Jena’s expression twisted up in misery. “Save them for what? A life of slavery?” She shook her head and collapsed on the floor of the lift tube. “It’s not worth it! He took everything from me!”
Alara walked over and went down on her haunches beside the other woman. “We’ve all lost a lot,” Alara said.
“He killed my sister,” Jena said, her eyes drifting out of focus, as if she were suddenly lost inside her head. “We were Peacekeepers. Partners. She… she jumped from a rooftop, and Omnius
let
her! He could have predicted it. He could have stopped her! Afterward, he claimed she was a Null Rebel, and everyone just
believed
him, like they’d somehow always known she was a traitor. She wasn’t a traitor! She was just tired.”
“I know,” Alara said. “Listen, we’re going to help a lot of people like your sister, people whose only crime is that they’re
tired
. We could use your help to save them.”
Jena looked up. “My help?”
“You’re a Peacekeeper, aren’t you?”
“I… yes, but I’m suspended.”
“Can you get a suit of armor?”
“Why?”
Ethan was busy wondering the same thing.
“Because we don’t need drones shooting at us, and if you look like a Peacekeeper, maybe you can convince them that we’re on their side so that we can find the Union’s jammer and destroy it before it’s too late.”
Ethan’s eyes lit up with understanding, and he hurried over to the lift controls, setting it in motion again.
“I don’t know…” Jena said, shaking her head.
“Your sister died. How did that make you feel?” Alara pressed.
Jena looked confused. “I just told you.”
“You were devastated.”
Jena nodded.
“If you really believe it’s better to die than to live with Omnius, then you wouldn’t have been sad to hear that your sister died. And if your sister’s death was still a tragedy, then how much more of a tragedy will it be if
everyone
on Avilon dies?”
The lift reached level 225 and the doors swished open. “Let’s go,” Ethan said, gesturing ahead of him.
Alara offered a hand to help Jena up. “Lead the way.”
Jena nodded and bounced to her feet with sudden enthusiasm. “This way,” she said, running out and down the hallway beyond the lift tube.
They reached the street-level exit and Jena led them out into the middle of a war zone.
Ethan saw civilians looting stores and running every which way with stolen goods in their arms. Laser fire flashed and crackled in the distance. Smoke curled through the air. People’s screams and the sounds of breaking glass filled the air. It was like someone had flicked a switch. Turn off Omnius, and suddenly everyone turned to their inner devlins for guidance.
So much for paradise,
Ethan thought.
“Come on,” Jena said, turning and running in the opposite direction from the firefight. Ethan kept pace beside his wife and daughter. Trinity’s violet eyes were wide and terrified. Ethan wanted to say something, but there wasn’t much he could say to lessen the terror of what was going on around them.
They followed Jena down one street after another, ducking through alleys and hiding in alcoves and entrances to avoid being seen by either Peacekeepers or drones. That went on for a long time before Jena took them into one of the buildings. “I have spare armor and weapons in my apartment,” Jena explained as they reached the lift tubes.
Alara nodded and turned to Ethan with a grim look. “I hope you can still find your way back to the jammer after this.”
Ethan nodded, thinking about all the twists and turns he’d taken since abandoning his squad in the omni node. “So do I,” he replied.
Once they reached Jena’s apartment, she stepped up to the security scanner and waited for the door to open. When it did, they were greeted to the sight of a messy apartment. Jena clearly hadn’t been in the mood to clean for the past…
couple of years,
Ethan decided, noting that dust had settled in a thick coat on every surface.
“I don’t spend much time here,” Jena explained while leading the way through her living room. “And I fired my servant drone after my sister died.”
“That’s all right,” Alara said.
Ethan nodded, trying not to choke on the smells or trip over any of the clutter on the ground.
Jena took them down a hallway and then to a door with another security system guarding it. The scanner recognized Jena and the door
swished
open a moment later, revealing a room full of weapons and gleaming suits of armor.
“They let you keep the hardware when you’re suspended?” Ethan asked.
“I was about to be reinstated. It’s more convenient for Peacekeepers to have their equipment at home,” Jena explained. “That way they have the quickest possible response time.”
