Dark Space: Avilon (40 page)

“Why did you do it?”

“We did not want to kill. Your captain started it.”

“But why did you take over the ship?”

“You are the Matriarch, and the captain does not show you the proper respect.”

Destra sighed. Gor logic. “I suppose I meant to ask what was so important about getting us to cooperate? You had your own fleet. You could have taken your ships and gone without us. Why insist that we take you there?”

Torv was silent for a long moment. Then he said,
“Because . . . we do not know the way.”

Destra blinked. “You don’t know how to get to your own home world?”

“Most of us are taken when we are very young.”

Suddenly the air shimmered in front of Destra and Torv appeared. His sunken cheeks and protruding ribs made him look like a giant skeleton wrapped in a thin gray sheet.

“Motherfrekker!” Cavanaugh said, and his ripper rifle snapped up for a head shot.

Torv’s skeletal head turned and he hissed at the sergeant, baring razor-sharp teeth.

“Stand down, Cavanaugh!” Destra said.

“It’s Bones!” Atta cried. “Hi, Bones!” she said, raising a skinny arm to wave at him.

“Bones?” Destra turned to her daughter with a frown.

“He’s the one who was keeping the monsters away.”

Another hiss.

“Hello, little human,”
Torv said.

“Where have you been?” Atta asked. “I was looking for you when they made me go to
stasis
. You weren’t there to scare away the monsters. They could have eaten me!” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I am there, little human. I watch you as you fall asleep.”

Suddenly Destra remembered her hallucination from just before she’d succumbed to stasis. She imagined that she’d seen Torv there, lurking in the back of the room.

“I didn’t see you,” Atta replied, sounding skeptical.

More hissing.
“Just because you do not see a thing does not mean that it isn’t there.”

Destra frowned, about to tell Atta to stop interrupting, when she realized that something was wrong. Atta wasn’t wearing a translator. She whirled on her daughter in shock. “You understand him?”

Atta looked up at her with big blue eyes. “You do, too.”

“I’m wearing a translator, Atta!” Destra grabbed her daughter and backed away from Torv.

“Do not be alarmed, human. I did nothing to her.”

“How the frek does she know what you are saying?”

“Mommy! Frek’s a bad word.”

“Quiet, Atta!”

“I speak with my thoughts. All Gors do. We also listen to yours. The translators you give us help to avoid misunderstandings, but we do not need verbal language.”

“Then why can’t I understand you without a translator?”

“Your daughter’s mind is open enough to hear my thoughts. Yours is not.”

Destra gaped at him, unable to decide whether or not she should believe him.

“It’s true, Mommy. That’s how he told me he was a friend and that he wouldn’t hurt me. He told me he’s scarier than any monster, so I wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“You’ve been visiting my daughter at night?” Destra asked, her eyes accusing.

The sentinels who’d come in with them were all still aiming their weapons at Torv, their eyes wide and staring behind their helmets.

“Her fear is so powerful that I can smell it from a great distance. You all reek of the same fear now. It is not a pleasant smell. Once I convince your daughter that I can keep the monsters away, her fear disappears, and I can breathe again.”

“See?” Atta said. “Told you.”

Suddenly they were interrupted by more hissing, this time high-pitched and keening, as if one of the Gors were in great pain. Destra’s eyes darted around the room. “What was that?”

“I tell you already,”
Torv replied.
“That, is the future of our creche.”

Destra shook her head. “The future? What do you mean?”

“A new Matriarch is about to be born.”

* * *

Atton sat in his cockpit, waiting. His interceptor was cloaked and running in a low-power mode, easy to mistake as just another piece of debris floating inside the
Dauntless.
His hand flexed around his flight stick; his ears strained for the slightest sound. He both heard and felt life support blowing barely-warm air across his face with a soft
whooshing
sound. Despite the comforting warmth of the uniform he wore
.
The icy darkness of space was ever creeping in. Low power mode meant even the small space heater inside the cockpit had been throttled back.

An endless field of stars glittered overhead. More than a few of them were Sythian warships, but Atton tried not to think about that. He took a deep breath, rallying his patience, and noticed for the first time that the inside of his interceptor had a fresh, citrus tang. Breathing deeply of it once more, he felt his fatigue melting away. His eyes grew just a little wider and he sat up straighter in his chair. The air was laced with some type of stim to keep him from falling asleep.

Atton studied the star map on his main display. Yet more Sythian transports were busy landing inside the ruined outer hull of the
Dauntless.
The firefight in space had ended. The battle was over. For all Atton knew, his squadmates and the strategian’s crew hiding in the rubble below were the only ones left alive from their side of the engagement.

Hoff and his crew had moved rubble around, putting up barricades and walls, creating a bunker for themselves with their backs against a caved-in corridor. No one could come up behind them. They just had to hold the line as long as possible and make their stand count for something.

The three interceptors lying cloaked in the jagged shadows and floating clouds of debris above the deck were tasked with providing air support.

“I’m detecting movement on the far side of the crater,” Gina breathed over the comms.

Their sensors were much better than those of the soldiers on the ground so they were also lookouts.

“Probably just a few stragglers,” Atton said, watching the same thing on his scopes.

“Nobody open fire,” Caldin reminded them. “The strategian wants to save the big guns for last.”

Moments later, two small, black-armored specks came stumbling out into the clearing below. Atton watched them with external cameras, not daring to fire maneuvering jets, even though his X-1 was safely cloaked.

