Dark Space: Origin (47 page)

She lay there for a long moment, gasping for air, her eyes wide and staring as she listened to the rapid-fire screech of lasers and the startled cries of her crew. She could smell something liked charred meat wafting through the air, and her stomach gave a nauseating flip as she wondered about the source of that smell. A moment later, Adram’s smiling face appeared above her. He crouched down beside her, taking cover behind the captain’s table. Caldin turned her head to get a better look at him, and that was when she noticed that she was lying in a pool of blood. Her blood.

“I’m sorry, Captain, but there’s been a change of plans,” he said. “I would have liked to overthrow the admiral with you, but it was not to be.”

“Why . . . ?” she whispered, still struggling to breathe as she listened to the raucous screech of laser fire and the frenzied shouts of her crew.

“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already. You
returned
from the Getties, Caldin, but I was
released
.”

Caldin shook her head, rocking it from side to side. “No.”

“Your species has proven very difficult to wipe out. You’d be surprised what lengths we’ve gone to, but now that is all about to end,” he said, aiming his sidearm at her head.

“Wayy . . .!” Caldin wheezed for lack of breath.
Wait,
she wanted to say.

Adram shook his head. “No, Captain. You must be in a lot of pain. It would be cruel of me not to put you out of your misery. We’re not the monsters you seem to think we are.”

Chapter 32

H
ere comes the moment of truth,
Hoff thought, hugging his wife and daughter close as the timer on the captain’s table reached zero. Abruptly, the deck thundered underfoot as all the
Tauron’s
weapons fired at the same instant, all aimed at the same invisible target. Hundreds of lasers and beams flashed out from the side of the
Tauron—
blinding red streaks of light. Silverstreak torpedoes and hailfire missiles joined them, racing out on bright, glittering contrails. But nothing happened. Had they miscalculated? Maybe they really were shooting at empty space.

Then the first few explosions began to appear, seeming to rise up out of nowhere, spewing debris and bright orange streaks of fire. A cheer went up from the crew. Hoff felt his chest expand and his shoulders lift with rising hope. “Keep firing! Helm—get us closer to our target!”

“Yes, sir!”

“I don’t believe it,” he said, looking up from the grid and out the forward viewports to watch the blooming explosions. The first wave of torpedoes hit their target. They exploded with an all-consuming flash of light, and the bridge’s sound system relayed that as a rumbling roar which could be heard even over the constant thunder of Sythian missiles slamming into their shields. Atta whimpered and hid behind her parents.

Hoff watched as the raging explosions faded back to the comparative tranquility of stars and space. Then space began to shimmer and the stars began to fade. Someone on the bridge gasped, and another shouted out, “There she is!”

The command ship lay before them, and its bright, shimmering hull was suddenly all they could see. A dark, charred hole had opened up in the side of the ship, gaping wide like the mouth of some primordial monster about to swallow them whole.

“Keep firing!” Hoff ordered.

“Sir, I’m detecting shields powering!”

The deck shook with more impacts, the explosions sounding as distant echoes.

“It’s not enough . . .” he whispered, looking at the damage they’d caused. The hole in the side of the enemy cruiser cut almost halfway through the ship, but the behemoth had not been destroyed, and they wouldn’t land a killing blow before the shields were up. Moreover, if that command cruiser had any weapons, it would take just one volley from them to finish off the
Tauron
. There was only one thing left to do.

Hoff snapped into action, taking Destra and Atta’s hands in his as he strode down the gangway. “Helm!” he called out as he went. “Full throttle. Aim for the hole in the side of that ship. We’re going to cut her in half.”

“Yes, sir. . . .”

“Comms, have all our nonessential personnel abandon ship. They won’t have long, but maybe a few can still escape.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are we going?” Destra asked suddenly.

Hoff ignored her. “Tova!” he called out as they drew near to the alien. “Tell your people to stop firing on us as soon as they see the command cruiser destroyed. I’m trusting them to hold up their end of this deal. If they do, it might not be too late for humans and Gors to work together, after all.”

“I tell them,” Tova said, closing her eyes. “But I do not promise we work with humans again.”

Destra squeezed Hoff’s hand. “Tell me you’re coming with us.”

He shook his head. “I have to make sure this works, Des. I’m sorry.”

“Hoff!” Destra burst out, and suddenly she stopped walking.

He dragged her along roughly despite her protestations, and Atta began to cry. Hoff nodded to Sergeant Thriker, who stood watching Tova and Roan with the squad of sentinels. “Sergeant!”

“Sir?” Thriker asked, striding up beside them.

“I need you to look after my family for me,” Hoff said as they reached the back of the bridge. They stopped in front of a recessed door with glowing warning labels pasted all over it. It was an escape pod. Hoff passed his wrist over the control panel, and as soon as the door opened, he shoved Destra and Atta inside.

“Hoff, please!” Destra pleaded.

“This is the only way, Des! I love you both.”

