Dark Space: Avilon (34 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
Hoff sat in his command chair on the bridge of the
Dauntless,
watching stars glitter like flecks of broken glass beyond the forward viewports of the cruiser. Then the jump timer reached zero, and everything disappeared in a blinding flash of light.
Space returned a moment later, but now the stars were hidden by a familiar gray nebula. Visibility was poor; shifting gray clouds of ice seemed to writhe like a living thing as the
Dauntless
sliced through them. The clouds were periodically lit up from within by bright, actinic flashes of light that came to Hoff’s ears as thunder, simulated by the ship’s sound system.
“Report!” Strategian Heston called out from where he sat in his command chair
.
“
Jump successful, sir!”
Hoff smiled to himself, nodding as he studied the star map on his ARC display. They were more than ten thousand klicks from the enemy formation. That put them at the edge of the Stormcloud Nebula, well above and behind the minefield that the enemy had laid for them around the old Imperial space gate. Clearly the Sythians hadn’t got the memo that Avilonians didn’t need to travel along physical paths between interstellar obstacles. Omnius had jumped them straight past the black holes that crowded the entrance of Dark Space.
Hoff noticed how vast the enemy armada was, but he knew it wouldn’t matter. Sythian sensors couldn’t pierce cloaking shields, and they couldn’t shoot what they couldn’t see. As soon as the Sythians realized they were being shot at with untraceable weapons fired from invisible ships, they would turn tail and run.
Omnius had already equipped the fleet for that eventuality, fitting their ships with SLS disruption fields. Similar to the quantum variety, those fields would prevent the enemy from jumping to SLS within a certain radius of the generator.
Unfortunately, that meant they would have to get uncomfortably close to the enemy.
Orders came in from the Grand Overseer’s ship—the
Justinian
—assigning each of the Avilonians’ 42 capital-class warships with the task of snaring one of the Sythians’ command ships. Once the command ships were snared in the SLS disruption fields, their fleets of slave-crewed ships wouldn’t dare jump away and leave their masters to die. The entire armada would be trapped and forced to shoot blindly back at the Avilonian Fleet.
Omnius’s plan was perfect.
The sensor operator highlighted their command ship on the map, and Hoff nodded down to the navigator. “Helm, full speed ahead!”
“Yes, sir.”
Hoff sat back, studying the star map and watching as the range to their target swiftly dropped. After a while his thoughts wandered and he absently studied the rest of the Sythian armada. None of their vessels were cloaked, but they knew better than to try to hide after being surprised and losing one of their command ships at Avilon.
Lurking among the alien warships was a small group of captured human ships—what remained of the old Imperial fleet. Seeing a few venture-class cruisers there, Hoff eyed their names and ship ID codes, looking for one in particular and hoping against hope that he didn’t find it.
Before he’d been executed, Hoff had left his wife and daughter hiding aboard a cloaked venture-class cruiser—the
Baroness.
He’d instructed Destra to wait for reinforcements with the rebel Gors. If reinforcements didn’t come soon, they were to abandon Dark Space and take as many refugees with them as they could. With any luck they’d already left, and Hoff would be able to track them down later with Omnius’s help.
He scanned a contact report that gave a breakdown of the ships on the map by class and hull type. He didn’t see the
Baroness
among the handful of venture-class cruisers in the report, just a few older models that had been assigned to guarding various parts of Dark Space.
Then he noticed a name he didn’t recognize. The
Emancipator
. The text was dim, meaning that one ship, of all the thousands of enemy vessels, was cloaked. They were trying to hide, but from who?
As he wondered where that ship was on the map, his ARC display responded, panning away from the Sythian armada to the far side of the system, to the ice world, Firea. The
Emancipator
wasn’t sitting in the Sythian formation, rather she was all alone, cut off and hiding by herself. That, and the fact that it was cloaked, led him to believe that this vessel was not under Sythian control.
“Sensors, flag the
Emancipator
as neutral, and alert mission command. I believe we have a friendly in system.”
“A friendly, sir?”
“Time will tell.” Hoff eyed the venture-class cruiser as its icon went from enemy red to neutral yellow on the map. It wasn’t the
Baroness,
but since the ship was cloaked, it wasn’t actively broadcasting its ID code. And sensor profiles could always be mistaken without active ID.
