04 Dark Space (47 page)

Then it suddenly ceased.

Atton deduced that the Avilonians had taken care of those fighters for him. A muffled clap of thunder applauded their demise a split second later as the sound of the explosions reached his ears.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and checked the grid for the captain’s escape pod. It was still cruising on behind him, unmolested. Either the Sythians hadn’t noticed it, or they were prioritizing targets by threat level. He knew better than to think they had spared the pod out of mercy. Hauling back on his throttle so the escape pod could fly past him, he keyed his comms and said, “Commander Delayn, you need to set down as soon as you can. Things are going to get worse before they get better up here.”

“Agreed, but for now we’re safer in the air.”

Atton was forced to agree as he peered over the nose of his fighter to the inferno raging through the city below. The shimmering cascades and lush, shadowy green of the city’s rooftop gardens were now a distant memory. Everything was black smoke and curling orange tongues of flame as far as the eye could see. He considered that at least the planet-wide city was too vast for the destruction to have spread very far.

As if to confirm his
look-on-the-bright-side
attitude, he saw the smoke begin to thin out up ahead. A few minutes later, his Nova punched through the fading black haze, and pristine gardens raced by once more. The captain’s pod flew past him and angled for a grassy garden which lay at the foot of a giant skyscraper. Not waiting for them to touch down, Atton began banking back the way he’d come.

“Thanks for the escort, Guardian Leader,” Delayn’s voice returned. “Where are you going? The Avilonians look like they can handle things from here. You’d be better off keeping your head down with us.”

“I’m sure they can handle things, sir,” Atton replied, “but I have at least one friend down there somewhere, and I need to go back and look for her.”

Delayn hesitated to reply, as if he thought that was a skriff’s errand, but all he said was, “I hope you find her.”

“So do I. Get under cover as soon as you can.”

“We will. Thanks again.”

Atton nodded, but gave no reply. He raced back into the inferno, the smoke swallowing his Nova greedily. Unable to see, he snapped on a terrain-following overlay, and a jagged world of broken towers and twisted debris became visible, painted over the hazy black smoke in shades of green.

He scanned the grid, searching for the ping of an emergency beacon which would alert him to the presence of a downed pilot, but there was nothing. Gravidar was completely devoid of any active signatures, either friendly or enemy. Most of his pilots had crashed in the vast square at the base of the Zenith Tower, but Atton couldn’t find either the square or the tower through all the debris. Flying up higher to get his bearings, he saw the smoke clear just enough to make out a blurry outline of the gargantuan Zenith Tower. The tower lay off his port side. Banking that way, Atton checked the grid for emergency beacons once more.

Still nothing.

Then his shields hissed with a string of impacts, followed by the sudden appearance of a Shell Fighter on his tail.
It must have been cloaked!
he realized. His missile lock alarm blared out a warning, but the enemy was too close for him to evade. The missile hit with a deafening roar, and his Nova bucked violently. His AI screamed out, “Shields depleted!”

After that, a damage alert blared close beside his ears,
along with a sharp whistling sound. Thick black smoke began swirling into the cockpit, giving him a clue about the whistling noise—there was a hole in his cockpit. In the next instant his flight suit auto-pressurized and sealed, cutting him off from the cockpit’s depressurized, contaminated air supply, but not before his ears popped with the sudden change in pressure or before he caught a lungful of acrid smoke.

Then a loud shearing noise drew his attention out the port side of the cockpit. He was just in time to see his wing sliced off by a lavender-hued flash of light. The Shell Fighter was still on his tail, intent on finishing him. Now unbalanced, his Nova began rolling over. Atton fought the controls for just a second before he realized it was futile. He pulled the red lever beside his flight chair, and explosive bolts blew his canopy into a netherworld of greasy black smoke.

