99 Gods: War

by Randall Farmer

  “Remember your lessons! Stay conscious!”

  50. (Atlanta)

  “You’re going to die, you useless sack of shit, unless you surrender,” Atlanta said.

  Atlanta didn’t know who or what was home over in Miami’s body, if anyone. He certainly didn’t answer, and he certainly didn’t give up the attack.

  Her abdomen, in the area hit by Miami’s last Red and Gold Helix attack, now showed mottled silver. She had lost the use of her left hand. Hell, she had lost her left hand. One of her mental tracks located her lost hand on the ground, somewhere back near the ruins of Portland’s estate. She would retrieve her hand later. Or not, if things continued to go wrong. Of course, in that scenario…

  She didn’t have much left but that scenario.

  Miami’s problems started in his head and ended there. Miami’s only wounds, if one could call them wounds, were at neck level and above. She had cut his throat a dozen times, and his throat gaped open, oozing silver. She had stuck knives through both eyes. She had skewered the remains of his brain. She had blown away about two thirds of Miami’s head.

  Miami still pummeled her. He still flamed her. She had tried to cut off his hands, but he kept stronger protections on his hands, his primary weapons, than on his head.

  Telling.

  Miami hadn’t said a word since the first head blow. Atlanta hadn’t experimented with head blows on herself, needless to say, and didn’t know if Miami suffered any mental damage. She didn’t know how much head, if any, a Territorial God needed to be able to think. By Miami’s example, two thirds of a missing head wasn’t sufficient to stop a Territorial’s attacks.

  Celebrity certainly didn’t even need a body to think. Vastly unfair. However, she also paid a price for her flexibility, as Celebrity had less power than the top two or three Telepaths in this fight. Her tricks did have their uses, though. The fact Celebrity had survived what she put herself through gave Atlanta hope for the success of her own last ditch plan.

  Miami’s Golden Fire attacks ended and he changed the pattern of his gestures. White Lightning hit her once. Then twice. Then twice more. Each bolt packed more punch than a Golden Fire attack, but each White Lightning lasted only an instant, and Miami took longer to gather himself for the next. The hesitation allowed Atlanta to press Miami back toward the white elephant, which Dana and Velma trundled, still invisible, toward the fight.

  Several times during the fight Atlanta had wished for some of the energy expended getting the white elephant to the fight, but in (short) retrospect, all the energy would have done would be to enable her to fight futilely for longer. Eventually, without this gambit, Miami would win. Not that eventually, either. She frayed at all her edges, bleeding away silvery vapor.

  Miami would win soon, head or no head.

  “Ground it,” Atlanta said, sending her voice to Dana. She had covered this part of the plan earlier with Dana, and Dana did so, wedging the white elephant down into the topsoil between two now flattened suburban homes. “Trigger the supports. Velma, keep Dana going!” Dana powered the supports herself, and the need nearly depleted her. Dr. Horton corralled Dana in her arms, and pushed divine regeneration into Dana. Mortal human bodies weren’t made to live through the energies coursing through her Chief of Staff, and without Velma’s help, the effort would fry Dana, perhaps killing her. Atlanta wasn’t sure what long term effects this would have on Dana, and hoped they wouldn’t be too severe.

  She risked both their lives with this. If another hostile God appeared, Miami miraculously recovered, or another squad of hostile enhanced mortals appeared, Dana and Velma would end up as dead as the heroic Melvin, as what Atlanta asked of them depleted them far too much. Melvin had died an honorable death, but a damned wasteful one. Portland needed to improve at combat or she herself would be just as dead someday soon.

  If not today.

  Atlanta’s mind flashed back to years ago, in the Anime Café, soon after the place opened and just after her mother let her explore around Athens on her own. Back when all she knew of anime and manga was Fruits Basket, she had been little more than spark and sparkle, along with nerdy curiosity about everything. She recalled her first conversation with Lara, looking as old as she did today: ‘There’s something strange about you, kid. I’d swear you were one of us.’ She hadn’t been, and the Indigo had never figured out what was strange about her, and lost interest. However, being one of a few beloved minority kids in a mostly Anglo group of crazies into anime, manga, and British and American science fiction and fantasy media had been tremendous fun for her.

