04 Dark Space (30 page)

The war would be long over by the time they escaped the snare which had interrupted their journey.

*   *   *

“We should go sit down,” Destra said.

Ethan’s gaze flicked from her to Torv and back before he nodded. “Right. Follow me.” He turned to find Alara standing behind him, her eyes wide, her jaw slack and hanging open.

“What’s going on?” she whispered as he took her hand and led her further into the suite.

Ethan shook his head. “I think we’re about to find out.”

They reached the living area of the honeymoon suite—an enclosed balcony overlooking the Vermillion’s worlds-class view. Ethan led them to the love seat and sat down with Alara. Destra came and sat opposite them in an armchair, while Torv remained standing by the front door.

“I’m sorry to surprise you like this, but there was no other way to contact you without risking that the Sythians find out.”

“Find out about what?” Alara asked.

Destra spent a moment studying them each in turn, and Ethan studied her back. She looked terrible. There were dark circles and puffy bags under her eyes as well as a skein of wrinkles he’d never seen before. This was no-frills Destra, with no makeup, no skin treatments, and no age defying tricks at work. Like that she looked much older than her 45 years of age.

“I need your help,” she explained. “As you probably already know, the Sythians executed Hoff.”

Ethan winced. With the shock of seeing Torv and then Destra pop up out of nowhere, he’d forgotten all about Hoff. That explained Destra’s neglected appearance. “I’m sorry, Des,” he said. “I can only imagine what you’re going through.”

Alara leaned forward and reached across the small table between them to touch Destra’s hand. “We’re both sorry. I can’t imagine losing Ethan.”

Destra offered her a wan smile. “No, it’s not easy, but Hoff isn’t the first husband I’ve lost,” she said, her gaze finding Ethan once more.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Hoi, Des, if that’s why you’re here . . .”

“No, I haven’t come to intrude upon your newly-wedded bliss by telling you I want you back. Even if that were true, this isn’t about me. We have far greater concerns than my own personal burden of grief. Every day, thousands of people are going through exactly what I went through as their fathers, husbands, mothers, wives, and even children are taken without warning or excuse and turned into obedient slaves for the Sythians’ fleet. Not only will our loved ones not come back to us, but they are no longer even the same people that we once loved. For all intents and purposes those slaves are as dead as Hoff right now. Humanity is at its end, Ethan. There is no coming back from this unless we defeat the Sythians soon. I’ve been working with the Gors to destabilize the Sythian occupation and slow them down, but it’s not working nearly as well as we had hoped.”

Ethan’s eyebrows shot up. “So you’re behind the Gor raids?”

Destra brushed a lock of dark hair out of her eyes and turned to study the view from the indoor balcony. Ethan followed her gaze. It was a relatively overcast day, so what they saw from the balcony was a carpet of white clouds stretching out beneath a bright blue sky. “One human cruiser escaped,” Destra explained, “as well as all of the Gors. They are now our only hope to defeat the Sythians.”

“Ironic,” Ethan said.

“Yes, the same aliens who defeated us and slaughtered us by the trillions are now going to be our saviors.”

“I suppose it’s one way for them to make amends. So that’s why you’re here . . . to ask us to join your rebellion?”

“No. We’re not actively recruiting. We have enough trouble supporting our numbers as it is. I’m here because of Atton.”

Ethan felt a cold spark of dread in his chest. His heart began to pound. “What do you mean? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?!” Ethan said, rising from the couch.

Destra raised a hand to stop him. “Let me explain. Before Hoff surrendered to the Sythians, he sent Atton on a mission to get help.”

Alara looked puzzled. “From who? I thought we were the only survivors.”

Ethan already knew what she was talking about. “From Avilon.”

“Yes,” Destra replied. “The Avilonians are the only other surviving humans we know of, and although even Hoff hasn’t—hadn’t—been back to Avilon for countless centuries, he did get them to help his refugees in the Enclave by providing much-needed supplies. Avilon itself is rumored to have a population in the trillions, with a fleet every bit as strong as the Imperium once had. Their technology is more advanced than either ours or the Sythians’, so if anyone can help us, it’s them.”