Sudden acceleration squashed him against his seat, carrying him swiftly away from the doomed Nova. His spine compressed painfully, the chair’s inertial management system too weak to shield him completely from the g-force. Then the sudden acceleration eased as the booster rockets in his chair sputtered out. Atton drifted to the top of his ascent, his head poking out above the pervasive smoke for a murky view of his surroundings. He was high above the ruined square which lay at the foot of the Zenith Tower. All around him bits of flaming debris and ash were fluttering to the ground. Overhead, bright white beams and red pulse lasers crisscrossed the sky, swatting at the Sythians’ fighters and fleeing cruisers. At the top of the Zenith shone a bright orb which Atton had somehow missed seeing before. It shone almost as bright as a sun, turning black of night to dawning day. As he watched, that orb seemed to swell, and then it shot straight up as the thickest, brightest beam weapon the Avilonians had fired thus far. His gaze followed that massive weapon up into seemingly empty space.

Feeling his stomach lurch as his flight chair began to slowly plummet to the ground, Atton turned away from the scene of the Sythians’ defeat to rather focus on his own survival. Using the controls on his armrest to direct himself as best he could, he headed for the Zenith Tower. Through the reams of smoke, he could just barely make out a gaping hole in the base of that tower. If he could get there, he might be safe.

The chair’s grav lifts controlled his descent as best they could, but the power supply wasn’t nearly strong enough for powered flight across the odd kilometer between him and the Zenith. With that in mind, Atton traded altitude for speed and used that speed to get himself as close as he could. When he saw the ground rushing up too fast beneath his feet, he pushed the grav lifts to their limit, buoying himself up at the last possible second. The resultant force threatened to flatten him against the seat of the chair, placing an almost unbearable pressure on his spine, but then that pressure eased and his chair slid to a stop, still upright and hovering a few inches above the ash-covered ground.

Atton hurried to unbuckle his flight restraints and then he set out at a run to cover the remaining distance to the Zenith. Thick black smoke clogged his way everywhere he looked, disorienting him. Giant black flakes of ash pinwheeled from the sky like snow. The ground shook with the periodic thunder of debris crashing all around him. The limited sensors inside his helmet were equally blinded by the smoke, and he was left groping in the dark, trying to steer clear of the blurry orange light of raging fires.

Desperate, Atton tried the comms as he ran. “This is Guardian Leader to anyone who can hear me, I’m on the ground at nav point Epsilon, looking for cover. Can’t see a frekking thing through the smoke . . .”

The comms crackled ominously with static. Either everyone was dead, or they were too far out of range to hear him.

But then a gruff voice cut through the static, and a light appeared, bright and shining through the gloom. “Commander, this is Mech Captain Alpha One—hold your position, I’m on my way to you now.”

Relief flooded through him, but rather than stop running, he ran faster, heading toward the light. All of a moment later, a dark shape came swirling out of the chaos—faceplate blue and glowing in the light of holographic displays. It was a Zephyr light assault mech.

“Frek, it’s good to see you, Captain!” Atton said. “Have you found any other survivors out here?”

“Why don’t you come see for yourself,” the captain said as he reached Atton’s side. “Follow me.”

Chapter 31

A
tton hurried up the stairs to the entrance of the Zenith Tower. He saw a glimmer of green beyond the gaping hole in the doors. That hole had been covered with a portable shield generator to keep out the smoke. He walked through the diaphanous blue membrane of those shields, passing from the nightmare of the burning city into an ethereal dream. A lush garden stretched out as far as the eye could see. The distant walls of the tower rose like glittering mountains of crystal. A bright blue sky sprawled overhead, etched with a faint spiral dotted with stars. The eye-shaped center of that spiral shone like the sun. White-robed people walked calmly through the garden, seemingly oblivious to the chaos and destruction beyond the walls of their tower.

Atton unsealed his helmet and removed it. The air was fresh and honeyed with nectar. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “What is this place?”

“It sure is somethin’ ain’ it?” the captain replied. “But you can gawk later. There’s someone here who’d like to see you. Come on.”

“Who?” Atton asked, following the captain down a glittering pathway. They didn’t get far before he spied a small knot of people gathered in the shade of a tall, blue-flowering tree. Most of those people were armored Avilonian soldiers, but Atton thought he noticed a few who stood out. They wore neither a shining suit of armor nor the white robes of the people in the garden. What they wore instead were ISSF flight suits. As soon as he saw that, Atton took off at a run, quickly outstripping the sentinel who was escorting him there.

