Gods and The City

by Steve Statham

  He stepped into the dim light beneath the overhang of the arch and entered the main tunnel that led into the UnderWorks.

  He made good time. Virtually no one descended more than a few levels into the tunnels. There was always the chance that one of the Fixers might stop him and ask inconvenient questions, but there were so few Fixers wandering the deep places anymore that Vance figured the odds were in his favor.

  There were also the eyes of Tower, of course. The god could see anywhere inside The City, or so they said in the temples.

  But Vance figured his presence in the remote places would not be seen as unusual.

  And surely a god must have more important things to do.

  Vance checked his chronometer and message feed to make sure that no one had claimed victory in the challenge. He picked up his pace, descending several levels quickly. He knew this route well from his mining excursions. At length the tunnel began to curve upward and outward from the footprint of the dome.

  He broke into a run once more as he neared the secret he had uncovered a season ago.

  He stopped at a junction of smaller tunnels. The furthest one on his right was an unlit, twisting corridor that seemed more natural crevice than smoothly-polished tunnel. He followed it back into the dark recesses, stepping over fallen stones and loose gravel until he reached his destination.

  He stood facing an ancient circular hatch.

  The patina of centuries of neglect dulled its surface. In the center was a hand-wheel for opening and closing, like in some surface ship from antiquity.

  A wolfish smile spread across Vance's face.

  As soon as he had discovered it, Vance had rushed to the public archives to research the early history of the founding of The City. After many days of reading through mundane journals and schematics, he pieced together what he had found.

  All the hatches to the surface of Skyra had long since been automated, with biometric scanners and other security features incorporated. But in the days when the gods and the 4,020 survivors of the calamities had first landed on this small moon and gratefully spilled out onto the surface, they had immediately established underground warrens to block out the rain of hard radiation from space. The old manual hatches were built for the first airlocks to these sub-surface quarters.

  That had been nearly one thousand years ago and the manual hatches had long since been replaced.

  Or, in this case, forgotten.

  Vance understood that this could not have been an accident. Tower didn't miss things like this. The hatch could only have been left in place because it was frozen shut from age, as solid and unmoving as the surrounding rock walls themselves.

  He had some theories about just how frozen it truly was.

  He set down his backpack and pulled out the tools that he used for polishing stone and shaping dense materials. He worked swiftly, first applying lubricating oils to the hinges and hand-wheel latch.

  Next, Vance attached portable heating strips around the circumference of the hatch and set them to gradually increase in temperature.

  Lastly, he pulled out a highly specialized tool. When searching the caverns and outside cliffs for prized stone to use in his furniture, he often employed a localized sonic wave amplifier to separate the targeted stone from the lesser rock surrounding it. He was guessing here, not knowing the precise points where the hatch would be frozen, but he carefully passed the sonic amplifier over the likely places of adhesion.

  He stood and leaned on the latch handle, testing for any movement, but it still felt as solid as stone.

  Vance returned to his steady passes with the sonic tool, focusing on the handle. He forgot about his competitors in the challenge. The priority now was just opening the hatch and testing his pressure suit.

  He worked methodically, adjusting the heat strips, applying more penetrating oils, testing various angles with the wave amplifier.

  The second time he leaned on the handle, he could feel a slight shudder in the mechanism.

  He put his weight into it and felt the first hint of movement in the hatch. Slowly, hinges groaning in protest, it opened. He caught a whiff of stale air, undisturbed for centuries.

  He tossed a light globe into the gloom. As it rolled across the floor it illuminated a three-meter deep section between the inner hatch and an outer one leading to Skyra's surface. Two stone benches lined the walls where the earliest residents of The City had sat while the native atmosphere was cycled out and air pumped in.

  A surge of adrenalin raced through his body.

  Might actually win this challenge after all.

  He loaded his tools into his backpack and placed it inside the airlock. Vance then muscled the hatch into place behind him and turned the handle to lock it.

  Under the dim glow of the light globe, Vance pulled out his hand-built pressure suit and gave it a final inspection. He sat on one of the stone benches and slid his legs into the suit, stood, and pulled it up to his shoulders. He pushed his arms through the sleeves and pulled the soft helmet over his head, securing it at the neck. He pressurized the suit and for the next few minutes ran through the safety checklist he had prepared.

  He smiled in satisfaction. The suit was secure.

  Vance moved into position at the outer hatch. He was prepared to repeat the same laborious procedure to open the door, but when he tested the handle the outer hatch opened as if had been freshly lubed the day before.

  "Thank the gods for Skyra's oily atmosphere," he muttered under his breath.

  Vance stepped out of the airlock and onto the surface of Skyra.

  He knew that he should hurry, that he was still engaged in a challenge where time was of the essence. But he couldn't help himself; he had to stop and take in his surroundings.

  The scale of it all was astonishing.

  He was approximately two hundred meters beyond the outer shell of The City. He looked up, tracking the curve of the dome. It towered over him like a smooth, glittering mountain. Its sides ran into the distance in both directions like endless walls.

