Read Dark Space: Origin for Free Online

incredulous. “So you’re just going to leave us here?” She heard the sounds of a struggle in the background. It sounded like Delayn.
    “Restrain that man! I’m sorry, Defiant. We did what we could.” And with that, the comms went silent, and the Interloper disappeared from the star map, cloaking once more.
    The first of the enemy warheads hit their bow with a bright flash of light and the deck shook underfoot. The lights dimmed as the shields took most of the available power to absorb that hit, and Caldin traded horrified glances with the nearest crewman—Deck Officer Gorvan, the weapons chief. He seemed frozen with shock, his eyes wide and his eyebrows raised, as if asking her what he should do.
    “Return fire!” she shouted.
    *  *  *
    —THE YEAR 3 AE—
     
    Destra stood on the steaming, glassy black plains of a recently cooled magma field. The residual heat of it was enough to keep the ice back—for now. She stared up at the stars, watching as one which was far larger than the rest, moved quickly across the sky.
    It must be a meteor, she thought.
    She saw it begin to glow, lighting up the night as it hit Ritan’s upper atmosphere, and then came the sonic boom of its passage. A frigid wind raised hairs on the back of her neck, and she turned in a quick circle, to make sure nothing was creeping up on her while she stood mesmerized by the rare event.
    There were no rictans on the ground that she could see—not that she could see very well—and as for predators hunting her from the sky, she would hear the loud whoosh of wings just before one of the giant bats descended on her, and that would give her at least a few seconds’ warning.
    Thanks to them, however, the rictans mostly left her alone. Months ago she’d discovered a bat cave at the end of an icy canyon. She’d harvested enough guano there that she could mask her scent whenever she left home— home was the Sythian shell fighter she’d landed in. That alien spacecraft was her only sanctuary on the desolate netherworld which was Ritan. She remembered sleeping with Hoff inside that bubble of relative warmth and safety. Every night they’d slept together on the same improvised bed and held each other close for warmth and reassurance. Now she slept alone, shivering and afraid, waking up every hour with her eyes wide and darting, searching the shadows for some unseen predator.
    By her count it had been almost a month since Hoff had been killed by rictans, but it was hard to tell without a sun to divide the days from the nights. She hadn’t been the same since he’d died. She’d buried him under a mound of snow and rocks, but rictans had dug him up the next day and finished what they’d started. If only she and Hoff had found the bat cave together. That guano would have saved his life.
    Since Hoff had died she’d become even skinnier, if that were possible. Hoff had been the hunter, but now it was up to her, and it wasn’t easy to get the ever-blunting point of her bone spear through the tough, hirsute hide of the ice walkers. It was even harder to drag one of them to a place of safety where she could skin and gut her kill. She’d always been the one keeping watch while Hoff had done that.
    With a grimace, Destra turned away from the falling meteor and limped back to her sanctuary. The injuries she’d sustained from the rictans that had killed Hoff still haunted her. The dark silhouette of the shell grew on the horizon. Ritan was always dark. Sometimes, she’d wake up on a particularly smoke and ash-clouded day and step outside to find that it was too dark to even find her hand in front of her face. On days like that she’d wonder with a sudden, cold sweat of panic if she were going blind.
    The faint light inside the shell belied that, but her tendency toward irrational, paranoid, and even outright crazy thoughts grew with every passing day.
    Suddenly, the world flashed with blinding light and deafening sound, and she had another irrational