The device discharged, and a blinding arc of pain surged through Kwed. He dropped to all four knees, and then fell on his side as a sagging sensation rippled through his body. The Harness of Lordship flooded his senses with shrieking warnings as it attempted to repair the damage to his body.
Despite his weakened state, Kwed did not release the human. He held his enemy tightly, pulling him in closer. The small weapon the human held in its paw clattered to the ground.
Still, the smaller alien was able to continue stabbing with its longblade. Normally such a creature would never have been able to resist the strength of Kwed’s whip arms, but with his fading strength he could not subdue the alien. It kicked with its lower limbs, delivering surprisingly strong blows.
He channeled whatever strength the Harness of Lordship could give him into strangling his foe. He found it was all he could focus on, as the unity between segments dimmed.
How could this be happening?
And then the nagging fear from earlier crystalized into a shocking revelation: The humans are not truly singletons. They coordinate in pack behaviors, incorporate technology from other species—even fight beside more primitive aliens—and modify themselves to enhance their powers. They once allied themselves with the Beh’neefazor, and they created larger versions of themselves when there were no other protectors. We have read them wrong from the beginning. From the beginning…
It was the last thought Kwed would ever have.
****
The timing wasn’t perfect for Vance’s three-pronged assault—nothing involving the Granth ever could be—but now the Otrid forced his hand.
By the seven! They have a power over the Granth!
Vance watched from his concealed position as the Granth warriors staggered in confusion. There was a strange new odor in the air, and a low humming that he could only hear because of the sensory enhancement that was a part of his implants.
Vance cursed himself for not anticipating this possibility.
Of course. The Otrid have ruled the Granth’s world for years. They know how to keep them in line.
It had been all Vance could do to restrain the Granth long enough for him to plot the assault on this Otrid team. After tasting blood while repelling the first group of boarders, their Granth allies had been almost uncontrollable in their lust for revenge.
And, sure enough, they had dropped from their places in the ductwork and scaffolding above before they were supposed to. The Granth had nearly pulled it off out of sheer ferocity, but now found themselves squeezed into a vulnerable position between the Otrid and the repurposed robots.
There was no choice but to hit the Otrid with everything they had left.
Vance motioned his men forward. They stormed up the ramp from the maintenance sub-level where Maelstrom had guided them. The squadrons fanned out according to plan, opening fire into the Otrid flanks as they ran.
Their advance was brief, however. Their charge was met by withering counter-fire. This group of Otrid displayed greater discipline than the one he’d defeated earlier. Vance quickly determined why. The largest of the invaders was clearly a leader of high rank. It wore some kind of battle suit not found on any of the others, and appeared to be issuing commands—at least, if Vance was correctly interpreting the waving of its tentacles and bellowing of its alien voice.
Almost immediately, the Otrid commander locked in on Vance and tracked him with that bizarre vision segment atop its neck.
So we’ve identified each other.
Vance rolled to his left at the same moment the Otrid raised its weapon and fired in his direction. His body responded instantly, unencumbered by old limitations. He offered up a thanks to Talia under his breath. Before the implants, he would never have been able to dodge that first shot.
He charged the Otrid commander. Adrenaline coursed through his body. The sword in his hand, substantial though it was, felt weightless.
“Watch out for this one,” Maelstrom whispered through their link. “It’s an Otrid Lord.”
Too late now, Vance told himself.
He engaged the larger alien using all the speed and power at his disposal. He leapt over it, slashing downward. In this type of engagement, the sword proved an ideal weapon. Once he landed, he turned and lunged in, stabbing deeply, then pivoted away before one of the long tentacles could reach him.
He leaped and slid and rolled, working his way over and around the oddly-proportioned alien.
The Otrid Lord seemed surprised at Vance’s movements, but as they parried, its aim and anticipation improved. It brought down the glowing belt it wielded with a thunderous crack across Vance’s armor. He nearly passed out as an energy current passed through the plating, and had it not absorbed most of the charge Vance knew he would be dead.
He circled his foe as he attempted to block out the pain. The Otrid Lord had its own wounds, and appeared to be doing whatever the Otrid equivalent was of catching its breath.
The momentary break allowed him to give clipped orders to his subordinates over his comm link, while ever-so briefly grabbing a glimpse of the bigger picture through his connection to Maelstrom. It was hard to interpret what Maelstrom revealed about the larger battle in space, but Vance picked up one piece of good news—the band he was fighting was the only surviving group of Otrid boarders on the godship.
The pause ended and Vance rushed in once more, driving his sword into the fleshy body.
But this time, he was not quick enough.
Two of the Otrid Lord’s tentacles snapped down and grabbed him, lifting him off the ground.
The world compressed around him. Vance’s awareness of the world constricted down to just himself and the alien. He was aware of every muscle in his body as the bio-implants amplified his strength, resisting the crushing embrace of the Otrid Lord.
