Now Boise interfered.
The interfering entity didn’t want Richard of Orlando to die.
The device’s attack crossed the hollow between hills with a thrumming of blue and white light, hit Boise and bounced.
Santa Fe triggered the god-killer three times in succession. The device not only exhausted itself but overloaded, blowing Santa Fe high into the air, and doing superficial damage to him. The last beam from the god-killer disintegrated Boise, despite the power loss from the overload. The first three full power blasts had weakened Boise sufficiently.
Maria screamed and Betrayer faltered, in both attacks. Boise’s death rocked the combined Mission of the now 97 Gods, as for only the second time, a God had killed a God.
Only this time the other side did the forbidden deed. The Host had explicitly forbidden this sort of Territorial God versus Territorial God conflict. Santa Fe’s action would color all that came after in this fight, personally weakening him, and likely forcing the Host to return him to God.
Point to the interfering entity.
The death of Boise shook Dubuque and Verona as well.
Verona didn’t lie to himself. He knew he had worshippers, and reveled in the emotion.
In the back of Betrayer’s mind, she heard a whistle and a
Dubuque’s desired teleport wasn’t on the list. However, Betrayer couldn’t do anything about it.
Alt could, though. He stabbed at Verona’s mind, causing a millisecond flinch.
Not enough. Verona completed the call and a window to another world appeared, a world showing the leader of the Host, Dominick. Betrayer couldn’t tap the message between Verona and Dominick without breaking her cover.
Not yet. She hadn’t finished creating the transport lock-down.
Dammit!
Dubuque flash-raised a Paladin and ported his enchanted body next to Alt. Betrayer ‘ported Vickie between them, straining credulity. A few more seconds and the flavor of her ‘port would reveal all. Vickie fought the Paladin. Betrayer joined in with her enchanted weapon in her left hand, the one on the right targeting Dubuque’s hands, attempting to interfere with whatever Dubuque did next.
Richard, Bob, Bob’s neo-Supported, and many of the remaining Nerds and EW soldiers flew out from the shadow of the Lair, a sortie to squeeze something out of the chaos Boise created. Bad luck for them, bad timing, another fruit of the unknown interference. The Abe-led Indigo warrior team, covered in an indigo protective shell, followed. Jan, Knot, Diana, Dave and Elorie followed Abe as well, at the rear of the Indigo team. Not now, idiots! You don’t have any proper nearby targets!
Vickie died.
Betrayer amped up the enchantment in her hand, an overpower only a God was capable of, and blew the Paladin’s soul to hell.
Dominick damn sure noticed her overpower.
Her anti-transport zone, a tuned territorial willpower amplified emulation of Indigo skepticism, appeared with a violet flash. She gathered her entire lot in life as a God – Betrayer, War and Atlanta – and focused her divinity into a blue reality ripping helix, blasting Dubuque and Verona. As she did, Alt tried for the Gods’ minds, to muss up their aim and degrade their defenses, while Walter tried to confuse the Gods’ knowledge of Betrayer’s location.
All following Betrayer’s plan. Right now, in the flux back into full Territorial Godhood, Betrayer was vulnerable. One pathetic gold helix, properly aimed, in this crucial set of milliseconds, would destroy her.
Dubuque reacted to the lockdown by sending back a blue helix, instinctive tit for tat, wide coverage. Good training but bad instincts. By going after all possible enemies with the blue, he had missed his opportunity to slay Betrayer. Verona mind-squeaked
For the first time, Betrayer tasted victory.
Alt and Walter died from Dubuque’s blue helix, as did Phil and Pat, the last of the two bodyguards. Betrayer now stood alone, all her secrets exposed. Her Mission blossomed, immense, and with it her power, all because she had fooled Dubuque. Dubuque’s Mission strength correspondingly plummeted. By holding her captive for all those months, unknowing, he had shown himself unworthy.
Betrayer had seventeen seconds to finish off one of the two worshipper-backed Gods in front of her. She could chase down one fleeing God, but not two.
She only hoped she had improved over the intervening year. It had taken her nearly five minutes to kill Miami.
60. (Dave)
Other than what Maria provided, he, Elorie and Kara Minor made sure nothing telepathic or willpower-based could touch them, or anyone else in the huge Indigo warrior group. They all knew this was the moment. His hunches, their hunches – all hunching along together. He could practically smell Nessa’s distrust, terrified that he and Elorie had fallen into some crazy other scheme.
Which they had.
He still had no idea why, only that they needed to go and heed the call. Dana’s death had left him with a gaping hole in his heart and an almost unstoppable urge to fight back, to do something. It also left him with a belief he was now a full member of the Indigo, nestled in the angelic Dana’s hands.
Utterly unbelievable.
Dave couldn’t answer Nessa, too overwhelmed by his first taste of this battle. He exited what remained of the front door of Betrayer’s lair into a cloud of smoke so pervasive it blocked the sun. He no longer recognized the front part of Betrayer’s lair, blasted into wall, robot and gargoyle shards. The world shuddered around him, buffeting him, concussive explosions from uncountable willpower-based attacks. He remembered Nessa and Ken’s battle against the Watchers and the City of God Supported attack on them in Florida. This was far worse. He couldn’t make sense of anything. Everything happened faster than during Betrayer and Maria’s training.
Anger churned through him, hot anger. Boise’s death was the key. Dave hadn’t realized until he got outside of
Betrayer’s lair that Santa Fe was their enemy. Dubuque at least captured Telepaths and Indigo-style others. Santa Fe killed them. Would kill all of them and their close allies, such as Elorie, Gods like Boise, and Dana, whose death he had ordered.
