Prologue
Galactic Standard Date: 152,183.02 AE
Haven 1: Eternal Palace
The Eternal Emperor Hashem
240 years ago…
Hashem
“He has a right to know!” the dark-winged Angelic screamed as her labor pains intensified.
“She-who-is forbids it.”
The Eternal Emperor Hashem paced the secret back room of his genetics laboratory as though –he- were the expectant father. “You must keep this child's existence a secret.”
“You and your stupid game of chess!” Asherah spat in an uncustomary bout of cussing. “Shemijaza is my husband!”
“He should have thought of that before he launched a rebellion!”
For millennia Hashem and Shay'tan had played chess to resolve their differences, and if that didn't work, then they gathered their armies and went to war. Neither old god had gained dominion over the galaxy until one day Hashem's greatest general rebelled. Declaring himself to be the leader of a 'Third Empire,' Shemijaza seized a string of planets too close to the old dragon's border to quash without igniting an intergalactic war. With the Sata'an Empire nipping at his Galactic Alliance, the last thing Hashem needed was a civil war!
Dark-haired, dark-winged, with eyes so blue they were the color of the Haven sky, Hashem had thought it a stroke of genius to send the beautiful, soft-spoken Asherah as an ambassador to entice the rebel leader into rejoining the Alliance.
“You were sent to negotiate a treaty!" Hashem jutted his finger at the foolish woman. "Not to marry him! I cannot let the Third Empire gain legitimacy by allowing Shemijaza to produce an heir!”
“I am half-Seraphim.” Asherah panted to control her pain as her contraction intensified. "When we consummated our marriage, my life became tied to his. I should be dead already!”
“You are half shipboard Angelic,” Hashem said. “You can survive if you so choose, as you have already demonstrated by coming here!”
"We're not farm animals to be bred and used as cannon fodder in your endless war against Shay'tan!" Asherah clutched her belly. "Our species is going extinct and you do -nothing- to help us! It's the only reason Shemijaza rebelled!”
Hashem's wild, white hair and bushy eyebrows jutted outwards as though he were a mad scientist. What had once been a symbol of his brilliance as a geneticist, his ability to splice together disparate life forms to create new ones, had become an embarrassing monument to his own incompetence. The genes which carried his army's animal features were recessive. To maintain them, he'd been forced to inbreed them until they had lost the ability to reproduce. Nothing, not his ascended powers, not the best in vitro fertilization methods his teams of scientists could dream up, had been able to fix it.
“Moloch is using your husband to gain a foothold in this universe,” Hashem warned. “Do you have any idea what will happen if the Evil One punches through? Shemijaza's child will be even more genetically evolved than he is! You must keep the child’s existence a secret!”
“I saw no sign of this Moloch.” Asherah gripped the bed rails as her contraction built to its crescendo. "Shemijaza had blackouts. Times he seemed a bit … callous. Headaches. He is sick! Not evil. The only evil I see is a selfish old god who would deprive a child of his father!”
Dark feathers flew everywhere as Asherah's instinct to take flight warred with her need to remain Haven-bound because a newborn could not fly. The child was coming, whether he wished for it to exist or not.
“The child’s head is crowning, your Majesty” Dephar interrupted, his chief geneticist who was acting as midwife. He grabbed a scalpel and clamps with the same practiced ease he used whenever he delivered any other genetics experiment Hashem had cooked up.
"Shemijaza!!!" Asherah threw back her head and screamed her husband's name.
Her cries awoke something Hashem had never felt before, perhaps it was pity? Yes. He wished to alleviate her suffering so he would not have to feel it himself. With no words to convince her this was the right thing to do, he resorted to something he had not done since he had ceased being mortal.
"Take my hand, Asherah," Hashem moderated his power so he could safely touch her, "and let me help you bear this pain." His hand grew warm where it brushed her skin, the sensation igniting some mortal need he had long forgotten existed.
"He has a right to know!" Asherah slapped away his hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she focused her attention inwards, seeking to make contact through the bond purebred Seraphim formed with their mate.
