by James Axler
And then the storm began, bloody reds and putrid greens assaulting his eyes, accompanied by the loud crack of thunder.
* * *
LYING ON THE FLOOR of the hexagonal chamber in Tiamat’s core, Grant saw Enlil and Ullikummis come charging at him, one on either side. They were so different, it was hard to believe they were from the same species. Where Enlil had sleek lines, Ullikummis was hard and brutal, an assault on the eyes.
They were coming to kill him, Grant knew, and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to make himself move, to roll aside from the attackers, but they were too close and he was backed up in a corner, with nowhere left to run. So instead Grant did the only thing left to him. He whipped the Sin Eater around and depressed the trigger, spraying the room with bullets.
“Eat it, you evil fuckers!”
The room erupted with sparks as bullets struck, pinging off the towering arches and the walls beyond. And Enlil—savage, brutal, sadistic Enlil—reached out not for Grant but for his own son, turning his blow at the last minute so that he dropped to the floor, tripping Ullikummis as he ran at the Cerberus rebel. Grant watched as the two figures slid past him across the decking, the jagged spikes of Ullikummis’s right shoulder missing Grant by barely six inches. Grant’s bullets danced across Ullikummis’s rock frame, carving tiny splinters from his awesome body as he hurtled by.
Grant had been granted a reprieve, albeit one that might only last a couple of seconds. He didn’t intend to waste it.
* * *
NEARBY, IN THE ante-nursery, Brigid Haight threw the empty TP-9 pistol at Rosalia as the dark-haired swordswoman charged toward her, her feet splashing through the spilled contents of the nutrient pool. Rosalia ducked, and the pistol hurtled past her, crashing against a distant scythelike column. But the movement cost her, and as she straightened her body, Brigid was upon her, kicking out with one long leg.
Rosalia reared back as Brigid’s foot came at her, getting her head out of its path and instead taking a glancing blow across her upper chest. Before Rosalia could respond, Brigid followed through her attack by bringing her other leg up in a perfect snap kick to her face. The pointed toe of Brigid’s boot clipped Rosalia across her chin, and the dark-haired fighter went sailing backward in a stumble, struggling to retain her footing. Around them, the panel displays of the room went through their birthing sequences, checking and rechecking the consistency of the birth pool in a whir of pulsing green and blue and golden lights.
Brigid was relentless, following one attack with another, granting Rosalia not so much as a second’s respite. Rosalia’s mind whirred even as she struggled to stay clear of the path of that brutal assault, kicks and punches powering toward her again and again.
Brigid Haight was a formidable fighter, with hand-to-hand combat skills second to none, Rosalia noted. But still there was a flaw in her technique. So overcome with furious purpose, the woman was following an unconscious pattern, striking from different sides but in the same rhythms—one-two-three, two-two-three—like a dancer at a grand ball. The attacks were swift and fierce, but there were pauses between each, momentary and brief, but pauses all the same. Rosalia began to time these in her head, using the blackened sword in her hand to bat the most savage of these attacks away, keeping barely a step in front of her fearsome opponent.
Brigid herself saw only the threat of the intruder, recalling nothing of Rosalia’s background nor the outcomes of their previous meetings. All she knew was that the woman was armed and had entered the sacred presence of Ninlil, the great mother, as her egg was fertilized with the genetic download and fed with the nutrients of the birthing pool.
Brigid drove another cross punch at the dark-haired woman’s head, angling it just subtly so that it overshot intentionally and struck instead against the woman’s shoulder blade. Rosalia grunted at the assault, but already Haight was bringing up her knee in a savage blow to the woman’s pelvis, driving it between the woman’s legs with such power it forced her dark-haired opponent upward off her feet.
Rosalia staggered back, the soles of her feet brushing against the floor as she struggled to gain purchase. “Come on,” she urged herself as her feet slid. Then she halted, and in an instant sprang from the deck, the sword flashing through the air.
Brigid drove her next kick forward as Rosalia leaped over her, and her foot passed through empty air before sweeping down to the floor once more. Overhead,
Rosalia brought the flat of her sword around, striking the red-haired warrior woman across her back as she hurtled past like a launched cannonball.
