by Helen Allan
“We need to stop every single one of these transports,” she whispered.
“All in good time,” he murmured, “I need to get on board one first.”
“Jesus, you didn’t say anything about that. You said you wanted to see them, count them and if possible, see an itinerary of flight patterns.”
“Yes, that too,” he smiled briefly.
She glared at him for a moment, annoyed that once again he had not shared his full plans with her.
“Okaaaay,” she finally groaned, leading the way toward a carrier, he walking behind her, tethered by her Wonder Woman rope, “but if we survive, you are doing a goddess.”
“I will do no such thing,” he growled.
She embraced her friend warmly and laughed.
“How? How on Earth did you end up here?
“Uh, my God you feel so small and hot and beautiful – two years, two years I’ve waited to feel this body.”
“Raphael,” she punched him lightly on the shoulder and tried to unwrap herself from his arms and wings, “you’ve been here two years?”
He shrugged, “give or take.”
“But,” she shook her head, “I don’t understand. I jumped through right before Lokan was supposed to blow the gate, and I fell into a five-year gap. Judgment had almost given up waiting for me. Did you jump through another world’s gate?”
“No,” he looked guilty and turned to the bar at the side of her room to pour himself a drink.
“Raph,” she said sternly, “tell me.”
“Shit,” he ran his hands through his feathered hair, “Etienne and I followed you. We expected you would be pissed, but neither of us fancied staying once it became clear all the portals were going to be blown. The Angels had swayed the parliament, unbeknownst to most, us included. It was only a sheer fluke that I overheard a conversation with the army commander organising suicide missions for the other pilots, that I realised what was going to happen.”
“Oh no,” Sorrow groaned, “every portal was closed?”
“Every single one,” he nodded, “meaning our planet is most likely now plunged into a pogrom and/or civil war – neither of which Gabrielle, Etienne or myself wanted to stay around for.”
“Gabrielle is here?” Sorrow smiled; she missed her friend.
“No, she jumped to Earth, to your mother. Etienne and I followed you here – only you were not waiting to ream us when we landed, you were nowhere to be found. Instead, we found ourselves captured by incompetent lizards. They wanted to take us prisoner, but they were terrified of us. They gave us food, water and oxygen masks before they scurried off and we made our way here.”
Sorrow chortled, she knew all too well the lack of bravery the Nãga exhibited.
“And no one here questioned you suddenly turning up out of nowhere?”
“We were fortunate. We walked towards the sounds of a large battle, as you do,” he snorted, “and realised the portals were under attack. Etienne recognised Judgment, but I don’t think he saw us. Gharials grabbed us and forced us into a line with a half a hundred other human men, and we were all marched here.
“Although clearly,” Sorrow frowned, “you are not human.”
“No,” he laughed, “I was put in The Games, as a fighter, expected I suppose to be gored or eaten to death by any number of the fucking crazy things they wanted me to fight. But I was lucky that I had caught the eye of one of the goddesses, the guardian no less – and she bid a very high price to keep me not as a fighter, but as,” he wiggled his eyebrows up and down, “a lover.”
“Christ,” Sorrow shook her head, “and Etienne?”
“Same,” Raphael laughed, “but he was kept in The Games. He has survived through his fighting prowess and his wits. Obviously, he can’t compete with the renown I can command through my expertise in the bedroom – something you have yet to sample, but when you do…”
Sorrow snorted and poured herself a drink.
“So that is why Etienne is battling dragons on horseback?”
“It is part of his charm,” Raphael laughed, “his mistress likes to see him win, likes to show him off to all the other ladies, and likes to rake in the money. The highest bidder gets him for the night – the bidding, I understand, will start later this evening, silent auction, in the Glass Ballroom.”
“Indeed,” Sorrow smirked, “do you know, Raphael, that I have worked here for months, been paid for months, and yet never found anything I wanted to buy.”
“Oh, come on,” he shook his head, “you don’t see me for two years, still owe me a victory fuck I might add, but you plan to abandon me and bid on a little French man.”
“Oh, he is not little,” Sorrow snorted, “he tells me that all the time – so it must be true.”
“In all seriousness though,” Raphael said when they both stopped laughing, “we really need to get the fuck out of here.”
“I know,” she replied, all laughter gone from her voice, “but first I need to figure out how to get that torc off your necks.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“That is the mission I have given Judgment tonight. Bed a goddess and learn the secrets of the torcs. I guess we have to hope he gets lucky.”
“He will need more than luck if he is trying to weasel that information,” Raphael said dryly, “I tried for years and learned nothing.”
Sorrow put her drink down and frowned, she could only concern herself with one thing at a time, and right now, she had an auction to attend.
“Mon Dieu,” Etienne smiled, kissing both her cheeks repeatedly, “but you are a sight for sore eyes.”
“So, I guess you are not sorry you were purchased for the evening by a mere Earthborn?” she chuckled, resting her head against his chest for a moment and allowing herself a second to feel safe within his arms.
“You have no idea,” he groaned.
Laughing, she pulled away and walked to the bar at the side of her room to pour them both drinks.
“What have you learned, Etienne?”
