Dark Space: Avilon (5 page)

Chapter 4

T
hud, thud! Thud, thud!

Galan Rovik’s heart beat insistently in his chest, like the hoof beats of an angry equestria. The waiting was the hardest part.
Soon,
he told himself.
Soon . . .

Looking out the main forward viewports of the
Ventress
with the wide-eyed wonder of a child, his gaze became lost between the bright needle points of light. Each one glinted with an elusive hint of the unknown, of things too fantastic to believe, or too terrible to survive.

Ancient cartographers from the world of Origin, the lost birthplace of humanity, had once painted the lesser-known parts of the world with monsters, as if to say,
bad things lurk in the unknown.
It was the same fear that made a child tremble in the dark, wide-eyed with terror when contemplating what lurked in the pool of shadows beneath the bed. Growing older did nothing to dispel that fear, as those ancient cartographers had proven with their maps. But as all of
humanity
grew older and wiser, the unknown became less and less, and all the monsters fled, going from under the bed, to beyond the known world, to beyond the known galaxy, and finally, to other galaxies entirely.

When contemplating those unknowns, there were too many of them to ever fully explore. They would always be populated with monsters, but Strategian Galan Rovik was determined to chase them from the Getties Cluster to the next nearest galaxy.

The theories about what they would find in the Getties were endless. No one had ever attempted to jump that far before. To calculate a safe quantum jump from one galaxy to another had taken Omnius the better part of a year, but now that the calculations were complete, it would be much faster to travel between galaxies. So fast, in fact, that it would become possible to explore and colonize the Getties Cluster on a large scale. That was exactly why Galan was going. If the Getties proved to be a safe haven for immortal humans, colonization would start immediately.

Hiding from the rest of humanity and the fast-growing Imperium of Star Systems had proved difficult of late, and hiding was a dire necessity. Hard-won experience from the Great War of Origin had shown that immortals and mortals couldn’t safely coexist unless they were carefully supervised, and the trillions of mortal beings in the Imperium of Star Systems were too far beyond Omnius’s sphere of influence for him to supervise. He knew humanity
well enough by now to predict that if Avilon were ever discovered, there would be another Great War.

For that reason, Omnius had built the wall of artificial gravity fields that surrounded the star system of Domus Licus. Anyone traveling there without a quantum jump drive would get stuck in the middle of a gravity field too strong to cross with simple faster-than-light drive systems, and too wide to cross at sub light speeds. It was good enough to keep Avilon and the greater star system of Domus Licus safe for now.
But walls don’t just keep people out,
Galan thought.
They also keep people in.

The Ascendancy had just one star system to the Imperium’s thousands, and over time Avilon had become so crowded that the only place left to build was up. Now between the Null Zone and Celesta, Avilon was covered with skyscrapers.

It was the way it had to be. One small, mysterious patch of space that Imperial explorers could never seem to fully probe (and sometimes didn’t come back from) was a curiosity relegated to the tall tales of old spacers, but if Omnius were to expand the wall of gravity fields to another star system, or even several, those tall tales would soon become facts, and the Second Great War that Omnius warned about would come to pass.

The solution, it seemed, lay in the Getties Cluster. Imperial faster-than-light drives would take six months or more to travel from the edge of the Adventa Galaxy to the edge of the Getties Cluster, expending vast quantities of fuel and resources in the process. It was impractical for them to make frequent trips. Not so for the Avilonians with their quantum jump drives.

The vast gap between galaxies would become a new wall for the Ascendancy, keeping the Imperium out until many centuries later when—
if—
they developed their own quantum jump drive technology.

“Strategian, we have reached the jump point.”

Galan turned to look up at his executive officer from where he sat in the ship’s command chair. “Good. Begin sequencing.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned back to gazing out at space. This time he noticed the sea of darkness between the stars, rather than the stars themselves. A moment later, the ship’s quantum jump drives finished sequencing Omnius’s calculations for the jump, and the ship began an automated countdown.

“Ten, nine, eight . . .” A rising
whir
accompanied the countdown, and the air began to shimmer and sparkle with a growing brilliance. A sweaty prickle of fear tickled the nape of Galan’s neck. This was it. The darkness between the stars was no different than the darkness in a child’s room—both conjured monsters to life—but today humanity would shine a light into the darkness and prove once again that the monsters didn’t exist.

The whirring noise reached a fever pitch, and the automated countdown reached
one.
Time seemed to take a sudden breath, and the noise stopped.

Then everything disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

Blinking spots out of his eyes, Galan saw a bright green and blue orb, swirled with white clouds. He gasped and heard his sharp intake of air echo all across the bridge as the rest of his crew reacted to the sight.

They’d arrived.

Galan mentally called up a view of surrounding space from the holographic suite built into his command chair, just to be sure. A three dimensional map of space shimmered to life before him, momentarily blotting out his view of the planet. The map confirmed it. They’d reached the specified coordinates. That meant that the planet before them was indeed
Agaris
, the world that Omnius had predicted, even from a great distance, to be the closest match for Avilon in terms of habitability.

Galan swiped his hands through the air, gesturing to shrink the map and place it to one side of his view. The planet was revealed once more, and he smiled as he gazed upon it, imagining all of the wide open spaces they would soon have to colonize.

