Prisoners of Darkness Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  03

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  06

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  09

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  Epilogue

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  PRISONERS OF DARKNESS

  By Jason Anspach

  & Nick Cole

  Copyright © 2017

  by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  All rights reserved. Version 1.0

  Edited by David Gatewood

  Published by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  Cover Art: Fabian Saravia

  Cover Design: Beaulistic Book Services

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  0

  Nether Ops

  The Carnivale Section

  Utopion

  It had been drizzling all day. Steady and slow, light and even easy. There were dark clouds on the horizon, but the rain never fully turned into the storm it promised, nor did it slacken and allow the cloud breaks that depressed X so much. He either liked it to rain, really rain, or commit to a sunny day. This was one of those days that couldn’t make up its mind, and he hated those the most.

  They reminded him too much of the world of Nether Ops. A world of neither light nor darkness, truth nor lies, rain nor sunshine. And this was the life he’d chosen. His work—and truth be told, his life. And he didn’t mind it too much. He just preferred his days to be a bit more committed to the truth than his work.

  The girl who’d been assigned to the front, a capable field agent in her own right, no doubt, now pulling duty inside the Carnivale as some punishment seen fit by the House of Reason, or by his enemies over at Dark Ops, leaned in the doorway to his office at the back of the ancient warehouse and told him they had traffic.

  The Assault Ship Forresaw’s transponder had just lit up. She’d just jumped in-system beyond the outer defensive networks of Utopion and was inbound for customs scan. For the next few hours the tactical assault ship would be threading local bureaucratic traffic control, maintaining her cover as a light freighter until she could slip away and set down relatively unnoticed.

  X raised his bushy gray eyebrows. His sparkling blue eyes came suddenly alive as he gave the girl a long look. Not really seeing her. Seeing the implications of the game and the hunt being afoot once more. The Forresaw had been missing for two weeks. And now here she was, popping right back into Utopion.

  He nodded once at the girl, saying nothing and dismissing in her in the same instant. He’d forgotten how much he’d briefed anyone on the Forresaw’s mission—the Carnivale was currently running three other critical Nether Ops missions—and not everyone was need-to-know.

  He thought she wasn’t. Not yet.

  Those three other missions consisted of assassinating a diplomat suspected of funneling information to the MCR, listening in on some enigmatic negotiations between several high-ranking House of Reason members and a zhee warlord named Karshak Bum Kali, and planting a honey trap near one of the high-ranking rogue admirals within this Goth Sullus startup. That last one had been a bit ad hoc and last moment, and who knew if anyone was going to survive, much less succeed. But improvisation was ever the rule of thumb in the Carnivale. And of course, they had to try.

  X smirked. They were calling themselves “The Empire.” A bit presumptuous, don’t you think? remarked X to himself as he put on the kettle for a cup of quiet afternoon tea. He selected an ancient bone china cup decorated with a floral pattern. He’d paid a fortune for it. He kept it in a drawer with all the other cups he collected and didn’t care much about.

  He had to spend his money on something.

  They’d heard nothing from Andien Broxin and the ghost team that had pulled the mission out to the Doomsday Fleet.

  What did their return mean?

  Would X be able to control the flow of information now?

  And which way was he going to go in this conflict?

  All three questions needed to be reasoned out before he shared anything with anybody. And so, he sat down to a cup of tea, swiveled his creaky old and perfectly comfortable chair out to watch the drizzle beyond the large paned windows that were occasionally drafty and whistled when the wind got up, wrapped his flannel scarf around his neck, tried to get the thermostat to provide a little more heat, and wondered whether it might be nice to have an office cat to occasionally stroke, or watch.

  Question One. What did the unannounced return of the Forresaw mean?

  Their mission—they being Operative Broxin and a Nether Ops ghost team that had been sent along to ride shotgun—had been to escort Maydoon’s little girl out to the House of Reason’s quiet Frankenstein project, activate the Doomsday Fleet, and turn the keys over to the ranking members of the House of Reason, who, according to the plan, were supposed to turn the Fleet loose on… The Empire.

  Again, X snorted at the reference.

  How exactly does one planet qualify as an empire? he wondered, not for the first time.

  X’s play had been to intercept the keys to the Doomsday Fleet by running Broxin, and then maintain control over the usage of said keys. In other words, actually use the tool to do what it was funded, designed, and intended to do; protect the Republic in the event the Legion went rogue and activated its own little doomsday clause.

  X suspected the House of Reason cabal would put its own interests, assets, and personal holdings first. Never mind if half the galaxy was on fire.

  “So, my motives are still pure,” said X suddenly in the silence of his office, not really caring if any of the Dark Ops spies, or House of Reason spies, inside his Carnivale heard the old man muttering non-sequiturs. Only the rain gently tap-tap-tapping on the large glass panes that looked out on the gray and swollen skies, the clouds themselves portending some greater storm in the offing, seemed to agree with his conclusions thus far.

