The Gods Who Chose Us

by Michael J Roy

  Gna gasped and looked wide-eyed in the direction of Haki. The moon would conceal those ships for most of their trip, giving them the obvious advantage of surprise, but using anti-matter seemed more like a last resort than tactical gain. Anti-matter weapons consisted of particles of anti-matter suspended in a magnetic field within the shell of a missile. Any single failure within the missile could lead to premature detonation, and failures could come from simple damage to the outer hull. They were so hazardous that they could only be carried in the automated Nemesis fighters.

  The ships carrying anti-matter weapons had to avoid contact with all projectiles and explosives. Simple damage to the ship, the kind that typically wouldn’t even cause retreat, could produce enough disturbances to prematurely detonate the missiles. The premature detonation would consume not only the ship carrying them, but other ships nearby. In this particular case, onboard detonation would cause more collateral damage than usual.

  Gna recalled that Skadi and Haki had modified the designs of the typical anti-matter missiles to include a packet of two hundred thousand pellets in the head of the weapon. They knew that these weapons could be shot down by defense systems and didn’t want to risk bringing them all this way for their use to end in complete failure. In the event of early detonation, the explosion would propel the pellets at an incredible speed, in a tight shot-gun pattern, toward the direction of the missile’s movement. This way, as long as the missiles were facing the enemy ship within 10-100 kilometers—depending on the size and speed of the vessel—they were guaranteed to do critical damage. Any further away and it became increasingly likely the velocity of the ship relative to the pellets would move the target out of the way prior to impact.

  Each pilot had one of their four automated ships carry two anti-matter bombs. Gna’s and Haki’s ships were docked 250 kilometers away. A single one of those ships had enough firepower to disable a Storskip, let alone another enemy fighter.

  Haki responded to Skadi. “Will we engage the fighter?”

  “The other team will contact you directly if they need you—we’ll be breaking radio silence as soon as this ship realizes our presence.”

  “Understood. Gna, if we need to pursue then keep your anti-matter ship grounded and follow my lead,” Haki said, looking in Gna’s direction.

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Athena approached the moon and prepped a message to send over the aion network to the Bellum system, planning to transmit it when she was safely past the Svalinn shield. As her fingers keyed the message, her HARPE system blinked sporadically, indicating fleeting objects around the Aegis, and then quieted down. A handful of small objects around the moon? Maybe a few meteorites?

  The instruments gave another beep. Athena slowed her speed down and adjusted her course to pass by a higher point on the moon. A few more beeps came through. There’s something out here. Athena strained her eyes to see what the Aegis was detecting. She saw a little sunlight reflecting at random angles off something near, but not on, the moon. It’s almost like an atmosphere, but…discharge nets! Athena accelerated and pulled her craft up and away from the moon.

  She immediately understood that the initial launch of the nets, and their subsequent overlapping in the direction of the Aegis, caused ephemeral pockets in the electromagnetic sea generated by HARPE.

  Her ship was heading away from the Earth-moon system at nearly a ninety-degree angle to their plane when a series of warnings came over her console. Four guided missiles heading this way? At their pace they’ll outrun the Aegis. Athena turned her vessel to curve around toward the back of the Earth, away from the moon. Just then, her ship rattled with enemy fire.

  A group of five Nemesis fighters were moving on a course to cut her off before she got even part of the way over Earth; another five stayed below the missiles and blocked another escape route. Shit.

  Athena changed course to dive directly at the fighters moving to intercept her. Let’s see if I can get the guided missiles to produce some friendly fire.

  Athena evaded much of the enemy fire and easily absorbing the few projectiles that landed. The intruders would need something more powerful if they planned on bringing down the Aegis.

  Athena approached the Nemesis fighters, firing back in precise bursts, blowing open fuel lines and disabling engines. She fought like a giant, intrepidly soaring directly into the opposing vessels’ formations. Her maneuvers not only caused constant realignment for her adversaries, but prevented cover fire from the other ships near the dogfight. It didn’t appear her challengers were willing to risk friendly fire.

  After successfully breaking another formation, Athena accelerated, and turned to catch a fighter face-to-face. The abrupt move would be unexpected and give her a clean shot at the cockpit. This fighter isn’t automated—someone’s in the cockpit…that’s—

  Before she could shoot, alarms went off indicating the guided missiles were within striking distance. She dove and rolled, trying to confuse the missiles. Her ship had a few tiny ports on the hull that could shoot small pellet-like explosives; they would detonate the missiles before they reached her ship. She released a volley of them, hoping to destroy at least two of the missiles on this pass.

  * * *

  “Haki, Gna, deploy,” Skadi ordered.

  “Gna, on me!” Haki said, quickly cutting his hard-wired communication and taking off. Gna followed in his wake.

  She pulled out from their side of the moon and saw the Olympian ship, without any visible damage, dancing and dodging both shells and missiles. The glimmering golden diamond, with its seemingly rolling hull, was surreal, as if her team was contending with an entity that flew in from a parallel universe. Some mechanical beast that only increased strength on the rare occasion it was hit.

  Gna followed Haki, with her automated fighters ahead of her, down toward the strange starship. Within a few seconds, one of the anti-matter missiles exploded.

