He kicked the throttle and shot out from the city, leaving the bloody battle in his wake. A few automatic turrets managed anti-spacecraft volleys of energy pulses designed to ground him, but he managed to avoid the shots with a few careful course corrections. The local ships were too busy engaging the enemy at their gates to worry about ones fleeing their atmosphere.
“Are you saying that the Duri are wrong?” he asked carefully. “That they shouldn’t exist?”
“No,” Colt said firmly. “The Duri have done plenty of good and much of what they teach is true to the spirit of the Divine Infinite. But they are men, and as with any religion of Man, subject to limitations. They have killed millions of innocent people across the galaxy because they believe genocide to be the wish of Omega, but the Divine Infinite creates all life. Why would He want life eradicated if He took the time to create it?”
“You said there is no such thing as time.” To that, she had no reply.
Nuri consulted the charts that appeared in thin air before him and tried to locate a habitable planet to plot his course. He noticed a clearing outside the city where several thousand aliens had congregated in an open field, but none of them were armed.
The civilians, he thought. They evacuated the civilians.
It was an oddly noble and touching measure, though one which any army would surely employ to protect the defenseless while their homes were at the heart of vicious crossfire.
“This is the same circular question you asked me before the trials,” he said. For the time being, he set a course for the orbit of a nearby planet which seemed to have liquid water so he could reevaluate his situation outside the combat zone, then stepped out from behind the console and approached Colt at the viewport. “That was you,” he said. “I understand now. It’s always been you.”
She stared back, drifting over to intercept him before he reached the window. She gently cupped his cheeks in her cold hands and leaned up to kiss his chin.
“You are the girl from the village. The river girl. The one the Duri killed because I couldn’t kill you myself.”
She still didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. His mind felt suddenly expansive, more efficient, and yet completely empty even though he still possessed his knowledge and memories. It was like his brain had evolved from registering a single letter on a datapad to every word ever written. He could piece together ideas and concepts which never would have occurred to him previously, and at last understood the nature of his kidnapping and imprisonment on the distant mountaintop. How he had been force-fed Duri doctrine to be molded into the ultimate killing machine. How the Duri had subverted the Divine Order of things to their own will rather than God’s.
“I see everything now,” he gasped, eyes widening. He touched his cheeks and was momentarily horrified to feel flaps of scorched flesh where the alien blasters had burnt away his face. “It’s like before. When you took me through the universe,” he said. “Everything revealed.”
“A great unveiling,” Colt agreed. “An apocalypse.”
Nuri fell to his knees before her and buried his head in her midsection. She wrapped her arms around him and drew him closer. He closed his eyes and sighed heavily, trying to keep pace with the trillions of subtle connections his brain made each second and dealing with the subsequent guilt from having all his sins laid out for him to pore over with the elevated context of a far superior being.
“I’m a sinner,” he whispered. “I’m not Hidria. I’m not worthy to be Hidria.” He hung his head in shame and stared at his hands. All his flesh had burnt away. He could see muscles, bone, and cartilage flexing when he clenched his fists. It seemed an appropriate affliction now that the rest of his soul had been laid bare for reckoning as well. “I can’t go to Prime. I’m not worthy of knowing the true nature of the Divine Infinite.” He looked up into Colt’s glow with desperation, tears welling in his eyes. “I belong in Tscharia,” he said.
She stared back at him without any change of expression.
And then the invading armada locked onto the ship and fired, blowing a hole through the port hull and knocking the vessel off course.
Nuri was thrown against the starboard wall so hard that he would have been killed instantly if he hadn’t already begun the physical transformation to Hidria. Colt simply disappeared.
The ship was hit twice more, each blow inflicting significantly less damage than the initial blast since his trajectory had changed and they likely couldn’t establish a reliable target lock, and then the bridge fell eerily silent as he spiraled out of control into deep space.
They must think I’m dead, he realized.
Under any other circumstances, they would have been correct. He could see two hull breaches at the back of the ship. The shields had kicked on enough to keep him from being sucked out into infinity, but the invaders would have known it was only a brief respite before the oxygen leaked out (if the aliens did, in fact, breathe oxygen, for the invaders had no way of knowing it was a human on board and not an arachnoid) and left him for dead.
God, help me, Nuri prayed as he spun with his eyes closed.
Alarms screamed throughout the ship. He opened his eyes briefly when a new light registered through the lids. A large, golden-brown planet approached quickly through the viewport.
Another planet in this system, he realized. He thought back to his initial scans of the solar system. He’d been searching for an orbit where he could plot his next step toward reaching Prime. There hadn’t been any other habitable planets in the database, but he recognized the one on the ship’s collision course. He didn’t know its name but he knew it was a desert planet with temperatures well north of three hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
Nuri took a deep breath and closed his eyes again. Surrender, he thought.
He felt Colt’s cold lips on his ear. “It begins,” she whispered.
Even his evolving mind didn’t understand what she meant.
“All will be revealed in time.”
Time?
