Dark Space: Origin (40 page)

Chapter 26

B
oth men wore the exact same spotless black uniform with white piping and the three gold stars’ insignia of an admiral. Destra couldn’t believe her eyes. This was beyond anything she had prepared herself to deal with. Just a few hours ago she’d decided to join her husband’s mad existence, but she had never imagined that something like this could happen.
There’s two of them!
she thought, looking from one to the other and back again. She couldn’t blame Atta for running away screaming. Even though she understood what she was seeing, and her daughter didn’t, Destra was tempted to run away screaming, too.

“Hoff, you’ve gone completely skriffy.”

The admiral standing inside Atton’s room turned to give her a grim look. “I’m sorry you feel that way. If it helps, remember that you’ve already been with two of us, so adding a third shouldn’t be that hard. Go with him. He’ll take you to the enclave.”

“This is ridiculous!” Destra burst out. Her eyes kept flicking between the two clones, unsure of which one she should address. “What are you going to do when you come back for us? Flip a coin to see who gets to be my husband and Atta’s father? Or maybe you’ll take turns?”

Hoff smiled sadly, and his gray eyes filled with a subtle sheen of moisture. “You’re assuming that I
am
coming back.” He turned to address his clone standing in the doorway. “Even if we win this fight, I won’t get in your way, and you won’t see me again. They’re as much your family as they are mine.”

“I appreciate your sacrifice,” the clone said. He took Destra’s hand, and she tried to jerk it away, but he held her fast. “Don’t make me stun you, Des,” he warned.

At that, she gave in. “I’m never going to join you now, Hoff,” she said, blinking tears. “And I’m
never
going to forgive you!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” the one holding her replied.

“You’d better go with them while you still have the chance, Atton,” the one standing closest to Atton added.

“What about Atta?” Destra demanded. “Are you going to threaten to stun her, too?”

“If I have to.”

“Why would you let her see this, Hoff? She’s just a child.”

“She’s the child of a
clone
, and sooner or later she had to find out.”

Atton snorted. “Good luck explaining
that
to her.”

“You’re a heartless kakard, Hoff,” Destra added.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” he replied.

“So am I,” Destra said, nodding slowly. She wiped away her tears with the back of the hand which Hoff’s newest clone wasn’t squeezing with bone-grinding force.
So am I.

*  *  *

Atton was forced to walk in front of Hoff's clone the whole way. The moon in the artificial sky overhead did nothing to lighten the black walls of the silverleaf maze. Little Atta was surprisingly quiet. Whatever her father had said to her before he’d said goodbye had dried her stream of tears and replaced her frightened, darting eyes with a wide and vacant gaze. By contrast, his mother’s expression was grim and determined.

“Where are you taking us?” Destra asked.

“To your transport.” They reached another fork in the path, and Hoff barked out to Atton, “Left!” At the next turn—“Right!” And then—“Another left!”

A few more minutes of that, and they reached the end of the maze. Atton stopped at the concealing holofield and waited there. All of a second later Hoff poked him in the back with his sidearm. “Keep moving.”

Atton smirked as he walked through the seeming wall of silverleafs to the hidden passage on the other side. “You know, you don’t have to march me along at gunpoint.”

Hoff gave no reply, but when they reached the end of the corridor, he holstered his gun and stepped up to the control panel to reactivate the lift tube. Atton considered attacking the admiral while he was distracted, but then he remembered how easily Hoff had deflected his last attack and he thought better of it. Once the lift was reactivated, Hoff gestured for Atton to enter first.

“Still don’t trust me, hoi?” Atton said.

“No more than I have to,” Hoff replied, stepping in after him.

Then something completely unexpected happened.

The admiral must have seen the look of shock cross Atton’s face, because he abruptly spun around to look, but it was too late. Destra had picked up one of the discarded pieces of the lift tube doors which Atton had cut away the previous day, and now she swung that heavy sheet of duranium with all her might.

It hit Hoff in the side of the head with a hollow-sounding
smack!
He staggered, and Atta began to scream again. Destra didn’t give him a chance to recover. She hit him again and he went spinning into the side of the lift tube and bounced off. Hoff turned in a dizzy circle, blood streaming from a gash above one eye. “I was right not to trust,” was all he managed to say before he collapsed to the floor.

