Dark Space Universe (Book 3): The Last Stand Read online

  Etherus nodded to her. “They wanted to live in a chaotic universe. That’s why they started the Great War. I gave them what they wanted, and allowed them to steal the Forge so that they could create the chaos they wanted, but the Faros and their soulless slaves are the only ones who will ever suffer because of the chaos they created, and their suffering is ultimately self-inflicted.”

  “But now Abaddon is planning to add Laniakea to his empire,” Wheeler said. “And according to what you’re saying, all of the beings inside the Red Line are free, conscious beings.”

  “That is why I am speaking to you now. To give you a chance to prevent what is coming. You need to hold the wormhole with everything you’ve got, while a smaller force goes looking for The Forge.

  “When you find it, you must destroy it. Abaddon has linked his clones to The Forge in such a way that if it is destroyed, all of his copies will be killed. That is to prevent any of them from defying him. He has also linked the minds of every other being on his side of the Red Line to The Forge, and he can kill any of them on a whim. That is ultimately how he maintains control over his empire, but if The Forge is destroyed, slaves and dissident forces everywhere will seize their opportunity to finally rise up against their masters, and the Farosien Empire will disintegrate.”

  “Wait, I thought the Faros’ slaves are all mindless automatons?” Tyra asked. “Why would they defy him if they can’t think for themselves?”

  “They’re not mindless,” Etherus said. “The mind is a predictable computer, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t intelligent. Abaddon’s creations are soulless. There is a difference.”

  “If it looks like a snake, and slithers like a snake, then it is a snake,” Wheeler said.

  Tyra frowned and shook her head. “Souls don’t exist. You admitted that when you helped us to defeat our AI ruler, Omnius, all those years ago. You showed us that our human minds were linked to sleeping Etherians on the artificial planet, Origin, and you told us that we were just avatars for those Etherians to experience the free, chaotic universe that the Faros wanted. Although back then you didn’t mention the Faros. Anyway... you said those sleeping Etherians were our souls. So was that all a lie?”

  “No, it was all true, but I never said that Etherians don’t have souls. After you decided to remain human, their souls passed on to you. That is what Abaddon could not do for any of his clones, or for any of the alien species that he created with the Forge. He could not give them souls.”

  “Then my daughter is still alive?” Garek asked.

  Etherus’s gaze swept to him, and Garek squinted against the glare. “Yes, her soul lives on, and you will see her again.”

  Garek nodded slowly, and some of the tension left his face.

  Tyra shook her head. “You’re just justifying your apathy toward the Faros in a way that we’ll never be able to prove. I think the truth is that you let Abaddon get out of hand. You gave him too much time to build his empire, and whatever forces the Etherians left behind aren’t enough to defeat them now. That’s why you haven’t gone to war with the Faros, because you know that you’ll lose. You abandoned this side of the universe, and us along with it.”

  Etherus regarded Tyra steadily. “You are upset because your husband is in a coma and your daughter is injured, and now you are lashing out at me, but it’s not my fault that they came to harm, or that any of the people from Astralis died. You were the ones who decided to leave the Etherian Empire against my wishes, and by doing so you have put everyone else at risk. Now you want someone to blame for the repercussions, but I am not responsible—you are. With freedom comes responsibility, and you have misused yours, but it is not too late. Find the Forge and destroy it. It is the only way to prevent what is coming.”

  “Then help us!” Tyra said. “Tell us where the Forge is, and send whatever ships you have on this side of the universe to help us destroy it.”

  Etherus tilted his head to one side. “You refuse to trust me, but you want my help. You refuse to listen to me, but you want me to share what I know. You defy my rules, and then you expect me to wave away the consequences. You don’t believe I am God, but you ascribe god-like powers to me with your demands and wait for me to prove that I have them. You are like spoiled children demanding that their parents solve all of their problems for them.”

  “If you did prove that you really are God, then we would obey you,” Tyra said. “In fact, if you’d just done that from the start, we could have avoided this entire mess!”

