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  As Ethan hurried out of his quarters, he became aware of a growing tickle in his throat, and soon he was coughing uncontrollably. Ethan frowned. He must’ve come down with something. He’d have to remember to find the med bay so he could request a few Viruxem to deal with the virus, and maybe while he was at it, a Soberanta for his hangover.

  Ethan looked around the corridor beyond his quarters, wondering which way to the ready room—left or right, but he didn’t recognize where he was at all. Fortunately for him, doors were swishing open all around him and pilots were spilling out into the corridor at a rapid rate. He followed them to the rail car system and boarded the next car with the rest of the pilots. He didn’t recognize any of them, so he kept his mouth shut and found an empty corner of the rail car and slumped down there. Before long, one of the pilots came up and sat next to him.

  “Hoi there!”

  Ethan looked up with a scowl. “Hoi.”

  The other pilot, a curly-haired blond with an irritating smile and a small, skinny frame raised his eyebrows. “You look like death.”

  “What a coincidence—that’s how I feel, too.”

  “You should take something for that.”

  “Just dropped a few oxas down the hatch. What do you suppose the scramble is about, brua?”

  Curly-hair shook his head. “No idea. Hey, you’re Adan Reese, right? I saw your simulator scores from the Rokan Defense. Pretty impressive.”

  Ethan nodded. “Thanks.”

  Curly-hair grinned and thrust out a hand. “Taz Fontaine.”

  Ethan reluctantly took the proffered hand, but the man squeezed too close to his still-bandaged wrist, where his identichip had been replaced with Adan’s, and Ethan winced from the pain. “You can call me Skidmark.”

  Taz sat down with a frown. “All right, then, Skidmark it is. You feeling okay? You don’t look too good.”

  “Long night.”

  Taz grinned once more. “Had some fun, did we?”

  Ethan smirked. “Not sure. I can’t remember, but the Mavericks sure had fun with me.”

  Taz laughed and slapped him on the back in an irritating fashion. The rail car sounded out with, “Coming up on, Pilots’ Center,” and a few seconds later, it screeched to a halt. The rail car doors opened, and Ethan slowly stood up from his seat. He and the rest of the pilots spilled out in a rush. Taz waved goodbye, saying, “See you in the ready room!”

  Ethan smiled and nodded politely. He tried in vain to keep up at the tail end of the group as they hurried down the corridor to the ready room at the far end of the hall, but the rest of the pilots all outran him, and Ethan was the last one through the doors. He ended up leaning dizzily on the door jamb for support and stifling a fit of coughing which drew a lot of unwelcome attention from nearby pilots.

  The ready room was set up in an auditorium style with tiered seating for more than 100 people. Ethan descended the stairs slowly, his gaze searching the rows of seats for someone he recognized. After a moment, he picked out Ithicus Adari’s head sticking out above the other pilots, and he angled that way. Finding the correct row, Ethan sat down on the end and directed his attention to the man standing on the podium below. By the three glittering gold chevrons and a nova emblazoned on his shoulder, Ethan recognized that the man on the podium was a Wing Commander, the highest rank in starfighter command. Whatever was going on, it was serious. Looking around the ready room, Ethan estimated there were over thirty pilots gathered, which had to be all the pilots currently aboard the Valiant.

  Someone grabbed Ethan’s shoulder, and he turned to the aisle to find himself facing none other than his squadron commander, Vance “Scorcher” Rangel.

  The commander took one look at him and shook his head. “What did you do last night?” Vance whispered fiercely. “I told you to get some rest. Your eyes are red, your uniform is wrinkled like you slept in it, and—” the commander scrunched up his nose and leaned closer to sniff the air around Ethan. “—you smell like beer. Get out of here! I’ll have a word with you in my office when I come back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ethan said hoarsely just before breaking into another fit of coughing that had the commander cringing away from him. That short run to the ready room certainly hadn’t done him any good.

  “Listen to you! I could have you drummed out the fleet just for trying to fly in such a state! Get out of here before I report you myself!” Vance said, pointing to the door.

