“Antifa,” Simone said, ticking off her fingers. “ISIS, Putin and the entire Kremlin, China, the North Koreans.”
“I... I wouldn’t put antifa in that list,” Liam said.
“That wasn’t a moral judgment, Vanderbilt,” Simone said, sighing. “Just pointing out that they’re the kind of people who’d love to have a god backing them. Doubly so when that’s a god of war.”
A long silence – unbroken by all save for the quiet gasps of excitement from Tethis and the low, droning roar of the engines – followed.
“Should I get out and push?” Meg asked.
Chapter Four
Kailee and Quinn whistled slowly as they looked over the railing.
“That’s a big damn hole,” Kailee said.
“How did you dig this?” Quinn asked as Admiral Cochrane clasped his hands behind his back and looked smug.
“Well, ladies,” Cochrane said, turning as he did so. He started to walk along the railing, heading towards one of the steam-powered elevators that whirred up and down the sides of the pit. In the shadows cast by the tall jungle trees that had been cultivated around the pit itself, the recesses of darkness seemed all the darker. It was as if every elevator simply vanished after a few feet, or emerged from nothingness to come to a stop at the edge. “This wasn’t the product of a single afternoon. But we had some covert assistance from Hades, Hel, Diayet...”
“How did you get help from Anubis?” Kailee asked. “And how do you know what happened to him?”
Cochrane chuckled. “I’ve got clearance. And, like Ares and Liviana, Diayet has been experimenting with her altered state.” He stepped onto an empty elevator. The cable connected to the top creaked as Kaliee and Quinn stepped aboard. The steam engine that powered the crank hissed and chuffed to life. The steam drifted into several wooden baffles that spread the steam outwards into a diffuse enough cloud that it couldn’t be spotted from above the treeline.
The elevator started to go down.
“Here,” Cochrane said, opening a small wooden cabinet on the side of the elevator. “Put these on.”
He held out a pair of outfits that looked completely alien to Kailee and Quinn. They were thick and furred and tufted with soft down, with sleeves that would completely cover their arms. The elevator was already starting to get colder as it descended into the pit.
Kailee shrugged into her jacket and drew it tight. It helped against the chill, but her fingertips and her legs started to prickle as the temperatures dropped as quickly as their elevator car. Quinn stepped to the side of the car, ignoring everything as she took hold of the railing and peered into the darkness. But they had stopped falling towards darkness.
Light was growing beneath them.
“It’s real…” Quinn whispered.
“Yes, it is, my ladies,” Cochrane said. “Your ship. The BSN Rocinante.”
He timed it perfectly.
The elevator fell fully into the dome of light created by mage lanterns. They shone on a solid expanse of gleaming metal – the same harsh black as the other creations of the Ancients. Built upon that was a scaffold of wood and bronze and crystal, creating a latticework around a half-finished wonder. It looked vaugely conical, with its forward nose fashioned from a single massive chunk of crystal that, even now, was being etched with magical runes. Glass spheres were nestled in a metallic framework along the spine of the ship, while wood was being placed into interlocking patterns to create the cone. Within that cone were decks – curved so the floor always faced outwards, towards the skin of the ship.
“We’ll be coating the wood in a thin layer of steel,” Cochrane said. “But the wood’s apparently required for the mages to do certain life-related spells. Something about their formerly living tissue makes the spells keep.” He shook his head.
“And those spheres? Are they place holders or are they the real deals?” Quinn asked.
Cochrane chuckled, swinging the door to the elevator open.
“Oh, they’re the real deal. They took almost five years of trade concessions and a deficit to the Tuatha that we’ll be paying off while my grandkids are going to the naval academy but they’re real.” Cochrane stepped forward, his shoes ringing off the metal surface they stood upon. Quinn pressed to Kailee as she stepped off the platform and onto the metal. She knew that the metal she stood upon had sustained millennia of impacts far more energetic than anything that she could do.
