Realms Of The Gods

by C. M. Kane

  Tae felt her fear rising but pushed it down, she knew she had a tendency to be mouthy at times, well a lot, if truth be told, but she was just so sick and tired of being pushed around when she had done nothing wrong. It wasn’t fair.

  Although she had never intended to come onto the Kydomois, circumstances beyond her control had forced her to. She had freely offered them the only things she had, her food, coupled with information, information that could prove vital to this god and his crew. But, once again, what kind of thanks did she get for all her efforts? Threats! Tae do this or else we’ll kill you! Tae do that or else we’ll kill you! She waited patiently while she silently fumed at the injustice of her treatment.

  The warriors ordered more techs to come and unload the boxes. Each was quickly scanned and then opened; she could see the crew looking at each other as if in disappointment at the small amount of food they contained. They appeared a little pale, but from the way the wolven warriors were eyeing the ripmeals she knew they must be starving.

  What the hell had happened here? Battleships usually carried supplies to feed its crews for at least six months, and from what she understood, the Kydomois had only been missing for three weeks or so. Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the turbo lift door and the appearance of a very large, very angry Ares, trailed by an equally angry, handsome blonde vampire who was obviously his second.

  Tae studied the god as he strode over. Damn me, she thought as she eyed him up and down, aren’t any of these guys ugly?

  This one had long brown hair with the front plaited on both sides in the way of warriors of old. He wore brown leather pant along with a sleeveless vest and boots, which all seemed perfectly designed to show off his sixandahalffoot physique. Tae knew she would’ve had to squash down her pheromones if it wasn’t for the fact that he already had his sword drawn, and what looked like a -I’m just here to kill you then I’ll be gone - look on his face.

  As he neared her Tae spoke quickly, from her first site of him she knew she was going to have to lie if she were going to have any hope of survival.

  ‘Before you kill me,’ she began quickly, ‘would you like to hear Lord Zeus’ message?’ Ares stopped before her, his brown eyes glittering with anger. He raised his sword to her throat and looked into her eyes.

  Tae stared back, her eyebrows raised in question while trying desperately not to betray any emotion while he considered her words, the warriors around her looked on silently.

  Ares narrowed his eyes. ‘Speak,’ he said, his sword pressing lightly against her throat.

  Tae felt something warm begin to wind its way down her neck and realized with a start it was her own blood. It was then she knew he was probably going to kill her as soon as she told him what he wanted to know anyway.

  How the hell do I keep getting into these situations? Her mind worked franticly as she tried to figure out a way to stop him taking her head.

  Ares respected strength and courage, or that’s what all the texts she’d ever read said. She had no choice, she could either stand up to him and maybe die with a little dignity, if that’s the way things turned out, or cower like a little girl and die anyway. Pride and anger won out; if she were going to die she might as well make it memorable.

  ‘Not until you stop poking me with that bloody great sword of yours.’ She raised her chin and glared at him. For the first time Ares looked slightly taken aback, he continued to watch at her, but now with a much more considering look.

  He really was quite intimidating, Tae thought to herself, all angry eyes and muscle-bound body. Without realizing it she found her eyes drifting appreciatively down his body before she quickly righted them again.

  Valaria and Radnor were right, she thought with shock. She was starting to notice males at the most inconvenient times, and it was only getting worse. If she didn’t do something about this soon she really might end up jumping some poor unsuspecting male’s bones. Ares withdrew his sword, wiping her blood on his second in command’s cape before he re-sheathed it.

  ‘Speak,’ he said.

  ‘Well, first off, don’t do anything rash, because they’re coming for you.’

  Ares’ only reaction was to slightly raise his eyebrows, he remained silent.

  ‘I don’t know exactly when,’ she said, ‘but it will be soon. They were waiting until they salvaged the Fenris from the volcano on Terra; Vulcan has his crews working on it now, but last I heard they weren’t moving until she was out.’

  She caught the flash of hope that appeared briefly on Ares’ face before he quickly disguised it.

