When the dust had cleared from that first skirmish with the exosegs, the Taka had come up from the underground, full of hope. Deadeye took a position right beside us, wide-eyed. We had auxiliaries now-plenty of help, enthusiastic help, from our Taka allies. We dressed them in camfax and set them loose.
They were good-we did not need to explain anything to them-the dead exos had done the trick. That’s all they had to see.
I eased up my E and pressed the sight against my faceplate. A roofless temple rose above the saw grass, a line of columns outlined against the night sky. Taka, moving around, clad in black cloaks, starlight glinting off spear points. The Soldiers of God, fighting for the doomed Cult of the Dead. The priests would be in there somewhere. We’d come for the priests. They’d never talk to us voluntarily. We threatened everything they stood for.
Our sudden appearance in this ancient world had upset the balance of power in the Takas’ uneven struggle to respond to the exoseg threat. We had learned that Taka society had disintegrated unknown ages ago, and the collapse of civilization in this world had nothing to do with the exosegs.
When the creatures suddenly appeared, their only opposition was a fragmented tribal society, completely unequipped to deal with such a formidable foe. The Takas had collapsed against the onslaught of the beasts and finally coalesced into two distinct groups, the Cult of the Dead, dedicated to appeasing the beasts through human sacrifice, and the Golden Sword, sworn to a seemingly hopeless struggle against the exos and the Cult of the Dead. The two groups expended most of their energy fighting each other in a pointless, bloody, protracted, worldwide struggle, tribe against tribe. And while the Takas fought amongst themselves, the exosegs continued reproducing, and soon they swarmed, an invincible horde.
“The moon rises, Slayer. The blood will flow soon. Too many have died already. The priests are insane! The sacrifices do not stop the Beasts. The Beasts take only the living.” Deadeye clutched a short stabbing spear. A blazing sun was etched onto the blade. Neither the Clouds nor the Cult expected to survive the war with the Beasts, and I knew that Deadeye would like nothing better than to kill a Cult priest. But we needed the priests alive. If anyone could explain the presence of the exos, it would be the priests.
“That’s a priest.” Snow Leopard’s voice, whispering in my ears. I triggered the zoom on the E’s sight and panned through the temple. Shadows, movement, then a faint red glow. They had lit a fire. Suddenly I had the priest, no doubt at all. A naked torso, a black cloak thrown back over his shoulders, arms going up, pale eyes rolling back, wild hair, a great metal staff in one hand, a long dark knife in the other. We could hear someone chanting and voices murmuring, whimpering. Andrion 2’s moon glowed, a far-off silver orb.
“Ready for assault,” Coolhand reported.
“Hold a frac,” Snow Leopard said. “We need confirmation on these sacrifices.” We’d been busting cult raiding parties for weeks, but this was our first chance to grab actual priests. So far, we’d only heard one version of the story. Orders were to get the other side of the story by nabbing a live priest for interrogation.
“Snow Leopard, do you want them to kill someone before we move?” Priestess asked. I had thought the same, but was not in the habit of questioning our orders.
“Move up slowly, gang,” Snow Leopard responded. “Keep an eye on the priest.” We moved, keeping low, the tall grass whispering all around us, Deadeye close beside me. I tried to keep the zoom on the priest, but it wasn’t easy. The sky darkened, black clouds blotting out the stars. I caught glimpses as we moved up, the priest glowing red in the reflection from the fire. He stood behind a high stone table that had to be an altar. The chanting became faster, a rhythmic human drum. Moans and cries carried on the breeze. Shadowy figures appeared around the altar. A naked baby squirmed on the stone. The priest had one hand on the baby, the other held the knife high. Deadeye broke into a charge, without a word.
“Deadeye’s attacking,” I reported.
“Fire,” Snow Leopard ordered. “V only. Get the priest.” The night erupted with the fury of our attack. The derelict temple flashed with brilliant white V-min hits. The Soldiers of God scattered immediately, blown off their feet like targets in a shooting range, spears flying, black cloaks flapping, V-min bolts bursting everywhere. I fired into a group of five warriors as I advanced and they went down in a tangle of limbs. In moments, we gained the temple and the engagement was over. The Cultists outnumbered us greatly, but they never had a chance.
