The fuzzy black abyss returned, and he was consumed with rage and grief. After that, he felt like he spent a lifetime crying in the dark, not caring if anyone heard, or if he ever saw the light again; he just wanted it all to end.
But the darkness began to lighten with the first strokes of dawn. The light wasn’t as blinding as before, but it was back, and he could hear voices calling to him from it, calling as if from a great distance . . .
“Wake up, Bretton . . . wake up . . .”
* * *
“Wake up!”
SLAP!
Bretton’s eyes shot open and he gasped from the pain that stung his cheek. He squinted up at a bright ceiling light and he saw Farah appear, her face silhouetted with a bright golden halo. Behind her, a Peacekeeper stood by the door.
A Peacekeeper!
Bretton sat up suddenly, only to find that he was lying on a sterile metal table and surrounded by blinking and beeping equipment. His heart rate accelerated and he heard some of the beeping accelerate with it.
“Relax,” the guard at the door said. “You’re among friends.”
“Relax? What is this?” he asked, finding an IV line trailing from his wrist. “Where am I?”
The room where they had him and Farah was equipped with half a dozen tables like his. Rather than the sterile white walls of a med center, here the walls were dull and gray—bare bactcrete, the lights were a harsh, artificial yellow, and a faint, musty draft wafted through the room, apparently coming from a dirty grate in the ceiling. A dark window on the far side of the room, beside the door, looked like it might be made of old-fashioned two-way glass. Bretton’s gaze found their guard once more. He looked like the same one they’d met on the tram station platform.
“Why are we being held here?”
The door swung wide and in walked a tall, stunning woman with short, straight black hair, wide glowing silver eyes, and a honey brown skin. All of that was wrapped up in a familiar black uniform with white piping and the gold star of a Captain.
“You’re not being held here,” she said as she approached. “New decontamination protocols. Don’t worry; you’re clean. We’ve just been waiting for you to wake up before we take you in for debriefing. The collar must have given you too much sedative.” The woman stopped to stand in front of them, hands clasped behind her back, her posture military straight.
“Where did you get that uniform?” Bretton asked, his eyes wide and staring.
“Old navy surplus.”
“Not from Avilon’s navy . . .”
The woman answered that with a small, secretive smile.
“You’re from the Imperium,” he said.
She shook her head. “No, I was born on Avilon.”
“Then . . .”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
Bretton began shaking his head. “This is all new to me,” he said, looking around the room again. His eyes landed on her once more, marveling again at the uniform she wore. “And so are you.”
“We’ve had to increase our security protocols pretty much overnight, so everything is still in flux. I’m Marla Picara,” she said, sticking out her hand.
Bretton shook it with a thoughtful frown. “Why all the changes?”
“Omnius killed over five thousand Nulls the night before last.”
“What? Why?”
“They were reportedly members of a rebellion that tried to kill everyone in the Uppers.”
“Is that even possible?” Farah asked.
Marla shrugged. “The virus was meant to overload their Lifelinks and fry their brains. Do that to everyone in the Uppers and corrupt the databases at the same time, and they’re not coming back. Not ever.”
“How did Omnius kill the rebels?” Bretton asked.
Marla made a flicking motion with one finger, as if to turn off a switch. “Same way. The Lifelinks.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bretton said. “No rebel in his right mind would still have a working Lifelink.”
Marla nodded. “Exactly.”
“So . . .”
“It wasn’t us, if that’s what you’re wondering. The Lifelink databases are far too hard to slice into, and even if we could, we wouldn’t be that stupid. Suppose we got it right—Omnius wouldn’t just roll over and play dead because we killed all of his precious children. He’d sic the drones on us and we’d be next.”
“Then it’s a cover up.”
Marla nodded. “The most obvious lie we’ve ever seen. Either the rebels responsible are still out there, or, more likely, they never existed in the first place, and Omnius invented the rebel plot as an excuse for why he had to make an emergency shut down—an emergency shut down that conveniently coincided with a Sythian attack.”
