Ethan’s nose wrinkled at that. “How do you know you can trust him?”
“Are you questioning me, human? I am no friend of Omnius. He betrayed us, just asss he betrayed humanity.”
Ethan shook his head.
“Feeling more confident about our chances yet?” Therius asked.
“Yes and no. How can you be sure Omnius doesn’t know about your rebellion? You’re taking people from Avilon. He must have noticed that by now.”
“We intercept Lifelink transfers on Avilon and use this fortress’s cloning facilities to resurrect them here.”
“And he can’t trace that?”
Therius shook his head.
“All right, so who was first? Someone had to physically escape and build this place in order to get things started.”
“I was the first, and this fortress was already here,” Therius said. “It’s very old, built by the very first people to walk this planet. I used it over the course of many years to build my army. The fortress came with a working quantum junction and that enabled me to visit planets all over the Imperium, even before the invasion. I eventually convinced a venture-class cruiser captain and his crew to follow me here. Together we organized the Union—we called ourselves Etheria’s Army until we allied with the Sythians and the Gors.”
“But how did you get here?”
Therius smiled. “I escaped Avilon.”
Ethan shook his head. “No one escapes Avilon, and even if you found a way, what are the chances of you coming here and finding this place to start your rebellion?”
“Very slim, I expect.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Ethan said.
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“So what was it?”
“An act of God,” Therius said.
Ethan frowned. An act of God, or an act of Omnius? “I don’t believe in god,” he said.
“Then neither of us is going to be happy with the other’s attributions for where we are and how we came to be here.”
“How did you escape?”
“I could go into detail—”
“Please.”
“—but it would take too long to explain right now. Perhaps another time.” Therius turned to Shallah. “You may leave us.”
Shallah lunged at him, hissing and snapping his jaws a few inches from Therius’s face. “I am not your pet, human!”
“Of course you aren’t,” Therius replied, not even blinking.
Ethan watched the Sythian go. Shallah’s thin reptilian tail lashed the floor restlessly as he went. Ethan’s skin crawled and he shivered.
“I don’t trust him,” he said, not sure whether he was talking about Shallah or Therius.
“Neither do I,” Destra added.
“We need the Sythians to help us take Avilon,” Therius replied.
Ethan turned and looked out the wall of windows to the field below. He walked up to get a closer look. Thousands of black dots were still milling around the base of the fortress.
“Those are the Gors,” he said, feeling his skin crawl again.
“We’ve been breeding them here for the past eight years,” Therius said.
“Breeding them?” Ethan asked. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. So this is Origin? How do you know?”
“Don’t you recognize it? Everyone does. It’s burned into humanity’s collective memory.”
“That sounds… unlikely,” Ethan decided.
“It’s the best explanation I can give you. Unfortunately it requires faith to understand.”
“Faith? In what?”
“Something bigger than yourself.”
“You’re talking about Etherianism.”
“I’m talking about a bigger picture of your existence.”
Ethan sighed. “Atta said you’re planning to attack Avilon in less than a week.”
“That’s right.”
“I hope you have a good plan. Avilon’s fleet isn’t as strong as it once was, but their garrison is stronger than ever. You’re going to face billions of Peacekeepers and trillions of drones.”
“Yes, but those drones will be all but disabled, and the Peacekeepers will be fighting for us.”
Ethan turned to regard Therius with eyebrows raised. “All right, you’ve got my attention.”
Therius smiled. “Good.”
* * *
As Ethan listened to Therius’s plan, he became more and more confident that it might work. The Union had a comparable level of technology to Omnius. Their fleet had already been fitted with quantum technologies, but they weren’t reliant on them like Omnius was, so their secret weapon—the Eclipser—was sure to hurt the enemy and not them.
With that one device they were going to defeat Omnius. It was a quantum jammer. As soon as it was activated, Omnius would lose contact with drones and Peacekeepers alike. The planet’s ground defenses would all go offline, Omnius’s fleet and garrison would be uncoordinated and easily picked off. The Union fleet was going to jump straight into orbit over Avilon and open fire on the planet’s garrisons before they even had a chance to take off. It all sounded very promising. Too promising. There had to be a catch.
“How did you develop the Eclipser?” Ethan asked. Thanks to Omnius, he was used to dealing with hidden agendas, and he wasn’t sure he trusted Therius yet. For all he knew, Therius had been planted by Omnius to lead all of his enemies into a trap. “And how do you know it works?”
“There have been plenty of field tests.”
“On Avilon?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know Omnius doesn’t already have countermeasures for it?”
“I came from Avilon. I was one of his most trusted confidants. Besides, we have people coming here from Avilon every day, and many of them were also high-ranking citizens. They know things, but none of them know about quantum jamming fields, and certainly not on the scale of the one we’re going to employ. And to answer your first question, we didn’t develop the Eclipser. We found it, just like Omnius found all of his advanced technology.”
“Omnius found his technology?”
“In the ruins of the Getties, yes, but he has yet to discover Origin, and the Eclipser was found here.”
“What if Omnius came to Origin long before you got here?”
“Then why didn’t he take the Eclipser with him? And if he knew where Origin was, he’d have found and destroyed our rebellion already.”
