Gods and The City (Gods and the Starways Book 1)

by Steve Statham

  But as he wandered into the facility’s monitoring center, he saw that the sanctuary was empty of acolytes.

  Ah. They must all be at the temples going through the motions. It’s not every day the god goes wandering about. No games or conversation today.

  He reluctantly turned to head home, but stopped. Something in the monitoring center wasn’t right. No, it was the absence of something, he decided. Usually the room was alive with the dancing flow of energy and information throughout The City and beyond, a flood in which the god immersed himself and directed to his own inscrutable ends.

  But now half the center was draped in darkness.

  He trotted to the station that sat at the center of the shadows. Communication between The City and the Wandering World, always reflected as a pulsing river of energy, was entirely dead. He had walked past this station a thousand times during his years on this assignment, and he had never seen it blank, not ever. An interstellar pipeline of information between the two primary human worlds should never be silent.

  His first instinct was to double back and grab his tools once more, so that he could diagnose the problem with this station. But then he slowly glanced around the chamber. He stopped. A chill crept across his skin. The lights were dimming on even more stations as he watched.

  He walked with uncertain steps to the next monitoring sector, mostly dark but flickering with embers of life. The central console was connected to the sentry ships at the far reaches of the solar system. These were extensions of Tower, not actively crewed ships, yet the living machines had personalities as vibrant as any human. Mik knew their names and, like many other citizens, followed their exploits at the boundaries of CitySpace.

  Almost all the links were dead.

  Mercury Eclipse, General Ashtone and Furious Rift seemed to have disappeared, their connections to The City severed.

  Sadness and fear welled up within him. Mik had flown on Mercury Eclipse to attend to the refitting of Cityspace Monitoring Station 3. As was his habit, he had crawled into every corner of the ship, exploring and studying the systems. The ship was a fine traveling companion, its controlling intelligence witty and approachable. It indulged him his curiosity, and was delighted when Mik discovered traces of a nitrogen leak in the rarely-used life support systems, something that even the ship’s wandering servitor robots had missed.

  The 4,000, Titan and Battle of Sedna were still active, energy signatures at maximum, but running silent.

  He had no idea what was supposed to be done in this situation.

  On shaky legs Mik ran to one of the other stations that still displayed signs of life. He had a harder time interpreting the data, but it appeared the micro sentinels were swarming toward a common destination. Very few people knew about the micros. Mik only did because he had helped construct their launch capsules, and even then he had had to guess at their true nature.

  The micro sentinels appeared to be a fearsome defensive weapon, one that, as far as he knew, had never been deployed in actual combat. That they now had a mission, and a target, filled Mik with dread.

  It was impossible that Tower would not know of this. The fact that defenses were deployed proved that the god was engaged. All these facts were in the front of Mik’s mind. And yet, the certainties were swept away by the unprecedented events around him. Mik felt the need, the compulsion, to report, in case there was some overlooked bit of information he could provide, some crucial knowledge that The City’s defender needed.

  He ran back to the locker where he had stored his tools and flung open the cover. His calibration glove contained a function that signaled the need for emergency repairs directly to the god.

  His hands were trembling as he opened the link to Tower.

  But there was no reply.

  3

  To Strike a God

  Talia stumbled backward and collapsed against the wall as the invader passed through the portal.

  Her brain warred with her eyes over what she was seeing. Whatever was coming through was unlike anything recorded in the Archives of the Known.

  Segmented appendages���crab-like arms or legs���reached out from the glowing, crackling energy of the portal. They shot across the office like javelins launched toward the god.

  Talia briefly saw the bulk of the creature’s main body emerge. It was small, compared with the length of its limbs, roughly the shape of a fish, with bronze-colored flesh stretched tightly over bones and multiple joints. A crest ran the length of its spine, with what appeared to be a row of eyes lined horizontally at the base. A compact harness was wrapped around its body. It clattered forward on long, spindly legs that nearly filled the room, its body several feet off the floor.

  And then all perception was drowned as the roaring fires of Tower’s divinity flared to life. The god glowed a fiery orange as he centered his power within his body. Talia fought the compulsion to look away���the sight of the god gathering his strength was painful yet at the same time mesmerizing.

  The glow expanded.

  The tips of the creature’s grasping limbs, so close now to the god, boiled away as they reached out for him. Talia smelled the odor of burnt flesh and heard a piercing noise from the creature that could only be a scream.

  And yet the invader kept coming, as if animated by an external force. It stumbled forward on shredded limbs, its steps mere spasms of motion.

  More of the segmented limbs emerged from the portal.

  Three of the aliens tumbled through, a rolling ball of intertwined legs and appendages. A luminescent purple sheen glittered across the skin of each.

  Tower held out his hand and whispered a command. The glow from within him crept along his outstretched arm and coalesced into a white-hot point grasped within his fist. He opened his fingers and a flood of gathered power streamed toward the invaders.

  But the energy flowed over their bodies without effect.

  Talia saw it then, an expression she had never expected to see on the face of The City’s god and protector���confusion.

