Dark Space (11 page)
“Roger that,” the
Defiant
replied. “We’ll hold our course.”
Ethan watched his torpedoes zeroing in on the enemy fighters. They reached 700 meters, and then Ethan’s attention was drawn by an incredibly bright flash of red light lancing past them. Ethan looked up to see an unimaginably wide red dymium beam go shooting by them and slam into the
Defiant
’s thrusters. A second later, the cruiser’s starboard thruster exploded in a raging fireball.
Ethan was back on the comm in an instant. “
Defiant
? Are you there?”
Chapter 21
E
mergency klaxons sounded all across the bridge; red lights flashed; acrid smoke hissed into the room; flames crackled at one of the control stations, and an officer was slumped there—motionless, possibly dead. Dominic picked himself off the floor and turned to see that the officer who was out of commission was none other than the comm officer, Petty Officer Ashril Grames. The overlord resisted the urge to punch the captain’s table. Grames had been the only semi-friendly face that Dominic had been able to find among all the strangers on his bridge.
“Helm, go evasive! Don’t let them target us again with that beam. Engineering, what’s the damage?”
The helm began maneuvering and suddenly Dominic was wrenched off his feet again. A second too late Petty Officer Delayn at the engineering station said, “The IMS is functioning at 90% efficiency, sir.”
That explained why every little twitch at the helm threatened to send everyone flying.
“And?” Dominic insisted as his XO helped him off the deck for the second time in as many seconds. If the other officers were smart, they’d be strapping in to their control stations right about now.
“We’ve lost our starboard thruster and maneuvering jets. Our reactor is damaged, but holding steady at 92% integrity. Aft shields are damaged and offline. The last twenty meters of decks four through eight are open to space, and the starboard engine room bled out a quarter of our fuel before we could shut it down.”
“Is that all?” Dominic asked, feeling strangely fatalistic about the damage.
Is that the best you’ve got?
he thought.
Come on, finish us!
Engineering responded to the rhetorical question: “No, the starboard nova launch tube is inoperable.”
“And the hangar?”
“Still fine.”
“That’s something, at least. Helm, how far are we from the gate?”
“If we head straight there, one minute.”
“Do so at all possible speed. Sacrifice shields and weapons to get there faster. Instruct the novas to get aboard if they can, if not they’ll have to meet us separately on the other side.”
“It’s an eight-hour trip through the gate,” Petty Sergeant Damen Corr at the helm remarked. “The novas will run out of fuel and fall short by several million kilometers.”
“Then we’ll send probes back to locate them! But we can’t stand another hit like that!”
“And the corvette? Should we wait for them to catch up?”
Dominic’s eyes turned glassy and distant. “Yes . . . I had forgotten about them. . . . What’s their ETA?” Dominic asked absently, his gaze locked on a distant star.
His XO replied, “Looks like they’re three minutes from the gate, sir.”
“Too long. That corona beam will be recharged before then and we’ll be hulled.” He turned from the viewports to the gunnery chief. “Set the fuse on our space mines for five minutes. That should give the corvette enough time to get through. We can’t afford to leave the gate intact longer than that.”
“Roger that, sir,” Deck Officer Gorvan said.
* * *
“Oh, for frek’s sake!” Gina said. “They’ve got the
Valiant
’s main beam online!”
Ethan tried the comm again. “
Defiant
? Please respond!”
Looking out the forward viewports with his naked eyes, Ethan could see the
Defiant
ahead of them, cutting an evasive pattern toward the Dark Space gate. That much at least suggested that they were still alive. Unfortunately, they hadn’t stayed still, so the enemy novas had changed course and four out of the six torpedoes Ethan had fired were way off target. The other two, however, were still racing toward the unsuspecting novas within an acceptable blast radius.
Ethan held his breath and watched.
In the next instant one of the novas let loose a torpedo of its own, firing at the unprotected and now flaming thruster banks of the
Defiant
. The rest of the enemy novas were quick to let their own torpedoes fly, and Ethan’s heart sank. There was no way the
Defiant
would be able to either outrun or shoot down all of those warheads. He was too late.
Then Ethan’s torpedoes reached 100 meters and they exploded. One of the enemy novas was caught in the blast wave and sent spinning into his wingman. Both of them exploded, and for a miracle, the shrapnel from that explosion hit the nearest enemy torpedo. It detonated with a sudden starburst of light, and that explosion fully engulfed the enemy fighter wave, setting off a chain reaction which wiped them and their torpedoes out in one fell swoop.