The anger inside him had been building ever since Dana fell. Boise’s death amplified his anger, even though he had never even talked to the guy. Diana’s own anger fueled his rage. Hunches rattled in his mind, letting him understand the links between him and Diana. Diana was here but wasn’t a combatant; in some crazy story fashion he had become her white knight. Somehow, she made his hunches better. That was the secret of the others: when they worked together their tricks amplified.
Santa Fe didn’t have to just be stopped. The God had to die. Apparently, slaying Santa Fe was their job as mortals. But how? How in the bloody blue blazes could they follow their noses through an actual battle and live to get close enough to attack Santa Fe?
Christine guided Abe through the rubble of what had once been a wall about thirty feet to the right of the former front door to the lair. She carried a willpower sword in her hand. Dust and smoke obscured all; save for Maria pointing things out in his mind he had lost track of the battle and the other combatants. Jan led Knot and Diana, a smidge to one side. The look on Jan’s face was feral.
Oh. A whole bunch more of his crazy Maria hunches finally made sense. He let Elorie guide him, eyes closed, as he worked through what he had figured out.
Maria buffeted his mind.
Dave opened his eyes as the world lit up like an atom bomb less than fifty feet in front of him.
What could be worse than a worshipped Territorial God? Dave had no idea, or any hunches that made sense.
Which meant that Ken and Nessa were now acting as one.
Dave froze in fear, not understanding what Santa Fe’s Paladins did, way back yonder, combining into a single huge thing. Then he remembered a hunch from when Maria went from two to one and some of the things he had seen during Diana’s rescue from Santa Fe’s lair.
Christine sent. Maria had taken an entire day to convince Nessa’s touchy mother to accept Maria’s faux-telepathy link. Dave still wasn’t convinced the work was worth the effort.
“Norms among the influential constituencies in developed countries may have evolved to incorporate the conviction that war is inherently immoral because of its costs to human well-being… If so, interstate war among developed countries would be going the way of customs such as slavery, serfdom, breaking on the wheel, disemboweling, bearbaiting, cat-burning, heretic-burning, witch-drowning, thief-hanging, public executions, the display of rotting corpses on gibbets, dueling, debtors’ prisons, flogging, keelhauling, and other practices…” – Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature
“Give me seventeen seconds!”
61. (Betrayer)
she sent back.
Betrayer’s action was her last planned betrayal, the worst of all. By reclaiming her Atlanta territory she had not only betrayed the Kid God but taken him completely out of the battle. Columbia wouldn’t recover for hours and she couldn’t do anything to ameliorate what she had done.
She had planned this deed from the start, ever since she realized she was Betrayer. The foul and black and corrupting betrayal seeped deep into her Mission, and she couldn’t do anything about that, either.
The betrayal could have gone wrong. Bob, though, understood immediately why she needed his Territory, and he chose not to fight the grab or hold her actions against her.
Dubuque and Verona still used divided thought streams, as did Betrayer; they still directed the siege, from a distance they still supported the Paladins and resurrected them as soon as they fell. As the sortie against Santa Fe faltered, exhausted, she felt the enemy’s army recover.
Through Maria, Betrayer followed the disaster she had loosed as the effects coursed through the defenders of the siege. Worse, she couldn’t lift the siege, she couldn’t let the defenders flee.
Maria understood instinctively, a God thing. Nessa didn’t bother to react, instead turning her mind toward a final defense of her family. The Indigo attack group took cover near the ruins of her lair’s front door, pinned down by Paladins.
Outside of the lair, Richard of Orlando covered Bob of Columbia. They had still been on their way back to the lair from their sortie when Betrayer stole back her territory. Kay, master of Progress, ported herself and the Natural Supported through the computer network into a position where they could protect Bob and Richard. The Nerd crew and EW crew with them began to die of Paladin poisoning.
Santa Fe, smelling victory and goaded by Dubuque and Verona to end this fight now, charged to where Bob of Columbia had fallen. The God ported in his reserves to join him, over two hundred Paladins, fifty Natural Supported and the newly created multi-Paladin. Richard of Orlando, attention divided by a need to protect Bob of Columbia, arranged his own in
coming Natural Supported and enchantment-wielding reserves to meet the attack.
There, at Bob’s fallen body, was where they would lose the lair battle.
Inside the lair, the Paladins broke through the last barrier barricading the secondary basement control room. Maria’s main body and Ken fled back to Nessa and the non-combatants, giving up on the coordinated defense that had failed after Bob’s loss of territorial power.
S’up and PheareChylde were powerless and defenseless, their willpower stores exhausted after their supporting God lost his territory. Santa Fe’s reserve Paladins targeted them as a unit, skittish from their many earlier encounters, and both S’up and PheareChylde evaporated into body part mist. The reserve Paladins targeted the now underpowered Nerd and EW squads next, and they fell in a few tenths of a second, taking a few but not enough of the Paladin reserve with them. Nessa screamed in all their minds, overwhelmed by the carnage.
Santa Fe sped toward Richard of Orlando, tasting revenge, overcome by divine bloodlust, the anger innate in the willpower. Betrayer had seen this before in battle, in Miami’s mind. A majority of the remaining City of God worshippers, steeped in Santa Fe’s berserker rage, allegorically leapt into the battle as well.
Richard of Orlando and his charges didn’t look long for the world.
Then, insanely, Maria tapped into a little of Atlanta’s territorial power, enough to port the Indigo crew, along with Dave and Elorie, right into the middle of the fight, positioning them between Santa Fe and Richard of Orlando.
99 Gods: Odysseia Page 63