The intensity of the alarms grew in volume and pitch with each mile they drew closer to the planet. He heard a loud crack once and guessed by the ship’s change in trajectory that the back half had torn off, and then the vessel skimmed the atmosphere and the nose began to burn away.
It begins, Colt said, no longer in the spaceship but burrowed deep inside his brain.
He suspected now that she had a foothold where his Duri conscience had once resided, she would never leave him again.
16
“This will be your last mission before the trials,” the Duri Master assured Nuri.
The two men were seated on a boulder overlooking the village, shivering in a breeze which had suddenly turned brisk as autumn rolled over the mountain with its Trojan-horse beauty. Sometime in the week prior, the leaves of the surrounding trees had also formed a kaleidoscope of purples, pinks, greens, reds, and blues, though Nuri hadn’t noticed either transformation until they were complete. Somehow, it seemed better to him that way. More natural, he supposed. He took a deep breath and watched the villagers complete their daily chores in the dusk half-light.
“I’m ready,” he replied after a time.
The Master nodded then frowned, folding the deep-set scars crisscrossing his cheeks into new, peculiar formations. “I know you are. If I didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t be going.”
“No man can know when the Called is ready to become Hidria,” Nuri said, paraphrasing a passage of Duri doctrine from the renowned theologian, Xyang Polanos. “The decision is made by the Divine Infinite and manifests in the heart of the pupil.”
The Duri Master’s frown slowly morphed into an equally intricate smile as his scars realigned. “Very good,” he beamed. “You’ve grown a great deal in your faith since your first cleansing.”
Nuri nodded, his brow furrowed in deep thought. “When I was young, I didn’t truly believe,” he said. “I was lost in a perpetual fugue of anger and doubt, but God has revealed my path. I must be Hid
ria to follow His will.” He dropped from the boulder and steadied himself against the white bark of a Dzatka Tree, whose leaves had turned an icy blue to greet the new season. “I’ve read every Duri text about the trials and talked to as many of the failed Called as I’ve been able to contact, but is there anything else you can tell me about the ritual?” He turned to look at his Master with the same unflinching stoicism which had dominated his expression since he was seventeen. “Do you have any specific advice?”
His Duri Master continued to stare down at the valley, slowly tapping his sandaled right foot against the boulder in rhythm with his shallow breaths. “The Duri do not perform the same rituals that you do as the Called. We have a different set of trials and evaluations to verify that our faith is sound.”
“Still,” Nuri pressed, selecting a branch from the ground and waving it distractedly. “You must have some insight into the trials. Please, tell me what you went through even if it will be different from what I experience. The spirit should be the same.”
The Duri Master dropped from the boulder and began descending the mountain toward the cottage. The comforts of home were but a little way down and the smoke rising from the chimney was nearly irresistible on a brisk evening. “A man’s experience in the trials is his and his alone. It should be left between the man and God. Besides, anything you could have learned about the trials you’ve already learned, and it might be that none of it helps once you are in the temple.”
“What about Colt?” Nuri asked, trailing him down the mountain. “Did you see her during the trials?”
The Duri Master stopped abruptly and gazed off into the star-filled sky as though something had caught his attention, but Nuri found nothing noteworthy. “That’s between God and me,” he said quietly. Each word seemed to cause him a great deal of physical pain. In fact, Nuri was taken aback by just how old his Master appeared in that moment. More than anything else he’d read or heard from those who’d attempted the trials and failed, that single look of fear and exquisite agony made Nuri question his preparedness for the ritual.
“I understand,” he said. “Forgive my intrusion.”
“Curiosity is dangerous,” the Duri Master replied. His stern demeanor had reformed as quickly as it had vacated. Nuri wondered idly if it had something to do with the myriad expressions possible in the intricate weave of scars by the tensing of a single muscle. “Knowledge can destroy. Sometimes, the Divine Infinite decrees that it is best for us not to know a thing. In this particular case, I’d wager it is better for you not to know the extent of the trials until you test the boundaries for yourself.”
Nuri bowed solemnly with his hands crossed behind his back in a show of respect, then turned and headed back up the mountain.
“Where are you going?” the Duri Master asked. There was no reproach in his voice. Ever since Nuri had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was loyal to the Duri calling, the corporal discipline which had dominated his adolescence had slackened. Now, his Duri Master trusted him to wander the mountain on his own. Nuri was ever mindful that it had not always been that way.
“With your permission, I would like to meditate on tomorrow’s mission,” he answered. “I’d also like to pray for strength during the trials. I believe I’ll need more than just faith to prove myself worthy of the Hidria namesake.”
The Duri Master sighed and resumed his descent toward the cottage. “There is more to being Hidria than the prestige of the title, but faith is all that you need to prove yourself worthy of God’s favor.”
“Favor and solemn responsibility are two very different things.”
“I suppose you should ask yourself, then, what the purpose of the trials will be for you, and what you are hoping to find in the face of the Divine Omega that you cannot find within yourself.”