Bretton shook his head. “You’re saying Omnius let them in on purpose.”
“Maybe.”
“Why? I thought looking after his chosen ones was his primary purpose, the almighty reason behind everything he does.”
“No one really died in the attack. Besides all the Nulls who got hit by falling debris, of course. Maybe Omnius wanted to impress upon us all the seriousness of the Sythian threat.”
“By destroying his own fleet—the same fleet he needs to fight them.”
Marla shook her head. “I don’t pretend to understand his reasoning, but if we can prove he shut down on purpose and there never was any rebel threat, we’ll have what we’ve been looking for.”
“Proof of that might be hard to find.”
“Maybe, but this lie is proof enough of one thing—Omnius is getting sloppy.”
“Or he just doesn’t care about preserving his holier than thou image anymore.” Bretton smiled. “It would save us a lot of trouble if he exposed himself.”
“But what happens next? We turn everyone on Avilon against Omnius and then he sics the drones on us and we’re all dead. The Resistance has the same end point as that so-called rebel plot.”
“What are you saying—that we’ve just been wasting our time and we shouldn’t even bother trying to expose him?”
“No, I’m saying that it’s time to start thinking about our next steps.”
“How about some food and sleep for next steps?” Farah chimed in.
Marla turned to her.
“We’ve been running short on both. Might be a nice way to show your appreciation for us bringing in that Sythian agent.”
“Yes, about him . . .” Marla trailed off and Bretton watched her turn back to him. “By now the analysis of the Lifelink data you brought us must be finished. Follow me.”
Farah’s mouth dropped open. Her plea for hospitality had been ignored. She began to say something about it as they followed Marla out of the room, but Bretton elbowed her in the ribs. “Not now,” he whispered. “There’ll be time for rest and recovery later. There’s something big going on here and I want to know what it is.”
“What, just because miss prissy pants is wearing an old Imperial uniform?”
“Yes.”
Farah snorted. “She’s not from some lost fleet. You heard what she said—born on Avilon.”
“Call it a hunch, then.”
Marla led them down a long corridor. The door swung shut behind them with a noisy click, and Bretton turned to see the guard following them out. More bare bactcrete lined the corridor. A matching floor and exposed pipes overhead made Bretton think of a bunker. A few flickering glow panels were there to remind him how badly the Resistance needed the funds from commissioned members like him. At the end of the corridor was another door. Above it hung a glossy black sphere with a dim red photoreceptor that looked like a drone’s eye. Marla stopped there and waited. A fan of red light flickered out and passed over all of them from head to toe. Once scanned, a loud beep issued from the door, and the eye in the black sphere glowed green.
They walked through into a circular chamber lit with a dim red light. In the center of the room was a familiar glossy dome. “What is that?” Bretton aske
d in a startled whisper, even though he already knew the answer. The dome began to rise on shimmering pillars of light as they approached, confirming his suspicions.
“You stole a quantum junction!” Farah said.
Marla cast a grin over her shoulder. “We’ll never have to worry about anyone finding our headquarters again.”
Bretton stopped at the edge of it, his hand lightly brushing the smooth surface of the dome as it rose. A kind of reverent awe settled over him, and he whistled slowly. “If Omnius knew you had this, he’d turn the Null Zone inside out just to find it. You could jump straight into the Zenith Tower—or better yet, send a proton bomb into Omnius’s core.”
“Unfortunately, he’s already thought of that. Everything important in the Uppers is already shielded with disruption fields. We can get off-world if we want to, though.”
“You have the power for that?” Bretton asked, surprised.
“We have more funds than we like to admit.”
“So let’s go!” Farah said. “What are we waiting for? This is exactly what we need! Let’s run as far as we can from here and never look back.”
“And leave countless billions of Nulls to Omnius’s mercy?” Marla asked, arching an eyebrow at them.
