Elorie’s team works on deciphering the Ecumenists’ records. Dave doesn’t fit in with this group, but he thinks sideways enough to come up with the solution for the first part of what happened to the Ecumenists – they flew to Turkey to hunt down some old legends. He and Elorie rekindle their old relationship, and end up getting married by John Lorenzi before they head off to Turkey to continue their mission. In Turkey, Elorie’s team quickly finds the trail of the Ecumenists, who went to the Cappadocia region of Turkey and vanished in one of the local underground cities.
War’s people approach the God Phoenix, and Phoenix’s forces attack them before they can start negotiations. They defeat Phoenix’s forces, but Phoenix flees using an Angel-backed identity switch trick, becoming a hidden Territorial God. Fearing the new tricks of the City of God defenders, they quickly move on Dubuque in his home in Oklahoma City. After a multi-day siege Dubuque’s people defeat them using something new: Supported wielding the power of their God’s worshippers. Satan is also forced to leave Dubuque’s HQ, done in by a nasty trick of Dubuque (she gets accosted by Satan worshippers). Both Satan and Portland’s group blame each other for their respective defeats.
Dana backed out of the fight against Dubuque after she sensed the moral wrongness associated with the siege of Dubuque. She’s also having nightmares caused by her encounter with the Hell incursion. To help her, one of the Indigo group’s leaders, Jan Cox, begins to counsel her on her problems. This gets Dana functional enough to help, as a projection, on a mission against the Seven Suits (the Gods who control and have destroyed the world economy), along with the Gods Change and Freedom, and a projection of War. The Suits and their minions defeat them, and capture Change and Freedom.
Elorie’s team follows a lead that leads them into a lesser-known underground city that, apparently, the Ecumenists entered and never left. While doing their searching, Dave gets to meet the God Persona, who appears in person to heal Elorie (after Dubuque turns Dave into a low-end Supported and uses him to call in Persona). In this imbroglio Dave (a telepathy-immune psychic) learns that Elorie is immune to a wide variety of magic. Called on to map underground passages, Dave gets to use his technical training, and leads them to temple complex that reeks of both magic and bad telepathy vibes. While investigating one of the rooms in the temple complex, an ancient magical device takes over the minds of everyone on the team except Dave. Dave is shot and left behind to die.
Nessa and Ken return to visit Portland. Portland is thinking of calling off the fight against the City of God. Nessa, Ken and Alt come up with a new idea for solving the inter-God conflict problem – a formal and contractual method for conflict resolution they call the Divine Compact, enforced by Godly bindings. Portland calls in an Angel for permission, and they learn the Divine Compact idea is valid. However, they learn about another problem – the Ecumenist Quest group is close to causing a disaster that could cause the Angels to oppose those who learn of the quest’s results. Portland hesitates on the Divine Compact idea, but after Alt’s crew helps her and several other Gods, including War, fight off an attack by Dubuque on one of Portland’s researcher crews, the Telepaths convince Portland’s allied Gods to lean on Portland to join them in the Divine Compact. The fight stresses War’s mind and she, using a recently learned method of seeing the future, now sees a way out of the real problem of the divine conflicts, one where she will have to betray everyone. She hesitantly arranges her first minor betrayal, not yet fully convinced this path is one she should be taking.
The birth of the Divine Compact also allows Nessa to help Nairobi hire a replacement for Uffie. After taking Uffie’s replacement to Nairobi and making the deal, an unknown assailant shoots down the commercial airliner she Ken, and Uffie are riding as they go off to see what form of disaster has hit the Ecumenist questers.
Dana agrees to help Jan rescue a group of young Indigo students from Dubuque’s investigators. While doing the rescue, a small company from Dubuque’s army of Supported surprises them. They trigger a Dubuque-turned traitor in the Indigo group, who kills Jan’s daughter, and a fight starts. In the fight, Dana realizes her potential as a Supported combatant for the first time, and helps the Indigo students to escape – but at the cost of Jan’s life. Afterwards, the Indigo group vanishes.
