A second archway rose ahead. Through it shone dim lavender light. A deep breathing, snorting, and cackling sounded from beyond.
Marco and Addy paused in the tunnel. They looked at each other. They did not need to speak. Marco saw the determination, courage, and love in Addy's eyes. He could think of nobody else he wanted to fight alongside. She was his best friend. She was his lover. She was his heroine. She was his sister-in-arms. She gave him a small smile and nod. He nodded back. They raised their rifles and stepped through the archway, entering the chamber in the heart of the pyramid.
Marco inhaled sharply.
Addy cursed and tightened her grip on her rifle.
"Fucking hell," she whispered.
Marco could barely breathe, couldn't move, only stare in horror.
The chamber was cavernous and dim. A ring of azoth crystals rose ahead, arranged like a Ferris wheel, perhaps twice a man's height. Marco had seen the small crystals that powered great warships, allowing warp drives to bend spacetime; those precious crystals were the size of erasers. Yet here shone azoth crystals the size of his head, intricately cut. Dozens floated in a ring of light.
Here it was. The control center of the empire. The grays' time machine.
And in the center of the crystal ring hung its operator.
The Time Seer. The Oracle.
"The Tick-Tock King," Marco whispered.
His body was small. No larger than a child's. Metal hooks pierced his gray skin, holding him up on cables. His head was larger than his body, the cranium bloated and embedded with crystal shards. Each shard was like a dagger, piercing the skull, reflecting the brain within. The creature's jaw thrust out, lined with sharp teeth, a jaw like a barracuda's. The Oracle had no eyes. They had been gouged out, the skin stitched over the empty sockets. Only thin scars remained where eyes had once been.
Yet strangest were the creature's arms. Dozens of arms thrust out from his body, arranged like the blades of a windmill. The fingers sprouted claws, and an eye blinked on each palm. There were as many arms as crystals in the ring, Marco realized. As he stood watching, the Oracle kept reaching out different hands, grabbing different crystals, and peering into them.
And inside the crystals, Marco could see visions. He could see Green Earth. He could see a great battle raging, the saucers filling the sky, the human army falling before the grays.
He is peering across time, Marco thought. The great battle rages here, on this ground, in this city, a million years ago. The Oracle knows. He is the master of time.
The creature raised his head. He looked at Marco and Addy. He grinned, hissing and drooling.
Marco and Addy shouted and opened fire.
The Oracle laughed. He grabbed several crystals from the ring and held them out. The bolts hit the crystals and shot back. One blast hit Marco's leg, and he screamed and fell, his flesh sizzling. Another blast slammed into Addy's shoulder, knocking her against the wall.
They tried to keep firing. But the Oracle held out two other hands, these ones empty. An invisible force reached out and grabbed the rifles. The guns tore free from Marco and Addy, flew through the air, and ended up in the Oracle's hands. The creature grinned as he crushed the rifles, crumpling the metal. He tossed the ruined rifles aside. With a sweep of one hand, he slammed the door shut from afar, sealing Marco and Addy in the chamber.
"He's some kind of fucking Jedi," Addy whispered, gripping her wounded shoulder.
"Tooth and nail!" Marco shouted, running toward the creature. "Fight!"
Addy screamed wordlessly and joined him. They raced toward the Oracle, determined to slay the beast with their bare hands. They leaped up, reaching for the deformed creature.
The Oracle swung his arms.
One of his fists, hard and cruel as a brick, slammed into Marco's head. He fell. Blood dripped from his temple. Another fist hit Addy's jaw, knocking her to the floor. She bled from her mouth.
They struggled to their feet, wheezing, bleeding, facing the Oracle. The creature hung in the center of the crystal ring, suspended on the cables. He cackled.
"Captain Marco Emery," the Oracle hissed, his voice like wind in a graveyard. "Captain Addy Linden. I smelled your stench from years away. I lured you here. Welcome."
Addy shouted and leaped forward again. Another blow knocked her back. She fell to the floor and spat out a tooth. Marco rushed to her side. They knelt, facing the monstrosity that hung before them. Its dozens of arms spread out their claws, forming a wall of blades. It seemed impossible to reach its body. Marco and Addy had no weapons. They had no way to slay this beast.
