Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2)

by Jason Anspach

  He closed his eyes and imagined that long-lost burger as he ate the one in his hand. Miss Cyber Saigon groaned more erotically than she had back in his suite. Maybe she, too, was acting. Making this moment… more… just for him. And her. Somehow.

  Tell a lie…

  It wasn’t the burger with Holly at the Yacht Club halfway between heaven and hell. No. It never would be.

  But gods decide their truths, don’t they?

  Miss Cyber Saigon took another bite, her delicate eyelids fluttering, just like they had during their time in his suite. During the fulfillment of all his demands and desires of her.

  He understood.

  Tell a lie…

  Maybe this was her Yacht Club moment. But she was just a slave, and what could she ever know about a truly fulfilled life? A god’s life.

  “It’s like eating life,” she said through a perfect mouthful of meat and cheese. Hungry and chewing, swallowing it down because it was hers.

  She picked up one of the two smoky scotches with a single giant square cube that had been served as an accompaniment. The cut-crystal glass looked perfect in her slender hand.

  Tell a lie…

  But it was not a bottle of beer out in the night under live oaks and mesquite listening to a house band play Skynyrd. Filled with the knowledge that you’d just eaten the best burger in the world and that the woman you’d desired as you were climbing all those mountains and assuaging yourself on all the stand-ins in between… was yours tonight in whatever mansion, or roadside motel, the two of you ended up together in.

  The road, your woman, and nothing more.

  Happiness. He’d had it once. Where had it gone?

  Tell a lie…

  Tell me, shouted the child he once was. Tell me where she’s gone.

  “It’s the best,” said Crometheus so that those close by could hear and be jealous of his success and obvious privilege. Lusypher had ordained that he might feed off-menu. The most insider of insider things on this step of the Path. That was revealed now.

  Tell a lie… long enough…

  …and it becomes the truth.

  Crometheus saw the white card leaned perfectly against the silver cone of fries. Saw his own whiplash smile in the silver cone’s polished-to-a-mirror reflection as he read the words printed upon the card’s white face in hard script.

  We need to talk.

  –Lusypher

  And then Crometheus took a fry. And yes, it was a dirty fry because he’d decided what the truth was. This too was cooked twice in goose fat. Wasn’t it? Seasoned with just the right secrets.

  Known and lost.

  We need to talk.

  And he ate it.

  Gods: Chapter Twelve

  It was the last of the good times in Sin City for Player Crometheus. The debauchery at Dante’s—the tiger won in the end—and all the other reckless and wild once-in-a-lifetime experiences that had played out in his elusive quest to be distracted, and maybe possibly find happiness, were done. At least for now. Crometheus was beyond spent. He was corpse-tired.

  And yet he was completely wide awake at quarter to five in the morning, Sin City time.

  The lithe Asian pleasure princess had molded into his body within the vast bed space that had become a sea of adventure upon which they’d sailed to many forbidden and exotic lands. That too was the eternal quest. She’d tried to keep up the role, play her part. Aloof mistress who could take you or leave you. But somewhere in the night, when she dreamt of all the things he could make happen for her, he’d found her clinging to him in their sleep. As though her body must do what her mind told her she could never admit to wanting if the play were to continue. To break from the agreed-upon script and admit her need of him. But to do so would violate some contract, the unspoken terms of the deal he’d hired her for. The fantasy would end. And then what need would he have of her in dawn’s light?

  On the mirrored bedside table next to a bed so wide and deep and comfortable it felt like an island in the galaxy that lay waiting to be conquered, rested his smartphone. His most ancient of holy relics…

  … alight with a text message.

  Meet me outside on the street in ten. -Lusypher.

  Crometheus slipped out of the sumptuous bed and away from the soft caramel body of the pleasure slave, dressing in the lace-up leather pants he found on the floor. He quietly slipped on the pair of rock-and-roll motorcycle boots, a white flowing silk shirt he half ducked into, and he was gone from the suite and headed down-tower toward the haunted streets of Sin City for a meeting with one of the most powerful players in the Pantheon.

  At just before dawn such meetings must take place.

  Yes. Yes, there are still some at the tables, cards and other low games of chance. But the big action games are silent. No one is throwing dice because there isn’t much of a crowd to encourage the loser to throw away more achievement points and whatever else they own or have acquired just to entertain everyone else with such dramatic decade-altering losses. And so those tables are quiet here at just a moment to five a.m. local as Crometheus walks through the never-silent casino.

  He makes the street, the wide entrance that lets out from the Olympus and is designed, with its wide marble steps, purple carpet, and flags and banners, to make one feel as though they are a Caesar triumphing as they enter and exit this palace of broken dreams. The effect is so perfectly done that the mind can’t help but embrace the filter and feel what one is expected to feel. Triumphant and god-like. Mighty towers and opulent palaces of high-tech hedonistic wonders gyrate and spin with a dozen light shows that never stop, never mind the approaching dawn. Epic fountains pulse languidly at the expectant break of day as holographic laser displays still recreate the T-Rex show, or this rock god encore, or an Evening with the Celebrated Wit God who ends everything with his catchphrase that people know, and have known for what seems eons, by heart. Everything comes at Crometheus with a stunning array of beautiful women, and sometimes men, depending on what your taste is. For him, everything comes with women. Women are lands to be conquered in his ever-insatiable rock god eyes.

