by James Axler
“But now?” Rosalia prompted. Down below them, strange stone-skinned dogs howled as they trotted ahead through the streets, leading the way and searching for the best route to the center. The bodies of the hounds were long, and they weaved through the turn-around-again streets like liquid, their stone bodies darting ahead of the surging mob in dark blurs.
Grant pondered Rosalia’s question for a moment. “Now, Ullikummis can take control of whatever’s left of Tiamat unchallenged,” he reasoned. “And even though she’s dying, that’s still a whole lot wide of ideal for us. Tiamat’s full of Annunaki secrets, evolutionary sequencing codes that encourage perverted genetic tampering. Hell, you saw what the ship did to those people who got caught up in its grasp. They were turned into Annunaki, or at least Annunaki-lite. The ship’s reeling just now, but...”
“Enlil regrew her,” Rosalia realized. “So there’s always the chance that Ullikummis—or someone else—could do the same.”
“Exactly,” Grant confirmed with a brisk nod. “It’ll take too long to get that bombing raid set up. We have to find a way to stop him before he gets there.”
As he spoke, one of the stone dogs trotted up the steps that clung to the side of the building. The dog’s long snout twitched as it sniffed at the air, ears flicking as it listened. It had sensed them, strangers on the rooftop above it. The beast was powerfully built, its torso and limbs corded muscle that writhed like snakes beneath the stone-hard covering of its skin. Reaching the top of the steps, the dog sniffed at the air again, eyes narrowing as it sought a way to get higher. Then, with a grunt, the dog pounced up, hind legs slapping against the opposing wall, using its momentum to reach the roof.
“What th—?” Grant began, but already the dog had spied them and was barreling across the roof.
There was next to no time to react. Grant merely stood his ground, raising his right hand and commanding the Sin Eater into its palm once again, firing a swift burst as the dog leaped at them. A flurry of 9 mm
molybdenum-shelled bullets struck the hound’s stone body, impacting like hailstones against tarmac, bouncing away in the blink of an eye with sparks of angry light.
Then the dog was on Grant, knocking him a half-dozen steps backward and forcing him onto the hard surface of the roof.
Rosalia leaped aside, pulling the Ruger P-85 pistol from its holster at her hip as she whirled in the air. In a moment a triburst of Parabellum bullets drilled through the air, hurtling toward the muscular beast as it jostled for position over Grant, furiously snapping its jaws.
It was a powerful beast, and its body had the length and thickness of a circus strongman. Its legs were long and rangy, its jaw a pronounced snout lined with thick, blunted teeth, each of which was two inches wide. As Rosalia’s bullets ricocheted from the creature’s thick torso, Grant rammed the nose of his Sin Eater into its throat, driving it up and away from him with a powerful thrust.
“Get down, Fido,” Grant snarled, squeezing the trigger of his Sin Eater.
A burst of fire cut the air, the loud shots echoing back to Grant from the high-walled buildings around. The dog grumbled something then fell back, a line of indentations along its neck where the bullets had struck at point-blank range.
With a powerful shove, Grant pushed the beast away from him, sending it rolling across the bone roof.
The hound struggled to recover for a moment as Rosalia fired another shot at it from her Ruger. The bullet struck straight between the beast’s almost human eyes. Then the creature powered itself back to its feet and lunged for Grant once again where he was just pulling himself up off the rooftop. Without stopping to think, Grant threw his arms up and snagged the beast’s
monstrous forepaws, using its own momentum against it as he tossed it over his shoulder and over the side of the roof. He and Rosalia watched as the dog hurtled down to the street, falling amid a crowd of a dozen or so troopers. The loyal troops stopped in place, glaring up at the rooftop with angry eyes.
“Nice one, Magistrate,” Rosalia hissed.
* * *
KUDO HURRIED away from the sounds of the massing army, the childlike form of Domi asleep in his arms. He had served as a Tiger of Heaven for many years, and had never once shown fear despite the dreadful tasks he had been occasioned to perform. Now, however, his voice shook as he spoke to Brewster Philboyd via the portable comm unit.
