by Alan Baxter
I straighten up. Stand up. Ignoring the wetness that pastes the fabric of my pants to my thighs, I hold myself tall. Or at least as tall as one can stand in front of gods. I’m compelled to hurl myself flat at Hlaarina’s feet and worship her for relieving me of the pain. It takes everything I have to resist.
“So,” I say, “would you like to hear some more? I mean, as the condemned man on the stand, I’m allowed to make my statement in full, yeah?”
“I prefer to regard it as a confession,” Trakiin says, “but by all means continue. We’re all ears.”
* * *
The diversion went down in Orlando. Luminous operatives – and I’d guess the woman I met at Nelson’s Folly was among them, if not the actual ringleader – set off a series of bombs at Redemptionland, the theme park formerly known as Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The explosions were carefully orchestrated so that not one innocent bystander was hurt. The damage was done to infrastructure alone: the exhibits, the chapels, the rides. The Holy History Tour in particular took a pounding, with almost every waxwork tableau getting at least partially blown up. So for a while to come, until it’s all fixed, nobody will have the pleasure of viewing, say, Trakiin’s Singlehanded Conquest of Moscow during the Forty-eight Hour War or The Friendly Rivalry Between Xorin and His Brother Q’lun and endure the bullshit recorded narration accompanying these scenes.
Naturally, Templars flocked to the site and, like the good little jackbooted thugs they are, started making arrests and breaking heads. Redemptionland had been busy that day, full of eager sheep, sorry, tourists who’d made the pilgrimage to the place from as far afield as California and Canada. Some of these folks would have spent several months’ wages for the privilege, the cost including travel permits, tickets for long journeys by solar-powered locomotive or electric bus, and of course the Faith Tithe that funds the Templars and keeps the clergy and theocrats in the luxury they so richly deserve. They weren’t expecting to have their day ruined by a series of noisy detonations and the less-than-discriminate attentions of divinely appointed rent-a-cops who uphold the law with batons, swords, and coilguns. Must’ve come as quite a shock.
Not sure if the Luminous cell got away unscathed or fell foul of the Templars but I’d put money on the latter. If any survived long enough to be captured they’ll be in holding cells at the Orlando Temple of Correction, getting their fingernails pliered out and their kneecaps pulverised. I’ve heard Templar inquisitors are especially fond of holy-waterboarding. You can take the interrogator out of the CIA…
At any rate, Orlando’s Templars were busy. Hell, most of Florida’s Templars were busy. Nothing kicks the hornets’ nest like a good ‘terrorist atrocity’. Suddenly the buggers were buzzing everywhere, swarms of them, angry and vengeful and above all undisciplined. Disorganized. Lashing out. Looking every which way but where they should be looking.
Which was over on the eastern flank of Florida, on Merritt Island, just north-northwest of Cape Canaveral, in the swampy forbidden zone that had once been the Launchpad and development hub for America’s space program.
Because that was where the five of us – me, Lind, Jorgensen, Roth and Padre McCreedy – were getting to work.
We inserted at 9pm, shortly after nightfall. We’d spent the best part of the day hauling our asses from Miami, a couple of hundred miles up the coast by motor launch, hugging the shoreline. Finding a small seaworthy craft with a working outboard had been a challenge, to say the least. Thank fuck there was a thriving black market in the rental of such things, and a very nice guy called Felipe was only too happy to take a thousand cash to let us borrow the boat. Gas was extra, and even more expensive. He might as well have been selling us jerrycans of pure myrrh, the amount he charged. But at least it was all on a no-questions-asked basis, and Felipe looked as though he knew how to keep a secret, judging by the Blessed Virgin Mary tattoo I saw peeping out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. Like McCreedy he was a covert Catholic, no doubt with a neighborhood church in someone’s garage or basement where he’d meet on Sundays with likeminded individuals and share the Sacrament with them and pray they wouldn’t get caught.
