Portals of Infinity: Reprisal

by John Van Stry

  "So why are you here?"

  "That is private. Have you heard about what happened in South Africa?"

  He shook his head, "No, what happened?"

  "Trouble with the police. Now, let's go inside and talk in private."

  "What about your car?"

  "They'll be leaving once they finish eating their lunch," I said. "Now, inside."

  He grumbled and let me in.

  "So where's the altar? Who's your head priest here?"

  "Old Norbert's in charge, this time of day he's out back doing his daily devotions. So what happened in South Africa?"

  "The police raided the place, turns out that the estate manager was an Interpol spy. It got pretty nasty, everyone got arrested, several people were killed, and they burned the place to the ground."

  "What?" He said sounding shocked.

  "Yeah, so we're going to have to relocate the main temple. Do you have a list of the members here?"

  "Yeah, it's upstairs in Norbert's office."

  "Well, let's go get that first, and burn it, in case the police show up. Then I'll go talk to Norbert and see how things are with him."

  "Do you think they'll come here?"

  I shrugged, "Maybe, the thing is, better to be safe than sorry."

  He nodded, "Follow me."

  I followed him up to the office; there were a lot of interesting documents and such there. As well as a lot of correspondence. I guess Norbert was a busy guy.

  "Is this from the other temples?" I asked and pointed to the letters.

  "Some of it is, why is that bad?"

  I sighed and spying a garbage bag I swept all of it off the desk and into the bag. "If the police come, it should be. Everyone was told to start locking stuff up or burn it. You got that list?"

  He nodded and handed me a list he'd pulled out of the file cabinet.

  "Good, is there an armory here?"

  "Of course there is! It's in the basement."

  "Thanks," I said and punched him in the throat, crushing his larynx, and then grabbing his head I wrung his neck, killing him.

  I searched the body quickly; he had one of the necklaces, so I pocketed that, and a key ring. I took that as well, and then ran downstairs to the basement. It took me a minute to unlock the door, there were several down there, and they all looked beat up and unused, but this was the only one that was locked, and inside I found a nice clean room a bunch of weapons, and better yet, some explosives all wired up and ready for use.

  I grabbed a bunch of explosives, and ran back upstairs. I set a few for ten minutes, hopefully the police wouldn't get here before then, hid a few of them in the building and I went out the back door.

  There were two outbuildings, one was an old barn, and the other was much nicer looking than that. I walked over to the nicer one and let myself in, the door was unlocked. Obviously they weren't expecting me.

  When I got inside, it was rather nice, there was a short vestibule area, and then as I walked through that, I entered a large room, obviously the temple. There was an altar at the far end, where there was a man in vestments standing, engaging in some sort of ceremony. Above the altar there was Cenewyg's symbol, along with a rather nice statue, that actually did look quite a bit like Cenewyg, if maybe taller.

  There were also about a dozen people in the room.

  I walked down the center aisle; I had a pistol in one hand, the bag of documents and explosives in the other. I stopped when I came even with the seats that were occupied, everyone looking at me. I gave them a quick once over, they were all middle aged or older, mostly men, but a few women. They all had the rough look of people who'd grown up rather poor.

  "Norbert!" I said loudly.

  "What?" The priest by the altar turned to face me, "Who are you? And what are you doing in the house of the Lord Gatwick?"

  I shot him in the head, and then I quickly turned and unloaded on the people in the seats on my left. I dropped the gun when I ran out of bullets and pulled out the next one, and finished off the rest.

  I quickly searched the bodies again, surprisingly they were all unarmed. However they each had that same necklace, though Norbert had a ring as well as a necklace. I took all of that, and stuck it in the bag, then I wiped off the three pistols and set them on the floor, and set the timers to one minute on the remaining bombs and after triggering them I dropped one under the altar and two more by the walls, then ran back outside, just in time to see the house blow up rather nicely.

  I could hear the sirens of the police, so I ran further away from the temple building, and after it exploded I gated out immediately.

  I did wonder briefly as I left, just what kind of a story Thomas and his two men were going to have to tell their bosses.

  Two

  Feliogustus's Temple - Hiland

  9 Months

  "So that went well," Fel said as I stepped out into the temple and collapsed the gate behind me.

  "It sure did," I said and hefted the bag I was carrying, "I also got some information!"

  "Yes, I can see that. Correspondence with his groups in Boston, Washington, Texas, and Nicaragua."

  "Wait, what?" I said looking around, the one thing I hated when Fel wasn't in the room I was in, was that I couldn't stare at him in disbelief when he did things like this to me. Talking to a disembodied voice is something you never quite get used to.

  "I'm a god, Will, the moment you entered the temple, I knew everything on all of the paper in the bag."

  "Oh!" I said.

  "But you're still going to have to go through it yourself," he chuckled.

  "Can't help?" I sighed.

  "Oh a little. Take it all out, and toss it all up in the air."

  "Seriously?" I said surprised.

  Fel laughed, "Trust me, Will."

