Dark Space: Avilon (16 page)

Chapter 13

B
retton Hale’s heart thudded in his chest. There was a Peacekeeper in Sutterfold Mine. Did that mean the resistance had been found?

“Hello, Master,” Bretton said, resorting to the default honorific for people from the Uppers.

The Peacekeeper stalked toward them and gestured to the unconscious Imperial they’d brought with him. “Did you know your friend there is unlisted?”

Bretton forced his eyebrows up, feigning surprise. “Really?” Of course the man wasn’t listed. Donali had crash-landed on Avilon, and his personal data had yet to be uploaded to the Omninet.

“Yes. Really.” The Peacekeeper stopped a few paces away from them and gazed down on Donali with a thoughtful frown, his glowing amber eyes unblinking. “What’s wrong with him?”

Bretton shrugged. “Tripped and fell down an old mine shaft, I’m guessing. We found him down here while we were doing our inspection. We’re trying to get him back up so we can take him to a med center.”

“I’d better take him for you. They won’t treat an unlisted Null without some convincing. What did you two say you were doing down here?”

Bretton pointed to the Gencore emblem on his jacket. “We’re investigating reports of a dymium gas leak.”

The Peacekeeper smiled at that. “In that case, you’d better come with me.”

“What?” Farah burst out. “We haven’t done anything wrong and you’re going to book us?”

Bretton was faster on the uptake than his niece. He placed a hand on her arm and replied to the Peacekeeper’s smile with one of his own. “So you’re the new security system.”

“Avilon’s finest. Who’s going to pick a fight with a Peacekeeper?”

Bretton let out a long sigh. “You had me for a minute.”

Farah’s eyes darted from Bretton to the man in the glowing armor and back again, but she said nothing.

“I’m going to need you two to submit to a quick scan.”

Bretton nodded and watched as the Peacekeeper removed a wand-shaped tool from his utility belt. He clicked something on the wand and it sprang to life, the tip glowing brightly with a shimmering fan of light that swiftly swept down to their feet and back up to the tops of their heads.

“You’re clean,” the man said, and then turned to use the wand on Donali. “So what’s this guy’s real story?”

Bretton chose that moment to explain, before the sentry found the same thing that Dag had found: a cloaked alien implant sitting right beside his regular Lifelink. “He’s not what he looks like.”

The guard turned to them with a frown. “And what does he look like?”

“Human.”

“I’m listening.”

Bretton went on to explain about the battle and the fact that Commander Lenon Donali had come to Avilon aboard one of the warships involved in the fighting. Then he explained about the Sythian implant Dag had found when they’d tried to de-link him, and what their mind walk had subsequently revealed about Commander Donali and the Sythians.

“That’s quite a story.”

“Now you can see why we have him stunned.”

“If all of what you just said is true, you’ve brought us something that not even Omnius has.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. His Lifelink was working when we found him.”

“So why didn’t Peacekeepers find him and pick him up before you did?”

“I’m guessing because he’s spent most of his time on Avilon unconscious. For at least part of the time that he wasn’t, Omnius was busy fighting a war.”

The guard shook his head. “Doesn’t add up. Omnius doesn’t miss things like this.”

“And yet he did.”

“Might be a trap.”

Bretton frowned. “We checked him. He’s not broadcasting anything on quantum or regular comms.”

Wordlessly, the guard finished scanning Donali with his wand and then he looked up, staring at nothing in particular as he studied something projected on his ARCs.

“Well?” Bretton pressed.

“I think I know why Omnius didn’t find him . . .”

“Why’s that?” Farah put in.

“He has two implants, just like you said, but neither of them are from Omnius.”

That news hit Bretton like a bucket of ice.
“What?”

“One of the implants is an Avilonian design, but its an old one. Very old.” The guard turned his glowing eyes on them. “This refugee of yours might even predate Omnius.”

“How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible that he’s an old Avilonian who somehow managed to leave Avilon before Omnius was created. You made a copy of the data on this implant?”

Bretton nodded, his hand absently finding the breast pocket inside his coat where he’d tucked the holo card that Dag had recorded with the contents of Donali’s brain.

“We’ll need to take a look at that.” The guard returned the scanner wand to his belt and then opened a compartment beside it and removed a thin metallic strip. He clasped it around Donali’s neck and then removed two more matching strips of metal and started toward them. “You ready?”

Bretton nodded. When the guard clasped the circlet of metal around his neck, he staggered slightly. His head felt suddenly light and airy and his eyes were heavy. He’d been through this before, so he knew what to expect, but the sudden onset of inescapable fatigue was always a shock.

He sunk to his knees on the cold floor of the station platform. It felt so good to rest, like he’d been running sleep deprived for a week. He yawned and said something that not even he could make sense out of, and then he lay down on the floor and drifted off into darkness.

As he slept, he dreamed of floating through the air, weightless, and then of a roaring wind that tore at his clothes and carried him into a place that was so bright it seemed to be made of light. In the midst of that light he saw a familiar face. Small mouth and bright, intelligent blue eyes . . . dimpled cheeks and a ragged mop of dark hair. He was tall and lanky for an eight-year-old, but Ciam was just the way Bretton remembered him.

“Hello, Dad!” Ciam said, smiling at him from the blinding brightness.

