Apotheosis Omnibus by S. Andrew Swann

Author:S. Andrew Swann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kingdom Come

“The brighter the light, the darker the shadows.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

“Let there be Light.”

— GENESIS 1:3

Date: 2526.6.5 (Standard)

Styx Orbit - Sigma Draconis

Toni followed the older man—whose name was Karl Stavros—and his son to the bridge of the Daedalus. She was thinking wildly about what to do next. Her major concern was how many people were aboard. “You have to order your crew to secure themselves,” she told him, “in case the docking system fails before we get your ship clear.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no one here right now. The rest of the crew’s on the station.”

That was a relief. Two civilians could be handled safely between her and her doppelganger. Four or five more, and it might be hard to maintain control of the situation without an excessive use of force. She didn’t want to hurt these people if she could avoid it.

“What are you going to do?”

What was she going to do?

“We need to pilot this craft out of the docking facility, place it into a parking orbit, and wait for repairs.”

“Can’t the computer do that?”

“Like I said, the communication links are affected. Even if we started an auto-disengage, there’s a chance the comm might fail in the middle of it. We need a trained pilot to do this.”

They entered the bridge, and she directed the two. of them to a pair of crash chairs by the doorway. “Get in those and strap in.”

Stefan, the son said, “But shouldn’t someone be at nav—”

“Move it! We don’t have time and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Again, barking orders authoritatively got the two moving.

She wanted them in the crash chairs because once they were strapped in, it would be hard for them to blind-side her, and if they were strapped in at the back of the cockpit, they wouldn’t have a good view of what she was doing at the pilot’s chair.

The first thing, she killed the main power to the communications station. The last thing she wanted was to talk to 3SEC traffic control. Then she slid into the pilot’s seat.

Okay here’s the part where we actually cross the line into piracy.

She felt the pulse in her neck and a faint taste of copper in her mouth. She had a brief moment of doubt, but thought of the colonel, standing unprotected in a vacuum, pointing a gun at her. Along with it came another thought.

Her other self was a ghost, and an incredibly unusual one. Most ghosts go through extensive debriefings, but Toni II was caught up in a massive attack on the wormhole network. Even if they were able to avoid the colonel and any other moles in 3SEC, Toni II was too valuable for them to ever let her go.

The console looked very far away.

From behind her, someone said, “Lieutenant?”

Can’t give them time to think. She couldn’t let them analyze what she’d been saying, or they’d realize that she had been making no sense at all—and had on at least two points contradicted herself.

She sucked in a breath and began the emergency disengage sequence.

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