04 Dark Space (26 page)

Kaon hissed with displeasure. Something would have to be done about it, but for now he had other concerns. Kaon stalked up to the
Valiant’s
command control station. Humans called it the
captain’s table.
He stared at it for a long moment, his big blue eyes watering and itching with frustration. He’d forgotten how to turn the thing on. He understood Imperial Versal well enough, so the language barrier wasn’t the problem, but human control systems were less intuitive than Sythian ones. In a Sythian ship one merely had to think a command and the ship would answer. Anything the ship knew, it would display, and anything the ship could do, it would perform. Human ships on the other hand required hands-on manipulation of control systems. Endless gestures and linguistic queries were required just to get at a specific bit of information.

Kaon refused to submit to the Mind Web in order to learn how to operate human control systems. He’d done it once before to learn their language, but it was not an experience he wished to repeat. No, for now, he had
The Pet
to help him. Kaon turned from the captain’s table to see The Pet standing behind him, his wrists bound with a few lengths of human stun cord. The Pet’s shoulders were rounded, his eyes and expression haunted. Flanking him were a pair of fully-armored human slave soldiers, standing ready to kill him if he did anything wrong. Not that he
could
do anything wrong.

“Come here Pet,” Kaon warbled. The Pet took a few steps toward him as soon as those words were translated by the device it wore in its ear. Ten years had passed since the original invasion of the Adventa Galaxy, and in all that time humans hadn’t bothered to learn Sythian. No wonder they had lost the war. Their ignorance was astounding. “Show me what is around our ship. I want to see the fleet,” he instructed.

The Pet stepped up to the captain’s table and began waving his hands, bound as they were, through the air. A holographic map flickered to life, rising out of the table with a blue glow. Kaon gave an eager hiss and peered into the open cube of space which had appeared. He realized that he still had much to learn about human systems of measurement and annotation. He could see miniature representations of each major ship on the display. Whole squadrons and wings of fighters were shown with small Shell Fighter icons. They were the only fighters on the map, since the humans’ Novas were all grounded until loyal slaves could be trained to pilot them. A few of The Pet’s best pilots were already hooked up to a Mind Web so that their skills and knowledge of piloting could be isolated, downloaded, and then transferred to obedient slaves.

As for The Pet himself, he was also a slave, but a different kind of slave. He had been implanted with a device which forced him to obey, but rather than alter his brain to make him a
willing
slave, instead it made him a prisoner in his own mind and body, a victim of suggestion and authority. He couldn’t resist any orders, even though his mind was surely screaming for him to do so. It gave Kaon no small amount of satisfaction to see the former admiral who had destroyed his mighty
Sharal
now a desiccated husk of his former self, locked in an endless struggle against himself.

“Are you watching, Pet?” Kaon pointed to the map, his armored finger tracing a line around a group of Sythian ships which was now splitting off from the rest. “Those ships go to Avilon. They go as the first wave of the next invasion.”

“The Avilonians are very strong. Those ships won’t be enough to defeat them,” The Pet said in a toneless voice. The implant in his brain forced him to speak his mind even if he didn’t want to. That added layer of transparency helped Kaon gain insight into his enemies.

“Do not worry. We have many more ships to fight this new enemy,” Kaon replied. “We are already culling your population of its troublemakers to fill these fleets with fresh slaves. Any and all who resist are forced to join the forces they fight against. The irony is delicious,” Kaon said, licking his rubbery lips.

“I think it’s despicable,” The Pet replied.

“I know you think this, but even you must admit that it is an efficient way to subdue your people.”

“Yes, it is,” The Pet replied, his face scrunching up in dismay.

Kaon’s eyes greedily tracked the ships leaving Dark Space. High Lord Quaris had elected to go, since the Second Fleet, which he commanded, was the smallest of the Sythians’ remaining fleets. Thanks to the Gors and their terrorism, the Sythians couldn’t afford to leave Dark Space undefended, so Kaon and Shondar would stay behind and wait to hear back from Quaris. He had orders to run with his command ship before losing the entire fleet, but even if he did, the data collected from that battle would be worth it. Armed with advance knowledge of their enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, they would defeat Avilon just as easily as they had defeated the rest of humanity. None could stand against the might of the Sythian Coalition, and soon their mission in the Adventa Galaxy would be complete.

