Prometheus Unites (The Great Insurrection Book 5)

by David Beers

  A look of confusion grew on the gigante’s face.

  “I saw the drathe in my dream. Is he here?”

  Oh, gods, Alistair thought, panicked. Adrenaline flooded his muscles and he stood up, destroying the foam around him. He turned to the seat behind him and started to rip into the foam there, pulling huge chunks off and throwing them with abandon.

  On the third pull, a dark shape shot out of the foam, pushing Alistair back and landing on top of him.

  Obs’ tongue flashed out, and Alistair got slobber all over his face.

  “OBS!” he shouted, reaching up to grab the damned animal. He overpowered the drathe, pulling him close, and Obs tilted his head toward Alistair’s chin to continue licking.

  They were now outside the ship, lying on ash, with a gigante standing above them. At that moment, Alistair didn’t care what else was happening in the universe. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated in a rush.

  Finally Nero stepped in, dropped a giant hand on the back of Obs’ neck, and lifted him by the scruff. He set him down quickly and Obs turned his head, confused by everything around him.

  “Sorry, Obs. There is no time for cuddling. There is much work to be done, and the three of us are meant to do it.”

  Alistair slowly sat up, looking around. The fire was a half-kilometer away in all directions. “Where in hades did you hide, Nero?”

  “Same place as always.” He stomped his right foot. “Underground. I spent the last week building and hoping this was the right place. Dreams are directionally right but not always accurate, right?”

  Alistair didn’t know or care. He stood up, understanding what the sound had been. Hundreds of those canisters lay around the ship, and when Alistair examined the giant, he saw soot covering him.

  No human could have done this. Only the technology inside a gigante could have protected and healed him long enough to start putting out the flames and create enough space that they could be safe.

  The AllMother’s words came back to him.

  All the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.

  Alistair didn’t know if the gods existed, and he felt certain that if they did, they didn’t interfere in human life, yet something seemed to be in play here.

  He stood up and brushed the remaining foam off him, then looked around again. The flames farther out were dying, and he knew that meant the enemy was moving closer to the city.

  “We’ve got to get back,” he said as his eyes narrowed, looking across the distance at the massive place he’d come from.

  The gigante shook his head. “No. We’re not to go back. We’re to wait here.”

  Alistair whipped around. “What are you talking about?”

  “The dream says we wait here. So we wait.”

  Alistair had to look up to view the giant’s face. There was no humor in it, no levity. He was serious and sounded insane.

  “I can’t wait here,” Alistair said. He pointed at the planet’s only city. “They need me. They need us. If we wait here, they’ll all die.”

  The gigante looked at the sky. “No, spaceman. If we go back, they die. If we stay here, they have a chance of living. It is a small chance, I’ll give you that, but any chance is better than none, right?”

  Alistair didn’t know what he was looking at. There was only the enemy up there, and the chances of them looking in this little clearing were small. What could they do here? Nothing. The trek back would take far too long. Alistair would have to think of something, but staying here was not an option.

  “Nero, I’m eternally grateful that you saved me, but Obs and I are getting out of here. Nearly everything I care about is back in that city, and that’s where I’m going.”

  The giant sighed as if he were trying to explain something to a small and not very bright child. “If you leave, they will die. If you stay, they might live.” His language was stilted, and at best, communication with the gigantes wasn’t easy. Right now, it was nearly impossible.

  “Why didn’t I dream then, Nero? Last time, I had the dream. Why didn’t I this time?”

  Nero shrugged, his head still turned to the sky. “We are all the heroes of our own story. In the real world, though, there are different heroes at different times. Now is not your time. Now is mine. Do not be greedy, spaceman.”

  Cristin was in her quarters in the dreadnought slowly making its way to the main city. To Simo’s chagrin, the pace she’d set was the fires’ pace. She would arrive at the same time as the flames, then their armies would drop down and finish off this planet.

  She was dressing for battle. She wore the ice armor of her planet and her family. It was white, shielding her from her head to her feet, just as ice covered every inch of her home.

  The screens in her room kept her abreast of what was happening below. The dreadnought’s technology was spectacular compared to what they had on land. The screens sensed the direction of her face and followed her around the room as she dressed, always a glance away.

  They continually switched views, showing her different parts of the world.

  It was pure luck that she looked up when she did because three seconds later, the image changed.

  “Go back,” she told the AI.

  “How far?”

  “Last image.”

  It switched back to a single swath of black land that was surrounded by fire.

  “Increase image tenfold,” she directed the AI. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but she wanted to see it better. Something was off in that spot.

  The image grew larger on the screen, and suddenly she was looking at what appeared to be a gigante, a man of some sort, and a four-legged animal.

  “Back up the image. Show me what happened to create this.”

  The image turned dark for a moment, then Cristin was watching a dogfight between two corvettes. One was hers, the other had come from the capital. She watched as her fighter easily disabled the other, and that was when something very strange happened.

