Sins of Angels (The Complete Collection)

by Larkin, Matt

  She reentered the shuttle, popped open the power console, and ejected one of the cells. She held it gingerly. Of course, she knew it wasn’t volatile. The casing made it perfectly safe to handle. And yet, well, it was a fusion cell.

  She brought it back to David, who went to work trying to feed power into the console.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Not as well as Phoebe would,” he said, “but I think so.”

  “You think so,” Knight said over the comm. “I didn’t come through all this to get irradiated or blown up.”

  Rachel looked around the hangar, but couldn’t see Knight. He must have moved toward the door. He had to have heard David’s warning about decompression. There was no way he’d… “Knight?” Better safe than sorry. “What are you doing?”

  “Watching for threats.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re alone down here. This thing has been buried for at least six hundred years.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Got it,” David said a minute later. He pressed the console, and the hangar doors slid closed.

  “You are going to be able to get those open again, right?” Knight said. “Because I wasn’t planning to move in.”

  “Aye, lad, I—”

  “Dana to McGregor,” Phoebe’s voice cut in over the comm.

  David rose and walked with Rachel toward the exit. “What is it, Phoebe?”

  “Gehennan ships are moving in on us, sir. Almost a hundred of them, and a pair of Jericho cruisers are with them.”

  “David, we can’t let them have this thing,” Rachel said.

  “Aye. Phoebe, hold them off as long as you can, on authority of Mizraim.” He turned to Rachel. “Lass, whatever you’re going to do here, better make it fast.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Nothing in all my studies, in all my experiences, could have prepared me for stepping into the Ark. Or for what lay inside.

  The corridors were too empty, too still. Every step Rachel took felt like it vibrated for kilometers. They were running out of time. It had taken more than half an hour to find the bridge, and by now Phoebe was probably in a firefight with too many ships for even the Logos to handle.

  The bridge was surprisingly empty. It was a circular room, with a pair of freestanding consoles, and some markings on the same wall as the door. Knight had gone off exploring the rest of the ship.

  David ran around as if seeking something, exuding waves of nervousness that nearly sent her own anxiety spiking. “I can’t read any of these symbols,” he complained again.

  Rachel tried to tune everything else out. She had to think. She’d seen some of these same markings in the Sefer Raziel. The Angels had their own language, their own symbology they’d never taught humankind.

  “David,” she said, following a string of symbols to a panel on the wall. “David!”

  He hurried over.

  “This ship probably uses a Singularity Drive, too, right?”

  “Aye. Anything this size would have to.”

  “And a singularity isn’t just going to go out, right?”

  He shuddered. “Small ones can, eventually, but one powerful enough to drive this… I doubt it. The Angels would have set up some kind of matter feed.”

  “So if this ship is like the Logos, then the power is off because…”

  He nodded. “Because the converter is off. There’s a power source, but nothing using it. They must have turned off the converter to make the ship harder to detect.”

  Right. She pressed on the panel, and it slid down into the wall. A keypad covered in Angelic symbols rested behind the panel.

  “All right, Angelologist,” David said. “What does it mean?”

  Rachel turned on the tablet for the Sefer and flipped the pages until she found a matching code. Was it that easy? Had Raziel really meant for anyone with the Sefer to be able to restart the Ark?

  Only one way to find out. The pad displayed sixteen symbols. Rachel chose the seven indicated in the Sefer. Something in the distance creaked.

  “What was that?” Knight said over the comm.

  “Just hold on,” she answered.

  A pulse like a heartbeat rocked through the ship. And then again. The walls throbbed, the floor beneath her feet vibrated. A warm illumination spilled out from crystal panes in the ceiling, lighting the bridge.

  “Angels above, is this thing alive?” David asked.

  An organic ship—hibernating until now. Waiting for someone to wake it. Rachel walked toward the center of the bridge and the floor opened up, pushing out a seat. The back narrowed heavily in the center as it reached up. She ran a finger over the slick seat. A seat for a being with wings.

  She sat down and a holographic display sprang up all around her, showing the surrounding space. Angelic symbols filled the air and gauges popped up on the wall like it was a screen. Rachel touched a symbol she thought meant life, and a chime sounded. A second later, air whooshed throughout the ship.

  “Angels above,” David said again. “This is breathable air. Where did it come from?”

  Rachel pressed her hand through the holographic image of the ship itself, and when she lifted it, the ship rocked, breaking from centuries of rock built around it.

  Knight rushed back onto the bridge. “What in the holy universe is going on?”

  Rachel glanced at him. “We’re about to change the universe.” She smiled. “Hold on to something.”

  She wrapped her hand into the holoship and lifted it up, and the Ark launched into space. A hundred other ships appeared in her holographic display.

  “What’s happening?” David said.

  They couldn’t see the hologram? Rachel saw a symbol for vision and passed her hand through it. The front wall became a screen revealing the battle. A Jericho cruiser was no match for a Sentinel battleship. But a pair of cruisers backed by dozens of Gehennan fighters might be.

