Dark Space: Avilon

by Jasper T. Scott

  Chapter 16

  Atton peered over the rim of his cup of caf, eying the Peacekeepers sitting opposite him. According to his ARCs, it was 0530 hours. The sun was already up and rising, although Atton supposed the difference between day and night became a slight one when you only had to sleep for four hours. Before the Imperials had been resurrected in Etheria, Sync had taken less than an hour. Omnius was still expanding himself to deal with the increased demands of governing more citizens. Atton assumed Sync would eventually return to its former status as a minor blip in the lives of Avilon’s citizens—the ones who lived in the Uppers anyway. Mortals like him still needed a good eight hours of regular sleep. And that was something that no one had managed to get last night.

  The nightmare of experiencing a very real death and resurrection on Avilon by reliving Strategian Rovik’s memories was enough to wake all of them up as soon as Sync ended and Omnius released them from their induced sleep.

  Ethan had apparently been the first one up, and he’d gone on an unscheduled tour with Strategian Rovik in the early hours of the morning. Now he was back in his room with Alara, reflecting on whatever it was that Omnius had shown him. When Atton had seen him come in, he’d been very pale, looking like he’d seen a ghost. Of course, on Avilon there were plenty of those.

  Beside him, Ceyla got up from the table and went to put her dishes away. Atton watched her go, not too sleepy to appreciate what he saw as she was leaving. Without warning she turned and caught him looking at her. He cleared his throat and smiled, not bothering to hide his interest. She arched an eyebrow and smiled wryly back, which he took for subtle encouragement. Ceyla Corbin came from a conservative Etherian background, but she obviously wasn’t averse to flirting.

  “Are we ready to go?” a familiar voice asked. Atton turned to see Strategian Rovik standing in the hallway leading from the dining hall to the entrance of the mansion. The morning sun sparkled off the Peacekeeper’s armor as it streamed in through the wall of windows beside him. “Day two,” Rovik said. “It’s time to tour Etheria, where hopefully you’ll all be living soon. You have fifteen minutes to meet me at the front door. Don’t be late.”

  “Ready,” Atton said, pushing out his chair and standing up. He took his dishes to the kitchen, scraped them off into a collection tube, and then stacked them neatly in an oversized dishwasher.

  That done he returned to his room to gather his belongings. It wasn’t much, just his ISSF flight suit and uniform. Both still smelled of acrid smoke from the Sythians’ attack on Avilon. His current attire—a shimmering white robe—was much more comfortable, but everyone seemed to wear the same thing in Celesta, and that made him feel uncomfortable, like he was just one of a trillion other faces—not unique or special in any way.

  “Hey handsome,” Ceyla said, popping up behind beside his ear and dropping a sweet-smelling kiss on his cheek.

  He turned to her, wide-eyed with surprise. She’d never done that before. “Hey . . .” he replied, whispering in a voice that was more seductive than he’d planned.

  She blushed and looked away. “We need to get going.”

  “Right.”

  Minutes later they were all gathered in the foyer downstairs. Atton noted that his father still looked unwell, his skin waxy and pale. His gaze moving on from there, Atton saw a pair of Peacekeepers at the front doors, but Strategian Rovik was nowhere to be seen. Atton went to check in with his father. His eyes met Alara’s as he approached.

  “Is he okay?” Atton asked, stopping beside her.

  She bit her lip and eyed her husband worriedly.

  “I’m fine,” Ethan managed, but Atton noticed that he was sweating even though the air inside the foyer was fresh and cool.

  “What happened this morning?”

  Ethan gave no reply, but Alara leaned over to whisper in Atton’s ear. “They took him to the Null Zone to meet his father—your grandfather.”

  Atton withdrew and stared at Alara in shock. That was when Master Rovik chose to show up. He stopped to speak with the guards at the entrance for a moment before turning to address the group. Atton noticed on his ARC display that the Strategian was more than ten minutes late.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I was called away for an emergency session of the war council. The Sythians are reinforcing their numbers in Dark Space, and it would appear that we are running short of time. The Choosing must go on, but I’ve been told to cut it short. You will now have just one day—today—to make your choices.”

