Dark Space: Avilon (28 page)
Read Dark Space: Avilon Online
Authors: Jasper T. Scott
Tags: #Children's Books, #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alien Invasion, #Cyberpunk, #First Contact, #Galactic Empire, #Military, #Space Fleet, #Space Opera, #Children's eBooks, #Metaphysical & Visionary, #Science Fiction
“Yes, sir.”
“We have a fleet of Gors with us. They can’t follow a blind jump,” Destra objected.
The deck shuddered once more.
“Shields at 74%!” engineering reported.
“And you can’t survive much more of this. Comms—contact the
Tempest,
inform them of our plans and tell them to make their own jump out.”
“You intend to leave my people behind,”
Torv said, stepping up on the other side of the table.
Destra translated.
“Multiple contacts inbound!” the gravidar operator interrupted. “It’s the Gors!”
Destra watched the unidentified admiral and Torv glaring at one another across the captain’s table.
“Your people communicate telepathically—directly from one mind to another—don’t they?” the admiral asked.
Hiss.
“Yes,”
Destra translated.
“Then you can tell them where we end up. If we don’t leave now, they’ll be on their own anyway, because we’ll be dead.”
“Very well. Do not jump further than the distance that light travels in ten orbits or I cannot contact them.”
The admiral looked to her once more, and Destra translated for him.
At that, the Admiral called out, “You heard the skull face! Make that blind jump a short one.”
Destra winced. “Don’t call them that,” she whispered.
The admiral shot her a bewildered look, but said nothing. She could read his expression easily enough. His eyes said it all. The Gors would always be
skull faces
to him.
“The
Tempest
just jumped away, sir! We’re exposed again!”
The deck began shuddering in earnest. Destra’s gaze fell upon the grid once more and she saw flashing streaks of purple light streaming out from the enemy fighters and slamming into their aft section.
“Aft shields at 67%!”
“Helm! Where’s that jump I ordered?”
“Our SLS drives are still spooling, sir!”
“What? What have you all been doing out here? You should have had your drives spooled long ago!”
“We were otherwise occupied,” Destra put in.
The admiral shot her a glance.
“Incoming missiles!”
“Take evasive action!” the admiral ordered. “Why aren’t our gunners firing back?”
“They’re in stasis,” Destra explained.
“Stasis? What are they doing in stasis?”
“Brace for impact!” gravidar called out.
They all grabbed the captain’s table, and Destra fiddled with the emergency grav field generator on her belt, just in case artificial gravity failed. The lights dimmed and a loud roar of simulated explosions filled the air.
“Damage report!”
“Aft shields holding at 43%! Minor hull breach on four! Coolant leak in the reactor room. We’re down to 75% power.”
“Helm! We need to jump!”
“One more second!”
“Here comes the next wave!”
Destra scanned the grid and she saw a sparkling wall of Sythian missiles rushing toward them from one of the larger Sythian warships. The first missile reached them with a titanic
boom!
Ten more followed, one after another.
Boom!
Boom!
BOOM . . . !
“Helm!” the admiral bellowed to be heard over the roaring of the explosions. “Where’s that jump?”
“Aft shields at two percent!”
“Jumping!”
Destra looked up and saw the flashing gray clouds of the nebula turn to a blurry gray streak as they jumped to SLS.
“Stay in SLS for half an hour. Project our exit coordinates and start plotting a second jump from there. We don’t want the Sythians tracking us from our jump trajectory. We’ll have to confuse them with multiple jumps.” Destra saw the Admiral’s brow grow lined as he turned to look at Torv. “The Sythians could follow your people to us. Their jump drives are the same speed as yours. Ours are twice as fast, so we can lose them. You can’t. We can’t afford to rendezvous with your people.”
Torv hissed loudly and looked away from the admiral. His slitted yellow eyes bored into Destra’s instead. “You lie to me! You say we follow, but you leave us to die!”
Destra translated that, and the admiral shook his head. “I didn’t lie. I simply didn’t have enough time to think about it in the heat of battle.”
Torv’s expression flickered and his eyes seemed to darken. Destra had a premonition of violence, and she took the admiral aside.
“Sir, we can’t abandon the Gors. They’re our only allies, and their fleet is too valuable to sacrifice.”
“What would you have me do? Better that we lose them than all of us die together.”
A loud hiss drew their attention back to Torv. He bared razor sharp teeth in a terrifying grin. “You repay our sacrifice by taking us to Noctune.”
“What did he say?”
