"Ventral shields critical! Equalizing..." the Liberator's chief engineer reported.
How much more of this can we take? Farah wondered. "What's our overall shield strength?"
"We're in the yellow, ma'am, almost red, with twenty eight percent."
They weren't even out of the atmosphere yet, and at this rate they weren't likely to get there. "Devries! Send a message on an open channel—we surrender! Tell Omnius all we want is to leave Avilon in peace. He can have his people. We won't try to stop the Trees of Life from reaching orbit."
A moment later Devries replied, shaking his head. "He's not going for it! He's accusing us of mass-murder. When that Sythian ship crashed it took out one of the Trees of Life. Those people are gone for good, Captain."
"What? You're telling me Omnius doesn't have backups of their data?"
"Apparently not."
Bullkrak, Farah thought.
"He says we need to be brought to justice, something he's calling Judgment Day. Isn't that from the Codices?"
Farah snorted and shook her head. This had to be a nightmare. The people they'd thought were their allies were actually their enemies, and now she and her crew were being blamed for a heinous crime that Therius had used the Sythians to commit.
Nightmare was too pleasant a term to describe what was happening.
"Helm! Plot a quantum jump out of here! I don't care where, just get us as far as you can, as fast as you can. As soon as we clear the atmosphere, punch it. Comms, make sure that order is relayed to the rest of the fleet, and don't bother sending them our jump coordinates. We don't need Omnius decrypting our message and following us. It's every ship for itself now."
"Yes, ma'am," both officers replied in unison.
The deck rocked again and again, and Damage alarms screamed one after another.
"Shields depleted, ma'am!"
"Shall I give the order to abandon ship, Captain?" Lieutenant Devries asked from the comms.
Farah's eyes darted around the bridge, taking in everything one last time—the pale, frightened faces of her crew, the triumphant look on Therius's face... smoke hissing into the bridge from broken coolant pipes, sparks sputtering from an open access panel in a buckled support beam, the spider's web of cracks in the main viewport...
"No," Farah said. "What for? So nanites can kill us slowly and painfully when our escape pods land on the surface? We're going down with the ship."
Farah was surprised that she'd even had that much time to contemplate their fate. By now they should have been hit by one final, killing beam. Instead, the constant roar of ordinance exploding and the periodic hum of beams hitting their hull abruptly vanished. Farah spent a moment listening to the sound of coolant hissing into the bridge and to the ship's mighty thrusters roaring as it fought to escape Avilon's gravity.
"Why aren't we dead yet?" she wondered aloud.
"Maybe Omnius doesn't want to shoot us down over Avilon..." the ship's chief engineer suggested. "If he waits for us to reach escape velocity, the debris won't crash into the planet and do further damage."
"That's not the reason," Therius replied, smiling faintly. "Why should he care if we cause more damage when he's already evacuated the planet?"
Farah resisted the urge to slap the smile off Therius's face. She settled for scowling at him instead. "What's the reason then?"
"He doesn't want to shoot us down at all. He wants to take us captive."
Farah gritted her teeth and focused on taking deep, calming breaths. "We should have attacked the Icosahedron with nanites while Omnius was being jammed. We could have defeated him!"
Therius shook his head. "We never would have gotten past the shields."
"Then we should have found a way to infiltrate it!"
Therius's smile suddenly blossomed into a full-blown grin. "What do you think we're doing now, Miss Hale?" he whispered.
"Escape velocity attained!" the officer at the helm announced.
"Jump away!" Farah ordered.
"We're not out of the atmosphere yet! The tidal forces could—"
Suddenly the deck shuddered once more, and every powered system died, plunging the ship into utter darkness and silence. Farah's stomach did a flip as artificial gravity failed. The only light they had to see by was the fake starlight shining down on them from the billions of viewports in the distant shell of New Avilon.
"Frek!" Farah said, and pounded the captain's table with her fists. The momentum of that movement sent her spinning up toward the ceiling.
"Have faith, Miss Hale," Therius said, kicking off the deck to join her. "They're going to take us aboard."
