God War (25 page)

Chapter 20

In the engine room, Ullikummis turned back and saw the spectral figure of Kane reaching toward him from beyond the quantum veil. There was a length of cord stretched tightly in the apekin’s hands. Before he could move, Kane looped the cord over the stone giant’s head, whipping it down until it was snug against his throat.

Ullikummis reached back, grasping for Kane where he’d attacked him from the numerous angles of the unseen dimensions, but his hand swept through thin air. Kane was still in the angles, driving his vengeance through them and into the world beyond.

“You want string theory?” Kane snarled as he tightened the cord around his foe’s throat. “Here’s what I know!”

With a yank, Ullikummis felt himself pulled back, the air bursting from his throat.

From his supine position on the driveshaft, Grant watched Ullikummis topple backward to the surface of the cylindrical unit. The stone giant was clawing at his throat as if some invisible cord were cinched there, yet it was something Grant could not see.

“Kane?” Grant asked. “Is that you?”

* * *

“Y
EAH
,
IT
’
S
ME
all right,” Kane replied.

Within a different angle, Kane was pulling on the strip of material, pulling it back farther, forcing Ullikummis to fall.

Kane pulled harder as the stone god struggled, kicking backward to keep Ullikummis from recovering. For the moment, Kane’s multidimensional attack was holding Ullikummis, but it couldn’t last long; the stone monster did not need air, so there was no way to strangle him.

“Balam? Lakesh?” Kane called. “Do we have anything to hold this son of a bitch?”

“We’re working on it, Kane,” Lakesh replied, “but nothing is presenting itself. Short of conducting a bombing raid on the spaceship, we’re out of options.”

“Can that be done?” Kane asked.

“With personnel as they are?” Lakesh replied. “No.”

* * *

M
EANWHILE
, Balam had a plan of his own. He had brought something from elsewhere in the vast storehouse, speculating that Kane might use it when the time came. Unrolling the matlike object, Balam laid it out across the floor of the cube by Kane’s feet. The material was a three-foot square of dark green, and marked out upon it in golden thread were concentric circles like a bull’s-eye. It was a portable parallax point, the kind that Kane and his team had only ever seen once before.

“There is a way,” Balam said, placing himself beside the navigator’s chair, “but you’ll need to open your eyes. I have a parallax point that can be shifted....”

Squirming in the chair, his body held in place by the eerie, living creepers, Kane gritted his teeth. “You’re nuts, Balam,” he snarled. “I can’t hold on to my presence here, as well as there.”

“Once viewed,” Balam continued, “you could use the navigation circuitry to move the parallax point, creating a warp through space.”

“Balam, are you even listening?” Kane growled as he struggled in the seat. “If I open my eyes, I’ll lose whatever it is I have here. I’ll lose Ullikummis.”

Balam stared at the parallax point laid out on the floor of the room and he shook his head. “Friend Kane,” he said solemnly, “to utilize the parallax point you will need to look at it. I’m afraid that there is simply no other way.”

* * *

K
ANE
WRENCHED
back on Ullikummis once again, dragging him across the abandoned beach in the middle of the desolate angles. Ullikummis had been off balance, but he was recovering, Kane could tell. Even as he listened to Balam explain the situation, Ullikummis reached back and clapped his hands together in a boom like thunder. Kane fell back, struggling to keep hold of the twisted cord around the stone figure’s neck.

“You’re playing in the big league now, Balam,” Kane snarled. “Find a way.”

* * *

I
N
THE
ANTE
-
NURSERY
, Ninlil of the Annunaki stepped from the stone womb, her face a picture of sadistic delight.

“I live,” she declared in ancient Sumerian tongue, “I breathe. The download is completed.”

From the edge of the nutrient pool, Brigid and Rosalia watched aghast as Ninlil took another step forward. She was beautiful, her scales a pale green like the spring leaves on a plant, her lines sleek and her skin shimmering beneath the violet lighting of the room. She stood over six feet tall, slender with a pleasing curve to the swell of her bare breasts and naked hips.

“No,” Brigid spit, “this can’t happen. I won’t let it.”

