Sins of Angels (The Complete Collection)

by Larkin, Matt

  Rachel pointed at a circular tower in the distance. “The Ark’s records are pretty sparse, but I think that’s a war archive. Maybe it can tell us about the Adversary.”

  David suppressed a shudder. The Adversary wasn’t something you just went looking into. It was the bogie to frighten children to sleep at night. It was the force in the darkness, beyond the void, waiting to prey on humanity. Without the Angels to protect them, mankind could never hope to face such a threat. It’s what they were all raised to believe, and despite all that had happened, he supposed he still did.

  “I’m reading a signal on the continent directly south of this one,” Phoebe said. “It could indicate some kind of power source still running. I should probably take the shuttle and go check it out.”

  Rachel glanced back at her. “We have no idea what might be on this planet. Splitting up could be dangerous.”

  “Aye, but we also don’t have all the time in the universe, lass,” David said. “Take Knight.”

  “Right, because I need a damn bodyguard, David.”

  Knight said nothing, but David could feel the man watching Rachel. Just as well to send him away.

  “He’s right,” Rachel said. “David’s here, Knight. I’ll be fine. Help her find whatever’s down there and let us know.”

  Knight sighed and strode back toward the shuttle.

  Phoebe muttered something David didn’t catch.

  “They could probably use some time alone to work through things, anyway,” Rachel said when the pair were out of earshot.

  David wasn’t so sure. He was no empath, but he could see tension brewing between Phoebe and the Gehennan. Still, Rachel did have a way with these things. Maybe she was right.

  It took several minutes to hike toward the building Rachel called a war archive.

  The tower was perhaps ten stories tall. The doors had long since fallen away, and plants had overgrown the lobby.

  A low growl echoed through the room when they entered. In the corner, a pair of wolves shifted. Angels had recorded the genetic material from every known animal on Eden. They’d recreated the fauna on other planets throughout the universe. Odd to think these wolves were the true source, the real animals rather than descendants of clones.

  David drew his pulse pistol and fired a shot in their direction. The wolves yelped and scampered away.

  Rachel groaned, rubbing her head.

  David was at her side in a moment. “What is it, lass?”

  “I don’t know … You didn’t hear anything?”

  He shook his head. Other than the wolves, he’d heard nothing. David brushed his hand along her cheek. She was caked in a chill sweat. “Rach?”

  She blinked rapidly, and swayed on her feet. “Nothing. Nothing, I thought I … I’m just excited. And I can’t hear the Ark. I don’t know, on the planet I guess I’m too far away. I … I still felt it on Horesh …”

  Bloody void, was she going through some kind of withdrawal from the psychic connection? Could she have become addicted to the damn Ark? He pulled Rachel close and held her head against his chest, trying not to let her see the concern on his face. She’d probably feel it anyway, but he couldn’t help that.

  Rachel pointed at something over his shoulder. “Look.” She pulled free and stumbled over to a pair of sliding doors with a slight wedge open between them. “This must have been a lift shaft. We need to get down there.”

  “You think the records were underground?”

  “That would make sense. They most likely considered an underground vault the safest. Such a place would have been more likely to withstand orbital bombardment.”

  Aye. David slipped his fingers between the doors and pulled. The metal shrieked as it slid open. He pushed the other one back into the wall too. The shaft was deep, deeper than he could see the bottom of. He tapped a button on his suit, turning on his wrist light.

  “Five stories down, I’d wager.”

  At the bottom the lift had fallen. It looked like it ran on a cable rather than mag rails. The cable had snapped, and the lift was crushed down there.

  Rachel’s warmth was right by his shoulder, looking down. “You could use your grav-net to jump down,” she said.

  “Aye. But how would we get back up? There have to be stairs. If the place ever lost power they’d want a way to escape, right?”

  “All right, so we’ll jump down,” Rachel said. “Then we find the stairs to climb back up.”

  Was she serious? “Lass, you can’t wait the extra five minutes to find the staircase?”

  Rachel looked like she was about to say something, then bit it back. She shrugged, and stalked off searching for another way down.

  David could understand her excitement. This was Eden, after all. Still, he didn’t want her getting reckless.

  “I found something,” she said a few minutes later. Rachel indicated a doorway that revealed a series of staircases leading down. She took off downward before he could respond. He followed her, pulse pistol in hand.

  Downstairs they found what looked to have been some kind of communications station. It was pitch black, the only light source coming from David’s suit.

  Flat monitors rested on the wall and a dozen others sat atop rusted metal desks. A thick cloud of dust kicked up as Rachel walked around the room, and she started coughing. David’s Smogger genes helped him filter the air, so it didn’t bother him.

  Rachel walked toward a desk, then stumbled and fell to her knees. She looked up, her face pale. And she screamed. The sound echoed off the metal walls and reverberated through the floors above them.

  David dashed to her side, and she threw her arms around him.

  “Mac!”

  “What is it? What happened?”

