The caped Avilonian crossed his forearms in front of him and a shimmering bubble of light expanded out from where he stood to surround all three of them. The air seemed to buzz and crackle with energy. Then the two flanking Avilonians raised their arms with palms outward, just as Caldin had seen one of them do before she’d been thrown against the ceiling.
Suddenly the mysterious bubble of light flashed and Caldin saw something glossy and black hit the floor with a thud. She gaped at it in horror. It was a Gor’s arm, sliced off cleanly at the elbow. A loud hissing noise filled the air—the Gor who’d lost his arm screaming in pain, or more likely, outrage.
The Avilonians began gesturing wildly in the air. Then came a raucous series of booming thuds as if someone were beating the bulkheads with sledgehammers. Caldin’s eyes were drawn toward each thud as it sounded—to the bulkheads, the deck, the ceiling, and finally to the bridge doors. A deep dent appeared in the doors, revealing a slice of the corridor beyond. It looked as if they’d been hit with a battering ram. The battering ram in question appeared a moment later, a glossy black shadow lying on the deck, hissing and writhing in pain.
Back was the thunderous voice of Omnius. “Do not let them suffer,” it said. The glowing bubble of energy vanished, and then the Avilonians unleashed screeching beams of blinding white light from their palms. One Gor at a time, the hissing stopped, and fallen Gors appeared all around them, their armor smoking and glowing with a faint orange light. Caldin was left staring in horror at the scene.
“How did you see them?” Caldin asked, unable to believe what she’d just witnessed. The Gors had been cloaked!
The taller Avilonian turned back to her and the glowing eye in the center of his chest swelled to a blinding brightness once more. “I see everything!” Omnius replied. “Did you really think you could hide them from me?”
“You didn’t have to kill them! They were already incapacitated.”
“Not all are worthy of redemption,” the thunder said. “Now, explain to me why you came.”
“We came to get help! The last of us are holed up and hiding in an isolated corner of the galaxy called Dark Space. A few weeks ago the Sythians arrived there with a fleet. We need your help to fight them off before they can finish what they started when they came to this galaxy. If you won’t help us for our sake, consider this—they’re coming for you next. We know they’ve been looking for Avilon for some time now. It won’t be long before they discover you.”
“They have already discovered us,” Omnius replied. “And it is too late for us to help you. Your people have lost the fight. Your leaders surrendered, and the Sythians now have complete control of Dark Space. They are busy enslaving your people to replace the Gors as crew for their fleets.”
“What?” Caldin couldn’t believe it. “How can you possibly know that?”
“I know many things.”
“I don’t believe you,” Caldin replied. “We would never surrender to Sythians.”
“No? Look. . . . and you shall see.” With that, the blinding light diminished and Caldin risked looking up. The air before the Avilonians shimmered briefly and then a hologram appeared, projected from the eye of Omnius. A familiar Sythian with translucent skin, pale lavender freckles, and gills in the sides of his neck appeared. Caldin watched the alien’s lips move and listened to the translation which followed.
“Humans, I am High Lord Kaon. Your rulers surrender to us, and you are now subjects of the Sythian Coalition. You surely require proof to convince you, and so . . .” The camera panned to show Admiral Hoff Heston standing to one side of Kaon. His hands were bound, his gray hair dirty and matted with sweat. Stubble covered his dirty, tear-stained cheeks, and blood stains marred the once pristine white of his now torn and tattered uniform. The holo froze there, and then it faded and the blinding light returned. Caldin winced and looked away.
“Now that you know the fate of your people, we must get back to deciding the fate of you and your crew. “What do you know about us?”
“Nothing,” Caldin lied.
“If you wish to live, you won’t lie to me again. What do you know about us?”
Caldin wondered how Omnius knew that she’d lied, but she decided it didn’t matter. She told the truth this time, explaining what Atton had told her about the immortals and the Sythians. She told them how humanity had evolved in the Getties Cluster on a mythical world called Origin, which was really Sythia. She recounted how humanity discovered a way to live forever by cloning themselves and transferring their consciousness to those clones at or before death via Lifelink implants. Then she explained about the Great War which had erupted between mortals and immortals, eventually driving the latter to flee the Getties Cluster. She told them how the mortals who won the war and stayed behind in the Getties had turned to manipulating their genome in order to live longer lives. When that failed to make them immortal, they went back to doing the very thing they had fought to stop—cloning themselves to live forever. By this point all their genetic tampering and unconstrained evolution made them into an entirely new species—the Sythians. As their population grew out of control, the Sythians continued their genetic tampering in order to create bodies for themselves which were uniquely suited to the worlds where they were forced to live, thus the Sythians became a collection of similar, but different species. Once their population grew too large for their galaxy to support, they turned to the Adventa Galaxy to continue expanding, but the Adventa Galaxy was already populated with humans, so they set about to annihilate humanity in order to make room for themselves.
Despite the blinding light radiating from Omnius, Caldin noticed the Avilonians exchanging wide-eyed looks, as if they were hearing all of this for the first time.
