Dark Space: Avilon Read online

  DARK SPACE V: Avilon

  (1st Edition)

  by Jasper T. Scott

  http://www.JasperTscott.com

  @JasperTscott

  Copyright © 2014 by Jasper T. Scott

  THE AUTHOR RETAINS ALL RIGHTS

  FOR THIS BOOK

  Reproduction or transmission of this book, in whole or in part, by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any other means is strictly prohibited, except with prior written permission from the author. You may direct your inquiries to [email protected]

  Cover design by Thien A.K.A "ShooKooBoo"

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, places, and incidents described are products of the writer’s imagination and any resemblance to real people or life events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE: THE CHOOSING

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  PART TWO: TO THE BITTER END

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  PART THREE: NEW BEGINNINGS

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  COMING SOON—THE ACTION-PACKED FINALE

  PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE SERIES

  CONTACT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Acknowledgements

  This story comes to you thanks in part to my wife and stepson for being so patient with me. I lost track of how many times I worked late or skipped my weekend to finish this book on time.

  A big thanks to my editor, Aaron Sikes. His advice and keen insight into the story were invaluable. Likewise, I’d like to thank Thien “Shookooboo” for creating such a stunning cover, as well as the illustrations in this book. It would be hard to find a more talented artist.

  My thanks also go out to all my beta readers, in particular, I’d like to thank Betty Hoffner, Branden Rasmussen, Daniel Eloff, Dave Cantrell, Doug S., Filip Schlatter, Gary Wilson, Ian Jedlica, Ian Seccombe, Jim Meinen, John H. Kuhl, Peter Hughes, Rob Dobozy, Ted Inver, and Tony Wilsenham. You all read that first draft like lightning to get your feedback to me in time for the 1st edition.

  Last, I’d like to thank you, the Reader. Without your appreciation, none of my books would exist. I look forward to responding to your e-mails and reading your reviews. Your feedback is what shapes my work, and tells me what to write next.

  Thank you, all of you!

  To those who dare,

  And to those who dream.

  To everyone who’s stronger than they seem.

  “Believe in me /

  I know you’ve waited for so long /

  Believe in me /

  Sometimes the weak become the strong”

  —STAIND, Believe

  Prologue

  —The Year 0 AE—

  “Helm! 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 sh
uddered 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.”

  Part One: The Choosing

  Chapter 1

  —The Year 10 AE, Present Day—

  Ethan Ortane watched his long-dead mother embracing his son, Atton, in the sky. He had to remind himself that they weren’t actually standing on the clouds. It was an illusion. It had to be.

  His mother wore a shimmering white robe, just like everyone else, and she looked far younger and more beautiful than he remembered her—but again, so did everyone else who had been resurrected. Apparently that was a part of the deal. Come back to life on Avilon and you get a brand new body, a perfected version of the one you had before.

  Ethan heard his son whisper, “This is impossible.”

  “No, Atton,” his grandmother replied. “It’s a miracle.”

  That miracle was Avilon. Over two months ago Atton had gone looking for the lost star system, hoping to get reinforcements against the Sythians. He’d never returned. Then Ethan’s ex-wife, Destra, had asked him to go looking for their son. He hadn’t returned either, but he’d found Atton—along with everyone else.

  A thunderous voice split the sky. It was Omnius, the artificial intelligence who had declared himself god and resurrected everyone who’d died in the Sythian invasion. Ethan suspected some technological rather than supernatural power was at work, but he hadn’t pieced it all together yet.

  “You are wondering if this is real,” the voice began. “Those of you who aren’t wondering are afraid to ask, but I tell you that your eyes do not deceive you. These are the same loved ones you lost. Many of them have been waiting a long time for you. Soon you will all return to the surface to begin your new lives on Avilon.

  “Some of you have asked me why I didn’t stop the Sythians when they invaded. Part of the answer, which I haven’t given until now, is that I
didn’t need to stop them. I only needed to bring everyone back to life in my city, where they would be safe. I have spent the past fifty years building the city of Etheria to make room for everyone, and now that the work is done, none of you need ever die again!”

  A loud cheer rose from the crowd: “Omnius grando est! Omnius grando est!”

  Ethan noticed that even his mother was repeating that mantra. His eyes drifted out of focus. Omnius, the AI who would be God. A god created by humans to rule them. Ethan shook his head, trying to dispel the unease that thought caused. He supposed that in some way Omnius was their creator. Somehow he had copied their memories and then cloned genetically-superior versions of them to give those memories to. Ethan wondered if there was a clone waiting for him somewhere on Avilon.

  Now that was an unsettling thought.

  “Ethan? Are you all right?” his mother asked, waving a hand in front of his face.

  He came back to the present and turned to his mother with a smile. “I’m just happy to see you, Mom. Besides your grandson, there’s someone else I’d like you to meet . . .”

  He trailed off when he couldn’t find Alara. He frowned, wondering where his wife had gone. She had to be just as shocked by this development as him. They’d survived a harrowing battle, defending a lost world of immortal human clones from the race of ruthless aliens that had killed everyone in the former Imperium of Star Systems, only to find out that everyone who had died in that war had been resurrected here, in the world-spanning city of Avilon.

  Cities, Ethan corrected himself. There were three, each separated by an energy shield—Celesta on top, Etheria below, and the Netherworld, or Null Zone, at the bottom.

  Omnius had named his cities well if he wanted people to think he really was god. Etherians had long spoken of the afterlife in terms of the Netherworld and Etheria, and both names were steeped in meaning for anyone who had come from the Imperium.

  People in shimmering white robes crowded all around, embracing their friends, crewmates, and loved ones who had arrived aboard the Intrepid.