Sins of Angels (The Complete Collection)

by Larkin, Matt

  “No!”

  Behind him, he heard crewmen fall to their knees. Others continued firing on the Ark, having little effect.

  The planet’s crust grew molten. And a heartbeat later, the entire world detonated. Molten shards of asteroids—pieces of his home—impacted the Wheel and ravaged the kinetic shields.

  “Kill them!” David shouted. “Take that thing out!” He sent swarms of drones at the Ark, but they vanished from his displays faster than he could direct them.

  A Sentinel cruiser detonated, and immediately imploded. The Singularity Drive began to suck in a nearby destroyer.

  “Sir,” Phoebe said, “the Tabernacle has retreated into the Conduit. They’ve signaled full withdrawal.”

  “Fire both ion cannons at the Ark!”

  They had destroyed his world. He might have been born on Calneh, but New Rome was home. His father … His father and sister were down there. The whole damn Sanhedrin. The leaders of twenty-three galaxies … He couldn’t imagine even one would miss the chance to meet the Angels. And they …

  Ion streams impacted the Ark, but minimal damage registered.

  “The Tabernacle is right,” Knight said. “Get us out of here.”

  “We’re staying! Continuous fire!” He should have listened to Rachel. He should have trusted her. She was right about the Angels. They weren’t saviors. They were monsters. They had eradicated a planet—almost a billion people, in an instant. No remorse.

  “The Wall Against Night is lost,” Phoebe reported. “I hate to agree with ninja boy … but …”

  “You want to run?” David shouted at her. “Let them get away with this?”

  “Yup. We’re losing power because of the ion cannons and—”

  Plasma bolts impacted them. A hull breach exploded on a lower deck, registering on his display.

  “We’ve lost enough people today, Captain,” she said.

  For an agonizing heartbeat he stared at the Ark with utter hatred. They should never have uncovered the monstrosity. He jerked the joystick, darting them around the Ark. The remaining Sentinel ships followed, and the Ark let them go.

  They had made their point.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN

  January 19th

  Even out on the fringes, I heard the news. New Rome gone. My home vanished in a ball of molten rock. My father lost, and I would never have the chance to reach him. Never have the chance to repair the rift between us. I had always thought one day I could home and show him I was right and he was wrong. And now he’s found that lesson far too late.

  Three times David tried to call Rachel. She did not answer. He prayed it was only anger that silenced her. He prayed the Angels were not looking for her as well. They would know she had been the captain of the Ark. Maybe they knew everything. And he had been blinded. Blinded by loyalty and tradition and the very indoctrination Rachel had accused him of.

  She was the most arrogant, self-righteous lass he’d ever met. And she’d been right. Did that justify her arrogance? Did that make it something else entirely?

  “Dana to McGregor. Sir, we’ve arrived at Gihon station.”

  David had dropped Rachel at Gihon. It was the last place he knew to look for her. The Sanhedrin were dead. Sentinel command was gone. No one had heard from the Tabernacle. Maybe the Ark had hunted it down and destroyed it as well. Maybe the Shekhinah was in hiding, deciding what to do about its former masters. Perhaps six hundred years of autonomy had made even the sentient computer leery of submission.

  He was on his own, and all he could think of was Rachel. He had let her leave, left her alone in this … chaos.

  He had no idea what to do anymore. He had no orders, and everyone was looking to him. Just as the people looked to the Sentinels to see them through the inferno threatening to engulf the entire universe. And he just didn’t know what to say to them.

  He tapped his comm. “You have command, Phoebe. I’m going aboard the station.”

  He almost ran down to the airlock. It buzzed, and opened onto a landing dock. The port was awash in civilian and military personnel, most seeming to be boarding outgoing transports with as much haste as possible. People dashed across the bridges, spilling goods and knocking each other over.

  One woman almost slipped over the rail. David grabbed her arm, saving her from a fall of twenty meters to the lower level.

