God War (16 page)

It was time then, he realized. Destiny could be held at bay no longer.

* * *

U
LLIKUMMIS
,
Brigid and Little Quav appeared in a swirl of quantum energy, stepping out of nothingness into the ante-nursery of the living starship. The ante-nursery was where genetics could be twisted, where catalysts were triggered. Years before, it was the ante-nursery that had given the signal for the Annunaki to reemerge on planet Earth, broadcasting the signal from far out in space that had resulted in the hybrid barons finally sloughing their false skins.

There were programs here, hypermemories in storage, personality gifts waiting to be bestowed and housed. The room itself was relatively small, a little bigger than the living room of a modest family home or the lady chapel of a cathedral. Like much of
Tiamat,
it looked alive, the columns that held the ceiling winding like the gnarled trunks of ancient trees. The walls were lit by some internal source, scattered pads illuminating the room in a soft creamy glow. The room was dominated by a sunken pit that dropped almost two feet below the rest of the floor. The pit was oval in shape, and its walls and base were made of a light gray substance that looked like pumice stone. A series of regular holes appeared around the edge of the pit’s walls, running all the way around, each one no wider than a man’s thumb.

Stepping into the room, Ullikummis reached to his left in a loose gesture, and the lights changed, dimming briefly before changing color, adopting a violet shade. Brigid watched as something dropped from the ceiling, descending from a hidden recess at Ullikummis’s command. He knew this place, knew its setup and operation. It was Annunaki technology; Ullikummis had grown up using it.

The thing that fell from the ceiling was on a rigid tube, and it halted in place a little below the level of Ullikummis’s shoulders, correcting itself with three quick movements. It looked something like a jawbone, a set of long teeth arrayed in a crescent shape that ran roughly fourteen inches from end to end.

As Brigid and the child watched, Ullikummis’s crude fingers played in the air, weaving a pattern over the teethlike keys of the drop-down unit. He didn’t appear to touch them, but they clearly responded to his subtle movements, lighting in sequence like a child’s
electronic game. A moment later, liquid began to rush from the holes that circled the sunken pit, and Ullikummis stepped away from the depending instrument, turning back to face Brigid and her young charge as if assuring himself they were still there. The liquid was transparent but cloudy, organic gunk swirling through its midst like sand on the desert breeze.

Ullikummis’s hands came together, and he passed them over the pit, drawing from his mighty psionic powers to call on the minerals that existed within the liquid and within
Tiamat
herself. Something sprouted from the middle of the pit, weaving into existence from the subatomic particles at Ullikummis’s command. Just as he had made the rock barricades and the lances that had ripped apart Annunaki warriors, now he created a subtler shape, its curved base wide, its sides thin and almost transparent. It looked like an egg, a narrow gap in its center. The liquid filling the pit sloshed against its edges, licking up its curving walls as it continued to take shape. All told, the egglike chrysalis was three and a half feet in height, large enough to hold a human child.

Turning back to Brigid and Little Quav, Ullikummis bent on his haunches, bringing his head level with the child’s and openly staring into her pale eyes. “
Tiamat
honors you, Mother,” he said, his voice like two great stones being slammed together.

Quav smiled uncertainly, her eyes never leaving those of her once and future son.

“The process will hurt,” he warned her. “It is a birth, and as such it must be traumatic for it sees the creation of new life where there was none before. You hold the genetic keys within you, and when they activate you will feel discomfort.” He took her hands in one of his great paws, still fixing her with his glowing magma eyes. “This will pass and the world will honor you. I swear this.”

Quav nodded solemnly, a child wise beyond her years. “You told me that change was good,” she said, “and that it was necessary.”

“And you remembered,” Ullikummis said, his ghastly rock face moving in the approximation of a smile. “Just as you shall remember everything, our time together before my father betrayed us both.”

Behind him, the pool continued to fill with a cloudy, viscous liquid. A pungent stink, like rotting fruit, emanated from it and the weird chrysalis shell towered in its center.

“My father once told me that birth must be painful to prepare us for the pain our lives shall bring,” Ullikummis explained. “I have done my best to protect you. The shell will do all it can to dissipate the pain. And you will be safe. Brigid will not be far.”

Obediently, Little Quav walked up to the egglike form with Brigid at her side, clinging tightly to the woman’s hand as she navigated the step down into the birthing pit. Ullikummis watched—pleased—as Quav stepped inside the chrysalis and let go of Brigid’s hand. Once Little Quav was within the shell, it began to seal from the bottom up, the two edges coming together like raindrops, bonding before their eyes.

