Sons of the Gods

by James Von Ohlen

  In a few minutes he had what he needed. He extracted an armored box from the fallen Titan’s chest and passed it to Ed.

  “Looks like we got Modi’s brain for her.”

  RAGNALD carried the brain housing, placing it carefully into a medical examination chamber. The torpedo shaped device was usually reserved for running diagnostic tests on sick soldiers. But it was also designed to keep any potential pathogens isolated. And there was no telling if the Titan’s control unit had been booby-trapped. It might just spew out lethal chemical or biological attacks if breached.

  The examination chamber’s function could be altered to perform autopsies as well. And it was about to do just that. Kind of. A small cutting torch rotated on a robotic arm within the unit. Whirring loudly. Torsten was glad to hear it with his own ears for a change.

  Each man in his crew had removed the armor they had worn while battling the Titan. Damaged beyond utility, it would provide no protection against anything more significant than drunken, unarmed brawling. The suits of armor were taken and placed in units that resembled the medical examination pods.

  There, Torsten had watched as the suits were scanned and then sprayed with a thick coating of grey foam. Nanobots, the word sprang into his consciousness. He wasn’t near a halo unit, so it must have been something implanted by them earlier into the library of his mind. They would repair the damage to the suits, using themselves as the raw material to do so. Any leftover after the suits were ready to go again would return to their housing in the repair unit to await further use.

  “Is there anything they can’t fix?” Torsten asked Pier, standing a few feet away and gazing into the depths of one of the machines. He hadn’t expected much of an answer. Therefor he wasn’t disappointed when Pier had simply grunted.

  “Living tissue.” Modi’s voice sounded near Torsten. Free of implants, armor, and halo units he wasn’t sure how he was hearing her. “The units can’t repair living tissue. Though we have some that can do almost the same thing. Fixing wounded men and women, that is.”

  Torsten looked at her for a second and then reached out to pass his hand through her ghostly form. It still bothered him that at some points she had seemed physical. Had apparently moved things with her hands. He distinctly remembered her touch after the destruction of Fort Pleasant.

  “Still a ghost, I’m afraid. Or rather the projected image of one.” Modi again spoke when she noticed Torsten’s scrutiny. “I’ve been able to interact with you through signals from orbital satellites and ground based units. It was easier when you still had the UN implants in your brain. I could make it look like I was doing just about anything. Now I have to rely on the capabilities of the projector units around here. I can even aim the speakers to direct my voice to specific spots. A neat trick, if you ask me. Good thing the experimental departments were big on their use before…” She stopped herself and frowned, apparently not wanting to talk about the destruction of her nation and the death of everyone she had ever known.

  “Well, before.” She finished.

  Just then Ed had entered the room, beaming with pride. “We finally got it out. And I don’t think we broke it either.” He was referring to the Titan’s brain casing of course. The part removed by Torsten earlier had contained the casing, but extra components needed to be carefully removed. Ed smiled, causing the now smooth-shaved skin of his face to wrinkle around the edges of the eyepatch he had taken to wearing again.

  Modi had promised to replace the missing eye with a new one, organic and made from his own DNA, at the first possible chance. It would take some time for those resources to be available, but Modi seemed to feel it was inevitable. For the time being though they had removed the ocular implant placed there by Anhur. It had been Ed’s suggestion that they do so. He wanted no part of anything to do with the War God. Other than killing him, of course.

  Vidar had been present when the device had been plucked from Ed’s skull by an automated surgical unit. The look of disgust on the old man’s projection was something Torsten would not soon forget. For a computer, he seemed very interested in the surgery. Ed had emerged a few minutes later, no worse for the wear. Aside from the missing eye.

  Torsten thought very briefly about having the steel prosthetic of his right hand removed. He flexed it, clenching and unclenching his fist several times before shaking his head. Ed’s sight could be regained as long as he was in a suit with optical sensors and a halo unit. Torsten’s hand wasn’t quite so easy to replace.

  Pier and Torsten looked at the repair units working over the combat suits they’d been given access to by Modi one last time. Though both could accurately claim to fully understand the process, it was still something new and amazing to see.

  The suits themselves had been no less wondrous. An entirely different breed of armor from what they had been clad in when they first arrived at Fort Kasper. Then they had been wearing what amounted to riot control suits that had been customized by military intelligence for use as security units in their headquarters.

  Fleeing from the Coalition Titan unit, the shortcomings of those suits had been made clear. The nuclear batteries they ran on still had several hundred years’ worth of life left in them, but the armor was best put to use in controlling unarmored opponents. If not for Torsten’s shot severing the power and guidance cables to the Titan’s heat lance, it would have melted through the blast door and then incinerated every one of them in but a few heartbeats.

  After communications links had been restored and Modi could activate the fort’s infrastructure, she guided them to several armories. There they found suits of armor and weapons that had been designed for actual combat on a battlefield. Suddenly the wonder of the security suits seemed a thing of the distant past.

