Dark Space Read online

  The young woman’s expression became puzzled. “No, my name is Angel,” she said, smiling sweetly. “What’s yours?”

  Darla gaped at the young woman. The voice was Alara’s. The face was hers, too. But she didn’t appear to recognize her own mother, and she seemed to think her name was Angel. “What has Brondi done to you?” Darla asked in horror.

  Chapter 13

  Dr. Kurlin watched as his wife was brought onto the bridge deck. Her hands were shackled and one of Brondi’s henchmen was at her back. Her posture was defiant—her chin thrust out, her back straight, and her blue eyes were glittering darkly. Kurlin knew that posture. His wife was furious. The man leading her onto the bridge passed charge of her over to the guards standing by the entrance, while he walked up to Brondi with a grave frown.

  Something was wrong.

  Kurlin locked eyes with his wife, and she held his gaze silently, but he had the distinct impression she was trying to tell him something. Kurlin turned to see the bodyguard who had brought her onto the bridge walk up to Brondi and whisper something in his ear, to which Brondi whirled around furiously. “Then why did you bring her here? You imbecile! Take her back.”

  The doctor turned to eye Brondi suspiciously. “What’s the matter?”

  Brondi shook his head. “Nothing.”

  That was when Kurlin heard his wife shout out behind him, “They have Alara!”

  Kurlin turned to see his wife straining to break free from the pair of guards at the door. A moment later, he felt his own arms seized, and he turned to see a guard on either side of him.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Kurlin demanded.

  Brondi shook his head sadly. “I wasn’t aware that she was your daughter, I swear.”

  “Then let her go!” Kurlin roared.

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  “I did everything you asked!”

  The crime lord inclined his head. “Yes, that you did. Thank you, by the way.” Turning his attention to the guards holding Kurlin, he said, “Take them to the detention level and lock them up.”

  * * *

  Ethan stood naked and shivering in the stasis room, his eyes drawn to the nearest stasis tube. The room was vast and airy, filled with dozens of the blue transpiranium tubes. Ethan frowned uncertainly at the tube which was being prepped for him and turned to the doctor who was standing filling a syringe at a nearby desk. “You’re sure this is necessary, Doc?”

  The doctor looked up from his work and tapped the air out of his syringe. “If you want to get better fast, yes.”

  Ethan felt the tickle in his throat abruptly shift to his nose, and he let loose a violent sneeze that left his eyes watering and his nose running. “Why don’t you just give me a pill,” he asked in a nasal voice.

  The doctor began chuckling. “Listen to you!” He walked over to Ethan and gestured for him to sit down on the stool beside the stasis tube. “Don’t worry, you won’t even be aware of the time passing,” the doctor said as he disinfected Ethan’s arm and searched for a vein to inject the stasis preparation.

  “Exactly how long will I be out for?” Ethan winced as the needle went in.

  “No more than twelve hours. Possibly less.” The doctor finished injecting him, and withdrew the needle with a small, satisfied smile. “There! You’ll start feeling sleepy soon.”

  Ethan was already sleepy; his eyes were slowly drifting shut as he sat there waiting. The doctor moved to key some inputs into the waiting stasis tube, and the blue transpiranium lid opened for him. Ethan peered inside. It looked like a coffin.

  “Your stasis tube is ready,” the doctor said. “You may climb inside whenever you feel ready.”

  Ethan rose slowly from the stool where he was seated. “What if you forget to wake me up?” He asked as the doctor helped him into the tube.

  “There are fail-safes, but we never put the patient inside without specifying a duration for the treatment. Even were the worst to occur, and everyone aboard somehow forgot about you, the tube itself would wake you up.” Ethan nodded as he settled into the tube, and the doctor appeared hovering over him with a smile. “But you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be here checking up on you every hour, and if not me, then one of the nurses. Someone will be here when you wake up.”

