The Last Stand Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Dramatis Personnae

  Previously in Dark Space Universe

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

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  KEEP IN TOUCH

  OTHER BOOKS BY JASPER SCOTT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dark Space Universe (Book 3): The Last Stand

  (1st Edition)

  by Jasper T. Scott

  JasperTscott.com

  @JasperTscott

  Copyright © 2017

  THE AUTHOR RETAINS ALL RIGHTS

  FOR THIS BOOK

  Cover Art © Jasper Scott

  Acknowledgments

  Writing, editing, and publishing this book in just two months was a monumental task. The list of people to thank is necessarily shorter, because there just wasn’t enough time for most of my advance readers to get through the book and send me their feedback. With that said, I’m very grateful to all of the people who managed to set aside their busy lives and somehow read through this book in a matter of just a few days. My eternal thanks go to: B. Allen Thobois, Gary Matthews, Gregg Cordell, Harry Huyler, Ian F. Jedlica, Jacqueline Gartside, Karl Keip, Karol Ross, Lara Gray, Lee Anke, Mary Whitehead, Mary Kastle Michael Raycraft, Peter Rouse, Rafael Gutierrez, and Shane Haylock—you guys are amazing!

  Finally, an enormous thank you goes to my volunteer editor, Dave Cantrell, who while sick and bed-ridden managed to read through and edit this book in just one week, giving me all the feedback that only a professional editor could give—and all the while refusing my attempts to pay him for his help. Dave, you are a damn fine editor and a fantastic writer, but you’re an even better friend. Thank you for all you do.

  To those who dare,

  And to those who dream.

  To everyone who’s stronger than they seem.

  “Believe in me / I know you’ve waited for so long / Believe in me / Sometimes the weak become the strong.”

  —STAIND, Believe

  Dramatis Personnae

  Ortane Family

  Lucien “Lucy” Ortane

  Tyra Ortane

  Atara Ortane - their five-year-old daughter

  Theola Ortane - their eighteen month-old daughter

  Lucien’s Family

  Ethan Ortane - Crusader/Captain of Dauntless

  Alara Ortane - Crusader/Co-captain of Dauntless

  Trinity Ortane

  Former Crew of the Intrepid

  Garek Helios “The Veteran”

  Adalyn Gallia “Addy”

  Brakos “Brak” - the Gor

  Astralis

  Joseph Corretti

  Bob “The Android”

  Admiral Esalia Wheeler

  Gideon

  Colonel Drask - First Officer “XO”/Gunnery Chief

  Major Calla Ward - First Officer “XO”/Gunnery Chief

  Lieutenant Roth Sebal - Comms

  Veritus

  Lieutenant Cassa Alissar - Engineering

  Lieutenant Gorman Argos - Helm / First Officer

  Lieutenant Lila Asher - Sensor Operator

  Lieutenant Teranik - Comms

  New Earth

  High Praetor Serenity Talos

  Others

  Etherus

  Abaddon - exiled commander of Etheria’s Army, the arch-enemy of Etherus

  Previously in Dark Space Universe

  Please Note

  The following synopses contain spoilers from Dark Space Universe (Book 1), and Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within.

  If you haven’t read those books and would rather do so, you can get them here:

  http://smarturl.it/darkspace7

  http://smarturl.it/darkspace8

  Synopsis for Dark Space Universe (Book 1)

  Etherus, the god and ruler of humanity, warned the three hundred million non-believers aboard Astralis of the dangers lurking beyond the Red Line, but he allowed them to leave his kingdom and seek the true nature of the universe by traveling to the cosmic horizon.

  Tyra Forster, captain of the Inquisitor, along with Lucien Ortane and a crew of trained explorers, known as Paragons, blazed a path for Astralis, but they soon ran into the Faros, a hostile race of alien slavers. The Faros relentlessly chased them across multiple star systems until the Inquisitor became separated from Astralis.

  Captain Forster and her crew spent the next eight years in stasis while their robotic navigator, Pandora, took them to the cosmic horizon and a rendezvous with Astralis. Soon after reaching that rendezvous, they learned that Pandora was actually a spy for the Faros, and an alien fleet arrived to enslave them all.

  During the ensuing battle, the crew of the Inquisitor was forced to abandon ship and flee from Astralis in shuttles. All of the shuttles were intercepted or destroyed, except for Lucien’s, which was badly damaged, but he managed to set down in a Faro colony with three of his fellow crew.

  The Faros’ leader, Abaddon, nearly killed them, and would have done so but for the efforts of an escaped Faro slave named Oorgurak. He helped them escape to Freedom Station, a haven for runaway slaves-turned-pirates, known as Marauders.

  Lucien and his surviving crew mates assume that Astralis must have been captured by the Faro fleet, and they are now hoping to meet a Marauder captain who will help them find and rescue their people. Little do they know, the Faros’ agenda isn’t as simple as it seems, and their people are in even greater danger than they think....

