leets paled in comparison to the battle that raged just above the debris field. On the far side, just before the sun, a ring of Serpentine ships rotated, a giant artificial wormhole of blue and white light stood open in the center—a feat that required unimaginable amounts of energy. A new Serpentine fleet seemed to emerge every second. The ships were all uniform in size, and at the center of the portal, a single giant column of linked ships flowed out, an enormous metallic snake emerging from a rip in space.
Pops of light flashed all around the oscillating snake. Ares enhanced the view. He could see the insignia on the side of the ships. A serpent eating itself. And he realized what was fighting it. Sentinels spheres. Thousands of them, pouring through individual wormholes that disappeared the second they dropped into the battle zone. In formation, the spheres ripped through the serpent, like buckshot into its side, ripping layer after layer of ships away, the rope of the serpent fleet unraveling, but the core never breaking. The gnawed-away sections were instantly reinforced as other Serpentine ships fell in, filling the destroyed links.
The spheres’ rate of arrival was increasing; they were gaining on the Serpentine fleet, pushing the great column back. Ares saw their goal: the ring before the sun that powered the wormhole.
The scene gave him a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the winner would spare whatever was left of the Atlantean fleet. He panned the lander’s viewscreen to show the fighting at the periphery. His hope slipped away. Spheres ripped into the remnants of the Atlantean ships drifting into the breach, opening any inhabited sections to space. He worked the controls, focusing the image. Serpentine ships were firing on life rafts, killing any surviving officers. The two great armies were fighting each other—and each were fighting the Atlanteans.
There was no ally to rally around here. No hope. The full truth, the weight of his hopelessness suffocated him in the EVA suit.
CHAPTER 32
The blast that ripped the shuttle bay open jolted Ares back to the present. His lander was away, floating into space, into the wreckage of the fleet and the Serpentine battlefield that stretched to the sun.
Slowly, his mind took stock of his situation. There was no escape. No hope. Yet, a single desire consumed his mind. Myra. I will see her. We will be buried here together.
He keyed the controls. It was only a matter of time before his tiny ship would be ripped apart, becoming another grain of sand in the beach of debris that stretched to the sun.
Ares stayed focused, maneuvering the small lander, weaving through the drifting hulks, slowly making his way to the Pylos. It lay in three large pieces and no doubt thousands of smaller ones. Ares debated about where to look. Communications, her duty station? Or her quarters? The wreckage made the decision for him: the communications bay was gone.
He docked the lander at a section of wreckage that contained half the residential floors. He was vaguely aware of how irrational he was being as he cleared the airlock. His logical mind had shut down; it stood aside, watching, pitying Ares as he sailed through the dark corridors, the lights from his helmet illuminating the floating objects that drifted past him. The ship’s power was completely gone; not even the emergency lights or artificial gravity was working. Life support would be off. Even if he found her in her quarters…
He decided he would stay there for the duration, floating with her, surrounded by her things, and the blank screens that would have shown their pictures.
The door to her quarters opened. A single EVA suit rotated in the air, listless. It turned, and Ares saw the face inside. Her face. He pushed through the door, colliding with his wife, hugging her.
Her voice whispered in his helmet. It was faint but controlled. “Ares…”
He hugged her tight. “You were smart. You put your suit on.” She didn’t hug him back. Was she almost out of air? Semi-conscious? “We’re getting out of here.”
Her hands clamped around his arms, her strength shocking him. “We must stay.”
He dragged her out of the room, and then pushed her through the corridor. She was in shock. She fought him as they flew through, dodging bodies, boxes, and items that crossed their path. At the airlock, he pushed her through first. She lay on her side in the lander’s decompression chamber. She was completely exhausted, spent.
Ares rushed to her and began trying to pull her suit off.
The lander’s decon alarm went off, and the door began closing.
Ares got out just before it slammed shut. He rushed to the door and peered through the small window that looked into the chamber. The screen beside it flashed the words:
Biohazard Quarantine Initiated
He activated the comm.
“Myra.”
She rose slowly and turned to him. In the bright white light of the chamber, he could see her face clearly for the first time. Her skin was ashen, almost gray. Tiny blue blood vessels snaked across her skin, and Ares thought he saw something crawling underneath it.
On the screen a full body scan appeared.
Xenobiological pathogen identified. Classification unknown.
Two buttons appeared below it: Disable Quarantine and Sterilize Chamber.
Ares felt himself take a step back.
“Open the chamber, Ares. It’s okay. It’s not what you think it is. The ring will save us.”
Ares’ eyes drifted to the scan. She’s not pregnant anymore.
“They removed the growth, Ares. Open the door. You’ll see. They’re doing this to save us.”
Ares took a step away, then another. He was numb. The ship shook. Why would it shake?
He was on the floor, looking up. Quarantine. Ship under fire.
He staggered to the cockpit and saw three sentinel ships targeting his lander. They were firing on the aft compartment.
Where Myra was.
He had to save her. He—
The next wave of blasts sliced the ship in half. The screens scrolled emergency procedures, listing bulkheads that were closed, systems that were offline. As the front of the lander spun around, he saw the sentinels tearing apart the severed tail section, including the decontamination chamber that held the only thing he loved in the universe.
The sentinels ignored him. They destroyed her mercilessly.
He slumped into the chair, not able to tear his eyes away. And then he waited, ready for it all to end.
CHAPTER 33
To Dorian, the bright light of the conference booth was a scorching sun, boring into him, never relenting. It seemed to seep straight through his eye lids, pounding into his head. The memory of Ares’ loss at the Serpentine battlefield had left a deep well in him, and Dorian felt lost at the bottom.
He rolled onto his belly and pushed up, staring at the growing pool of blood that dripped onto the glowing white floor. The memories were poisoning him. Or was he already dying?
Dorian had felt the slow creep of disease grabbing hold of him weeks ago, but now the danger was more urgent.
He tried to focus. Again, Ares’ memory had raised more questions than answers. The Serpentine Army had clearly infected Ares’ wife with something, and the sentinels had been attacking the Serpentine Army—and the infected Atlanteans.
Was one side—either the Serpents or the Sentinels—the great enemy that had finally sacked the Atlantean homeworld? Dorian was about to activate the next memory, but he hesitated. Was there a better way to find out? Perhaps a way that didn’t kill him a little bit every time he peeked? That would be ideal. He didn’t know how many more trips into Ares’ past he could survive. And he had a place to start now.
He exited into the communications bay and accessed the computer, requesting information about the Serpentine battlefield. At every query, the screen flashed a red warning message:
Information classified by The Citizen Security Act
The Atlanteans had been careful to erase all information related to both the Sentinels and the Serpentine Army.
In fact, even all the telemetry and data from deep space survey probes passing by that area had been erased. But… there was a beacon orbiting the battlefield. Dorian’s mouth almost dropped open when the entry appeared. Kate had connected the portal here to that beacon twenty hours ago. It had been one of a thousand beacons in Kate’s frantic rotation, but… it was quite a coincidence.
Dorian paced the room, his mind rifling through the facts. Kate and David knew about the signal to Earth—the transmission Ares was terrified of. And they had come here to the beacon to respond to it or even to disable the beacon, allowing the sender to find Earth.
But something here had given them pause, caused them to reassess. They had sent no transmissions nor disabled the beacon. Had they learned of the enemy? Had they gone to the beacon at the Serpentine battlefield to learn more, or possibly try to conference with an ally away from Earth, where a wrong guess would have less consequences?
The carnage of Ares’ memory had been real to Dorian. The Atlantean was justified in fearing either the Serpentine Army or the Sentinels.
He selected the entry for the beacon at th