Deadeye had one foot on the chest of an enemy warrior. He pulled his bloody spear from the thrashing man’s throat. No one moved to help the choking Cultist as he finally let out a death rattle and grew still. Someone sobbed. Several Taka women huddled miserably not far from the altar, too shocked to move. Cultists were sprawled everywhere, stunned and twitching. A burst of auto v-min erupted to my right. Ironman and Dragon were clearing up some resistance. I saw a few stragglers hightailing it through the saw grass, auto V-min trailing them, lighting up the dark.
The baby’s body lay split open on the altar, bathed in blood, tiny fists frozen in death, its little pink mouth locked open in a final scream, eyes tightly shut. Too late!
“We hit the priest. He’s right here,” Coolhand reported, standing over a prone, shadowy figure.
“Good. Keep him away from Deadeye,” Snow Leopard ordered.
I found the priest’s bloody knife where it had fallen on the stone floor. The blood-encrusted altar showed the baby was not the first to die here. The priest’s staff stood grounded in a slot on the floor. I lifted it out and examined it. It appeared to be iron. A massive, circular design, an exoseg-Exoseg Gigantic Soldier-decorated the top of the staff. This was the Mark of the Beast, chilling in its simplicity.
“Let me kill him, Slayer.” Deadeye whispered desperately to me.
“We have to question him, Deadeye,” I replied.
He bit off his words. “Then come with me, Slayer. The dead await us.”
“Site is secure,” Coolhand reported. A few drops of rain hit my faceplate. Black clouds streaked past the face of Andrion 2’s moon. I followed Deadeye.
An open pit located off to one side of the temple was half filled with corpses, naked children of all ages and both sexes, their throats slit, their chests carved open, their limbs frozen in death. A forlorn group of Taka females gathered around the pit, crying and wailing, covering mouths and noses from the stench of death. It started to rain, fat heavy drops falling onto the dead.
“We’ve got your confirmation, Snow Leopard,” Priestess said quietly.
He did not respond.
“They are all Taka,” Deadeye explained. “They are all children. Do you see why we fight the Cult of the Dead? They are worse than the Beasts-they kill their own kind. Let me kill the priest, Slayer-grant me only that!”
I could not grant Deadeye his wish, but later, I took a good look at the priest when he regained consciousness, his arms secured behind him, wild eyes, a pale, fanatic face. His chest was shredded with old wounds, hundreds of little flaps of skin fluttering in the breeze…what in Deadman’s name?
“Each cut is a death, Slayer. Each cut is a soul,” Deadeye explained. We had taken away his spear. We knew he could not control himself in the presence of his enemies.
“I’m sorry the baby died, Deadeye.”
“The Gods willed it, Slayer. The Gods brought you. You are the Golden Sword, come from the past to avenge us. The Beasts are doomed, and the priests will die, and our people will live. We bless you, Slayer.”
“We’re not from the past, Deadeye. We’re from the future.”
“No, Slayer. The Gods have sent you. You are from the Past.”
Ironman and Dragon appeared from the saw grass. Ironman had a Taka girl by an arm. The girl was pale and shaken, too tired to run further.
“Can I keep her?” Ironman asked. He was joking, but it was almost obscene. Ironman, an alien monster in black armor and red faceplate, bristling with ant
ennas and weapons, while the girl, almost naked, gasped in shock. Even splattered with mud, she was dangerously attractive. The more I saw of these Taka girls, the more I liked them. They appeared fragile and beautiful, creatures from some gentler world. And they certainly did not belong in the mud.
“Why don’t you just get her number?” I suggested. “Rape is not included in the mission order, I checked.”
“Damn! Look at her-she is nice!”
“She is yours, Longhair.” Deadeye addressed Ironman. He had named us all, and Ironman was Longhair. We ignored his comment about the girl, but we learned later what he meant. The Taka did not kid.
“Command, Beta. Mission over. We’ve got your priest.” Snow Leopard reported back to our CAT leader.
“Good news, Beta. Bring him in.” The skies opened and the rain fell, washing away some of the blood.
