by Damon Alan
Be free, King of Gods.
Merik broke the forces containing Faroo's essence on the house farthest from her, freeing him from his prison.
The house turned to fire as Faroo's rage ran free, and a wave of force spread out from the thing in a circle as a ball of fire climbed into the sky.
Return home, mighty God. We aren't enemies after all, you and I.
The men below broke into pandemonium, running in all directions. Merik released Faroo's essence in house after house, each one turned to fire. The adepts were vaporized, dead and living. Her soldiers were bowled to the ground, then scoured of their flesh by the angry god. The demonic men were also consumed by the flames, one after another as Merik unlocked the god imprisoned within their houses.
Merik released five of the houses to fire, when she noticed the second floor of one of the houses swiveling its arm toward her...
“What's this?”
BOOM!
The ground in front of her erupted with the force of the gods themselves. A tremendous explosion tore through her soul. Wailing, her ears ringing and her body bleeding, she rose and fled down the hill back toward the sea. She screamed in agony and rage, her body bruised and burned. The raging fire of hatred within her mind told her she was far from dead.
She dragged herself into some trees, and lay down in a stream of water. The water rushed over her, cooling her body, washing blood away. An unknown amount of time passed, then she vacantly noticed a strange noise outside the trees. She didn’t care. Instead of responding she closed her eyes and decided to rest in the reviving water.
I'm so tired.
Merik?
Alarin, they've taken everything. First you, my only love, the one trust I've ever known. Then my loyal adepts, and my soldiers. But I'm not done yet. I live.
Surrender, Merik, and Sarah Dayson will allow you to live. I have lived with them, and they are people who believe in life.
My body is wounded, but not broken. I will recover, and soon. Then I will take my vengeance.
No vengeance, Merik, please. They trust me, you can live and I will take care of you forever. Surrender, and we can be together in exile.
I am a god. Gods do not surrender.
Merik lost consciousness, her mind and body hidden from the world.
Chapter 48 - Struck, Soul and Body
33 NODER 15327
“He's dead, Captain.”
Sarah went numb inside. Gilbert was dead. She felt her world begin to spin, and she slumped against the webbing of her command station.
Seto looked at Sarah, an expression of horror and pain on the lieutenant's face.
It took every ounce of Sarah’s strength not to wail. “How?” she asked weakly. She stopped the open crying, but she couldn’t hold back the tears. Water collected in small drops, floating in the air near her.
“We missed at least one of the adepts. Tanks started blowing up, fire was everywhere. He was outside our tank, ensuring the enemy soldiers knew resistance was hopeless. I think he was trying to figure out a way to keep from killing them, they rushed death like fanatics. The blasts killed everyone outside. We lost five tanks, five remain. Four are near the farmhouse where the battle was fought, the other is at our landing zone base camp. The ground is a radioactive wasteland at the battle point right now.”
“Ok, Sergeant. Who is ranking officer there now?”
“No officers, they were all outside. We have several sergeants.”
Sarah paused a moment to catch her breath. She’d lost her professional demeanor due to personal loss once before, when she’d lost her family at Korvand. It wasn’t going to happen again. She’d save her mourning for later, but maintaining her composure took all she had. “Take charge, Ensign Hamden. We'll make it official later.” She asked the question she dreaded. “Hamden… do you know if you got Merik?”
“I don’t know Captain.”
“Get the tanks back to the pickup location, and wait there for further orders. Do you have any scouts left?”
“All six, they were well away from the explosions.”
“Put up a perimeter,” Sarah said. Her emotions changed direction like a bird in flight. Rage flowed inside her, and her hatred echoed in her next order. “And Hamden…”
“Yes?”
“Kill everyone that approaches.”
Hamden paused before he responded. “Sir?”
“This is no time to take chances. If a local gets near visual range of you, put a round in their head. If it gets too bad, have the shuttles extract you. But I'd prefer to have you on the ground and ready for orders.”
“Yes sir. I’ll do it, sir. The round to the head sounds like a good idea.”
