“What are those?”
“I am detecting energy signatures consistent with high-powered cannons.”
“Shields up!” Ev ordered.
The cloak disengaged, and a hum sounded as the protective field around the ship sprang to life. Below them, a series of blinding flashes erupted from the cannons. Almost immediately, the Midgard was rocked by the explosions that now beat upon it relentlessly. Everyone gripped their seats until their knuckles turned white, every muscle now concentrated on keeping their bodies in place.
All around him, Ev heard roars and screeches, the result of the lunar barrage. He yelled out, but couldn’t hear his own voice over the cacophony. Then, remembering Ragnarok’s advice about communicating telepathically, he sent out a mental command: Return fire!
The Midgard then unleashed its own volley of crimson death down upon the lunar surface. The cannons were instantly incinerated.
The noise died down. “Is that all of them?” Ev said.
“Affirmative. All targets have been neutralized.”
“That can’t be all they’ve got,” Daryn said. “Zero Grade’s defenses aren’t so puny as that.”
“We really have no idea what kind of defenses they have,” Maya said.
Ragnarok agreed, saying, “I believe Crewman Brünhart is correct. I am detecting an even larger energy source rising up from a massive crater below us.”
Without waiting for the enemy’s next weapon to attack, Ev said, “Blow the crater to hell!”
“Yes, Captain Bannen.”
The ship again fired upon the moon, this time turning the crater below into a molten pit. There was nothing left of it but bright orange melted rock.
“Did we get it?” Jaysin said.
“Scanning.” Ev’s nerves frayed rapidly as he waited with baited breath to hear the answer. Every moment clawed at him like nails on a chalkboard. Then: “Negative. Energy signature is still present.”
“Shit!” Daryn said.
From the molten pit below rose another cylinder. This one, however, had a gigantic silver ball the size of a house at the end. Moving around the ball were several golden rings.
“What is that?” CiCi said, aghast.
“Unknown. Its energy signature differs greatly from the simple cannons we just destroyed.”
“So they were holding back on us,” Priscilia said.
“Destroy that thing!” Ev said.
But before the AI could comply, strange golden light emanated from the weapon. Arcs of electricity began dancing from the rings to the silver ball as the rings spun faster and faster around it.
There was a flash, and the ship shook. It wasn’t as bad, this time. Ev thought it strange; a bigger weapon should make a bigger impact, shouldn’t it?
“Damage report,” he said.
Ragnarok explained, “My forward cannons have been removed and have reappeared separately at different locations around the moon.”
“How is that possible?” Daryn said.
“I can only speculate, but it appears Zero Grade is using an advanced technology to bend space at multiple points simultaneously.”
Ev felt it safe to say they were all shocked.
“You mean, like a wormhole?” Maya said.
“Yes, but the technology involved is beyond my realm of experience. Zero Grade seems to be creating multiple wormholes at the same location to forcibly detach portions of this ship and scatter them around.”
Ev focused his attention on the insane weapon currently tearing the Midgard apart. They needed to take that thing out now. “Attack it with the cannons we still have.”
But before the AI could comply, the ship shook again. Ev’s fingers dug into his chair’s arm rests to keep him upright.
“Aft cannons have been removed. We have no weapons left,” Ragnarok announced.
Shit! They didn’t have a whole lot of options left. “Any ideas?” Ev said to his crew.
Daryn’s head hung sadly on his shoulders. “They took out our weapons. We don’t have any choice now but to retreat.”
A sighing Ev felt defeated. They had come here to end this terrible war, yet now they must leave in defeat or die. “Fine. Ragnarok, get us out of here.”
Yet, once again, the ship was rocked by a blast from Zero Grade’s mysterious weapon. “Primary thrusters offline. We can only move at forty-percent speed.”
“Get us out of range of that weapon!” Ev ordered.
The next few moments happened too quickly for him to fully process. One moment, he was looking at the view screen, and the next, it was gone, ripped away as if by the hand of a goliath.
