Dark Space: The Invisible War (5 page)

“We’re gettin’ close,” Digger said, leaning forward to study the nav.

Destra glanced his way, watching him pan and zoom the map with shaking hands. “You okay there, Digger?”

“Yea, why?”

“Your hands are shaking.”

He sent her a quick smile. “Must be the adrenaline.”

“Hmmm, right,” Destra replied. “Must be.”
That or you’re getting a little edgy between doses of stim.

Destra wasn’t sure why she was so mistrustful of this man. Perhaps it was the idea of an outlaw allowing them to hide with him and share limited supplies. In her experience, her husband notwithstanding, outlaws had a highly evolved me-first attitude. The less selfish ones were usually dead, or toiling away on a prison world in Dark Space, because they’d falsely expected their self-sacrificing attitude to be reciprocated by their associates.

As the distance to Digger’s stim lab narrowed, Destra began to chew her lower lip. She wasn’t worried about being able to take care of herself—Ethan had taught her well—she was worried about the woman and her son sitting in the back of the hover, and whether or not she could protect them, too. Outlaws could be the exception to all the rules—like Ethan—or they could be the stereotypes which defined those rules, and it was a coin’s toss to know which. Based on her first impression of Digger, Destra’s bet was on the stereotypes, but she decided to reserve judgment.

They came to a point on the road which lay parallel to the one which Digger had marked on the map, and Destra brought the transport to a slow stop. “What now?” she asked, scanning the immediate area.

Digger nodded out his window to the trees. “In there.”

Destra peered into the forest, noting that the trees were too close together for the hover to make it through.

“We’ll have to go on foot,” Digger said.

“Right,” Destra frowned. “Of course.” This felt like a trap, but it was too late to turn back. Sythians would be all over by now, flying grid patterns and raining death on human settlements. They’d never escape notice in broad daylight, so for now hiding in a forest was a pretty good idea. Destra drove the transport down to the tree line, as close as she could get it, and then she extended the landing struts and dialed down the grav lifts until the transport settled lightly on a bed of leaves.

“Wakey wake!” Digger said, turning to Lessie and Dean with a broad grin. “Time to go for a walk.”

—THE YEAR 10 AE—

“S
o?” Ethan asked, now that they were seated once more in Atton’s office aboard the
Defiant
. “How is that monster below decks our only hope?”

Atton smiled. “The Gors are great warriors, as you can imagine. They crew and pilot the Sythian ships and serve as foot soldiers on the ground. They fight all of the Sythians’ battles for them. Having them on our side completely reverses the balance of power in this war.”

“If the Gors fight all the Sythians’ battles, why have we never seen them before?”

“Have you ever seen a Sythian without its armor, Ethan?”

Ethan shook his head. “I thought the armor was a part of them, some sort of exoskeleton.”

Atton smiled. “I suppose you wouldn’t have had a chance to see them without armor. Those images only surfaced late in the war, and even then they were classified.” Atton directed his gaze to the desk and said, “Holofield on. Show armored Sythian trooper.”

The air above the desk shimmered, and the lights inside Atton’s office dimmed. A moment later, a tall bipedal creature in shiny black armor appeared rotating above the desk. Ethan studied the image. It looked just as he remembered a Sythian should—tall, broad-shouldered, glowing red compound eyes, chitinous black exoskeleton.

“Enlarge head,” Atton said, and the image zoomed in on the Sythian’s skull-like head. “Freeze image,” he added, so they could study the face.

Atton pointed to the image and traced the gleaming, angular black lines of the creature’s head. “When we dissected the first Sythian, we found exactly what you’d expect from a giant bug—beneath the exoskeleton is a spongy yellow layer, but then beneath that is an epidermis, and below that we found another skeleton.”

Ethan blinked.

“When you strip away the outer shell and the spongy insulating layer, you have a real Sythian, with eyes, ears, nose, skin, muscle, and bone. Below their exoskeleton armor, the Sythians appear more reptilian than insectile.”

“Okay . . .” Ethan said, his brow furrowing as he wondered where Atton was going with his biology lesson.

“Overlay unarmored Sythian trooper,” Atton said, speaking to the holo projector once more.

Suddenly the gleaming skull-shaped helmet faded to a skull-shaped face with bald blue-gray skin, flat nose, and slitted yellow eyes.

Ethan almost fell out of his chair. “That’s Tova!”

Atton smiled. “The few Sythians we did manage to kill and examine looked just like the Gors, but that’s because they
were
Gors. Besides protecting them in battle, their armor functions as a space suit in the event of decompression, and an environment suit to deal with inhospitable climates. They breathe roughly the same mixture of air that we do, but they use their armor to protect their eyes and skin from solar radiation as well as their bodies from the heat. Being a nocturnal species that evolved to live in caves and underground lairs, the Gors are used to cold, dark, and wet environments.”

“Wait,” Ethan held up a hand and shook his head. “If the Sythians are actually Gors, then where are the real Sythians?”

“They are only found aboard their largest warships, sitting safely cloaked behind the lines while they command their armies of slaves.”

“What do these command ships look like?”

“Display Sythian behemoth cruiser.”

The cadaverous Gor disappeared and a long, organically-shaped cruiser began rotating above the desk. It had a dark blue and lavender hull with glimmering patterns that shifted subtly as the ship turned. It looked just like a bulkier version of the Sythian ships he’d seen in the Rokan Defense simulation.

“Hmmm . . . so that’s it?” Ethan asked. “That’s our real enemy?” The ship didn’t look so menacing. “How many of them are there?”

“According to the data the Gors gave us, there are seven command ships in the Sythian armada. One for each cluster—or fleet.”

