04 Dark Space (37 page)

“Are you saying they have cloaking shields?” Alara asked as she sat in the copilot’s station beside him.

“No, well . . . I don’t know.”

“Have you tried hailing them?”

“I was about to when I realized that they probably won’t hear us if they’re drifting without power.”

“You won’t know until you try.”

“Go ahead. I’m going to bring us in for a closer look.”

“Don’t get too close . . .” Alara warned. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I, but I don’t see how they’re a danger to us. How are they going to shoot us? Stick their heads out the airlocks and throw rocks?”

Alara smiled and warmth bled into her violet eyes as she turned to speak into the comm. “This is Alara Ortane of the
Trinity.
We are low on fuel and require immediate assistance. Please respond if you receive this message.”

The comms crackled and popped with static as the
Trinity
roared through the planet’s upper atmosphere. Clouds and stormy skies yielded to the diamond sparkle of stars. Ethan set visual auto-scaling to 500% and suddenly the Avilonian fleet appeared in the distance. Their ships were oblong and rectangular, white and glowing with reflected light from the system’s sun, which was just now peeking over the horizon of the planet below.

“There’s no response,” Alara said, turning to him with wide violet eyes. “What should we do?”

“I’m going to get us closer to one of those ships.”

“What for?”

“We’re going to board them.”

“I don’t see any open hangars . . .”

“So we make one.”

“That’s a nice way to ask for help—
we tried knocking on your door, but you didn’t answer, so we decided to break it down
.”

“Maybe they need
our
help?” he suggested. Alara looked dubious, and he shrugged. “Either way, we don’t have a choice. I don’t see any other starships around here that might hail from the Avilonian Empire.”

“You’re right, but we’re not going unarmed.”

“You’re not going at all,” Ethan replied.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re going to be in the cockpit with the thrusters hot and ready for a getaway. If I don’t come back, or if you suddenly lose contact with me, you take off and get as far from here as you can. Look for a habitable world.”

“I’m not leaving you behind, Ethan, and you’re not going alone.”

But half an hour later, when Ethan had finished cutting a hole in the nearest derelict vessel’s hull, Alara wasn’t standing beside him in the airlock. She was waiting at the pilot’s station, staying in touch with him via comms.

“You better come back here in one piece, Ethan Ortane, or I’m going to rip you apart myself.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

“Don’t you sweetheart me.”

Ethan grinned behind the faceplate of his vac suit and began playing with the settings on his grav gun. He set the gun for a heavy load, and then targeted the glowing, red-hot circle he’d cut in the outer hull of the Avilonian ship. Holding down the trigger, he heard a metallic groan, followed by a hiss of molten metal dripping down to the hermetic seal which had extended from the
Trinity’s
main airlock. Ethan hoped those molten beads of duranium or whatever other alloy the ship’s hull was made of didn’t burn a hole through that seal and into space. He was wearing a vac suit, but that didn’t mean he’d survive sudden depressurization of the airlock.

“Everything all right down there?” Alara asked.

“Just fine . . .” Ethan replied as the glowing hot circle of alloy popped free and began drifting toward him. He set it down on the floor. That done, he turned to peer into the shadowy hole he’d cut. Unable to see anything clearly, he drew his sidearm and snapped on the scope light. A regular ship’s deck appeared
below
. The Avilonian ship was oriented so that its deck lay dead ahead, rather than
down
as it should have been.

“I’m going in.”

“Are you sure? Is it safe?”

“I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Ethan!”

He jumped down into the ship and bounced back off the deck before he could turn on the grav field emitter on his belt. The ship’s artificial gravity was obviously offline along with everything else.

“I’m going to see if I can find the crew . . .” Ethan said as his feet touched the deck once more. Walking within his own personal bubble of gravity, he made his way slowly through the dark, abandoned corridor where he now found himself.

“What do you see in there?”

Ethan panned his scope light over the walls and ceiling. “Nothing unusual so far,” he said, noting shiny white walls, gray ceiling, and the silvery deck under his feet.

