Dark Space: Avilon

Prologue

—The Year 0 AE—

“H
elm! Full throttle! Get us into orbit as fast as you can.”

“Yes, Captain!”

“And start spooling for a jump!”

“Already 22% spooled, sir.”

Captain Bretton Hale nodded but gave no reply. He stood at the forward viewports of the
Arkadian,
his palms pressed against the cold transpiranium. Golden fires raged in his dark brown eyes, poor reflections of the devastation in Roka City far below. Roka IV had been the last stop along the way to Dark Space. Orders were to pick up the remaining key personnel and as many refugees as possible before continuing on to the fleet rendezvous, but the Sythians had beat them there. It would have been easy for the fleet to jump out immediately, but the Supreme Overlord was among the
key personnel
they’d stopped to rescue, so the First and Fifth Fleets had been dragged into one last, deadly engagement to cover the overlord’s escape.

Bretton’s ship was
a 280-meter-long venture-class cruiser, the backbone of the navy and a warhorse if ever there was one, but it was hardly a match for the Sythians’ often kilometers-long battleships. Bretton’s mission had been the same as all the other mid-sized cruiser captains: get dirt side and rescue as many people as possible before the order came to withdraw.

It had been a nightmare on the surface. Crowds pressing in from all sides, screaming their pleas for a rescue. Bretton had seen more than a few parents actually
throw
their children at his sentinels.

He grimaced, the muscles in his jaw clenching with the memory. He winced, shaking those thoughts aside, and turned to his crew. His XO and niece, Farah Hale, stood at the captain’s table in the center of the bridge. That was where he should have been, too, not watching the last vestiges of the Imperium go up in smoke.

Bretton strode quickly down the gangway to her side. “What’s it look like out there, Commander?”

Farah’s back was rigid, her eyes hard and bloodshot when she turned to him. Her hair was wound as tight as she was, tied up in a bun at the back of her head. “An enemy battleship is moving to intercept us, and we’ve got four squadrons of Shells headed our way.”

Bretton grimaced. “ETA?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Comms! Have our Novas switch from flank escort to bow intercept. They’d better harry those Shells before they start hammering us with missiles.”

“Yes, sir.”

Farah looked up at him, her blue eyes round and full of fear. “We should have left when the First Fleet pulled out.”

Bretton acknowledged his niece’s concern with a nod. “That wasn’t our call, Commander. Hindsight makes skriffs of us all.” When Admiral Heston had received orders to jump out with the First Fleet, he had deliberately disobeyed those orders to finish rescue operations on the ground. Now the admiral himself was MIA and his fleet in orbit was being torn apart. Bretton shook his head. “Comms, any word from the Admiral?”

“No direct words, no.”

“What’s the
Tauron
have to say about that?”

“They’re reluctant to elaborate further.”

“Very well. Our orders are the same. Get to the rendezvous before the First Fleet gives us up for dead and leaves us behind.”

Beside him Farah sighed. “They should have given all the captains access to the coordinates of Dark Space.”

“Too risky. If just one of us were captured and interrogated, it would make this all for nothing.”

“The skull faces don’t seem intent on capturing us, sir.”

“No, I suppose not.” Bretton frowned, idly drumming his fingers on the captain’s table as he studied the holographic grid. The area above them was teeming with red enemy contacts. The area below them was the same. In the middle lay a tiny knot of green—the
Arkadian
and its fighter escort
.

He eyed the largest contact in the swarm of enemies moving to intercept them.
It’s just one battleship. We’ve skated through worse.

“Contact! De-cloaking at 15-4-22 by—”

The deck shuddered underfoot, interrupting the gravidar officer’s report before he could finish rattling off coordinates.

“Return fire!” Bretton roared, his gaze fixed on three red blips that had suddenly appeared between them and the battleship in orbit. They’d appeared out of nowhere.

“Three cruisers and a battleship,” he whispered amidst the
hum
and
screech
of the
Arkadian’s
beam cannons firing back at the new arrivals.

Bretton set a new waypoint from the captain’s table. “Helm, adjust heading to nav point alpha five and try to keep them from outflanking us. We can’t afford to take a broadside from those cruisers.”

“Yes, sir.”

The deck shuddered underfoot once more. This time the shuddering didn’t stop. Lights flickered on the bridge, and a scream of duranium shearing set all of their teeth on edge. Bretton felt himself being pulled toward the aft of the ship as artificial gravity and the inertial management system (IMS) faltered. It was a momentary blip, but enough to get Bretton’s pulse pounding.