Destra?
he wondered, thinking about how he could hail that ship without revealing both it and the
Dauntless
to the Sythians. There was no way to do it with conventional comms, and neither the
Baroness
nor any other venture-class
would have quantum tech.
Hoff resolved to teleport over there himself as soon as the battle was won to find out exactly who was on board that ship.
* * *
Captain Marla Picara stood aboard the
Emancipator,
looming over her comm operator’s shoulder. “Well?”
“Just a minute, Ma’am.”
“Make sure you don’t transmit a visual from our end. And scramble our vocals. Sensors, is our quantum disruption field activated?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. Nothing is getting on or off this ship. Not without using an airlock, anyway.”
“Good.” That was just an added security measure, in case the Avilonians somehow managed to identify them as Nulls despite their scrambled vocals and the lack of a visual on their end of the comm.
Marla tapped her foot impatiently, watching as the comms operator selected the largest ship in the Avilonian formation and hailed it using the
Emancipator’s
recently upgraded comm systems.
“They’re responding. Connection established, Ma’am. Transmitting . . .”
Marla looked up, her eyes scanning the forward viewport. Suddenly, their view of space shimmered, abruptly replaced by none other than the Grand Overseer of Avilon, Vladin Thardris. His glowing silver eyes were just as unsettling as ever, seeming to flicker and dance like tongues of flame.
“Who is this?”
“You’re flying into a trap,” she replied. “The Sythians can see you through your cloaking shields.”
The Overseer’s eyes drifted out of focus as he appeared to consult something on his ARC display. “Then why haven’t they responded to our arrival in system?”
“You mean why haven’t they sprung their trap before you’ve closed to firing range?”
“What leads you to believe that the enemy can see us? I note that your vessel is also cloaked. There are no Sythians moving to engage you either. Why would you bother to cloak yourselves if you thought it wouldn’t hide you from the enemy?”
Marla let out a frustrated sigh. “Trust me. They’ve already engaged us while we were cloaked. Right now they’re leaving us alone because they don’t want you to know they can see us.”
“And who are you that I should trust you? If we were truly flying into a trap, Omnius would have warned me by now.”
“Omnius doesn’t know.”
The Grand Overseer laughed and shook his head. “That is very presumptuous of you. Since you didn’t ask me who Omnius is, I can assume you’re an Avilonian.”
Marla hesitated. “Yes . . .”
“And you’re not a Peacekeeper, because I would know if you were.”
This time Marla gave no reply, seeing where the Grand Overseer’s logic was taking him.
“There’s no voice match, and you’re not transmitting a visual. That means you’re trying to hide your identity from me. I can only assume that you must be a Null who somehow escaped from Avilon. And you ask me to
trust
you? This conversation is over. I suggest you stand down and prepare for boarding. Your vessel will be dealt with soon. Thardris out.”
The viewport shimmered once more and the Overlord’s burning silver gaze faded to the black of space.
“You self-righteous son of a . . .” Marla calmed herself with a few deep breaths. She realized her crew were all staring at her, waiting for further orders.
“Get Admiral Hale back on screen,” she said, nodding to the comms operator. “We’re going to need a new plan.”
Chapter 27
“W
hat do you mean they didn’t believe you?” Bretton said.
“The Grand Overseer deduced that we’re Nulls, sir.”
“So? What do you or any other Nulls have to gain by
warning
them that they’re flying into a trap?”
“If I had to guess, sir, I’d say he thinks we’re trying to get them to expose themselves and engage in a straight fight with a more numerous foe.”
“More numerous, but not stronger. What are they afraid of? They have faster sub light drives and warheads that can be fired from extreme range with no chance of being intercepted. They just have to fly circles around the enemy, launching missiles at them until the Sythians are either all dead or realize it’s futile and run away.”
“I don’t believe their purpose is to destroy or drive away the enemy fleet. Based on their heading, it looks like they mean to capture the Sythian fleet.”
“What?” Bretton’s mind boggled at the thought of Omnius getting his greedy circuits into a fleet of almost ten thousand warships—some of them, the behemoth-class command ships, over thirty kilometers long. If all of those ships were upgraded with quantum tech, it would certainly go a long way toward swinging the balance of power in humanity’s favor.
Except that it would never happen.
The Sythians would wait until all the Avilonian ships had closed to firing range and then they’d open fire. With cloaking shields rather than energy shields raised, the Avilonians would be wiped out in just one volley.
“We can’t just leave them to die, sir,” Marla said.
