Ten Thousand Thunders

by Brian Trent

  Without warning, someone else was standing in the chamber with them.

  “Father Tiamat,” King D. said, bowing, struggling to contain his awe and confusion.

  High Priest Tiamat didn’t so much as glance in his direction. He was as blocky as Apophis was lean; in fact, the man gave the impression of deformity in a manner that wasn’t immediately apparent. King D. squirmed uneasily.

  Tiamat fixed an impatient wintry stare on Apophis. “We do not need your distractions right now.”

  Apophis shrugged and, still walking, transformed. His Stillness robe flowered into a new design – or rather, a very very old one. He was abruptly clad in a golden cloak, his face painted like some demented clown. A cobra-topped crown adorned his head.

  “Promethean forces have attacked an IPC military outpost,” he said. “With the Nobunaga burning up, now is the time for our test.”

  “I know that,” Tiamat snapped, and King D. realized the man had neither eyebrows nor ears. But hadn’t he had both a moment ago? And why…

  The High Priest disintegrated into a nebulous mass of colors that, oddly, resembled some kind of massive ribbonfish or centipede. Maybe a jellyfish.

  “My God,” King D. whispered.

  Apophis seated himself before a control panel at the front of the contraption. “I was thinking of the IPC base in Madrid. What do you think, King D.? There’s a Save center there. Good enough for a test? Yes?”

  Tiamat’s voice came from every direction at once. “Proceed.”

  Apophis bowed his head. He threw a switch.

  A hundred red beams erupted from the machine’s quills and pierced the Tiamat-thing as if with pencil-thin, flaming spears. His mercurial jellyfish body jerked and twisted in the trap.

  There were no nerve endings in the children of storm. They had never known pain, not even when they assumed physical forms. Masters of pattern, they rarely saw any need to grow a functioning nervous system, or bother filling their ersatz veins with blood, or stuffing their bodies with fleshy specialized organs.

  The only pain the children of storm knew, in fact, was the psychological terror of oblivion. It afflicted even those who advocated the return of lifelessness. The horror of losing oneself.

  Penetrated by the beams, Tiamat shrieked and caught fire.

  “Apophis!” Tiamat’s flashing, vaporous form cried. “What’s happening?”

  The titan attempted to flee the bars of red light. They held him fast. He batted against the sandstone walls, screeching in betrayal, transforming into a six-headed reptilian creature, growing leathery wings, vomiting caustic flame at Apophis through the web of light. But the fire never left the containment field. The colorless flames ricocheted off the luminous cross sections and blew back into Tiamat himself.

  He began to break into fiery, sizzling streamers.

  “I have finally accepted that I differ with you,” Apophis announced, wondering if Tiamat’s consciousness was anything more than a soup of thrashing electrons now, flying apart in the phantom impulses of willpower, surrendering to implacable, superheated chaos. “Your philosophy no longer suits me. Embrace the light of nirvana. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, plasma to plasma. I bid you farewell, my beloved friend!”

  His friend cried in a thousand voices.

  King D. staggered backwards, sick.

  “Apophis!” Tiamat cried, and then the voice cut out as his ever-changing body burst apart, raining fiery scraps that vanished as if they had never been.

  For his part, Apophis gazed at the disintegrating fireball. He didn’t smile or show any expression except for the glint in his eyes. The effect was precisely as he had expected…and yet strangely beautiful as well.

  Beautiful. So very beautiful…as was everything in life.

  Apophis disengaged the device. The beams cut out. The only evidence of Father Tiamat’s existence was garlands of swiftly dissipating smoke.

  King D. realized his mouth was dry.

  Apophis grinned wickedly at him. “Where were we? Ah yes! You desire equality among the peoples of Earth. I shall satisfy that wish. Listen closely.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Warlord Enyalios

  In the ruined Shimizu Gardens, Gethin expected to die. There was just enough time to realize that death would come at the hands of the most ruthless mass murderer in the history of history…the man who was not a man after all…the unifier of two continents…the tyrant who had conquered the Americas by butchering the Americas themselves.