Muscles burning, he reached down to his side-holster and drew his projectile gun. With agonizing slowness he raised his arm. The tentacles tightened around him, but could not stop him. He fired, and fired again immediately. The giant alien buckled.
Even so, its strength did not diminish. Vance had a flashing insight that the Otrid Lord’s elaborate armor was boosting its strength. Pain ran up Vance’s arm as his own armor finally cracked under the pressure, and with it, three of his ribs. One of the thin tentacles drew back, then stabbed at him with a speed almost too quick to follow. The point burrowed into his side, sending a jolt of burning pain through his body.
He dropped the projectile gun, and then used what was left of his strength to thrust with his sword. He felt the blade slide into the fleshy base of the alien’s massive neck, and this time the creature rolled onto its side, slowly, the collapsing bulk taking with it the blade from Vance’s grasp.
And still it did not release him.
Vance struggled in vain as he was dragged down to the deck. He could see his own blood running in rivulets across his body armor. The taste of blood was on his lips.
In its death spasms, the Otrid Lord twisted Vance around and stared at him with the four cold eyes embedded in the alien’s wedged shaped head. Whatever thoughts lurked behind the featureless eyes were a mystery. He stared back, unblinking, holding the alien’s gaze.
The battle of wills ticked away for an indeterminate time, until Vance’s vision clouded. He was vaguely aware that his implants were trying to mitigate the damage to his body, and he could hear his men as if from a great distance. Maelstrom whispered in his ear.
But those things no longer mattered.
He blinked—slowly, so slowly—and when he opened his eyes he saw Jenna’s face smiling at him. Beside her were Brent, Prina, Arianna and Jackson, and the life that danced in their eyes made his heart sing.
He smiled and reached out to them, and they gathered him up in an everlasting embrace.
Chapter 28
The Mad God
Unbelievable.
Apollo watched with growing anger as the Otrid ships exited the wormhole and spread throughout Cityspa
ce. The entirety of the human race, The City, and the remaining gods were mere hours away, a day at most, from slipping away in the night to a system so remote the Otrid would never find it. And now, in the blink of an eye, all of Apollo’s plans had come crashing down around him.
He let the anger flow through him, channeled into a focused rage. He did not look at the unfolding scene with the detachment he’d developed over the centuries of godhood. He composed no symphony in the background of his mind, held no bemused debates between the factions of his consciousness.
I’m going to kill them, was the sole thought that guided his actions.
It was no trivial decision.
In all the long years since his elevation, Apollo had never had to take another life. He’d been selected for godhood in the aftermath of humanity’s near extermination, but the fight had been over at that point. The entire focus of the gods had been to escape the smoldering Earth and find a new place for humanity to rebuild. Until the last attack, they’d successfully hidden themselves from the Otrid and any other hostile species. After the chaotic first century when the gods had established The City, he’d been able to devote himself to exploration of stellar masses and indulge his creative muse, with diminishing attention paid to an increasingly hypothetical defense of the human race. They’d escaped, and humanity had begun the long climb back from the brink.
Or so they had long thought. But those days were done.
They call us gods. Time to start acting like it, he told himself as he linked his mind to all the godship’s defensive and offensive systems. The brightly lit spires went dark, the great wings that collected energy retracted. Shielding flickered to life in a protective embrace.
The sector rippled with exotic energies as the Otrid poured through their portals and fired their first salvos.
Apollo took a few precious seconds to analyze the invaders’ attack patterns as he formulated his own. His most pressing concern was to protect the array he’d constructed to channel the local sun’s energy. It was the key to opening a large enough gateway into Divine Space for Skyra to pass through.
It would also make a handy weapon.
He released a swarm of semi-autonomous fighter drones from his godship, sending them into a defensive pattern around the array.
He then set a course for the wormhole. He was pleased to see that the ships under admiral Mik’s command were already responding to the incursion, and were moving quickly to intercept. They were closer to the intruders than Apollo’s godship, leaving him in the frustrating position of being a spectator to the opening clash.
Apollo watched through his sensors as the forces converged. The human starships were outnumbered, yet even so, Apollo could see that the number of Otrid ships was insufficient for a full-scale invasion.
There are more to come.
He paused, leashing his anger. Even though he wanted to immediately wade into the midst of the fighting, wielding his godship like a sword, he knew he needed to view the situation with a cold, tactical eye. He could save many of The City’s ships if he engaged immediately, but if a second portal opened when all forces were committed in a single sector, The City could be left wide open. He set his godship on a new course between Skyra and the outbound defensive fleet.
It was a nerve-wracking gamble, and he found not all the old human autonomic systems in his body were dormant. His palms were sweating and the pit of his stomach felt as if a snake had awakened and was coiling around his organs.
The battle unfolded before him. With savage pleasure he watched the Hightower and the accompanying ships draw first blood, eliminating several of the sixteen enemy ships in mere moments. The clever research Mik had undertaken on the Otrid shields was paying off.
He noted too, that Mik had not committed all of his forces to this initial clash. Several ships hung back, forming a secondary line of defense.
