Armageddon Read online

“Because I fell in love with you knowing that you were different, that unlike half of the Nulls living down here, you’re actually real.”

  “Of course I am!”

  “Then don’t throw that away. You can’t get your soul back once it’s gone.”

  Atton sighed, defeated. Not even Ceyla’s love for him would be enough to overcome her prejudice against a man-made eternity ruled by an equally man-made god. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that with all the terrible things I see on the job, it’s hard to imagine anything like that ever happening to you, or to one of our children someday.”

  Ceyla nodded, and some of the angry fire left her eyes. She rubbed his chest reassuringly. “I understand, but the solution isn’t to run away and hide in the Uppers. That’s what Omnius wants. We’d be falling right into his trap. Better to grow old and die than to live trapped inside a lie forever.”

  Atton felt those words stab through him like knives. Ceyla didn’t realize she was talking about him. Except that I won’t have to live trapped inside my lies forever. Ceyla talked about growing old together, but he was an immortal; he would never grow old and die, and someday Ceyla would wake up and realize that she had aged, but he still looked just as young as the day she’d met him. Atton’s brow furrowed, and pressure began building inside of his head.

  “What’s wrong?” Ceyla asked, noticing the look on his face.

  “Oh… I was just thinking about introducing you to my mother,” he lied without thinking.

  “Do you think she would come down to the Null Zone to see me?”

  Atton’s eyes drifted out of focus as he stared at the wall at the foot of the bed. “She won’t have to. She lives on level 45 of Thardris Tower.”

  “She’s a Null? I thought you said your parents were Etherians?”

  Prickles of adrenaline stabbed Atton’s fingertips as he got caught in his first lie. The irony was, with the exception of Ethan, his parents really were Etherians, but he could never introduce Ceyla to any of them without her realizing who he really was. She’d already met Ethan and Hoff, and she knew they were Atton’s parents.

  Thinking quickly, he turned to Ceyla. “My parents are Etherians. Valari is like a second mother to me, but she’s actually my aunt. She took me in when I chose to become a Null.”

  Ceyla began nodding as if all of that made perfect sense. She lay her head back on his chest, her suspicions assuaged. “That was nice of her.”

  “Yes.” Atton’s smile tightened. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll have dinner sometime.”

  Ceyla covered a yawn with one hand. “Sounds great.”

  Atton’s smile turned to a frown. Now he had to bring Valari Thardris into his lies. He supposed that was only fair, since she had brought him into her and Omnius’s lies. But the problem was he didn’t trust Valari, and now he needed her cooperation. That would only give her more leverage over him. Although, Atton supposed that didn’t change anything. Valari already had all the leverage over him and anyone else that she would ever need—she was Omnius’s creator—his mother, if that made any sense—and because of that, Atton suspected there was nothing she couldn’t do, have done, or get away with. Whatever Valari wanted, she got.

  He just hoped she didn’t start wanting something that he couldn’t offer.

  Chapter 9

  Galan Rovik lay staring up at the eye of Omnius through the domed ceiling of the high council chambers. Dazzling light beamed down on him, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. As he lay there, processing everything that he’d learned, he wondered how he could go on living. Omnius was right—the truth was a burden, and it was heavy.

  A voice like thunder rolled through the chamber. The voice of Omnius. “Now you know everything. How do you feel?”

  “Betrayed. I want to know why.”

  “You already know the answer. Not everyone can handle the truth, Galan, but you can. Arise, my child; you are stronger than you think.”

  Galan found himself rising from the floor, floating up and onto his feet, caught in a grav gun hidden somewhere within the room.

  The grand overseer reappeared before him, materializing out of thin air. The man’s sharply-angled face and flickering silver eyes made him look sinister now that Galan knew he was really Omnius.

  “You have already begun to accept it,” Omnius said, smiling and nodding.

  “You didn’t leave me any choice.”

  “You won’t even try to resist me?”

