Bombing runs.
It was too late! Fury boiled up inside of her. "The entire point of the Armageddon protocol was to get Omnius to back down! He actually surrendered, and you're still going to kill everyone?"
Therius met her gaze unblinkingly. "Trust me, Miss Hale. I'm going to set humanity free."
"By killing them?" Farah shrieked. She turned in a dizzy circle to see that the rest of the crew was all equally shocked and outraged. Behind her, drone 767 came clanking down the gangway, his weapons trained on her, anticipating that she would make a move to attack Therius. Torv, the ship's Gor chief of security, remained at the doors to the bridge, silently watching the developing confrontation.
The rest of the crew was not so passive. Multiple officers rose to their feet and drew their sidearms. 767 wouldn't be able to defeat them all.
"Stand down, Seven Sixty Seven!" Therius called out. "I surrender," he said, raising his hands above his head.
Weapons remained trained on both Therius and his drone bodyguard. "Torv, arrest him!" Farah ordered, while watching 767 carefully. "And someone shut down that drone!" she added.
"Yes, ma'am," Lieutenant Devries said, abandoning the comms.
Farah turned to Torv. "I gave you an order, Sergeant."
The Gor hissed, but made no move to obey.
"Your people are on the ground, too, Torv. They're also going to die because of what Therius did."
That got through to him. Farah watched as the Gor strode down the gangway to the captain's table, steadily advancing on Therius.
"I have not betrayed your people, Torv," Therius said.
"We need him, Torv. If nothing else, so that we can bring him to justice later.
Hiss. Torv reached Therius and stopped within a hair's breadth of the man's face. The Gor glared at Therius for a long moment before producing a pair of stun cords from a compartment on his belt. Therius made no effort to resist; he even held his hands behind his back for Torv to tie with stun cords.
"You don't know what you're doing," he said, his eyes on Farah. "But it doesn't matter. I forgive you."
"You forgive me? If anyone should be sorry, it's you, you sick frek," Farah said. She turned to see that Devries had flipped open 767's access panel, and the drone's optical sensor was now dark. "Check him for weapons," she said, nodding to the Lieutenant.
Devries walked over and began patting the admiral down, but Therius wasn't even wearing a standard-issue sidearm. "He's clean ma'am," Devries said. "What should we do with him?"
"Let's keep him on deck, just in case he has anything else up his sleeve that we need to know about."
"Yes, ma'am."
"All right, everyone back to your stations!" Farah said, clapping her hands. "Devries, call a retreat. We need to get out of here before those nanites infect the entire planet and us along with it. Warn the Gors that the Sythians are now hostile."
"What about our people on the ground?" Devries asked.
Farah glanced at the tactical map just in time to see a Sythian command ship go crashing through the upper city of Celesta, knocking down dozens of monolithic towers as it went. She grimaced and shook her head.
"We can't risk bringing nanites aboard."
The deck shuddered violently underfoot and a shields critical alert shrieked through the bridge speakers.
"Aft shields are in the red!" engineering reported. "Equalizing."
"Gunnery! Keep those drone fighters away from us! We can't shoot their ordinance, but we can shoot them."
"Yes, ma'am. We're doing our best..."
A moment later, the gravidar officer called out. "Captain! We have multiple enemy contacts launching from Avilon! Epsilon class."
Epsilon class meant they were several kilometers long, at least. Farah eyed the tactical map, zooming in on one of the enemy contacts and toggling the map for a simulated 3D holo view rather than a bird's eye perspective.
She saw Celesta at night. Towers shone dazzlingly bright, like radiant columns in the sky. Urban parks sprawled between those columns, their pathways lit to a shadowy green by snaking rivers of streetlights. To one side blazed a massive inferno where the Sythian command ship had crashed, and in the middle distance a massive tower rose from the city.
No, not a tower—a ship, Farah realized as its thrusters cleared the rooftops of Celesta with a blinding flare of red light. She recognized the tower-ship immediately. It was one of the Trees of Life, the buildings where Omnius kept everyone's clones and Lifelink data.