It didn’t stop a tiny voice in the back of her head from screaming.
“Have you tested them?” Kailee asked. “If what Quinn said is right, then without those fucking balls, this whole ship is one big wasted boondoggle.”
“Yes,” Cochrane said, then smiled as a young goblin shimmied down the scaffolding and ran towards the trio. She was slender and muscular, with grease under her fingers and brilliant red hair that exploded around her head like the sun itself.
As she skidded to a stop and gave the worlds sloppiest salute, Kailee purred quietly and grinned as she whispered in Quinn’s ear. “Dibs.”
“This is our chief engineer, Solis,” Cochrane said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Solis said, cheerfully. “You’re the captain?” She looked at Quinn. Quinn chuckled.
“No, uh, she is,” she said, pointing at Kailee. Kailee grinned, taking Solis’ hand.
“Charmed,” Kailee purred, leaning forward to kiss Solis’ knuckles.
Solis blinked, looking completely baffled. She drew her hand back slowly, her brow furrowing. “Uh. Right. Do you wanna see the ship?”
Kailee tried to not pout.
“Yes!” Quinn said, nodding.
Solis bounced excitedly. “Yeah! Okay! So, that’s where we’re going to be putting the machine guns – we, uh, haven’t mentioned those to the Americans. I have a lizardman smith topside who's working on making more slugs in their caliber. But the real treat is the fireball launchers. They’re tied right to the Blinking Star. Now, we’re not sure on their range, so they may only be usable near Purgatory.” She rubbed her palms together. “And I haven’t even started on the missiles. Rockets, really. Primitive garbage, actually. But still!”
Kailee, though, couldn’t take her eyes off Solis’ rump. Quinn saw that and smiled. But her eyes were nestled on the glass orbs. From their position they were nearly invisible, shrouded by wooden scaffolds and metallic protection. But she knew that they were the key.
Not to Purgatory.
No, they were the key to the whole damn solar system.
***
President Amanda Deinhardt had a small figurine of a golfer on her desk. It had a huge bobbly head and a massive, shit eating grin. Its pose made it look as if it had just swung hard at a ball, a ball that was now sailing across her desk, through the oval office, and out the nearest window.
She kept this figurine to remind herself, every day, of what not to do.
Golfing was hugely wasteful – requiring vast tracts of land that could only be enjoyed by a minority of people at a time. They demanded sprawling mono-cultures of grass that needed constant tending and an immense amount of water. It was a great expense for a tiny amount of people. It was everything that her administration opposed.
It also gave her a head to bang around when she wanted to smash her own forehead into the endless array of paperwork that seemed to dominate her every day. Slowly, Deinhardt reached out and flicked the bobblehead. The spring made a quiet squeaking noise.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, Louise?” Deinhardt asked, smiling at her aide.
Louise, a shy looking black woman who did her best work as far away from cameras as possible, held a manilla envelope. “This is from our embassy in New Delhi, apparently it’s urgent.”
“Put it down, I’ll get to it after this bill,” Deinhardt said, rolling her shoulder slowly. “Also, any news on Vanderbilt and the Purgatorians?”
“Uh, according to security, they’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Good, thanks Louise,” Deinhardt sa
id.
Louise bowed her head, then turned and scurried away before the weirdos from beyond the edge of the known universe came to visit. Deinhardt didn’t exactly blame her. But she had been around the world, shaken hands with despots and dictators, saints and philanthropists, and seen more things than she had ever expected to see when she started off her career as a senator from Texas. Hell, the fact she was here, in this office, in 2018, was enough of a head-trip some days.
She took a moment to lean back and think, her eyes settling on the bright red envelope that the Pentagon had sent her office this morning. There had been no news release, no press brief, but she knew that the moratorium on the story wouldn’t last forever. Someone would leak, eventually.
It was only a matter of time.
The door opened a few minutes later after she had managed to get the desk neatened up.
And in came the weirdos.