  The wall of furious eyes rushed him.

  And then, without warning, Gethin felt arms draw protectively around him.

  “Do not harm them, my friend.”

  The cloud of eyes sprouted razor claws and many mouths. The air was oven-hot; Gethin’s nanonics were functioning, and he was alarmed to realize that his own body temperature was spiking. 103 degrees! 104!

  “Sy’hoss’a, these are allies. They are not to be killed. Please.”

  105 degrees. 106. Gethin heard the popping of capillaries in his eyes.

  And then, just as easily, the heat diminished. The nightmare thing floating in front of him changed into a nebulous cloud, its killing mood, perhaps, passing away for now.

  Great stars! Gethin rubbed his injured eyes. His fingertips came away wet with blood.

  Celeste glistened in sweat; by the luminous creature floating in the air, she glittered as if powdered in diamond dust. “We’re not here to harm you. We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” she said.

  “Is Eris dead?” Gethin said stupidly. He knew the answer. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Warlord Enyalios assumed human form then, the cloud distilling into arms and legs and head and chest. Yes, it really is Enyalios. Gethin and Celeste gazed in unabashed shock at this figure of history returned to life.

  Enyalios, for his part, paced with the cagey energy of a sabertooth in a throwback zoo. The Shimizu Gardens were rubble, melted plastic, and scorched leaves. The sea breeze blew in through the gaping hole in the windows, smelling of salt and rotting kelp.

  “She is purged,” the mad Warlord hissed.

  Apollo appeared faintly. “They have a Midas Hand, Sy’hoss’a. Celeste knows where they are. She can lead us there, yes?”

  Celeste couldn’t find her voice. She managed a stiff nod.

  Enyalios whirled towards her, looking savage and dangerous, eager for violence. “Where are they?”

  “The High Priests are in a mountain retreat in China.”

  Enyalios looked to his friend. “You can’t go, Hy’ala.” He lapsed into a rapid staccato tongue that matched nothing Ego had on record. Apollo replied in the same forgotten language. It was clear they were talking about Apollo’s health; he was, quite literally, barely holding himself together.

  In the end, Apollo made some parting shot and Enyalios stormed away, solemn and angry but grudgingly compliant.

  “You’re sending us with him, aren’t you?” Gethin asked Apollo. “Jesus Christ, Doros…I mean…whatever your name really is.”

  “It was never Jesus Christ,” Apollo said, and suddenly he was the ghost of Doros Peisistratos standing there, looking corpulent and impish.

  Gethin swallowed. “Is there anything we can do to help you recover? Can you recover?”

  The professor-shape ignored the question. “Enyalios will go with you to China. He has agreed to defer to your judgment and command. You must understand how difficult that is for him.” The ancient being smiled weakly. “Oh, and he agreed not to kill you.”

  Celeste gave a nod. “That was nice of him.”

  “It was necessary. Sy’hoss’a has never cared much for the human race. To him, you are still rats crawling in the sewers of long-forgotten troodon cities.” Apollo drew a painful sigh and his color shifted like sunlight through a spectrum, apple-red to evening-blue, and
then to nothing at all.

  Gethin and Celeste shared a look.

  “I guess we’re going, then,” she said, and turned to Enyalios.

  But Enyalios was gone.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Hanmura3’s Last Call

  Aboard his airship high in the Swiss sky, Sakyo Hanmura3 imagined himself as an orchestra conductor as he manipulated a 360-degree wraparound of holopanels. They were like overlapping sheets of tinted glass, marked for a dozen recipients and in various stages of composition. Hanmura3 fervently rotated to each, dispatching commands and listening to reports from his advisory boards on three worlds. His actions would decide the future of his company. There was no way around it: Hanmura Enterprises could not afford to stay neutral in the burgeoning conflict.

  And that window of opportunity was already zipping shut. A Promethean bitch named Keiko Yamanaka was skillfully positioning herself as peace broker, and the cunt had seen fit to fire a very public salvo at his company. Claiming that Hanmura Enterprises was behind the attack on the PI offshore rig.