“They won’t. Only their fleet will, and last I checked ships don’t die; they blow up.”
“And if they do, it will leave Avilon defenseless. Now the Sythians have quantum sensors that can pierce cloaking shields. What if they develop quantum jump drives next? They’ll jump right by our wall of grav fields, straight into orbit, and this time the upper cities won’t be the only ones whose towers fall.”
Bretton sighed. “Even if the Peacekeepers’ fleet is destroyed there’s still the drone fleet to defend Avilon, but I suppose I do see your point. What do you suggest we do? You said it yourself—they know we’re Nulls, and that means they won’t trust us no matter what we say.”
“I think we’ll have to
show
them that we’re telling the truth.”
“Show them?” Bretton shook his head, uncomprehending.
“Don’t wait for me at the rendezvous, sir.”
Bretton’s eyes hardened. “Don’t you do anything stupid, Captain!”
Bretton watched her raise her arm for a stiff salute. “Goodbye, sir,” she said just before the visual vanished.
“Marla!” Bretton bellowed. “Where did she go? Get her back on screen!”
“She cut the transmission from her end, sir,” the comms officer reported. “I’ll try to hail them again. . . . They’re not responding, sir.”
Bretton shook his head.
Damn you, Picara!
Unlike the stupid Peacekeepers, she and her crew actually could die.
* * *
Hoff watched the star map without blinking for minutes on end. He was still curious about the venture-class cruiser lying mysteriously cloaked on the far side of the system.
Could it be the
Baroness?
Perhaps Avilonian databases were not up to date and the
Emancipator
was a previous name for the ship.
He was tempted to jump aboard them now and see for himself, but Omnius whispered to him, reminding him that his duty to Avilon must come first.
He tried asking Omnius for clarification. Surely
he
knew where Destra and Atta were, but all Omnius said was,
Trust me, you will be reunited with your family soon.
That neither confirmed nor denied that they were aboard the
Emancipator.
Omnius was being as cryptic as ever.
As Hoff watched, something changed, and the
Emancipator’s
glowing yellow icon abruptly vanished from the map.
Hoff blinked, for a moment too shocked to speak. “Sensors! Where is the
Emancipator?
”
“The what, sir?”
“The neutral ship!”
“Checking . . .”
Suddenly Hoff’s view of the map panned over to the Sythian fleet, zooming in until he could see the mass of red enemy contacts as individual icons. There, in the midst of them lay one small yellow dot. Zooming in further, he was able to confirm that it was the
Emancipator.
She was just a few hundred klicks below the Sythian formation.
“What are they doing there?”
The question had been hypothetical, but his XO, Tactician Okara, answered. “I believe they used their jump drive to make a short hop, sir.”
Hoff turned to her, his eyes narrowing swiftly. “I know
that,
I want to know
why
. Surely they don’t mean to attack the enemy.”
“They remain cloaked. Perhaps they have a plan?”
“One that will alert the Sythians to our presence. Comms! Advise the
Justinian
and ask them if they want us to do anything about that ship before they give us away.”
“Yes, sir . . .”
Hoff waited for what felt like an eternity, watching as the
Emancipator
began accelerating toward the nearest Sythian command ship. His brow dropped a troubled shadow over his eyes as he tried to understand what they were doing.
“The
Justinian
just replied with a fleet-wide update. They’re aware of the position of the neutral ship. We are to ignore them. They are not operating under Omnius’s authority.”
“I could have guessed that. If they were operating under His authority, then they wouldn’t be trying to ruin His battle plan!”
“They didn’t elaborate further, sir. Those are our orders. Would you like to send another inquiry?”
“No, never mind.” Hoff continued watching the map on his ARC display, unable to tear his eyes away. As he watched the cruiser, awareness trickled slowly through him, and he began to sit up straighter in his chair, trying to get a better look even though the map was projected just a few millimeters from his retinas. His ARCs read his intentions and zoomed in on the neutral ship, providing extra details about its speed and heading.
“That’s a collision course! What are they doing?” Hoff bounced up from his chair, his heart pounding and his brain buzzing with adrenaline.
He became gradually aware of his crew turning from their stations to stare at him.
“They’re going to use their ship as a missile, sir,” the sensor operator replied. “That Sythian cruiser isn’t moving, so they won’t be hard to hit. By the time the
Emancipator
reaches it, she’ll be traveling dozens of kilometers per second.”
