Dark Space: The Invisible War (16 page)

“I—frek, I’m sorry, Alara. He held out a hand to help her up, but she slapped it away and pushed herself off the floor.”

“Hoi, if you like men, you could have just told me instead of wasting my time by bringing me here. I don’t know why you bothered.” She went to pick up her panties, and Ethan found himself watching as she bent down. He shook his head and looked away again as she pulled her underwear back on. He absently felt for his wedding band to give himself strength, but it wasn’t there. He’d taken it off long ago to avoid giving himself away. The overlord wasn’t married, after all.

Alara brushed past him into the living room to hunt for the rest of her clothes. She pulled on her pants and then snatched up her bra and blouse. “Good night old man,” she said with a smirk. She was now almost to the door. “You’d probably better see a medic about that prostate before it explodes.”

“Alara!” Ethan said, taking a deep breath to still his racing heart.

“What?” she looked up at him with hard, angry eyes.

His lips twisted in a miserable frown. “I love you, kiddie.”

Suddenly, she stopped buttoning her blouse and her expression went from angry to shocked. Then her eyes began to glisten with moisture in the low, night-cycle lighting of his quarters. “You what?” Her breath hitched in her chest.

“I love you,” he repeated, now walking toward her. “That’s why I’m not going to do what you want.” He reached her side in a few short strides and led her gently by the hand to the nearest couch in his living room. She sank into it gratefully, her eyes wide and blinking as she stared at the opposite wall. A solitary tear slid slowly down her left cheek.

“You’re not well,” he said, holding her hand in his lap as he sat down beside her.

Alara slowly turned her head to him and he wiped away that trickling tear. She began to shiver.

He noticed and placed his hand against her forehead. “Are you okay?”

“You called me kiddie.”

Ethan saw the spark of recognition in her violet eyes and his own eyes grew wide. “Well, to me everyone’s a kid, so—”

“Don’t do that to me.” Alara frowned and shook her head. “Everyone’s been telling me I’m not who I think I am, and that what I remember isn’t real, but this
is
real, isn’t it? Are you him? Am I remembering you from my childhood? When you were younger?” She searched his eyes, but then that spark of recognition and hope he’d seen abruptly died, and she shook her head. “Never mind.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your eyes are the wrong color. They’re blue, not green.”

“Oh . . . well, there’s not much I can do about that, I’m afraid.”

Alara gave him a broken smile. “I suppose not.” She withdrew her hand from his and clasped it together with her other one, as if she were about to pray. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, staring down at her hands, “To be caught between two realities and two different lives and to wonder which one of them is really yours.”

Ethan rubbed her back gently and said, “I’m sorry.”

She looked up at him. “Do you ever wonder who you really are? Do you have to listen to people telling you all day that the way you are, the things you want, what you say, and even how you act—that all of it is wrong? They tell you that you need to do a better job . . . to resist yourself, but even when you try, it’s not real. It’s just an act. You’re just doing what they want to make them happy. It has nothing to do with
you
.”

Ethan shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that’s like.”

“Then you can’t know how I feel.”

“Perhaps not, but I think I know someone who might.”

Alara’s eyebrows went up.

“I believe you’ve met Captain Adan Reese, the new XO of the
Defiant
?” She hesitated, then nodded slowly, and Ethan went on, “You should talk to him. Make a friend. I have a feeling he’s looking for one, too.”

Alara smiled half-heartedly. “I’m not good at making friends. I’ve never had to be.”

Ethan shrugged. “Neither is he. Same reason.” He patted her on the back and rose from the couch, offering his hand to help her up. She took it, but her eyes were wary.

“You can sleep here tonight, if you don’t want to go back to your parents’ quarters yet,” Ethan said.

She cocked her head. “Reconsidering your decision not to sleep with me?”

“No. I’ll stay here on the couch.” He waved a hand at the dividing half wall between the living area and the bedroom, and said, “Privacy screen on.”

Suddenly the bedroom was cut off by a holofield of trees rising up behind the short wall of real ferns. The walkway between living room and bedroom had become a slightly-curving tunnel of greenery, the entrance all but blocked by a hanging veil of red and yellow blossoms.

“Thank you,” Alara said, turning to him with a smile. She kissed him on the cheek and started toward the blossom-crowded path. “If you change your mind . . .”

“I won’t.”

She sent him a playful wink and then walked through the projected veil of flowers.

Ethan let out a long sigh. “Hardest thing I ever . . .” He muttered and shook his head. He’d grown used to rejecting women’s advances over the years, and Alara had given him regular practice in the past—although she’d never been that pushy about it, nor that good at using her assets to change his mind.

He hadn’t lied to her. He
did
love her, and maybe with enough time he could even be persuaded to love her romantically, but one thing stopped him: he loved Destra far more, and where before he’d only had his memories of her to keep him chaste, he now had something far more compelling.

Hope.