Destra translated.
“What?” The admiral shook his head. “That’s in the Getties! Why the frek would we go there?”
For the first time Destra heard one of the other men who’d come with the admiral say something. She was shocked when she realized that he wasn’t speaking Imperial Versal.
Suddenly the questions she’d been holding back since they’d mysteriously appeared out of thin air all came flooding back. The admiral replied to his subordinate in kind, using the same language.
“Who are you?” Destra whispered, momentarily ignoring Torv’s hissing.
The admiral turned to her. “We’re in the middle of a diplomatic negotiation. Try to keep up.” He turned back to Torv. “We will take you and the other Gors on board this ship to Noctune, if that’s what you want.”
Torv went on hissing at them. As soon as he was done speaking, he looked away—from both of them this time. Now even
she
was unworthy of his sight. Turning to the admiral, Destra translated, “Torv says that will be good enough, but that humans have no honor and cannot be trusted. The alliance is at an end.” There’d also been a more personal note about her not being worthy of the title of
Matriarch
, but she chose not to translate that part.
“Fine with me,” the admiral grunted, turning away. “Engineering, how are repairs coming along?”
“They’re not. Our crew is in stasis, sir.”
“
All
of them? Someone had better start explaining
something
soon
.
”
“We’re critically low on supplies,” Destra said. “Stasis was a way to make them go further.”
“I see . . . and the blood stains?” he stamped the floor under his feet.
“The Gors didn’t see eye to eye with our captain. They wanted him to take them to Noctune.”
The admiral’s head came up suddenly and he fixed Torv with a deadly look. For his part, the Gor still wasn’t looking at them.
“The captain refused, and they killed him.”
Destra nodded. “I was in stasis at the time, but they tell me he killed a few of them first.”
“So where are the bodies?”
Destra shrugged. “The captain’s was here when I arrived. I asked the Gors to take him off the bridge.”
The Admiral’s gaze turned to her and she felt suspicion pouring off of him. “So you were the one calling the shots after this little mutiny of theirs?”
“They . . . wanted to put me in command, since I was willing to take them to Noctune. They called me their
Matriarch.
Until now.”
“I see, and who are you?”
“Councilor Heston.”
The admiral blinked at her. “
Heston?
”
“Yes.”
“You’re not by any chance related to Admiral Hoff Heston, are you?”
“I’m his wife.”
“His wife?” the admiral asked, surprise evident on his face.
“You knew him?” she asked, wondering at the man’s sudden interest in her.
At that, he stuck out his hand. “Admiral Bretton Hale. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ma’am.”
Destra eyed his hand a moment before taking it; they shook briefly. “A pleasure to meet you, too . . . whoever you are,” she said, releasing his hand to cross her arms over her chest and regard him with a skeptical frown. “I was under the impression that my husband was the last surviving admiral from the Imperium.”
“I fought beside him in the fifth fleet, during the exodus. Back then I was a Captain. My ship became . . .
separated
from the rest of the fleet during our evacuation from Roka Four.”
Destra’s eyes lit with sudden understanding. Then she recalled something she’d witnessed a moment ago, and her frown was back. “Your accent is Imperial, but you speak another language. I’ve never heard it before.”
Admiral Hale nodded. “We’re from a place called Avilon. Perhaps your husband told you about it?”
That news went through Destra like a lightning bolt. Her pulse raced; her palms began to sweat; she broke out in goosebumps all over. “Avilon? It’s real? Has anyone arrived there recently? Imperials?” The admiral began shaking his head, but Destra barreled on, “A young man, by the name of Atton Ortane. He’s a fighter pilot, a—”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, Ma’am.”
The woman standing behind the admiral shot him an impatient look. “Sir, we don’t have time for this.”
Destra sent her a scowl. “You have children?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand.”
The woman’s cheeks bulged for a hasty retort, but she let that breath out with a sigh, obviously thinking better of it. The admiral turned to her, “You have command for now. Leave the crew in stasis. With all of the recent changes in command we could have another mutiny on our hands if we’re not careful.”
The woman eyed him for a moment longer before nodding reluctantly. “Yes, sir.”
Destra saw the Admiral’s eyes flick to Torv and from him to the other Gors standing around the bridge, leaning against the walls and watching them all from the shadows. He said something else to his executive officer then, but it was whispered and spoken in that foreign language of his. To that, she nodded, and she began eyeing the Gors, too.
Admiral Hale turned back to her and said, “We have a lot to talk about, Mrs Heston. Is there somewhere more private we can speak?”
