by Alan Baxter
“This is a trial. We are sitting in judgment of you. We wish to hear your perspective.”
“So I can argue my case? Maybe get the chance to win my liberty, like in a proper trial? Do I have the right to an attorney?”
Trakiin leans close. “No, Ethan Nash. That is not how it works. You are going to die here today. Foster no illusion as to that. But what kind of gods would we be if we didn’t at least offer you a fair hearing?”
“Strange definition of ‘fair’,” I say. There’s still the taste of copper in my mouth and a huge-seeming hole in my gum where a tooth should be. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“‘Fair’ is whatever I say it is,” Trakiin declares. “If you don’t like it, we can end this now. I can have Xorin set to work on you straight away, beat you until everything is broken and you’re no more than a bag of shattered bones and ruptured organs. Or perhaps I will ask Jhan S’reen over there to weave her dark magic and suck the life out of you in slow, agonising increments.”
He gestures at the Goddess of Death, plump, pale-skinned and buxom, dressed in a combination of frilly white lace and glossy jet-black leather like she’s on her way from a wedding to a fetish party. Her eyes are eightballs – white iris, black sclera – and her fingernails are so long and curved they might as well be talons. They say she feeds on souls. I say she could stand to go on a diet and lose a few pounds, maybe cut back on the number of victims she drains for sustenance.
But I don’t voice the thought.
Because something in her eerie eightball eyes, her sickle smile, her curvaceous mama-does-kinky body, scares the shit out of me.
“Thought as much,” says Trakiin, off my silence. “So we shall do this my way. I ask, you speak.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. If it’ll postpone my death for just a few minutes…
“First of all, tell me of the forbidden zone. The location of your petty Luminous raid. Tell me about the mission from the outset.”
* * *
The mission was supposed to be a straightforward infil/exfil. Isn’t it always? The objective was to scrounge up evidence. Clues, if there were any. Stuff we could show the world. Something to demonstrate conclusively that the Savior Gods were the frauds we at Luminous knew them to be.
It wasn’t enough simply to say they were bogus. We had spent years doing just that to little effect as their noose continued to tighten around our collective neck. We had to back up our claims with cold hard data and we believed the ruins of Kennedy Space Center held just the clue we’d been searching for.
The team was five-strong. There was me, of course, the fearless leader and local asset, first-class lady killer and seasoned field agent. There was the decorated sharpshooter Carrie Lind, heavy muscle on loan from the European branch of Luminous. Tales of her exploits were so legendary they pervaded the guerrilla network here in the States. According to scuttlebutt Lind counted multiple Dominions among her hit-tally – and with that composite bow of hers no less. I intended to ask Lind about that dubious claim prior to her arrival but it turned out she wasn’t big on kill and tell.
Accompanying her from across the Atlantic was Ben Jorgensen, also ex-military, Lind’s full-time spotter and part-time lover. Affable and unaccustomed to the heat, Jorgensen adopted billowy Aloha shirts and cargo shorts as his undercover attire. Nothing screams conspicuous like a 6’5” Scandinavian dressed like a Margaritaville outcast but I wasn’t going to argue fashion with the Benny the Friendly Viking.
Ashton Roth, our science guy and allegedly one of Luminous’s brightest minds, had journeyed from Mexico to join our crusade. Roth was as tan as Jorgensen was pale. While he wasn’t an experienced operator like the sniper or her spotter, Roth roamed the world unimpeded by the Templars and their draconian travel restrictions. He knew all the wrinkles. He could be a ghost when required, slipping under every radar.
And then we had the inscrutable John-Patrick McCreedy, former Catholic priest, faith expert. McCreedy came highly recommended from a persuasive senior officer, though I couldn’t fathom what purpose a ‘faith expert’ might serve during this specific op. He was the nearest by when the call went out, and the two of us spent the better part of a month together waiting for the others to arrive. Three and a half weeks together and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about McCreedy save he always seemed to be sucking on a peppermint.
