Dark Space: Origin Read online

  Alara wasn’t going to make it.

  Chapter 16

  Captain Loba Caldin strode onto the bridge of the Interloper with her bridge crew and Tova close on her heels. Her gaze skipped from the glossy black deck to the transparent dome which ran from floor to ceiling. She hadn’t seen anything on the outside of the ship to correspond to that dome, so she assumed it was simulated. Human control stations looked out of place on the deck, sprouting naked wires and cables which ran in colorful lines across the obsidian floor.

  Captain Adram stood by the foremost edge of the dome, looking out at space, with his own bridge crew flanking him. An expression of solidarity? Caldin wondered as she approached. Just before she reached Adram, he turned around and smiled. Belatedly the rest of his crew did the same. “Welcome to the Interloper, Captain Caldin.” He inclined his head to her and then gestured to the control stations. “My men will assist you with anything which might be unfamiliar, but we’ve already adapted the Sythian controls with our own technology, so for the most part everything should be intuitive.”

  Caldin stopped in front of Adram and nodded. He hadn’t bothered to salute, but she wasn’t going to press the point with him. She’d been given his ship and his rank; there was no point rubbing his nose in it. Adram looked to be seventy-something, with thin, wispy white hair that looked almost neon in the dim light of the alien ship. His angular face and hooked nose made his features vulturine, while his eyes seemed to glitter and glow in the dark.

  “Why don’t you dial up the illumination?” she asked.

  Adram shook his head. “Sythian ships weren’t built for bright lights; the décor starts to throw off distracting reflections.”

  Caldin frowned. “What about the heat? It’s freezing in here.”

  “Isss nice,” Tova hissed.

  “For you,” Caldin replied.

  Adram turned to look up at the alien, and he smiled. She was still naked, but she looked comfortable, much more so than she had been aboard the admiral’s ship. “Welcome aboard, Tova,” Adram said. “Do you like what we’ve done to the place?”

  Tova looked around. “Is different?”

  Adram laughed. “Come.” He started toward the nearest bridge control station. “We’ll show you all what’s changed.”

  Caldin and her crew followed a few paces behind him, and she wondered if he had been talking to them or to Tova. So far Captain Adram and his crew were taking it very well that they’d been summarily supplanted on their own ship. If it had been her command, she would have been furious.

  Not everyone is as ambitious as I am, she decided.

  * * *

  Junior Captain Crossid Adram stood leaning over Captain Caldin’s shoulder, pointing to the glowing blue holographic displays one at a time as Caldin scrolled through them from the captain’s table.

  “All of the systems have been laboriously translated and replaced with our own. The original Sythian control systems were thought-controlled, while ours are touch and voice activated.”

  Caldin nodded; Adram caught her eye and smiled. “You shouldn’t have any trouble figuring things out, but we’re here just in case.”

  “Thank you, Adram.”

  “Please, call me Crossid,” he said. “We’re not so formal on my ship—well, your ship now.”

  “I see. All the same, I prefer to stick with convention.”

  “Suit yourself, Captain. Once you’re all familiarized with the controls, my crew will go to their new assignments, and only I’ll stay here.”

  Caldin nodded, and Adram straightened. His gaze wandered down to Tova who stood at the edge of the transparent dome, looking out at space. “She’s a mysterious creature, isn’t she?” Adram said.

  “It’s a pity we couldn’t leave her in the brig. Having her running around loose isn’t going to make it any easier to sleep in this crypt.”

  “The admiral thinks they are our real enemy.”

  “He’s right to be suspicious.”

  “Perhaps, but he’s even suspicious of you, Caldin.”

  Caldin looked up from the captain’s table with a frown. “He said that?”

  “He told me to keep an eye on you and your crew, in case you had something to do with Brondi’s coup.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Because I want you to understand what I mean when I say that the admiral is suspicious without reason. He suspects everyone of everything, and trusts no one—no matter how compelling the reasons that he should.”

  Caldin shook her head. “Let’s get on with the mission, Adram. The admiral can test our loyalty as much as he wants; he won’t be disappointed.”