Liam Vanderbilt came in first. He was a bit of a revelation for Deinhardt – seeing him emerging from the portal a few months ago, she had been struck by how much Purgatory had changed him. With his shirt off and wearing that kilt, he had looked like a savage warrior from the cover of an old bodice ripper that she’d never admit to reading. Well, he cleaned up. He cleaned up good. In his suit and tie, he looked like how she rather wished more heads of state might look. His clothing was tailored well enough that it showed off his muscle without being too tight or confining, and he moved with the casual, confident grace of a warrior. But tempering that was the dorky expression of concern that seemed to be plastered on his face nearly every second of the day.
After him came Megara, his wife. She was…
It was still surreal to see a walking, breathing angel. But next to Fizit, Meg was essentially normal. But the one that gave Deinhardt the biggest heebie jeebies was Liv. She was so close to being an utterly normal person. She had pointed ears, so what? It was the same kind of costume anyone could get at a dime store for cosplaying or Halloween. But what no costume could ever replicate was the look in those electric blue eyes, or the too-fluid grace that made her every movement a kind of hypnotic poetry.
A voice echoed in Deinhardt’s mind, from her briefing after the Purgatorian party had gone through decontamination and some serendipitous testing.
Well, if our understanding of the CAT scans are accurate, the node-like structure in Livana’s brain allows her to manipulate quantum events with a certain level of intentionality. The, uh, the backscatter effect on she has on electromagnetic spectra and the way that- There had been a pause as the biologist had been forced to simplify and get to the point. Essentially, ma’am... have you ever read Watchmen? Meet Doctor Manhattan.
Deinhardt had then gone and read the book and hadn’t slept the whole night.
Liam stepped forward and held out his hand. “Madam President,” he said, grinning at her.
“Ambassador Vanderbilt,” Deinhardt said, standing and taking his hand. He squeezed her hand – not hard enough to hurt, but not gently enough that it felt like he wasn’t taking her seriously. Deinhardt smiled ever so slightly and gave him a bit of a squeeze back, before letting go and sitting down. “Take a seat, everyone. Enjoying your homecoming?”
“Yeah,” Liam said, chuckling nervously as he took a seat.
“It’s cold here,” Tethis said, her ears twitching up.
“You were in California, aren’t you?” Deinhardt asked.
“It’s still cold,” Tethis said.
Deinhardt shuddered melodramatically. “I grew up in Texas. And it gets as hot as Hades there, but at least it’s a dry heat.”
Fizit chuckled.
Liam nodded. “It has been nice getting to curl up in a blanket and not wake up swimming in sweat.” He paused. “But you didn’t call us here for a little chit chat about the weather, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Deinhardt said, her hand going to the red envelope. She slid it across the desk. “Yesterday, a military base in Wyoming was attacked. It was a training facility, there were only a few casualties, no deaths.” She paused. “But the attackers were protected by Purgatorian magic.” She pulled out some of the photographs. They had been taken from base security cameras. Other than some blurring artifacts caused by the motion of the truck, they were clear. They showed the truck driving through the fence without leaving a hole. They showed the soldiers shooting at the men in the Guy Fawkes masks.
“Do you know who they were?” Liam asked.
“A far-left anarchist cell,” Deinhardt said. “They stole enough weaponry to outfit a platoon, and they’re immune to weapons fire and have a crystal that lets them phase through solid matter. They haven’t taken any further action, but what do we do if these fellows roll up to Main Street USA and open fire on the mayor’s office and declare themselves the first free-state of New Freedonia?”
Liam rubbed his palms along his face. “Normally, you’d send in the national guard...”
“Which is why, normally, anarchists grumble about politics on chatrooms and hand out fliers,” Deinhardt said. “Somehow, they’ve changed the rules.”
“But how?” Tethis asked, frowning as she picked up the papers. “That crystal isn’t hewn. It’s just a chunk.” She cocked her head. “I can’t see any rune working. It must be a short term enchantment, something cheap.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” Deinhardt said.