* * *

G
RANT
AND
R
OSALIA
hurried through the eerie corridors of
Tiamat.
The walls were curved, giving them the impression that they were running inside a series of linked tubes, and each wall was ribbed with great solid bars that glistened like metal yet were calcified like bone. There was liquid on the decking, some of it seeping down the walls and over the sphincterlike connectors that made up the doors between sections. The water gathered in patches, sometimes ankle deep where they ran. The mother ship had been in a worse state when they had exited just a few hours before, when the corridors had been filling with dirty water the color of feces after its main tanks had been compromised. It seemed that the ship had purged herself of that overflow, and Grant could hear great muscles pumping away behind the walls, clearing the remaining water.
Tiamat
was an organic machine, he realized, and there was ethereal beauty to her functions.

Rosalia kept a few paces ahead of Grant, her body tense, senses alert. In that respect, she reminded Grant of Kane, the way his body would tense when he was placed in a dangerous situation, his trusted point-man sense coming to the fore without his even realizing it. Rosalia had spoken a little of being trained, though most of what Grant knew of her was through subtle hints. She seemed unwilling to share too much of her past, although he guessed she came from south of the former U.S. border. He kept speculating that she was perhaps a Magistrate, too, or a lapsed one like himself.

Several times, Rosalia had halted in place, turning on her heel and urging Grant back the way they had come. “Find another route,” she had said. “These playmates don’t play nice.”

Annunaki, Grant realized. She was finding a route into the ship that avoided their enemies as much as possible.

Rosalia took them a long way into the core of the grounded spacecraft, mapping the ship swiftly in her head. Until recently, Grant and Kane had been able to rely on Brigid Baptiste to do that kind of work, and he realized now how much they had needed one another as a team. Whether intentional or not, breaking the trio apart had been Ullikummis’s most successful strike against Cerberus. It had crippled their ability to act effectively, and it seemed that they had spent the past two months chasing their own tails as they gradually fractured from within.

They passed doorways and saw items looming in the murk of poorly lit rooms, things intricately fashioned out of complicated angles and curves of metal, instruments or devices of mysterious purpose. Rosalia gestured one way, ducking through a doorway and into one of these rooms even as two Annunaki guardsmen came padding down the far end of the vast, tunnellike corridor they were in. Her movement was so swift that Grant was off balance. It took him a second to right himself, turning into the doorway to follow her before the Annunaki spotted him. This room churned with the noise of turbines, and Grant jogged through it, eyeing nutrient sacs, bubbling pipe work, steam gauges and pressure switches. The ex-Magistrate felt as if he were moving through a vast circuit board or plumbing system, each facet on show wherever he looked. He had been inside
Tiamat
before, back when she had sailed on the cosmic winds in her first form. She had been all sleek lines and glistening panels then. In her current form she seemed rougher, still unfinished, and her walls gave off a faint and alluring smell of spices.

Hurrying through the room, Rosalia spied an exit by a series of pipes that came up together through the floor and disappeared at different points into the ceiling and walls. Rosalia ducked beneath one of the low pipes with Grant just a few paces behind her, holding his Sin Eater ready as he checked they weren’t being followed.

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Grant asked, keeping his voice low.

Rosalia narrowed her eyes in thought. “Toward the center. Little way yet.”

Grant nodded, trusting the woman’s judgment. She seemed to know what she was doing, and he had to admit he was lost.

At the wall, Rosalia found a door that held a vast cylindrical unit in its middle, like an engorged turnkey. Taking it in both hands, she wiggled it left then right until she felt it bite on the hidden lock and begin to turn. In a moment, Rosalia had the door open and it swung outward, away from her and Grant.

As the door opened, Grant heard a rushing cacophony, like a million kettles all being boiled at the same time. He followed Rosalia as she stepped into the next room. It was huge, a wide gangway running across its center like an elevated footbridge. Thirty feet below, huge, bulging units were arrayed in lines, like the fallen pillars of some great temple. These units were roughly cylindrical, but they bulged in their centers to form beadlike ovals. Running lights twinkled along their surfaces, pulsing in yellows and whites that chased one another across their skins.

Grant stopped, looking down at the strange, bulging pods and spotted figures moving between them. Though distant, Grant could see that they were humanoid, wearing dark garments as they tended to the pods with their tools. Each pod was thirty feet or more in length, and there had to be fifty of them in the room. Engines, Grant realized—they were standing above the engines of
Tiamat.

As that thought struck him, Rosalia hissed, “Magistrate.”

Grant brought his attention back to the present. He looked up and saw four figures approaching. Like the ones working on the engines, these four were dressed in dark coveralls that were ragged and streaked with oils and unguents. The figures looked short to him, not one of them standing taller than five feet high, and they waddled along with an uneasy gait. Even over the sounds of the engines, Grant heard them shriek to one another as they pointed at the strangers making their way through their midst.