  With filters you see what you want because that’s what you want to see, he’s told himself before in the distant background apps of his mind. With filters… everyone’s truth is true.

  “Mine,” he hears himself mutter in defiance of this age-old technological slogan they were all sold at the beginning of the Exodus and the Big Uplift. Because there is one caveat. You can have your own truth… unless someone more Uplifted than you wants you to see reality as they intend it to be seen.

  And so, another form of programming that began long ago, deep within him on that rainy-day airport Marriott empowerment conference, life-changing weekend, nods that this is as it should be. How it must be. Those who are best, the elites, they see the truth as it should be seen. Hence the race to the top of the Xanadu Tower. For that truth will be the truth before which all other truths must bow.

  That was the moment when Former Rock God Crometheus, late of the world, and now Uplifted marine, had his reality collide with Lusypher’s in the street.

  To his credit, Lusypher wasn’t boorishly obnoxious like some of the Uplifted tended to be. And after all, why not, they’d made it to godhood. Who was anyone lesser to tell them what was the difference between right and wrong? It was their truth that mattered in the collection of truths everyone tried to espouse. They’d proved that by making it… obviously.

  But here on the street beneath the gyrating light shows and the rising towers of the casinos, the Uplifted who’d once had some ordinary name and was now called Lusypher looked like a Nazi officer from the long ago of Earth’s histories and fables. If you believed all that such-and-such and went in for the idea that there actually was an early master race that fought the world to a standstill and almost imitated an Uplift on their own.

  But Crometh
eus had never been much of a student of mythology, or history, other than his own. He was aware, during past moments of long reflection between the stars, and just before the call from Lusypher to meet on the street, lying in the ocean-sized bed next to Miss Cyber Saigon, that his view of the grand scheme of things sort of began and ended with himself. You have to be honest about that, he’d told himself as he tried to listen through the stifling silence for hints of life beyond the carpet, lush appointments, heavy door, and surrounding pleasure tower, lying in bed within the suite.

  That was how he’d climbed to the top. Being honest with himself by telling himself the truths he wanted to hear.

  Empowerment.

  Your career… you, he reminded himself, as it really was, didn’t leave time to be concerned with dates and times, Nazis, and other fictitious characters. You had to focus on yourself and manage you, if you were indeed going to turn that one little monkey trick you could do into something that could get you into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and all the other secret weekends, insider parties, and read-only information lists illuminating which causes and social issues must be talked about, tweeted about, and hammered home if the world was ever going to become the better place only the elites could make it. If power, wonderfully unlimited power, were to be handed over.

  A blue-check paradise guarded by velvet ropes and armed security in a world where no one else was allowed to have guns. It had almost been paradise if not for the mass of rabble that couldn’t get with the program, insisting on their personal freedoms at the expense of the greater good. Their own voice above the wisdom of the collective.

  Garbage. They’d ruined all the plans and The Game by never truly bowing down to the fears they were supposed to be afraid of. Fears that would force them to listen to those who knew better. Train them to serve. Someone had to work. We can’t all be gods, now can we? Someone’s got to sweep the streets, take out the garbage, unclog the toilets.

  But that was the past, and this now… this was a future in which the hierarchy of supremacy was uncontested. It had just taken leaving Earth and a long voyage aboard the colony ship Pantheon, and a little bit of culling, to reach enlightenment. Finally. And it worked so much better out here than it ever had back there on ruined old Earth. The Uplifted had ranks. And the Uplifted knew what was best for everyone else.

  And to be fair and give credit where credit was due… the slaves had had their chance to participate in the great experiment that had become the Path. If they’d chosen to do as they were told and play their parts, they could have had access to rich full lives free of pain and suffering. Just like the Asian gamer girl back in the suite. Asleep in a luxurious bed he’d purchased through hard gaming. Her benefiting from his superiority.

  She was grateful for it. Of course. Desperately so at times.

  He knew that.

  She’d certainly performed as though she’d been incredibly grateful for even just the chance to be with him. No moment, no pleasure, no desire had been withheld.

  Grateful.

  Things were better this way. Obviously.

  And if they, the lessers, chose not to participate, then there was always pain and suffering and ultimately… reclamation. Where they could serve the greater good whether they liked it or not. Such was the hierarchy.

  And sometimes no matter how high up you were, you met someone a little higher up than yourself. And in these times, inside the Pantheon, it was their truth that reigned supreme. Such was the natural order of things.

  Here at dawn in Sin City, Lusypher’s truth reigned supreme. And it was almost the same as Crometheus’s.

  “Good morning, Crometheus,” said Lusypher in his dark SS officer’s uniform and black leather trench coat. His saucer cap cocked at a slightly jaunty angle. His voice dry and laconic but still businesslike. Friendly in the pre-dawn cool.

