The Goddess Gambit

by B Michael Stevens

  "He was never going to shut up," Lucy explained. "Now, about that Weaver."

  "Understood," Colonel Taylor said and closed the private comm line he had with Chairman Warbak. He pulled the ear-bud from his left ear and, leaving it dangling, handed the N-Tab back to Jackson. "A bunch of yahoos managed to launch an attack on the obelisks, but they failed. Only thing it did is accelerate the timeline a bit." Everyone on the deck turned in their seats to listen to him. "We need to double-time this march and get to the city pronto. Turns out some esoterrorists have been hiding right under Warbak's nose. We are to lend our assistance in the rooting out of these vermin." Everyone nodded their understanding.

  "Captain," Taylor said and nodded to his second in command. Jackson understood the tacit order and turned, issuing his order into a comm-link in his hand.

  "Umbra ol' boy," Taylor said, reaching for his holster, "I'd say I'm sorry, but the truth is, I want every one of you Drop-trash pieces of shit off my planet." The Colonel drew his sidearm and spun around only to find that Umbra was no longer standing behind him. "Well dunk my ass in gravy and call me Sally..." Taylor's gaze drifted to the only exit from the transport: the vestibule at the top of the ladder and the hatch that he had left open. "Ain't that some chicken-fried bullshit? Captain, we have a problem!"

  Jackson looked back to Taylor, awaiting further intel. "Tell your men to open fire, now!" the Colonel ordered and made his way up the ladder to witness the destruction.

  "Now where did you get to?" he muttered to himself as he cleared the open hatch. Umbra was nowhere to be seen. Just off in the distance, he could see the Ziggurat. They would be on the edge of the Shanty and at the southern highway within the hour. Chairman Warbak had wanted to be present at the moment of betrayal. He had wanted to see the look of rage on the purple-haired alien's face when he was executed. Warbak had told Taylor as much. But things happened fast thanks to some rebel riff-raff, and now they had to pull the trigger before Umbra caught wind of the Spartan advent and put two and two together. Warbak had no intention of handing over the souls of Home to the Harvesters. He would instead figure out how the demons used the souls to power their technology and along with the 51st and the new Spartan army, would conquer Tartarus, the Harvester homeland.

  Speaking of. Taylor turned around when he heard the Heavies priming their weapons.

  Surrounded on four sides by row after row of Heavy Mechs, the pregnant beetle-looking transport was a sitting duck. Taylor threw a curt salute at the alien vessel and shouted, "Nice knowing ya!" Then the Heavies opened fire. They pummeled the Harvester land-yacht with everything they had. Hundreds of plasma discs, thousands of .50 cal rounds, and dozens of mini-missile clusters.

  "Hoo-rah!" Taylor hooted over the deafening roar. The barrage lasted for a good sixty or seventy seconds straight. There was so much smoke from the heavy guns and explosions centered on their target that Taylor quickly lost sight of the land-yacht. Only the broiling eruption of continuous explosions where it used to be revealed its location. This shit'll make yur pecker stand up, yessir.

  Finally, the guns subsided, and the smoke began to clear.

  "Fuck me sideways..." Taylor mumbled, both his jaw and his pecker going slack.

  The alien transport was undamaged. The ring of levitating, satellite orbs around the vessel were spinning faster than before, however, and glowing.

  "You gotta be fucking kidding me!" Taylor shouted now, rage quickly replacing shock. "Fire again!" he screamed. "Fire! Fire! Kill those sons of bitches!"

  The 51st opened up again, and the results were the same. This time, however, the Harvester transport began to slowly rise into the air, only stopping when it was well and clear of the Heavy Mecha that surrounded it. Then, as Taylor watched, dumbfounded, the vessel simply turned its bulbous, snail-like prow to the east and floated away, even as the bullets and missiles continued to bounce harmlessly off it.

  I guess we're lucky it was just a transport and not an offensive unit, Taylor mused, shaking his head in disbelief as the vessel cleared his company.

  When he saw the spinning orbs cease their orbit and gather up into a geometric pattern at the rear of the fleeing vessel, Taylor began to suspect that he had felt relief too soon.