Rosalia landed, forward rolling to dissipate her momentum before bringing herself up in a wary crouch. Standing by the pit, Brigid Haight was rubbing at her shoulders where the sword had struck. In a moment, the redhead had unbuckled her fur cloak, and it dropped to the floor in a graceful swish.
Rosalia held the sword poised before her, and as she twisted it in her hands, the blackened blade caught the data lights of the room, flashing blue, gold and green. Brigid seemed to pause for a moment, transfixed by the blade as the lights played across its surface. And then she ran, charging toward the dark-haired mercenary, murder on her mind. Rosalia used the sword to bat the woman away, slicing a line across her leather suit. Brigid stepped back, bouncing on the balls of her feet as a bloody line of red appeared across her chest where the suit had been split by the blade.
Rosalia glanced to her side, checking on the location of the stone egg. Brigid was protecting it, just as Kane had suggested, but it seemed to be just one piece, the whole thing sealed as a single unit. Before Rosalia could think further, Brigid charged her again, and she was forced to defend herself.
The two women fought, struggling to gain the upper hand, the sword cutting through the air in a defensive pattern to stave off Brigid’s most fearsome attacks. They were evenly matched, and if either did have an advantage, it was Brigid for she held no compulsion that her enemy should be allowed to live. She was a tool of hate, as her name stated, willing nothing less than ignoble death on any who failed to pledge allegiance to her dread master.
“This is a battle you cannot win,” Brigid spit. “Even if I die, a million more will step up to replace me, the priests of the new world.”
“Go tell it to the mountain man,” Rosalia replied.
And then the two women were charging toward each other once more, Rosalia’s charred sword flashing with the lights of the room, the nutrient pool bubbling like soup on the stove, its contents nothing less than the building blocks of life.
* * *
GRANT ROLLED OVER and over, hurrying out of the path of the two Annunaki combatants. Enlil was atop Ullikummis where he lay sprawled on the floor, driving the bloodied knuckles of his fist into the rock lord’s face. Enlil reached back with his other hand, sweeping it through the air over his head, and suddenly the serpent lightning reappeared with a crackle of electricity like a thunderclap.
Krak-a-boom!
The serpent lightning jostled in Enlil’s hand, its lashing head dancing in midair as Enlil brought it down to strike the smoldering body of his son. The weapon struck with a shower of sparks, and Grant watched as lightning played across Ullikummis’s powerful frame and the bone deck beneath him. Then, with a loud crack, the floor beneath the two opponents began to break apart, cracking in a long, jagged line.
Grant could only watch as Enlil lashed at Ullikummis again with the lightning weapon, whipping it against his son’s body again and again in an unrelenting attack. Ullikummis’s body smoldered, smoke pouring from the ridges and valleys that ran along his rocky flesh. Grant trained his Sin Eater on the two Annunaki combatants, waiting for an opening—any opening. To do what, he didn’t know.
Crouched astride the beaten body of his son, Enlil drew back the serpent lightning again, its fierce glow like a scar on the air as it whipped back in a crackle of sparks. “You ha
ve disappointed me for the last time, loin fruit,” Enlil hissed, his cruel eyes fixed on the molten orbs of his progeny. And then he swept the lightning down again, lashing it against his son’s writhing body.
But to Enlil’s surprise, Ullikummis jabbed out his right arm as the lightning struck again, shaping his hand like a blade.
“No,” Ullikummis shouted, driving the hand toward his father’s leg. “I am the Godkiller. And you will remember that always.”
Then, with a brutal slash of his stone-clad hand, Ullikummis drove his pointed fingers into the flesh of his father’s leg, piercing the armorlike scales and burrowing deeper into the limb just above the knee. Enlil shrieked in sheer agony, keeling over but still connected to Ullikummis by the bloody wound that the latter was inflicting. The serpent lightning continued on its own path, lashing now not against Ullikummis but striking Enlil instead, connecting with his hip and sending a potent jolt of electricity through his agonized form.
Ullikummis’s hand clawed deeper into his father’s limb, splaying his rock-hard fingers as he tore through the flesh.