  The spires of The City shimmered through the semi-transparent outer shell.

  But what shocked him into silence was the sight of Lodias rising above the horizon. The gaseous planet was so immense, so powerful, that it dwarfed the majesty of The City. Its clouds swirled in furious combat, clashes of color that painted half the sky. Vance felt for a moment that the sheer might of the colossal world would lift him from the ground and carry him across the void and into the planet's embrace.

  It was several minutes before he shook his gaze from the hypnotically beautiful landscape. He remembered his goal and turned away, back toward the airlock and the rocky terrain beyond. He could select any object from outside the dome to win the challenge, but he had a particular thing in mind.

  He approached the cliffs surrounding the airlock and followed them to his right, inspecting the layers of strata. He found what he was looking for approximately one hundred and twenty meters from the airlock—a rope of wine-colored gemstone that snaked vertically between the sediments like an artery.

  Vance pulled out his sonic wave amplifier and switched it to the highest setting. He identified the segment of gemstone he wanted and methodically worked the amplifier around it until it fell loose into his hand. By itself, the stone was of no great value, but it would be a prized detail when incorporated into one of his tables, or perhaps a headboard for a bed. He hadn't decided yet.

  Vance shadowcast a secure group message to the other Affiliation members. The entire message consisted of an image of the stone in his hand, with the exterior of the dome shining in the background.

  Over the link he heard the groans of his compatriots.

  He laughed softly and made his way back to the hatch. He opened it, then turned to take one last look at the dome.

  Something in the sky caught his eye. He craned his neck to view it—a bright point of light. Skyra's atmosphere was thin, and the stars shone with a clear brilliance most of the time.


  This light appeared close; in fact, he could make out a bright disc at the center. Vance knew the constellations and local bodies visible in the Lodias system. But he did not recognize this one.

  His attention was pulled away by strange motion inside the dome of The City.

  The top of one of the spires in the administrative district had burst open in a cloud of debris.

  Distant figures fell tumbling through the air. Some of the shapes were clearly not human.

  His heart hammered in his chest. Concern for Jenna and the kids raced through his mind.

  And Vance knew in that moment that The City's days of boring monotony were gone forever.

  5

  Flight of the Acolyte

  Mik stared at the new problem and wondered, just for an instant, if he should shoot it.

  Great idea, genius. Shoot it with what?

  He watched it approach, almost falling from the sky. It looked like an egg cracked in a thousand places with bits of the broken shell flapping in the breeze. The colors swirled, expanding and contracting like the storm clouds of the gas giant Lodias around which The City orbited.

  He had no idea what it was or what it meant. But confusion was nothing new today.

  He had tapped into the citizen news feed, and several were reporting that Tower was fighting—physically fighting—with some sort of long-legged monsters. That made no sense. Tower should be able to dispatch any living creature with a wave of his hand, given the powers at his command.

  Each piece of news and data added to that hollow feeling growing in his belly. After getting no response from Tower about the dead links and blank screens in the monitoring center, Mik had started running diagnostics on one of the stations. It was in perfect operational condition. The dead zone was on the other end.

  Mik had then run up to the open-air plaza on the sanctuary's roof to check if there was anything to be seen.

  Almost immediately he spied this new problem, this...thing...that was flying directly toward the sanctuary.

  Flying and not slowing down.

  He turned and ran from the edge, back toward the arch that led down into the interior. The shadow of the thing was already over him, and there was a moment when he wondered if Tower would be waiting for him in whatever afterlife was to come.

  How will it work? Will we all be gods together, or will he still be a god above us?

  These thoughts evaporated, and on impulse Mik grabbed the rim of the arch with one hand and turned to look, to face his destroyer head-on.

  He stopped.

  The flying orb was coming apart.

  The shell, or whatever it was, burst apart in an explosion of color as it made contact with the stone of the plaza. Mik instinctively threw his arm in front of his face for protection, but there was no explosion, no debris. Instead, the thing that had appeared to be a solid mass hurtling through the air dissolved into a flock of axis flyers. They fluttered momentarily in apparent confusion and then began to drift away like spores on a breeze.

  Mik watched them disperse with disbelief. He had maintained the systems that nourished and repaired the strange and simple airborne eyes of the god, but he had never seen more than three of them coordinating on anything, ever. For these hundreds to be working together...

  As the sphere of conjoined flyers finally devolved into individual units, he spied the slim figure of a woman huddled on the stone, as if gently deposited there by an evaporating fist.

  "Talia!" He rushed to her, waving away the few straggling flyers.

  She sat up, blinking, eyes wide. Her silver acolyte's robe was frayed and torn in several places. "Mik? I'm at the sanctuary? Tower... he sent me..." She shook her head and took a deep breath, visibly trying to control the fear that lurked just beneath the surface. "Mik, something is terribly wrong. Some kind of alien monsters attacked Tower. And the Outward Administrator just sat there, like he'd planned the entire ambush."

