by Brian Trent
Some two hundred Stillness troopers, a dozen priests, and King D.’s own elite bodyguards gathered in the granite passages beneath the Sinkiang Mountains of China. No satellite could spy on them here. No Hassan would ever seek them this far underground.
And that was part of the strangeness. They were nearly two kilometers down. King D. doubted the upper world even suspected this network of caves existed; certainly no references existed anywhere on the blueweb. When he had hailed the local Stillness cairn demanding a top-level conference, he expected to be summoned to a clever hideout. But this?
Incredible.
And there were other oddities.
For starters, although Stillness had clearly been using the place for many years (by the look of the open dormitories, replovats, generators, and the rusting, industrial-sized inclinator that could move fifty people at a time to higher levels of the hollowed-out mountain) it seemed that some structures – namely the colossal pillars and support beams – had existed here for an impossibly long time. King D.’s eyes kept straying, seduced by the suggestion of antiquity…far older than the earliest whispers of Chinese civilization dared imply.
Secondly, there was a damnably strange machine down here.
In the bowels of the mountain, beneath the airy cavern bustling with green-cloaked troops, a mad contraption had been assembled. A chimera of many mechanical fathers, it bristled with magnetic ventricles and an angular peak of quill-like spindles that jabbed straight up a narrow mountain shaft. Power cables snaked into it from four fusion generators. A cathode rail unlike anything King D. had ever seen formed the centerpiece of the monstrosity. And most disturbingly of all, six antimatter missiles were set into the sanctum that housed the infernal machine; they ringed it and connected to it via a forest of cables.
Six missiles!
My missiles, he thought bitterly.
Father Chadwick headed the local cairn, and he seemed an amiable enough fellow. But negotiations were making little headway; King D. was already weighing the logistics of stealing the missiles back. He had been granted safe passage, and even been allowed to bring a contingent of armed bodyguards. Unlike Stillness, his guards were jacked with enough pilfered technologies to represent a serious threat, despite being heavily outnumbered; Stillness’s visible strength was triple his own.
It was the eccentric contraption that worried King D. more. He didn’t know what the hell it did, except that six goddamn antimatter missiles were part of its design, and he didn’t want to mess with something he didn’t understand.
So he turned back to the priest. “There is a tremendous lot that we share in terms of goals,” he said, “the least of which is the overthrow of the Republic and IPC.”
“Yes,” Chadwick replied, voice echoing musically in the cavern. “But the advantage of the current situation is obvious. Arky devilwork is in the hands of arky devils. It’s therefore contained, while most of the Wastes are spared such metal cancers. We may suffer in our transitory world of the flesh, but eternal paradise awaits us.”
“Promises of eternal life,” King D. bellowed in his rich baritone, “don’t erase the fact that you spend part of your lives on Earth. We must help those who suffer here.”
“Yes,” Chadwick agreed. “If StrikeDown and Stillness were to unite, we could do much to improve the Outlands. But here we come to an irreconcilable juncture: you wish to crack open the arky shells and let their poisons unfurl into the rest of the world. This is not acceptable to us.”
Murmurs of approval from the crowd.
King D. maintained his composure and decided to change tactics. “Can I speak plain?”
“Of course.”
“Is it more acceptable to you the way the Republic slaughters your people by the thousands? Is death more acceptable than a unified front against tyranny?”
“At least in death, our souls remain pure.”
King D. smiled. “Ah! Then end your life now. Kill yourself and rocket into the hereafter. Do it!” He turned his gaze outward to the crowd of young parishioners, men and women in their late teens and early twenties, a few elder heads in the crowd like aging dandelions. “Why don’t you all kill yourselves and rush to God? I’ll tell you why: you are not cowards! You wish to fight those who oppress us. My people are committed to that fight, and we are your allies. This is why I propose a compromise. Neither of us will get everything we want. Not StrikeDown, and not Stillness.”
He strode away from Chadwick, gazing directly into the crowd. The priest was an old, complacent, weak-willed fanatic. The masses needed to be addressed…and it was what King D. excelled at.
“If we work together,” the StrikeDown leader said, turning up his crystal baritone, “we will bring down the arky devils! We will seize their world by its balls! Slap a fiery delivery stamp on their Save Centers, and ship them all by antimatter express to Hell! Threaten them with permadeath! Why should they continue running things? Make them answer to us for a change!”
Murmurs of agreement rippled among the crowd.
“The arkies have kept us divided for centuries, squabbling over garbage like dire dogs. How about we make them suffer for a change? Break open their cities. Rescue their children from sinful illusion. With our two organizations in charge!” D. beckoned to Chadwick to join him at the ridge. The priest stood awkwardly, uncertain. “Call it a rescue, call it revenge. But they will hear us. They will hear StrikeDown, they will hear Stillness, and people can decide for themselves what they want. The arkies don’t give them choice. We will!”
The approving voices multiplied.
“Who wants to kill the infidels? The IPC just declared war on Prometheus Industries. It’s gonna be a bloodbath!”
Outright cheers from the crowd.
