by Matt Forbeck
Samuel shook his head, feigning regret that he could not help the man out. “There is no alcohol here.”
Mitch snorted. “You telling me that God doesn’t drink?”
Samuel glanced at Mitch, then followed the other man’s gaze to the tabernacle behind the altar. Brother Henrik was opening it to get the supplies for the next mass’s communion. There had to be hundreds of dusty bottles of wine shelved inside it.
Samuel looked back at Mitch and stared at him for a long moment before understanding what he meant. His chin set in grim determination.
“That is for communion.”
Mitch smiled, knowing he’d win the argument. “This is communion.”
24
Mitch stifled a groan as the monk stuffed the paper into his robes and walked up to the front of the chapel.
“I don’t mean to bore any of you,” Samuel said.
Then quit talking, Mitch thought. The monk glared at him as if he could read the soldier’s mind.
“I realize that history lessons sometimes don’t seem relevant, especially to men and women of action. However”—Samuel gazed into the eyes of each of the soldiers—“if I were you, I’d want to know what I was fighting for.”
“Been fighting for Capitol for three years now,” said El Jesus. “Ain’t bothered me yet.” A nervous twitter started through the room, but Samuel shut it down with a frown.
Mitch rubbed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat of the pew. He’d listen, but only because he didn’t want to bother plugging his ears.
“Millennia ago, something landed on Earth, something that did not belong here,” Samuel said.
“The meteor that killed the dinosaurs?” Juba said.
Samuel raised an eyebrow. “Not that long ago.” He cleared his throat and continued.
“This thing brought a horrible evil to our world. It is that evil against which the Brotherhood has always stood. It is the evil we were founded to fight.”
“The Brotherhood isn’t that old.” Steiner spoke respectfully. Even if he didn’t believe the monk’s words, he’d clearly drunk the Brotherhood’s wine. He gave Samuel his due for his robes alone.
Samuel nodded. “Cardinal Nathaniel Durand the First founded the modern Brotherhood not so long ago in terms of the age of the world, but the roots of the Brotherhood stretch back much farther than that.
“The ancient Druids knew the secrets of the Enemy before anyone else, and they led the war to seal the mutants away the first time they came. They inscribed that knowledge in a book they handed down to their heirs, from generation to generation, should the mutants ever return.”
Samuel put his hand on the leather-bound book attached to him by a chain around his wrist. “The Druids were the forebears of the Brotherhood. They prophesied its rise but did not directly create it. Like most people, they believed that even if they did not live forever, their institutions would.
“They built some things to last. Like this book”—he patted the cover—“and the Great Seal.”
“Which we blew up,” Mitch said, sitting up. He pointed over at Steiner. “When we were fighting them.”
Every eye in the place whipped toward him. Samuel’s frown deepened. “You were in that battle?”
El Jesus leaned forward, his face gone white. “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.”
“Fickmich.” Steiner looked like he might throw up.
Samuel put his hands on his face for a moment, as if he were praying into them. Then he wiped them down his cheeks. “The Enemy has been active for centuries.”
Duval nodded. “These mutants, I’ve heard rumors of them before. They crop up in big battles all the time.”
Mitch had to confess that he had too. He’d usually chalked them off to the insane ramblings of shell-shocked soldiers. But had they been nuts to start with, or had the experience driven them mad?
He wondered how long the bureaucrats in charge of each of the megacorporations had known about such creatures. They had to. Yet they kept sending people into battle, risking stirring the damn things up.
“But we’re talking more than a few mutants in a trench this time,” Mitch said.
“Reports of these creatures have come in from around the globe,” MacGuire said. “From across the worlds. They have not limited themselves to battlefields.
“The foot soldiers tend not to use weapons. Their boneblades are usually enough, and they don’t seem to have any means of supply. However…”
Mitch hated “howevers.” There always had to be a “however,” and they rarely made anything better.
