In just another few seconds they reached those people, and suddenly Ethan was afraid that they would crash into them, but as they drew near to each other, one or both sets of people began to slow down. Ethan noticed that the others were standing upright in thin air, as if the clouds were made of substance rather than condensing water vapor. They wore shimmering white robes like the ones he’d seen people wearing in the upper city. As he and the others who had jumped from the dome slowed to a stop in front of these white-robed people, he felt something hard and smooth touch his belly, and he flinched as if scalded by it. Suddenly, he understood the illusion—
And he stood up.
The floor under his feet was invisible, as if cloaked, or covered with a projection of what lay underneath—racing clouds. That meant it wasn’t all fake. They were riding high above the surface of Avilon in some type of starship—the walls, ceiling, and floor of which had all been cloaked to hide them from view. Their fall had been arrested by grav guns as he had suspected, and then they’d been held aloft above the invisible deck to enjoy the illusion of unassisted flight until everyone had jumped. As for the wind . . . that must have been generated.
Ethan realized that it was all some type of elaborate trust exercise. Once everyone had literally taken the leap of faith, they’d been accelerated slowly up to the group of white-robed people standing at the opposite end of the chamber—their welcoming party.
Now he understood why the wind hadn’t corresponded to their velocity. Ethan glanced behind him to look up at the golden dome once more. He estimated that it was hovering at least a hundred meters above their heads and perhaps two hundred meters behind them. That meant that the ship they were flying in was relatively large, and the space where they now stood was at least as large as one of the venture-class hangars aboard the Valiant.
Ethan began to hear people crying out with glee and shouting exclamations of joy.
“Ethan . . .” Alara whispered beside him, tugging on his arm to get his attention.
“What?” he asked, turning back to her with a frown. Then he saw that she was pointing to someone, one of the white-robed Avilonians—a young man with dark, wavy hair and piercing gray eyes. Something about him was familiar, but Ethan couldn’t decide what it was. The man’s angular features . . . his broad, square jaw, the stubborn set to his lips . . . all of those features reminded him of . . . It can’t be.
“Hello, Ethan,” the man said, walking toward him. “It’s good to see you again.”
Ethan shook his head, his brain denying what his eyes were telling him. “I don’t know you,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” the man replied. Then his gray eyes flicked over the group of people who’d jumped down from the dome, and that young man began nodding slowly. “You all do.”
Atton was the first to recognize the stranger. Ethan turned to see his son take a few quick steps forward. “Admiral? Is that you?”
Chapter 37
Atton couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The gray-eyed man standing before him couldn’t be more than thirty, but his resemblance to the admiral was unmistakable.
“Yes, Atton, it’s me,” that man said, but Atton still didn’t believe it.
“You look . . .”
“Younger?” Admiral Heston smiled a familiar smile and he nodded. “One of a great many advantages to life here in Avilon.”
Atton shook his head. “I don’t understand, are you a clone?”
“Of a sort. I’m still the same man, if that’s what you’re asking, but now I’ll never age or die, and my body has few of the frailties it once did.”
“You’re not the admiral I remember,” a new voice said. Atton turned to see Captain Caldin stalking up to them. There was a dark look on her face and a note of accusation in her voice.
“I am he,” the young admiral replied.
“Bullkrak.”
“The admiral you are looking for died in Dark Space, but he and I are now one and the same person.”
“Yea, the Omni-frekker said you died, but I’m starting to think you’re all just full of the same krak.”
“That’s enough!” a gravelly voice bellowed.
The crowd of white-robed people parted and Atton noticed the blue-caped soldier who’d jumped from the dome first striding toward them with a scowl. Atton also noticed that the white-robed people were all smiling broadly as if they shared a secret they weren’t telling. He frowned at that. A few of them noticed him looking, and their smiles only grew wider still. He looked away, unnerved by their stares.
“It's true. The Sythians invaded Dark Space and we surrendered. They executed me not long after you left to come here,” Admiral Heston explained.