Enlil crashed to the deck, the lightning playing across his body as Ullikummis wrenched his bloody hand free, bringing with it thick gobs of muscle and skin like a butcher’s display. The serpent lightning slunk against the floor, sparking and jolting in a shock of whiteness.
Grant narrowed his eyes to slits, using his hand as a shield to see past the sparking lightning so he could make out what had happened to the pair of them. Enlil’s left leg lay at an unnatural angle, a pool of blood forming around the traumatic wound that had been inflicted. Ullikummis had slumped onto his back, dark wisps of smoke still emanating from his face and torso, his right hand and arm covered in his father’s blood.
Ullikummis did not appear to be breathing, Grant noticed automatically, the old Magistrate instincts kicking in. Has he ever needed to breathe? Grant queried, second-guessing himself.
* * *
FROM HIS VANTAGE point atop the tree, Kane had seen the whole battle as a thunderstorm, with streaks of lightning in ruby reds and emerald greens lashing across the sky, some nightmarish vision of the aurora borealis. He was connected to Ullikummis by the stone implant, and he felt the Annunaki prince’s rage as it raced across the black heavens, lashing at his father like a stormy sea.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, the storm abating, the sky turning pale.
“Was that it?” Kane asked, clinging to the tree’s highest branches.
* * *
GRANT STEPPED WARILY closer, eyeing the two forms of the Annunaki as they lay against the deck. Enlil’s weapon spewed lightning against the floor, shuddering and snapping as it painted its savage patterns on the bone and cartilage that made up Tiamat’s interior.
Neither figure was moving, Grant saw. They just lay there, bloody and exhausted, possibly dead.
As Grant took another step toward the bodies, the serpent lightning flexed again, lashing a burst of white fire against the deck where the cracks had begun to appear. Then, as Grant watched, the whole floor started to split apart, the cracks widening in a rapidly expanding pattern of broken lines, tearing across the hexagonal room in a matter of seconds.
Grant ran for the doorway, but it was already too late—the floor was giving way.
With a loud crack like an avalanche, the floor collapsed, and Ullikummis, Enlil and Grant found themselves falling to the next level of the great dragon ship.
Chapter 18
Vast chunks of bone plate crashed down as the floor gave way, falling like flakes of cooked fish under the touch of a knife. The hole started in the center of the room, where Ullikummis and Enlil had struggled just seconds before, but it expanded in a matter of seconds, huge gaping cracks splintering across the deck, sending great gouges of flooring tipping away into the darkness below.
Grant cried out, sending his Sin Eater back to its hiding place as he grasped for something—anything—to cling to as he was thrown to the deck. The floor was tipping down to the center, slanting at an ever-increasing angle as it collapsed under its own weight, the structural integrity lost, everything falling toward the hole. In the center of the ruined floor, Ullikummis and Enlil were the first to fall, disappearing beneath the ruined line of the broken deck.
Above Grant, those towering bone arches were crumbling in on themselves, the great columns that held them splintering apart.
Miraculously Grant’s left hand found a ridged break in the floor as he slid backward at an alarming rate, snagging it with a tight grip as hunks of alien masonry crashed past him on their perilous plunge to the floor below.
Grant hung there with one hand, his breathing coming heavily. He was hanging at the edge of the hole, now a ten-foot-wide gap that dominated fully one-third of the room’s floor. His legs hung out over empty space, dangling high above the engine room that he and Rosalia had crossed not an hour earlier.
Grant ducked his head as another chunk of the bone arches hurtled past him, missing his broad shoulder by less than a foot. He watched for a moment as it fell past him, sinking away into the engine room and hitting the distant floor with a crash, sixty feet below. It was pandemonium down there, Grant saw, tiny figures rushing back and forth as the debris rained from the ceiling, the thick cylindrical drives of the great starship now strewed with wreckage.
Grant reached up with his free hand, swinging himself up so that he could grab the edge of the floor. It was rough to his touch, grazing his hand in a biting cut. The deck itself was four feet thick, its strata made up of layered plates of cartilage that glistened like translucent metal.
