Dark Space: Avilon (20 page)

“Mommy, look at that star there!” Atta bounced up and pointed out the viewport.

Destra frowned, trying to see what her daughter was pointing at. It didn’t take long to find the silhouette of an enormous Sythian warship glinting in the red light of the system’s sun.

“Is that another galaxy?” Atta asked.

Destra smiled and nodded, unable to give voice to the lie. Based on its size, that had to be one of the Sythians’ thirty-kilometer-long command ships. A behemoth-class. They were usually cloaked and hidden behind the fleets they carried into battle, but this one was sitting brazenly out in the open, as if the Sythians had suddenly lost the fear of death that had driven them to use slave crews for their smaller warships. More likely they weren’t hiding now because they knew they had nothing to fear.

As they flew onward, Destra spotted more of those massive warships, each of them sitting in the center of its own cluster of smaller ships. By the time she’d counted the eighth command ship, a dark frown had wrinkled her forehead, and she was reaching up to her comm piece to make a call.

“Stay here, Atta,” she said, getting up from the bench seats.

“Where are you going?” Atta asked.

“Nowhere, darling. I just need to make a call.” Destra walked to the far corner of the room and leaned up against the bulkhead to watch her daughter from the shadows. The lights were turned down low in the viewing gallery to make it easier to see the stars.

“What is it, Councilor?” a gruff voice answered as her call went through.

“Captain,” she began, whispering into her comm. “I just noticed the number of ships out there . . . There’s more than seven command ships.”

“I know.”

“There were only seven in the entire invasion.”

“
Were
is the operative word, Councilor,” Captain Covani replied. She imagined his tangerine eyes narrowed to unhappy slits.

“How many are there?”

“We’re cloaked, so passive scanning only, but visual estimates would suggest there are more than twenty.”

“
Twenty?
” Destra couldn’t believe it. “That’s more than double what they used to defeat the Imperium!”

“Good thing there’s no Imperium left for them to defeat.”

She thought about Avilon, where her son, Atton, had gone to get reinforcements, but she didn’t want to mention that in case the captain decided to take them there. Hoff had warned her that the Avilonians wouldn’t welcome so many refugees, particularly not
Gor
refugees. “How far are we from the jump point?” she asked.

“Nearest one is fifteen minutes out. The one I’ve set is about half an hour.”

“What? Do you have a death wish, Captain? Use the nearest one!”

“There’s a lot of risk jumping too far from the out-system gate. We want to avoid running into in-system debris and ships. Besides, jumping out parallel to the old gate will help us to avoid obstacles in the Stormcloud Nebula. The lane should still be clear.”

“I don’t like it,” Destra replied.

“We’re cloaked, Councilor. What are you afraid of?”

“Suppose one of their fighters accidentally runs into us and they realize we’re here?”

“The odds of that are slim. Space is vast.”

“We should jump out now, Captain, while we still can.”

“Your suggestion has been noted.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion.”

“Leave the military decisions to me, Ma’am. That’s what I’m here for.”

Destra thought about arguing further, but she had to pick her battles, and this one wasn’t worth fighting. “Very well. Keep me informed.”

“Of course. Speaking of that, you might like to know the prisoners you rescued are almost aboard.”

“They’re
what?
”

“Coming aboard. You asked to be notified . . .”

“I know
that
. You should have waited to transfer them. How did you even coordinate that without giving our position away?”

“The Gors are telepaths.”

“And how do they know where our hangar is without some type of comm beacon to guide them in?”

“We’re using a Gor-piloted shuttle to aim for a Gor-occupied hangar. They can telelocate, too, Ma’am . . .”

Destra didn’t appreciate the Captain’s condescending tone. “Very well. Which hangar?”

“Port ventral.”

“I’ll head down there now.”

“See you there. Covani out.”

The comm went dead, and Destra fought the urge to punch the bulkhead. Hopefully the captain’s attitude was provoked by hunger from the emergency rationing rather than by true insubordination.

Destra let her frustration out in a sigh. A sudden draft stirred the air. Turning to see what had caused it, she heard a sibilant hiss. That was when she noticed the dark shadow sitting beside her, yellow eyes glinting in the dark.

Destra cursed and jumped backward, slamming into the bulkhead with a painful
thud
.

“The captain showss you little ressspect. You should eat him.”

Destra’s heart thudded in her chest. “Torv? What are you doing here?”

“I come to rest my eyes and to be free of my shell for a time.”

“Your shell?”

“That which protects me from the heat and brightness that you humans prefer.”

His armor.
She realized then that he wasn’t wearing it. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she also saw that he was sitting cross-legged on the deck, his back propped up against the cold duranium bulkhead behind him. “How long have you been sitting there, Torv?”

“Long enough to see how much you care for your daughter. She knows nothing of war, even though it is all around her. Does that not inspire you?”

Destra nodded. “It does.”

“Peace is something my people can only dream of, until recently.”

“You mean freedom,” Destra suggested, thinking that peace was still an elusive goal for all of them.

“Are they not the same? Without freedom there can be no peace, and without peace there is no freedom.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Peace comes at a price,” Torv mused.

“It always does.”

“The Sythians slaughter my people for it. Humans do, too.”

Destra smiled ruefully. “Not anymore,” she clarified, in case she’d missed something in the present-tense-only translation. “We’re allies now. And don’t forget that the Gors slaughtered us, too. It’s a happy little circle of death.”

Torv nodded his big head and he looked away, turning to watch Atta, still sitting patiently on the benches along the gallery viewport. After a moment, he spoke again, “If the Sythians took your crecheling from you, what would you do?”

“I’d go get her back, and then I’d kill the ones who took her.”

