Dark Space: Origin (2 page)

As Hoff lay dying, his thoughts drifted in lazy circles, seeming to become some separate part of him, which was isolated from the pain and the suffocating feeling that he couldn’t breathe. Above him hovered a friendly face, twisted with fear and anguish, her dark, overgrown hair pasted with sweat and grime in a gritty mess across her forehead. She screamed at him, trying to bring him back from the brink, but Hoff knew it was too late. He’d been here many times before. He was cold; his thoughts were becoming increasingly abstract, time seemed to be racing and crawling to a stop all at the same time. Staring up at the impenetrable black clouds overhead, he had a premonition of the oblivion which was coming for him. Not even a single star shone through to light the way. Hoff tried to say something to Destra, but found himself choking on the words. Something warm had obstructed his airways, so he lay still and stopped trying to fight it. He shut his eyes and disappeared into his thoughts.

Images came unbidden to his mind’s eye. Images of the earliest things he could remember—until now locked away in some distant corner of his mind. Somehow at the end, the beginning always became clearer. Hoff marveled at it, feeling as though he were just about to solve some great mystery about the universe.

It was a scene of incredible beauty. In his mind, he saw himself standing on a grassy field, shielding his eyes against the glare of a bright yellow sun. That sun was already high in a clear blue sky. Green grass and bright purple flowers grew rampant on the field where he stood. In the middle distance a wall of dark green trees swept up the sides of a soaring mountain in the background, the peak of which was wreathed in wisps of cloud and covered in thick glacial ice. To his left—on the other side of a shimmering, lavender-colored lake—lay a towering, dome-topped fortress, shining white in the sun. It was the summer palace.

That scene came straight out of a children’s story book, and Hoff recognized the world immediately. It was the lost world of
Origin
. Hoff felt his spirits soar with wonder and excitement. . . . He’d actually been to Origin! How had he forgotten that?

Then the scene was abruptly ripped away. Back was the angry black sky of Ritan, and a blurry image of Destra’s face. Hoff’s heart was beating hard and slow, while his chest burned fiercely. The pain grew more distant as numbness crept in. He forced himself to focus on Destra’s anguished face. She looked so scared, so distraught, and so
alone
that he wanted to do something to comfort her. Everything was numb, and he found that he couldn’t move, but with one last, monumental effort he managed to force his lips into a brief smile before he drifted away on a tide of utter darkness.

But that was not the end. A light appeared, distant, but growing nearer and brighter by the second, as if he were racing down a long, dark tunnel. Hoff felt himself being
pulled
toward the light, faster and faster, until it loomed impossibly bright, and then he heard a familiar voice. “Hello, Hoff,” it said. And in that moment, he understood that he’d been wrong—about everything.

RESCUE

Chapter 1

—THE YEAR 10 AE, CURRENT DAY—

E
than Ortane lay staring up at the ceiling of his cell. The lights on the brig had been turned down low for the
Defiant’s
night cycle, which was already half over. The steady hum of the ship’s reactor should have lulled him to sleep by now, but instead he lay awake on his bunk, listening to the
tick-tick-ticking
of old fans and the
whooshing
of barely warm air from the ship’s air cyclers. Based on the number of night cycles since he’d been revealed as a holoskinner impersonating Supreme Overlord Altarian Dominic, Ethan had already spent almost two full days in the brig.

Not long after he’d been put there, Alara had come to visit her father. Ethan had been surprised and pleased to find that despite the slave chip in her brain which suppressed all her memories and replaced them with memories of a life she’d never lived, she had recognized him. He remembered seeing her come striding in, about to walk straight by his cell until she’d noticed him staring at her. She’d walked up to him and they’d had a brief conversation through the bars of his cell, passing written messages back and forth on her holo pad.

I remember you
. . . .
We used to fly together. You were the overlord all this time?

Ethan nodded.

You said you loved me. Is that true?

He hesitated before nodding again.

What were you doing impersonating the overlord?

He gestured for her to pass the pad to him through the bars, and she turned her body to shield the movement from the overhead holocorder. When he was done writing his message, he turned the pad so she could see.

It’s a long story. They’re going to use a probe on me when we get to Obsidian Station, so you’ll find out then—assuming the information isn’t classified.

Alara’s violet eyes flew wide and she typed,
I’m going to get you out.

He shook his head.

I love you, Ethan. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that. I can’t leave you here. I’ll find a way.

Hearing that, he felt sorry for her and gestured for the pad again. He couldn’t leave her like this—pining away after a man she could barely remember, a man who was going to die for his crimes—so he wrote:
You can’t help me now. I know you love me, Kiddie, but you want something I can’t give you. My heart still belongs to my wife.
It had been true, but a callous way for him to tell her, as if he were throwing her love in her face and slapping her with it.

The next thing she wrote was.
You’re married??

And then the door to the brig swished open and a burly corpsman came bustling in with the warden, neither of them looking amused.

“Hoi, get away from that prisoner!” the corpsman said. “You’re not authorized to speak with him.”

Alara turned. “I wasn’t speaking with him. I was just trying to decide if I recognized him from somewhere.”

“And?”

