Colony - Nephilim

by Gene Stiles

  “What is it I do not understand?” Neptune asked, biting the words off sharply through his clenched teeth.

  “It is not your size I find so astounding,” Tethys said, finding her voice and composure once again. “I meant to offense. Please forgive me.”

  “Then what is it that causes you such shock?”

  “It is your face,” Tethys answered, a twinkling smile spreading across her full, pink lips.

  “My face?” Neptune did not understand, but he sensed no animosity coming from his guests. “What is wrong with my face?”

  “Oh, nothing, Captain,” Tethys responded, reaching out a hand to him. “You are truly a handsome young man. It is just that, though you may be much, much bigger than he is, you are the perfect mirror image of your father.”

  “My father?”

  “Yes,” Oceanus grinned. “Your father. Cronus, Lord Father of Atlantis.”

  The Sea Dragon was quickly loaded with all the supplies and cargo it might need for an extended voyage at absolutely no charge by dour-faced dock men eager to see the mighty vessel gone from their wharves. All it took was for Oceanus to go the Harbormaster’s office, identify himself and say a few words that went something like this:

  “We have decided to book passage on the Sea Dragon,” he told the disbelieving man. “As one of the Twelve, I would like to thank you for your treatment of its Captain. I am sure you were unaware that Neptune is actually the long-lost son of Cronus, the Lord Father. You remember, do you not? One of those sent away from Atlantis and thought to be dead. I am quite sure Cronus will be grateful to you for giving his son safe harbor for these many long years.”

  After proving it by bringing up a holo of the two men and showing it around the room, Oceanus mused aloud, his lips twisted in a thoughtful sneer, “I wonder if he will thank you with gold or if he will decide to reduce this port to ashes. You have heard the stories. The Lord Father can be quite unpredictable. I am sure you will want to inform him as soon as possible.”

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, tossing the words lightly over his shoulder as he left. “We could use a few supplies and help to get them aboard. Thank you for any assistance you could kindly provide and have a wonderful day.”

  Despite the veiled warning, the Harbormaster felt it his duty to inform his brethren at the other ports, telling them to keep the information secret and far from the halls of Atlantis. Thus, as rumors do, the gossip spread faster than a skyship could fly.

  “We thank you for your help, Captain Neptune,” Alcmene said, leaning against the bulwarks, watching the azure sea tumble around the swiftly moving turquoise hull. As the smallest of the Nephilim, standing only nine-foot-eight, it was she who sought out Neptune and his ship. Having endured playful jabs at her height all her life with nicknames like Nymph, Imp, Dwarf and others, she was the best able to slip among the People unnoticed.

  “You are most welcome, Lady,” he replied, his emerald eyes staring out at an endless, blue horizon. It was clear from his tone and the way the muscles twitched at the edges of his jawline that his mind was far afield of where he now stood. “Though I am not sure anymore if my name is Neptune or Poseidon.”

  “What is a name beyond a title people know us by?” Alcmene asked gently, her fingertips teasing the long rope of braided, golden-blond hair that hung over her shoulder and between her ample cleavage. “It does not define our character nor does it tell us who we are. We already know that.”

  “I would agree,” he told her, tearing his gaze from the vastness of the open water and looking down into her stunningly beautiful face, “yet my name carries with it ramifications that reach far beyond who I think myself to be. It changes how others perceive me and their reactions to my presence. If the stories of Cronus are true - and I am sure that they are - my name could have dire consequences for me, my ship and crew and for all those associated with me, you and your brothers and sisters included.”

  “We are already reviled and ostracized,” Alcmene countered with a huff, pushing away his warning with a wave of her hand as she would a bothersome insect. “What is one more reason to hate us?”

  “As for that,” Neptune responded kindly, “I am sorry. You and your kin had no say in how or where you were raised. You did not determine the manner of your birth. It is unforgivable that you should be held accountable for the evil machinations of others.”

  “And yet, here we are,” Alcmene said, her smile more brilliant than the hot, yellow sun above them, “both products of a past we had nothing to do with. It is now our choice what we do with it.”

