Darkspace didn’t get its name for being a particularly brightly lit space. In fact, the only thing you could see there at all was a solitary black hole, way off in the distance, which always looked…. Wrong, while you were in there. Light didn’t travel right, sound didn’t travel right…

  But the destination seemed…. Even more empty.

  Sure, you could see the stars, off in the distance. But… there was no sun, no worlds… just… nothing. Literally just a set of random grid coordinates, with nothing picked up on the telescopes.

  As the trio stared at the display, Kyle slowly shook his head. “...Not a goddamned thing. Is this… some sort of joke? Did they just trick us into coming out here to make us waste a week floating in the void for some reason?”

  Poisseux leaned forward, adjusting herself a bit, clearly still not quite comfortable in her own skin, or the dull grey skinsuit she’d chosen; not seeming to favor the dark green Kyle had preferred. “More likely, this is just a meeting site. Someone from the base will show up, pick us up, and take us there. Either leaving the ship here, or taking the whole ship and keeping it inside a carrier for the trip.”

  Elise nodded. “Yeah. There’s cargo ships that could fit the whole Sapper in there, though that’s a bit odd, most of them just use masses of modular containers. I bet thats what’s going on. Any second now….”

  The display shifted. One moment, nothing. The next? The narrow shape of a United Worlds destroyer appeared; a long, sleek design aside that bulged out near the engines in the back, painted a dull black that seemed to soak up the light.

  Void paint was fairly popular; it was easier to spot than stealth panels like the ones on the Sapper, but also didn’t rely on rebroadcasting images of stars, and had no active components at all.

  Now that he thought about it…. Actually having a paintjob and not being dull black was the unusual bit, reserved for either older ships, navies trying to match a theme, or lunatics like the Skulls.

  Or carriers which were never meant to be on the front line.

  It only took a few seconds before the comms buzzed.

  ~ISS Sapper, this is the UWS Jungle Viper. Shut down all active sensors and communications devices, and turn off your running lights except at one single airlock. We’re going to be wrapping you up in a bubble and hauling you somewhere else. That airlock is going to be the only way in or out of the bubble until we open it back up. Shut down all engines once the wrap-up process starts. Once its finished, gravity will be towards the back of the ship from your perspective. You’ll hear three warning chimes before that happens, then ten seconds later, acceleration.~

  There was a brief pause. ~Once the airlock is secure on our side, you’ll hear three more chimes, and will be allowed to enter. No weapons, no comm devices. Recording devices and computers can only be brought in if they have no transmit function. If you have transmitting implants, your NDA software should shut them down on its own. If not, let us know; we’d prefer not to have to kill you.~

  Kyle nodded. Tapped the comms button himself, and cycling over to lasers rather than a radio broadcast.

  “This is ISS Sapper actual. Three chimes. Confirmed. This will be our last transmission until the bubble pops, just letting you know it will take about three minutes to prep for the direction change. Powering off comms… now.”

  Of course, on the other end, they’d only be able to hear part of the word now. He just shut down the power, after all.

  Elise cycled through the system settings, shutting off running lights, checking through the ship… and nodded. “All good. I assume we want the upper airlock?”

  “Doubt they’d connect to the cargo bay, so yeah.” Kyle tapped a few buttons, bringing up the fabricator in the engineering bay; currently printing out the frame of another scout drone, and setting it to hold; an abrupt change in gravity could completely ruin the process and make it start over.

  “Elise, I think the galley is cleared out, but if you wouldn’t mind checking to be sure. Poisseux, if you wouldn’t mind checking the cargo bay, and let us know if we need to call for a delay. I’ll run through this deck real quick.”

  What followed was a quick scramble; the ship was usually kept fairly secure. Dishes in magnetic drawers. Cargo netted. Weapons locked down, and drones magnetically adhered to a surface.

  Better to be safe than sorry, though; Poisseux had been working on her fighter recently, and a wrench might cause some damage if it ended up in the wrong spot… or even worse, a disconnected engine might go rebounding through the bay.

  When the three tones sounded, Kyle stopped where he was; made sure the magnets in his boots were engaged… and just stood there, waiting, by the corner….

  As things suddenly started moving.

  He focused on his HUD for a moment as he could feel himself being pushed towards the back of the ship…. And he dialed in the telescopes. Just in time to watch… something… being draped over them.

  Mere moments after the darkness…. He could feel the subtle shift, as the Sapper entered Darkspace.

  Yup. That was just a transit point. He’d genuinely have no clue where the hell this base actually was.

  ***

  It took at least another two hours before the acceleration stopped… and they could feel gravity shifting again…. Pulling towards the… left side of the ship. Clearly, they had to put her at an odd angle to be able to dock up with whatever they were connecting to. On the plus side, it meant they’d be walking out of the top airlock, rather than climbing.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  All three of them were waiting in the airlock when the alarm sounded. Kyle in one of his normal engineering frames, while Elise and Poisseux had both changed into flat green skinsuits pulled from storage; not wanting to cut the comm devices out of their own custom suits.

  It made the trio look almost like a Republic boarding party… only.. Without any weapons, or the usual armor plating.

  When the last chime ended, Kyle reached out to press the button… and with a soft hiss, the airlock checked for atmosphere on the other side… then opened.

  Two women; not much taller than Poisseux’s new body; wearing heavy navy-blue combat armor, with built-in wrist-mounted weapons, their faces and expressions hidden by armored helmets, stood inside; flanking a man in a more grey-blue suit, and with… a labcoat on over it.

