Dark Space: Origin (35 page)

Hoff gritted his teeth and shook his head. “How do you propose we do that? With our nonexistent commnet, perhaps? I’d love to warn them, but it’s too late for that. The Gors have already turned on us, and if we don’t act now, Ritan will be overrun. Right now we have the chance to strike them fast, and strike them hard. If we have to lose a few ships for that, then count them as acceptable losses, and rather think of how many lives we’ll save by killing that many Gors.” Hoff turned to Atton and scowled. “You know that this means I was right. All along, I was right about your so-called allies. I only hope that your blind trust in them hasn’t already exposed Dark Space, or we’re about to relive the Exodus.”

Atton shook his head. “Trust is never wrong—only ever misplaced.”

“Well you certainly misplaced yours! Expect betrayal, Atton, and plan for it. Trust no one! If you had been doing that as you should, we wouldn’t have to take back the
Valiant
now, and I wouldn’t have to write off all your ships out here in Sythian Space.”

“Trust no one?” Destra echoed thoughtfully. “Not even your wife?”

Hoff just looked at her, but his ire was undiminished by the fire now flashing in his wife’s eyes. “I trust you more than anyone, Des—and you know that—”

“More than Donali?”

“That’s different.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I’ve been burned before, Destra! The closer someone is, the easier it is for them to stab you in the back. Don’t push me, Des. That only raises my suspicions.”

Destra smirked and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to go help HTX set the table.” As she brushed past her husband, she said, “You’d better stay out here, Hoff. I’ll be handling knives, and you know how easy it would be for me to stab you if you were to wander too close.”

Both Atton and Hoff watched her leave. As soon as the door swished shut behind her, Hoff turned to Atton with thoughtfully narrowed eyes. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what the two of you have been talking about while I’ve been gone.”

“Finding someone else to blame for your mistakes isn’t going to fix them.”

Hoff smiled. “Be careful, Atton. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

“No? I think I have a pretty good idea, actually. You’re a coward.” Hoff’s eyes flashed, but Atton barreled on. “You don’t trust anyone because you’re afraid. Scared to death, even of your own wife.”

“That’s none of your business,” Hoff growled.

“She’s my mother. That makes it my business.”

“Watch your step, boy. You’re treading on very dangerous ground.”

Atton smiled back. “So are you.”

Chapter 22

N
o one talked over dinner. Hoff contented himself with the silence, but he couldn’t help noticing how far away his wife and daughter sat, all the way at the opposite end of the dining room table. Atton sat with them, leaving four empty seats on Hoff’s end of the eight seat table. Unimpressed by their petulant solidarity, Hoff left and returned to the bridge. When he reached the bridge, he found his XO still on deck, supervising the minutiae of running the ship. Hoff nodded to the commander as he approached. “All’s well?”

“Yes, sir. I wasn’t expecting you here . . . is everything all right, sir?”

“Just fine, Donali. I thought we could go over strategy now that the Gors are no longer going to be there to serve as a link between us and the
Interloper.
”

Donali nodded. “What do you suggest for our new plan of attack?”

“We drop out of SLS a quarter of a light year from Dark Space, and then send out the
Interloper
by herself to gather intel. We wait for her to return with the intel, and then we send her back out, loaded with as many sentinels as we can fit on board. After that, the rest is the same—she sidles up to one of the
Valiant’s
venture-class hangars, and then we jump in as close as we can get and make a quick pass to knock out the hangar shields. Brondi won’t even see the
Interloper
slip inside, and we’ll roar safely underneath the carrier, running away at top speed. A quick hit and run.”

“What about their SLS disruptor field?”

“Carriers like the
Valiant
can knock ships out of SLS at 20 to 50 klicks. We can cover that kind of distance quickly enough using our novas to screen us from enemy fighters. We might take a bit of damage, but we only have to make one pass. Coordination will be difficult without the Gors, but if the
Interloper
does her part, it should work just the same way, and it will certainly be easier than trying to take on the
Valiant
in a straight fight.”

“I suspect we would lose if we tried.”

“Indeed we would.”

They spent the next half an hour working over the details of their battle plan, but the sheer simplicity of the plan didn’t call for so much contemplation. Hoff was just trying to keep his mind off other things, and soon that became apparent.

“You should get some sleep, sir,” Donali said.

Hoff shook his head. He had no intention of returning to his quarters to bask in his wife’s tense, stony silence. “It’s early yet, Commander. When was the last time you had a drink? A real drink?”

“Sir, under the circumstances I’m not sure we can allow ourselves that kind of indiscretion.”

“On the contrary, Donali. These are the only circumstances by which we can. We have a long jump ahead of us, and no Gor ship we’ve ever encountered has SLS disruptors. Call a condition green for the next few hours. Our men deserve a break—and so do we.”

“Yes, sir,” Donali said, frowning. He turned and nodded to the comm officer. “Set readiness to condition green.”

