The Risen Gods

by Frank Kennedy

  The Major twisted a frown. “No need to become messianic. You have considerable abilities, yes, but there are only ten of you.”

  “More than ten. You know what I mean.”

  “The extended-lifers. Already in the thousands. However, they can resurrect. You and the other hybrids cannot.” He lifted a finger, as if testing the wind. “I will make you a guarantee in exchange for your surrender.”

  “Why should a dead man believe in a deal from a Chancellor?”

  The Major nodded, as if acknowledging a valid point.

  “The unarmed Passaic Dawn is in a holding pattern five kilometers from this tower. I have two Scramjets awaiting orders to pursue. If I give them the word, they will chase down and kill your brother and Ophelia Tomelin. If you submit now, I will guarantee them free passage. If Valentin wishes to pursue the other extended-lifers, he will be free from prosecution to do so. Dr. Tomelin may raise the compliant hybrids. Your future will arrive but in less disruptive fashion. What do you say, James?”

  Rayna scratched his mind.

  - Father made deal with man like him. Last time I saw Father, he had red ring around his throat.

  - He knows we won’t make a deal. He just doesn’t want to explain the mess to anyone.

  - What of your brother? Are you worried for him?

  - No. He can take care of himself. If our plan goes wrong, he will start again. He understands who he is now.

  - I wish to know Valentin better. He is not terrible man.

  - He’ll appreciate the compliment. Time to finish negotiations. The Major seems impatient for my answer.

  He disconnected.

  “I’m considering your offer,” James said. “But one question first. All those years trying to set up Perrone. If you hated him so much, why not just have him killed? You could have taken his place.”

  Marshall chuckled. “Why play elaborate games of deception and brinkmanship? Why not murder him as you did today? Short answer? Because this is what men such as me have to live for. James, behind our titles and power, we rot in perpetual monotony. Naturally, we crave the chance to leverage other lives. Call it the tragedy of the Chancellors, if you must.

  “You deprived me of a more elegant end to Augustus Perrone, but I have only myself to blame. If not for me, you never would have crossed the fold.”

  Marshall’s words cut deep. For a moment, the blast rifle felt heavier. Then James regrouped and recalled Ophelia’s admission.

  “I already learned how you prevented my father from killing the Jewels three years ago.”

  “Yes, there was an intervention, but I’m referring to another tactical maneuver. An error in judgment. Fifteen years ago, I was a colonel assigned to Special Services Division. I was also friends with a man named Walter Pynn. Or as you knew him: Walter Huggins.”

  Sammie’s father. The first person I killed.

  “Through him, I learned about the hybrids and became a believer. Before Walter went into exile with you and the observers, he complained about his fellow travelers. Paranoid, Walter was. He paid me to bring an additional level of security to the recovery day. Which I did. Two Shock Units.”

  It made sense before Marshall said another word.

  “I gave Ophelia no choice but to send them through, assuming she wished to maintain control of the project. Now that I have pieced together your story, I know you would have been killed, never resurrected, and all this prevented – if only I betrayed Walter. As I said earlier, James, I have only myself to blame.

  “Time to decide. Surrender or die.”

  The irony of it twisted James about. A father who created him then tried to kill him because he feared the monster. A zealot who died protecting him to give birth to the same monster. A soldier who dispatched beasts to the battlefield now pleading with the very monster he gifted to the world.

  “You gave me new life,” James said. “Now you will know me.”

  All confidence – and color – vanished from the Major’s face.

  He tapped his amp.

  “All soldiers. Fire. Scramjets 4 and 6: Pursue and destroy.”

  Hundreds of flash pegs and tracers screamed in pursuit of two targets in red. James smiled. He heard the warrior in Rayna exult.

  Know me.

  60

  J AMES BLINKED AND RETURNED to the white forest. He stood eye to eye with Ignatius Horne.

  “This is how it ends for us,” James said. He respected the Jewel for coming in his hour of need, emerging while James faced paralysis inside a ReCon tube on Perrone’s Scramjet. “You deserved a final goodbye and thank you.”

