"Ethan, if those fighters get missile locks on us—"
The chirping warnings from the TDS became solid tones, and Ethan's hands tingled with adrenaline, getting ready to throw them into a last-ditch maneuver.
"Hang on..." he warned, watching the grid for the warning flash of light as the Shell fighters pursuing them launched their missiles. That flash of light came, but not from the star map. It suffused the entire deck, washing everything a dazzling white and making all of their concerns moot.
* * *
Farah Hale lay pinned to the main forward viewport with the rest of her crew, held there by a mysterious force of deceleration that had gripped their ship as they drew near to the Icosahedron. Farah could only assume that Omnius was arresting their approach with some type of grav gun. Most of the crew was content to lie against the viewport and wait for the inevitable, but Farah had twisted around onto her belly so that she could watch. It took all of her strength just to keep her face from being smashed against the viewport.
She was rewarded for her effort with a breathtaking view of New Avilon. They were finally close enough to pick out details on the inner side of it. The most curious detail were the thousands of giant, bristling towers pointing down toward Avilon. They looked like the barrels of giant laser cannons.
Farah remembered that the Icosahedron was supposed to be capable of mining entire planets for resources, and she wondered if those towers were massive beam weapons. She estimated by the size and number of them that Omnius could have wiped out the entire Union fleet in seconds.
So why hasn't he?
Even as she was thinking that, one of those towers opened fire and a thick white beam shot by them to hit some unseen target coming up from the surface of Avilon. Farah blinked the spots from her eyes. Whatever that beam had hit, it was gone now, but Omnius had fired just one beam out of thousands. He was cherry-picking the targets he wished to destroy and capturing others. She wondered what criteria Omnius was using. Was he capturing only human ships, or Sythian and Gor ones, too?
Farah watched as one of the Trees of Life reached the Icosahedron. It had rotated to dock with its engines facing the inner side of the sphere. As soon as the bright red glow of its thrusters disappeared and it finished docking, that tower became just one more out of thousands already aimed at the surface of Avilon.
Farah blinked. All of those towers weren't just weapons emplacements. They were New Avilon's cloning facilities and Lifelink data centers.
"We've stopped moving," Therius whispered, announcing the fact just a split second before Farah realized that the crushing weight on her back had disappeared.
She pushed gently off the main forward viewport and turned to see her crew all drifting and tumbling through the bridge. "I thought you said Omnius was going to take us aboard?" she said, eager to poke a hole in Therius's smug insanity.
"He will, but first drones will board us, scan us, and carry us away in one of Omnius's ships. He would never trust us to come aboard in one of our own vessels."
Farah smirked. "Of course not. So what exactly is your plan? Or don't you have one anymore?"
"I plan to wait until we are captured."
"And then?"
"Then we're going to meet with Omnius face-to-face, and I'm going to speak with him one last time."
Farah snorted. "Going to beg for mercy? We should kill ourselves now before Omnius finds a more painful way to do it."
"I'm going to give him one last chance to back down," Therius replied.
Farah stared at him, unable to believe what he'd just said. He refused to admit defeat even while looking down the barrels of a thousand planet-mining beam weapons. That, she decided, was the very definition of insanity.
"Would you please cut my bonds and help me power up your uncle's drone?" Therius asked.
"Seven Sixty Seven? Why?"
"Trust me, Farah."
Farah eyed Therius through the darkness. His eyes shone with reflected light from the Icosahedron, making him look even more insane than usual. She took a deep breath and shook her head. "If you're planning some kind of last stand, you're going to have to count me out of it. I'm done."
"Very well," Therius said, sounding disappointed. He turned away from her, and Farah saw his gaze settle on Torv next. "I brought your people back from the brink of extinction. The Gors are an honorable people, and I promised your matriarch they would be rewarded. My promise stands, despite what you might think. Will you help me?"
Hissss.
Farah's translator spat out a single word. "No."
"What do you have to lose?"