All business, he got straight to the point, answering as he so often did, without her having to quantify what she wanted to know.
“The Gharials are brought in, operated on and sent to The Fist. There are no male gods here, the red leaders are born here, the findailes are brought in and operated on, much like the Gharials before being sent out to war – and the only way out of here is to steal a spacecraft. Unfortunately, neither our winged friend nor I know how to fly them.”
“And the torcs?”
“My darling girl, if I knew how to get this off my neck you and I would not be meeting here right now.”
“Right,” she grimaced, “so why are they still making you fight in the games, given your, well, obvious accomplishments in the bedroom.”
“Don’t tell me you bid so high because you seek to sample my charms, finally?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I am, as we ascertained some time ago, ma cherie, sterile. The human men who are usually retained here for pleasure are not. This is the only reason I can possibly think of. We were tested as soon as we arrived here and separated into groups. Several men with me were sent to The Fist, never to return, I have no idea what became of them.”
“I do,” Sorrow shuddered, thinking of the Findailes large appetites.
“But I was not sent, after one of the goddesses caught me winking at her and decided to have a little fun and put me in The Games. Fortunately, my dragon-hunting and monster slaughtering skills are, apparently, second to none – who would have thought?”
“Nothing you do surprises me,” Sorrow shook her head and laughed gently. “But tell me, have you seen Shu? Is she the guardian?”
“Well, this is something interesting,” Etienne smiled, sitting on the edge of the bed and patting it for Sorrow to join him as he crossed his long legs and sipped his drink; “the guardian is just a normal god, voted in I think, I’m not sure about that. But as for Shu, that crazy bitch is dead.”
“No!” Sorrow exclaimed, her eyes wide in surprise.
“Oh yes,” Etienne chuckled, sipping his drink, “it seems she had a little disagreement with her dear brother many hundreds of years ago, and he killed her. Dipped her in gold, actually, and left her as a lasting reminder to others in the centre of the city.”
“A disagreement over what, I wonder?” Sorrow mused.
“That I cannot tell you,” Etienne smiled, “but I imagine it has something to do with a certain breeding program that seems to be going on right under the noses of the gods which they either refuse to see or simply have no clue about. That and the fact I believe the crazed twin may have sent all the male gods initially as leaders of the Gharial, but they died in battles – hence needing the red leaders. I have heard nothing to suggest they exist elsewhere, and many of the gods mourn the loss of their partners – still others hope they will return someday.”
“Well,” Sorrow nodded, smiling as he took her hand and held it while she talked, “you are correct, the gods have no clue their eggs are being used to form red leaders. I wouldn’t have believed it either until I saw the genetic manipulation that took place in order to form the red leaders. They are not just Earthborn like I am; their DNA is altered with strands from several species. They are a mixed bag of genes, mostly human, but others too, the ova of the gods though, are necessary for the mix. It is a highly secret world in the breeding areas though; I have been working for the past months in the infirmary – it is a closed world, separate and hidden and the security is ridiculous.”
“So,” Etienne shuddered, “have you told Judgment that he is not purely Earthborn, but a mix of any number of aliens? Which, I might add, might explain why he is such a bastard.”
“No,” Sorrow ignored his jibe, “I’ve meant to sit down with him and flesh out a whole heap of information, but we have not had any time so far, and to tell you the truth he is changed.”
“How so?”
“He was always reticent to share information,” Sorrow said quietly, thinking through her words carefully as she spoke, “but I put that down to his subterfuge on Avalona over who he really was. Here though,” she shook her head, “he is equally as secretive and very powerful. He commanded the respect of The Fist and the insurgents. I can’t help but think I don’t really know the real him at all. We are working together ostensibly to overthrow the Gharial, but I feel like I am simply an add-on and that he doesn’t fully trust me. I don’t really know what he plans much of the time.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I do,” she said, haltingly, “I guess, yes, I do.”
“And is your judgement, excuse the pun, clouded ma cherie?”
“No,” she shook her head, “I no longer feel that way towards him. I’m thinking clearly.”
“Then you trust him,” Etienne said, “I will remain if you don’t mind, somewhat sceptical. But either way, we must figure out a way to get out of here and join this revolution.”
“Yes. Right now though, Judgment’s revolutionaries are being hunted by The Fist after he was betrayed by one of his own and I broke them all out of prison.”
“That’s my girl,” Etienne laughed, shaking his head, “so where is your red leader now?”
“He’s paying the piper,” Sorrow snickered, “he is sleeping with a goddess who requested his company and trying to find out about the torcs.”
“No chance,” Etienne shook his head.
“We shall see,” Sorrow frowned.
7
“Judge, if you are going to do this, do it now!” Sorrow shouted as the lasers continued to fire directly at them where they sat, strapped into the control room of the spacecraft, and she saw a much larger, cannon-like weapon, being wheeled into place by the Gharial airport guards.
“I’m getting there,” he gritted, as the spacecraft hovered just above the ground for an interminable time before shooting straight up into the air and crashing through the roof of the hangar.
Sorrow closed her eyes as the craft careered left, then hard right, and looked like it was about to slam into the ground before Judgment regained control at the last minute and shot them into the clouds.
