04 Dark Space (16 page)

Hoff shook his head. “There is no other way, Des.”

“Mind probes kill people, Hoff.”

“So do Sythians.”

“Yes, but . . .” Destra turned to the doctor with a helpless look. “Tell him to stop this!”

The doctor didn’t even turn from his probe control console. “What the admiral wants to do is quite safe, and he is right, ma’am. If the Sythians are after what’s in his head, the only way to stop them from getting it is to erase what’s there or alter it.”

“And what happens when they find out you’ve sent them on a wild rictan hunt?” Destra demanded, rounding angrily on her husband. “They’ll kill you.”

Hoff shrugged. “I’m going to alter the location of Avilon to a point in the middle of the Devlins’ Hand Nebula, halfway between our galaxy and theirs. By the time they get back to report that I gave them the wrong coordinates, help will have arrived from Avilon.”

“And if not?”

“Then we are all dead anyway.”

“What about Atton? You won’t be able to send a rescue for him if something happens. You won’t even know where he is anymore!”

“I won’t even know about the mission. I’ll have to erase any memory of my having sent it in order to prevent the Sythians from seeing through our surrender. But it won’t matter whether or not I can send help. If Atton doesn’t return, it will be because the immortals refused to let him leave, and that can only mean that they have decided not to help us. In that case, Atton will be the only mortal human in the galaxy who doesn’t need helping.”

“So let’s all leave! Evacuate as many as possible and then run before the Sythians get tired of playing nice with us and finish what they started. From what you’ve told me, Avilon will be much safer than Dark Space.”

“And what happens when we get to Avilon and the Avilonians decide that we’re not good enough for them?”

Destra’s eyes narrowed sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Immortals don’t think like us, Des. If you are not perfect—if you don’t fit their mould—then you are not worthy to live among them. If they refuse to send us back where we came from for fear that we could reveal their location to the Sythians, and they refuse to let us live among them, then what other option is there?”

“Are you saying they’ll execute us?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Do you really want to find out?”

Destra’s hands began to shake and they balled into white-knuckled fists. “You sent Atton there, knowing that he could be in real danger!”

“Atton is in no danger. One of the reasons I sent
him,
rather than someone else, is because the boy is young and innocent enough to adapt to the Avilonians’ rules if he has to. He will be fine. At worst he will make a new life for himself there, and I’m sure he will be happy for many thousands of years to come.” Hoff reached into his pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized rectangular wafer, a holo card. “Put this somewhere only you can find it.”

“What is it?”

“The real location of Avilon.” Destra accepted the card with a frown, and Hoff went on, “After this procedure, you’ll be the only one besides Atton who knows where it is.”

Destra turned to stare at the back of Doctor Elder’s head while he prepared the mind probe. “What about him?”

“Yes, and him. I’ve given Stevon another set of the coordinates, recorded on a micro dot in a suicide tooth. If he’s captured before he has a chance to destroy the coordinates, he’ll kill himself to keep them hidden.”

“
Stevon,
huh? You and the doctor must go way back if you trust him enough to have a copy of Avilon’s location.”

“He is one of the few besides Donali who knew about me, so yes, I trust him. He will be the only one on board who knows what he did to me, and he’ll be the only one who can help me find Avilon if I’m forced to flee. He’ll be my lifeline after this procedure.”

Destra gave a wry smile and raised her voice to address the doctor, “You won’t be tempted to flee to Avilon, Doctor?”

He turned from his console with a smile on his deeply-lined face. Rare magenta eyes stared unblinkingly back at her as he shook his head. “No.”

“He’s an Etherian,” Hoff explained. “That’s why I chose him.”

“A what?”

“It’s an old religion. It means he believes in the Immortals, Etherus, Etheria, the Netherworld . . . all of that, but he doesn’t believe the Avilonians are the real Immortals. He believes Lifelink implants are a cheap imitation of the immortal soul.”

“So . . .” Destra shook her head, uncomprehending.

“The immortals in Avilon are strict atheists. They believe religion is a force for evil, not for good, so they would never allow the doctor to join them. To them, he is evil incarnate.”

Doctor Elder snorted. “I dedicate my life to healing people and I’m evil incarnate.”