"And then what?" she asked, pushing off the ceiling as she drew near. "We don't have any nanites aboard... or do we?"
Therius smiled, and for a moment Farah dared to hope that defeating Omnius was still a possibility. Then he shook his head and said, "No, they will not allow us aboard with any weapons, and we will be thoroughly scanned to make sure of that."
Farah frowned. He was right, of course, but that meant there was no coming back from this catastrophe, and Therius's cryptic smiles were a symptom of his insanity, not some hidden genius. Avilon was infected with nanites, doomed to a slow but certain end; Omnius had evacuated the planet; and the Union no longer had any power to threaten him.
The battle was lost, and Omnius had won.
* * *
Jena Faros led Ethan and his family and the remaining Rictans under the golden dome of a quantum junction. She used the junction to jump them directly inside one of the History Towers. From there she led them through a museum full of human history.
Some of it Ethan recognized, exhibits of early species of humans from Advistine—hairy primates, mostly—including showcases of primitive tools, and fossilized bones to describe the different stages of human evolution. Then there were exhibits of architectural wonders created by the earliest civilizations, long before the advent of space flight. He saw pyramids, giant statues, temples...
Ethan marveled at it all.
"The History of Space Flight is this way," Jena said, as they began to linger.
"Where did Omnius get all of these artifacts?" Ethan asked, wondering if he'd somehow stolen them from museums on Advistine before he sent the Sythians to destroy the planet.
"They're mostly replicas," Jena explained.
Ethan snorted. "So there's no longer any real evidence to describe our past."
"I suppose not," Jena replied, slowing from a jog to a fast walk.
"That's convenient," Ethan said. "I guess he can rewrite history now."
They passed through increasingly modern exhibits until eventually Advistine's cities sprawled across the continents, covering most of the planetary surface. Space elevators soared, and orbital space stations became as common and as numerous as land-based hotels. Up ahead Ethan saw a pair of doors leading to the next exhibit. Above those doors was a rotating hologram depicting Advistine from space at the end of the terrestrial period. Dozens of space elevators climbed up to giant counter-weighting stations. Under the hologram Ethan read the caption, Earth at the End of the Terrestrial Period.
He frowned. "I thought this exhibit was about Advistine? I've never heard of a planet called Earth."
Jena glanced over her shoulder as she waved open the doors to the next exhibit. "Earth is what we used to call Advistine before the Galactic Period."
"How do you know that?" Alara asked, proving Ethan wasn't the only one in the dark.
"Omnius must have found a reference to it somewhere," Jena said.
Ethan nodded, noting that the next exhibit was the one they were looking for—The History of Space Flight. He was even more distracted by all of the different space ships and technologies that powered them. Some of the designs looked absurd, but all the more intriguing for their novelty.
Something outside the History Towers exploded with a terrific bang! and shook the building so hard that the walls and floor cracked.
Ethan lost his balance a
nd fell against the railing of the nearest exhibit. "What the frek was that?"
"We better hurry!" Alara said.
"Let's go!" Jena added, yelling to be heard above the residual rumblings of the explosion. Ethan scooped up his daughter and sprinted down the aisle between showcases. So far the History Towers were deserted, which was just as well. Ethan wasn't sure if Omnius would try to stop them from leaving, but he didn't want to find out.
They came to the most recent part of the Galactic Period, and Ethan saw his ship gleaming in the distance, sitting on a landing pad in front of a vast wall of windows.
Ethan stopped to stare up at his pride and joy, a 40-meter-long seraphim-class corvette. His breath caught in his chest, and he was momentarily at a loss for words.
"The Trinity," he whispered.
"Hey, that's my name!" Trinity said, sending him an accusing look.
Ethan turned to her with a smile. "Where do you think you got it from?"
Another explosion boomed and rumbled through the floor. Then came a distant shriek of rending metal, and Ethan's eyes were drawn out the wall of glass behind his ship. There, in the distance, a massive tower was on fire, a chunk bitten out its side. As they watched, the top half of the tower began falling toward them.
