When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony

by Chris Kennedy

  Whatever relics were in the sword had the desired effect, and the efreeti emitted the same steam whistle noise that the first one had and disintegrated, leaving Sella to fall on the floor. Before they could see to the women, the soldiers were distracted by a telepathic, “DIE!” from where Steropes and Quetzalcoatl were still fighting. The soldiers looked over and could see that the fight wasn’t going well for Steropes, as the coatl had him almost completely wrapped up in its coils and was constricting him about three feet above the ground.

  “Let me help!” Calvin begged from five feet away, now holding Master Chief’s spear.

  “No,” said Steropes, “still...got...this.” He was obviously having problems breathing and, as Calvin watched, one of his ribs broke with an audible snap. Steropes cried out and, with a jerk, was able to get his right arm free from the coil. He reached toward his boot but, seeing the movement, Quetzalcoatl struck quickly, biting him hard on the hand.

  Steropes pulled his hand free, and Quetzalcoatl’s teeth tore huge chunks out of it. Blood began dripping heavily from it. With another quick movement, Quetzalcoatl leaned over further and pulled something from Steropes’ boot with his mouth. “Is this what you wanted?” it asked, holding up a throwing dagger in its mouth. “How pathetic and predictable. Hundreds of years later, and you still have a knife hidden in your boot. Now you will die with your own knife!” Quetzalcoatl tried to drive it through Steropes’ chest, but the rubber knife only bent on contact.

  “You’re the predictable one,” Steropes said, driving the real knife that he had kept hidden in his sleeve deep into the side of Quetzalcoatl’s body near its wings. “That one was just to keep you occupied!”

  Gravely wounded, Quetzalcoatl dropped Steropes to the floor and flew off toward the door to the left of the dais, the knife still embedded in its side. “You can...help now,” Steropes wheezed, gasping for air.

  “With pleasure,” Calvin replied, throwing the spear with all his might. Quetzalcoatl stopped at the door to wrap its tail around the handle. Before Quetzalcoatl could open it, the spear hit it in the neck just behind its head, severing its spine. It fell to the floor, dead.

  As Quetzalcoatl’s tail fell off the door handle, it seemed to move of its own accord. The Terrans readied their weapons to repel an attack from the outside. The door opened, and Night burst in, followed by the Ground Force, weapons at the ready. “Did someone call for retrieval?” he asked.

  Night nearly tripped over the body in front of him, and he looked down to see Quetzalcoatl lying on the ground with a spear through it. He nudged the body with the toe of his boot. “Is it dead?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied Father Zuhlsdorf, who had come over to check. “I guess their gods aren’t gods, after all.”

  Night looked back up at the Space Force. Battered and bloody, most of them were barely able to stand. “Quickly,” he said, “we’ve only got a few minutes. Give us your suits!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In Front of the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  The Ground Force troopers took possession of the suits and bounded back down to the shuttle. They quickly loaded them, and Top commed the WSO, Lieutenant Imagawa ‘Samurai’ Sadayo, “All of the squad’s 19 suits are aboard; cleared to take off.”

  “Roger, that,” Samurai replied. He looked at his pilot, Lieutenant Clarisse Boudreau. “Let’s go, Clarisse!” he commed. “We’ve only got a few minutes left!”

  The shuttle blasted off, carrying the death of the planet inside.

  Watching it go, Top had a thought. “Lieutenant Train, Top,” he commed. “How many suits did you say we were supposed to have aboard the shuttle?”

  “19,” Night replied. “Staff Sergeant Dantone went back to the Gulf. There’s 17 left in the squad, plus Lieutenant Commander Hobbs and Steropes, so there should be 19 suits.”

  “But what about Father Zuhlsdorf?” Top asked. “Shouldn’t there be a total of 20?”

  “Shit!” Night commed. “Standby.”

  Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  “The shuttle just took off with 19 suits aboard,” Night said. “Shouldn’t there be 20? Who’s suit did we miss?”

  “I don’t know,” Calvin replied. “Did you get all of the suits from the people that got separated?”

