“Eight years.”
“I assume you’ve run the numbers already. How many Gors will there be by then?”
“Almost ten million.”
Farah’s mind boggled at that. “That many?”
“How do you think Omnius created the Sythian’s original invasion army so quickly?”
Farah glanced up at Torv, wondering how much he understood from their conversation and whether or not he objected to his people being bred for war for the second time in recent history.
“What do the Gors think about this?”
“I have already explained the situation to Torv, and to their Matriarch, Shara. She has agreed to help us, but this time the Gors won’t be fighting as slaves. They will fight as equals.”
“And I suppose they’ve taken your word for that.”
“It’s the truth, and they have no reason to doubt it. They want their species to thrive, and I am offering them the means to make that happen. This time their ships won’t be centrally controlled from the Sythians’ command ships, and the Sythians will be joining us in battle, not hiding behind the lines. The Gors are more than pleased with that arrangement.”
Farah blinked. “Shallah agreed to all of that?”
“He has no choice. He can’t face Omnius alone.”
“How the frek did you bring the Sythians into this alliance?”
Therius smiled. “I offered Shallah everything that Omnius has, all the technology he needs to put him on an equal footing with Avilon. Over the next eight years we’ll be busy refitting the Sythians’ ships and selectively breeding the Gors to create an army to fly them.”
“Busy is the word,” Farah replied, feeling hope stir despite having seen what became of Bretton. “Ten million Gors… how are you planning to feed all of them?”
“There’s plenty of local fauna to hunt, but besides that, the Sythian fleet was created to be self-sufficient. We’re just replacing the crew that they killed.”
“I suppose we’re going to use quantum jump tech to slip past Avilon’s gravity fields and make a head-on attack.”
“That’s part of the plan,” Therius said.
Farah crossed her arms over her chest. “Ten million Gors against fifty trillion drones and seventy trillion humans on Avilon. Those numbers don’t predict a favorable outcome. The rest of your plan better be frekking good.”
“It is.”
“Can I see it?”
“Of course, as my executive officer, and captain of the Liberator, you’ll be privy to all of my battle plans. You have a lot of catching up to do.”
The Liberator? Farah wondered. Therius had wasted no time coming up with a new name for her ship. “We’d better get started then,” she said.
Therius nodded. “Yes, we had. Come with me.”
Part Two: Unmasking The Enemy
“Evil wears a beauteous mask.”
—An Unknown Etherian
Chapter 18
“Happy Birthday, Trinity!” Ethan said as the waiter set a small chocolate cake in front of her. She blew out the candle, and he smiled.
“What did you wish for?” Alara asked.
Trinity looked up, her violet eyes bright and just a shade warmer than her mother’s. Ethan felt an echo of his love for Alara every time he looked at Trinity. She looked just like her mother, but she had his personality—stubborn and independent, an Ortane through and through.
“If I tell you what I wished for, it won’t come true.”
Ethan shook his head. “Wishes are what you make of them, Trin. There’s no force shaping your destiny but your own.”
“What about Omnius?” Trinity asked.
Ethan’s brow tensed and his eyes narrowed. “As far as you’re concerned, Omnius doesn’t exist.”
“But he does,” Trinity said, thrusting out her chin.
Ethan felt Alara place a hand on his knee, and her grip tightened in warning. He turned to her and saw the quiet plea in her eyes.
“It’s her birthday,” she reminded him.
Ethan forced a smile for his daughter’s benefit. “Why the sudden interest in Omnius?”
“I can’t ever leave the apartment. I don’t have any friends. I’ve never even seen the sun! What is a sun? A ball of hot plasma that heats a star system. That’s what I learned on the net, anyway.”
“You won’t get to see the sun in Etheria.”
“But I will in Celesta. Grover says that Etherians get to visit Celesta, and they can go as often as they like!”
Ethan frowned. Apparently Trinity also had her mother’s brain. She was too smart. “Who is Grover?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t have any friends.”
Alara’s hand tightened on his knee again.
“He’s just this boy I know.”
“But you never leave the apartment…”
“We talk on the net. He helps me with math, and I help him with history.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed by another few degrees. “No more talking to Grover.”
“Why not?” Trinity demanded.
“Because I said so.”
“No.”
“Ethan…” Alara’s hand squeezed so tight it began restricting his blood flow.
“All right, fine. I’m disconnecting you from the net.”
“You can’t! I’ll die of boredom.”
“No one has ever died of boredom, but plenty of people have died by wanting to go to Etheria,” Ethan replied.
“It’s her choice,” Alara whispered.
Ethan rounded on his wife. “Her choice? To what? Kill herself?” He shook his head and snapped his fingers to the nearest waiter.
“Sir? Is everything to your satisfaction?”
“Bring me the bill, please. We’re done here.”
“Of course, sir.”
Trinity’s eyes brimmed with tears as she stared at her cake in disbelief.
Ethan drove home with both the women in his life giving him the silent treatment. Fine by him. He was too furious to talk to either of them. Why the frek would Trinity want to go to Etheria? he fumed.
