by Jack Castle
“What? Oh, I saw him hanging around with some guy surrounded by blue flames and a bunch of water nymphs.”
“Great,” Mac said sarcastically. Just then, she spotted Enoch standing near a pillared entrance, the entrance to Khaos’s inner sanctum. Enoch gestured for her to join him.
Quoting one of Leo’s favorite old movies, Mac said, “Looks like the great and all powerful wizard is ready to see us now.” She signaled Stein, who was still stuffing his face with food.
With her flight engineer and the German commando in tow, Mac strode toward the inner sanctum. She was confident that she would be able to negotiate with aliens who tried to pass themselves off as gods.
#
They followed Enoch through an elaborate entranceway and down a long pathway that was flanked by rows of enormous pillars. If there were walls behind the seemingly endless number of pillars, Mac certainly didn’t see any.
It was a shame Leo wasn’t with them. She made a mental note to wring his neck once she found him later. Damn that future son-in-law of mine. Never around when you need him.
When she looked up at what appeared to be a throne room at the end of the hallway, she saw Khaos for the first time. The beautiful humanoid male, who had wolf-like facial features and sun-colored hair, was so tall that she had mistaken him for one of the giant statues that littered the palace. That is, until he moved.
Looking at him, Mac realized that the hybrids had to be his offspring. The Mooks must have been the original inhabitants of this planet, but after Khaos introduced his DNA into the mix, he produced worlds of followers.
Khaos stood before his large throne, which was the size of a school bus turned on one end, while his aide spoke to a convoy of pilgrims. The aide was small in stature and resembled nothing Mac had ever seen. He was alien even in this palace of the gods.
“His eminence is most pleased with your offering, Queen Apsu,” the aide said in a compassionate voice. “Go in peace with his blessing.”
The lanky queen bowed and said to Khaos, “Thank you, your eminence. It is my and my people’s privilege to serve such a loving god.”
“TELL YOUR PEOPLE THAT I LOVE ALL OF MY CHILDREN,” Khaos boomed.
“Thank you, thank you, your grace.” The queen bowed again and her head nearly touched the floor.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” Tae said. “God has a Korean accent. He talks just like my uncle back home in South Korea.”
“No,” Stein countered, “he’s speaking in German — Southern German, to be precise.”
But to Mac, Khaos sounded like her Baptist preacher back home in South Carolina. His voice reminded her of Sunday afternoons at church with her parents.
“I think it’s all three of them,” she said. “I think it’s some sort of telepathy.”
This is going to be easier than I thought, she said to herself. If he’s capable of this, then we’re as good as home.
They waited with Enoch until Khaos’s aide signaled to them. Enoch then ushered them ahead, and they approached the being that Mac guessed was easily twice the size of an ordinary man. The hybrid aide, who stood next to Khaos’s throne, only came up to his kneecap.
From afar, Khaos had seemed disarming and benevolent, but up close, he was downright scary. The god’s dark, liquid eyes frightened Mac the most. They reminded her of a sociopath’s eyes. And when those eyes looked at her as though she were the only thing that existed in the universe, ice ran up and down her spine.
Mac waited for a full minute for someone to say something before she finally took a deep breath of courage and stepped forward. “Your eminence, my name is Commander MacKenzie O’Bryant, and this is my crew…”
The aide stepped forward and held up a slender six-fingered hand to silence her. “His eminence knows who you are.” That said, the aide took a step backward to stand again by his master’s side. He reminded Mac of her grandpa’s dog back home, who used to sleep by her grandpa’s rocker on the porch.
Mac waited once again for someone to speak. She risked a quick look back at Enoch, but the old prophet had mysteriously vanished.
After waiting another sixty seconds, she said, “It is my hope that…”
Again, the small aide stepped forward and held up his hand. “Do not speak to me. I am Lahmu, aide to the Atum. Speak only to his eminence, Atum-Khaos — he who is higher than the most high.”