“That’s a good point.” Ethan sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He was inexplicably tired—exhausted actually, but he’d only been awoken a few hours ago…
“You need to rest,” Therius said. “Lifelink transfers are mentally draining.”
That explained it. “I’m not sure I’m ready to sleep yet. I want to see more of Origin. If this is where humanity began, there must be ruins, artifacts… something to help fit all of these pieces together.”
Therius spread his hands. “There’ll be plenty of time to fill in the blanks in human history later, but right now, you need to start training with your squadron. Would you like me to take you to your quarters and introduce you to the others?”
There came a knock at the door, followed by a muffled voice—“Captain Hale is here. You asked to be informed when she arrived.”
“Yes, thank you. Send her in.”
The door swished open to reveal an angry-looking woman with short, curly blond hair. “I need to speak with you, Admiral,” she said.
Therius smiled and nodded. “That’s why we made this appointment, is it not? What’s on your mind, Captain?”
Ethan saw her gaze skip sideways and settle on him. “I think we’d better speak in private,” she said.
“Yes, of course,” Therius replied. “Ethan would you please step outside for a moment? I’ll show you to your quarters as soon as I’m done.”
Ethan hesitated, wondering what this was about. Who was Captain Hale and why did she look so upset?
“Sure,” he
replied, and eased out of his chair. He squeezed by the captain on his way out.
“Who are you?” she asked, echoing his own thoughts about her.
“Ethan Ortane.”
“Commander Ethan Ortane,” Therius replied.
The captain’s eyebrows lifted. “I haven’t seen him before. He must be new. You’ve made him a commander already? Of what?”
“He’s assigned to your ship, actually,” Therius said. “He’ll be commanding Rictan Squadron.”
“The Rictans? Really. I’d like to see that. Do they know yet?”
“They will soon.”
Ethan gave a sloppy salute. “Reporting for duty, Captain.”
She frowned and returned the salute. “Dismissed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and walked out the door. It swished shut behind him, and he took a moment to collect his thoughts. The guard standing at the door eyed him, looking ready to say something about him lingering there. Ethan nodded to the man—a petty officer. He was surprised to find that he recognized the insignias. They were all identical to those worn by officers in the old ISSF, back before the Sythian invasion.
The guard glared at him. Ethan wasn’t wearing a uniform yet, so the fact that he was a commander meant nothing. He walked up to a row of seats along one wall and sat down there to wait. Then he heard something—
“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it immediately, sir.”
The petty officer by the door was speaking into his ear piece, but the conversation ended abruptly, and he abandoned his post, giving Ethan a warning look as he strode past. Ethan waited for the guard to round the corner, and then he jumped out of his chair and hurried to the door. He pressed his ear against it to listen in. He couldn’t hear a thing. But then, as if by magic, voices rippled out. It took Ethan a moment to realize that those voices were being transmitted through the intercom beside the door. Ethan eyed the intercom suspiciously. Was he supposed to hear this? Had Therius pressed the transmit button on purpose or by accident?
“Winning at all costs isn’t winning, Admiral!” Captain Hale said.
“Your problem, Captain, is that you don’t have enough faith. You think that everyone on Avilon will die if we detonate nanite bombs there, but you’re wrong. We’ll finally be setting them free from Omnius. He can’t follow them beyond the grave. Unlike us, he doesn’t have a soul.”
“Let’s assume you’re right. What’s stopping him from resurrecting everyone again? Technically everyone on Avilon has already died at least once before.”
“The clones and all their data are still on Avilon. If we destroy Avilon before Omnius has a chance to transfer people’s Lifelink data to New Avilon, then he won’t be able to bring anyone back ever again.”
“How do you know he hasn’t transferred the data already?”
“Because we would have detected the transfers and intercepted them, and besides that, Omnius is arrogant. Why go to all the trouble of making off-site backups when your on-site backups are already more than good enough?”
“Let’s assume you’re right. Not everyone believes in an afterlife, and even the people who do aren’t going to be in a hurry to commit mass suicide in order to get there ahead of schedule. You really expect us to fight and die in order to make our own species extinct?”
“The Armageddon Protocol is a last resort, Captain Hale. We won’t need to use it, and no, I don’t expect people to fight and die for that plan, because I’m not going to tell them about it.”
“They have a right to know.”
“This is war, and in war some information is classified.”
“It’s not war, it’s suicide! If it were up to me—”
“But it’s not up to you, Captain. The only way we can defeat Omnius is to hold his people ransom. We can’t beat him in a straight fight. The Icosahedron is a million times as strong as our entire fleet. We would need millions of warships and a whole galaxy of infrastructure if we wanted to beat Omnius by conventional means.”
“Then we should give up now. We have a better chance of survival if we run away and hide. Omnius hasn’t found Origin in all this time. Maybe he never will. We could start over here, keep intercepting Lifelink transfers, bring people here slowly over time. Think this through before you pin our survival as a species on the slim hope that Omnius will back down.”