I was basking in the sun at the bar on the patio of Nelson’s Folly in Miami when I received the go-ahead to proceed with Operation Iconoclast. Four days in a row I’d visited the establishment, hoping to get lucky and instead slinking back to the safe house with blue balls – metaphorically speaking of course. I nursed a Cuba Libre while leafing through the final issue of Samson, a comicbook circulated by an underground press. I found the religious-themed narrative nonsensical and the quality of the print lacking, but I couldn’t deny I enjoyed the stylistic depictions of violence.
“Do you often go to the bar to be antisocial?”
I glanced up from a two-page spread of the titular Samson tearing down the pillars of the Temple of Dagon. A young woman with tawny skin and a pearlescent smile sidled up to me at the bar and ordered a mojito. I didn’t recognize her but that didn’t mean anything – Luminous cells were highly compartmentalized in order to prevent entire sections from being wiped out if one cell got busted.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re reading in public,” she said. “Makes conversation with other human beings a little difficult.”
“You know, once upon a time everyone carried around portable electronic devices with them. They had access to the news, weather, music, books, games all in the palm of their hand. Had their eyes constantly glued to the things. Sometimes even on dates. It made conversation very difficult,” I said.
She laughed, pretend-incredulous.
“I’ve given away my age haven’t I?”
She nodded, laughed again and sat down at the open seat next to me. I set Samson down and she appraised the bombastic cover.
“That looks like something the censors would classify seditious material. Couldn’t you get in trouble for reading that?” she asked.
“The authorities are too busy cracking down on those pesky secular humanists to bother with a harmless cartoon strip,” I replied, and it was true. I indulged in small sins in order to mask my more egregious transgressions. After all, there’s nothing more suspicious than a saint. Tradecraft 101.
“You still haven’t answered my first question,” she said.
“Hmmm?”
“Do you regularly go out to not interact with people?”
“I’m actually waiting on someone,” I said.
“Woman?” she probed. “Man?”
“Oh, I figure I’ll know ’em when I see ’em,” I said and winked.
The bartender returned with her mojito. She thanked him and paid.
“Well, if they fail to materialize and you’re in the neighborhood, some friends of mine are having a party tonight. You’re welcome to join us.” She pulled a pen from her purse and started writing on a bar napkin. “I’ll warn you, though. It’s going to get wild.”
She kissed the napkin, handed it to me, and left, cocktail in hand. I looked down at the scribbled message. Anyone else who read it would see the time and address of the aforementioned party, with an inviting lipstick mark for good measure. To a Luminous operative capable of decoding it, however, it was the confirmation we’d been waiting for. I polished off the rest of my Cuba Libre and shoved the napkin in my pocket.
“Can I get you another round?” asked the bartender.
“Nah, I’ll settle up. It looks like I got a shindig to get ready for,” I said with a grin and paid my tab.
“Hlaarina’s blessing be upon you brother,” he said.
“And also upon you,” I replied.
I left Nelson’s Folly with a little
extra pep in my step. It was a possibility I would die in a few short hours. The greater tragedy was that it seemed even less likely the beautiful young woman I’d just met would survive the diversion her cell had planned for us. But the wait was finally over and the excitement of it suffused every inch of my body. The time to act was now.
Per standard operating procedure I took a Surveillance Detection Route – or SDR – on my way back to the safe house. I cut through the crowd to cross the street and headed for the park.
A priest blared the horn from behind the wheel of an electric car, the mass of pedestrians refusing to part. The only motor vehicles on the road these days belonged to the Savior Gods’ clergy and enforcers, and as a result people weren’t certain how to react. The priest’s Templar escort climbed out the passenger-side door and began clubbing the nearest civilians with a baton. The club smashed into an older woman’s face and she dropped, nose erupting with blood. The throng quickly got the message and parted to allow the car through.
I clenched my jaw and kept walking until I arrived at the park entrance, good mood forgotten. The public area was relatively empty that time of day and the absence of foot traffic would make it easier to spot hostile surveillance. I used the layout of the walking paths to my advantage, ambling along without any apparent direction. Seemingly at random I sped up and slowed my pace, took abrupt turns and doubled back around a time or two. I passed several other people during my stroll but none struck me as undercover Templars.