"He dropped nanites on Avilon, Torv. There are millions of Gors on the surface, and now they're all going to die."
"Not everything here is what it seems, Miss Hale. Torv, you need to make up your mind for yourself. Will you trust me?"
Torv replied with a sibilant stream of hisses and used the grav guns in his boots to regain his footing on the deck below.
Farah's translator whispered in her ear. "I trust. But if you lie, I eat you alive."
"Torv..." Farah said, shaking her head.
She saw Therius smile. "I accept your terms."
Torv walked over to Therius and reached up to grab his ankle and pull him down.
"Take me to the drone," Therius instructed.
Torv dragged Therius over to 767, who was floating a few feet above the captain's table.
"Please cut my bonds, Torv."
The Gor cut them with a brief flash of light from his scythe-shaped energy blade.
"Thank you." Therius stood on Torv's shoulders and reached around the back of the drone's head to turn it on. A beam of crimson light shot out from 767's optical sensor and washed across the deck.
"Welcome back, Seven Sixty Seven. It's time for us to leave the bridge."
"Where are we going, Admiral?"
"I'll show you."
Therius wrapped his arms around the drone's neck and 767 powered his own grav guns to join Torv on the deck. Therius nodded to the Gor. "Thank you, my friend. Your part in this is over, but you will not be disappointed. Have faith."
Torv hissed once more. "I go with you."
"If you insist."
Farah's brow furrowed, and she watched as the three of them made their way down the gangway, walking by the crimson light of 767's optical sensor. The bridge doors swished open and then shut behind them. Farah scowled, hoping Torv would get a chance to make good on his threat to eat Therius alive, but she had a bad feeling that the Union leader would doublecross him before long. Gors were too trusting, particularly the males. Farah was sure that if Matriarch Shara had been aboard in Torv's stead, she would have ripped Therius's throat out by now. Of course, that was probably why she wasn't aboard. Farah wondered where Therius was headed.
Critical systems like doors were running in low-power mode on battery backups alone. That meant they would be able to reach the escape pods, but abandoning ship wouldn't get them anywhere. Omnius would see their escape pod and either vaporize them or pick them up.
Still, the thought of Therius running from the mess he'd created made Farah's blood boil.
This was all his fault! The entire attack had been a lie. He'd never planned to defeat Omnius. His idea of setting humanity free was to kill them. Farah spent the next fifteen minutes dwelling on that and imagining ways she could get revenge on Therius for what he'd done.
The bridge doors swished open once more and a squad of drones came clanking in. Their optical sensors cast bright red fans of light through the air as they scanned the surviving crew.
Seeing her chance, Farah called out to them, "Our leader escaped! Check the escape pods. If there aren't any missing, then he's still aboard."
The drones gave no verbal response, but a pair of them went clanking back the way they'd come, going to search the ship. Farah felt better, knowing that whatever fate awaited her and her crew, Therius wasn't about to escape it.
The air buzzed with the crackling r
eport of energy weapons set to stun. Dazzling blue bolts snapped out with pinpoint accuracy. People screamed and a few belatedly tried to resist by firing back with their sidearms.
Farah shut her eyes, and allowed her thoughts to drift to her Uncle Bretton—the real one, not the drone. Bretton was dead and gone, but maybe just maybe he'd passed on to a better place. Farah chose to believe that.
Then a stun bolt hit her, and her body convulsed. Darkness closed in around her, and she welcomed it.
Chapter 50
As the spots cleared from Ethan's eyes, he saw what had caused the blinding flash of light. All of the Shell fighters on their tail had simultaneously exploded.
Drone fighters appeared on all sides, and a pair raced out ahead, leading the way to the Icosahedron. Omnius's escort had arrived just in time to rescue them.
Ethan breathed out a shaky sigh. "That was close."
Alara nodded.
Avilon's atmosphere fell away and they gained a crystal-clear view of New Avilon. Its viewports shone down on them like a dense field of stars. Lasers flashed against that backdrop, and explosions flared almost continuously.