Farah panned her viewpoint around, searching the city in all directions, and she saw no less than half a dozen identical towers racing up into the artificial night. The Trees of Life were all leaving Avilon.
Farah blinked, unable to believe it. All this time, those towers had been starships, not skyscrapers, and now Omnius was ordering them to leave. That could only mean one thing.
He was evacuating the planet.
Chapter 47
Shallah watched from his command chair as Lord Shondar's ship crashed into the surface of Avilon. "Have them detonate their nanites!" Shallah ordered. "We shall resurrect them all here after we jump out."
"Yes, master," the operator at the communications station said.
"We must leave the planet now, Supreme One," the nav operator warned.
"Yes. Tell the command ships to make orbit and jump away."
Even as Shallah ordered them to flee, the deck shuddered under their feet with a violent roar as Avilon's ground defenses battled once more against their shields.
"It isss unlikely that we all make it," Shallah's second in command, Queen Tavia said.
He turned to her. "We only need one ship to escape. From there we can resurrect all of our dead."
Tavia nodded. "Yes, master."
"The losses are regrettable, but is it not worth it? Look at them burn!" Shallah said, gesturing out the forward viewport to the raging inferno that Shondar's ship had caused. "Now, finally, we have our revenge, and Omnius is made to pay for casting us aside!"
"What is that?" Tavia asked, pointing out the main forward viewport.
Shallah saw a gargantuan tower rising from the burning planet, blasting away into the depthless black sky. "Sensors! What is that?" he demanded, his gills flaring with surprise.
"I do not know, My Lord!"
Shallah gaped at the sight, unable to decide what he was looking at. Then he saw more identical towers rising. He summoned a star map from his command chair and studied them with sensors. The towers were shielded, powered, and accelerating straight up at a rapid rate. They were also off the charts with lifeform readings. Maybe Omnius was evacuating some of his people? Shallah watched as those towers clawed for orbit. Yet there weren't enough ships to evacuate everyone, unless...
Omnius didn't have to evacuate the entire planet. He only needed to take the clones and their Lifelink data, and he would be able to bring them all back again. Shallah's eyes watered and itched with frustration.
Omnius had won! The only victory they could possibly hope for would be to escape so that they could fight another day. Or just so that we can hide, Shallah thought.
That was a more realistic goal, he decided, whilst furiously rubbing his lips together.
Suddenly a dazzling light suffused the deck, blinding him, and searing his eyes with its heat.
An explosion roared and Shallah screamed as he was catapulted out into the upper atmosphere. The cold air seared his skin. Wind whipped past his ears as he tumbled and fell, gasping for breath. His eyes bulged. Capillaries began bursting from decompression and Shallah saw red.
Twisting around, he caught a glimpse of his command ship above him. Fire leapt from a ragged tear in the ship's midsection. Debris and bodies gushed out. The behemoth was slowly cracking in half, its mighty engines still driving the back and ripping it free of the front.
Resistance is futile, Shallah realized.
Then a secondary explosion tore through his ship, shredding the back half with a blinding flash
and a titanic boom. The shock wave hit him mere seconds later, debris punching his body full of holes. He died and his mind retreated to a purely digital existence within the next nearest command ship. But he only had a few seconds to recover before an explosion rocked that ship, too. The power failed, bringing with it an endless void as Shallah's awareness faded.
* * *
Ethan heard the immense, bone-rattling roar, long before he saw what caused it. His first thought was that the entire planet was caving in. He imagined all three of the world-spanning cities telescoping down on top of themselves and the ground under his feet opening up in a gaping maw.
Then he saw the black sky suddenly turn a bright, fiery gold as the flaming hull of a massive Sythian ship skimmed by low overhead. The next thing Ethan knew, he was flying. The air pocket carried by that thirty kilometer-long ship sent them skipping across the rooftops.