  “Yes,” Ignatius said, deep wrinkles of resignation crisscrossing his features. “You’ve grown beyond me. What remains to be seen is whether you will be worthy of all I’ve given you.”

  “You mean the map? The one that shows me how to tear down everything and start again?”

  “Ah.” Ignatius closed to a hair’s breadth of James, inspecting him as if analyzing every pore, every new hair in his stubble. “Did you not see another clue in the map? Did you not see a choice to rediscover your humanity instead?”

  “I am not human.”

  “No. Neither was he.”

  The white forest began to shift. The trees morphed into rays of sunlight. Soon, they became confined to narrow channels. Twelve beams of light broke through the settling darkness and formed a perfect circle around them both.

  “What are you showing me, Ignatius?”

  “I told you I would finish my story, but only in your moment of desolation. You wanted to hear of the sacrifice of Ignatius Horne and the fall of Hiebimini. Look upon it, James, and see a miracle.”

  He stood amid two thousand people ranting and hissing at two figured in the center of a circular theater. The only light burst through twelve portals equidistant around the theater.

  He identified it without the guidance: This was the Hall of Sun, most revered spot in Messalina, capital of Hiebimini. Thirty-five years ago.

  The eight-foot-tall Chancellor at the center had golden hair and dressed in an orange/brown robe. He dwarfed the slouched Hiebim at his side. The natives cowered at this giant among them.

  “He was a beautiful man,” the Jewel said, its words echoing from behind James. “You will reach his height in time.”

  The man called Ignatius Horne spoke to the crowd about truth as a liberator. He told them: “At the core of human pain is a struggle to vanquish truth and its unrelenting pain.” He told his listeners the most painful of truths, that they had been deceived for nine centuries. He spoke of a Chancellor-made drug called Genysen that colonists took to strengthen their immune system against their own worlds. But the true purpose of the drug was control, to make them worship the Chancellory and never stand against it.

  The news stunned the crowd. Ignatius used this moment to tell them how the Chancellors were to be pitied, how they overreached and now stood on the brink themselves. Ignatius then revealed he was not alone. “The second voice,” Ignatius told the crowd, “is called The Father, and he bears a message founded in the death of another civilization not unlike our own.”

  James whirled about as a hidden voice whispered in his ear.

  “Yes, James. I said Ignatius Horne was like you. Part human, part Jewel. The last of a 3,000-year-old bloodline.”

  “It was you? You were ‘The Father?’ ”

  “In a manner of speaking. The lines between the Jewels of Eternity are in constant motion. They redesigned you with a piece of him, although I cannot say where that piece begins and ends.”

  “How did you come to me from so far away?”

  “Distance is relative. My entity has never been to Hiebimini.”

  “Then how?”

  “It is neither here nor there. Not this star system or the next. Neither one universe nor another. What matters, James, is what happened in the Hall of Sun. Watch him, James. Learn from him.”

  The Father spoke through Ignatius and told the story of his creators, who m
ore than a million years ago evolved to their genetic height and fancied themselves gods. They lived for centuries before being brought low by a pandemic. He explained how the Jewels spread their legacy across the universe. How these Jewels came upon Earth before the rise of the Chancellory and manipulated the course of history. And how, after colonization, the Chancellors discovered a mineral capable of elevating their genome: Brontinium. Without the extract, he told the crowd, Chancellors will break down. “In three hundred years,” he told them, “the final descendants of the Chancellor caste will go to dust.”

  Chaos broke out. Shouts of peacekeepers storming the hall. Shots fired in all directions. Ignatius fought hard until he fell to his knees.

  “His birth name,” the Jewel told James, “was Ilya Hollander. He was trained to be a warrior, a killer, a destroyer of worlds. He rejected his father’s lies and fulfilled a prophecy ending the longest tyranny in history. To become this man, he needed to find love that he might give of himself to liberate others. To show the truth of their existence.”