The battle wasn't going to last much longer. Union ships were being taken out just as fast as they could race into orbit, and there were at least a hundred red enemy contacts for every solitary green one. Enemy contacts were purely fighter-class, but with so many of them, it didn't matter that Omnius hadn't brought any heavier weapons to the fight.
"I guess now all we have to do is wait," Ethan said.
"I guess..." Alara's eyes were glazed and staring, her mind somewhere far away.
Ethan didn't have to ask to know what she was thinking about. "Trinity was already a clone. Nothing's going to change when Omnius brings her back."
Alara shook her head. "That doesn't make watching her die any easier."
Bang!
Ethan's eyes flew to the TDS, then to the grid, but nothing was attacking them. "The frek...?"
Then the sound came again, and Ethan realized it was coming from the cockpit hatch. He turned to see the hatch sprinkled with fingertip-sized dents.
As he watched, there came another bang, and another sprinkling of dents appeared. The pattern exactly matched the spread of a sawed-off ripper rifle. Remembering the armory aboard his ship and the pair of elite commandos he'd left rattling around in the Trinity's aft sections, Ethan's eyes flew wide. He was shocked that those weapons hadn't been stripped from the Trinity before the ship had been made into a museum exhibit.
"They're going to punch a hole!" Alara said.
Bang!
Even as she said that, holes began shining through the hatch. Ethan saw a familiar brown eye appear in one of them.
"Omnius killed her," Magnum said. "Just thought you might want to know that before you delivered us all into his clutches."
"Killed who?" Ethan asked.
"That Peacekeeper woman. He pulled the plug on her like she was some kinda drone."
Alara replied, "He killed her because she was trying to get us killed by firing at Gors!"
"You locked us out of the cockpit and took us hostage to deliver to the enemy. It's kill or be killed, Motherfrekkers!"
Bang!
Ethan took cover behind the pilot's chair, his mind racing to come up with a way to defeat them. He remembered the trick he'd pulled earlier with the ship's inertial management system and sudden acceleration.
"Hang on," he told Alara, one hand poised over the throttle, the other picking a new setting for the IMS.
But he never had a chance to set it. The cockpit came alive with a gusting wind and a blinding light. Then the light faded and Ethan heard a screech of lasers firing, followed by a thud, a strangled cry, and another thud.
Clanking footsteps approached, drawing Ethan's attention to the rear. He watched as metallic claws reached through the shredded hatch, tearing it open like paper. A pair of drones came into the cockpit, their optical sensors scanning with crimson beams of light.
Omnius had quantum-jumped these two aboard to deal with the Rictans.
Ethan spotted the pair of commandos lying motionless in a spreading black pool of blood just beyond the hatch, and he grimaced. The drones' eyes settled on him, and he hesitated, suddenly afraid that he might be next.
"Thank you," he managed.
The drones gave no reply. They merely took up guard positions, one to either side of the ruined hatch.
Ethan went back to piloting the ship with his hands shaking on the flight controls. Omnius had just dispatched both of the remaining Rictans, and apparently, one of his own Peacekeepers.
"They would have killed us," Alara said, seeming to read his mind.
He pressed his lips into a thin line. "I guess Magnum was right. It's kill or be killed."
"Would you rather we be the ones lying on the deck in a pool of blood right now?"
"No, but Omnius didn't have to kill them. They're not coming back, you know. They didn't have Lifelinks. None of us did. Even if they had clones on Avilon, they weren't the same people, and they didn't share the same memories."
"They came to Avilon knowing there was a chance that they could die in the fighting."
"And that means their deaths don't mean anything?"
"Ethan, we saved Avilon, and now we're going to save our daughter. We did everything we could to prevent further loss of life."
"But what is Omnius doing to prevent further loss of life?"
"He's disabling Union ships, not destroying them," Alara said, nodding to the star map.