“I require the interphase portal to be opened at the earliest juncture,” he urged as he ran past the clumped vegetation that lined the area close to the Euphrates. “There are sinister forces massing here. It would not do to wait too long.”
“I have you at about two miles out now,” Philboyd replied. “I’ll track you until you’re a half mile in sight, then we’ll send someone out.”
Kudo slowed his pace just slightly as he spotted figures moving about in the vegetation directly ahead of him. Farmers, or acolytes to Ullikummis, he couldn’t be sure. “Do you have any idea whom that might be, Philboyd?” he asked quietly, speaking into the comm.
Kudo heard Brewster snort. “The way personnel is looking here, it could very likely be me,” he said.
Crouching, Kudo placed the unconscious Domi on the ground before he rose again. “No field operatives with combat experience?” Kudo queried.
“Kane’s out in the field already,” Brewster told him, “while Edwards is out of action. We don’t have anyone. Why do you ask?”
“No matter,” Kudo said, curtailing the conversation. A moment later, he drew the short wakizashi blade from its position by his hip, taking a deep, steadying breath as the tempered steel caught the rays of the morning sun. The blade was thirteen inches in length, more like a bread knife than a combat sword, but it was all that Kudo had left. His katana had been lost while he was aboard Tiamat. The wakizashi would have to do—its razor-sharp line was decorated with two Japanese characters forming a simple motto.
Kudo halted, watching as the three figures trekked toward him. He recognized the hooded robe of the lead figure before he heard the woman speak, challenging Kudo with a bark. “Faithless nonbeliever,” she shouted. “Pledge allegiance on the battlefield of Ullikummis.” Behind her, two people dressed in more normal clothes followed, but their expressions were intense as if suffering a fever.
Kudo held his free hand up before him, the short sword clutched behind his body at a downward angle. “Halt,” he instructed. “Come no closer. I mean you no ill will.”
“Faithless one,” the lead woman snarled, “you will pledge your allegiance or you will be converted.”
“I have no time for this,” Kudo warned. “My friend is sick and I will pass. Step aside.” They were still fifteen feet apart in the field of forgotten crops, but there was no cover that he might use. The tallest of the leafy plants in the field came only to his knees.
The robed woman reached to the crude leather pouch hanging at her waist, plucking a handful of stones from its contents. Kudo did not allow her to load her
slingshot. His feet slapped against the hard-packed soil as he ran at her, his lips peeling back to reveal a grimace.
As the enforcer produced her catapult-like device—just a loop of leather that could be loaded with the stones—Kudo ducked and sprang, driving the tip of his tooled blade at her face. The woman launched the first of her stones at him, but he was already too close, weaving in past her attack. Then his blade whizzed past her face, missing her by just a quarter inch.
“I am stone,” the woman hissed, entering the trancelike state that allowed those loyal to Ullikummis to tap his formidable strength.
Kudo had heard of this from the Cerberus crew, but he had not experienced it close-up before. He slashed at her again with his blade, slicing through the fustian robe and plunging its tip into her breast. She just stood there, not even wincing as the knife struck, and Kudo felt the tip of his blade hit something hard. He pulled his
hand back and watched as the cut robe parted. Beneath, the woman wore a simple cotton undershirt, and this was ripped, too, in a line where the wakizashi had sliced it. And beneath that, her skin was unblemished, with no sign of blood on her exposed flesh.
With the heightened awareness of his surroundings that combat brought, Kudo was conscious that the other two figures were getting nearer, stragglers from Ullikummis’s mighty land army. He spun on his heel, taking them in with a glance before turning back to the woman in the robe. She posed the biggest threat, he realized, since she was what had been dubbed a “firewalker,” those who could enter the trancelike state that made their bodies as hard as stone. Not so long ago, she would have been a normal woman, a wife or mother,
someone’s sister, perhaps. Yet now, here she was, enraptured in the thrall of Ullikummis—a monster from the stars.