  * * *

  Alarms were drowning Athena in the Aegis. Despite the fact that her pellets detonated one of the missiles multiple kilometers from her vessel, the blast still sent shrapnel into her hull and engines. How is that possible?

  Athena shut off her automated defense gunner system to avoid blowing up any other missiles, but it was too late. She saw eight more ships join the fight. They were aiming to hit the other three missiles that were currently pursuing her, while the five ships that had waited to cut off her position were now firing at her cockpit. Athena knew the combined firepower of the weaponry and ships she faced were enough to break through her tasseled defense system. The shrapnel from the single missile alone excoriated portions of her stem-skin.

  Athena pointed her vulnerable ship toward Earth and got ready to eject. The Aegis’ had an escape pod below the cockpit, a small capsule that would fire from her crippled craft at a speed that, when added to the Aegis’ velocity, should get her to Earth’s surface with only a small chance of being completely blown out of the sky.

  Athena moved her right hand to send her partially completed message through the aion network and her other to pull for evacuation. Athena dropped into the pointed cylinder beneath her seat and propelled toward Earth. She watched behind her as the Aegis, a ship that had delivered her safely from hundreds of dangerous encounters, broke into two pieces, beginning its fiery free-fall to Earth. I hope the message sent before they destroyed you old friend, farewell.

  * * *

  Athena landed hard somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, fracturing her tailbone. Her escape pod had enough fuel to get her to the continent of Africa. She thought about her failure, wincing with discomfort as her broken bones and bruises knit. She directed her pod to submerge under the water and then headed for land. The person in that cockpit—the cockpit of an Olympian Nemesis fighter—was either Olympian…or Aesirian.

  Athena was mortified. Of course other Primordials aren’t back on Earth! What was I thinking? I got too caught up in those Huacan research facilities.

&nbs
p; This can’t be Olympians coordinating the attack. Some in the public, and maybe the military, would definitely protest the Council if they heard about the experiments occurring on Earth, but they wouldn’t risk collapsing Chronos Passages or fighting soldiers to protect humans. No, this has to be the Aesir, but why would they risk it? How would they even know what’s happening on Earth?

  Act II, Chapter 7

  Activated

  Location: Grindavik, Iceland

  Lugh was shrouded in darkness; running through what he thought was a field. The smell of grass tracts were replaced with an acrimonious odor of sulfur and heat. Geysers spewing red liquid burst from the ground, oozing bitter poison. The toxic fluid propagated over the land, weakening it. Sections of the field became unstable with no warning and dropped into nothingness. Lugh spared a glance backward at whoever was chasing him, but as he turned the Earth beneath him disappeared. He fell for what felt like minutes before realizing he wasn’t falling through the air: he was falling through water.

  His body flailed and jerked, trying to find the surface, but his futile struggle against the current did nothing but sap him of energy. He needed to breathe. His lungs burned from the lack of fresh oxygen. His consciousness started to recede into a pit of eternal blackness. In a last ditch effort to survive, he opened his mouth to inhale.

  Lugh awoke with a jolt, grasping his stomach. The pain from his dream softly lingered for a moment, reminding him the power his mind had over his body, and then vanished. The void was filled with an ache and general malaise.

  He took a deep breath and sat up on his bed. Sluggishly, he moved toward the door and stumbled out of his room. “Water…I need water,” he said in a raspy voice, dehydrated from vomiting. His red hair was matted against his face, still damp from the cold sweats he endured.

  Vili got up from watching a talking head on the television and brought him a glass of water from the kitchen. “You look like death.”

  “I feel like death—wasn’t this process supposed to unlock some special powers?” Lugh said as he took the water.

  “Powers? No. Just enhancement within the bounds of human potential. You know, a little smarter, faster, stronger, but there will likely be substantial advances in specific areas.”

  “Do we…know what…those are?” Lugh said in-between large gulps of water.

  “No. I’ve been told it’s easier to find these patterns of DNA than identifying what exactly they’ll do when unlocked.”

  Lugh flicked Vili an exhausted look before tottering to the kitchen for another glass of water. Breathlessly, he responded, “So…it’s not even guaranteed…we’ll gain much of an advantage from this?”

  Vili smiled. “We will definitely gain an advantage from your transformation. In fact, it’s highly unlikely there won’t be some significant positive effect from this. Why don’t you sit down—while you recover I should tell you about what has been happening with your ‘United Nations.’”

  * * *

  “So I take a nap and half the world’s constitutions dissolve?’ Lugh said, in a light-hearted tone that surprised him. Why aren’t I more worried?

  “Look, I know your planet wants you to contact them about me—and don’t worry, we will—but we need to first wait for my team to arrive here. We need a better understanding of who’s on Earth before we go public.”

  “Sure,” Lugh said with indifference. Why don’t I seem to care about the consequences of harboring an alien fugitive? “So who are these Primordials you mentioned before I went under?”

  “Yes, the five most advanced civilizations in the galaxy. One of the five—the Olympians—currently control Earth. They are the ones conducting experiments on humans.”