  Which seemed about right for the whole situation as far as X was concerned. The agreement of rain. The coming storm not yet here.

  Question Number Two.

  Except that he hadn’t really answered Question Number One satisfactorily. Why had Broxin not updated him in two weeks? Why were they coming back directly to Utopion? Was she a spy for one of the House of Reason factions? Was she making her own play?

  He felt he’d vetted her deeply. She had no meaningful connections that had survived the fiasco that had brought her into his web. And beyond that, she seemed one of those not-yet-totally-disillusioned types that gathered like hyenas in the intel community. Like she still believed everyone was on the same side, mostly.

  And if she was making her own play, delivering the keys to the Doomsday Fleet to some high House of Reason Mandarin… well… then there was nothing that could be done. His opportunity to control things at this stage had passed him by if that was about to happen. He, X, would have to start new machinations.
He would adjust under the shifting sands of the House of Reason’s quest to hold on to power. This play had failed.

  But he didn’t know if it had failed just yet.

  There was still the farmhouse, out in Northern Utopion, on an island off the coast. The LZ was set up. If the ship went there, as protocols indicated, then Broxin was still in play.

  Question Two. Would he be able to control the flow of information?

  If Broxin landed at the farm… then yes.

  If not… then no.

  Of course.

  So, what to do if “yes”?

  Go to the Legion and tell the generals the Doomsday Fleet had been unleashed and would support their efforts to retake Tarrago. Bypass the House of Reason—who will, thought X, attempt to assassinate me as soon as I throw in with the Legion. They would be very upset their new toy didn’t fall directly into their hands and was instead being used to save the Republic as it had been originally intended to do.

  What to do if “no”?

  If Broxin takes the keys to the House of Reason?

  Then there were three choices here.

  One… save the Republic.

  Two… let the Republic fall into this Goth Sullus’s hands and actually see if the Benevolent Dictator Theory played out like the dissident thinkers always hoped it would.

  Except no one knew who, or what, Goth Sullus was. What his motivations were. What his endgame might be. And in the world of Nether Ops, that was just completely unacceptable.

  The unknown scared the hell out of the intelligence community. Generally, they could manipulate anyone with the usual vices. Power. Sex. Drugs. Credits.

  Everyone, in X’s experience, responded on some level to these base motivations. Very few were actual intellectual monks such as X. Very few enjoyed playing the game for the sake of playing the game. Most wanted to win, and would do anything to do so.

  And no one knew anything about Goth Sullus.

  That was scary.

  Option two was to do a deal with the devil, or an angel… who knew exactly what Goth Sullus was other than something that needed to now be reckoned with. That was X’s least favorite solution. It made him shudder, and he sipped his tea and wished for his cat that he did not yet have.

  He did not like the unknown any more than the rest of the intelligence community did. He didn’t like people who couldn’t be manipulated, gamed, or calculated. He didn’t like Goth Sullus.

  Option Three. Release the Legion. Break the system and let them purge everything and everyone. They would get six months. At the end of that, the House of Reason would stand elections again, and hopefully, the Legion would have gutted the rot and cored out the worms. Six months wasn’t quite long enough… but it was all the Constitution allowed.

  It would have to do.

  That was Option Three. Let the Legion go Legion on the galaxy.

  X did not shudder when he considered the death toll. Galaxy-wide, it would be phenomenal.

  And what if the Legion didn’t surrender power as it was supposed to at that point?

  Well, thought X, sipping tea once more. There was that to consider.

  And without meaning to, he had answered Question Three. Which was… Which way would he, X, go?

  Save the Republic?

  Ally with this Sullus?

  Release the Legion?

  It all depended on who showed up at the farm in the next two hours. It was amazing to think that such grand alterations in the galactic scheme of things had to be decided on the “weather” any given situation presented. In his mind there were no grand schemes, only long games.

  He tapped the intercom.

  The front girl answered. “Yes?”

  “Have Carn bring the shuttle in. I need to run up to the farm.”

  Pause.

  “Shall I accompany you, sir?”

  “Won’t be necessary. Just need to check on something. We’ll be back in the evening.”

  “All right then,” said the girl cheerily enough. “Take a coat, sir, the storm’s broken up that way. Heavy rain for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “I shall,” replied X. Then he drained his cup and went to meet the shuttle.

  ***

  It was an uneasy feeling that wouldn’t leave X that caused him to put the sniper team the Carnivale kept on constant ready out in the woods beyond the landing pad in the field next to the farm. The Carnivale used the farm for training. Nothing up to legionnaire standards, but for purposes of spycraft it was enough. Device training. Explosives. Sidearms. Knifework. Code school. Hand-to-hand with an emphasis on strangulations. All of that was taught within the three ancient stone buildings, erected most likely after the first explorers settled on Utopion who cared how long ago.