  Atmosphere vented out from multiple hull breaches on the Logos. It had cost the Gehennans dearly and the wreckage of dozens more fighters littered space, but more people were going to die before this was over.

  Rachel reached into a holographic image of a plasma ball. The ship was speaking to her, speaking to her mind. It was alive, almost sentient. Telling her how to use it. She flung her wrist toward one of the cruisers and a stream of plasma erupted from the Ark. It took only seconds for the stream to cut through the cruiser’s shields and breach the hull.

  From there the beam carved a line down the middle of the Jericho ship and the entire thing exploded. The other ship hesitated only a moment before turning to flee. The Gehennans followed suit quickly.

  Rachel leaned back in the chair. It was becoming part of her. She could feel its presence in her mind, unraveling its mysteries slowly. It was like the moment between dreaming and waking, as she became half-conscious of infinite possibilities.

  Time passed, she couldn’t say how much, and David was shaking her. “Love? Are you all right? Rach?”

  She nodded, and shrugged. The moment she rose the hologram faded. “How long was I…?”

  “A few hours,” he said. “Knight wanted to wake you already, but I was worried what would happen. Still, we couldn’t wait any more.”

  Her stomach rumbled. God, she was starving. The room spun a little, and David caught her. She felt Knight there watching, his emotions too jumbled, too conflicted for her to make out clearly.

  “You need rest, lass. We should go back to the Logos.”

  “I’ll rest on the Ark—there are plenty of quarters.” There were so many places here she had only begun to explore, so many things she hadn’t even considered. So much her head felt like it would blast apart.

  She shook herself and turned to Knight. “Thank you. For everything, Knight. You did more than I ever could have asked.”

  He shifted, his sudden discomfort at the praise almost knocking her over. “Yeah, whatever.”

  She smiled. “A lot of bad things happened
to you on that planet, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Bad things happen to everyone on that planet.”

  “Maybe I can make some small part of that better.”

  Knight raised an eyebrow, and Rachel sat back in the chair. The hologram popped back up, and she directed the ship toward Gehenna.

  “Rach, whatever this is, can’t it wait?” David said. “You’re barely holding yourself up.”

  True, but she needed to do this. Her mind delved deeper into the ship, reaching its core consciousness. Symbols sprang before her face, and she chose more and more. Every selection had to be made carefully, but the Ark knew what she wanted. She could feel it.

  The ship pulsed, and something fired into Gehenna’s atmosphere. The clouds covering the planet convulsed, releasing bursts of thunder. Then they began to break up. Painfully slowly, the atmosphere began to change, the sky turning from black and red to blue. A chain reaction began converting the toxic fumes to breathable air. In a few hours, anyone would be able to walk outside without a breather.

  David fell to his knees, watching the screen before him. “Angels preserve us… How…?”

  Knight snorted. “Don’t think this means I want to go back there.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  October 14th, 3096 EY

  The Ark is mine and I find myself reluctant to hand it over to Galizur. I know what I was hired to do, but somehow I fear QI will abuse this technology as badly as Jericho would have. There is more here than I ever imagined. It is not just the knowledge to reshape the universe, but a ship with the power to do so directly. And while I cannot allow it to fall into the wrong hands, I am left with the lingering question of what right I have to this relic.

  Sometimes, Rachel felt the Ark in her mind, even when she slept. It spoke to her, whispering things she couldn’t quite remember on waking. It carried with it the sense of vast ancientness, of a being that had watched stars being born and seen them go out.

  David said he could feel its presence, too. Not Knight, though. He claimed not to feel anything. Maybe only Psychs could pick it up.

  He walked by her side now, as she explored the depths of the ship. They’d spent days doing this and only scratched the surface. David had returned to the Logos, feeling he had to report the situation to the Tabernacle. Rachel had followed the Sentinel ship through the Conduit and away from Gehenna, not eager to be around if Jericho came back in force.

  David had agreed to let her keep the Ark, for now. Which was just as well. She had no intention of handing it over to them, although she’d allowed Leah to come aboard to study this strange organic tech. This was centuries, maybe millennia ahead of the organic tech Jericho had developed. The technology to build the Ark itself, to say nothing of its power or knowledge, that alone would be worth killing over.

  “Do you still want me to take you to New Rome?” she asked Knight.

  He grunted. “I suspect you may need protection in the future.”

  She tried not to smile. She was getting used to having him around anyway. She could feel he still wanted her, but beneath it, some part of him had accepted their relationship as it was. And she was glad of it—he was the friend she needed. And he was right, she was likely to need him again.

  “Besides,” he said. “It’s expensive to live there. I assume you’re going to keep paying me.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes, then paused before a door. It didn’t open when she approached, as most on the ship did. She pressed her hand on the panel and it revealed a keypad with symbols again. Odd. She thought she’d opened all the locks from the bridge.

  She tapped in the same code she’d used to activate the ship. The symbols spun, whirring, and something inside the door clicked. Then it whooshed open, revealing a chill chamber saturated with mist. The chamber went back farther than she could see, and Knight felt suddenly pensive. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, then stepped through himself.