  The three spidery beings shot across the office with unnatural speed and converged on Tower as one. The momentum of the assault carried all of them toward the wall of live-glass behind them. A gap irised open, but it was too slow and too small, and the collection of aliens and the god shattered the material and fell toward the avenue far below.

  Talia cried out but could not hear her own voice over the hum of the energies concentrated around the portal. She rose to her feet as quickly as she could and stumbled toward the broken live-glass. Fear gripped her as surely as the monstrous legs had held Tower within their obscene embrace.

  How can this be?

  She passed the administrator and glanced in his direction. He still sat behind his desk, motionless, smiling.

  Talia stepped to the edge, her feet crunching over the shards of broken live-glass that were even now reforming. She reached out with one arm and leaned against the frame of the window, peering below.

  The god and the monsters were still falling, a tangle of ferocious motion, although they were not falling as fast as Talia expected. It was startling to watch, but then she remembered the god’s physical body was not like hers or any other human’s. He had probably adjusted its density, or perhaps its fundamental structure, even as the invaders attempted to rip his frame to shreds.

  She turned around. The administrator was looking directly at her, traces of a dark new expression on his face.

  “A body is a fragile thing, is it not?”

  Her heart hammered inside her chest.

  The four men who had been standing at the back of the office moved toward her.

  And then the portal blazed to life again as another set of horrifying limbs emerged. Talia took a step back and felt the breeze pass through the opening behind her. She could still hear the sounds of the fight drifting up from below.

  A shadow passed behind her, as something large moved between her and the light rivers that snaked across the inner surfa
ce of The City’s dome.

  At the same time the faintest imprint of a message wafted through her mind. She focused, and heard Tower’s voice. Time seemed to slow, and the movements of the people and aliens in the room seemed far away and sluggish.

  “Talia, The City is beset on all sides,” the god whispered inside her. “I am fighting on several fronts. These creatures are nothing, mere assault troops of alien origin, but some power elevates their defenses. They occupy my immediate thoughts and limit my actions.

  “Now listen���your life is in danger as well. You must do exactly as I tell you. Do you trust me, faithful acolyte?”

  “Yes!” Talia shouted the answer with her voice and her mind.

  “Jump now!”

  Without looking, without hesitation, Talia spun and threw herself over the broken live-glass and out into the open air. Breath fled her body. The spires of The City tumbled crazily in her vision. She briefly heard the distant shouting of the men in the office above and the uglier noises of the aliens, but those sounds faded quickly.

  Below, she caught a glimpse of the writhing ball of alien creatures and the god, still falling, but not plummeting like a stone as she was.

  She closed her eyes and tried to chant the First Prayer to calm herself. It was the homage to great Maelstrom himself, mightiest of the gods. Tower had taken physical form and led her in the prayer himself on Talia’s first day as an acolyte.

  The god was still in her mind and she felt Tower smile within her as they shared the memory. He spoke to her now using his true voice���or what Talia hoped was the true voice���not the officious, blunt speech he had used in the office with the administrator. Tower used many voices, and Talia often wondered which was the true one.

  “Talia, love, you’re about to go flying back to the sanctuary. Just relax and don’t resist. I’ll have more instructions when you get there.”

  And the god was no longer in her mind.

  A new sensation surrounded her.

  She was first aware of a soft rustling coming from above, which rapidly coalesced into the furious beating of wings. She felt the touch of soft, leathery material against her skin.

  Talia opened her eyes and fought the vertigo brought on by the multi-colored shapes that darted before her, a boiling mass of blue, orange and white triangles.

  She was surrounded by a swirling cloud of axis flyers. She had never seen so many gathered in one place, and never so animated. She cried out in alarm and instinctively thrashed out with her arms and legs. It took a moment to remember the words of the god.

  Don’t resist.

  Trust.

  She relaxed. The axis flyers were semi-living organisms, bodiless wings that patrolled the skies of The City, extensions of the vision of the god. Through them, Tower watched The City from constantly changing perspectives. They looked vaguely like aquatic rays from one of Old Earth’s oceans, although smaller and flatter, and with more exaggerated wings.

  But they were apparently more than simply eyes of The City’s protector.

  They swarmed around her, and Talia felt them massing together and forming a cushion beneath her, a web of support that slowed her descent. The axis flyers cradled her in a constantly shifting embrace, a cocoon of flapping motion.

  She realized she was no longer falling. Instead, she was leveling out and moving away from the spire of the administrator, over the roofs of lesser structures. She was flying, carried along on a semi-living carpet of winged scouts, all of them struggling in furious coordination to keep her from falling to the streets below.

  The last thing Talia saw before the bubble of axis flyers completely encased her���fragments glimpsed between the beating wings���was a grotesque stream of the alien invaders spilling from the broken window above, their long limbs thrashing crazily in the air, tumbling down to the god below like giant spiders carried over a waterfall.

