Prologue
A vast backdrop of stars sparkled all around Ethan’s head, just on the other side of the nova interceptor’s thin transpiranium cockpit canopy. The stars seemed so close he could touch them, but Ethan couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by the view. He targeted the nearest enemy fighter and brought the red brackets under his crosshairs. His ears picked up the soft click of a laser lock even before his eyes registered the crosshair turning green. He pulled the trigger and held it down, pouring a continuous stream of bright red pulse lasers into his target. Then the laser charge gauges began flashing red on his HUD, and that stream of fire diminished to a slow trickle. Ethan eased up on the trigger and switched over to missiles just as his target began jinking out of line. Enemy ripper fire sizzled off his rear shields, and Ethan broke into an evasive pattern, forgetting about his target for the moment. The sound of ripper fire hitting his shields stopped, only to start again from another angle when a second junker swooped down onto his six. Ethan craned his neck to get a visual reference on the enemy fighters. They were converging on him from completely opposite directions—a pincer maneuver that was sure to get him killed.
“Ah, a little help over here? I’m caught in a vice!”
“Roger that, Five,” Seven said.
Ethan tried to hold it together as enemy fire sizzled off his shields, turning them dark green, then yellow, and finally red. Now shells plinked off his hull as the shields were unable to completely dissipate the energy of those projectiles.
The streams of enemy fire on his port side ceased, followed by, “That got him!” from Guardian Seven. Now, with only one fighter attacking him, Ethan strengthened his shields on the starboard side and circled around to line up on the enemy fighter’s tail. A few moments later he poured freshly charged pulse lasers into the twin hulls of a blocky junk fighter whose starboard maneuvering jet was already flickering dimly. Unable to evade him, the junker took heavy fire. One of his shots punched through to the reactor, and the enemy fighter suddenly exploded, sending the twin hulls flaming off in opposite directions.
“I need help!” Gina screamed.
Guardian Three came on saying, “Four enemy fighters just broke off from the main group! They’re lining up for another pass on the Defiant! Get them before—” The comm died in static.
“Lead?” Ethan quickly checked his scopes.
A second later Ithicus came back saying, “I’m all right. Got winged by a bit of shrapnel. No major damage. Those four fired off a volley of torps at point-blank range. Dumb frekkers.”
The command channel sounded in the next instant with, “Guardians, we need a better screen than that!”
“Doing the best we can, Control,” Three shot back. “We’re down by five and there are at least two enemy squadrons out here. Where are your gunnery crews?”
“Cannons are coming online any minute.”
We don’t have a minute, Ethan thought to himself. “Six, where are you?” he asked, remembering that she’d called for help. He spent a moment checking his scopes for Gina without any luck. A cold fist seized his heart, but then he found her, cutting an evasive pattern toward the Valiant, a pair of enemy interceptors pouring golden streams of ripper fire on her tail. Those two were fast for junkers—she was having trouble shaking them.
“I’m right where you left me, you dumb kakard! I don’t suppose I still have a wingmate out there somewhere?”
Ethan grimaced. He wasn’t used to working in teams. “Sorry, on my way now.” He came about and boosted with the last of his afterburners to catch up to the enemy interceptors. Once in range, he switched to Hailfire missiles and quickly dropped one on the enemies’ tails. A second later he realized his mistake as he noted the proximity between the enemy interceptors and Gina’s own nova. “Gina, get out of there! I just fired a Hailfire on your pursuit.”
“Frek you! My afterburners are tapped out! What do you want me to do?”
Ethan thought fast, even as the blue trail of the Hailfire’s primary thrusters winked out. The enemy fighters realized their peril and broke off from Gina to go evasive, but they were still too close.
“Reverse thrust!” Ethan said.
“They might lock on to me if I do that!”
Frek, Ethan thought. “Hold on!” He thumbed over to pulse lasers and targeted the distant missile, hoping he could get it before it exploded into its four smaller warheads. At this range his targeting computer refused to lock onto the missile. Desperate, Ethan raked blind laser fire over the target brackets. Nothing happened. An instant later, the Hailfire exploded in four separate directions, and Ethan felt a stab of fear. Sweat trickled into his left eye and he swiped at it with the back of one hand, blinking to clear his vision. The smaller warheads flared to life and boosted after the enemy fighters.
“They’re too close!”
Ethan could hear a tremor in Gina’s voice. “Give me a second!” he said, switching fire to the warhead arcing closest to Gina. He hit it with a lucky shot, and the resultant explosion tore into the nearest enemy fighter, drawing flames and debris from its thruster pods. Gina’s fighter rocked in the shockwave. Then the other three warheads found their marks, and the remaining two enemy fighters exploded in blinding fireballs. Ethan heard Gina scream, and then her comm cut off in static. “Gina!”