Hoff shrugged. “Paradise is only as good as the people who live in it. One way of elevating society is by trimming away all of the low-hanging branches that weigh us down.”

“That may be true, but how does religion weigh us down?”

“If you believe in an afterlife where you will live forever in paradise, why bother going to so much trouble to make a paradise here and live forever in it now? That’s a lot of work for nothing.”

“I suppose . . .”

“Moreover, the whole argument behind immortality via implants and clones is that consciousness can be transferred without losing anything in the process. If we have a soul which is our real essence, don’t we still lose that when we transfer from one body to another?”

Doctor Elder smiled. “Exactly.”

“Then you know where I’m going with this. It’s not so much that the Avilonians won’t accept you or the other Etherians, Doctor, it’s that they know you and others like you will never accept
them,
or their way of life. Even if you do for a time, eventually you will turn against them because of what you believe, and you may even try to destabilize their society in the process. It has happened in the past.”

Doctor Elder smiled. “Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t you tell me on the way here that you were one of these immortal clones, and that that is how you know of Avilon?”

“That is correct.”

Doctor Elder cocked his head suddenly to one side. “So doesn’t it bother you that
you
do not have a soul?”

“It might bother me, if I believed that such a thing exists.”

Destra looked on with a frown as they debated spiritual matters. She wasn’t sure what she believed, but she was a lot more worried about what the doctor was saying than Hoff. It meant that her husband had long ago made a deal with the Devlin and traded his soul for immortality in this life. Now, she had convinced him to give even that up, to disable his Lifelink implant and become a mortal man once more. That meant that even if there was an afterlife, she wasn’t going to see him in it.

“Enough philosophy,” Destra said, getting uncomfortable with the conversation.

“Yes,” Hoff agreed. “We’re running out of time. You may proceed when ready, Doctor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t do this, Hoff,” Destra pleaded one last time, watching as Doctor Elder stood up from the probe console with a wicked looking needle—an implanter.

Hoff met her eyes as the probe was injected into the base of his neck. “Hurry, Des. Take Atta and go to the
Baroness
. They have orders to leave as soon as you’re aboard. You’ll be running food to the Gors’ fleet, supporting them covertly until Atton comes back with reinforcements. I’m going to have the doctor erase my memory of what you are doing and where you are. All I’ll know is that you are someplace safe.”

Destra bit her lower lip and shook her head. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Atta? She’s in the waiting room outside.”

Hoff shook his head. “There’s no time, and I don’t want her to worry. If she asks, tell her I’m going to get help so we can defeat the Sythians.”

Destra hesitated, still chewing her lower lip.

“We’re ready to begin, sir,” Doctor Elder said, already on his way back to the probe console.

Hoff caught her eye. “Destra, go!”

She snapped into motion, leaning over the chair to drop a quick kiss on her husband’s cheek. “I’ll be with you in your dreams, Hoff,” she whispered beside his ear.

“And I in yours,” he replied.

With that, she turned and ran from the room. On her way through the waiting room, she grabbed Atta’s hand and pulled her daughter along.

“Ouch!” Atta said, trying to wriggle free. “Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s busy, sweetheart.”

Atta stopped suddenly, just before the double doors of the med bay, causing Destra’s arm to snap painfully taut. “I want to see him!” she said.

Destra rounded on her daughter with flashing blue eyes. “We’ll see him later. Right now, we have to run, Atta. We have to hurry! Come on.”

“What’s going on?” Atta asked.

“The Sythians are coming,” Destra said without thinking, and promptly winced. She had hoped to spare her daughter from the ugly truth of what was happening.

But the truth worked better than any comforting lie—Atta shut right up, and she didn’t try to stop or turn around again.

*   *   *

Destra watched from the bridge of the
Baroness
as swarms of Sythian shuttle craft poured between the Sythian fleet and the human defenders in Dark Space. Not a shot was fired from either side, making the surrender uncontested. As for the Gors, they were somewhere nearby, no doubt watching the same scene from afar.

“Surreal, isn’t it?” Captain Covani said, coming up beside Destra.