  “Our friends belowdecks are as comfortable as possible,” Miko said, interrupting their musings, “though they are not yet ready to step out into the sunshine.” The Quartermaster let out a bellow of a laugh that spread across the main deck like the wind, infecting the crew hurrying about their duties.

  After clearing the port of Tharsis, the Sea Dragon changed course and headed southeast around the Atlantean continent, stopping in a cove protected by a fingertip of land that jutted out into the sea. They stayed for three days, giving the Nephilim time to rendezvous with them. A small oak forest provided the wood required to convert one of the larger holds into living quarters for their passengers. Oceanus and Tethys kindly refused the Captain’s offer of his own chambers, choosing instead to bunk in a cabin near the Nephilim.

  “I am happily surprised that the crew has taken so well to my kin’s appearance,” Alcmene said to the officer, unable to keep the chuckle from her voice. “Their size usually makes others instantly afraid of them.”

  “Nothing reduces a man’s stature quicker to a sailor than to watch him vomit and turn green with the slightest sway of the ship,” Miko replied, slapping his knee in merriment. His guffaws were contagious and soon even Alcmene had to wipe tears from her eyes.

  “You must be blessed with a stronger constitution, Lady,” Oceanus remarked with a smile as he and Tethys joined them on the main deck. He still wore his tan breeches, but was bare-chested, enjoying the feel of the heat upon his darkly bronzed skin.

  “That I am,” Alcmene said, nodding to him and his lady. “I spend some time on the River Gaia while I was in Atlantis.”

  “Ah,” Tethys said, moving to stand next to her by the rail. “The currents there can get rather nasty.” The older woman had taken a quick liking to the younger woman and enjoyed her company. Turning to the Captain, she asked, “Have you decided to take our suggestion?”

  “I have, Lady,” Neptune responded with a nod. “It is a longer voyage than I had planned and we shall have to stop on the Aseabaen continent for a time to hunt, resupply and rest before making the trip to Nil. There are few islands along the way to make port and they are uninhabited. We should go unnoticed.”

  “That is a good thing,” Oceanus said, his face becoming stern for a moment. “I am sure word will spread. The farther we are from the main sea routes, the less likely the ships of Atlantis will find us. I think we should avoid conflict wherever possible.”

  “I agree,” Miko added. “We are armed, but not nearly well enough to combat an Atlantean sea-going warship.”

  “We shall have to see it does not come to that,” Neptune agreed. Turning to Alcmene with a glowing smile, he took her by the elbow and guided her toward the galley. “In the meantime, let us see of your ironclad stomach can handle a touch of supper.”

  “It is about time you fed me,” she said to him with a grin. “A lady could starve around here! I could eat a whole goat all by myself!”

  “We shall see,” he said, laughing at her confidence. “We shall see.”

  The tempest that viciously assaulted them as they neared the Aseabaen continent ended their voyage far short of their final destination. The smaller storms that they encountered in their months of travel hardened the Nephilim, making them as hardy as their seafaring hosts. If not for this, even the Sea Dragon would surely have rested in the eternal darkness of the cold ocean floor. Instead, she lay broken and bleeding, lis
ting heavily against a rocky outcropping where she had run aground.

  The monstrous hurricane swept in from the west under cover of a cloudy, moonless night, slamming into them with the incredible speed and primal, savagery of a maddened Dire Wolf. The screaming, hundred-thirty-mile-per- hour winds howled like a rabid beast, clawing at the half-raised sails, tearing many of them to shreds and snapping spars into tiny pieces of kindling. Hundred-foot waves smashed against the starboard hull, attempting to shove the vessel broadside into the deep churning troughs between their peaks. If they succeeded, the ship and all hands would die a cold and watery death.

  “Hang on!” Captain Neptune bellowed unnecessarily, his throat raw from screaming above the howling winds. The webbing that secured him to the helm lacerated his flesh and tore muscles beneath his leathers as he struggled to turn the Sea Dragon’s bow into the wailing winds. The bunched muscles of his enormous legs spasmed with the strain, threatening to buckle under him.