  She trembled in his arms, and for the life of him, he had no idea what was wrong. All he could do was hold her close and pray she’d be all right. And that wasn’t enough. He was supposed to protect the lass. To keep her safe from any threat. And now her connection to that ship—or her withdrawal from it—was hurting her.

  He felt a ripple pressing on his psionic nerves, like the beginning of a migraine building behind his eyes. A wave that came and went. A psychic disturbance coming off Rachel?

  “I saw … A ghost?” she mumbled.

  Say what now? “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Rach.”

  “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you hear them?”

  He shook his head. The only thing he felt was a buzzing building in his head. It was like spending too much time in the Conduit, frying his psionic nerves. Most people couldn’t understand how draining that could be for a Psych.

  He pulled her tighter against his chest. “All right, lass. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “No! Mac, they’re trying to tell me. They’re trying to show me what happened. They need me. Everyone needs me.” She pushed away from him and scrambled over to a panel on the wall.

  With her shirt she brushed away millennia of dust covering the screen. It was some kind of display, long-dead.

  David’s voice caught in his throat, and he almost wanted to weep, to see Rachel so obsessed. Driven off rotation by a quest he’d let her—enabled her—to pursue. God forgive him for ever bringing her here. She wanted to save humanity from itself, but maybe Rachel needed to be saved from herself.

  “It must be because I’m an empath,” she mumbled.

  David sighed, feeling a shudder run through his chest, and slunk into a chair. The metal creaked, but still supported him. “What is?”

  “Think about it, Mac. Living minds create psionic energy fields, right?”

  He scratched his head and shut his eyes. Basic Psych theory. All living beings created energy through their thoughts, and Psychs could pick up on that energy. Telepaths could read actual thoughts, Empaths could pick up emotions, and ESPs, like himself, could read patterns to envision possible futures.

  “So open your mind to it.”

  “There’s no one here, lass.”

  �
��But there was. Seven billion people died on this planet in a matter of hours, Mac. All the pain, that psychic energy, what if it didn’t dissipate? Don’t you feel anything?”

  Was that even possible? That her ghosts might be psionic impressions left behind by the murder of three quarters of a planet? David shut his eyes and tried to do as she asked. Instead of fighting the pressure on his psionic nerves, he opened himself to it.

  Slowly, images formed in his mind. Visions of things, of the people who had been here. They drifted about the room like phantoms, running from console to console, screaming in panic about the ship closing in on Earth.

  “You can see it, can’t you?” Rachel said. She grabbed his arm, and he tried to push the vision at her, connect to her mind. Sometimes two Psychs could share such things.

  “Mars is gone,” he heard someone say. “And they’ve moved in on the Lunar colony.”

  “There are half a million people up there,” someone else shouted. “We’ve got to evacuate them.”

  The screen displayed a ship, though he could barely see it. Jet black against the dark of space, and with razor-sharp wings, like an Angel. Like the Ark. For an instant, the feed showed plasma streams escaping the Adversary ship. Then it cut off.

  “We’ve lost contact with the moon,” a female voice said. “The entire fleet is gone. It’s too late to do anything for them. We have to prepare an evacuation of this planet.”

  “We’re decades away from being ready for that.”

  “Get people on the long range probes. Get them away from Earth …”

  “Nuke the bastards!”

  “The fleet already tried that. The aliens shot them down.”

  David was no empath, but even he could feel the terrible, sickening fear seeping off the so-called ghosts. It was what had been left behind. Three thousand years of terror, of horror remained here.

  Rachel collapsed against him, moaning. God, this place would poison her. A planet’s worth of pain and death lingered here, and it was creeping inside her.

  It would poison any Psych, sooner or later. Was that why the Angels drove mankind away? Was that why they hid the planet? Because with so much pain, it would never be inhabitable again? Except, Knight and Phoebe seemed to be fine. So it was only Psychs who were affected.

  He had to get Rachel back to the Ark. Someone like her didn’t belong on this planet. Maybe no one did.

  He called the second shuttle down remotely.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  When mankind realizes that Eden was a real place, and that the Angels lied to us about how bad it was, everything will change. They will come here in droves to see the place of our origin. And maybe, at long last, they will begin to question the Angels. It’s that first question that proves the hardest. Once a person stops taking everything they’ve been told for granted, once they begin thinking for themselves, their eyes will open.

  Rachel awakened on the shuttle, her head pounding, and her body trembling with fear set deep inside her. Terror unlike anything she had known. A beautiful horror trapped forever in the moment of the death of an entire world.

  She glanced outside to take a last look at the city spread around her. The place was too empty, but not silent. Birds chirped everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. The whole planet had been taken back by nature. Eerie and revitalizing, in a way. Three thousand years had healed this world, and mankind could at last end the Exodus … except for Psychs. Eden could support Norms, she could use the Ark to lead them here. But she was no longer certain she should.

  “You know why they did it, don’t you?” David said.

  Rachel folded her arms and stared out the window. The Angels had denied mankind their homeworld. Did the reason even matter? It should have been humanity’s choice.

  And yet, to think the Angels had really, truly created the Exodus to protect mankind, just like they said they had … It left her nauseated. Could she have been wrong about them? Was it possible?

