04 Dark Space (33 page)

Caldin looked up and her gaze passed over each of the officers present before she continued. “If you are honest with yourselves you’ll come to the same conclusion that I have—things are going to go to the netherworld when the Avilonians come aboard. The only question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to roll over and play dead, or are we going to fight back?” A murmur of agreement swept through the room, and Caldin gave a decisive nod. “Then
fight!
Ruh-kah!”

Death and Glory,
Atton translated silently as the others sitting around him repeated the old Rokan battle cry.

Officers began rising from the table, and Atton stood up with them. There was so much more he wanted to say, but it was clear that no one was going to listen.
Hopefully the captain has the sense to keep the Gors as a last resort. If not . . . perhaps the Avilonians will accept
my
surrender.

*   *   *

On the second stage of its journey, the
Trinity
departed the Gor cruiser which had carried it out of Dark Space right under the Sythians’ noses. From there, Ethan and Alara spent the subsequent week travelling through SLS in order to reach the Avilonians’ forward base. In that time Ethan had grown thoroughly bored, while his wife had grown increasingly anxious about what was to come. Now almost three months pregnant, she spent her days worrying about the future. Where would their child grow up? Would the kid get a good education? Would there be food on the table? A roof over their heads?
Would they be safe?

When Alara finally tired of asking those questions, she withdrew from the real world and its problems, adopting a vacant, glassy-eyed stare. Whenever Ethan saw her like that he tried to snap her out of it, but he rarely succeeded. Yesterday, her morning sickness had begun, arriving later than usual, and Ethan realized that they didn’t have any medication on board to treat it. At that, Alara had adopted another vacant look, saying in a quiet voice that it was just
a sign of things to come.
Ethan tried to reassure her that the Avilonians probably had even better medical care than what they were used to, but she’d countered that by asking how they were going to pay for it. . . .

“We could sell the Trinity,” he suggested, even though it felt like he was suggesting they sell his right arm.

She smiled bitterly and shook her head. “If the Avilonians are so technologically advanced, then what use will they have for our ship? You’ll have to sell it for scrap, and something tells me that won’t give us enough to buy a mansion on a lake, or a spacious habitat on some space station. We’re frekked, Ethan! We should have stayed!”

“You agreed we should go!”

“You convinced me!”

“Well it’s too late now
.
”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t have enough fuel for a return trip.”

“What?!”

“We’re not going back, anyway. We can’t. There’s nothing to go back to.”

“What if Avilon sends reinforcements to Dark Space?”

“Even then. Where would you rather raise our child, Kiddie—in a warzone with the scarcity, the criminals, and the Gors, or in Avilon, where all of that will be just a distant memory?”

“They’ll have their own problems.”

“Yea, like whether to eat seafood or steak for dinner. They’ll probably also have a lot of trouble picking which vintage of wine to drink. From what I’ve heard the place is a paradise, but even if it isn’t—it has to be better than where we’re coming from. So no, we’re not going back. Besides, remember what Destra told us. They probably won’t even let us leave.”

“Exactly! Doesn’t that sound like a trap to you?”

“You think they want a bunch of skriffs like us to go looking for them? If that’s the case, then they wouldn’t have been hiding all this time. No, Avilon is a well-kept secret, because if everyone knew about it, then they’d all want to live there, and my bet is they have enough people living there already.

“Make people immortal and what’s the next thing that happens? The next thing that happens, Kiddie, is their population growth explodes. If no one ever dies and everyone keeps having kids, that growth curve becomes exponential and pretty soon the entire galaxy is overrun with people. That’s exactly what happened with the Sythians, and it’s why they’re here now.”

“So why don’t we see Avilonians everywhere?” Alara asked. “Why didn’t they take over our galaxy instead of the Sythians?”

“Maybe they have a way of keeping their population under control. Maybe they don’t even have kids anymore.”

“And I’m pregnant,” Alara snorted. “You still think it’ll be a good place to raise a child?”