“Does it look like one of our ships?”

“Hoi, Kiddie, hold on . . . I’m looking.”

“So you found us at last,” came an unidentified voice.

Ethan whirled around. Turning on his helmet’s external speakers, he called out, “Who said that?”

“Ethan?!” Alara interjected in a panicky voice. “What’s going on?”

“I did.” This time the voice was right beside Ethan’s ear.

Startled, he spun toward the sound, his finger already twitching on the trigger of his pistol. He glimpsed something bright and glowing which came swelling out of thin air. Then came a
whoosh
and something heavy hit him in the chest, throwing him backward. Ethan hit the opposite wall of the corridor with a
bang
and slid to the floor with a groan.

“Your timing could not have been better,” the voice said. Ethan looked up to see a man in a suit of glowing blue-white armor stepping toward him. The man’s face was hidden by a shiny helmet and glowing visor.

“Who are you?” Ethan asked.

“I am an acolyte of Omnius and a templar of His peacekeepers.”

“Omni-what?”

“You will help us.”

Ethan was tempted to laugh, but somehow he held it in. “We came here looking for
your
help. If you need us to help
you,
then I’m pretty sure we’re all frekked.”

“Can your ship fly?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t have much fuel.”

“We do not have far to go.”

“Look . . .” Ethan said, picking himself off the deck and shaking his head. He felt like he’d run into a wall. “I don’t know what all of this is about, or what you think we can do to help you, but you sure do know how to ask. What did you do, hit me with a grav truck?”

“You were startled and aiming a weapon at my face. I had to ensure that you did not kill yourself before I could talk with you.”

“Kill myself—” Ethan broke off, chuckling. “I’m not sure you know how weapons work.”

“My armor is shielded. It will reflect whatever you shoot at me. We must hurry. There is no time to waste.”

“Hurry where?”

“To Avilon.”

Ethan’s eyes lit up behind his helmet. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Why the frek didn’t you say so earlier? Let’s go.”

Chapter 24

I
t took nearly half an hour to translate the Avilonians’ coordinates to ones which the
Intrepid
could use. Now they were about to revert to real space and arrive in Avilon—or the Ascendancy, as the Avilonians called it. There was still no sign of Omnius, and the Avilonians on board were growing increasingly restless.

Caldin watched the reversion timer on the captain’s table, trying not to pay attention to the trio of glowing men impatiently crowding around the table with her.

“How much longer?” Galan Rovik asked.

“You asked me the same question five minutes ago,” she said.

“Because it is hard to believe. How can your ships take so long to travel such a short distance?”

Caldin accepted that criticism with a thin smile. Avilon—the real location rather than the location of their forward base—was straight through the gravity field and just 1.75 light years away. The
Intrepid
could make roughly five light years per hour with red dymium fuel and an extended range SLS drive such as they had on board. Thus, their total travel time was just over twenty minutes. Caldin didn’t think much of that, especially not after being forced to consider a four year journey through real space, but the Avilonians were appalled by how slow the
Intrepid
was, leaving her to marvel yet again at how advanced their technology must be.

“How do your SLS drives work?” she asked to distract the Avilonians from their growing impatience.

She wasn’t expecting an answer, but to her surprise, Galan replied, “They transport us directly from one point in space to another. Much the same way we came aboard your ship.”

Caldin’s eyes flew wide. “You mean you can . . .
teleport
from one place to another?”

“It takes time to calculate a jump and time to energize the transporter field. The further the jump, the longer calculations take. Omnius can make such calculations almost instantly, but he rarely has the attention to spare for that.”

She accepted, nodding absently. It occurred to her that Omnius seemed to have a lot of limitations for a
god
, but by now she knew better than to offend the Avilonians’ delicate sensibilities by saying that aloud.

The reversion timer reached ten minutes, and Caldin turned to find the comm officer. “Sound a red alert, and send a message to the ready rooms on the flight deck. Make sure our pilots are ready to launch as soon as we revert to real space.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Engineering, is our cloaking shield engaged?”