Destra nodded. “Follow me.”
She led him off the bridge, down the hall to the Captain’s quarters. Once there, they locked the door behind them, and both sat down—her behind the desk in the captain’s chair, him in front of it. Destra listened for what felt like an eternity as the Admiral told her the most impossible story she’d ever heard.
He told her all about an AI god called Omnius and his resurrected empire of humanity. They were interrupted a few times as the woman the admiral had left in charge of the bridge called them on the intercom to ask for further orders.
By the time the admiral finally finished explaining everything to her, they’d dropped out of SLS not once but twice, and were now waiting for the
Tempest
to arrive at their rendezvous.
Admiral Hale went on to explain the difference between Nulls and resurrected Etherians, saying that Nulls were not networked to Avilon’s AI god, so he couldn’t keep an eye on them or tell them what they should and shouldn’t do. When he explained that he and the others with him were part of a Null resistance movement, something occurred to her, and she interrupted him.
“If I have a Lifelink implant like everyone else, then is Omnius watching me, too?” Destra asked.
That question seemed to take the admiral by surprise. “I suppose he can, yes . . . You make a good point. We’ll have to get you and the rest of your crew de-linked before I end up in front of a firing squad. Excuse me . . .”
Destra waited while he contacted his XO again. The two of them had a heated discussion in their language. Unable to understand what they were saying, Destra took the time to process everything that she’d learned. It seemed too good to be true. Everyone who died in the war had been resurrected on Avilon? Did that mean Hoff was still alive?
As soon as the admiral finished speaking to his XO, he rose from the desk. “We need to go.”
Destra rose with him. “Your first officer didn’t sound happy. What’s wrong?”
“Besides the fact that Omnius could be tracking us right now because we’re in the company of a bunch of
martales?
” He shook his head. “The
Tempest
is here, and we need to take your Gor allies to Noctune before they do to me what they did to your previous captain. How many do you have on board this ship?”
“A few dozen, I believe.”
“There were only seven on the bridge. Where are the others?”
“I’ve been in stasis, Admiral.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. We can’t afford to fight that many of them in close quarters. We’ll take too many casualties. The easiest will be to give them what they want.”
“I’m not sure I would call that
easy.
The Getties is a very long way from here.”
The Admiral regarded her with a small smile. “It’ll take about a day to make the calculations, but otherwise we’ll be able to travel there instantly.”
Destra blinked, shock running through her. “
Instantly?
”
“Instantly,” the admiral confirmed. “Having a super intellect guide human progress hasn’t been all bad.” The admiral’s glowing blue eyes seemed to flare suddenly brighter, and Destra shivered.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No, it’s just a lot to get used to all at once . . . I’m having trouble believing it.”
He nodded. “I know just how you feel.”
But it wasn’t just that. Destra was busy thinking about Omnius, and the resistance movement that Admiral Hale belonged to. She wondered whether she should be on their side, or Omnius’s. From there her thoughts turned to Atton, and a stab of worry lanced through her heart.
Be safe my son. I’ll be there soon. . . .
Chapter 22
A
n alarm woke Atton at exactly 0400, right after Sync was supposed to end. He blinked, his eyes still bleary with sleep. He couldn’t remember having dreamed anything in particular last night. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt rested.
Atton lay awake and staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the room to snap into focus. As it did so, he saw a wan golden light slowly rising in the room, like an artificial sun. He yawned, and tried to cover it with the hand lying on his chest. When that hand didn’t move, and his real one encountered a pair of naked breasts, he realized that he hadn’t slept alone.
He rolled to that side and came face to face with Ceyla. Her blue eyes were wide and bright in the light of her ARCs.
Suddenly the events of the previous night came back to him, and he smiled. He couldn’t remember waking up with a smile on his face . . . ever.
“Hey,” Ceyla said in a small voice.
Atton cleared his throat. “Hey.”
Her lips were a tempting target. Despite the night they’d had, desire was already stirring inside of him.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, leaving the good morning kiss for later. He hoped there would
be
a later.
“I’m okay. What about you?”
Atton hesitated. Small talk wasn’t going to get them anywhere. He wasn’t sure how much time they had, so he just went for it. “Come with me. You’re a pilot, Ceyla, a fighter. You won’t be happy living a civilian life, and you can’t join the Peacekeepers as a Null.”
Ceyla’s eyes flashed angrily and she sat up, turning her back to him in one smooth motion so that he caught only a glimpse of her breasts before she shut her robe.
