Still, nothing.
And then … a throb.
There was no other way to describe it. As if the very world had shuddered without moving, pulsing along some unseen plane. He felt it deep in his guts, though the world around him remained unchanged.
The Codex fell. Plummeting to the ground with an audible crack, then rolling like a marble down the incline of the slope.
Cade watched it roll, eyes widening, only to gasp as the sphere disappeared into the very rock itself.
A voice spoke.
“We do not have much time,” it said. “Follow, quickly.”
CHAPTER
28
Cade stared.
Breathed. Waited.
His mind teetered on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Yet the voice spoke again.
“Cade, please.”
It was the Codex’s voice. Artificial. Flat toned.
“Abaddon?” he hissed.
There was a pause. Then:
“Walk toward this voice. Hurry.”
Cade put his hand to the wall, letting his fingers graze along its surface. Only they touched nothing but air, passing through the wall as if it were not there at all.
He took a step forward, leaning his face toward the wall. Something grasped his breastplate and pulled him through.
Cade staggered, the unexpected emptiness of what he passed through making him lose his balance. Light, so bright it blinded him, glared from where he fell.
The tunnel continued. But only for a few yards. It morphed into a cave bereft of lichen, with walls smooth and white as porcelain. Turning, he saw the fake wall remained. A hologram.
He blinked in the new light, raising his eyes to protect them. A figure stood before him.
A Gray.
One dressed in a simple white robe, and no weapons to speak of.
It watched him from its black protruding eyes, the slitted mouth pursed in inscrutable expression. Its hand, outstretched from where it had grabbed him, fell to its side.
“What…,” was all Cade could manage.
But there was too much to take in for him to formulate a question. The cave was vast. So large it could fit the entire keep within its confines. Size, though, was not the greatest shock here.
Technology was. There was no other word for it.
Terminals lined the walls, complete with wires and flashing lights. And above, screens. Hundreds of them, empty of image or movement, yet startling in their number. They stretched up into the very recesses of the ceiling’s space, where artificial light shone dazzlingly bright.
This was no part of the medieval, alien fortress. A spear and shield would be as strange here as a caveman in an arcade.
“Forgive my use of scent to bring you here. It is the only sense the pantheon’s Codexes cannot detect.”
Cade blinked, lifting his hand to shield his eyes.
“Too bright?” the voice asked as the lights dimmed to half their level.
The Gray’s lipless mouth moved as the voice spoke. But the source of the voice was not the Gray, but rather an object on a plinth at the very center of the room.
A Codex. But not as he knew it.
The drone had been taken apart, its pieces splayed like a deconstructed watch, with wiring plugged to a half-dozen elements. These wires, in turn, split and split again, running along the floors to the terminals on the walls.
“You will have questions,” the Gray said. “But we have little time to answer them. I will answer some to gain your trust, but then you must follow my instruction. If you do not … it will not be just my world that ends, but yours. Yours and countless others, from now until the end of time. Know this. And ask.”
Cade moved into a crouch, his hand straying to his sword.
Startled, the Gray moved back, its hands held up in supplication.
“If I had wished you harm, you would not be here. I beg you, do not waste time. Ask.”
Cade let his hand fall to his side, his mind racing. This was not supposed to be here. If Abaddon discovered it, they would fail the round.
His thoughts strayed to a dark place. One where he cut this unarmed creature down. Where he returned to the tunnel and spoke not a word of what he had seen.
But he turned away from those imaginings. He was sick of the killing. Of the death.
“If you will not ask, I shall tell,” the Gray said.
The creature folded its spindly legs, sitting in a meditative pose on the ground. Its eyes, seen so close, stirred within their sockets.
“You may call me Song. That is the meaning of my name in your language. I have been here for almost a hundred of your Earth years. And I have been watching you since you arrived on this planet.”
Cade fell back, sitting opposite the creature. A sense of unreality moved through him. He felt detached. As if it were all happening to someone else.
“When I first came here, we did not fight as you have seen us. We fought with guns. Airships. Technology more advanced than you humans have dreamed of.”
“Why am I here?” Cade blurted.
In the background, Cade heard his words parroted back in the fluting language of the Grays.
Song’s lips pursed closed, his nostrils flaring.
“You will understand soon enough,” Song replied, this time so forcefully that Cade could hear its fluting voice beneath the dull intonation of the dissected Codex beyond.
“It was in a battle against a race not dissimilar to our own that it happened. A weapon of immense power was used by our enemy. An electromagnetic pulse so powerful that it disabled every piece of technology on the planet. And in its use, the powers of the pantheon were disabled. Abaddon included.”
Cade could only stare, incredulous. To hurt the pantheon had seemed an impossibility.
“They let them use it?” Cade asked.
Song seemed to smile at the question, though it was hard to tell. His facial expressions were very different from a human’s.
“Call it hubris. We believe the pantheon have long forgotten how their technology works. It was built by their predecessors. They have no respect for the weapons of mere mortals such as us. An opinion they held at their peril.”
