God War (8 page)

Bolting to the top of the bone steps, Grant reached up with his free hand and grasped high on the wall where it met with the lip of the roof. Without slowing, he pulled himself up, his feet kicking out as he continued to move. In less than two seconds, Grant had flipped himself onto the roof, three stories above ground level. He crouched there, crab-walking to the far edge of the roof where he would have a better view of the massing army.

Rosalia followed a moment later. Her swift strides brought her up the pale steps at a run before springing toward the wall of the adjacent building and using it to kick herself higher and land on the rooftop with Grant, making just the bare minimum of noise. Keeping her head low, Rosalia hurried to join Grant at its edge.

Beyond the roof, they could see the quantum gateway hovering next to the Euphrates, its impossible depths churning with a swirl of beautiful colors. Grant and Rosalia watched in awe as Ullikummis turned to the people from the head of that vast column of loyal followers, raising his long, stone-clad arms. In a moment, the crowd fell to silence, two thousand or more people hushed without so much as a word. It was quite something to behold.

The stone giant stood on a hillock by the river, a raised mound of dirt beside the rippling surface. Brigid stood beside him, her red-gold hair shimmering with the sunlight, clutching the hand of the little girl in the indigo dress.

“Behold the tools of the future,” Ullikummis said, his voice carrying across the burgeoning group of arrivals. He indicated the dragon shape that stood behind him, its arrow-shaped head looming high above, his voice echoing through the abandoned streets. “Here is
Tiamat,
the engine that will change the world. Here is your future, waiting to be freed from terrible bondage.

“Will you stand with me as I free
Tiamat?
”

The crowd cheered in response, hanging on Ullikummis’s every word.

“Will you embrace the future for the betterment of all?”

Again the crowd cheered.

“Onward, bearers of the future,” Ullikummis yelled, “onward to utopia.”

With that, the stone god turned and began to stride toward the outskirts of the dragon city, his tree-trunk-like feet stomping against the sandy soil in brutal, punishing blows. Brigid Haight strode with him, hurrying little Quav along at her side, the army of two thousand or more following briskly in their wake.

The people could not imagine how the wars of the Annunaki were to be fought. All they knew was what they saw: here was a leader who led, not a general who hid behind his troops as they went into battle.

Ullikummis spread out his hands, and the ground began to shake, a tremor running through it deep below the surface.

Holding his Sin Eater ready as he crouched atop of the chalk-white roof, Grant felt that tremor rock through his boots and against his knees, pounding deep through his body like a low bass note.

“The hell is that?” Grant muttered.

Before Rosalia could answer, something began to change beyond the edges of
Tiamat
’s broad wings. Those wings stretched out for eight miles, a huge structure that dominated the landscape. Now, around the outskirts, the ground rumbled and split as sharp prongs of stone were pulled from the soil, ripped from the bedrock itself to form a spiky cage around the perimeter of the spaceship. The prongs pointed into the air, their sharp tips climbing twelve feet into the sky like eerie monuments. More spikes tore through the ground as Ullikummis passed, and Grant watched as they spread out from where he was walking, new prongs jutting from the soil at an increasingly greater distance from where the stone god stepped.

“What is he doing?” Grant whispered.

“The same thing he did at Cerberus,” Rosalia replied. “Creating a lockdown.”

As she said it, the jutting columns began to dwindle, and those farthest from Ullikummis appeared much shorter, some just two or three feet in height. From their high vantage point, Grant and Rosalia could see that the pointed columns did not wrap around the whole of the grounded spaceship but instead ran in a crescent shape around this, the southwest quarter. Even so, the bowed line of spikes took in almost a mile in its length, a vast line of bars caging in the spaceship where she waited poised on the soil.

Behind the Cerberus warriors, the citylike form of
Tiamat
waited in silence, never acknowledging the barricade that had been erected before her. Though she looked like a city, the streets and buildings had been left vacant, a ghost town on the banks of the river. Every person who had stepped into the city had disappeared, abducted by its lone ruler, the Annunaki Overlord Enlil. But now Enlil was gone—
wasn’t he?—
and Ullikummis had arrived to take control of the genetic factory womb that
Tiamat
contained, his first bold step in reordering the world.

“We have to stop him,” Grant blurted, scrambling back toward the area of the rooftop that dropped to the staircase.

Rosalia grabbed his arm, pulling the ex-Mag up short. “Are you insane, Grant? There are probably two thousand people down there, maybe more. We can’t take them all on.”