We came so close, Marco thought. Only to fail.
He rose.
He charged at the Oracle in blind fury.
The claws grabbed him, lifted him from the ground, and tossed him against the wall. Marco fell down hard, banging his tailbone, maybe cracking it. He couldn't breathe. The claws had sliced him. He bled.
"What do you want?" Marco shouted. "Why don't you just kill us?"
The Oracle opened several of his hands. The eyes on the palms stared at him.
"Kill you?" the creature hissed. "No. Death is a mercy to vermin such as you. I want you to live for many decades. To suffer for as long as your pathetic lifespans will allow. Like I made . . . her suffer."
Addy pushed herself up, mouth bleeding, shoulder burnt. She spat out blood. "Who are you talking about?"
The Oracle laughed, a sickly sound like bones crunching.
"Still you don't know!" the beast said. "Still you have not understood. All this while, you have been fighting Nefitis, goddess of the Sanctified Sons. Do you still not know who Nefitis is?"
Marco struggled to rise. His cuts were deep. They wouldn't stop bleeding.
"Nefitis is your daughter!" he shouted at the Oracle. "We know this. Lailani saw this truth."
The Oracle licked his jaws. His tongue was lined with teeth. "Yes. Nefitis is my daughter. I fathered her many years ago. And do you know who her mother is?" The creature's grin widened. "Do you whose womb I placed the holy seed into?"
"We're not interested in riddles," Marco said.
"Ah, but life is a riddle," said the Oracle. "Space and time are a great riddle. And I am the riddle master. I see all paths. I uncoil all mysteries. I shatter. I mend. I ask. And I answer. This is the greatest of riddles. Who gave birth to Nefitis? Who grew her seed in the womb, who nursed her at the breast? The mother was not Sanctified. She was a human woman. Yes. She was a human as you are. You see, hybrids are strong. Hybrids are built to survive on Old Earth. I have kept my mate here. Decades later, still she lingers in my den. Still she serves me. Still she pleasures me. Still she suffers. See her! See the mother of Nefitis! See your own future!"
The creature reached behind him and opened a door on the opposite wall. His claws reached into the shadows, grabbed a figure, and pulled it into the light.
Marco and Addy found themselves staring at an elderly woman.
She must have been a hundred years old. Her skin was saggy and splotched with liver marks. Her hair was white and thin. Marco had a flashback to Abaddon, to seeing the old woman the scum emperor had kept captive. For an instant he thought he was gazing at the same woman.
But then he stared closer.
He gazed into this old woman's green eyes.
And there was no more riddle. He knew her.
Tears streamed down Marco's cheeks.
"Ben-Ari," he whispered.
* * * * *
Ben-Ari, a hundred years old, frail and wrinkled and bent, gazed at Marco and Addy. Her eyes flooded with tears.
"Marco," the old woman whispered. "Addy. After so long . . . it's really you."
She wept.
"No," Marco whispered. He fell to his knees. "God. No."
Tears flowed down his cheeks. But he knew it was true. That it was her. That he had failed to save her. That Ben-Ari, his heroine, his guiding light—that she had been suffering here for decades. He sobbed.
"You fu
cking liar!" Addy shouted at the Oracle. "This is fake! Ben-Ari is young! She's young! She's . . ."
"She's been here for decades." The Tick-Tock King laughed, clutching Ben-Ari in his claws. "My soldiers captured her not long after you left Earth in your mechas. They brought her to me seventy years ago. I enjoyed the first few years, when she was young and fresh, not yet broken. She gave me many children. Most died, as hybrids often do. I enjoyed consuming their flesh. But one, a daughter, lived. Nefitis lived! Nefitis—strongest among us. In her veins flows the blood of the oracles and the blood of Einav Ben-Ari, strongest of human women. And Nefitis grew mighty. She traveled to ancient Egypt and found humans to worship her. She sent her monks to live on Isfet, to glorify her name. And now, Marco and Addy, now Nefitis is assaulting your world, conquering Old Earth, preparing it for my arrival. Soon we will go there together." He swung on his cables, bringing himself closer to Addy, and sniffed. "This one will make a good mate once Ben-Ari is dead."
