The Dark Before the Light (The Guild Wars Book 5), page 1
The Dark Before the Light
Book Five of The Guild Wars
by
Tim C. Taylor
PUBLISHED BY: Seventh Seal Press
Copyright © 2020 Tim C. Taylor
All Rights Reserved
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko
Original Art by Ricky Ryan
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Dedication
For the real Obadiah Jex, my ancestor and 18th-century Suffolk adventurer. If he’d been born in the right century, he’d have aced his VOWs and toured the galaxy as a merc. And gotten paid. A lot.
Contents
Part 1: The Poison Within an Airless Past
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Part 2: The Light Must Not Die
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Part 3: Consummation Delayed is yet Sweeter Still
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-One
Chapter Eighty-Two
Chapter Eighty-Three
Chapter Eighty-Four
Chapter Eighty-Five
Chapter Eighty-Six
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety-One
Chapter Ninety-Two
Chapter Ninety-Three
Chapter Ninety-Four
Chapter Ninety-Five
Chapter Ninety-Six
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Chapter Ninety-Eight
About the Author
Join the Merc Guild
Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy
Excerpt from Book One of The Progenitors’ War
Excerpt from Book One of the Singularity War
Excerpt from Book One of the Mako Saga
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Part 1: The Poison Within an Airless Past
“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity
Chapter One
Free Trader Unlikely Regret, In Hyperspace Transit
At the top of the ladderwell, Strike Leader Harak-Jash squeezed his body through the smoothly shrouded opening to Deck 7. After ducking under the bracing beam, he allowed himself the indulgence of stretching all seven of his limbs as he pushed along the passageway in zero gravity, making occasional propulsive taps against the overhead.
Inwardly, he admonished himself for the contempt he felt for the spaceship that had rescued him, which he was now trapped inside of until they emerged from hyperspace. Such emotional attitudes clouded clear judgment. They corrupted information gathering even more, and that was the mission Harak-Jash was about.
He admitted he was exaggerating the deficiencies of this vessel—he didn’t truly need to squeeze his body to fit through the hole between decks. Nonetheless, no Goltar ship would have an inter-deck transit route like this that couldn’t be navigated at speed, and not at all in power armor.
Unlikely Regret is not a warship, he reminded himself. It’s a time-ravaged smuggler’s vessel crewed by secondary and tertiary alien species. Assess it as such without value judgments.
A crewman approached him, bounding along the corridor using the weak attraction between its boots and a channel marked in blue paint along the deck. It was a Blevin, a humanoid air-breather species with leathery skin. They were a relatively new species to spread in numbers from their homeworld, but even among the lowlife dregs of the Spine Nebula, they had rapidly acquired a reputation for petty dishonesty.
Blevins were not to be trusted.
Harak-Jash verified that this particular Blevin’s ear was decorated with three shiny baubles colored blue, yellow, and blue again.
The alien bounded toward him on an intercept path. He slapped the creature back with one tentacle, cracking his beak in annoyance.
Hidden within this display of Goltar dominance, he’d passed two 5,000-credit red diamond chips.
Harak-Jash continued along the narrow warren of tunnels to the head. He availed himself of the facilities—the better to make his presence here appear credible—and then retraced his journey back to the narrow funnel and the ladderwell to Deck 9.
How does the humanoid crew not break their bones when the ship’s under thrust? he wondered to himself. Logic dictated that the ship’s design must be functional, despite its appearance as chaotic disaster. There was a lesson in there for him. Humanoids were not to be trusted. That much was obvious. But humanoids could also be cunning, or at least they had an ability to adapt to their environment that gave the appearance of being cunning. He’d better not forget that.
The hole down to the ladder was curved like a vortex funnel, smoothed by layers of paint laid down over centuries that buried the bracing beam bolstering the hull’s integrity.
If the Blevin conspirator hadn’t informed him, Harak-Jash doubted he would have noticed the access panel set into the aft bulkhead beneath the beam. He slid it open and crawled inside.
This time, he really did have to squeeze his body to fit inside the narrow space.
The Goltar strike leader secured the hatch behind him and got to work. He knew he wouldn’t have long.
* * *
Commander Henrik Gadzo floated into the burned-out shield generator compartment.
At first, he thought the lights inside the space had failed, but as his eyes adjusted to what
“I told you it was a total write-off,” said Chief Engineer Lawrence, who had stayed behind at the hatch. “Did you not believe me?”
“We all have friends dead or missing,” Gadzo stated firmly, though without rancor. “Which is why I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. This time. No, Mr. Lawrence. I have every confidence in the damage assessments I’ve been given. I just need to see with my own eyes how close we came to sharing the fate of Honest Profit, and so many others.”
Gadzo was the first officer of Unlikely Regret, a free trader that took the ‘free’ in its name very seriously. Especially when considering such matters as import tariffs and trading restrictions.
Despite recent conversions that included the installation of a 500-megawatt particle cannon in what used to be the main hold, Unlikely Regret would never be a warship. But in recent weeks it had experienced multiple space battles, its crew having volunteered to serve (at an excellent pay rate) as Spine Patriots in dirtside operations against the dark forces who had subdued the nebula for centuries without ever openly declaring themselves.
Even the skipper was missing, picked up by a genuine warship, a battlecruiser called Midnight Sun. Whether that ancient ship was ally, friend, or foe, was proving tricky to keep track of in the rapidly shifting allegiances of the conflict boiling through the nebula.
Gadzo’s trajectory across the compartment came to a bumping halt against a radiator outlet. He grabbed one of the curved tubes to steady himself, but it snapped off in his hands, blowing a puff of black particles into the air.
