Armageddon (60 page)

Farah shivered violently and stepped out of the tank just as soon as she could. She expected to see drones waiting for her—or Peacekeepers—but what she saw instead was a Union soldier with a lieutenant’s chevrons. He saluted and quickly averted his eyes, staring over her head. “Captain,” he said.

People entered stasis naked, and apparently Omnius’s version of it was no different, but Farah didn’t have time for modesty. She returned the man’s salute and nodded to him. “At ease, Lieutenant. Give me an update.”

He went on staring at the wall above her head, not daring to make eye contact with her. “Ma’am, we have taken control of the Icosahedron.”

“You
what?
How did that happen? Omnius—”

“He’s dead, ma’am. Admiral Therius ordered us to board, and we found all of the drones disabled. Omnius’s human body was found dead in his control room, along with an unidentified woman. The drone fighters are returning to their hangars on autopilot, but the drones aren’t even trying to leave their cockpits. They’re all powered down.”

Farah shook her head. “How?” Therius must have had a plan after all. She recalled him telling her to have faith, and she frowned. “What about Avilon? Is it a total loss? Do we know where nanites were dropped and where it might be safe to begin evacuating the population?”

“Preliminary reports show that nanite activity ceased as soon as the quantum jamming field returned.”

“The jamming
returned?
” Farah blinked twice quickly. “The Eclipser was destroyed, Lieutenant.”

“I don’t understand it either, ma’am. We are attempting to make contact with Therius to ask him about it.”

“Where is he?”

“He left the inner sphere of the Icosahedron. Our last contact showed him approaching another planet in this system’s habitable zone.

“What other planet? There’s only one in this system’s habitable zone and that’s Avilon.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Ma’am I’m not qualified to answer that. I’m with the ground forces.”

“Of course you are. Carry on, Lieutenant.” Farah brushed by him, crossing the stasis room to the nearest set of lockers. Along the way she saw more stasis tubes hissing open with swirling clouds of vapor, her crew stepping out to be greeted by drones.

“Lieutenant!” she roared.

He hurried up beside her. “Ma’am?”

“I thought you said the drones were all powered down?” she said.

“They are. These are our drones, Ma’am. Therius somehow infiltrated the Icosahedron with them and infected the entire thing with a virus. The drones are helping us to access restricted systems, but it’s going to take some time to secure the entire vessel.”

Farah shot the man a look. “
Some
time? The Icosahedron is five times the diameter of Avilon, and it’s twenty klicks thick. We’re not going to secure it without a whole lot more manpower than what we brought. We need to focus on securing key areas.”

“Matriarch Shara is working on that, ma’am. Her people are landing as we speak.”

“The Gors? How many of them survived?”

“Ten percent, maybe twenty. They didn’t fare as well as we did. Omnius wasn’t trying to capture their ships.”

“What about the Sythians?”

“All dead. Omnius hit them the hardest.”

Farah snorted. “Good.” She heard
clanking
footsteps approaching and turned to see one of the drones walking up to her with a bundle of clothes.

“Would you like your uniform, Captain Hale?” the drone asked.

That voice was vaguely familiar. Her eyes narrowed to slits, searching for some distinguishing mark.

“Bretton?” Farah asked.

“My designation is 767, ma’am.”

Farah frowned and made a
gimme
gesture, to which 767 handed over her uniform. By the time she was half dressed and bending down to put on her socks, a bright light flashed before her eyes, and she stumbled, falling against the wall of lockers beside her.

Farah was suddenly painfully
aware.
She
knew
things, remembered things—things that until now she’d forgotten. The war, Etheria, the Immortals, Etherus, the Netherworld… It all coalesced in one horrible instant.

She gasped and turned to look around the room. Her crew wasn’t faring any better. The lieutenant who’d greeted her when she’d emerged from stasis lay belly up and staring at the ceiling.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Drone 767 asked, his optical sensor glowing momentarily brighter as he scanned her. “Your life signs are fluctuating in a manner consistent with extreme distress or excitement. Are you distressed or excited, Captain?”

Farah shook her head. She turned to the drone with a smile. “You’re alive.”

“I am a drone, Ma’am. I am either powered on or off, never alive nor dead.”

Farah shook her head. “No, I mean, Bretton Hale is alive!”

She ran from the stasis room without even bothering to finish getting dressed. She knew where Therius—
Etherus
—was coming aboard. She was going to beg him to resurrect Bretton now. She had to see her uncle. But Bretton wasn’t really her uncle at all. She
remembered
, and now she finally understood her feelings. She knew
why
she loved him.

She loved him because they’d been together in Etheria. Farah smiled as she pounded down the corridors of the Icosahedron to the nearest quantum junction. As she ran, specific memories went drifting away, but the key points remained. She knew to expect that. Etherus had already explained everything to all of them. That was how she knew that Bretton was coming back. His soul hadn’t gone to Etheria, and it wasn’t going there now. He was going to live out his human life with her in the New Earth.

Farah reached the nearest quantum junction and tried activating it, but it wouldn’t respond to either her gestures or verbal commands. Then she remembered what the lieutenant had said about the Union’s drones helping them to access key systems aboard the Icosahedron.

Farah kicked the junction and winced as pain radiated from her big toe. She’d forgotten to put on her boots. While she was still hopping on one leg and cursing her own foolishness, she heard the
clanking
footfalls of a drone racing down the corridor toward her. Farah turned and the drone chasing her slowed to a fast walk. It stopped in front of her and said, “May I assist you, Captain?” It was 767 again. He’d followed her like a lost puppy.

Farah grimaced and nodded to the junction. “Hangar bay 17, deck five hundred.” That was where Etherus was going to land.