  Mik's thin hope that the problems of the morning had just been a series of technical glitches vanished. "Half the monitoring stations are dark, too. I think it's even worse than all that, Talia. I've been trying to track the sentry ships. Most of them are gone. And the micro sentinels are swarming toward something. I don't know what."

  A series of intense lights flared outside the dome of The City, pinpoints that brightened in the pale darkness beyond the small moon's atmosphere like unraveling stars. The transparent surface of the dome automatically darkened to blunt the glare of the hostile energies unleashed.

  Mik and Talia reflexively turned away, shielding their eyes.

  "That was probably the Titan," Mik said softly as they watched the points of light expand and fade. He continued babbling on, as if silence was an enemy to be kept at bay. "It was holding a close-in defensive position, but what was it fighting? That looked like several ships going off. It must have taken some of the invaders with it."

  He put an arm around her as his voice trailed off, but she seemed unaware of his touch. She was looking out over The City, but her gaze was vacant, as if not locked on anything in particular. Mik recognized the look. He had tried to reintroduce Talia to life beyond the sanctuary on many occasions, but often felt as if she was looking right through him, her mind wandering with the gods on higher planes.

  She shivered and turned to face him.

  "Mik...what if these aliens are crawling all over The City? What if..."

  There was an explosion in the distance, from the direction of the administration spires. The sound of the blast radiated between the structures and the dome.

  And then Mik felt a new sensation, like a living thing screaming inside him.

  His stomach clenched with a sudden hollow feeling that reminded him of the disorientation that comes after gravity has abruptly fled. It was at once a cry that echoed through his mind and a deep, primal feeling of dread and sorrow that wracked his body. He could see by the expression on Talia's face that the same sensation was racing through her.

  Mik knew beyond question that it was the agony of the god.

  They heard random screams from below as the god-agony crested, washing over the inhabitants of The City.

  They reached for each other like blind creatures in a lightless cavern and embraced with trembling arms. "Talia," Mik whispered, barely able to get the words out. "Has something like that ever happened before?"

  "No. Oh no."

  Utter despair was etched on her face, an abject hopelessness that shocked Mik back into action. He had to get them out of there, away from their exposed position, beyond the pain of the god if possible.

  He struggled to his feet, pulling her up with him.

  "C'mon, Talia. I know some places deep down under The City where we can wait this out," he said, hoping his voice sounded more reassuring than he felt. "No aliens will find us. Let's go."

  "No, Mik, we can't run!" She tried weakly to pull away from Mik's grasp. "We have to find a way to help him!"

  "Help a god?" It was a ridiculous notion, Mik knew, but he could see that she would not go with him unless he agreed. "Yes, of course, let's find a way to help Tower. But we can't do anything from up here. Let's go."

  They ran toward the arch leading back down to the sanctuary. They passed under its shadow.

  Mik felt a moment of disorientation.

  They stepped from under the arch, but they were not back in the sanctuary.

  They were in another place altogether.

  6

  The Space Below

  The disorientation Mik felt was intense, but mercifully brief. It must have been the same for Talia, he realized, judging by the force with which she gripped his arm. She released the tension slowly, and then her arms fell to her sides.

  They craned their necks in unison to take in the immensity of the cavern in which they stood. The walls curved around them up to a distant point, nearly lost in the dim light.

  A sense of wonder at the scale of the place quickly overtook Mik's initial fright. "Sweet Talia, Radia
nt Acolyte, I stand corrected," he whispered. "I do not, in fact, know about all the hidden places under The City. This one, for instance."

  "Tower forgives you your ignorance," she said, and as the words sank in Mik gave her a sideways glance.

  Is she so wrapped up in holy sanctimony even now?

  But he was relieved to see a tight smile on her face and the faint beginnings of a mischievous twinkle in her eye, a look he knew so well. She appeared to be rapidly bouncing back from the experience of being carried across The City by a flock of axis flyers and being dumped on the roof of the sanctuary.

  "This is Tower's work," she said. "He has many hidden doorways to strange places. Wherever we are, we should be safe."

  Mik was silent. He had plumbed the depths beneath The City for many years, inspecting, examining and repairing the systems that kept humanity's redoubt alive. But he had no idea that the god had such enormous hidden strongholds. Well, not completely hidden. The acolytes apparently knew about them, if not anonymous workers like himself.

  Mik took a deep breath and tamped down the awe that had initially overwhelmed him. He forced himself to examine the underground keep with the cold eye of an engineer. Although the walls, floor and ceiling were highly polished, he recognized the writhing purple striations in the rock, a unique geologic signature of Skyra.

  Mik could feel the weight of the moon above him, a roof of stone as heavy as the world.

  In the center of the vast space sat a sentry ship, black and ominous, its function as obvious and purposeful as the blade of a knife.

  In front of the ship stood a man.

  He had not been there a moment before, Mik would have sworn.

  The man looked vaguely familiar, although Mik couldn't immediately place him. His clothing was fashioned in some antiquated style Mik could not identify, and his pale hair was arranged in an uncommon formation. He was not as tall as most people in The City, but seemed bulkier, more heavily muscled. The man was watching them with penetrating eyes.