“What happened?” Cade asked, perhaps stupidly. But what else could he ask? Abaddon was still here, after all.
“We ended our battle in the face of the pantheon’s silence. Made peace with the enemy—for after all, we fought only to preserve ourselves. But while they focused on building a means of returning home, we knew the pantheon were not finished yet. We planned for their resurgence.”
Cade could not believe what he was hearing.
“For seven blessed days, we were free from their influence. It was during that time that this place was built. A place invisible to them and protected from any future electromagnetic pulses. This place is currently surrounded by what you humans would call a Faraday cage, one I deployed just before I fired our EMP.”
“Why?” Cade asked. “Why not destroy the pantheon?”
The Gray sighed, though there was no equivalent sound from the deconstructed Codex.
“Because in disabling their technology, our own was destroyed too. We had no time to build something powerful enough to destroy them, nor did we have the resources. But we could build this.”
Song motioned at the monitors behind him. “In repairing and backward engineering this disabled Codex, I can see what the pantheon can see. Or at least, a fraction of it at a time. There are thousands of Codexes on this planet alone, and millions more across the universe. It is through these many eyes that they observe us.”
Cade was stunned. “So there are Codexes floating around Earth?” he asked.
The Gray nodded this time. “All around this planet too,” he said. “Invisible, and fast enough to avoid anything that might touch them. Shielded from anything that might see them—heat, movement, magnetism—nothing works when they do not want to be seen. It is an incredible technology. One we have learned much from, here in this place. It i
s how we have stayed hidden for so long.”
“We?” Cade asked.
Song was silent for a moment. “I am the last of the research team. The others aged into death many years ago. We have waited so long for an opportunity to end this. To strike back at the pantheon—to destroy them for good.”
Cade felt pity for the creature. “You’ve been alone for that long?” he asked. “I’m so sorry.”
To Cade’s surprise, a blue tear rolled from the corner of Song’s eye.
“Our species has fallen too low on the leaderboard, and has been destroyed,” the Gray said. “I watched it happen. Saw the fires rain from the sky. I am the last of my kind.”
If there was bitterness in the Gray’s voice, Cade could not tell. He only heard the dull intonation of the Codex. Song closed his eyes as he spoke again.
“Now, I must ask you—the one who brought about our destruction—to do what I could not.”
“I can’t stay here,” Cade whispered. “I can’t take your place.”
Song shook his head.
“No, little one,” the Gray said, his fluting voice soft. “I ask much more of you.”
He opened his eyes.
“You must destroy the pantheon.”
CHAPTER
29
Cade was speechless. It seemed impossible. More so than anything Abaddon had asked him to do.
“You’re joking, right?” Cade said. “What could I possibly do that you couldn’t, with all that you have here?”
“We could not communicate with our brethren in the fortress, nor did we have the materials to build a weapon, here in this place. In truth, they have forgotten us, for new generations have been brought here, and those who were here before have died. And of course, any who remembered us could not discuss our presence with the newcomers. The pantheon is always watching. Come.”
Song stood and motioned for him to follow. Cade pushed himself to his feet and padded after him, struggling to keep up. Song was surprisingly fast, and he turned down into an antechamber just before Cade lost sight of him.
A strange machine filled the space as large as an aircraft hangar. Copper coils twisted around a giant pillar of metal, with a terminal at its base.
“This is how I disabled their ship, so we could have this conversation,” Song said, running his hands along the rings of bronzed wiring. “It is the same weapon as the one that gave us those seven days of freedom all those years ago.”
Here, the Codex’s translation crackled through speakers, hidden somewhere above.
Cade was amazed. Finally, a way to strike back at Abaddon.
“An EMP?” Cade asked.
“That is the closest translation to what your species is aware of, though it is more sophisticated than that.”
Cade strode closer, craning his neck to take in the full scale of it.
“Why not keep using it?” Cade asked.
Song shook his head. “This took almost a decade to charge up for the single pulse I used today. The pantheon will have recovered long before I can produce a second. Worse still, they will know where the attack came from. When they come back online, this place will be destroyed. As will I.”
“And how long will that be?” Cade asked.
Song’s mouth pursed. “The first time the pantheon were unprepared, and unfamiliar with this type of attack. We have watched their preparations for another attack of a similar kind, though it does not seem they were too concerned about a repeat. You see, when they returned, they made sure to teleport away any weapons that might be capable of such a thing again. But they did not know we had been busy down here, preparing for an opportune moment.”
Cade grinned. “Hubris seems to be a theme here.”
Song nodded. “They have been unable to protect themselves fully, for in blocking an EMP, so too do they block their ability to interact with the outside world. Were they to build a similar Faraday cage to the one that surrounds us now, they would be unable to manipulate anything beyond. It blocks all signals, inside and out.”
“Surely they’re advanced enough to figure out a solution?” Cade asked.
Song let out a trill, one that Cade assumed was laughter.