Addy sneered. "I'd rather fuck a porcupine's prickly dick."
The Oracle licked his jaws. "Ah, humor. That is one of the things that breaks first. And it will break, Addy. When I torture you, it will break. Like the rest of you. Like Ben-Ari broke."
The Oracle swung one arm, backhanding Ben-Ari.
The elderly woman fell, blood splattering.
"You son of a bitch!" Marco shouted, running forth.
The Oracle cut him. Marco kept running, suffering the wounds. Bleeding, weak, maybe dying, he reached Ben-Ari. He knelt by her. He pulled her into his arms. She gazed up at him, blood trickling from her mouth. Her skin was wrinkled, sagging. One of her eyes had gone blind. Her hair was but wisps.
"I've got you, Einav," Marco whispered. "I've got you. I'm here."
With arthritic fingers, she gripped his hand. She was trying to speak. Her voice was too soft. He leaned down.
"Marco," she whispered into his ear. "Fight him."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ben-Ari stood on the pile of rubble, facing the goddess. The ruins of Jerusalem spread around them. She had lost her helmet in the battle, and the sandy wind blew her long blond hair. She was thirty-two years old. She was a major in the military, a captain of HOPE. She was a woman alone, death around her, facing a goddess of evil. With a thin smile, Ben-Ari raised her massive .50-cal railgun.
Nefitis shrieked, jaws opened wide, revealing human flesh in her gullet. The goddess outstretched her claws, bellowing, her stench on the wind. Around her spread the devastation. Fallen archways, cracked minarets, and crumbling domes. Thousands of dead warriors, humans and grays alike. Burning tanks. Shattered saucers and jets. The battle was still raging, but here they stood alone.
Ben-Ari.
Nefitis.
They faced each other upon this biblical mountain. Around them, the world burned.
"You cannot take this world!" Ben-Ari said. "This is not your time, Nefitis. This Earth belongs to us. You must leave this place."
Nefitis screamed and leaped toward her, claws lashing. Ben-Ari fired her railgun. A bullet the size of a dagger slammed into Nefitis, knocking her back a step. The goddess roared, blood seeping from her chest.
She can be hurt, Ben-Ari thought. She is no goddess. She is mortal. She bleeds like the rest of us.
"Call off your troops!" Ben-Ari said. "Retreat back to your own time! This era is forbidden to you. Retreat now with your hosts, and I will let you live. Stay and I will shatter your bones upon this mountain."
Nefitis advanced toward her. Her foot crushed Petty as she walked over him. The president was unconscious, maybe dead already. Blood seeped from a gash on his belly, and his hand was severed.
"You fool," Nefitis hissed at Ben-Ari. "Do you still not know who I am?"
"You are Nefitis, a wretched creature," Ben-Ari said. "You are no goddess. You are humanity's malice and cowardice distilled. You are the end of a path we will not tread. Leave now! I am Einav Ben-Ari, a captain of HOPE, a soldier of Earth. Leave now! This planet is forbidden to you. I banish you from this world."
The sun set. Shadows fell upon Jerusalem. The battle raged on, explosions lighting the night.
Nefitis stared at Ben-Ari. She tilted her head. And she began to laugh.
"No. You still do not know." Nefitis cackled. "But you will. It is time for our conquest. Time for my reign to begin. And time for truth."
Nefitis leaped forward.
Ben-Ari fired her railgun.
The hypersonic bullet slammed through the creature's chest, shattering ribs, emerging from her back, a blow that could have slain a bull, but Nefitis did not even slow down. She rammed into Ben-Ari with the might of a crashing warship.
Ben-Ari screamed, knocked onto her back.
She fired again. Her bullet plowed through Nefitis's head, taking one eye, bursting out the back with a shower of brains.
Yet still the creature lived.
Her claws—by God, they were so strong—grabbed Ben-Ari's railgun and shattered the barrel. The claws then drove into Ben-Ari's shoulders, piercing deep, and she screamed.
Nefitis straightened, lifting Ben-Ari like a piece of meat on a skewer.
The creature's remaining eye stared at Ben-Ari in amusement, filled with visions of a dying world.