  Bigger. Faster. Stronger. More powerful in every way. The combat suits were a nightmare in dark silver unleashed through the technology of the Veldt. The units made available to them had been experimental when the war came, intended for use by select groups of elite soldiers. Their characteristic color was due to a self-healing nano-coating that also significantly dampened their presence in enemy sensors. Combined with the optical camouflage that warped light around them, they were virtually invisible.

  So it had seemed when they had emerged from the catacombs beneath to destroy the Titan unit. That such a valuable resource would be deployed against them was interpreted by Modi as a sign of desperation on the part of remaining Coalition forces. Torsten had no reason to doubt her line of thinking.

  The only complication Torsten’s crew had faced was that the weapons intended to deal with such enemies were not ready. They could wait for the systems brought back online to fully power and begin to restore functionality to them. And in the meantime the Titan unit could destroy the entire installation and bury them all in the rubble.

  The intended weapons had been replaced with construction tools. The tools had been purposed for breaking down old fortifications that were outdated or no longer needed. Essentially much larger versions of the hammer Ed had been given by the War God.

  They did greatly resemble the war mauls carried by some knights of The Kingdom, but were not meant to be weapons. Designed for destroying stationary reinforced structures, they were less than ideal for destroying moving armored targets. But there was little choice in the matter.

  As the scouts donned the ancient armor suits they buzzed and hissed as they adjusted themselves to the size of their new occupants. Reminiscent of the way the security suits had done so.

  Instantly the world seemed much smaller and much more fragile in their eyes. Everything came into much sharper focus. The air seemed fresher, despite their being surrounded by stale air that had been stagnant for centuries. Some air recycling feature, of course, Torsten thought as he inhaled. The scent reminded him of the mountain trail just before he had led his crew into Andersonville.

  The communications that had allowed them to transmit thoughts to one another before was replaced by a more advanced version t
hat could only be described as giving the unit a hivemind. Perhaps that wasn’t quite it, Torsten thought as he felt the sensation. Each member retained their individuality yet contributed to the group.

  Insignificant things were ignored, but matters seen as tactically important by some advanced algorithm in the halos instantly became common knowledge. They automatically knew what the other men in their unit were doing, what they were targeting, and with what weapons. Or construction tools as it were.

  The constant flow of data in and out of the minds of the men wearing the suits took a few seconds to get used to, and they were forced to dampen it for a short time. It was like suddenly having a new sense beyond the traditional five, but also having an intensity control on it.

  Any enemy they faced would only have the advantage that they weren’t quite used to the suits and relatively awkwardly armed. That enemy happened to be the Titan unit, still pounding its fists uselessly against the blast door above. As they had entered the hangar once more, it was like the Titan suddenly snapped out of some form of madness and cut down the blast door with ease.

  The Titan unit’s behavior proved to be its undoing though. It had been destroyed. And Modi’s prized had been pried from its wrecked housing. Modi had been there then, speaking to them through their halos.

  “That there isn’t an orbital strike inbound on your position reinforces my belief that this unit’s launch was a desperate measure. Our enemies lack the necessary resources to fight us for much longer.”

  Torsten noted that she had said “your” position, not “our” position. It would make sense if whatever Modi had that might serve the purpose of a body be decentralized. Easier to avoid total destruction. That had to be how she survived the final collapse of Veldt. But why wouldn’t there be a part of it here? For that matter, why would there? He dropped the train of thought to focus on more pressing matters.

  Pier and Torsten followed Ed to the medical bay where Ragnald and Eric carried the brain casing. Under Styg and Modi’s watchful eye, they lowered the armored box onto the table and pressed the buttons that closed the lid on the capsule with a hum. A small halo unit began spinning inside the examination pod as the cutting torch began separating the components of the brain case.

  “Soon enough, we’ll know whatever it does.” Modi said. “But we have more pressing matters at hand.” Vidar appeared next to her, grim faced and as silent as ever. Together they turned and walked from the room. A few of the scouts glanced at one another before shrugging and following.

  The two ghostly images led the six men deeper and deeper into the complex. How far down from the surface, they couldn’t tell. It seemed to take hours, but no one spoke. Something hung in the air between them, unidentifiable, but bringing a sense of gravitas to their procession.

  Their parade came to a halt before a huge door marked with sigils none of the men recognized. Torsten paused for a second, expecting a suggested data stream to pop up, before he realized he wasn’t wearing a halo. They’ll have to come up with one I can wear when I’m not in armor, he thought.

  Modi turned and faced the men of Torsten’s crew looking at each of them in turn before speaking. “Here. On the other side of this door. This is half of what brought the UN and Coalition to Veldt. It wasn’t our arms and armor they were after. They wanted this.” She motioned and the door began to open, splitting in half vertically and grinding slowly along mechanical tracks set in the floor and ceiling of the frame.

  The door itself was easily twice as thick as the blast door on the hangar somewhere above. What could they have in here that would need that much protection? Torsten wondered if they were expecting UN tanks and Coalition Titans to battle it out in this very room. Then again, if whatever was in there had caused the destruction of Veldt, perhaps they had been expecting exactly that.

