Dorian dreaded starting the next memory, but he had no choice. Learning the truth about Ares, about the enemy beyond the beacon was his world’s only hope. He had to. And he had never turned away from what had to be done. He stepped into the communications booth and began Ares’ memory stream where he had left off.
Ares awoke to the standard fleet hazard alarm. He had heard it many times—most often when a team doing an experiment, either inside or outside the ship, was in trouble. The last time he had heard it, hundreds of sentinel ships had been bearing down on his sub-fleet. They had destroyed his ships and every last man and woman under his command.
He sat up and planted his feet on the cold metallic floor. He realized he was sweating, but his skin wasn’t warm. Fear. Something was wrong with him.
He battled to get to his feet, his body fighting him, not wanting to respond.
The speaker system dinged, and a calm voice began repeating: “All hands to hazard stations.”
Hazard stations. Every member of the service knew theirs. The drills came at least once every five days. Safety came first in the Expeditionary Fleet, and for the first time in Ares’ career, he had no hazard station. No station period. He was no longer a captain of a ship or a commander of a sub-fleet or even in a chain of command. He was simply an officer with no assignment—and at the moment, no clue as to what was going on.
He donned his standard service uniform and rushed into the hall, where people from all service branches swarmed around him. He tried to ask several people what was happening, but everyone threw off his grasp and continued past him.
Ares snaked his way through the crowd, fighting to get to the lift.
At the bridge, he stopped dead when he saw the screen.
The massive battlefield that stretched to the star… it was the same scene Myra had shown him, but it wasn’t dormant; it was alive with activity. The Atlantean first and second expeditionary fleets lay at the far end of it—seventy-three ships in total. But a far larger fleet loomed just above the black plane of debris. Massive ships, some the size of the entire Atlantean fleet hovered, blocking out massive swabs of the sun, throwing long shadows on the relatively small Atlantean vessels—all of which were ships of exploration.
When the Atlanteans had launched their first deep space exploration ships, they had armed them. But as the decades and centuries slipped by and no enemies had presented themselves, it grew harder and harder to justify the cost and space of arming their ships. Their primitive period of weapons-enabled ships was seen as comical to some and embarrassing to others. They had come to believe that any race sufficiently advanced to reach deep into space must be civilized.
Standing on the bridge, staring at the massive fleet that loomed above the Atlantean ships, Ares knew how wrong and foolish they had been. These were ships of war, of destruction, just as the sentinel spheres were.
“Play it again,” the ship’s captain called from his standing position at the high-top table in the center of the bridge. Around the bridge, officers and technicians focused on the screen. Ares stepped forward, stopping just behind the captain, his focus squarely on the viewscreen. He watched the scene reset, the timestamp in the top right reverting to an earlier time. They were watching a recording, telemetry from the fleets at the Serpentine battlefield. We must still be en route, Ares thought.
The First Fleet Admiral’s voice played over the speaker.
“Fleet, be advised, we’ve received a signal from the Serpentine Army. We’re working to decode it now, but we’ve re-transmitted the message to confirm our receipt in what we hope will be interpreted as a sign of friendship.”
The screen tracked forward in time. Behind the Serpentine fleet, a wormhole opened and more ships began pouring in. They were all the same shape and size. For a moment, they paused just before the portal, then began circling, linking end-on-end with each other, forming a ring. Or a serpent? A second ring formed, just inside the other, and another until there were seven rings, all fit together, like a donut blocking out the sun. Ares saw a glimmer and realized that they were collecting sunlight. A massive solar cell, trapping energy.
The admiral’s recorded voice played again. “Fleet, be advised, the first part of the signal is binary. This location in space and another region, currently uncharted. Could be the Serpentine homeworld. Second part is believed to be a DNA sequence, possibly a virus. It’s not long enough to be a complete human genome.”
On the screen, several small ships disembarked from a large ship deep in the Serpentine fleet and moved slowly toward the First Fleet flagship.
“Fleet, we’ve got incoming. Scans are negative on content. Repeat, they’re either blocking our scans or there’s nothing inside the vessels. Stand by. All ships hold your position.”
Fools, Ares thought. The admiral was playing it safe, reasoning that they couldn’t fight, so why run? Ares didn’t see it that way. His wife was on the Pylos, an explorer class ship in the second fleet. He waited, hoping to hear the admiral give the order to evacuate the fleet.
The small black ships stopped halfway between the Serpentine and Atlantean fleets.
“Fleet, we’re sending tugs to bring the first few ships in. This could be a peace offering or a communication of some kind. Stand by.”
The tugs pulled a few of the vessels into the closest explorer class ship, and then the video log spun forward with nothing happening until it ended in a freeze frame.
Ares looked around the bridge. Everyone was tapping notes and working at their stations, some people conversing.
“Keep playing it,” the captain said. “Pay attention, everyone. Any detail could be important.”
“What’s happened?” Ares asked him.
“We’ve lost contact with the first and second fleets—right after they made contact with the Serpentine ships.”
“It’s an attack,” Ares said firmly.
“We don’t know that. It could be a systems malfunction related to the communication. It could be the sentinels cutting off communication. A stellar anomaly. Anything. We’re advancing all our ships to the Serpentine battlefield.”
“Have you apprised the council?”
“Yes.”
“Are they evacuating?”
“No. They’ve decided there will be no announcements until we know for sure what’s happening.”
“Fools. This could be the start of an invasion. We should divide our fleet, call in all the mining and freighting vessels, and evacuate as many as we can.”
“And if this is simply a misunderstanding? An evacuation will cost lives too. The panic would cripple us—at the very worst time. This has been decided.”
“Give me a ship,” Ares said.
“Relieve a commanding officer without cause during a crisis to give you a ship? I didn’t believe the psych report I read, Ares. But it’s looking more accurate by the second. We’ll reach the Serpentine battlefield in minutes—”
Ares stormed off the bridge, into the lift. Scenarios, options, coursed through his mind. He had to get to the Pylos, to his wife, and get out.
The corridors were still filled, but not as jam-packed as they had been.
Ares was twenty feet from the portal bay when the first blast rocked the ship, throwing him into the wall of the corridor. The side of his face swelled, and he thought he would lose consciousness. His ribs and wrist throbbed. He rolled onto his back and lay on the floor as the ship bounced, stabilized, and shook as the motion canceling systems recovered and failed. When the quakes subsided, he staggered to the portal bay and quickly worked the controls. If he could port to the Pylos, he could reach her.
He activated the link, but the screen read:
Portal Lockdown Protocol in Effect
The fleet had sealed itself off. Smart. But he was trapped.
He raced down the hallway to the shuttle bay doors. They opened, revealing a wide, deep hangar where half of the ten small crafts were overturned and some had been smashed against the bay wall. There was a lander still upright and intact. Ares boarded it and entered the launch sequence.
He donned one of the three EVA suits, hoping to save a little time. Seconds could count. As he waded back into the cockpit, he got his first view through the opening shuttle bay doors.
The creaking doors slowly revealed the horror and scale of the massacre. The entire Atlantean first and second fleets lay broken, disintegrating, floating into the debris field, joining the millions of ships that had fallen before them.
Pieces of Ares’ own fleet, newly arrived to the battle, rolled by the shuttle bay, collapsing into the tempest. There was fire and light coming from the remnants of his own ship and those in its fleet, but they would grow dark soon, just like the first and second fleet. Ares watched listless ships collide, explode in flashes, then grow dark, drifting as compartments along their jagged edges decompressed, puffing air, objects, and his comrades into space.
But the spectacle of the annihilated Atlantean f