Darkest, p.1
Darkest, page 1
* * *
Darkest
DARKEST is the third book in the Dark Series.
A beacon sent from space has sent its message. To the rescue comes the HMSS Attenborough, a ship crewed by the Royal Navy but with a mind of her own, steered by the only girl who can talk to it. And not all of the crew are on the same mission.
In the Dark, a dictator is dead, leaving a reunited Underfolk and Overfolk. But a dead dictator always leaves a power vacuum.
* * *
PAUL ARVIDSON is a fifty-ish ex lighting designer who lives in rural Somerset. He juggles his non-author time bringing up the kids and playing D&D to avoid lockdown insanity. The Dark Series is his first Science-Fiction Fantasy series.
* * *
Darkest
a novel by
Paul L Arvidson
ISBN-13: 978-1393408291
ISBN-10: 1393408291
Ed. Sue Meade at No Stone Unturned editing and cover by betibup33 from thebookcoverdesigner.com, both with grateful thanks.
Created with Draft2Digital
Available online from paularvidson.co.uk and real-life bookshops.
© Copyright Paul L Arvidson 2021
For Cheryl, Leah, and Nenna
Contents
Chapter 1 - Ship
Chapter 2 - Ship
Chapter 3 - Ship
Chapter 4 - Ship
Chapter 5 - Ship
Chapter 6 - Ship
Chapter 7 - Ship
Chapter 8 - Ship
Chapter 9 - Ship
Chapter 10 - Ship
Chapter 11 – Dark
Chapter 12 - Dark
Chapter 13 - Dark
Chapter 14 - Dark
Chapter 15 – Dark
Chapter 16 – Dark
Chapter 17 – Dark
Chapter 18 – Dark
Chapter 19 - Dark
Chapter 20 - Ship
Chapter 21 - Ship
Chapter 22 - Ship
Chapter 23 – Ship
Chapter 24 – Ship
Chapter 25 – Ship
Chapter 26 - Ship
Chapter 27 – Dark
Chapter 28 – Dark
Chapter 29 - Dark
Chapter 30 – Dark
Chapter 31 – Dark
Chapter 32 – Dark
Chapter 33 – Dark
Chapter 34 – Dark
Chapter 35 - Ship
Chapter 36 – Ship
Chapter 37 – Ship
Chapter 38 – Ship
Chapter 39 – Ship
Chapter 40 - Ship
Chapter 41 - Ship
Chapter 42 - Dark
Chapter 43 - Dark
Chapter 44 - Dark
Chapter 45 - Dark
Chapter 46 - Dark
Chapter 47 - Dark
Chapter 48 - Dark
Chapter 49 – Ship
Chapter 50 - Ship
Chapter 51 - Ship
Chapter 52 - Ship
Chapter 53 - Ship
Chapter 54 - Ship
Chapter 55 - Ship
Chapter 56 - Dark
Chapter 57 - Dark
Chapter 58 - Dark
Chapter 59 - Dark
Chapter 60 - Dark
Chapter 61 - Dark
Chapter 62 - Dark
Chapter 63 - Dark
Chapter 64 - Ship
Chapter 65 - Ship
Chapter 66 - Ship
Chapter 67 - Ship
Chapter 68 - Ship
Chapter 69 - Ship
Chapter 70 - Dark
Chapter 71 - Dark
Chapter 72 - Dark
Chapter 73 - Dark
Chapter 74 - Dark
Chapter 75 - Dark
Chapter 76 - Dark
Chapter 77 – Dark
Chapter 78 - Dark
Thank you
What to read next?