Two bright lances of red laser fire shot out from the Strategian’s bunker. One of the enemy soldiers crumpled and fell, his grav field obviously still working to keep him pinned to the deck, while the other one dove behind cover. A brief firefight ensued.

Atton saw the enemy’s arm shot clean off with a spurt of red, human blood, and he tried to remind himself that these humans were Sythian
slaves,
and killing them would be doing them a favor. Once they died, they would wake up on Avilon, resurrected by Omnius.

“There’s going to be a lot more where they came from,” Strategian Heston warned over the comms.

Atton glanced up, out the gaping hole to the stars above their heads and hoped the Sythians didn’t decide to deal with the newfound threat by firing more ordinance at the
Dauntless.

Moments later, the grid came alive with movement. Atton zoomed in to watch in greater detail
.
A seething mass of tiny red dots began flowing toward their position.

“Looks like you
really
got their attention, sir,” Gina said. “They’re all on their way here.”

“Good. Keep us posted,” Hoff replied.

Atton eyed the grid, watching for long minutes while the enemy ran through the
Dauntless
to get to them
.
The first wave of enemies approached their crater.

“Here they come!” Caldin called out.

A dozen or more slave soldiers boiled out onto the deck below, jumping over fallen beams and twisted bulkheads, their weapons and glowing red optics scanning the starlit shadows in the bottom of the crater.

All of them were out in the open and exposed, but none of Heston’s men opened fire. Suddenly a bright orange mushroom flowered in the enemy’s midst, sending them flying in all directions. One was impaled on a jutting beam. The rest slammed into the broken bulkheads and lay still, while another went tumbling out into space. Atton heard a
thunk
as that one bounced off his fighter, and he grimaced, hoping the enemy soldier wasn’t alive to notice that he’d just bumped into something invisible.

A few of the enemy soldiers stumbled to their feet. Then came a withering barrage of laser fire, and they were burned back down.

A cheer rose over the comms from the officers huddled in their bunker below. “There goes the first wave!” one of them said.

Atton smiled, but he decided to save his breath. There were thousands more where those had come from.

Another wave of enemy soldiers came rushing into the clearing below, but this time they knew where to shoot, and they opened fire on Hoff’s bunker straight away. A few of them launched grenades and anti-personnel rockets that chipped away at the officer’s hastily-constructed fortifications. When no return fire immediately came from the bunker, Atton heard, “Gold Squadron! Take them out! Use your auto cannons!”

Atton took manual control of his auto-cannon. An under barrel view appeared on his main display and he used his flight stick to control it. He lined up the first target, and pulled the trigger. A bright yellow streak shot out, tracer alloy activated by the accelerator coils in the barrel of the cannon. A small explosion bloomed on the deck, blowing his target apart with a gory rain that fell
up
instead of down. A few chunks
thunked
against his hull on their way out. Grimacing, Atton lined up another target and opened fire. Matching yellow streaks joined his own, and dozens of black-armored bodies flew apart, one after another. The enemy formation was thrown into confused chaos with all of them diving for cover and looking around stupidly for the source of the fire that was taking them out.

By the time all the enemy soldiers were down, there was a fine, frozen red mist drifting over the deck, along with bits and pieces of black armor. At least that’s what Atton hoped they were.

“We’ve taken out more than fifty already,” Caldin said. “They’re not going to keep running out like that. We need to think about finding a new position, one that’s less exposed.”

“No,” Hoff replied. “Omnius wants us back on Avilon. He’s about to make an important announcement.”

Atton’s brow furrowed as he heard that. “So Omnius wants us to hurry up and die?”

“He wants us to make our stand and get out. We can’t make a significant difference here.”

“I disagree,” Atton said. He felt a sweaty surge of anxiety with that statement, and he realized that what he was feeling was Omnius’s disapproval. He shook his head and went on, “We could take out a few thousand of them at this rate.”

“If Omnius thinks we’re not doing any good down here, then I’m sure there’s a reason for it,” Hoff replied. “We’re going to make this next wave our last,” he said. “Arm your splitter grenades, one in each hand. We’re going to charge out and take them with us when we go!”

Atton blinked, shocked by what he was hearing. A suicide charge?

“Gold Squadron—you can either join us, set your power cores to detonate, or run out and see how many Shells you can take down with you.”

“We’ll see you off first, sir,” Caldin replied, sounding as dubious as Atton felt.

“Suit yourselves.”

The next wave appeared, this one much bigger than the previous two. Rather than boil out into the crater, this time the enemy came creeping up behind cover, two at a time, trying to outflank the strategian’s bunker. Growing tired of their skulduggery, Atton targeted the enemy with his auto cannon and took out two of them in a puff of red mist. The others looked up, this time noticing where the fire was coming from. Soldiers began streaming into the clearing, firing blindly up at them with a constant barrage of dazzlingly bright violet lasers.

A few random shots found Atton’s fighter, causing it to shudder.

Atton fired back with a steady stream from his auto-cannon. This time both Gina and Caldin joined him. Then Atton saw Hoff and his men go running out into the fray, heedless of friendly fire.

Atton noticed the small pulsing red spheres they held in their hands—
splitter grenades—
and he grimaced. The strategian hadn’t been joking.

Enemy fire shifted, turning toward the onrushing Avilonians, and Atton braced himself, waiting for a series of explosions to light up the deck. Then something impossible happened.

The enemy soldiers all suddenly crumpled to the ground and stopped firing. The Avilonians slowed their suicidal charge, and turned in confused circles to stare at their mysteriously fallen enemy.

Atton didn’t understand what had happened. Was this some sort of strange new Sythian tactic? Play dead?