Bretton frowned. “We could take some of them with us.”
“Not nearly enough.”
They walked under the dome to the middle of the glowing green circle in the center. The guard in Peacekeeper’s armor stood outside the dome, watching them leave. Marla raised her hands and swiftly dropped them, and the dome fell with a boom. A rising whirr started up, quickly becoming a deafening roar as air whipped around inside the dome. The walls began to glow and Bretton shut his eyes before they turned blindingly bright. The brightness blazed through his closed eyelids, and with it, he remembered the little boy from his dream.
Ciam.
Through the deafening roar of wind and the painfully bright glow inside the dome, Bretton did something he usually tried not to do—he remembered.
The memories flooded back, running backward in time—happy memories for a change . . . They went all the way back to the beginning, and he saw his wife, Karie Hale, looking younger and more beautiful than he remembered her, smiling and crying with joy as they were reunited in Etheria. She’d been waiting a little over a month for him to join her on Avilon.
“I have a surprise for you, Bret,” she said, withdrawing from their embrace.
He arched an eyebrow at that. “You’ve already surprised me enough for one day.”
“Then maybe someone else should surprise you.” She said, smiling and placing his hand on her belly.
He frowned and shook his head, wondering what she was on about. Then he caught the meaningful look in her gaze, and his eyes flew wide. “That’s not possible! We were . . .”
“Together on Advistine. Four months ago.”
“But you . . . You died, Karie.”
“So how am I here speaking to you now?”
When the light and sound vanished and the dome rose once more on shimmering pillars of light, his recollection faded, and Bretton opened his eyes. He found himself back in darkness.
Marla led them out from under the dome, into another circular chamber lit with dim red lights. They stopped at a door and another black eye scanned them with a fan of light. Then the door swished open, and they walked out into a bright, bustling operations center.
Bretton blinked against the sudden glare of the lights, trying to make sense of the chaos. Before them lay a gleaming catwalk, at the end of which was a broad bank of viewports cluttered with stars, and in the middle distance lay a familiar table with uniformed men and women gathered around it. To either side of the gleaming catwalk were control stations with more people in uniforms sitting behind them.
The whole scene was a blast from the past. Bretton’s heart skipped a beat and seemed to freeze in his chest. His eyes burned with emotion and he shook his head, feeling certain that he was asleep and this was all just a lot of wishful thinking.
“Where . . .” Bretton trailed off, unable to finish that sentence.
Farah was more eloquent. “Holy frek! You found a working venture-class cruiser?”
Marla grinned broadly at them, but her eyes quickly found Bretton’s. “Welcome back to the ISSF, Captain Hale.”
Chapter 14
Ethan couldn’t believe his eyes. “Dad?”
The younger man nodded, confirming Ethan’s suspicions. “Come inside,” he said, holding the door open for them.
Ethan walked through first, and Rovik followed behind him. The apartment was a small, open concept space with living room, dining room, kitchen, and what looked like a bedroom and bathroom at the back.
“It’s not much,” Preston said, but it’s home.”
The floor was a dull matte gray, the walls plain white. The living room furniture was solid blue, and the dining room table solid white with gray chairs. It was all utilitarian and uninspiring to look at, but the space was tidy and warm, much warmer than the air outside. Preston Ortane directed them to sit in the blue living room furniture.
“Drinks?” he asked, already on his way to the kitchen.
Ethan sat down in an armchair that looked to be made of several interlocking pieces. It was surprisingly comfortable. “What do you have?” he asked.
“Beer. Water.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Rovik said, taking a seat on one of the room’s two couches. The cushions squeaked noisily against his armor and he sunk deep into the couch, making him look as though he were a midget with giant legs. Ethan surmised that the Peacekeeper must weigh a lot with his armor on.
“Beer,” Ethan replied.
Preston returned with two bottles of a dark-looking beer and passed one to Ethan. Preston turned and eyed Rovik with a frown. “You better not break my couch.”