“In the beginning was the sky, and the clouds. The People of the Clouds came from the sky. We fell from the sky onto the land, and could not get back.” Deadeye paused, for dramatic effect.
Several weeks had passed since we had captured the priest. We had just reached our position after a hard run from the ruins of the city. The Cultists would come soon, flushed from their hideouts by Delta. I was exhausted, and glad for the chance to take a little break. Half of Beta accompanied Delta, and it had been somewhat hectic.
“Beta, Element Two in position,” I reported back.
“Confirm,” Snow Leopard responded.
Deadeye continued with his story. “From the People of the Clouds, the Taka, came the Men of the Sword and the Men of the Book and the Men of the Mud. The Golden Sword took the Sunrealm from Chaos, and then the Ancients were no more, and the Men of the Book appeared. A thousand years of war, and a hundred years of peace, and then the Age of Chaos. Now the Men of the Book are gone, and the People of the Clouds are one with the Men of the Mud. We are now in the Ending Time for Sunrealm, and our race is doomed to die. The Beasts came from the sky, and they were written in the Book. They feed on our fears. The Cult of the Dead says our destiny is to die. But we Taka do not care for words. We live to kill the Beasts, and to kill the priests. I do not know any more.”
“Tell me more,” I urged Deadeye. “About the Ancients? Who were the Men of the Book? What did the Book say about the Beasts?”
“The Ancients were the Men of the Sword. They made the peace, with war, and the land turned green under the sign of the sun. The Men of the Book faced the Age of Chaos. I do not know what the Book says about the Beasts. I have never seen the Book, and I cannot read. You must ask a Loremaster.”
But there were no Loremasters any more, I already knew. The priests of the Cult of the Dead had inherited their world.
The priests used the wealth of their victims to enrich themselves and to buy the loyalty of the Soldiers of God, a professional standing army. It held sway over a vast domain, peopled by many tribes. The priests called it the Realm of God.
We had gone to work immediately to smash the Cult. We saw no need for any more sacrifices. We launched our CAT teams into the Realm of God, and the priests and soldiers quickly learned that there was no defense. The word spread about the return of the Golden Sword and the collapse of the Realm of God and the slaughter of the Beasts by the Men of the Past. The Taka offered unconditional loyalty and unconditional obedience. We would kill the Beasts, and free them from the priests and Soldiers of God. A fair bargain!
But from the Realm of God came resistance. Many Taka would not bend their knees to us. The People of the Lake and the Red Earth People and the People of the Dark and the Clan of the Heart, and many other tribes declared they would fight us to the death. No talk with Evil! They knew their fate-it was to die, in the mouth of the Beast. Their priests had told them so.
Our strategy was simple: kill exos, and win over all the Sunrealmers to our side. Our orders were to secure the planet, and that’s what we were going to do, Systies or not. Most of the 12th Regiment was on-planet now and that included all of the 2nd Company. Half of our forces went after the exosegs, and the other half dealt with the Taka. Beta got the Taka. I was happy about that, at first. Many of the Sunrealmers lived underground. They found the exos had difficulty cutting through solid stone and had fortified the underground after the exos had swarmed over the fortress walls above ground. The size of the exos limited what they could do in confined spaces, although they continued their efforts to break the Taka defenses. Apparently, the priests understood Exoseg tactics.
Our work was tiring and sometimes dangerous. CAT 24 had been lucky so far. Our closest call was Nomad. But he had been hauled back from the dead by the lifies.
And through it all, there was no sign of Systies. They just did not seem to be here.
“The enemy approaches, Thinker.” Sweety was whispering in my ears. My thoughts snapped back to the present.
“Soldiers of God,” Deadeye warned me. He loaded up his slingshot.
“Beta, Delta, we’re flushing your Cultists. You all set?”
“Delta, Beta. We’re on it.” I raised my E. They were on the scope, a whole gang of them. Why didn’t they just surrender? It was pointless.
“Priestess, Thinker. Where are you going?”
