04 Dark Space (6 page)

“Accidentally?” she asked.

Hoff smiled thinly and keyed off the holograms hovering between him and Tova so he could watch her more carefully. “Of course. My understanding is that your créche mates can detect one another telepathically, even through cloaking shields.”

“That is correct.”

“I am also given to understand that your people cannot always control when they are sending telepathic signals to each other, and that as soon as a telepathic signal is received, both the sender and recipient can locate one another.”

Tova was silent for a long time—so long, that Hoff thought perhaps the silence only seemed long to him. Then he heard Donali clear his throat and finally Tova spoke, “That is correct,” she said. With that she looked away to the far corner of the room, as if Hoff had just offended her so deeply that he was now
unworthy of her sight
. In Gor culture that meant he’d fallen out of favor with her.

Hoff frowned, but he decided to ignore the tension between them for now. Turning back to Atton, he said, “Any questions?”

“Just one—what if the Avilonians don’t want to help us?”

“Then . . .” Hoff hesitated. “We’re all going to die here.”

Chapter 4

E
than Ortane stood on a grassy field behind the Vastras’ house, watching the rolling green hills of Forliss ripple in the wind. The long grass came alive wherever the wind touched it, making it seem to flow from the foothills of the Astral Mountains like a river. Now setting above those mountains was the bright blue orb of the Alissan System’s sun. The setting sun had turned the planet’s usually misty blue sky to a cold turquoise shot through with glowing ribbons of gold that were high-flying wisps of cirrus clouds.

Ethan stood there, mesmerized by the beauty of it, lost in his thoughts. A lot had happened in the past few months. Ten years after the war and his sentence to Dark Space had separated him from his wife and son, he’d found them both again. Now his son was grown, and his wife, Destra . . . she had remarried and given birth to a daughter who was already seven years old. Ethan frowned. It was ironic. He’d waited for his wife—mourned her loss for ten years, thinking that she had died in the invasion—but she hadn’t waited more than three years for him.

And she had married Admiral Hoff Heston of all people. As fate would have it, Hoff was now the Supreme Overlord of Dark Space, and Ethan was forced to admit how much better off Destra was without him.

It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but he had done all right for himself. During the years he’d spent mourning for the family he thought he’d lost forever, his copilot, Alara Vastra, had stood by his side helping him through the darkest of those days. She’d been waiting for him to recover enough to notice her. Years had passed like that, with him too blinded by his grief to notice much of anything.

Finding Destra alive and married to another man had been just the slap in the face he’d needed to snap him out of it. Not long after that he’d proposed to Alara and she’d accepted. He was just glad that it hadn’t been too late to return her affections. Now that he looked back on all those years he’d spent feeling sorry for himself, he realized just how much time he’d wasted longing for an idealized version of his old life.

Now he was about to start a new life, and tonight was the night before it would begin—the night before the wedding. Ethan smiled. It seemed like a dream. Alara was beautiful. With her flowing dark hair, wide violet eyes, slender hourglass curves, and porcelain skin she was the envy of any man, but aside from that superficial appeal, she was also the sweetest and most faithful woman he’d ever known.
Of course she has to balance that sweetness by being a hot-blooded firebrand.

Ethan sighed. In times like these, he had to force himself to remember all the good things. It was easy to forget those things when she was freezing him out with a stony silence or going on the attack with flashing eyes and barbed tongue. He’d known she was an emotional woman when he’d met her, and all through their tension-filled partnership as freelancers he’d seen that side of her, so he’d known what he was getting into. He suspected that fire was part of what attracted him to her—she didn’t take krak from anyone.

“Hoi, are you trying to get away from me out here?”

Ethan started at the sound of Alara’s voice. He slowly turned to face her. She stood a dozen feet away with her hands planted on her hips, her violet eyes narrowed, and her dark hair glowing gold in the light of the setting sun. He forced a smile and shook his head. “No, Kiddie. You’re not
that
scary,” he said with a wink, and then turned back to watch the sunset.

