Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Read online

  “I come to take you home, to save you from yourself,” Brak said. “But you do not go, so I stay.”

  Lucien frowned. “That doesn’t seem like a good reason to come along.”

  “Maybe it is not a good reason, but it is a good adventure.”

  “If you wanted adventure you could have gone on any number of officially sanctioned missions,” Lucien replied.

  “None of those go to the edge of the universe,” Brak replied. “And you also could have done this.”

  “Everybody freeze!” Tyra said.

  Lucien stopped where he was, but he didn’t see why she’d called such a sudden halt. He turned in a quick circle, eyes on his scopes, trying to find whatever had alarmed her, but he saw nothing.

  “Did you see that?” Tyra asked.

  “See what?” Lucien replied.

  Tyra’s face looked pale behind her helmet visor as she looked around, too. “There it is again!” she pointed in front of them, and this time Lucien saw it.

  A luminous spider came crawling out of the side wall of the cave. It was almost as big as the tree-dwelling monsters they’d fought in the forest, but unlike them, this creature didn’t seem to be making any aggressive moves, and for some reason it didn’t show up on sensors.

  The creature looked like it was made of glass. Its innards were clearly visible. Lucien watched, frozen with fascination and horror as it picked its way toward them, walking on eight legs. In addition to those, it had four hairy, segmented arms, two in front, and two in the back, each equipped with three fingers. Black eyes winked at them all over its luminous body.

  Then it began to speak in a clacking voice that sounded like a bag full of marbles.

  “Troo?” Tyra whispered. “Can you make contact for us? Tell it we’re friends. We don’t want to hurt it.”

  “How’s she going to do that?” Lucien asked. “Send a mental picture of butterflies and rainbows?”

  The Fossak walked to the fore and stopped a few paces from the giant spider. After a couple of seconds, she shook her head. “I is not sensing anything.”

  “Neither are sensors,” Lucien added.

  “How is that possible?” Tyra asked.

  “Because it is not really here,” Pandora explained. “I believe we are looking at a hologram of a sentient being, not the being itself.”

  “That’s even better!” Tyra said. “That means they have advanced technology!”

  “The egg sacks on the walls appear to be responsible for the hologram—I believe they are some type of bio-technology,” Pandora added.

  “Is there any way you can interface with them to download the data?” Tyra asked.

  Panda just looked at her. The bot’s pink eyes glowed bright in the gloom of the cave. “It is bio-technology. Perhaps you should try interfacing with it?”

  The spider disappeared, replaced by a holographic web with two icons clinging to it. One of them was a constellation of stars, the other, a beige planet freckled with blue lakes and crimson patches around the blue. Rivers snaked down to the lakes from rippled gray mountains, and there was a distinct lack of cloud cover.

  Lucien walked up to the web and poked a finger into the holographic planet. The web rippled with his touch, like a pool of water, and then faded away. The air around them shimmered, and suddenly the cave was gone.

  They stood on a glowing spider web, suspended in a large, open space, surrounded by blinking lights, strange-looking controls, and luminous spiders crawling across the web from station to station. Dead ahead, was a broad, panoramic viewport where they could see the beige planet with blue freckles. They were on approach to that planet. A space station gleamed in orbit, shaped like a spider’s web, with concentric rings and interconnecting spokes. Small silver specks buzzed around it.

  “Incredible…” Tyra breathed.

  As they drew near to the station, Lucien saw missiles streaking through space, and explosions rippling along the space station’s hull. After just a few seconds, it cracked apart, throwing jagged debris in all directions. The spiders on the bridge grew frantic, chittering at one another loudly.

  The view shifted as the ship they were on turned, and a massive star cruiser came into view. It was shaped like a giant cigar and gleaming with lights. The ship belched streams of silver specks down to the planet below. Pinprick-sized explosions flashed around it, stopping short of reaching its hull, while missiles streaked out from its bow, racing toward another, much smaller starship. Its target was luminous, with engine pods and weapons emplacements arcing away from its central body like the legs of a spider.

