“There’s always one of you, isn’t there? You new recruits do ask the stupidest questions! Aren’t you supposed to be on red deck?”
Atton’s brow furrowed in confusion. Red deck was the battle deck, where the gunners remotely controlled the Dauntless’s weapon systems, but he hadn’t selected gunnery training.
“Well? What are you still doing here?”
“I selected pilot’s training, sir. I’m an X-1 pilot.”
“Oh! It’s just that with you asking stupid questions about which type of ordinance the gunners should fire at the enemy, I thought maybe you’d been assigned to my squadron by mistake. Are there any other questions?”
Gina flashed Atton a broad grin, and he scowled back. No one else raised a hand to ask a question.
“Good! Time to go boys and girls!” The Chevalier stepped back in front of his launcher. A split second later, all twelve portal-shaped doors swished open at the same time. Atton peered into his and found himself looking into a small capsule with a soft, padded black floor. Beyond that lay a thousand different flight controls and readouts that he’d never used before in his life. Despite that, he recognized every status light, switch, and dial. Just another part of Omnius’s instant training, he supposed.
Atton realized he was staring into the cockpit capsule of an Avilonian X-1 Interceptor. The portal-shaped opening was the rear-access to the cockpit, which would form the backrest of the flight chair when closed. The cockpit capsule was detachable from the rest of the fighter, and it doubled as an escape pod for emergencies.
Atton crawled through the portal and into his cockpit. The rear-access cycled shut behind him and he turned to see the access door padded with the same black cushions as the seat he knelt on. Suspending himself by the armrests of the chair, he swung his legs out and into the bottom of the capsule. He settled back against the rear hatch. The cockpit was roomy enough, even for his recently enlarged frame.
Before Atton could wonder about flight restraints, a pair of them whipped across his chest, writhing over him like snakes. He fought against them for a moment before he realized what they were. Feeling stupid, he muttered to himself about the overly automated systems aboard Avilonian starships.
Pop out displays and tool tips crowded Atton’s ARC display. His ARCs interacted with the various controls and readouts in his cockpit, highlighting some and providing extra settings for others. He found that he could select those just by thinking about them.
Atton began going through a preflight check while his cockpit capsule rocketed down into the frame of its fighter. Seeing the wings and nose take up a fair portion of his view, he flicked a switch for enhanced visibility and the shiny, bluish frame of the fighter abruptly shimmered and vanished. Even the frame of the cockpit disappeared, giving him the disconcerting notion that he was hovering in the air, surrounded by floating flight controls. Only a vague outline of the interceptor’s frame remained, giving him a nearly unobstructed view of his surroundings.
The cylindrical walls of the X-1 launcher were also semi-transparent. To either side, he could see matching launchers with more X-1 Interceptors locked and loaded inside. He could identify the pilots sitting in the fighters immediately to his left and right, their expressions grim, cast in sharp relief by the hard blue light of their displays. Atton realized then that none of them were wearing helmets, nor had they been given flight suits to wear. Their cockpit capsules would be what shot away if any of them had to eject. But what would happened if the cockpit took a hit and depressurized?
He supposed he’d wake up in the nearest clone room. That wasn’t much comfort when faced with the prospect of a slow, torturous death in outer space. . . .
As he thought about it, Atton realized that small leaks in the cockpit would auto-seal, and under his seat he had a few hull patches and cans of sealant spray for the ones that didn’t. For all intents and purposes, the cockpit capsule was his flight suit.
Looking down to the end of his launcher, Atton saw a small circular opening filled with stars slowly scrolling by as the Dauntless turned to orient itself for the jump.
Keeping half an eye on the jump timer on his ARC display—just ten minutes left—Atton went back to doing systems checks and inventories.
The X-1 was packed with two magazines of eight quantum-launched thunderbolt missiles as well as two phased red dymium pulse lasers—that meant they could be rapid-fired, or pulsed, charged for slower cycle times, or even depleted with one shot as high-powered beam weapons, the likes of which Atton had never seen on a fighter this small. Making them even more deadly, those lasers had 360 degree firing arcs from front to back.
