and they saw stars and space once more. “Lieutenant Hanz,” Hoff began in a worlds-weary voice. “Have our ships stop where they are and lower their shields.” He turned and started from the bridge. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my quarters.”
“Yes, sir . . .” Hanz replied in a small voice.
Deck Commander Akra caught up to him just as the doors of the auxiliary bridge swished open for him. She caught him by the arm and spun him to face her. He studied her usually kind honey-brown features, now twisted up in contempt, and met her accusing eyes with a defeated look. “Yes, Commander?”
“You are a fool and a coward,” she spat.
Hoff nodded, pretending to accept that. Without offering so much as a word in his defense, he continued on his way, heading not for his quarters, but for the med bay where Doctor Elder was standing by with a mind probe to alter his memories. When he judged that he was out of earshot of the commander, Hoff placed a hand to his ear and put a comm call through to his wife.
She answered a moment later. “Hoff, what’s going on? I heard we surrendered; please tell me that’s not true. . . .”
“Destra, I’ll explain everything in a minute,” Hoff whispered. “I need you to meet me in the med bay. Ask for Doctor Elder, and explain that I sent you. We don’t have much time, so hurry.”
“Okay . . . what about Atta?”
“Bring her, Des. You’re both leaving the Valiant before the Sythians get here.”
“They’re coming aboard?”
“They’re already on their way.”
“I hope you know what you’ve done, Hoff.”
“So do I, Des. I’ll see you soon.”
Chapter 10
Destra Hesto
n stood in the med bay, watching as her husband sat down in the probe chair. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “There has to be another way. This is too dangerous.”
Hoff shook his head. “There is no other way, Des.”
“Mind probes kill people, Hoff.”
“So do Sythians.”
“Yes, but . . .” Destra turned to the doctor with a helpless look. “Tell him to stop this!”
The doctor didn’t even turn from his probe control console. “What the admiral wants to do is quite safe, and he is right, ma’am. If the Sythians are after what’s in his head, the only way to stop them from getting it is to erase what’s there or alter it.”
“And what happens when they find out you’ve sent them on a wild rictan hunt?” Destra demanded, rounding angrily on her husband. “They’ll kill you.”
Hoff shrugged. “I’m going to alter the location of Avilon to a point in the middle of the Devlins’ Hand Nebula, halfway between our galaxy and theirs. By the time they get back to report that I gave them the wrong coordinates, help will have arrived from Avilon.”
“And if not?”
“Then we are all dead anyway.”
“What about Atton? You won’t be able to send a rescue for him if something happens. You won’t even know where he is anymore!”
“I won’t even know about the mission. I’ll have to erase any memory of my having sent it in order to prevent the Sythians from seeing through our surrender. But it won’t matter whether or not I can send help. If Atton doesn’t return, it will be because the immortals refused to let him leave, and that can only mean that they have decided not to help us. In that case, Atton will be the only mortal human in the galaxy who doesn’t need helping.”
“So let’s all leave! Evacuate as many as possible and then run before the Sythians get tired of playing nice with us and finish what they started. From what you’ve told me, Avilon will be much safer than Dark Space.”
“And what happens when we get to Avilon and the Avilonians decide that we’re not good enough for them?”
Destra’s eyes narrowed sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Immortals don’t think like us, Des. If you are not perfect—if you don’t fit their mould—then you are not worthy to live among them. If they refuse to send us back where we came from for fear that we could reveal their location to the Sythians, and they refuse to let us live among them, then what other option is there?”
“Are you saying they’ll execute us?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Do you really want to find out?”
Destra’s hands began to shake and they balled into white-knuckled fists. “You sent Atton there, knowing that he could be in real danger!”
“Atton is in no danger. One of the reasons I sent him, rather than someone else, is because the boy is young and innocent enough to adapt to the Avilonians’ rules if he has to. He will be fine. At worst he will make a new life for himself there, and I’m sure he will be happy for many thousands of years to come.” Hoff reached into his pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized rectangular wafer, a holo card. “Put this somewhere only you can find it.”
“What is it?”
“The real location of Avilon.” Destra accepted the card with a frown, and Hoff went on, “After this procedure, you’ll be the only one besides Atton who knows where it is.”
Destra turned to stare at the back of Doctor Elder’s head while he prepared the mind probe. “What about him?”
“Yes, and him. I’ve given Stevon another set of the coordinates, recorded on a micro dot in a suicide tooth. If he’s captured before he has a chance to destroy the coordinates, he’ll kill himself to keep them hidden.”
“Stevon, huh? You and the doctor must go way back if you trust him enough to have a copy of Avilon’s location.”
“He is one of the few besides Donali who knew about me, so yes, I trust him. He will be the only one on board who knows what he did to me, and he’ll be the only one who can help me find Avilon if I’m forced to flee. He’ll be my lifeline after this procedure.”
Destra gave a wry smile and raised her voice to address the doctor, “You won’t be tempted to flee to Avilon, Doctor?”
He turned from his console with a smile on his deeply-lined face. Rare magenta eyes stared unblinkingly back at her as he shook his head. “No.”