Atton’s heart sank. Her reaction said it all.
Ceyla turned to him then, her shimmering white robe now sealed all the way up to her neck. “You used me.”
“What?” He blinked. “You threw yourself at me!”
“Because I thought maybe you needed a reason to live! I was stupid enough to think that
I
could be that reason.”
“I’m going to live. I’m going to live forever.”
“That’s what you say.”
Atton reached for her hand, but she withdrew it and stood up from the bed.
“Ceyla . . .”
“You can’t have it all, Atton! You have to choose—me, or . . .” She gestured helplessly to their surroundings and her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Or Omnius’s lies.”
“He’s not lying to us, Ceyla. He’s just telling us everything he knows as honestly as he can. He can’t tell us that we might have souls or that there might be a life after this one if he has no proof of that.
That
would be the lie. He’s still a bot at heart, and he’s too logical for such a thing as faith.”
“Faith can’t be reasoned, Atton, only felt.”
“Ceyla . . .” Atton took a deep breath. “Is there any way you would agree to come with me?”
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be me that goes, and I’m not willing to commit suicide.”
“Then wait for me. I’ll be back. You can at least be sure of that. Once Dark Space is free and the Sythians are defeated, I’ll join you in the Null Zone. I’ll leave it all behind. Until then I’ll visit as often as I can.”
Some of the anger left Ceyla’s gaze, and she sunk back to the bed, her eyes shimmering with tears. She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “No, Atton. Don’t. I can see how that looks like a big sacrifice to you, and maybe even a fair trade—me for eternity. But the truth is it’s not fair to either of us. If your clone has a chance to live forever, he shouldn’t give that up for me, because he won’t have a chance to see me in the next life. As for me, whoever I decide to marry, I don’t just want to be with them here and now, I want to be with them in the next life, too. You’ll be dooming me to an eternity of loneliness and despair. You won’t be able to join me where I’m going.”
Atton frowned, confused by her reasoning. “How do you know my clone won’t have a soul? Maybe the Etherus you believe in will take pity on us.”
“And allow two different versions of you to live in Etheria? Why not ten? Or twenty? In fact, what’s stopping Omnius from cloning you a million times? Then would all one million of you get to spend eternity in Etheria when you do eventually decide to die?”
“I don’t think Omnius would clone any one person that many times simultaneously, but hypothetically—why not? We’d all be unique individuals, having departed from the version of me they were cloned from at the moment they began living parallel lives. If this Etherus of yours is a good god, then he’ll judge each of us on our individual merit.”
“Okay, so which one of you do you suppose I’ll be with in Etheria? Maybe I’ll just choose the one with the personality I like best. What if that one isn’t
you?
Even if I just have to choose between just two of you—the original, and the clone, which one do I pick? Who’s the real Atton? Maybe I spend eternity with both of you and you’ll have to compete for my attention.
”
“I . . .”
“There are a lot of paradoxes and dilemmas along the lines of what you’re about to do, and none of them end well for you. In the end they all make your existence look and sound hollow. All the clones living on Avilon are more like organic bots than real living humans.”
“I’m not doing this for me, Ceyla. I’m doing it so that someone else won’t have to. The Sythians need to be stopped. If your Etherus is as good as you seem to think he is, he’ll see my sacrifice, and he won’t allow me to be punished for it.”
Some of the tears shimmering in Ceyla’s eyes spilled to her cheeks and Atton winced. He reached out and wiped one of them away with his thumb.
Ceyla’s lower lip began to tremble and she shook her head. “You said you loved me. How can you just leave me after that? Frek the Sythians, Atton! Haven’t they taken enough from you?”
Something inside of his chest began to ache and Atton swallowed thickly. “The war is all I know. I won’t be able to settle down and live my life until it’s over. I wake up every morning feeling like a failure and go to bed every night expecting to wake up to people screaming and dying all around me. I still remember the invasion like it was yesterday.”
“What you’re talking about is post-traumatic stress. You need counseling for that, not more trauma and stress.”
Atton shrugged. “It helps me sleep at night to know I’m doing my part to end the war.”
“The war might never be over, Atton. There’s countless trillions of Sythians out there.”
“Then I’ll have all eternity to defeat them.”
“I won’t be around to see that.”
“Yes, you will. I’m not leaving you down here.
Please
come with me.”
“You can’t take me with you, and I don’t want to go.”