Destra dropped the piece of metal with a noisy
bang,
and took a quick step back, her eyes wide and locked on her husband’s unconscious form, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. Atta’s cries snapped her out of it. “Daddy?” she said in a small voice, trying to squeeze past her mother to get to him.

Destra grabbed her and turned her away from the scene, shushing her frantic questions. “Why did you hit him? Is he dead?”

“No darling, he’s not dead. He’s just sleeping. Remember he wanted to take us away, but we don’t want to go away, do we? We’re going to stay and help your father, but he wouldn’t let us, so that’s why we had to put him to sleep.”

“But he’s not really Daddy, is he? He told me he is, but . . .”

“Shhh,” Destra cooed.

Atton looked on with a growing sense of unreality setting in. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Hoff hadn’t trusted his wife to know his secret because he was afraid of how she’d react. Now, having seen his mother’s reaction, Atton couldn’t say he blamed the man. He’d known his wife very well.

“Atton,” Destra said, snapping him out of it. “Come on.”

He shook his head. “Hoff said there was a ship waiting below. It must have weapons and shields.”

“Atton . . .”

“I can’t just do
nothing!
If Brondi wins . . .”

Destra sighed. “You’re as stubborn as your father. Go. I’m not going to stop you.”

“You might want to come with me rather than be around when Hoff wakes up. He’ll never trust you again.”

“He never trusted me to begin with, and I could have killed him. The fact that I didn’t should tell him something. You leave Hoff to me.”

“Which one?”

Destra hesitated, her eyes back on the unconscious clone. “You’d better take that one with you. You’ll need his credentials to get aboard the transport.”

“Then what do you want me to do with him?”

“Tie him up for now. We can figure out that part if you . . .” Destra swallowed hard and shook her head. “
When
you return.”

“Right. Take care of yourself, Mom,” Atton said as he selected deck 24 from the lift control panel.

“You too, son. I love you!”

He looked up and smiled, opening his mouth to reply, but whatever he said was stolen by the wind as the lift dropped away.

*  *  *

Hoff returned to the bridge scant minutes before the
Tauron
dropped out of SLS. Relief radiated from his the crew like a palpable force. They’d been trying to reach him on the comms for the past half an hour while he’d been busy dealing with his family emergency.

Things hadn’t gone the way he had hoped, but he wasn’t surprised by Destra’s reaction. She would come around, although unfortunately, he wouldn’t get to see that. Even if he survived, he couldn’t complicate matters and return to vie against himself for his family. It made no sense. Instead, he would stay in Dark Space and lead humanity there. Eventually he’d find a new persona for himself—a new body, and a new life.

It was almost enough to make him want to give up and die, but he’d been down this road many times before, and as ever, he had a job to do. As long as there were still criminals like Brondi or Sythians and Gors to fight, he would have a reason to carry on.

Hoff forced himself to focus on something other than that brooding train of thought. The
Tauron
was now just five minutes from her reversion to real space, and he needed to be ready for it. Their battle plan was simple, but there were a million things which could go wrong.

Upon analyzing intel from the
Interloper,
they’d found just four safe paths through the minefield which surrounded the
Valiant—
three leading in, and
one
leading out. Of those three approach vectors, only two would be possible to line up with the exit vector on the other side, and one was a better approach angle than the other.

Preliminary calculations predicted that their window of opportunity would be tight. Hoff planned to drop out of SLS just a few kilometers from the edge of the interrupter buoys and then roar through the minefield at their top acceleration of 70 KAPS. At that speed it would take just a minute and a half for them to close to within 25 kilometers of the carrier, which was their maximum effective beam and torpedo range. By that point they’d be moving at over six kilometers a second, and the helmsman better have already adjusted their course to avoid a collision. They would have between three and four seconds to overwhelm the hangar shields. Then the
Interloper
would have approximately fifteen seconds to get inside before the carrier’s port shields equalized and they would have to make another pass. But there could be no second pass. The
Tauron
wouldn’t survive it. Everything came down to timing.