  The man named Ilya Hollander contorted. Rivulets of blood emerged from every orifice and snaked through the lining of his robes. The blood danced around him and congealed. The new mass took form, spawning limbs and a head. For an instant, it transformed into the first man in Ilya’s bloodline. Ilya spoke to the old man. “Safe journey.” The old man dissolved into a haze and blasted through the roof of the dome.

  James stood over Ilya, who took his last breath and looked skyward. The Jewel whispered, “He feels the love of his wife and remembers the voice of the daughter he left behind.”

  “What happened after The Father escaped?”

  “Escaped? Or set free?”

  “Tell me.”

  “We embraced each other high above the planet. We encircled Hiebimini and breathed upon it. We destroyed the brontinium and redesigned the world.”

  James considered everything he saw and heard, pivoted about, and found himself stuck again in the white forest. Ignatius sat upon a white stump, his legs crossed.

  “The choice is simple, James. When you next blink, you accept one of two outcomes. You surrender to death but preserve your humanity. Or, you accept the delusion of godhood and become their nightmare.”

  He considered the options. He thought of the beaches of Pensacola when he was a boy. He thought of Earth cities turned to ash. He understood the journey this Jewel laid out for him.

  “You knew this moment would come.”

  “There was no certainty, but causality recommended it.”

  “Do you have a true name or a true face?”

  “No, by the creators’ design.”

  James smiled as he wrapped a hand over the man’s shoulders.

  “You’re wrong. Your name is James Bouchet. It always will be.”

  The Jewel’s eyes faded and darkened. James continued.

  “The original Ignatius Horne did not end tyranny. His truth set no one free. But he started humanity down a new path. What he started, I will finish. And you,” he said, tightening his hand around the Jewel’s neck, “will always be ME.”

  He squeezed with fury. Bones snapped, and the world created by the Jewel trembled. The white forest dissolved.

  James blinked again, his future sealed.

  Know me.

  Flash pegs shattered against his bodysuit, and he returned indiscriminate fire. Down below, soldiers fell and the Major ran.

  Too late.

  The dark washed over him in an instant of exultation, a furious joy born a million years ago. It coursed through his blood. He heard the echoes of the dark consume Rayna. They fell into each other’s minds and saw the limitless stars waiting for them.

  They spoke in unison.

  Show them who we are.

  Two Berserkers acted as one.

  61

  O PHELIA WILLFULLY COMPROMISED her principles when she allied with Emil and Sexton. She told herself she was working for the greater good of the Chancellory. Her reward might not show itself for decades, but she would leave behind the legacy of a great rebirth for her people.

  Now, as she wiped away her tears and pushed sloppy hair out of her face, Ophelia questioned everything – foremost, her decision to rescue the hybrids.

  She sat in the passenger cabin of the Passaic Dawn, staring across the aisle at the ship’s pilot, who slumped over, his eyes open and a pulse laser hole over his heart. He didn’t want to turn back after Valentin ordered full atmospheric burn. He wanted nothing to do with escaped criminals. He was a reasonable man – though Ophelia couldn’t remember his name.

  What she did remember was Valentin enraged, dragging him back to the cabin and shooting him point-blank. He claimed the pilot would have to be killed at some point anyway; he knew too much. Their escape must be clean.

  In his fury, she saw the same ruthlessness as all the others who wielded unlimited power without consideration of principle or human decency. Bouchet, Marshall, Perrone. The worst of the Chancellory.

  Yet as much as Ophelia wanted to blame others, she could not look past a mirror. I knew what they were. I would gladly have traded places. I am no better.

  With that, she pulled herself together and returned to the command deck, hoping to see a calmer Valentin.

  The Passaic Dawn settled into a hover five kilometers east of SkyTower. The late-afternoon sun went into full eclipse behind the structure, which itself dominated the cloudscape, expanding more than a mile across. Even from this distance, it seemed more like a great wall than a cylindrical tower.