“How do you know all of this?” Omnius boomed, sounding as though he were surprised, too.
“It was told to me by one of my commanders—the one we sent to find you and ask for help. He was in turn told by his stepfather, Admiral Hoff Heston—the man from the hologram. The Admiral found out about these things from the Sythians. I am told that he was once one of your people—an Avilonian himself.”
“An exile. Yes, I know this man. He came to us for help not long ago. He needed food for his refugees.”
“Why was he exiled?”
“That was before my time, just after the Great War between mortals and immortals. . . . If what you are saying about these Sythians is true, then that war, which we all still remember, was not the first war which we have fought over immortality.”
“It would appear that history has repeated itself at least once,” Caldin agreed.
“That explains why your admiral’s offense was so grievous to the royal council.”
“What did he do?”
“He advocated mortality as a choice. He said that people should have the freedom to live a natural life and to have at least one child per person as a reward for that choice. He argued that the Great War and the rebellion all started because breeding was strictly regulated, and because not everyone wanted to live forever. He believed that giving the rebels what they wanted would prevent another war, but the council did not agree about the causes for the war, and his proposal was rejected. He was stripped of all rank and privilege for daring to propose such a thing. Rather than leave it at that, he appealed directly to the citizens, hoping to gain popular support and force the council to admit that he was right. He was caught and exiled for treason.”
“If what the admiral did was so despicable, why did you agree to help feed his Enclave?”
“Why should innocent people suffer for his mistake?”
“That’s a noble sentiment.” For some reason Caldin didn’t buy Omnius’s concern for innocent people but she let it go. There was something else that didn’t add up. “Why didn’t Hoff mention you?”
“Me?”
“You—what are you? I’ve never heard of any Omnius.”
“Yes you have, but you don’t know it, and neither does your admiral. He went
to our outpost, and I did not meet with him personally. I do not reveal myself to everyone.”
“So what makes us so special?”
“You are trespassing in Ascendancy space, so I am forced to cast a judgment. If I decide to let you leave, you will not leave here with any memory of this encounter.”
“And if you don’t let us leave?”
“Then it will be because I have decided to let you join my kingdom.”
Caldin shook her head. “What are you?”
“Your legends speak of me, and of my chosen people—you call them Immortals, and you call me—”
“Etherus . . .” Caldin breathed.
“Yes,” Omnius replied.
Caldin’s jaw dropped and she forced herself to look up into the blinding light. “Etherus is a god.”
“I am a god,” Omnius boomed. “The only god you will ever meet.”
Caldin’s eyes began to burn and tear. “Are you saying that you created us?”
“No, you created me.”
“Then whatever you are . . . you aren’t really our god, are you?” Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she refused to look away from the light, determined to show this Omnius that she was not subservient to it. “We are your gods,” she added with a sardonic smile.
“Blasphemy!” one of the Avilonians screamed. There came another whoosh of air, and Caldin felt herself ripped off the deck once more. This time when she hit the ceiling, she hit her head, and the infernal light of Omnius disappeared as she plunged into a hazy darkness.
* * *
Captain Caldin awoke with a tickling sensation in the back of her head; then her eyes popped open and she saw one of the Avilonians standing over her with a glowing wand. She watched him pass the wand over her shoulder and the tickling sensation moved to there. When the sensation passed, the nauseating ache in her shoulder went with it.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked.
The Avilonian gave no reply. She sat up, and he withdrew, walking back toward the blinding light which was still suffusing the bridge. Based on that, she assumed that she hadn’t been unconscious for long.
“What now?” she demanded of the light. “If you won’t send reinforcements to Dark Space, what are you going to do with me and my crew?”
“I did not say I wouldn’t send reinforcements. I merely told you that it is too late to save your people. Nevertheless, the time has come for the Sythians to meet their end.”
Caldin shook her head in bewilderment. “That’s it? Just like that you decide that they should be stopped? Why now? Why didn’t you stop them ten years ago when they came to our galaxy?”
The blinding light seemed to swell and then diminish to half its former brightness. “We were not aware of the threat until it was too late to stop it.”
“You have sensors that can detect ships travelling at superluminal speeds while they’re still light years away, and you expect me to believe that you didn’t know we were being slaughtered by the trillions?”
“No, we became aware of the Sythians long before your people did. We have been preparing for their arrival ever since.”
“What? You knew and you didn’t think to warn us?”
“If I have been unable to adequately prepare in the last half a century, then what makes you think you could have? They are the threat of all threats, a species so ruthless and so numerous that we could not have stopped them even if all of humanity had found a way to stand together. The only way to survive the invasion was to hide from it, and we are very good at hiding.”
“Coward,” Caldin spat.
“Great One, I beg your permission to kill her,” the taller Avilonian said, sounding as though he spoke through gritted teeth.
“No, she will learn. As for why now—the answer is that your Sythians have finally found us, and it is pointless for us to go on pretending that we do not exist. Now it is time for us to put our preparations to the test.”
“I get it. So when your asses are on the line you do something, but when it’s ours, you can just leave us to die.”
