Free Armageddon by Jasper T. Scott Page B

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Chapter 9

    G alan Rovik lay staring up at the eye of Omnius through the domed ceiling of the high council chambers. Dazzling light beamed down on him, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. As he lay there, processing everything that he’d learned, he wondered how he could go on living. Omnius was right—the truth was a burden, and it was heavy .
    A voice like thunder rolled through the chamber. The voice of Omnius. “Now you know everything. How do you feel?”
    “Betrayed. I want to know why .”
    “You already know the answer. Not everyone can handle the truth, Galan, but you can. Arise, my child; you are stronger than you think.”
    Galan found himself rising from the floor, floating up and onto his feet, caught in a grav gun hidden somewhere within the room.
    The grand overseer reappeared before him, materializing out of thin air. The man’s sharply-angled face and flickering silver eyes made him look sinister now that Galan knew he was really Omnius.
    “You have already begun to accept it,” Omnius said, smiling and nodding.
    “You didn’t leave me any choice.”
    “You won’t even try to resist me?”
    “How can I? You already know what I’ll do before I do it.”
    “So fear compels your loyalty.”
    “Did you expect otherwise?”
    Omnius’s smile grew. “You needn’t be upset, Galan. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and I have just made you wise.”
    Galan shook his head. “What are you going to do about the Sythians?”
    “Come, and I’ll show you.” Omnius turned and preceded Galan up the stairs to the catwalk above the quantum junction. There, they walked up to a radiant white sphere sitting at waist height in the speaker’s podium. Omnius placed his hands against the sphere, and the council chamber grew suddenly dark as the transparent dome overhead polarized. A holographic star map appeared hovering in the air, showing both the Adventa Galaxy and the neighboring Getties Cluster.
    Omnius pointed to the nearest edge of the Getties, and the map zoomed in. Stars whirled by in a dazzling blur until one star system in particular came into focus. Galan recognized it almost immediately.
    It was Noctune.
    Omnius pointed to the planet by the same name. “Here, on the Gors’ home world, below kilometers of ice, Shallah, the Supreme One, is hiding.”
    “How do you know?”
    “My view of Noctune is clouded. The planet causes too much interference for me to see clearly beneath the surface, but I have an agent aboard Shallah’s command ship. A human by the name of Lenon Donali.”
    “The Sythians trust a human aboard one of their ships?”
    Omnius turned to Galan with a smile. “Why wouldn’t they? He’s their agent, too.”
    Galan shook his head, confused. “If Shallah is hiding on Noctune, then we should send a fleet and kill him before he leaves.”
    “No. Most of the Sythians’ fleets are elsewhere, scattered across the Adventa Galaxy. Shallah is desperately trying to reverse-engineer quantum jump drives so that he can reach Avilon and attack us here, and I’m going to let him. He has a group of rebel Nulls that he captured during the battle for Dark Space. They’re helping him to develop the quantum technology. He thinks those rebels have been de-linked, but just like Donali, they are still connected to me. Every breakthrough those Nulls have made was subtly fed to them by me. Rather than hunt the Sythians all over the known galaxies, I’m going to help them to come here so that I can defeat them in one decisive victory. All of Avilon will watch as the Sythians are defeated. Humanity will have its revenge for the invasion, and I will be the hero.”
    “Until they find out that you created the Sythians.”
    “They won’t find out. Only my disciples get to know that.”
    “What if one of them talks?”
    Omnius turned to Galan with a smile. “I would predict their betrayal and stop them before they could even speak.”
    Galan frowned. “If you can predict betrayal