“As of five minutes ago, ma’am.”

“Good. Whatever is happening in Avilon, we don’t want to go blundering into it.”

“
On
Avilon,” Galan said quietly.

“I’m sorry?” Caldin turned to find Galan regarding her silently.

“Avilon is a planet.”

“All right,
on Avilon.
What is it you call the star system, then?”

“Domus Licus. In your language this would be, Home of Light.”

“That explains all the glowing motifs. . . .” she said, eyeing Galan’s shining faceplate. “I don’t even know what you look like behind that thing. For all I know you’re really a skull face.”

“A skull . . . ?”

“Sythian.”

“I do not sound like a Sythian.”

“It was a joke,” Caldin replied.

Suddenly the man’s glowing white visor disappeared, and in its place Caldin saw the face of a handsome young man—twenty years old at best. His eyes were bright blue and subtly glowing—
of course his eyes glow
, Caldin thought with a wry smile. She assumed the effect was cosmetic.

“Is that better?” Galan asked.

“You’re just a boy,” Caldin said.

“I am older than you.”

“You don’t look it.”

“What something appears to be is rarely representative of what it actually is. I am over eight thousand years old.”

“Eight . . . how many times have you been cloned?”

“Five.”

Caldin shook her head, marveling at that. “How long since you last . . .”

“Resurrected? Over six thousand years. At my rank I am rarely sent into dangerous situations anymore. Not all are as fortunate as I.”

Caldin shook her head. “You don’t look more than twenty! How is that possible?”

“Our bodies do not age, and they do not die,” Galan replied.

“I was told that you live forever because you transfer yourselves to clones before you die.”

“That was the original idea, yes, but it has been a long time since we’ve had to do that. Now we only clone ourselves in the event that we should suffer an accidental death.”

Caldin’s mind balked at the possibilities once more. Galan’s words echoed softly inside her head.
Our bodies do not age, and they do not die . . .
That made the business of cloning oneself and transferring to clones seem like a cheap imitation of eternal life. What Galan was describing went far beyond that. “Then your people are truly immortal.”

“Most of us, yes. Not everyone wants to live forever.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“You ask many questions,
martalis
.”

“Martalis?”

“A child. A mortal. These words are synonymous to us.”

Caldin felt her ire rise at being called a child by a man who looked to be many years her junior, but she kept herself in check and changed the topic. “If you don’t age, why risk your life by coming aboard my ship?”

“It was not a great risk. It would be hard to kill me. But regardless, I am a Peacekeeper, and it is my job to risk my life so that others don’t have to.”

“But why? Why not do something else?”

“To serve one’s god and fellow man is the highest calling there is.”

Caldin turned back to the captain’s table with a frown. Reversion to real space would occur in just two and a half minutes. She was about to drop the conversation when something else occurred to her. “How did you die? Avilon has been hidden for millennia, and you didn’t fight the Sythians with us, so who
are
you fighting?”

“The real fight is the same one which has been going on since the dawn of time,” Galan replied. “It is within
us
. Good and evil war daily for control of our actions and our thoughts.”

Caldin tried hard to understand what she was hearing. “So you died fighting yourself . . . ?”

“No, I died trying to save others from themselves. Omnius is our first and best defense against the evil in our hearts, but there are some who have rejected him. They are a danger to themselves and others. They are the Nulls.”

“Nulls, huh. Let’s cut through the krak, Galan. You’re saying that this Omnius of yours controls everyone else. That’s why they’re not dangerous.”

“No. He guides us.”

“I see . . .” Caldin replied, but she really didn’t see. She couldn’t understand what Galan was talking about. Clearly he was some type of law enforcement officer, but if life were so perfect in Avilon, why would these Nulls want to stir up trouble? And if Omnius were such a benevolent
god
then why would anyone reject him? Clearly Avilonian society wasn’t perfect for everyone.