Dark Space: The Invisible War (3 page)

“Trying to save on the heating bill?” Ethan gasped.

“Not quite,” Atton said as he started out of the lift tube. Ethan followed him into the shadows.

They were on their way to see the Gors—the mysterious aliens who were enslaved to the Sythians. Atton said they were the
key
to defeating the Sythians, but Ethan was still having a hard time imagining any of it. He’d never even met a Sythian, let alone a Gor, and he couldn’t fathom how a race of alien slaves was going to overthrow their masters all of a sudden, just because a few thousand human rebels were helping them.

The lift tube doors swished shut behind them, plunging the corridor into utter darkness. Ethan almost stopped, afraid to trip over his own feet, but he could hear his son walking on up ahead, so he continued on.

“Something wrong with the glow panels on this level?” Ethan asked.

“No, the Gors prefer to live in dimly lit spaces.”

“Dimly lit?” Ethan echoed. “There are more lumens in the center of black hole!” As he said that, he ran into a wall and bounced off with a resounding thud. “Frek!” Ethan muttered, reaching up to rub his injured nose.

“Sorry,” Atton replied. “It’s this way.”

“Yeah . . .” Ethan followed the sound of his son’s voice. “Thanks.”

They turned the corner and began walking down an equally dark section of the corridor.

“Don’t worry, your eyes will adjust soon.”

Ethan began to hear the sound of rushing water. “Is that a plumbing leak?”

Atton laughed lightly. “Relax old man! It’s a little something to make the Gors feel more at home. They spend a lot of time down here, so we’ve tried to mimic their natural environment as much as possible.”

“I’m not sure if I would like to visit their home world, then.”

“That’s just as well. I suspect if you did, they would eat you.”

“Hoi—eat me?” The corridor was beginning to lighten, or else Ethan’s eyes were finally adjusting to whatever luminescence there was. At least now he could see the walls. Between the bulkheads, they were made of transpiranium panels, but it was too dark to see through them.

“It’s eat or be eaten on Noctune. Nothing personal, Ethan, that’s just their culture.”

“Friendly culture. Have they tried to eat you yet?”

“Of course not. I keep them well fed.”

“That’s encouraging. I hope you don’t run out of food.” Ethan saw a pair of doors gleaming at the end of the corridor, and the sound of rushing water was grew louder. He braced himself for whatever he was about to see. He’d never met an alien before—not even one of the so-called “skull faces” who had destroyed everything Ethan had ever known.

They walked up to the doors and stopped. Ethan waited for Atton to pass his wrist over the blinking door scanner, but the boy did nothing. “What are you waiting for?” Ethan asked.

“It’s not polite to barge in on your neighbors.”

“Well, shouldn’t you knock or something?”

Atton shook his head. “They know we’re here.”

“They know—”

“They’ve been watching us.”

Ethan felt a shiver crawl down his spine, and he turned to look behind him, but all he saw was the corridor disappearing into fuzzy darkness. He wrapped his arms around himself in a vain attempt to preserve his body heat, and then he turned to his son.

Atton was already looking at him. “Don’t make any sudden moves, and let me do the talking. Got it?”

Ethan was about to reply to that when he felt a gust of wind on the back of his neck. He whirled around, but saw nothing. His hand went instinctively to his side arm, but it had been taken from him when he’d been brought aboard the
Defiant.
“I don’t like this. . . .”

“Shhh.” Atton placed a finger to his lips.

Ethan thought he heard a strange warbling followed by an indistinct whispering just beside his ear—the ear with the translator in it—and he whirled around again, searching the darkness, but still there was nothing.

Suddenly the warbling sound grew louder, and Ethan heard the whispers grow to full volume. “Who are you?” the speaker in Ethan’s ear asked in a gender neutral voice. Ethan turned in a frantic circle, trying to find where the sound was coming from, but he still couldn’t see the source.

Atton turned and spoke into the darkness. “He is a friend. What are you doing out here, Tova?”

Ethan heard another warble beside his ear, followed by, “I hear sounds of battle and feel ship move. You do not tell me we go into battle.”

Suddenly the air shimmered in Ethan’s peripheral vision, and he turned to see what it was. A monstrous shadow swam out of the gloom mere inches from Ethan’s nose. He saw the yellow gleam of its slitted eyes, and he stumbled back into his son. “What the frek!”

“Relax,” Atton said, sidestepping his father to face the creature which had just appeared out of nowhere. “Tova, you know you’re not allowed to be seen by the rest of the crew. That wasn’t part of our deal.”

“I am never seen by your kind unless I wish to be.”

“I believe it,” Ethan muttered.

The shadow turned its slitted yellow eyes on him and hissed. Ethan caught a glimpse of a very jagged row of white teeth.
Those yellow eyes turned away, back to Atton, and Ethan frowned.

“From now on this
friend
—” Atton gestured to Ethan. “—will hold the same authority as I do, Tova. Do you understand?”

The shadow hissed. “I do not.”

“He is my crèchling.”

Ethan saw the yellow eyes turn on him once more.

“Your . . .
crèchling
.”

“I had thought he was dead,” Atton went on.