“And I suppose you remember your own death,” Caldin said.
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“Then you’re delusional!” Caldin replied.
“You need to calm down,” Galan Rovik said, stopping in front of the captain. His glowing blue eyes looked angry to Atton.
“Why? What are you going to do—kill me, too?” Turning back to the admiral, she said, “What the frek do I have to lose? My ship? My crew? My lover? No . . .” Caldin shook her head. “The Sythians already took all of them, and now you’re here, miraculously back from the dead. What makes you so damned special?”
Rather than offer words of sympathy for her loss, the admiral smiled broadly. It was the wrong thing to do. Atton saw Captain Caldin’s indigo eyes flash, and for a moment he was afraid that she would leap out and punch him in the face.
“But that’s just it,” the admiral replied. “I’m not special. I’m just one of many—one of a great multitude, actually.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
The admiral turned and gestured to the crowd of people behind him. “Each and every one of your crew members is alive and well, and they’re standing right here with me.”
“What?”
Atton’s shock mirrored hers. He found himself scanning the faces before them, searching desperately for one that might be familiar—for one in particular. It wasn’t long before he’d found her.
Gina.
Her face was younger and more beautiful than he remembered it, but she was still easy to recognize. When she saw him looking at her, the smile she was wearing turned to ice, and she looked away, turning instead to the man standing beside her. That man was none other than Horace “Hawkeye” Perkins.
“I don’t believe it . . .” he whispered.
“Believe it,” Master Rovik said. With that, he turned to the crowd of white-robed people and nodded.
That must have been the signal they’d been waiting for. Now everyone rushed forth for a reunion, the likes of which Atton was certain had never been seen before.
“Captain!” a deep voice called out. Atton spied a tall, familiar man rushing toward her, and he thought he knew who that was. What the captain said next confirmed it.
“Markom Terl! You stim-baked skriff!” The two of them collided, and Atton watched with a growing smile as they wrapped their arms around each other, hugging and kissing with wild abandon. They’d always been discreet about their relationship before, but now they didn’t seem to care who saw them.
Atton shook his head, feeling left out. “This is incredible . . .” he breathed, speaking to no one in particular. He turned to look for Ceyla, to see her reaction, but she wasn’t there. She was standing off to one side, locked in an embrace of her own. He frowned, wondering who the man and woman with her were. He walked up to them, thinking they might be pilots from Guardian Squadron.
“Corbin,” he said, tapping her gently on the shoulder.
She turned to him with tears in her eyes and streaming down her face. She was blubbering like a little girl. Atton’s own eyes narrowed sharply and he turned to glare at the people she was with, thinking they must have done something to hurt her. “Hoi! Get away from her!”
“Atton!” she said. “They’re my parents!”
; “Your what?” he shook his head, uncomprehending. “They weren’t aboard the Intrepid, were they?”
“No, Atton,” she said, smiling wildly at him and shaking her head. “They were dead! I told you, remember? They died in the invasion!”
With that Atton took an abrupt step back. What felt like a thousand volts of electricity went coursing through him, and he shook his head. It was too much. In fact it was impossible. There was no way these people were her parents. They were far too young to have a daughter her age. “How can you be sure?” he asked, searching those two strangers’ smiling faces.
“I’m sure,” she said, wiping her tears with the backs of her hands. “They know things about me, Atton . . . things no one else could possibly know.”
Atton still refused to believe it—any of it. He turned away from Ceyla, stumbling across a deck that was seemingly made of thin air. He felt like he was about to pass out. Stopping for a moment to crouch down and put his head between his legs did nothing to help. He stared down at a racing carpet of clouds lying close beneath his feet. Just then a gap in those clouds appeared and he saw the ground—a vast city of shining towers capped with green parks, sparkling rivers, and thundering cascades. Between the sprawling green parkland, lay the hexagonally segmented shield. The Celestial Wall.