“Don’t bother me!” Delta had forced the Cultist fanatics out, and we’d mopped them up. It had been a nasty, violent operation. The underground Cult complex had been savagely defended at the cost of several of our Taka auxiliaries and even a few wounded of our own.
In the aftermath of the op, long lines of prisoners, just recovered from the gas, snaked out shakily from a dead city. The night was ablaze with searchlights and flares, aircars hovered overhead, and probes darted around.
Priestess was staggering blindly. I caught up with her as she was about to stumble into a tree. The limp form of a dead Taka girl was draped across her armored arms. Blood was everywhere, even smeared across Priestess’s faceplate.
“I’m so tired, Thinker. I’m so tired. I want to sleep. I want to die.”
“Don’t be foolish. Come here, over here, let’s get out of this mess.” I did not know where I was going. I stumbled over some equipment, and led Priestess past a flare and into a clearing. As gently as I could, I took the girl from Priestess’s arms and laid her body gently on the ground.
“It’s all wrong, we shouldn’t be fighting them. It’s wrong.” Priestess slurred her words.
“It’s right. We can’t postpone it. The longer the priests rule, the more Taka die. You know that.”
I sat her down on a bed of flowers. The night sky arched gently above us, full of stars. An aircar glided overhead, searchlight burning down into the forest. I could hear V bolts in the distance. Priestess slumped and turned away from the corpse until she lay flat on her back. We should have been working, I knew.
“Why can’t we leave them alone? Why are we here? There aren’t any Systies here!”
“We can’t leave them alone. We’ve been ordered to take this world. And we have to consolidate power as soon as possible. That’s Legion doctrine, and it’s also what our auxiliaries are telling us. We’ve got to wipe out these priests.”
“I don’t care. I’m going to sleep now.”
I was desperate and Priestess appeared to be going into shock. “Priestess, look. Look! The moon.”
It was floating just over the black tree line, a pale moon, rising in the night sky. I was so high on fatigue, it struck me then as the most magnificent sight I had ever seen.
“Yes, I see. I see.” Priestess propped herself up on an elbow. “Moon rising. What does it mean?”
“It means everything will be all right. Now get up!” And she did, with a little help from her Persist.
It was after that op that they pulled us back for a rest in the squadmod.
The next day, we were gathered around the tacsit console. “So this is the Hand of the Hand. I’m disappointed,” Snow Leopard said.
The Hand of the Hand was on screen, under interrogation back in Alpha Base. H
e was a very important priest of the Cult, second in rank to the supreme Hand of God, who was still on the run. CAT 23 had captured him by blind luck. The priest we had captured had been a nobody, but this fellow was number two for the whole Cult.
“He looks like a mildly retarded florist,” Merlin said.
“Except for the shredded chest,” I added.
“Plenty of kills,” Dragon said. “Wonder how many were babies.”
The priest did not look particularly formidable. He was a slight, shriveled old man with wet, expressionless eyes. His frizzy, thinning hair reached to his shoulders. He wore the Mark of the Beast on a medallion around his neck. He didn’t look like a mass murderer, but he certainly was just that. Somebody from CAT 23 was interrogating him, a young, brightly extroverted Legionnaire who spoke fluent Taka.
“But you must know the Book,” the Legionnaire was insisting, “the one Book of the Men of the Book, in which was written the coming of the Beasts.” I could understand most of it. Atom refused to give up on me.
“It is lies,” the Hand of the Hand replied, “all lies, written by the Unbelievers. We do not need the Book of Lies. Our book is the Road of Truth. God calls us through His Beasts. We need no book.”
“But have you read the one Book of the Men of the Book?”
“We do not read the Book of Lies.”
“I have not read it either,” the Legionnaire said. “I have heard it was full of falsehoods. And yet it is said that the Book speaks of the coming of God’s Beasts. Is it so?”
“I need not know what is written in the Book of Lies.”
“Your own book is the Road of Truth? Is it a book? Is God’s word written in a book?”
“God needs no book.”
“How do you know what God wants, if there is no scripture?”
“God speaks through the Beasts. It is the ending time for Sunrealm. All of our people must die. God wishes it so. It is our sacred duty to deliver all our people to God. This is clear. We need no book!”
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