In fact, he found the length of time to be frankly shocking. He chastised himself. It was careless, as one of the seven guardians of mankind, to be so cut off from those who depended on him. His creative impulses were becoming a weakness, he grimly acknowledged.
He made his way to the speaking chamber. In his mind he often referred to it as “the corner bar” because that sector of his ship concentrated the energies at his command to open a small hole into Divine Space that allowed rapid communication between the deities. A small fleet of micro-relays were then sent inside the nether-dimension of Divine Space, machines that could amplify the distant voices of The Seven.
By loading a low-level Aspect into the relay network it allowed for something that resembled full conversation between the gods. It was nothing like instantaneous speech, given the strange energies involved. The quirks of this shortcut through space-time upended all known laws of physics. Access to Divine Space was the most important gift of the Benefactors, and the most tightly held secret the gods possessed. It was a resource of almost miraculous proportions.
He began organizing his thoughts and testing out long-unused vocal cords. Despite his unease at being away for so long, Apollo was eager to share his accomplishments with his fellow gods, and gather what news he could.
The non-essential functions of the ship went dark as the speaking chamber gathered the necessary power to open the rift. The reactors on Apollo’s godship hummed, and great stellar sails drank in energy from the nearby star.
The portal opened, and his micro-relay fleet disappeared.
He let the sensations of the linked drones flow over him as he oriented himself to communicate across the void.
He called out to Faraway.
Silence.
Apollo tried again. She must truly be distant.
Again, only the stillness of eternity.
A spark of worry flared inside him. No place in the entire galaxy was beyond the reach of Divine Space.
He shifted his focus and called out to Triton.
Silence.
He tensed within the confines of the speaking chamber. What was happening? What had he missed?
Tower would know. The great protector of The City made it a point to know where every god was located at any given time. He had an entire facility in The City dedicated to the task, staffed by acolytes from the temples, even if they weren’t always informed what they were tracking.
The temples.
Apollo’s mood darkened as he remembered the temples of The City. He wondered if he still had acolytes in his own temple. Did he even have worshippers any more? Did they still leave offerings, and call out to him for aid?
A wave of shame at his dereliction of duty coursed through him.
His role was important, part of the web of security that kept the human race alive. Yet people had more direct needs that couldn’t be filled by empty temples and remote legends.
We were never meant to be this distant.
He reached out for Tower, the steady rock of mankind’s seven deities.
A feeling of dread like he’d not felt in ages crept through his being when he was once again met with silence. With a growing sense of urgency he shifted his full attention to a little-used cache that contained incoming messages. There were few beings in the entire galaxy even capable of contacting him this way, so he rarely checked it.
He found a string of messages that had arrived closely together some time ago, then ended abruptly. He tore through them. If his body had still been fully human, with all its instincts and responses intact, his heart would have been racing and his palms sweating.
When he was finished reading the messages he recalled his fleet of micro relays and began preparing his ship for the transit through Divine Space. There was only one course of action for him now.
Apollo entered coordinates for the Lodias system and grimly braced himself for whatever he would find at The City.
Chapter 11
A Voice From the Deep
Talia momentarily lost track of the seemingly endless stream of tasks and decisions required of her. It happened suddenly. One moment she was guiding dozens of systems The City depended upon, the next moment she felt separated from the great machinery of the domed metropolis, in a null space, almost hypnotized by the flow of information and the intricacies of production.
With a start, she struggled to reconnect with the pulsing life of The City. Frighteningly, she couldn’t remember precisely when the lapse had begun. She was vaguely aware that the pace of construction on the starships had slowed. A lengthening file of requests and queries shouted for her attention.
So she couldn’t help but wonder if she was lucid dreaming when the strange voice broke into her thoughts.
“What are you?”
Bewildered, Talia didn’t reply at first. She did the mental equivalent of looking around her, as if someone had spoken over her shoulder.
The voice returned. “What are you?”
This time she replied automatically. “I am Talia, protector of The City. Who are you?”
In the silence that followed, she desperately scrambled to reintegrate fully with The City’s systems. Fear focused her thoughts. The defense network in Cityspace hadn’t been fully rebuilt. An attack now would require her complete attention and more.
The voice returned, not as cold this time, almost sorrowful. “Where is Tower?”
A new hope rose within her. She decided to answer forthrightly. The truth wouldn’t be hard to discover anyway.
“He fell during the Otrid attack. One of his last acts was to elevate me to run The City and rebuild our defenses.”
“Otrid attack? Tower is truly dead?”
“Do you see the glowing gas and debris in the direction of the constellation of the Doghead? That was the location of Tower’s final battle. He died honorably defending The City.”
Talia felt a stirring in her body, one she had not experienced for many months. She remembered the sensation with pleasure. It was the blood riders in her veins reacting to the presence of a god.
“Goddess Talia, is it?”