Alara replied with a snort of laughter, and Ethan heard the grass rustling against her black leggings as she came to stand beside him. “You know . . .” she began. “You’re going to have to stop calling me that when we have kids.”

“Hmmm?” Ethan turned to her with a dumb look. “Oh—the nickname. Well I’m sure I’ll get at least a few more years’ use out of it,” he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

“A few years? You want to wait that long to have kids?”

“Well . . . yes. Just because we’ve got our own ship now doesn’t mean we’re rich.” Hoff had given them that ship—perhaps because he felt guilty for stealing Ethan’s wife, or perhaps because Destra felt guilty, and she’d convinced Hoff to do it. Whatever the reason, Ethan didn’t care. A seraphim-class corvette was nothing to sneeze at. It was exactly what he and Alara needed to start their life together. Of course Alara’s father thought it was exactly what they needed to
sell
in order to start their life together.

“You don’t need to be rich to have kids, Ethan, and the last time I checked a corvette like ours is worth a small fortune, so technically, we
are
rich.”

“It’s an asset, Alara. We can’t eat it. We have to use it to make some profit before it’ll be of any use, but don’t worry, we will, and in a year or two we’ll have enough saved up that we’ll be able to buy that house we talked about, or maybe a habitat on a station if you prefer. Once we have that, then we can think about starting a family.”

“That’s one option. . . . Another option might be for you to consider my father’s offer.”

“What, sell the ship and go work for him in the agri corps as a freighter pilot? I’ll just be a glorified babysitter for an AI. Those freighters are almost entirely automated. Not the most exciting job in the world. And where does that leave you? Stuck on some planet raising our kids all by yourself, waiting patiently for me to return once or twice a week and spend some time with you?”

“It’s not ideal, I agree, but maybe after a few years you could transfer to a desk job. I’m sure my father could help you with that. Then you would be home every night.”

Ethan snorted. “A desk job. That sounds even better than babysitting an AI.”

“It would pay the bills, and the money from our ship would give us enough to buy a mansion, let alone a house.”

Ethan rounded on Alara. “Please tell me you didn’t come out here just to convince me that your father’s right. What happened to you? I thought we were on the same page, Kiddie. We’ve always dreamed of having our own ship, of freelancing together and making our living between the stars. That’s been our dream for as long as we’ve known each other, and now suddenly you want to change it.”

It was Alara’s turn to sigh. “Look, just don’t close your mind to the idea, okay? There’s nothing wrong with settling down.”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with settling down, Kiddie, but there
is
something wrong with settling.”

Alara recoiled from him as if he had slapped her. “Are you sure you’re still talking about our ship?” she asked quietly.

Ethan frowned and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

Alara crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you’re having second thoughts. Maybe you’ve got cold feet and you’re just too much of a frekking coward to say it to my face.”

“I’m not talking about
you,
Alara! And I’m not having second thoughts. I love you, Kiddie, but you can’t expect me to give up my dreams just because now we’re getting married.”

“
Just because.
” Alara smiled bitterly. “I thought
I
was one of your dreams, Ethan. Isn’t that why you proposed to me?”

“You are! Frek it—Alara, listen to me . . .” Ethan took a quick step toward her and grabbed her by her shoulders before she could storm away. The smoldering look in her violet eyes warned him to choose his words carefully. “You
are
my dream. Marrying you is a dream come true. People don’t get to live twice, but here I am, living my life over with you. All I’m asking for is a chance to prove to you that my way could be better. I know it seems riskier than your father’s idea, but
trust me
. I can make this work. The corvette we have is ten times the ship our old rust bucket was. We don’t owe any debts on her, and now we can command a much better fee for our services.”

Alara frowned and let out a deep sigh. “I
do
trust you, Ethan, but security is not as overrated as you seem to think it is.” Alara uncrossed her arms and he took the opportunity to give her a hug. She pulled away all of a second later and looked him in the eye. “Just don’t say no without talking to me first, okay? We’re a team, remember?”

“I know.”