Bretton’s mouth cracked open, but he found he couldn’t speak. Only strained whispers came out.

Ciam frowned. “When are you going to come visit me?”

Again, Bretton tried to say something, but the words got stuck in his throat.

Ciam’s expression turned hurt and angry. “You left me! I waited for you to come, but you never did. You left me to die!”

Bretton shook his head. “No!” This time he managed to scream, but his son turned away, disappearing into the blinding light as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

The fuzzy black abyss returned, and he was consumed with rage and grief. After that, he felt like he spent a lifetime crying in the dark, not caring if anyone heard, or if he ever saw the light again; he just wanted it all to end.

But the darkness began to lighten with the first strokes of dawn. The light wasn’t as blinding as before, but it was back, and he could hear voices calling to him from it, calling as if from a great distance . . .

“Wake up, Bretton . . . wake up . . .”

* * *

“Wake up!”

SLAP!

Bretton’s eyes shot open and he gasped from the pain that stung his cheek. He squinted up at a bright ceiling light and he saw Farah appear, her face silhouetted with a bright golden halo. Behind her, a Peacekeeper stood by the door.

A Peacekeeper!

Bretton sat up suddenly, only to find that he was lying on a sterile metal table and surrounded by blinking and beeping equipment. His heart rate accelerated and he heard some of the beeping accelerate with it.

“Relax,” the guard at the door said. “You’re among friends.”

“Relax? What is this?” he asked, finding an IV line trailing from his wrist. “Where am I?”

The room where they had him and Farah was equipped with half a dozen tables like his. Rather than the sterile white walls of a med center, here the walls were dull and gray—bare bactcrete, the lights were a harsh, artificial yellow, and a faint, musty draft wafted through the room, apparently coming from a dirty grate in the ceiling. A dark window on the far side of the room, beside the door, looked like it might be made of old-fashioned two-way glass. Bretton’s gaze found their guard once more. He looked like the same one they’d met on the tram station platform.

“Why are we being held here?”

The door swung wide and in walked a tall, stunning woman with short, straight black hair, wide glowing silver eyes, and a honey brown skin. All of that was wrapped up in a familiar black uniform with white piping and the gold star of a
Captain.

“You’re not being
held
here,” she said as she approached. “New decontamination protocols. Don’t worry; you’re clean. We’ve just been waiting for you to wake up before we take you in for debriefing. The collar must have given you too much sedative.” The woman stopped to stand in front of them, hands clasped behind her back, her posture military straight.

“Where did you get that uniform?” Bretton asked, his eyes wide and staring.

“Old navy surplus.”

“Not from Avilon’s navy . . .”

The woman answered that with a small, secretive smile.

“You’re from the Imperium,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, I was born on Avilon.”

“Then . . .”

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

Bretton began shaking his head. “This is all new to me,” he said, looking around the room again. His eyes landed on her once more, marveling again at the uniform she wore. “And so are you.”

“We’ve had to increase our security protocols pretty much overnight, so everything is still in flux. I’m Marla Picara,” she said, sticking out her hand.

Bretton shook it with a thoughtful frown. “Why all the changes?”

“Omnius killed over five thousand Nulls the night before last.”

“What? Why?”

“They were reportedly members of a rebellion that tried to kill everyone in the Uppers.”

“Is that even possible?” Farah asked.

Marla shrugged. “The virus was meant to overload their Lifelinks and fry their brains. Do that to everyone in the Uppers and corrupt the databases at the same time, and they’re not coming back. Not ever.”

“How did Omnius kill the rebels?” Bretton asked.

Marla made a flicking motion with one finger, as if to turn off a switch. “Same way. The Lifelinks.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bretton said. “No rebel in his right mind would still have a working Lifelink.”

Marla nodded. “Exactly.”

“So . . .”

“It wasn’t us, if that’s what you’re wondering. The Lifelink databases are far too hard to slice into, and even if we could, we wouldn’t be that stupid. Suppose we got it right—Omnius wouldn’t just roll over and play dead because we killed all of his precious children. He’d sic the drones on us and we’d be next.”

“Then it’s a cover up.”

Marla nodded. “The most obvious lie we’ve ever seen. Either the rebels responsible are still out there, or, more likely, they never existed in the first place, and Omnius invented the rebel plot as an excuse for why he had to make an emergency shut down—an emergency shut down that conveniently coincided with a Sythian attack.”

Bretton shook his head. “You’re saying Omnius let them in on purpose.”

“Maybe.”

“Why? I thought looking after his chosen ones was his primary purpose, the almighty reason behind everything he does.”

“No one really died in the attack. Besides all the Nulls who got hit by falling debris, of course. Maybe Omnius wanted to impress upon us all the seriousness of the Sythian threat.”

“By destroying his own fleet—the same fleet he needs to fight them.”

Marla shook her head. “I don’t pretend to understand his reasoning, but if we can prove he shut down on purpose and there never was any rebel threat, we’ll have what we’ve been looking for.”

“Proof of that might be hard to find.”

“Maybe, but this lie is proof enough of one thing—Omnius is getting sloppy.”

“Or he just doesn’t care about preserving his
holier than thou
image anymore.” Bretton smiled. “It would save us a lot of trouble if he exposed himself.”