Asherah was only half-Seraphim, but he had reason to worry she had formed the bond which granted her kind telepathy, no matter how far apart they were in the universe. He'd gone through great lengths to make the rebel leader believe she'd committed suicide. If Shemijaza found out Asherah had just borne him a son, he would raze the Alliance into dust to get her back. With Shay’tan sapping his resources, there was no way he could withstand war on a second front.
“Goddess!!!” Hashem shouted, not with his voice, but with his mind. “I don't know how to prevent this!”
The scent of ozone and fresh flowers supplanted the sterile, medicinal scent of the genetics laboratory. A buzz that felt like tiny jolts of electricity filled the air as golden light descended from the ethers and coalesced into a tall, slender female with pointed ears and gossamer wings. SHE rarely descended into material form because it made her vulnerable, but keeping this child a secret was paramount. With a rustle of wings which sounded like crinkling cellophane, She-who-is plastered a sympathetic expression upon her chiseled features and stepped forward to console the grieving mother.
“I would not ask you to make this sacrifice if the fate of the universe did not depend upon it,” She-who-is's tone was hypnotically reassuring. “Ki warned you of this when you sang her Song to conceive your son, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Asherah sobbed.
Hashem felt a twinge of envy. Why had a mortal been given access to the Song of Creation and not him? By Ki, no less? She-who-is's mother?
“Your Eminence,” Dephar's snout bowed with awe at the appearance of the goddess who ruled All-That-Is. “The child is stuck in the birth canal.”
“I shall deliver him myself," She-who-is lilted a perfectly shaped eyebrow in Hashem's direction. "He is that important." SHE placed her hand upon Asherah’s swollen abdomen to eliminate the Seraphim's physical pain. “Push, my daughter. I wish to meet this prince of Tyre.”
The child slid into HER waiting arms. He did not cry as others did upon being cast out of their mother's womb, but looked at HER as though he could already understand what she said. He reached for her face as Dephar cut the umbilical cord and gurgled a sound which sounded like 'SHE.'
The goddess's lips turned up in a smile, genuine this time as she recognized something in the newborn which pleased her immensely.
“You are Lucifer, Bringer of Light." SHE glanced over to the sobbing Seraphim, too grief-stricken to hold the son whose conception had forced her to abandon her husband. "Be grateful, young prince, that this mortal loves you enough to keep you hidden from your -real- father. All-That-Is depends upon you not falling into Moloch's hands.”
Asherah wept. She-who-is reached towards her temple to grant her the mercy of wiping Shemijaza from her mind, but Asherah slapped away HER hand. Even Dephar gasped at the Seraphim's audacity.
“Don’t you play your memory games on me!” Asherah hissed. She sat up in her childbed as regal as a queen. “I shall do as you ask, but the soul does not forget! Someday Shemijaza and I will reunite!”
Hashem cringed. She-who-is might be all-powerful, but Asherah understood the rules of the larger game which bound even old gods such as himself. Not quite genetically evolved enough to achieve immortality on her own, the Seraphim was too close to perfection to manipulate against her will.
“So be it.” She-who-is wrapped the infant in a blanket and handed him to Hashem. “You must protect this child with your immortal life. Train him to l
ead his people on the path of balance or I will hand him over to someone else who will.”
“Yes, your Eminence.” Hashem bowed. “I will raise him as though he were my own son.”
The goddess's eyes burned gold with power. With a disdainful flick of her gossamer wings, She-who-is shimmered out of the material plain.
Hashem looked down at the child who had just been placed into his care. The infant did not cry. Not even a squeak. He had his mother's delicate facial features, but the snow-white wings and white-blonde hair of his father. Instead of blue, the child had inherited Shemijaza's eyes, so pale and blue they were silver like the moon, a genetic throwback to a bloodline they had all believed to be extinct.
Morning Star…
Would this child also inherit his father's intellect?