We chuntered northward, slowing if we passed anything that even smelled like a Templar coastal patrol craft. We made landfall in a creek so overgrown with mangrove and saw palmetto it was little more than a narrow stream in places. We hitched up the boat and waded inland through some of the most inhospitable terrain I’d ever encountered. If the stagnant swamp water sucking at our boots wasn’t enough, there were the hummingbird-sized mosquitos sucking at our blood. An alligator as big as a fucking Buick swam past, only its eyes and snout above the surface, giving us a hard reptilian glare as though sizing us up, trying to figure which of us would be the tastiest snack. Lind kept her rifle trained on it the whole time – a British Army SA80-L85 she’d ‘liberated’ from her barracks arsenal the same day she went permanently AWOL and joined the Luminous cause – until we could safely say, “See ya later, alligator.” Even then her forefinger never strayed far from the trigger, and I for one would not have been sad to see a 5.56x45mm bullet turn the creature’s brain to so much mush. The dinosaur wouldn’t have shown us any mercy if it had come back for dinner.
Same goes for the panther that stalked us for a couple miles. That feline sonofabitch was so assured of its status as apex land predator in the area, it barely made any attempt at stealth. It just prowled alongside us at a distance of no more than a dozen yards, sometimes lurking in thickets of bald cypress but mostly giving us a clear, unimpeded view of its tawny pelt and loping strides, as though saying, Screw you, humans. You’re on my turf. Deal.
Then we came to the perimeter fence.
Or what was left of the perimeter fence.
Chain-link mesh tangled in weeds and thick vines, it was more like a sagging wall of greenery. Plenty of handholds and toeholds. We climbed over it as easily as if it were a child’s jungle gym, and paid no mind whatsoever to the sign posted on top which read:
FORBIDDEN ZONE
ENTRY STRICTLY PROHIBITED
ON PAIN OF DEATH
BY DIVINE DECREE
Because, well, that was kind of the whole point of being there, wasn’t it? To enter this STRICTLY PROHIBITED location? With the degree of heat we were packing we were already in violation of so many divine decrees that traipsing around in the forbidden zone would be the least of the Templars’ concerns should we be caught.
Once we were safely the other side of the fence, McCreedy crossed himself. Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch, as the old joke goes. But he did it with the Sig in his hand, the fat suppressor threaded on the end of the barrel tapping the four points on his body. I guess, just in case his capital-G God was otherwise engaged, the semiauto offered an extra layer of reassurance. When prayer doesn’t work, a 10mm subsonic round can often fill the gap.
Ahead, beyond an undulating landscape of grass and wild shrubbery, the buildings of the old Kennedy Space Center loomed.
“Our intel’s good, isn’t it?” Jorgensen piped up. “Just asking.”
“Bit late for that,” said Lind. “We’re already committed.”
“But if we’ve gone to all this trouble and we get to those buildings and it turns out there’s nothing inside worth risking our necks for…”
“The intel’s good,” I said, with perhaps more confidence than I felt. Luminous shared information across its various networks as best it could, but communications were never straightforward and messages could be intercepted, corrupted, falsified. You couldn’t completely rely on what anyone said. “Now’s as good a time as any to tell you that this mission isn’t only about looking for proof about the Savior Gods,” said Roth.
I arched an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”
“No. That’s a secondary objective. They’re aliens. That’s pretty much taken as read. It’s the only possible explanation for their enhanced abilities and their appar
ent immortality. We believe they fled from a world far in advance of ours, technologically speaking. They’re not messiahs, just intergalactic scammers – a bunch of chancers who spied an opportunity to lord over a stunted, backwards civilisation and seized it with both hands. And if we can find anything to confirm that, great. Cool. High-fives all round.”
“But…?” Lind prompted.
“But… after the Savior Gods arrived and began throwing their weight around, NASA began working on methods of negating their powers, levelling the playing field for us mere mortals. The eggheads examined whatever of their tech they could scavenge from the Forty-eight Hour War and took it to pieces trying to find out what made it tick. There were even attempts to reverse-engineer Dominions’ blast-lances and flight capability. The goal was a weapon that could bring down gods.”