  "Oh, I trust you! Just sometimes I think you enjoy laughing at my screw-ups too much to not help a few of them along."

  "Well yes, there is that," Fel agreed.

  I pulled all the documents out and threw them up in the air. They literally exploded into a large cloud of papers that swirled and twisted around me. I watched then, rather fascinated as they all settled out into eight distinct piles.

  "Wow," I said. "Impressive."

  "Well, I am a god you know," Fel laughed.

  "And you just love to show off for me," I said grinning.

  "Well, you're about the only one who still appreciates it," I heard Fel sigh, which surprised me. "Everyone else just expects it from me."

  "They still worship you, Fel." I pointed out.

  "True, but I've got all these nice powers and tricks, and I rarely get to show them off anymore."

  "Un-huh. So, what are the piles?"

  "Each one contains the correspondence referencing each of the eight locations. The first two are for the South Africa and Garrison locations, that you have already taken care of."

  I nodded, "So they're not important?"

  "You might want to look them over for reference."

  "You mentioned Boston, Washington, Texas, and Nicaragua," I said. "If I add the two others, that's just six. What are the other two piles?"

  "There are references to two more places, one in Azerbaijan, the other in Afghanistan."

  "I know where Afghanistan is, where's Azerbaijan?"

  "Just outside of Russia."

  "Ah, the old Soviet Union," I said. "So why do you think he had places in those two spots?"

  "Well, Afghanistan has a large warlord population, and they buy lots of weapons, especially back when the Soviets were trying to take it over before the USSR collapsed. So if he was already doing business there, be probably figured he might as well set up a place."

  "Makes sense," I agreed. "And Azerbaijan? The USSR was looking pretty solid back when he was last there."

  "There have always been problems with rebels and such in that area, they were once an independent country, and they've wanted to be one again."

  "Ah, so are they now?"

  "Yes, the
y are."

  "Well, that's good I guess." I looked at the piles and picking them up, I carefully put them back in the bag so they wouldn't get messed back up. "Guess I have some studying to do."

  It took me a few days to get through all of it. There were addresses for the people who had sent the letters, which would help in finding the different 'churches,' at least the four Fel had mentioned. There was even enough information as to guess who the 'priests' of Gatwick were at those locations. Unsurprisingly they were all guys, kind of typical of Cenewyg I guess. As for the other two locations, while they were mentioned, there were no real details on them. Apparently they hadn't been writing anything to anyone lately.

  From the correspondence, I discovered that yes, they were all very concerned about what had become of Cenewyg, or 'Mister Gatwick' as they referred to him. While at times he did disappear for a year or two, he'd never been gone this long before, and apparently the 'flock' had been losing members over it. They were quickly getting down to the core 'faithful,' who were now getting concerned about the shrinking size of their following.

  There were also questions being asked about why the main 'temple' at Gatwick's estates outside of Johannesburg had rather suddenly stopped talking to anyone else, and there was a note from one of the people in Washington D.C. that something had happened between the South African government and the estate, and it was apparently being kept rather quiet.

  They were still discussing if they should investigate, over a year and a half later, but it appeared that the Texas contingent were rather happy with this state of affairs, as it seemed that they were now the ones in charge, though some of the comments coming from a man named Alexander in D.C. showed there might be some friction there.

  "So what are you working on there?" Rachel asked, coming over and looking at what I was doing as I was writing up my notes. "I don't recognize the language."

  "Killing someone," I grumbled.

  "Sure looks like a lot of work to kill someone," she laughed. "Is this something Feliogustus is putting you through?"

  I shook my head, "This is related to a problem that cropped up back when I first had to go off on a quest for Fel."

  "Ah," Rachel said and moving my arm off the desk, turned around and sat down on my lap. "I remember that, you were pretty upset the first few times you came back home while dealing with that."

  I looked at her surprised. "You noticed?"

  "Of course I noticed!" She laughed, "What, you don't think I pay attention to my husband?"

  I shrugged, and gave her a kiss, "I figure with you being a queen and all that, you just have other things on your mind."

  She leaned in and gave me a nip on the jaw.

  I blinked and started a little, "What was that for?"

  "Thinking that I don't pay attention of course, really now, William!"

  I sighed and gave her a hug, "Sorry. I just don't like making my problems, your problems. You seem to have enough of your own after all."

  "So," she motioned to the papers, "What's this all about then?"

  "I have to track down a bunch of places for an upstart, and destroy them."

  "Upstart what?"

  "God. Or at least someone who thinks he is one."

  "Ah, and I take it they're all well hidden?"

  I nodded, "But I got my hands on some of the letters between the people in charge, so I'm hoping they'll lead me to their temples."

  Rachel nodded and pondered that a moment, "You know they won't lead you to them, don't you?"

  "Why wouldn't they?"

  "They think this guy is their god, right?"

  "But he's not a god!" I sighed.

  "You sure about that?" Rachel smiled.

  "Oh yeah, I'm sure about it," I grumbled.

  "Are they sure about it?"

  I shook my head and sighed, "No, they all think he's the real deal."