She turned to him with a frown. Captain Ekram Covani was a man of forty-something, bald, with a skin as black as a Gor’s armor. His piercing tangerine eyes made him look at times more alien than human—his eyes similar to a Gor’s—but Destra knew Covani was one of the few officers left in the fleet that Hoff would entrust his life to. Covani had been in Dark Space since the exodus, but he and Hoff had known each other long before the war had separated them.

Destra replied, “We’ve spent so long fighting them and now we’re just going to give up. It feels like we’re reliving the invasion. Like it’s the end of everything, and this time there’s no escape.”

“We have to hold on to hope. The Gors are still out there, waiting for the right time to attack.”

Destra nodded.

“Besides that, we have to hold on to the hope that reinforcements will come.”

“Hoff told you about that?”

“About your son’s mission? Yes, ma’am. He told me that he sent your son to get help from another group of survivors.”

Destra’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would he tell you about that?”

“The admiral knew that if he expected my crew and I to wait around, ferrying food and supplies to the Gors, then he had to give us hope. He had to give us a reason to stay. We have our orders. We’ll wait here until we can’t wait any longer, and if help doesn’t come, I’ve been told we are to rescue as many as we can and flee.”

“It won’t come to that.”

”Well, let’s hope not. Our fate is in your son’s hands, ma’am.”

Destra nodded slowly and she turned back to watch the swarms of Sythian shuttle craft streaming into the
Valiant’s
hangars
.
“Not just ours . . .” she whispered. “The fate of the entire galaxy is depending on him.”

“I hope he’s up to it.”

I just hope he stays safe,
Destra thought.

*   *   *

Hoff blinked his eyes open and shook his head. Pain stabbed through his brain with the movement, and he winced. “Where . . .” He lifted his head off the pillow to look around. He was in the med bay, lying on a bed in one of the ward rooms. A doctor was sitting at a nearby desk taking notes. Presently, that man turned around, and Hoff found he recognized him. “Doctor Elder, what am I doing here?”

The doctor smiled, and his already bright magenta eyes grew a few shades warmer. “You passed out and hit your head, Admiral. Low blood sugar and a potassium deficiency, it seems. And perhaps, the shock of our surrender.”

“Surrender?” Suddenly Hoff remembered, and his eyes flew wide. His memory was hazy, and it felt like he was trapped in a bad dream, but one thing was crystal clear: he had surrendered to the Sythians. “Why . . .” he shook his head again, and it began throbbing mercilessly. “I don’t remember why we surrendered.”

The Doctor’s expression became grim. “Because we are badly outnumbered. We had no choice. The Sythians demanded we give them the Gors so they could bring their slaves to justice, and in exchange they offered to leave us in peace—if we would agree to join them.”

Hoff’s jaw dropped; he remembered now, but he still didn’t understand. It seemed like death would have been preferable to surrender. “How long have I been out?”

“Less than an hour. We have Sythians coming aboard now. You should be there to greet them if you’re feeling up to it.”

“Yes . . .” Hoff trailed off. “I probably should. What about the Gors? They’re . . .”

“They cloaked. For all we know they’re already long gone, fleeing to some other part of the galaxy.”

Hoff began nodding slowly. “They must have seen the betrayal coming.”

“Indeed,” Doctor Elder replied. “Shall I send an escort to take you to the ventral hangar concourse or can you find your way there on your own?”

“Have an honor guard of sentinels meet me there, but make sure they’re not armed. I don’t want a firefight. It’s too late to change our minds about surrendering now.”

“Much too late,” the doctor agreed.

Hoff swung his legs off the gurney and the doctor helped him down. “Did we set any terms for the surrender?” Hoff asked, now standing on the deck.

“No, sir. It was unconditional—apart from the condition that they agree not to harm us.”

“Right.” Hoff grimaced. “Why is my memory so poor? I can remember after you tell me the answers, but it’s hard to summon those answers for myself.”

“Amnesia is not uncommon after a head injury. The answers will come clearer in time.”

“Well, thank you, Doctor. I’d better hurry.”

“Immortals be with you, sir.”

Hoff strode quickly to the entrance of the ward room. He passed his wrist over the scanner and then turned back to the doctor as something else occurred to him. “Do we know what the Sythians want?”