  No. No! Whatever their reasons, they had created a totalitarian regime. There was no excuse for the physical and ideological domination of another species.

  She tapped her comm. “Jordan to Knight.”

  “Knight here.”

  “We’re going back to the Ark. A dangerous level of psionic energy remains on that planet. Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine. We haven’t noticed anything, really. Except something interfering with the scanners. Phoebe needs more time to locate the source of the signal.”

  “All right. Be careful.”

  The comm clicked off.

  She shut her eyes and tried to rest as David flew them home. The moment they broke orbit, she began to feel the familiar presence of the Ark in her mind. It must have picked up on the lingering fear that had suffused her, because it began to feed such terror back at her.

  The shuttle docked in the hangar, and Rachel rushed out. She had to get to the bridge and calm her Ark down.

  “Rachel, wait a minute, lass,” David said.

  She glanced back at him, but kept walking. She could feel the Ark fully reconnecting to her mind now she was aboard. Making her whole again. She wasn’t going to listen to David demand she take the ship into battle right now.

  “I can’t reach Leah. Something’s not right.”

  Rachel almost walked right into a pair of men in combat armor. It was similar to Sentinel form-fitting armor, but they wore sharply angled helmets and had the QI logo over their hearts.

  “On the ground, now!” one shouted.

  Rachel went for her MAG, but her attackers already had theirs drawn. She’d never get it out in time.

  A pulse blast shot past her head and one QI soldier flew backward. A split second later another pulse took the other one.

  David tackled her to the ground as more QI troops poured into the hallway. He launched himself up and flung one down by his legs.

  How the void had QI even found them? How would anyone know where to find Eden? Could they have followed the Ark through the Conduit? It sounded impossible, but here they were.

  Another tried to pin David’s weapon hand. David twisted the man’s arm backward, and Rachel heard it crack.

  “Jordan to Knight!” Rachel called into the comm. “We’ve been boarded! Knight, come in—”

  A QI security man kicked her head and the comm winked out. White light filled her eyes and her ears rang. The ship was spinning, pulsing through her mind. Its voice spoke to her, warning of countless intruders swarming through her hull. They buzzed through her corridors like an army of ants, clogging her hallways.

  With a groan she rolled over, staring at the ceiling. She blinked, trying to get her vision to clear. She couldn’t hear anything except the warnings the Ark blared through their shared mind. She turned to the side and saw MAG rounds bouncing off David’s suit.

  A dozen QI troopers lay sprawled around the hall, some shot, some with broken bones. More and more filed in, coming from all sides.

  Hands roughly jerked her to her feet. Her legs gave out beneath her, but she felt someone dragging her by the armpits.

  David caught another QI trooper in a headlock and flung him into a charging man. Where was his pulse pistol? Had he dropped it?

  A QI officer shot at him with an electrolaser. David jerked another man in front of him. The victim bore the brunt of the hit, but still David stumbled back.

  God, David.

  She tried to call out to him, but her throat wouldn’t work. Her words slurred over a thick tongue. Was she just dazed, or did she have a concussion? It was probably a good sign she could still think clearly enough to ask the question.

  More officers tackled David. A third. A fourth.

  Quasar Industries had come at them with an army.

  She heard a MAG retort. Her hearing was coming back.

  Rachel dug in her heels and shoved one of the men holding her. He stumbled away and she threw herself onto the other man. Her weight barreled them both to the ground. His armor would p
revent her blows from doing any serious harm, so she grabbed his head and banged it against the deck. Repeatedly.

  A hand jerked her to her feet.

  “Run, lass!”

  David.

  He shoved her down the corridor and she ran.

  They were taking her ship. Her Ark. They were in her hallways. They had entered her bridge. She could feel them, like a gnawing rash eating away at her.

  “Get them out! Get them off me!”

  David shoved her down another hallway.

  Another security team formed up in front of them. Before Rachel could even react, David had pushed her around a corner. The echo of David’s pulse pistol filled the hallway. He must have recovered it.

  Men and women screamed.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her back the way they had been heading. Four bodies now splattered the hallway.

  Her hallway.

  They were bleeding all over her.

  They were trying to take her!

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  And I have to believe, with open eyes, mankind will realize the Angels were not messengers of God at all. I am increasingly convinced these beings are mere aliens who have preyed on human weakness, doubt, and gullibility to cast themselves as divine. They came to us with technology maybe millions of years beyond our own, and we thought them gods.

  Rainforest covered much of the southern continent. Knight had never seen anything like it. He’d thought the Ekron Conservatory a forest. It was nothing. Greenery surrounded him on all sides, more brilliant and more varied than even the overgrowth of the northern continent. Bright blue flowers, some half a meter wide, opened around them.

  Phoebe had detected the signal near here, at an old compound. The degree of underbrush had meant they had to land on a beach and walk over a kilometer to reach this place.

  “It’s kind of beautiful,” she said, staring at a flower. “Strangely alien, too.”

  “If this is really Eden, it’s not alien at all.”