Dark Space: Avilon (33 page)
Read Dark Space: Avilon Online
Authors: Jasper T. Scott
Tags: #Children's Books, #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Alien Invasion, #Cyberpunk, #First Contact, #Galactic Empire, #Military, #Space Fleet, #Space Opera, #Children's eBooks, #Metaphysical & Visionary, #Science Fiction
* * *
“You’re sure you want to do this, Captain?”
Picara nodded, running a hand through her short, straight black hair as she stepped into the glowing green circle beneath the hovering dome of the quantum junction. “She’s my command, sir. Who better to fetch the
Emancipator
than I?”
“The Sythians have been toying with her. They may open fire when they realize you’re trying to escape.”
“Maybe, maybe not. They can’t detect quantum drives powering or track a quantum jump. With any luck we’ll finish the refits and jump away before they even realize we’re trying to escape. I bet we’ll be at the rendezvous before you even make it back from the Getties.”
Bretton gave her a grim smile. “Unless the Gors eat me. In which case you’ll be in command.”
Picara’s brow grew lined with worry. “Don’t joke, sir. They’re savages. If I were you I would have dumped them out the nearest airlock long ago.”
“Yes, that might be wiser, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we have precious few friends as it is. In any case, it’s not much out of our way thanks to the
Tempest’s
recent tech upgrades.”
“Well, be careful, sir.”
“Likewise.” Bretton stepped back, beyond the rim of the glossy black podium that formed the base of the junction. Picara raised her arms, palms up, as if praising Omnius, and the dome began to drop down over her head.
Bretton gave a stiff salute, and Captain Picara just managed to return it before the dome blocked her from view. Then he heard a roaring noise come from within the dome; a bright light shone around the base of it, and then the light vanished and a heavy silence fell.
Bretton turned, walking back to the bridge. The doors
swished
open, revealing a long, gleaming gangway to the captain’s table. Farah stood there, hands clasped behind her back, watching the grid. Behind her, broad viewports lay draped with a shimmering curtain of stars. Bretton started down the gangway, scanning the crew stations to either side.
He reached the captain’s table and nodded to Farah. “Any new developments?”
“Our engineers have finished looking over the
Baroness
; she’s clean. No tracking devices or unscheduled commcasts have been detected. It should be safe to wake her crew.”
Bretton breathed a sigh. “That’s a relief, but no, we’re not waking the crew just yet. Any one of them could be a Sythian agent.”
“We can’t just leave her derelict. What if the Sythians come along? The
Baroness
has guns, we don’t. We should take advantage of that. I’d almost say it would be better to move our operations to the
Baroness
.”
“Almost,” Bretton agreed, “Except the quantum jump drives and comms aboard the
Tempest
are our golden ticket, and our only line back to Avilon. But you’re right. We can’t leave the
Baroness
defenseless. I was thinking of sending Captain Hale along with a skeleton crew to command our new ship.”
“Captain Hale, sir? So now you’re referring to yourself in third person?”
Bretton turned to Farah with a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His eyes sparkled. “I’m not the only
Hale
here, am I?”
“You want
me
to command her?” Farah’s eyes grew wide, and she shook her head.
“Why not? You’re more than qualified. How about it,
Captain?
”
Farah grinned. She took a quick step toward him, looking like she wanted to give him a hug, but then she recovered and settled for a brisk salute, instead. “It would be an honor, sir. But don’t you have to clear that kind of thing with the Resistance first?”
Bretton shrugged. “They made me an Admiral. That should come with some autonomy. Besides, who else would they rather have commanding an old venture-class? Some textbook captain or a real venture-class veteran?”
Farah’s grin remained fixed on her lips. “I’ll leave the explanations to you.”
“Good.” Raising his voice, Bretton said, “Gunnery, calculate a quantum jump to the bridge of the
Baroness!
Comms, contact the bridge crew we found aboard the Baroness when we jumped over. Have them meet us at the junction.
”
Both the comms and weapons operators acknowledged their orders and Bretton took Farah gently by the arm, leading her toward the entrance of the bridge. As they walked together, her grin faded to a more subdued glow. By the time they reached the junction, the golden dome was already hovering on four shining pillars of light.
Bretton stood with his niece at the threshold, waiting for her crew to arrive. “I’m afraid this is goodbye for a while, Fay,” he said, breaking military protocol for the moment.
She nodded, matching his serious tone with a slight frown. “You’re still planning to take the Gors to Noctune,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. It’s not a big deal to us. It’s a big deal to them. Maybe some day they’ll repay the favor. Either way, we know what its like to be pushed to the brink of extinction. That’s not a fitting end for any sentient species.”
“Don’t go,” Farah said.
“We’ll pre-calculate the jump home, just in case. There’s no risk that way. First hint of Sythians we see and we’ll jump straight back.”