  Until Apotheosis, she never suspected the insane stories the Indigo crazies told her had been real.

  Now, it all ended.

  Dana’s supports, a partial kinetic energy reversal, were necessary to keep the white elephant from destroying itself after they triggered it. Atlanta had designed this trick herself. She basked in pride for a microsecond before shouting “Now!” To Dana.

  The decision to keep the trigger in Dana’s hands had been a gamble, but a correct one. Miami’s attacks would have fried the trigger, a normal mechanical device, in the first seconds of the battle. Dana, limp in Velma’s arms as she dragged Dana away, flicked the switch. The electronic signal went out, and Atlanta grabbed hold of Miami with the last of her personal power, a divine confinement, three feet above the pavement of a destruction littered suburban street. The trick wouldn’t have held Miami earlier, and her trick wouldn’t hold him long now, even weakened as he was.

  The Delta SRB ignited with Miami fifteen feet from the rocket’s exhaust cone. The thrust tugged at Atlanta’s divine confinement holding Miami in place, but the confinement did its job and didn’t shatter. Tiny bits of Miami abraded into the air from the heat and force of the thrust, the world becoming Miami’s scream. Two of these white elephants had enough thrust to launch a Delta II rocket into orbit, if helped by the Delta II’s main engine. One solid rocket booster should be enough to abrade the fight-weakened Miami into oblivion, Atlanta hoped.

  Only if Atlanta could hold on to Miami, though. His last panicked throes strained her near the point of final exhaustion. To hold on she had to inch closer and closer to the SRB exhaust plume.

  Which she did, exactly as she needed for her secret last-ditch scenario.

  With no great worry, she entered the SRB exhaust to join Miami, hoping her work with Celebrity would pay off.

  Miami died.

  Atlanta was no more.

  51. (John)

  Boise doubled over and groaned. Inventor wailed, Singularity sank to his knees, and Freedom swore under his breath and didn’t stop.

  John looked up from his scry bowl, fearing the worst, expecting to see Phoenix or Dubuque in the room with them. Nothing. He motioned with his eyes to Reed, who concentrated.

  “We’ve got dead Gods,” Reed said.

  Dead Gods. Dear God!

  John hadn’t expected dead Gods. He did a quick scan of the room. “Atlanta’s projection is missing, and so is Dr. Horton’s,” he said. Reed nodded.

  “Dammit,” John said, and looked back at his scry bowl. With his allied Gods discombobulated, this would be the perfect time for an enemy charge. However, the enemy, or at least the enemies John had been able to identify, chose this instant to pull back. Several winked off entirely, which meant they had lost their divine support. John took a deep breath and watched. Pinkus, the least senior of John’s apprentice magicians, detonated two attack spells at one of the fleeing targets. Line of sight didn’t matter, as they were able to target anyone visible in the scry bowl. In but a moment, the last of the enemies vanished from the bowl, ending the fight.

  John waved his hands and attracted the attention of his magicians. “Cease fire. We’re not going to risk going after them. We haven’t been doing anything more than annoying them, anyway.” He had learned enough, though, about the Godly defenses to construct much more efficient battle spells, ones tuned to Gods and God supported normals, for the next fight.


  Boise came out of his crouch and looked up at John with strained eyes. “We’ve lost Atlanta,” he said. “She killed Miami.”

  “You’re certain of this?” John said. In his wildest dreams he hadn’t imagined the Gods could be killed by anything except normal humans, based on what the Gods told him. So, then, where were the normals able to kill or even harm Gods? The Telepaths didn’t appear to have the power. His magicians might eventually have the power, but by the time they did, they would no longer count as normal humans.

  Had the Host fed the Gods a lie?

  “They’re both gone, leaving behind great aching gaps in the minds of all the Gods,” Boise said.

  Reed had wandered over to the couch, where Dana’s projection lay, and touched her with his hands, enabling him to read her emotions through the linkage. “Dana’s having a mental breakdown and I think she over-extended herself using her divine support; Dr. Horton’s alive and conscious, but she’s lost her divine support. I think the Portland battlefield’s a charnel house,” Reed said. “The only functional combatant left standing is… Nessa? Her? That twit? How?”