* * *
Darkest
Chapter 1 - Ship
THE VAST SKELETAL CYLINDER called The Yard rotated majestically, end-on to the Earth. Procurement Officer Richard Purves always imagined it like a cigarette about to be stubbed out on the planet. He’d long since lost the magic of space-travel and seeing massive numbers of ships lined up next to each other in one place did nothing for him. Not so his niece, Caroline. After much negotiation, she’d persuaded her mother and then her uncle to let her come. Lena’s wide eyes gleamed from deep in her spacesuit. For Richard, it was another day at the office, and he needed to find a suitable salvage hulk that could be recommissioned for the next chugging-about task required by the British Navy, a task that someone in procurement had been performing for his or her Majesty for six hundred-odd years. He didn’t suppose that the likelihood of finding a decent hulk to purchase in this particular shipyard was all that different either. He gazed down the row of abandoned freighters, mining vessels and leaky pleasure cruisers and sighed, misting his visor.
“Uncle Richard?”
Lena was a well behaved ten-year-old, but hell could she talk. Having no children of his own and no way to hand this one back till the shuttle touched down in Glasgow, today was becoming a lengthy affair. The tugging on his suit was not endearing her to him.
“Uncle Richard?”
“What?” Then because she’d jumped, “Sorry, you startled me. What were you saying?”
“I—was going to say, what about this pretty rainbow one?”
Lena indicated an unpromising-looking haulage vessel, unmarked, unloved and, well he’d think of other ‘uns’ later. It would just about fit the size specs he’d been given but it would blow his refit budget for now and the next three years. He drew in a breath.
“I like her!” said Lena, jumping, “can we pick her?”
And where the hell had she got rainbows from? Richard wondered how long ago it was that he’d had that kind of imagination. Had she seen hydraulic fluid or something else leaking he’d missed? He retraced his steps to the battered metallic hulk and peered under it, asking absently “How do you know it’s a her?”
“She told me.”
Chapter 2 - Ship
RICHARD PURVES WAS tired. Not just standard procurement-officer-of-Her-Majesty’s-Navy tired, but bone-deep-half-way-through-the-tricky-stage-of-a-complicated-procurement kind of tired. What he really wanted was to lay his head down on the long oak committee table and nap. Instead, he smiled weakly and refilled his water glass. He could feel the stares from the other committee members boring into him.
His arm pad vibrated, telling him he had a personal message. He could read the header on his implant without even moving his eyes. A message, from his sister Rachel: Remember Lena’s Birthday! He dismissed the icon to read later. It was his niece who had got him into the mess with this sodding ship in the first place.
“Purves!”
Richard started.
“About a replacement Captain?” the chair of the committee, Admiral Jeremy Burleigh-Hall, was notorious for his inability to suffer fools. Richard had spent most of his career avoiding being one—until this ship. This sodding ship. Two captains had quit and it was only sea trials. Well, space trials, but in the British Navy it didn’t matter if your vessel sailed in the ocean or the vast void of interstellar nothingness, to Her Majesty’s Navy, a ship was a ship, terminology, ritual and all.
“I have a suggestion, if I may?” Rescue from Richards’ left, someone who he hadn’t noticed when he’d come in—a thirty-something woman, hair tied back in a tight bun, looked a bit like Rachel. “There is a candidate I’ve suggested before?”
“The Indian girl?” said the Admiral.
Richard had a coughing fit.
The woman-who-looked-like-Rachel swept her com stylus like a wand, painting a picture that could only be read from her perspective. “Her family is from Oxford. She graduated top of her class at Dartmouth. Her first degree is in Classics from Cambridge.”
“Oh, she’s a classicist!” the admiral bubbled.
Woman-who-looked-like-Rachel dropped her com-stylus. It clattered onto the shiny top of the massive antique mahogany table. Richard went to pick it up and then thought better of it. He put his hands either side of his face like blinkers on a horse and stared at the surface of the table. He wondered if someone from five hundred years ago would have stared at the same table, discussing ships built of wood.
“Richard, do you know this young girl?”
“I’ve not met Lieutenant Commander Varma personally but her service record is exemplary.”
“This would be her first ship...”
This was a yawning gap for Richard to fall into and he knew it. An untried captain in this role could cause all kinds of trouble. Especially with the newfound sensitivity of the mission. But so far, one experienced and one retiring captain had quit what was becoming a ‘problem job’, his choices were limited.