“I’m serious, Bret. Anything could happen, and I can’t bail you out this time. I’m going to be a galaxy away, at least six-months’ journey from coming to the rescue.”
“So don’t. If I don’t show up at the rendezvous, don’t wait for me, and don’t you dare go to Noctune. Take your crew and the survivors in stasis and go start a colony somewhere new. Get away from Avilon, and don’t ever look back. It’s a fresh start, just like you always wanted.”
Farah bit her lower lip, considering it. “Not exactly like I always wanted . . .” she said.
In that moment, the door on the other side of the junction opened, and in walked the five officers they’d found on the bridge of the
Baroness
—not including Councilor Heston.
Bretton nodded to them and smiled. He turned Farah by her shoulders to face the waiting junction and her crew. “Nothing ever is,” he said. “Now go.”
Farah walked under the dome, meeting her crew in the center of the glowing green circle on the glossy black podium that formed the base of the junction. She turned to wave goodbye just before the golden dome dropped and whisked her away to her ship.
Bretton returned to the bridge. Back at the captain’s table he studied the star map for a moment, waiting.
“Commander Hale reports she is safely aboard the
Baroness
,” the comms operator announced.
Bretton nodded. “That’s
Captain
Hale, now. Tell her to form up, and—”
“Sir! Picara is reporting from Dark Space. She says its urgent.”
Bretton turned to address his comms operator. “Put her through.”
The main viewport shimmered, and Captain Picara’s face appeared in a larger-than-life holo projection.
She looked somewhat paler than before. “Sir!” she said, sounding out of breath.
“What’s wrong, Captain?”
She shook her head. “The crew just finished a sensors test to verify that the upgrades are working. We detected something new. There’s a cloaked fleet out there, sir.”
“That sector is teeming with Sythians. I’m surprised only
one
of their fleets is cloaked. Ignore it. Just make sure they don’t get too close to you.”
Picara shook her head. “No, sir . . . that’s not it. The fleet is Avilonian. They’re Peacekeepers.”
“Peacekeepers? What are they doing in Dark Space?”
“I don’t know, sir, but they’re advancing on the Sythian armada. What are your orders? Should we warn them?”
Suddenly Bretton understood Picara’s dilemma. The Avilonians were cloaked, and they obviously thought that the Sythians couldn’t detect them. Bretton and the rest of his crew had just proven otherwise during their engagement with the enemy, and that meant the Peacekeepers were flying straight into a deadly trap.
Bretton considered that. The Resistance had just been given a once in a lifetime chance to strike a killing blow against Omnius’s Peacekeepers, and the best part of it was, all they had to do was sit back and watch. The Sythians would do all of the work.
There was just one problem.
Who was the bigger threat—Omnius or the Sythians?
“Do you have a way to contact Admiral Vee?” Bretton asked.
Picara shook her head. “I’ve already tried. She won’t answer.”
“Bad time to be away from the comms . . .”
In his mind’s eye Bretton saw his eight-year-old son, Ciam, his expression tranquil, his eyes closed, just as they had been when Bretton had seen him in the casket. Omnius had forced Ciam to choose, just like everyone else. Ciam had chosen to become a Null of all things. Less than a month later, he’d been walking down the street with his friends on his way back to his boarding school when he’d been caught in the middle of a shootout between two gangs warring over territory.
Bretton tried to compare that tragedy to all the trillions of people that the Sythians had killed during the invasion.
There was no comparison. The choosing was bad, and Omnius’s rigidly controlled-society was worse, but at least he wasn’t trying to wipe out the human race.
“Sir, we don’t have much time. . . .”
“Warn them, Captain, and then get the frek out of there. We’ll wait for you to arrive at the rendezvous before we go to Noctune.”
“Our jump drives aren’t finished being upgraded, sir.”
“Then use conventional SLS! Right now, while the Sythians are distracted, is your best chance to escape. Make sure you use it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Part Two: To The Bitter End
Chapter 26
A
tton raced across the flight deck, otherwise known as
Sky Deck
for the glowing sky-blue trim lining all the walls. Caldin and Razor raced ahead of him, all of them following the green arrows projected mere millimeters from their retinas by their ARCs. Atton found his new body didn’t just look fit; it was fit. He ran as easily as he remembered walking in his former life.
Up ahead a bank of transporter tubes appeared, but rather than jump into them, both Razor and Caldin disappeared down a corridor branching off to the right. Atton’s arrow turned the same way, and he followed.
More officers streamed into the corridor from the other side, all of them dressed in the same glossy, skin tight blue uniforms with matching sky blue trim. On either side of the corridor were broad, star-dappled viewports with portal-shaped doors staggered in between. Remembering the layout of the ship, with drone decks running all the way around the crew decks in a protective cocoon, Atton knew that those viewports were simulated. The portal-shaped doors, however, were real.