  The corvette crashed, but in a way that didn’t destroy it. Instead, it slid across the ground for a half-kilometer or so before coming to rest in the midst of the flames.

  Then a gigante removed a boulder that was burning like the rest of the area and stepped out. He began spraying some type of fire extinguishing spray, burning all the while. The nanotech exited his hands, healing him as he continued to spray the fire.

  “Speed up.”

  The video’s speed increased, and the gigante continued to fight the fire until only ash remained and the fire was at bay.

  Finally, the man and animal hopped out of the dead corvette as if nothing had happened.

  “Current state,” the Ice Queen commanded.

  The screen sped ahead until it reached the present time. The gigante was staring at the sky while the man appeared to be yelling at him, or at least speaking heatedly.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “Are you him? Are you the man who conquered a world and thought he could conquer my army with a tiny ship like that? What kind of beast are you?”

  Louder, to the AI, she said, “Show me the capital.”

  The screen went black for a moment, then she was looking at a bird’s-eye view of the city. The flames still had a hundred kilometers to go. There was plenty of time to get down there.

  “Send a group of fifty warriors. Bring those three to me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Ah, spaceman, now you see. Look. You will not steal my glory yet.” Nero extended his huge arm and hand into the sky, pointing.

  Alistair had been in the middle of cursing the giant up and down, ignored by Nero. He finally shut his trap and turned to look in the air.

  Ships were dropping from the dreadnought. It was too far away for Alistair to tell how many. He turned in a circle, looking at both the land and space to see where else they could come from.

  He saw nothing.

  “We’ve got to go right now. Can we get to your hole, Nero?”

&nbs
p; “Spaceman, after everything that has happened to you, can you not trust just a little longer?” Nero asked without looking. “We cannot run from them. Even if you had begun to walk back or travel on a roc, she would still have seen you. Those up there would still be coming for you. I do not know how this ends, but I know we must go up high with them. There is no other way.”

  She.

  The dispatched ships were entering the atmosphere, flames burning across their metal hulls and streaking back in long trails.

  She.

  Alistair forgot about the ships and looked at the giant’s massive eyes as he followed their path. “Who is she, Nero? Who are you talking about?”

  “The one you saw. I do not know her name, but I know she is a queen of the cold. Like you, she cares for only one thing. She is curious about you. That’s who comes now. Running won’t matter. Hiding won’t matter. What the queen of cold wants, she will have, and right now she wants you.”

  Alistair let go of his defenses, his desire to return to their city, and his anger at the giant. “Obs, to me.”

  The drathe trotted over and sat. He and his master looked up at the ships, which were rapidly slowing their pace, the fire burning off the metal that encased whoever was inside. Alistair wore no armor. He had his Whip in a holster on his right side and a StarBeam on his left.

  Are they right? The AllMother and the AllSeer? Is fate directing this, and we’re just playing our parts? If so, he’d played his perfectly by training his mind these past few months.

  He was going to see the shepherd, and he needed to let someone know he was still alive.

  Alistair closed his eyes and sent two sentences toward the woman he hoped had some ability left.

  I’m here. I’m still fighting.

  The AllMother had not left her spot at the table. She wasn’t sure she could walk right now without falling, and no one else needed to worry about her at this moment. She remained seated and watched what Thoreaux threw up on the holovid.

  The AllMother’s lesson with Alistair had weakened her, but that wasn’t the reason her legs would fail if she stood.

  She, perhaps more than anyone else at this table, believed in Prometheus. She had searched all but a few years of her life for this man. Every time he fell or faced insurmountable odds, she never wavered in her belief that he would overcome.

  That was what he did. He overcame.

  She had just watched him fly recklessly against a much more adept pilot, lose disastrously, and crash into a fiery field. She was weak from the loss, so that much that she couldn’t feel his strength, his power, from a few hundred kilometers away?

  The AllMother hadn’t said those things to Thoreaux or Servia or the rest, but she thought Jeeves was right. The chance that he remained alive was small, probably smaller than the AI recognized.

  She should be able to feel him, but she couldn’t.

  That meant that her life, her movement—they were over. There would be no search for a replacement. Nay, there would be no replacement. Thoreaux, the gods bless him, was not equipped for a battle like that, and he knew it. Even Caesar, the mighty giant, would die long before reaching Earth.

  If Prometheus was dead, they would all die in a few short hours.

  Given that overwhelming knowledge, standing would be too much. She would wait until everyone had left or remain here all night. The AllMother wouldn’t worry these people as they tried to salvage this disaster.

  She couldn’t cry. She could show no emotion.

  She had to be the leader she’d always been.

  Though it was over.

  Thoreaux was back and forth across the room, taking messages from Jeeves, handing out orders through the AI, talking directly to Pro’s council. He was handling it quite well. The anger in him had driven away the sadness, and he would do his best to save this world.