  He had a long, brown-grey, frazzled beard, his right eye was cybernetic, and his skin was… patchwork. Some dark, some light; either an affectation or a skin condition. Either way…

  Kyle extended a hand. “Kyle Huxley, captain of the Sapper. Permission to board?”

  The lab-coated man grinned. “Doctor Lewis Blank…. Blank…” He chuckled. “I can’t even tell you my name. Glorious! The head researcher here is… Doctor Pamela Blank. Hah! This is going to make things so damned stupid. I’ve only used Doctor Blank’s first name maybe seven times since I’ve met her, and…”

  He looked down; and raised his labcoat. ‘Dr. Bertholme’ was printed on it. “They can read. My name is on my labcoat and on my uniform. Can I call myself Doctor Blank now? I…”

  He shook his head… and then grabbed Kyle’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “Well. Welcome to the hole, mister Huxley. I’ve been told to give you a complete update on our voidborn organics research, and that you’re allowed to look at other research, but not access the databases. This is some of the dumbest bullshit I’ve ever heard of, but still. Welcome!”

  “...Thanks, doctor Bertholme.”

  “They usually call me Doc Bert. …Bert. I can say that, but not Bertholme? Wait. Why can I say it now?”

  Elise leaned forward. “I suspect its because Kyle said your last name, Doctor.”

  “...But he could read… you know what, I’m not going any further down that road. Trying to peek into the minds of our programmers is madness. Come on. Let me give you the tour. You can leave when you’d like, but I’m told your NDA software won’t let you actually go to civilization for a while after, so might as well hang out a few days.”

  He turned, marching towards another airlock at the end of a long, silvery hall… and called back over his shoulder. “This is gonna be amazing. You wouldn’t believe the sort of progress we’ve made in the last few days. Your samples are so different from what we got from the Empire! And the new ones we just got today when the follow-up team came back… amazing!”

  Kyle blinked. They’d… already been out to the system to get more samples? Well. This promised to be interesting.

  ***

  As they stepped through the doorway, yet another armored marine was waiting for them; looking like a copy of the first two, they stopped inside a larger chamber, with a heavily armored door… and just stood there, seemingly pointlessly.

  Kyle felt… strange. As if his implant were… humming? Some sort of a glowing blue panel on the left-hand wall was likely responsible.

  The doctor glanced back. “Scanning. I’ve got a governor on my implant, and no comms. You people are special, for some reason… but still no comms.”

  They simply stood there for an interminably long scan… before the next door opened.

  “Looks like you passed! Come on. This’ll be great.”

  Kyle glanced at the guards…. As they followed them down the next hallway. Now that they were inside, the corridors were larger… with orbs every few meters in the ceiling, undoubtedly defensive weapons, or cameras… or both.

  As they proceeded, they walked by numerous doors; all armored; all with security checkpoints; and stopped a few hundred meters in, by ‘Lab 017’... where the door opened to reveal…

  An enormous, open space, at least big enough for a football stadium or a shooting range.. And containing the largest set of field emitters he’d ever seen.

  Each of the towering spires had numerous tiny spokes sticking out like radial antenna, forming a massive circle… except they came down from the ceiling as well, so more like a sphere… over a hundred meters across.

  And on the inside… a dragon. It was tiny… just a baby, maybe ten, fifteen meters long. But it was floating around, inquisitively rubbing its head against the barrier it was trapped inside.

  The doctor stopped, staring up at it. At least a dozen other men and women in the blue-grey skinsuits were there, talking, looking at instruments… though five of them were gathered around a table which had another dragon on it… this one sliced open, pinned to the surface.

  Kyle almost felt sorry for the creature, but he wasn’t sure if it was alive or dead… and just turned to Bert. “So. What’s so amazing that you’ve found here?”

  The doctor made a ‘follow’ gesture, sweeping his hand towards the table and the partially dissected creature. “This stuff is crazy. Those ‘Kraken’ you met? They’re the same species! Just with some parasites in them that dig into the brain. We’ve learned so many awesome things. Like… Deb, can you do the thing again?”

  One of the women at the table rolled her eyes, the dark-skinned woman reaching down, tapping out a sequence on a keypad attached to the side of the table… and suddenly the creature’s tail curled up, pointing at the ceiling.

  “We’re learning how to control them! The parasite sinks into the nervous system of the dragon and uses it to move around and do things. And we’ve learned how to do the same, only better. These samples have just… exploded our understanding of their biology, their nervous systems…”

  Kyle nodded, as the woman directed the creature to lay its tail back out… and from the pulsing glow of its internal organs, it must still be alive. “...Any luck as far as the Kraken goes, and its whole space-warping thing?”

  Doctor Bert shrugged. “Its gonna take some time. We observed a few of them in the field, retrieving the samples, and got plenty of readings. But we want to try to tag one, and get readings on it while its still alive. Which…. Has been a big ask.”

  He studied the creature, and looked out at the display. “... But… if you can control one of the little ones.. Doesn’t that mean you just… plant the sensors on it… infect it.. And let it go?”

  The doctor chuckled. “That’s the current plan. We’re gonna plant thousands of sensors in one, grow it up over time, docile, under control… then release it with a bunch of the parasites on it. That’s gonna take some time, though. In the meantime, we gather what data we can, and work on our ability to control these babies.”

  He patted the table the creature was pinned to. “After seeing the way these Krakens work, the brass wants us to make implants for these Dragons to let us control them in battle, or at the very least not see our ships as hostile. Oh.”

  He glanced at Kyle. “And based on the agreement, we’re supposed to show you any other ‘voidborn organic life’. So. you want to see what the other ones can do? Its not as awesome, but I promise, its still pretty damn cool!”