Kaon felt a pleasant warmth rise in his chest as his twin hearts began beating faster at the thought. He basked in that warmth for a moment before turning his thoughts back to the matter at hand.

He and High Lord Shondar were going to stay behind to continue the work of re-crewing their ships with human slaves. They needed to hurry, especially now that they were sending a fleet to poke their sleeping enemy in the belly. Within a week, High Lords Worval, Rossk, Thorian, and Lady Kala would all arrive with their behemoth command cruisers. Docked inside those massive ships would be over a thousand starships—empty and waiting for their new slave crews. Even at the rate they were going, conscripting over a hundred thousand slaves per week, it would take several months to completely crew those ships.

Kaon considered that a few million slaves was probably more than they could justify by claiming those citizens were resisting the occupation, but Sythians didn’t have to explain themselves to their slaves. Any justifications they gave were just a courtesy to make their slaves feel like their lives actually mattered.
A happy slave is a productive slave.

The Pet interrupted Kaon’s thoughts by asking, “How will you fill all of your ships with humans if you only take the ones who offer resistance?”

Kaon turned to The Pet, the gills in the sides of his neck flaring with surprise. Had The Pet read his mind?

“Our population is small,” The Pet went on. “You will destroy our economy if you take too many of us.”

“Your people have their orders to breed. They are to replenish what we take.”

“They will not obey.”

“Then those who do not are to become slavesss,” Kaon hissed. “Either way, you give us what we desire.”

“Why don’t you just clone us?”

“Cloning takes time and resources. Taking from an existing population is much faster. It puts the burden on your people and keeps your population under control. Humans are never to become strong enough to challenge us again.”

“I hate you,” The Pet said, his private thoughts making themselves known once more.

Kaon turned to offer him a rubbery smile. “I know.”

Chapter 17

B
eep beep, beep beep, beep beep . . .

Doctor Stevon Elder reached into his outer lab coat pocket and fumbled with his holo pad to turn off his alarm. As soon as the incessant beeping stopped, he subsided with a sigh and began shivering violently where he lay. He realized he couldn’t feel his toes, and he could barely see his hands in front of his face. The cold and darkness were a reminder that he was no longer living among his own kind. The Sythians had come, and even though they now used human slaves—as opposed to Gors whose native environment was dark and frigid—somehow these humans weren’t bothered by either the darkness or the cold the way they should have been. Perhaps it was a question of mind over matter.
Thank the Immortals they haven’t messed with
my
mind yet.

Stevon turned his head and felt a sharp stab of pain in his neck. He reached around to find a molten chunk of transpiranium poking him there. He threw it to one side, and it landed a few feet away with a
thunk.
All around him were debris, shattered equipment and twisted girders. It was hard to believe he was still aboard the
Valiant
. He’d found this abandoned alcove by accident a few weeks ago. An old med lab, hiding almost at the bottom of an abandoned lift tube. Based on the amount of destruction it had seen, there had been some kind of explosive accident.

Whatever had befallen the lab, Stevon was grateful for it. He had known the Sythians would do one of two things when they came aboard—execute the fleet’s officers en masse, or turn them into slaves the way they had with the refugees they’d found in the Enclave. The skull faces had opted for the latter option, which was far worse than the former in Stevon’s opinion. Better to die and go to Etheria than to live and be forced against one’s will to serve a heartless, soulless enemy.