The tube should have been filled with toxic fluids, but he faced no danger. Its contents had boiled away when the shield had overloaded in the recent battle.
He needed to see this himself, because no matter how confusing the battle allegiances were with the Scythe, the Goltar, Endless Night, and the Patriots, the damage here was terrifyingly simple to understand. His command had come within a hair’s breadth of destruction. Until the skipper made it back—if he made it back—it was Gadzo’s responsibility to keep everybody alive.
And that required more than fighting space battles.
“Commander?”
The words came from the translator pendant around Gadzo’s neck, but the voice that had spoken was Blevin. A female.
Laverna was waiting at the hatch.
“Thank you, Chief Engineer,” said Gadzo. “I’ll seal up the compartment when I’ve finished.”
Lawrence looked from the first officer to the Blevin crewman and back. He shrugged. “Looking the other way. Aye, sir.”
When the engineer had left them to it, Gadzo asked Laverna, “Did he bite?”
“Strike Leader Harak-Jash is in the access space now. He certainly gave the impression that he’s bought our ploy.”
“It’s the best we can hope for. I want a report on what he’s accessing as soon as possible.”
“I’ll do my best, but it’s risky,” said Laverna. “I can report on the data tripwires I installed myself, but without the skipper or Commander Rachid, I don’t know which data to protect. I allowed the Goltar access to Level 1 data, and he’ll have to work to break into Level 2. My guess is he’ll expose a little of Level 2 and never realize Level 3 is even there.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Crewman. If Level 2 is the data we let people find if they work hard enough for it, maybe Level 3 is what we’re supposed to know about, so we don’t suspect the existence of Level 4 data. Only the skipper can tell you that. I don’t know any more than you. I swear.”
“Just wanted to make sure you understood the risk, Commander.”
“Acknowledged. In the skipper’s absence, it’s my call. I can’t see that there are any secrets to find that would interest the Goltar. Nothing they wouldn’t find out easily enough for themselves anyway. It’s the data sniffer you implanted that’ll be revealing secrets, and it’ll be Harak-Jash and his squids who’ll be giving them up. We’ve nothing to hide.”
* * *
Harak-Jash found himself inside an access space that was designed as a means to link with the ship’s vital systems from this zone of the ship if damage prevented access from the more usual points.
The bribed Blevin had left a slate sprouting wired connections that hooked into boxes mounted at the far end of the crawlspace. A circle floated at the center of the slate’s flat 2D-display.
Harak-Jash tapped it with one tentacle. Immediately, his pinplants reported an access request, which he let through. His mind pinlinked to the slate and via it to the Unlikely Regret’s systems. It was the ship’s memories he wished to plunder, but before he could, the Blevin’s face appeared in his pinview, the overlay his pinplants added to his natural senses.
“I’ve hacked through every firewall and encryption veil I’m aware of. There may be more security protocols I don’t know about, but if you bypass them, you’ll trigger alerts. I’m a de-security specialist, which makes me better at this shit than you, Goltar. You have five minutes after this message terminates. After that, your link will shut down and burn evidence of its intrusion. Good luck.”
The alien’s head disappeared, to be replaced by a schematic of the ship and her many systems.
Harak-Jash had no doubt the alien was correct in its claim to be superior at this kind of work. He was a strike leader, a specialist in small infantry unit tactics, not data thief scum like the easily bought Blevin. Even strike team leaders understood the importance of intelligence gathering, though, and were given rudimentary training. The most realistic outcome was that he would acquire data now that the analysts could pour over when he reunited with his unit.
Maybe then they’d learn who the Spine Patriots really were and what their agenda was.
He mentally gestured through the ship systems until he hit the data logs and began transferring them over shortrange pinlink to the storage device in a pouch on his waist.
Travel times, port fees paid, cargo manifests, personnel files, crew payments, security surveillance footage, environmental load on the life-support systems, F11 consumption patterns: the streams of data poured into his recorder.
Without a doubt, there’d be incriminating evidence of illegal activities. Whether Goltar analysts could turn this deluge of data into valuable information seemed unlikely to him, but that was the genius of data analysts—to take seemingly benign and unrelated information and see the pattern behind it.
While his passive data trawl was underway, Harak-Jash also went actively seeking useful information in the most fertile hunting ground of all—the financial records.
There was an ancient Goltar saying. If you want to find your true enemy, follow the money. Many species had similar sayings.
He uncovered large credit sums moved into holding accounts and left there. Income had flooded into an account named “Olvanjie” without a link to any obvious cargo shipment. Perhaps this Olvanjie was the paymaster of the Spine Patriots.
The data deluge shut down.
His time was up.
The slate now displayed a three-way split showing camera views of the approaches to the access compartment.
It looked like his exit was clear.
Harak-Jash seized his chance and left, climbing back down the ladderwell to Deck 9.
On the way, he passed the Blevin making her way up to Deck 8. They brushed, and in the exchange Harak-Jash surreptitiously deposited two more 5,000-credit red diamond chips.
* * *
“Did it work?” Gadzo’s face enquired from the slate.
“Like a charm,” Laverna replied. “My data sniffer implanted in both the target’s pinfeed and the portable info-repository he scraped our data into. Let me be clear, Commander; I haven’t actually hacked the Goltar’s pinplants, but I have added a layer that might let us see what he gets up to and where. As for what he got of our data, the poor squid had no idea what he was doing. He barely penetrated the Level 2 secrets we take such care to make it not too hard to penetrate. He mostly scraped interior camera logs. If the Goltar want to watch tens of thousands of hours of empty passageways and endless examples of Leading Spacer Sevig-Rhu explaining his unfettered sexual imagination, then they’re welcome to it.”