Those eyes remained fixed on Ethan, and he held the alien’s gaze, determined not to back down despite the fact that this shadowy monster was easily two meters tall and clearly capable of ripping him apart with its bare hands—assuming the alien had hands. It wasn’t easy to tell in the dark.

Tova hissed, but said nothing further.

“Let’s make ourselves more comfortable,” Atton went on, finally reaching up to pass his wrist over the door scanner. The doors swished open and a wan blue light spilled out. Beyond the doors lay a broad staircase, dusted with snow. Atton walked through the doors, followed by the shadowy beast. There was a subtle shimmer as they crossed the threshold, and Ethan both heard and felt the sizzle of static shields. As Tova stepped into the slightly brighter dimness, Ethan caught his first real glimpse of the alien—two arms and two legs; its skin was a sallow blue-gray and as smooth and hairless as a newborn’s, but its back rippled with the over-developed muscles of a bigorexic sentinel. Tova could have passed for a very large, very pale, bald and naked human except for the bony ridge running down its back. The alien’s forearms and legs were striped a darker blue and also lined with bony protrusions, but those ones looked like spines.

As they started up the staircase together, Ethan marveled that a creature as large as Tova could walk so soundlessly. A moment later they crested the top of the stairs, and Ethan’s mouth dropped open. Now he heard the rushing water more clearly, but he could also see what was making the sound. At the top of the stairs lay a vast chamber with a waterfall pouring from the back wall. The walls were slick with ice, and the deck was covered with snow all the way out to the edge of a brilliant blue pool. Pillars of glowing blue-green ice reached from the floor to the ceiling along the far shore of the pool, and little golden sparks drifted through the air. When one of them flew up close to Ethan’s face, he heard a buzzing sound and saw an insectile body silhouetted within the glow. The sparks were actually some type of bug.

It was like he’d stepped into another world. The only thing which stood out of place was a gleaming, oversized command console just beside the door. Ethan found himself staring curiously at it. “What’s that?”

Atton waved a dismissive hand. “That’s how Tova contributes to the running of this ship.”

Ethan turned to his son with an eyebrow raised. “How’s that?”

“I’ll explain later.” Atton gestured expansively to the rest of the room. “What do you think?” Atton smiled. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

“Is this what Noctune looks like?” Ethan asked, his eyes panning around the cold, airy room once more.

Tova turned around and hissed.

Ethan almost staggered away from the alien. Being able to finally see Tova’s features didn’t make the alien any less frightening. Its face was skeletal, with sunken cheeks and prominent jaw; its eyes were large and the slitted yellow of a reptile, while its brow was high and sloping up to its bald head. What passed for the alien’s nose was just a pair of open slits surrounded by bony ridges, much like a human nose might look without the cartilage.

Ethan heard the alien’s warbling speech before the translation came through the bead in his ear. “What do you know of Noctune?” Tova asked with nose slits flaring.

“Ah, nothing.” Ethan frowned. “It’s your home world, right big guy?”

“He’s not a big guy,” Atton interrupted. “And he’s not a
he
—Tova is a she.”

“Oh.” Ethan was taken aback. Tova was naked, but he couldn’t see any visible sign of the creature’s sex—though in hindsight perhaps that should have been his first clue. Ethan smiled. “Sorry, big girl, then.”

Atton began looking around. “Where’s Roan?”

Tova’s head turned very slowly to him and she hissed once more before warbling her answer. “I ask you the same question.”

Atton paled. “You mean he’s not here?”

“You ask he help you to make larger crèche aboard one of your other ships. I do not see him here since that time.”

“Then he’s . . .” Atton trailed off. A faraway look crept into his eyes and his gaze swept back to the open doors at the bottom of the stairs.

“He’s what?” Ethan asked, his eyes skipping between Atton’s face and Tova’s rapidly narrowing yellow eyes.

“Yesss, tell uss,” Tova intoned. Her hissing grew louder and overlaid the translation of what she said.

Atton turned to Tova with a smile. “He’s just about done, I’m sure. . . . I’ll have to go check on his progress as soon as we get back aboard the
Valiant.
” Atton added that last part with a warning glance in Ethan’s direction.

Ethan caught the hint. The
Valiant
had just been stolen from them by Alec Brondi, the most notorious crime lord in all of Dark Space, and they wouldn’t be getting back aboard that carrier any time soon, but Ethan had the feeling that it would be unwise to tell Tova that. Instead, he smiled and nodded. “Yes, that’s a good point. We should go check on Roan’s progress. You don’t mind, do you, Tova?”

“No,” she said, turning away and striding over to the edge of the pool. “Bring Roan—and bring food. Something fresh,” she added. Ethan couldn’t be sure due to the neutral tone of the translator bead, but he thought he heard a note of warning in her voice, like if they didn’t deliver, she would improvise the
something fresh.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Ethan said, already starting back the way they’d come. Atton didn’t need to be told twice. They hurried down the stairs and out into the corridor.

“What the frek was that?” Ethan demanded as soon as they were out of earshot.

“That,” he sighed, “was humanity’s only hope.”

“All I saw was a hungry monster with a cloaking device. How did she do that, anyway? She scared the krak out of me!”

“I’ll explain it all once we’re back in my office,” Atton replied. “For now, we’d better go. I’m not sure how much use Tova is going to be to us now that her mate is MIA.”