  The bottom dropped out from beneath him as they crested the seething, white-capped wave, lifting his feet from the deck. The giant propellers bit nothing but turbulent air as they were torn from the water. The bowsprit pierced the belly of the ocean and was ripped away as the nose of the Dragon rose from the depths sputtering in fulminating fury. Even Neptune’s awe-inspiring strength could not force the wheel to starboard against the power of the incensed sea.

  Luckily, he was not alone. Anak threw his prodigious muscles alongside those of the Captain, his gigantic hands wrapped around the spokes of the wheel opposite Neptune’s. Together, the two behemoths swung the prow into the oncoming waves as the huge rudder and screaming screws again sunk beneath the seething waters. The hastily tied hemp ropes that bound the Nephilim to the helm left bloody rashes across his skin, the salty spray burning the open wounds.

  Upon the main deck, the scrambling crew thanked the Creator that the Nephilim were aboard. With ropes binding them to the masts, the gargantuans hauled on riggings that were torn from the storm-soaked hands of their smaller friends, hoisting sails that would otherwise have been lost to the cyclone gales. Belowdecks, amid tumbling cargo and storm-tossed men, the Children of Pettit held timbers cracked by the enormous hurricane and jammed crates against breaches in the hull that hemorrhaged seawater like a severed artery.

  After endless hours, the horrendous beast spat them out like a tasteless piece of hardened gristle against the shoreline of Aseabea in a partially protected bay. The Sea Dragon landed hard upon a rocky outcropping, her hull cracked and splintered, her keel buried in soft, sucking silt. Torrential rains and the eye-searing flashes of nearby lightning strikes kept the battered and broken survivors huddled together for days in the few holds and cabins that were left dry and somewhat intact.

  “We lost sixteen people,” the First Mate, Kiranimis, said, hanging his head as they walked through the piles of cargo and supplies haphazardly scattered upon the rocky, moss and seaweed-covered beach. “Twenty-eight more are so badly injured that it will take some time for them to Heal. Many of these have required Lendings and will for at least two more days.”

  “Good men and women, all,” Neptune muttered bitterly, as angry at himself as he was with Mother Sea for her wanton destruction. Not that feeling such would change their dire circumstances one wit.

  He glared across the turquoise waters at the pile of sharp-edged boulders that held his battered, beloved Sea Dragon captive as if the flames of his burning jade eyes could shatter their grip and set her free. She listed heavily to port, her forward mast splintered with the tattered remains of blue sails flapping in the warm breeze blowing inland.

  “I should have seen the storm coming sooner,” the Captain growled, condemning himself as he kicked at the pebbles beneath his booted feet.

  “This is not your fault,” Miko admonished him, gripping his shoulder firmly. “If we had not lost the scanners to the lightning strike in that freak squall a week prior, we would have had plenty of warning. As it was, that monster was upon us faster than we could hoist the sails. Such is the sea.”

  “Such is the sea,” Neptune replied harshly, echoing an old sailor’s adage. He ran his fingers through the snarled mess of reddish hair surrounding his head and sighed deeply.

  “As it is,” Miko continued, tucking limp, strawberry-blond curls beneath the dirty rag he had tied around his broad forehead, “we were very lucky. Look around us,” he said, his bright blue eyes sparkling in the brilliant sunshine. “High cliffs box us in on either side. We were not smashed against that granite. Jagged rocks line the surf like an open maw and yet we somehow managed to avoid most of them and came to rest close enough to the only beach in sight to be able to make it ashore.”

  “The men report a large oak forest less than a league inland,” he said, waving a hand toward the upslope behind them, a wide, toothy smile glowing through his scraggly beard, “and a freshwater stream leading into a sizable lake. There is game, fish, fruit trees and caves to set up camp in. We are blessed!”

  “Blessed? Only you could find sunshine in a cyclone,” Neptune replied, a wry smile touching his lips and feeling his load lighten a tiny bit. He turned around, heading for the makeshift tents set up near the meadow a little uphill from the beach. He took time to say a word to each man and woman sifting through and separating what they salvaged from the wreckage.

  “We have to get communications back up,” he told his men, shifting himself back into his Captain mode. “We are far out of the shipping lanes and will be stuck here for years if we do not get help. No one is looking for us and, even if they were, they think we headed toward Aseabea.”

