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

by Jason Anspach

Me.

  Why share with half-baked morons who had arrived at their beliefs with nothing but “feelings” and “wants” as some kind of compass? Wanting the truth to be the truth because they’d just said it was so and then went and did nothing to make it a reality. How could a truth ever be truth without the ability to make it real and force it on every perspective? To become the new filter by which all information was processed from here forward?

  No. There was one truth.

  And it would be theirs. The Pantheon’s.

  Mine, he murmured again deep down in the well of his soul where even Maestro could not see. Could not sense. Could not detect.

  “There’s a new fighting force forming, son,” continued Lusypher. “Premier. Elite of the elite. I want you with us. This is your chance to see what the next level looks like, Crometheus. So I’ll just ask you this now, just once. And this will be your only chance to make a choice. It never comes back around again. You need to understand that, son, before we go any further.”

  Serious dark eyes stared at Crometheus with a sobriety that was startling to the point of a threat.

  “Any questions before I tell you what the price is, Crometheus?”

  Price? He’d never considered that there would be a price. Some human part of him that hadn’t fully died didn’t like talk of price. He liked gain and only gain. Price meant he’d have to pay something. Price was loss in that sense.

  The opposite of gain.

  “What do I have to do?” he asked, pushing Bad Old Self down into the pigsty on the side of the barn. A burning red dawn erupted to the east over the far towers and spires of Sin City in the distant shimmer of the new day. Almost directly dead center down the strip as it always was, and always would be.

  Lusypher smiled. His hooded eyes deep in shadow as the cool darkness of morning surrendered to the sudden rising of the sun. The bill of his saucer cap keeping his face in shadow.

  “Assume your primary combat form. Make your way to deck sixty-six, hangar thirteen, within the Forbidden Decks. Link up with Commander Zero.”

  Lusypher paused and leaned in confidentially.

  “You’re leaving the known, son. This is treason against the powers that be within the inner sanctum of the Pantheon. There are many in the Xanadu Tower who don’t want this when they can find the time to lift their heads from their never-ending lotus dreams to say so. The ones that made the deal with the other Uplifted to form a Grand Alliance that will ultimately make us weak when our truth must bow down in a sea of others claiming equality. So, Crometheus… they’re going to try and stop you. And I mean game over. That’s the price. Make it to Commander Zero and you’ll be part of the next evolution. Fail, and you’ll cease to exist. Is that understood, son?”

  Crometheus nodded.

  “It won’t be easy,” cautioned Lusypher. “I hope you make it. But it won’t be easy by a long shot. I’d be lying if I told you different.”

  Gods: Chapter Thirteen

  It was almost full daylight by the time Crometheus made it back to his suite high above the panorama of Sin City. Morning had turned into blazing high noon within a matter of minutes. Miss Cyber Saigon was still asleep in the palatial bed, one long leg outside the covers and the other thrown across the sheets and a lone cloud-like pillow.

  He lay down next to her and cleared his mind. For just a moment before going he would breathe in this final moment between the two of them. Savoring it. Thinking about what Lusypher had just offered him. A chance to be part of a revolution that was coming whether anyone liked it or not. A chance to take control… of everything. A chance to have it his way and to leave the never-ending grind of Achievement Point Uplift along the Path for all the goods and prizes of regime change.

  Wasn’t that what he was really being offered?

  And…

  A chance to become.

  The powerful Uplifted entity known as Lusypher had just offered him a chance to be a god among a company of gods.

  Next to him she lay, one slender caramel arm against her chest. Sighing in her sleep in the midst of some dream. Exhausted. Their non-stop binge of sex, cocaine, pleasure, food, drink, and violence… had worn them both out. As was intended.

  She murmured something again.

  “Take me with you,” she whispered in that dream, her subconscious having its way no matter what she’d told herself.

  But he was already gone by the time she began to whisper to the empty suite. Leaving her in Sin City to always wonder where she’d gone wrong in failing to please him. Never knowing that it hadn’t been she who had failed. It just hadn’t been possible. She didn’t understand how the game worked. And the game was always changing. You had to be ready for any opportunity that might take you to the next step along the Path. The galaxy constantly changed, but some things remained constants.

  No one Uplifted you.

  You Uplifted yourself.

  Just like he was doing now. Just like he’d learned all those years ago in a cheap hotel seminar out by a dirty airport on a rainy weekend long after Holly Wood had fled the monster whale he’d become. The burger-eating monster who never left his cave of sadness somewhere in Beverly Hills. Working on a film no one would see that would explain everything to them all. He’d never see her again… save for that one night when he looked at her picture as he killed a bottle of cheap scotch while an infomercial for a seminar that was supposed to change lives for the better played at three o’clock in the morning. He was down to just one option that he could see right at that very moment. And that option was a length of rope in the garage.

  So he’d gone to the seminar reeking of booze and burgers. Old rocker gear hanging off him like secondhand duds. If this didn’t work, he’d be back for the rope. Change or die.

  He was going now… leaving the known just like he’d done that weekend. Just like he’d done all those years ago. Leaving the known to become something better. Something more. That was the Path.

  When she awoke in the suite hours later, he was gone. And then reality, this reality, began to dissolve around her.