“You may not believe this, but I and my children have gone to a great deal of trouble to save your people.”
“Like what? I’d never even heard of Avilon until recently, so explain to me how the frek you’ve been trying to save us?”
Omnius gave no reply for a long moment. The light shining from the “eye” in the center of the taller Avilonian’s chest swelled once more and then disappeared entirely.
Caldin’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Come back here! You can’t answer me, can you?”
The three Avilonians began speaking quickly amongst themselves in a language that Caldin didn’t understand. They gestured wildly and then turned in a quick circle to look around the bridge.
She was peripherally aware of someone crouching down beside her. It was her XO, Cobrale Delayn. “What do you think’s going on?” he asked.
Caldin shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“They don’t look too happy,” Delayn replied, pointing at the trio of Avilonians who were still talking at high speed and gesturing frenetically.
A loud banging interrupted Caldin’s thoughts, drawing everyone’s attention toward the source of the noise—the bridge doors. Even the Avilonians were distracted by the sound. Caldin heard muffled shouting beyond the doors. Some of the other crew had obviously come looking for them. A few seconds later the crackling hiss of a cutting beam started up, and the Avilonian with the cape turned away from the doors to stare at her. The glowing ellipse which was his faceplate remained fixed on her for a long moment. Then he seemed to come to a decision and he began stalking toward her.
“You—” the Avilonian said as he approached, “—you are the captain of this vessel, are you not?”
Caldin nodded as Delayn helped her to her feet. “I am.”
“I’m commandeering this vessel for the Ascendancy. Your crew and your ship will fight for me. You will relay my orders to them. If they do not obey, they will die, is this understood?”
Caldin shook her head, bewildered by those demands. “Our technology is far less advanced than yours. What possible use could we be to you?”
“This vessel is the only one I now have to call upon.”
“What? What happened to yours?”
“It has been remotely deactivated, along with every other vessel and weapon that we possess. Omnius is not responding, and the gravity fields where you and your Sythians were stranded have all now been deactivated.”
Delayn whistled quietly. “Someone frekked things up good. You have centralized control for everything, don’t you?”
“Yes, how do you know this?”
“Just a wild guess,” Delayn said. “Here’s another one for you. That little flashlight of yours—Omnius—he’s the one who controls everything.”
The Avilonian standing before them loomed close to Delayn and shook an armored fist in his face. “If you wish to live, you will show more respect.”
“You need me. I don’t need you.”
“For now . . .” the Avilonian growled. He turned back to Caldin. “We must go. I fear something terrible has happened.”
Caldin nodded slowly. “Comms!” she bellowed, spinning around to find the officer at the comms station. “Tell our crew outside the bridge not to be alarmed; everything is under control, but do have them finish cutting through the doors—just in case we might like to leave the bridge some day. Make sure they understand the Avilonians are on our side, and that they’re going to be joining us for a while.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“All right,” Caldin said, turning back to the Avilonian with the cape. “What now, your lordship?”
“I am not a lord. In your language you would call me a Strategian—a Captain, I believe.”
“Do you have a name, Mr. Strategian?”
“I am Master Galan Rovik.”
“Master?”
“It is a title.”
“I see . . .”
/>
“We are wasting time. No more questions. We must go—now.”
“All right, Master Strategian . . . where are we going?”
“To Avilon.”
“All right, but I have one question before we go,” Caldin said. “Who is Omnius?”
Galan regarded her silently, but it was Delayn who replied, “He is an AI. Obviously far more advanced than any of our own artificial intelligences.”
“Yes,” Galan replied, “but he is much more than that. He is our ruler, a benevolent intelligence so vast that we cannot even begin to comprehend him; for countless millennia Omnius has selflessly devoted his life to rule our people with fairness and wisdom—he is a god. He is our god, but now I fear something terrible has happened to him.”
“If he’s a god,” Caldin said, “then why does he need our help?”
“I do not know. All I can say is that nothing like this has ever happened before. Omnius does not simply stop being; he does not lose control for even an instant. He is constantly in contact with us and us with him. For that to have changed, and for all of our vessels to suddenly be deactivated . . . Omnius must have been shut down.”
“Some god you have there, Galan. He’s the first deity I’ve ever heard of that has an on/off switch.”
“Silence! Take us to Avilon or I will kill you for your blasphemy.”
Caldin snorted and shook her head, turning to stalk down the gangway to the captain’s table. “Well, you’d better give me the coordinates!” she called out. Then the bridge doors opened with a boom as two freshly cut pieces of duranium fell out of place and crashed to the deck. Caldin turned to see Commander Ortane standing in the opening with a handful of pilots and sentinels. They had their rifles and sidearms drawn. “What the frek?” someone called out.
“Stand down!” Caldin said just as the pair of Avilonians still standing by the doors crossed their forearms in front of them and produced another shimmering blue shield like the one which had sliced a Gor’s arm off. One of the sentinels called out in alarm and opened fire on the expanding bubble of energy. The laser bolt bounced straight back at him and hit the bulkhead beside his head.
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