More practical, Rosalia simply grabbed her Ruger pistol from where it had fallen and aimed it at the approaching Annunaki, directing a bullet between the thing’s eyes. The revolver went off with a loud bang, and the 9 mm slug raced to its target, striking Ninlil midforehead. The bullet ricocheted off the armorlike scales of the goddess’s skin, but the shock of impact was enough to make her step back, her feet splashing through the nutrient-filled waters of the pool.

“You can’t kill her,” Brigid said. “Not like that.”

“Then what?” Rosalia asked.

Brigid racked her brains, recalling all she could of what Ullikummis had taught her.

“Hold my hand,” Brigid said, running into the nutrient pool, splashing liquid everywhere as she charged at the reborn Annunaki goddess.

“What are you doing?” Rosalia demanded as she was dragged into the pool with the red-haired archivist.

“Ullikummis showed me the Annunaki way of seeing the world,” Brigid said as she reached for Ninlil before the stone egg. “They see time as infinite but mutable. Movement is time, and an action can be reversed.”

As she spoke, Brigid slapped her palm against Ninlil, striking her chest and shoving her back into the cracked shell of the stone chrysalis. Ninlil stumbled into it, falling back into its embrace.

“There’s enough of that other me,” Brigid said, “of Haight, to remember how to do this. It’s just the same as finding the hidden door to Agartha. But it won’t stay with me much longer.”

“What are you babbling about?” Rosalia snapped angrily. “You can’t live both in their world and ours.”

“I know,” Brigid replied, flicking her gaze on Rosalia for just a second. When she did so, Rosalia saw the darkness return to the woman’s expression, the sinister fires of hate burning within her emerald eyes. “Anchor me.”

Rosalia grabbed the woman’s other arm as Brigid pressed her palm against Ninlil’s body, shunting her back into the cocoon. Around them, the nutrient bath continued to bubble, dark lines streaming through its milky concoction of amino acids.

Caught in the chrysalis, the beautiful figure of Ninlil seemed to shudder in place, her mouth opening in a silent scream.

* * *

I
N
THE
ENGINE
ROOM
, Grant scrambled back as Ullikummis’s body started to crackle with energy. The power was emanating from around his neck, but Grant could not see where it was originating from. The eerie energy ringed Ullikummis’s throat like a necklace, sparks blasting out in furious red dots that hung in the air for a second before winking out to be replaced by more of the same.

From the floor level below, Grant could hear the worried cries of the mechanics, and he looked out into the vast engine room to see what they were doing. One by one they were running away from the scene with Ullikummis, scrambling along the aisles that ran between the great cylinders that powered
Tiamat.
Grant figured he ought to take that as his cue and get out of there, too.

Standing, Grant activated his Commtact. “Kane, you got this?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Kane grunted back, his voice strained.

As Grant watched, another blast of coruscating energy sparked from Ullikummis’s throat. It was as if the god prince was being torn apart.

* * *

K
ANE
YANKED
BACK
on the struggling body of Ullikummis, holding his frightening form on the sand as he fought against him. He looked like a churning volcano now, his magma energies smoldering into the air with relentless rage. Kane held the choking rope in place as Ullikummis lunged for him, one mighty magma arm cutting the impossible landscape as he struck out at Kane.

Kane grunted, feeling the blow cuff him across the left ear, but also feeling it somewhere else, somewhere deep inside. Whatever level this battle was being fought on, it was as much spiritual as physical.

Kane held in place, pulling harder against the cord that strangled Ullikummis. And as he struggled, Kane heard Balam speak from nearby.

“Kane, I have an idea,” Balam said.

“Make it quick,” Kane spit, struggling with the effort.

“We have been linked at an ocular level,” Balam said, “granting you the ability to see despite the infection.”

“Faster,” Kane growled impatiently.

Beneath him, Ullikummis twisted his mighty body, snagging the cord and wrenching it from his throat in three quick pulls. Kane felt his hands burn as the cord was torn from them.

“I shall reverse the way the link works,” Balam explained, “allowing you to see what I am looking at.”

“You can do that?” Kane asked, watching Ullikummis pull himself back to his full height, burning lava cascading across his ominous silhouetted form.