The static hissed on and Ethan felt a horrible chill creeping down his spine.
Frek! His heart pounding, Ethan checked his scopes, but they’d fuzzed out due to the proximity of the explosions. He flew through the expanding debris clouds and ignored the sound of shattered duranium pelting his fighter. His forward shields quickly dropped into the red, and he feared what that meant for Gina. “Gina!” he tried again.
Then he saw her, one of her three engines still glowing blue, the other two flickering. Her starboard stabilizer fin had been knocked off, and he could see her cockpit canopy was striated with fractures. “Gina, for Immortals’ sake, answer me!”
A moment later her voice came back to him, but she sounded weak. “I’m alive. Took a hit through my canopy. My suit’s pissing air.”
“Krak, how badly are you injured?”
“Not much blood, but breathing hurts like a motherfrekker. Maybe a few broken ribs.”
“Fly back to the Defiant. I’ll cover you.”
“I’ll never make it, not on half thrust. . . . Too many enemy fighters.”
Ethan gritted his teeth. “Well, frek it! You’re just gonna give up and die?”
No answer.
Ethan watched the hull of the Valiant growing large before them. In his periphery he spotted the Defiant's beam cannons opening up as the cruiser made her first pass on the Valiant’s port hangar. Eight blue dymium beams shot out, drawing rippling waves from the hangar’s shields.
A few seconds later, Ethan saw nova fighters tearing out of the carrier’s launch tubes.
“Are those our novas coming from the Valiant?” Gina asked.
Ethan shook his head. “We don’t have anyone left on board. We took everyone except for the sentinels with us.”
“So those are enemy novas. Frek!”
Ethan had no reply for that. By now Brondi had overwhelmed the six sentinels in the concourse between the carrier’s ventral hangars and he was taking control of the ship—including its considerable complement of nova fighters and interceptors. Gina’s right. We won’t make it back to the Defiant.
No one will.
A DEAL WITH THE DEVLIN
Two days earlier …
Chapter 1
Ethan Ortane stood at the smeary viewport, looking out at space through a greasy sheen of fingerprints. His fingerprints. He placed a hand against the viewport, adding a fresh smear of grease. Here and there against the blackness of space a bright blue or orange glow of real space drives flickered to life as some ship or other fired its engines to change course, speed up, or slow down. They were easy to pick out against the blackness of Dark Space—the distant sector of the galaxy where humanity had holed up since the war. Dark Space was a cluster of black holes with a small pocket of semi-habitable planets and stations inside. Radiation was a constant threat, and if you weren’t in a reasonably shielded station or ship, you would be burned alive. Some of the planets were far enough away and had strong enough atmospheres that they didn’t bake in the radiation, but most were inhospitable rocks. For these reasons, and because there was only one known way in or out of the sector, Dark Space had once been a place of exile for criminals, but now it was all that was left of the once galaxy-spanning Imperium of Star Systems.
Now, the ISS was dead in all but name. Only a handful of fleet vessels had survived the war, and they were left guarding the deactivated space gate which was the only way in or out of Dark Space.
“This is what we’ve come to—” Ethan said, turning from the viewport with a sigh, but he wasn’t talking about the galactic situation. “—renting a room in the cheapest station we can find, hiding from Brondi’s collection agents until we can miraculously come up with the money to pay our debts.”
Alara offered him a pretty smile from where she was sitting on the bed, and her big, bright violet eyes shone in the wan, flickering light of the room’s sole glow panel. She had long dark hair and alabaster white skin with full red lips. A man could lose himself staring at her face for too long; it was like staring into a fire—you just knew that if you got too close you were going to get burned. Her face was to die for, and she had a body to match, but most of the time Ethan didn’t notice either.
“Hiding is still better than dead,” she said.
Ethan frowned, his eyes skipping around the dismal, boxy room. Paint was peeling off the walls; a rickety, squeaky bed lay to one side, and a low-res holo projector was mounted on the opposite wall. The room had a tiny bathroom with a vaccucleanser so small you had to step in sideways. Ethan turned back to the greasy smear of a viewport. “It’s only better than dead until someone finds us.”