Grant stared at her. “I don’t know a lot about all this stuff,” he said, “but I do know that when
Tiamat
’s involved, bad things happen.”

“I thought the ship was dead,” Rosalia stated angrily.

“If I’ve learned one thing about the Annunaki it’s this,” Grant told her grimly. “Things die only to be reborn. And when they come back, they come back worse than ever.

“We have to stop him.”

“Okay,” Rosalia agreed reluctantly. “Then we figure out a way. I’m not going out there with you, all guns blazing against a whole fucking army, hoping that’s somehow going to do the job.”

Grant nodded in agreement. “Always a way,” he said. “Just have to figure out what it is.”

Below them, the vast, ragtag army of Ullikummis stormed through the streets to the southwest of
Tiamat
’s skeletal structure, their chants echoing from the hard walls around them.

“We are stone,” they called. “Stone is strength.”

They reminded Rosalia of locusts, the way they swarmed across the wings of the fallen spaceship.

Chapter 5

The armies were massing elsewhere, too.

Halfway around the world, on the Pacific Coast of the old United States, Lakesh stood on the balcony of the temporary Cerberus base and sighed. Beside him, a beautiful samurai woman of petite stature waited for the Cerberus leader to take everything in.

The pair stood on the wooden balcony that ran right around the single-story structure, its steeple roofs and the railings of the balconies painted a bright, festive red. The woman was called Shizuka and she was the leader of the Tigers of Heaven, a position that placed many great responsibilities upon her shoulders. Dressed in the supple leather armor that she preferred, Shizuka was a warrior born, and she could outmatch any of the warriors in her team. She wore a
katana
sword in an ornate sheath at her belt, along with a shorter
wakizashi
blade nestled close to her back. Her black hair was cut in a long bob, the tips of which trailed down to brush her shoulders, and she had peach-tinted cheeks and rose-petal lips beneath the pleasing almond curves of her dark, attractive eyes.

The building where Cerberus had set up shop belonged to Shizuka, and it had been in her family for many generations. Surrounded by several acres of carefully manicured gardens, the building served as a lodge or winter palace, which her predecessors had visited for rest and relaxation. A tiny square garden stood at the rear of the property, dotted with winding paths and a simple water feature whose constant shushing sound added to the sense of tranquillity engendered by the flowering herbs that colored its carefully tended borders. Beyond that lay the vast lawns that stretched off toward the sea on one side and out to an untended private road at the other. A high wall ran along this side with a long, steel gate. Made up of a line of vertical bars painted the same red as the balcony, the gate stood more than eight feet in height and ran to a width of twelve, wide enough to let a vehicle like a Sandcat through. A simple sentry box stood to one side of the gate, located within the grounds themselves, where the operator could open the gate for visitors. The gate operated via an electromagnetic lock, which sealed it shut when not in use.

Out there, beyond the gate, Lakesh could see four men waiting. Pacing back and forth like caged tigers, the men wore heavy fustian robes like monks’ habits, the hoods pulled low to obscure their faces. Lakesh knew just who—or what—they were. Firewalkers, the agents of Ullikummis.

“Our jackals are getting closer,” Shizuka said, her tone betraying no emotion.

“Yes,” Lakesh agreed, staring at the gate through a set of binoculars. Behind him, Ryochi, the Tiger of Heaven warrior who had brought him to meet Shizuka, waited patiently, his pose as still as an ancient tree. “First there was one. Now four.”

“Six,” Shizuka corrected dispassionately. “Two are hiding in the foliage across the path. More will likely follow. Even now, we may assume that they are on their way.”

“How do they speak to one another?” Lakesh wondered aloud. “How are they communicating? I can’t see any radio equipment.”

“They each have the stone,” Shizuka reminded him. “Rosalia said it can identify sympathizers, other bearers of the stone seed. Maybe it acts as a communication device, too.”

Lakesh nodded wearily as he pulled the field glasses from his eyes. There was more to it than that, he felt sure. He had been present when pro-Ullikummis troops had sacked the previous Cerberus base, and he had observed the way they acted in tandem. The Annunaki’s faithful warriors seemed to be linked at a cerebral level, often acting as one organism rather than many. The nearest equivalent he could think of was the way birds reacted in flight, turning together, responding as one majestic creature rather than as several. It was inhuman.

Lakesh wondered how long they would have to wait until the strangers were ready to mount their attack. Because he knew that they had to be here to attack. When it was just one of them he could believe that he might be here just to observe. But now—well, now an army was forming right outside his door.