  She continued with all she knew, if he wanted her to tell him everything in front of these people then obviously he trusted them. ‘They were attacked by the Hindishah and some traitors,’ she glanced over at Darva, ‘mostly thalien and humans in maintenance uniforms, they disabled several of the Gods ships and tried to kill them while they were in the Pavilion watching the Island.’

  Ares held up his hand. ‘You say Loki is alive, how is this possible?’

  Tae nodded. ‘Yes, he also saved thirty of his best techs. He rigged some sleepers to what power crystals he had left to keep them all asleep, then he rigged his own sleeper to the sensors so as soon as they detected fresh air he awakened.’

  ‘How did this happen?’ Ares asked.

  Tae sighed; she would have to tell him everything from the very beginning. She told her story, relating a slightly amended version of everything that had happened. She knew it might be more prudent to change things slightly until she knew where she stood, so she never mentioned her Uber nanites. Instead she told him she had accidentally stumbled across and downloaded the Loki vid. She also told him everything she knew, up until the last meeting with the gods. She did omit her vision, along with her purloining of the jumper from Thor; she had a feeling that wouldn’t have been welcomed, either.

  ‘Have you any proof of what you say?’ he asked. ‘Or do you simply expect us to believe this fanciful story?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I told you they all believe Hera is involved, so if that’s what’s keeping you here then you know I’m telling the truth, otherwise how could I know?’

  ‘You could know if you came straight from Hera’s ship.’

  ‘My jumper,’ she said, ‘can you tell if it’s from the Olympus?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but that could have been stolen.’ He cocked his head to the side, regarding her quizzically. ‘This could simply be an elaborate ruse to get us into the open again before we can warn the others.’

  Tae tried to think of anything that could convince this still angry, suspicious god. ‘You know the others,’ she said. ‘You know how they would speak.’

  Ares nodded and she continued. ‘Lord Vulcan said at the meeting you wouldn’t be so stupid as to enter Cassandra’s swamp.’

  Ares gave a low growl. ‘But Lord Poseidon said you might, if you had information you thought they should know, otherwise you’d go out pulse cannons blazing … his words, not mine,’ she said.

  Ares looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Although this sounds like them I still do not trust you.’

  Darva stepped forward. ‘Excuse me my interruption, Lord Ares, but you should know she bought rip-meals, over three hundred by the looks of things.’

  Ares eyes narrowed immediately. ‘How did you know we had been hit in our storage compartments and were out of food if you didn’t come straight from Hera?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I didn’t bring the food for you originally.’ Tae bit her lip in uncertainty then, taking a deep breath, told him the rest of the story. She told him of how Loki had hired her, how Radnor had threatened her. This conversation led to Cassandra and Tae’s special little friends that she was hiding from them. Truth within a lie, Tae, truth within a lie. They mustn’t know about the nanites.

  ‘I told Radnor I quit and went to my room. I didn’t know what to do after that, but I knew that this Cassandra didn’t seem to be bothered by anyone, and I thought that she might have
a job opening. I decided I’d go see her in the hopes I might be able to get my life back again. You know, without people trying to constantly kill me.’

  ‘So you stole a jumper?’ Ares lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’re a thief, then.’

  Tae’s chin went up a notch at the implication that she was a common thief, her mouth pursing in anger. ‘I am not a thief. I asked Lord Thor if I could borrow a jumper to complete my flight training. I have every intention of returning it when I’m finished. I took some food and water from the galley so I wouldn’t get hungry while flying, and I only did that after getting the head food tech’s permission.’

  Ares turned and looked at the remains of the jumper, hiding his growing amusement at her explanation. He wondered briefly if she were aware how her emotions played out clearly across her expressive features when she became angry. He hadn’t missed her earlier appraisal of him either. Still, he didn’t trust her, and he never gave any leeway to those he didn’t trust.

  ‘It looks like it won’t be flying anywhere soon, so how do you plan to return it?’

  Tae smiled at him. ‘Well it’s safe here with you so you could give it back to the Olympus next time you see them,’ she spread her hands, ‘perfect.’