“Looks like we’re doing the old dance number again,” Grant muttered as the group of freakish mechanics came charging toward him and Rosalia, clutching their tools like weapons.

“Then let’s mix up the routine,” Rosalia said, pulling her sword from her belt.

* * *

“
T
IAMAT
HONORS
YOU
,” Ullikummis repeated as the egglike structure bonded together in the birthing chamber, its front sections closing like the teeth of a zipper, knitting together to seal Little Quav within.

A dozen seconds passed as Ullikummis and Brigid watched it close. As the parted sections sealed, locking the girl within, they heard a clatter from somewhere behind them. Combat senses ready, the two mismatched figures turned as one, spotting the newcomer to the room as he stopped in a far doorway.

“And
Tiamat
honors you, too,” the figure said. “With death!”

Ullikummis recognized the figure immediately, as did Brigid. Ragged scarlet cloak billowing about his golden body, the newcomer was none other than Enlil, cruelest overlord of the Annunaki.

Chapter 12

Enlil charged at Ullikummis like a runaway freight train, his lips pulled back in a sneer.

“Protect Ninlil,” Ullikummis instructed Brigid without taking his eyes from those of his father. Then he began striding forward, picking up speed as he hurried across the birthing chamber to meet with the father he despised, his footsteps driving shock waves through the whole room.

Brigid watched from her vantage point by the stone cocoon as Ullikummis and Enlil clashed for the first time. The stone god struck a low punch to his father’s gut while at the same time Overlord Enlil drove his clawed hand at his son’s face. Surely he must know that his son is armored, Brigid thought. And then she saw Ullikummis back away even as his father staggered back under the power of his blow. Ullikummis’s face was streaming with noxious black smoke; Enlil had used something hidden in his hand to gain a temporary advantage.

Enlil wandered backward, his head down and blood dribbling from the side of his mouth. Ullikummis’s first blow had incredible force behind it, blasting through the old man’s scale armor. Enlil coughed, wiping bloody saliva from his mouth.

“Better,” he spit, glaring at Ullikummis. “I expected better.”

Smoke billowing from his face, Ullikummis turned to glare at his father, an approximation of a sneer across his imprecise features.

“You were trained for this, my son,” Enlil hissed. “Trained to be the killer of gods. And yet I stand, and I live, and you have failed.”

Ullikummis’s eyes burned in his face like twin pools of magma as he glared at his father and listened to his mocking tone. “You are no god,” he responded. “You have deluded yourself, like untold Annunaki before you, seduced by your own reputation. Narcissus gazing upon his own self in the reflecting pool, never realizing how far you have fallen.

“Look around you. Look at this world our family once ruled. Look at what has become of it, of how you have lost your grip on all the things that made the Annunaki strong.”

“And you intend to change this?” Enlil asked contemptuously. “Is that what you plan to do, Ullikummis?”

“No,” Ullikummis roared. “I came back here for just one thing—your death.”

“Then naught but disappointment awaits you in the bowels of
Tiamat,
” Enlil hissed, drawing his hands back in a graceful arc.

The air seemed to shimmer between Enlil’s bronze-scaled hands as something took form, solidifying in place between them. It looked like a longbow, curved in a subtle crescent, but there was no string at its inner edge. The crescent shape glowed with an inner fire, like a streak of lightning burned into the air. Ullikummis recognized the serpent lightning, one of the most ancient and revered weapons in the Annunaki arsenal. To wield it took exceptional skill and concentration, taxing its user’s abilities to predict mathematical probabilities over more than three dimensions. For Enlil to use it now was as much a statement of his superiority—perceived or otherwise—as his determination to annihilate his son absolutely. The serpent lightning hummed and crackled, like the low rumble of approaching thunder on the air.

Krak-a-boom!

Turning his head, Enlil spit another gob of bloody saliva to the deck. And then he ran, charging across the decking toward where Ullikummis stood with his stone face still smoldering with black smoke. As he ran, Enlil drew back the glowing weapon in his hand and Brigid saw it shimmer and swirl, moving like a stiff cord, whipping back and then darting forward like a striking snake.

Ullikummis raised his left arm, fending away the blow from the striking line of light. A vicious mosaic of sparks rattled across his arm as the snakelike whip was knocked aside, and lightning played across his arm, torso and neck as the angry sparks faded. A moment later, the electricity winked out of existence, leaving Ullikummis visibly rocking, the echo of retreating thunder trembling through the walls of the chamber.