“I already have thought about it. Trust me. This is the only way we can defeat him. No matter how well we hide, we can’t hide forever. Eventually we’ll have to come out and face our enemy, and by then he’ll be a hundred times stronger. No… now is the only time we have. Carpe diem, Captain Hale.”
“Carpe mortem, you mean.”
“Mors mihi lucrum.”
“What?”
“It means, Death to me is a reward.”
“Well, good for you, but I’m not sure everyone would agree with that.”
“You are dismissed, Captain.”
There was a brief moment of silence. Then she said, “Yes, sir.”
Ethan heard footsteps, and he flew back to his chair, falling into it just as the door swished open and Captain Hale came storming out. Ethan folded his hands nonchalantly in his lap. He was overly aware of his pounding heart, and he wondered if the captain could see it beating through his robes. But she didn’t so much as look as him as she walked by.
He felt sick to his stomach. Therius was threatening to kill everyone in order to blackmail Omnius into… what? Surrendering? And what was that thing Therius had mentioned… an Icosahed-ris? Hed-ra? Hedron. That’s it. Icosahedron. What the frek?
Therius came out of his office next. He had a smile pasted on his face. “Thank you for being so patient with me, Ethan. It seems I don’t get a moment to myself these days.”
“I see that,” Ethan said, rising to his feet. “What did the captain want to speak with you about?” he asked, half-hoping that the admiral knew about his accidental slip up with the intercom and now he’d explain everything in a way that would somehow sound less terrible.
“Oh, she just wanted to iron out some of the finer details of our battle plan.”
“The finer details?”
“Yes, would you like me to show you to your quarters now?”
“Ah, yeah… before you do that, I’ve been thinking about something.”
Therius cocked his head to one side.
“Where is my family?”
“On Avilon.”
“But you intercepted my Lifelink transfer when I died.”
“That’s correct.”
“So why didn’t you intercept theirs? My wife and daughter died before I did.”
“Our resources are limited here, Ethan. If we intercepted every transfer and subsequently cloned bodies for them here, we would soon run out of food and supplies. We have to pick our candidates very carefully, so we choose those who are best suited to help us in the battle to come.”
“My wife flew Novas, too.”
“But your daughter didn’t, and she’s not old enough to be an asset here. We couldn’t resurrect your wife without your daughter—that would have been too painful for her—and besides, the fewer duplicates of living clones we have, the better. Can you imagine all the trouble that will cause later? It’s far better to save your family’s rescue for after we take control of Avilon.”
“What if they die in the fighting?”
“Then we’ll clone them and bring them back using their Lifelinks.”
Ethan frowned.
Therius grabbed his shoulder and leaned in close to look him in the eye. “One way or another, you’ll be with your family again. I promise. You just need to have faith. Can you do that?”
One way or another—you mean in this life or the next? “I’m going to hold you to that,” Ethan said.
Therius nodded. “I expect you to. Now come, you have a lot of training to catch up with.”
Therius led the way, and Ethan followed, all the while wondering what in the Netherworld was going on. They reached a pair of lift
tubes and waited for the nearest one to arrive.
Ethan stared at Therius, his eyes burning a hole in the side of the man’s face. If the Union detonated nanite bombs on Avilon, there was no way his family would come back from that, no matter what Therius promised about them being together again, but if blackmailing Omnius actually worked, then the bombs wouldn’t need to be detonated, and everyone would be fine.
That was one too many if’s for Ethan’s liking. He had to do something. Ethan agreed with Captain Hale: killing everyone so Omnius couldn’t control them anymore didn’t count as winning.
Therius could go jump in a black hole as far as he was concerned. The man was skriffy as a Psycho, and he had to be stopped before it was too late. The only question was how…
“Is something wrong, Ethan?”
Ethan snapped out of his reverie and smiled. “No, nothing, why?”
“You’ve been staring at me for the past minute,” Therius replied.
“Oh.” He covered a yawn with one hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Just tired, I guess.”
“Well, we’d better get you to your quarters so you can sleep.”
Then the lift opened and they stepped inside.
Chapter 29
The lift shot up a dozen levels before opening into a broad corridor. Therius strode out and Ethan kept pace beside him. On this level the passersby all wore jumpsuits rather than uniforms. A few of them eyed him in his white patient’s gown, no doubt wondering who he was. Ethan wondered the same thing.
Am I a clone or am I me? The difference felt vague and irrelevant now that he had already been cloned.
After a few minutes of walking, Therius stopped in front of a door on their left and waved it open. Inside the room were half a dozen double bunk beds and a handful of men. They were all half-dressed in undershirts and shorts. Glowing tattoos were everywhere; a few gold earrings dangled from ears, and they all looked like they had a habit of injecting hormones for enhanced muscle growth.
Conversations stopped. A pillow reached its target with a whuff, but both target and attacker froze in place, their eyes on him. A petite woman in a white jumpsuit stood out from the rest. When she turned to face him, Ethan saw that it was Atta. She placed her hands on her hips and regarded him with a look of displeasure. A black man seated on the bunk beside her turned to him with equal animosity. Ethan noticed that his face and neck glowed with green tattoos, and so did his upper arms. There were no less than five gold earrings in his ears. He looked like a thug.
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