  Atton heard people gasping and murmuring all around him. His own eyes grew wide and he began shaking his head. He’d had an idea about what he was going to choose, but having just one day to make that choice suddenly threw him into a swirling pool of doubt. What if he made the wrong choice?

  Strategian Rovik went on, “Today we will tour both Etheria and the Null Zone, and by tomorrow morning I expect you all to be ready to begin your new lives on Avilon. Tomorrow night, the entire fleet is going to war, and I hope to see some of you flying out with me when that time comes,” the Strategian finished, his eyes roving over the group.

  “Hey!” someone said. “Why do we have to hurry up and choose just because you’re going off to war?”

  Atton turned to see Razor, Guardian Five, the only other surviving pilot from his squadron besides him and Ceyla.

  “Because there will be no one left to supervise your choosing,” Rovik explained, his tone suggesting that the answer should have been obvious. “We need every Peacekeeper we have to fight the Sythians.”

  Atton blinked, only now realizing the seriousness of the situation—the Avilonians were afraid they might actually lose. With that realization, he made up his mind. His hand shot up before he even realized he’d raised it.

  “Yes, Atton?” Rovik asked, pointing to him.

  All eyes turned to him and he felt suddenly less certain about his choice. “I’d like to sign up to fight, sir.”

  “Without even having seen Etheria?”

  Atton nodded, and the Strategian smiled.

  “Take note of this boy’s courage and his faith. He is an example to you all. He’s willing to accept, without having seen, that he will be better off in Etheria living under Omnius’s rule. Take a good look at him. If he keeps that up, someday he’ll be ruling over all of you at Omnius’s side.”

  Atton noticed that several of the glances turned his way were now filled with suspicion and resentment. One gaze stood out from all the rest and cut straight through the confidence he’d had in his decision, filling him with regret. Ceyla Corbin’s blue eyes were full of hurt and shock, as if he’d just rejected her right along with the possibility of a life in the Null Zone. He realized that because of her beliefs, that was exactly what he’d done. Ceyla would never accept that Etherianism had actually come from second-hand knowledge of life in Avilon. Etherus was Omnius, and the people that she believed had died and gone to Etheria were actually Avilonians.

  Atton started toward Ceyla, hoping he could find some way to comfort her. Maybe after the war he could join her in the Null Zone. Before he’d taken two steps, a firm hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around.

  “What the frek is wrong with you?” It was Ethan. He still looked pale, but his green eyes were blazing and full of life. “I didn’t spend ten years mourning your death only to find you alive and well just in time to watch you kill yourself!”

  Atton frowned. “I won’t be dead.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “No, but I am sure that if we don’t defeat the Sythians, they’ll kill all of us, not just me.”

  Ethan stared at him for a long moment, revulsion and shock warring on his face.

  “The boy’s right,” Strategian Rovik interrupted. “And you of all people should not be attacking his faith, Ethan. Would you care to share what Omnius showed you in the Null Zone this morning?”

  Ethan turned to face the Peacekeeper. “No,” he said, “because Omnius showed it to me. He’s been trying
to sway my choice ever since I got here, and I’m not about to let a rambling AI with a god complex decide my fate.”

  “Very well. It would appear that in this case like father is very much not like son. Atton, Omnius smiles upon you as well as all of those here who think as you do, but as I mentioned earlier, the Choosing is not optional. Please follow me. We are already late for our tour of Etheria.”

  Atton watched Strategian Rovik turn and head not for the front door of the mansion, but rather to the back of the foyer, cutting through the group of refugees to get to the stair case they’d all descended a few minutes ago. They followed him up past the second floor landing, and up another flight of stairs to a third floor that Atton hadn’t even noticed until now.

  The third floor landing led down a long hallway running beside an equally long balcony. As they walked to the end of it, Atton walked up beside Ceyla and reached for her hand. She jerked it away and shot him an angry look.