Mac nodded and said to herself, Okay, this could be going better. To Khaos, she said, quickening her tone, “Your eminence, Khaos, it is my hope that we could obtain passage…”
Lahmu stepped forward and cut her off for the third time. “Your eminence knows why you are here and how it is you came to be here.”
Mac’s mouth was still hanging open from the last time the aide had interrupted her. It only made sense that Enoch had briefed his boss on who they were and what they wanted, but she was still speechless and unsure how to proceed. She looked to the others for help.
Tae shrugged his shoulders, and Stein, whose eyes took in the Tripod guards around them, remained as impassive as ever. Before she could utter another word, the towering deity spoke to her in a thunderous voice.
“HOW MANY?” he asked. When he spoke, he revealed a mouth filled with triangular-shaped teeth.
Mac nearly jumped out of her skin when the deity spoke to her, and she hoped her body didn’t show it. She briefly glanced at the others to see if they understood the question any more than she did. Was he asking how many needed a ride back to Earth?
“HOW MANY LIVE ON YOUR WORLD?” the colossal deity asked with a hint of impatience in his voice.
The pilgrims before certainly had gotten better treatment, Mac thought. She considered his question for a moment. Why would this deity, alien, whatever, want to know how many people lived on Earth? Having received military training, she was reluctant to hand over information. She wondered just how much information she should share with an extraterrestrial, especially one that Captain Reed had so adamantly warned them about.
Tae, still jubilant from his tour, didn’t seem to have any such quandaries. He stepped forward and said, “Per the last census, conducted in August of 2167, there are nearly eleven billion citizens residing in our solar system on and around six major planets.” Smiling broadly, and happy he could be of help, Tae nodded to Mac as if to say ‘you’re welcome’ and stepped backward.
Mac glared at the young engineer, but he didn’t seem to notice her irritation.
Khaos sniffed the air as though smelling the humans’ very essence. It was apparent from the look on his face that he caught the scent of something he didn’t like. Mac had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Khaos’s look must have bothered Stein, too, for Mac heard a familiar CLICK as the commando took off the safety on his rifle. Other than his thumb, the soldier hadn’t moved so much as a muscle beside her. She wanted to tell him to stand down, but in truth, she was getting nervous; her stomach acted up with more fervor. She was comforted by the fact that she had her own .45 strapped in a shoulder holster that she had taken from one of the Avenger pilots, but at the same time, she doubted that bullets would bring down such a formidable being as Khaos.
The god sniffed the room a second time. “YOU’RE ESSENCE IS OF MY SISTER, THE SONGBIRD GODDESS.”
From the way he said it, Mac could tell that it wasn’t a compliment. Just as she was going to say “maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Khaos pointed at her.
The aide quickly commanded the Tripods, “Take them away until they can be properly interrogated.”
Mac and Stein tried to back toward the door, but four Tripods quickly encircled them.
“Get your hands off of me!” Stein jerked free of a Tripod that had grabbed him from behind. He spun on his heel and sprayed bullets into the Tripod’s face.
The three-legged being grabbed its ruined face and took off as fast
as its three legs could carry it. It ran into a nearby stone pillar and knocked itself out while also breaking part of the pillar.
Mac drew her own pistol and pointed it at the nearest advancing Tripod. She shot one time in the air, and the creature skidded to a stop. It then began moving laterally.
Stein was reloading when a Tripod conked Tae on the head from behind. Before either Mac or Stein could fire a second time, she saw the towering deity rise to his feet, remove a staff from his throne, and cast a beam of light at the German commando.
“Stein, look out!” she shouted, but it was too late. The beam of light cut Stein in half.
When Mac was distracted, the Tripod that had initially advanced on her attacked again. It reared up a foreleg and one thundering hoof connected with her face. Lying on the cold floor, as the darkness enveloped the last of her senses, she could just make out Stein, who lay beside her with his body in two pieces.
#
While the unconscious Adamah bodies were dragged away, Atum-Khaos turned his attention to his aide, Lahmu, who had leaped down from the dais to pick through the dead infidel’s remains.