Grant hung there, catching his breath as he dangled precariously over the huge hole in the flooring, dust and tiles skittering past him amid the ruins of the room.
Then there was another crack, and Grant felt the floor shake, a heavy tremble rumbling through it. Urgently he hurried to pull himself up, legs kicking out as he dragged himself over the edge. Then his chest was on the angled floor, and he was pulling himself up and over the precipice on mighty muscles.
A chunk of bone arch broke away as Grant pulled himself to the floor, collapsing with an almighty boom. The ex-Mag struggled to keep his balance as the already listing floor dipped farther, the column’s impact sending a shock wave through the precarious structure.
The floor beneath Grant broke abruptly, collapsing away from the edge. He found himself falling through empty air, the broken ruins of the floor tumbling downward beside him as gravity tugged him toward his doom.
* * *
ROSALIA’S SWORD cut the air with a resounding hum like a bird’s wing as she drove at Brigid Haight. Then, without warning, the whole room shook and the two women were tossed off their feet. From just beyond the sealed doors, they heard the terrific bang as the floor of the next room fell away.
“Grant?” Rosalia gasped, her head going automatically to the doors where a jagged crack was appearing beneath the violet lights. The doors held, chunks of the wall splitting away from the lintel and smashing against the floor with a resounding bang.
Before her, Brigid Haight was recovering, pulling herself back to her feet and running at Rosalia with a brutal ram’s-head punch, the fingers clenched back to drive the heel of her hand into her opponent’s nose.
Rosalia avoided the blow by an inch and slashed her katana blade around so that it hacked into Brigid’s side.
Brigid cried out in pain, but already she was following up her own deadly assault, bringing her open right hand up toward Rosalia’s throat. At the same time as Brigid grabbed Rosalia’s neck, she kicked forward with her right leg, booting the dark-haired woman in the shin. Rosalia expelled a lungful of air through clenched teeth at the blow, feeling the pressure close on her throat as Brigid attempted to curtail her next inhalation. The dark-eyed mercenary brought her sword back and around, jabbing at her ad
versary with its pommel because the close quarters prevented her properly utilizing the blade itself. The artistically tooled base of the katana’s handle slammed against Brigid’s chest, smacking just above her right breast with such force it made her take an awkward step backward. Her grip did not fail, and Rosalia found herself dragged by the throat across the hard decking.
The toes of her boots scraped on the floor as Rosalia was pulled forward, and she lashed out again with the hard stump of the sword’s grip, this time striking her red-haired foe across the top of her chest where she had previously delivered a nasty cut from with the blade’s edge. Brigid shrieked in agony as the bloody wound was ripped wider, swearing as the pain struck her. Her grip faltered, and Rosalia lunged, using her free hand to extricate herself from Brigid’s hold and drive the woman back.
Brigid drove her feet against the deck, springing toward Rosalia with a guttural battle cry borne of pure rage.
Rosalia tried to sidestep, moving out of her foe’s path like a toreador. Brigid’s arms stretched wide like an eagle’s wings as it took flight, and the left arm slammed against Rosalia’s gut with enough power to knock the younger woman off her feet. Rosalia rolled backward, the sword skittering from her grasp as she landed in a heap with Brigid astride her. The sword spun through the air, and once again its ebony blade reflected the shimmering lights of the tracking consoles all around as they monitored Little Quav’s progress from hybrid girl to Annunaki goddess. The reflected lights seemed to give Brigid pause, and she stared about her in confusion as the sword clattered to the deck, searching the blue, gold and green lights that played across the consoles at the sides of the room.
Rosalia snatched the advantage, twisting her body to drop Brigid to the deck and rolling herself until she was atop the former Cerberus archivist. There was blood on both their clothes now. Brigid’s chest showed a thick line that went from shoulder blade to shoulder blade through the torn front of her outfit. Rosalia bunched her fist and drew it back, striking Brigid in her face once, twice, thrice. Brigid’s head slammed back into the deck, and her emerald eyes rolled up in their sockets for a moment as unconsciousness threatened to overwhelm her. Then, as Rosalia drew her bloody fist back for another blow, Brigid’s eyes snapped back open and she glared at the woman astride her with savage intent.