Atton had told him that Destra Ortane had been alive when she’d sent him away with his great uncle Reichland, which meant there was a chance she might still be alive. And as long as there was even a chance, he had to keep looking for her. He had to wait. He’d wait until his dying breath if that was what it took.

— THE YEAR 0 AE—

N
ight was the most trying time of all, when all their nerves were frayed and the shadows seemed to take on ghoulish form. Night was when the Sythians came out to hunt.

Destra sat huddled on the living room couch with Lessie and her son Dean, their eyes glued to the holoscreen opposite the couch, watching the night vision security feeds which were coming in from cameras scattered around the forest above Digger’s hideout. Each camera slowly panned left to right and back again, giving a comprehensive view of their surroundings.

“You’re not going to see anything,” Digger said, calling from the kitchen. Destra turned to meet his gaze, but he was busy preparing himself a sandwich with the last two slices of bread. After a moment, he caught her staring at him and he looked up with a shrug. “The best we can do is listen for them.” He took a giant bite of his sandwich and then made a gesture at the holoscreen. Destra turned to see the volume rapidly increasing from 0 to 100. They heard a soft fuzz of static and the sound of wind roaring and whistling through the trees.

Destra turned back to Digger. “How are we supposed to listen for anything through all that background noise?”

“
You’re
not. I have a program automatically analyzing the feed for specific sound profiles—anything which doesn’t fit the usual background noise of the forest, like footsteps.” Digger took another bite of his sandwich and waved a dismissive hand. “Besides, it’s one thing for the skullies to traipse by us. It’s a whole ‘nother thing for them to find us down here.”

Destra’s brow furrowed. “You don’t think they have detectors? That they’ll detect radiation leakage from your generator, for example?”

“Hey, what do you take me for, a total stim-bake?” Destra frowned at that. She’d caught him shooting up in the bathroom soon after they’d arrived. He’d claimed the stims he used were not addictive, with no side effects, but Destra didn’t want to know about it—stimmers all had the same excuses. “Patrollers have been lookin’ for me for years,” Digger went on. “I’m so deep underground and so heavily-shielded in here that they must have walked right by me half a dozen times.” Digger waved a hand at the screen, “Besides, I don’t see the skullies walkin’ around with any kind of tech. They’re just hunting for the next meal—one of
us,
that is.”

Lessie clapped her hands over Dean’s ears. “Could you not talk about that while we’re here, please? Dean has enough trouble sleeping without you reminding us what’s out there.”

“Hoi, sorry,” Digger drawled with his mouth full of sandwich. “Jus tryin’ to keep it real, ya know?”

“Well, don’t.”

“Speakin’ of what’s out there. Which one of you’s going to do the first scavenger hunt?”

Detra turned to Digger with a frown. “The first what?”

“You know, comb around for food and supplies . . . we won’t last long in here without that.”

“You and I can go first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Ha! Ha, ha!” Digger lowered his sandwich and smiled meaningfully at Destra.

She found herself distracted by a small green piece of salad caught in a smear of mustard at the corner of his mouth. “What?” she asked.

“I’m providing the digs here, so I think it’s only fair you be the runners.”

“You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask the kid to go. He can stay here with me.”

Now Lessie turned to join the conversation. “You can’t be serious.”

Digger shrugged. “Fine, take him with. I don’t care.”

“No, I mean about sending us out there—with those
things
.” Lessie appeared to shiver even at the thought of the aliens running around on the surface.

“Someone’s got to go.”

“How about you?” Destra asked, jerking her chin to him. “We can send Digger The Brave.”

“Watch your pretty mouth.” Digger scowled. “You’re going, and I’m staying, and that’s the end of it. If either of you has something else to say about it, you can tell it to Doc and Petra.”

Destra felt her ire rising at the mention of Digger’s pet rictans. They were both chipped, so they weren’t a danger to anyone unless Digger wanted them to be, but one of them could kill just as efficiently as a Sythian, and Destra was quietly furious that Digger let them roam around freely at night.
As if it isn’t hard enough to sleep already.

“I have weapons and armor for the two of you, so you should be fine out there.”

Destra was about to reply when the sound of the wind whistling and rustling through the trees overhead was broken by a piercing scream. All eyes turned to the cameras, and this time they saw something. A warning tone issued from the sound system and a computerized voice said, “Warning, threat detected.”

“Oh no, oh no—” Lessie said, trying to cover Dean’s eyes and ears at the same time. “Switch it off!”

Dean began to cry.

Destra watched with horrified fascination as one of the cameras automatically panned and zoomed in on the sight. A small group of people were running through the trees. One of the women in that group was screaming at the top of her lungs with the others hissing at her to shut up.

“We have to do something!” Destra said, turning back to Digger.

He just shook his head. “We can’t.”

“You said you have weapons!”

“For us, not for them.”

“Digger!”

Another scream came from the cameras, and there was a loud ruckus of shouting, followed by the sound of ripper rifles opening up. They all watched in horror as one by one the group of people was knocked to the ground and set upon by invisible beasts, their guns all firing in random directions as they were struck down. Destra looked away as the scene turned bloody. “Switch it off, Digger!”