  “I think so,” Night answered. “There was one for every soldier, dead or alive.”

  “Shit!” Calvin said. “Applebaum. We forgot about Petty Officer Applebaum, who got killed on the beach. If you didn’t come down and get them, his body and the suit are probably still on the beach.”

  Shuttle 01, Airborne on Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  “There is a suit on the beach where the platoon first landed,” Night commed. “We don’t know if it was close enough for the EMP to affect it, but it may have been.”

  “Understood,” Samurai replied. “We’re on our way to get it.”

  “I heard,” Clarisse said, “I’m headed there now. It’s going to be close.”

  “We don’t have a crewman in the back,” Samurai said, unstrapping from his seat, “so I’ll have to go out to get the suit. I’m heading to the back.”

  “Roger,” the Canadian replied, “we’ll be there in 20 seconds.”

  Samurai made it back to the cargo bay, and the loading ramp was already on its way down as the shuttle landed on the beach. He ran to the body and almost threw up. They had told him the soldier was dead; they hadn’t told him that most of the front of him had been eaten away. What was left was now crawling with some kind of local parasite that found Earth men appetizing. With no other place to grab him, he took the corpse by the ankles and began dragging him toward the shuttle. The soft sand was a cardiovascular nightmare, especially in the hot sun. Even though his suit’s air conditioner was running at full, it wasn’t enough to cool him.

  He didn’t know how he did it, but finally his feet hit metal as he made it to the ramp of the shuttle. He pulled the corpse onto the ramp and then hit the button to close it. “I’m in,” he commed, “Go! Go! Go!”

  He flipped the corpse over so that he could see the battery pack. Three minutes remaining. They were screwed. “Master Sergeant Smith,” he commed as he ran toward the cockpit, “could you please pass on a message for me?”

  In Front of the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  “Did they get the suit?” Calvin asked as he made his way down the front of the pyramid with the rest of the Space Force. The Ground Force members were helping the Space Force make it down, most of whom were bloody and next to dead.

  “Yeah, they did,” Night replied. “They’re on their way to space. Samurai just commed and said that there won’t be time to dump the suits, so they’re going to eject instead. We’ll have to pick them up on our way to the Gulf.”

  “Good plan,” Calvin said.

  “Samurai?” asked Top, who had Master Chief’s arm over his shoulder as he helped him down the front of the pyramid. “Is that Lieutenant Imagawa?”

  “Yeah, that’s his callsign,” Calvin replied. “Why?”

  “He had a message for you,” Top answered. “He said to tell you, and I quote, ‘Today’s the day.’ He said you’d know what that meant.”

  Calvin’s face went white. “Comm him now,” he ordered. “Tell him I said ‘No!’”

  “What’s going on?” Night asked.

  “He told me one time that it was his destiny to die in the squadron,” Calvin replied. “I jokingly told him to let me know when that day was, so I could make sure I wasn’t on the flight schedule with him. He’s planning on killing himself.”

  Shuttle 01, Vicinity of Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  “One minute to detonation,” Samurai said as they reached the black of space. “We don’t have time to get rid of the suits. We’ll have to eject.”

  “Got it,” Lieutenant Boudreau replied, trying not to hyperv
entilate. No one had ever ejected out of a shuttle before. No humans, anyway. She was not looking forward to being the first, nor to waiting in the depths of space for the other shuttle to come and, hopefully, find her. “Ensure the ejection selector is in Command Eject,” she added. Command Eject was used to make sure that all of the crew ejected, regardless of who initiated the ejection process.

  “It is in Command Eject,” Samurai agreed, pushing the selector to ‘Individual Eject.’

  “I just hope that the shuttle continues in this direction,” Clarisse noted. No one knew what the ejection forces would do to the shuttle’s trajectory, and the Vella Gulf was close, almost too close.

  “I’m sure it will,” Samurai said. “30 seconds to detonation...stand by...Eject! Eject! Eject!”