  Synopsis for Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within

  Aboard Freedom Station, Lucien and the surviving crew from the Intrepid run into Katawa, an enigmatic gray alien who claims to be from Etheria. He offers to help them find and rescue Astralis if they will first help him find a lost Etherian fleet so that he can use the data in its nav computers to discover the way home to Etheria.

  Back on Astralis, Lucien’s clone and his wife, Tyra, are fighting desperately to fend off a boarding party of Faros. The aliens detonate a bomb over Fallside, one of the four “surface-level” cities of Astralis, ripping the city open to space and killing millions of people in a matter of seconds. But that was just the distraction. Their real objective was to reach Astralis’s leaders and possess them with Abaddon’s own consciousness. Several other less important individuals are also possessed, including Lucien and Tyra’s daughter, Atara.

  The Faros remain undercover, working secretly to accomplish their real objective: to find the lost fleet and the way to Etheria so they can get revenge on Etherus and the Etherians for exiling them.

  Aboard Katawa’s shuttle, Lucien and his crewmates discover that their gray alien friend is actually working for Abaddon and using them to find the lost Etherian fleet. By the time they find out, Katawa has stranded them on an ali
en planet full of hostile natives, and all that’s left for them to do is to find the lost fleet so that they can use it to escape.

  Meanwhile, Abaddon knows that Lucien and his crew will take the lost fleet straight to Astralis once they find it, and now that he has control of Astralis through its leaders, he plans to commandeer the fleet as soon as it arrives.

  But before Abaddon can execute this plan, Tyra discovers what he’s done to the leaders of Astralis and to her own daughter, Atara. Tyra hatches a plot with Lucien and several others to overthrow the possessed leaders of Astralis by infiltrating the Resurrection Center and exposing the thoughts and memories of the possessed. In order to accomplish this, Lucien Ortane makes a deal with a local gangster, Joe Coretti, to get them a bomb that they can use to hold the center ransom. They execute their plan and smuggle the bomb inside, but things don’t go as planned, and most of the infiltrators die in the fighting, including Coretti. Ultimately, the leaders of Astralis are revealed for what they are, but Coretti’s android henchman detonates the bomb anyway, and blows up the center as part of an unknown criminal agenda.

  Marines and police forces move to apprehend the leaders of Astralis. Just before they do, Chief Councilor Ellis sends a message to the nearest Faro fleet, giving them instructions to wait until the lost fleet arrives to spring their trap. They won’t be able to commandeer the lost Etherian fleet anymore, so they’ll just have to fight for it. With that message sent, the possessed humans all manage to kill themselves before they can be brought to justice, leaving Astralis’s leadership in disarray, and no one to interrogate. Tyra becomes the acting chief councilor, and promotes Commander Esalia Wheeler, a bridge officer and co-conspirator, to the rank of admiral.

  Lucien’s daughter, Atara, and a few other scattered individuals remain infected with Abaddon’s consciousness, and now that the Resurrection Center is destroyed, there’s no way to restore their minds to the way they were before—or to bring back any of the people who died when Fallside was destroyed. Atara is being interrogated to discover what the Faros’ agenda really was. The interrogation proves fruitless, but just as it’s concluding, the Lost Fleet arrives, followed immediately by a massive Faro fleet.

  Now Astralis is surrounded, and the lost Etherian fleet has just four crew to command more than a thousand ships. Somehow they have to keep the Faros from boarding those ships or Abaddon will learn the way to Etheria and the invasion will begin....

  Chapter 1

  Aboard the Lost Etherian Fleet

  Faro ships streamed into the system by the hundreds, appearing with brief, blinding-white flashes of light. The enemy fleet jumped in all around the dark, gleaming wedge of Astralis, surrounding it in seconds.

  Lucien Ortane watched impotently from the command control station aboard the Gideon, the largest of the one thousand and fifty-seven warships in the lost Etherian Fleet.

  “They used us as bait to get to Astralis—again!” Addy said.

  “I don’t think so,” Garek replied. “Abaddon is after the lost fleet, not Astralis.”

  “Then why did they only show up now? Why not ambush us sooner?” Addy demanded, turning from her station to look at Lucien.

  Her bald scalp shone blue with reflected light from the holo displays at the helm. Even after two months, their hair still hadn’t begun to grow back. Katawa had forced them to shave it all off and bathe in depilatory gel so they could disguise themselves as Faros and go hunting for the lost fleet. Little did they know those disguises were just elaborate window dressing and Katawa was secretly working for Abaddon. They’d been manipulated into stealing the lost fleet out from under the noses of its extra-dimensional guardians, the Polypuses, and now the Polypuses’ dire warnings about what would happen if the Faros found the fleet were about to come to pass.