Alara Vastra was his copilot and long-time partner in crime. She liked to play the optimist, but the truth was, without a miracle, they were both as good as dead. They’d borrowed 10,000 sols from “Big Brainy” Brondi to fix their ship after their drives had cut out and they’d crashed during a routine landing on Etaris. They’d skipped the last three loan payments in order to avoid having their ship impounded for unpaid docking fees, and now Brondi wanted them dead. They’d lost a few inches of duranium and their shields in their last encounter with his collections agents, and they didn’t have the money to repair the shields. Next time they met with Brondi’s agents would be the last.
Ethan spotted the characteristic ternary blue engine glow of a fighter as it jetted past the station. He idly traced its path with a pair of fingers, and then he realized what he was looking at, and his brow furrowed curiously. That was a Nova Fighter. What are you doing out here, little guy? Ethan wondered. Novas were the Dark Space police—aging fighters from the Valiant. In the last decade of hiding in Dark Space, the Valiant’s original complement of 144 Nova Fighters and 144 Nova Interceptors had been whittled down by the slow attrition of time, firefights with the delinquent denizens of Dark Space, and by a limited supply of available replacement parts. Now there were rumored to be less than 80 of each still operational. That left a little more than one fighter and one interceptor to guard every station in Dark Space, except Supreme Overlord Dominic had permanently assigned a whole squadron of each around the fuel mines of Etaris and the farms on Forliss—not to mention the garrison at the Dark Space gate.
Translation: there were no police in Dark Space. People had to fend for themselves and settle their own squabbles. So what was a nova doing all the way out at Chorlis Orbital?
Ethan watched the fighter come around and begin an approach pattern. “He’s going to dock,” Ethan marveled.
Alara joined him at the viewport to see what he was talking about. She recognized the fighter immediately. “Now there’s a rare sight. Must be something serious. Novas don’t fly around for fun.”
Ethan nodded. “I’d like to know what’s up.” He turned away from the viewport, heading for the door.
“Wait,” Alara said. “I thought we were supposed to be hiding.”
He turned from the door to face her. “We are, but as long as we’re being hunted by an infamous crime lord, I thought we might like to inform the authorities, just in case they’d care to do something about it.”
Alara just stared at him with those big violet eyes of hers. “Aren’t you going to ask if I want to come?”
“Do you?”
She turned her mesmerizing eyes away from him to walk over to the room’s only storage cabinet. Ethan watched her open the cabinet on a squeal of rusty hinges and pull out a hefty plasma pistol. She checked the charge, and then promptly strapped it around her waist. Ethan was already wearing his. Closing and locking the cabinet, Alara turned back to him, and said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter 2
Ethan and Alara walked past a parade of rusty duranium doors with peeling paint and barely legible room numbers on their way through the darkened corridors of Chorlis Station. Half of the station’s glow panels were dark while the other half were flickering. Even as they walked, Ethan saw sparks fly from one of them as it flared and went out. The corridors were deserted, but every now and then they could hear the despondent moaning or angry screaming of the residents beyond those doors. Ethan frowned. While most of the stations in Dark Space weren’t in good repair, renting a room aboard Chorlis Station was the equivalent to crawling into an armpit—and humanity had already holed up where the galaxy’s many suns didn’t shine.
“What if that nova is here looking for us?” Alara whispered.
They walked past door number five and heard a plasma pistol go off. Alara turned to the door in horror, and she slowed her pace. Ethan grabbed her arm and pulled her along.
“Don’t slow down,” he growled.
“I think someone just killed himself!” Alara said in a disbelieving whisper.
“Or someone else.”
They heard the swish of a door opening behind them, and turned to look just in time to see a bald, dark-skinned man emerging from door number five and holstering a steaming plasma pistol. He was dressed entirely in black. “What are you looking at?” the man said.
Ethan froze, his hand dropping automatically to his sidearm. “Nothing. I mind my own business,” he said.
The dark man eyed them for a moment, taking in the fact that both of them were armed. “Smart,” he said, and his hand drifted away from his gun.
Ethan nodded and dragged Alara around a bend in the corridor, his heart pounding with adrenaline. Dark Space might be lawless, but for the most part people weren’t looking for trouble. At least, not trouble they couldn’t handle.
“Ethan,” Alara said in a frightened tone. “What are we doing? We are fugitives just as much as Brondi is. Going to the authorities won’t help.”
“Everyone in Dark Space is a fugitive, and besides, I’m not trying to sick the novas on him. I’m more interested in finding out if the Valiant has any work for us.”
“Why would you ...” Alara trailed off with a sly smile. “Oh you’re a devlin, Ethan. If I’d known you were so smart, I would have agreed to marry you when you proposed to me.”
Ethan frowned. “I was drunk, and you said you were leaving. It’s not easy to find a good copilot.”