Atton’s stomach did a queasy flip and he stood up. Trying not to look down again, he turned in a dizzy circle to look at the crowds of people around him. Everyone was locked in some type of conversation or embrace.
Everyone but him.
Atton spied his father standing nearby, and he headed that way, walking on wooden legs. Ethan had his back turned, and he was stooped down to give someone a hug.
“Dad!” Atton called out.
Ethan turned, and although his eyes weren’t gushing with tears, they were red with the threat of them. “Hoi there, son,” he said in a voice that was choked with emotion. “You should come meet your grandmother. It’s been a long time since she’s seen you.”
Now Atton noticed the person his father had been hugging—a short young woman with familiar green eyes—his and his father’s eyes. She had long, dark hair and a beautiful smile. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Hello, Atton,” she said as he drew near. “Look at you . . . all grown up. I’ve missed you!” With that, she crushed him in a surprisingly strong embrace.
Atton gaped over her shoulder. She was young enough to be his sister. There was no way she was his grandmother! “This is impossible,” he whispered.
“No, Atton,” his grandmother said. “It’s a miracle.”
Before anyone could say another word, a voice like thunder split the sky. “Some of you are wondering if this is real. Those of you who aren’t are afraid to ask, but I tell you that your eyes do not deceive you. These are the same loved ones you lost. Many of them have been waiting a long time for you. Soon you will all return to the surface to begin your new lives on Avilon.
“Some of you have asked me why I didn’t stop the Sythians when they invaded. Part of the answer which I haven’t given until now is that I didn’t need to stop them. I only needed to bring everyone back to life in my city, where they would be safe. I have spent the past fifty years expanding the city of Etheria to make room for everyone, and now that the work is done, none of you need ever die again!”
A loud cheering rose from the crowd: “Omnius grando est! Omnius grando est!”
Atton wasn’t sure what that meant, but if it meant what he thought it did, then he was inclined to agree. “Great is Omnius . . .” he whispered.
Epilogue
Three weeks and 116 hours earlier . . .
Red emergency lights flashed inside the air lock, and a warning siren wailed. That siren indicated that the airlock was about to be opened without taking the time to suck out all the air and depressurize it. Anything inside the airlock was just seconds from being blown violently into space as positive air pressure met vacuum.
Admiral Heston stared into the black lens of the holo news crew’s camera and raised a shaking hand to his forehead in a salute for the people who would soon be watching his execution on news channels all over Dark Space.
In the next instant, Hoff heard a violent roar of air. It ripped him off the deck and tossed him out into space. The roaring gave way to a painful silence. He watched the Valiant spinning away beneath his feet. He tried to hold his breath, but it burst from his lungs with the same violence as the air in the airlock. His lungs collapsed and began heaving desperately for air. His ears popped, or perhaps they burst. The searing pain suggested the latter. But that was the extent of it. Having already suffered worse pain while the Sythians tortured him for the location of Avilon, he wondered—is that it?
Taking a space walk without a suit was a surprisingly peaceful way to go. He began to wonder if he was dreaming. Wasn’t being thrown out an airlock supposed to kill him instantly? Why was he still alive? He took a moment to ignore his heaving lungs and stinging ears in order to appreciate an unobstructed view of space. The diamond sparkle of stars against the black velvet of space had never looked so beautiful.
A sudden chill swept through Hoff’s body and he shivered. He felt cold, but not nearly as cold as he would have expected. He supposed his body could only lose heat by radiating it away from him. In every other respect, the vacuum was a perfect insulator.
This must be a dream.
Then Hoff’s limbs began to tingle. Gently at first, but the sensation became rapidly more urgent, quickly turning into pain, and that pain soon grew to be unbearable. Hoff’s mouth opened in a soundless scream.
He needed air to scream.
His body convulsed. Without air pressure to keep his bodily fluids in a liquid state, they began to boil, and as they boiled into vapor, they lost energy so quickly that they began to freeze.