He shook his head, and she leaned in toward him. Her hands found his face and her lips found his in a soft, fragrant kiss that smelled like
her
. He lost himself in that moment, breathing her in desperately. Then it was over and something inside of him broke. His eyes began to burn, and the world grew blurry.
“Goodbye, Atton.” She rubbed his cheeks and smiled ruefully at him. “I guess you’re not made of ice, after all.”
Before he could reply to that, the door to their room opened, and a familiar-looking Peacekeeper poked his head in. “It’s time,” Master Rovik said.
Atton nodded. “Just give us a minute.”
“I’ve already waited ten. The two of you are breaking Omnius’s heart. He had hoped things would turn out differently.”
Ceyla flashed the Peacekeeper a sardonic grin. “Really? I thought he already knew how we’re going to choose?”
“Just because you can read any part of a book doesn’t mean you want to start by reading the end. Now come. The others are already making their choices.”
* * *
The choosing ceremony was not what Ethan had expected. They were all whisked away to a large, circular chamber with high, vaulted ceilings. On the walls all around the circumference of the room were more light paintings depicting different scenes, what looked like snapshots of human lives. Each painting had one human figure as a subject, but it was just their silhouette, a shadow. The rest of the scene was painted in bold strokes of color. There were scenes of glory and triumph on colorful alien fields of battle, men and women standing together in arms amidst thousands of unidentified bodies. Others showed the scenes from the bridges of giant star cruisers, enemy ships exploding all around. Still others depicted happy families, and scenes of domestic bliss. A few showed scenes of loneliness and despair, of death and privation. Each scene was animated with a few frames to convey its nature.
Ethan’s eyes fell on a particular painting. There was a male silhouette sitting on a street corner with his head in his hands and an empty bottle beside him. As Ethan watched, the painting came alive. Rain poured down and people passed by, glancing at the man on the curbside. Then a flash of lightning washed the scene away, and suddenly it showed that man lying in bed in the arms of a woman. Ethan stared at the painting, spellbound by it.
Suddenly the man’s black, featureless face took form—it was
his.
The woman lying beside him opened her eyes, and he saw a flash of bright color in her irises—not violet, but turquoise, like those of the woman from last night’s dream.
A hand found his and squeezed. The spell broken, Ethan shivered and looked away.
Alara’s violet gaze was full of concern. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head. “Not really, no. I had a bad dream last night.”
“So did I.”
He tilted his head to one side. “What was yours?”
They heard approaching footsteps from the direction they’d come and turned to see Rovik walk in. Atton and Ceyla came in behind him. Ethan’s eyes flicked to Atton then Ceyla, and he realized that they weren’t walking next to each other and they weren’t holding hands. That either meant he’d been wrong about what they’d been doing last night, or it hadn’t worked. Either way, he was about to say goodbye to his son.
Ethan turned away with a furrowed brow, and Alara shook her head. “I’ll tell you later.”
Rovik walked to the front of the group. Behind him lay a shadowy section of wall with no light paintings hanging there. As the Peacekeeper stopped and turned to face them, that dark section of wall became suddenly radiant with light. Two doors appeared, one beside the other. One was narrow and glowing bright gold, while the other was wide and glowing a bloody red. To either side stood a pair of Omnies, the red eyes in the center of their heads glowing to life.
“Welcome to Choosing Day,” Rovik said. “To your left lies the way to the Null Zone. To your right lies Etheria. All around you, hanging on the walls, are scenes that Omnius has drawn from your probable futures, based on the decisions you’ve all already made. No doubt one painting in particular has already caught your eye. That is no coincidence. That scene is yours, drawn from your future. For some of you, it is Omnius’s last warning, while for others it is something to look forward to. Whatever the case, be sure that you choose wisely. Some people go to the Null Zone and die the next day. Others go to Etheria only to leave soon afterward. I hope that all of you will be satisfied with your choice, and I wish you all the best in your new lives. This is the end of our journey together.
“It has been my pleasure to watch some of you grow and open your minds to the possibilities of life in Avilon. Be sure that you don’t later lose your way. Take it from one who has ascended and fallen and then returned to the truth.”
Rovik turned and gestured to the gold-glowing door on the right. “Those of you who have chosen Etheria, please approach the door. Single file.”
For a moment nothing happened, but then the group of refugees surged forward. Ethan watched, horrified as roughly two thirds of the group formed a long line toward the door. Atton lingered near the back of the line, his eyes on Ceyla, one hand held out to her. She refused to even look at him. Ethan grimaced and shook his head. Then Atton caught his eye.