  “I’m sure that’s so,” Adram said. He returned to staring at Tova’s back in idle contemplation. After a minute, he turned to the engineering station and nodded down to his engineering chief. “Are we securely docked to the Tauron yet, Lieutenant?”

  Adram’s man, a ranking engineer, stood leaning over the shoulder of Captain Caldin’s own engineering chief, a mere petty officer, as he pointed out differences between the modified control station and standard. Adram frowned. Some distant part of him still cared that he and his crew had been snubbed in favor of Caldin and her crew, even if it was only for show. Ultimately, however, it didn’t matter, and he was long past caring about the admiral’s orders.

  Adram’s engineer looked up and said, “The spacebees are just leaving now, sir.”

  “Good. Captain . . .” Adram began, “we’d better tell the admiral that we’re ready. It’s time to go.”

  * * *

  Atton was back in a cell, this time aboard the Tauron. He found there was little difference between one cell and another—they all had the same duranium bars and stark gray walls, the same dim unshielded glow panels and hard bunks. Atton lay on his bunk now, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how the battle for the Valiant was going. Had his father found Brondi yet? Was the carrier back under Imperial control? He hadn’t heard any news, but there was no one else in the brig except for Doctor Kurlin Vastra, and the guards rarely checked in on them, so both he and Kurlin were equally cut off. Kurlin was so quiet that Atton thought he must have fallen asleep, but then he heard a soft, reedy voice say, “So you are Ethan Ortane’s son?”

  Atton sat up and turned to see Kurlin staring at him from the cell across the aisle. “Yes.”

  “I thought your last name was Reese.”

  Atton saw where the doctor was going with that, but he knew better than to fall for it. “I was adopted,” he explained.

  “Oh, I see. Yes, that makes sense.”

  They were interrupted by the sound of a door swishing open followed by approaching footsteps. Moments later a quartet of sentinels strode into view. Atton rose from his bunk. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re putting you two in stasis until you can be tried for your crimes.”

  “What? Why? Is the trial going to be that long from now?” Atton asked.

  “It could be weeks.”

  “Weeks!” Atton echoed. “Why so long?”

  “Your friend Brondi made a run for it. We’re chasing him back to Dark Space.”

  “Frek . . .” Atton muttered. Then something occurred to him. “What about the other prisoner? Is he going to be placed in stasis, too?”

  “What other prisoner?” the sentinel who opened Atton’s cell asked.

  “Ethan, the imposter overlord.”

  “I haven’t seen him. Maybe he got spaced.”

  Atton’s brow furrowed and the two men facing him walked in and bound his hands with stun cord. The other two sentinels did the same with Kurlin, and then both of them were shoved roughly out of their cells. “Move along. It’s time to go beddy byes.”

  The guards led them down corridor after corridor. Atton walked along in a daze. They started down a corridor with real viewports. Atton noticed the bright star lines and streaks of SLS, and his heart sank further. The guards weren’t lying. Admiral Heston had gone to SLS to follow Brondi,
and if Ethan wasn’t being placed in stasis with them, then that meant he hadn’t made it back from the Valiant.

  By the time they reached the med bay, a team of medics was already waiting for them. They were led straight to the stasis room, and then forced to sit while the medics injected them with stasis preparations. Then they were stripped naked and led to a pair of blue transpiranium tubes with blinking red status lights. Atton shivered in the cold air of the stasis room as he watched one of the medics step forward to open and configure the tubes. When he was done, he turned and nodded to the sentinels, and they shoved Atton and Kurlin toward the open tubes. Neither of them tried to resist as they were forced to stand inside, but Kurlin turned and gave Atton a grim look before the tubes were sealed. He shook his head and said. “Goodbye, Mr. Reese.”

  “We’ll see each other again at the trial.”

  “If there is one.”

  Atton was about to reply to that when he heard his tube begin whirring shut. He watched the blue transpiranium cover swing shut and seal with a hiss. An intense feeling of claustrophobia overwhelmed him, but then he felt his body growing numb and warm. His eyes drifted shut. . . .