  Fire tore through the smaller ship as explosions rippled along its luminous hull. It abruptly stopped radiating light, becoming a dark shadow drifting across the planet below.

  This drew more chittering from the spiders scrambling around them; then a cluster of missiles spiraled toward the ship they were standing on, and everything turned white.

  When the brightness faded, they were standing on a sandy desert under a bright blue sky. Black husks of dead spiders littered the desert, their legs and arms curled in on their bodies. In the distance, plumes of black smoke rose from crimson hills. The scene changed, showing those smoking hills from closer up. They looked like cauliflower heads sprouting from the ground.

  Living spiders, still luminous, shuffled in orderly lines across the desert from the smoking crimson hills to a large, cigar-shaped starship. Tall bipeds in black armor walked down the lines, holding rifles.

  The scene changed once more, and suddenly they were standing in one of the lines, shuffling along with the spiders. They got a close-up view of one of the bipedal aliens in black armor. Their helmets were illuminated from within, revealing humanoid features, but with green skin.

  One of the spiders leapt out of line to attack the armored biped. He held out a hand, and the spider stopped, hovering in mid-air. One-handed, the green-skinned humanoid aimed his rifle at the sky. A shriek of pent-up energy split the air, and a glowing white ball of plasma shot out, homing in on the hovering spider. Its body disintegrated in a rain of glowing embers and fat black ashes, while its legs and arms fell flaming to the ground.

  The other spiders abruptly stopped shuffling, and the bipedal alien aimed its weapon at them. It said something in a guttural voice that boomed across the desert.

  The spiders chittered quietly to one another and continued on their way.

  Once more the scene faded. It was night now, and stars glittered overhead. The cigar-shaped ship hovered up in front of them, sending clouds of sand rippling out in all directions. The ship turned and aimed at the sky, at a much larger version of itself. Then it lit its engines, and peeled back the night with a crimson flash of light. The glare faded and so did the starship, becoming a tiny crimson ember shooting into the sky.

  The scene faded, and the spider web Lucien had touched returned.

  “They were enslaved,” Tyra said.

  Lucien nodded slowly. “But where are they now?”

  “Maybe here, on Panda-1A-V?” Tyra suggested.

  “Maybe,” Pandora replied. “But then why not greet us themselves? They left this holo history here for sentient beings to encounter, to learn what happened to them. It’s possible they left it as a warning.”

  “Or a cry for help,” Addy suggested. “We should play the other recording. Maybe we can learn something else.”

  The other icon clinging to the web was a constellation of stars. Tyra poked a finger into it, and the air shimmered once more. Suddenly they were floating in outer space. The planet where they were now lay below them, a mottled red, blue, and purple ball, highlighted against the blue-white glare of the gas giant Panda-1A. Constellations appeared as glowing lines connected the dots in patterns that weren’t recognizable to their minds—though one of them vaguely resembled a spider.

  A star next to that spider-shaped constellation changed colors from blue-white to red, and back again, blinking insistently.

  “Pandora…” Tyra
began, not looking away from the blinking star. “Do you think you can pinpoint that star with our nav system on Inquisitor?”

  “Assuming its position is accurately depicted here, that should be easy, ma’am.”

  “Good. Memorize the location and these constellations so that you can find it again. We’re going there next.”

  “Hold on—” Lucien objected.

  Tyra turned to him, her eyebrows raised in question.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

  “Why not?”

  “We don’t know what’s there,” he said.

  “It might be the spider people’s refuge,” Tyra suggested.

  “Or the slavers’ homeworld,” Addy said.

  “Exactly,” Lucien agreed.

  “Either one of those possibilities is acceptable,” Tyra replied. “We’re here to meet sentient alien races and learn what we can beyond the red line. Imagine how much faster we’ll learn about our new neighborhood if we can talk to a sentient, space-faring alien race? I don’t care if they’re the slavers or the slaves, just so long as they’re intelligent.”