Alt’s group of Telepaths sense the various deaths and disasters happening among their acquaintances and withdraw within themselves. War uses the time to plot out what she needs to do to arrange the possible ‘good’ future she has found. Nessa mentally eavesdrops in War’s mind and gives her approval of War’s betrayal, revealing that she and Ken survived the missile strike. War proposes she and Alt’s crew attempt to subdue Dubuque on a stealth mission, setting up her first large betrayal. She begins to train them in stealth tactics, after squeezing out of them what they know about the recent disasters.
Meeting later with the rest of Portland’s Divine Compact allies, War learns that the City of God is shutting down all the State and National governments in the areas they control. They have essentially won the fight against Portland and her allies. Portland decides to support War’s stealth subdual plan as a last ditch effort.
Nessa’s group rescues Dave, Nessa having to put work into keeping the rest of her people from killing him, as they are convinced he betrayed the rest of the Ecumenist quest. They follow the rest of the Ecumenist questers to the high Caucasus, where they find a village of inexplicably powerful entities who call themselves the Watchers. The Watchers, who are powerful magicians, radiate both evil and good. They confront Nessa and her group, who learn the Watchers killed the Ecumenists who came to visit them, as well as everyone on the Ecumenist quest except Elorie.
After a great deal of reconnaissance and study, Satan and Willie go after the Seven Suits. Their first attempt ends in a mild failure, chased off by the Suits’ Supported minions, but they do learn that Dana and Portland were correct – the Suits are running their financial empire using captive Gods. The next time Satan and Willie go in they do so with the help of the local New York law enforcement authorities, and they free several of the captive Gods, and get several of the Suits to fight each other. Unfortunately, in the process, Willie gives in to the voices in his head and turns evil, proving that Satan’s fears about Lorenzi’s trainee magicians are correct.
Dana learns that Bob (the child God) is still in contact with the Indigo’s angelic backer, Kara. Dana calls in Kara, and Dana learns that Jan is still strangely alive, but Kara can’t reveal the details.
Dave agrees to allow the Watchers to take him captive so he can visit Elorie. He learns Persona’s healing has fallen off Elorie again, and she’s not doing well, either physically and mentally. The Watchers’ magic also befuddles Dave and Elorie’s minds, making them think Nessa and her crew are the real enemies. Dave learns the ways of the Watchers enough to trick them into revealing they have a way to cure Elorie’s ills, and convinces them to provide the cure. Dave returns for a short time to Nessa’s group, to reveal what he has learned, and to try to convince them leave. He fails, and returns to the Watchers. Nessa and Ken, stymied, call in a Portland projection to ask for help, and learn the angelic backers of the 99 Gods have declared Nessa, Ken and her group anathema for what they have done and what they have learned.
Satan goes to visit John Lorenzi to convince him that she was correct about how easily his trainee magicians would become evil. He notes Willie’s fall and gives in, removing magicianhood from all of his trainees. Without his trainees he’s back to being a single ineffectual magician, and he and Satan decide the best thing they can do is delve into the Ecumenist records to figure out why the Ecumenists acted as they did.
As the last civilian governments in the United States fall to the City of God, Portland orders War to attempt her stealth subdual plan. War and Alt’s Telepath group go in and Dubuque trivially defeats them, as War’s plan had no chance of success. Dubuque figures out War’s betrayal, as do the Telepaths and Portland. Dubuque uses the failure of the atta
ck and the betrayal to convince Portland to surrender.
Nessa and her crew attack the Watchers, attempting to force them to surrender Dave and Elorie. Dave and Elorie panic during the fight and figure out how to combine their respective immunities to protect the both of them from magic and mental takeover. They free themselves from the Watchers captivity, and the Watchers surrender, in the process revealing that Nessa is one of their prophetic and legendary figures, the Daughter of Light. Nessa binds the Watchers to peace and non-violence, at least temporarily, and has the insight that John Lorenzi is the second of their three prophetic figures, the Father of Darkness. The Watchers reveal that the Angelic Host, the creators of the 99 Gods, were once members of the Ecumenists when mortal and alive. Her mind free from the Watchers’ control, Elorie figures out that the Watchers are the remnants of another group of Gods, once created many thousands of years ago. Nobody else believes her.