“Scan the planet,” Galan said. “Find us a suitable place to land.”

“Yes, sir,” the sensor operator said, his armor flashing with a sudden brightness as he spoke. Galan’s augmented reality contacts (ARCs) had been the source of the visual cue, but it wasn’t necessary, the operator’s voice was recognizable.

“Comms, report back to Omnius: Jump successful. We’ve found it. Send our visual and sensor feed since arrival. That should whet people’s appetites back home.”

“Yes, Strategian.” Again the flash of brightness to accompany his crewman’s speech, but this time it was a blue-tinted light. Each Operator on the bridge had their own ARC color code to differentiate them from the rest. “Would you like to speak to Him?” the comm operator asked.

“Not yet.”

Omnius was too far away to maintain constant contact as he usually did with people on Avilon. In order to allow intergalactic communications, comm relay ships had been strung between the two galaxies like a lifeline, and while quantum comms were normally instant, having all the relays in the way made for a few seconds’ delay between sending and receiving.

“Navigator, take us in and establish orbit. We’ll make one pass around the globe before setting down. I want to get a lay of the land.”

“Yes, sir.”

Looking out over the crew pit, Galan saw the nav officer bob his helmeted head. From there Galan’s blue eyes found his XO, Tactician Kar Thedron, prowling the aisles between control stations, hands clasped behind his back, posture military-straight. He was on his way back to the command deck, just passing the sensor operator’s station.

“Sir!” The sensor operator flashed white in Galan’s peripheral vision. “I’m getting strange readings from the surface. . .”

Galan leaned suddenly forward in his chair, hands poised on the armrests as if he were about to leap down into the crew pit below. “What kind of readings?”

Thud, thud. Thud, thud. . . .

“Energy readings, sir—massive ones—coming from the far side of the planet.”

Galan frowned and shook his head, trying to pierce the cloud cover of the distant planet to see what his Operator might be speaking about. There was no sign of alien life, just the mottled green and blue of nature at its best.

Then a suspicion began to form in his gut.

“Magnify the planet, 100 times.”

Suddenly the planet swelled until it was all anyone could see. Now the green and blue expanses took on regular shapes. There were patchwork fields and irrigating rivers flowing between them in rigid blue lines. Energy readings suggested advanced civilization. But whose? Had the Imperium beat them to the Getties?

“Contact, contact!” An alarm shrieked to emphasize the threat.

“What?” Galan blinked. “Where?”

“De-cloaking at 15-50-25, unknown type. They’re powering weapons!”

“Shields!”

A brilliant purple ball of light impacted on the bow of the cruiser a split second later, provoking a rippling blue flash from the
Ventress’s
shields. “Do
not
fire back! Comms, hail them!”

“How?”

“Use both conventional comms and quantum. See what they reply to first. Sensors—magnify the nearest ship and put it on screen!”

The sensor operator was too busy to reply. Galan drummed his fingers on his armrest while he waited for a visual, his mind spinning. Imperial ships didn’t have cloaking devices, and he’d never seen an Imperial ship attack without hailing a warning first. But if the contact wasn’t ISSF, then who?

A muffled boom shook the Ventress to her beams as another volley hit them.

“Shields?” Galan asked, his eyes on the back of the systems operator’s head.

“99% and holding. Either their weapons are not very strong, or they’re just testing us, sir.”

A visual of their quarry appeared a split second later. Galan’s blue eyes widened, and he shook his head. The crew was dead silent. The ship before them had a tear-drop shape, with flowing organic lines and a hull that shone as bright and reflective as any Avilonian’s armor. The ship glowed a faint lavender color against the darkness of space. As they studied it, the enemy ship fired on them with what looked like a spinning purple star.

Someone whispered, “That’s not a human vessel.”

“No, it’s not,” Galan said quietly.

“Comms—any answer?”

“None, sir.”

“More contacts! Five—wait, fifteen—no, there’s more than a hundred! Weapons Incoming!”

“Brace!” Galan called out.

The deck shook with violent fury and overhead lights darkened as shields drew extra power to deflect the attack. A damage alert blared from the systems operator’s control console.

“Damage report!” Galan barked.

“Shields 56%. Minor damage to deck four.”

“Navigator, take evasive action! Get us out of here!” The deck shook again. “
Now!”

“Yes, sir!”

Galan watched with a deepening frown as their magnified view of the enemy ship disappeared, replaced by empty space.
No, not empty,
he realized. A few of those sparkling points of light were too big and too bright to be stars. They were alien ships.

Perhaps the monsters exist after all. . . .

* * *

His eyes slowly opening, Ethan caught a blurry glimpse of a gradually brightening square of light. As the light brightened, he realized it was a window. Beyond it lay a vast expanse of immaculate green gardens and majestic trees. Above that, a deep blue sky.

Where was he? Then it all came rushing back. The battle. Avilon. Omnius.

He sat up suddenly, snow white bed sheets cascading from his chest. Alara stirred beside him and moaned something unintelligible. Ethan scanned the room: white walls, white sheets, the broad window that had awoken him with its light . . .