  “That can be a good thing given how you were treated in port and the passengers we carry,” Kiranimis said sternly, glancing back at the Nephilim working along the Sea Dragon’s crew.

  “You just might be right there, my friend,” Neptune agreed, stepping through the flaps of the bustling command tent. “You just might be right.”

  Yet a massive search was underway for the Sea Dragon. Oceanus managed to send word to Ra before they left Tharsis and asked him to pass it on to Zeus. The Lord of Olympia was desperate to find his last remaining sibling for war was spreading quickly throughout the empire.

  It was not just Neptune’s brother who sought them, though. They were being hunted by a much larger force that saw them not as men but as prey.

  Chapter IX

  “No more!” Cronus bellowed in the half-empty Table of the Twelve chambers, his words punctuated by a searing flash of lightning blazing through the clear crystal windows. “No more!”

  The horrendous storm outside blanketed the sky with surly black clouds that dropped impenetrable sheets of rain down upon the barren walkways. The People huddled inside their stores and homes, hiding from the savage demon that screamed over the city. Howling winds assaulted the streets of Atlantis like a pack of rabid Dire Wolves, ripping loose anything not hammered into the hard granite walls of the buildings and filling the boulevards with flying debris.

  Yet, the tempest outside was a tamed puppy compared to the tumultuous fury of the Lord Father as he attacked the Black Guard commanders shifting nervously on their feet before him. Spittle dripped into his curly red beard as he ranted, cursing the men for their incompetence, berating them for their impotency and promising hideous consequences to them and their families if his orders were not completed as demanded.

  “The outer cities are rebelling against Atlantis, refusing to pay their tariffs, shorting us on much-needed supplies and demanding more self-rule,” he shouted as they stared at their boots. “Zeus remains hidden amid rumors of building a great army to assault our shores. Ra stands apart, rejecting my insistence that he share Nillian technology with Atlantis!”

  “Does the bastard not remember it was I who sent him there in the first place?” Cronus slammed his hardened fists onto the table, spilling tankards of ale and cups of tea on the smoothly polished wood. His jade eyes blazed brighter than a bonfire as he spread his burning
gaze to cover his remaining brethren gathered around him. “And you all do nothing but debate!”

  He rose from his high-backed, black leather chair and stomped toward the Commanders. To their credit, the eight men remained steadfast though more than one flinched as Cronus advanced upon them like a stalking tiger. His sparkling onyx robe swished against the floor with a sound like the hissing of serpents. The muscles of his sculpted body rippled in high relief beneath the gold-edged, white linen shift he wore that fell to his mid-thigh, belted at his narrow waist by a wide band of golden leather. His ruggedly handsome face was taut, deep furrows cutting across his crinkled forehead, his white teeth snarling through his full, darkly tanned lips.

  Iapetus sat near his men, stone-faced, his broad, sinewy chest rising and falling with carefully controlled breathing, saying nothing. Though he saw his brother’s rage, he did not sense the madness that sometimes overtook him. What he did see was the furious frustration tearing at Cronus at the splitting of the council along with all the discord shredding the empire. What he did not wish to admit was the soul-churning fear he also saw buried deep within the Lord Father and the blood-red color it added to his words.

  “You cannot keep order on our own streets and now you tell me you have lost the Sea Dragon,” Cronus uttered murderously as he strode before the Black Guard, his hands clenched behind his back. “Tell me,” he said, his frigid voice washing over them like glacier winds, “how could you let a ship so large, colorful and so well-known slip through your fingers? That vessel holds the Nephilim who slaughtered your own men on the streets of Atlantis in front of hundreds of witnesses and who still managed to flee the city under your watch. How do you expect the People to believe you can protect them if you cannot even protect your own? You are all a disgrace to your uniforms! I should have you all executed for your incompetence!”

  The Commanders bit their lips, keeping their heads high and their bitter eyes straight ahead, terrified to meet the gaze of the Lord Father. To a man, they also knew now who the Captain of the ship was and the true reason Cronus was so furious, though none were stupid enough to mention it.