  Nessa had successfully walked through the valley of the shadow of death. John laughed, a painful chuckle at Reed’s mortal offense at Nessa’s capabilities. “Despite her flakiness, she is one of the top five Telepaths on the planet, Reed. She’s well trained and has mental reserves none of us can imagine.” He had seen her do the terrifyingly impossible far too many times. “Boise, how fast can you get us to Portland?”

  “I must recover,” Boise said.

  “Recover later.”

  “You forget yourself, Lorenzi. You aren’t my boss.”

  “I don’t want to be your boss,” John said. At least not right this instant; he didn’t have the right leverage now. “I’m talking necessity. We can’t stand around studying our navels while we have wounded allies and…”

  “Be quiet,” Boise said, and closed his eyes. A moment later, three God projections appeared in the cabin’s great room: Akron, Worcester and Montreal. Boise waved his hands. “Now you know what I know. Choose your sides carefully. What happened today to Miami and Atlanta will happen to you if you continue on your paths. How long will it be before Dubuque calls upon you to do what he called on Phoenix and Miami to do? Hear my voice for once.”

  John shivered as he realized what Boise did. They hadn’t had time to work out a defense against Dubuque’s control trick, but Boise had enough time to duplicate it. Bastard. If John had known Boise knew the trick, he would have worked the battle differently.

  Worcester flung up a barrier around her projection and winked out. Montreal shook her head for a moment, knelt and put her head in her hands. Akron stood firm and shook her head.

  “You should have stuck to logic,” Akron said. This was the first time John had seen Akron, and she looked the picture of a modern American well-to-do burgher housewife. Hair too short, body too thin, and slacks. And what was the point of jewelry if it didn’t involve gems or precious metals?

  “I was countering Dubuque’s control.”

  “I’d already thrown off Dubuque’s so-called control,” Akron said. “For a self-named prophet of God, you don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

  “I apologize then. I am not perfect.” Boise flicked flies and looked abashed.

  Akron’s projection looked around John’s safe house. Her severe face took on a look of disapproval. “This fighting is ridiculous. Madness. This cannot be what we were put on the Earth for. Miami sinned, and so have you.”

  “Phoenix besieged us; we struck back only after Miami attacked Atlanta. However, we couldn’t do anything more than keep them from destroying us,” John said. “I’m not sure we even scratched or scorched a one of them.”

  “I hear and understand. I’m not joining your group or following your orders, though,” Akron said. “If you come up with someone more reasonable to lead the defense against Dubuque’s insanity than you two losers, contact me then. Until then, don’t bother.”

  Her projection vanished.

  John looked over to Boise, who had lifted Montreal to her feet. “I’m embarrassed,” Montreal said, in her lusty Quebecker accent. Her body, unlike Akron’s, carried enough weight to look healthy and attractive, though he wished she wouldn’t show quite so much cleavage. “I can’t figure out for the life of me why I’m so vulnerable to mental takeover. Sure, I’ll ally with you now, but based on previous experience, the next time a God grabs me and does this trick to me I’ll just switch sides again. What a cock-up!”

  “We’re working on a defense for Dubuque’s control,” Boise said. “Stay with us. As soon as we finalize it, we’ll give it to you.”

  “Free me?” She continued to hold Boise’s hand even after she stood.

  “Yes,” Boise said. “I have no desire to control anyone on a permanent basis or build any empires.”

  “What if I stalk off?”

  “Then you stalk off,” Boise said. “Better to have you as an angry neutral than as Dubuque’s slave.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Montreal said. “Why did Miami and Atlanta do what they did? It’s ‘orrible!”

  “Miami attacked Atlanta, and we don’t know why,” Boise said, patting Montreal’s shoulder in comfort. “Atlanta was hurting, even before the fight. Dubuque’s political attacks on her had shredded her Mission and frayed her hold on her territory. Worse, actual fighting between two Territorial Gods turns out to be bad in general; each blow thrown hurt the thrower as much as it hurt the defender. We Territorial Gods have the power to fight each other, but the Host made us in such a way as to be socially incapable of such a fight, thank God Almighty. I don’t believe she saw any other choice but to die at the end.” Boise paused and took a deep breath. “This was inevitable, but an important lesson to all of us as well. Because of what was done today, we’ll never again see an all-out personal Territorial God versus Territorial God fight.”