“Then why didn’t they?” Alara asked.

“Why they didn’t help us before is a mystery, but it’s too late for recriminations. Regardless of their reasons for staying out of the war, our need has never been greater, so we had to take the risk. The worst they could say is no.”

“Yea, and then kill Atton for invading their precious privacy,” Ethan put in.

“Hoff assured me they are not like that, but he did warn that Atton might not be allowed to leave. That’s why I’m here. Atton should have been here weeks ago. I need you to go look for him and while you’re there, make one last attempt to convince the Avilonians to help us. They should know that the Sythians are looking for them, and that by leaving us at the Sythians’ mercy they are only making them stronger. Our invaders now have a free source of slaves, food, fuel, munitions—even shipyards which can build more ships for their fleet.”

“I doubt they can produce Sythian warships. . . .”

“No, but they can build human ones, and our ships are no weaker than theirs.”

Ethan turned to his wife. She was busy chewing her lower lip. “What do you think, Kiddie?”

“I’m
pregnant,
Ethan.”

“You’re what?” Destra said. “When did you find out?”

Alara shot her a quick smile. “Just before the wedding.”

“Well . . . congratulations.”

“Thank you . . .” Alara turned back to Ethan with a pleading look. “What if they don’t let
us
leave? Where will we live? What will we do for a living? We don’t even know what life is like there!”

“It can’t be any worse than life is here,” Destra replied. “Freedom is worth a whole lot of hardship.”

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand—why are you coming to
me?
You said a human cruiser escaped. That means you have at least 24 Nova pilots you could call on for a mission like this.”

“Yes, and then I would have to clear it with the captain of the ship. He’s getting restless, Ethan. Hoff told him support the Gors for just a few weeks, until reinforcements arrived. In the case that those reinforcements never came, he was told to rescue as many people as he could and leave. If the captain finds out about Avilon, he won’t just send another envoy to look for Atton and appeal to the Avilonians for help—he’ll take all of us there.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“I’m not sure we would
all
be welcome—particularly the Gors—and I’m not willing to abandon either them or Dark Space yet. We might not be able to stop the Sythians, but we can make their lives more difficult. If you don’t return within a few months, however, we may have no choice but to follow you to Avilon.”

Ethan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “This is a lot to think about.” He turned to look at Alara once more. “I need to know what you think about this.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think about anything anymore, Ethan.”

“Neither do I, but I’m not sure we have a choice.”

“We could stay,” Alara suggested.

“Yes, we could, but we’ll have to live under the constant threat that either one of us could be taken. Even if we aren’t, we’ll have to raise our children knowing that as soon they turn sixteen they’ll be drafted into the Sythian fleet for the next five years. I’m not even sure the kids who return will be the same ones who left, and who knows if the Sythians change their minds and decide to keep our children indefinitely?”

Alara bit her lip and shook her head. “How will we get there? We can’t leave Dark Space without a cloaking device, and even then, our ship isn’t loaded with high grade fuel. It won’t get us very far.”

“There’s a Gor cruiser waiting to carry you out. The Sythians won’t see you while you’re under the cover of the Gors’ cloaking shield. As for the fuel problem, before you go, we’ll load your ship with red dymium fuel as well as any other supplies you might need.”

Ethan tried to contain the surge of hope now swelling in his chest, waiting to see Alara’s reaction. She eyed him for a long moment, uncertainty warring on her face.

“What do you say, Kiddie? One more adventure before we settle down?”

She hesitated a moment longer before, but at last she nodded. “All right.”

Ethan grinned. Turning back to Destra, he asked, “When do we leave?”

Destra returned his grin with a wan smile. “Right now.”

AVILON

Chapter 20

One week later . . .

C
aptain Loba Caldin paced up and down the bridge of the
Intrepid,
passing back and forth in front of the crew stations and the bridge viewports. Every now and then one of her officers would look up from what they were doing and cast her a worried glance. She could read their minds. They were wondering if their captain had gone space sick already.