Portland, Akron and the rest of the now-defeated Divine Compact call in War. They reveal the power of the Divine Compact by taking War’s divine name away from her, but due to the fact War’s real body is currently held captive elsewhere, they can’t end her and send her back to God. The former War escapes them and demands payment from Dubuque, her 30 pieces of silver. She gets Lydia Gibson (the natural Supported, who had joined in on the attack on Dubuque) and the God Persona (who is hiding inside Lydia, which Dubuque does not know). The former War drops Lydia and Persona off in Dana’s lair, and Dana names the former War Betrayer, which suits the former War and her current mission. Using her knowledge of the future, Betrayer interferes with the plan of the Angelic backer of the Indigo, opens a portal to Hell and retrieves Jan early. Dana boggles when Jan and her new companion, Diana, say that Betrayer retrieved them from another timeline.
Nessa’s group, along with Dave and Elorie, return to Nessa’s home in Alaska. They report their findings to John and Satan, but nobody believes Elorie’s deduction about the divinity of the Watchers, until later, when while covering each other with their immunities, Dave realizes Elorie is correct. Persona finally cures Elorie of her various cancers and bodysculps both Dave and Elorie into much more beautiful people as a reward for their efforts on the Ecumenist quest.
It turns out the former War’s real body is currently a captive of Dubuque, as she was masquerading as one of the Telepath’s bodyguards. Betrayer, in her real body, reveals to Alt that she was both War and Atlanta, and the betrayal was a sham. The whole point of her leading Alt’s Telepath crew to ignominious defeat was to get them, and her real God body and her knowledge of Territorial God tricks, inside of Dubuque’s defenses. When they know enough, and if Betrayer’s other machinations and betrayals work, they will strike at Dubuque from inside his defenses.
99 Gods: Odysseia
“True science and true religion are twin-sisters, and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the death of both.” – Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and Religion
“The best preservative for unreason is to make a religion of it.” – Gary Wills
Part 1
Supported No More
“A great principle of moral advancement, on a par with ‘Love thy neighbor’ and ‘All men are created equal,’ is the one on the bumper sticker: ‘shit happens.’” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature
Eighteen weeks later…
“Surely you know I love you.”
1. (Dana)
“Me?” Lydia Gibson said, shaking her head and sending her fly-away hair flapping, almost disturbing her Hello Kitty pink cat-ear barrettes. “Bed-slapping with a God? Get real, uber-zombie.”
Dana walked the length of her oversized tent and stalked back again, avoiding Lydia’s dusty large-heeled footprints. Lydia hadn’t spoken a lie, at least to the limits of Dana’s ability to detect. She suspected the always bantering and insubordinate Lydia, the first known Natural Supported to the 99 Gods, could fool her with willpower, but the foul-mouthed nineteen year old normally didn’t have a reason to try.
The eyes, though, they told all and all and all. Dana had espied Lydia eyeballing Bob the Kid God on several occasions and she knew Bob eyeballed anything young, female, smart and non-ugly.
“He’s been walking around with a bounce in his step and whistling, of all things,” Dana said, glaring at Lydia. “He’s intimate with somebody.”
“Nrrr. What the fuck do you care if he’s been making like a crazed weasel?” Lydia said, still standing at attention, or what passed for attention for her. “Besides, great worry-wart boss lady, aren’t you reading your own prejudices into this situation a little too damned much here?”
Dana reddened and stood up a bit straighter at this far-too-accurate zing at her own chaste lifestyle. She hadn’t wanted to complicate her life as a student or after her somewhat recent PhD in economics; Lydia, just as bright though untested by college, had been doing it since she gave herself a sweaty birthday present at age fourteen. Dana blamed Lydia’s parents. Whatever their darling daughter wanted, she got.