“You would do anything for her. Even if it meant risking your own life.”

“Yes.”

“Then humans are not so different from my people. We, too, would do anything to keep our young ones safe.” Slitted yellow eyes found Destra again. “They are alive, you know.”

“Who?”

“Our young ones. The crechelings on Noctune.”

“What? How can you possibly know that? They’re a galaxy away from us.”

“They do not communicate with us, if that is what you wonder.”

That’s exactly what she had been wondering. The ability to communicate between galaxies without SLS comm relays and waiting weeks or months for an answer was a technology that humans had yet to develop, let alone the supposedly savage Gors.

“I know it,” Torv went on, “because my inner voice tells me this.”

“Your inner voice.”

“Yes. The same voice that tells me to trust humans even after they lie and kill my people. Even after they torture the lords of my creche.”

“The lords of your . . . your
parents
,” Destra decided.

“My creche lord desires to ask you something. He regrets that he is not here to ask you himself.”

Destra recalled that Roan was Torv’s creche lord, as well as the leader of the Gor fleet. “What would he like to ask, Torv?”

“He asks you to convince the captain to go to Noctune, so that we can rescue our young ones. As a Matriarch to your own young one, he thinks you must understand, but after what I hear and see between you and the captain . . .” Torv hissed and went on, “I am not sure your understanding matters.”

Destra frowned. “If the Sythians claim to have killed all of the Gors on Noctune, what makes you think your young ones are alive?”

“The creches are far below the surface of our world. Until crechelings grow older, they are susceptible to the cold, so we raise them deep below the ice, where it is warmer.”

“How deep?”

“As far as this ship is long, and farther still.”

“Three hundred
meters?
Your people dug that deep into the ice?”

“The creches are below the ice.”

Destra shook her head, shocked by what she was hearing. If the Gors’ homes were dug that far beneath the surface, there actually was a good chance that some of them had survived the Sythians’ bombardment. “Do the Sythians know how far your homes go below the surface?”

“I do not think so. They do not care to know about the Gors. We are too little important to them.”

“If that’s true, then you might be right.”

“Speak with the captain for us. Remind him there are many worlds close to Noctune that humans would find pleasant.”

Destra’s brow furrowed. “I still don’t understand that part. If we’d find them pleasant, the Sythians should be there, too.”

“I do not know why they are not, but I know it to be true.”

“Why do you need us to go? If you want to go back to Noctune and look for your young ones, you are free to go, Torv. We are not your masters.”

“If we go, we do not return. Our ships do not have the fuel for it.”

“I understand. We will miss you.”

“A Matriarch and the lord of her creche are both strong and can defend themselves, but if one of them dies while their crechelings are still young, then there is either no lord to hunt for the creche or no Matriarch to defend it. The crechelings are eaten by predators or die of hunger.”

“What are you saying, Torv?”

“Humans are like the Matriarch. Gors are like the creche lord. We are the hunters, and you stay home to defend the creche.”

Suddenly Destra understood. “You’re saying we have a better chance of survival if we stick together.”

“You speak truth.”

Destra nodded. “I will do everything I can to convince the captain we should go. If you’re right about there being empty worlds in your sector, it’s probably the last place the Sythians would think to look for us. If not, at least we’ll be cloaked, and we’ll be able to stay hidden long enough to explore and find another suitable place to start a colony.”

“May it be so, my Matriarch.”

Destra accepted that honorific with a nod. “I’d better go, Torv. I have to see the prisoners we rescued.”

“May the Mighty Zarn and Kar go with you.”

“You’re going to stay here? Doesn’t the captain need you on the bridge?”

“The captain has ears but he does not use them, and I do not trust myself not to eat him for his disrespect.”

Destra gave a shadowy smile. “I know the feeling.”

* * *

Bretton Hale watched on the captain’s table as a group of several hundred vessels ran through the Sythian fleet. Most of those warships were identical to the Sythian ships, except for the fact that they appeared on the gravidar as shadowy outlines rather than solid icons. That meant they were cloaked. Thanks to Avilonian upgrades to the
Tempest
, they could see through those cloaking shields. For a moment Bretton didn’t understand what he was looking at. It seemed like the cloaked fleet was just another part of the Sythian one. There was a human cruiser with it, but that didn’t mean anything, since there were dozens of other human ships in formation with the enemy. From what he’d learned walking through the traitor’s mind, he knew that Dark Space had surrendered to the Sythians and the humans living there had been enslaved. So why was part of the fleet cloaked and making a dash for the edge of the system?

“They’re Gors,” Admiral Vee supplied, as if she’d read his mind.

“Gors?”

The admiral explained about the distinction between the Sythians and their slave soldiers, and about the recent Gor rebellion that had resulted in the Gors stealing an entire fleet of ships.

“That’s impossible!” Farah said.

“It’s not common knowledge that the Gors are actually slaves of a race we’ve never seen,” Admiral Vee explained. “Omnius probably knows, but he hasn’t seen fit to tell Nulls like us.”

Bretton was equally shocked. “Forget Omnius,
we
should have known about them
.
We fought the Sythians for almost a year before the retreat and exodus to Dark Space. How could we miss noticing that we were fighting two different species?”

“Actually more like eight. The Sythians are made up of seven interrelated sub-species. As for how they hid themselves during the war, that’s easy. You only ever fought the Gors. The Sythians stayed cloaked behind the lines and let their slaves fight. Now they’re using human slaves from Dark Space because the Gors rebelled. Our most recent news from the Uppers suggests that Omnius is planning a counter attack here in Dark Space, and he’s going to try to free the slaves so he can bring them to Avilon.”