  "So they're not going to talk, no matter what you do to them," she pointed out.

  "Well, I've been trying to pass myself off as the guy's nephew and flashing one of their symbols."

  "And how many times has that worked?"

  I looked a little guilty, "Once. I sort of got it from my sister, she pulled it off once with even less than that."

  Rachel laughed, "Yeah, I can see her doing that. You however? You're not a good liar, Hon."

  "Oh? Really?" I looked at her surprised.

  "You're too innocent," Rachel purred, "you're not used to a life of lies and deception. While I on the other hand...."

  "Are a queen." I finished.

  "And I deal with it all the time, when not doing it myself. The point I'm getting at however, is that if you keep trying to trick the true believers, you'll foul it up, eventually."

  I shrugged, "So?"

  "So, if you think they're hard to find now, how much harder will they be, when they know that you're looking for them?"

  "Umm, you really think they'll figure it out?"

  "Well, just how did you get all of this?" she asked and waved her hand at the piles of papers.

  "I destroyed one of their smaller churches," I said.

  "And you think they won't notice?" she, smiled and leaned into me.

  "Well, the last place of theirs was destroyed by the local government."

  "So, they're going to be even more worried, don't you think?"

  I pondered that a moment. Yeah, they would be.

  "So what do you suggest?" I asked.

  "Well, the first thing is to identify and find your targets, you want to know who and where, does that information there cover all of that?"

  I nodded.

  "So how many people and places are there?

  "Well there are six left, though no one has heard from two of them for a long while."

  "And the remaining four?"

  "Three are in the same country, two of those are pretty important."

  "What makes them important?"

  "Well, one of them is now the largest and most prestigious, it's now their main temple, with the other one located in the capitol, there are a lot of powerful people in that one."

  "The other two?"

  "One is tied to the one I just destroyed, the other one, I know nothing about."

  Rachel nodded and pondered that a moment.

  "The first one you mentioned, could it have been destroyed by the government as well?"

  I thought about that, "That or a rival political faction," I told her.

  "Okay, then that one should be next. They're the most likely to be the ones to run and hide right now."

  "You think so?" I asked.

  She nodded, "It might be political, and not religious, political factions have falling outs all the time. If the rest think it's just politics, they're not as likely to run and hide. They'll think it's just a local problem, nothing that they have to fear."

  I nodded.

  "I'd take the one out of the country next. Now what do you know about the two that no one has heard about in a while?"

  "Not very much," I admitted, "Just an address for one of them."

  "What are the chances that the locals already took care of them?"

  "You think they might have?" I said surprised.

  "Well, are there local gods where they're setting up their new temples?"

  I nodded, "Well, yeah. But people are supposed to be tolerant of other religions."

  "Oh, like they are here?" She asked grinning at me.

  "Umm, well they are in some places," I said and I tried to remember what I knew about the existing religions in the countries those two temples were located in. I seemed to remember there being some fairly militant religions in that area.

  "But you could be right." I admitted.

  Rachel smiled, "Of course I'm right. The big guys always go after the upstarts. Just publicizing these people might be more than enough to take care of them. After all, wouldn't you go after anybody who tried to build a temple or start a new religion in Feliogustus's territory?"

  I
nodded slowly.

  "So, go find these places, see what the people around them are like, maybe you can enlist the locals to do the dirty work for you, or at least help.

  "For that matter," She continued, "you may want to seek out the heads of the local religions or at least some of the stauncher or even more fanatical supporters at the other locations too. They're not going to like another religion trying to horn into their territory, so you might gain a few allies.

  I nodded again, "What about the last two?"

  "Well, the main temple is last, they have to defend that, or they'll not just lose it, they'll lose all their followers and their god. If you won't stand and defend your last bastion, no one is every going to have faith in you. It's one of those make or break moments in any movement."

  "And the other one?"

  "The other one is going to be a bit trickier. It's the capitol, they're all politicians then?"

  I nodded, "Some of them are, I don't know about all of them however."

  "Politicians will scatter at the first sign of danger, like the rassa bugs do when the light is brought into the room. So you want to go after them all at the same time, gather them together, and strike them all at once. Otherwise there will always be a few left lingering in the walls."

  "And just how do I do that?" I asked.

  Rachel smiled, "I'm just the strategist, you're the tactician, I'm sure you can handle that, Dear."

  I nodded and pulled her over to me, maybe I could get Agent Addison to help.

  "So, to what do I owe all of this sage advice?" I asked.

  "Just what kind of a wife would I be if I didn't help my husband when he needed it?" Rachel giggled playfully.

  "Mmmhmmm," I said and kissed her.

  "Now, be a good husband and show your wife a little gratitude," she purred.

  "Oh, I think I can show you more than just a little," I purred back.

  § §

  I looked around Fel's bar and smiled, "Yes, Fel?"

  "So, going to take Rachel's advice I see," Fel said smiling.

  I nodded, "I really hadn't thought about what might happen when I started picking the rest of them off."

  "Well, it's good that you consider it now."