  She followed him inside, and he wove through the mist to a large tube of some sort, iced over. Knight wiped the frost away with his glove, revealing the contents.

  At first she thought it was a person. Then she stepped up, closer. The being inside was humanoid, but had cybernetic… wings. Other pieces of machinery poked through its frozen flesh in a few places.

  It was impossible. This couldn’t be real.

  More tubes lined the chamber. Rachel ran down the hall, wiping away the frost of a few more.

  A cold seeped inside her chest, darker and more freezing than the mist sweeping over her legs.

  More than a hundred cryogenic chambers.

  And inside each—an Angel.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  November 10th, 3096 EY

  I have escaped Gehenna in the Ark of the Angels. What I had thought would be a computer is so much more—a living ship with the power of the Angels. More disturbing, the Angels themselves are frozen within. I am left with more questions than ever.

  The cryogenic chamber seemed to stretch on endlessly. Row after row of frozen Angels. Rachel’s breath misted the air as she walked through the hall for the thousandth time since she’d found this place three weeks back. Six hundred years ago the Angels had vanished without explanation, leaving mankind to their own devices. Some claimed they had returned to heaven now that mankind was safe from the Adversary. Some claimed they had traveled into deep space, beyond the Local Group.

  All were lies.

  They had frozen themselves in suspended animation.

  Why?

  These days, the Ark touched her mind even in her waking hours. It showed her the wonders of the universe—the birth of stars and nebulae, the death of whole planets as stars went nova. But it offered no answers for the question that burned her mind, night and day.

  Why would the Angels freeze themselves?

  The Ark supposedly held all the secrets of the Angels, but after three weeks, she had yet to unlock even a fraction of them. She paused before a frozen Angel. She looked human—almost. Cybernetics poked through her skin, including, most obtrusively, massive metal wings.

  The First Commandment said, ‘Man Shall Not Alter the Form of Man’. That apparently didn’t apply to Angels cybering themselves. What would the rest of humanity think when they learned Angels were cyborgs?

  Further down the hall, she could hear Leah examining one of the … creatures.

  Rachel wore a thick woolen parka in here, as did Leah. Rachel wasn’t quite sure what to make of the other woman. Apparently she was David’s best friend, except he’d never mentioned her, not that Rachel remembered.

  Leah Suzuki was an Amphie, a human whose ancestors were engineered by the Angels for subsea mining. And that was fine. Rachel had no problem with any of the Races of Man—except for maybe the Gog and Magog. What was more unsettling was Leah’s guarded, but definite feelings for David. Whenever he was around, Rachel could feel that hint of jealousy coming off Leah, that whisper of a desire the Amphie probably couldn’t even admit to herself.

  As an empath, Rachel sometimes found herself privy to things she’d rather not know.

  Rachel pushed her hair back under the parka. Had the two of them slept together? Best friends in the service together … It shouldn’t surprise her if they had. It wasn’t like she and David had been together at the time. Void, she wasn’t sure they were together now. He’d rescued her from Sentinel custody—from torture under Captain Waller—and she could feel his love for her. But everything with David was so complex. The very history they shared made it that much more difficult to move on. And so she pretended it was just sex between them. He wanted more, she knew he did. David had always wanted children, and even this morning the subtle pressures he put on her wore her down.

  He talked fondly of helping raise his youngest sister on New Rome. After his mother had fallen in the line of duty, David had to help his father keep the family together.

  Of course, she knew she was being unfair to him. To take him into her bed and embrace him in the night, then push
him away in the morning.

  Like she’d done to Knight. She’d slept with him, then spurned him in favor of David. She had a habit of hurting those closest to her, but for the life of her she couldn’t seem to break free of it.

  How could she settle down with David when there was so much more to do? When humanity was still mired in its own self-delusion and ignorance?

  She approached Leah and knelt beside the Sentinel. “Learned anything?”

  “From what I can tell,” Leah said, “they’re basically human. Take away the cybernetics and possibly divergent evolution, and we could be related. I can’t get a proper genetic sample without opening one up, of course.”

  “Can you do that?”

  Leah shrugged. “I could probably wake one up, yes.”

  “Wake him up? Void no!” Rachel stood. “No way in the holy universe do we want those … those things awake, Leah.”

  “But they’re Angels …” Genuine confusion wafted off Leah, which only made it all the more irritating.

  “Exactly.” Rachel thumped the cryo tube with her finger. “These pricks saved us, right? And then used that as an excuse to rule us with an iron first for the next two and a half millennia. They indoctrinated mankind to believe only what we were told, and then they left us to our own devices. And now we are still, six hundred years later, mired in traditions enforced on us!” She thumped the tube again. “All the chaos and death in the universe right now, we can trace back to them. They gave Mizraim and Asherah a reason for war.”

  Leah smiled, shaking her head. Damn her and her smug amusement, anyway. “He said you were like that.”

  Oh, so David had talked about her, did he? He’d discussed her with Leah. It meant she’d been on his mind this whole time? Just like he’d been on hers. So why couldn’t she just settle down with him and move on? She couldn’t think of a single good reason for torturing herself. Except for her mission …