"Take cover!" Magnum yelled just before the tower landed in a grassy green park at the base of the History Towers. There came a world-shattering boom, and then a roiling gray cloud of pulverized bactcrete burst forth, knocking over trees and consuming everything in its path.
Ethan saw the rushing cloud of debris and he hit the floor, pulling Trinity down with him. He held her down firmly. Then the shock wave hit and the glass wall exploded. Trinity lifted her head to look just as a glittering rain of shattered glass came flying at them. She screamed.
"Head down!" Ethan yelled, feeling glass shards dig into his back and arms. Then it was over. Ethan's ears rang, and his back stung fiercely with embedded glass. He lifted his head to check how Trinity was doing, and the air left his lungs in a strangled cry.
A jagged wedge of glass protruded from Trinity's forehead with blood bubbling out around it.
She was conscious and crying, but he doubted it was from the pain. She had to be in shock.
"Medic!" Ethan yelled.
Alara reached them first. "What happened?" she demanded. "Oh no... Trinity..."
Rictan Six dropped to his haunches beside them. His gaze flicked to the chunk of glass in Trinity's head, and his cheeks turned gray.
Ethan wanted to pick the man up and shake him. "What are you waiting for? Fix her!"
Trinity's eyes rolled in her head, and she mumbled incoherently. Alara began sobbing. She held their daughter's head in her lap, stroking blood-matted hair away from her forehead, telling her that everything was going to be all right.
"I'm sorry," Blades whispered.
"We need to go!" Jena called out.
Ethan felt sick. He grabbed his daughter's hand and squeezed. "Trin," he said. Her eyes stopped rolling long enough to settle on him, and he gave her a strangled smile. "I love you, sweetheart."
Then he realized why her eyes had stopped rolling, and he burst into tears.
Chapter 49
Jena and the Rictans did their best to drag them away from Trinity. Ethan didn't have the strength left to resist. He rose to his feet, backing away slowly, his heart broken.
"If we don't hurry, we could be next," Jena said, still trying to tear Alara away.
"Who cares?" Alara screamed.
Jena took a step back and shook her head, looking startled. "You don't have to go with us," she said, "but we're leaving Avilon. Maybe if you stay, Omnius will bring your daughter back."
Ethan walked up to his wife and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Alara—"
"Don't touch me!"
"Trust me," Ethan whispered through gritted teeth.
"I tried that, remember?" Alara's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "Look how that worked out. If you'd been in Etheria with us, this never would have happened."
Ethan winced. It wasn't fair to lay the blame for this on him, but Alara needed someone to blame, and right now her cheating husband was an easy target. He shook his head. "Look—we brought Omnius back online. That's got to count for something. If he doesn't repay the favor by resurrecting Trinity, I'll be very surprised."
Alara's expression took a hopeful turn. "You're right. We did bring him back, didn't we...?"
Ethan nodded.
"Fine, so you're staying, and we're going," Jena said. "Nice to meet you all..."
"Hold on!" Ethan caught her by the arm and yanked her up to within an inch of his face. "You can't fly my ship out of here without my launch codes, and we're not going to sit around here waiting for nanites to kill us. You're going to take us up to the Icosahedron so that we can speak with Omnius in person."
"Forget it."
"I'm not asking you," Ethan said. "I'm telling you. Now let's go."
Jena started to object, but Ethan silenced her with a venomous look. "She's my daughter. End of discussion."
Alara surprised him by slipping her hand into his.
She hadn't forgiven him yet, but it was a start.
Jena held Ethan's gaze for a long moment. Then she scowled and nodded. "Fine."
They ran to the Trinity and straight up the ramp. Ethan led the way to the cockpit and found the Rictans already there, trying to bypass his launch codes.
"Out of the way," Ethan said, yanking Magnum out of the pilot's chair. He sat down and entered the codes; then he ran a quick check on the ship's systems. To his amazement, all ship's systems were in the green, even after almost a decade of disuse. Feeling suddenly more positive, Ethan fired up the grav lifts and then the thrusters, cold-starting them both. The ship's only complaint was a mild shudder before it hovered up from the landing pad.