With that, the Duri Master disappeared beneath the shadows of boulders and the tangle of tree branches, leaving Nuri to stew in stunned silence. Even considering his own doubts through the years and his exposure to controversial theologies from the colonies he’d cleansed in that time, it was hard to digest borderline heresy from the lips of a trusted purveyor of the Sacred Word face to face. Duri Master’s were supposed to be above talk of the value of personhood.
He’s quoting The Divine Incendiary, Nuri realized. I had no idea there was still so much doubt in his heart.
He hadn’t thought much about the controversial text in a while, and it was certainly a book that no self-respecting Duri Master would openly quote before another man of faith. At best, such a slip was liable to cause a heated argument. At worst, torture, mutilation, and death. Still, there was a reason The Divine Incendiary had been banned from all databases in Duri-controlled regions of the galaxy. It rang with a little too much truth for the tribunal’s liking. Anyone found consulting the text even for historical or anthropological reasons received an automatic death sentence once they were brought before the council on Secondus: the political epicenter of the Duri religion.
I wonder why he chose to quote that passage now, Nuri thought. Maybe he doesn’t think that I know The Divine Incendiary well enough to recognize its verses. Or maybe he’s testing to see if I will alert the tribunal, which would in turn implicate me by confirming that I can identify specific passages from the forbidden book. Of course, if he turned it around on me, I could truthfully testify that he was the one who exposed me to the verses in the first place.
Discussing the theology of the book was one thing, but it was outright heresy for a Duri Master to quote passages from the tainted scriptures which had recently been dubbed The Red Gospels. He knew his Duri Master must have had some motive beyond just casual dismissal, otherwise he wouldn’t have taken such a significant—and potentially fatal—risk.
Frowning, Nuri continued climbing until he reached the mountain’s peak, then quickly began to descend the other side. He didn’t bother pausing to enjoy the spectacular view of the plains or the sea stretching far off in the distance. He’d beheld the aesthetic magnificence of the land plenty in the years since he’d been taken from his family, but his focus was no longer drawn to the physical world around him. He’d devoted himself entirely to realities beyond his perception, and he was eager to glimpse the pure universe where God’s existence wasn’t a theoretical issue but an incontrovertible truth.
I have already been there, he thought. I’ve seen it in my dreams.
But I must be careful.
The Duri strictly warned against dream interpretation or placing too much emphasis on the subconscious and illusory. It was the Devil’s Trap, they said. Yet deep down, Nuri strongly believed that he’d experienced the Hidriala: the sacred call from the Divine Infinite to seek Him in the trials.
It could be the Evil One trying to draw me back to unbelief, as he did when I nearly defected.
There were times when he still couldn’t believe he’d been the one to lead the mission on the heretic moon colony years before, or that he’d made the right decision in the end through good fortune more than purity. It was almost as though God had reached down and drawn the skepticism directly from his soul.
“You don’t believe that, do you?” a voice asked from the shadowed woods ahead of him.
Nuri froze and tried to place the speaker without appearing too alarmed. Deep down, though, he was terrified, both because he’d been caught unawares despite his warrior training and because the voice seemed privy to his innermost thoughts.
It could be coincidence.
No matter how hard he focused, however, the early shades of night were too thick for him to register anything out of the ordinary. His heightened senses didn’t detect a single breath to pinpoint the intruder’s position.
“A man cannot hide from the All Knowing, and one who hides from his brothers emulates the Evil One,” Nuri responded, reflexively quoting yet another Duri saying he’d picked up in some text or another. He could no longer remember which one. Although he’d memorized much during his years of study, sometimes the ph
rases blended together. It had grown difficult, therefore, to identify a text with any accuracy.
Except, of course, for The Divine Incendiary.
“What if I’m not a man?”
Relieved that the creature did not appear to bear him any malice but curious nonetheless, Nuri continued his descent to the valley opposite the village. “The same is true for women.”
“What if I’m not hiding?”
“Then reveal yourself to me so that I know you are trustworthy.”
“Don’t the Called hide on every one of their cleansing missions? Or how do you surprise heretics?”
Frowning, Nuri angled toward the voice. It had moved from the patch of trees on his left to a cave mouth on his right. “Combat exists outside the Duri Catechism so long as it is a just cause, and I can think of no greater testament to the Divine Infinite than offering blood sacrifices on which to build His kingdom.”
A cold, blue light glowed from the cave, stopping Nuri in his tracks yet again.
“Is that how you believe kingdoms are built? On the blood of innocents?”
“They are not innocents,” Nuri argued. “They are sinners. Nonbelievers.”
“What if they know nothing of God?”
“Then they have the option to convert or they must be cleansed in His name.”
“I don’t recall any passage in scripture that references this bloody undertaking.”
“Then perhaps you haven’t read the correct scriptures.”
Slowly, a face formed from the bright light within the cave. “You’re angry.” A familiar face, too. Smiling at him. Mocking him.
“You speak heresy. If anyone were to hear you questioning the work of the Called, you would be executed.”
The girl from the river laughed with a playful light in her eyes. “What weapon can kill me?”
“He who has the favor of The First and Last does not need material weapon to vanquish his enemies.”
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 19