“Dayson out.”
Sarah remained expressionless as she forced herself to regain her composure. Her bridge crew knew better than interrupt the process. Finally, after several minutes, she snapped to life.
“Seto, get Alarin for me.” Her tone was no longer about loss. It was about anger.
Seto made the connection then answered Sarah. “I have him, Captain.”
“Alarin, it’s Sarah. I need to know if Merik is dead.”
Alarin’s voice sounded despondent. “I sense nothing from her, Captain. She spoke to me for a bit, swearing to kill you. I could tell she was wounded. Then she ceased to exist. There is no way to know if she’s dead, unconscious, or simply hiding her existence.”
Sarah had no time for his pain as she controlled her own. “Thank you. Dayson out.” Sarah severed the connection and untethered from her gravity couch. “Seto, you have the bridge. I’m taking eight hours crew rest.”
Seto didn't hesitate. “I have the conn, Captain.”
Sarah left the bridge, returning to the habitation ring and her quarters. She opened her cooler, inside were five pouches of Packet, Squirt, Factory Process Number Four and half a bar of chocolate. She opened a pouch and grabbed the chocolate.
“Everything I love dies,” she said to nobody.
“I don't understand your statement,” Lucy said.
Sarah shook her head. “Neither do I, Lucy. Neither do I.”
Sarah laid back on her bunk, and smelled the pillow, Gilbert's scent still on it.
“One crew rest, Gilbert, that's all you get. That's all the mourning time you get. Then I have to hunt down your...”
She couldn't bring herself to say killer. Her heart was in her throat and her stomach roiled. Tears poured from eyes that never seemed to empty. Her voice was cracked and broken. She punched the bulkhead next to her bunk. “I loved you. Damn it, I loved you.”
She emptied her wine, crumpled up the pouch, and threw it across the room. She reached into her cooler for another, and emptied it far too quickly as well. Halfway into her third, her comm chimed.
Sarah yelled at the comm. “Dayson. This better be really fucking important.”
Thea Jannis's voice, as respectful as Sarah had ever heard the doctor speak, greeted her. “Captain, I just heard. I... I want to know if you need something to help you sleep. Not my normal prescription, but...”
“No, doctor, I'm good,” Sarah said.
“Okay, Captain, but my offer stands.”
“Great. Dayson out.” Sarah closed the link.
An hour later Sarah lay unconscious on her bunk, the last half-empty pouch of wine dripping onto the bedspread.
* * *
34 NODER 15327
Her alarm chimed. She ignored it.
It chimed again, followed by Seto's voice.
“Captain, you have an incoming call from Alarin.”
Groggy, Sarah sat up, rolled her legs off the bunk onto the floor. She was still dressed from the night before, her side soaked with alcohol.
The empty wine pouch on her blanket made a crinkling noise as she rested a hand on it. She picked it up and stared at it half conscious.
“Captain?”
No Franklin, and almost no wine left.
She felt like screaming. Instead she answered Seto
.
“Put him through, Lieutenant.”
Her head pounded and her mouth tasted like an infantryman's sock.
“Sarah, do you hear me?”
Groggy, Sarah massaged her aching hand. “How is Peter?”
“He's improving, I think. He is sleeping at the moment. I'm not a healer, but Thea Jannis has taught me a lot.”
Sarah reached up and put her hands on both temples, then pushed as she willed the headache away. “Good.”
“Sarah… Merik is alive.”
Sarah's pain recessed back into her mind, and her focus returned in a flood. She bolted upright. “You told me she didn’t exist, how can…”
“Your men must have wounded her, made her unconscious. I’m sorry.”
“Do you know what she did?”
“Halani Seto told me. I'm sorry, Sarah Dayson. I could feel your happiness when I met you at the Outhouse.”
Everything gone, and we didn’t get her…
“None of that matters,” Sarah snarled. “Do you know where she is now?”