  “Olympians? Like the ancient Greek gods?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know much about the experiments that went on here before the Fracturing, but it wasn’t uncommon for researchers to interact with their subjects. When they did, they needed a cover. Sometimes they acted as supernatural beings and other times they threatened the population; occasionally, they didn’t say anything.”

  Lugh immediately recalled the ‘cargo cults’ that popped up on some of the islands of Vanuatu in the 1940s; the local populations received portions of cargo drops from the allied forces during World War II and that sparked the cults. They started to worship the planes, as well as individual soldiers, and built effigies to sacrifice via fire to the sky, hoping the free supplies would continue after the war. “They wouldn’t necessarily need to say anything—at least, not to humans. The mere presence of advanced technology has sparked cults on Earth in the past.” How did I remember the name “Vanuatu?”

  “I suppose that’s true. The COPUOS broadcasts mentioned some cults popping up merely from the existence of aliens.”

  “Interesting…so what experiments are the Olympians running on us now?”

  “We aren’t totally sure. We know that they consist of lots of observation and the rare releasing of chemicals in the atmosphere or contact with individuals.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “We have…our own ways of monitoring what the Olympians are doing out here,” Vili replied, clearly not ready to divulge everything to Lugh.

  “Fair enough.” Lugh was silent for a few moments before asking something that had been nagging at him since he first heard Vili’s broadcast. “Why are you helping us?”

  “Do we need a reason for helping a sentient civilization break away from the grip of the Olympians?”

  “Yes, you do. You seem to be risking a lot—you and your team.” Lugh wasn’t going to let this topic drop so easily.

  Vili got up and walked to the window. He scanned the heavens and sighed, seemingly bracing himself for the discussion about to ensue. “The Aesir were once the plaything of the Olympians. Like humans, we were their experiments. Unlike humans, the experiments were much more than mere observation.

  “They were medical and military in nature. They would infect some Aesirians with terrible diseases and test cures on them. Or modify our genes to ascertain the maximum physiological variety achievable within in our species. They dissected us. They tried to map our anatomy against their own, looking to understand how we may evolve given our differences.

  “The military experiments were far worse, but the details are irrelevant here.” Vili paused, his composure slightly faltering. He turned to face Lugh and took a deep breath, buffing out his chest. He slowly exhaled through his nose; each passing second regaining the phlegmatic disposition Lugh was accustomed to in Vili. “Throughout the experiments, we begged and pleaded with them to stop, but they viewed us as no more significant than you might an ant beneath your boot. Many of us lost our spouses, children, and parents. No Aesirian was untouched by the Olympians’ cruelty. We thought the nightmare would never end.

  “Thankfully, the Fracturing started, and the Olympians left us to go fight a war. Initially, my people waited in anguish for the wicked gods to return; their spirits broken and ground to dust. My brothers and I weren’t ready to give up yet, though. Looking back, that may have been because our pain didn’t end with the Olympians leaving for war.

  “Soon after our experimenters left, we had to kill our father, Ymir. He was infected with a terrible disease that even the Olympians didn’t know how to cure. After they left, he knew there was no hope left for him. With his wife dead, he begged us to end his suffering. And we did.

  “His death ignited a fire in us. We vowed to avenge his passing, to build a secure place for our people from his ashes. We started to organize the Aesir and foment a rebellion. Odin breathed the life of fiery vengeance and hope into our people. He used the story of our father’s death, among others, to encourage the uprising. Ve and I developed a strategy to defeat—or at least defend against—the Olympians upon their return.

  “We realized we could use the experiments the Olympians put us through to our favor. At the time the Olympians initially arrived, we were a bit more advanced than Earth—or at lea
st what I’ve seen of Earth—is today. Our focus was to rapidly learn what we could about space flight and spread our people across our system. We also studied the medical and genetic experiments left behind to determine how to increase our strength, intelligence, and longevity. With sharper minds and longer lives, we could produce fiercer weapons. We planned to use the data from the Olympians’ cruel experiments against them.

  “Odin had the idea to continue to discourage birth. Most individuals voluntarily stopped having children during the experiments and we simply continued that trend. We didn’t think the Aesir could handle child rearing during that time and we didn’t want to bring more Aesir into a world of suffering.

  “The Fracturing lasted over two hundred years, and during that time we colonized two other planets in our system. We had just finished building our first superluminal ship when the Olympians returned. Superluminal ships were the reason the Fracturing started in the first place; once the Primordials could traverse lightyears in hours, the galaxy suddenly seemed too crowded.

  “Anyway, when the Olympians returned, they were surprised to see the massive technological leap we had made. We had ships and weapons to defend against the average Olympian force, and we were happy to display our strength. Ve and I led the first attack when they entered our system.

  “After a few skirmishes, the Olympians extended us an offer to join Olympia. They didn’t have the will to fight another war, regardless how minor. More importantly, the Olympian public’s view of sentience evolved after witnessing the horrific acts of war perpetuated against them by civilizations that viewed Olympia as inferior.

  “The Olympus Council, the central governing body in Olympia, claimed we’d retain governance over our own system with ‘minor’ interference. Our system, the Asgard system, is deep in Olympic territory.