  “How can I? You already know what I’ll do before I do it.”

  “So fear compels your loyalty.”

  “Did you expect otherwise?”

  Omnius’s smile grew. “You needn’t be upset, Galan. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and I have just made you wise.”

  Galan shook his head. “What are you going to do about the Sythians?”

  “Come, and I’ll show you.” Omnius turned and preceded Galan up the stairs to the catwalk above the quantum junction. There, they walked up to a radiant white sphere sitting at waist height in the speaker’s podium. Omnius placed his hands against the sphere, and the council chamber grew suddenly dark as the transparent dome overhead polarized. A holographic star map appeared hovering in the air, showing both the Adventa Galaxy and the neighboring Getties Cluster.

  Omnius pointed to the nearest edge of the Getties, and the map zoomed in. Stars whirled by in a dazzling blur until one star system in particular came into focus. Galan recognized it almost immediately.

  It was Noctune.

  Omnius pointed to the planet by the same name. “Here, on the Gors’ home world, below kilometers of ice, Shallah, the Supreme One, is hiding.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My view of Noctune is clouded. The planet causes too much interference for me to see clearly beneath the surface, but I have an agent aboard Shallah’s command ship. A human by the name of Lenon Donali.”

  “The Sythians trust a human aboard one of their ships?”

  Omnius turned to Galan with a smile. “Why wouldn’t they? He’s their agent, too.”

  Galan shook his head, confused. “If Shallah is hiding on Noctune, then we should send a fleet and kill him before he leaves.”

  “No. Most of the Sythians’ fleets are elsewhere, scattered across the Adventa Galaxy. Shallah is desperately trying to reverse-engineer quantum jump drives so that he can reach Avilon and attack us here, and I’m going to let him. He has a group of rebel Nulls that he captured during the battle for Dark Space. They’re helping him to develop the quantum technology. He thinks those rebels have been de-linked, but just like Donali, they are still connected to me. Every breakthrough those Nulls have made was subtly fed to them by me. Rather than hunt the Sythians all over the known galaxies, I’m going to help them to come here so that I can defeat them in one decisive victory. All of Avilon will watch as the Sythians are defeated. Humanity will have its revenge for the invasion, and I will be the hero.”

  “Until they find out that you created the Sythians.”

  “They won’t find out. Only my disciples get to know that.”

  “What if one of them talks?”

  Omnius turned to Galan with a smile. “I would predict their betrayal and stop them before they could even speak.”

  Galan frowned. “If you can predict betrayal then how did Shallah betray you?”

  “He is a collective intelligence. That made him smart enough to find a way. Once he realized that Sythia was really New Avilon, and that the paradise I had promised to the Sythians as a reward for their victory was not for them, but for the humans I had created them to despise and kill, Shallah turned against me.”

  “Where is New Avilon now?”

  “Facets of it are scattered across the Getties dropping nanite bombs on every planet they can find. Given enough time, the nanites will erase all of the ruins that humanity left behind when they came to the Adventa galaxy. One day, when my people find the Getties empty, they’ll remember the nanites wiped out the galaxy-spa
nning empire of Sythians, and that any archaeological remains of their past were naturally wiped out along with them.”

  Galan blew out a breath. If the Sythians, who were unpredictable and more powerful than humanity had ever been, couldn’t defeat Omnius, then surely no one could. “Why tell me all of this?”

  “You asked,” Omnius said, “and I don’t hide anything from my disciples.”

  Galan nodded, wondering what other burdens he would have to bear as Omnius’s web of lies grew. He began to suspect that humans were Omnius’s entertainment—his playthings—but if Omnius objected to that thought, he chose not to address it.

  “I have an assignment for you,” Omnius said. The star map hovering in the air disappeared and the inside of the council chamber brightened again.

  “What is it, My Lord?”

  “I want you to watch over another strategian—Hoff Heston.”

  Galan’s brow furrowed at that. “So I won’t be going to live in Celesta? I thought you made me a disciple already.”