"Still purrs like a kitten," he said, and rotated the ship until it faced the shattered wall of glass. Alara sat in the copilot's seat beside him, and Jena Faros hovered over their shoulders.
"We're not going to board the Icosahedron," Jena said. "You can send a message to Omnius and then launch yourselves in an escape pod so he can pick you up."
"Sure," Ethan replied, and dialed the inertial management system back to eighty percent. Then he pushed the throttle up past the stops and rocketed out over Avilon. The ship's sudden acceleration pinned him and Alara both to their seats, while Jena Faros and the Rictans all went tumbling backward, screaming as they went. He heard someone cursing, and risked a glance over his shoulder to see Magnum clinging to the open hatch by his fingernails.
"Motherfrekker!" Magnum gritted out.
"Guess I forgot to warn you guys to strap in," Ethan said. Then he pulled up, adding the planet's gravity to accentuate their momentum. Magnum lost his grip with a curse and a shout, and Ethan sealed the cockpit from the pilot's station. Now that they were alone he brought inertial management up to 100%.
"Are they okay?" Alara asked.
"I don't know," Ethan said.
That uncertainty hung between them as the Trinity clawed for orbit in a near-vertical climb. Thousands of fighters danced above them, their thrusters tracing neon swirls behind the clouds—Nova blue, Shell fighter orange, and drone fighter red. The colors mingled and swirled together in buzzing swarms. Streams of red and purple lasers crisscrossed between the fighters, and explosions speckled the sky with fiery bursts of light.
Ethan keyed the comms and set them for an open channel, about to ask Omnius for permission to approach the Icosahedron and land, but Alara touched his hand and shook her head. For a split second he was afraid she'd had a change of heart about bringing Trinity back.
"I've already told him," she said. "Omnius knows we're coming. He's going to send a drone escort to get us there safely."
Ethan remembered her Lifelink implant, and he nodded. "Good."
They raced through the clouds and emerged in the middle of a dazzling firefight between a pair of Gor cruisers and
a few thousand drone fighters.
One of the Gor ships exploded with a titanic boom, spraying their shields with supersonic debris, and Ethan grimaced as their forward shields went from blue to green. Laser fire flickered by them, so close that it actually made the corvette shudder. No, something else had to have caused that shudder. Lasers didn't impart kinetic energy with their passing. Ethan checked the threat detection system to identify their attackers, but there weren't any. Then the deck shuddered once more, and another dazzling flicker of laser light stole Ethan's attention. This time he noticed the source.
The lasers were coming from them.
"What the frek?" Ethan's hands flew over the controls as he hurried to shut down the ship's weapons systems.
"What is it?" Alara asked.
"Looks like our passengers are okay after all. They've found the turrets and they're using them to get some target practice."
"They're trying to shoot down drones? Are they crazy?"
Another flash of lasers streaked out from them. This time Ethan saw the lasers impact on the side of a nearby cruiser—a Gor cruiser. He gaped at that.
"Ethan?" Alara asked.
He braced himself for return fire. "They're not shooting at drones," he explained. "They're shooting at Gors!"
"Aren't the Gors their allies? Why would they shoot them?"
"To get us all killed! Why else?" Ethan finished shutting down the weapon systems and then keyed the intercom. "I hope you're happy, Magnum!"
Laughter rippled back over the intercom. "No guts, no glory, motherfrekker! And I'm gonna spill yours if it's the last thing I do."
The TDS screeched out a belated warning, and a blinding light suffused the deck. A muffed explosion sounded somewhere aft of the cockpit, and damage alerts screamed. Ethan threw the ship into an evasive pattern.
"Damn you, Magnum!" he breathed.
"What was that?" Alara asked.
Another explosion roared through the cockpit and the Trinity rocked violently once more.
"The Gors are firing at us!" he said.
The TDS chirped out a series of rapid fire warnings, and Ethan saw half a dozen Shell Fighters lining up behind them, vying for missile locks. That wasn't good. Evading energy-based Pirakla missiles came down to speed and sudden, last-minute changes in momentum, but they were still in atmosphere, clawing for orbit, and the Trinity's lack of aerodynamic properties made it a sitting duck.
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