Her Choosing Ceremony was tomorrow! After reassuring him dozens of times over the past years and months—now, at the last possible moment, she’d decided to rethink everything. Ethan cast a resentful glance at his wife. He began to suspect collusion. Alara had never made any secret of wanting to go to Etheria. She believed their lives would be better and safer there.
Never mind that they’d have to die before they could live forever in paradise. Talk about irony. It was the great lie of Avilon.
Ethan tried to focus on the virtual road. White lines marked his lane. He raced past slower traffic on his right, making sure to keep far from the yellow lines between him and oncoming cars. Buildings flashed by as shining pillars of light in the eternal night of the Null Zone.
“What if she leaves?” Alara asked, finally breaking the suffocating silence in the car. “What are you going to do, stay here?”
“You said it yourself. It’s her choice. If she wants to leave us, then so be it.”
Alara snorted. “You’re unbelievable.”
“No, what’s unbelievable is why anyone would want to die so that they can live.”
“Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean resurrection isn’t possible. What is a human besides a biological machine? Turn it off, transfer the data to a new one, and turn it on.” Alara snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.
“We’re done with this conversation,” Ethan said.
“You don’t believe in an afterlife, Ethan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you don’t believe there’s more to us than flesh and blood, then explain to me why resurrection won’t work?”
“Because when we get turned off, we still have all of our memories. We’re there when Omnius turns out the lights. If people weren’t disposed of after the transfer, there could be two copies of everyone running around and you’d never be able to tell the differ
ence. Ask any one of them after the fact if they feel like their existence is meaningless just because they have a clone running around out there somewhere, and you’ll realize that it’s not that simple. A copy is still a copy, no matter how convincing it is.”
Alara blew out a breath. “You don’t get it.”
“You’re right, I don’t!”
A long silence stretched between them, during which Ethan worked hard to control his breathing, but every time he breathed out, he felt like there was a wellspring of air still trapped inside his chest.
“You can’t keep Trinity locked in our apartment forever. What’s going to happen when she gets a job? Or when she starts to date? You won’t always be able to protect her.”
“Protect her from what? We’re safe up here.”
“You make more money than 90% of Nulls, Ethan. You think she’ll be that lucky?”
“So she’ll have to get a good education. Isn’t that what we’re paying a thousand bytes a month for?”
“No matter how good her education, everyone starts at the bottom. She’ll spend years living in the most dangerous parts of the city before she ever has a chance to rise to the top.”
“Not if she marries well.”
“That’s your plan for her future? Marry into money?”
Ethan scowled and sent Trinity a quick look over his shoulder. She sat in the middle of the backseat, her violet eyes wide and darting between her parents.
“Trin, don’t let your mother scare you. We’ve stayed safe down here this long, and that’s not about to change. Remember what you promised me.”
Trinity’s eyes flicked to her mother. “I made Mom a promise, too.”
Ethan’s nostrils flared and his head spun around as if he’d been slapped. “What have you been telling her?”
Alara met his gaze unblinkingly. “The truth.”
Ethan snorted. “Then you should have lied! There’s nothing more deadly than the truth on Avilon.”
Alara sighed. “Just drive, Ethan.”
“Sure thing,” he said, shaking his head. He wasn’t going to let Alara manipulate him into going to Etheria by convincing their daughter to lead the way. He would make sure that Trinity stayed, even if he had to break the rules to do it.
* * *
Destra stood on her balcony high above the parade grounds, watching the graduation ceremony for the latest group of Gor soldiers. There had been countless ceremonies like this one, at least two per week for as long as she could remember, but this group was different.
Destra’s gaze roved up and down the ranks of over ten thousand Gors, standing in a perfect square, all of them wearing the same glossy black suits of armor that their forefathers had used almost twenty years ago to all but wipe out the human race.
Destra still couldn’t believe that Omnius had orchestrated the invasion in order to kill and then resurrect everyone on Avilon. It was hard enough to understand how resurrection worked, let alone the motives behind it, but she couldn’t refute the process.
Eight years ago she’d been cloned by the Union in order to de-link her from Omnius. Now her body was even younger than it had been when the Sythians invaded, and just recently she’d turned thirty for the second time. Talk about confusing, Destra thought. She didn’t even bother celebrating birthdays anymore. What was the point?
Far below the balcony where Destra stood, Therius welcomed the new recruits to the Union Army. His voice boomed through the square, reaching Destra’s ears with perfect clarity despite a distance of a few hundred meters. But she wasn’t paying any attention to the speech.
So much had happened since the invasion. She’d lost no less than two husbands, and likely her son, Atton, too. Therius promised they would rescue Avilon and set its people free, but whenever she had the chance to ask him if she’d ever see her husband or her son again, his answer had been evasive. The last time she’d asked him he’d said, “Death is just the doorway to another life, so it is inevitable that you will see them again.”
“Does that mean they’ll die?”
“It means that only Etherus knows the future, and humans are designed to live in the present.”
Therius was religious. Destra could appreciate that, but he was taking things too far. He hadn’t even made plans to resurrect anyone who died in the coming battle. His excuse was that there wouldn’t be anyone left on Origin to resurrect them, and the data banks Therius had used to store intercepted Lifelink data from Avilon were far too limited. They might be able to store and resurrect a few thousand individuals, but how would they decide who got to live again and who didn’t? There was no way to make those decisions fairly, so Therius had declared that no one would be coming back this time. That put the stakes higher than ever.