  And suddenly he was back at home on Roka IV. He stood on the balcony, up to his knees in snow, looking in on his parents’ bedroom as a young child came tearing in and jumped up on the bed, waking them up. His parents sat up, and Atton gasped. His father wasn’t his father at all—he was Admiral Heston—and the child was Atta, not him.

  Atton shook his head. It couldn’t be. Suddenly Atton was standing inside a stasis tube, watching as the blue transpiranium cover began whirring shut. He screamed and tried to get out, but his body was paralyzed. “Don’t leave me in here!” he said.

  That was when he heard a familiar voice say, “They can’t hear you.”

  Atton turned to see his father standing beside him in a matching stasis tube. “She’s forgotten about us, Atton.”

  He shook his head. “No!”

  Ethan shrugged. “She doesn’t love us anymore. She’s got them now.” Atton turned back to look just as his stasis tube shut. He beat upon the lid with his fists and screamed, but they didn’t even turn to look. As he watched, Admiral Hoff produced a stuffed diger and gave it to Atta. His mother smiled and Atta jumped up and down for joy, hugging the toy to her chest.

  “No! Tibby!” Atton screamed with the voice of a young boy.

  Finally, someone noticed him there. It was Hoff. He turned and smiled, and as Atton watched, the admiral’s gray eyes became yellow and slitted, and his age-lined cheeks became gray and sunken. Atton shook his head and screamed once more. “He’s a Gor! Mom, he’s a Gor!”

  But she couldn’t hear, and she didn’t appear to notice Hoff’s transformation.

  Atton’s eyelids grew heavy and the scene faded to black, but he went on screaming, “He’s a Gor! Hoff’s a Gor!”

  A loud hiss reached Atton’s ears and a gust of frigid air surrounded him. He opened his eyes and saw none other than Admiral Hoff Heston glaring at him, his eyes once again their usual gray. Atton fell out of the stasis tube, and Hoff held out a hand to help him up. Atton scuttled away, shaking his head vehemently. “You’re a Gor! Stay away from me!”

  Hoff smiled. “I thought the Gors were your friends?”

  “Not you!”

  “That’s a fine way to greet your rescuer. You’re delirious. Get up.”

  “Where am I?” he asked suddenly, looking around the dark room. He saw Kurlin’s stasis tube behind him. Green status lights blinked on the control panel. The doctor was still fast asleep inside the tube. And then it all came rushing back to him, and Atton realized that he’d been dreaming. His gaze returned to the admiral. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m getting you out of here.”

  Then Atton saw a naked man with excessive musculature step out of the shadows beside the admiral, “Who’s he?” Atton asked, suddenly afraid again.

  “He’s your stand-in.”

  “My what?”

  “I can’t release you, and my wife won’t let me leave you in here, so Chief Warrant Officer Densin has agreed to take your place. He’s going to wear your holoskin until you can be acquitted.”

  “I . . .”

  “A simple thank you is good enough,” the warrant officer said in a gruff voice as he stepped toward Atton and yanked him to his feet. Atton stood naked and shivering, hugging himself against the cold as he tried to catch up with everything that was happening.

  “We don’t have long, Atton,” Hoff said. “Get out of that holoskin and give it to Densin.”

  Atton nodded and carefully peeled out of the skintight body suit. It was second rate technology compared to the overlord’s holoskin, but still more than enough to fool the eyes. “What about my vocal synthesizer and identichip?” Atton asked.

  The admiral turned and nodded to a nearby examination table. “We’re going to have to remove them.”

  Atton stumbled over to the table and hopped up. He heard a whirring sound and turned to see a hovering bot appear beside him with articulated arms already holding a needle full of anesthesia and a scalpel. Once Atton’s wrist was laid open and the indentichip of Adan Reese removed, Hoff asked, “Where’s your old chip?”

  Atton shook his head. “It’s in the overlord’s quarters, aboard the Valiant.”