“The pantheon are not who you think they are,” he said. “I have watched them for many years. The members we suffer under today have no understanding of the machines they use now. The Codexes, their teleportation technology—even the ship they reside on—was built by their ancestors. They simply inherited it. The pantheon are but spoiled children.”
He held up a finger before Cade could speak, though he had a thousand questions to ask.
“Do not misunderstand me. They are creatures of vast intellect. Capable of multitasking to a degree that I once thought was impossible. Able to simultaneously monitor and process billions of viewpoints at once. But their technology is beyond their understanding. The vast machines that built the tools they use have long been lost. They repair and maintain, and teleport from elsewhere. They do not create.”
“So we have a week?” Cade asked.
He was excited by that prospect … though he had no idea how they would be able to do anything beyond what Song had prepared.
But his joy was immediately dashed as Song shook his head.
“They have become much more accomplished at repairing the damage that these attacks do, even if they are unable to prevent them. My analysis of what they have prepared gives us no more than an hour before they recover. But I cannot be sure—we must hurry.”
Cade’s heart fell. “So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We have one more of these, hidden elsewhere on the planet. Just one,” Song said. “The next time it is used, we must have a weapon capable of destroying them for good.”
“And?” Cade demanded. “Do you have one?”
“No,” Song said. “But you do.”
Cade scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
Song stared at him. “So you know, then?”
Cade paused, confused, then realized that the Gray had not understood his sarcasm.
“No, sorry. Tell me.”
Song pointed at one of the screens, one of the larger ones that lined the walls of the antechamber.
It depicted something that Cade instantly recognized: a satellite image of the caldera, seen from far, far above. Earth’s region.
“Your race is one of violence. The tragedies you have inflicted upon your own people are as cruel as any species I have encountered. And I have seen many through the pantheon’s Codexes. In that, you have an advantage.”
He moved his hands, and the image zoomed closer.
“Here. You are already aware of this remnant. An A-4E Skyhawk attack aircraft loaded with a B43 nuclear weapon. It is this that you will use to destroy the pantheon.”
Cade looked on, amazed. He was looking at a clearing in the midst of the jungles. There was a plane at its center, surrounded by long grass.
“You want me to fly a … crashed fighter jet? I can’t even drive a car!”
The Gray seemed to laugh again, the trill setting Cade’s teeth on edge.
“I do not need you to fly such a thing. I want you to fly this.”
The picture blurred as the satellite image swept across the jungles before settling above a pool of water.
Cade squinted. “Hey … that’s the waterfall outside our keep.”
Song laughed some more, and then gestured with his hands again.
The screen flickered, and the image changed to black and white. It almost looked like an X-ray. Now, he could see something beneath the water. An oblong shape, all in white.
“Fifty years ago, a battle took place between one of our ships and six of your planes. I believe the planes were called Flight 19, taken from your planet in Earth’s year of 1945.”
Cade raised his brows.
“During the battle, our pilot was killed by a bullet through his windshield. The autopilot brought the ship down to the nearest safe landing zone—the plunge pool of the wate
rfall. It has remained there ever since, hidden beneath the boulders that the pantheon placed above it.”
“Why would they keep it there?” Cade asked.
Song waggled his head, which Cade guessed was the Gray equivalent of a shrug.
“We believed it was for a future game of theirs. Something for you humans to discover. Lucky for you, the layer of water protects it from the EMP. The cockpit will be flooded, and there will be a space suit for you to wear to help you breathe while flying it out of the atmosphere, but it should remain fully functional.”
“Wait, wait wait,” Cade said, holding up his hands. “You want me to fly it into space?!”
The Gray trilled again. “I have prepared a disguised tool for you to use.”
Song withdrew something from his simple, white robe. It looked for all the world like a carved Gray, made from the same purple wood. A child’s toy. “If Abaddon questions your possession of it, you must claim it is a memento of your victory here.”
He lifted the toy and pressed a delicate digit into its eye, which clicked down after some gentle pressure.
“Press the left eye once to set off the EMP. Twice to command the ship to lift from the pool and land beside it. The right eye three times to command it to land on the pantheon’s ship. Both eyes four times for it to detonate, which you must do when pressing it to the tip of the atomic bomb.”
Cade swayed on his feet, though whether from shock or exhaustion he could not tell. He tried to commit the instructions to memory, but he was also trying to process what Song was saying.
“I land on their ship?” Cade whispered.
“Yes,” Song replied, gesturing with his hands once again. The screen changed.
Now it depicted a giant structure. It could not be called a ship so much as an enormous mass. Clearly aesthetics had not been a concern of the pantheon’s ancestors when they built it. The structure was an uneven mass of metal, a jumble of pylons, panels, dishes, and girders.
It was floating above the planet Acies.
And what a planet it was. This was no random mess of continents and oceans. Rather, it was a world divided into thousands of near-perfect squares, parceled out like a patchwork quilt. Territories for the various species the pantheon had played with in their cruel game.
The Champion Page 12