Hashem shivered even though he had long evolved past the ability to feel the cold. Shemijaza had outsmarted him. Outsmarted Shay’tan. Outsmarted every creature in the galaxy including She-who-is. Asherah had brought warning of a new threat snuffling around the rebel leader, one terrifying enough to cause the half-Seraphim to abandon her mate and flee.
Morning Star…
A bloodline that was even older than She-who-is. Heaven help them all if Moloch got his hands on Shemijaza's offspring!
“Asherah?” Hashem presented the infant to the grieving Seraphim, beautiful in her grief. “Your son…”
“Go away!” Asherah curled up in a fetal position and refused to look at her child. “You wanted him, now you’ve got him!”
The infant stared up at him, his eerie silver eyes filled with trust. It couldn't be good for the child to be rejected by his own mother. Hashem knew from his work as a geneticist that most rejected offspring simply withered and died.
Morning Star …
The most genetically advanced bloodline in existence!
Hashem glanced around at the cold, sterile artifices of his genetics laboratory. She-who-is had given -him- the prize, and neither Shay'tan nor the child's own father even knew it! All he had to do was make sure Moloch didn’t find out, either.
He took the infant and gave Asherah the space to grieve.
Chapter 1
September 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
MIKHAIL
Colonel Mikhail Mannuk’ili crouched behind the fence, surveying the landscape as he stalked his prey. The demon moved through the crops like pestilence, laying waste to all that fell beneath its cloven hooves.
"Spawn of Shay'tan," he cursed beneath his breath. "I will crush thy horned head beneath my boot!"
Wings tucked tightly against his back, he crept closer, his belly pressed against the earth. He embraced the soil, unashamed to dirty his feathers as he moved forward to the cover of the next stone wall. He had a mission to complete and, damantia! He would complete it!
The Ubaid gave these demons innocuous-sounding names, such as kechi or anz. Fools! His wife's primitive culture practically worshipped them! They … and their false promises of milk and honey! He, a superior being from an advanced civilization, saw that wherever this creature tread, it devoured all that lay in its path. It stood there now, consuming barley the widow-sisters had helped him plant in tribute to Ninkasi, the goddess of bread and beer. Of all the fields which dotted the fertile alluvial plane of the Hiddekel River, why had the evil creature targeted this field? The one he had spent half the summer digging levies and planting the experimental grain?
He was an even-tempered man, but even an Angelic could be pushed too far. Never, ever come between a man and his vat of future beer…
"I will catch thee, Nemesis!" he hissed in Galactic Standard. "And roast thy flesh upon a spit!"
Right now he didn't care what his father-in-law said about a good leader coaxing adversaries around to his way of thinking. That black pit of anger he kept suppressed simmered beneath the surface, threatening to erupt through his carefully constructed self-control. He had humbled himself and come bearing treats, not expecting the creature to spurn his overture of peace.
Normally he would approach from the air, but the creature had learned to slip his grip just as he shifted his wings from the bosom of the wind to land. There was nothing discrete about a dark-winged Angelic swooping down from the sky. If there was one thing he had learned from his time amongst the Cherubim, it was to creep up on his enemies. This time, he would use stealth to succeed where valor failed. The demon had just laid waste to months of back-breaking labor!
"I swear upon All-That-Is, Little Nemesis, that this time I will rid this village of your presence once and for all!"
His hand trailed down to where his sword should be strapped to his thigh, but Ninsianna insisted he subdue this creature using nothing but his wits. Bah! He should not need a sword to prevail! Angelics had been genetically engineered to fight. He whispered the Cherubim prayers to focus on the mission.
Smite … the … demon…
He crept closer, invisible against the dirt even though the sun still shone bright, no small feat of stealth for a man more than seven feet tall. Oh! How he wished he had a knife clenched between his teeth to slit the creature's throat. He had stalked far fouler beasts than this, Sata'anic lizards and the armies of Shay'tan.
So why was he having so much trouble with this one?
Nemesis's head came up, her broad nostrils flared as she sniffed the wind. He suppressed the involuntary rustle of feathers that preceded any race into flight, determined to not alert her to his presence until it was too late for her to react. He had flown downwind, skimming the tree tops and creeping up from the riverbed so that she would not scent his approach.