For its defenses the fighter was equipped with both particle and energy shields, as well as an optional cloaking shield. There was also a miniature quantum disruptor to prevent quantum-launched weapons from getting close, a mine layer with three cloaking mines, and a dorsal-mounted auto-cannon with explosive rounds, designed to shoot down incoming missiles, or shoot back at pursuing fighters. All of that, combined with the X-1’s lightning-fast acceleration, quantum sensors, comms, and jump drive made the fighter a deadly weapon, far superior to the Imperial “Nova” equivalent.
Making the pilot’s job easier, there was a range of computer-assisted and automated functions. The X-1 almost didn’t need a pilot, but hands-on human pilots tended to fight better than both drones and remote-flying humans. They were more creative than drones, and for some reason the threat of death made even immortal pilots fight better.
Atton’s eyes skipped to the jump timer on his ARC display and he saw that just five minutes remained.
Finishing his preflight checks, he set up the star map on the fighter’s main display screen so that he could watch the coming battle.
One minute.
Speakers crackled beside his ears. “Take care of yourself out there, Iceman,” a smooth female voice said.
Atton frowned and turned to look out the left side of his cockpit at his wingmate. Caldin saw him looking. She smiled and waved. That hadn’t been her voice.
He waved back and then turned to look at his comms board. The speaker was designated as Gold Ten, Gina Giord. Figures.
“Hey there, Tuner,” he said, using her old call sign. “We’re good, right?” After all, she hadn’t ended up dead, but rather resurrected in the body of an immortal clone. How could she hold that against him? She’d skipped right by The Choosing. If he’d known what was waiting on Avilon he wouldn’t have fought so hard to stay alive during the battle.
“We’re perfect,” Gina said. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“My what?”
“Ceyla . . . Green V.”
“She, uh, chose to be a Null.”
Gina snorted. “Well, at least she had a choice.”
There was definitely a note of recrimination in Gina’s voice that time. Atton wondered if she was still out for revenge. He decided that it didn’t matter. Omnius was watching both of them, now, and he would deal with Gina if she did anything wrong. Besides, what was the worst she could do? Kill him? By some people’s definition, he was already dead.
The jump timer reached zero and a bright flash of light washed the world away. An instant later it was back and Atton’s eyes fell on the star map rising from the fighter’s main display.
That three dimensional projection of space was suddenly so crowded with glowing red enemy contact icons that it looked like they’d stumbled into some type of crimson nebula. Atton wondered how many of them there were and an obscene number appeared in the bottom corner of the star map. There were almost ten thousand capital-class warships, and the number of enemy fighters was in the high six figures.
The Avilonian fleet on the other hand was just 42 capital-class and 492 fighters strong. Atton shook his head, stunned by the sheer mass of the Sythian force. Now they were finally beginning to see the true strength of the enemy. The Sythians had originally invaded with just seven fleets. Now they had dozens more, and there were probably still h
undreds sitting in reserve in the Getties. Even with the Avilonians’ technological edge, Atton began to wonder if their fleet could prevail.
It’s a good thing they can’t see us right now, he thought, watching as their fleet began advancing on the enemy formation.
* * *
Hoff sat in his command chair on the bridge of the Dauntless, watching stars glitter like flecks of broken glass beyond the forward viewports of the cruiser. Then the jump timer reached zero, and everything disappeared in a blinding flash of light.
Space returned a moment later, but now the stars were hidden by a familiar gray nebula. Visibility was poor; shifting gray clouds of ice seemed to writhe like a living thing as the Dauntless sliced through them. The clouds were periodically lit up from within by bright, actinic flashes of light that came to Hoff’s ears as thunder, simulated by the ship’s sound system.
“Report!” Strategian Heston called out from where he sat in his command chair.
“Jump successful, sir!”
