Dark Space: Origin Read online

  Alara had wondered if her dreams of him were real, or just another phantom from a life that had never existed, but then, the night before their rescue mission, Commander Caldin had suggested she go say goodbye to her father, Dr. Kurlin Vastra—a man who she couldn’t remember at all—and that was when she’d seen him, Ethan Ortane, the man from her dreams brought to life. The same man who said he loved her in those dreams was now sitting in prison, scheduled for a mind probe. Even if the probe didn’t kill him, his crimes would be more than enough to sentence him to death. The only man she could remember having loved was about to be put to death. As if all of that weren’t already enough, the last thing Ethan had said to her before she’d left the Defiant had been: My heart still belongs to my wife.

  He was married. Somehow she’d remembered him and how she felt about him, but she hadn’t remembered that he was in love with and married to someone else. How could she have been so stupid in her previous life? A painful lump rose in her throat, and she shook her head.

  “Hoi,” Delayn said, interrupting the silence on the bridge. “We have something to celebrate.” The old engineer waited for everyone’s attention, and then he went on, “The Rescue has been rescued!”

  “Ha ha,” Gina laughed drily. “You’ve spent too much time with bots, Delayn. You’re starting to sound like one.”

  “At least I have friends,” Delayn replied.

  Gina just snorted and shook her head.

  The Rescue has been rescued. . . . Alara thought, and she wondered if that really mattered to her anymore.

  What did she have to go back to?

  * * *

  Commander Caldin returned to her quarters even more furious than when she had left. Ethan had given her precious few answers, despite the beating he’d taken. If he really was an ex-con, exiled to Dark Space before the war, then he was probably used to taking that kind of punishment.

  She would have tried her luck with his son or even the old doctor, but as much as she hated to admit it, the boy was right—it would be better to wait for the mind probe before she beat them all senseless.

  Caldin walked up to her bed and gazed down on it longingly. She was tired, but too agitated and restless to sleep. She needed to unwind, to defuse her stress. Her thoughts turned to Corpsman Terl. She’d left him on the brig to keep an eye on the prisoners for a while. Now she regretted that decision, wishing she’d instead asked him to come spend the night with her.

  As she gazed down on the bed, the comm piece in her ear began trilling and a computerized voice said, “Incoming call from the brig.”

  Caldin touched her ear to receive the call. “Hello?”

  “Commander, the prisoners are askin’ for a medic.” It was Terl. Caldin smiled, grateful to hear his voice. He went on, “The imposter looks to be unconscious. What do you want to do, ma’am?”

  “Go ahead, call the med bay, meanwhile you can perform first aid if necessary.”

  “If it were up to me, ma’am, I’d just space him out the airlock. No one would blame you.”

  “Perhaps they wouldn’t, but we need him—if not exactly intact, then at least lucid enough to endure the probe. Keep an eye on him, though—just in case he’s faking.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Terl?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You feel like keeping a lonely woman company tonight?”

  “Mmmm . . . that depends . . .” Terl’s voice took on a seductive tone.

  “On what?”

  “Is that lonely woman you?”

  Caldin smiled. “What do you think?”

  “Then yes.”

  “Good. I’ll be waiting.”

  * * *

  Alec Brondi drew his grav gun from the zephyr light assault mech’s equipment belt and fired it at the deck to bring himself down from the ceiling. Once he was back on his feet, he clipped the gun to his belt and tuned it to emit a steady grav field. Now he could walk on the deck as though the Valiant’s artificial gravity were still working.

  “What happened?” Brondi demanded. He flicked on his mech’s floodlights and turned in a slow circle to see his men grappling down to the deck with their grav guns. They drew their sidearms and activated the flashlights mounted below the barrels to search for some unseen foe. Brondi had been living inside the zephyr ever since they’d discovered that the Valiant was being terrorized by one or more cloaked Sythians—or Gors? He wasn’t sure how the Gors fit into things, but he didn’t care whether he was being attacked by Gors or Sythians. Whoever they were, they were killing his men and sabotaging his ship. And now, thanks to those saboteurs, the Valiant was drifting in a deteriorating orbit above Ritan, without power and without gravity.