“They come in a far wider variety than most know. Nepharites. Razides. Ezoghouls. Necromutants. Zenithian Soulslayers. Calistonian Intruders. Praetorian Stalkers. The grunts are known as Legionnaires.”
“From what legion?” Juba said.
“The Dark Legion.”
“Fucking kidding me,” El Jesus said.
“You said these things are on other worlds too?” Mitch wanted to be sure he got this right.
Samuel grimaced. “The Brotherhood has located citadels on every settled planet. These are usually in places so remote that few have seen them. Some are underground. Others are as large as mountains.”
“But the Brotherhood monitors them?” Steiner said.
“It is part of our mission.”
Mitch asked what everyone else had to be wondering. “How bad is it?”
“On the other worlds, the citadels have not launched any new attacks. On Earth…”
The man looked like he wanted to creep into a hole and die.
“The Cartel believes we have less than forty days.”
“Before what? Before the Cartel’s offices fall?”
Samuel shook his head. “Before we are overrun.”
“Fuck fucking me,” El Jesus said.
“So,” Mitch said, “what happens then?”
“When what?” Samuel said.
“When we fuck it up.”
Everyone stared at Mitch coldly, even El Jesus. He shrugged. “All right, if we fuck it up.”
Samuel grunted. “It won’t end here. The citadels on the other planets will react. The people there will have no way to defeat them. One by one, the worlds will be overrun.”
“How can you say that?” Duval said, panic creeping into her voice. “How would the other citadels even know?”
“The mutants work together across vast distances. They are communicating with each other somehow, through their Dark Symmetry.”
“So?”
Samuel nodded toward Mitch. “If they can get a signal across the continent, perhaps even the planet—”
“Then they can reach across worlds, too,” Mitch interrupted. He got up and walked over to the tabernacle again.
“What are you doing?” Samuel said.
Mitch ignored him and opened the tabernacle’s doors. Inside stood scores of bottles of wine racked in dusty unlabeled bottles. He took one out, cradled it in his hands, and blew the dust off it. Then he tossed it to El Jesus, who plucked it from the air.
“Use it or lose it, hermano!” The big man grinned.
25
That night Samuel knelt before the altar alone. He’d left Severian in her cell to prepare herself for the battle tomorrow. He’d never wished more that she could talk with him, but he knew she’d given up her voice to God many years ago. She wasn’t about to abandon that for a prebattle chat—even if it seemed like the battle might presage the Apocalypse.
The monk lit a solitary votive and watched the flame flare for a moment before settling down for a slow burn on the blackening wick. The scent of the incense from the earlier mass still hung in the air and carried Samuel back to his youth on Luna, where he’d served as an altar boy in the cathedral.
More than once, Samuel had been given the honor of serving a mass officiated by the Cardinal. Standing in the man’s sacred presence filled Samuel with wonder at the mysteries of God. He’d almost missed his cues twice and once had
spilled a bit of sacramental wine on the Cardinal’s sleeve.
At that point, Samuel had felt that if a column of flame didn’t strike him down for his incompetence he might fall over dead on his own. The Cardinal, though, had favored him with a serene smile and put his hand on Samuel’s shoulder. At that moment, Samuel knew that everything would be all right.
The next day, he had announced to his parents that he would be entering the Brotherhood to become a monk. They couldn’t have been prouder. None of them, of course, had known what that would entail.
After years of study, Samuel had decided to devote himself to entering the Second Directorate, better known as the Inquisition. He had a fire in his belly for rooting out evil, and he aimed to put it to good use. His analytical mind and flair for ferreting out the truth would serve him well, he knew, and his instructors had agreed.
He’d worked hard and been selected to become a Mortificator, one of the Brotherhood’s elite cadre of black-robed assassins. As part of his apprenticeship, he’d been paired with Sebastian Crenshaw, the greatest Mortificator of his time. Crenshaw had been a brutal instructor, fair but unyielding. He’d seen the worst effects of heresy and corruption firsthand, and there were few limits to what he would do to protect humanity from them.
