The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3) (20 page)

Mary took a step toward the portal.

A face broke the surface of the glowing archway, extending only a few inches.

Milo.

His eyes were closed, a look of pain across his face. “Save yourselves!”

Mary grabbed Paul’s forearm, her nails digging in.

Milo opened his eyes and broke into a grin. “I’m just kidding. Come on. It’s okay.”

The instant the portal connection re-established, Dorian ran through and searched the small space station. Empty.

They had gone to another beacon. Fools. What dangers lurked out there? Did they know? Care?

Dorian walked to the communications bay and activated the logs. He would have their location in minutes. He hoped he could stop them in time.

C
HAPTER
26

To Milo, the new beacon was yet another miracle. And he had brought the team here, led the way. Instinctively, he knew that action had been his purpose all along. He felt that if he hadn’t stepped through the portal at that exact second, something terrible would have happened. Perhaps he would never know. As he turned to his companions, he sensed something was wrong.

This beacon was different. David knew it instantly. The station that shrouded Earth was a science beacon—the floors pearl white, walls matte gray, it’s every feature minimal and clinical.

This beacon felt more militaristic, dark and rugged, with black floors and walls. It seemed ancient and used, almost decrepit. Where a wide picture window lay opposite the portal door in the last beacon, a relatively small, industrial window looked out onto the black of space, where a few stars twinkled, but nothing remarkable caught his eye.

David raised his gun and began searching the space, Sonja following close behind him, covering his back.

The layout was similar to the last beacon: a saucer with the portal in the center. However, it had a staircase with two levels. There were more rooms and more equipment here. And it was empty.

David could feel a slight motion. Was this beacon rotating?

He returned to the portal, where Paul and Mary had joined them.

David gripped Milo’s shoulders. “Never do that again.”

“It had to be me.”

“What?”

“I’m the most disposable,” Milo said with a nod.

“You’re not disposable.”

“I’m not a scientist or a soldier. I—”

“You’re a kid.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You will be the last to go through from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because,” David said, shaking his head. “You’ll… understand when you’re an adult.” The words were a surreal moment for him: saying something his parents had said to him countless times, him always thinking it was a lame cop-out.

“I want to understand it now,” Milo said.

“You’re the last one of us we’d ever put in danger.”

“Why?”

David exhaled and shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. Just… go to your room for now, Milo.” David silently groaned at his own words. He saw Kate fighting a smile as Milo traipsed away toward the residential pods.

David nodded to Sonja, who began setting up to guard the portal.

He put his arm around Kate, leading her to a bedroom.

“Teenagers,” she said when the door closed.

“I’m not happy with you either,” he said. “You opened the door for him.”

“I had no idea he would go through.”

“First things first: can Sloane follow us here?”

“Yes. But he’s going to have a hard time finding us.”

“How hard?”

“Like one in a thousand.” Kate paused. “Unless he’s really, really smart.”

David didn’t like the sound of that. He hated Dorian Sloane. David had dedicated a large part of his life to finding and punishing Sloane, but he wouldn’t lie about his enemy: he was smart.

“Then that’s a problem.”

The door opened, and Paul stuck his head in, cringing as he spoke. “I’m really, really sorry, but you two need to see this.”

Kate and David followed him back to the portal area, where the others stood, their backs to them, staring through the small window.

David realized that this beacon was in fact rotating. Through the window, the empty view of space had been replaced.

A sun burned brightly in the center of the scene, but it was the flat expanse of debris that stretched from the beacon almost to the burning star that took David’s breath away. Remnants of star ships, thousands, maybe millions of pieces spread out. David thought if a hundred Earths were destroyed in the space, that it still wouldn’t have filled the area that all the shattered vessels did. The floating wreckage was mostly black or gray, but here and there, a speck of white, yellow, or blue dotted the plane. Pieces of debris collided with each other, arcs of blue and white light reaching across like lightning bolts connecting them for a fraction of a second. Taken in whole, the glistening dark debris field looked like an asphalt road in space that led to the sun.

Where the others had stood in awe of the view of Earth from the last beacon, it was David’s turn. For a soldier and a historian, the view was a transcendental moment.

He felt some part of himself let go. Maybe it was the scope of it, the realization of how tiny a speck the human race was in the vastness of the universe, or perhaps it was seeing proof that there was a force this powerful in the universe, powerful enough to destroy worlds. Whatever the cause, something changed for him in that moment.

Kate had been right.

They couldn’t hide. Or bide their time.

Their odds of survival were long.

They would have to take chances now. It was their only hope.

