This is a fan translation of Emperors of Illusions (Императоры иллюзий) by the Russian science fiction and fantasy author Sergei Lukyanenko. The novel is a sequel to Lukyanenko's Line of Dreams (Линия грёз) novel and can be considered a fan fiction of the original Master of Orion game.
Part VII
God
Chapter 1
The emergency airlock was only there out of respect for tradition. It was unlikely that any crewmember after the days of the Vague War had had a chance to use it. Ships in space either died instantly or not at all. Leaving the ship during a battle, when space itself was being ripped apart by streams of energy, was doubly insane. As far as Kay knew, no one had yet thought about using the airlock during a hyperjump.
But it was possible that Arthur had access to more information.
They ran down a hallway, which had automatic bulkheads every ten meters. Up until the last moment, Kay feared that the outer hatch would be locked, but it seemed that no one had thought that the prisoners would flee into nowhere.
The airlock chamber was tiny, capable of fitting three people in heavy armor at most. Kay's eyes found the control panel. Green, yellow, and red modes of exiting into space. He reached for the red button.
"Dutch, have people gone out into hyper?" Tommy touched his shoulder with a press that would have broken a Bulrathi's bones.
"Yeah. Onto the ship's hull."
"What about beyond that?"
"No idea."
Kay touched the alarmingly glowing button. Now for the safety plate.
"Hold on to me. Tightly," he commanded.
The safety plate sank into the panel.
A segment of the destroyer's outer hull swung open with the ease of a common window. The emergency exit mode did not include air being pumped out first. They were thrown out into the gray haze in the whirlwind of freezing gases.
No darkness and no light. The unreality. The endlessness of unborn worlds. Non-space, non-energy, non-time. A wormhole of space, through which the hyperfield generator carried the destroyer.
Alarm lights flashed on the heads-up display. The sensors were perceiving hyperspace as vacuum, an emergency mode for the armor, which, after all, wasn't a full-fledged spacesuit.
"Kay?"
He didn't reply; there was no need to speak in this gray haze, floating over the world.
"Kay, how is it going to happen?"
There was no panic in his voice… good. They were moving farther and farther away from the destroyer, from that island of matter floating between worlds. How would he know how it was going to happen? Maybe they would be torn into pieces or splattered across a hundred light years of space…
A dark outline appeared in the glowing abyss of the open airlock. It pushed away from the threshold, flying off into nothingness out of the ship's artificial gravity field.
"Kay…"
The gray haze exploded into sparkling darkness.
"The bridge's emergency airlock has been opened."
Someone else was still trying to monitor the situation. Lemak nodded, hoping it would be interpreted as approval. So that was Dutch's escape plan…
"Forty seconds to jump exit."
"Admiral…"
Lemak turned. The destroyer's captain was handing him a pistol.
"aTan, Admiral."
Karl Lemak, the Hero of the Tukai Conflict and the Emperor's contemporary, shook his head.
"I won't abandon the ship."
"Neither will I."
Lemak engaged ship-wide communications. He spoke, hoping that his voice remained firm, "To all people with aTan. I am ordering…"
The words wouldn't come. They had become madness.
"I am ordering you to use your last chance. Tell fleet HQ what has happened."
Three paces away from him, a young officer put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. There was an explosion; the skull couldn't contain the boiling brain. The Admiral's face was splattered with clotted blood.
"I am taking command of the ship, Captain," Lemak said. "Leave through aTan."
"My aTan hasn't been paid for. I bought a house on Tauri."
Lemak wiped his face.
"Craving the beautiful life, Captain?"
Another shot. And another. Far too few, compared to the number of people with aTan.
Killing yourself wasn't easy.
"Exit."
The light shudder of the transition. The haze on the screens was replaced by the usual darkness. Except every second for them was equal to years for the rest of the galaxy.
There was someone's belated shot, as if a salute to human indecision. Idiot… did the aTan Corporation or the Human Empire even exist anymore?
"Repair team to the bridge," Lemak ordered. "Slow us down, damn you!"
What would they hear when they turned on the receivers at the Imperial frequency? Human voices or silence, a requiem to a vanished race?
Who would need soldiers from centuries past on an ancient ship?
For some reason, Lemak thought that it depended on Kay… a killer who had left the ship into nothingness.
"It's a damned world where sinners do the world of saints," Lemak whispered.
Whatever this world had been, this world, his world, it was rapidly disappearing into history. As was Lemak himself… turning into a legend, a few sentences in an encyclopedia…
The Admiral was crying, unaware of his own tears.