  The assembled orbs flashed a brilliant lime green and the world around Taylor exploded.

  "Honorable Chairman, sir, it is done." Matiaba bowed deeply.

  "Ah," Warbak replied, looking up from the N-Tab he had just switched off. "Excellent. Let's go take a look, shall we?" Casting the tablet off to the side, Warbak rose from his throne and descended the steps to where his aide stood.

  "Sir, if I may?" Matiaba asked, his voice shaking.

  "Speak freely," Warbak said.

  "I would like to thank you for sparing me." Matiaba bowed again.

  "Matiaba, of course!" Warbak chuckled. "I need to keep you around. It's not nearly as satisfying when a robot licks your boot."

  The aide flinched at that but hid his emotions by holding the bow for a second longer. "Of course, Honorable Chairman, sir."

  "Now, let us observe my new kingdom."

  Matiaba followed Accoba Warbak out of the pagoda and through the forest garden path to where the wood met wall. Without giving a verbal command, Warbak gestured impatiently to the wall before him. Half nodding, half bowing, Matiaba scurried forward and with a wave of his hand revealed a hidden control panel in the wall. A second later a wide door began to slide open, recessing itself into the adjacent wall. On the other side, a balcony awaited. The aide stepped to the side and bowed once more. Accoba Warbak strode by without acknowledging the man and stood at the end of the rectangular balcony, one hand resting on the balustrade there.

  Warbak looked out across the Shanty and down the steel slopes of the Ziggurat. To his left and right, spaced equal distances apart—for he was in the dead center of the highest level—stood two towering obelisks, each connected to the Zigg by way of a narrow arching bridge. Atop each of the obelisks, the alien weapons sat quiet now. Deep inside the glass, as if it were klicks and klicks away, a gentle throbbing pulse of green light lingered.

  The souls of the Unpure. The souls of the invasive species and the last generation of flawed humans, born from flesh.

  "Do you hear it, Matiaba?" Warbak asked.

  The aide rushed forward, afraid that he had missed something and cautiously approached his lord. He strained to listen but could not identify what Warbak had heard. Terrified about coming across as contrary, he answered warily. "I hear nothing, Honorable Chairman, sir."

  "Exactly!" Warbak laughed, pleased. "For the first time since Umbra built this city for me, it is quiet again. Gone is the noise and stink of the unwashed trash that washed upon my shores. Home is now pure."

  Home is now a graveyard, Matiaba thought, but wisely kept that to himself.

  The silence of the late morning was broken by the unmistakable sound of combat, far off. Warbak had chosen the western flank of the Zigg for the location of his balcony, for even though he would have to see the filth that was the Shanty no matter which direction he gazed, he found solace in looking upon the quiet giants of the Rocky Mountain range in the distance beyond. The sounds of the battle were coming from the south. Upon hearing it, Warbak smiled and drifted to the left edge of the balcony to observe.

  "Even now," he said to his aide, "Colonel Taylor and the 51st are eliminating my last remaining adversary. Without Umbra to lead them, the Harvesters will be lost. Soon, all of Earth will be mine."

  Then came the first explosion. Both Warbak and Matiaba could even see it, just shy of where the southern highway sloped down and touched the earth beyond the outskirts of the Shanty. Upon witnessing the plume of flame belch into the sky, followed by a rising column of thick, black smoke, Matiaba gasped.

  "Nothing to be alarmed about. It's only the death rattle of Umbra and his alien vessel. Good, the job is done. Let us retire inside and celebrate. There is still the matter of the nuisances hiding underground." Satisfied
with his victory, Warbak began to head back inside.

  "My lord!" Matiaba exclaimed, a single finger raised and pointed towards the explosion.

  "What?" Warbak rolled his eyes and sighed, his irritation with the groveling aide growing by the second.

  Matiaba did not answer, as if speaking the thing would make it real. Warbak frowned and followed the direction of the aide's pointed digit, saw it and had to catch his breath.

  An object, a mere speck from this distance, a vessel of unknown design, was flying low to the ground, much lower than his Republic transports. Worse, it was flying away from the burning patch of ground and smoke. The Harvesters... Umbra!