They had history, these two. More than four thousand years of animosity flowed between them like a raging river, and this day its banks had finally burst. Enlil had created Ullikummis from the very start, back when the Annunaki had first walked the Earth. Master manipulator, Enlil had sown his seed in Ninlil during an afternoon of passion and anger, raping her as she struggled against his advances in the back rooms of one of the palaces of Nippur. A festival celebration had continued just two rooms away, and it was said that her cries of fear and pain could be heard all through the palace and beyond. But the Annunaki were decadent, caring little for those unable to defend themselves, and so the feast had continued uninterrupted.

By the time the egg that would be Ullikummis had been laid, Ninlil had already met with Ningishzidda on Enlil’s orders, the master genetic engineer for the Annunaki, a scientist who could manipulate DNA with the artistry of a composer penning a symphony. Ningishzidda had changed the makeup of the cells within that egg, altering the creature that would appear, turning it into the monster that would emerge instead. Like all Annunaki, Ullikummis had been born with skin like armor plate, but his was of stone, not scale, a heavy clunking thing that weighed upon his altered bones. Over the subsequent years, at Enlil’s instruction, Ullikummis’s body had been shaped and reshaped, each manipulation bringing him closer to the ideal monstrous form that the cruel overlord had in mind. A stone pillar of a god, Ullikummis had been sent to kill Teshub, the lord of heaven, on his father’s instructions. He had been just eighteen at the time, and already he had killed Annunaki at his father’s request, wielding the blade Godkiller that could pierce the fractals that made up an Annunaki’s life. The blade itself was a shard of his own body; Ullikummis had carved it from his dismembered arm, tempered it in fires of magma. The arm had regrown, for Ningishzidda had enhanced Ullikummis’s genetic makeup in many ways, and at heart Ullikummis was still a lizard.

The attack on Teshub had concerned control of
Tiamat,
and Ullikummis had achieved all he needed to in the sky god’s mountain palace. But something had gone wrong, and—along with his guru, Upelluri—Ullikummis had been the victim of a devastating attack that had seen his feet cut off and his body left for dead by his uncle, Enki. When Enlil’s forces had found him, Ullikummis had rejoiced, relieved that his father would protect him and provide him and his mentor with the medical care they needed to recover. But he had been wrong. His plot against Teshub exposed, Overlord Enlil had distanced himself from the assassination attempt and had exiled his son from his court, imprisoning him in a stone chamber that would orbit the cosmos for eternity.

Ullikummis had spoken to his mother briefly, before he had been locked away in the prison asteroid. Only then, when everything had come to such a dreadful head, had he realized that he also had been manipulated, that his father had done all of this to achieve his aims, to gain power over
Tiamat.
For four millennia, Ullikummis had drifted the universe in his orbiting prison, locked inside a shell of stone. And for four millennia, Ullikummis had said but one word every single day, reminding himself of his betrayal at his father’s hands. That word had been his father’s name, Enlil, and he had spoken it with all the hate it deserved.

By contrast, Enlil had thought nothing of his son in four and a half thousand years, paying the matter no mind since the moment that the child was out of his life. Ullikummis had played his role, and that was enough. Enlil had attended his exile from Earth merely as a formality, remaining hidden behind the thick drapes of his palanquin throughout the ritual banishment, copulating with a slave girl. He had been barely conscious of the words spoken by his adviser, Nusku, as he read them from the holographic tablet before the open door to his son’s prison.

“‘For the gross failure that you have committed, purportedly in your father’s name, you shall be cast into the heavens. Your name shall no longer be mentioned in this house, nor shall you be recognized as a deity. Your history shall be known as the story of a failure. No glory shall be visited upon the name of Ullikummis, Son of Enlil,’” the vizier had pronounced.

And then the vizier had spoken Enlil’s final taunt, casting the blame upon Ullikummis’s mentor.

“‘Upelluri dared to turn his hand against Lord Enlil,’” he read, “‘poisoning the mind of the great god’s son, Ullikummis. He, too, shall be punished.’”

In that moment, Enlil’s responsibility to the drama had been publicly assuaged, leaving him clear and free in the minds of both his subjects and all but the most suspicious of the Annunaki.

Now, in the ante-nursery of the reborn starship
Tiamat,
Ullikummis faced Enlil in a conflict that had been millennia in reaching its conclusion. Enlil swung the serpent lightning at him, its shimmering line fluctuating as it cut through the air. This time Ullikummis was ready, punching forward with his right arm and snatching the writhing line midway down its length. The end of the serpent lightning wrapped around Ullikummis’s arm, burning everything it touched as it clung to the stone-plate armor that was the prince’s skin, clung there like the resin of the terebinth tree, channeling thousands of volts through his flesh. The force was so powerful it seemed to lash against Ullikummis’s bones, burrowing deep beneath the stone cladding of his altered skin, the sound of thunder deafening in his ears.