"You cannot kill me," Nefitis hissed, and a cruel grin twisted her thin mouth. "I am your daughter."
Ben-Ari hung in the creature's grip, staring, unable to breathe.
"No," she whispered. "No! You lie!"
Nefitis sneered. "Look. See the truth."
And in that black eye, Ben-Ari saw her future.
She saw herself captured, taken a million years to the future, to a blackened Earth, the era of the grays. Taken to a time seventy years before the grays had launched their invasion.
She saw herself beaten, chained.
She saw a deformed creature with a hundred arms mount her, rape her, impregnate her.
She saw herself giving birth to a twisted babe, a hybrid, created to have her strength, to survive on Old Earth, to fight for her monstrous father.
A babe named Nefitis.
A babe who grew into a goddess, a terror.
The visions faded, and Ben-Ari wept.
"Yes," Nefitis whispered. "Now you see. Finally, Mother, you understand. I will take you to my world now. To a time before my birth. To my father. And he will impregnate you. He will create me in your womb. A circle in time. It has always been. It always will be. You created our race, Einav Ben-Ari. And you created me."
Ben-Ari stared, trembling, bleeding.
No. This can't be real. This is a lie. A deception. This can't be true.
Yet she knew that it was.
She hung her head low.
Around them, the world was falling. Platoon after platoon fell dead. The corpses of humanity piled up. Petty lay on the rubble, bleeding, dying. Ben-Ari looked around her, and she saw the faces of the dead. So many gone. Because of her. Because of her . . .
Gray soldiers were climbing the Temple Mount, rising toward Nefitis and Ben-Ari.
I am surrounded, Ben-Ari thought. We have lost this world. We have failed. Humanity will fall. What have I done?
Still holding her above the ground, Nefitis laughed.
"Do not weep, Mother. You have given birth to a great race. Forever shall we praise your name. You created us. You gave us this world. And now, Mother, now it's time to meet Father. Our story has been cycling throughout eternity. It's time to begin the cycle again."
A portal opened above them, blue and crackling, leading to the future.
Inside the portal, she saw him. Waiting. Licking his lips. He hung from cables in a ring of crystals. The Tick-Tock King. A creature with many arms. A creature ready to mount her, impregnate her, break her.
So I must break them.
Ben-Ari had lost her rifle. No more human troops were here to save her. She was wounded, she was weak. The claws tightened.
"I cannot kill you," Ben-Ari whispered. "But I can break the c
ycle."
She raised her prosthetic arm and opened the hatch, revealing the hidden compartment.
She pulled out the derringer from within. The pistol her grandfather had given her on her twelfth birthday. Her first gun.
Nefitis's remaining eye widened.
Yet Ben-Ari did not aim the gun at that eye.
She placed the derringer against her own temple.
Nefitis shrieked, terror filling her eye.
"What are you doing, ape?"
"Ending this," Ben-Ari whispered. "Making sure you will never be born. Creating a paradox."
She took a deep breath.
She thought of the rolling hills of Earth, of green fields and golden deserts, of snowcapped mountains and deep blue seas.
She thought of the beauty and nobility of humanity, of symphonies and literature and paintings to make one weep with wonder.
She thought of those she loved. Of Lailani, forever in her heart. Of the professor, the only man she had ever truly loved. Of her lost parents. Of Addy. Of Marco. And her tears fell, and her heart was full.
She thought of a pale blue marble. Of a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Of Earth.
Because Earth is my home, she thought. Earth is here. Earth is beautiful. Earth is eternal.
She gazed upon the ruins of Jerusalem. Her father had been born here. This was her home. This was a good place to die. And as she gazed around her, Ben-Ari no longer saw the grays, no longer saw the cruelty of Nefitis, no longer saw the death of thousands.
She saw snow falling in a winter's dawn.
She saw flowers blooming as spring's birds sang.
She saw generations crossing hills and meadows to sing, to pray, to tell stories, to love.
She saw more than just Earth. She saw humanity. And it was good.
It was farewell.
"It's beautiful," she whispered, tears falling. "It's so beautiful."
She smiled and closed her eyes.
She pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9) Page 25