  How the hell did she know?

  He pushed aside the question. There was a far more pressing matter. An issue of longer term consideration.

  His other self on Luna, Hanmura2, had already warned him about a creature calling itself Apophis. Hanmura2’s email dripped with fear and irrationality, referencing ancient Japanese gods and evil trickster spirits. Great stars! Hanmura3 figured his other self was fraying.

  After all, there were no gods or trickster hengeyokai. This Apophis was just a brilliantly calibrated psychological strike from either Bielawa and/or Gates, and Hanmura3 grudgingly admitted that the trick had been most effective. His other self was a wreck; private messages disorganized, repeating the refrain of universal cooperation against the ‘real enemy’.

  I must have gone batshit insane, he thought, struggling to contain the fear that if his Lunar counterpart was now psychotic, then he himself was potentially psychotic, given the right jab.

  Hanmura3 gave a long, musical sigh. The important thing now was to publicly discredit this Keiko Yamanaka. He needed to harness the public’s emotional reactionism, remind them that a Promethean lab had been destroyed, a Promethean memo warned of dangerous experiments, a Promethean monster admitted its origins. Why listen to a Promethean cunt? The truth didn’t matter. Victory was the only goal that—

  One of his screens flashed an incoming message. Hanmura3 touched it open. A black silhouette appeared.

  “Hanmura-sama?” the silhouette asked.

  The great man glared. “Who is this? How did you get this—”

  “Am I speaking to the Sakyo Hanmura on Mars, or the one on Luna, or perhaps the one on Earth?”

  The CEO felt his blood turn to cold slush. Before he could muster a reply, his mysterious caller gave a sickeningly wet cough lasting several seconds. It might have been a sound-byte…a crude joke hinting at death and ruin.

  “Who,” Hanmura3 sputtered, “the hell is this?”

  “Information is of more relevance than names,” the voice said. It was a deep, resonating voice, richly timbered and articulate. “There are few secrets in Arcadia, Hanmura-sama. The one from Tengu Castle is out. I know that Hanmura Enterprises rehearsed the attack on a Promethean offshore rig. The IPC Senate will be receiving the full record of that rehearsal, along with the confession of one Taku Miyamoto. I have already contacted him. He made a confession tape at my urging.”

  The corporate leader felt his body petrifying. “I—”

  “Deny nothing,” the voice snapped, and before it could continue there was another series of horrible, lung-shredding coughs. “My…my name is unimportant. No one shall remember me. But they will always remember that Sakyo Hanmura violated IPC law so he could manipulate world events to his own greed and glory.”

  Hanmura3 struggled to control his face. Beyond the airship windows, the Swiss mountains seemed painted on the sky.

  “You have shamed the honor of your ancestors,” the voice accused, and Hanmura3 actually gasped, so powerful was this condemnation. “Hanmura Enterprises shall wear the mark of your wickedness for a thousand years. Unless you choose to rectify the situation.”

  The CEO rubbed his mouth in a nervous habit. “How?” he asked softly.

  There was another eruption of wet coughs, worse than before. It was a hideous sound, a terrible reminder of mankind’s frailty. That had to be the lesson here.

  Hanmura3 considered his options. “Perhaps we can make some arrangement?”

  He let the suggestion hover, waiting for a reply. No reply came. The line remained active. The CEO tried several more times and was answered only with merciless silence.

  In the end, he had to disconnect the call himself.

  And quite suddenly, he realized what he needed to do.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Siege

  The Mantid hung like an invisible dragonfly over the Sinkiang Mountains. They were a rounded collection of verdant peaks, their crests peeking through wreaths of fog so that they appeared like the Floating Isles themselves. The central peak towered over its brethren as a jade tooth curling towards heaven, and Gethin thought: This is as good a place to die as any.

  “D. said there’s a tunnel access near the base,” Celeste was saying. “And a tram that’s used to ferry supplies and personnel. Below the fog line, I’m guessing.” Onscreen, the mountain flashed past as the Mantid circled outward.

