Armageddon (32 page)

“Let’s assume you’re right. What’s stopping him from resurrecting everyone again? Technically everyone on Avilon has already died at least once before.”

“The clones and all their data are still on Avilon. If we destroy Avilon before Omnius has a chance to transfer people’s Lifelink data to New Avilon, then he won’t be able to bring anyone back ever again.”

“How do you know he hasn’t transferred the data already?”

“Because we would have detected the transfers and intercepted them, and besides that, Omnius is arrogant. Why go to all the trouble of making off-site backups when your on-site backups are already more than good enough?”

“Let’s assume you’re right. Not everyone believes in an afterlife, and even the people who do aren’t going to be in a hurry to commit mass suicide in order to get there ahead of schedule. You really expect us to fight and die in order to make our own species extinct?”

“The Armageddon Protocol is a last resort, Captain Hale. We won’t need to use it, and no, I don’t expect people to fight and die for that plan, because I’m not going to tell them about it.”

“They have a right to know.”

“This is war, and in war some information is classified.”

“It’s not war, it’s suicide! If it were up to me—”

“But it’s not up to you, Captain. The only way we can defeat Omnius is to hold his people ransom. We can’t beat him in a straight fight. The Icosahedron is a million times as strong as our entire fleet. We would need millions of warships and a whole galaxy of infrastructure if we wanted to beat Omnius by conventional means.”

“Then we should give up now. We have a better chance of survival if we run away and hide. Omnius hasn’t found Origin in all this time. Maybe he never will. We could start over here, keep intercepting Lifelink transfers, bring people here slowly over time. Think this through before you pin our survival as a species on the slim hope that Omnius will back down.”

“I already have thought about it. Trust me. This is the only way we can defeat him. No matter how well we hide, we can’t hide forever. Eventually we’ll have to come out and face our enemy, and by then he’ll be a hundred times stronger. No… now is the only time we have.
Carpe diem
, Captain Hale.”

“Carpe mortem, you mean.”

“Mors mihi lucrum.”

“What?”

“It means,
Death to me is a reward.
”

“Well, good for you, but I’m not sure everyone would agree with that.”

“You are dismissed, Captain.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Then she said, “Yes, sir.”

Ethan heard footsteps, and he flew back to his chair, falling into it just as the door swished open and Captain Hale came storming out. Ethan folded his hands nonchalantly in his lap. He was overly aware of his pounding heart, and he wondered if the captain could see it beating through his robes. But she didn’t so much as look as him as she walked by.

He felt sick to his stomach. Therius was threatening to kill
everyone
in order to blackmail Omnius into… what? Surrendering? And what was that thing Therius had mentioned…
an
Icosahed-ris? Hed-ra? Hedron. That’s it. Icosahedron. What the frek?

Therius came out of his office next. He had a smile pasted on his face. “Thank you for being so patient with me, Ethan. It seems I don’t get a moment to myself these days.”

“I see that,” Ethan said, rising to his feet. “What did the captain want to speak with you about?” he asked, half-hoping that the admiral knew about his accidental slip up with the intercom and now he’d explain everything in a way that would somehow sound less terrible.

“Oh, she just wanted to iron out some of the finer details of our battle plan.”

“The finer details?”

“Yes, would you like me to show you to your quarters now?”

“Ah, yeah… before you do that, I’ve been thinking about something.”

Therius cocked his head to one side.

“Where is my family?”

“On Avilon.”

“But you intercepted my Lifelink transfer when I died.”

“That’s correct.”

“So why didn’t you intercept theirs? My wife and daughter died before I did.”

“Our resources are limited here, Ethan. If we intercepted every transfer and subsequently cloned bodies for them here, we would soon run out of food and supplies. We have to pick our candidates very carefully, so we choose those who are best suited to help us in the battle to come.”

“My wife flew Novas, too.”

“But your daughter didn’t, and she’s not old enough to be an asset here. We couldn’t resurrect your wife without your daughter—that would have been too painful for her—and besides, the fewer duplicates of living clones we have, the better. Can you imagine all the trouble that will cause later? It’s far better to save your family’s rescue for after we take control of Avilon.”

“What if they die in the fighting?”

“Then we’ll clone them and bring them back using their Lifelinks.”

Ethan frowned.

Therius grabbed his shoulder and leaned in close to look him in the eye. “One way or another, you’ll be with your family again. I promise. You just need to have faith. Can you do that?”

One way or another—you mean in this life or the next?
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Ethan said.

Therius nodded. “I expect you to. Now come, you have a lot of training to catch up with.”

Therius led the way, and Ethan followed, all the while wondering what in the Netherworld was going on. They reached a pair of lift tubes and waited for the nearest one to arrive.

Ethan stared at Therius, his eyes burning a hole in the side of the man’s face. If the Union detonated nanite bombs on Avilon, there was no way his family would come back from that, no matter what Therius promised about them being together again, but if blackmailing Omnius actually worked, then the bombs wouldn’t need to be detonated, and everyone would be fine.

That was one too many if’s for Ethan’s liking. He had to do something. Ethan agreed with Captain Hale: killing everyone so Omnius couldn’t control them anymore didn’t count as
winning
.

Therius could go jump in a black hole as far as he was concerned. The man was skriffy as a Psycho, and he had to be stopped before it was too late. The only question was
how…

“Is something wrong, Ethan?”

Ethan snapped out of his reverie and smiled. “No, nothing, why?”

“You’ve been staring at me for the past minute,” Therius replied.

“Oh.” He covered a yawn with one hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Just tired, I guess.”