  He will fail, the old woman thought. I have failed him. His parents. Servia and her parents. I put too much faith in one man, and perhaps my brother was right. Perhaps his fate is the true one. His wind the one that will carry me back to Earth.

  All at once, the AllMother felt like dying.

  The chair moved before the AllMother knew what was happening. One moment she was sitting at the round table, and the next, the chair was swiftly heading toward the wall. It was moving so fast, she didn’t even have time to try to grip the floor with her shoes.

  It hit the wall, her head nearly smacking into it too—which later she’d realize would have done as much damage to this endeavor as anything if she’d been knocked out.

  The AllMother managed to stay conscious, then the words fell on her like an unexpected wave. She grew cold and could focus on nothing but remembering to breathe.

  She’d only seen such power once, and even then, it wasn’t this skilled. The AllMother had seen it when Prometheus killed an army of gigantes that was about to kill him, throwing everyone and everything against the wall.

  Now that pressure was focused. There was no denying who had sent it, and especially not the message.

  I’m here. I’m still fighting.

  Thoreaux turned from a screen on the other side of the room, the bang of the chair against the wall grabbing his attention. Servia had been staring at a DataTrack in her hand, facing the opposite way, and she quickly looked up too.

  “What…” Thoreaux started to say, then stopped. He must have seen the AllMother’s pale face, wide eyes, and open mouth. Perhaps he thought she was having a stroke.

  Servia dropped the DataTrack and rushed across the room, Thoreaux only a moment behind her.

  They went to their knees, all four hands reaching out to touch the closest thing to a mom either of them had.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do we need doctors?”

  The questions ran over each other and were fired at her so quickly it would have been hard for anyone to answer them.

  The AllMother didn’t even hear them.

  Her face still pale, her eyes still wide, she smiled. “Prometheus lives.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ares had thought a lot since they’d left the black box. They were traveling in the fourth dimension now, moving at a much faster rate, and they’d been doing it for quite some time.

  Wherever they were going, it was farther out than he thought anyone had ever gone.

  Except that couldn’t be true because someone had programmed this damned thing. Someone had been here before. Someone held the algorithm.

  Ares’s father Adrian hadn’t spoken much about the gods when he was a boy, but there was a lot of time to think on this trip, and he found himself contemplating them.

  He and Veena had kicked everything they could think of about the black box back and forth. He’d run out of ideas about what it could mean or what the real test had been. He thought Veena had too.

  Things had changed between them. Nothing romantic—Ares didn’t think that would ever interest either of them. In the beginning, they’d been reluctant comrades. When they’d left together, they’d been reluctant partners because there was no one else.

  The reluctance had faded. She’d come back to die at his side, and for Ares, there was no greater loyalty. He’d tried to fend off the robots and told her to run for her life while he died. He didn’t know what that meant to her. Neither of them felt comfortable discussing those feelings with the other, which was fine.

  It had meant something, though, and Ares could feel the difference in her.

  They were both in the ship’s little lounge. The vessel had a huge collection of media they could consume, everything from novels to endless holovid programs, some that went back before the Commonwealth. Ares had spent a good bit of time watching those, especially a little cartoon called Rick and Morty. It was a humorous program that dealt with space, time travel, multiverses, and a number of other things.

  It was crazy what humans had thought up back then.

  A thousand years in the future, Ares wis
hed that space was as easy as the mad scientist had made it seem.

  While watching that program, he began to consider the gods because the mad scientist Morty seemed as powerful as a god in his own hilariously goofy way.

  “What are you watching?” he called over the back of his chair. His feet were up on a counter, and the program was casting in the air in front of him. He was thankful someone had gone back to the old shows, made them three-dimensional, and allowed them to be played on a holovid. Two-dimensional during this forever trip would drive a man to drink.

  Only there wasn’t anything to drink on this ship.

  “Underground documentary on the first Ascendant. I would have never been able to see this on Earth. The man might have been a genius, but he was also a monster. I imagine whoever made this was killed off quick.”

  “Mind if I interrupt?” he asked.

  “All this politeness, Ares? I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He didn’t turn around but paused the program with a wave of his hand. “You ever think about the gods? Do you believe in them?”

  “Don’t you find that odd? Everyone in our Solar System knows about the gods. We know their names. Sure, some worship different gods and a few backward people are monotheistic, but we all know about some power greater than ours, yet people hardly discuss it. We are taught it as children, and that’s it.”

  “I haven’t thought about that before. I guess it’s true, though. It’s been like that as long as anyone knows.”

  Veena spun so that she was facing the back of his chair. “No. That’s what some of this documentary is about. People used to attend huge cathedrals. They’d pray daily. There was even a sizable number of people who believed in no god. Now, it’s like we all believe, but they don’t matter to us.”

  Ares thought about that for a second, staring at the wild-haired scientist suspended in the air in front of him. “Do you believe in them?”