  The farmhouse had a small staff led by Sergeant Major Avers, an old tail man who’d served in the Legion and taught tracking, following, and strangulations. He ran the old place just right for X’s taste, and of course it would be nice to see the old fox and nip at a bit of scotch while they waited for the Forresaw to appear.

  It was raining quite heavily up at the farm. The shuttle dropped off X and lifted off, leaving the tiny pad clear for the Forresaw to arrive. In the quiet that followed the departure of the transport shuttle, X listened to the rain falling beyond the landing site. He scanned the trees only occasionally, knowing that there was a sniper and a spotter out there waiting to do what they did.

  Already.

  Waiting.

  And still, X had no idea why he’d ordered the team there. Just that uneasy feeling, an unquiet ghost wandering the old house he called his mind.

  He wrapped himself tighter in his coat and made his way to the main house. Sergeant Major Avers had a fire going in the old riverstone hearth.

  X wondered how he was going to play out the next move in this long game. There was every chance there might be a double-cross here. Or even an arrest by the House of Reason for some wonderfully trumped-up charge like high treason. They could make it stick long enough to make sure he went to his first court date. But then they would get a look, from some anonymous courier, at some portion of the files he kept on all of them.

  And he would be free again shortly thereafter.

  He wondered how long he could play that game.

  He opened the door to the large cottage and saw the sergeant major waiting in a high-backed chair. The older man smiled his rose-cheeked smile and clinked two tumblers together. For the rest of the afternoon, as they waited for the Forresaw to make planetfall, they had at the scotch and talked about old times, old friends, and nothing of Nether Ops.

  In Nether Ops no one ever talked about Nether Ops, because Nether Ops didn’t exist. Not even in your memories.

  Toward dark, the rain let up and the Forresaw finally cleared approach traffic and made her way down onto the landing pad. They heard her big engines whining as she came in through the storm, repulsors fighting the embrace of greedy gravity, and then some low and barely caught note of gears coming out as the ship approached the pad. Through the cottage’s lone window they saw the landing lights cut the field. It washed over the darkness inside the cottage.

  Engines flared, and the ship was down.

  “C’mon,” said X to the sergeant major. “Let’s go see what our strays are up to.”

  The sergeant major stood and groaned, putting his hand to his back.

  “You worried, Chief?” he said to X rather casually in the quiet putting-on-coats moment that followed.

  X turned. Was it that obvious? He’d gone to great lengths to seem rather blasé about the whole mess. When really, all the options and questions had been turning over and over again and again in his mind throughout the long afternoon of scotch-sipping.

  X shook his head. Then asked, “Boys in the woods?”

  The sergeant major nodded solemnly, no trace of the joviality of their drink on his stone-cold hard man’s face. “Aye.”

  And then they were out into the early dark, seeing the looming For
resaw, glowering over the landing pad like some evil and unwanted bird come home to roost. The boarding ramp was already coming down, throwing a shaft of internal bright light out onto the pad.

  That apparently peeved the sergeant major as he trudged along through the field behind the long loping strides of X, who, though bent, was tall. “They’re supposed to cut to light discipline when we’re doing business. They know that. I trained them to do that. Why don’t they do that?”

  Doing business is code for Nether Ops work.

  X sees only Andien Broxin coming down the ramp. No ghost team. No little girl. And this makes him deeply uncomfortable.

  He pats the holdout blaster in his coat pocket, because something is wrong. This has all gone wrong. He pats the tiny blaster as though he is searching for a pack of cigarettes, or a pen, or something not a blaster, because he is, after all, just an old man who once had all the close up and personal business of spying and killing.

  The Forresaw’s engines have gone silent by the time X stops just twenty feet away from Captain Broxin at the bottom of the ramp.

  His protégé.

  His Judas?

  “We were worried about you,” he says. The fields all around them smell of fresh wet grass, and the woods are heady in their cold night-misted fragrances. X knows this moment. This moment of killing. Because everything is so real. So vibrant. So wish-you-were-anywhere-but-here.

  It’s a shame to kill the girl. She had potential. But everybody does at this level of the game.

  And… you might as well know you’re going to do a thing before you do it.

  What she says next will determine everything for X. He’s noticed she’s strapped. Carrying her blaster.

  The girl says nothing.

  Uncertain, X tries, “Where is Hutch? The rest?”

  Especially the little girl who was so important to this mission. Maydoon’s little girl. Prisma Maydoon. The key to the Doomsday Fleet.

  “Dead,” says Broxin, and X is surprised at himself more than he is at the answer. Of course, there was the potential that all of them could have been killed. But he hadn’t really considered it even as everything began to go strange in this long afternoon of mysterious ships suddenly appearing. The truth was, he’d been concentrating on the long game instead of thinking about the actual mission. Maybe he was getting old?