I took a detour to make an offering on my way out of the park, as was customary. A statue of Fhariyya, Goddess of Hunts and Wilderness, posed proudly in polished granite, surrounded by hand-carved wildlife native to the area. Or at least she would have posed proudly had some brave soul not spray painted a dick and balls on her in vivid lime green. I stifled a laugh and flicked a dodecagonal coin stamped with Trakiin’s face on one side and an image of Kha’cheldaa on the other into the pool at the sculpture’s feet.
A beleaguered-looking groundskeeper approached with a bucket of sudsy water and a brush and set to scrubbing the graffiti as though his life depended on it. It very well might have. I made one final circuit of the park and, satisfied I wasn’t being followed, went back to home base to tell everyone the good news.
“Luuuucy, I’m hoooome!” I said stepping in the front door of my apartment.
Lind sat on the floor waxing her bowstring. She glanced at me before returning her attention to proper bow maintenance. Roth waved dismissively from the cot where he lay reading some banned science textbook. McCreedy too sat on the floor, fieldstripping and cleaning a Sig Sauer P225. He ignored me entirely.
Jorgensen was considerably more welcoming, wrapping me in his rib-crushing embrace. Did I forget to mention that Benny was a hugger?
“Good to see you too, now would’ya mind letting me go?” I asked.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m getting a little stir crazy is all,” he said, admonished. I couldn’t fault him. Our crew may have consisted of consummate professionals but they weren’t exactly what anyone would consider companionable. Spending days sequestered in a one-bedroom apartment wasn’t doing anything to improve their attitudes either.
“I’ve got good news,” I said patting Jorgensen on the shoulder. That seemed to grab Lind and Roth’s attention. McCreedy disregarded the announcement as if I hadn’t said anything at all, intent on the disassembled parts of his weapon.
“Hey Padre,” I said, addressing McCreedy with the sarcastic title I’d bestowed upon him after weeks of trying to crack his prickly shell. His stayed on task but his eyes locked on my own. I suppressed a shiver as my Lizard Brain recoiled from McCreedy’s scrutiny. He’s just the retired practitioner of a dead religion, I tried to remind myself.
Watching how naturally his fingers navigated the handgun made me think otherwise.
“We got the green light. Iconoclast is a go.”
* * *
“Yes, yes,” says Trakiin. “Fascinating stuff. Your disapproval of us and our methods is duly noted, Mr Nash.”
“Disapproval?” huffs Xorin. “Outright blasphemy!”
Trakiin shoots him a look that’s equal parts fatherly reproof and kingly contempt. Xorin bristles, but decides he’s better off not taking the argument any further. Meanwhile the Dominions, in their recess perches, stir. Wings twitch and flare, and steel-jacketed hands grasp blast-lances that little more tightly. They’re attuned to the mood in the chamber, sensitive to the tides of emotion ebbing and flowing, the raising of voices, heart rate acceleration, adrenaline spikes. Their hardwired programming compels them to defend the Savior Gods from any perceived threat, however great or small, with overwhelming lethal force.
My skin prickles as I think about them, about what they could do to me. In many ways I’m more scared of the Dominions than I am of Trakiin or Xorin or even Jhan S’reen. Android angels can’t be reasoned with or pleaded with.
Just stay calm, I tell myself. Keep the fear in check. Keep talking.
But that’s easier said than done. I’ve seen Dominions in action several times, but most memorably at a protest rally in New York. It was during the early days of the Savior Gods’ reign. We’d already lost the Forty-eight Hour War but people still thought we had some choice in the matter, still thought that by getting together in public and expressing our feelings we might somehow persuade them our modern society had no need of gods and convince them to leave us alone. I was there, on a hot summer’s afternoon in Central Park, waving my placard and chanting the slogans. Mostly I’d gone because my college girlfriend, Claire, wanted to be there and I was too hornily in love with her to say I wouldn’t come. I was still at the stage of needing to impress her.