“Kavaar!” Ethan whooped. He gaped at all the wreckage which they were now flying through. It pelted their shields and plinked off their hull. A full minute later the supreme commander came on the comm, and Ethan could hear wild cheering in the background.
“You did it, you old frekker!” The overlord said in an unexpected breach of his usually clean language. “We’re clear to the gate! Our mine goes off in five, so be sure you make it in time. See you on the other side, Ethan.
Defiant
out!”
Ethan’s heart froze.
Ethan. The overlord just called me
Ethan.
He knows who I am!
Ethan spun around to see if Gina had noticed the slip, but her eyes were intent upon her control station.
“We’re still a few minutes out,” she said, sounding tense. “We’ll make it before that detlor mine goes off, but the
Valiant
’s main beam cannon should be almost charged. If it even grazes us, we’re dead.”
“Fly an evasive pattern, then,” Ethan suggested cautiously. Did he even want to make it to the other side? If the supreme overlord knew his real identity, did he also know about Ethan’s role in the epidemic which had swept the
Valiant
? There were surely some fates worse than death, and if the surviving crew from the
Valiant
found out what he’d done, even though he’d done it unwittingly, he was sure they would contemplate all of those fates for him and more.
Abruptly, a blinding red flash suffused the entire deck, and Ethan’s contemplation was cut short. He could actually feel the heat of the beam radiating through the transpiranium and threatening to give him a sunburn. The air seemed to hum and vibrate all around him, and a computerized voice sounded across the deck with, “Shields critical.”
And then the beam was gone, and Ethan gasped for air, feeling like someone had just tried to suffocate him with a sun.
“We’re alive!”
“Barely,” Gina said through gritted teeth.
Ethan watched the Dark Space gate swelling before them, growing larger and larger—the shimmering portal looked like a dark pool which they were about to plunge into, and then—
Space disappeared in a bright flash and was replaced by the streaking star lines of superluminal space.
Ethan couldn’t believe it.
Gina breathed a sigh. “Now maybe I can die in peace,” she said, but she wasn’t actually in any danger of dying—probably just in a lot of pain from her broken ribs.
Ethan shook his head. They’d escaped! They were alive! He wasn’t sure whether to be overjoyed or apprehensive. What would the overlord do to him on the other end?
Suddenly, they heard a crackling hiss start up behind them, and Ethan turned to see a hot, molten red line appearing on the duranium bridge doors.
“Frek!” Gina said.
“I think our guests are getting restless,” Ethan said.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about the overlord after all.
Chapter 22
D
ominic strode onto the bridge of the
Defiant
with a scowl. He stopped in front of the captain’s table and gave a quick nod to his XO who was already standing there, waiting for him. He’d had a very rocky night’s sleep while they were travelling through SLS. In the subsequent hours after the ship had dropped out of superluminal, and while they were waiting on the other side of the gate for emergency repair crews to finish crawling over the outside of the hull, he’d awoken briefly to give his bridge crew orders, sending out search and rescue shuttles to find their missing nova pilots. Now, just a few minutes ago, his comm officer had roused him once more with the news that all of their fighters had been found—just six of them. According to the pilots, the other two had been taken out by junkers just before they could make the jump to Sythian Space.
Dominic turned from the captain’s table to Deck Officer Grimsby, the replacement comm officer. “Have we seen any sign of the corvette which was following us to the gate?”
Grimsby shook his head. “No, sir, but our sensors are significantly impeded by the nebula. Perhaps they were damaged or short of fuel and they didn’t make it as far as the exit gate.”
Dominic turned to stare out at the gray Stormcloud Nebula which had hidden the entrance to Dark Space for the past decade. As he watched, there came a bright flicker of static discharging deep within the clouds.
“If they haven’t arrived by now,” the overlord began, “then we have to assume that they’re gone. Helm—” Dominic turned to find Petty Sergeant Damen Corr staring at him expectantly. “Set course for the Stormcloud Transfer Station. We’ll lie low there until repairs are completed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait!” Corpsman Goldrim at the gravidar said, drawing everyone’s attention. “I have contact, coming out of the Dark Space gate . . . It’s a corvette analog.”
Dominic whirled to face the comm officer. “Hail them!”
Grimsby nodded and began hailing the corvette, but before he could even reply, the gravidar officer reported once more, “It doesn’t look good. . . . The corvette is venting atmosphere, and the bridge is open to space.”