A glowing, gold-colored numeral appeared to hover in the air in front of each door. Atton read twelve numerals in all. Each of the doors led to one of the ship’s X-1 launchers.
Atton found his place beside Caldin at launcher number eight. Hers was number seven. He turned to her. “Looks like we’re going to be wingmates,” he said.
Caldin nodded. “Nervous?”
“Not at all. This time we can’t die, and the Sythians can’t even get to Avilon for reprisals. It’s time for some real payback, Captain.”
“It’s just
Pilot
now, Ortane.”
“Consider it a call sign then.”
She smirked at that. “Very well,
Iceman
.”
Atton grimaced and took a quick look around to make sure no one else had recognized his former call sign. Gina was around here somewhere. . . .
He found her standing down the ranks to his right, in front of launcher number ten. She hadn’t noticed him.
Someone clapped their hands and called for attention. Atton turned to look down the rows of waiting pilots once more.
“Listen up!” a man at the other end of the corridor said, stepping away from his launcher so that all of them could see him. Atton supposed this must be the squadron leader,
Chevalier
Davellin. “In just a few minutes, we’re going to jump into Dark Space. Intel suggests we’re badly outnumbered, so we’re going to use every advantage we’ve got.
“The big boys are going to sit behind their cloaking shields and fire quantum-launched ordinance at the enemy. If you’re wondering where we fit into that picture, the answer is we don’t. If that sounds boring to you, then you can go hit the rack for some extra sleep.” The Chevalier waited a beat, but no one moved. He began to chuckle, his broad shoulders shaking in appreciation of his own joke. “No one? Good. This battle will
probably
be a moonwalk, but if war always went as planned, we could all jump home now and let the drones handle it by themselves.
“Orders are we stay in our cockpits and sit tight. Chances are we’ll only be called out after the battle’s already over to help mop up stragglers. Are there any questions?”
Before Atton could stop himself, he raised his hand.
“Yes, Ortane?”
Everyone looked his way—including Gina. He could have sworn her eyes narrowed when she saw him.
He winced and cleared his throat. “Isn’t this a rescue operation? How are we going to rescue the slaves if we stay cloaked and fire bombs at the enemy ships?” His thoughts were on his mother as he asked that. She had been in Dark Space when the Sythians invaded. By now she had probably been captured and turned into a Sythian slave with everyone else. Supposedly Omnius’s reason for attacking Dark Space was a mission of mercy to liberate the slaves and give them a chance to choose a life for themselves on Avilon.
“There’s always one of you, isn’t there? You new recruits do ask the stupidest questions! Aren’t you supposed to be on red deck?”
Atton’s brow furrowed in confusion. Red deck was the
battle deck,
where the gunners remotely controlled the
Dauntless’s
weapon systems, but he hadn’t selected gunnery training.
“Well? What are you still doing here?”
“I selected pilot’s training, sir. I’m an X-1 pilot.”
“Oh! It’s just that with you asking stupid questions about which type of ordinance the gunners should fire at the enemy, I thought maybe you’d been assigned to my squadron by mistake. Are there any other questions?”
Gina flashed Atton a broad grin, and he scowled back. No one else raised a hand to ask a question.
“Good! Time to go boys and girls!” The Chevalier stepped back in front of his launcher. A split second later, all twelve portal-shaped doors swished open at the same time. Atton peered into his and found himself looking into a small capsule with a soft, padded black floor. Beyond that lay a thousand different flight controls and readouts that he’d never used before in his life. Despite that, he recognized every status light, switch, and dial. Just another part of Omnius’s instant training, he supposed.
Atton realized he was staring into the cockpit capsule of an Avilonian X-1 Interceptor. The portal-shaped opening was the rear-access to the cockpit, which would form the backrest of the flight chair when closed. The cockpit capsule was detachable from the rest of the fighter, and it doubled as an escape pod for emergencies.
Atton crawled through the portal and into his cockpit. The rear-access cycled shut behind him and he turned to see the access door padded with the same black cushions as the seat he knelt on. Suspending himself by the armrests of the chair, he swung his legs out and into the bottom of the capsule. He settled back against the rear hatch. The cockpit was roomy enough, even for his recently enlarged frame.
Before Atton could wonder about flight restraints, a pair of them whipped across his chest, writhing over him like snakes. He fought against them for a moment before he realized what they were. Feeling stupid, he muttered to himself about the overly automated systems aboard Avilonian starships.
Pop out displays and tool tips crowded Atton’s ARC display. His ARCs interacted with the various controls and readouts in his cockpit, highlighting some and providing extra settings for others. He found that he could select those just by thinking about them.
Atton began going through a preflight check while his cockpit capsule rocketed down into the frame of its fighter. Seeing the wings and nose take up a fair portion of his view, he flicked a switch for enhanced visibility and the shiny, bluish frame of the fighter abruptly shimmered and vanished. Even the frame of the cockpit disappeared, giving him the disconcerting notion that he was hovering in the air, surrounded by floating flight controls. Only a vague outline of the interceptor’s frame remained, giving him a nearly unobstructed view of his surroundings.