He deliberately waited a few more seconds before waving his hand to turn off the screen. “Well,” he began, “it’s unfortunate we had to see that just before bedtime.”

“And you want us to go out there?” Destra shook her head. “I think we need a better plan.”

“Like what?” Digger snorted. “Maybe we can dig a little deeper down here and find some juicy worms.” He smirked and went on, “Except I don’t fancy eating worms. Don’t worry, the Sythians only hunt at night. So long as you don’t wake any of ‘em up you should be fine.”

“Thanks,” Destra said as she and Lessie rose from the couch. Lessie had her son in her arms and was trying to soothe his crying by patting and rubbing his back. Both Lessie and Destra scowled at Digger as they walked past.

“G’night,” he said, smiling thinly at them.

Destra gave no reply. Digger had just drawn a line in the sand. He’d shown them who was the head of this household, and exactly what that meant. In the process of exercising his authority, he’d finally answered for her the question of why a scuzzy outlaw like him would go out of his way to shelter three complete strangers. He was sheltering them because they were his meal tickets. They would go out and hunt while he stayed safe at home.

As they walked into the spare bedroom they heard a growl and saw one of the rictans turn its head to glare at them with red eyes glinting in the dark.

Lessie froze in the doorway with a gasp of shock, and Destra felt her heart rate spike, but then she walked by Lessie with a scowl and shooed the beast from the room, doing her best to ignore its snarling. She had to remind herself it was chipped, so it wouldn’t bite her. “Doc, get out of here! We’re going to bed!”

The initial arrangement with her sleeping on the couch and Lessie and Dean sleeping alone in the spare room had quickly been overturned when Destra had been unable to get any sleep with the rictans pacing the living room at night, their claws
clickity-clacking
across the polished duranium floors.

As soon as Doc was out of the room and glaring at her sleepily from the other side of the open door, Destra moved to seal and lock the room. The door shut with a
swish
and subsequent
thunk
of bolts sliding into place. “There,” Destra said, and turned to Lessie and Dean with a frown. “Let’s get some rest. It sounds like we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

Lessie nodded slowly and moved to deposit Dean on the bed while Destra began to undress. After what they’d seen on the cameras, she had a feeling it would be a long night, too.

*  *  *

—THE YEAR 10 AE—

Brondi stared up into the starry blackness of space, feeling the chair beneath him dip and slowly turn to carry him through the Star Dome. With the room’s dome-shaped transpiranium ceiling he was treated to a broad, unobstructed view of space. Reclining grav chairs floated in a slow dance around the room, gently rising and falling as they drifted in lazy circles. The Star Dome was an officer’s lounge, with drinks being served by a server bot at a bar along the far wall of the room. Brondi could make an order using the controls in his armrest and then his grav chair would stop to pick up his drink on its next pass by the bar.

The whole purpose of the Star Dome was to relax. Between the room’s low gravity and amazing vistas of space, it functioned just as intended.

Chairs could be configured to circle the room together in more social groupings, or to circle the room alone, as Brondi was doing now. The crime lord wondered how many times the indolent overlord had come here just to catch a nap or to piss away the afternoon and evening with an endless stream of fancy cocktails. The dome was also equipped with a holofield so it could be configured to show any scene at all, or even a holovid.

Adding to the relaxing atmosphere was the sound of water which bubbled up from a light sculpture in the center of the room. The water cascaded down the sides of the sculpture, but somehow kept from disturbing the glassy pool on the deck. The effect of the water below and the transparent dome above was startling. The pool reflected the view through the ceiling almost perfectly, giving a sense that one was suspended, floating in deep space. It was the perfect environment for Brondi to clear his head, which was exactly what he needed to do now.

He had to plan his next move. At first, he’d been content just to have the
Valiant,
and to rule all of Dark Space without the nettlesome interference of the ISSF, but now like a kid who’d just had his first taste of candy, he wanted more.

Dominic had been hiding more than Brondi could have ever thought possible. First of all, he wasn’t actually the overlord; he had been a holoskinner in a long line of holoskinners; second, there was a whole race of aliens beyond Dark Space that no one even knew about; and third, and possibly most interesting of all, there was another enclave of human survivors—and who knew how many ships they might have!

All of those details had been swirling together in Brondi’s mind for the past two hours, and now finally, he knew what to do. Brondi keyed the controls in his armrest to let him off when his chair next drifted by the entrance of the Star Dome. When he reached the doors, and his chair slowed to a stop, Brondi pushed himself to his feet and walked out of the room in a dreamy haze. The doors swished open and he started down a long corridor toward another pair of doors. The gravity in the corridor gradually increased until it reached ISSF standard. After hours in low gravity, normal gravity made him feel twice as slow and heavy as usual. Frowning at the sudden headache which he felt encroaching at his temples, Brondi made his way to the nearest pair of lift tubes.