Dominic’s heart sank. “So they’re dead.”
“Unless they suited up before the bridge was breached.”
“Comms?”
“They’re not responding to our hails, sir.”
“Are they under power?”
“Yes, sir, but they’re not maneuvering. By now they should have spotted us and begun heading this way if their intent were to rendezvous with us.”
“If they are alive, then they’re cut off from the auxiliary bridge controls.” Dominic turned to Damen Corr at the helm. “Bring us alongside.”
“Yes, sir.”
The overlord turned back to the comm. “Have the hangar operators standing by with the grav guns and bring her aboard as soon as we’re in range. And have a boarding party waiting for me on the hangar deck in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dominic nodded and began striding from the bridge. His XO caught up to him a moment later and began speaking to him in hushed tones. “With respect, sir, you shouldn’t take the risk. Let the boarders do their work. You don’t need to go with them.”
As they reached the lift tubes, Dominic turned to her. “I’ll be the judge of what risks I should and shouldn’t take.”
Deck Commander Loba Caldin frowned, but then she nodded curtly. “Sir.”
* * *
After just a few minutes of searching the ship, the boarding party found them—locked inside an escape pod on the shattered bridge.
The overlord peered grimly into the pod as his sentinels unsealed the hatch. “Hoi, there are our heroes!”
Ethan lifted his head sleepily from the single bunk inside the pod and turned to see who it was. “We made it. . . .” He noted with a groggy smile.
“Yes, you did.”
Now Gina sat up beside Ethan. “Finally,” she said.
The overlord jerked a thumb to the shattered bridge deck behind them. “What happened here?”
Gina spoke first: “When we realized the enemy was coming through, we set charges to blow the viewports, and then we retreated to the pod. Seems like they got sucked out into space.”
“A risky plan,” the overlord said.
“No riskier than a firefight on the bridge, which would have blown the viewports anyway.”
“Well, come on out, then.”
Ethan and Gina crawled stiffly from the small escape pod, the latter clutching her ribs and wincing. Once they were standing on the other side, they were able to survey the damage firsthand. Several control stations had been shattered by the blast, and all the viewports were blown out. Jagged pieces of transpiranium glittered on the deck and crunched underfoot as they walked around.
“So,” Ethan said, giving the overlord a measuring look. “Were there any surprises waiting on the other end?”
Dominic met that look with a wry smile. “None at all, Lieutenant Adan.”
The way the overlord emphasized his name, Ethan felt a sharp spike of dread, and he was now surer than ever that his cover was blown.
The overlord shook his head and went on, “No, everything went according to plan, and if the detlor mine we dropped did its job, no one will be following us out for a long time.”
Gina snorted. “They’ll have to make a new gate from scratch after that. There won’t be enough constituent dust left to powder my nose.”
“Sir!” Everyone turned as a pair of sentinels came striding through the melted hole in the bridge doors. “What is it, Sergeant?” Dominic asked.
“We’ve found three more survivors on the detention level, sir.”
“Good! Release them, and bring them to my quarters aboard the
Defiant
for questioning.”
Ethan was looking at the sentinels like he’d seen a ghost. There’d been people still locked up on the detention level. . . .
“Something the matter, Lieutenant?”
“No, nothing, sir,” Ethan said, making an effort to hide the surge of hope he’d felt at the mention of prisoners aboard Brondi’s corvette.
“Good, go get cleaned up and get some rest.” Turning to Gina, the overlord took in the way she was clutching her side, and he said, “As for you—head to the med bay immediately and get yourself examined.”
“Yes, sir,” they said.
* * *
Maybe I imagined it,
Ethan thought.
It was just the stress of battle, or maybe some comm interference. . . . Maybe he didn’t call me Ethan.
But the overlord had just summoned him for a personal debriefing—alone in his office—and that made Ethan a whole lot less sure that he’d imagined it.
That wasn’t the only strange thing. They’d found three more people aboard Brondi’s corvette—on the
detention
level. Alara immediately came to mind. Could one of them be her? He didn’t allow himself to hope for it, but just maybe, if he were lucky—and if
she
were lucky—then she would be among those three. Or maybe she wouldn’t be all that lucky. There was the small matter that now they were stranded in Sythian Space, in a damaged cruiser, and with barely any fighter escort left to defend them.