  “Th-thank you,” she said.

  A siren sounded in the distance, announcing another departing ship. People were fleeing from everywhere, to everywhere. Because no one knew where safe was anymore.

  “Get to your ship,” he said. “Tell them to head for the outer galaxies. The Antila Dwarf, maybe.” That should put them well away from Asherah or Angels, for the moment.

  She nodded, and rushed off.

  There was a passage in the Codex, toward the end. Tremble in the wake of chaos, lest Hell should be unleashed. David had never dwelled on the passage, had never really understood it. Was this what they meant? That in failing to submit to their order, in embracing chaos, they would create a living hell?

  He pushed his way against the charging crowd, back toward the heart of the station. Gihon was a civilian transport station run by Manna Products. Fortunately, the corp hadn’t closed access to Mizraim citizens after the Conglomerate allied with Asherah. Maybe Manna wanted to play both sides. Or maybe it saw the reality—that a station near the Asheran border, but within Mizraim space, would lose all business if they stopped refitting Sentinel ships and allowing citizen transport here.

  He slapped the buzzer to the head office.

  A moment later, a security guard opened the door. The man was an Emite—big, strong, and a bit too submissive for this kind of work. Still, if someone ordered him to, he could cause serious harm.

  “Can I help you, officer …?”

  “Captain. David McGregor. I need to see whoever is in charge.”

  “That would be me,” a man said from behind the Emite. “Let the captain through.”

  The Emite stepped aside, revealing the speaker—an Amphie who had to be well past a hundred. David might have placed him approaching twice that, but he suspected part of it was just fatigue lines on the face of an overworked old man. A man who should have been home, bouncing great-grandchildren on his knee.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “I need to find someone. She passed through this station a while back.”

  The old Amphie shrugged. “Lots of people do. But if you want a manifest, you need a warrant. You know that.”

  A warrant? Most places didn’t even bother asking Sentinels for warrants. It only served to irritate the officers, and everyone knew a Sentinel could easily obtain one. Except for right now. Maybe that was what the Amphie was thinking. Or maybe he was just trying to hold on to fragile regulations in an off rotation time.

  David scratched his head, then pointed out the door behind him. “Do you see what’s going on out there? You think this is the time to worry about station regulations or any of that shite?”

  “This station is owned by Manna Products, Captain. We are under their sovereignty.”

  So that was it. The Conglomerate must have told its people to cease cooperation with Sentinels.

  Well, there were two ways he could handle this. He’d start with the way that didn’t involve leaving the poor Emite unconscious on the floor.

  “All right, man, listen to this. A person I care a lot about is missing, right? You probably have people in the same situation. Now, I need to find her, and I need to do it right now.”

  The Amphie gnawed on his lower lip a moment, then made a sucking sound. “It’s off the record then?”

  “Aye.”

  At last the old man nodded, typed something on the console, and handed him a data chip. “Off with you, then.”

  David nodded at the man, then rushed back to the Wheel. He plugged the data chip into his personal console. It contained a manifest of everyone who had passed through the station in the las
t three months. Manna kept excellent records, he had to give them that. Trust a corp to always manage the bookkeeping. Never let a single credit slip away.

  “Scan all records for Rachel Jordan.”

  A second later she was displayed. Arrived on the Wheel of Law, and departed some days later, on the Anthem.

  “Query Sentinel database for all records on the Anthem.” A readout popped up on his display. “Summarize.”

  “The Anthem is a Unicorn-class transport ship commissioned by Quasar Industries in 3034 EY. It passed through a series of private owners, and is now registered to Captain Degana O’Malley.”

  “Pause.” O’Malley? “Any relation to Thomas O’Malley?”

  “Degana O’Malley is Thomas O’Malley’s younger sister.”

  David slapped his desk. That was it. Rachel was still working with the damn Seekers, wasn’t she? Which meant she had probably gone back to Eden.