  The admiral sighed. “Well, for now you won’t have one, then. You’ll be under house arrest anyway, so you won’t need it.” Turning to the bot, Hoff said, “Stitch him up XZT.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Atton watched the bot hold the incision in his wrist closed with one hand, and then spray it with some kind of resin. The bot removed its hand and Atton watched as the resin seemed to foam and then run toward the incision. There it foamed some more, and Atton felt a vague tickling sensation even through the anesthesia. Nanites, he thought, marveling as the cut in his wrist faded and smoothed. “Sparing no expense, hoi Admiral?”

  “We can’t afford to have anyone to see the stitches. You’re going to be staying in my quarters, which means you need to be above reproach.”

  “Who are you going to tell people I am?”

  “A long lost relative. Open your mouth.”

  “What for?”

  “Open it.”

  Atton did as he was told and then watched as the bot loomed closer with a chip extractor turned on and humming as it sent signals to Atton’s vocal synthesizer. He stood very still and kept his mouth open until he felt something rising in his throat, and then he gagged and spat what looked like a small duranium ball into the bot’s waiting receptacle. Atton shook himself and his nose wrinkled with the metallic aftertaste. Both he and Hoff turned to watch the procedure in reverse with Densin. The warrant officer remained standing the entire time, bracing his arm against his body.

  When it was over, the bot deposited the warrant officer’s identichip in a fresh receptacle. “Aren’t you going to keep that?” Atton asked in a strange-sounding tenor voice. It was his real voice—a voice he had all but forgotten he had.

  Densin flashed him a wry smile and replied, “Wasn’t mine anyway.” His voice was also different, now that of the cocky nova pilot, Adan Reese.

  Atton turned to Hoff with his eyebrows raised.

  “Spec ops.” Hoff walked over to an adjacent examination table and picked up a pile of clothes while the bot sprayed Densin’s wrist with nanites. Hoff tossed the clothes at Atton and one of the shoes hit him in the head. He turned to glare at the admiral, and Heston glared back. Then came the sound of a stasis tube whirring shut, followed by a hiss of pressurizing air. Atton turned to see the warrant officer’s eyes drifting shut, and he shook his head. “Am I dreaming?”

  “No,” Hoff replied. “Put on your clothes.”

  Atton bent to pick up the clothes and set them beside him on the examination table. He pulled on the pants and buttoned up his shirt. By the time he got to the blazer, he recognized the gold chevron and silver emblem of a nova fighter, which fo
rmed the rank insignia of a lieutenant commander. “You’re making me a ranking officer?”

  “Don’t get too excited. That’s just to keep people from getting nosy. You’re a long lost relative and a survivor from the war. Everything else about you is classified, and if anyone has a chance to ask, you will tell them exactly that.”

  Atton nodded.

  “Hurry up. Your mother is anxious to see you.”

  Maybe Mom hasn't forgotten about us after all. . . . Atton thought as he put on the blazer and shoes. Then he remembered that there was no us. It was just him. His father was dead, and that meant that he’d lost two fathers now—one adoptive and one real. Atton tried to ignore the hollow ache in his chest which that thought caused.

  Rest in peace, Ethan.

  Chapter 17

  “I’m going to administer something for the pain. It might make you sleep,” the medic said.

  Alara nodded where she lay on the roof behind the copilot’s chair. She looked very pale. “Do what you have to do,” she said.

  Ethan watched with a grimace as the medic injected the painkiller. He held Alara’s hand gently in his armored glove until her good eye drifted shut, and her hand relaxed and fell out of his. Ethan nodded to the medic. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad, but it’s hard to tell until I’ve scanned her—give me a minute.” He nodded to Gina and said, “Hold the gauze against her wound.” Gina moved to a better angle and held the gauze to Alara’s head while the medic withdrew a scanner from his belt. He pointed it at Alara, and a pale fan of light flickered out, passing over her recumbent form from head to toe. A moment later a holographic display appeared hovering in the air, projected from the back of the scanner. Ethan tried to interpret the results of the body scan as the medic used gestures and voice commands to pan and zoom the image until he could get a look at her brain. The medic sat back on his haunches, frowning and shaking his head.