Once again, Cerberus was about to be attacked. And even though he knew about it this time, Lakesh couldn’t help but wonder how well they would fare with none of his warriors left on site to repel intruders.

* * *

O
N
THE
FORTRESS
ISLE
of Bensalem, Kane and Balam stared at the wreckage of the chrysalis strewed across the stone floor. A breeze blew through the open window at the far end of the room, playing through Kane’s unkempt hair as he worked out this latest puzzle.

“So, what?” Kane asked, his eyes fixed on the debris. “He changed Quav’s appearance? Ullikummis changed her appearance?”

Balam bent at the waist, sifting through the debris with his toe. “It’s hard to say,” he admitted. “The equipment—what’s left of it—fractured. It shouldn’t have done this, friend Kane. I’ve never known of this to happen before.”

“How many times you seen this setup, Balam?” Kane asked.

Balam shook his head heavily. “Not often,” he said. “The structures are Tuatha de Danaan, but it’s ancient technology reinterpreted. I barely recognize it.”

Kane took a pace forward, leaning down to look at the wreckage of the chrysalis. Then, still bent, he turned, looking directly up into Balam’s face. “Balam, we need to find her. To find them. So you have got to get that great big brain of yours in gear and figure out exactly what it is we have here, get me?”

“Kane, I know that you are worried about Brigid—” Balam began but Kane halted him with a single gesture of irritation.

“Just figure it out,” he instructed. “Get your hands dirty, for once, and get as much information as you can.” Then, to Balam’s surprise, Kane grasped a handful of his tunic and shoved him forward, pushing the bulbous-headed humanoid closer to the ruined chrysalis.

Balam staggered forward, his feet tromping over the broken fragments that were arrayed across the stone flagging. “Respectfully, friend Kane,” he said, “I am ill prepared to make a full analysis.”

Kane tamped down the rage that was welling inside him, reminding himself that Balam had little experience in the field like this. The two of them had been thrown together by circumstance, with Balam essentially a peaceful arbiter and Kane currently at his lowest physical and mental ebb. Yet here they stood, on the trail of a woman Kane considered close enough to be his sister and a child whom Balam had taken for his own. Kane was being too hard on him, he knew. Balam was hurt, emotionally drained. He put up a front, as he always did, reticent to share his emotions. But he had lost his foster daughter, a girl with whom he’d been in the solitary company of for almost three years, and his feelings had to be in turmoil right now.

Balam looked up from the ruined shell. “It broke on usage,” he stated simply. “Which means it was imperfect. A prototype, perhaps.”

“It’s possible, I guess,” Kane mused uncertainly.

“If you build something that fails,” Balam reasoned, “you either improve upon it or you resign yourself to defeat. I do not believe that Ullikummis would resign himself to defeat.”

“No,” Kane agreed. “That’s not his way. Let’s look around some more.”

Without much enthusiasm, Kane and Balam left the room and began checking the other doorways along the tunnellike corridor, each one of them open. There were wide areas of solid wall between each doorway, and Kane wondered whether more rooms might be hidden in this structure, built as it had been by Ullikummis.

The next room was empty, as was the one after, nothing but dust blowing about in the sea breeze from the open windows. No provision had been made to insulate this rock palace. Presumably it had been designed by Ullikummis for his own usage and as such there was no need, for his genetically altered body could survive in the cold vacuum of space.

The fourth doorway on the right-hand wall opened into a small chamber that stank of something rotting. Kane peered inside, but he stepped back instantly as something leaped at him, hissing like a snake as it threw itself through the air. There were bars there, narrow jabs of rock stretched horizontally across a recess behind the doorway like a venetian blind. The thing in the room slammed against these bars, reaching through them with its tiny hands as it tried to grasp Kane’s shirt.

Standing away from the doorway, Kane stared at it, reeling in horror at the thing. It stood two feet tall, human in shape but deformed, with a blur of face as if its head had been melted. There was anger in its wide-spaced blue eyes—anger and perhaps sorrow. The thing was naked, female, with skin a pink so pale that it was almost white. Around her, watery feces stained the stone floor, creating the stench. The girl hissed again, rattling the bars of her cell. She was bony, wasting away, her ribs running like the keys of a piano against the pale skin of her chest. She couldn’t get through the bars, Kane realized—the first “door” he had seen here—and he moved closer once more, studying the strange figure.