“We’re at my parents house, my father is trying to help us, and rather than being polite and saying you’ll think about it, you just refused and got all defensive. You didn’t even give me a chance to say what I thought about it.”

“I felt ambushed, but I’m sorry. Next time we’ll talk about it and decide what to do together.”

“So does that mean you’ll think about it?”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute—I already have thought about it, and now we
have
talked about it. Look—there’s one thing you’re forgetting in all of this. You’re right—security isn’t overrated—but being tied down to a home on a planet like Forliss might not be as secure as you think. Ten years ago all the people with so-called security died because they didn’t have the freedom we have right now. Right now, if the Sythians come back, we’ll be among the lucky few who can escape—but only
if
we keep our ship.”

Alara crossed her arms again. “And where do you think we’ll run to after this? Dark Space is humanity’s last hope.”

“It might be humanity’s last hope, but it isn’t ours. We are just you and me, and as long as we’re alive and together we can always find somewhere else to live. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but at least we can run away if it does.”

“Seems like you already have everything all figured out,” Alara said, turning back to look at the sunset.

“Alara . . . you have to admit what I’m saying makes sense.”

“Hoi, Ethan, you’re complaining that I’m asking you to give up on your dream, but have you ever thought to ask me about mine?”

“Well, I thought I already knew what it was, but I guess I was wrong . . .”

“You do know, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of. Do you remember what I told you aboard the
Valiant
before we left? About the dream I had?”

Ethan’s brow furrowed. “You dreamed of a cabin on a lake, of two kids running around it and their father chasing them. You said the father was me.”

“Exactly. I didn’t dream of you chasing our kids around on a starship, Ethan. I dreamed of a home and a family, on a
planet
—a real life. You seemed to want that, too. You asked me to marry you already knowing what my dreams were.
Now
you’re asking what happened to me? I’ll tell you what happened: you led me to believe you were ready to settle down—to start a life with me—and now you don’t seem so sure.”

“Alara . . .” Ethan reached for her hand, but she jerked it away and turned to leave. Once she was a few paces away, she stopped and turned back to him.

“I’m going to leave you here to think, Ethan. Maybe you’ll find the answers you came out here for. Just promise me you’ll let me know what they are before we’re standing at the altar tomorrow.” With that, she turned and walked away once more.

“Alara!” he called after her, but a sudden gust of wind drowned him out. He shivered in the growing cold, and reached a hand up to run it through his salt and pepper hair as he watched his fiancée pick her way back along the trail to her parents’ house. The Vastras were a wealthy family, one of a very few such families in the entire sector. Their home was a mansion, with thick, black marble columns and an imposing façade of transpiranium and white duranium siding. The home had its own hangar, a greenhouse, and even a pool with a retractable skylight. There were more rooms in that mansion than Ethan had seen in most hotels.

This was what Alara had come from. He should have known she wouldn’t be happy with a spacer’s life. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was getting cold feet. What if he couldn’t make her happy? What if they wanted different things and couldn’t build a life together without one of them being forced to give up on their dreams? Would she do that for him, or would he be forced to do it for her?

Something told him if she were willing to do that for him, then she wouldn’t have left him all alone out here
to think
. Ethan sighed and his brow furrowed in thought.

Would he be able to give up on his dreams for her, or would he just end up resenting her for it? Was there a compromise where he could have his freedom and she could have her security, or would they just fall apart trying to find that middle ground?

Suddenly Ethan realized that Alara had already tried to find that middle ground. She’d had her father offer him a steady job piloting freighters for the agri corps. That gave him his freedom and her the stability she wanted.
Frek
, Ethan thought.
She’s busy compromising and I’m being just as stubborn as ever.

The problem was, compromise or no compromise, he finally had his own ship—he was so close to everything he’d ever wanted! He wasn’t ready to give up on his dreams of being an independent trader just yet. That was the ultimate freedom. Alara could have her home on Forliss, and he would have his ship. She could have the security she wanted. In fact, he would even do one better by giving her the added security of knowing that if they had to flee Dark Space in a hurry, then they still could. It was the best of everything. It gave them both what they wanted.