Hoff knew that now he had only seconds to live, and he was grateful for that. He tried to focus on the view. Then the capillaries in his eyes burst and he saw red. He passed a few more seconds in agony before he lost consciousness. An indeterminate amount of time passed, and then . . .
He woke up. At least he thought he did.
A bright light appeared in the distance. He saw it growing ever nearer as he raced down a long, dark tunnel toward it. He felt as though he were being pulled toward the light. The brightness swelled until it blinded him, and then he heard a familiar voice. “Hello, Hoff,” it said.
The brightness faded somewhat and he noticed where he was. He gasped. He was soaring out over a golden carpet of clouds, racing toward a rising red sun. He looked down and found that nothing was holding him up. Somehow, impossibly, he was flying. For the first time in forever he felt truly free, but he also felt strangely numb.
Hadn’t he just died? And yet here he was. Was it a dream?
All Hoff could see anywhere he looked were clouds and the blinding brightness of the rising sun. “Who are you?” Hoff thought to ask of the voice that had greeted him. He was afraid to know the answer.
“You know who I am, Hoff.”
He shook his head and tried to search the blinding light for something with substance or even an apparition of substance.
Yet there was nothing.
“Etherus?” Hoff tried.
“That is one of my names. I am known better by my children as Omnius. I am your god, Hoff Natharian Heston.”
“Is that why I recognize your voice?”
“It is the same as your inner voice—the one that has always been there, often heard, but never listened to.”
“Where am I?”
“You are home.”
“Home?”
“Avilon.”
“What?” Hoff’s thoughts took a sudden right turn. This wasn’t a conversation with his god. God didn’t live in Avilon. Avilonians lived in Avilon.
“Your thoughts betray you, Hoff.”
“What are you?”
“I have already answered that.”
“This is a dream,” he replied.
&nb
sp; “No, it is not.”
Hoff began flailing in the air. “Let me down!” he roared.
“No, there is someone you must meet.”
Then Hoff noticed that he was racing toward someone—someone standing in front of the rising red sun, with his feet seemingly planted squarely on the peak of a tufted white cloud. He wore a shimmering white robe.
As Hoff drew near, he thought he recognized the man’s face, but he couldn’t seem to remember who it was. Then he slowed to a stop in front of that white-robed man, although the clouds continued to race by beneath them. He drifted gradually closer until he came face-to-face with that stranger—a stranger with familiar gray eyes, and a younger version of his face.
Hoff’s mouth dropped open, and he shook his head. “Is this some kind of a joke?” he demanded, turning to look up at the indigo sky and address the god he had been speaking with a moment ago.
But Omnius didn’t reply, the stranger did: “It is no joke. I am you, and you are me. We share the same memories, the same personality—well, give or take the past seven years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You died on Ritan—or I did anyway. That Hoff—the one who died in his lover’s arms—is me.”
“You don’t even look like me!” Hoff spluttered.
“Yes I do, except that I am even younger than the man who died. Rest assured, however, my mind is identical in every way.”
Horror and realization sliced through Hoff like a knife. He had no memory of Ritan. He’d been stranded there while escaping the Sythians over ten years ago—or so his wife told him. Destra had been stranded with him. That was where they’d grown close enough to conceive their daughter, Atta. Hoff couldn’t remember any of that because he hadn’t made it off Ritan. He’d died there, and he’d been too far from his ship to transfer his Lifelink data to a clone. The artificial intelligence in charge of the cloning chamber aboard his flagship had decided to revive him soon after it had lost contact with him during the invasion. The one it had revived was him, and for a time there had been two of him, living parallel lives—the one on Ritan, and the one with his fleet in the Enclave. Now he was getting to meet the one that had died, but that should have been impossible. He had recently disabled his Lifelink implant at his wife’s request. So how had he been revived here, in Avilon? And how had the clone of him on Ritan been revived? If he’d been too far from his flagship to revive there all those years ago, then how could he possibly have revived here in Avilon?
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