Then again, the Sythians likely wouldn’t let him live once they found out what he knew. If they had the chance to turn him into a slave, his newfound loyalty to them would make him tell all, and one of the first things he would tell them was what he had done to hide the location of Avilon. After that, his life and Admiral Heston’s would be forfeit, but not before both of them were thoroughly tortured to find out what they knew. Stevon would use the suicide tooth the admiral had given him long before it came to that, but it occurred to him that there was a better option than sitting around in the ruined med lab, waiting to be discovered. The admiral had given him the coordinates to get to Avilon, recorded on a micro dot inside his suicide tooth.

Perhaps the Avilonians wouldn’t welcome him—an Etherian—or perhaps the sector had become more open-minded since Hoff had been there all those millennia ago. Either way, Stevon knew the Avilonians were the key to humanity’s survival. Even if they killed him upon arrival, at least he might have a chance to warn them about the Sythians and what they were doing in Dark Space. When Atton had left to get help, the invaders had been at a standoff with humanity. Now, things were much more serious.

Stevon stood up and brushed a fine layer of white dust from his clothes which had accumulated while he slept. Clearly the air filters weren’t working in the ruined med lab. Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Stevon turned toward the far wall and the out-of-service lift shaft which he’d climbed down to get here. It was now or never. He’d set his alarm for the middle of the night cycle in the hope that he’d run into fewer of the Sythians’ slave soldiers. He had to try to get to the hangar and steal a ship. If he failed and had to use his suicide pill, or got shot to pieces while trying to escape, then he would suffer the same fate as if he stayed here, only swifter.

Even rationing himself and sleeping as much as possible, it had taken him less than a week to exhaust the 100 pound grav bag of supplies he’d brought with him. Now he had just two options—stay and die a slow, painful death from dehydration, or make a run for it and go down fighting.

Stevon started toward the broken lift tube shaft. Bits of transpiranium and duranium crunched underfoot. There was a hollow ache in his belly, and he was swaying on his feet as he walked. He reached the shaft and looked up. It looked as daunting as a mountain, but he reminded himself he only had to climb up three floors to get out. After that . . .

He wasn’t sure what he would do.

One step at a time, Stevon,
he told himself.
Immortals help me . . .

He found his first handhold and almost lost his grip while trying to pull himself up onto a fallen girder. But, step by awkward step, handhold by handhold, somehow he made it. Panting and sweating from the exertion, he reached the doors on the third level up from the ruined lab. He pried them open with shaking hands and slithered out into the corridor. Exhausted, all he could do was lay there on his belly and catch his breath. Thankfully, the corridor was deserted, but he knew better than to rely on that. The
Valiant
had holocorders everywhere, and someone, somewhere would be watching. His heart pounding, Stevon pushed himself off the cold deck and hurried down the corridor. As he ran, he struggled to remember which way he had to go to get to the nearest hangar. But the ship was too vast, and he barely knew where he was. His best bet would be to get to the nearest rail car tunnel. Once there he could search the ship’s directory for its hangar bays. He hurried on, his booted-feet pounding down the corridor.

Then something caught his eye.

Up ahead, gleaming in the low, lavender-hued light, which the Sythians had set the ship’s glow panels to produce, Stevon saw a suspicious-looking black dome hanging down from the ceiling—a holocorder. His legs shaking, he ran faster as he passed beneath the camera, irrationally hoping that if he ran fast enough it wouldn’t see him.

Come on, Stevon . . . pull yourself together. . . .

*   *   *

“My Lord, there’s a security alert on level 15,” the
Valiant’s
security officer said.

Kaon turned away from the Captain’s table with a hiss. “What is it?” he warbled.

“A man, Doctor Stevon Elder, according to visual analysis. He appears to be in a great hurry to get somewhere. The security system flagged his behavior as suspicious. He is not one of us.”

Kaon walked up behind the officer in charge of security and studied the hologram projected above his station. It showed footage of the doctor in question, running as fast as he could down one corridor after another. “What is the reason for his haste?”

“I do not know. Perhaps he is trying to get off the
Valiant
before we find him and make him join us.”

“We already find him.”

“He must be desperate to believe we wouldn’t catch him.”

“I like to know what he intends to do,” Kaon replied.