Dark Space: The Invisible War (37 page)

Even that chance was slim. Delayn had taken them aside just before Caldin’s farewell speech and told them what the commander had been holding back during the debriefing. There was a good chance the
Rescue
wouldn’t make it. The reactor could easily overheat and suffer a meltdown before they ever reached Obsidian Station.

As Alara, Gina, Delayn, and Tova climbed the boarding ramp to the corvette
,
the crew cheered and whistled, and the burden of their lives grew all the heavier. Gina shook her head as they retreated inside the corvette. “The way they’re acting, you’d think we were conquering heroes.”

Alara nodded.

“We will be heroes if we make it,” Delayn said.

The inside of the corvette was so cramped that they didn’t need to guess which way to go. There only was one. A short corridor led to a lift tube which would carry them straight up the four decks to the bridge. The ship was a giant space rocket, packed with enough fuel to atomize the
Defiant
if something went wrong—let alone the much smaller corvette.

“If we even hit a bit of space dust,” Gina said, catching Alara’s eye while they waited for the lift. “We’re going to make a real pretty supernova.”

“I do not understand,” Tova said. Her warbling language filtered roughly through the Gor’s helmet to their aural translators and then came out in a gender-neutral computerized voice.

Gina turned to her with a frown. “It means we might all die before we can get help.”

“I see. I do my best to contact my crèche mates before we arrive.”

“Well,” Gina gave the alien a big, false smile. “That’s why you’re here.”

Turning back to the lift as it opened, Gina shook her head and muttered, “Frekkin’ Gors. . . .”

“We do copulate,” Tova replied. “But not as often as humans.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Gina said, her nose wrinkling with disgust.

The lift took them up to the fourth level and opened directly in front of the cockpit. They started forward and the doors automatically swished open to let them through. Alara found the nearest chair and sat down, not caring whether she was the pilot or the copilot, but both control stations turned out to be identically appointed, allowing one of them to sleep while the other kept watch.

Gina sat down beside her and they began the preflight check while Tova squeezed into the gravidar station to their right, and Delayn into the engineering station to their left. They went through the preflight carefully to avoid deadly oversights, but everything checked out, and they received clearance for take off. The engines started with a rising roar and began rumbling ominously underfoot.

“Ruh-kah!” Commander Caldin said, her voice coming to their ears from the comm speakers as she waved to them from her podium on the flight deck below.

And then Gina turned to Alara with a grim smile. “Next stop Obsidian Station.”

*  *  *

Alec Brondi stood aboard the bridge of the
Valiant,
down by the viewports, watching the countdown to real space from the HUD relay inside his zephyr’s helmet. He’d become even more paranoid since the incident in the med center, refusing to leave the designated “safe” zones, and refusing to take off his armor for any reason. It was starting to stink inside the mech, but Brondi considered that a small price to pay. His trip had been worth it. They’d successfully isolated Kurlin’s virus from the blood sample they’d taken. Now all they needed to do was get it aboard Admiral Heston’s ships, sit back, and let nature take its course.

Brondi smiled behind his helmet and turned to Captain Thornton, who was now cloaked in a holoskin that made him look exactly like Overlord Dominic. “Are you ready?”

The captain nodded. “I am,” he said, in the gravelly voice of the overlord himself.

Amazing,
Brondi thought.
It sounds just like him!
They’d managed to produce a decent vocal synthesizer based on recordings of the overlord’s voice. The only thing they couldn’t do was fake up an identichip for Thornton, but they wouldn’t need that to gain the admiral’s confidence. Showing up in the overlord’s flagship, looking and sounding just like him would be more than good enough.

The
Valiant
dropped out of SLS directly above Ritan, and Brondi smiled down upon the dark world below. “Gravidar, report!”

“I have . . . nothing on scopes.”

“What?” Brondi blinked. “What do you mean
nothing?
”

“Wait, there is one contact. She’s small. Looks like a guardian-class destroyer. They’re hailing us.”

“Good. That must be them.” Brondi turned to Captain Thornton. “It’s time for you to shine.”

The captain nodded and turned to the viewports with hands clasped behind his back. He wore the white uniform of the overlord, recently tailored to fit his slightly taller frame. “Put them on screen,” the captain said.

Suddenly their view of Ritan was replaced with the larger-than-life face of a very haggard-looking man of about 50 something.

“Supreme Overlord, what are you doing so far from home?”

