Dark Space: Origin (3 page)

“That cruiser must have been waiting to trap any ships still en route to the station . . .” Delayn put in.

Alara gazed at the alien cruiser on the gravidar display. It wasn’t opening fire.

An alien warbling interrupted them, and then the translator in Alara’s ear said, “I cannot tell them anything. I sense no one aboard.”

Everyone turned to the giant alien sitting at the oversized gravidar station. Tova’s black armor gleamed in the low light of the bridge, and the red eyes of her helmet glowed as she stared back at them.

“Wait, what did you say?” Gina asked.

“I sense no one aboard.”

Alara shook her head. “You mean that ship is empty?”

“If it’s empty, how did it de-cloak?” Gina said.

Alara traded glances with Gina, and Delayn finished their unspoken thoughts. “Sythians.” They didn’t have the telepathic abilities of the Gors, so Tova wouldn’t be able to
sense
them.

“Sounds like it,” Gina replied.

“So why aren’t they firing on us?” Alara asked.

Before any of them could hazard a guess, the comms crackled with an answer. “
Rescue
, this is the FFR vessel,
Interloper
, please state your business here.”

Alara gaped at Gina. “That was a human voice.”

Gina blinked and slowly shook her head. “What are our guys doing aboard a Sythian Cruiser?”

*  *  *

Thwack!

Caldin’s fist hit Ethan’s already battered face. She wore padded black combat gloves, but the padding was for her, not for him. One of Ethan’s eyes had swollen shut, and his lips were split and bleeding in several places.

“Who are you!” the commander demanded. Her chest heaved from the exertion and her eyes flashed with rage.

Ethan’s head lolled, and his neck cracked painfully. Two burly men held him up by his arms with bruising force, but he barely noticed the pain of their dirty fingernails digging into his skin. The more immediate throbbing from Caldin’s blows took his full attention.

“Still not talking?” she demanded.

Whuff—
the air left his lungs in a rush as Caldin knocked the wind out of him with another blow. Ethan groaned and spat blood on her shiny black boots.

“He already told you, Caldin!” Atton said. He was in the cell just across the aisle, but Ethan heard him as though from a great distance. “He’s just an ex-con from Dark Space! Leave him alone.”

“So how did a lowly ex-con become Supreme Overlord of the Imperium?”

Atton sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“Really? Start talking!”

“You going to beat me senseless, too? I’m not sure a mind probe will be much use to you if we’re both already brain dead.”

Ethan wanted to tell Atton to shut up and stop goading her, but he couldn’t open his mouth. He wondered if that meant his jaw was broken, or if his tongue had simply swollen too much to move—he’d bitten it several times as Caldin had pummeled his face. He tried to lift his head to see where Caldin had gone, but then the guards holding him let him go, and he fell to the deck with a bone-jarring
thud.

Ethan just lay there, sprawled out on his back, waiting to hear the meaty
smack
of Caldin’s fist against Atton’s face.

“You’re very lucky, Mr. Reese, that I’m a patient woman.”

Ethan heard his cell door slide shut with a squeal, and the next thing he heard was booted feet receding down the hall. A door
swished
open and shut, and then came a ringing silence. Ethan could barely hear in one ear. He wondered if that was because blood had run into it and blocked it, or because Caldin had beat him so badly that she’d burst his eardrum.

“Are you all right?”

Ethan had to fight the dreamy haze swirling inside of his head to focus on that voice. It was his son. He tried again to speak, but this time a sharp pain lanced through his jaw, stopping him.
Definitely broken,
he thought.

“Frek . . .” Atton muttered. “She almost killed you!”

“You think she’ll send a medic?” Another voice. Ethan thought it might be Doctor Kurlin. He was encouraged that he could still make some sense of the world around him, even with just one blurry eye and one ringing ear. Maybe that meant he didn’t have a concussion.

“She’d better do something if she wants him to live long enough to stand trial. Hoi! Can we get a medic down here? Caldin! If you want to get any answers out of us, you’d better keep us alive!”

Ethan wanted to tell them that he was okay, but his one good eye drifted shut and his battered body relaxed in sleep.