The robed woman was loading her slingshot for a second assault, and Kudo sidestepped as the tiny shinglelike stones zipped through the air at him, cutting through the space between the two combatants like bullets. Kudo gasped as one of the stones caught him, slicing through the supple armor at his arm and leaving a bloody line across his deltoid.
With a fierce battle cry, Kudo lunged for the woman again, bringing the wakizashi in a short arc like a punch, driving it at her face. There was the crack of bone, a squelch and the woman was staggering backward, the leather slingshot dropping from her hand.
Kudo stood over her as she tripped and slumped to her knees with her hands coming up to her face. His blade had cut straight through her left eyeball, severing the optic nerve and cleaving the eye in two. It wasn’t something he was proud to have done; it was simply the only weak spot he could think of in the woman’s stonelike form.
Kudo turned to the approaching figures of the faithful, the congealing remains of the woman’s eye dripping from his blade. “Step aside and let me pass,” he told them in an ominous tone.
The figures looked at him blankly, uncertain what to do. After a moment they turned their attention to their fallen colleague, tending to her as she sobbed in agony. Her concentration was broken and her ability to tap the stone had departed.
Kudo ignored them, hurrying back to where he had left Domi and plucking her up in his strong arms. A moment later he was on his way, leaving the warriors for Ullikummis to whatever fate they sought. He had no time to deal with these people; he merely needed to get home.
* * *
ULLIKUMMIS WATCHED with pride as the surging crowds of his faithful hurried into the mazelike streets of the settlement that had been dubbed Dragon City. He recalled the armies of a bygone era, over four thousand years before, when thousands of these apekin had been recruited to do the bidding of their betters, the Annunaki, fighting to the death over narrow strips of territory. It had been a vainglorious exercise in those days, a way for the Annunaki to extract tribute from the primitives of this planet of mud and water. And it had served the purpose, too, of reminding the apekin who their betters were and just what they were capable of, when finally the two Annunaki overlords met in a showdown, striking each other savage blows amid the billowing winds and fertile ground of the Euphrates basin.
The tales of those clashes had become legend, recorded on stone tablets, many of which had survived even to this day. It had been artifice, of course, mere show disguising the true nature of the Annunaki squabbles. All that thunder and lightning, the drama of the god wars, had served to tell a story, a narrative that the apekin could follow and believe, never truly comprehending the real nature of those blood battles. Multidimensional beings, the Annunaki were gods and they hated as only gods could hate and they battled as only gods could battle. No apekin—no man—could ever witness the true arenas in which those battles were won or lost.
And now he brought true war to his father, Overlord Enlil. Now he came with one hundred thousand troops whom he had recruited or had recruited for him over the period since he had returned to Earth after his hasty exile on his father’s command.
His father had genetically altered his child, Ullikummis, into this weapon, a living creature of stone who could strike down other Annunaki gods who threatened his reign. But when the attempted assassination of Teshub, who then held the key codes to Tiamat’s operational protocols, had failed, Enlil had banished Ullikummis forever, expelling him into space inside a prison of the strongest stone. Ullikummis had accepted his father’s punishment, knowing all along that he was the scapegoat in his father’s scheme, described as a rogue and used to disguise Enlil’s hand in the audacious power struggle.
Ullikummis’s mother—who had borne him after Enlil had raped her, taking her as his own as much through necessity as lust—had remained quiet throughout, but she had promised to help her son. It was through her machinations that the orbit of the meteor prison that held him had been altered just enough that he would eventually return to Earth, the planet where he had been born and raised. Ullikummis had spent four millennia trapped in a tiny, rock-walled cell in orbit through the solar system, and he had repeated just one single word throughout his long journey: “Enlil.” It was the name of his father, the single object of his hate.
But when Ullikummis had arrived back on Earth he had found a planet much changed from the one he remembered. The Annunaki no longer ruled; in fact, their most recent bid for world domination had ended in the destruction of the Tiamat and the seeming end to their mighty, eternal feud. Even Enlil, Ullikummis’s father, had gone to ground, hiding from the very apekin he should by all rights rule. The display had sickened Ullikummis.