“Well—"
“Good,” said the admiral, “let’s make this one work, eh? You’ll meet her today, of course.” Not a question. The Navy had a way of doing that. “The Admiral requests...”
Richard gazed imploringly at Woman-who-looked-like-Rachel. She was focused on the next display she’d wanded into existence in front of her and was staring right through him, presumably requesting and requiring poor Lt Com Varma. “All sorted, you meet her at the international docking station at sixteen-hundred hours. I’ve sent her a briefing.”
Another message beeped on Richard’s arm pad. Don’t forget you’re taking Lena shopping this afternoon and she’s meant to be staying in Greenwich with you t onight as a treat.
Today was just getting better.
Chapter 3 - Ship
“UNCLE RICHIE, LOOK at this one!”
Only Lena called him Richie. He wished he were a Richie in some ways, but the name never really fit him. Same way some people were Andrew and never Andy. He couldn’t carry off that level of informality, he never had. Perhaps, it was how his parents had brought him up. And what they’d have thought of the spray-on outfit Lena was suggesting he buy for her, God alone knew. If she went home in it, Rachel would kill him. Was there a word to cover Best-Uncle-Whilst-Being-Worst-Brother-Ever?
He loosened his tie and cocked his head to one side in a way he hoped indicated quizzical disapproval. Then a flicker in the corner of his vision made him stop. He raised a finger to Lena and turned slightly to square up to the window of the shop to the side of him. The dress was astonishing. It was a full-length dress, so out-of-fashion these days, but this one had layers and layers of holo-projection over a plain white shift. Currently running on its advertising cycle was a waterfall. At the bottom of the window was a sign reading: “Shout me a new look and I’ll change!” He felt Lena at his shoulder.
“Booly!” she grinned. Richard rolled his eyes inwardly. It was pre-teen speak for good. She acknowledged the sign with a tilt of her head, “Think it works?”
Richard shrugged. He had also noticed the price, which was sat on the floor neatly written in a cursive hand and eye-watering.
“Forest!” said Lena. The water fell away and when it had, autumnal leaves were falling gently in the clearing of a beautiful forest, the likes of which were tricky to find in real-life England anymore.
“Wow,” she was open-mouthed. The dress interpreted her request, with a montage of large bright eyes with expanding pupils, open mouths and the word itself in a thousand different fonts.
Then the requests came thick and fast: stars, volcanoes, squirrels and finally, “Nothing!”
The dress promptly disappeared, not even a mannequin was visible beneath it, the two of them gazed instead at the back of the shop window.
“I. Have. To. Have. That. Dress.”
“Mmm, hmm,” Richard was already at the controls of his arm-pad, searching for the RFID tag of the shop and enacting the kind of expensive security protocols that still came as standard in a job in the Navy.
The window made a cheery crescendo of notes and rose accordingly. The other side of it, was of course, nothing like a shop at all. Sat on a lilac velvet cushion in a small gunmetal alcove was a flat white box. Lena held her hands intertwined in front of her, “Go ahead,” he said. Instead, she pivoted smoothly and wrapped him in an enormous hug. He tried to smile, extricate himself and make a noise to indicate urgency of the window closing.
“Oh, sorry,” she said and grabbed the package, beaming.
His arm pad buzzed: a timer. “We should go and eat,”
“Could I get changed into this, first?”
“Sure, I don’t know where though.”
“Isn’t the ship near here?”
“Yes? Oh no.”
“What Uncle Richie? Aw come on, let me see her again? Please?”
The thought of exposing her to the miasma of swearing that currently engulfed the ship was not appealing. If she went home with a newly expanded vocabulary Richard would again be lynched after having worked so hard to find a suitable gift.
“Could we not find a public bathroom?”
“What with all the druggies and the streeto-s?”
“In a restaurant—"
“You know how much room there is in those places. After you having spent so much money on my present, I don’t want to wreck it on the first outing. Come on, Uncle Richie, I’ll be good, I promise I won’t touch anything, pleee-ease.”