Hoff smiled to himself, nodding as he studied the star map on his ARC display. They were more than ten thousand klicks from the enemy formation. That put them at the edge of the Stormcloud Nebula, well above and behind the minefield that the enemy had laid for them around the old Imperial space gate. Clearly the Sythians hadn’t got the memo that Avilonians didn’t need to travel along physical paths between interstellar obstacles. Omnius had jumped them straight past the black holes that crowded the entrance of Dark Space.
Hoff noticed how vast the enemy armada was, but he knew it wouldn’t matter. Sythian sensors couldn’t pierce cloaking shields, and they couldn’t shoot what they couldn’t see. As soon as the Sythians realized they were being shot at with untraceable weapons fired from invisible ships, they would turn tail and run.
Omnius had already equipped the fleet for that eventuality, fitting their ships with SLS disruption fields. Similar to the quantum variety, those fields would prevent the enemy from jumping to SLS within a certain radius of the generator.
Unfortunately, that meant they would have to get uncomfortably close to the enemy.
Orders came in from the Grand Overseer’s ship—the Justinian—assigning each of the Avilonians’ 42 capital-class warships with the task of snaring one of the Sythians’ command ships. Once the command ships were snared in the SLS disruption fields, their fleets of slave-crewed ships wouldn’t dare jump away and leave their masters to die. The entire armada would be trapped and forced to shoot blindly back at the Avilonian Fleet.
Omnius’s plan was perfect.
The sensor operator highlighted their command ship on the map, and Hoff nodded down to the navigator. “Helm, full speed ahead!”
“Yes, sir.”
Hoff sat back, studying the star map and watching as the range to their target swiftly dropped. After a while his thoughts wandered and he absently studied the rest of the Sythian armada. None of their vessels were cloaked, but they knew better than to try to hide after being surprised and losing one of their command ships at Avilon.
Lurking among the alien warships was a small group of captured human ships—what remained of the old Imperial fleet. Seeing a few venture-class cruisers there, Hoff eyed their names and ship ID codes, looking for one in particular and hoping against hope that he didn’t find it.
Before he’d been executed, Hoff had left his wife and daughter hiding aboard a cloaked venture-class cruiser—the Baroness. He’d instructed Destra to wait for reinforcements with the rebel Gors. If reinforcements didn’t come soon, they were to abandon Dark Space and take as many refugees with them as they could. With any luck they’d already left, and Hoff would be able to track them down later with Omnius’s help.
He scanned a contact report that gave a breakdown of the ships on the map by class and hull type. He didn’t see the Baroness among the handful of venture-class cruisers in the report, just a few older models that had been assigned to guarding various parts of Dark Space.
Then he noticed a name he didn’t recognize. The Emancipator. The text was dim, meaning that one ship, of all the thousands of enemy vessels, was cloaked. They were trying to hide, but from who?
As he wondered where that ship was on the map, his ARC display responded, panning away from the Sythian armada to the far side of the system, to the ice world, Firea. The Emancipator wasn’t sitting in the Sythian formation, rather she was all alone, cut off and hiding by herself. That, and the fact that it was cloaked, led him to believe that this vessel was not under Sythian control.
“Sensors, flag the Emancipator as neutral, and alert mission command. I believe we have a friendly in system.”
“A friendly, sir?”
“Time will tell.” Hoff eyed the venture-class cruiser as its icon went from enemy red to neutral yellow on the map. It wasn’t the Baroness, but since the ship was cloaked, it wasn’t actively broadcasting its ID code. And sensor profiles could always be mistaken without active ID.
Destra? he wondered, thinking about how he could hail that ship without revealing both it and the Dauntless to the Sythians. There was no way to do it with conventional comms, and neither the Baroness nor any other venture-class would have quantum tech.
Hoff resolved to teleport over there himself as soon as the battle was won to find out exactly who was on board that ship.
* * *
Captain Marla Picara stood aboard the Emancipator, looming over her comm operator’s shoulder. “Well?”