Now, five hours after being brought aboard the
Defiant
, Ethan was all cleaned up, rested, and waiting to meet the firing squad which was surely awaiting him for his crimes. He reached the double doors to the overlord’s quarters and checked in with the pair of sentinels stationed there before being cleared for admittance. The doors parted with a
swish,
and Ethan stepped inside.
Unlike the rest of the cruiser, which was strictly utilitarian, this room was luxuriously appointed, and for a moment it reminded Ethan of Brondi’s corvette. At the far end of the room was a broad,
wooden
desk set before a floor-to-ceiling viewport. Behind that desk was a big, high-backed black chair, which was currently turned away from Ethan to face the viewport.
Ethan stopped just inside the doors. They swished shut, and he turned to look behind him only to find that he was alone in the overlord’s office. Suddenly, Ethan felt incredibly nervous and acutely aware of his skin, which was now crawling with dread. “Sir?” Ethan tried.
“Do you know why I summoned you here alone?”
Ethan felt his dread blossom into a sweaty, almost nauseating terror, but he clamped down on it. Whatever his fate, he surely deserved it after the disaster he’d wrought aboard the
Valiant
. “No, sir,” he lied.
The chair slowly swiveled to face him. The overlord steepled his hands before his lips. “I think you do. I think you know exactly why. But you don’t know the half of it.” Ethan watched a slow smile spread across the overlord’s lips. “What I’m about to share with you can never leave this room. Do you understand that, Lieutenant?”
Ethan blinked slowly—confused. “If you’re asking whether or not I can keep a confidence, sir, I assure you that I can.”
“Good, because I have kept yours. . . .
Ethan.
”
Ethan’s eyes bulged. “Then you
do
know. . . . How did you find out?”
“My first clue was the
Atton.
”
“The
Atton,
sir?”
The overlord nodded. “Your ship.”
“I see. . . .”
“I’m quite sure you don’t, but let me continue. My second clue was more subtle. Few people would recognize the tells of a holoskinner—such as the way your wrist still hurts for weeks and even months after the procedure while it is accommodating a new identichip, one which you were not implanted with at birth. Few would notice that, except for another skinner.”
Ethan did a double take and then shook his head. “Another . . .”
“You’re not the only one who can wear a holoskin, Ethan.” And with that, the overlord’s hoary features shimmered and abruptly morphed into those of a much younger man—a man in his early twenties at most.
Ethan took a quick step back. “Who are you?”
The young man laughed. “That’s a fine question to ask. Don’t you recognize your own son?”
Ethan felt like someone had just thrown a glass of ice water in his face. “Atton?” Ethan shook his head, and his jaw dropped open. It couldn’t be. This was a dream. “Is that you?”
The erstwhile overlord smiled. “Sometimes I have to look in the mirror and ask myself the very same question, but yes, it’s me.”
Chapter 23
E
than struggled to understand what he was seeing and hearing. His son was alive and sitting there before him, but just a few seconds ago he’d been looking and sounding exactly like Supreme Overlord Dominic.
“How do I know you’re my son? You could just be claiming to be him.”
Atton was still smiling. “Then how would I know your name? You can tell me it’s a big coincidence that your ship’s name is the
Atton,
and that my father’s name is Ethan, but I think you and I both know that’s not very likely. Besides which, there’s the fact that my mother’s name was Destra.”
Ethan’s eyes widened and Atton nodded slowly. “Yes, I can see by the look on your face that I am not mistaken. My mother found the entrance to Dark Space a few months after you were exiled there. She was going to break you out, but before she could, the Sythians invaded, and she convinced her uncle, Captain Riechland, XO of the
Valiant
at the time, to take me with him when the heads of state retreated there. Riechland died in a delaying action which was to cover the
Valiant
’s retreat, and I was left alone. Dark Space was no place for a young kid without adult supervision, and neither was the
Valiant
. Long story short, the Supreme Overlord took pity on me.
Later on, when the overlord was about to die, he shared his secret with me. He wasn’t really the overlord. He was a holoskinner just like you and me, and so he passed the mantle of command as well as his holoskin and identichip to me.”
Ethan shook his head. “You mean you’re the second generation of pretenders to the throne?”
“The face of the ISS couldn’t afford to die. My adoptive father’s predecessor, the real Dominic, actually died very young. He passed his burden to his most trusted advisor, and his most trusted advisor—my adoptive father—passed it on to me. I was never intended to last long in the role. It was my job to find someone more suitable—someone who has all the right instincts for command, someone with the age and experience to command respect from those serving under him. That someone could never be me, but I feel fairly confident, between your actions in our retreat, and your scores in the Rokan Defense, that now I’ve finally found the one I was looking for. . . . Should you choose to accept the responsibility.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “Kavaar . . . you . . .”