“No, but she's not gone far. She wants her vengeance on me, and the last I spoke to her yesterday she said she has something planned for your people as well.”
Oh no, the remaining tanks...
“Seto, are you listening?”
“Yes Captain, I'm here.”
“Have the shuttles extract Hamden and the remaining men. Order the Schein to set status one on three one megaton warheads. Ready for a ground strike.”
A short silence accentuated the moment between the order and the reply.
“Aye, Captain.”
“Alarin, we’ll get you and Peter out of there as soon as we can. You still have water for a while, just be patient.”
“Patience is the greatest lesson the gods can teach us, Sarah.”
Bullshit.
“Yeah, I'm sure it is. Dayson out.”
Sarah heard the link close.
Twenty minutes later she headed toward the bridge, her hangover forced from her consciousness.
I'm going to kill Merik myself. Nothing will save her now.
Chapter 49 - Ascension
Evening of Firstday, cycle 95, year 8748
Merik rose from the stream. Cold laced her body like an opiate. She shuffled to the edge of the trees she'd sought refuge within, then looked to the sky.
There she was, Fandama and her new consort, the demon.
She walked to the small valley where she'd attacked the demonic men, stopping only to rip her clothing and dress wounds that opened as she walked.
Merik.
She didn't have the strength to find his mind, but allowed Alarin to spend his energy seeking hers.
“Alarin, they almost killed me.”
I'm sorry, Merik. Please listen to me. Surrender, and I will embrace you forever.
Merik laughed. Surprised by her own reaction, she was devoid of anger or rage. “No, Alarin, it's too late. I'm headed to where your friends killed my people. Tell your demons I will be there, waiting for them.”
No, Merik. There doesn't have to be a confrontation. I have always loved you, which is something not even I can explain. Let me save you.
Anger finally started to rise, subtle cloying fingers reaching up from darkness within her, playing at the edge of her mind. “You dare show me pity? I am halfway between mortal and god, Alarin, and you show me pity? I won't make the same mistake next time. I was fascinated as I destroyed the houses the demonic men came in. I popped them one by one, as a child pops a soap bubble on the wind. But...” she stopped to tighten a bandage on her thigh, “but I can do more.”
Merik, please, I beg you. I don't pity you. I fear you.
“Of course you do. Men fear that which can swat them with a slap of a hand.”
Any adept can swat another, this is not a reason for fear. There is a code, an order, maintained by the priests for thousands of years to keep our power focused, working for the people. You, Merik, are not working for the people. You are only for Merik.
“And you. I was for you. I killed my father for you.”
Were you? Then listen to me. Surrender, and I will be for you. I will let you kill me if that is what you want, or I will give myself in servitude. Anything you want.
Merik laughed. “It's going to be fine, Alarin. I no longer want to kill you. Once I finish the demons, I will make you mine again. I don't have to kill you, because I can have anything I want. You will rise to godhood with me.”
No, Merik, I'm no god. Just a man who serves them.
“Then you can serve me.” She closed her mind to him, pushing him away. It was easy, although her head hurt terribly.
She walked toward the carnage, the valley where demon and man died in the fiery breath of Faroo. Not much time had passed as she lay asleep in the stream. She was hungry, but not unbearably so. She was thirsty when she awakened, but she had sated that from the stream. She looked up at the sky. Faroo was on the left of Jalai, drawing close. It was still Firstday, although it was getting late.
It took her a while, but she crested the hill overlooking the now quiet battlefield. She felt the strange energy she'd sensed at her estate, it was spread across the farm below like seeds sown at the start of a growing season. The ground was blackened, and the farmhouse was leveled along with the outbuildings. Everything but stone was burned away. Some of the moving houses the demonic men had come in were mounds of distorted stone, unrecognizable. She could sense their essence driven into the very ground. The others were gone.
“Good work, Faroo.” She no longer thought of the god as her superior, she was a goddess now. She addressed him as an equal.