He was about to tell Thriker to join his family in the pod when something heavy hit him from behind, and he went stumbling into his wife’s open arms.

“They took
my
family from me, Admiral. Make sure they don’t take you or yours.”

Hoff whirled around just in time to see Sergeant Thriker shut the door and seal the escape pod. Then came a flash of light as the launch tube energized. The pod’s IMS buffered their sudden acceleration, so no one was knocked off their feet. Hoff turned to see them racing down a long tunnel past consecutive rings of red light that flashed brightly as they roared by.

Destra clung to his arm while Atta clung to his legs. Hoff clung to hope. If the Sythian Cruiser were disabled when the
Tauron
collided with it, and if the Gors surrendered after that . . . then maybe—maybe Dark Space still had a chance.

Suddenly the tunnel of light disappeared, and they roared out into the dark unknown.

*  *  *

Adram’s finger tightened on the trigger—

And a high-powered rifle blew him away. Caldin watched him hit the deck beside her with half of his face missing. She listened to the sounds of laser fire on the bridge briefly intensify, and suddenly she was very glad that the Sythian ship didn’t have a real viewport. By now it would have been shattered and all of them sucked out into space.

Caldin forced herself to breathe despite the fiery ache in her side. Moments later the sounds of laser fire ceased, and a familiar voice called out, “She’s over here!”

Her chief engineer appeared, kneeling at her side. “You’re going to be okay,” Delayn said as he found her hand and squeezed it.

Then a gruff voice called out in concern, and she turned to see a familiar corpsman rushing toward her. He knelt on the other side of her, and took her other hand. “Loba!”

Delayn shot the man an odd look, but he covered his surprise to hear a fellow petty officer calling their captain by her first name, and asked, “How is she?”

“Terl . . .” Caldin whispered, her eyes softening with a smile.

“She’s lucky,” the corpsman said, quickly checking her injured side. “It must have been a glancing hit. She lost a lot of blood, and she has a bad laser burn, but she’ll live.”

Caldin rocked her head from side to side, her eyes turning to the engineer. “What happened, Delayn?”

The folds of skin around Cobrale Delayn’s pale blue eyes tightened as he winced. “We lost a few good men.”

Caldin tried to sit up, but Terl held her down. “Don’t move,” he said. She heard an aerosol spray of some kind dispensing. Nanites. “That should stop the bleeding,” he said.

Then came a flurry of gasps and exclamations, and Caldin couldn’t stand the suspense any more. “What’s going on? Help me up.”

“I’m not done yet!” Terl hissed.

“You can finish treating my injuries in a moment,” she replied.

Corpsman Terl and Delayn helped her to her feet, and she planted her palms on the captain’s table, leaning heavily on it. She was just in time to watch on the grid as the
Tauron
collided with a monolithic Sythian cruiser. The
Tauron
disappeared inside a gaping hole in the side of the alien vessel, and for a long moment, nothing happened.

Caldin frowned, wondering if the two ships had actually hit each other after all.

Then a bright ribbon of fire shot out from the larger ship and it cracked in two flaming pieces. The fires died quickly as their oxygen ran out into space, leaving the massive halves of the enemy ship slowly drifting apart amidst a dark cloud of their own debris. The
Tauron’s
gravidar icon reappeared on the grid. She was also drifting through the cloud of debris, but barely moving, and her icon was dark—indicating that she was derelict, without power. Caldin zoomed in on the battleship until she could see not just an icon of the ship, but the ship itself. The
Tauron’s
front end was completely ruined, and her bridge had been scraped clean off, along with most of her guns. Even so, she was not yet completely destroyed. The core of the ship had survived.

“Comms!” Caldin called out in a weak voice. She swayed unsteadily on her feet, but forced herself to stay conscious. “Hail the admiral. I want to know if there any survivors.”

The comm officer didn’t reply.

“He’s dead, ma’am,” Delayn whispered. “Grimsby called the sentinels for help, but Adram’s men shot him for his trouble.”

Caldin turned to Delayn with an angry scowl, but her anger wasn’t directed at him. “Find me a replacement, then!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Delayn started off, staring idly at the captain’s table as he walked by. A moment later, however, Caldin saw him suddenly stop and gape at the grid.

“What?”

“The Sythians,” Delayn said. “They’ve stopped firing.”

Caldin turned to look, and now she noticed it, too. The entire Sythian armada with all its hundreds of encircling cruisers and thousands of swarming fighters had suddenly stopped shooting. Space was calm except for a few scattered shots from human ships that were late to realize their enemy had just surrendered en masse. For a moment Caldin thought the alien ships had stopped firing because the
Tauron
was no longer a threat, but that didn’t explain why they weren’t still shooting at the
Valiant,
or for that matter, at any of the handful of the admiral’s surviving transports and fighters.

“You think the Gors were telling the truth?” Delayn asked.

Caldin blinked and shook her head, unable to believe it. “I don’t know. . . .” But she couldn’t think of another explanation.

*  *  *