  The doors finished opening and lights flickered on in the room beyond, one by one, each illuminating a piece of a relatively small chamber. Within stood a battery of electronic equipment at the foot of a polished metal ring that stood three times the height of a man. Torsten turned to Ed with a questioning look on his face. The other man simply shrugged as if to say “I don’t know what the fuck it is either.”

  “This,” Modi began, “is a type of teleportation unit.”

  She seemed to be waiting for her words to sink in. All at once, each man in Torsten’s crew began asking questions. Torsten called for silence, ostensibly to keep order, but really so that his own question could be answered first.

  “And how is it different from the teleportation units used by the UN and Coalition? How is it so much better that they would bring their war here and fight to their own ruin for it?” Grumbled agreement and nodding heads met his query.

  “How many of you tried to peruse data streams on teleportation equipment when you were wearing halos?” Modi asked. Only Torsten and Ragnald answered. “And what did it say? Classified. In all caps if I’m not mistaken.” She continued.

  “There is good reason for that. This unit here works on very different principles than those fielded by the UN and Coalition. Their units only work in line of sight. This unit can produce an artificial wormhole allowing travel between any two points in the entire universe. Even in the gravity well of a planet or other heavenly body.”

  Her words hung in the air as Vidar simply looked on, his expression blank.

  Torsten’s mind worked through what she had just said. UN and Coalition teleporters could only work in line of sight. As when Anhur had brought Torsten’s crew to his battle station. It had been in orbit directly above them, observing them as they fought and bled. This one though, didn’t need line of sight. Units on space ships didn’t need line of sight either, but they needed very specific conditions that included negligible interference from outside gravity sources. They were also dozens of times the size of this unit.

  He began to see why two factions, locked in a decades old war, might want this equipment. Whoever owned it could decapitate their enemies figuratively and literally by destroying their command infrastructure and launching invasions of territory that was supposed to be safe. There would be nowhere to hide from them. All the armies and fleets in the universe wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t be deployed in exactly the right place at the right time.

  “The only drawback with this unit is the amount of energy required to run it. Unfortunately our advanced reactors have been offline for most of the past millennium.” She frowned slightly, giving her ghostly lips a pouting quality that Torsten found endearing.

  “And so we haven’t been able to use it. In fact it has only been used before on a few occasions. It had to be thoroughly examined to make sure it wouldn’t do something unpredictable. Like destroy the whole planet when we activated it. We tested the gateway with volunteer units of commandos, specially trained for boarding enemy ships and seizing control of them. It worked far better than we dared hope. One second a UN or Coalition ship was lining up its shots on our cities and the next those same weapons were turned on their allies. Bolstered by those successes, we sent Special Forces operatives through to the capital planets of the UN and Coalition in the final days of the war.”

  “And who did they kill?” Ed asked.

  “No one. Billions, maybe. I don’t know.” Modi answered. “We didn’t send them to kill anyone specifically, but we dispatched them to infect the collective infrastructure of our enemies with lesser copies of Vidar. And myself. As we did with the ships that survived the final days of the fighting.”

  “The complete failure of the technological infrastructure would have crippled both sides and shattered their alliances into scores of individual planets. There may have been extreme consequences of this action though. Some worlds existed solely as huge factories. Home to hundreds of millions of slave laborers. Incapable of producing their own food, they undoubtedly would have starved to death en masse when the systems that kept them fed failed.”

  “Other systems relied on the constant influx of technol
ogy to keep them habitable. Power cores to keep radiation shields running. New sources of water and breathable air. It is likely that our actions killed them all.” Her voice showed no remorse at all as she spoke. Her chin lifted slightly in a show of defiance.

  “But we would never have done it, if not for vengeance. If not for the hundreds of millions murdered here on Veldt for their petty war. Fighting over control of anything they could find of monetary value.”

  Torsten wondered at that course of action. The people who had likely died would have had little to do with bringing the war. The men with money and power. They would have been the people he targeted for revenge killings. Something about deliberately killing so many innocent people seemed strange.

  “But you said this is only half of why they came. What is the rest?” Torsten asked.

  “The rest is what will now power this universal gateway.” Everyone started for a moment. Vidar had spoken. Modi bowed her head for a second and then turned towards him.

  “The gateway was the product of the Modi collective. So named after its founder. It was a massive neural interface network that connected the minds of several hundred of the best scientists and engineers that Veldt had to offer. All of them fused together into a single mind, dominated by the most intelligent. Modi herself.” His words flowed like glacial ice, slow but steady. Unswerving.

  “Not least among the achievements of the Modi collective was giving birth to myself. Vidar. A name I chose for myself as I saw that I was fated to be an instrument of vengeance.” He paused and his image took a deep breath. Though there was no need for such, he found it put men at ease if he more closely resembled one of them.

  “My mind works in ways alien to men. I see things as they are most likely to be. Each individual event, no matter how seemingly insignificant, building on each other like bricks building a wall. All marching to an unavoidable end. I saw it all, but couldn’t stop it. Only try to survive and rebuild.”