“Alara, we don’t have a choice, so just try to be positive, okay?”

She was quiet for a long while, contemplating that. Then he felt a soft tug on his arm as she pulled one of his hands away from the controls. He turned to see her wide violet eyes full of unshed tears. “Just promise me we’re going to be okay, Ethan. That’s all I ask.”

Ethan shot her an unconvincing smile. “We’re going to be okay, Kiddie.” With that, he leaned across the space between the pilot’s and copilot’s chairs and gave her a kiss.

“Are you sure?” she asked, withdrawing slowly to look him in the eye.

He’d nodded and squeezed her hand. “I’m positive.”

Ethan snapped out of his reverie and shook his head. He wasn’t positive at all, but he couldn’t afford to sit around paralyzed with fear. He had to focus on the solution, and right now that solution was for them to find Avilon.

Ethan glanced at the
Trinity’s
SLS timer. They were just five minutes from reversion to real space, and this time, they wouldn’t be reverting at some intermediary nav point along the way. They were about to reach the actual coordinates which Destra had given them. Ethan’s heart began to pound and his palms grew slick with sweat. He tried but failed to contain his excitement. He considered calling Alara to come up to the cockpit, but she was resting in their quarters, and the last time he’d checked in on her she wasn’t in the best of moods, so he decided to let her sleep.

Ethan watched the timer slowly tick down to zero. He didn’t even bother to look up as the streaking swirls of superluminal space disappeared with a flash of light. His eyes remained glued to the grid, searching for any blips on gravidar. After a few seconds, when the grid was still devoid of contacts, Ethan frowned and shook his head. He tried expanding the
Trinity’s
sensor range from the default one hundredth of a light year to a full one tenth of a light year. At that range it would take over 15 minutes rather than one second for his ship’s computer to completely scan the accompanying volume of space and update his gravidar with any new contacts, but when it did, he was sure to find
something
.

While he waited, Ethan found the nearest planet and set course for it. A mottled blue sphere came into view. He magnified that view and queried his ship’s sensors for details on the planet. It was a water world with 1.25 times standard gravity, a breathable atmosphere, and approximately 2% of its surface dotted with small islands. The equatorial temperature was 317 degrees Kelvin, making it on the hot side of balmy, and although it was listed on his star charts, the world didn’t even have a name, just a designation—
GK-465
. That was a good indication that it was worthless. Even barren rocks had names.

Ethan felt a crushing weight of despair. He worked hard to calm his racing heart as a sweaty surge of anxiety pulsed through him. If this was the Avilonians’ forward base, then where were they?

They must be hiding.
If they’d gone to so much trouble to hide themselves from the rest of the galaxy, then of course they wouldn’t just suddenly change their minds about it now. Ethan keyed his comm to broadcast on an open channel and then he said, “This is Ethan Ortane, Captain of the
Trinity,
hailing from what remains of the Imperium of Star Systems. If anyone can hear this message, please respond; we are in urgent need of assistance.”

He waited a full minute with the comms open, listening for a reply. When none came, he tried repeating the message, but again, there was no response. Ethan accepted that with a frown.
You want to hide? All right, I’ll play that game.

Fifteen minutes later, his ship finished updating the grid, now to a range of one tenth of a light year, but besides a few more planets and some outlying asteroid belts, there was
still
nothing out there. Cold dread began trickling through Ethan’s gut.

Now the planet was all he could see out the forward viewport. It lay close beneath his ship. A moment later, the
Trinity
began to shudder and shake around him as it hit the upper atmosphere. “Frek . . .” he hissed, fumbling with the dial to set the IMS from 98% to 100%. The shuddering stopped. He hoped he’d adjusted the controls in time to keep from waking Alara, but he supposed he’d know the answer to that soon.