He could easily see the distortion caused by the Hightower’s Gravitic Compression Point bombs. The aesthete in him had to hand it to Tower—that was an elegantly lethal weapon. Too lethal, probably, for use so close to Skyra. The gravitational waves would be distorting the orbits of all of Lodias’ moons for years to come.
But then again, those forces might actually help in opening a doorway to Divine Space large enough to swallow an entire moon. He tasked his godship’s mind-core with running scenarios for using the gravitational waves to amplify the power of his own array.
Apollo didn’t have to wait long for the expected second wave. His instruments detected the first wavering spatial distortions caused by the Otrid jump technology. It covered a wider area than he expected, however, but he quickly ascertained why.
Two wormhole exit gates were forming.
The first wormhole rippled to life at a surprising distance from Skyra. There were no human assets in place nearby, and the Otrid would be easy to track as they closed the considerable distance. Yet they would also have the flexibility to divert to any flashpoint of the conflict as needed; a reserve force, even if that wasn’t their original assignment.
The second one burst into existence perilously close to Faraway’s old godship, close enough to cause the beautiful sphere to glow as it reflected the energies that poured forth.
Apollo made his decision. The ships spilling from the closer wormhole could be dealt with by Maelstrom, commanding Faraway’s godship, along with The City’s own Skyra-based weaponry.
The more distant, unopposed force was all his.
He immediately set a course to intercept.
The godship felt alive around him, every system responding to his commands, all working in harmony. The power flowed through him, every resource like an extension of his body.
The feeling was truly godlike.
He accessed the array with a thought and diverted some of its immense power reserves to his godship. The tightly focused beam zeroed in on the ship’s receiving station, and Apollo felt the surge of energy like a shot of whiskey warming his body.
Apollo saw on his screens that the Hightower had already changed course toward the new arrivals. He opened a comm link to Mik. “Hold back your ships, admiral. I’ll take care of these.”
He laughed as he drew closer to his targets. In his current state of mind they glittered in the night like fragile toys, mere nuisances to be swept away by the hand of a god.
“I am the storm! Today you will pay for Tower, and Faraway, and Triton! Today The City will have its revenge!”
He locked his targeting sensors onto the closest ship. With a roar he loosed a beam of condensed energy that his godship had absorbed from his remote array and amplified. The resulting flare burned across the blackness of space as if the star had just hurled a piece of itself at his enemies.
There was a brief flicker as the closest Otrid vessel’s shields collapsed. Apollo viewed the hit with every sensor in his arsenal. He had made his first kills. It should have been a grim milestone, yet his rage and the power that coursed through him shunted aside any reflections on the morality of taking lives. The Otrid had forced his hand, and he now used his powers without restraint.
He smiled as he slowed the images so he could watch the ship melt under the onslaught.
He targeted the lead ship next, and it too vanished under the force he wielded.
Apollo set a new course to head off the remaining Otrid vessels. As he raced toward his foes, he sang Battle of Otterbourne, an ancient song of war from a long-lost Earth culture, called up from somewhere deep within the ship’s archives.
“But I have dream'd a dreary dream,
Beyond the Isle of Skye;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I!”
His mind raced between the different systems calling for his attention. Apollo had never felt like he’d lived a small life before, but now that he leveraged all of the capabilities of the Benefactor technology that were woven into himself and his godship, commanding fundamental forces in such a devastating manner, he could onl
y marvel at the power at his disposal.
The tactical situation shifted as his ship’s weapons recharged. The nearest Otrid ships repositioned into a formation of four—a closely packed, single target, but one that allowed their shields to overlap and strengthen.
He entered their range and they fired at his godship, a coordinated barrage consisting of four different offensive systems. The shielding on his ship strained under the load, but held, the mindcore in control adjusting and reacting at speeds so brief they could scarcely be calculated.
“They swakked their swords, till sair they swat,
And the blood ran down like rain!”
His primary energy beam, distilled from the power of the star, reached full capacity once more. He fired at the clustered Otrid ships. The layered shields of his enemies flared brightly as they were overwhelmed, but the ships survived, peeling off in four different directions as they scrambled to recover.
A second group of four approached on a different vector, and this time their unified fire severely strained the godship’s shields. Embedded in every system as he was, Apollo felt the shot like a physical blow. Minor systems on the periphery of his consciousness went dark.
He fired off rapid targeted shots at the four retreating ships, then changed course to intercept the new foursome. He raked their combined shields with his primary beam, then rashly fired off a Benefactor-designed missile that had nestled unused in his godship for a thousand years.
He’d never been able to figure out exactly what that weapon would do.
It winked out of normal space and reappeared almost simultaneously inside the shield of the Otrid formation. The resulting explosion could have atomized a small moon.
Too bad I don’t have another one of those.
The expanding wave of radiation and debris followed shortly, and even the godship’s shields wavered under the assault.
Gods and the Stars Page 20