“Just a minute, Ma’am.”
“Make sure you don’t transmit a visual from our end. And scramble our vocals. Sensors, is our quantum disruption field activated?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. Nothing is getting on or off this ship. Not without using an airlock, anyway.”
“Good.” That was just an added security measure, in case the Avilonians somehow managed to identify them as Nulls despite their scrambled vocals and the lack of a visual on their end of the comm.
Marla tapped her foot impatiently, watching as the comms operator selected the largest ship in the Avilonian formation and hailed it using the Emancipator’s recently upgraded comm systems.
“They’re responding. Connection established, Ma’am. Transmitting . . .”
Marla looked up, her eyes scanning the forward viewport. Suddenly, their view of space shimmered, abruptly replaced by none other than the Grand Overseer of Avilon, Vladin Thardris. His glowing silver eyes were just as unsettling as ever, seeming to flicker and dance like tongues of flame.
“Who is this?”
“You’re flying into a trap,” she replied. “The Sythians can see you through your cloaking shields.”
The Overseer’s eyes drifted out of focus as he appeared to consult something on his ARC display. “Then why haven’t they responded to our arrival in system?”
“You mean why haven’t they sprung their trap before you’ve closed to firing range?”
“What leads you to believe that the enemy can see us? I note that your vessel is also cloaked. There are no Sythians moving to engage you either. Why would you bother to cloak yourselves if you thought it wouldn’t hide you from the enemy?”
Marla let out a frustrated sigh. “Trust me. They’ve already engaged us while we were cloaked. Right now they’re leaving us alone because they don’t want you to know they can see us.”
“And who are you that I should trust you? If we were truly flying into a trap, Omnius would have warned me by now.”
“Omnius doesn’t know.”
The Grand Overseer laughed and shook his head. “That is very presumptuous of you. Since you didn’t ask me who Omnius is, I can assume you’re an Avilonian.”
Marla hesitated. “Yes . . .”
“And you’re not a Peacekeeper, because I would know if you were.”
This time Marla gave no reply, seeing where the Grand Overseer’s logic was taking him.
“There’s no voice match, and you’re not transmitting a visual. That means you’re trying to hide your
identity from me. I can only assume that you must be a Null who somehow escaped from Avilon. And you ask me to trust you? This conversation is over. I suggest you stand down and prepare for boarding. Your vessel will be dealt with soon. Thardris out.”
The viewport shimmered once more and the Overlord’s burning silver gaze faded to the black of space.
“You self-righteous son of a . . .” Marla calmed herself with a few deep breaths. She realized her crew were all staring at her, waiting for further orders.
“Get Admiral Hale back on screen,” she said, nodding to the comms operator. “We’re going to need a new plan.”
Chapter 27
“What do you mean they didn’t believe you?” Bretton said.
“The Grand Overseer deduced that we’re Nulls, sir.”
“So? What do you or any other Nulls have to gain by warning them that they’re flying into a trap?”
“If I had to guess, sir, I’d say he thinks we’re trying to get them to expose themselves and engage in a straight fight with a more numerous foe.”
“More numerous, but not stronger. What are they afraid of? They have faster sub light drives and warheads that can be fired from extreme range with no chance of being intercepted. They just have to fly circles around the enemy, launching missiles at them until the Sythians are either all dead or realize it’s futile and run away.”
“I don’t believe their purpose is to destroy or drive away the enemy fleet. Based on their heading, it looks like they mean to capture the Sythian fleet.”
“What?” Bretton’s mind boggled at the thought of Omnius getting his greedy circuits into a fleet of almost ten thousand warships—some of them, the behemoth-class command ships, over thirty kilometers long. If all of those ships were upgraded with quantum tech, it would certainly go a long way toward swinging the balance of power in humanity’s favor.
Except that it would never happen.
The Sythians would wait until all the Avilonian ships had closed to firing range and then they’d open fire. With cloaking shields rather than energy shields raised, the Avilonians would be wiped out in just one volley.
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