Krak-a-boom!

Ullikummis ignored the pain, dismissing it in the way that Upelluri had taught him, focusing past it and into the wellspring of hate that burned deep in his heart.

Enlil bared his teeth as the serpent lightning trembled in his grip, feeling the awesome power of the weapon looping back and forth from its handle.

Abruptly, Ullikummis pulled his body back, yanking the lightning serpent closer in a flare of sparks and pulling Enlil with it. The scarlet-cloaked overlord had two options now: to let go of the weapon or to follow where Ullikummis dragged him. He clung fiercely, his clawed hand tightly clenched around the weapon’s handle.

His right arm alive with dancing electrical flames, Ullikummis used his weight to pull his father back, dragging the fearsome Annunaki overlord forward in a reluctant stagger. He was heavier than his father by far, the stonework of his body giving him the dynamism of a collapsing skyscraper. Ullikummis glanced behind him, past the scythelike protrusions that reared from his immense shoulders, searching for the exit to the room.

“Ungrateful child,” Enlil spit as he was forced to take another stumbling step forward. “Your time is over. Your era past. You shone briefly, as was always my intention.”

Ullikummis reached out with his free hand, grasping the door frame and anchoring himself there as he drew his father forward at the far end of the serpent lightning.

“Now is the time to lie down,” Enlil gritted, “and give your body over to
Tiamat
once more. Accept inevitability. Your moment is over. You are nothing more than a footnote to history.”

Ullikummis pulled once more, mustering all his strength to snatch his father forward, dragging him through the door and out of the birthing room.

In a moment the dueling Annunaki were out of the room, and finally Ullikummis released his grip on the burning length of lightning flame. Flames licked along his arm, his dark stone flesh blackened to the color of coal.

Enlil stumbled another few steps into the huge antechamber beyond, staggering like a drunk as he tried to right himself. The lightning weapon flared and dimmed in his grip, cycling through its options as it renewed its fearsome charge.

The room was twenty feet across and designed in a hexagonal pattern, with great jutting arches interlaced high over its deck, each one grown of decorative bone. Ill lit, the room had a faint blue-green glow, like being beneath the ocean. Ullikummis stood in the center of those bone arches, his eyes burning brightly in the gloom as his father recovered himself. Behind Enlil, the door to the birthing chamber sealed shut, metal plates coming together horizontally like a set of jaws.

“You fear me, Father,” Ullikummis said, “because I am the one thing you never planned for.”

Enlil nodded as the serpent lightning buzzed in his hand like a living thing. “A loose end to be snipped,” he agreed, his eerie duotonal voice echoing from the walls.

And then, the two Annunaki charged at each other again, hatred eternal burning behind their eyes.

* * *

D
OWN
IN
Tiamat
’s engine room, Grant and Rosalia stood side by side as the strange, short figures rushed at them along the wide gangway that ran over the engine housings like a bridge. Each figure was dressed in a ragged black one-piece outfit, pockets lining their sides and looped around their waists like a belt sewn into the garment itself. Around their heads, each figure wore a small rig of lights that rested to the sides of their tiny eyes, each light the size of a fingernail but
exceptionally bright. Each figure’s face proved hard to see behind those lights, but Grant made out tiny, squinting eyes and hooked, beaklike noses with rugged flesh that looked like burned meat.

Grant stepped back, spreading his feet wider in a sturdy position as the first of the strangely garbed figures hurried toward them. Beside him, Rosalia had drawn her
katana
up past her head in a two-handed grip, its charcoal-black blade like a line of shadow in the air. Then the battle commenced, the quartet of figures attacking the Cerberus pair in a flurry of movement.

With a fierce shout, Rosalia brought her body forward and low, swinging her blade in a graceful arc that caught the ankles of the lead figure in a grisly shower of blood. The blood was clear with a black tint, like something that might ooze from a crushed bug. The figure tumbled backward, its pudgy hands snapping out to grab the sword before Rosalia could pull it away.

Behind her, Grant found himself facing the second of the rodentlike figures, and was suddenly dazzled by the lighting rig around its face. This one held a tool of some kind. To Grant’s eye it looked like a wrench, brutally curved at the bottom and carved from a creamy bonelike material. Grant stepped back, struggling to see as the wrench rushed toward him, cutting the air just inches from his chest as his coattails billowed before him. Then the ex-Mag blindly raised his right hand—the one that wielded the Sin Eater—and squeezed the trigger, sending a burst of fire in the direction of the ugly-looking creature.