Standing in front of the group were a pair of blue-caped Avilonians, and between them hovered a bright light. As Atton approached, he heard a voice like thunder speaking to the group of people.

The light turned toward him, and Atton was abruptly blinded by it. He fell to his knees in the grass, clutching his eyes.

“Atton!” a gruff, familiar voice called out. A moment later he felt himself yanked to his feet for a crushing hug. Now partially shielded from the light, he opened his eyes to slits in time to see his father withdraw to an arm’s length. “Glad you could make it,” Ethan said.

Atton took in his father’s salt and pepper hair, his grizzly growth of stubble, and care-worn features, stretched now into a smile that crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. He gazed into the piercing green eyes set within those crinkles and returned his father’s smile. “How did you get here?” he whispered.

“Things got bad after you left. Your mother sent me to look for you.”

“Hoi there, Atton,” a new voice added. He turned to see Alara walking up beside his father, her violet eyes bright with emotion. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I found them . . .” Atton said, turning in a quick circle to marvel at the garden where they now stood. “I found Avilon.”

“Yes, you found us,” a deep, gravelly voice interrupted. “But at what cost? The evil you brought with you has killed millions!”

Atton stepped to one side of his father, and the blinding light found him once more. He was forced to shut his eyes as he spoke. “We didn’t bring the Sythians here. The only coordinates I received were for your forward base. It was your people who came and rescued us from the gravity field where we were stranded. They helped us find our way here. If the Sythians followed us, then technically it was your people who led them here.”

“You dare to blame us for this devastation?” the gravelly voice replied.

“Silence!” the voice like thunder interrupted, accompanied by an even brighter pulse of light from the blinding sun. “The
martalis
speaks the truth. They did not lead the Sythians here, but neither did my Peacekeepers. The Sythians did not follow you to Avilon. They already knew where it was. A
martalis
man by the name of Stevon Elder told them.”

“Who?” Ethan asked.

“Doctor Elder?” Atton added. “How would you know that? Actually, better yet, how do you even know him?”

“I know many things.”

“Who
are
you?” Atton replied.

“I am your god!” the thunder boomed.

Atton turned to his father with a dubious look. “He can’t be serious?”

Ethan winced away from the light and shrugged. “Just roll with it. The Immortals are the Avilonians, Etherus is Omnius . . . it all makes a twisted kind of sense when you think about it. I never believed in all that, but I guess those who do should be running around screaming
I told you so!
”

Atton turned back to the light with a frown, wondering if Ceyla being an Etherian would agree with that.

Ceyla!
His heart began to pound with the sudden fear that she hadn’t made it. Where was she? He recalled the group of people he’d seen as he approached the grassy clearing where he now stood, and he remembered that there’d been few people wearing ISSF uniforms. . . .

Hope rising past the lump in his throat, he called out, “Marksman Corbin?” At that, he opened his eyes fully, trying to see past the light. His eyes promptly blurred with tears and he was forced to shut them again.

“Over here, Commander!”

Relief flooded through him, and he smiled through the tears.

“Hoi, don’t forget about me, you old motherfrekker!” came Razor’s voice.

“Quiet!” the gravelly voice hissed at them. “Omnius is speaking.”

“They will learn respect . . .” the thunder replied. Switching to the Avilonians’ language, Omnius said something for the benefit of the Peacekeepers, and then the blinding light vanished, and the gravelly voice said. “On your feet!”

Atton blinked the spots out of his eyes and he picked Ceyla out of the crowd of kneeling Avilonians on the grass. She was sitting beside Guardian Five, Razor. Atton reached her side just as the soldiers rose to their feet. She was in no rush to stand, but Atton held out his hand to help her up. She accepted it gratefully. “Thanks for your help up there,” she said.

“No problem.”

“Move along!” one of the soldiers beside Atton said, giving him a healthy shove.

“Hoi!” Atton turned to scowl at the man. The face behind the glowing visor was inscrutable, but he imagined a nasty look on the soldier’s face. Maybe they were upset with him for suggesting that they were to blame for bringing the Sythians to Avilon.