  Dim red emergency lighting came on, and Brondi’s chief engineer said. “The IMS and main reactor are down and not responding. There must have been some kind of inertial surge when the IMS failed. We’re going to have to send teams down there.”

  “Hold on, Lieutenant,” Brondi said, watching with a frown as Captain Thornton floated by in a globular pool of his own blood. He still wore the holoskin of Overlord Dominic and was to all appearances an 80-something year old man with white hair and wrinkled, age-spotted skin. Thornton had been Brondi’s choice to impersonate the overlord and gain Admiral Heston’s confidence, but with the inertial surge that had sent them all flying, Thornton must have had the bad luck to hit one of the sharper edges on the bridge. Now Brondi would need to find a new impersonator.

  That’s it, he thought as he activated his comm and put a call through to Sergeant Gibbs, the commander of his mechanized battalion.

  “It’s good to hear your voice, sir! What happened?” Gibbs answered.

  “Our stowaways knocked out the IMS and our main reactor.”

  “Frek! How? We had guards posted.”

  “Had. This has gone on long enough, Gibbs. Get me as many zephyrs as you can. We’re going hunting.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir. It’s chaos down here.”

  “Meet me at the bridge. I’m sealing it up until you arrive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 2

  Commander Caldin awoke with Terl’s arms locked around her bare chest, his naked body pressed firmly against hers. She lifted her head from the pillow with a groan to check the time on the comm unit beside her bed. It was just after 1300 hours. Depriving herself of sleep over the last few days had finally caught up with her. She’d slept for almost twelve hours straight. . . .

  With that realization, Caldin abruptly sat up, breaking Terl’s hold on her. No one had woken her with a comm call, which meant that the Rescue still hadn’t returned.

  Terl’s eyes cracked open. He stretched and smiled. “Hoi, beautiful,” he said. “Morning already?”

  “Already? We slept through half the day.”

  “Kavaar! Can’t remember the last time I did that! Feels good to get some real rack time.”

  Caldin just nodded and looked away.

  “What is it?” Terl asked, his smile fading.

  “They’re not back yet.”

  “Oh. . . .”

  “Yeah, well, it’s time we got up and joined the crew. This ship’s not going to run itself.”

  Terl grinned and pulled her down on top of him. “Last I checked the ship didn’t need runnin’ at all. We’re just sittin’ here, waitin’ for a rescue. And as long as we’ve got nothin’ better to do . . .” He reached down and touched her between her legs.

  She quirked one eyebrow at him. “Didn’t you have enough last night?”

  “I never get enough of you ma’am. . . .”

  She felt his hand begin tracing delicate, provocative circles, but she wasn’t in the mood. Reaching down, she grabbed his hand and gently pushed it away. “Don’t start anything you can’t finish. I have to at least pretend to care what’s happening on my ship before the crew gets restless and starts planning a mutiny.” She smiled and kissed his lips to soften the rejection before rolling off him and
climbing out of bed.

  Terl sighed and followed her. They shared a quick meal together in her quarters, and then Caldin made the call that she’d been dreading and checked in with the bridge. “Everything all right up there, Grimsby?” She didn’t want them to tell her what she already knew—to make the truth any more real.

  “All fine, ma’am, but there’s no sign of the Rescue—or any Sythians.”

  “Not that we’d see the Sythians if they were there.”

  “No, ma’am. I suppose we wouldn’t.”

  “I’ll be up in five. Caldin out.” Turning to Terl, she said, “I need you to head back down to the brig to help keep watch. If I wanted to kill the imposter last night, someone else might try to do the same. Those three prisoners have made enough enemies to last them a lifetime, so make sure no one disturbs them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Five minutes later, Caldin stepped up to the doors of the bridge and waved her wrist over the control panel. The doors swished open and she was chagrined to find the entire day crew already at their posts. Only their commander had slept in. A few heads turned to see her striding down the gangway, and she met their hollow-eyed gazes with a nod. By now everyone was in need of a morale boost. The Rescue was very late. A round trip to Obsidian Station should have taken less than two days. Almost three had passed.