The crowd numbered – best guess – a couple hundred thousand. It was before the Savior Gods shut down all mass communication and texts and social media had spread the word and generated a real grass-roots movement. It seemed to us the gods surely couldn’t ignore so much concentrated anger, such a critical mass of opposition. They’d have to pay attention.
And we were right, but in the wrong way. The Order of Templars hadn’t been formed yet, but the Savior Gods had an already established means of crushing resistance. Dominions descended from out of the blazing blue sky above the park, dozens of them, firing plasma bolts from their blast-lances indiscriminately into the crowd. Protest turned to panic. As many were killed in the stampede as were incinerated by the Dominions’ strafing.
Claire and I were running for our lives, like everyone else. I was holding Claire’s hand. We’d nearly made it to the edge of the park, onto Fifth Avenue, and I was thinking we could take shelter inside the MOMA, hole up there until the chaos was over. Then a shimmer of wings, a wave of searing heat, and I was still holding Claire’s hand. But only that. Sheared off at the wrist, the stump neatly cauterized. Of Claire herself, nothing else was left. She’d been vaporised in an instant.
And the gods had made themselves a lifelong enemy that day.
Not just because of Claire, although that was traumatizing enough. Because of the sheer senseless slaughter. Fully half the people who attended the rally died that day. Wiped off the face of the planet. Senior citizens among them. Mothers. Doctors. Firefighters. Kindergarten teachers. Kids. All for daring to defy false gods. The massacre proved quite the recruitment drive for Luminous.
“We should expect nothing more, or less, from Mr Nash,” Trakiin says. “A Luminous operative is by definition a blasphemer, and one moreover who is so immersed in his heresy that he sees it as a virtue rather than a deadly sin. Luminous exists to defy our rule. They will stop at nothing, and stoop to anything, to rid the world of us.”
You have to hand it to old Trakiin: he’s a damn good speechifier. Him make talk sound pretty.
“It’s at the very least ingratitude,” he continues. “Have we gods not created peace? Where there was once discord, we have brought harmony. Where there was
once inequality, we have brought fairness. Where there was once despair, we have brought hope. The human race was hell-bent on its own destruction before we arrived. In fifty years, maybe less, it would have rendered its environment uninhabitable and annihilated itself squabbling over the few precious resources remaining. Now it can look forward to a better, simpler, cleaner future, one less reliant on technology, less rapacious, less internecine. Mankind, united by the one true faith.”
Ooh, internecine. Fancy.
Trakiin stares pointedly at me, as though he can hear my snarky thoughts. “Such salvation is something people like you, Mr Nash, seem determined to reject. Why is that?”
“That a rhetorical question, or are you actually asking me? It’s sometimes hard to tell.”
“Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me, Luminous.”
“Well, on balance, I’d say I prefer to be a free man than a slave to space Nazis. Just my opinion, mind you. Your mileage may vary.”
Trakiin’s lip curls, amusement crossbred with a pitbull snarl.
“Plus,” I add, “it isn’t ‘peace’ if it needs to be maintained with an iron fist. The one kinda contradicts the other.”
“Ha ha.” He says this more than laughs it. “A paradox, if valid.”
Then he strokes my chest, gently, almost like a caress.
And five minutes later I’m still writhing on the floor, wracked in agony from head to toe, every muscle spasming and clenching. It feels like my heart is trying to hammer its way out of my chest cavity. My lungs are burning, my guts cramping, and I can hear myself making pathetic little mewling, choking noises, like a kitten being strangled. A damp crotch tells me I’ve pissed myself. I think I know now how a convict must feel in the electric chair. Only difference is, I get to live to tell the tale and the convict gets the sweet release of death.
A lovely, maternal face looms over me, blurred in my tear-clogged vision. Hlaarina. With a brush of her fingertips she takes the pain away, all of it, just like that. Suddenly I feel better than I have in years. A new man.