“But in time, they will wind down and talk peace. That’s the time to strike! Capturing their Save Centers is essential, I’m sure you agree. After all, how can you save souls when they keep coming back in new bodily shells?”
He was delighted with the ease with which he had possessed the crowd. He caught Father Chadwick’s glance. The priest gave the briefest nod, conceding defeat.
For the next several minutes, King D. whipped the cavern into dizzying heights of frenzy, filling their minds with dancing wheels of fiery images.
Maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to steal the missiles back after all, he hoped. We can fight over ideological divisions in the aftermath. If I can just convince them to let me use the missiles smartly, as opposed to whatever harebrained plots they are hatching…
A voice sounded in his sensorium. Holly Gibbs, his chief intelligence advisor, spoke urgently from his gathering of bodyguards: “Someone’s coming, D.”
He noticed two men entering the cavern from a passageway. High Priests, judging by their golden robes.
“High Priest Tiamat,” Gibbs informed him, running her recognition software. “And High Priest Apophis.”
Interesting, King D. thought.
Born in the ashes of the Final War, the Stillness movement had long been a Balkanized, unpleasant stew of provincial kingdoms, loosely tethered by a mantra of purity to contrast with the fallout from a fallen age. Eventually, self-professed prophets began appearing. Three prophets who welded the believing masses into a unified cause. Three prophets who could somehow travel the world unseen and uncaught, across the decades.
They called themselves Tiamat, Eris, and Apophis.
King D. had never thought much of the stories before. He himself was a committed atheist, seeing the usefulness of evangelistic rhetoric as a means to ammunition and strategic objectives. Nothing built an army better than the double-sided promise of eternal goodies for one’s own tribe, and eternal punishment for everyone else.
Now he watched with interest as two of these famous prophets passed by barely a hundred meters from where he stood. Tiamat was the more imposing figure, with spiked blond h
air and luminous, wintry eyes.
The lankier figure was Apophis, trailing Tiamat in a stooped, subservient manner.
“High Priests Tiamat and Apophis!” King D. shouted. “It is my honor to meet you both!”
Tiamat didn’t so much as glance in his direction; the man was bound for the bowels of the mountain. To D’s surprise, it was Apophis who halted momentarily, smiled, and nodded…in simple acknowledgement, or approval, who knew? But it was a start.
* * *
In the Midas Hand chamber, Tiamat leaned over the machine controls with an expression of repugnance. There was a bone-chilling draft in the alcove, breathing in from high above where the mountain’s natural hollow had been expanded by nanorod-enforced diamond drills over the course of decades. Like the flue of a blacksmith’s cliffside forge, where the high-altitude breeze was sucked down to cool a smelted array of swords, axe blades, and sickles.
Tiamat no longer resembled Colonel Leon Tanner, or any other registered human being. He had melted into a blank slate of a man, facial features as crude and simplistic as something a child would shape from clay.
“Need I inquire the status of this thing?” Tiamat asked softly.
Apophis bowed. “I am integrating the last piece. In another day or two, we can run a field test.”
Tiamat ran his hand over the controls. “Another day or two?”
“We have waited a billion years. What is forty-eight little hours?”
Tiamat craned his neck to peer at the steeplelike extensions.
“I asked the technicians about this cathode rail I obtained for you,” he said thickly. “They couldn’t explain how it fits into this. Perhaps you can, Apophis? You said Prometheus had succeeded where your efforts failed.” He jabbed a finger at the phallic rail. “What is so special about this…that you couldn’t invent it yourself?”
Apophis grinned like a jackal. “I’m the cleverest creature you’ve ever encountered, but they have billions of minds at their disposal. And they’re inventive little fuckers. Always were.”
“Run the test now.”
“The opening shots of war have begun. We’ve worked hard to stir the nest. Why not let them fly about, stinging each other? It will be more effective to deliver the fatal blow when they’re distracted.”
Tiamat’s clay features sharpened into a doppleganger of Colonel Leon Tanner once more.
“If this machine works,” he snapped, “what does it matter if they’re fighting or not?”
Apophis licked his lips. “Because when I trigger this, they’ll see where it comes from.”
“What of it? It will be too late by then.”
“And if it doesn’t work to the extent we wish? The humans will unite in the face of common threat. They could strike from orbit, destroy the machine. We will lose…again.”
He could see his words were having an effect. Tiamat growled low, backed off. He gave another disgusted glance to the machine, to this mechanism of steel, nanomaterials, glasstic, cables, and concrete bedding.
“The IPC tracked a mysterious explosion in the Pacific,” Tiamat said gently, arctic eyes glinting suspiciously. “A sampan village was destroyed by unknown means, and the blast radius is…curious.” He regarded Apophis.
Apophis hid his stab of fear behind his false face. “Oh?”
Tiamat didn’t say anything for a long while. Apophis soon realized his friend was done speaking, having voiced his suspicions and content to let them drift, floating between accusation, inquiry, and conversational camaraderie.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Apophis said at last. “But I do have news you may enjoy, my friend. Lady Wen Ying is dead. Eris destroyed her in Shimizu…and will impersonate her, waiting for the others to arrive.”