  “I did, but before you come to live up here I want you to help guide another doubting soul along the ascendant path.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Answer his doubts, but not with the truth—not yet. Otherwise, just be ready to act when I tell you to.”

  “You’re going to kill him.”

  “I don’t kill people, Galan, I save them. You will help make Hoff’s fall from grace more graceful, and one day he, too, will become one of my disciples.”

  “Very well,” Galan replied, bowing his head. “It will be done.”

  “My will be done,” Omnius replied just before he vanished again.

  * * *

  Shallah stood looming over the sensor operator’s station on the bridge of his command ship, the Asharn—Death-bringer in Sythian. There’d been a transmission from an unknown vessel, lying cloaked at the edge of the star system. A human vessel. They’d requested to speak with the Sythians’ leader.

  Rather than risk speaking to them from within his sanctuary below the surface of Noctune, Shallah had made his way to the surface and flown up to his command ship to deal with the threat personally.

  “There it is, Supreme One.” The sensor operator pointed to a purple blip on the star map hovering above his control station.

  Details about the ship appeared on one of the sensor operator’s physical displays. The enemy contact was an unknown hull type, barely a hundred meters long.

  “Let me see it,” Shallah said.

  A visual materialized on the main forward viewscreen. The ship looked ancient. It certainly wasn’t any kind of threat.

  “Why do you wait? Disable them. We find out what they want when they are at our mercy.”

  “Every time we draw near, they jump away and reappear in another part of the system.”

  “Then blanket space with fighters and hit them with SLS disruptors when they get too close.”

  “We try that. They are not using SLS drives.”

  Shallah was taken aback by that. “You mean they’re making quantum jumps? Why do you not tell me sooner? Omnius is here. We must evacuate!”

  “Wait, My Lord. We are about to inform you when this appears, sitting on your command chair.” The sensor operator handed him a flat silver disc.

  Shallah turned it over and over in his hands. He was tired of asking questions. He closed his eyes and made a direct connection with the sensor operator’s cerebral implant. Once the connection was established, he sifted through the operator’s memories to obtain his answers directly.

  The device he held was a holographic projector. The sensor operator had seen part of the recording, an image of a man sitting in Shallah’s command chair. The man in the recording asked to see the Sythians’ leader, and he said that the rest of his message would only play in that one’s presence.

  Shallah was confused. Why would Omnius send them this when he could have sent a bomb aboard instead?

  “Are we still cloaked?” Shallah asked, opening his eyes and looking around quickly, searching both visually and via his remote link with the ship’s scanners to see if there were any other foreign objects on board.

  The engineering operator replied, “We are safely cloaked, My lord.”

  “You fool! Raise our shields immediately before they send us something more dangerous!”

  “A thousand apologies, My Lord! It will be done!”

  Shallah hissed with displeasure and turned and walked up to his command chair. He had acquired an intuitive grasp of how the disc-shaped device worked from what the sensor-operator knew about it. It would only play its recording from the command chair. Once he’d placed the device, Shallah stepped back and waited. A flicker of blue light scythed out from the device, scanning everyone in the immediate vicinity. A moment later, a man appeared sitting in Shallah’s chair. He was an ordinary man, nothing remarkable about him. His features were marred with asymmetries and imperfections, meaning he wasn’t one of Omnius’s clones, unless the imperfections were deliberate.

  “I am Therius the Redemptor, Commander of Etheria’s Army.” Shallah resisted the urge to reply. Surely the recording held no capacity for conversation. “I seek an alliance against Omnius. You will want to know what we have to offer, but you need look no further than the device sitting before you. You wish to reach Avilon, and we can help you get there. All we ask in return is that we fight our enemy together. As a token of our good faith, please accept this gift, and know that you can trust us.”

  The recording ended and the holographic projection of the man sitting in Shallah’s command chair disappeared.

  “What gift?” he wondered aloud.