  She sighed. ‘Of course, this puts the kibosh on my plans to go see Cassandra. When my jumper’s engine was hit I knew I was never going to make it, I was just lucky I stumbled across you when I was almost out of oxygen.’

  Ares turned to Darva. ‘Test the food, if it’s clean then divide it between everyone equally. In the meantime throw her in the brig until I decide what to do with her.’

  ‘What?’ Tae screeched. ‘You can’t be serious. I’ve just bloody well helped you.’

  Ares swung around, the cold dangerous look back in his eyes. ‘Don’t test me, woman. Loki may have put up with your childish insolence, I however will not.’ He turned to Darva. ‘If she gives you any trouble, kill her.’

  Tae gaped at her captor as he walked away. Childish insolence? What a … a … She fumed, searching for a word foul enough to describe the arrogant snot of a god that had just swept out of the hangar.

  ‘Buttroach!’ she exploded, saying the first thing that popped into her head.

  The milling warriors looked at her with a mixture of shock and amusement as Tae continued to stare angrily at the turbo lift Ares had just disappeared into. She realized that now she would have to find a way to escape this beaten up shit heap, steal a jumper - something which she now felt particularly fine about- and get the hell out of here in one piece.

  The Universe hates me, that’s what it is, it just flat out hates me. She humphed loudly in annoyance.

  One problem at a time, Tae, just take it one problem at a time.

  Darva began organizing the warriors to take the crates away for more in depth testing. While he was busy with that Tae took a good look around the hangar at what jumpers there were, and where they were situated. She turned back to Darva as he nodded to a large wolven.

  ‘Redaan, if it all comes back clean make sure it’s divided equally among all the crew.’ The wolven nodded, hefting a crate onto his broad shoulder and walking off.

  ‘Come with me.’ Darva gestured for Tae to walk in front of him, his small zap gun never leaving her back. They entered a turbo lift and she took notice of the level she was on, twentythree, she thought. They took the lift to level seventeen then walked down a long corridor until they came to a horizontal lift. They went another six stops before Darva motioned for her to get out again. Directly across the hallway in a large room a young elven warrior sat at a comdesk, his feet up as he read from a compad.

  Excellent, only one guard, thought Tae. She immediately tried to look as scared and as harmless as possible.

  ‘Commander Darva.’ The elf jumped to his feet, a dull flush of embarrassment creeping up his cheeks at being caught slacking off.

  Darva nudged her forward. ‘Corporal Mallion, I have a prisoner for you. She’ll most likely be short term until Lord Ares decides what to do with her.’

  Corporal Mallion looked at Tae who now had tears in her eyes and looked terrified. She was already using the men’s exchange to innocently look around the room, but in truth she was taking account of all of the visible security measures.

  ‘This way.’ Mallion led them into the next room.

  Darva pushed her gently into a grey cell with a sleeping pallet and a waste receptacle unit in the corner, as soon as she was inside an electrical field shot up over the doorway.

  Corporal Mallion smiled, ‘I wouldn’t touch the doorway if I was you’ he grinned, ‘not if you want to keep your hand.’

  Darva gave her one last look of amusement, then strolled off whistling, no doubt thinking of the hot meal that she had just so conveniently provided for him.

  Corporal Mallion looked at her with interest, ‘I haven’t seen you around before, so what did you do?’ he asked curiously

  Tae bit her lip, still trying to look wideeyed and afraid.

  ‘I got lost,’ she said.

  Bursting in to tears, she ran to the pallet and threw herself face down before the corporal had a chance to notice she wasn’t actually crying. It had been hard enough for her to get a tear in her eye as it was, just to look tearful she’d had to resort to pricking the inside of her nose with her little claw.

  Mallion sighed in disappointment, he’d been stuck here for no other reason than his Lords insistence that a warrior be stationed as a guard in the ships brig at all times. Whether or not it held prisoners seemed to be immaterial to his orders, he returned to his desk in the outer room feeling slightly annoyed. He might have liked to talk to her to relieve his boredom, but not while she was blubbering like that.