  Gethin buckled the last strap of the CAMO suit; he had stripped it from a carcass in the hallway outside Doros’s quarters. The suit stank of blood and didn’t fit right. He also worried that the horrific nanite chewers were still on it, possessed by the last Faustian command to pulverize the wearer.

  He watched Celeste squeeze into her own pilfered suit. Stars, he felt exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and they ached. His chest ached too. He wondered if there had been electrical damage to his augmentations.

  There had been no sign of Enyalios during the voyage. Leaving Shimizu, he realized he was expecting the demon to appear on the ship with them, but it never happened.

  “This mountain range is a black blot in global records,” he said, distracting himself from a thousand concerns. “The Republic declared them a zone of protection. They’re a void, a hole in the maps.” He paused. “Perfect place for Stillness to set up shop, huh? Right under APAC’s nose?”

  “D. said they have some kind of communications center. The heart of the mountain is hollowed out.”

  Gethin looked at her sharply. “What?”

  Celeste gave a shrug that betrayed her own tiredness. “That’s what he told me.”

  He mulled that over. How long did it take to carve out a mountain? And why? Was it for sanctuary, so their wicked gods could retreat to a subterranean Xanadu to plot their next move in a billion-year war? Or did they utilize it as a spacious recovery room, licking their wounds by geothermal balefires?

  Acting on a hunch, Gethin ordered Ego to search the etymology of this high peak of Sinkiang. It had been named in the earliest days of the Old Calendar, perhaps a millennium before the birth of Confucius, Ego replied. Back in the Xia Dynasty. The name meant: Mountain of Dragons.

  He regarded the Outlander. Her mask was peeled up so he could view the lovely oval of her face. “I don’t suppose your inside man noted the kind of security waiting for us?”

  “Lots of troops and cameras,” she said. “But Stillness is able to keep a low profile because they’re low tech. When you want a hideout, you don’t pump it full of ultrasonics.”

  “You would know.”

  She winked at him. “Better than you think.”

  [Celeste, I have located something of interest,] said the Mantid on the standard comlink. There was a trace of excitement in its delivery.

  “Show me.”

  The screen splintered into fly-eye qu
adrants. The fog peeled away under thermal imaging.

  The thermal view flushed into blue, umber, and orange. Gradually, a large tunnel became evident. It was well-hidden, overhung by vegetation and crowded with trees too well-placed to have grown there naturally. The image sharpened. A shape appeared, resembling an oversized insect. But it could only be…

  “A ship,” said Gethin. “That’s another one of your invisible StrikeDown vessels, isn’t it?”

  Celeste grunted, “King D.’s transport. The Cobra. Running dark.”

  The Mantid zoomed view on the cave. Men were stationed at the mouth, costumed in beetle-black armor.

  “Stillness Seraphs,” Gethin said, heart sinking. “Terrific.”

  Celeste contemplated the images. The falling water obscured the finer details but she was able to count thirteen Seraphs. Thirteen! And there was something else of note at the waterfall tunnel ledge: the black steel underframes of tortoise microshields. The shields themselves were invisible, comprised of micromolecular binding that could be tailored to whatever height, depth, or shape you desired. Impenetrable. The Seraphs must have sealed off the entire passageway.

  Gethin touched the screen. “Can you give us audio?”

  The Mantid dialed down the roar of the waterfall. The Seraphs were discussing the physical attributes of someone named ‘Lalania’. Apparently, her hindquarters were really something to see.

  “Cut that,” Celeste ordered, and she rubbed her temples, trying to think. “Microshields will stop a railgun. There’s no way past them.”

  “Enough heat will melt the microfilaments,” he suggested.

  “Do we have that kind of time?”

  “Do we have another choice?”

  Celeste licked her lips. “Your pal Apollo insisted that we be subtle about getting in there and taking out that maniac before—”

  Onscreen, the Seraphs burst like wet balloons.

  It had happened so quickly that Gethin felt his mind go blank. He wondered if he was having a stroke; the excitement and stresses of post-regeneration life finally unhinging his brain.