The cylindrical walls of the X-1 launcher were also semi-transparent. To either side, he could see matching launchers with more X-1 Interceptors locked and loaded inside. He could identify the pilots sitting in the fighters immediately to his left and right, their expressions grim, cast in sharp relief by the hard blue light of their displays. Atton realized then that none of them were wearing helmets, nor had they been given flight suits to wear. Their cockpit capsules would be what shot away if any of them had to eject. But what would happened if the cockpit took a hit and depressurized?
He supposed he’d wake up in the nearest clone room. That wasn’t much comfort when faced with the prospect of a slow, torturous death in outer space. . . .
As he thought about it, Atton realized that small leaks in the cockpit would auto-seal, and under his seat he had a few hull patches and cans of sealant spray for the ones that didn’t. For all intents and purposes, the cockpit capsule was his flight suit.
Looking down to the end of his launcher, Atton saw a small circular opening filled with stars slowly scrolling by as the
Dauntless
turned to orient itself for the jump.
Keeping half an eye on the jump timer on his ARC display—just ten minutes left—Atton went back to doing systems checks and inventories.
The X-1 was packed with two magazines of eight quantum-launched thunderbolt missiles as well as two phased red dymium pulse lasers—that meant they could be rapid-fired, or pulsed, charged for slower cycle times, or even depleted with one shot as high-powered beam weapons, the likes of which Atton had never seen on a fighter this small. Making them even more deadly, those lasers had 360 degree firing arcs from front to back.
For its defenses the fighter was equipped with both particle and energy shields, as well as an optional cloaking shield. There was also a miniature quantum disruptor to prevent quantum-launched weapons from getting close, a mine layer with three cloaking mines, and a dorsal-mounted auto-cannon with explosive rounds, designed to shoot down incoming missiles, or shoot back at pursuing fighters. All of that, combined with the X-1’s lightning-fast acceleration, quantum sensors, comms, and jump drive made the fighter a deadly weapon, far superior to the Imperial “Nova” equivalent.
Making the pilot’s job easier, there was a range of computer-assisted and automated functions. The X-1 almost didn’t need a pilot, but hands-on human pilots tended to fight better than both drones and remote-flying humans. They were more creative than drones, and for some reason the threat of death made even immortal pilots fight better.
Atton’s eyes skipped to the jump timer on his ARC display and he saw that just five minutes remained.
Finishing his preflight checks, he set up the star map on the fighter’s main display screen so that he could watch the coming battle.
One minute.
Speakers crackled beside his ears. “Take care of yourself out there, Iceman,” a smooth female voice said.
Atton frowned and turned to look out the left side of his cockpit at his wingmate. Caldin saw him looking. She smiled and waved. That hadn’t been her voice.
He waved back and then turned to look at his comms board. The speaker was designated as Gold Ten, Gina Giord.
Figures.
“Hey there, Tuner,” he said, using her old call sign. “We’re good, right?” After all, she hadn’t ended up dead, but rather resurrected in the body of an immortal clone. How could she hold that against him? She’d skipped right by
The Choosing
. If he’d known what was waiting on Avilon he wouldn’t have fought so hard to stay alive during the battle.
“We’re perfect,” Gina said. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“My what?”
“Ceyla . . . Green V.”
“She, uh, chose to be a Null.”
Gina snorted. “Well, at least she had a choice.”
There was definitely a note of recrimination in Gina’s voice that time. Atton wondered if she was still out for revenge. He decided that it didn’t matter. Omnius was watching both of them, now, and he would deal with Gina if she did anything wrong. Besides, what was the worst she could do? Kill him? By some people’s definition, he was already dead.
The jump timer reached zero and a bright flash of light washed the world away. An instant later it was back and Atton’s eyes fell on the star map rising from the fighter’s main display.
That three dimensional projection of space was suddenly so crowded with glowing red enemy contact icons that it looked like they’d stumbled into some type of crimson nebula. Atton wondered how many of them there were and an obscene number appeared in the bottom corner of the star map. There were almost ten thousand capital-class warships, and the number of enemy fighters was in the high six figures.
The Avilonian fleet on the other hand was just 42 capital-class and 492 fighters strong. Atton shook his head, stunned by the sheer mass of the Sythian force. Now they were finally beginning to see the true strength of the enemy. The Sythians had originally invaded with just seven fleets. Now they had dozens more, and there were probably still hundreds sitting in reserve in the Getties. Even with the Avilonians’ technological edge, Atton began to wonder if their fleet could prevail.
It’s a good thing they can’t see us right now
, he thought, watching as their fleet began advancing on the enemy formation.
* * *