  Ethan grimaced. “Yes, sir.” So much for keeping a low profile.

  A few pilots in the nearby rows had turned to look, their attention drawn by the commotion. Then the briefing began. The room fell into darkness, and a holoscreen at the front of the room glowed to life, showing an angry red image of the Firebelt Nebula. Under the cover of darkness, Ethan slowly stood and started back up the stairs to the ready room doors. As he left, he heard the wing commander begin speaking—

  “While we were asleep last night, someone seeded our SLS buoys with a virus. Our mission is to reset them all, and keep an eye out for whoever did this. Without gates to open wormholes for us, the fuel cost will be high, so we’ll be making multiple trips back to refuel. Hopefully, we can reset all the buoys before the day is out, but that will depend on how fast our codes slicers are able to reset them. Any questions?”

  Ethan walked through the doors and out the ready room before he had a chance to hear the first question. It didn’t sound like he was missing much. It would be a boring, tedious mission, and if anything, being forced to stay behind would give him more of an opportunity to sabotage the Valiant. Ethan grinned as he made his way back to the rail car system at the end of the corridor. The commander could threaten all he wanted to drum him out of the fleet, but at the end of the day, there wasn’t going to be a fleet to get drummed out of.

  His conscience gave him a pang with that vindictive thought, and he shook his head. What was he thinking? He wasn’t even in the fleet. Besides, he reminded himself, he wasn’t looking for a way to kill the crew—just a way to doom their ship. No one would get hurt.

  No sooner had Ethan finished that thought than he began coughing uncontrollably again. He reached the rail car tunnel and punched the summon car button. Maybe I’d better find the med bay first, he decided. When the tunnel doors opened to let him into the next rail car, Ethan stepped up to the directory beside the car doors and keyed in Med Center as his destination. Then he found a seat in the mostly-empty car and leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes for just a moment. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept last night, but it couldn’t have been for more than a few hours, and he was exhausted. Maybe a good stop for him to make after the med center would be his quarters for a nap. A few more hours of sleep wouldn’t kill him.

  Chapter 12

  Ethan walked through the double doors and into the med center, past the handful of cadets, fleet engineers, and ranking officers in the waiting room, and straight up to the reception desk. The woman standing behind the desk eyed him as he approached.

  “I need to see a medic,” Ethan said.

  “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t,” she replied. “Hold out your hand.” Ethan gave her his right hand and turned it over to bare his wrist. The receptionist promptly scanned him with a wand, and pointed to the rows of seating in the waiting room. “Wait your turn.”

  Ethan found the nearest seat and settled in to wait. He felt his throat begin tickling again, and he let loose a hacking series of coughs. A few of the nearby officers glanced his way and scowled. Ethan tried to ignore them. He shifted his attention elsewhere and found his eyes settle on a shifting light sculpture in the center of the waiting room. It was casting dancing patterns of rainbow-colored light on the ceiling. Ethan focused on the fiery depths of the sculpture. He found that those shifting patterns of iridescent light soon calmed and mesmerized him. After a while, he even forgot to cough. In days gone by such sculptures had been used to manipulate a person’s mental and physiological states, but he hadn’t seen one prop
erly employed since his exile to Dark Space.

  There weren’t many people in the waiting room ahead of him, and between his exhaustion and the strangely soothing sculpture, Ethan barely noticed them going ahead of him.

  Before long Ethan heard, “Lieutenant Adan Reese,” and he rose dreamily from his chair and turned to see a young male nurse waiting at the beginning of a long, white hallway. Ethan followed the nurse down the hallway to a small examination room. Inside the room, there was a tiny viewport just above the bed where the nurse directed him to lie down. The nurse promptly hooked him up to diagnostic unit and began studying the results.

  Ethan’s throat began tickling again now that he was lying down. He tried to fight it, but before long his body convulsed with another fit of coughing. When it was over, he shook his head and groaned.