By the time they stopped tumbling they'd been carried at least a few hundred feet. Ethan stood on wobbly legs, surprised to find all of his limbs still attached to his body. He and Alara had both landed on top of a bridge over the shimmering blue sea that was the shield wall between Celesta and Etheria. Titanic booms sounded in the distance as the crashing warship hit kilometers-high skyscrapers, knocking them down with violent shrieks of rending alloy and shattering glass. As the debris fell, the bridge where they stood picked up the vibrations, jumping and skipping under their feet like a plucked string.
"Where's Trinity?" Alara asked suddenly.
Ethan whirled around, searching. Then he spotted her, a dozen feet away and struggling to stand up on the shield. He grimaced. She would have some nasty burns where her skin had touched that energy field.
"Trin!" he called.
"Dad!"
He barely heard her over the roar and rumble of crashing debris. In the distance, he saw Atta and a group of Rictans jump down onto the shield to help Trinity up. They half-carried and half-dragged her to the bridge where Ethan stood. Further away, Galan Rovik had also landed on the shield, but he appeared to be in no hurry to get off. The Peacekeeper stood watching as Celestial towers collapsed in the distance. Drones gathered on all sides of him, forming a protective circle around their human leader.
Atta and the Rictans reached the bridge and began pushing Trinity up. Looking away from the destruction, Ethan grabbed his daughter's hands to pull her up. She cried out in pain, and he almost dropped her.
"Careful!" Atta warned.
Trinity's hands were raw and bleeding with burns from the shield. Ethan felt sick. "Brave girl," he said, grabbing her behind her wrists instead.
Alara hurried over and helped him pull Trinity up. "We need to get off this bridge..." she said as it began vibrating again.
Atta grunted, giving Trinity a final shove before letting go.
"I've got you," Ethan said, pulling his little girl over the railing.
Rictan Six pulled himself up next, and Ethan realized from the man's curly blond hair that he was Blades, the squad medic. He was about to ask Blades to tend to Trinity's injuries, but the man was already opening his medkit.
The railing rattled, and Ethan turned to see the remaining Rictans lifting and pushing Atta up to the bridge. For a moment he wondered why she couldn't help herself up, but then he noticed how one of her shoulders hung well below the other one. It was either broken or dislocated—maybe both.
"Sorry," he said, reaching over the railing again to help her up.
Atta grabbed his hand with her good arm. "Thanks," she panted, her face contorted with pain.
Then the world flashed with a dazzling burst of light. A mighty boom! left Ethan's ears ringing, followed by a thundering roar. The shock wave hit, and the bridge twisted, tipping toward the shield. Atta's hand was wrenched free of his, and Ethan watched helplessly as she and the Rictans went tumbling across the shield, screaming and cursing wherever bare skin touched the energy field. The shock wave doubled Ethan over the railing, threatening to throw him face-first onto the shield and give him a few burns of his own, but he held on tight.
Then it was over. Ethan would have breathed a sigh of relief, but the wind had been knocked out of him. In the distance he saw Atta and the Rictans pick themselves off the shield, struggling to crawl out of a pile of drones. Off to one side, Galan Rovik did the same.
Ethan glanced behind him and saw Blades loosening his grip on Trinity and Alara. The Rictan had hooked his legs around the railings and his arms around Ethan's family to keep them from flying off the bridge. Ethan was just about to thank him when he heard a woman scream. He spun around in time to see the shield flickering dangerously.
Atta and the Rictans ran toward the bridge, but shields gave next to zero traction, and their feet slipped with every step. Atta threw her weight from side to side, using her momentum to skate, not run. She made faster progress like that, but she was still a long way off.
"Come on, Atta!"
Then the shield stopped flickering and failed completely. This time no one had a chance to scream. They fell like rocks.
"Atta!" Ethan roared, half-lunging over the railing as she disappeared amidst a glinting, tumbling rain of drones, Rictans, and one fluttering blue cape. The chasm below the bridge went straight down, almost 300 floors to the Null Zone. No one could survive that. Even the drones would be pulverized on impact. "Atta!" he called again, but he couldn't even see her now.
A hand gripped his shoulder.
"There'll be time to grieve our losses later." Ethan turned to Blades in a daze, and the Rictan shook him to snap him out of it. "Triage. We've got to focus on saving the ones we still can."