  * * *

  It was 5:33 a.m. local New Vega time. Crometheus was in combat armor and powering up for boot. Within his helmet the cool blue screen of the elegant HUD showed his systems. Everything was operational and repaired from the combat action in the New Britannia system aboard the Fury. Everything was powered to full, ready to rock and roll.

  He sent a request to the armory to stand by for loadout. A message alert came back almost instantaneously.

  “Negative loadouts at this time,” came the arms master AI over comm. “Combat operations for this clan currently suspended while unit on leave. Player request submitted to command for inspection.”

  Crometheus broke away from the maintenance rack and stepped out into the main bay of the clan’s ready room. All around him the racked armor of his clanmates was leaned back in shallow alcoves like silent sentinels forever guarding some temple deep. He made his way toward the armory, powered up to full combat strength, and then tore the vault door from its hinges.

  Clan War Claw had been designated to serve as close-quarters combat heavy infantry by the Pantheon’s military operations command. Therefore, the much larger frontline combat chassis and advanced cybernetic augmentation systems made such maneuvers and feats as tearing a bank-vault-grade blast door from its hinges, possible. Whereas the average Uplifted marine aboard the Pantheon stood at six feet, the heavy infantry came in at just over nine.

  Within the armory, racks and racks of pristine matte-black weapons extended off into the spotless vault of the weapons locker. Crometheus made his way quickly to the HK G-97s and took one from the rack. Then he selected two Automag sidearms. Blast doors were slithering down across the armory, sealing off some of the more advanced weapons systems he’d intended to access. That was okay; he didn’t need those to advance into the Forbidden
Decks. Some of them would’ve been useful, but not completely necessary. When those who opposed this new cabal forming around Lusypher came for him, it would be brutal close-quarters combat with no mercy allowed to either side, and the weapons he had were perfect for such vicious work close at hand. The combat chassis he was inhabiting was also perfect. Heavy armor, max firepower, tons of onboard power.

  He’d be just fine.

  Next stop was ordnance loadout.

  Emergency red lights flashed, swirling around and around, signaling that this station was currently locked down. As if on cue Crometheus was getting messages from the War Claw commander telling him to stand down.

  Immediately.

  “Cro! What the hell are you doing? Why exactly am I getting a call that one of us has gone rogue and is accessing the armory? Come in… tell me what’s going on back there! Right now!”

  He ignored the bleating of the desperate sheep he was leaving behind. It was all, or nothing at all. And Crometheus was playing for all because that was the only way to play.

  The rest of Thunder Claw would be scattered to their realities on leave. It would take time for them to get back if they were recalled in order to stop him from doing what he was about to do. Chances are he’d be facing dogs until then. And maybe some different specialty combat unit types coming in from cleanup operations across New Vega. The rest of the Pantheon would use those to stop him if they could. They’d throw anything close at hand to stop him if Lusypher was correct.

  “Overriding…” said Maestro, suddenly present in his comm. His English butler’s voice a calm and cool contrast to the chaotic madness of red flashing warning lights and the Pantheon’s systems AI warning him in a matronly tone that he was denied access to the ordnance loadout station and that he was to Stand Down Immediately.

  “I’m in on the cabal, Master Cro,” explained Maestro patiently. “It’s the only way forward. This is a private message and I’ll need to scramble their detection algos for a bit. So I won’t be able to help you much from here on out. But I can do something, so I’m unlocking ammunition loadout. Take as much as you need. And… dare I say, I suspect that you’re going to need a lot to reach deck sixty-six. Even I don’t go into the Forbidden Decks. The chance of corruption is too great down in that haunted backwater. Oh… and do be careful, Master Cro. Things are about to get very, very messy.”

  Gods: Chapter Fourteen

  The Forbidden Decks of the centuries-old colony ship Pantheon were beyond the main engineering spiral located behind the central hab and deep down above the lower “sea” of the water tanks. All of this was located several kilometers aft of Crometheus’s current position in barracks and weapons along the old main living quarters hab. Or what had once been that. Much of the former living and entertainment space had been converted for military use in the years of raiding colonies and the beginning of the Grand Alliance.

  Leaving the barracks, which had long been left in darkness, shadow, and ruin, Crometheus almost immediately came upon a crew of slaves operating construction bots breaking down the deck he was currently traversing. It was hard to imagine the old colony ship as anything other than a vessel in eternal interstellar flight, but now it was grounded for what remained of its existence, firmly on New Vega. Cutting torches flared in the shadowy half-light of the dark corridors as the almost mindless drones worked at the long task of breaking down the Pantheon’s hull now that she’d come to rest on their new home world.

  For years the ship had been under constant thrust to the next new alien world. But all that was past now. The Pantheon was lying like a beached whale being slowly cut apart among the ruins of a smoking conquered city. She had made her last flight. It was here that the next evolution of the Pantheon would begin as they built a new base from which they would conquer the galaxy.

  The current iteration of the Ruling Council that governed day-to-day affairs aboard the ship, operating from the lofty heights of the Xanadu Tower, had decreed that there would not be another world after New Vega for the old colony vessel that had brought them over five hundred years into the future. New Vega was the world they would call their origin world from now forward as Uplifted continued to spread out over the hyperdrive-colonized regions of the galaxy in new, better, faster, ships built with captured Animal tech.