“Forward shields critical!” engineering exclaimed.

“Equalize! What hit us? Damage report!”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t the cruisers,” Gravidar said. “My guess would be that battleship is dropping cloaking mines on us like bombs from orbit!”

“Clever little kakards,” Bretton muttered. “All right—weapons! Have our gunners lay down covering fire in a 25-degree arc around our bow!”

Suddenly a bright light suffused the bridge. Bretton looked up to see a wall of fire burst through the viewports with a deafening roar. The sudden wave of heat and pressurized air picked him off his feet and seared his exposed skin. Arms and legs flailing, he hit the bulkheads behind him with a
thud.
Everything went dark.

Time. Stopped.

Bretton supposed he was dead, but if he were, would he still be capable of concluding that? Somewhere he remembered reading that cognitive thought could go on for minutes after the heart stopped beating. Perhaps that was what he was experiencing now—his last few minutes of darkness before death. He wondered about the darkness. His eyes were in his head. Even if his heart had stopped, shouldn’t he still be able to see? Was he actually blind, or smothered by a mountain of debris? He tried blinking, but he couldn’t be sure if it worked. His mind wandered to the nature of death. Would he simply cease to exist as most predicted, or be resurrected in paradise as the Etherians believed?

An indeterminate amount of time passed. Eventually his existential wondering was subsumed by more immediate concerns: the sharp, tingling sensation in his extremities; his heart pounding; the loud, ringing of silence in his ears . . .

What was happening? Hadn’t he died?

Then a bright circle of light appeared, as if shining from the end of a long, dark tunnel; he felt himself move, being drawn toward the light, faster and faster . . .

The light grew to blinding force, and then it consumed him, surrounding him on all sides. Wind battered his face. His eyes teared as they struggled to adapt to the sudden brightness.

As he began to make out details, he gasped and flailed his arms and legs again. A carpet of golden-white clouds raced by underneath him, and he screamed—his lungs emptying with a pitiless wail. His mind raced to catch up. He must have lost consciousness briefly, only to be thrown free of the bridge. Now he was plummeting to the surface of Roka far below.

Except he wasn’t plummeting. Absent was the gut-wrenching sensation of free fall, and the clouds were not getting any closer. More remarkable still was the blinding red sun peeking over the tops of the clouds. The Arkadian had lifted off from Roka City in the middle of the night, but this looked like sunrise.

“What the frek . . . ?”
Bretton wondered.

Suddenly the sky boomed with thunder—a voice—it said, “Hello Bretton. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“What? Who are you? Where am I?” Bretton craned his head to look around him, searching for the source of the voice. That was when he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Flying to either side of him were others like him. They looked vaguely familiar.

“I am exactly who you suspect I am, and you are on Avilon.”

“Avi . . . ?”

“Etheria lies below you.”

“Etheria? It’s real?”

“You’ll be able to see for yourself soon. Look . . .”

The clouds opened up below him, and Bretton saw a vast and sparkling city below. Orderly green expanses of parkland stretched between immense, glittering towers that seemed to be made of light. He gasped. It was the most beautiful city he had ever seen.

“Who are those people beside me?”

“They are your crew, Bretton.”

Joy swelled in his chest and tears sprang to his eyes once more. “I don’t believe it. They were right! Those codice-toting skriffs were right all along!”

“The Etherians? Yes, they had a part of the truth. Soon you will know its entirety.”

“I . . .” Bretton trailed off, unable to express what he was feeling.

“Would you like to meet your wife now? She’s been waiting for you.”

The tears in Bretton’s eyes began spilling to his cheeks and his joy overwhelmed him. He’d never been so happy in all his life. His wife had died less than a month ago when the Sythians had invaded Advistine. Now, not only was the after life more real and tangible than anyone had ever imagined, but he was going to be reunited with her and all of the other people he had lost along the way. He was almost afraid to believe it. Maybe he was still trapped in the rubble on his bridge, unconscious and dreaming.

“No, Bretton, you aren’t dreaming,” the thunder intoned. “Welcome home.”

Home.
The word rattled around inside his head for a moment before finding purchase. It felt right. “Thank you . . .” he managed. “What should I call you?”

“You know me as Etherus,” the thunder replied, “but I am better known by my children as Omnius.”

“Omnius . . .” Bretton said, repeating the unfamiliar name. “Thank you, Omnius. This is incredible. More than I ever imagined!”

“If you are amazed by this, what will you say when I reveal the mysteries of the universe? Prepare to be amazed, Captain Hale.”