“Only seven?”

Atton nodded to the holo. “Check the scale.”

Ethan leaned forward to peer more closely at the glowing white numbers hovering at the bottom of the projection. His eyes widened as he read them. “That can’t be right,” Ethan said. “The scale says this ship is over thirty kilometers long.”

“The scale is correct.”

“No ship is that big! How do they fit through our gates?”

“Only just.”

Ethan sat back in his chair, looking startled. “We were even more outmatched than we thought. Just one of those ships would rival a whole fleet of ours. Why didn’t they ever join the fighting?”

Atton shrugged. “The Sythians aren’t willing to risk their own lives in battle, so they send in the Gors. Apparently the Sythians’ courage is quite legendary.” Atton added that last part with laughing eyes.

“So all those fleets and millions of armored soldiers which overran us were . . .”

“Gors. Slave armies.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And the Sythians? Do we even know what they look like?”

“I wouldn’t have trusted the Gors if they hadn’t come to us the way they did. They brought us High Lord Kaon of the Sythian First Fleet and military intelligence on the numbers and positions of all the ships in the Sythians’ seven fleets.”

“Lord Kaon, huh?” Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Atton nodded. “We keep him prisoner on Obsidian Station—our supply point for the prime worlds’ strike force.”

“You have a picture of this . . . Kaon?”

Atton smiled. “I have better.” He glanced at the holo projector once more and said, “Play back recording: Obsidian Interrogation.”

Ethan watched the holo of the cruiser disappear, replaced by a view into a dark room. The camera was bobbing, heading toward a large, brightly-illuminated transpiranium cube in the center of the room. As the camera closed in on the cube, they were given a closer look at what was inside—nothing. Just an empty steel cot and a trough which looked suspiciously like it served as a latrine. There was also a tray piled high with green mush, and a cup of water lying untouched in front of a slot-sized opening in the base of the cube.

The camera moved up to a section of the cube wall which contained a control panel and a metal grill that might be a speaker. Now the cameraman began to talk.
“Hello, Kaon.”

There was no reply, but someone off camera said,
“He doesn’t want us to see him.”

“We’ll have to smoke him out.”
A hand reached into the camera’s field of view and touched a button on the wall-mounted control panel. Suddenly, jets opened up in the ceiling and walls of the cube, and pressurized white streams shot out. The streams reached a certain point inside the cube and then came to a sudden stop in midair, spraying out in all directions around an invisible obstacle, quickly coating it. The jets turned off a few seconds later, but the thick, gummy ‘smoke’ had adhered to the creature’s body and defined a rough shape. He was bipedal with two arms and two legs, but Ethan couldn’t discern much else about him. Based on his size, he could have even been human.

“There you are, Kaon,”
the cameraman said.

This time there was a reply. It sounded like some version of the warbling hissing language which Ethan had heard from Tova.

“Do we have to go through this exercise every time?”

More warbling.

“We’ll get you cleaned up if you agree to stop hiding.”

Warble.

Slitted blue eyes appeared.

“Good,”
the cameraman said, reaching for the control console again. This time pressurized jets of water shot out from the walls and ceiling. The water washed away the foam, and Ethan found himself cringing at the sight. It wasn’t so much terrifying as disgusting to look at. The creature was human-sized, naked, with a slick translucent skin that gave a clear view of its internal organs. The creature had large, round eyes the color of dark sapphire, muscular arms and torso, and a bony skull-like face, similar to Tova’s, but with light blue fins rising along the top of its head. Gills flared in the sides of its neck as it breathed. As Ethan watched, the creature bared a double row of small, serated white teeth which looked like they might belong to a shark. Looking more carefully, Ethan saw a thin, dexterous tail restlessly lashing the ground behind the alien.

“That’s better,”
the cameraman said, and zoomed in on the creature’s face.

“Freeze image,” Atton said.

Ethan sat staring intently into the wide blue eyes and translucent face of a real Sythian. “Ugly kakard,” Ethan commented.

Atton smiled. “Not going to win any beauty contests, is he?”

Ethan frowned. “Definitely not.”

“How do we know the Gors are really on our side? As far as I can tell they have a lot in common with the Sythians—language for one. It’s probably safe to assume there are cultural similarities as well. Why would they side with us, a species which they have nothing in common with?”

“Ethan, we fight our own
species
and for reasons less compelling than emancipation—Alec Brondi is a fine example of that. Sharing genes and culture is not enough reason to peacefully coexist. If the tables were turned, wouldn’t you side with the Gors against your fellow man in order to escape slavery?”

Ethan nodded. “I suppose I might.”

“The Gors haven’t given us away yet, and they’ve had multiple opportunities to do so. They already know where Dark Space is.”

Ethan grimaced. “Revealing that was not very wise, Atton.”

“It seemed a worthwhile gamble. Trust me, the Gors are not our enemy, Ethan. They require no convincing to fight on our side, and to date, Gor-crewed ships have taken out more Sythian vessels than we did in the entire war.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. You mentioned Tova was supposed to stay hidden—that it’s part of some sort of deal the two of you have. . . .”

Atton nodded. “Yes.”

“So none of the rest of the crew has seen her aboard? This is some big state secret?”

“In Sythian Space we staff Gor ships with a human commander and bridge crew, but the main body of the crew is made up of Gors—well, along with human nova pilots and a few human engineers to fit into the smaller crawl spaces of our ships. Due to the Gors’ physical size, they can’t perform in every capacity that we’d like, but they do enable us to run most of our ships with a skeleton crew.”

“So . . . it’s just the
Defiant
that doesn’t know about your pet alien?” Ethan’s brow furrowed up to his bristly salt and pepper hair.