Merik sensed the strange energies in the fields below harming her. She limped back down the hill, putting the rise between her and the unseen death waiting on the other side. She sat down, and lay back in the grass. Fandama was overhead, she could see the demon this side of the goddess, it circled Fandama as Fandama circled Jalai.
“I wonder...” Merik said. She reached out with her mind, and encircled Fandama. She felt the flood of information wash over her, and condense into a river within her mind. Her mind easily encompassed the moon, exploring the information it shared with her.
Your secrets are mine, goddess.
Merik felt the atmosphere of Fandama, the rocks below, and the void above the goddess where the demon circled. Everything behind the demon was hidden to her, but the plan developing in her mind didn't care about that. Merik was already pulling in more information than she ever had, yet felt an inner calm. To her joy, there was yet more she could do. She embraced Jalai, and felt the heat, the violence, the immensity of the great mother goddess.
Nothing is beyond my reach.
The images of the demon, Fandama, and Jalai danced in her mind as she grasped the heat of Jalai, the relative coolness of Fandama, and the location of the demon. She switched the heat of the mother to the daughter.
Fandama exploded.
She violently shed her atmosphere into space, her surface boiled away. Jalai looked as if she'd been punched in her face, a huge section of the planet began to implode into itself. She watched the events unfold as she lay in the cool grass. She rejoiced to see the demon race away from Fandama a short while later. It careened toward Jalai, and Merik laughed.
Laughing hurt.
She wiped her mouth, and blood came away on her sleeve.
She laughed at that, then coughed up more blood, puzzling her. “Gods can't die.”
She lay for hours upon the ground as she watched the demon shrink away, savoring its retreat. Shortnight fell, and she lay through the chill of it into Secondday. Jalai continued to collapse into herself. A portion of Jalai’s black orb now glowed orange as the heated material within the goddess churned to the surface. Fandama smoldered a searing red, the color of molten rock, a glowing aura around her.
Merik whispered to the sky. “You’re beauty fades, whore.”
Merik, what have you done?
“Far
oo still loves me, Alarin. Jalai does not. I've scarred the beauty of Jalai's daughter, and struck Jalai's face.”
Only disaster will follow, Merik, please stop. I can feel… no, I’m living your pain, I think every adept on Nula Armana is.
“Really? I don't feel any pain. I lay here, looking at the sky and see Jalai's pain.”
It's as if there are two of you, an inner Merik crying out for help, the other insane and drunk on her power.
“How dare you? I am the goddess Merik. When this mortal body heals, I will erase Jalai from the sky.”
That's not how it will go, Merik. You will end us all.
“Then let the ending begin.” Merik closed her mind and again laughed although it hurt her to do so. As she looked upon the drama unfolding in the sky consciousness once more left her.
Chapter 50 – Sacrifice
34 NODER 15327
Heading down the last gangway before the bridge, Sarah slammed violently into a bulkhead and felt the bones of her shoulder give way. Alarms screamed from all directions.
Lights went out.
A moment later dim emergency lights flashed on. Smoke drifted down the corridor from ahead of Sarah’s position.
Pressure hurt her ears as the airtight doors across the ship slammed shut and life support took a moment to adapt.
Oh no, please no...
Ignoring the searing pain in her left arm, Sarah floated down the corridor and pulled herself onto the bridge. Seto called plaintively for the Schein to answer her hails.
“Captain on the bridge,” Harmeen said, voice raised over the klaxons.
Sarah wanted to cover her ears, but one arm didn’t work. “Turn those things off… what's happened?”
“Get the doctor up here, the captain is injured,” Seto yelled into her mic.
Harmeen silenced the klaxons, then put the tactical situation on the viewscreen. The two ships at Fandama were both heavily damaged and out of control. The Schein was on the main viewscreen, tumbling end over end and slowly rotating on its long axis. Streams of gas left spiral lines in space behind the stricken craft as it tumbled. Fires raged inside viewports.
Sarah was pretty sure the scene on the Stennis wasn’t much better, although the ship didn’t appear to be tumbling as the Schein was.