Thornton sighed. “It’s a long story.”

The man on screen folded his hands on the desk before him and nodded. “I’m listening.”

Captain Thornton dutifully explained the story they’d come up with. An outlaw fleet had attacked them with a devastating bio weapon—a virus. The
Valiant
had developed a vaccine before it was too late, but not before their now vastly-under crewed ship had been forced to flee Dark Space by the enemy fleet. Thornton was quick to point out the damage to their port side as proof of that engagement—damage which they’d actually suffered while fleeing Sythians.

At the end of their long, sad story, Thornton revealed the good news. They’d saved some of the vaccine so that Admiral Hoff could inoculate his crew against the deadly virus—just in case it spread.

“Well,” the man speaking with them sighed. “That’s unfortunate. Of course your crew could still be contagious, so we’re going to have to keep our distance, but you can jettison the vaccine in an escape pod and I’ll be sure that it gets to the admiral so he can distribute it to the fleet.”

Brondi was upset to hear they weren’t talking with the admiral himself, but happy that it seemed like the man they
were
talking to had bought their cover story.
He’s even going to spread the virus for me!
Brondi thought.

“We’ll be in touch, Dominic.” And with that, the holo call ended and Brondi was left grinning smugly out at space. Soon he’d have a whole fleet under his command! Now he just needed to find a crew for it. Perhaps he’d open recruitment offices when they got back to Dark Space. . . .
Yes,
Brondi nodded. Dreams of a truly free Imperium safely tucked away in Dark Space, patrolled and ruled by a powerful fleet under his command swirled through his head.

Brondi turned from the viewports to address his crew, and that was when the deck rocked violently under his feet. Brondi fell against the viewports. The
thunk
which sounded from that impact rang painfully in his ears, and then the lights flickered and went out. Suddenly Brondi felt his feet drifting free of the deck. He snapped on his zephyr’s floodlights just in time to see the ceiling before he floated into it. Brondi turned to see the rest of his crew floating above the deck, their arms and legs flailing as they cursed and shouted at each other. He twisted his torso the other way to see Captain Thornton floating in a globular pool of his own blood. “Captain!” he yelled.

But Thornton didn’t respond.

*  *  *

Roan heard the distant boom of the explosion, and he grinned inside his helmet. The lights went out, and then the gravity failed but Roan could manage in zero G just fine using his armor. He’d kept his feet rooted to the deck using the grav field on his belt.

He had done everything he could to take back the
Valiant,
but they had finally made it impossible for him to kill any more. After being almost killed by mines—twice—while trying to get to the surviving crew memebers, Roan had finally understood that there was only one option left, and he had thought back to the plan Tova had laid out for him to sabotage the ship before reinforcements arrived. They’d asked him to shut down the main reactor and destroy the IMS—which is exactly what he had done.

Tova had warned him that the humans would eventually use grav guns and field emitters to regain their footing, but without power on the ship, they’d have to venture out to fix the reactor and the ruined IMS, and that was what Roan really wanted. He’d laid a few traps of his own along the approaches to those areas of the ship.

Roan hissed inside his helmet and bared his teeth. It was time to hunt again.

*  *  *

Alara, Gina, and Delayn fell into a routine, the hours blurring together with the same dull monotony of napping, eating emergency rations, and taking turns to stay awake and nursemaid the
Rescue
. Someone had to constantly watch the reactor’s coolant levels and core temperature. If the coolant dropped too low, or the core temperature rose too high, they would have to make an emergency stop to let the reactor cool. In between watching the reactor, they studied the time till reversion. The SLS timer was like the timer on a bomb—which was exactly what it felt like. It felt like they were riding inside a giant bomb. In her mind’s eye Alara saw it explode in a magnificent flash of light and sound which could be seen streaking across the night sky, clear from one side of the galaxy to the other.

And then, that was exactly what happened. Alara saw the flash of light and heard—

“Wake up, Kiddie!” Someone was shaking her. “Wake up!”

She groaned and sat up to see the maddening, bright swirl of SLS fade to a much more tolerable pattern of tiny pinpricks of light.

“Where are we?” she asked, suddenly disoriented. Gina stopped shaking her, and Delayn answered her question.

“The core was getting too hot, so I dropped us out to let the reactor cool. Meanwhile, we can see if we’re close enough now for Tova to contact her fellow skull faces. “Tova?”

“I try . . . wait.”