Jorgensen let out a low whistle.
“For the longest time we were under the impression they didn’t get very far, though,” Roth went on. “The Big Twelve caught wind of what was up and flew in to personally Sodom and Gomorrah’d the shit out of the place. Scorched earth, motherfucker. The NASA guys never stood a chance. That day, religion disproved science.”
“But doesn’t that imply there’s nothing here now?” I said. “The Twelve would have been thorough cleaning the place out surely.”
“New intel suggests it’s possible something survived. Sources claim the rocket scientists were in fact closer to their goal than anyone realised. They may even have achieved it.” Roth paused. “Somewhere on the premises there may well be something that can kill a god.”
McCreedy broke the silence that followed. “‘May’ being the operative word. What are the odds?”
“No idea,” Roth admitted, “but whatever they are, I’m willing to take the gamble. We should all be. The potential reward is just too damn valuable.”
Lind and McCreedy both looked skeptical, whereas Jorgensen was nodding avidly.
“So,” I said, “we continue to treat this as a regular op, only with possible fringe benefits. Huge ones.”
“I had a girlfriend like that once,” Jorgensen said, clutching two handfuls of empty air at chest height. “Huge benefits.”
“Oh, shut up,” Lind said, thwacking his meaty biceps with a fist.
Jorgensen grinned impishly through his thick, Scandinavian-pale beard. “Better equipped than you in that respect, darling. But she couldn’t shoot the wings off a gnat like you can.”
“And the balls off a Norwegian, too, if necessary.”
“I love it when you try to emasculate me.”
“You won’t love it when I actually do.”
“Enough foreplay you two,” I said. “We’ve tyrants to dethrone.”
The brief moment of levity over, Lind transitioned back into default ice-cold operator mode. Jorgensen gave me an appreciative wink, and as a group we closed in on the Space Center. We moved slow through the waist-high grass, keeping a low profile and taking advantage of the concealment provided by unkempt foliage. Despite his size, Jorgensen proved to be quite stealthy. Lind moved effortlessly, gliding through the grass like a snake, but to my utter amazement Padre McCreedy gave her a run for her money. Roth tried his damnedest to keep up but I couldn’t help but cringe, expecting a barrage of bullets to blast us apart with every clumsy, squelching footstep he took.
Mercifully the Templars had ceased patrolling that far out from the facilities years ago, and with the distraction at Redemptionland there was only a skeleton crew on station. As we drew closer, I recognized the charred carcass of the Vehicle Assembly Building and had an urge to do my best Charlton Heston impression circa ’68 – You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! – but refrained. I’d estimate only a third of the buildings remained standing, and even those Mother Nature was fighting for sovereignty over. If the weeds sprouting up through crumbling asphalt and the kudzu blanketing walls and abandoned vehicles were any indication, the Templars were losing that particular war.
We stopped to allow Roth to get his bearings in the alien landscape. He removed a battered old map and a penlight from his kit. We surrounded him, blocking the light from line-of-sight with our bodies while he worked. We heard the Templar well before we spotted him – stomping around through the undergrowth and whistling a melody from an early 2000s pop song. He stepped out from behind a collapsed structure fifty meters ahead and moved toward us, the torch mounted on his coilgun sweeping lazily back and forth; the product of lax discipline and long hours at an uneventful post.
Padre McCreedy raised his Sig and I aimed down the holographic sight of my MP7A2, but Jorgensen signalled for us to lower our weapons and we complied. Suppressed though they might have been, neither the Sig nor my Heckler and Koch personal defence weapon was silent. Lind slung the SA80 assault rifle and took out her composite bow, nocking a broadhead-tipped arrow from her quiver. She took aim as the Templar closed in on our position, the beam of his torch creeping too close for comfort. With a thwish the arrow launched, travelling the short distance between Lind and the Templar, piercing his neck and severing his spine.