“Oh, come on, why don’t you just admit it. You know you love me,” she said, leaning on his arm and resting her head on his shoulder.
He turned to look down at her, and then he waved his hand in her face to indicate the silver band on his ring finger. “I’m already married, remember?”
Alara let go of him and looked away with a fading grin. “Right, I almost forgot.”
“Anyway,” he sighed, changing the topic. “My idea is, if we’re employed by the Valiant, it’s going to be hard for Brondi to get to us. We might even get an escort out of this nova pilot.”
“It’s a brilliant plan,” Alara said absently as the corridor they were walking down opened up into a combined lobby and bar for Chorlis Orbital’s one and only functioning habitat module.
Ethan turned to look at her, but she’d turned away to look out the wall of viewports which made up the far side of the lobby. Out those viewports Ethan could see the station’s hydroponic module; the green fronds of plants pressed up against the dirty transpiranium dome. It looked inviting, but they didn’t have time to stroll through the gardens and catch a breath of fresh air.
Alara wandered over to the viewports, while Ethan walked up to the bar. He planned to stay here and wait for the nova pilot to come to him. Everyone who came to Chorlis Orbital eventually ended up at the bar, and usually sooner than later. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Drink?” the bartender asked as Ethan pulled out a bar stool and sat down. The barman had a lumpy face and a glowing red tattoo whorled around one eye. He looked like he’d seen a lot of brawls in his day. Maybe he was an ex-con from Etaris, same as Ethan.
Ethan reached across the counter and bared his wrist. The bartender scanned his embedded identichip with a wand, and Ethan said, “Just a water, please.”
“Sure,” the bartender said with a smirk. He busied himself by typing something into the wand, and a moment later, a total flashed up before Ethan’s eyes.
Water - 3.00 sols, Chorlis Orbital.
The transaction was relayed from the chip in his wrist directly to his brain and then flashed up like an afterimage before his eyes. Ethan cast a quick look over his shoulder to see if Alara was coming to join him at the bar, but she was standing statuesque by the viewports.
Ethan frowned. He could hardly blame her for being upset. They were friends—friends and partners in business, but nothing more, and she obviously wanted more. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried or he hadn’t been tempted, but as he’d said, he was married. Eleven years ago he’d been exiled to Dark Space for smuggling, leaving his wife and young son behind.
The following year the ISS had mapped a hyper route through the Devlin’s Hand, the giant red nebula which lay in the gulf between their galaxy and the neighboring satellite, The Getties Cluster. The ISS was foolish enough to link the two galaxies with space gates straight away, and before they were even done exploring the solar system on the other side, they were under attack. The massacre which followed quickly spread through the gate, from one galaxy to the other, and took trillions of lives.
To this day, no one knew why the war had started or even much about the insectile aliens who’d started it. One theory was that the Sythians—or “Skull Faces”—had run out of habitable space in their small satellite galaxy, and they’d just been waiting to find a way to cross the void between galaxies. Once a pathway had been opened up, the war had ended in just nine months. The Sythians hadn’t had a technological edge, but they’d had greater numbers, better coordination, and they’d used cloaking shields to hide their ships until the last minute before attacking, always taking Imperial forces by surprise.
And while the Sythians’ SLS (superluminal space) drives weren’t as fast as the Imperium’s SLS drives, their cloaking devices had enabled them to use the ISS’s network of space gates without anyone being the wiser.
In the time it took for a baby to be born, humanity had been all but annihilated. A lucky few had managed to evacuate to Dark Space, but the coordinates of the gate were uncharted. Worse, it was hidden in a statically charged ice cloud that disrupted sensors, making it impossible to find the gate unless you already knew where to look. Apparently those who had known about the gate hadn’t shared that secret with the downtrodden masses, so the majority of the evacuees who had arrived were high-ranking fleet officers and government officials.
But that hadn’t stopped Ethan from searching among the survivors. As soon as the gate leading out of Dark Space had been deactivated and sealed, and after all the “non-dangerous” prisoners had officially been released to help support a flagging economy, Ethan had wasted two years of his life searching for a familiar face—on the off chance that either his darling Destra or little seven-year-old Atton had been able to escape the war, but he hadn’t been able to find either of them, and eventually he’d been forced to give up the search for a lack of funds. What had followed was a dark period for Ethan, but four years ago Alara had come into his life, and with her quick wit, easy smile, and those beautiful violet eyes, she’d managed to mostly snap him out of it. But that didn’t mean he was ready to move on—or that he’d like to move on with her. She was young enough to be his daughter!
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