“Well, we’d better get you to your quarters so you can sleep.”

Then the lift opened and they stepped inside.

Chapter 29

T
he lift shot up a dozen levels before opening into a broad corridor. Therius strode out and Ethan kept pace beside him. On this level the passersby all wore jumpsuits rather than uniforms. A few of them eyed him in his white patient’s gown, no doubt wondering who he was. Ethan wondered the same thing.

Am I a clone or am I me?
The difference felt vague and irrelevant now that he had already been cloned.

After a few minutes of walking, Therius stopped in front of a door on their left and waved it open. Inside the room were half a dozen double bunk beds and a handful of men. They were all half-dressed in undershirts and shorts. Glowing tattoos were everywhere; a few gold earrings dangled from ears, and they all looked like they had a habit of injecting hormones for enhanced muscle growth.

Conversations stopped. A pillow reached its target with a
whuff,
but both target and attacker froze in place, their eyes on him. A petite woman in a white jumpsuit stood out from the rest. When she turned to face him, Ethan saw that it was Atta. She placed her hands on her hips and regarded him with a look of displeasure. A black man seated on the bunk beside her turned to him with equal animosity. Ethan noticed that his face and neck glowed with green tattoos, and so did his upper arms. There were no less than five gold earrings in his ears. He looked like a thug.

Another man walked by, half-naked, busy brushing his teeth. He came to a hasty stop when he saw them standing in the open doorway. Thrusting out his hairy chest, he saluted and exclaimed, “
Admiwal!
” lisping around his sonic toothbrush.

“What’s he doing here?” Atta asked.

“He’s the Rictans’ new squadron commander,” Therius replied.

“Their
what?
” Atta burst out. “He just got here! He hasn’t even begun training!”

“He’s an excellent fighter pilot, and he’s already spent plenty of time in a Nova cockpit.”

“Even if that’s so, I doubt he has the commando training. How much time has he spent in a Zephyr?”

So this was a hybrid squadron. Ethan hadn’t actually spent any time piloting a mech, but how hard could it be? Nova pilots called mech pilots
stompers
for a reason. Piloting a mech was intuitive, but flying a starfighter was definitely
not
.

Despite his confidence, he was just as surprised as Atta that he’d been summarily appointed to be a squadron commander just a few short hours after he’d arrived.

“He’s done a kind of commando training,” Therius said. “He was a stim runner in the old Imperium
and
in the Null Zone, so he knows how to take care of himself.”

“
With respect, sir,” Atta went on, “if you want Ethan to be in this squadron, don’t make him their commander. Make him their boot-polisher and see how he handles that first.”

Chuckles rippled through the room and a few appreciative hoots and whistles reached Ethan’s ears.

Atta was popular with the thugs… Interesting.

“That’s enough!” Therius boomed. Silence echoed. “His appointment is not up for discussion. Miss Heston, I’m going to leave you to make the introductions, and please see to it that he gets a uniform and jumpsuit with a
commander’s
rank insignia. In case you need some help adding up all the bars and chevrons, that means he also outranks you,
Field General,
so I would show a little more respect if I were you. As for the rest of you, I expect you to give Ethan a proper Rictans’ welcome to the squadron.”

“Yes,
sur!
” the man with the toothbrush said, saluting once more.

Therius turned and left, waving the door shut behind him. People eyed Ethan for a long, silent moment. Then the black man stood up and sauntered over, all the while looking him up, down, and sideways. The man came right up to within a hand’s breadth of Ethan’s face. He caught a noxious whiff of sweat, homemade grog, and bad cologne.

The black man’s nose twitched and the corners of his mouth turned down, as if
he
was the one who’d caught a whiff of something sour.
You should smell yourself,
Ethan thought.

“I smell fear,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice.

Ethan tried to remember that he outranked this man, even if he didn’t have the uniform to prove it yet. “Actually, I think that smell is coming from your armpits,” he replied.

More laughter rippled from the others in the room, but subdued this time. Atta cracked a smile and shook her head.

The black man sneered and loomed closer. “You want to be a Rictan? Let’s put you to the test. See how much ya know. You got twenty drones on your tail; you’re pissin’ your pants you’re so scared, and all the piss is runnin’ down into your boots ‘cause you’re pulling five g’s over what your IMS can take. You’ve got half a second before they turn your sorry ass into plasma, but wait! Your wingman just called for help. What’s your move, greeny?”

“That depends, are we in atmosphere or space?”

“Atmosphere.” The word was a growl as it rolled off the other man’s lips.

“What are the specs on a drone fighter?”

The man took a full step back, his eyes flew wide, and one corner of his mouth slumped with derision. “You don’t know? Well frek me!” The black man threw up his hands and turned in a circle to address everyone else in the room. “
This
is your new commander, everyone! He wants to know what are the specs on a drone fighter!” Turning back to him, the man sneered. “I’m gonna give you a hint. The answer ain’t got to do with tactics, fighter specs, or pilotin’ skill.”

Ethan arched an eyebrow.

“The answer is, you go
help
your wingman. It doesn’t matter if you just had your leg blown off. Your brother calls for help, you crawl over to him, and you
help.
That’s what it means to be a Rictan.”

Ethan nodded, trying not to take the hazing personally. He would have to prove his worth to these men in the cockpit. “Fair enough. Who was your commander before me?” Ethan asked.

“You’re lookin’ at him!”

That made sense. “You have a name?”

“Sure, name’s
Lieutenant,
and that’s all you’re gonna get outta of me. None of us gotta ask each other’s names—we’re the
Black Rictans,
and we all brothers, but you… you just another clone.”