The aide dipped two slender fingers into the blood on the floor, and after a brief sniff, he flicked his long, forked tongue over the blood, as a snake does when it scans for food.
Seemingly reading his master’s thoughts, the aide said, “The Adamah’s DNA is consistent with that of the miners in the colony near the Sol system.”
Khaos pondered this information for a moment. “DID WE NOT DESTROY THAT COLONY FILLED WITH MY SISTER’S DISGUSTING OFFSPRING?”
“We did, sire, in the form of a great flood about thirty-six thousand Sars ago, but it seems that some of her progeny somehow survived.” Lahmu thought for a moment. “Perhaps your sister warned the Adamah of the impending flood before you so wisely banished her.”
Lahmu knew that the thought of an entire planet filled with his sister’s descendants would not sit well with Khaos. The SongBird Goddess’s offspring were too difficult to control; they were artistic and sometimes even clever. This would not do.
“How shall I dispose of him, your eminence?” Lahmu pointed to the severed Adamah, Stein.
Khaos took a deep breath through his nose. “HE IS NOT OF HER BUT OF ME. EVEN AFTER CENTURIES, I CAN STILL SENSE MY OFFSPRING.” Khaos looked at the fallen Tripod that his progeny had killed.
“As you wish, your eminence.” The aide clapped his hands at nearby Mook servants and gestured for them to remove the Adamah’s body parts and take those, as well as the dead Tripod, to the medical facility.
“I WILL SPEAK WITH MY SISTER NOW,” Khaos announced abruptly. He rose from his throne and walked to the wall behind it, which contained a plain looking wooden doorway that resembled the pi symbol. He paused before stepping through the seemingly solid matter. “AFTER TRIBUTE, PREPARE FOR ASCENSION. WE WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST OF HER VILE OFFSPRING ONCE AND FOR ALL.”
“As you wish, my grace.”
After the aide had followed the Mook slaves out of the room, Enoch stepped out from behind the one of the nearest pillars, where he had been hiding. He had a worried look on his face as he removed a weathered book from the pocket of his robes.
He recalled the story young Tae had told him about how his followers had been burned ruthlessly when the chariot of the gods had taken him away. He said solemnly to himself, “And when they came to the place Enoch had departed from, they found the earth covered with snow, and upon the snow lay great stones like unto hailstones.”
Chapter 26
Back in the Cell
Mac remembered. Stein was gunning down a Tripod when a white bolt of lightning seared him in half. She had been standing right next to him when he’d been struck down. That was the last thing Mac remembered: lying with her face on the floor and seeing Stein’s severed body.
Looking at the whitewashed cell wall around them, Mac assumed that they were being held in the prisons of Joppa-Cal. She wondered whether this was where Harry had been held captive and whether Fu-Mar and Hu-Nan were still being held nearby.
The sound of the door unlocking interrupted her thoughts. She fought down her hopes that it was Enoch, coming to the rescue. A door that was invisible inside the cell swung open.
“He wants that one,” a Tripod’s hologram commanded from the hallway, pointing at Mac. Two Mooks moved in, unhooked her manacles from the wall, and led her away in chains.
Still groggy from her head trauma, Mac was too weak to put up a fight.
“Where are you taking her?” Tae asked but was ignored.
“Bye, Mac. Say ‘hi’ to Khaos for me!” Leo said as she was dragged from the prison cell.
The door slammed shut behind them, and Mac was gone.
There was a moment of blessed silence before Leo started up again. “You know, in ancient Greek mythology, the gods would often descend down from Olympus to make love to beautiful women.”
“Shut up, Leo.”
#
As they dragged Mac down the torch-lit hallway, she reviewed the latest turn of events. She had underestimated Captain Reed’s grasp of the situation. She had thought that his twentieth-century mind was too easily fooled by these alien posers, when, in fact, these beings were so advanced, powerful, and seemingly omnipotent that they could be easily classified in the category of ‘gods’ by anyone’s reckoning. And because she had underestimated the situation, another member of her crew was dead. Worse still, if Khaos had discovered the wormhole, all of Earth might be in danger.
