Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga)

by Anna Erishkigal

  “Jophie?” He touched the high cheekbone displayed on his video monitor as if, by touching the screen, he could reach across the galaxy to touch her, sentimentality which was frowned upon for enlisted soldiers, but which he, persistent lover, dared.

  “Yes, Raphael.” Her lip trembled.

  “Give Uriel a kiss goodnight from me?”

  Jophiel hesitated, then reached up to place her hand upon the screen at the other side of the chasm which yawned between them, not just physical distance, but the politics and woes of an Alliance which was unraveling at the seams.

  “I will….”

  Chapter 17

  Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.09

  Haven-1

  Angelic Air Force General Abaddon

  (a.k.a. 'The Destroyer')

  Abaddon

  General Abaddon, commander of the Angelic Air Force, stared down at the Eternal Palace as his shuttlecraft circled for a landing. The Eternal Tree rose out of the center like a church spire, its great limbs spreading outwards over the wildlife refuge it sheltered below. This time of year its leaves changed from fiery gold to silver, the color of Lucifer's eyes. Abaddon shivered each time he stared into that tree and saw something staring out that was immortal. It was rumored to be a multi-dimensional being, drawing sustenance through its roots from Ki herself and casting forth its stabilizing song the same way a real tree breathed out oxygen. Watching it embrace the wind, he could easily believe the tree was something more.

  How many times in the past 635 years had he visited this palace, first as an awe-struck Lieutenant, then later to receive commendations for valor after he'd defeated Shay'tan's fiercest general? How many times had he chosen service to the Emperor over Shay'tan's bribes and, later, when he'd been blacklisted as infertile, Shemijaza's promises of a Third way between the rigid ideologies of the two great empires?

  The shuttle touched down. It did not surprise him to see Supreme Commander-General Jophiel's shuttlecraft sitting on the runway, nor Leonid General Harakhti's or Centauri General Kunopegos, but the fourth shuttle gave him pause.

  "I was not told Admiral Atagartis was summoned," Abaddon asked the flight coordinator. "It's a long journey from the Mer-Levi Confederation."

  "We were told to expect six shuttlecraft, Sir," the Mantoid flight coordinator saluted him. "That is all I know."

  "Six? Who else is coming today? Lieutenant-General Groaker?"

  Groaker was Delphinium, the amphibious species who made up the Alliance portion of the Mer Navy. Very few purebred Merfolk existed since Hashem's abandoned Leviathan experiment had been rediscovered on some forgotten backwater, abandoned for millennia to achieve space travel on their own. The Merfolk were no longer going extinct like the other three hybrid species, but they were no longer, well, Merfolk, either.

  "We were not told, Sir," the flight coordinator gave him a stiff salute. "Only that you are to be given every courtesy and directed to the Great Hall."

  "I shall find out soon enough," Abaddon growled. It goaded him to be kept in the dark, especially when he harbored secrets, but showing his displeasure would solve nothing. He gave the flight coordinator a crisp salute and strode with purpose across the flight strip.

  Everything about Abaddon mirrored the sword he carried at his side. Steel-grey hair and gunship eyes, he tucked his falcon-grey wings against his back in the controlled posture of a military commander. The four stars which decorated his chest, his command carrier, even the scar which ran from his forehead to his chin, had all been earned by a sword. A Sata'an sword, a grim reminder that each day was a gift. Only Supreme Commander-General Jophiel outranked him, but he hid that smart to his ego, always respectful to the upstart cadet who'd been promoted out of obscurity 25 years ago to become Lucifer's military equal.

  Some accused him of harboring resentment because Hashem had promoted a female capable of bearing offspring instead of an infertile old goat such as himself to unite the military under a single leader, but nothing could be further from the truth. Abaddon resented Jophiel because she bore an eerie resemblance to Lucifer's mother. Oh! How the fate of the Alliance might have turned out differently had Asherah not followed her rebellious husband into the grave! It was a selfishness the soldier reared from birth to serve the races which made up this Alliance, but never be one of them, had never understood. Now that he had secretly taken a mate; however, that part of him which was descended from a Seraphim grandfather could comprehend the instinct to will oneself to die.