Suddenly Hoff understood what they were doing. The Sythians couldn’t see the
Emancipator
coming, and their command ship wasn’t moving. That made them the perfect target. Given enough time, the
Emancipator
could accelerate up to a lethal speed. That much mass, moving that quickly . . . they would overload the enemy’s shields and cut them in half.
“Sir?” Hoff’s XO said, trying to catch his attention. “Our orders were to ignore them.”
Hoff shook his head. “Who are they?” he wondered aloud, and hoped to Omnius that his family wasn’t aboard. Maybe that was what Omnius had meant when he’d said they’d be reunited
soon
. Maybe Omnius knew they were going to die and be resurrected on Avilon.
“Sir?” his XO tried again.
Hoff slowly sank back to his command chair, but he remained silent, watching until only seconds remained before the inevitable collision.
At the last possible moment, the Sythian command cruiser fired her engines at full burn to get away.
Hoff gaped at that. The
Emancipator
missed its target by just a few klicks. “They moved!”
“Sir? Who moved?”
“Wasn’t anyone watching? That command cruiser
moved
just before the
Emancipator
could hit it.”
“With all due respect, sir, we don’t have time for—”
“Comms! Hail the
Justinian
. I want to talk with the Overseer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hoff heard his XO make an irritated noise in the back of her throat, but he ignored her. Moments later the blazing silver eyes and chiseled features of the Grand Overseer appeared. He looked impatient. “What is it, Strategian?”
“Sir, I’ve been tracking the neutral ship, and—”
“I thought I ordered you to ignore them.”
Hoff bridled at being cut off, but he rallied his patience. “Yes, sir. I was curious about their intentions, so I kept an eye on them. They set a collision course with one of the enemy command ships. The Sythians moved to get out of the way, sir.”
At that, the overseer sighed and shook his head. “You think they somehow saw the
Emancipator
coming. Even through its cloak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Heston. The ship we’re talking about, the one you designated
neutral
, just finished contacting me to describe the same coincidence. They seemed equally surprised that they didn’t die in a fiery explosion.”
“They contacted you? Who are they?”
“They’re Nulls, and this is the second time that they’ve tried to convince me that the Sythians can see through our cloaking shields. But the fact remains that the Sythians have yet to open fire on any of us—including the ship that just tried to ram them.”
“How did
Nulls
get off Avilon?”
“Now there’s a good question. Spend your time thinking about that, and let me know if you come up with any answers.”
The overseer turned away, no doubt intending to end the comm call there. Hoff called out to stop him, “Wait, sir!”
“Make it quick, Heston.”
“What if it’s true? What if they can see us? We’ll be flying straight into a trap.”
“Why would Nulls warn us about that? They’d let us fly to our doom, laughing as they watched.”
Hoff wasn’t convinced. “It’s still a big coincidence. We should look into it, sir.”
“If there were a real threat, don’t you think Omnius would be warning me instead of you? Or do you think your instincts are now better than His? He’s watching this battle, too, Heston. I suggest you examine the situation more thoroughly before you go casting doubt on Omnius’s plans. Otherwise, you risk making a terrible fool of yourself.”
Hoff frowned. “Yes, sir.”
“Thardris out.”
The grand overseer’s face vanished as the comm call ended.
“I tried to warn you, sir,” Hoff’s XO said.
He turned to glare at her. “Helm!” he called out.
“Sir?”
“Calculate a micro jump to the far side of Firea. Set a pre-defined course that will bring us to our objective, and leave our coordinates at the time of the jump as variable for now.”
Tactician Okara fidgeted beside him. “Our orders are to—”
Hoff waved away her objections. “I know what our orders are, Tactician.”
“You’re planning to run. You doubt Omnius’s plan will work?”
“I doubt nothing. I am simply being careful. If Omnius didn’t need us to think for ourselves, He would command this ship Himself, don’t you think, Okara?”
She had no reply for that. She looked away, and Hoff did likewise. He shook his head and went back to watching the star map. The Avilonian fleet flew onward, drawing ever closer to the enemy formation. It wouldn’t be long before they came into range of the enemy’s weapons. . . .
If they can see us, we’re about to find out,
he thought, frowning at the map. He hoped the next thing they saw wouldn’t be a blinding wave of enemy fire, followed by a long, dark tunnel with a light at the end of it.
* * *