“Impressive flying,” Raphael snorted, once they were clear of the laser cannon fire from the ground.
“Shut up,” Judge growled, turning the craft a hard right, in the opposite direction to the mountain retreat the resistance had once used as their base.
Etienne, his knuckles white where they gripped his chair, looked across at Sorrow and shook his head.
“Trust Judge, you said. He knows how to remove torcs, you said, he knows how to fly, you said.”
“We are in the sky, aren’t we?” Sorrow frowned, “and your neck is free of the torc.”
“Yes, and your little friend the chauffeur is free of this world,” he shook his head once more and turned his face from her, ostensibly looking out the windscreen as they flew.
Sorrow swallowed hard. Etienne was right, this plan was half-baked at best, and she had trusted, once again, in Judgment without seeking all the details of his strategy. But they were free, and they did have a spaceship now – so not all was lost.
“So, tell me,” Raphael said, trying to lighten the mood, “how exactly did you get the information out of the hag about how to remove the torcs?”
“I didn’t,” Judge muttered, concentrating on his flying.
“I beg your pardon?” Etienne asked quietly, his voice deadly.
“I said, I didn’t.”
“Then how did you know to use the atomiser.”
“A hunch.”
“Are you saying you risked our lives on a hunch?” Etienne growled.
Judgment shrugged. “You wanted to leave The Finger. One way or the other you were going to leave, either in a casket, roasted by a dragon…the options were endless. I figured you were willing to take the chance.”
“Wait,” Sorrow held up her hand, “you were supposed to fuck the information out of the goddess. What the hell were you doing all those hours?”
“I beat the information out of her,” he shrugged, “what little information she had. Then I took a long bath.”
Etienne and Raphael shared a worried look, Sorrow said nothing for a moment, sickened. She knew she had risked the lives of both her friends with her blind trust of Judgment, and even though he had come through and rescued them, there was a lesson to be learned here. They were still expendable as far as he was concerned.
“So, wait,” she said quietly, “when you shot the torc off the chauffeur, and missed and turned him into a puddle, you were, even then, determined to continue to try on my friends, despite not even knowing if it would work?”
He sighed.
“The goddess told me she had seen a torc blown off a human in battle at The Games one year – the man had survived. I figured there was a 50-50 chance it would work. It would have worked on the chauffeur if he hadn’t squeaked and tried to move at the last minute.”
“He was my friend,” Sorrow said quietly, “he didn’t even want to lose his torc or leave The Finger, he was playing the guinea pig as a favour.”
“He played the pig because I had a gun pointed at him,” Judgment snorted, “he had no choice. Your slave and the bird are free; we have much to discuss and much to plan – there is no point looking backwards.”
“You are an interesting ally,” Raphael chuckled.
Etienne said nothing, but Sorrow noted the deadly look on the Frenchman’s face and the way his jaw clenched. She hoped he would wait until they landed before hitting Judgment which, if she knew her friend, and she did, was quite inevitable.
“I so wanted to hear her voice,” Sorrow muttered, pushing her chair away from the aircraft console in frustration.
“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Judgment shrugged.
“It was worth a try, ma mie,” Etienne said, patting Sorrow’s leg and scowling at Judgment, “but it seems the pods can be linked via intercom, not regular airsh
ips like this one. I imagine the distance between here and the Earth is very far.”
“Yes, but I would have liked to have known Gabrielle got back there safely, and to get Mum’s advice on how to proceed from here.”
“Well, I’m not sure what your mother would have said. But certainly, your Uncle Jamie can be paraphrased. He only ever had one solution to all the problems with the gods,” Etienne chuckled.
“And what was that?” Judgment asked.
“Nuke the lot of them,” Etienne smirked.
Sorrow sighed and stood up, meaning to leave, when she saw the expression on Judgment’s face, and the face of his new second in command.
“No.”
“It makes sense, Sorrow.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“I have already thought. It will be the final solution to all the Gharial, the gods, Tefnut. If we can pull it off it will come as a complete surprise,” Judgement said, nodding to Ib at some unspoken thought.
“You risk killing everything and everyone on this planet.”
“We can steal airships and escape - we already have this one. We know Tefnut has the obliterative weaponry that could do the job – he has threatened planets with it before. It is very similar to nuclear, only more advanced. We can drop the bomb from the air. If we do it while the portals are open it will blow them to kingdom come too – no one will ever enter or exit this planet via portal again – the poisoned air will prevent future colonisation. In the long run, we are saving this world.”
“No. Etienne, talk some sense into him.”
Etienne leaned back in his flight chair and studied Judgment, scrutinising his expression, before spinning his chair back to Sorrow.
“The plan has merit,” he sighed.
“No, it fucking does not,” Sorrow growled, “what of the local species, the Nãga, would you destroy an entire civilisation? We are no better than Tefnut or Seth if we go down this path.”
“Sorrow,” Judgment frowned, “there is no option. There are hardly any of these Nãga creatures, if any, surviving on this planet, I should know I have lived here all my life, taken part in hunts, forays, battles the length and breadth of this land.”