  The intoxicating scent of the Haven wind clashed with Abaddon's mood as he reached the exit of the flight terminal.

  "General Abaddon, Sir," a strapping young Spiderid greeted. "We were told to expect you, Sir." The young insectoid's curlicea trembled in the manner of one fresh out of the Academy.

  "At ease," Abaddon returned his salute. "I take it I am to enter through the service entrance?"

  "No, Sir," the Spiderid said. "The Emperor wishes his generals to pass today through the Pearl Gate." The young arachnid pointed towards a walkway that led to the entrance used by dignitaries on important matters of state. It was both an honor … and an insult.

  Abaddon gave him a crisp salute of dismissal and moved towards the enormous matching doors, over seventy feet high, which marked the 'official' entrance to the Eternal Palace. They were high enough, it was said, for even Shay'tan to pass without ducking, though to his knowledge the opposing emperor had never set foot on Haven-1.

  The Great Gate had been opened twice in Abaddon's lifetime. The first time had been the day the Emperor had marched forth with fifteen-year-old Lucifer at his side to announce Shemijaza had no legal claim upon the babe he had raised from birth to be his lawful heir. The second had been the day he had elevated Supreme Commander-General Jophiel to become the new commander in chief of all four branches of his military, creating a new post that was the military equal of the civilian prime minister.

  Lucifer hadn't been the only person Hashem had snubbed that day. While the Emperor had been gone, the other generals had looked to him to be their de facto supreme commander, a pedestal he'd been knocked off of the day Hashem had returned and handed the prize to an obscure cadet. If there had been a reason for his fall from grace, a loss in battle, perhaps, or intrigues, some reason he had earned the Emperor's disfavor, then perhaps Abaddon could have swallowed the bitter pill, but he had served the Emperor loyally his entire life. It appalled him how callously the Emperor had pushed his service aside.

  Expendable. Just like that, he had been replaced…

  Abaddon's mouth tightened into a grim line as he crossed the courtyard's checkered squares, his steps automatically falling into a rhythmic march as he skirted the ones at the center. The insinuation was subtle, 32 reddish-granite squares interlaid with 32 beige ones, but Abaddon refused to amuse his emperor by acting as a living chess piece. In the center marched guards from every sentient homeworld in the Alliance. Many greeting him by name in an elaborate changing of the guard that occurred on the chessboard at the turn of every hour.

  "Attention!" the Mantoid Master of Arms shouted, his two uppermost legs held at stiff attention. "General Abaddon is on the premises."

  "Sir! Welcome Sir!" the ceremonial guardsmen shouted as a single unit. Their heels, and in a few instances tentacles or flippers, clacked together in a solid *thud* as they clapped their ceremonial rifles to their shoulders. They all looked so young.

  "As you were," Abaddon paused to return their salute. Technically these men no longer answered to him, but to the higher authority of Supreme Commander-General Jophiel.

  "Sir! Thank you, Sir!" the ceremonial guard shouted.

  "Ready position!" the Master of Arms shouted. "Left face! Forward … march!"

  The ceremonial guard resumed the maneuvers they had practiced in front of the Emperor's palace for the past 150,000 years. The privilege of sending a soldier to guard the Eternal Emperor was granted upon achieving full Alliance membership. Newer worlds, or those that had lost favor,
guarded the outermost perimeter, while the oldest and most trusted races were allowed into the inner sanctum.

  His grey eyes softened. Someday Sarvenaz's world would send delegates here, one for each house of Parliament and two to guard the many doors which graced the Emperor's palace. Over time they would move inwards, as had every other member species since the Alliance had first been created. The thought of evicting Shay'tan from the human homewold and laying it as a gift at his beloved's feet caused that sentiment to blossom into a full-blown smile.

  Yes. He would grant his wife the gift she pleaded for every time he basked in the afterglow of their lovemaking as she traced the scar which had nearly taken his eye. Destroyer. It had not been his own men who had given him that moniker, but Shay'tan himself after Abaddon had captured … and decapitated … his most loyal general and seized his sword. He would show his wife that he still had what it took to make the old dragon tremble.