  The nurse eyed him curiously. “Well, I don’t suppose I have to tell you this, but it would appear that you have a relatively bad case of the common cold. Ordinarily I would prescribe you with anti-virals and bed rest, but since you are a nova pilot and the fleet can’t afford to do without you for a few days, I’m going to recommend we rather put you in a stasis tube and treat you more aggressively.”

  Ethan groaned again. “Whatever you think’s best, Doc.”

  “Yes,” the nurse nodded to himself, his eyes still locked on the diagnostic unit’s screens. “That way you’ll be back in the cockpit again in no time,” he said, and flashed Ethan a quick smile. “I’ll be right back with the doctor. Meanwhile, get some rest.”

  Ethan nodded and lay his head back against the bed. The door swished open, and then shut again, and he was left alone with his thoughts. He felt like the room was spinning around him, so he closed his eyes, but the feeling didn’t go away.

  His throat began tickling once more, provoking another coughing fit. Just what I needed, he thought. He hadn’t even begun his mission! Brondi hadn’t set a timeframe, but the crime boss wasn’t known for being the most patient person in the galaxy. It was beginning to look like Alara would be killed before he had a chance to rescue her. Ethan grimaced. Hurry up, Doc. . . .

  * * *

  Alec Brondi watched the red clouds of the Firebelt Nebula roiling angrily in the background as they cruised back to the final SLS interrupter buoy along the Firean-Chorlis route. Brondi stood on the bridge of his corvette, arms crossed over his chest, waiting for the SLS drives to spin up again. It had cost him a lot of time and fuel to sabotage all the buoys along the Firean-Chorlis space lane. The process of infecting the buoys with a computer virus had been long and tedious, but it would be even more tedious to undo, and it would keep the Valiant cut off from aid for the crucial window of time that was necessary. The buoys were all simultaneously malfunctioning now, causing ships traveling from the Chorlis system to the Firean system, where the Valiant was stationed, to drop out of SLS as though a dangerous obstacle had been encountered in real space along their flight path. The result would be costly delays in time and fuel for all of the ships traveling that route. It would be nearly impossible to reach the Valiant until the buoys were fixed, which would buy time for Bondi’s other virus to take its toll.

  The crime boss turned to address Dr. Kurlin Vastra, his biochemist. “You’re sure that your vaccine will work?”

  The old cadaverous doctor nodded slowly. “Absolutely. We won’t get sick at all, not even a sniffle.”

  “And you’re sure that the virus won’t set off pathogen detectors aboard the Valiant?”

  “No, because it is a hybrid of two separate viruses and each of them will be recognized separately as a common, non-dangerous type. Moreover, aside from our host, who is carrying a mega dose of both viruses, none of the infected will even present with symptoms. Only subsequent generations of the virus which have resulted from interbreeding of the two base types will produce symptoms, and although the hybrid virus will present as a dangerous type and set off pathogen sensors aboard the ship, by that time everyone should be infected and it will be too late. The hybrid will kill its host within hours.”

  Brondi nodded slowly. “Meaning that before the interrupter buoys can be reset, everyone should be dead.”

  “Yes, arming the buoys is just a precautionary measure to make sure none of the infected escape with the virus, which is good—just in case, mind you—because the virus is extremely virulent.”

  Brondi glared at the doctor. “I thought you said your vaccine will work.”

  “It will, of course it will. But it is always good to have a backup plan. Had we not already distributed the vaccine in the rest of Dark Space, this virus would wipe out the last remnant of humanity. All it would take is one of the infected to escape with it. After all, that is the mechanism we chose for disseminating it in the first place.” The doctor held up a bony finger. “One host to kill 50,000. Rest assured, the virus will do its intended work. I must warn you, however, anyone who has recently left the Valiant to visit the other systems in Dark Space should have acquired the vaccine through the water supply by now, and they will survive. You will still encounter resistance among the survivors . . . though how many survivors there will be depends on the number which have been travelling beyond the Firean system recently.”

