Dark Space: Origin (33 page)

“Well, I’ve been to the enclave, Atton.”

“What about the lost sector? Have you been there?”

“The enclave is getting supplies from somewhere.”

Atton shook his head. “So why set up an enclave for refugees when there’s already a place for them where they would be safe?”

“Hoff says that the only way to keep the lost worlds safe is to keep them hidden—from everyone.”

“Everyone except for him—oh, and let me guess, his XO. As for his wife . . . well, she’s just there to warm his bed and bear his children.”

“Atton!” Destra’s eyes flashed with hurt.

“Good! Then you understand how absurd all of this is. Secrets divide us, and this is a time for humanity to stand together, not apart. It’s our only hope. If Dark Space is the enclave’s poorer cousin, we should all be there, or at the very least sharing the wealth. What point is there to keeping us in poverty?”

“I don’t know.”

“So let’s find out! No more hiding, Mom.”

Destra sighed. “I’ll help
you
find out, and you can tell me what you found. That’s the best I can do.”

“So your son’s the fall guy, is that it? I don’t think Hoff’s going to believe that I found out all on my own.”

“You were wandering his maze for hours last night. Maybe you found something. It’s plausible.”

“It’s thin.”

Destra looked away. “You’ll need an escape plan.”

Atton nodded. “The
Tauron
is about to drop out of SLS. If you could find a transport for me, I could blast out of here before the drives are even finished cooling for the next jump. I’d beat them to Dark Space.”

“It’s too soon. There’s not enough time. When we reach the entrance to Dark Space, we’ll have a better opportunity, and the Stormcloud Nebula will shield you from the
Tauron’s
scanners when and if you do have to leave.”

“Fine. When we reach Dark Space, then, but I’m holding you to that.”

Destra nodded and let out a long, slow breath. A moment later they were interrupted by the sound of something hitting transpiranium. They turned to see Atta with her face pressed up against the dining room window, making silly faces at them. When she saw her mother’s stern expression she giggled and ran away.

“Remember why you’re helping me,” Atton said, using Atta’s sudden appearance to cement his mother’s resolve.

“I should be doing it for myself, too . . .” Destra said. “A decade ago, I never would have pictured myself turning a blind eye to a man who’s keeping secrets from me. I never would have put up with that from your father.” Destra turned to him with a haunted look. “But after spending three years isolated and slowly starving to death on the dark, frigid netherworld that is Ritan . . . you get a new perspective on life. After that, you never take luxury like this for granted, and you’d do anything not to go through those horrors again.”

“You won’t have to,” Atton said. “I promise.”

“I’m afraid that’s a promise you can’t keep, Atton, but thank you anyway. Hoff’s lucky he can’t remember Ritan,” she said, giving an involuntary shiver.

That caught his attention. “What do you mean Hoff can’t
remember
it?”

Destra smiled and looked away quickly. “Oh . . . he hit his head. . . . He never really recovered from that. We should go back inside and finish eating.”

Atton nodded slowly. “After you . . .” He watched with thoughtfully narrowed eyes as his mother walked ahead of him, and suddenly he wondered if Hoff was the only one keeping secrets. . . .

Chapter 21

A
dmiral Heston stood at the bridge viewports while his XO kept watch at the captain’s table, just in case. Hoff wasn’t expecting trouble when they dropped out of superluminal, but it didn’t hurt for someone to have eyes on the grid. Even if they had been followed from Ritan, the Sythians’ slower ships wouldn’t be able to keep up.

The reversion countdown reached zero, and the bright swirl of SLS vanished, replaced with a stark, starry blackness. Master Commander Lenon Donali reported, “All systems green, jump successful.”

“Scopes?” Hoff asked.

“Clear.”

“As far as we can tell, anyway.” Hoff turned away from the view with a grimace and walked back up to the captain’s table.

“Even if we were followed from Ritan, they must be at least four hours behind us now,” Donali said. “We’re safe.”

“Yes . . .” Hoff’s gaze turned to Roan, who stood in the furthest, darkest corner of the bridge, leaning against the wall. His gleaming black armor and the glowing red eyes of his helmet were unsettling to look at. Hoff shook his head and looked away. “All of those measures could be for nothing if the Gors give us away telepathically. For all we know, Roan is talking to an enemy fleet right now, and they’re using that connection to telelocate him.”

“Well, let’s find out, shall we?” Donali pressed a button on the captain’s table and a bright yellow overlay appeared, glittering like a cloud of stardust on the three dimensional grid. The overlay showed the spread of tachyon radiation in the immediate area, but there was only one wake-shaped wave drifting out from the
Tauron.
The size and spread of that wake were consistent with the wormhole they’d just opened to leave SLS.

“Maybe they really are on our side,” Donali said.

Hoff snorted. “And maybe I’m really a Sythian wearing a holoskin.”

“Are you, sir?”

Hoff glared at Donali until the commander turned back to the grid.

“Hoi—what’s that?” he whispered, pointing frantically.

Hoff turned to see a second, much smaller wave of radiation now spreading out from the ship. It dissipated quickly, but their recently-recalibrated scanners highlighted the dissipating wake and a moment later a yellow vector appeared, giving a direction for the tachyon burst which had caused the radiation. A shaded red sphere appeared around the
Tauron
, narrowing down the point of origin for that burst to within ten klicks. “Well, well,” Hoff said, tracing the vector with his finger. Since the point of origin could be anywhere inside a five klick radius, the vector was off by the same margin and the real line of communication could have been any of an infinite number of other vectors which lay parallel to the calculated one. But Hoff could already see that none of those lines would cross through both the
Tauron
and the
Interloper.
The telepathic burst could have begun on either the
Interloper
or the
Tauron
, but it wasn’t Tova and Roan communicating with each other. One of them had just sent an outbound message. “Roan!” Hoff roared.