  Before Warbak could curse aloud, let alone order Matiaba to rally the Spartans and give pursuit to his escaping quarry, the second explosion of the morning erupted. This blast was so close that both aide and Chairman alike could feel it, and both instinctively ducked in alarm.

  "What the hell?" Warbak hissed, hand shielding his face. The south-western orb to their right was gone, in its place a swirling tempest of numinous light and energy. The swirl expanded, flashed, and then disappeared, leaving only a trailing wisp of steam.

  "The orb, my lord! It's been destroyed!" Matiaba proclaimed.

  As the sound of the explosion subsided, the deathly quiet of the city-turned-graveyard was slowly filled the low roar of voices. Standing back upright, Warbak rushed to the far side of the balcony and beheld his ruined prize.

  Masses.

  Masses of people had returned to a portion of the Shanty.

  Escaped! But how?

  Warbak reeled, his mind flash-frozen. He snapped out of his stupor when his ears registered another sound—the high-pitched whine of a Hopper unit in flight.

  Then he saw it: a lone Hopper, pulling up and away from the shattered orb. The power armor banked away from the walls of the Zigg and began to climb, gaining altitude and heading straight for the north-western obelisk.

  "There! That one! Shoot him down! Scramble everything! Everything!"

  With a broad smile on his face, Jon pulled Chad’s freshly repaired Hopper into a climb.

  It worked!

  He’d known it would. How could he have been so stupid to miss it in the first place? Back when the first orb broke and freed the villagers... It wasn't simply the breaking of the glass that did it. The mystical glass needed to be weakened first! That's why Carbine's super-sonic slugs didn't work! The orbs hadn't been weakened.

  It had all come to Jon in a flash, down in the Vault as he’d mourned the loss of his best friend. Quiteke had wrecked his Easy-Rider before the Beasties trampled it. The orb had been placed, by Jon, in the private's saddlebag, along with the Weaver they’d found in the barn. And wasn't Weaver derived from Drop stuff?

  It all made sense now, even if it didn't. For some unknown reason, the nature of alien technology being what it was, Weaver softened the Harvester orbs. Once soaked in Weaver, all one needed to do to release those who had been harvested was to simply crack the glass.

  After putting it all together in his head, Jon and Lucy had procured all the Weaver they could from the one place they knew would have it, then it was just a matter of retrofitting some water-balloon-like bombs to the wings of the Hopper Chad had so generously donated to the cause.

  Jon raced up the height of the second obelisk, climbing nearly straight up, relishing the sensation of flight that he hadn't experienced since the day of finals in the Academy. Directly above, the orb loomed. He pulled his power armor back slightly, so as to dodge the sphere as he passed by and above it. He imagined he could see the souls of the purged inside its swirling depths, just as he had the villagers in the Rough.

  Hang on guys, he thought to himself and, having cleared the top of the orb, cut power to the thrusters. In the second before his engine-powered climb gave way to the pull of Earth's gravity, Jon seemed to almost float motionless in space. His eye caught and focused on the symbol in his suit's HUD that would activate the mini-missile release latch.

  Fire!

  Where normally a cluster of miniature explosive rockets would drop from the wings of his Hopper, a tangle of balloons fell, each filled with the procured Weaver. They struck the orb and splattered, coating the surface of the sphere with the glitter-flecked milky liquid. A second later, Jon too was falling, hammer poised to come crashing down.

  And crash down it did, shattering this orb just as it had the first.

  A violent blast of energy exhaled and expanded out into the world, releasing the captured souls and depositing them back onto the ground from where they had been stolen. The blast rocked Jon's Hopper, but he quickly recovered and, hammer still in hand, fired back up his thrusters and began the long arc around the Zigg towards the last two remaining orbs.

  The Spartan that had been Hegna 451-223, now simply Unit 451-223, had been one of the first units to scramble when the news came that esoterrorists were attempting to sabotage the Purge. He was the first to spot them, perched atop a twelve-story ring of pre-Storm metal containers. He was the first to get within range, and he dumped every mini-missile his suit had at them. His missiles struck their target moments before he reached them. He had aimed for the precariously stacked containers themselves and struck a direct hit. As he passed over them, he glanced down and back and watched as more than half of the ring collapsed in a cloud of smoke and fire, taking the troublesome rebels with them. Never one to assume anything, Unit 451-233 banked around for another pass and found that at least three of the terrorists had survived. They seemed to be fighting each other. After a quick scan, Unit 451-223 found that one of the terrorists had been a New Breed, and was now Unit 761-354.