  His knees ached as he ascended the white marble steps, not a steep climb, but to a newer sentient race, a psychologically daunting one. Under his tenure, the Delphiniums, Mantoids and Spiderids had all moved to full participating status. They'd eagerly filled the gaps in the dying hybrid militaries because allowing their burgeoning populations to be used as cannon fodder had put them on the fast-track. Alliance membership would have stalled had the Emperor been here to rally support against Lucifer's Parliamentary grip and declare those planets protected seed worlds, curiosities to be studied like a late-night wildlife show instead of being asked to put their collective shoulders to the wheel and help push the Alliance they wanted to join.

  His smile faded, grey eyes taking on the cold edge of steel. If left up to the Emperor, that day would not come until humans found their own way out of the Stone Age which forced relocation from Nibiru had knocked them back into, long after his own species was extinct. Lucifer might be a power-hungry weasel, but he was determined not to let his bloodline perish along with the rest of his species.

  Stubbornness caused him to march straight for the Great Gate and not veer off to the smaller Pearl Gate. The two elaborately carved doors were wrought from fallen branches of the eternal tree, edged in gold leaf and platinum. On one door stood Hashem, poised upon a chariot, a spear held forth in his hand and a sundial upon his wrist. On the other perched Shay'tan, not the portly, ornately robed emperor Abaddon had seen intelligence images of, but a true dragon, fangs bared as it drew upon the powers of chaos to square off against its opponent. Flames licked up from the base of the door, setting fire to Hashem's chariot, but Shay'tan's leathery wings were untouched.

  "Sir?" a Muqqib'at serpent approached and saluted him with its short arms. "I am to assist you."

  Abaddon gave Astanphaeus a grey-eyed look that communicated 'don't disturb me when I'm thinking.' He stared back at the great carved doors, those gates which had only been opened twice. To the untrained eye, it appeared the two old god's weapons were aimed at each other, but Abaddon had his own theory about what the mural on the gates of Haven meant. In between Hashem's spear and Shay'tan's fire lay an enormous lock whose key-hole lay within the mouth of a bull. Its red eyes captured the setting sun and made Abaddon shiver.

  "Evil One," he whispered to the great carved doors. "That is why they do not simply destroy one another. They've got something bigger to worry about than one another."

  "Sir?" Astanphaeus gave him a puzzled look.

  Abaddon changed the subject rather than explain why he'd uttered something so peculiar when he didn't know where the thought had come from himself.

  "I know the drill!" With an indignant rustle of grey feathers, he marched to the small, mother-of-pearl encrusted door which lay to the right of the great one and stepped inside.

  "Weapons?"

  "Pulse rifle," Abaddon pulled his sidearm out of its holster. "Pulse pistol. Pulse grenades. Knife. Another knife. More grenades. Tear gas. Another knife. Miniature pulse pistol. Flash grenades."

  The guard carefully laid out each weapon inside a numbered plastic bucket. He looked down at Abaddon's sword, an uncommon weapon for an Angelic to be carrying, especially since it was Sata'anic in nature and not the curved blade carried by the Cherubim.

  "Sword." Abaddon unclipped the weapon and held it horizontally. He could not resist unsheathing it. The feel of steel scraping against leather reverberated through his hand, the caress of a lover he knew more intimately than even his wife's gentle touch.

  "I'll take good care of it for you, Sir." Astanphaeus's hand trembled as he took the sword, his serpentine-snout mumbling apologies even though this same guard had taken this weapon from him many times.

  "See that you do," Abaddon growled. He resented the fact the Emperor ordered his generals be disarmed each time they stepped foot into his palace, a security measure he had never demanded before his return. The pulse rifle, the grenades? Those Abaddon gave up willingly, but without his sword he felt naked.

  "The scanner, Sir?" Astanphaeus gestured with his short serpentine arms to a machine which looked out of place in the otherwise ornate entrance to the Eternal Emperor's palace.

  Abaddon stared in the viewing port while an infra-red scanner photographed his pupils and measured how long it took to react to changes in the light. The closer you got to the Eternal Emperor, the more scans you were forced to go through, not just for weapons, but delays in reaction time or other warnings that someone did not act under their own control. Hashem was immortal, but occasionally an assassin was sent anyways, incurring collateral damage.