  Lieutenant Boudreau grabbed the ejection handles and pulled. There was a roar and a flash of rocket fire, and then her seat was gone. As he had worried would happen, the force of the ejection caused the shuttle to skew back toward the Vella Gulf. Samurai calmly reached over to take the stick and pointed the nose of the shuttle back away from the ship.

  The rocket fire of Clarisse’s seat was quite beautiful, Samurai thought, well worthy of a haiku. “A blossom of flame,” he started. The shuttle detonated.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  In Front of the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  “I’m sorry sir,” Top said, as they reached the bottom of the pyramid. “The Vella Gulf just commed to say that the shuttle blew up. The duty officer said that it didn’t look like Lieutenant Imagawa ejected prior to the explosion.”

  “Dammit,” Calvin said, sitting down hard on the bottom step of the pyramid. “He was a good man.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Night added. “I know you two flew together a lot.”

  “Yeah, we did,” Calvin agreed. He let his head fall forward onto his arms, crossed over his knees, lost in grief.

  “C’mon, sir,” Night said, taking one of Calvin’s arms. “Let’s get the hell off this rock...What the fuck?”

  Calvin’s head snapped up to see the shuttle lifting off from the courtyard in a giant cloud of dust. What? Why was the shuttle leaving without them? As the craft accelerated upward, the dust cleared to reveal the reason for its hasty departure—a group of seven dino-bears in an arrowhead formation passed through where it had been only seconds before. The lead dino-bear paused to bellow a trumpeting roar at the shuttle as it climbed out of its reach, before looking back to the Terrans that were still in the courtyard. As the beasts turned to reorient on the platoon members, Calvin was shocked to see that each of the creatures had a small brown figure on its back, holding reins that led to the beasts’ noses. The Mayans were riding them!

  “What the hell is that?” someone commed.

  “Fire!” Night commed to the suited members of the Ground Force, most of whom were watching the creatures in stunned disbelief. They hadn’t seen the one on the beach earlier and couldn’t believe how fast the dino-bears could move.

  The troops began firing at the giant creatures and scattering to get away from their charge. As Night began firing, he saw that one of the new soldiers from Epsilon Eridani, Corporal Madek Shokal, wasn’t going to escape the charge. Overwhelmed by the size of the monsters, he hadn’t even moved. He stood there watching as they charged, his rifle at his side, too scared to move.

  Seeing his trooper frozen, Night fired repeatedly at the dino-bear in the lead, hitting it several times in the chest. The little holes that he poked into the beast were not enough to bring down the 17-feet tall behemoth, although it roared in pain at the continued stings. Several other soldiers, seeing the monster bearing down on Corporal Shokal, began firing at it as well, and it was hit seven or eight times as it closed on the Eridanian. It wasn’t enough, and the dino-bear reached down to grab Corporal Shokal, who screamed over the implant network as the 9-inch talons pierced his suit and skewered him. The dino-bear lifted him from the ground, eliciting another round of screams from the soldier. Unlike a dinosaur, the monster’s head was shaped more like a bear’s, and it didn’t have as large a mouth as a comparable-sized tyrannosaurus rex would have had. That meant that instead of eating the soldier whole, the creature was only able to get about the top third of the soldier into its mouth for the first bite. The screams ceased suddenly as the soldier was torn in half.

  Chewing what it had in its mouth, the dino-bear stopped and stood upright. Night took aim and shot it in the right eye twice; the second shot pierced the ocular cavity and continued into its brain, killing it. It fell backward in slow motion, squashing the Mayan warrior on its back.

  As Night looked up he could see the soldiers of the Ground Force firing at the rest of the dino-bears throughout the courtyard. They had taken cover as best they could on the pyramids and were having success. In addition to the one that Night had killed, two others were down, and one of the others had lost its rider. That one continued to snap its jaws at the pain it was feeling, but didn’t seem to understand what was hurting it. It opened its mouth to roar its pain to the heavens, and a lucky shot went through the roof of its mouth into its brain, putting it out of its misery.

