Dark Space: Origin Read Online Free Page B

“Hello?”
    “Commander, the prisoners are askin’ for a medic.” It was Terl. Caldin smiled, grateful to hear his voice. He went on, “The imposter looks to be unconscious. What do you want to do, ma’am?”
    “Go ahead, call the med bay, meanwhile you can perform first aid if necessary.”
    “If it were up to me, ma’am, I’d just space him out the airlock. No one would blame you.”
    “Perhaps they wouldn’t, but we need him—if not exactly intact, then at least lucid enough to endure the probe. Keep an eye on him, though—just in case he’s faking.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “And Terl?”
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “You feel like keeping a lonely woman company tonight?”
    “Mmmm . . . that depends . . .” Terl’s voice took on a seductive tone.
    “On what?”
    “Is that lonely woman you?”
    Caldin smiled. “What do you think?”
    “Then yes.”
    “Good. I’ll be waiting.”
    *  *  *

    Alec Brondi drew his grav gun from the zephyr light assault mech’s equipment belt and fired it at the deck to bring himself down from the ceiling. Once he was back on his feet, he clipped the gun to his belt and tuned it to emit a steady grav field. Now he could walk on the deck as though the Valiant’s artificial gravity were still working.
    “What happened?” Brondi demanded. He flicked on his mech’s floodlights and turned in a slow circle to see his men grappling down to the deck with their grav guns. They drew their sidearms and activated the flashlights mounted below the barrels to search for some unseen foe. Brondi had been living inside the zephyr ever since they’d discovered that the Valiant was being terrorized by one or more cloaked Sythians—or Gors? He wasn’t sure how the Gors fit into things, but he didn’t care whether he was being attacked by Gors or Sythians. Whoever they were, they were killing his men and sabotaging his ship. And now, thanks to those saboteurs, the Valiant was drifting in a deteriorating orbit above Ritan, without power and without gravity.
    Dim red emergency lighting came on, and Brondi’s chief engineer said. “The IMS and main reactor are down and not responding. There must have been some kind of inertial surge when the IMS failed. We’re going to have to send teams down there.”
    “Hold on, Lieutenant,” Brondi said, watching with a frown as Captain Thornton floated by in a globular pool of his own blood. He still wore the holoskin of Overlord Dominic and was to all appearances an 80-something year old man with white hair and wrinkled, age-spotted skin. Thornton had been Brondi’s choice to impersonate the overlord and gain Admiral Heston’s confidence, but with the inertial surge that had sent them all flying, Thornton must have had the bad luck to hit one of the sharper edges on the bridge. Now Brondi would need to find a new impersonator.
    That’s it, he thought as he activated his comm and put a call through to Sergeant Gibbs, the commander of his mechanized battalion.
    “It’s good to hear your voice, sir! What happened?” Gibbs answered.
    “Our stowaways knocked out the IMS and our main reactor.”
    “Frek! How? We had guards posted.”
    “ Had . This has gone on long enough, Gibbs. Get me as many zephyrs as you can. We’re going hunting.”
    “I’ll do my best, sir. It’s chaos down here.”
    “Meet me at the bridge. I’m sealing it up until you arrive.”
    “Yes, sir.”

 
     
    Chapter 2
     

    C ommander Caldin awoke with Terl’s arms locked around her bare chest, his naked body pressed firmly against hers. She lifted her head from the pillow with a groan to check the time on the comm unit beside her bed. It was just after 1300 hours. Depriving herself of sleep over the last few days had finally caught up with her. She’d slept for almost twelve hours straight. . . .
    With that realization, Caldin abruptly sat up, breaking Terl’s hold on her. No one had woken her with a comm call, which meant that the Rescue still hadn’t