Atton held up a hand. “Please, don’t give me an answer now. Think about it. We’ll need some time to repair and regroup with the others out here in Sythian Space before we head back to retake the
Valiant
.
“Atton.” Ethan’s mouth felt dry. In fact, he felt dizzy and unsteady on his feet. He still didn’t fully trust what he was seeing and hearing, but the young man seated before him was certainly young enough to be his son. “This is all a lot to take in, but you should know something before you go on.” Ethan swallowed visibly and then said, “Your old man hasn’t done much to improve himself since you knew him. . . .” Ethan wasn’t sure how to continue. Or if he even should. He’d just been given his son back from the grave, and he was sure to lose the boy again with what he was about to say next.
Atton cocked his head. “Yes?”
Ethan smiled tightly. “I suppose I can deactivate my holoskin for a while.” With that, he sent a mental command to the control system which was attached to his stolen identichip. He felt a tingle of static brush across his skin, raising the hair on his arms and legs, and then he watched.
Atton’s eyes widened and he began nodding approvingly. “There’s the old man I knew. My memories aren’t that clear, but I can recognize you from my mom’s old holos well enough.”
Ethan took a few steps forward, until he was close enough to lean on the desk where his son was seated. Abruptly Atton rose to his feet and walked around the desk to stand face to face with his father. Ethan found that he was staring at a younger version of himself. The similarities between them were striking. They both had the same tall, broad-shouldered frame—the same green eyes, the same dark hair. Abruptly Ethan took another step forward and gave his son a big, bone-crushing hug. After that, they withdrew to an arm’s length, and Ethan found himself grinning uncontrollably. “I missed you, kid.”
“Me, too . . . Dad.”
Ethan let his arms fall back to his sides. “Well, now I can die a happy man.”
“Die? I hope you’re not planning to die. We have a lot of work to do.”
“You might not think so when you hear what I have to say next,” Ethan said with a grimace.
Atton’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Go on.”
“What do you think is the reason I was impersonating an ISSF officer?”
Atton raised his eyebrows and a slow smile began spreading across his lips. “The food. Our breakfast scones are to die for.”
Ethan scowled. “I’m being serious, Atton. Look, I’m just going to say it. Brondi put me up to it, but that’s no excuse. My copilot and I owed him a fair whack of sols. We skipped payments so he hunted us down to hold our feet to the afterburners. He kept my copilot as a ransom and said if I didn’t do what he asked, he was going to kill us, so I agreed. I didn’t know what I was really getting into, but . . .” Ethan looked away, out the viewport, and his eyes caught a bright flash of static discharging inside the gray ice clouds of the nebula.
“What did he ask you to do?”
Ethan slowly turned back to meet his son’s gaze. “He asked me to sabotage the
Valiant
. To destroy it. I was planning to find a way to doom the ship without killing everyone on board, but long before I could do that, I realized Brondi’s real goal. He’d infected me with some kind of plague and set me loose aboard the ship. I don’t know why I survived, but as far as I can tell, I was the first one to get sick. I went to med bay and they put me in stasis to get better. Twelve hours later I woke up and I was fine, but everyone aboard was dead. You were the first survivor I encountered.”
Atton took all of that in without blinking. He was stolid and silent, as if waiting to hear the rest of the story. When he realized his father was done talking, he quietly said, “I know, Ethan. Among the prisoners aboard Brondi’s corvette was the biochemist who engineered the virus. He explained everything to me already.”
“Then . . .”
“I’m not going to pardon you for your sins, but since you didn’t actually
do
anything, the worst we could charge you with would be impersonating a fleet officer, and possibly conspiracy against the ISS. Between the two you’d get life on Etaris, but as it happens I’m the only one who knows about your secret, and now you know mine, so we’re obliged to keep each other’s secrets safe.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Then there are no hard feelings?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I had a lot of friends aboard the
Valiant
. Even acting in my capacity as overlord I was able to get close enough to a few people that I’ll certainly miss them, but I just got you back from Etaris, and I’m not going to send you there again—no matter what you’ve done.”
Ethan nodded slowly. “I went looking for you, you know. Both you and your mother. I went flat broke to do it, and I never found anything. Eventually I had to concede that the odds
were
low either of you had made it.”