“He’s an Etherian,” Hoff explained. “That’s why I chose him.”
“A what?”
“It’s an old religion. It means he believes in the Immortals, Etherus, Etheria, the Netherworld . . . all of that, but he doesn’t believe the Avilonians are the real Immortals. He believes Lifelink implants are a cheap imitation of the immortal soul.”
“So . . .” Destra shook her head, uncomprehending.
“The immortals in Avilon are strict atheists. They believe religion is a force for evil, not for good, so they would never allow the doctor to join them. To them, he is evil incarnate.”
Doctor Elder snorted. “I dedicate my life to healing people and I’m evil incarnate.”
Hoff shrugged. “Paradise is only as good as the people who live in it. One way of elevating society is by trimming away all of the low-hanging branches that weigh us down.”
“That may be true, but how does religion weigh us down?”
“If you believe in an afterlife where you will live forever in paradise, why bother going to so much trouble to make a paradise here and live forever in it now? That’s a lot of work for nothing.”
“I suppose . . .”
“Moreover, the whole argument behind immortality via implants and clones is that consciousness can be transferred without losing anything in the process. If we have a soul which is our real essence, don’t we still lose that when we transfer from one body to another?”
Doctor Elder smiled. “Exactly.”
“Then you know where I’m going with this. It’s not so much that the Avilonians won’t accept you or the other Etherians, Doctor, it’s that they know you and others like you will never accept them, or their way of life. Even if you do for a time, eventually you will turn against them because of what you believe, and you may even try to destabilize their society in the process. It has happened in the past.”
Doctor Elder smiled. “Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t you tell me on the way here that you were one of these immortal clones, and that that is how you know of Avilon?”
“That is correct.”
Doctor Elder cocked his head suddenly to one side. “So doesn’t it bother you that you do not have a soul?”
“It might bother me, if I believed that such a thing exists.”
Destra looked on with a frown as they debated spiritual matters. She wasn’t sure what she believed, but she was a lot more worried about what the doctor was saying than Hoff. It meant that her husband had long ago made a deal with the Devlin and traded his soul for immortality in this life. Now, she had convinced him to give even that up, to disable his Lifelink implant and become a mortal man once more. That meant that even if there was an afterlife, she wasn’t going to see him in it.
“Enough philosophy,” Destra said, getting uncomfortable with the conversation.
“Yes,” Hoff agreed. “We’re running out of time. You may proceed when ready, Doctor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t do this, Hoff,” Destra pleaded one last time, watching as Doctor Elder stood up from the probe console with a wicked looking needle—an implanter.
Hoff met her eyes as the probe was injected into the base of his neck. “Hurry, Des. Take Atta and go to the Baroness. They have orders to leave as soon as you’re aboard. You’ll be running food to the Gors’ fleet, supporting them covertly until Atton comes back with reinforcements. I’m going to have the doctor erase my memory of what you are doing and where you are. All I’ll know is that you are someplace safe.”
Destra bit her lower lip and shook her head. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Atta? She’s in the waiting
room outside.”
Hoff shook his head. “There’s no time, and I don’t want her to worry. If she asks, tell her I’m going to get help so we can defeat the Sythians.”
Destra hesitated, still chewing her lower lip.
“We’re ready to begin, sir,” Doctor Elder said, already on his way back to the probe console.
Hoff caught her eye. “Destra, go!”
She snapped into motion, leaning over the chair to drop a quick kiss on her husband’s cheek. “I’ll be with you in your dreams, Hoff,” she whispered beside his ear.
“And I in yours,” he replied.
With that, she turned and ran from the room. On her way through the waiting room, she grabbed Atta’s hand and pulled her daughter along.
“Ouch!” Atta said, trying to wriggle free. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s busy, sweetheart.”
Atta stopped suddenly, just before the double doors of the med bay, causing Destra’s arm to snap painfully taut. “I want to see him!” she said.
Destra rounded on her daughter with flashing blue eyes. “We’ll see him later. Right now, we have to run, Atta. We have to hurry! Come on.”
“What’s going on?” Atta asked.
“The Sythians are coming,” Destra said without thinking, and promptly winced. She had hoped to spare her daughter from the ugly truth of what was happening.
But the truth worked better than any comforting lie—Atta shut right up, and she didn’t try to stop or turn around again.
* * *
Destra watched from the bridge of the Baroness as swarms of Sythian shuttle craft poured between the Sythian fleet and the human defenders in Dark Space. Not a shot was fired from either side, making the surrender uncontested. As for the Gors, they were somewhere nearby, no doubt watching the same scene from afar.
“Surreal, isn’t it?” Captain Covani said, coming up beside Destra.
She turned to him with a frown. Captain Ekram Covani was a man of forty-something, bald, with a skin as black as a Gor’s armor. His piercing tangerine eyes made him look at times more alien than human—his eyes similar to a Gor’s—but Destra knew Covani was one of the few officers left in the fleet that Hoff would entrust his life to. Covani had been in Dark Space since the exodus, but he and Hoff had known each other long before the war had separated them.
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