“No. I’m merely a reflection of what Tower was, hastily elevated through his machinery and craft. I am no god. But The City was designed to have a controlling authority and Tower chose me.”
The presence grew stronger in her mind, closer somehow. She imagined a figure moving out of shadow.
“I sense Faraway’s godship, but she is not present. Where is she?”
“Dead as well. The remnants of Maelstrom now inhabit her sphere.”
A long pause followed.
“Remnants?”
“This would be easier if you joined us in The City. I can sense you’re one of the gods, but I can’t determine which one. Apex? Apollo? Reveal yourself, please. The City will rejoice at your arrival and we need you more than ever.”
The presence withdrew, and Talia wondered briefly if she’d said the wrong thing, or worse, misidentified the powerful stranger.
She didn’t have long to wait.
Talia felt an uplifting of her spirit that she knew was coming from the blood riders in her body as they answered the call of a god. The reaction lifted her mood, and the worries of a few minutes ago drifted away.
Tied into the systems of The City as she was, she could sense a stirring among the people. They could feel it too. The blood riders, and what they implied about control, were both loved and resented in equal measure. But at their best, highest use, the technology allowed humanity to experience all the higher emotions that kept people moving forward, even during the darkest hours—a sense of hopefulness, of possibilities, of vision and determination. She embraced the emotions with a desperation that surprised her.
And when a godship appeared on her tracking sensors, broadcasting to every open link in the system for all to hear, Talia cried out with relief. Tears stung her eyes as laughter trickled up from within her.
There was no longer any question about what was happening
.
Apollo had returned to The City.
****
Despite her years as an acolyte and her immersion in the temples, Talia still wasn’t sure what to expect with Apollo’s arrival.
She had studied the histories of all the gods, of course, even contributed historical research to the archives. But Apollo had never personally visited The City during her lifetime, and until very recently she had been too minor a personage to quiz Tower for his thoughts on the other gods in the pantheon.
She had a limited cache of Tower’s memories that he’d left behind, and had a general sense of how he viewed Apollo, but that wasn’t much to go on.
As it turned out, she had no time to prepare anyway.
One moment she was alone in her underground chamber, comfortably ensconced in her command creche, secured by the hairlike cables that kept her connected to The City, and the next moment she found the massive Aspect of a god staring down at her.
Apollo had always been portrayed as especially radiant, beautiful even, and his Aspect did not disappoint. He was dressed in some sort of archaic garb, the type of clothing that amplified his heroic proportions. His skin glowed with a golden sheen. His features were flawless, his stance purposeful. Apollo’s smile alone lifted her heart. It made her even more aware of how pale and sickly her own body must look after all this time in the underground chamber.
“Talia, I presume. I must say, this is a surprising development.”
His green eyes bored into hers, drinking in the details of her command creche. Behind those eyes Talia could perceive the scans from the godship focusing on her. She felt naked and exposed, although not in a lurid way.
“For me, too, although a welcome one, Apollo.”
“My apologies for my absence. My duties occupied my full concentration.” And then the Aspect of Apollo sighed in a very human way. “Which is no excuse at all. My first duty is always to my people, a duty that I’ve very nearly failed. But you won’t be alone anymore, Talia. I’ll be here, come what may.”
Even through all the tendrils and cables that encased her, she felt the muscle of her face tighten into a smile, and heard the sigh of relief that escaped her lips.
The Aspect walked a slow circle around Talia’s creche.
“I am astounded. I’ve never seen this attempted before, taking a pure human and plugging her into the equivalent of a godship. Why you?”
Talia started to reply, but choked it back quickly. She dared not reveal the secret she’d discovered in the archives—that she was a direct descendent of Tower. The gods had been required to be childless as a condition of uplift, so that no aristocracies could develop, and no family would be favored over another. Yet Tower had defied the agreement, falsifying DNA records in order to disguise his young son among the survivors.
A thousand years later, Talia could trace her bloodline straight back to that hidden son of Jensen Severin, the man who would become Tower.
She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to withhold this from Apollo, but a tiny whisper of caution swept through her soul. She was not a god, yet no longer purely human, and only very slowly had the denizens of The City accepted her as the demigod in charge. If the knowledge of her bloodline was revealed, would the people reject her? Would the gods cast her out as some sort of abomination? The full truth seemed unnecessary and fraught with risk.
Yet the blood riders within her cried out for the purity of truth when addressing this god. Her whole life had been dedicated to the temples of The Seven. To lie to a god conflicted with everything she’d ever believed.
She steeled herself and replied with an incomplete truth, mentally shoving aside the discomfort. All of the gods must carry secrets from their human lives, she told herself, and she was entitled to one or two of her own.
“I served him almost my entire life,” she said. “He valued my knowledge of the history of our people, thinking it would be important in the coming struggle. And I suppose I had more direct interaction with him than anyone else under the dome.”