“I can try,” Balam said hopefully. “Stand by.”

Kane watched as the burning form of Enlil’s son came charging at him across the cool vermilion sands. Kane stretched out his arms, as ready as he would ever be to wrestle a child of the multiplanes.

Suddenly, Kane’s vision changed, and instead of the charging figure of Ullikummis, he saw something else—the thing that Balam was looking at. It was a parallax point, the decorative design sewn onto a simple mat, just like the one he had seen beneath Luilekkerville a week before.

Two realities vied for dominance in Kane’s vision, the regular concentric circles and the view of Ullikummis hurtling toward him. Ullikummis burned as he ran, and in that moment Kane had the idea of how to finish this.

* * *

S
TANDING
AT
THE
END
of the cylinder, Grant watched as another vicious energy cloud burst from Ullikummis’s body, space stuff being borne into the engine room. The energy struck the cylinder beside the one he was on, and Grant saw fire burst to life there in a colossal explosion that shook the whole room.

“I’m going to regret this,” Grant muttered as he eyed the sparking form of Ullikummis, “but what the hell.”

Then the Cerberus warrior began to run, long strides eating up the distance between himself and Ullikummis where the great stone Annunaki stood, writhing in the energy spewing from his throat. Head down, Grant struck Ullikummis shoulder-first, and it was like hitting a brick wall. Grant grunted in pain, but he didn’t stop—his feet kept pounding against the curved surface of the cylinder as he pushed Ullikummis back toward its edge.

* * *

I
N
THE
ANTE
-
NURSERY
, Brigid pressed her hand firmly against the reptilian body of Ninlil, applying all the incredible pressure of her corrupted understanding of the universe. Ninlil’s body shook in the stone egg, shuddering in place.

Standing behind Brigid, Rosalia watched as the astonishing scene took place. Her brain struggled to comprehend what was happening. It seemed that Ninlil was becoming focused even as the world around her blurred.

Brigid recalled the equation she had used to find the hidden door to Agartha, driving into her mind that different way of seeing, of comprehending. The Annunaki were multidimensional; the static rules of physics did not apply. Backed inside the egg, Ninlil’s body wrapped upon itself, becoming smaller to fit the enclosed space, the way her son had traveled the universe in his rock prison.

Time took a half step back; evolution itself was reversed.

Then the stone chrysalis sealed with Ninlil crouched inside it, and Brigid slumped forward, splashing beneath the waters of the nutrient bath.

Rosalia ran a quick three paces forward as Brigid fell, staggering across the pool in ungainly steps as her grip left Brigid’s. She turned, pulling herself from the viscous liquid and searching for Brigid. Her red hair spread across the surface, but the woman herself was still beneath the pool.

* * *

H
IS
HEAD
DOWN
, Grant drove himself on, leg muscles straining as he barged the towering form of Ullikummis back toward the edge of the cylindrical drive unit. Grant could not see where he was going; he just pushed with all his strength, building momentum and willing the both of them onward. All the while, two words echoed through Grant’s mind, over and over: keep going.

Battered from all sides, Ullikummis seemed not to know where to strike, which threat to react against. His mouth opened wide and his voice rose on a single cry of anguish.

Then, in a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Ullikummis toppled over the edge of the cylindrical drive, even as Grant threw himself to the side. But Ullikummis did not strike the deck below. As Grant watched, the great stone monster tumbled through the air only to disappear in a burst of fiery energy, the great rift of an interphase window appearing to swallow him whole.

* * *

W
ORKING
THE
astro-navigation program of the Annunaki chair, Kane instructed it to locate the nearest star. In less than a second, he was looking at the sun poised in the center of the solar system like a jewel in space. Elsewhere in his brain, he saw what Balam was looking at, the incredible design for the mobile parallax point. Running through the fractures of multiplaned space, Kane folded the two images together, slapping them against the charging form of Ullikummis as he hurried across the vermilion sands.

* * *

R
OSALIA
DIVED
, plunging beneath the surface of the shallow pool until her body was under that of Brigid Baptiste. It was almost impossible to see down there, the liquid was so thick with gunk.