Armageddon (51 page)

The blinding light disappeared, and Ethan was left blinking spots from his eyes. It was too much for him to take in all at once. He couldn’t decide what to make of it, but one thing was clear—they had to leave Avilon. The very fact that Omnius had told them not to was suspicious.

“What a load of krak!” Atta said.

Galan turned to her and shook his head. “I’m surprised that you are not embracing your newfound freedom.”

“What freedom?” she challenged. “You still have a hundred drones watching over us, ready to shoot.”

Galan smiled patiently. “You came here to cause death and destruction. If I let you go, will you not cause more of the same? You do not trust Omnius, therefore, I do not trust you.” Turning to Ethan, Rovik nodded and said, “Or you.”

“What?” Ethan blinked. “We were the ones who brought Omnius back online!”

“And he is grateful, but trying to escape now could get you killed. The time will come when it will be safe for you to leave Avilon, but not yet. Now, enough questions. It’s time to go. Leave your weapons and armor behind.”

No one made a move to follow that order.

“If you won’t come willingly, I’ll stun you all and have my drones carry you out,” Galan said.

Ethan watched Jena draw the pulse rifle from the holster on her back and aim it at the Rictans. “You heard him!” she said.

Ethan gaped at her, wondering how she could change sides so quickly. She’d been ready to abandon Omnius not so long ago. Maybe he’d convinced her with his speech about freedoms being restored.

Somehow Jena’s order worked where Galan’s hadn’t. Atta and the Rictans began cracking out of their armor. A few of them glanced at their fallen squad mate as they did so.

“Everyone who died today will be resurrected. You have Omnius’s word,” Galan reminded them.

What’s that worth?
Ethan wondered.

“He didn’t have a Lifelink,” Atta said.

“Whose fault is that?” Galan countered. “But don’t worry, that man is alive and well here on Avilon. Omnius resurrected all of you here years ago. You’re just copies of copies.”

Ethan exchanged glances with his wife, and Galan smiled.

“Makes you wonder which copy is the real one, doesn’t it? Come. It’s time for us to go.”

Chapter 46

F
arah woke up in a daze in the middle of complete chaos. People shouted; the ground trembled under her feet.
No, not the ground—the deck,
she realized, recognizing that she was aboard the bridge of a starship.

Then it all came rushing back: Therius, The Union, Avilon, the attack… and Drone 767 stunning her as she tried to incite a mutiny.

Farah eased off the deck, climbing unsteadily to her feet. Rigid hands helped her up. She was about to turn and thank the officer helping her when she realized that it was none other than the drone who’d shot her in the first place. She recoiled from him.

“I’m fine!” she snapped.

The drone withdrew, and Farah took in the scene around her. Out the viewports she saw the
Liberator
pouring blinding torrents of energy into a depthless void. Farah could have sworn they were flying through space, but the absence of stars was telling, and so was the faint golden glow shining through the shadowy carpet of clouds racing beneath them. Avilon had been cast into an artificial night by the shadow of Omnius’s Icosahedron.

Crimson light poured from the
Liberator’s
laser cannons, drawing bright orange flares from the void as enemy fighters exploded all around them. Farah actually felt those explosions come rattling through the hull of the venture-class cruiser as supersonic shock waves of shrapnel went hissing off their shields. Alerts and alarms blared almost constantly. Shouts from bridge crew filled the air.

Farah rushed up to the captain’s table to join Therius and see how the battle was going, putting aside for the moment that
he
was the one who had given the order to stun her.

But she didn’t really need to see the tactical map to know they were losing the fight. Enemy fighters harried them to all sides, and the
Liberator
rocked with a near-constant roar of exploding ordinance.

It took Farah a moment to realize what that meant. Avilonian ordinance was all quantum-fired, teleported instantly to their targets, and if they were firing quantum weapons now, that meant that Omnius was back online.

Farah reached the captain’s table, breathing hard not from exertion, but from sheer panic. “Therius! What happened? Why is the Eclipser offline?”

He turned and blinked pale blue eyes at her, a wan smile stretching his lips taut. He looked all-together too calm for her liking. “You’re awake,” he said. “Good. I wouldn’t want you to miss this. It’s time to initiate the Armageddon Protocol.”

Suddenly all of the crew’s frantic activity ceased. Silence rang. The finality of Therius’s command seemed to echo from the walls, whispering death to anyone who would listen. They’d all heard the rumors about the nanite bomb plot.

“You can’t!” Farah screamed. “What’s the point of freedom if no one is alive to appreciate it?” The crew seemed to be in agreement with that. Farah assumed she’d missed the part where Therius had delivered his ultimatum.

“Omnius already surrendered,” Lieutenant Devries said from the comms, revealing just how much Farah had really missed.

“And it’s a trick,” Therius said. “Humanity will never be free as long as Omnius is the one calling the shots. It’s time to use the greatest weapon of all—ourselves. We’re going to deprive Omnius of his people.”

Farah gaped at Therius in disbelief. Omnius had surrendered! Therius had accomplished what he’d set out to do, but like a petulant child who’d gotten his way only to decide that it wasn’t what he really wanted, he was going to drop the nanites and kill everyone anyway!

“No one is going to do it!” she said. Therius turned to her, his eyebrows raised, and she went on, “You’re the only one crazy enough to advocate self-annihilation!”

Therius smiled. “Me and a whole army of Sythians. I anticipated resistance and had the nanites relocated to the Sythians’ ships before we jumped here. Shallah thinks I don’t know of his plans to betray us, but I have always known, and now I have given him the tools he needs to destroy humanity once and for all. By the looks of it, he has already begun to use them.”

Therius nodded to the tactical map. Farah looked down and saw Sythian Command Ships racing down from the heights of Avilon’s atmosphere, skimming low over Celesta. There was only one reason for them to get that close.

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

S
hallah 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.