  Ethan allowed his eyelids to drift shut, and he stifled a weak cough with his hand. He felt drugged. “Okay,” he said dreamily. “Hurry it up, Doc. I need to . . .” An overwhelming sleepiness overcame Ethan then, and he trailed off abruptly, his lips still moving, but no sound coming out. He heard the stasis tube shut with a distant click and a soft hiss of pressurizing air. The tube grew warm and he felt his mind drifting as though he were floating away on a cloud. Soon, he was asleep and dreaming of nova fighters chasing one another in heated dogfights across the rolling green surface of Forliss, blasting one another to shrapnel and raining fire down on the agri-domes below. Ethan wanted to object, to ask why they were fighting each other, but then he found himself flying one of those fighters and his own hand was tightening on the trigger to fire a torrent of red lasers at another nova as it danced around under his crosshairs. He scored a hit and watched as the enemy’s shields flared blue and then died, allowing a portion of the energy to bleed through. The port engine glow of Ethan’s target suddenly winked out, sending the fighter slowly listing toward the ground. Ethan followed his target, tracking it perfectly in its downward spiral.

  His comm crackled then with a familiar voice. “You shot me, Ethan!” It was Alara. Her voice was filled with pain. “Goodbye . . .” She said as her fighter plummeted to the ground.

  Ethan’s eyes flew wide, and he followed her down, saying. “Alara, punch out! I didn’t know it was you!”

  But the only reply which came back to him over the comm was a hiss of static. He watched her fighter hit the ground and explode in a huge, expanding fireball which shook his fighter with a concussive wave. Ethan screamed, “Alara!”

  And then he woke up.

  The stasis tube hissed with escaping air as the cover slowly rose. “Treatment complete,” a computerized voice said. Ethan sat up with a shiver in the colder air of the stasis room. Gone was the tickle in the back of his throat, and he took a deep breath to find that he wasn’t stuffed up anymore. The stasis tube had done its job. How long had he been in stasis? No sooner had he thought it, than the current date and time flashed up in his mind’s eye, fed to him by the holo card reader implant behind his ear. Only twelve hours had passed. Ethan shook out his arms which were tingling vaguely with pins and needles, and he took a moment to look around.

  The med center was dark, and despite the doctor’s assurances, no one was there to greet him. Ethan frowned and swung his legs over the side of the stasis tube, wondering what had happened while he’d been asleep.

  That was when he noticed the body lying face down on the floor, clothed in a bulky white hazmat suit and surrounded by shattered vials of who-knew-what. Ethan abruptly stood from the stasis tube and turned in a dizzy circle. All of the other stasis tubes were full, their blue transpiranium covers dimly lit from within to reveal the faces of their occupants. Deeper into the shadowy room, Ethan could vaguely see the white glove and sleeve of another hazmat suit, peeking out from behind a trolley of medical equipment.

  Ethan shook his head, disbelieving what he was seeing. This was a dream. It couldn’t be real. “Hello?” Ethan called out, and waited for a reply, but no one came bursting into the stasis room, and the body on the floor didn’t even stir.

  GHOST SHIP

  Chapter 14

  Brondi stood at the forward viewport on the bridge of his corvette, watching as the Valiant grew large and menacing before them. Beside him, stood Doctor Kurlin, shackled hand and foot with stun cords.

  “It’s the moment of truth, Doctor. If those batteries open fire on us, your virus didn’t kill the crew, and I kill you.” Brondi finished that last part with a threatening look cast the doctor’s way, but Kurlin gave no
sign that he had heard. He stood with his shoulders hunched and eyes downcast, studying the deck at his feet.

  Brondi felt a small surge of pity for the man. “I’ll tell you what, Kurlin. If all of this goes according to plan, I’ll re-invoke our former arrangement. You and your wife can go free, and I’ll pay you the sols I promised.”

  Kurlin turned to look at the crime boss with wary hope etched across his bony face. “What about my daughter?”

  Brondi held up a fat hand to stop the Doctor there. “Don’t get greedy, Kurlin. She wasn’t a part of our arrangement. And I swear I didn’t know she was your daughter. If you want her back, I can release her to you and disable her programming for a fee.”

  The doctor set his jaw. “How much?”

  “How much do I owe you?” Brondi countered.

  “One million sols.”