  “It’s the other way around,” Lucien decided. “They used Astralis as bait to get to us. The Polypuses were right. Now, because we didn’t take the fleet straight back to Etheria, Abaddon is going to get his hands on it and learn the way to Etheria. Then the visions we saw of him invading and conquering Etheria and New Earth are going to happen. We need to jump away now, before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late,” Addy said. The Faros have us surrounded with overlapping jamming fields. We can’t jump out. The risk of scattering is over ninety percent. There’s a nine out of ten chance that we’ll disintegrate if we jump away now.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” Lucien said quietly.

  “Think again, kid,” Garek said. “A ninety percent chance of scattering with over a thousand vessels means that at least a hundred of them will survive. Abaddon will still find them and discover the way to Etheria. Getting ourselves killed isn’t going to help anyone. Besides, Astralis needs us now. If we leave them here, the Faros will enslave them for sure.”

  “So we fight,” Brak put in, turning from his control station to bare his dagger-sharp black teeth at them in a fearsome grin.

  Lucien shook his head. “How? We’ve got just four crew for a thousand ships that are ordinarily crewed by a few thousand people each!”

  “They’re all set to automatically follow us,” Addy said. “Maybe we can find a way to automate their defenses from here?”

  “Astralis is launching fighters and galleons,” Garek announced. “And the Faros are opening fire on them from extreme range—or maybe that’s close range for their weapons systems.”

  Lucien hurriedly paged through the various displays available from his station, hunting for the gunnery panel.

  “Faro shuttles are launching!” Addy said. “They’re headed our way!”

  Lucien found the gunnery panel and scanned the options for automation settings. He found a column labeled Fire Mode at the top of the list of weapons on board; then he selected that column and set all of the weapons from manual fire to auto fire. He looked up at the holo dome covering the Gideon’s bridge.

  Space was dark; clumps of enemy starships gleamed a dull gray, and new ones continued jumping in with periodic flashes of light. The ships in the lost fleet shone a bright silver, and the giant wedge that was Astralis gleamed darkly in the system’s sun, its solar-energy collecting side facing up and slightly to one side.

  Lucien expected to see simulated laser beams flash out from their ship, and missiles streaking into the void—or at least to hear the muffled reports of cannons and launchers rumbling through the deck, but all was silent, and the only flashes of weapons fire he saw were the distant, needle-thin flickers of light from the enemy fleet as it fired on Astralis and its garrison.

  “Those Faro shuttles are getting closer...” Addy warned.

  “I don’t get it! I set the ship’s weapons to auto-fire!” Lucien said.

  “You forgot to set a target,” Garek explained. “Hang on, I’ll do it....” They’d each passed the time while calculating jumps to Astralis by familiarizing themselves with the capabilities of one of the ship’s primary control systems. Garek had chosen gunnery, Lucien the command station, Brak engineering, while Addy handled the helm, comms, and sensors.

  “Got it!” Garek said.

  Lucien heard the muffled reports of weapons fire and looked up to see the black of space suddenly turn as bright as day. Green laser beams snapped out in all directions, and bright blue balls of energy tracked through the void at a much lazier pace—Etherian missiles? Lucien wondered. After just a second, explosions began poking fiery holes in the darkness between the stars, as if all of space was a thick curtain holding back a blinding wall of light. The explosions faded and blossomed anew, creating shifting patterns that danced behind Lucien’s eyelids every time he blinked. “We’re kicking the Faros’ asses...” he marveled.

  Faro shielding and weapons technology was leagues ahead of what humanity had developed, but Etherian tech was far better still.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Addy said. “We’re just one ship against hundreds. If we can’t find a way to control the rest of the fleet from here, we’re sti
ll going to lose.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” Garek said.

  Just as he said that, green lasers and blue missiles snapped out from the rest of their fleet. Green lasers and streaking blue missiles filled the void, drawing bright, flowering orange explosions wherever they converged.

  Unable to make any sense of the battle from such a limited perspective, Lucien looked back to his displays and paged through them until he found something called the tactical map. He selected it, and a two-dimensional grid appeared, sprawled out in front of him like a chess board. Three-dimensional red and green-shaded miniatures hovered above and below the grid, with straight lines connecting them to it and providing a sense of depth.

  Lucien found he could rotate the entire display by moving his hands around it as if he were grasping an invisible ball and turning it in his hands. Simulated laser beams and the tiny glowing balls of missiles flashed between the friendly and enemy ships, causing their miniature 3D icons to flicker as they took fire.

  Bright blue circles around the ships denoted their shield strength, along with a percent value. Most of those blue circles were still bright and showing percentages in the high nineties, but a few of the enemy ships were surrounded by much dimmer blue circles, with shield values already dropping into the forties and thirties.

  A contacts summary to one side of the display gave the numbers of vessels in the two fleets—the lost fleet, labeled Gideon’s Army, still showed all one thousand and fifty-seven ships they’d started with, while the enemy fleet, labeled the 5016th Faro Fleet, numbered six hundred and ten—

  Six hundred and nine, Lucien corrected, as one of the enemy capital ships cracked apart in a fiery burst of jagged debris.