  His eyes drifted over to the backside of the great doorway no mortal except for Lucifer and Supreme Commander-General Jophiel had ever passed through. The mural was the same, same Emperor, same dragon, but instead of the head of a bull, around the lock was engraved a beautiful key on a slender chain. Shay'tan raised an eight-pointed star as though it was a beacon, his fire gone. What did it mean? Nobody knew. But this same mural repeated itself throughout both empires, two empires whose immortal rulers could manipulate their history books to turn news into fairy tales and fairy tales into news, but were reluctant to tear down the monuments which bore evidence of a history which had been suppressed.

  "The Emperor awaits your arrival in the Great Hall, Sir," Astanphaeus said with a serpentine hiss.

  "Thank you, Major Astanphaeus," Abaddon returned his salute.

  He wandered down halls laden with frescos of every creature in the Alliance and the occasional mural of She-who-is. The iolanthian columns which held up the cathedral ceiling were so tall even Shay'tan would not bump his head. Creatures now extinct stared down from the walls in soft pastels, a warning, reminding him what happened to those the Emperor lost interest in keeping under his benevolent care.

  As he reached the portico and the end of the first hallway, his own species was idealized on one of five walls in the circular chamber. His brother-species, Leonids, Merfolk, and Centauri, each graced one fresco. On the ceiling above sat the Cherubim Queen, surrounded by a retinue of monks. The fifth wall stood out not for what was painted there, but for what was missing. Vermin had been hastily painted over a species which had lost the Emperor's favor, the colorful paints a sharp contrast to the muted pastels used everywhere else. Whatever crime had offended the Emperor, it had happened so long ago that no one remembered which species had been erased.

  His boots echoed in the empty hallway as he moved into the Hall of Memories. Esteemed species, long dead and gone, held lofty positions on the ceiling, including a recently added fresco of the Wheles. Someday soon his species would be depicted here. It hardened his resolve to support Lucifer's trade deal even though he had his reservations. He approached the second checkpoint.

  "General Abaddon," a Dardda'il bacteroid chirped at him through a computer interface. "Please step into the hive to be scanned."

  Abaddon held out his arms and flared his wings while the sentient hive-mind swarmed around him, peeking into parts of his body he'd rather not think about. Once upon a time, before Asherah had app
eared at the palace doors carrying Shemijaza's unborn child, Hashem had trusted his guards to simply search all entrants to the palace. He wasn't sure what the Emperor was searching for, but whatever Hashem had seen while he'd fruitlessly pursued Asherah into the Dreamtime, it had been a paranoid old god who'd come back to rule the Alliance.

  "Satisfied?" Abaddon shook a few stray bacteroids out of his hair, once nearly as dark as Colonel Mannuki'ili's, but now the color of his sword. Individually the bacteroids were not sentient, but as a hive organism not only were they the most powerful group-mind in the galaxy, but the way they shared memories from bacteroids long dead and in the grave meant the creatures had a type of immortality.

  "No signs of anomalies," the Dardda'il hive mind spoke through the computer interface. "You may pass to the next checkpoint."

  He passed through four more checkpoints until he came to a pair of golden doors depicting the Eternal Tree. In the carving the branches were heavy with fruit, something the real Eternal Tree had not borne for thousands of years. Beneath it, some species the Emperor had hurried along to sentience in the Alliance's early days, before he had enacted seed world bans prohibiting interference in the evolution of newly-sentient races, reached up to pick the fruit.

  On either side of the entrance stood the Emperor's six-limbed Cherubim guard, thirteen feet tall and bristling with ancient weapons, intricately carved armor, and their trademark curved sword. There was no expression in those stern faces.

  "Master Ujitaru, Master Tsuneie," Abaddon greeted the two Cherubim masters with a respectful salute.

  Although his esteem of the Emperor had dimmed these past 25 years, his regard for the species that guarded Hashem's immortal form had not. If anything, he regarded the race which had trained last full-blooded Seraphim with awe. The Cherubim had taken in one of his species and turned him into one of them.