Apollo’s Aspect smiled warmly. “Ah, the histories. He always was a student of war,” he said. “That perspective helped us more than once, and no doubt will again. I have no doubt he chose wisely.”
If Apollo detected her deception, Talia couldn’t see it.
He started to speak again, but then a strange expression fell across his perfect face. “Maelstrom is reaching out to me. This should be interesting,” he said. “I came to you first, as the primary voice of The City. I think Maelstrom is a bit upset that I didn’t come straight to him. He’s been reduced to remnants you say, eh?”
“I might have exaggerated just a bit. Might be best not to tell him my exact wording on his disposition.”
Apollo’s laughter filled the chamber.
“I like you. This is going to be fun, if we all survive it together.” And then some of the amusement melted from his features, and his tone turned somber. “But now, I need to know everything that happened while I was gone. The Otrid attack, the status of The City, the fates of the other gods, all of it.”
Talia nodded and released a flood of information packets to Apollo’s godship. After all this time of not knowing whether the remaining gods even still existed, it was sweet relief.
Chapter 12
Chains of Obedience
Kwed's feet dug into the spongy loam of the staging planet, tasting the soil. The sensations of the world were moderately unpleasant, but nothing unexpected. The training sessions on War Vessel 84 had thoroughly prepared the crew for the exotic yet primitive flavor of this sad planet, the world from which the Otrid would launch a renewed attack upon the human colony that lay beyond the jump gates.
Kwed barely noticed the planet's original inhabitants. The native life forms seemed subdued, as if aware of their subjugation. Small crawling things scurried away as Otrid warriors approached, frantically scrambling for shelter among the roots of the stubby trees that littered the landscape. Even the so-called "intelligent" species, the long-legged waders, hid in muddy pools—as if that could conceal them from their new Otrid masters.
But the native creatures did not matter.
It was the human monstrosity at the center of the gathering that captured the Otrid's attention.
The squadrons of Otrid warriors had been called from their tasks to witness an utterly unprecedented ceremony—the execution of a human large one.
The freakish singleton was imprisoned in a specially constructed cage of reactive metal. He (the researchers had determined with ninety percent certainty that the creature was of the male sex, as alien biology was understood, despite its abominable modifications) was restrained by hundreds of strands of obedience. The display was shocking. Kwed had never believed it possible that any lesser species should require such caution.
The large one sat calmly, however, looking over the assembled Otrid with his two grotesque eyes. His posture seemed relaxed, despite the number of cables draped across his body.
The creature was indeed large in the physical sense, taller than any normal human, according to the reports. It was even larger than an Otrid, although not as massive.
The large one's name, they had been told, was Triton. If the name held any particular significance, it was lost on the researchers tasked with unraveling the being's secrets.
Fortunately, this enemy would be dead soon.
Despite the months of study required during training, Kwed still had a difficult time understanding the nature of these human "large ones." They appeared to have great power, yet they were still singletons, were they not? The contradictions were too great for Kwed to fully absorb the lessons.
Even their origins remained clouded. These large ones did not exist at the time of the conquest of the humans' homeworld. They first appeared in the aftermath, as the few pitiful survivors fled the might of the Otrid fleet. It was generally accepted that one of the other singleton species the Otrid had fought in that long-ago conflict had assisted the humans in creat
ing these large ones, but much was still unknown. That other, even more monstrous alien species, had never been conquered, but had simply disappeared. There were few records of the interactions between the allied singleton aliens.
There was another popular theory—that these large ones were not even of the same species, despite their similar appearance to the humans. In this theory, the humans had attached themselves to these greater beings, much like a parasite attaches itself to a host. This was typical behavior of singletons, went the argument.
Whichever was true, there was no denying the power of these aliens. It had taken the might of the entire Otrid space fleet, plus the skills of the Otrid Lords' greatest weapon—a captive parasite associated with an exotic elder race of aliens—to capture and subvert just two of these large ones.
A third was killed in the recent attack on the human habitat around the gas giant, but even then, the large one had unleashed such a conflagration of energy that the Otrid portals into human space had been destroyed, and the enslaved elder alien had been freed from Otrid control.
A fourth large one had been at that battle as well. It was believed to have been injured, but there was no way to know for sure.
Since then, the Otrid Lords had attempted to control and extract useful information from the captive large one, without favorable result.
Forcing the large one to comply with the will of the Otrid Lords resulted in the destruction of much of what gave the large ones their power. This large one had injured itself, destroying valuable information from its own mind, to prevent the Otrid Lords from achieving maximum gain from their prize.
This much was believed true: Triton's body had been engineered to incorporate abilities that no mere human possessed. He had the ability to breathe in an almost unlimited number of atmospheric conditions. The large one needed no re-breathing equipment to survive in the methane-heavy environment of this alien world. He also needed no armor or pressure suit, as his skin and skeletal structure had been engineered to withstand extraordinary cold, heat, and pressure.
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