  “Ceyla . . .” he began.

  “I’m not talking to you,” she replied, looking away.

  Suddenly there was a painful knot in his throat. They came to a door, which Master Rovik opened for them. Beyond that lay a familiar golden transporter dome . . . a quantum junction.

  Atton watched it rise on dazzling columns of light, thinking to himself, Next stop Etheria . . .

  Somehow that word held less hope and anticipation for him now that he knew without a doubt that Ceyla wouldn’t be joining him there. But even more than he needed her, humanity needed soldiers to fight the Sythians. Atton’s lips curved into a bitter smile. It seemed like duty would always come before his own personal needs.

  He supposed it was some consolation that soon he’d have all of eternity to make up for that.

  They walked under the dome of the quantum junction and huddled together inside the glowing green circle on the floor. Moments later the dome began to glow and it fell with a boom. The air began whipping and roaring around them and the light inside the dome became blinding.

  Next stop Etheria . . . look out skull faces, here I come.

  * * *

  Destra sat in the viewing gallery anxiously watching as the Baroness slipped unnoticed through the Firean system. Atta was bouncing up and down beside her on the row of bench seats where they sat. Destra turned to her with a smile. The innocence of youth shielded Atta from the significance of this moment. Here—now—was where they would say their final goodbyes to a once great empire, and with it, civilization. The Imperium of Star Systems, as they all had known it, was about to disappear forever. What came next would be a long and treacherous time for humanity and their Gor allies. They would either stay hidden and thrive, or they would be discovered by the Sythians and slaughtered once and for all.

  Destra’s eyes roved between the bright, twinkling stars. Her gaze stopped here and there to study clusters of much brighter points of light that lurked between those stars.

  Atta’s innocence shielded her from more than just the melancholy nostalgia of the moment, but also from the potential danger. Traveling unseen with them, their ships likewise cloaked, was an entire fleet of Gors, and together they were all flying past the noses of hundreds, if not thousands, of Sythian warships.

  Theoretically there was no way that they could be detected through their cloaking shields, but a cynical part of Destra wondered if the Gors had successfully managed to remove all traces of the Sythians’ locator beacons from their ships. If not, this would be a much shorter trip than anyone anticipated.

  Destra had to remind herself that they’d been running ops together in Dark Space for months since the Sythian occupation of the sector, and the Gor fleet had yet to be detected.

  “Mommy, look at that star there!” Atta bounced up and pointed out the viewport.

  Destra frowned, trying to see what her daughter was pointing at. It didn’t take long to find the silhouette of an enormous Sythian warship glinting in the red light of the system’s sun.

  “Is that another galaxy?” Atta asked.

  Destra smiled and nodded, unable to give voice to the lie. Based on its size, that had to be one of the Sythians’ thirty-kilometer-long command ships. A behemoth-class. They were usually cloaked and hidden behind the fleets they carried into battle, but this one was sitting brazenly out in the open, as if the Sythians had suddenly lost the fear of death that had driven them to use slave crews for their smaller warships. More likely they weren’t hiding now because they knew they had nothing to fear.

  As they flew onward, Destra spotted more of those massive warships, each of them sitting in the center of its own cluster of smaller ships. By the time she’d counted the eighth command ship, a dark frown had wrinkled her forehead, and she was reaching up to her comm piece to make a call.

  “Stay here, Atta,” she said, getting up from the bench seats.

  “Where are you going?” Atta asked.

  “Nowhere, darling. I just need to make a call.” Destra walked to the far corner of the room and leaned up against the bulkhead to watch her daughter from the shadows. The lights were turned down low in the viewing gallery to make it easier to see the stars.

  “What is it, Councilor?” a gruff voice answered as her call went through.

  “Captain,” she began, whispering into her comm. “I just noticed the number of ships out there . . . There’s more than seven command ships.”

  “I know.”

  “There were only seven in the entire invasion.”