C
HAPTER
27

Dorian wanted to shoot the beacon’s computer. And Kate Warner. During the few minutes the portal had been disconnected from the
Alpha Lander
, she had connected to a thousand other beacons. The entries were all grouped in the same time interval, preventing Dorian from discerning how long the portal had connected to each beacon. She could have connected to 999 beacons in the first second and used the remaining time to access their true destination. They could be at any one of a thousand locations in the entry.

He paced the room. How could he find them? What did he have to work with? He had checked: there was no video surveillance. Porting to another beacon was a risky move. That David and Kate had taken the leap surprised even Dorian.

How did they even choose which location? Randomly? Surely not. Did she know something? She had to—but what? What did she have to work with? Kate had the memories of one of the Atlantean scientists. Was that her clue; did she remember something that could help them? An ally? The idea struck a chord of doubt in Dorian. If they knew more than he did…

He manipulated the computer quickly. Yes. The beacon had a backup of the resurrection memories. There were three entries: those of Janus, his partner, which was identified as being deleted, and… Ares.

Dorian queried the computer, asking,
Can I see the resurrection memories?

You may only access your own memories, General Ares.


The beacon recognized him as Ares. He queried the computer again.
How can I view them?

A small door at the side of the room opened.

The conference booth can be configured as a resurrection memory simulator.


Dorian stepped into the square room. The walls and floor glowed brightly, making the box seem as though it were built out of light and virtually limitless in size. He blinked, and it was gone, replaced by a place much like a train station. A large board hung above, blank.

“Identify memory date,” a computerized voice boomed.

Memory date
, Dorian thought. Where to start? He truly had no idea. After a moment, he said, “Show me Ares’ most painful memory.”

The train station disappeared, and Dorian saw his reflection in curved glass—but it wasn’t his face, it was Ares’ face. It looked almost the same as it had in Antarctica, though the features were different somehow. Not as hardened.

At first, Dorian thought he was in yet another tube, but it was too large. He looked around. A lift. The rest of the reflection revealed his attire: a blue uniform with a rank insignia on the left chest.

As the seconds ticked by and the lift rose, Dorian felt his own thoughts and presence fade. It was only Ares standing in the lift now; Dorian was simply watching, experiencing them as they came. In this memory, he was Ares.

The lift trembled, and then shook violently, slamming Ares into the back wall. Words and sounds whirled around him, and he fought to stay conscious.

The blurred visions and slurred noise coalesced, and a man was shouting in his ear. “Commander, they’ve caught us. Permission to port to the main fleet?”

Ares pushed up as the lift doors slid open, and the ship shuddered again. He stood on a bridge where a curved viewscreen covered the far wall. Around the room, a dozen uniformed Atlanteans were shouting and pointing at terminals.

On the screen, four large ships were fleeing hundreds of round, dark objects, which were gaining on them, shooting at them. The dark spheres converged on the tail ship, crashing through it in a ball of yellow light and blue pops.

“Port to the main fleet, sir?”

“Negative!” Ares yelled. “Deploy life rafts. Space them out.”

“Sir?”

“Do it! When we’ve cleared the rafts, order the auxiliaries to eject their gravity mines and all ships to release their asteroid charges.”

On the screen, a thousand little discs slipped out of the remaining ships in the fleet, a tiny few connecting with the round balls that swarmed the ships. The explosions ripped the spheres apart, but there were too many of them.

We die protecting our fleet
, Ares thought as the screen filled with light and searing heat ripped the vessel open and pressed into him.

He opened his eyes. He stood in a small rectangular vessel with a single window that looked out on a surging wave of light—the remnants of the battle he had just fought.

He was on one of the life rafts—his emergency evac tag had ported him to the raft, along with nine others: the first officer from his own bridge and the captains and first officers of the other vessels in his sub-fleet. They were all standing, recessed into their medical pods. A few heads poked out, taking stock.

The wave reached them, and the flash of heat, pain, and bone-rattling force blew through Ares again.

He opened his eyes. Another life raft. The wave was farther away. The evac tag had ported them to the next raft when the wave had destroyed the last. Ares didn’t bother cowering as the wave rushed forward. He watched, waited, bracing himself. The force, heat, and pain washed over him again, and he stood in the third life raft. In the fifth raft, he started dreading the wave.

At the tenth, he could no longer open his eyes. Time seemed to disappear. There was only the oscillating wave of agony and nothingness. Then the ship shook, but the heat and pain never came. He opened his eyes. The raft was twirling in space. It rotated, and he saw the gravity wave, no longer nearly as strong, rolling away, curving the tiny dots of light that were distant stars.

Ares closed his eyes. He wondered if the life raft would initiate a medical coma or simply let him die. He didn’t know which he preferred. He wasn’t sure what followed after that, but he experienced only nothingness, an abyss of time without feeling or thought.