One night, late in Samuel’s apprenticeship, he and Crenshaw and an Inquisitor named Nikodemus had gone out to hunt down a prominent heretic known as Lucente. They’d flushed the man from his hole of a headquarters, a cavity in the underbelly of Luna filled with the horrible filth of a pernicious cult dedicated to the Dark Apostle Semai, the Lord of Spite.
Lucente had run like a rabbit forced from his burrow, and the three Inquisitors had given chase. “He’s too valuable as a source of information about his fellow cultists,” Crenshaw had said. “We need to take him alive.”
As they closed in on the heretic, he became more and more desperate to get away. When it finally looked like he was cornered, he gunned down a young mother and plucked her infant child from her stroller. His back to the wall, Lucente put his still-smoking pistol to the wailing child’s head.
Crenshaw sent Samuel to the right to angle for a clear shot while he tried to talk the man down. Nikodemus had fallen behind during the chase and was nowhere to be seen.
“You’ve no place to run,” Crenshaw said. “Put down the child, and we can make this painless.”
Lucente just laughed, knowing he had the upper hand. “That’s why humanity is doomed. You brothers are too weak-minded. You put barriers up before you that limit your actions. That’s why the darkness will always triumph!”
The man started to cackle madly and lifted the baby before him to gloat. As he did, a flat crack sounded from somewhere above, and the child was blown to pieces in the man’s hands.
At first Samuel thought the heretic had killed the child, perhaps by accident, but Lucente seemed as shocked as anyone. While Samuel still stared, shocked at the mess that had been made of the child, Crenshaw stepped forward and knocked the man flat with a single, sharp blow. Lucente offered no resistance.
A few moments later, Nikodemus arrived, his Mephisto sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.
Crenshaw spat at his fellow Inquisitor as he finished up. “That was unnecessary. We had the situation under control.”
“You could have lost him,” Nikodemus said, no trace of remorse in his voice. “How many more would have died or been influenced by his heresy had that happened?”
It was then that Samuel realized what Nikodemus had done. Enraged, he charged at the man. A moment later he found himself flat on his back, clutching at a broken nose.
“That was an innocent child!” Samuel said, spluttering through the blood running down his face.
Nikodemus gave Samuel a flat, empty stare and said one thing before leaving him and Crenshaw to escort the heretic to an interrogation cell: “There are no innocents.”
The next day, Samuel put in for a transfer out of the Inquisition. Despite Crenshaw’s disappointment at losing such a promising protégé, he joined the Mission instead, and he had been a part of the Third Directorate ever since.
The Curia, the powerful committee that worked under the Cardinal, hadn’t been happy about Samuel wasting so much of his training. To make an example of him, they assigned him to this remote outpost on Earth, the backwater of the entire solar system.
Here Samuel had quickly become one of the top monks in the monastery. Since many of the other monks had been banished from Luna for various offenses, that meant he often felt like one of the inmates in charge of the asylum. Still, the fact that the monastery housed the original material for the first Chronicle as well as the device designed to destroy the prophesied Machine of the mutants meant that he never lacked a sense of purpose.
For most of his years here, though, Samuel had felt like little more than a caretaker. The prophecy had lain fallow for so many years that he felt sure he would never be called on to help fulfill it. He never used that as an excuse to be slack in his duties—he took pride in his work and that of the brothers who worked with him—but he had to admit he’d been as surprised as anyone when word of the mutant invasion had come through.
Now, tomorrow, he would lead a crew of mercenaries into the heart of the Enemy’s citadel in a suicidal attempt to destroy it and save the world. He wondered for a while if he was ready for this but then realized that it didn’t matter. He was as ready as he was going to be, and now he had to place his faith in God and do the best he could.
That would have to be enough.
26
Mitch always hated these nights, the last few hours before embarking on a new mission. He’d done as much as he could to prepare. Now it was a matter of killing the hours before the real action began.