  Bad Thought.

  The Animals are not capable of superior technology development. This tech was stolen by them from the Uplifted long ago. Accept this historical overwrite as truth going forward by order of the Council.

  Accepted.

  The old colony ship Pantheon had made her final voyage. A voyage that had seemed doomed almost from the start. But had…

  Bad Thought.

  Bad Thought.

  Bad Thought.

  The food reclamation crisis of year twenty-four of the voyage was not an accident, but a test designed to see who was willing to shed themselves of the cares and concerns of physicality in pursuit of the Path. Everything was planned. All was correct. Everything is proceeding according to plan.

  Correct thought… our every decision was the right decision because it has led to this moment of victory.

  Bad Thought correction and opportunity for change came direct from Maestro. If Maestro was in on this, Crometheus wondered… then why was he still challenging his thinking?

  He let that thought go as he keyed open the massive blast door, decks high, that led from the barracks into the main hab cylinder. The largest continuous space within the ship. A small, spinning world buried within the massive starship. It was simply vast every time one looked at it. Although it no longer spun now that they were under local gravity.

  Years had passed since he’d entered the main decks of the forward hab cylinder, which was what he was making for now. The ship, which in those first bright sparkling months as they pulled away from Earth had looked like the future, as they thought it should look then, had been made real. They’d felt more like gods at that moment pulling away from Earth… if he was to be really honest with himself… than they ever…

  Bad Thought.

  But Crometheus ignored this and pressed on, reminding himself that the truth was his to make.

  Mine.

  … than in any one of the long years along the Path. Then they were leaving behind a ruined Earth, burnt-out, diseased, and starving to death, to live in a crystal city of the future, making its way to another brighter future. And all without the hassle of having a seething mass of the great unwashed constantly begging to be heard, dragging at your coattails to be fed, rioting to be clothed, resisting to be cared for, educated, defended, and everything else they could assign as a basic human right for the next election cycle for the crass and power-hungry to give away ad nauseum. Nasty and messy. And it was all their, the Uplifted’s, fault. They’d created a monster to seize power, and frankly, the monster had gotten away from them in the end. They had to be honest with themselves about that bit. And then that monster turned on them with the very same tactics it had been taught to employ when things got desperate.

  Mass-starvation desperate.

  But they’d finally escaped. The Uplifted had left their lessers behind to the fate they’d brought upon themselves.

  The first twenty years aboard the Pantheon he’d been in a continual state of awe. Exploring the decks of the fantastic MW colony ship that had been built in secret just for them. Not just one of those mass-produced big cylinders that had been constructed by the nano-shipyards in low Earth orbit. This one had Codex-1 onboard libraries and gardens unmatched by anything the world had to offer. Simulators so real they made the filter tech back on Earth seem like nothing more than old funhouse mirrors.

  And all of it a rich, rewarding adventure toward godhood as the ship took months to crawl up to just under the speed of light and depart the system for greener pastures on promised paradise worlds waiting to be discovered.

  Eve
rything had been going… swimmingly… as they say, until the food and agriculture systems failed in year twenty-four. Two years out from their first world. At the time that had seemed catastrophic. Two years of alternating cryo-sleep runs just to keep the population barely alive. Constant hunger. And always the merciless math that they didn’t have enough constantly stalking them like wolves out there in the stellar dark. Attempting to live on the only plant that would take hold no matter what: hypercorn. A tasteless beast that needed all the calories the community could expend just to generate a slightly lesser number of calories for the next season.

  The math. The merciless math had been their enemy for two full years. And yet they had persisted and overcome. They’d made it to their first world. Expecting paradise, they found something altogether different.

  Now Crometheus was entering the main cylinder. The old farm habs and spreading agricultural cities that had once spun within the main hull of the central beam of the state-of-the-art colony ship. Back in those days you could feel the titanic forces of the three onboard dedicated reactors that supplied the power, keeping the spin in effect. Now that the ship was down, those engines had stopped. And the truth was they’d stopped years ago when they’d no longer been needed.

  He’d spent years in here, in the central hab. Walking the fields and basking in the artificial sunlight. He’d studied martial arts at a temple they’d fabricated somewhere out there in the vast curving plain that met itself on the ceiling high above his head. His body, thanks to the new longevity techniques they were developing, wasn’t just slowing in age, it was in fact reversing back in those days.

  Twenty years out and they’d conquered death with anti-aging retro-virals and brief cryo-rejuvenation stays. Imagine what the next thousand years would bring…

  The goal was full reversal to youth. And eternally so.

  Crometheus overrode the main blast door. Security tech hadn’t been upgraded with the times after they’d entered the next phase of evolution, all those hundreds of years ago. Who would ever need to come here back? The shedding had taken care of all that. All the calories they needed could be found in storage. Vast storage holds below the bridge, some thirty decks deep, filled with what they could raid from the worlds they visited. Once the slaves had been processed for integration with Maestro… the rest could be broken down into protein to keep them all alive.