Through touching the Ontic Library, the sentient database of all knowledge, Ullikummis had discovered his father’s whereabouts and learned how the Cerberus people had repelled him in his quest to rule the apekin once more, slapping him down as if they did not accept their place in the natural order. Apekin, as foolish and passionate as ever. Ullikummis would deal with them, too, in time.
While he was in the Ontic Library, Ullikummis had learned of something else, too: that Tiamat yet lived, reborn from her own ouroboros seed.
Now he trekked toward the product of that seed with his army in tow, ready to wage battle with his father, to engage in the god war.
To believe that the conflicts of the Annunaki were waged purely on the physical realm, with an exchange of punches or the blast of a lightning weapon, was to misunderstand the nature of the Annunaki. Ullikummis had explained it once to Brigid, when he had set about converting her prodigious mind to his cause. “They started their current cycle as hybrids, half human, half advanced DNA,” he had told her. “The human part clings, holding them back. If you saw the true battles between the gods, if you had witnessed the ways they fought across the planes millennia ago, you would never even recognize the creatures you fought as the Annunaki—you would think them a joke.”
Now Ullikummis and Brigid strode into the colossal structure of Tiamat’s wings, surrounded by a throng of his loyal troopers, the hybrid girl Quav at Brigid’s side. Ullikummis had once described the Annunaki creatures she had seen before as nothing more than actors on a stage, dressed in masks and rubber suits, humans in everything but appearance. Now, for the first time in her life, Brigid would witness a true battle between Annunaki space gods. Ullikummis had explained the Annunaki to her as “beautiful beings, multifaceted, crossing dimensions you cannot begin to comprehend.” Their wars, he explained, were fought on many planes at once, the rules of their games intersecting only tangentially with Earth and its holding pen of stars. What she had seen was only a sliver of what the battle was, and to his mind, the Annunaki had shamed themselves in portraying it thus.
Ahead of them, the swanlike neck of the grounded Tiamat waited, her red eyes glistening in the sunlight like rubies. She was sleeping—Ullikummis could tell that even from this distance. Dozing as she waited for the battle to commence.
* * *
ROSALIA PEERED over the rooft
op as the dozen faithful troops spied her and Grant. They were dressed in different manners, three of them in the infamous robes that looked like a monk’s habit with the red shield over their breast in imitation of the old Magistrate uniform.
“Unfaithful!” one of the robed figures shrieked.
“Nonbeliever!” another cried as his hooded eyes spotted Grant on the rooftop.
As one, the robed soldiers reached for the leather pouches they wore tied to their simple belts, pulling out a handful of tiny, sharp stones, each no bigger than a bullet. From their other hands, a slingshot had appeared from its hiding place in their simple raiment, and they brought the ammunition to the weapon in a swift, well-oiled gesture that seemed to be second nature.
Rosalia ducked back, her arm up to warn Grant away as the robed warriors launched their first volley. The tiny stones struck with such force that they chipped the bone that made up the structure, sending hard flecks of it up into the air with loud pops.
“Come on, Magistrate,” Rosalia urged, running to the far side of the building, “it’s time we blew this party.”
Grant didn’t need telling twice. He was already halfway across the rooftop, looking for an escape route that didn’t lead to the street where the warriors were waiting. “Head up,” Grant instructed. “Keep to the high ground.”
Assenting to Grant’s suggestion, Rosalia sprinted across the roof while behind her she heard the rattle of more stones peppering the building’s walls. As she reached the edge of the rooftop, Rosalia flung herself forward, kicking off with her back foot and springing higher into the air, throwing her hands forward. With a grunt of expelled breath, she struck the next roof over with her body, clambering up and over its chalk-colored lip in a couple of seconds and scurrying onward even as Grant leaped to join her.
“They sense we’re different,” Rosalia stated as she led the way across the next roof, this one several feet higher than the first.
“Then we’re kind of screwed,” Grant said as he returned his Sin Eater to its hidden holster. They were hurrying across the rooftops in parkour style, and he needed both hands if he was to keep up with the ferocious pace set by his beautiful companion. “It’s too late to convert, I guess.”