"Omnius can't bring them back," Ethan said. Atta was dead.
"No, he can't," Blades replied. "But at least that Peacekeeper and his drones went with them. That means we have a chance to escape, and we need to use it while we still can." The bridge shuddered, and the railing rattled once more. "Come on!" Blades said.
The Rictan took off at a run, and Ethan raced after him, grabbing Alara by the hand and Trinity by her forearm.
By the time they reached the end of the bridge, Ethan saw a pair of people running up to greet them. It was Magnum and Jena Faros.
"Where's everyone else?" Magnum asked as he drew near.
Blades shook his head. "They fell with the shield."
For a long moment no one said anything. Something flickered through Magnum's eyes, and then he nodded. "No guts, no glory."
"No guts, no glory," Blades agreed.
"What are you all standing around for?" Jena Faros said. "We need to go!"
Ethan shot her a dark look. "We just lost a lot of good people."
"And we'll lose the ones we have left if we don't leave now."
"Where?" Alara asked, her eyes glazed with shock.
"That depends... where's that ship of yours?"
Ethan recited the address for her.
"Heritage District..." Jena said, nodding. "That way," she said, pointing in the opposite direction from the crashed behemoth cruiser. She took off at a run. Magnum and Blades ran after her, while Ethan brought up the rear with his family.
Beside him, Alara whispered, "Omnius is telling us not to go. He's saying we should trust him."
Ethan frowned. He'd forgotten that Alara and Trinity were linked. So was Jena Faros. Only he and the Rictans weren't.
"Is he going to stop you?" Ethan asked.
"I told him about Atta, and I explained that it's not about trust, it's about getting to safety. He said he's sorry, and he understands, but he suggests that the safest place to be right now is the Icosahedron—if we can find a way to get there."
"We're not going to the Icosahedron."
"I know. I told him. He's wishing us luck."
Ethan snorted. "What kind of luck?"
Before Alara could reply, they heard another deafening roar. Ethan's heart jumped in his chest, afraid that another ship was about to come crashing down on top of them. Then he saw the source of the sound. Massive towers w
ere blasting off, rising steadily from Celesta, their thrusters glowing bright red against the night.
"What the..." Magnum stopped running to stare up at them.
"The Trees of Life!" Jena exclaimed.
Ethan squinted against the blinding glare of the towers' thrusters. "They were starships?"
"I don't like this," Magnum said. "Why's he runnin' with his tail between his legs? He won!"
Ethan remembered the nanites, and his eyes grew round. "Therius must have dropped the bombs anyway." He shook his head. "Omnius is taking all the clones and leaving Avilon to its fate."
Magnum turned to look at him. "Then why's he tellin' everyone to stay here?"
Alara answered. "He says the ship that crashed was infected. He's going to sterilize the crash site from orbit, but he's withdrawing the Trees of Life just in case."
"How do we know that's true?" Ethan asked. "For all we know dozens of bombs made it and he's telling the people who didn't choose him to stay on Avilon so he has an excuse to get rid of them."
Alara shook her head. "Either way, we need to get out of here. Even if Avilon survives, it's going to be a dangerous place without Omnius to keep law and order."
"We're wasting time!" Jena said.
They ran again, and this time they didn't stop to gawk along the way. Ground-based beams crisscrossed the sky, and explosions roared both distant and near. Fighters raced, screeching with blazing streams of lasers. Sonic booms echoed by the dozen with every minute that passed, and the night turned to day as a deep, throbbing hum filled the air.
Whatever it was, the sound came from behind them. Ethan glanced over his shoulder to see a dozen blinding white beams converging from the sky on the crash site, making it look like an upside down maypole. Omnius really was trying to sterilize the crash site, but did that mean he was being honest about everything else, too?
A little bit of truth can cover up a whole lot of lies, he thought. The question was, What's Omnius lying about now?
Chapter 48
The bridge shuddered with a violent tremor. The hum and roar of energy being exchanged and dissipated by their shields was so loud that it actually set Farah's teeth on edge.
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