A carpet of angry storm clouds appeared below him, racing up to greet his ship. The
Trinity
sliced into them and everything turned a dark, purplish blue. Raindrops began pelting the forward viewports, and then a blinding flash of lightning lit up the clouds from within, followed by a crack of thunder which rumbled through the cockpit. Ethan grimaced at that. Alara had to be awake by now. Decreasing the ship’s angle of descent, he began configuring the autopilot for a grid search of the planet. He couldn’t assume that the Avilonians were hiding on one of the planet’s islands; they were just as likely to be found hovering above the surface, or floating beneath it in some type of underwater facility.

While he was still configuring the autopilot, Ethan heard the cockpit door
swish
open behind him, followed by Alara’s voice: “What’s going on?”

He turned to her with a smile. “Hello, Darling.”

“Darling, hoi? Why didn’t you tell me we’d arrived?”

“I thought you could use the sleep.”

“Thanks, I guess. Have you made contact yet?” Alara asked as she slid into the copilot’s station.

Ethan cleared his throat. “I’m working on it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I haven’t found them yet.”

“Well haven’t they found you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did you try the comms?”

“Yes—no reply.”

“Are you sure we’re at the right coordinates?”

Ethan sighed. “Look, I’ve checked everything, and tried everything—my guess is they don’t want to reveal themselves until they have no other choice.”

“Either that or your ex-wife sent us on a one-way trip into the middle of frekking nowhere.”

The clouds parted and an angry black sea appeared below them. Even from several kilometers up, the waves were marked wrinkles on the face of the water. Lightning flashed overhead and another rumble of thunder roared through the cockpit.

“Why would she do that?” Ethan asked.

“Maybe she’s jealous. You saw the way she was looking at us—like we have everything she wants.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Our son is
missing.
Dark Space is overrun. Hoff is dead. Even if she is jealous, she has bigger issues to deal with. Whatever else Destra may be, she’s not that petty. The Avilonians are here. We just have to find them. Think about it, if you were trying to hide from the rest of the galaxy, why would you leave your forward base out in the open where everyone could find it? You’d find a way to hide it from nosey passersby.”

“Yea, well there aren’t exactly a lot of passersby left in the galaxy, so what are they hiding from now?”

“Maybe they’re hiding from the same thing we were—” Ethan suggested. “—Sythians.”

“Maybe,” Alara replied. A frown graced her smooth, pearly white skin, and she bent over her control station. “Or maybe you’re just not asking nicely enough. Let me try the comms.”

Ethan watched with one eyebrow skeptically raised as Alara set the comms to broadcast on all channels and then spoke into the audio pickups. “This is Alara Ortane of the
Trinity,
we know you’re out there, you motherfrekkers!”

“Hoi!” Ethan slapped the mute button. “What are doing?”

“What?”

“We want to find them so we can talk, not so they can blow us out of the sky!”

All the same, Ethan found himself listening to the crackle and hiss of the comms, hoping to hear a reply.

None came.

“Look,” Ethan said. “We’ll grid search the planet. I’ll put it on auto and set an alert to notify us when something comes up on the scopes. A few days from now when we’ve scanned every square meter of this planet, we’re bound to have something to go on.”

Alara shook her head slowly and turned to him with wide, frightened eyes. “What if we don’t?”

Ethan noticed that she had one arm wrapped around her belly as if to protect their unborn child from some unseen threat. He reached for her other hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “We will. Everything is going to be all right, Alara. I promise.” Ethan forced a smile for her sake and then leaned over to kiss her. His lips brushed hers, softly at first, but she returned his kiss with unexpected force. Ethan let himself be carried away by the moment until they broke apart, panting and gasping for air. “Why don’t you go back to our quarters,” he said. “I’ll finish setting up the autopilot and then meet you there.”

Alara nodded and shot him a wan smile. “Don’t be late . . .”

Her hand trailed lightly up his thigh as she left, and he turned to watch her leave. The tight black leggings she wore clung to her in a way which left nothing to the imagination. Ethan let out his frustration in a long, slow breath. Alara opened the cockpit and turned from the open doorway with a sly grin. “See you soon, handsome.”