“The odds were low. They would have been infinitesimal if it weren’t for the fact that Mom had already found the gate and was planning to bust you out. She was still trying to scrape together enough to rent a ship for the prison break when the invasion separated us. I’ve been looking for her ever since I’ve had the power to order missions into Sythian Space. That was the real reason we reopened the gate.”
Ethan’s eyes brightened. “Then you think she might still be alive?”
“She was when she said goodbye to me. Whether or not she survived is another matter.”
Ethan grimaced and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Immortals willing . . .” A long moment later Ethan looked up. “Atton.”
“Yes?”
“You really want me to take command? I’m sure I’m not the most experienced commander you have, not by a long shot.”
Atton shook his head. “After they all died I don’t have many to choose from.” Ethan grimaced and Atton went on, “But besides that, I can’t imagine someone else who would be safe to share my secret with, and even if I could find someone else, that person probably wouldn’t be willing to take the job, or to give me
their
identity in exchange.”
“You’d like to trade, then.”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea to reveal myself as me; I faked my death years ago to take this role, and old Dominic’s ruse is a dangerous secret to reveal. Even our most loyal crew members would mutiny if they were to discover that.”
Ethan shook his head. “But I can’t pretend to be the overlord forever. He already looks like he’s more than 100 years old.”
“You won’t have to do it forever. You and I are both going to shed our holoskins before long. We’ll switch to our real skins as soon as we can fake up some new identichips and a cover story for those identities. Our names will still be different, but that can’t be helped. Until then, and until the overlord can formally hand over his title to you with your new identity, we’re going to switch places. The
Defiant
needs a good commander if we’re going to make it through Sythian Space alive, and I’m not the man for that job.”
“Are you so sure I am? I probably got lucky on the Rokan Defense.”
“No, that wasn’t luck.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Take all the time you need as long as it’s less than a day.”
Ethan nodded and gripped his son’s shoulder. “Meanwhile, I have to ask one more thing—”
“Of course.”
“Was there by chance a young woman among the prisoners aboard Brondi’s corvette? A young woman with dark hair and violet eyes?”
“There was. She rather takes one’s breath away. A friend of yours?”
Ethan nodded quickly. “She’s my copilot. I thought I’d lost her by now.”
Atton frowned. “Your copilot? Are you sure?”
“Yes, why?”
“It’s just . . . well, she seems more like the sort of woman to be . . .”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “To be what?”
Atton held up a hand. “Don’t take offence, okay, but she tried coming on to me—as the overlord, the old, hairy, wrinkly overlord. When that didn’t work, she tried coming on to my nearest bodyguard. She’s almost a dead ringer for a . . .” Atton grimaced. “Well, again, pardon my saying so, but she seems to be more suited to being a pleasure palace playgirl than a copilot.”
The blood drained from Ethan’s face. “Take me to her.”
Atton nodded. “Put your holoskin back on.”
* * *
Atton’s features shimmered and back was the wrinkled countenance of the supreme overlord. “She’s still being debriefed, along with her parents.”
“Parents?” Ethan asked, as his own features shimmered and were replaced by those of the pilot Adan Reese.
“Yes, the biochemist and his wife. Seems like Brondi was keeping the whole family hostage to leverage the old doctor.” Atton walked up to the doors and keyed them open. He nodded to his guards as he walked out, and Ethan followed him down the corridor to the lift tube at the end.
Ethan and the overlord—
his son
—stepped into the lift tube and Atton keyed in a deck number. With a gut-wrenching lurch, the floor abruptly dropped out from under them, and Ethan had to steady himself on the nearest wall of the lift tube.
“We’re still repairing the inertial management system,” Atton explained.
Ethan straightened with a grunt. “I can feel that.”
The lift tube screeched to a halt, and again they felt the jolt, a rapid deceleration that made their knees want to buckle. When the lift tube doors swished open once more, Atton led them through the bowels of the ship, winding through darkened corridors. Every so often the corridor ahead was lit up with a hissing shower of orange sparks and then they would inevitably pass a repairman with a welding laser.
“These decks took a beating in our retreat,” Atton said, pointing to a ragged patch on the near wall of the corridor where a repairman was still drawing a molten line with his welding laser to seal the patch. “We finished sealing them just a few hours before you arrived. We need to be fully battle-ready before we attempt to cross Sythian Space.”
