Dark Space: Origin (30 page)

Alara turned back to him, still smiling. “I’d like you to meet the groom—Admiral Hoff Heston. Hoff, this is Ethan.”

“Hello, Ethan,” he said, stepping inside.

“Why?” was all Ethan could manage as he tried to work moisture into his suddenly dry mouth. “It was supposed to be us, Kiddie.”

Alara shrugged and looped her arm through Hoff’s. “Did you think I was going to wait for you forever?” She giggled once more, and Hoff added a booming laugh of his own.

Boom.

Ethan’s eyes shot open. He stared up at the dark ceiling, watching a strange orange glow flicker and dance across it. He heard a metallic
thud
and then heavy footsteps pounding away. In the next instant, his sleep-clouded brain picked out the crackle of flames responsible for the flickering glow on the ceiling. He turned toward the light and sound. It was coming from the entrance of the control tower. Where was Corporal Exalian? Had Brondi’s men found them?
Alara!
Ethan thought. He turned to look beside him, and found nothing but an empty blanket where she had been lying earlier. Then he noticed that the spare zephyr was gone, too.
Frek!
Ethan thought, and suddenly he understood why Alara had asked him about piloting mechs. He rolled over and crawled sentinel-style across the deck, making slow progress and occasionally feeling a sharp warning jolt from the stun cords which bound his hands and feet. By the time he reached the entrance, the flames were already burning low, but acrid smoke had begun pouring into the control tower. Ethan coughed and his eyes burned, but he pushed on. Fear drove him faster. Fear that he would be trapped in the control tower by the blaze, and fear of what he would find when he reached the entrance.

Ethan rounded the corner and his worst fears were realized. Lying slumped in the far corner of the corridor leading away from the entrance was Aleph Seven. Flames leapt up around his mech from a shiny, black pool of hydraulic fluid and lubricant which had seeped out from his zephyr. The corpsman wasn’t even trying to escape the blaze, but Ethan didn’t have to wonder why—the zephyr’s chest plate was peeled open like cheap duranium, and his eyes were wide and staring behind his helmet.

Corporal Exalian was dead.

*  *  *

The faster Atton ran, the more he realized that he was lost. The stars glittered and the moon shone down from the artificial sky overhead, casting a wan, silver glow into the silverleaf maze.
At least by now Hoff has to be back in his quarters,
Atton thought, and with that he slowed his frantic pace. His lungs burned and his feet ached. He turned another corner and two more paths disappeared to either side of him, a third one wound around a corner up ahead, but Atton had no idea where he was or which one of those paths would get him out of the maze. He turned to gaze up at the sheer black walls of the silverleaf bushes rising to either side of him and wondered if he could climb them to see where he was in relation to the admiral’s opulent quarters. It was worth a try. He reached into the bushes, looking for a branch which might be strong enough to hold his weight, but his arm sunk in all the way up to the shoulder and his hand rattled around blindly, seeking purchase among the spindly branches.

“Hello, Atton.”

He froze.

“I wouldn’t bother trying to climb them. The sky only
appears
to be distant. It forms a low-hanging roof over the maze, so you won’t see anything from up there.”

Atton withdrew his arm from the hedge and turned to see Hoff standing at the end of the path which he’d seen winding away in front of him. He affected an innocent smile. “Admiral! You have no idea how good it is to see a friendly face! I thought I was never going to get out of here.”

Hoff smiled back as he approached. “Indeed? I’ll take that as a compliment. The point of any maze is to make you to lose your way, wouldn’t you say, Atton?”

“I guess.”

Hoff stopped within arm’s reach of him. “What brings you out here in the middle of the night?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Ahh, I see. Even with the light sculpture?”

“I found it distracting.”

“You must have a tough case of insomnia. We have tea for that, you know.”

“The fresh air clears my head.”

“Simulated fresh, but I would think it only clears your head because it wakes you up more. Somewhat counter-productive for sleep. You should have stayed in the garden, Atton.”

There was a sinister note of rebuke in Hoff’s voice that Atton didn’t like. He brushed it off with a shrug. “I thought this was part of the garden. By the time I realized it wasn’t, I was already lost. What are
you
doing up, Admiral?”