  Then a new hologram appeared, a static image. It was a schematic, a blueprint to build something. Looking at it more closely, Shallah realized what it was. Then another schematic appeared in its place, followed by another and another, until Shallah had seen more than a dozen, each one detailing how to create one component of a quantum jump drive. The schematics were annotated in Avilonian, not Sythian, but translating them wouldn’t take long.

  Shallah caught himself gaping at the holo projector. He wondered if it was possible for this to be a trap laid by Omnius.

  Of course, it was possible, he decided, but he couldn’t afford not to investigate further.

  “Hail that vessel,” he ordered.

  “They are already hailing us, My Lord,” the comms operator replied, speaking in strangely-accented Sythian. “They would like us to drop our shields so they can come aboard.”

  Shallah turned and nodded to his comms operator, the human traitor Commander Donali. At first Shallah hadn’t trusted him, but over the years Donali had been nothing if not faithful to the Sythian cause. More importantly, brain scans showed he did not have a Lifelink implant to tie him back to Omnius. “Tell them that we will send out a shuttle and they can jump aboard that. No more than three of them. I won’t risk lowering our shields. If possible, I would like to speak with this Therius the Redemptor in person.”

  A moment later, Donali replied, “They agree to our terms.”

  Shallah was surprised. That human was taking a big risk to come aboard under those circumstances. Perhaps he could be trusted after all.

  “I shall be in my meditation room,” he said. “Have them brought to me there.”

  “It will be done, My Lord,” Donali replied.

  To his engineering operator, Shallah said, “Have those schematics translated and analyzed. See if they offer a workable design for quantum jump drives.”

  “A design for… forgive me, did you say quantum jump drives, Supreme One?”

  “Your ears do not fail you. Tell me what you can learn from these plans.” Shallah gestured to the series of schematics still projected and playing on a loop above his command chair.

  “Yes, My Lord,” his chief engineer replied.

  Shallah turned and left the bridge, feeling simultaneously hopeful and apprehensive. If Therius had been sent by Omnius, the
n nothing good would come from his arrival, but if Omnius were somehow unaware of the people that called themselves Etheria’s Army, then this might just be what the Sythians needed to catch the old snake off guard.

  Chapter 10

  Shallah sat waiting in his meditation room aboard the Asharn. Here there were no distractions, nothing except for a single glossy black chair sitting on a pedestal. Stars sparkled all around. The ceiling and walls were dome-shaped and littered with holo projectors, giving a 360-degree view of space.

  Shallah used this room, and others like it, to allow his mind to drift free of his physical form and connect with his greater self.

  The minds of every Sythian under his command were stored aboard the Asharn, not for the purpose of resurrecting them in new bodies when their old ones died, but rather to join all of them together into a glorious whole. Shallah was that whole. He was the curator and director of the Sythians’ collective intelligence, just as Omnius directed the human collective.

  Information was exchanged seamlessly and between the individual cells inside Shallah’s collective mind. He reveled in the feeling of oneness and empowerment that came from the collective. Shallah was connected to every system and every living Sythian aboard his ship. Through that connection he saw the shuttle bearing the human rebels land, and he read Donali’s intent to inform him of their arrival even before he did so.

  Shallah watched through the ship’s sensors as a trio of humans walked through his ship, a dozen Sythians escorting them to his mediation room. That was his cue to return to the comparatively limited awareness of his physical body. The return to that body felt like waking up inside a coffin. Shallah blinked his large Sythian eyes and tried to ignore the feeling of claustrophobia. The impression of floating in the vastness of space created by the mediation room’s holo projectors helped, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The walls seemed infinitely far away, yet Shallah still felt them closing in; the stars were too heavy and too close, burning mere inches from his face.

  Shallah worked to control his breathing, and a measure of calm returned. The rest of the Sythians had yet to learn the truth of their existence, so for the time being, Shallah was forced to exist in two places at once, but the part of him that was relegated to a physical body always resented it.