  Night heard Calvin yell, “Incoming from the left,” as he dropped his spear and began running up the steps. Night turned to see another of the monsters racing toward him and his defenseless commanding officer. Based on the amount of damage the first one had taken to kill, Night knew there was no way he could stop it prior to the creature reaching them. He only had a second to think and decided the best defense was a good offense. Throwing down his rifle, he ran toward the dino-bear.

  The dino-bear drew up in surprise. It had never had anything attack it; everything always ran away from it. That gave Night the moment he needed, and he rolled through the dino-bear’s legs, drawing one of his knives as he rolled. The creature reached down to try to grab him, but was too late. Night came out of the roll standing up behind its right leg and slashed down on the tendon going to the creature’s right foot. Hobbled, the dino-bear screamed and tried to use its tail and good leg to turn itself around. Night avoided the swipe of its tail and severed the tendon going to the beast’s left foot. The creature screamed in pain and frustration, and Night used the time to hack at the dino-bear’s tail, cutting through the bone and severing part of its tail. Deprived of its ability to balance, the dino-bear fell backward to its left.

  Just before it hit, the Mayan riding it jumped off, landing in a roll. Incredibly agile, the soldier stood up before Night could get to him, drawing two of the native weapons called macuahuitls. Looking at them, Night saw that they were unlike anything he had ever seen. Neither a sword nor a club, the weapons looked like batons that were about three feet long and about three inches in diameter. As the warrior began weaving the weapons in a defensive pattern, Night could see that the clubs had a row of obsidian blades imbedded down the side, giving it a serrated cutting edge that would make a bloody mess out of anything that it hit.

  Realizing that his Green Beret knife was out-classed by the warrior’s weapons, Night drew his pistol, intending to shoot him. Unfortunately, the pistol hadn’t survived Night’s roll between the dino-bear’s legs. As he pulled it out, he watched in dismay as the barrel fell off.

  The Mayan warrior smiled and yelled a battle cry as he leaped forward, the weapon in his right hand already descending.

  Across from the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  Top continued firing into the head of the dino-bear as it staggered and started to fall. He had gathered three of the Ground Force soldiers to his side, and they were systematically working to take down the dino-bears. Having ‘Tiny’ Johnson alongside him with his .95 caliber rifle helped. The lasers were good for poking little holes into the creatures, but they did more to infuriate the creatures than they did to kill them, barring a lucky shot or multiple hits into the creatures’ heads. The rifle had the power to rip bigger chunks from the
monsters than the lasers, and to penetrate their skulls...sometimes.

  As the soldiers started to fire at the last dino-bear still standing, they were startled by the sounds of wooden drums, conch shell trumpets, whistles and shouting from behind them. Looking over his shoulder, Top saw nearly 100 Mayan warriors charging toward them. The little brown men ran swiftly toward them, and Top had the transient thought that it looked like the attack of a costume party. The warriors’ dress varied wildly, although all of them were colorful and well-decorated. Some of the warriors were even painted as large carnivores; Top saw at least two that looked like leopards and another that was dressed as a lion. Many of the warriors wore layers of bark or cloth as armor, and most of the Mayans had good luck charms of animal claws and predatory bird feathers. Some even wore full animal furs, hoping to invoke that animal’s skills. Scattered throughout were brightly colored masks that depicted grotesque shapes and images. To see them running at full speed was...disconcerting...to someone used to a more modern battlefield.

  In Front of the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

  Thinking quickly, Night threw the handle of his pistol into the face of the Mayan warrior. The warrior twitched backward to avoid it, causing him to miss with his macuahuitl as Night dove backward to his right. Seeing that the handle wasn’t a threat, the warrior jumped forward, using his momentum to swing the weapon in his left hand.

  Night continued to give ground as rolled upright, drawing his second knife as he stood. Holdovers from his early days as a Green Beret, the knives were just over 12 inches in length, with blades that were seven inches long. As he took a fighting stance, the warrior looked at his knives and snorted in derision. His weapons were two feet longer, giving him a significant reach advantage. He continued to advance on Night, swinging one of the macuahuitls, while holding the other one ready to swing if Night tried to close on him. The material on Night’s left shoulder tore as one of the weapon’s jagged blades caught it and ripped it open.