04 Dark Space

DARK SPACE IV: Revenge

(4th Edition)

by Jasper T. Scott

http://www.JasperTscott.com

@JasperTscott

Copyright © 2014 by Jasper T. Scott

THE AUTHOR RETAINS ALL RIGHTS
FOR THIS BOOK

Reproduction or transmission of this book, in whole or in part, by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any other means is strictly prohibited, except with prior written permission from the author. You may direct your inquiries to
[email protected]

Cover design by Thien A.K.A "ShooKooBoo"

This book is a work of fiction. All names, places, and incidents described are products of the writer’s imagination and any resemblance to real people or life events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

• Copyright Page
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Dedication
  
• THE ENEMY IN OUR MIDST
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• WHERE THE DARKNESS FINDS US
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• AVILON
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Epilogue
  
• DARK SPACE CONTINUES FALL 2014
  
• PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE SERIES
  
• CONTACT THE AUTHOR
  
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  

Acknowledgements

This book comes to you thanks in large part to my wonderful wife, who endured many a lonely night and weekend to help me finish on time. The quality of the story is thanks in large part to my editor, Aaron Sikes, whose remarkable feedback helped me to see the big picture through all the little details. Thank you, Aaron for helping me make this story shine. Also, a big thanks to my very talented cover artist, Thien "Shookooboo," for artwork that far surpassed my expectations.

Finally, I have to say an extra special thanks to all my beta readers, without whose feedback this book would be far less polished than it is. Many thanks go to Andrew de Mora, Andrew Goodwin, Bill Gallacher, Carmen Romano, Daniel Eloff, Damon Trent, Dave Cantrell, David Brotchie, Davis Shellabarger, Gary Watts, Ian Jedlica, Ian Seccombe, Jay Gehringer, Jeph Yang, Jim, John H. Kuhl, John K. Nash, John Parker, John Rowles, Kedd Burmeister, Mark Tindall, Marten Ekema, Maurizio Cattaneo, Patrick Blenkinsop, Randy Mills, Raymond Myers, Sandra Roan, Steven Shapse, and Wade Whitaker.

To those who dare,

And to those who dream.

To everyone who’s stronger than they seem.

“Believe in me /
I know you’ve waited for so long /
Believe in me /
Sometimes the weak become the strong”
—STAIND,
Believe

THE ENEMY IN OUR MIDST

Chapter 1

M
aster Commander Lenon Donali dropped out of superluminal space (SLS) for the tenth time. The bright streaks and starlines of faster-than-light travel disappeared with a flash, persisting only as an afterimage burned onto his retinas from staring too long into that mesmerizing swirl of light. Ghostly patterns floated across the diamond-bright sparkle of the void. Fuel was running low from so many stops. He hadn’t travelled more than twelve light years away from Dark Space, but entering and leaving SLS were the most fuel-expensive parts of space flight.

Donali checked the grid for enemy contacts, just as he had done at each reversion point since leaving Dark Space. He wasn’t expecting to see anything, and he wasn’t surprised. Apart from the spreading wake of radiation from his corvette, there was no detectable trace of tachyon radiation. Donali waited a minute longer, watching the grid without blinking, but his scopes were clear; he hadn’t been followed.

He sighed with relief, and his thoughts went to the alien implant which he’d left in the corvette’s med bay to be analyzed by the ship’s computers. Whatever it was, it had finished calling home long ago, and now it couldn’t be bothered to tell the Sythians where it was. The last time that mysterious alien device had transmitted anything at all had been at the entrance of Dark Space. Donali hoped it hadn’t given away the location of the sector. Dark Space was humanity’s only refuge from the Sythians, and it was only safe because it had been kept hidden for the last ten years after the invasion.

But now that refuge was in jeopardy. If the alien implant they had discovered while dissecting High Lord Kaon’s brain had managed to call home, then for all Donali knew Dark Space was already overrun with Sythians.

Donali unbuckled his seat restraints and pushed out of the pilot’s chair. It was time to finish studying the alien device and then jettison it out the nearest airlock. He had a rendezvous with Admiral Hoff Heston coming up in just five days, and that was precious little time to study the Sythian device.

When he arrived in the med bay, he was gratified to find the implant still sitting inside the holoimager where he’d left it. He’d been half expecting it to have walked off by itself. Donali keyed the machine for the results of its analysis and a hologram flickered to life above the imager.

The inside of the implant was organized into a crystal lattice structure, and the outside hadn’t responded to any probe of any kind . . . except for . . . the electrical conduction test. When the device had been exposed to low level electrical signals, it had begun to respond with the same. That made sense, since it would have to interact with the Sythians’ brains somehow. Donali stared at the screen, wondering what purpose the implant served.

If the Sythians had known Kaon was going to be captured, or if they had allowed him to be captured, then the device could be a tracker of some kind, but if that were so, then why wasn’t it transmitting now? The fact that it responded to electrical stimulation seemed to indicate that it still had power.