“Of course.” The drone gestured to the junction and it rose on four shimmering pillars of light.

Farah watched that drone curiously, wondering what would become of him. “What am I to you?” she asked as she stepped under the dome of the junction with 767.

“You are Captain Hale.”

“And that’s all?”

The drone’s optical sensor brightened once more, as if he was scanning her again. “You are… familiar,” he said. “I know things about you that I do not know about other humans.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“I have data locked in archives that I am not permitted to access. Based on what I am told about the man named Bretton Hale and my relation to him, it is likely that those data archives belong to him, and accessing them would interfere with my primary programming.”

Farah nodded, thinking how ironic that was. Omnius turning rebellious humans into drones and archiving their human memories was a parallel of what Etherus and the Immortals had done with prisoners from the Great War.

“When this is all over, we’ll see what we can do about unlocking those archives for you, Seven Sixty Seven.”

“Thank you, Captain Hale. I believe I would like that.”

“No problem. Let’s go meet Etherus.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Farah blinked, surprised that the drone hadn’t asked who she was talking about. “You knew who Therius was?” she asked.

“I was programmed to know my creator, ma’am. Why would he hide his identity from me?”

“I meant that you know Therius is Etherus.”

“In my records Therius is spelled with an ‘
e.’
Ther-e-us. It is an anagram of Etherus. My programming instructs me to refer to him by that anagram.”

Farah snorted and shook her head. “Well, let’s go meet your maker.”
Our maker,
she thought, correcting herself.

“Yes, ma’am.” Seven Sixty Seven dropped his hands and the junction fell around them with a
boom.

When the junction rose once more, and Farah exited into hangar bay 17, she saw Etherus already striding across the deck to greet her. She recognized the man walking beside him as Commander Ortane of Rictan Squadron, but the woman was a complete stranger to her.

Etherus stopped a few feet away and flashed her a broad smile. His pale blue eyes were somehow brighter and livelier than she remembered. “I told you to have faith, Farah,” he said.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t. It all makes sense now.”

Etherus placed his hands on her shoulders. Looking her straight in the eye, he said, “I forgive you. Now come, and follow me.”

Etherus continued on, back to the quantum junction she’d just left. The others followed, and Commander Ortane nodded to her as he walked by.

“Captain,” he said.

Farah lingered a moment longer. “Where are we going?” she asked, her eyes on Etherus.

He cast her a backward glance and smiled. “Trust me,” was all he said.

And this time, she did.

Epilogue

—One Month Later—

F
arah watched as a pair of drones pulled Bretton Hale up out of his clone tank—his was just one out of thousands on this floor of Tree of Life 10,976. The deck disappeared almost endlessly to all sides, with glowing hexagonal clone tanks making the floor look like a giant, blue-tinted honeycomb. Everywhere Farah looked people stood in huddled groups, waiting for their loved ones to be awakened. It was a bizarre way to have a reunion—not the dramatic show Omnius had put on for newcomers to Avilon. But somehow it was better this way.
More real,
Farah decided.

She smiled, watching as Bretton’s clone stood naked and shivering before her. Nutrient water dripped from all the angles and edges of his body to the floor. His eyelids fluttered, and he muttered something about being blind. The drones holding him released his arms so he could wipe the smeary liquid from his eyes. His gaze found her, and he went abruptly still, staring at her for a long, silent moment.

His soul’s memories had already been incorporated with his human ones, so there was no need for her to explain anything. Farah walked up to him with a towel. Bretton used it to dry himself, and then wrapped it around his waist and regarded her with a grim smile. “Is this a dream?” he asked.

Farah shook her head. “The dream is what you woke from. This is real. You have a lot of catching up to do,” she said. He might know where he came from and why he was here now in a human body, but he had yet to learn about his new home.

“I can’t believe you were right there in front of me all those years. I think maybe I felt something, but…” Bretton trailed off. “I didn’t know what it was.”

“Our hearts don’t know how to forget. They just know how to beat.”

Something in Bretton’s eyes flickered, and suddenly he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Farah kissed him back, pouring years of pent-up longing into that kiss.

“There’s one thing I still don’t remember,” Bretton murmured as he withdrew.

Floating on a cloud, Farah asked dreamily, “What’s that?”

“What did I ever do to deserve a woman like you?”

Farah smiled and took his hand in hers. “You always knew the right thing to say. We should get out of here. I’m dying to show you where we live.”

Bretton nodded. “All right, but no dying, please. I think we’ve all had enough of that.”

Farah turned to address one of the drones that had helped Bretton out of his tank. “Seven Sixty Seven—”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“It’s time to go home.”

“Home, ma’am?”

“Etherus didn’t tell you? You’ve been reassigned. You’re going to live with us.”

“That is good news. I would like to get to know my old self.”

“His old self?” Bretton echoed, regarding the drone with a furrowed brow.

Apparently Etherus had left some things for her to explain. Farah took Bretton’s arm and began guiding him to the nearest exit. “While you were sleeping, Omnius copied some parts of you to a drone.”

“So he’s me.”

“He’s Seven Sixty Seven, but you can think of him as your digital son.”

“The son I never had…” Bretton mused.

“We could change that,” Farah said.

“We’re still able to have children? I thought there weren’t any souls left to put in bodies.”

“There aren’t, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create new ones. A soul is just a prior state of existence. Anyone born from now on will be born the same as us, but without any past to reconcile before they can move on to their futures. They’ll be the lucky ones, Bret.”

“And what if they take this world for granted the way we did with Etheria? What if they start another war? They haven’t been through everything we have. They might not appreciate that with freedom comes the responsibility to choose wisely.”