*  *  *

Ethan’s hands flew over the controls in a familiar rhythm as he led his squadron through a series of basic flight maneuvers. To say that they were green was an understatement. Gina was the only one with any aptitude for flying, and that was likely because she was already a trained pilot, which just went to show, there were some things a slave chip didn’t or couldn’t change. There was always a trace. The other pilots flew only marginally better than the sentinels which they’d been trained to be, and Gina flew only a few letter grades worse than she used to.

“Frek, he’s doing it again! Devlin Four, keep the frek away from me! You’re going to tear my wing off.”

Ethan sighed. “It only looks that way, Three. Four—maintain a strict distance at all times.”

“I am, LC! Five keeps wandering my way and I have to compensate in the other direction!”

Greenies. All of them. “This mission is over. We’re returning to the
Valiant
to get some more sim time. I’m coming about. Try to keep up.” Ethan stepped on the right rudder pedal and brought his Nova around back the way they’d come. The icy surface of Firea hove into view. Lying to one side of that, against the night side of the planet was the
Valiant
, her lights glittering like a million tightly-packed stars. Range to the carrier was just over 250 klicks. Brondi had Devlin Squadron flying back-to-back patrol missions on the outskirts of the perimeter he’d set up, meaning that they would be among the first to encounter Admiral Heston’s forces when they arrived. Then the life and death struggle would begin. Kill or be killed. Ethan hadn’t decided which was worse.

It was hard to believe that he was back where he’d started—being blackmailed into working for Brondi in order to protect Alara. So far Brondi was holding up his end of the deal and keeping his men away from Alara, but Ethan knew better than to rely on that. He and Alara had to escape somehow. Maybe when Hoff came and the battle was in full swing there would be an opportunity for Ethan to slip away and rescue her—assuming he wasn’t embroiled in the middle of a dogfight at the time, and assuming he could find some way to rescue Alara despite the fact that she didn’t
want
to be rescued.

It was a hopeless situation. Ethan’s gaze dipped to study the star map on his main holo display. The sheer number of enemy forces arrayed there was startling. In the last day since they’d arrived in Dark Space, Brondi had managed to summon over a dozen small and medium-sized warships to the Firean System, along with whole wings of fighters. Space was alive and buzzing with over 500 fighters—more than 40 squadrons of novas and junkers. There wasn’t even room for all of them to land at once, so they were flying endless, rotating sorties to provide a protective screen for the
Valiant
. And that five-kilometer-long gladiator-class carrier was not so defenseless herself. Ethan remembered that the admiral’s flagship had carried just one squadron of novas, and he fervently hoped that Hoff had put together a big enough fleet to take the
Valiant
down. Ethan hadn’t seen such a display of force since the old glory days of the Imperium, and it was frightening to think that the return of those days might come under Brondi’s rule.

If Hoff didn’t recover the
Valiant
soon, Dark Space was about to grow much darker.

*  *  *

Atton slept in late and crept out into the hall as he had the previous morning. This time he couldn’t hear hushed voices coming from the living room, but HTX4 was buzzing around in the kitchen again. Atton followed him out into the main living area just in time to see Hoff rise from the dining room table. Destra was there, too, but sitting at the opposite end of the table.

Hoff looked up and smiled as Atton approached. “Good morning. I was just headed to the bridge, so I’ll leave you and your mother to gossip about me in my absence.”

Atton shook his head as the front doors swished shut behind the admiral. He pulled out a chair on the sliding rails which bolted it to the floor and sat down with a sigh. “Is your husband always so grumpy in the morning?”

“He suspects something, Atton.”

“All the more reason for us to act quickly.” He saw his mother’s hesitant expression and frowned. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. We’re not going to get another chance at this. It’s now or never, Mom.”

“I haven’t changed my mind about that,” Destra said. “I’ve decided to come with you.”

Atton blinked. “What? What changed your mind?”

“Last night. I told myself that maybe he’s just keeping military secrets. But Hoff’s philosophy to live by is
trust no one
—
the closer someone is, the easier it is for them to stab you in the back.
With an attitude like that he could be hiding anything and everything.”

“I’m glad you woke up.” Atton pushed out his chair.

Destra shot him an anxious look. “Aren’t you going to eat something first?”

He shook his head. “There’s no time. We have to go now.”

*  *  *

This time when the
Tauron
dropped out of SLS, space wasn’t black and full of glittering stars; it was dark and gray with actinic flashes of light which would have sounded like thunder if you could have stuck your head out an airlock and still lived to tell about it. They’d dropped out of superluminal space in the middle of the Stormcloud Nebula. The pervasive gray clouds of charged particles and the constant buzz of static discharging was enough to shield anything within the nebula from prying scanners, and for over a decade, the Stormcloud Nebula had kept the entrance of Dark Space safely hidden from Sythians and Gors alike. Admiral Heston just hoped that it hadn’t all been for nothing. Even if the Gors didn’t know exactly where Dark Space was, as Atton said, there was still the matter of taking the sector back from Brondi. He was beginning to wonder at the wisdom of attempting that with just two ships, but the
Interloper
was their secret weapon. One pass on the
Valiant’s
hangar and the cloaked cruiser would slip inside with a legion of fully-armed and armored sentinels.