Jena activated a suit of armor and pieces began hovering down off the wall of their own accord, snapping into place over her calves, arms, chest, and legs.
Ethan took a pulse rifle off the wall.
“I’ll take that,” she said and slotted it into a magnetic holster on her back. She held out her hand and nodded to the sidearm strapped to his waist.
“No way,” he said.
“If we’re going to tell all the drones and Peacekeepers we meet that I’m in charge, and you’ve switched sides to help me to find and disable the jamming field, then you’d better not be armed.”
“Disabling the Eclipser was our idea, not yours,” Ethan said.
“But who’s going to believe that?”
Ethan unbuckled his gun belt with a grimace. Jena took it from him and buckled it to her own waist. Nodding at that, she said, “Let’s go.”
Rather than take them back to the streets, she took them to her garage and they all piled into her patrol car. Ethan sat up front to give directions as she hovered up and out the static-shielded entrance of her garage.
“Where to?” she asked.
Ethan eyed the rising columns of buildings and shook his head. He didn’t recognize any of them. “Where’s the nearest omni-node?” he asked. “We were trying to get to the control center inside the node closest to the train station where I met you.”
“That’s about fifty blocks from here,” Jena said. “Hang on.”
Ethan was pinned to his seat as the car rocketed toward the nearest row of buildings, aiming for an alley between towers. Glittering lights rushed at them. Up ahead the alley appeared too narrow to fit their car. Ethan fumbled to buckle his seat restraints.
“You sure you know how to fly this thing?”
Jena shrugged. “Maybe. I’m used to having Omnius fly me around.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. The alley was just a thin black line between the buildings. “Jena…”
At the last possible second, she flipped the car up on its side and skated through the alley sideways. She ducked and wove around garbage chutes and emergency stairwells with practiced ease, and then they flew out and roared across the next chasm between rows of buildings.
Ethan let out a breath and turned to glare at the Peacekeeper. “You did that on purpose.”
“Did what?” she asked.
“Pretended not to know how to fly.”
“We all know how to fly, Ethan. We used to fly X-1’s with the fleet, remember?”
“That was almost a decade ago!”
Jena shrugged. “It’s just like riding a hover cycle.”
Fifty blocks went by in a blur of colorful glass. Soon a tower Ethan recognized came into view. Here and there flames belched from broken windows. High above, the Celestial Wall gaped open and flaming debris tumbled through holes in the shield.
“This is it,” Ethan said.
“Upper or lower levels?” Jena asked.
“Upper, I think…” A row of windows burst open and fire blew out in pressurized streams. Ethan pointed. “Over there.”
“Hang on,” Jena said. She flew them right up to the blaze and then drifted down the row of windows to a section that wasn’t already on fire. Hovering there, she opened the driver’s side window and aimed one arm out at the building. Lasers screeched from her palm and the side of the building burst open in glittering clouds of shattered glass. Jena flew through the hole she’d made, scraping the top and bottom of her car on the window frame. The car knocked over data towers and crushed them beneath its grav lifts. Jena landed on top of the debris, and they all spent a moment studying the swirling clouds of smoke inside the building. Ethan turned to Alara where she sat with Trinity on the back seat. “Stay here with Trin,” he said.
She looked ready to object, but he stopped her. “There’s too much smoke.”
Jena opened the glove compartment and withdrew a set of translucent membranes. She passed them out. “Put these on. They’ll help you breathe through the smoke.”
Ethan accepted his filter and eyed it for a moment before placing it over his mouth and nose. It adhered to his face with wet sucking noises, as if it were a living thing.
“Let’s go,” Jena said, simultaneously activating the faceplate of her helmet and opening the driver’s side door. She stepped out into the swirling smoke. “Follow my lead if we run into any drones,” she called out in an amplified voice.
Ethan left the car, his eyes already burning and blurring with tears. The air filter kept the smoke out of his lungs, but did nothing for his eyes. He blinked away his tears, and turned to look around for his family. Alara and Trinity came out behind him, holding hands. He took Trinity’s other hand and ran to catch up with Jena before she disappeared in the drifting clouds of smoke.