  Brondi snorted derisively. “Yes, a few squadrons of novas worth of resistance. The rest of the crew never leave their precious ship. The Valiant will have a token defense of fighters with no support crew, and I have two full wings of my own fighters to deal with them in case they want to be heroes.”

  Dr. Kurlin arched an eyebrow. “What about the fleet’s other capital vessels?”

  “They’re scattered throughout Dark Space and still cut off from the comm network. Once they find out about the change in command, they’ll either surrender to my newly-captured Valiant, or they’ll be destroyed by it.”

  Dr. Kurlin nodded slowly. “And my wife?”

  Brondi turned to look at the old man. “She’ll be released to you as promised, and you can go back to engineering more bountiful crops for the agri corps if you like. Not that you’ll need to with all the sols I’m going to give you.”

  Dr. Kurlin’s dark brown eyes held a world full of pain. “You didn’t have to take her hostage, you know. I would have done as you asked just for the sols.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve found that a reward is far less motivating than a threat, and I couldn’t risk you developing a conscience, now could I?”

  Dr. Kurlin shook his head, and his gaze slipped away to stare out the forward viewport. “A conscience is a luxury that few can afford these days.”

  Brondi shook his head and grinned gapingly. “I couldn’t agree more! Don’t be sad, you old grub!” Brondi slapped the doctor vigorously on the back. “I’ll let you visit your wife tonight, how’s that? Better yet, she can visit you. Call it a probationary release, pending the success of your virus, of course.”

  “Yes, that would be nice,” Dr. Kurlin said. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Brondi replied. “In fact, let’s have her brought up here now.” The crime boss turned to his comm officer and said, “Lieutenant Marik, have the doctor’s woman brought up to the bridge to see him.”

  The comm officer nodded and began speaking into his headset. Brondi turned back to the doctor with a smile. “There, you see? No evil deed goes unrewarded.”

  The doctor gave an unconvincing laugh, while his gaze and his thoughts remained lost within the nebula.

  * * *

  “Come on, Mrs. Vastra, you have a date with your husband tonight,” the guard said, pushing her roughly down the corridor from her cell. “Hurry it up.”

  “To what do I owe this unusual courtesy?”

  “Big Brainy must be pleased with the doc’s progress.”

  Darla Vastra said nothing to that. She wasn’t sure what Brondi had her husband working on, but she knew it couldn’t be good. Her husband was a biochemist specialized in genetic engineering. His job was to help engineer more productive crops for the agri corps divi
sion of the Hydroponics Guild in order to feed the growing population of Dark Space. What Brondi could possibly want with those skills, was beyond her. Maybe he wanted to engineer a more potent stim.

  Darla turned to look over her shoulder at the guard behind her. “I suppose you’ll be taking me back to my cell again after this?”

  The guard shrugged. “I just follow orders.”

  “Yes, I would expect that’s what you do.”

  “Move along,” the guard said as he shoved her forward again.

  Darla was marched past a handful of empty cells on her way to the waiting lift tube at the end of the corridor. She found herself studying the empty depths of those cells as she walked by, searching for a fellow inmate, but all the cells were empty—all of them except for the last cell on the right. Inside that one was a beautiful young woman. She was sitting up on her bunk, her face hooded with long, dark hair, and her features shadowed by the cell’s poor lighting. Darla felt a pang of sorrow for her. She couldn’t have been more than 20 years old, and she reminded Darla keenly of her own daughter who she hadn’t seen for more than a year now. Darla was just looking away when the woman sitting on that bunk stood and walked up to the cell doors. It was then that her features came into the light.

  Darla gasped.

  She abruptly stopped walking, causing the guard walking behind her to nearly bowl her over. He tried to shove her forward again, but she wouldn’t be moved. She felt like someone had stabbed her straight through the heart. She willed it not to be true.

  “Alara?” Darla asked in a tremulous voice. “Is that you?”

  The guard stopped trying to shove Darla forward and instead stood back to watch the developing scene with a thoughtful frown, his gaze flicking back and forth between the two women.