But she wasn’t skriffy from spending too much time cooped up in space. She was worrying endlessly over a question which had no obvious answer. How had they ended up stranded in a gravity field if their SLS fail-safes were working flawlessly? There were only two possible answers to that question, but neither one of them made any sense. Either the fail-safes had stopped working temporarily at precisely the wrong moment, or else the gravity field hadn’t existed until they’d already flown into it. With respect to the space-time continuum, the latter option was impossible, and the former was just stupid. No one was that unlucky.

So what had happened?

Caldin’s thoughts were interrupted by a hand landing on her shoulder. “Ma’am . . .”

She turned to find her friend and lover, Corpsman Terl, standing behind her, regarding her with a worried frown. “Not now, corpsman,” she said to forestall his concerns.

“Ma’am, with respect, you need a break. You’ve been on your feet all day. You even skipped lunch. The crew is worried about you—
I’m
worried about you,” he added in a gentler voice.

Caldin’s eyes skipped from Terl’s handsome face down to his broad chest and chiseled arms. She could think of one thing worth leaving the bridge for, and it wasn’t a bad idea for dealing with her stress and frustration, either. She was just about to concede to his suggestion that she take some down time when Lieutenant Esayla Carvon’s voice cut into her musings—

“I don’t believe this . . . contact!”

“What are we looking at?” Caldin asked as she ran to the gravidar station.

“Target de-cloaking at K-35-12-72—just 357 klicks out!”

“
De-cloaking?
” Caldin shook her head. “Double check that scan, Lieutenant!”

They’d been followed. Caldin wasn’t sure how that was possible, but she didn’t have time to worry about
how
it had happened—only what she was going to do about it.

“The scan is accurate, ma’am! Contact confirmed.”

“Sythians! Red alert!”

Ambient lighting dimmed to a bloody red, and the red alert siren blared a few times to emphasize the point.

“I don’t think they’re Sythians,” Esayla said slowly.

“Why not?”

“The sensor profile is not suggestive of known Sythian hull types. It has too many sharp angles.”

“Yet it has a cloaking device, and we only developed that tech recently. Are you trying to tell me the admiral sent another mission out here and they ended up stuck in exactly the same place as us?”

Esayla shook her head. “No, ma’am; that would be highly improbable.”

“The only way anyone could have found us here is if they were around to see us jump. That means they had to have come from Ikara with us. Get me a visual,” Caldin demanded.

“The nebula is blocking our optics, but I can have the computer generate a model from sensor readings.”

“Do it.” Caldin frowned, her head spinning. No ship could drop out of superluminal space at speed, so the mysterious contact had to have been following them for quite some time without their knowledge.

A hologram of the ship in question appeared projected over the main viewport. Caldin’s eyes tracked over the shaded model of the warship from stem to stern. As Esayla had said, the ship looked more human than anything else—made up of hard angles and geometric shapes rather the organic lines and curves which Sythians preferred. The broad, flat deck on top of the ship looked like it might serve as some type of landing field in atmosphere for “hot” landings and non-vertical take-offs. That led Caldin to believe that the warship had been designed with planetary defense in mind. A quick look at the scale markings around the rendering revealed that the ship wasn’t much larger than the
Intrepid,
at just 302 meters long and approximately 21 decks high.

“What class of ship is that?” Caldin asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not in our databanks,” Esayla replied. “Maybe some type of cruiser?”

“Corpsman—” Caldin began, looking away from the hologram to find Terl, whom she had employed as her comm officer.

“Yes, Captain?” he replied. He was already seated at his control console.

“Hail them for us. I want to know who they are and why they followed us.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Caldin waited impatiently for Terl to reply, but before he could, the bridge speakers let out a sharp squeal of protest. Then came a deep, gravelly voice, which said, “Cancel your ship’s momentum and lower your shields. We are coming aboard.”

Caldin did a double take. “Who is this?” she demanded.

“I haven’t established a connection yet. They can’t hear you. . . .” Terl said from the comms station, sounding bewildered.