  “Were is the operative word, Councilor,” Captain Covani replied. She imagined his tangerine eyes narrowed to unhappy slits.

  “How many are there?”

  “We’re cloaked, so passive scanning only, but visual estimates would suggest there are more than twenty.”

  “Twenty?” Destra couldn’t believe it. “That’s more than double what they used to defeat the Imperium!”

  “Good thing there’s no Imperium left for them to defeat.”

  She thought about Avilon, where her son, Atton, had gone to get reinforcements, but she didn’t want to mention that in case the captain decided to take them there. Hoff had warned her that the Avilonians wouldn’t welcome so many refugees, particularly not Gor refugees. “How far are we from the jump point?” she asked.

  “Nearest one is fifteen minutes out. The one I’ve set is about half an hour.”

  “What? Do you have a death wish, Captain? Use the nearest one!”

  “There’s a lot of risk jumping too far from the out-system gate. We want to avoid running into in-system debris and ships. Besides, jumping out parallel to the old gate will help us to avoid obstacles in the Stormcloud Nebula. The lane should still be clear.”

  “I don’t like it,” Destra replied.

  “We’re cloaked, Councilor. What are you afraid of?”

  “Suppose one of their fighters accidentally runs into us and they realize we’re here?”

  “The odds of that are slim. Space is vast.”

  “We should jump out now, Captain, while we still can.”

  “Your suggestion has been noted.”

  “It wasn’t a suggestion.”

  “Leave the military decisions to me, Ma’am. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Destra thought about arguing further, but she had to pick her battles, and this one wasn’t worth fighting. “Very well. Keep me informed.”

  “Of course. Speaking of that, you might like to know the prisoners you rescued are almost aboard.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Coming aboard. You asked to be notified . . .”

  “I know that. You should have waited to transfer them. How did you even coordinate that without giving our position away?”

  “The Gors are telepaths.”

  “And how do they know where our hangar is without some type of comm beacon to guide them in?”

  “We’re using a Gor-piloted shuttle to aim for a Gor-occupied hangar. They can telelocate, too, Ma’am . . .”

  Destra didn’t appre
ciate the Captain’s condescending tone. “Very well. Which hangar?”

  “Port ventral.”

  “I’ll head down there now.”

  “See you there. Covani out.”

  The comm went dead, and Destra fought the urge to punch the bulkhead. Hopefully the captain’s attitude was provoked by hunger from the emergency rationing rather than by true insubordination.

  Destra let her frustration out in a sigh. A sudden draft stirred the air. Turning to see what had caused it, she heard a sibilant hiss. That was when she noticed the dark shadow sitting beside her, yellow eyes glinting in the dark.

  Destra cursed and jumped backward, slamming into the bulkhead with a painful thud.

  “The captain showss you little ressspect. You should eat him.”

  Destra’s heart thudded in her chest. “Torv? What are you doing here?”

  “I come to rest my eyes and to be free of my shell for a time.”

  “Your shell?”

  “That which protects me from the heat and brightness that you humans prefer.”

  His armor. She realized then that he wasn’t wearing it. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she also saw that he was sitting cross-legged on the deck, his back propped up against the cold duranium bulkhead behind him. “How long have you been sitting there, Torv?”

  “Long enough to see how much you care for your daughter. She knows nothing of war, even though it is all around her. Does that not inspire you?”

  Destra nodded. “It does.”

  “Peace is something my people can only dream of, until recently.”

  “You mean freedom,” Destra suggested, thinking that peace was still an elusive goal for all of them.

  “Are they not the same? Without freedom there can be no peace, and without peace there is no freedom.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Peace comes at a price,” Torv mused.

  “It always does.”

  “The Sythians slaughter my people for it. Humans do, too.”

  Destra smiled ruefully. “Not anymore,” she clarified, in case she’d missed something in the present-tense-only translation. “We’re allies now. And don’t forget that the Gors slaughtered us, too. It’s a happy little circle of death.”