“It’s just déjà vu. Being chipped makes it hard to decide what’s real . . . and what isn’t.” She glanced back at Ethan as she said that, and he felt her words stab him through the heart, making him wonder if maybe he had more feelings for her than he was willing to admit.

Now Ethan shook his head, rocking it back and forth on his pillow. It didn’t matter anymore, because it was too late, but he was beginning to think that he’d been a fool. Ten years had passed since he’d even
seen
his wife, Destra. That had been
before
the Sythian invasion and the subsequent exodus to Dark Space. The chance that she was even still alive was very slim, so why had he waited for her?

Ethan’s lips formed a thin, determined line as the answer came to him. It seemed to shine bright and clear in his mind. He’d waited, because she would have done the same for him, and because for all he knew she was out there somewhere, alive and waiting still.

*  *  *

Deck Commander Loba Caldin sat in her quarters—which until recently had been the overlord’s quarters—aboard the
Defiant.
Her dark blue eyes stared out the broad viewport and into space. It had been more than a day since they’d salvaged fuel and components from the
Defiant
to give the
Rescue
a chance to reach Obsidian Station. The corvette should have arrived by now, but without SLS gates and the associated network of comm relays which had once made up the galaxy-wide commnet, there was no way to communicate across vast, interstellar distances. They would have to wait patiently, for at least another day, before the
Rescue
might return with help. Caldin forced herself to be positive. They would make it; they
would
return; and this wasn’t the end.

It was, however, the end of something else. Now that the overlord had been discovered as a holoskinner, the Imperium was finally undone. It had survived the Sythians, but it wouldn’t survive this. This deception brought into question everything that had happened—both before and after the exodus. How long had the imposter been in power? How had he come to be in power? How many decisions had he made which he was both unqualified and unauthorized to make? Had his bad decisions been what had led to the destruction and unraveling of a galaxy-wide Imperium? Had he somehow doomed the
Valiant
to the virus which had run rampant on the ship, killing countless thousands of fleet officers?

And those weren’t the only mysteries surrounding Supreme Overlord Altarian Dominic’s imposter. Upon reviewing security holos from the brig with her confidant and lover, Corpsman Terl, she’d discovered that Captain Adan Reese was the imposter’s son, and that Dr. Kurlin Vastra, who was the engineer of the virus which had ravaged the
Valiant,
seemed to know them both personally. Had they all been co-conspirators with the crime lord Alec Brondi?

But that didn’t make sense, since they had both fought Brondi and run from him. There was some kind of plot afoot—more likely several plots—but it was all a tangled web of lies, and the more Caldin tried to unravel it, the less sense it made. She could sit here all day asking questions, each one more disturbing than the last, but there would be no reliable answers until they could get to Obsidian Station and subject the prisoners to a mind probe. Until that time, she would have to be patient. . . .

Caldin gritted her teeth and played connect the dots with the stars, but every time she blinked, the hateful face of the imposter swam before her eyes. She shut her eyes and tried to push him out of her head, but then she saw the pale faces of dead officers go dancing by in a haunting parade, their eyes all dark and accusing. Tens of thousands had died on the
Valiant.
Hundreds of them had been her friends—some as close as family. She was sure the imposter overlord was at the bottom of it, and that made her see red.

Suddenly Caldin rose to her feet. She’d had enough of being patient. If nothing else, beating some answers out of the erstwhile overlord would give her an outlet for her frustration, and maybe, just maybe—a modicum of justice for the dead.

*  *  *

Alara Vastra stared unblinkingly at the jagged, misshapen debris of Obsidian Station as they tumbled and turned, slow-dancing through space. Besides the stars, there were no lights shining through that carbon-scored mess of twisted alloy, and apart from the perpetual tumbling of the debris, there was no movement either—nothing that could be considered purposeful or
alive.

Beside her, at the
Rescue’s
other pilot control station, Gina Giord tried the comm again. “This is the ISSF Light Corvette,
Rescue,
to any survivors aboard Obsidian Station, please acknowledge.”

Gina waited with the comms open, but all they heard was static. Eventually she sighed and shook her head. “There’s not a whisper of life. We should probably try to land on one of the bigger pieces of the station—see if we can get aboard for salvage.”

“It’s going to be hard to get any closer without debris hitting us,” Alara said. Even as she said that, two of the larger pieces of the station collided, generating a brief shower of sparks and pulverized duranium before flying apart.

Petty Officer Cobrale Delayn looked up from the engineering station and shook his head. He reached up to rub tired eyes and run a hand through his stubbly gray hair. “What’s the point? If there were any fuel aboard, it would have blown up with the station.”

Gina threw up her hands. “All right, let’s just sit here and wait for a rescue, then! Oh right—that’s
our
job. We picked a
great
name for this bucket.” She shook her head. “We came all this way to get help, but there’s no one here and we’re out of fuel, so we may as well go frek ours—”

Gina cut herself off as space began to ripple strangely above them.

“What the . . .”Alara began, looking up.

And then the rippling stopped and a Sythian cruiser appeared in its place.

“Evasive action!” Alara yelled.

Gina’s hands were already on the controls, diving and rolling out from under the enemy ship to put the debris field between them and it.

“As if we weren’t already frekked!” Gina said. “Tova, tell them to stand down! We’re friends!”