Her brown eyes rolled in a gesture of contempt. This demon had made him the laughing stock of the entire village. How could he ask these people to follow the principles set forth by his Emperor and God when each day this accursed creature outwitted, out-maneuvered, and out-thought him? He searched for a weakness, something different he could try that perhaps he had failed to notice countless times before?
Damantia! He would win this war! He was a man of his word, and until now his word had never been broken. Not that he could remember. Much. Well, from what little he could remember of his past, he knew he almost never broke his word. Ninsianna did not count. He had asked her father if he could break his promise before he had asked her to marry him. If the permission changed, than it wasn’t really violating his word now, was it?
Little Nemesis’s bleating dragged his mind away from that tender thought. He had a mission to complete! Train his wife’s people to fight back against the raids occurring all over Ubaid territory. With dozens of allied villagers dead and young women kidnapped by slavers, he had more important things to do than stalk a petty demon. She-who-is had sent him here to raise armies from the dust, not have his lack of natural leadership ability rubbed in his face!
His heart rate sped up, pumping oxygen to his muscles in anticipation of the battle to come. He would show this creature that he was in charge! Maybe then the people of this village would stop wandering off in fifty different directions, as well?
Little Nemesis stomped her hoof and tossed her head as though to taunt him, ‘bring it on.’
Yes. He would bring it on and this time he would win! With a mighty pounding of black-brown wings, he took to the air, racing towards her before she could run away.
Just for a moment, he thought he had her, but at the last second she turned, causing him to overshoot the mark. He veered, feathers flying as his wings struck the ground and shot airborne once more. Nemesis zig-zagged through the low stone walls which had been built as levies, leaping over fields of emmer and einkorn, and bolted up the embankment towards the village of Assur. This was open ground, for godssakes! How was she able to evade his grasp when he could catch a sparrow mid-air?
"Watch out!" the black-eyed girl shouted as Nemesis squeaked past the guards who watched the narrow entrance through the impenetrab
le outer ring of houses, Mikhail hot on her tail. He was too intent on his quarry to utter an apology. Nemesis had the advantage here, the alleys too narrow to fit his beating wings, but he had flight. He soared above the mud-brick houses, descending just often enough to keep her running back where she belonged.
At last Nemesis turned and ran towards the milking shed. Her hooves pounded upon the rocky soil, weaving back and forth as he cut off her escape again and again. Almost there. Almost. Almost… He caught a cross-wind to land, just before a shed barely large enough to ram his body into. Curiosity seekers had gathered at the edge of the pen, waiting for him to fight this daily battle. They cheered, although he suspected it was the goat they rooted for, not him. He curled his wings forward, banking left to prevent a half-hearted attempt to escape.
“There’s no escaping now, Little Nemesis,” he shouted with glee. The goat stuck its nose through the rough stick gate and ran inside. He had her!
“Yea!” the villagers cheered.
Mikhail glanced their way, a rare smile lighting up his face as he banked his wings to land. At the last second Nemesis turned and ran between his legs, knocking him off-balance before he hit the ground. He flapped his wings, trying to get airborne as he grabbed for her, but it was a mistake! Without his feet securely beneath him, the momentum of his earlier flight catapulted him forward. He tried to break his fall, but he was going too fast. He toppled heel-over-head and slammed into the side of the milking shed, crumpling face-down into a pile of goat dung.
Dark feathers flew everywhere. The setting sun appeared as though it were three stars as bells rang in his brain, accompanied by the laughter of villagers who had turned out to watch him lose in battle once more. One voice in particular assaulted his ears, as light and musical as a heavenly choir.
“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” Ninsianna laughed. “I told you I would milk her.”
“You are with child.” Mikhail forced himself to his hands and knees, trying to get his wings to obey what his mind told them to do. He glanced up at his laughing wife, her golden eyes flashing with mirth as he pushed himself to his feet, tucking his wings behind his back in an indignant rustle of feathers.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 2