  “Yeah, that might be a bit short-sighted…” Lucien said.

  Tyra raised her eyebrows. “Scared?”

  “If you’re trying to call me chicken, it’s not working.”

  “Maybe this vision is telling us what we is to be finding there,” Troo said, as she reached out to touch the blinking red star.

  The scene rippled, and stars streaked by them until the blinking red star resolved into a blazing white sun with a system of planets. The hologram paused, and one of those planets began blinking red. This time Tyra touched it, and the hologram zoomed in once more. Stars and space whirled by until they arrived in orbit over a dull beige planet that somewhat resembled the spider people’s world, but without the blue freckles and crimson patches. A fleet of the cigar-shaped ships they’d seen attacking the spider people’s homeworld hung in orbit over the planet.

  Lucien touched it, and the hologram zoomed in, taking them down past a few stray wisps of cloud to a rocky desert. Now they all stood on the surface, watching luminous spiders skittering through the sand, darting in and out of illuminated tunnel entrances, carrying heavy machinery and dusty metal crates on their backs. Giant landing pads sprouted all around them with cigar-shaped landers waiting, while bipeds in black armor stood guard from the tops of high towers, and others on the ground. One of the ones on the ground turned their way, revealing a scarred, snarling face with green skin.

  A spider limped through the scene, struggling under a heavy burden. As they watched, it collapsed with a chittering sigh. The guard started toward it, and the spider’s chittering grew frantic. Its legs scrambled for purchase in the sand. The guard walked up to it with a coil of black rope in one hand. He stopped a few feet from the struggling spider and unfurled his rope, revealing that it was actually some kind of whip. Lucien frowned, wondering what good a whip would be against a spider with an exoskeleton; then the whip went from black to glowing orange like molten metal. It lay sizzling and smoking in the sand.

  The guard flicked his wrist and lashed the fallen spider across its back. The spider convulsed, and screamed like a kettle of boiling water, and a dark black line appeared on its luminous body. It tried again to get up, but failed. The whip fell again with the same result.

  A crowd of spiders gathered around the spectacle, all fidgeting and chittering to one another. Again the whip fell, and another scream whistled out. The spiders watching stopped chittering, and all was silent but for the sizzling of the guard’s whip. He glanced around him, as if daring them to do something. Then he flicked his whip once more, and the collapsed spider convulsed.

  The other spiders rushed the guard. He dropped his whip and crouched down to one knee, as if resigned to his fate.

  But the air blurred and began to shimmer with some kind of force field. A split second before the spiders reached him, the force field exploded, sending spiders flying and skidding through the dust. The guard rose to his feet and turned in a slow circle, waiting to see if any of them would try again, but they fled, skittering away from him in all directions.

  He picked up his whip and ignited it once more; then he walked over to the one spider that hadn’t scurried away after the force field had tossed it aside. Black lines scarred its luminous body, and it was still struggling to get up.

  The guard lashed it again and again until it stopped twitching and its whole body turned as black as coal.

  The scene faded and the holographic web returned. Lucien felt sick to his stomach. Long seconds passed, and no one said anything.

  Finally, Tyra broke the silence. “Well, it’s pretty clear what happened to the spiders,” she said. “And equally clear what we’ll find if we go to that star system.”

  No one ventured a reply.

  “Nevertheless, I think we should go there to meet these slavers,” Tyra concluded.

  “Meet them?” Lucien asked.

  “What else would we do?”

  “Free the slaves,” Addy suggested.

  Tyra shook her head. “We’re not here to right the wrongs of the universe. We’re explorers, not a crusading army of Paragons. You should have stayed with Etherus if that’s what you wanted to be.”

  Addy narrowed her eyes at that, and Brak walked up to Tyra, baring his black teeth.

  “We go and we set slaves free,” he insisted.