  Terrans, he thought in disgust. So pathetically weak, no wonder all the other races hold most of them in such contempt. He returned to his compad.

  Tae stopped sobbing slowly to keep up the act and keep him away from her, and then she started planning. When she was as happy as she could be with the plan she came up with she set to work.

  They had left her com-watch with her; probably trying to let her think they had forgotten it in the hope she would try to contact someone.

  Big mistake, arseholes, she thought savagely. They didn’t know about her powerful friends, but they sure as hell were about to find out.

  As she lay face down on the pallet she touched her right hand to the screen, ordering her nanites to link with the mainframe of the Kydomois as discretely as possible and find out which cell she was in, and then to gain her access to the security monitors. After a less than a minute she had the information. She took a thirty second vid of herself from the wall mounted camera and then rerouted it to the monitors that were trained on her cell. She then turned the monitor’s eye off and set what she had recorded into a continuous loop. Now if anyone happened to look at her cell they would only see her lying quietly, face down on the pallet as if asleep.

  Once she had her cell sorted out she sat up and got to work. She found the jumper bay’s command centre next and ordered the hangar doors to open on a specific set of numbers within the next hour. She just had to hope the pulse cannons weren’t fixed as yet and wouldn’t be able to fire on her. She hadn’t been able to find an access point to them, besides, she thought that any tech working on them would be onto her immediately if she tried. Luckily she would be exiting on the port side near what she hoped were the damaged cannons. She was hoping they would also have the smaller particle beam weapons near them offline as they fixed their much larger guns.

  Tae thought she might be reasonably safe, after all, it only made sense to switch off all equipment in an area undergoing any major repairs, there was less of a chance of unwanted accidents that way, especially when you didn’t know what other damage might have occurred to an area.

  After that came what she considered the riskiest part of her plan. If she dropped the door to her cell she couldn’t reach the corporal before he could raise the alarm, especially not wi
th an elven’s natural speed. Not that she’d have any hope of overpowering him even if she did; Brohan had already proven to her how inadequate her fighting skills were compared to a fully trained warrior.

  She could, however, set off the stunners in the small prison complex and incapacitate him. The only trouble with this plan was that she could easily stun herself at the same time.

  She found the controls to the stunners and wound back the sonic shock pulse she was about to get as far as possible. She prayed it was enough, and that this was the one time the elven’s wonderfully enhanced hearing would work against him.

  When she was ready she crawled under the sleeping pallet and dragged the thin sleeping pad around her head as firmly as she could and got ready. She huddled there with her hands pressing the pad as hard as possible to her ears. Then closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she ordered her nanites to activate the stunners.

  It felt like a sledge hammer slammed into her head. After a moment of stunned agony, she rolled back out from under the pallet and vomited. Her head was ringing and she felt like she was going to be sick again at any moment, but she was still conscious, if only barely.

  She sat up with her back against the wall and ordered her nanites to cut the power to her cell door. It dropped immediately. Pushing against the cell wall for support she got unsteadily to her feet. Her head swam alarmingly but she forced herself to start moving, she couldn’t afford to collapse, she had no idea if her plan to incapacitate the elven warrior had worked.

  She staggered into the outer room and found her jailer unconscious at his desk. She smiled grimly, so far so good. As quickly as she could she stripped the warrior of his shirt and put it on, tucking her hair inside it. Now, if someone saw her from a distance they might not realize it was her. She steadied herself against the desk as another wave of nausea washed over her, closing her eyes she breathed deeply until the bout of sickness passed. Tae gave herself one last look over; she was as ready as she’d ever be. Taking another deep breath she grabbed the warrior’s compad then peeked out the doorway; she still felt ill and wobbly, but she knew that time was now her enemy. When she was sure it was clear she hurried directly across and into the turbo lift. Once safely inside she finished arranging her hair and buttoning up the shirt. Satisfied, she pressed the button for six stops further along.