*  *  *

Gina Giord finished explaining who they were and why they’d come to Obsidian Station to Captain Adram of the
Interloper
. They waited through a tense silence for the captain to respond. When that silence dragged on too long, Gina keyed the comm again.

“
Interloper,
do you copy?”

“We copy,
Rescue
. Please stand by.”

“Acknowledged . . . standing by . . .” Gina replied with a furrowed brow.

Alara frowned at the comm display, reading the transcript of their conversation for a recap. A minute later she shook her head and looked up at Gina. “Do you think they believe us?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“The overlord was a holoskinner. A notorious crime lord set a devastating virus loose on the ISSF’s flagship and he’s now controlling both that ship and likely all of Dark Space, while we’re out here looking for help so we can rescue the handful of survivors from that attack.”

“Hmmm.”

“And after all that, no response—just,
we copy. Stand by
—like they’re still deciding what to think of us.”

“Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to bring us aboard?” Delayn suggested. “It can’t be easy to operate a Sythian cruiser. They use mental control systems for everything, and half the time we don’t know what thought patterns will activate a given system.”

“Well, there’s another mystery for you—” Gina said. “—and I still haven’t heard an answer. What are our boys doing joyriding in a Sythian Cruiser?”

“Maybe it isss more comfortable,” Tova hissed.

Gina turned to glare at her. They couldn’t see the alien’s expression behind her helmet, so it was hard to decide if her comment was an attempt at humor—assuming Gors had a sense of humor.

The comm crackled once more. “
Rescue,
we’ve detected a Gor aboard your ship.”

Gina leaned forward to speak into the comms once more. “That’s correct,
Interloper,
but she’s friendly.”

Another long pause.

“The admiral doesn’t allow
skull faces
aboard his ships.”

All eyes turned to Tova, but thankfully she didn’t react to the racial slur.

Gina sighed loudly. “We’ve come a long way,
Interloper,
and we have people counting on us, so time is short. Don’t you think you could bend the rules, just this once?”

“She’ll have to stay on the corvette. If you agree, we’ll bring you aboard.”

Gina scowled. “Agreed,
Interloper.
”

“Stand by for grav lock.”

The ship shuddered almost imperceptibly and Alara noticed their icon on the star map begin moving toward the larger icon of the Sythian cruiser. “I thought they were going to fire on us,” she said, looking up from the display.

Gina shrugged. “Not everyone’s as forgiving as Overlord Dom—” She cut herself off with a frown and left it at that.

It was common knowledge that the overlord had been uncovered as a holoskinner and an imposter. Knowing that, it was hard not to question his judgment in forming an alliance with the Gors.

“What do you think will happen now that the overlord’s not in power anymore?” Delayn asked.

Gina shrugged. “I guess the fleet will take over with Admiral Heston in command.”

“A military dictatorship,” Alara said.

“Better than an illegitimate civilian one.”

Alara noticed Tova watching them as they discussed the situation, and she wondered how much the alien understood about human politics. Was Tova authorized to know about the current instability in the human government? Technically, Admiral Heston wasn’t a part of the alliance between humans and Gors, so if he took over both human factions, that alliance would be in jeopardy. If the Gors realized that, then they might take preemptive measures.

Alara’s mind turned back to the fate of the Imperium and her thoughts began boiling with questions as she tried to reconcile her private knowledge that the man she remembered as her friend and business partner, a man named Ethan Ortane, was the imposter overlord. How could he have been flying with her and somehow also ruling the Imperium at the same time? She decided that didn’t make any sense, so he must have come into the position recently. But
how and why
had he come to impersonate Overlord Dominic?
Had Ethan been working with Brondi to take over the
Valiant
and destabilize the Imperium, and if so, did that make Ethan her enemy or her friend? She still remembered growing up in Brondi’s care with all of the other orphans he’d rescued. The crime lord was the only one who’d ever really cared about her—the only one who’d ever shown an interest in her life. . . .

Alara had to remind herself that those feelings of gratitude came from memories of a life that didn’t exist. Everyone said that Brondi was their enemy and he had implanted her with a slave chip to turn her into a playgirl for one of his pleasure palaces, but if Ethan was on his side . . .