It’s a pity I don’t have someone to implant this in . . .
he thought. It was much larger than the average human implant, and would require surgery to insert—not that he had a test subject for that, anyway.

Unless. . . .

Donali’s eyes turned to the stasis room adjoining the med bay. Abruptly he turned and walked toward it. He waved his hand over the door controls, and the door slid away with a
swish.
The lights came on automatically for him. This was Donali’s own personal transport, and it knew him well.

He walked to the back of the room to the pair of empty stasis tubes there. The room held twelve stasis tubes in all, one for each of the corvette’s standard crew. When Donali reached the pair of empty stasis tubes, he stepped up to the control panel of the leftmost one and keyed in a code which only he knew. He heard a
clu-clunk
of duranium bolts sliding away and reached out with both hands to grasp the sides of the heavy stasis tube. It pulled away from the wall easily enough, rolling on wheels that it shouldn’t have had. Behind that, lay another stasis tube, the transpiranium cover glowing blue and active. Donali saw a stranger staring back at him from the other side of the transpiranium. That stranger was his escape plan—a clone of a long dead fleet officer.

Serving under someone like Admiral Heston, Donali had to be careful. The admiral had been betrayed so many times that he would betray his friends and family preemptively just to keep it from happening again, and that meant Donali needed to keep a few secrets of his own—just in case the admiral should ever decide to preemptively betray his own XO.

Already fitted in the clone’s wrist were all the credentials Donali would need to get away and make a new life for himself without the admiral ever being the wiser. Being a senior member of the
Tauron
’s medical staff had its advantages. Any bodies which passed through the morgue were his to examine if he so chose. He’d stolen the identichips from more than a few of them and subsequently erased the record of their deaths. Then he’d cloned them and left their cloned bodies in stasis until they were needed. Using the Lifelink implant in his brain, Donali could transfer his conscious self from his current body to any one of the clones. Like that, he could effectively disappear. So far Donali hadn’t needed that backup plan, but it gave him a unique opportunity now.

He walked into the dark crawl space and keyed the control panel to release the clone. The cover of the stasis tube opened with a hiss and the clone opened its eyes for the first time. It saw him and began to cry pitifully. It fell into Donali’s arms, unable to even stand up on its own. Donali backed out of the crawl space, half dragging and half carrying his clone. He tried to ignore its wailing cries while it clung to him like a baby to its mother.

Clones grown for immortals spent their entire lives in an induced sleep, growing to maturity at an accelerated rate until they reached the right age, and then they were frozen like that until they were needed. All a clone ever had a chance to experience was a cloning tank and the endless dreaming of accelerated aging, and after that—another tank and the near perfect metabolic suspension of stasis. They could last in stasis for a thousand years and only age ten. What they dreamt about while they were in there was a mystery, but the most likely answer was nothing. They had never experienced anything, so how could their brains imagine something? They never learned to walk, talk, eat, or do anything else that a regular adult took for granted. They were full-grown newborns until the Lifelink implants in their brains received the flood of information which they would use, along with a billion little nanites, to sculpt their brains into the mirror image of their creators’.

Clones were never woken like this, without their Lifelink implant being activated first. Donali tried to ignore the pinprick of guilt which he felt over that and over what he was about to do. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s okay. Daddy needs your help.” Donali set the clone down on the cold deck and its cries intensified. The man curled into a fetal ball, while Donali fumbled with his grav gun. He aimed the gun at the clone and gravved him off the deck to carry him into the med bay.

An hour later, Donali had his subject strapped down on the examination table, still crying, but more softly now. The clone’s eyes flicked from side to side, darting and wide. Donali put him out of his misery a moment later with a sleep-inducing anesthetic.

Now the operation could begin. It took just over an hour to open the clone’s skull and delicately tuck the alien implant inside his brain. Then Donali sealed the clone's skull once more. Another hour passed while he cleaned up his surgical instruments and waited for the clone to wake.

Suddenly, there came an alien warbling and Donali spun around to look. His patient was awake. He hurried back to the clone’s side, his heart pounding, his eyes wide and filled with wonder. The clone had been a blank slate, dumb and mute, and now he was speaking in some facsimile of Sythian. There was only one explanation for that. The alien implant was more than just a tracker. It contained information from the Sythian they'd taken it from. Perhaps it was the Sythian equivalent of an immortal human's Lifelink implant.

“Hello, Kaon,” Donali tried, testing his theory. He was almost unable to contain his excitement.

The clone turned to look at him, and warbled something else. Donali wasn’t wearing a translator, so he didn’t understand. Then the clone appeared to notice that he was strapped down to the table. He raised his chin to his chest and saw that he was a human. Seeing that, he turned back to Donali with a hateful glare. “Where am I? What you do to me?” he demanded, now speaking in Imperial Versal.

Donali blinked and his red artificial eye winked in tandem with his real one. “You can speak our language?” He shook his head incredulously, still trying to catch up with everything. This confirmed Admiral Hoff’s suspicions. Humans and Sythians
had
met before, and they were both doing the same thing—using implants and clones to live forever.