  4

  Under the Dome

  Vance ran down the Avenue of the Benefactors at full speed. The feel of motion and the welcome ache of his muscles buoyed his spirits, giving him a heady feeling of satisfaction.

  Is this what it’s like to have the wind at your back? He’d heard the old expression but had never been able to fully grasp what that would feel like. The weather of The City was always tranquil. What would it be like to have the air moving so fast it could push a person, carry him to even greater speeds?

  But there was no time to fixate on the simple pleasure of running.

  At the end of the Avenue, he took a hard left turn toward the arbor district. Cutting across that sector would get him to the UnderWorks the quickest.

  And it was in those great tunnels that he would win this challenge���or lose it.

  The challenges had been getting increasingly complex and risky, and Vance was largely responsible for that. The members of the Affiliation of Seekers looked to him for creative leadership, and he found he was eager to give it.

  He was not the only one to chafe under the dull routines of City life. But he was the one who had decided to do something about it. Vance had created the Affiliation of Seekers with a small group of friends, a circle that had grown steadily these last two seasons. The challenges were secret contests that tested the endurance, bravery and skill of Affiliation members. Initially, the challenges had been run only in the forgotten corners of The City, but more recent ones had been designed to be performed anywhere under the dome.

  Vance had mapped out this latest challenge. It was straight-forward, if not exactly simple: be the first to retrieve an item from outside the dome without using the required exit protocols or seeking official permissions.

  Vance was confident in his own strategy, but there was more than one way to attack the problem. He was sure his biggest competitor would be Kriff, who had an artful talent for redirecting the embedded orders in servitor robots. Vance figured Kriff would find a way to hijack a maintenance robot and use it to snatch something from the surface of Skyra before anyone else could sneak out and return.

  He increased his speed despite the burning sensation in his lungs. One hundred meters into the arbor district he left the pathways and cut across the open space between the trees.

  He immediately regretted it.

  Sprawled out at the base of a stand of pine trees was one of the rootless tribes. He groaned.

  They turned toward him as he approached, alarmed at the sight of a man charging toward them for no apparent reason. “Young man, what’s your hurry? Join us as we break our fast,” one of the men called out.

  “I have a better idea,” Vance replied as he raced past. “Why don’t you rouse yourself from your stupor and run with me?”

  The startled looks told him everything he needed to know.

  He continued loping through the arbor. He had been unnecessarily harsh to the rootless fool, he conceded to himself. But the tribes exasperated him no end. The dome provided, yes; none will go hungry or freeze in the dark. But too many of the rootless had allowed that security to define their lives. Fed and clothed by the grace of the gods, they wandered The City without purpose, sleeping where they would, unconcerned about the causes and effects of life.

  Deep within Vance was the diamond-hard certainty that there was more to existence than accepting handouts from the gods’ machines. It had been that conviction that drove the Affiliation on these increasingly risky challenges.

  Vance passed through the edge of the arbor district and onto the curving street called Apex’s Way. Almost immediately he found himself running up on a ragged line of children on their way to school.

  This time he did have to slow down as the children bunched up behind their teachers, nearly blocking the entire street.

  So many of them! There were rumors of a dome expansion, a thing that had not happened in Vance’s lifetime. He hoped so. At least it would be something new.

  As he slowed to a jog he searched for familiar faces, but did not see his own children among this group. It was a
bit of a relief, since it would have meant a delay, but also a disappointment. He had been out all night planning this challenge and had not yet seen his kids this morning.

  If there was one feature of society under the dome of which Vance thoroughly approved, it was the pressure to reproduce���and not just for the obvious reasons. He loved the chaos and unpredictability that children introduced into life. Jenna, his wife, was three months along with their fourth child in six years, which was a quick pace even by City standards.

  With a smile, he left the children behind and continued on until Apex’s Way met with the boundaries of the administrative district.

  He could see the low arch that led to the UnderWorks getting closer, a divot in the ground framed by the spires beyond. It was one of three entrances to the maintenance tunnels that burrowed under The City like angular roots reaching down to the core of the moon.

  It was also, hopefully, his path to victory.

  Vance slowed to a fast walk as he approached. He shifted his backpack and caught his breath. He had not noticed the weight of his pressure suit while running, but was now aware of its bulk inside his backpack. Eagerness and a small itch of fear warred inside him. This challenge would be his first opportunity to test the suit in an actual low-pressure atmosphere.

  Risky���but he had focused on its construction with a fierce intensity.

  I did it right, he told himself once more.

  It was not as elegant as the thin suits issued by the frontier administrators for approved excursions outside the dome. But he did not doubt its quality.

  Vance had spent weeks fabricating it, under cover of a variety of materials requests that could reasonably be attributed to his business. Vance was the proprietor of a custom furnishings shop that was known for melding disparate materials into unusual shapes.

  Machine-made furniture was abundant and cheap under the dome. But the products that were churned from the manufactories had never suited Vance. No servitor robot could comprehend how to sweeten a line, or imbue an inanimate object with warmth and life. He had known that fundamental truth from a young age.