“Why? Was it not free?”
“The pieces were, sure, but putting them together costs a lot of sweat.” Preston flicked the cap off his beer and sat down on the other couch, as far from the Peacekeeper as he could. “Don’t tell me you came to Avilon looking for me?” he said, his eyes on Ethan as he took a long gulp from his bottle.
Ethan flicked the cap off his own and tried the brew. It was bitter, flat, and awful, but he tried not to let that show on his face. At least it was cold. “Actually, I came looking for my son.”
“Ah, right, little Atty . . . he must be all grown up now. He died in the war, I guess?”
Ethan shook his head, and Preston’s dark eyebrows swiftly rose. He finished that look of surprise with a heavy frown. “What do you mean? He actually found a way here as a mortal?”
“Him, and a bunch of others, including my wife and I.”
“So where’s Destra, then?”
“Not Des . . . Alara. We’re newly-weds with a baby girl on the way. It’s a long story.”
“I see. Well . . . you shouldn’t have come. Especially not with a pregnant wife.”
“The rest of the galaxy isn’t a great place to be either.”
Preston shrugged and took another gulp of beer. “Grass is always greener or bluer someplace else. Then you get there and find there ain’t any grass at all. I’m guessing you’re stuck here now.”
Ethan nodded.
“So why come visit me? Old times’ sake?”
“Actually, I don’t know why I’m here,” Ethan said, glancing at Rovik. “Omnius wanted me to come.”
“He did, did he?” Preston’s eyes turned to the Peacekeeper, too. “Well, what is it the big ol’ eyeball wants from me?”
Rovik shook his head. “Please show more respect, and he doesn’t want anything. He just wanted the two of you to find each other and catch up.”
Preston snorted and jumped up from his couch. “Ain’t that something! The eyeball doing me a favor out of the kindness of his . . . core. Doesn’t have a heart, now does he?” Preston laughed at his own joke.
Ethan watched his father start pacing around
the room with his beer, emptying it in two quick swigs. He tossed the bottle aside, and it bounced and rolled to a stop in one corner. “Want another?” Preston asked, his gaze suddenly sharp and insistent as he turned to Ethan again.
“I’m all right, thanks.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind another.”
Ethan eyed the bottle in the corner of the room, wondering how the apartment could be so clean if his father had a habit of throwing his garbage on the floor. He tried another sip of his beer and grimaced at the flavor of it. It went down with a warm tingling sensation that made him think it probably had a much higher alcohol content than the average brew.
As he sat back in his chair, the buzz began to burn in his veins, but rather than make him feel relaxed and pleasantly numb, he felt more alert than usual. Little noises he hadn’t noticed before became loud. The scratching of a bug’s legs as it scuttled across the floor drew his attention to one side of the room where, sure enough, a small insect was making a hasty dash for the fallen beer bottle. Ethan found his mind felt clearer than usual, and he felt happier, more focused, more at ease in his own skin. He felt like he could conquer the world!
Rovik was watching him carefully.
“What?” Ethan asked.
“Give me that bottle,” he said, reaching out for it.
Ethan withheld his beer, sheltering it with his other arm. “Why?”
“Just trust me, Ortane,” the Peacekeeper said.
“Frek that!” Ethan took a long swig.
His father returned with another beer, already open. This time he didn’t sit down to drink it; instead he paced over to the fallen bottle and cap he’d tossed aside previously, as if it suddenly irritated him to see them lying on the floor. On the way he made a hasty sidestep to crush the bug scuttling across his floor. He picked up both the remnants of the bug and his empty beer bottle and cap and carried them to a wide pipe running down the wall from ceiling to floor. There was a bulge halfway down the tube. His father opened a hatch in the side of it, revealing an empty compartment. He placed the bug there and shut the hatch. No sooner had he shut the door than the bug was sucked away with a noisy slurp of air.
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