  “Intimidation isn’t going to work on me, Brak,” Tyra said.

  “No? I kill you and steal your ship. Then I free slaves myself.”

  “You kill me, and I’ll come back on Astralis. You, on the other hand, will be executed with no chance of resurrection.”

  “What makes you think I go back to Astralis?” Brak challenged.

  “If you don’t, you’ll die when your timer implant runs down a month from now.”

  Brak hissed more loudly now, and loomed over Tyra, looking like he was about to tear her arms off. To her credit, she didn’t back down.

  Lucien walked up to Brak and placed a hand on his arm. “Brak. Take it easy.”

  The Gor rounded on him. “Were your people slaves?”

  Lucien frowned at the reminder. The Gors had once been the slave soldiers of the now-extinct Sythians. “I get it, Brak, I want to free them, too, but we can’t just go barging in there, guns blazing. We need to know more about the situation first. From what we’ve seen of the slavers’ weapons, their technology might be comparable to ours, in which case, there’s no chance we’re going to be able to free a planet full of slaves with just one galleon.”

  “Then we bring more galleons.”

  “We can suggest it to the council,” Tyra said. Brak glared at her with his slitted yellow eyes. “It’s not my decision to make,” she added. “But if we can learn more about the situation, as Lucien suggests, then we might be able to convince them. Is that okay with you?”

  Brak grunted, but said nothing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Everyone ready to go?” Tyra asked.

  “You’re not going to give your clerics a chance to come down here first?” Lucien asked.

  Tyra shook her head. “We’ll deploy probes. They can study the data and samples taken by the probes when we come back. Let’s go.”

  “Wait—” Addy said.

  They all turned to her.

  “What if this is a trap?”

  “What do you mean?” Tyra asked.

  “I mean, what are the odds of us finding this holo history here, in these caves, within hours of landfall?”

  “That depends,” Tyra said. “It’s probably in caves all over the planet—or else our finding it is just a happy coincidence.”

  “Okay,” Addy said, “so what are the odds of us finding the holo history here, on this moon, in this star system?”

  “What are you getting at?” Tyra asked.

  “Either this is a happy coincidence, as you say, or this history is in many different star systems,
on many different planets.”

  “Seems like a reasonable way to lead other sentient races to you,” Tyra replied.

  “For what purpose?” Addy insisted.

  “Maybe in the hopes that someone will help set them free.”

  “If these holo histories are everywhere, don’t you think the spider people’s slavers would have found them already?”

  “Probably.”

  “So why would they leave the recordings here?”

  “You’re suggesting that the slavers are the ones who left them?”

  Addy nodded.

  “Her concerns are logical,” Pandora said. “Sympathy can be an effective lure.”

  “I agree,” Lucien said.

  “Then we’ll have to proceed carefully,” Tyra replied. “Worst case, we end up captured and we die when our timers run down. If that happens, we’ll be resurrected on Astralis and continue on our merry way to the cosmic horizon.”

  “What if they interrogate us to find out who we are and where we come from?”

  Tyra appeared to consider that. “Now would probably be a good time to mention the other functionality of your timer implants. You can’t reset the timers to give yourself more time, but you can give yourself less. If it comes to it, you set your timers to zero and kill yourselves before you can be probed or tortured for information. Any other objections?” Tyra asked, glancing at each of them in turn.

  No one said anything.

  “All right, then let’s get back to the Inquisitor.”

  Chapter 12

  “I’m running a pattern-matching algorithm against the constellations we saw to locate the star from the hologram,” Pandora announced.

  “Good. Let me know when you find it,” Tyra replied.

  Lucien sat beside her, overlooking the crew deck below. The other four control stations were arranged around them at ten o’clock, two o’clock, four o’clock, and eight. Besides Tinker, who was absent due to his injuries, Only Jalisa and Troo occupied stations on the bridge. Until then, Pandora was handling the ship’s engineering controls from her nav station.