  There was no one out on the Strip. For all intents and purposes Sin City was only occupied by the two of them. Perhaps, wondered Crometheus in the quiet moment that fell between them, that was how Lusypher preferred to filter their intersecting realities. Sans anyone but himself and those he was directly dealing with. As if no one really existed but him, and those he allowed.

  “It’s time for an upgrade, son.” Lusypher’s voice was wry. And the Uplifted had gotten directly to the point like some veteran businessman who knows what’s next to be done. No velvet-hammer compliment, critique, compliment, learned in business management school from time immemorial. Straight to the point that drove every Uplifted in the Pantheon forward and kept them from losing their marbles like they’d all once collectively done out there in the dark. Keep trying to upgrade and someday you just might. That had gotten them this far.

  It would get them to the goal.

  There were also no non-sequitur observations about the soulless casinos and the nonstop fun to entertain the slaves being a mere illusion and indicating by illustration that he, Lusypher, was greater than all of everything. None of that either. That would have been cliché.

  Straight to business. Right to the point. Directly straight on.

  “Your work has been noticed, Crometheus,” he said, turning away from the view down the Strip. A Strip a thousand pleasure palaces long and stretching off in infinite vistas of distraction. Each offering lifetimes of diversion and entertainment if only one had all the achievement points to spend for such pursuits.

  Achievement points. They made the Pantheon go ‘round, as some liked to quip, and all knew. Enough… and you could do anything you wanted to do. Even become a god. Create your reality with your own truths and filters for all to obey.

  “I was just trying to run up my score, sir,” replied Crometheus, highlighting his self-centered ambitions, which was a form of humility within the Uplifted. When you indicated that you were out for yourself, instead of out for the greater good of all Uplifted culture… then what you were saying is I’m still too humble to let you know I was really doing it for us all. Except you really were doing it for yourself. Which was both ironic and truthful.

  That was the party line.

  In fact, the deeper layer to be peeled back, the final path down deep inside your own personal psyche… said this had been the truth all along. You were always doing it for yourself. Even when you were making a selfless sacrifice for the whole. That was just for the self too.

  And there’s nothing wrong with that once you’ve set yourself free to understand, and more importantly, embrace.

  When you get honest with yourself, it’s truly amazing what you can discover about the real you. Instead of believing the lies you tell others to pretend that you’re something different.

  As if to signal that he, Lusypher, knew this, understood the humblebrag of “just trying to run up the score,” he smiled. Once. Wanly. With just a twinge of melancholy that indicated he too, once in the unenlightened long ago of his own personal history… had thought just as Crometheus now thought. Done as such. Been… just like.

  It was a master’s touch, and Crometheus was secretly proud of himself for noticing the superior Uplifted’s trick. There was no such thing as a casual conversation among the Uplifted. And if there were, somewhere in some secret place, it was a luxury. One was more honest with the slaves they were bedding than with a peer. Or a superior Uplifted who held absolute sway over your existence, and your desire to take the next step along the Path. That was what had been so unique about the conversation with Maestro aboard the destroyed ship. Hanging from the sensor mast. Dangling in the void.

  But to notice the tricks… to notice the game another was running on you… Ah. Now further enlightenment along the path was almost certainly at hand. If you noticed.

  “You played hard and gave it everything you had on New Vega,” continued Lusypher. “That was a bad break getting dinged on points for failure, but you got right back in there and accepted what we were telling ourselves was a suicide mission
to fulfill our obligations with the Id. They helped us on New Vega, so we had to go in and run a screening operation to protect their gains on New Britannia. And in the end… Crometheus… you smoked yourself a cruiser and got noticed by everyone that counts, son. The Tower was watching.”

  Crometheus said nothing.

  The casino across the way was promising a Drowning Orgy tomorrow night that could not be missed. Flesh and arms writhed around a beautiful redheaded girl slave whose face was a blank mask fifty feet tall as she promised pleasures never before had. Her green eyes lifeless. Her skin porcelain.

  “Noticed by me, is the important part,” continued Lusypher. “To be specific. Maestro alerted me that you successfully passed a truth test we’ve been undertaking for vetting, with regard to a secret operation currently underway within the Pantheon. So now I’m here to offer you something, Crometheus. A chance to join something a lot bigger than our marines. Something that will run beneath the surface of this Grand Alliance we’ve formed with the other Uplifted. Something that will change the future of the Pantheon.”

  Crometheus’s mind scrambled across his last conversations with Maestro. And yes. There had been, hanging from the damaged comm-sensor mast as the Animal fleet burned and disintegrated into ruin all about him, there had been that conversation about the nature of truth. That revelation that there could only be one truth. In the end. Not the collective social justice voodoo they’d all been spouting since Earth. The “our truths” or “That’s his or her, or even zhir’s, truth.”

  One truth that must prevail and reign supreme.

  Our truth.

  Mine, he whispered where no one could hear.

  The Animal civilizations were collapsing. It was going to be winner-take-all and if they were going to go forward then there would be, needed to be, one truth. And whoever’s it was… they’d be the winner.

  Mine.