  Caldin reached the captain’s table and gazed down on it with a furrowed brow, as if there were something to study there. The Defiant was holding steady at the rendezvous they’d set up before the Rescue had left. The coordinates of the rendezvous were far enough away from their original jump trajectory to keep them safe—at least for a time—but the Sythians were not stupid when it came to astronavigation. By now they would have sent out ships from both the Forlax and Odaran Systems on jumps which would hem them in and narrow down their possible location. With the Sythians’ slower SLS technology it would take some time, but depending how many ships were out there searching, the Defiant could be discovered at any moment. They needed the Rescue to return with reinforcements now.

  Caldin stared at the star map rising out of the captain’s table, willing a contact to appear in the three dimensional grid, but nothing happened. Looking up from the table, she shook her head and walked down from the gangway to the gravidar station. Petty Officer Goldrim turned and gave a brisk salute. “Ma’am?” The boy was barely twenty years old with a round face, dark hair, and a lanky frame. At best, he should have still been in training to join a bridge crew, and his rating was that of a med bay corpsman, like Terl. He’d been filling in on the bridge just as Terl was currently serving as an ISF officer. The med bay was already full of qualified personnel, since by some twist of fate they had more corpsmen on board than they knew what to do with. For almost every other role on board the Defiant, properly trained personnel were few and far between.

  “At ease, Petty Officer,” Caldin said. Goldrim had done his job well during the Battle of Forlax, and Caldin had promoted him to a petty officer third class. “Have you seen anything on the scopes?”

  Goldrim hesitated, but then shook his head. “No, ma’am. I would have reported even the slightest blip.”

  “What about the logs?”

  Goldrim shook his head again. “I checked them as soon as I got to my post. Also clear.”

  Caldin nodded and walked up to the viewports to gaze out over the topside of the Defiant. She traced the rugged lines of the ship to the barrels of the main beam cannons. They were locked in the forward position, ready and waiting for action. Less notable from this distance were an odd half a dozen pulse laser turrets which were a part of the cruiser’s AMS (anti-missile system). Since the cruiser was so undermanned, they had to pick where to assign gunners—beam cannons, AMS, missiles, or some combination. With the recent loss of 10 more nova pilots—some of whom had been drafted from gunnery positions—they were now down to a total crew count of just 62, and three of those had left aboard the Rescue—including her chief engineer, Petty Officer First Class Cobrale Delayn. That middle-aged man was irreplaceable to her. He was the best damn greaser she had. By contrast, the junior engineer who was his temporary replacement seemed very uncomfortable in his role on the bridge. His movements at the engineering station were jerky and unsure, his arms and legs constantly fidgeting.

  Caldin’s indigo eyes wandered up from the hull to the sparkling backdrop of stars. It was hard to imagine the worlds orbiting those pinpricks of light now teeming with savage aliens when not so long ago they’d been home to trillions of humans, each one going about their daily life: waking up, going to work or school, coming home, spending time with their families . . . life as usual. Caldin couldn’t imagine what life as usual might be for Sythians or Gors.

  “I think I’ve got something!” Petty Officer Goldrim called out, interrupting Caldin’s thoughts.

  “You think? I’m going to need an explanation for that, Goldrim! What do you see out there?”

  “Scratch that—contact confirmed! It’s a Sythian cruiser! They’re de-cloaking—dead ahead!”

  “Red alert!” Caldin said.

  The siren sounded and the lights on the bridge dimmed to a bloody red.

  “How far are they?” Caldin asked as she hurried back to the captain’s table.

  “Over 2000 klicks,” Goldrim replied.

  “That’s well out of weapons range,” Caldin said, gazing into the grid rising from the captain’s table. “Why would they de-cloak that far out and give up the element of surprise?”