  An almost human thought then occurred to Unit 451-223. The scanned unit below seemed familiar, and further cross-referencing revealed the unit's former designation: Rene 761-354.

  Something deep inside Unit 451-223's programming twitched. When Unit 451-223 used his HUD to zoom in on the scene below, something inside him broke free and rose to the surface. For Unit 451-223 recognized another one of the terrorists down there.

  Jon 310-257.

  And for some reason, Jon hadn't become a Spartan like he was supposed to. The thing that rose to the surface then lodged itself deeply into the forefront of Unit 451-223's pseudo-consciousness.

  That thing was hatred.

  Unit 451-223, having already used all his missiles, readied his twin plasma launchers and set up his strafing run. The walls of the purge were closing in, but he wanted to be the one to kill the malfunctioning unit below. The thought, if one could call it that, was in and of itself an aberration, inexplicable. Nevertheless, it was there, it persisted, it burned in his circuits like an overheating processor, and it would not go away.

  When a portal appeared, and his target disappeared into it, Unit 451-223 screamed.

  Robbed of his revenge, the Spartan spent the next several hours in the Hopper hangar bay, seething in silence, unable to process his deviant thoughts. When the order came to scramble once more, with intel that a stolen Hopper was attacking the orbs, a spark of what could only be called hope appeared in Unit 451-223.

  When the Hopper was identified as having belonged to Unit 444-760, formerly designated Chad, Unit 451-223 knew he had returned.

  Jon was back.

  This time, the Spartan thought, you will not escape me.

  "Spread out and give them everything you got!" Miller shouted as he led the rag-tag group of rebels out into the streets of the Shanty. Many squinted against the bright light of day, having been in the Underground for most of their recent past; most of their lives, in some cases. "Stay clear of civilians! We don't want to get anyone killed if we can help it!"

  The rebels, men, women, children, and displaced aliens all shouted back their understanding and darted out in different directions, searching frantically for cover and high ground, any place from which to hide and still offer the support that their operative in the sky needed.

  Miller spotted a nearby struc
ture, as trashed and haphazardly built as anything in the Shanty, but decided it would have to do. He ducked through the hanging cloth that served as a front door and called out, making sure the dwelling was empty. It was. The Purged had not yet returned to this part of the Shanty.

  Just as Miller reached the window of the second-floor bedroom, a flash filled the sky, followed by a rush of wind.

  That's two! Miller thought, and for the first time began to believe that this new kid's plan might work. He knelt and rested his rifle on the ledge of the glassless window and took aim at the towering city-state, waiting for the Hoppers to come pouring out, like fire ants out of a stomped hill.

  As expected, the hangers high up in the upper levels of the Zigg opened their doors, and swarms of Hoppers emerged. Let ‘em rip! Miller hoped the others were also in good positions, as the new kid was going to need all the help he could get not to get shot out of the sky. Miller prayed that he and everyone else would be able to keep Jon's stolen Hopper separate from the others, and squeezed his trigger.

  From all over the city, other shots rang out, and several Hoppers fell from the sky, trailing smoke behind them as they crashed down. Where one fell, two more seemed to take its place, and Miller knew with a sinking realization that the counterattack was not going to be pretty.

  Hurry, kid, hurry.

  "Maya, if you could stop pacing, that would be great," Ratt said without looking up from his computer screen.

  "Oh! I'm so sorry! It's just—" The goddess stammered as a slight flush reddened her cheeks.

  "I know, I know. I'm nervous too, but I need to concentrate. Sorry, not trying to be a jerk," the kid said. Maya stopped her walking and stood behind Ratt, trying to stay out of sight. She clasped her hands together and then proceeded to fold and straighten her elbows over and over.

  "Fidgeting isn't much better, and besides, you're making me nervous back there," Ratt said.