Life was about to become a lot more precious.
Destra eyed the generals standing on the podium with Therius. They all wore the same armor as the Gors they commanded, but theirs had been painted white to distinguish them from the soldiers under their command. Further distinguishing the generals from the rest was the fact that they were all females.
With the Gors Omnius had chosen the right species to subjugate. He’d only needed to subjugate the males, because without their matriarchs they became trusting and obedient. Their females were the exact opposite, however, and they were revered as leaders of their people.
All of that would have been mere trivia to Destra, but for one thing: Gors revered female humans, too, and by some twist of genetic fate, Destra’s daughter, Atta, was still receptive to the Gors’ telepathic abilities, even as a young adult.
Because of that, Admiral Therius had determined that Atta would be the perfect general for a mixed Gor and human battalion. The Gors had already accepted Atta as one of their own, calling her the Little Matriarch.
Destra bit her lip, her eyes on Atta. She stood at attention to Therius’s right, her helmet off and tucked under her arm. Her beautiful dark hair had been cropped so close to her scalp that it looked like a hat. Something warm and wet slid down Destra’s cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of one hand.
Her little girl was going to war. She was only sixteen, far too young to be a part of what was coming. Unfortunately, Therius didn’t see it that way. Everyone was going to fight. There were no civilians in the Union Fleet, not even her. Destra was going to fly a drop ship. She’d been training for the past eight years, but she still didn’t feel ready.
Therius finished his speech, and the Gors all shuffled their feet and turned as one, raising their arms to the distant purplish orb of Origin’s sun.
Therius called out, “Fire!” and ten thousand pirakla missiles shot out at the same exact moment. Those packets of energy danced and spun, sparkling bright purple as they soared into the air. Each one of them competed with the sun, looking like a star in its own right. At a set altitude above the parade grounds and the Union’s fortress, all of those missiles exploded at once in a mighty thunderclap that rattled Destra’s bones and shook the balcony where she stood.
Therius could instill in them all the martial pride he wanted, but the truth was, he had just ten million Gors, twenty thousand Sythians, and five thousand humans to take on a planet with countless trillions of people, guarded by a few hundred billion drones. And when Omnius arrived with New Avilon, trillions more drones would arrive to join the fight.
Destra shook her head. Etherus save us…
Chapter 19
Ethan took a few minutes to speak to Trinity before they went to bed. He planned to undermine whatever crazy ideas her mother had put into her head, but Alara refused to give them a private moment.
She crawled into bed beside Trinity, and hugged their daughter close, saying, “Your father is scared, but it’s your life, Trinity. You need to make this choice for yourself.”
Ethan felt a vein begin pulsing in his forehead, and his eyes narrowed. “Trin.” He waited for her to look at him. “Omnius will try to convince you to leave us.”
“I know,” s
he replied.
“Just remember, everything he says is a lie.”
“How do you know that?” Alara demanded. “Give me one example of a lie that you can prove he’s told us.”
“I don’t have proof. If I did, then Omnius probably would have killed me by now just to shut me up.”
“Or maybe you don’t have proof because there isn’t any,” Alara replied.
“Where’s your proof that we can trust him?”
“Dad, stop,” Trinity said, an imploring look on her face. “Please, no more fighting.”
Ethan set his jaw and nodded once. “All right. But we’re a family, okay? If we decide to go to Etheria, we need to make that decision together. Whatever you decide to do, your decision is either going to keep us together or tear us apart.”
“Don’t put that pressure on her,” Alara said.
“Mom…”
Alara sighed and kissed Trinity goodnight. “Happy Birthday, sweetheart,” she said as she brushed by Ethan in the entrance of Trinity’s room.
Ethan lingered, wondering what else he could say, but after a moment’s deliberation, he walked up to Trinity’s bed and kissed her on the top of her head. “Goodnight, Trin.”
Ethan stumbled wearily to his and Alara’s room. He climbed into bed beside her. Alara was at the far end of the bed, her back to him. He glared at her with a frown and then rolled the other way before turning out the lights.
He dreamed that Alara was straddling him, her hands pinning his wrists to the pillow with impressive force. She held him captive, her bright turquoise eyes spitting venom while her hips moved against his rhythmically, making him feel violated, a prisoner to her own fulfillment. Turquoise eyes? He wondered, while trying to free his wrists against her impossible weight. That gaze was familiar, but it wasn’t Alara’s. The rest of her, however—her face, her long silken black hair, even her naked breasts—all looked identical to his wife.
He shook his head. “Get off,” he mumbled.
The woman’s lips curved wryly. “Why? Don’t pretend you don’t like it.” She kissed him, and he felt more strength ebb out of him as the taste and smell of her overwhelmed him. He was too weak to resist. His arms felt heavy and numb, his body the same. The kiss went on and on, her lips taking possession of his, as if trying to sap away his very soul. Eventually he found enough of his strength return for him to free his wrists and give her a shove.
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