Mac had no doubt Khaos would torture her, Tae, and Leo for every scrap of information he could glean about the inhabitants of their solar system. She’d fight them, of course, but if it came right down to it, she’d kill herself at the earliest opportunity before she let them pick her brain. Her deepest regret was not getting the chance to see her daughter one last time. No one could possibly save her now.
“Hi there,” said a familiar voice in the hallway just ahead of them — a human voice. “There’s been a slight change of plans.”
Utterly defeated, Mac had been looking at her feet the whole time. With Herculean effort, she lifted her head and saw Captain Harry Reed.
The Mooks holding her were just as surprised to see him as she was. Before either of them could react, Captain Reed knocked out one with one punch. The second one uttered a short growl that reminded Mac of a small, scrappy dog and jumped at him. Harry backhanded the Mook, slamming it into a wall. He moved in, pinned the dazed Mook to the wall, and unsheathed the survival knife he kept on his belt.
There was fear in the little Mook’s eyes. These weren’t the same wild Mooks that had killed Brett at the ruins. These were domesticated servants that were merely obeying their master’s commands.
Mac saw the frightened look in the Mook’s eyes. “Don’t kill him,” she said.
Harry rolled his eyes but did as she asked. He flipped the knife around in the air and bonked the little guy on the head with the handle. The Mook fell to the floor unconscious.
“Miss me?” Harry asked. He still hadn’t noticed Mac’s appearance. When he did, the look in his eye finally broke her down.
She wanted so badly to be tough and reply with some quip like “it’s about time you got here,” but instead, she simply fell into his arms and cried. After everything in the universe had been thrown at her, she was finally broken. She had seen it in his eyes.
Mac buried her face in Harry’s jacket, and he held her until her sobbing finally slowed.
“It’s okay, Mac. Hey, it’s okay,” he said soothingly. He sat down with her on the stairs and rocked her gently. “You cry as long as you need to.”
Mac did. When she was able to stand, Harry helped her to her feet. “C’mon, I’m getting you out of here,” he said.
“Wait a minute. We’ve still got to save Leo and Tae,” she said. The spark in her had rekin
dled slightly.
“Which way?” Harry asked without hesitation.
“Um, back this way.”
#
Soon they were back in the lowest regions of Joppa-Cal’s prison. Mac leaned out and peeked around a corner. She could see Leo and Tae’s cell, but it was guarded by one of the gigantic Tripods. She turned around to face Harry, who had been following just behind her. “It’s just one guard, but it’s a Tripod, and he’s a big ’un.”
Harry checked his .45 pistol.
“You can’t use that,” Mac stammered. “You’ll bring every guard in the castle down here.”
“Hmm, you’re right.” Harry holstered his weapon and walked out from their hiding spot — out into the open.
“Wait a minute. What are you doing?” she whispered harshly after him.
He stopped. “I’m going to get Leo and Tae.”
“Are you crazy? What about the guard?”
Harry turned and looked at her. She noticed now that there was a light about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he seemed more alive than before. It gave her hope. Her own spark was beginning to turn into a flame — a small one — but a flame nonetheless.
“Mac, trust me,” he said. He headed down the dungeon’s hallway as if he owned the place.
Mac decided Harry had gone crazy but followed timidly after him, on the balls of her feet, just the same. She trusted him. As they got closer, she noticed that this particular Tripod wasn’t wearing a hologram projector and was thankful for small favors.
Harry walked up to the Tripod sentry and said, “Excuse me, but my friends are in there. Would you mind opening up and letting them out?”
The Tripod looked at Harry in disbelief. Seeing that he and Mac were alone, it shrugged its shoulders haughtily and struck one hoof on the dungeon floor for emphasis.
Mac stepped up behind Harry. “Shoot him,” she whispered into his ear. “Shoot him now!”
Instead, Harry held up his hands, palms up. “Whoa, whoa, hold on there, big guy.”