“It’s okay,” Kane soothed. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

The creature behind the bars watched him with feral eyes, hissing again as he stood there before her. At first glance the girl appeared hairless, but now Kane could see a few tufts of white along her scalp as he took a closer look. Her skin was puckered here and there, running like fish scales along the sides of her legs and around her throat. It reminded Kane of the Annunaki, and he realized in a moment what he was looking at.

“Have you found something?” Balam asked from behind him, disturbing Kane’s thoughts.

The Cerberus warrior turned to Balam, a hard look on his face. “You don’t want to see this, Balam,” he said.

Less than a year earlier, Kane might have teased Balam about the thing in the cell, taking a childish pleasure in shocking friends like his colleagues in the Cerberus group. Something had changed inside him over these past few months, something that had dulled his happy-go-lucky streak, making him more ponderous, more introspective. The thing in the cell was Little Quav, he realized, or some approximation of her.

* * *

A
T
THE
TEMPORARY
Cerberus headquarters on the Pacific Coast, three operatives sat in heated discussion about another problem related to Ullikummis. The room itself was a small study with a desk along one wall where a portable computer screen glowed, and several comfy chairs that had been placed in such a way as to be behind the desk user’s back when people sat in them. The man at the desk had turned his swivel chair to face the two women, both of whom were dressed in the white jumpsuits with blue vertical zippers that served as the uniform of the Cerberus personnel.

“Could focused ultrasound actually break down rock?” Reba DeFore asked with irritation in her tone. She was a stocky bronze-skinned woman with brown eyes and ash-blond hair tied up in an elaborate braid. She appeared tired and haunted, dark shadows massing around her eyes. It had been a trying couple of months for DeFore, once the on-site physician for the Cerberus redoubt.

From the desk, Dr. Kazuka shook his head uncertainly and he peered back to the screen of his electronic notebook. “There’s a lot of theory dating back to before the nukecaust,” he stated, “but I can find little in the way of evidence of its practical application.” In his early forties, Kazuko had cropped black hair and the walnut complexion of his fellow Tigers of Heaven, for whom he was a field medic. He had been seconded by Shizuka to serve the Cerberus team in this, their hour of need. He wore a light cotton shirt, open at the collar, with cotton slacks and soft shoes, and he moved with a simple grace that was unusual in a man. Despite his light ensemble, Kazuka was sweating; the room was small and the three bodies within were making it warm.

The third person, another operative for Cerberus called Mariah Falk, rubbed at her leg irritably. She was a slender woman in her forties, with dark hair pebbled with streaks of gray. Though not conventionally attractive, Mariah had a winning smile and an amiable manner that put people at ease. Falk was a geologist and, unusually, her expertise had been called upon in this medical problem because it involved one of the obedience stones that had been planted by Ullikummis. She had a personal beef with Ullikummis—not only had he killed her would-be boyfriend, but he had also caused her to be shot in the leg just a few months before. Whenever the discussion turned to Ullikummis, Mariah remembered Clem Bryant’s face as he lay dying on the floor of the Cerberus cafeteria, and she felt the determination well up within her.

“The physics behind it seems sound enough,” Mariah said, wincing at her own accidental pun. “Seismic waves have been used for oceanographic studies, but really you’d want to ask Clem about th—” She stopped herself, realizing her error.

Reba reached over, placing her thin hand on Mariah’s for a few seconds, patting her gently. “It’s okay, Mariah.”

Mariah thanked her, silently mouthing the word before she continued. “Point is, it’s possible,” she
concluded. “But I’m talking in terms of rocks, not people. Employing focused ultrasound for surgery is a long way out of my league.”

Reba and Kazuka nodded, grateful for the geologist’s input.

“The real question, it seems to me,” Kazuka said in his compassionate tone, “is what other options do we have left open to us. Your operative Edwards has this sentient stone growing inside his skull like a tumor, and it is affecting his judgment and ability to function.”

It had done more than that, in fact. Edwards had been turned against his teammates by the obedience stone, and he was acting on external instructions to achieve the goals of his new master, Ullikummis. And he wasn’t the only one—other members of the Cerberus team who had once been trusted had now gone rogue, working for the New Order in Ullikummis’s name. Sela Sinclair and Brigid Baptiste were two such operatives, and there had been at least four others identified whose thoughts had been infiltrated. It was a dark day for Cerberus when they realized friends had been turned into enemies.

“Utilizing ultrasound is a noninvasive form of surgery,” Kazuka continued thoughtfully. “We can use it to break down the stone without making an incision and thus avoid causing damage to the brain. This would seem to be desirable.”