The Templar’s rifle fell and his body wasn’t far behind. Jorgensen rushed and caught him, lowering him gently to minimize sound. He checked to confirm the Templar was dead and incapable of calling for support. Jorgensen turned off the rifle-mounted torch and dragged the weapon and body into a dense thicket off the road. I got the impression from the speed and efficiency of the whole process that it was well practiced and frequently implemented by Lind and Jorgensen.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on just a bit.
“Are we good to go?” I whispered to Roth.
He bobbed his head and placed the map and penlight back in his kit. Roth indicated the direction we needed to go and we crept that way at a glacial pace. Jorgensen ranged ahead and Padre McCreedy brought up the rear. I covered Roth, and Lind stayed with us, bow held at the ready.
Forty-five minutes of creeping along abandoned streets and dodging patrols later, and Roth gestured toward a relatively intact building. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other relatively intact buildings apart from a pair of guards standing by a hole in the wall vaguely shaped like it was made by a linebacker on super-steroids.
Xorin was here, I told myself.
These Templars appeared significantly more alert than the one dispatched by Lind earlier. Even more inconveniently, they remained firmly rooted at their station and were encased in complete sets of armor – helmets and all. We watched from a distance for a while but they stood at attention the entire time, not even shifting slightly to prevent cramp. Could’ve earned themselves a penny or two as human statues on Venice Beach.
Jorgensen cased the joint and found two locked doors in back and around the side and some busted windows too small for any of us to fit through. Every minute we wasted increased the risk of the dead Templar’s disappearance being noted.
We needed to act.
Padre McCreedy and I were the only ones with suppressed firearms. Guns are rare enough in the age of the Savior Gods but suppressors are almost impossible to find. I knew my 4.6x30mm rounds could defeat Templar body armor but I wasn’t sure if McCreedy’s Sig would do the trick, let alone if he could hit the target from that distance with a pistol.
“Got anything capable of penetrating ballistic plate tucked away up your sleeve?” I murmured to Lind, half serious.
She selected an arrow with red fletching from her quiver and showed me the nasty-looking bodkin tip affixed to the carbon shaft.
“Will that do the trick?”
“Hasn’t failed me yet,” she remarked.
“Fair enough,” I conceded.
“You take the goon on the left, I got the one on the right. You shoot first and I’ll follow your lead.”
I shouldered my MP7 and acquired the guard to the left of the god-shaped
cavity. I took deep controlled breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. The holographic reticle hovered on the dodecagonal badge of the Savior Gods emblazoned on the Templar’s gleaming breastplate. I breathed out one final time, pause, and my finger stroked the trigger.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
The guard convulsed and collapsed as three tungsten carbide penetrators bypassed his armor in quick succession and shredded his heart. Beside him the second Templar fumbled with an arrow that had sprouted unexpectedly from his gorget. Before he could cause too much of a racket Jorgensen was there, knife in hand, to deliver the coup de grâce. Jorgensen ducked his head inside Xorin’s improvised entrance and signalled to us the coast was clear.
We hustled down the street and dragged the dead guards inside behind us and out of immediate visibility.
“Lind, Jorgensen, patrol the perimeter. I want to know if anyone comes within two blocks. Padre, mind our egress point. I don’t want any surprises if a Templar manages to slip their net.” At this, Lind huffed. “Roth you’re with me. Find us that silver bullet.”
Whatever purpose the premises once served was no longer identifiable. The God of War had redecorated the interior with the subtle eye for design of an artillery shell. Splintered desks and shattered monitors served as tombstones for skeletons bearing the evidence of excessive trauma. Yet more weeds sprouted from craters stamped into the flooring tiles by massive footprints. Pens and various other office paraphernalia crunched under the tread of my boots as Roth and I delved deeper into the facility.
Roth picked his way through the wreckage, examining each long-dead tablet and opening every desk drawer. I was starting to doubt he would find anything of value to the cause. If there was even anything of value to find. Would the Savior Gods really leave any stone unturned if they believed a threat to their reign existed? It would have been deliciously appropriate to punish such hubris in the manner of the pagan gods of ancient Greece but the longer Roth spent scouring the debris the less plausible it seemed.