  And that’s where he was going, too.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN

  Despite myself, I actually called Machaerus, the fortress station of the Redeemers. I called, hoping, whispering a silent prayer my father had been there. My prayers went unanswered. He is gone, and an entire world with him.

  Sometimes Knight actually missed living on the Ark. It had been so quiet. The massive Angel ship had housed a crew of only a few people, which meant he could walk for hours without seeing another person. There was a kind of peacefulness in that.

  Here, on board the Wheel of Law, everywhere he went there were Sentinels. And despite himself, he now respected them. But he missed his private dojo and his long walks through empty halls. Now, walking down the corridor back to his quarters, he passed another pair of officers. They offered him a terse nod and he returned it. Phoebe had been right, of course. Most Sentinels resented him being made an officer over them. They saw their route to duty—through the Academy, rising through the ranks one by one—as the only true way. They didn’t care about his time in the Gibborim, or that he had effectively been special forces for another military. And he couldn’t blame them. How well would Gibborim react to similar intrusion into their closed ranks?

  Knight buzzed his quarters. Even before the door opened, he knew something was wrong. The tortures Raziel had put him through had honed senses he’d never understood.

  Inside, Phoebe sat on his bunk, head in her hands. Her fingers weaved through her pink-white hair like she was trying to massage tension out of her scalp.

  She didn’t look up as he approached and sat down beside her. Knight had the sudden urge to jam a knife into whoever had put the girl in such a state. No one would ever hurt Phoebe. He would never allow that.

  He slipped his arm around her and took hold of her scalp, his fingers replacing hers in the massage. Even her head was comfortingly warm.

  She moaned slightly, and her head slumped.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “They, uh …” She sighed, and then pulled out of his grasp. Phoebe turned on the bed to look into his face. Her icy blue eyes darted around, like she was looking for something. “I was trained on Hazaroth, at the Academy, you know? Aaron and me. He died out there.”

  Right. Her brother died in a spacewalk accident. Knight watched her face, unsure what to say. Every day he thought he knew her a little bit better. But in times like this, he never had the right words. They always seemed to lurk on the edge of his mind. Other people had it so damn easy. To have grown up in worlds and times that taught them how to comfort others. To have had parents to give them an example to emulate.

  “We just got word … The crew doesn’t even know yet. The Angels destroyed Hazaroth, the Academy … Everything. I, uh … I guess they wanted to make a point about the price of defiance.”

  “God … Phoebe …” What could he possibly say to that? Hazaroth had to be a mixed memory for her. She’d lost her brother, but she’d also become a Sentinel there. And despite all the horrors that had happened to him on Gehenna, if the whole planet just disappeared, Knight would still grieve for it. It was where he had come from. It had brought him here. Whatever he was now, whatever good had arisen in him, it was at least in part because of where he came from.

  And Phoebe had lost that. She still had her homeworld—although even now she must be worrying over that. The Angels had destroyed New Rome, the capital of Mizraim. Next they had taken out the Sentinel Academy. The message was all too clear. There was no alternative to submission. There would be no compromise, no negotiation.

  Knight drew Phoebe into an embrace and held her close. What else could he do? Rachel would know what to say. She should never have left. Her decision to release Caleb without consulting anyone was beyond reckless. It was … selfish. Arrogant. All the things Knight himself had once been. So how much could he blame Rachel for it? She was the one who had helped him find himself. And now, she was Angels-knew-where, on her own. Maybe David knew, but the captain had shown little desire to discuss things with Knight.

  He blew out a long breath. “You’re not alone.”

  She chuckled, her shoulders shaking in his arms.

  Damn. He still didn’t have the right words.

  “Sometimes you surprise me,” she said. “Just when I think I have you all figured out, you finally manage to say the right thing.”

  “I … did?”

  She pulled away and punched his shoulder. “Yup, yup. Don’t make a habit of it. I might die of shock.”