It wasn’t long before they heard weapons fire, followed by the sound of mechanized footsteps. Jena told them to wait, and then she disappeared.
After just a few moments of waiting, the weapons’ fire went silent, and not long after that, Jena returned.
“I found them,” she said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
—30 Minutes Earlier—
Atta heard one of the Rictans come up behind her, armored boots
thunking
as they struck the floor. She turned toward the sound to see that it was Magnum.
“The Eclipser is hidden. Even if drones start breaking through our lines, there’s no reason they should find it.”
Atta frowned. “What about collateral damage? You put it somewhere safe, I hope?”
Magnum jerked his head to the far corner of the control room, where a broken wall and the associated debris camouflaged the device from immediate scrutiny. “There’s only so many places we can hide it that won’t draw attention.”
The Eclipser was disguised as a broken chunk of castcrete, so they had to leave it somewhere that similar debris might logically be found.
Atta’s gaze darted to the hole in the wall beside the device. The rest of the Rictans were on the other side helping Galan Rovik and his Peacekeepers guard the rear entrances.
“We need to carry the Eclipser deeper into the city,” Atta decided. “Even if no one finds it here, we’re too close to the rooftops. A crashing ship could take us and the Eclipser out at any minute.”
Magnum blew out an uneasy breath. “Gettin’ to the lower levels ain’t gonna be easy. We ran into hordes of drones down there. They’ve got the entire Second Battalion pinned down, and we don’t have the numbers to break through.”
Atta pursed her lips, about to suggest an alternate course of action that would work to get the Eclipser to safety.
Then a mighty
boom
shook the building and dust trickled down from the ceiling. Atta looked around quickly, eyes scanning her rear view and peripheral displays for the source of the explosion. “What was that?”
Ripper and laser cannons roared, and the comms lit up with exclamations from the Rictans. Magnum ran toward the commotion just as his squad came diving through the hole in the wall and into the control room.
“Report!” Magnum ordered, taking cover with them beside the opening.
Atta took cover opposite Magnum. Lasers came lancing through the hole in a crimson flurry, burning equipment in the control room to slag.
“That Peacekeeper turned on us!” one of the Rictans said, breathing heavily over the comms. “He dropped a grenade and ran to join the drones attacking us. He killed his own men.”
“What?” Atta said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the sounds of laser fire.
Suddenly enemy fire ceased and they heard a gravelly voice say, “Tell me where the Eclipser is, and you will be shown mercy.”
Atta switched to external helmet speakers and yelled back. “Frek you!”
“You will die here today, Miss Heston.”
The enemy began firing again, and Atta gritted her teeth.
“What are your orders, General?” Magnum asked.
She was about to order them through the hole, to go out in a blaze of glory, when something caught her attention on her rear view display.
Squads of green friendlies were racing up behind them. Atta turned, hope swelling in her chest. Their armor was a glossy black, their eye-shaped visors glowing red.
Gors,
was her first thought, but the voice that announced them wasn’t that of a Gor—
“Lookss like we arrive at a good time.”
The voice belonged to a Sythian.
Atta blinked, confusion swirling through her thoughts. She didn’t know there were Sythian ground teams. They were too cowardly to risk their necks like that. Yet here they were.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
The Sythian removed his helmet and revealed an ugly, but familiar countenance with translucent skin, gills flaring in his neck, and a bald head with a ridge of horns running down the vertex. He was the same sub-species as Shallah.
“I am High Lord Kaon,” the Sythian said. He nodded to the dazzling stream of lasers still pouring into the room. “Where is the Eclipser? We must get it someplace safe! You hold this position while we take it to safety,” Kaon suggested.
“Forget it! We’re not going anywhere until we clear these space rats off our six. Get in position!” She waved the Sythians over and turned back to watching the entrance. “We’re going to get them as they come through,” Atta said. “Switch to melee, Rictans.”
Energy blades sizzled out. Atta kept half an eye on the Sythians walking up behind them. She saw them fanning out, keeping the other entrances covered. Returning her attention to the fore, Atta watched the red outlines of enemy contacts growing larger on her HUD. Behind her she saw Sythians raising their palms in readiness. Their integrated weapons were charged, the apertures glowing bright red.