  “If I proved to you that I am God, you would not need faith to believe in me, and if it were a matter of proof and not faith, then you would have no choice but to do as I say. You would obey me because you have to, not because you want to. Who would knowingly defy the creator of the universe?” Etherus asked.

  “That depends whether or not you promise to punish the ones who go their own way,” Tyra pointed out.

  Admiral Wheeler shook her head. “Let’s cut to the chase. You want us to deal with the consequences of our actions now and solve our own problems. That means we need to find the Forge and destroy it, while simultaneously defending this wormhole from the Faros. I don’t suppose you have any suggestions about where we should start looking for this Forge? It’s a big universe out there.”

  “Wouldn’t a simple query to the fleet’s data banks reveal its location?” Addy asked.

  “No,” Etherus replied. “The fleet’s sensors have unlimited range, but the Forge’s location is not indexed.”

  “So we need to send scouts looking for it,” Admiral Wheeler mused.

  “What if we only find it after our defenses have failed?” Colonel Drask asked.

  “Then you will have lost the war,” Etherus replied.

  “You’d let us fail?” Tyra asked.

  “Do you trust me?” Etherus replied.

  Tyra said nothing to that. She could have lied and said yes, but she was fairly certain Etherus would see through her.

  “I don’t know,” she finally replied.

  This time it was Etherus’s turn to say nothing.

  Colonel Drask squinted at him. “If the outcome is uncertain, then evacuate us all to Etheria.”

  Etherus shook his head. “There is no time to do so.”

  “You have to do something!” Tyra burst out. “We’re talking about the enslavement of trillions of sentient beings, and not all of them are guilty of defying you. Only Astralis did that.”

  “That is true, but you are all guilty of wanting to live in a chaotic society where my control is not absolute and my interference is minimal. Being subjected to the poor choices that other people make is an inevitable result of such chaos.”

  Tyra gaped at Etherus. The blinding light of his gaze made her eyes ache, but she refused to look away. Etherus’s stance felt all wrong to her.

  “I need to go see my family,” she said, turning to leave the bridge once more.

  “There is one other thing you should know, Tyra...” Etherus said as she strode for the exit. “One of the agents you discovered, whose mind Abaddon was supposed to release—was not in fact released, and she has recently reverted back to her subjugated state.”

  She...? Tyra wondered. Atara. No, it can’t be her. But Tyra’s heart was already in her throat, and her steps had faltered. Her legs were shaking as she turned back to Etherus.

  He looked distraught. “I am sorry, Tyra. Abaddon was angry about the way you treated him during your negotiations. He took his revenge by pretending to release your daughter.”

  “If that’s true, then you should release her,” Tyra said slowly. “A good god would never allow a five-year-old to languish as a prisoner in her own mind.”

  Etherus shook his head. “She is gone, Tyra, but you will see her again someday.”

  Tyra’s horror and outrage grew unbearable. She wanted to scream at Etherus and punch him in the face. She wanted hurt him just as much as his inaction was hurting her.

  “You can’t claim to be good and let innoc
ent children suffer!”

  “It is what you wanted,” he replied, his eyes dimming and his expression grim.

  “Then I’ve changed my mind! Take me and family to Etheria and bring Atara back!”

  He just shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You can’t be free of me when it pleases you and be my faithful follower when it doesn’t. I’ve intervened as much as I can without removing your freedom. Now the rest is up to you.”

  With that, Etherus vanished and the light of his presence left the bridge.

  Tyra was panting with rage, glaring at the spot where he had been standing a moment ago.

  For long minutes, no one spoke.

  Finally, Admiral Wheeler broke the silence, “We’d better start preparing. We have an invasion to repel, and scouts to send out looking for the Forge.”

  “So we’re going to break the treaty?” Colonel Drask asked, sounding incredulous as he turned to Wheeler with dark eyebrows raised. “We’re just going to open fire on the first Faro ship that dares to cross the wormhole?”