  You’re not alone. It had been the right thing to say? It had just seemed so … obvious. Of course he would stay by her side. “Whatever comes, I will be here for you. You know that, right?”

  She leaned back against his chest, then pulled him down onto the bunk. She wrapped his arm around her side and lay there. Being pressed against her warmth was like curling up in front of heater—comfort seeping through ever centimeter of his body.

  “Yup, yup. I know it now.”

  Her warmth settled deep inside his chest, until he wondered if it wasn’t more than just the heat of her body. He had never been able to tell Shirin just how much he felt for her. He had never been able to say the words aloud. He had killed some of the fiercest enemies in the universe. He had fought an Angel with his bare hands. And the thought of trying to say it now left his stomach fluttering …

  He pressed his face close to her ear. “I love you.”

  “Hmmm. Obviously. What’s not to love? Void, I love me, too. I mean, I’m adorable.”

  She hadn’t pulled away. He’d told her—he’d finally said it. And she was still right there in his arms.

  “Hey,” she said a moment later. “You know, I love you too.”

  A long, deep sigh escaped him. And he let himself breathe, truly and freely.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN

  So I tried to reach my brother. Jeremiah would not speak to me. I am truly alone. Maybe that’s where I belonged from the beginning.

  Try not to think. That was the key.

  Apollo stood before him, face still covered by a hood. Caleb kept his own eyes forward, doing his damnedest to focus only on the task at hand. Not to consider his family, who Apollo already knew to use against him. Not to think of Rebekah, and risk making her a target, too. Not to consider what he’d gladly do to Apollo given half the chance.

  No. Think about what the man was saying. Nothing else.

  “The Asheran ship will arrive later today. You are to go aboard and take command. You will take the ship into the Expanse of Nod and meet with the Sons of Cain. They will assist you with a further task.”

  The … Expanse? Angels had forbidden access to the Expanse since … well, forever. Rumors and legends persisted there, stories of ships vanishing into the void. The Expanse was the domain of pirates and madman—those beyond even the fringes of civilization. And the Sons of Cain were the worst sort of pirates. Ruthless disciples who idolized a legendary murderer. They preyed on any they could, and retreated to a space not even Sentinels dared to tread.

  An
d that was where Apollo wanted him to go. Into the void. To meet with some off rotation gang that would likely slit his throat and sell his insides for a few credits on the black market. Not to mention the last Chairman died out there.

  And he had absolutely no choice. Apollo had made that clear already, and Caleb couldn’t afford to push the issue. Not while the Asheran—if that’s what the man was—had Caleb’s family as leverage. If Caleb had been able to take the Ark … No. Don’t think it. He glanced at the man, still unable to penetrate the darkness under that hood.

  “Is this really a wise course?”

  “Do not question me, Gavet. Go, and be prepared for an important mission.” At that, the man turned and left Caleb’s room.

  Caleb collapsed on his bunk. Angels above, what had he gotten himself into? Any illusion that he was in charge of his company had fled. Somehow, somewhere along the line, Apollo had taken control. He had made Caleb the Chairman of Jericho and rendered him nothing but a puppet.

  Caleb, be a good little dog and fetch the Ark. Caleb, make an alliance with Asherah. Caleb, go feed your liver to pirates in forbidden space.

  Bile rose in his throat, and he stumbled over to the washroom. He vomited into the toilet. His stomach continued to heave, even when nothing remained. And despite himself, he felt wetness building in his eyes.

  Fucking fantastic. Here he was, Chairman of Jericho, one of the most powerful men in the universe, puking and weeping like a teenage girl. He slapped the sink.

  Which accomplished nothing except making his hand sting. He pulled himself to his feet and washed his mouth, then his face. There was nothing to be gained by self-pity. He had wanted to build a luxurious future for himself and his family. He wanted power, and the perks that went along with it. Well, now he had it all. And along with it, he had gotten the intrigue and deception and sickening games that must always dwell in the halls of the mighty.