“Your mother told me you came out here. She said you might need some help finding your way back.”

“Well, she was right.”

“Good mothers always are. Come—” Hoff said, wrapping an arm around Atton’s shoulders to guide him out of the maze. “—let’s go try some of that tea.”

*  *  *

Angel couldn’t stop running. Her footsteps sounded like thunder as she pounded down the gleaming corridors. She’d been running for what felt like forever—ever since she’d shot the sentinel who’d told her to shut up and stop making so much noise. She hadn’t meant to kill him—just stun him, but she hadn’t mastered the mech’s weapons yet, and instead of stunning him, she’d fired an anti-personnel rocket, killing him before he even knew what had hit him.

After what she’d done to that sentinel, she knew that if the rest of his squad caught up with her, they’d do the same thing to her. A cold sweat of panic beaded on her brow and gut-twisting guilt raged right alongside it. Angel shook her head.
Snap out of it!
She couldn’t afford to feel bad right now. So she’d killed someone. So what. They were here to steal Brondi’s ship, maybe even to kill
him
, and that meant she had to choose whose life was more important. To her, that was “Big Brainy” Brondi’s. He was the closest thing she had to a father. He’d taken her in along with all of the other war orphans when she was just sixteen. He’d taught them the art of dancing poles and of teasing men until they’d agree to trade a day’s wage for a few short hours—usually minutes, in her experience—of bliss. That trade had kept her alive while others starved. She owed Brondi.

Angel couldn’t remember how she’d come to be captured by a squad of enemy soldiers. She’d awoken in the dark, lying beside some lunatic who claimed to know her, who told her not to trust herself because she was chipped. What a lot of krak. That must have been how they’d captured her. They’d brainwashed her and turned her into some kind of undercover agent in order to kill Brondi. It had been all she could do to keep calm and play along until she could find a way to escape.

And now that she had escaped, time was of the essence. She had to warn Brondi. “Alec!” Angel called out to the ceiling. “Big Brainy! It’s me, Angel! Help!” She wasn’t sure if anyone was listening, but she had to try.

She ran and ran until her legs grew tired even in spite of the power-assisted armor she wore. How was she supposed to find her way to the bridge? She turned a corner and found herself faced with another corridor just as endless and just as deserted as the previous one. Angel bit back a sob and pressed on. She had to run into someone eventually. How big could the ship be?

*  *  *

“I hope you have a good reason for waking me, Sergeant,” Brondi said as he strode down the gangway from the entrance of the bridge.

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Gibbs replied, keeping pace beside him. A squad of armored soldiers walked behind Brondi, shadowing him. After reports had stopped coming in of invisible assailants attacking his crew, Brondi had finally risked cracking open his zephyr, trading the exaggerated armor for a luxuriant red robe and fuzzy white slippers, which he’d found in the overlord’s quarters. The half a dozen soldiers walking behind him were his contingency plan.

“Well? What is it?” Brondi demanded.

“Watch stations are reporting activity on one of the lower decks.”

“What kind of activity?” Brondi asked as he strode up to the sergeant’s security console. “Don’t tell me we have more Sythians on board, because I don’t think I could handle being forced to walk around in a zephyr again. It smells like the inside of a boot. Do you know what it’s like to live inside a boot, sergeant?”

“No, sir.”

“I can arrange it for you.”

Gibbs ignored him and pointed at the holoscreen rising out of his control station. “There. We’re tracking her on deck 33 right now.”

“Her?” Brondi frowned as he stared at the matte black form of a zephyr light assault mech running down a long, nondescript corridor aboard the
Valiant
.

Gibbs leaned forward and dialed up the volume. Suddenly Brondi heard his name blaring through the speakers, and the ringing thuds of the mech’s hurried footfalls.

“Alec! Big Brainy! It’s me, Angel! . . . Help!”

“Angel . . .” Brondi repeated. “It can’t be.”

“You know her, sir?”

“I might. Where did she come from?”

“Earliest we have her on the holocorders is somewhere near the venture-class hangars. You think she slipped aboard while we were at Ritan?”

Brondi frowned. “If so, then she’s not alone. Get her up here, but make sure they crack her out of that armor first. I don’t want any more accidents aboard my ship.”