Sitting in a shadowed corner of the hall the monks had opened for them, he took a slug of wine straight from one of the bottles he’d liberated from the tabernacle. The alcohol helped take the edge off. No matter how sloppy he might get tonight, he knew he’d have plenty of dead time on the transport tomorrow to sleep it off.
Having a hangover on a rattling deathtrap of a plane wasn’t any fun, but Mitch was long past caring about that. This might be his last hangover ever, and he was damn well going to enjoy causing it.
An old cylinder player in the corner cranked out music. Mitch hadn’t seen one of them in years, but he figured the monks lived too far from a radio station for them to get any of the regular stations.
“Can we shut that shit off?” El Jesus said. The younger man took a long pull from his latest bottle. After knocking the last drops out of it, he tossed it back over his shoulder. It shattered against the wall behind him, the shards joining the remnants of the other bottles already thrown there.
“The monks don’t have anything else,” Juba said. The Mishiman savored his wine from a pair of glasses he’d hunted up for himself and Duval. He’d taken the time to pick through the dusty bottles to find an excellent vintage and was determined to enjoy it properly, no matter how many of the others were happy to swig their wine straight from the bottle.
“They all sound like dirges,” MacGuire said. He’d spent most of the evening with the two other men from Imperial, who hadn’t said three words between them all day, at least not in front of Mitch. MacGuire did all the talking for them.
“Don’t you find that appropriate?” Steiner called over from where he and the two other soldiers from Bauhaus had spent the last hour or so playing chess. He’d won the last three games straight and didn’t seem to think much of his competition. None of the other soldiers had seen fit to challenge him to a game, though, so he kept trouncing the other Cogs, more out of boredom than anything else.
El Jesus stared at Steiner as the Cog strolled over to stand over him. He tried to focus his eyes for a few seconds, then gave up. “What I find it is fucking depressing. I got enough dark shit rolling around in my head without that magnifying it. We’ll all be crying in our boots by the end of the night.”
“You may,” Steiner said. “The men of Bauhaus do not weep for themselves. Only for our foes.”
El Jesus rolled his eyes at the man. “Ha, ha, ha, motherfucker.”
Steiner suppressed a sneer. “In Bauhaus, the enlisted men do not speak to the officers in such tones.”
“Well,” El Jesus said as politely as he could, “fuck lucky me.”
Mitch sized up the situation. Steiner was a loudmouth from a society that prized such bastards, and he had two junior soldiers to witness the disgrace of this Capitol corporal showing him disrespect. Fortunately, he’d taken off his holster when he had sat down to play chess, and that put his gun on the other side of the room.
Mitch sat up, letting his chair scrape on the floor. As he did, he took a long drag on his cigarette, enough to make the tip glow like a furnace. Steiner’s gaze flicked in Mitch’s direction and caught there for a moment. The Cog had gotten the unspoken message. If he decided to mess with El Jesus, Mitch would stop him cold.
Steiner looked back at El Jesus to find the drunken corporal grinning up at him, daring him to do something stupid. If he’d been Steiner or MacGuire, Mitch would have stood up and chewed El Jesus out for screwing around with men who were supposed to be his teammates, like them or not. But he just didn’t give a fuck.
Let the sheep butt heads. Let them knock each other silly trying to prove who was the better man. El Jesus was a grown man. He could take care of himself.
If Mitch had been inclined to worry for anyone, it would have been Steiner. Even drunk, El Jesus could likely take the man in a fight. He had several inches and at least forty pounds on Steiner, and he was too wasted to know when to quit.
A shot rang out, and the music player splintered into dozens of pieces. Steiner whipped around to see MacGuire holding a smoking pistol.
“The young man is right,” the Imperial said in his clipped tones. “It was getting on my nerves.”
MacGuire didn’t point his gun at Steiner, but he didn’t have to. The Cog understood what MacGuire meant: Leave it alone. We’ll need all the soldiers we can get.