The alien shattered his statuesque pose, and the glowing red eyes of his helmet turned. He warbled something.

“Yess?” Hoff’s translator hissed in his hear.

“Could you tell me if there are any other Gors nearby? Maybe we can get some reinforcements.”

“If they are nearby, they are with Zithianzz, and we need rescue them before they help us.”

“Ah, yes, you make a good point. Well, all the same, it would be good to know if there are Sythians nearby. Would you check for us, please?”

“I try.” A few moments later Roan replied, “None of my crèche mates are close enough for me to speak with them.”

“I see. Thank you, Roan.” Hoff turned back to his XO. Donali’s real eye was thoughtfully narrowed. “He’s lying to us,” Hoff whispered. “Why do you think that might be?”

Donali shook his head. “This has gone on long enough. They’re endangering our mission, and if we keep them aboard, they’ll endanger Dark Space, too.”

Hoff touched his comm piece and whispered into it to put a call through to one of the sentinels standing guard over the bridge. The sergeant commander standing at the entrance answered.

“Admiral?”

“Sergeant Thriker—Code 12.”

“Code confirmed.”

Hoff watched the sergeant signal to the soldier standing beside him. They turned in unison, raised their rifles, and fired. Blue fire screeched out and hit Roan in the chest and neck. The alien tried to react, instinctively lifting his arms to fire back from his forearm gauntlets, but his weapons had been disabled long before he’d been brought on board, and his knees buckled before he could even take one step. Thriker fired once more and Roan toppled to the deck with a
thud.

“Take him to the probe rooms,” Hoff said. “It’s time we found out what the Gors have been hiding.”

Sergeant Thriker and his squad mate headed for Roan.

“The probe is useless on Gors, sir,” Donali said. “You’ll just kill him.”

“Who says I want him to live? But before we try that, we’ll be sure to exhaust every other option.”

“What are you going to do when Tova realizes we’ve turned on them? She could make a mess of the
Interloper
if our crew isn’t ready and waiting to stun her.”

“Petty Officer Ashron!” Hoff turned to his comms officer. He was still busy at his station, eyes down, hands busy. The rest of the crew was the same. They hadn’t skipped a beat. If they were shocked that Hoff had ordered Roan stunned, they weren’t showing it.

“Sir?”

“Tell the
Interloper
to arrest Tova, and be
careful
about it. Have them send her here. As soon as you’re done with that, send a scout back to Fortress Station with a message. They are to evacuate Ritan, and make sure our transports are rigorously screened for any stowaways. Once our people are off world, they can drop the shatter bombs and head to the colonies. We’ll meet them there when this is all over.”

“Yes, sir,” Ashron replied.

Donali nodded. “So the alliance is over.”

Hoff shot him a quick look. “It never really began. They weren’t on our side, Commander.”

“So what were they waiting for?”

“Maybe this. If they don’t know exactly where Dark Space is, then maybe all they needed was for someone to lead them there.”

“If that’s true, then there will be a whole cloaked fleet hot on our
trail.”

“Our tachyon trail will be cold long before they can get here to pick it up again. Nav!” Hoff bellowed. “Start spooling for a jump to Dark Space. As soon as our messenger is away, punch it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hoff and Donali turned to watch as the Sergeant Thriker used his grav gun to levitate Roan off the deck.

“It’s a pity the Gors weren’t on our side,” Donali said absently. “With their help we actually could have turned the tide in this war.”

“Cold, hard truth is always preferable to a comforting lie.”

“What if the lie is all you have?”

Hoff frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“We can’t stay hidden forever, Admiral, so what happens when they find us? That lie was our only hope.”

“Then hope was the real lie. . . .” Hoff turned to gaze out the forward viewports at dark, glittering space. “Death came for us at last—” he said, speaking softly. “Her strokes were swift and cruel, and nary a man was left standing, but we found hope in the ashes, for the ashes buried our bodies and covered our blood, and for a moment they allowed us to pretend that the horrors we’d seen were not really there.”

Donali blinked. “Waxing poetic, are we, sir?”

“It’s a line from an old holo play—
Origin at the End.
”

“Ah, the great war of legend.”

Hoff turned to his XO with a small smile. “Of legend? No, Commander, not just legend. It was very real. Sometime I should show you your heritage.”

Donali frowned. “That would be an honor, sir.”

“Be sure that you are worthy of it when the time comes. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing, if it is shared too freely. We must be careful who we tell and how much we say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As for hope—take heart, Commander—we’re not dead yet, and death is not the end. It’s a new beginning.”

Commander Donali smirked. “I’ll have to take your word for that, sir.”

*  *  *

Tova heard the screech and felt the stab of betrayal mere seconds before she lost consciousness. When next she awoke she was naked and strapped down on a table, wincing up at a bright light. When she tried to rise, strong cords held her down and seared her exposed skin, so she lay back, gasping for air. She turned her head and saw Roan lying on a matching table beside hers, hovering a few feet above the ground. He looked badly beaten. His eyes were only half open, and as his head turned toward her, and he hissed softly, she could
hear
his pain.

Tova hissed back, angrily, and she fought her restraints once more. Sparks flew as her restraints crackled, but she ignored the lancing waves of pain.

“Good, you’re awake,” a human voice said. The translation warbled into her ear a moment later and she struggled to find the source of the sound. “What is thiss?” she hissed.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Now the speaker came into view, but she smelled him long before his features became clear. He stank of fear. “Hoff,” she said, trying to approximate his name with her vocals. What came out sounded more like,
Woss.

“You remember my name. I’m touched.”

“What you do to Roan?”