“Lydia, I think…”
Dana’s growl about the dangers of a kid God falling in lust for someone on her skimpy staff clattered out of her thoughts when one of her willpower detections blared a foghorn in her mind – a squadron of fighter jets fifteen miles away had turned toward them. An attack. Just the thing to rouse everyone this early morning. Better than blaring alarm clocks and strong gritty coffee. Their abandoned gas station hideout and small backyard tent city in the tiny northeast Alabama mountain village of Flat Rock had just lost what remained of its meager tenability.
At least they would be able to ditch the inescapable motor oil and gasoline smells now.
Lydia caught the alert and turned translucent as her numerous layers of protections kicked in. Anger and fear rushed through Dana, drawing open all her senses and tensing her muscles. She scanned around for the other inevitable prongs of the usual multi-pronged attack and found none. Bob, though, hadn’t budged from his electronics, ensconced in the garage of the abandoned gas station. That is, he ignored the alert.
Bob Personason, aka the Kid God, had far too many ignorance deficiencies.
“Organize the defenses, Lydia,” Dana said. “I’ll get the blasted Kid.”
Lydia nodded and hopped off, chains jangling on her jeans. Despite her youth, her training by Portland and War in battle strategies and tactics showed. Dana trusted Lydia with her life.
Bob, as usual, engrossed himself in his computers. He had grown, to grotesquely misuse the word ‘grown’, to be taller than Dana’s five ten. Although he remained thin, Dana noticed hints on his long bones of what passed as muscles for the non-flesh Gods. He wore uncombed fly-away hair on purpose and he played a divinely fast three-chord electric guitar, metal style, when he wanted. His baggy pants sagged down low, to show too often what Lydia coyly termed his coin slot. Bob appeared to be sixteen, complete with zits, as fake as his computer avatars in his many shared world games.
Despite his age and flaws, Bob was a Territorial God, the Territorial God of the southeast United States, holding down the deceased God Atlanta’s old territory. Dana remained his Regent, sharing in Bob’s territorial power. As a Territorial God, and unlike the Practical and Ideological Gods, he didn’t possess the ability to grossly alter his Imago, God terminology for what he looked like. Instead, his looks altered themselves as he ‘grew’.
Dana hurried toward Bob, her willpower giving her ten-foot strides. “Bob! Get a move on! Trouble’s coming,” Dana said, her shout loud enough to shake dust from wherever dust came from. This she didn’t need.
Bob unhooked earbuds from a webcam session with, well, a scantily clad woman that Dana didn’t have good feelings about. “So do your job and protect me,” Bob said, glaring at Dana. “I’m in the middle of an instance.” He referred, Dana presumed, to the other screen, the one with the hokey fantasy simulation where he endlessly bounded forward with unreal strides into stupid things that never existed and never would.
“Would you rather die in your computer game or in reality?” Dana said, glaring back. She tried her best to ease Bob out of the gaming community, but despite her work and strict limitations on his allowance, he still gamed all the time. Something about his gaming software being warez. When she had asked, he said “Don’t worry about the term, it’s just part of The Scene,” whatever that meant.
Dana hated being so antiquated about things internet.
Bob shook his head. He did, thankfully, exert Divine willpower, which began to shut down and pack up his equipment. When packed his room-full of equipment fit in a Scooby-Doo lunchbox, a trick unique to him. The fact he used a Scooby-Doo lunchbox was pure adolescent sass.
“I need time,” Bob said, echoing Dana’s thoughts.
“We’re trying, Bob,” Dana said, very trying. Indeed. “I smell Dubuque Supported in this attack, but I haven’t spotted them yet.” Bob the Kid God, superior being above them all and with ample power for oodles of miracles, wasn’t ready for full Territorial God responsibilities. He had a hard time flying anyone other than himself. He tended to lose track of people and things and drop them. Only a suicidal fool or someone who could already fly would let Bob lift them more than a yard off the ground. Even scarier, his success rate was even worse when he tried to protect other people. Bob and stress didn’t get along. Not even remotely.
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 2