Richard huffed and turned in the direction of the mooring bays.
“Thank you, thank you thank you thank you!” She was nearly hopping as she fell into stride alongside him.
The trip to the dock was a maze of security doors, Lena kept up with the enthusiasm of one not yet eleven.
At the final door, a more substantial bulkhead plastered with security warnings was matched with a porthole to see through to the bay beyond. This was how Richard stepped to one side and avoided collision with a woman coming out in grey overalls and a bandana. She was brandishing a particle wrench, almost didn’t acknowledge them at all, and stomped off into the port.
“Grumpy,” said Lena.
“Stressed,” replied Richard, frowning. He glanced through the doorway to check for other cross engineers. “Mind the step,” he said over his shoulder. He saw the ship and sighed. It was still the same uninspiring grey metal hulk he’d left this morning. He puffed out air from the corner of his mouth, like a pipe-less Popeye, “Here she is, the freshly named RSSV Bonington.”
Lena nearly tripped headlong onto the dockside, she recovered, frowning at Richard. But when she craned round him to see the ship, she beamed from ear-to-ear.
Chapter 4 - Ship
LENA THOUGHT THE SHIP seemed less ‘glowy’ than when she’d seen it last. Still a beautiful pearlescent work of art, but something was different. Uncle Richard had stomped off in search of the Chief Engineer, having left Lena in his cabin with multi-coloured threats of the consequences of wandering before he got back.
The cabin was beautiful. No surface met another at right angles. The walls had a faint blue tinge, fading to white in the corners. There was a table in the centre of the room, like a waist-high mushroom with a fine flat top like the stem of an upturned wine glass. She placed her package carefully on it, and her hands on her hips. The oval door she’d come through closed like a wound, with a soft bong. It bonged again and a faint outline in pink marked where the door had been. Did that mean it was locked now? She’d have to take a chance.
She folded her jeans and placed them on the table next to the box, putting her pumps on the floor next to them. She looked down at her rather sad retro green and white tennis shoes. If this new dress were half as good in real life, she’d need to consider new footwear to go with it. Perhaps Mum would spring for a new pair of boots. She lifted the lid of the box and removed a layer of beautiful pink nanofiber packing with an animated note with a floating icon that she collected with a swipe of her arm pad, which beeped. She shrugged the dress over her head and then she checked her pad to see what instructions the icon had loaded. There were quite a lot. That could wait for another time, another day. There was a flashing notice saying demo. She made the click in her mouth she’d trained her pad to listen for when her hands were full. It seemed to be the cycle of images from the shop window, which she stopped on forest. That would do, this evening, she would be a forest. She stood and the whole wall next to the door had turned into a mirror. The dress was astonishing. She was sure it had a faint scent of pine too. If she didn’t walk too fast, she could get about without her tennis shoes showing. At least they had green stripes. She turned back to the screen and had the oddest feeling she was being watched. No, not being watched exactly. No-one was looking at her but rather a presence was aware of her. The ship. The ship was pleased she was enjoying herself.
She shook her head. This was odd in so many ways. Was she making all this up? Her mother and her Uncle Richard would certainly think so. A piece of tech couldn’t talk to her, not really. “You’re a big girl now...” was becoming an old favourite in their apartment, followed by entreaties to do or stop doing or believing something. She blinked at her reflection. How had the ship known to do that? She must have muttered something. She sighed, gathered up her frock and headed to the door. It opened as she approached. Lena shook her head and stomped out into the corridor. She searched her pad for a schematic of where she was, to find her Uncle. The pad presented nothing except the dots representing each person, no walls, nothing. Perhaps there was some crazy security lockdown on military vessels. There was a broad outline of the outer edges of the ship, but nothing inside except the twenty or so dots representing the people comprising the commissioning crew. She stared at the walls, then down again at the pad. Walls or not, Uncle Richard wasn’t far away, and her stomach had started to rumble. She strode off to find him.
Chapter 5 - Ship