  “Okay, then let’s say one point one million sols.”

  The doctor’s eyes bulged. “I don’t have that much, and you know it!”

  Brondi eyed him speculatively. “Are you saying your daughter isn’t worth the extra 100,000 sols?”

  Kurlin gritted his teeth. “I’m saying I don’t have the money.”

  Brondi shrugged. “That’s all right. You can owe me. I’m sure I can find some or other job for you to pay off the debt.”

  Kurlin turned back to the viewport and sighed, his shoulders hunching once more. “Very well.”

  Out the viewport they could see the bright multi-colored engine glows of Brondi’s mixed type fighter squadrons, twelve and a half of them in all. Flying around them were a few supporting craft, including Ethan’s precious Atton which was serving in this operation as a recovery vessel for pilots—should they encounter any resistance that is. And flying in front of them and slightly off to the port side was a large gallant-class troop transport carrying a substitute crew for the Valiant. Brondi hadn’t been able to put together more than five thousand men, which was a skeleton crew at best for the city-sized carrier, but it would be sufficient for the time being.

  He was placing a lot of faith in the fact that the virus he’d set loose aboard the Valiant wouldn’t pose a threat to them, but all of his crew had been inoculated with Kurlin’s vaccine, and just in case, they’d be going aboard in hazmat suits.

  Behind Brondi, his comm officer called out, “Reaper Squadron is in range of the Valiant’s batteries!”

  “Good,” Brondi replied, and watched intently for the Valiant’s long-range beam cannons to open fire on the squadron, but the carrier lay dark and unresponsive in the distance. Also a good sign was the fact that the Valiant hadn’t tried to hail them as they approached, and as yet there were no novas flying out to greet them. To all appearances, the Valiant had become a ghost ship.

  Brondi’s mouth dropped open in a grin. “Alert the troops, Lieutenant Marik. We’re going aboard.”

  * * *

  At first, Ethan had a hard time understanding what had happened, but between the doctors and nurses collapsed on the floor in their hazmat suits, and the fact that he couldn’t leave the med center because the ship was under quarantine, Ethan began to realize that there had been some type of epidemic aboard the ship. A quick query at the control panel beside the entrance to the med center confirmed it. “Emergency quarantine in effect. Only properly authorized medical personnel may enter and leave the med center.”

  Ethan frowned. How was he supposed to open the doors if all of the properly authorized medical personnel were dead? The waiting room floor was littered with motionless med workers in their pristine white hazmat suits.

  It seemed like a mighty big coincidence that the mission Brondi had given him had been fulfilled without him having to do anything. Making matters even more suspicious, 12 hours ago, Ethan had been the only one who was sick. Now he was fine, and everyone else had died of a mysterious pathogen.

  Ethan’s frown deepened. He wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. His gut told him that this was no accident. Ethan’s mind flashed back to the fiery red cocktail that Brondi had prepared for him, and he felt abruptly sick.

  If it were true, and he had unwittingly brought the deadly pathogen aboard the ship, then why had he, of all people, survived? Moreover, if he had been the carrier of the plague and Brondi had engineered that, then it seemed like a waste of effort for the crime boss to have used Lieutenant Adan Reese as a cover identity. Why not just capture one of the nova pilots, infect him, and release him? Ethan supposed that doing things that way, Brondi would have had no guarantees that the pilot would head straight back to the Valiant, or that he would be able to take the carrier by surprise. A nova pilot being captured and then released was sure to draw a lot of suspicion from the fleet. This way Brondi had more control over the spread of the plague, and he had been guaranteed of results.

  To Ethan the more disturbing part of all this was that if it were even half true, Brondi had never had any intention of honoring their deal, and Alara’s life was already forfeit.

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed to deadly slits. “All right, Brondi, round one goes to you, but in the second round all bets are off. I’m going to find you and kill you with my bare hands.”

  For the moment, however, his primary concern was getting out of the med bay and off the ship before the same thing that had happened to the crew happened to him. Ethan hurried from the waiting room, back the way he’d come. He was still naked, so he went to retrieve his clothes from the locker in the stasis room which corresponded to the number of his stasis tube. After that, he began searching the med center for survivors. The other stasis tubes were all lit up, indicating that their occupants were alive, but Ethan wasn’t about to risk letting them out. If they were in there, it was for a good reason.