  Valentin settled into the pilot’s chair, the navigation cylinder swirling around him. He was studying ship movements when Ophelia fell into the co-pilot’s seat. He appeared all business, as if the execution moments ago was forgotten.

  “What is the plan, Valentin?”

  “Any moment now,” he said. “Just watch. You can’t miss it.”

  “They won’t do this, will they?”

  He did not break focus but from the floating graphics.

  “They have to. The truth compels them.”

  Her heart jumped. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we have exposed these generations for their lies. I shut my eyes until I met my brother. He has shown me the future we must have. As did you, Ophelia.”

  “And what is this future?”

  “James said it best. It’s the one we create after we tear down everything else.” He inhaled, as if breathing in the fragrance of the sweetest rose. “We will tear it down, Ophelia.”

  “But … he was speaking in metaphors. Yes? Not …”

  Valentin seemed at peace when he ignored her.

  “Here we go. Scramjets are beginning attack run.” A warning beacon called out. “They will be in position to fire in fifteen seconds.”

  “What? Why aren’t you doing anything? We have to …”

  Valentin pivoted to Ophelia. He placed a finger over his lips.

  “Watch. We will remember this the rest of our lives.”

  The initial blast shattered the dampening sky and filled the command deck with a fiery glow brighter than the sun. When the initial wave retreated, Ophelia saw the full magnitude.

  A crevasse opened in SkyTower, a firestorm hurling destruction outward, the concussion and debris obliterating anything in the vicinity. The warning beacon died when the Scramjets became ensnared in the mouth of the nuclear wave.

  “No. No.” Ophelia whimpered. “Not this way.”

  The storm sliced through the tower in an outward radius. Wispy cloud banks glowed yellow and orange.

  “Hold on,” Valentin said. “Here it comes.”

  The concussion shook the Passaic Dawn. Command deck controls flickered for a few seconds then stabilized along with the ship.

  The storm expanded. Small ships in the tower’s “temperate travel zone” – shuttles, uplifts and cargo transports – burned and fell toward the Earth like lit matches.

  Horrified but unable to shy away, Ophelia looked far no
rth and south to realize what the Berserkers wrought. The blazing nuclear crevasse arrived at either horizon, racing to intersect the multiplying eastern devastation.

  The hybrids took a slice out of SkyTower in seconds. Even her worst nightmares never went this far, never dared to imagine monsters of such scale. She was trying to fool herself again.

  We should have killed them.

  “Horrible,” Valentin said. “Beautiful. Necessary. Remember this, Ophelia. You were here when the future began.”

  She expected to see madness in his eyes, but Valentin instead looked to be in love. She saw no disquiet in his soul as he fingered the controls and set a new course.

  “We have to be quick. The fires are dying but the tower might come down anytime now.”

  “Wait, what? We’re going in?”

  He smiled. “James and Rayna are waiting.”

  “No. How could they have survived? I thought …”

  Valentin opened his DR29 and tossed it into the navigation cylinder. Ophelia studied the schematics. Nine levels of SkyTower were wiped away, save for the outer girders. Two levels above the base of the devastation, a pair of red blips activated.

  “We’ll do great things,” Valentin told her. “All three of us. I’m sure we could use your help. What do you say, Ophelia?”

  As the Passaic Dawn accelerated, Ophelia buried her face in her hands and cried.

  62

  A S THE WORLD ENDED AROUND HIM, James wrapped Rayna in a loving, protective embrace. They calmed the storm within as it raged outward, spreading feverish destruction in every direction. Unlike the first time he unleashed the Jewel’s intensity on Earth, James directed the nuclear torrent to open its blossoms to the western and north quadrants of his family’s compound, while Rayna consumed the southern and eastern zones.

  He saw humans atomized in a blink then the wealth and trappings of god-wannabes turned to ash and hurled out among the clouds, left to fall as gray showers upon the surface. He heard the Transport Core shatter and implode, the furious flames spiraling for miles up the series of great lifts connecting Earth to low orbit. The lifts exploded, crackled, and fell, an arsenal of fiery debris tumbling down shaft.