Ethan saw that Alara was right. One in every two Union ships had gone dark on the grid. Space was crowded with more derelict warships than debris.
Ethan was taken aback by that. Maybe Omnius wasn't the real enemy, after all. He'd agreed to give the Union what they wanted, and they'd still dropped nanites on Avilon.
But just because Therius's side was the wrong one didn't mean Omnius's was the right one. He was just as guilty of unnecessary bloodshed, if not more. After all, he'd created the Sythians and used them to start all the fighting in the first place.
The vast shell of the Icosahedron drew ever-nearer, and the drone fighters guiding them in banked suddenly to port. Ethan was about to match that maneuver, but his ship moved before he could.
"What the..."
"Omnius is guiding us in," Alara explained. "He wants you to shut down your engines."
Ethan hesitated for a second before killing thrust. "Now what?" he asked, sitting back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap.
"Now we wait to be brought aboard."
It was a short wait. Half an hour later they raced past an inverted city of lights and towers, the tallest of which looked identical to the Trees of Life they'd seen launching from Avilon.
Ethan marveled at the sheer size and scale of Omnius's creation. It was like someone had turned the cities of Avilon inside out and stretched them into a thin shell around the planet. Although, according to the Trinity's sensors that 'thin' shell was more than twenty kilometers thick.
"Where did Omnius get enough raw materials to create something like this?" Ethan wondered. "He must have mined a few planets into nonexistence."
"Maybe a few solar systems," Alara suggested.
Dead ahead Ethan saw a small blue rectangle appear. As they drew near, he realized it was a hangar bay, and it wasn't small. It could have berthed an entire fleet. The drones flying ahead of them disappeared through the hazy blue glow of the hangar's shields. Then the Trinity glided in after them with a faint sizzle of exchanging energy, and Ethan saw a vast, empty hangar deck with myriad glowing red circles to denote landing spaces. Without him having to touch the flight controls, the Trinity hovered down into the middle of a green-glowing circle, while their fighter escort settled down on matching circles around them.
A mechanical voice spoke, startling Ethan out of his thoughts. "Welcome to New Avilon. Please follow me."
Ethan turned to see the drones who'd been standing
guard at the hatch come alive and go clanking out the cockpit, down the access corridor beyond.
Alara unbuckled her flight restraints. "Come on," she said, and hurried after the drones.
Ethan followed, grimacing as he was forced to step around the bloody mess that Omnius had made of the Rictans. Seeing Magnum's glazed and staring eyes gave him pause once more.
Everything that had happened since the Sythians invaded was all just a lot of senseless killing for the sake of killing. It was almost as if Omnius enjoyed the bloodshed.
It's time to get some answers, he thought.
Chapter 51
As the drones led them through the vast, echoing hangar bay, Ethan noticed all of the empty racks folded up along the walls and ceiling. They looked like gleaming black skeletons. Ethan realized they were meant to hold drone fighters, but they were empty now that all of the drones were out fighting the Union fleet.
Once they reached the far wall of the hangar, the drones led them down a broad corridor with a familiar, shiny golden dome at the end—a quantum junction.
The drones activated the junction, causing it to rise on four shimmering pillars of light, and Ethan and Alara hurried to the center of the green-glowing circle underneath. The drones came clanking into position and then one of them raised its hands to activate the junction.
Ethan shut his eyes as the dome fell and began glowing with a dazzling light. He fumbled for Alara's hand and laced his fingers through hers as wind gusted around inside the dome, tearing at their clothes and hair.
Then the light vanished and the wind died down. Ethan opened his eyes to see the dome rising once more.
He saw a small group of people standing in front of a massive wraparound viewport. Beyond that, Avilon lay dark and whorled with the dendritic patterns of light from its cities. As the drones led them to the viewport, Ethan recognized the people standing there. One of them was Grand Overseer Thardris. The overseer turned and smiled. His eyes flickered bright silver in the light of his ARCs, making it all but impossible to see the whites of his eyes.
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