  Still searching the med center, Ethan eventually found himself standing inside a vast medical supply room. But here, like everywhere else he had gone, there were dead med workers lying face down on the floor and no survivors anywhere to be seen. Ethan eyed the nearest body with a frown. If the med center had already been compromised, why were all of the medical personnel wearing hazmat suits? Maybe not everyone had been exposed. . . . but the number of dead med workers Ethan had encountered belied that theory.

  More likely . . .

  Ethan’s mind flashed back to the med center doors. “Only properly authorized medical personnel may enter and leave the med center.” Perhaps the suits allowed the med workers to move freely through the ship despite the quarantine. It made sense, but Ethan hadn’t found any free suits. His eyes were drawn to the nearest body, and he shuddered with revulsion at the idea which occurred to him then.

  Before he could change his mind, Ethan got down on his haunches beside the nearest body and began unsnapping the seals on the hazmat suit.

  When Ethan pulled off the dead med worker’s helmet, he saw that there were no visible signs of what had killed the man. Just in case the man were merely asleep or unconscious, Ethan pressed a hand to the med worker’s forehead. His skin was ice cold to the touch, and Ethan recoiled from the body.

  “Definitely dead,” Ethan muttered to himself. He quickly finished pulling the suit off the dead med worker and then climbed into it himself.

  When Ethan returned to the entrance of the med center, now properly clothed in a hazmat suit, the doors automatically swished open for him, and he stepped out into a dimly-lit corridor. Ethan looked around, while listening to the sound of his canned breathing reverberating back to him inside of the helmet. There were a couple more bodies beyond the med center. One of them had on a white hazmat suit, while the other was clothed in a black fleet uniform. That meant the incident wasn’t limited to the med bay.

  Ethan walked cautiously up to the officer, and then he bent down to steal the man’s side arm. On a whim, he rolled the man over, but as with the med worker he’d stolen his suit from, there were no visible signs of what had killed the officer. With a frown, Ethan stood up and started down the corridor, winding his way around to the rail car system he’d arrived on jus
t over twelve hours ago.

  When the rail car arrived, Ethan stepped inside and found a few more dead officers slumped over in their seats or splayed out across the floor. He tried to ignore them, and instead focused on his destination. Using the directory beside the doors, he looked up the bridge deck and keyed that in—if anyone were still alive and in charge, that was a logical place for them to be. Access to the bridge was restricted, so the plague might not have had a chance to spread there. The rail car accepted his destination and quickly accelerated up to speed.

  Ethan went to find a seat as far as possible from any of the bodies inside the rail car. Even if the bridge were similarly filled with bodies, Ethan planned to check from there using the life support systems to see if there were survivors anywhere aboard the ship, and if not, he’d abandon the ghost ship in one of the novas before someone came snooping around to ask him awkward questions. His excuse that it was all Brondi’s fault was bound to sound mighty thin to a fleet interrogator, and that was to say nothing of what they’d do to him when they found out he was actually wearing a holoskin and impersonating a fleet officer.

  Brondi’s scheme had worked out just great for him. Without the Valiant in the picture, he would be rid of the vast majority of the fleet. The scattered remnant that had been stationed elsewhere would be hard-pressed to police Dark Space if some major upheaval were to take place—such as an open war between Brondi’s forces and those of the fleet.

  Ethan realized that that was likely what the crime boss had been planning all along—some sort of coup d’état which would install him as the governing head of the sector. He didn’t want to be rid of the government. He wanted to be the government.

  The rail car arrived at the bridge after a few minutes of travelling through the network of tunnels which traversed the ship. The doors opened, and Ethan stepped out into a short, broad gray corridor lined with pipes, glow panels, and lift tubes. The double doors at the end of the corridor were jammed open with a half-crushed trolley full of hazmat suits and the remains of the suited med worker who’d been pushing that trolley.