  “I don’t see that we have a choice. The wormhole is the only advantage we have. If we let the Faros cross it, and they realize they can’t reach their real target...” Wheeler trailed off with a grimace. “Etherus is right; they’ll turn on us next.”

  “Send us to look for the Forge,” Garek said.

  Admiral Wheeler turned to him. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, send us, ma’am. Myself, Addy, Brak... we were all disguised by Abaddon to look and sound like Faros so that we could search for the lost Etherian fleet. We can even speak their language. We’ll blend right in with their people.”

  “And we still have the Faros’ boarding shuttles on Astralis...” Wheeler mused. “Yes, that could work. You think you can fly one of their shuttles?”

  Garek shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Tyra shook her head. She couldn’t deal with this right now. She was too angry to think straight. She needed to go see her husband, to make sure that at least he was okay—and to see for herself if what Etherus had said about Atara was true. “I have to go,” she said.

  Wheeler called after her as she reached the bridge doors. “Don’t let your daughter know that we’re suspicious of her! If she’s a Faro agent, we might need her to feed misinformation to the enemy.”

  Tyra bit her tongue to hold back an angry retort. She waved the doors of the bridge open and breezed through.

  The Marine Sergeant standing inside the doors followed her out with his squad of bots. The Sergeant strode by her and took point, but he looked just as dazed as Tyra felt.

  Etherus’s revelations had come as a shock to them all, and his refusal to help Atara boiled her blood. How can a good God stand by and allow innocent children to suffer? It was a question as old as time, and as far as Tyra was concerned, the preservation of people’s freedoms, or—because that’s the kind of universe you wanted to live in—weren’t good enough answers.

  I’ll find a way to bring you back, Atara. With or without Etherus’s help.

  Chapter 11

  The Lost Etherian Fleet

  When Tyra reached the corridor outside her quarters, she found dozens of people wounded and nine people dead. Doctors were busy attending people’s injuries as best they could, but they didn’t have the facilities or the supplies to treat everyone properly—Lucien in particular. Soon after Tyra arrived, medics transferred him to the bed in his and Tyra’s quarters.

  Now Tyra stood at his bedside with their two daughters, watching Lucien sleep and listening to the rhythmic beeping of a portable heart monitor. She kept hoping to see his eyelids flutter open and a smile grace his lips, but he didn’t even twitch. Atara had an odd expression on her face as she watched her father, but Tyra wasn’t ready to draw any conclusions from her behavior yet.

  “Dada!” Theola exclaimed suddenly and pointed at Lucien. She jumped in Tyra’s arms, trying to reach him.

  “Yes, that’s Dada,” Tyra said.

  Doctor Reed, the physician attending Lucien, took out a portable scanner and passed it over his head. “The swelling is getting worse,” he said. “If it continues, it will cut off blood flow to his brain and he will die.”

  “Can’t you relieve the pressure, somehow?” Tyra asked.

  “If I had the right tools and an operating room, maybe.”

  “There isn’t a medical center on board?”

  “It’s crowded with people. We’d have to clear them all out, and even then, the sterility of the environment has already been compromised. We could be exposing your husband to a lethal infection if we operate there. We’d do just as well by operating right here.”

  “So what are you waiting for?” Tyra demanded.

  Doctor Reed hesitated. “I’d need to find the proper instruments, but...”

  “But what?”

  “I understand your husband has a healthy clone on board.”

  “He was arrested for insubordination.”

  “Perhaps those charges can be dropped if he is integrated with this Lucien.”

  Tyra frowned and glanced at her husband once more. It actually wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Even if we treat your husband now, there’s no guarantee that the swelling hasn’t already caused irreparable brain damage.”

  “Then how do you know that the data you extracted isn’t compromised?”

  “We copied his brain data immediately, before the swelling had a chance to set in, so there’s no reason to expect that the data is incomplete.”

  Tyra hesitated to approve the procedure. For one thing, she’d been hoping her husband wouldn’t be asked to integrate with his clone, because that other Lucien was romantically involved with his crewmate, Addy Gallia.