  “Fuck,” Montreal said, her bedroom eyes now wide in surprise. “They’ve ruined my Integrity!”

  Boise turned to John and Reed, who had walked over from Dana’s immobile and unoccupied projection to join them. “The fight shattered the Integrity of all the Gods, especially all the Territorial Gods. Dubuque lost more than a supporter by arranging this fight: he’s cratered his own cause, perhaps fatally. I can’t tell. In any event, as the prime mover behind this fight, he lost more than any other surviving God. He’s going to need to start over to rebuild his Integrity, and in the meantime, his City of God plots and plans are on hold. If we’re lucky, he’ll never be able to recover, but I doubt we’ll be so lucky.”

  John cleared his throat, and Boise nodded. “Yes, yes. I’m pompous and long winded. Live with it. However, my pomposity gave me enough time to recover. Now we can go to Portland and heal the fallen.” Boise paused. “But do us all a favor and leave your apprentice magicians behind. I still say they’re wrong and they shouldn’t exist.”

  “If you wish,” John said, chewing his lower lip and worrying about how many funerals he would end up attending because of this disaster.

  52. (Nessa)

  Nessa stood and grabbed a mostly crushed chocolate bar from Ken’s back pocket on the way up. She opened the wrapper. Powder. She lapped up the chocolate powder anyway.

  Ken had only suffered a few wounds, but he still hadn’t recovered from the rest stop ambush, and the last shared mental attack had taken the last of what he had left to offer. He opened one eye half open and gave her a plaintive ‘please’ to let him rest. He had done so much during the fight, perhaps too much. Her love needed his rest. Nessa couldn’t, for many reasons.

  For a moment, her hand touched his, almost wedding band to wedding band, and the touch brought a smile to her face. They had come so far, in so short a time. Their improbable joining helped her so much, so unlike her real church approved wedding and marriage, all tied up in societal expectations and good rough sex. This was real love, and the crazy backwards marriage ha
d found a way to open up her unconscious mind and bushwhack a path through her Telepath-standard I-am-aloneness brambles. And Ken’s. Such a beautiful thing!

  Exhausted, her mental discipline faltered, and her mind whirled from self to other. Could she find a way to duplicate the backwards marriage, and share such beauty with the world? Yes, she could. She could put a telepathic whammy on the rings, and when they gave them up to the person or two who haunted Ken’s mind, she would be able to give them a backwards marriage as well. Yum. Scheme! With two, there would be a pattern, and in the minds of those receptive, not only including the Telepaths, but also the Psychics, the Mindbound and those few who thought in the same way as Telepaths, the pattern would take hold and duplicate whenever appropriate. Without her interference. This is what Opartuth had done with his crazy believe in the UFOs trick. Normally, she couldn’t even think of such things, but now, with her telepathy exhausted, she knew how. Of course, exhausted, she couldn’t do anything now, but she would remember. She never forgot her schemes, unless she willed them out of her mind.

  Heh.

  Nessa walked out from her place of concealment, the brick fireplace, and looked around. Nobody else moved, at least nobody she could see through the smoke or sense with her mind. She still controlled six Miami thugs, and the voices in her mind, her two socks, cheered her on for being able to maintain her focus on the control during the entirety of the battle. The distant ones were gone. Out there somewhere, a man knelt near the back edge of the battlefield outside of Portland’s wrecked estate, the one who had surrendered on his own. She ignored the screwy Mindbound for the moment, although the fact he alone still possessed Miami’s divine enhancements did puzzle her. The loudest noise she heard were Dana and the other’s howls, from far outside the estate. Dana’s mind had hit the wall, unable to take the carnage, and taken her physician companion with her into insanity. Strangely, Dana also still possessed her divine enhancements. Oh, right. Portland still supported Dana.