Tiamat gave no indication he had even heard. He bowed his head before the machine. He was no longer breathing – none of them needed to breathe like the pestilent inhabitants of Earth. His face quivered in painful, needful contortions. In a small voice, he whispered, “We have lost so many from our side. They would have wanted to be here…for this moment of victory and peace. Their loss must be marked.”
Apophis extended an invisible tendril to his friend, filaments streaming out from his human manifestation to offer an electrical touch of comfort. He was reminded of the astonishing limitations of Homo Sapiens, with their simplistic extremities, sensory organs crammed into a head, and the way skin separated them from the environment.
“We must sing the litany of the lost,” Tiamat maintained, and the color of his body faded until he was translucent as milky glass. The Tanner manifestation bled at the edges and began to dissipate.
“We will,” Apophis said tenderly. “Purity will return.”
“When the dust settles—”
“Understand that this time, there will be only dust, and it will never settle. You understand what this machine will do?”
“Yes.”
“And what of us?”
Tiamat had reverted entirely to his base form; a swirling phosphorescent plasma. The colors washed in indigos and twilight dusks. “When stillness has arrived, we will join it. Do you understand?”
“Of course, my friend. Of course.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Aboard the Mantid
Celeste Segarra nearly collapsed in her relief, the emotion moistening her eyes. Being back aboard her ship in its cramped compartments was like returning from cold years into a warm and cherished home…far more secure than anywhere else she’d ever known.
The central bay was just four meters long; stuffy when Jeff, Rajnar, Allie, and Jamala shared it for mission transports. Celeste glimpsed the dried blood flaking on the floor and medtable. It took her a moment to realize she was seeing her own residue from the airfield rescue at the Hudson.
She saw, too, the chair where Jeff liked to sit. Where he had been sitting in the moments before their final, fateful mission.
Twenty-four soldiers? he had asked. Really? Quinn will expect this…
It wasn’t Quinn we had to worry about, Jeff. It was a nonhuman Egyptian God unleashed upon the Earth.
Gethin gave the place a methodical viewing, noting the weld points, equipment locker, and five resin lockers arranged side by side like tombs in a mausoleum: ALLIE, PRANILIKA, JEFFREY, RAJNAR, CELESTE.
No doubt, he thought. He remembered Keiko’s preliminary report on the ship’s unique properties. Where had a Wastelander obtained it?
The most obvious hypothesis – that it was a refurbished Warlord transport – was clearly wrong. The Mantid had rescued its owner, assessed the extent of her wounds, and made the decision to bring her to Babylon arcology. That in itself wasn’t so unusual; there were drone-ambulances which could do the same.
But Celeste’s protector had also negotiated for medical treatment, deceived PI security, and then exercised both the skill and sense of self-preservation to vanish off their radar. It had managed to jettison the tracking device Keiko installed, was able to stay hidden from surveillance sweeps, had rescued her a second time through an astonishingly daring pseudopod maneuver. Had any Warlord state possessed artificial intelligence of this sort during the Century, it would have dominated all conflicts faster than even Apollo the Great. Like a twenty-first-century aircraft carrier sent back to the Napoleonic Wars.
Gethin tabled these speculations. “I need to access my email. That’ll trigger a few IPC bells.”
Celeste shrugged. “Route your access through the system here.”
“That won’t stop a trace.”
“Um. Yes, it will.”
He heard the certainty in her voice. “Indeed?”
Celeste went to her locker, drew it open, and started poking about inside. “The Mantid can route a laser transmission through concealing channels.”
<
br /> “A lot of people can do that.”
“Not like this ship.”
“Through whom does it route the signals?”
Celeste shrugged and continued her digging.
Gethin decided to try something. He sent his Familiars to tap into the ship’s logic circuits.
*Not well enough,* Id cut in. *Last several communications were calibrated for unknown receiving stations along the Carpathians.*
“Line of sight to Avalon,” Gethin muttered knowingly. Before he could continue, a new, unfamiliar voice spilled into his head with the sensation of chilled fog.
[Any further attempts to access my systems without permission will be construed as an attack. I do not wish that.]
Gethin’s eyes grew wide and he chanced a nervous laugh. “Neither do I.” He noticed Celeste peering over her shoulder at him. She had not been privy to the conversation, but by the look on her face she had a good idea of the content.
“She means business,” Celeste advised.
“Sorry. I’m just checking my email, Mantid. No need to be rude.”
[I wasn’t being rude. Any further attempt to hack my systems will be met with lethal force. Not rudeness, Gethin Bryce. Honesty.]
He pressed the access pad behind his ear. His inbox unfolded.
Two new messages had arrived, joining the unread message from Lori, which continued sitting like an unopened Solstice gift.
The senders’ names were there for perusal:
KEIKO YAMANAKA (Unread)
LT. DONNA MCCALLISTER (Unread)
LORI GOSSAMER AMBERMOON (Unread)
“Anything?” Celeste asked.
“Ex-wife, ex-employer, ex-wife,” he said. He noted the timestamps. Keiko’s had come in just minutes ago. McCallister had sent hers around the time he was leaving Haventown and running into Cappadocia’s scouts.