  “I’m not sure,” Goldrim said. “They’re flying toward us at a modest speed, and their shields are up.” Caldin tapped the red, roughly elliptically-shaped gravidar icon of the enemy contact to bring up more detailed target info. A gleaming, teardrop-shaped ship appeared projected above the grid. It was a Sythian cutter-class cruiser, and just 98 meters long.

  “Should we move to engage?” Petty Sergeant Corr asked from the helm.

  Caldin held up a hand. “The only reason we can see them is because they want us to see them. They’re trying to lure us in. . . .”

  “Why bother?” Deck Officer Gorvan asked from the gunnery station. “If they have a cloaking device, they could ambush us whether they lure us in or not.”

  “Yes . . .” Caldin rubbed the back of her neck. “Unless they don’t think they have enough force to take us down in a straight fight. Then they might lay a nest of cloaking mines and get us to fly straight into them.” Caldin turned to the comm officer and said, “Grimsby, send out a nova to investigate.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They had just one qualified nova pilot left besides the pair they’d sent aboard the Rescue, and Captain Adan Reese who was still locked up in the brig.

  A moment later the comm officer looked up from his station with wide eyes.

  “What is it, Grimsby?”

  “The cruiser’s hailing us, ma’am.”

  Silence fell across the bridge.

  Caldin blinked. “They’re what?” In all the engagements they’d ever had with Sythians and Gors, they’d never once been hailed. The only communication they’d ever had between sides had come after the war, and then it had been direct, face to face contact with Gors as a result of exploring the Getties Cluster. Caldin had led that expedition herself, and she’d returned home with a trio of Gor captives—Tova, Roan, and Edasa. She’d killed Edasa with an unauthorized mind probe, earning herself a demotion from Captain to Commander and almost costing the overlord his precious alliance. As for the Sythians, apparently they never ventured out in anything smaller than one of their 30 kilometer-long behemoth-class cruisers. Those ships stayed cloaked behind the lines, and had never been so much as glimpsed by humans. As such, the first time humans had ever laid eyes on one of the elusive Sythians had been when the Tova and Roan had captured High Lord Kaon of the Sythian First Fleet and given him to the overlord to support their story and cement the alliance between humans and Gors.

  “Open the comms, and bring them on scree
n if you can, Grimsby.”

  “Opening comms. There’s no visual.”

  The next thing they heard was—“Defiant, this is Captain Adram of the Interloper, attached to the Fifth Fleet Remnant. We heard you needed assistance.”

  Caldin gaped at her comm officer and then turned absent-mindedly to the viewports and gazed out into space. “Interloper, this is Deck Commander Caldin of the Defiant . . . you’re not exactly what we were expecting.”

  “Safer to travel out here this way.”

  “Roger that, Interloper. I’m assuming you must have the Rescue on board?”

  “We do. One moment—”

  “Commander, we made it!” That voice belonged to Petty Officer Cobrale Delayn. A few relieved sighs rose up from the Defiant’s crew.

  “Am I glad to hear your voice, Delayn!” Caldin said.

  “The feeling’s mutual, Commander.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “Sythian ships aren’t as fast as ours, ma’am, but you’ve got to see this beasty from the inside—creepy as the netherworld and just as dark.”

  Caldin nodded. “I suspect we’re all going to be seeing a lot more of her than we’d like.”

  “Roger that—here’s the captain again, ma’am.”

  “Defiant, I hate to interrupt a happy reunion, but we’ve taken a long detour from our original mission to pick you all up. Please proceed to the following coordin—hold on a second, Defiant.”

  Caldin listened with a frown to the hiss of static which accompanied that pause in the captain’s transmission. He was back a second later and sounding tense. “Defiant, we’re detecting multiple Sythian warships de-cloaking in this orbital. They’re surrounding you as we speak.”

  Caldin turned from the viewports to see Goldrim look up from the gravidar station with wide eyes and an ashen face. “He’s right, ma’am.”

  “We see them, Interloper,” Caldin said, “but we’re undermanned and damaged. We could use your help!”