Liam leaned back in his seat and frowned. As his arms settled in the chair, Deinhardt found her eyes slowly drifting from his face to those broad shoulders. She could practically sit on them. She licked her lips subtly and forced her eyes back to his face as he continued to think.
“Ares can’t just be working with these guys,” he said. “But how the fu... udge...”
“You can say fuck here,” Deinhardt said, her lips quirking up at the way that Liam flushed. Swear? In-front of the President? “There’s no press, after all.”
Liam nodded, coughed, and said: “Well, how the fuck did Ares get here?”
“Through your gate?” Deinhardt asked.
“No,” Fizit said, her tail twitching. “Even if he had some kind of magical way to get through, we’d have noticed. He’d drop directly into your bunker, and your bunker has no exits save through decontamination and those machine guns.”
Deinhardt nodded, slowly.
The door to the office rattled.
“What is it?” Deinhardt asked.
The door opened and a ruffled looking aide – Jeremy – looked in. “Ma’am! It’s the Pentagon!”
***
The situation room was closed and cramped and smelled a bit like pens. Meg sat next to Liam to the right of the President, while the Secretary of State and other members of the Cabinat crammed into the left. Fizit remained standing in the back, frowning and hissing in displeasure. Liv tapped her foot on the ground next to the lizardwoman. Tethis, being the smallest, sat nearest to the front and looked deeply concerned.
The screen had a man on it. He was ill shaven and round cheeked, his brown hair flecked with silvery threads. He wore a Confederate flag armband and was standing with a confident swagger before a half a dozen terrified looking men and women in work casual clothes. One of the men was nursing a split lip and a rapidly puffing up black eye.
Several other goons - wearing black balaclavas over their faces and uniforms that weren’t quite army issue - stood near the hostages. They had rifles slung over their shoulders and stood with the confidence of men who had just won a battle.
“No longer will we bow to the tyrant whims of a false president, who took power in an illegal coup!” the man raved. “We, of the Liberation Army of Jesus Christ, have been blessed by He Who Lives Again, to retake the world in his name and his justice and his light!” Spittle flew from his lips and he laughed, spreading his arms. The movement drew attention to the dozens of ragged holes in his outfits. “See the blessing he has bestowed upon me!”
The video hit pause.
“That is ‘General’ Bartholomew
Brown,” General Sung said, using the biggest air-quotes that Liam had ever seen in his life. “Dishonorably discharged from the Coast Guard for smuggling cocaine over the border and belonging to several neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate websites. He fell in with a militia movement called the Liberation Army of Jesus Christ two years ago. It seems he’s running the joint now.”
“Confederate?” Meg’s brow furrowed. Then she hissed. “Oh. Right. Those assholes.” Liam nodded to her, making a subtle gesture to stay quiet.
“This is bad,” Liv said, bluntly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Liv pointed at the man. “I can see it, on the camera. He’s been blessed by Ares. He might even be a Chosen.”
“A Chosen?” the secretary of state asked. “That’s like a priest?”
“A Chosen is to a priest as a priest is to a guy who goes to temple every holy day,” Liv said, crossing her arms over her chest again. “They’re given extended life, some characteristics of the god, and a direct line to their powers. So, a Chosen of Bast looks like a cat. A Chosen of Ares gets warlike and good at stabbing people.” She paused. “Or at least, they used to, before Ares went nuts.”
The secretary of state shook his head slowly.
General Sung frowned and clasped his hands before him. “The point is that this entire militia has moved into a Louisiana township and taken it over. They’ve killed a few cops, captured the rest. A few have even switched sides.” He shook his head. “The whole town has been cut off the grid, but people are going to notice and soon. Then we’ll have an international news story on our hands.”
“What are our options? Tethis? Liv?” Deinhardt asked.
Tethis frowned. “I’m thinking.”
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