  “What if we integrate them and then this Lucien wakes up and he’s fine?” she asked.

  The doctor shrugged. “Then we can have the judiciary rule who should be integrated with whom. Until then—” He broke off suddenly as Lucien’s heart monitor stopped beeping and instead issued a solid tone. “He’s crashing!”

  “Do something!” Tyra demanded.

  “Frek... I don’t have the equipment to restart his heart!” Doctor Reed hurriedly peeled back the covers and planted his hands on Lucien’s chest to start compressions.

  Tyra looked on in horror as he conducted CPR. Several minutes passed, but Lucien’s monitor didn’t give so much as a single beep.

  Finally, the doctor stepped back, gasping for air, exhausted. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. The decision has been taken out of our hands.” He walked around and pulled the plug on Lucien’s heart monitor to silence the annoying flat line tone. With that, he turned back to her. “You can wait until we arrive at New Earth to have him cloned and revived in a new body, or you can revive him now by integrating him with the clone we have. It’s your choice.”

  Tyra stared at Lucien’s lifeless face for a long moment.

  “Is he dead?” Atara asked, and poked Lucien’s cheek with one finger. When he didn’t respond, she poked him again.

  “Atara!”

  “What?”

  Tyra grimaced. Is he dead? No emotion. No sign of grief. That didn’t sound like normal behavior from five-year-old who’d just lost her father. Tyra shook her head and turned back to Doctor Reed. “Let’s integrate them,” she said. “Assuming the prisoner gives his consent.”

  Doctor Reed nodded. “Perhaps you’d like to accompany me to see the prisoner? I suspect you’ll be more convincing than I.”

  Tyra nodded. “Let’s go—Brak would you stay here with Theola and Atara please? Keep them safe, and make sure they don’t... tease each other,” she added, glancing at Atara.

  “I shall guard them with my life,” Brak replied.

  Tyra passed Theola to him, and he held her awkwardly in one arm. Theola gazed up at the Gor with big blue eyes.

  “Doctor Reed?” Tyra prompted.

  He nodded and started for the door to her room. She followed him out, all
the while wondering about Admiral Wheeler’s plan to send out the survivors from the Intrepid to find the Forge. Would Admiral Wheeler send Lucien, even after he had defied her orders? If she did, integrating her Lucien’s memories with his surviving clone wasn’t going to bring him back to her.

  * * *

  The Lost Etherian Fleet

  “Colonel Drask, have the first group of ships jump to New Earth,” Admiral Wheeler said.

  “Aye, Admiral,” he replied.

  Wheeler listened as he got on the comms and gave the order. They’d divided the fleet up into ten groups, and now they were sending them to New Earth one at a time to disembark the refugees.

  Meanwhile, New Earth was busy deciding what to do about everything Etherus had told them. Apparently he’d appeared on New Earth to speak to its Chief Councilors at the same time that he’d appeared on the bridge of the Gideon. He’d told New Earth all of the same things, and now they were deliberating over what to do about the coming Faro invasion.

  As far as Wheeler was concerned, there was nothing to deliberate about. Soon the Faros would come streaming through the wormhole with everything they had, and if New Earth didn’t also put everything they had into defending their side of the gap, the entire human race would soon be enslaved to the Faros. Yet that defense was a losing battle, nothing but a stalling tactic to give them time to find and destroy the Forge.

  With that in mind, Wheeler looked up from her control station to address her crew. “Lieutenants Addy Gallia, Garek Helios, and Brakos—” All three turned to look at her, and Wheeler went on, “Report to Hangar Bay Seventeen. It’s time for you to prepare for your mission to find the Forge. I’ll find replacements to fill in for you here on the bridge.”

  All three of them stood up from their control stations. Wheeler noted Garek’s dull eyes and despondent expression, and she wondered if she should even be sending him. He’d recently learned that his daughter, Director Nora Helios, had been killed during the fighting inside the Resurrection Center. Etherus had promised Garek would see her again, but Wheeler didn’t see how that was possible with the Res Center and all of its data gone.