They all grabbed onto their chairs to avoid being sucked out into the vacuum of space. Ev felt his insides begin to boil under the onslaught of the inhospitable void. He cried out in pain, but there was no longer any sound on the bridge.
The next thing he knew, there was a light, and he found himself bouncing across the lunar surface in a silent nightmare. His insides continued to boil, and he couldn’t breathe; honestly, he couldn’t imagine a worse way to die.
He kept on tumbling, and soon fell into a crater that must have been a mile deep. He just kept falling, desperate to catch a breath of nonexistent air.
Eventually he came to a rest at the bottom. As he writhed on the ground, terror enveloped him. Nothing in his entire life had ever scared him as much as this; not refghasts, the Nephilim or any dark gods. No, there was nothing so terrifying as the deadly emptiness of space.
His vision started to go black, and his last thoughts drifted to his friends. In his newfound delirium, an argument occurred between the voices in his head.
Maya? Where’s Maya?
Shouldn’t you be more worried about yourself? You’re going to die in a few moments.
No! I can’t die! I’ll never see Maya again.
Forget her. You’ve got to save yourself.
I can’t just abandon her.
She’s probably dead already, and you will be, too, if you don’t do something.
What can I do?
Something. Anything!
Despite the almost indescribable agony he was in, he managed to get to his feet and looked around. He didn’t see the Midgard anywhere, but that didn’t matter; even if he knew where it was, he could never get back to it in time.
In desperation, he began walking along the wall of the crater, using it to support himself since he didn’t have much strength left. Suddenly, it changed from rock to metal. Focusing his eyes as best he could, he managed to make out a square shape.
A door.
He didn’t know how or why, but there was a door here, and he needed to get inside before he died. Therefore, he began frantically searching for a door knob, a handle, anything to get it open.
But there was nothing, not even a slit, and he could feel his eyes bulging out of his head. If he didn’t get inside within the next few moments, he would be dead, a gruesome footnote in the history of gods.
It was then that his failing eyes spied a keypad next to the door. It was frozen and appeared barely functional, but he spotted a faint light emanating from it and a message:
Enter Code
He began punching in random numbers, only to get an error message.
Incorrect Sequence
Ev was at the breaking point. Without thinking, he slammed his fist into the keypad. Despite his god strength, the keypad withstood the blow.
However, it suddenly displayed a new message.
Code Accepted. Now Opening Airlock
The door parted down the middle, and Ev rushed into the dark space within. The door then closed behind him, and actual oxygen flooded the space. Ev ravenously drank it in, immense relief pouring over him as the room pressurized.
But relief turned once again to alarm as the floor abruptly dropped out from under him, and he found himself blinded by an intense light. He fell and fell, unable to see where he was falling into. He tried to fly, but no longer had the strength.
His
sight returned to him just as he collided with the ground.
Chapter IV
He opened his eyes. To his surprise, he was in what appeared to be some sort of small cabin. Rustic-looking furniture filled the tiny space, and a primitive stone fireplace occupied the corner. A dirty rug lay on the floor.
Ev looked around. Brilliant sunlight poured in through the window above him. Sunlight? Last he checked, he was on the moon. Where the hell was sunlight coming from?
He searched his memories for anything that could tell him where he was. His last memory was of falling into a bright… something. Had he suffered brain damage?
He directed energy to his head to fix it, but it didn’t bring any memories back. As far as he could remember, he had simply fallen into a strange place and gotten knocked out when he hit the ground.
He tried contacting the others using telepathy, but couldn’t get a signal. Something seemed to be blocking them.
The door to the cabin opened, and a little girl, perhaps eight years old, walked in. She wore a dirty white dress, and her almond-colored hair was cut in a bob. She had the cutest dimples on her cheeks, and she was very tan. “Hello, mister,” she said. “You’re finally up.”
Ev blinked in surprise. “Who are you?”
A man walked in behind her. He was tall, rugged, and wore a flannel shirt tucked into faded blue jeans. “It’s polite to introduce yourself first.”
“Oh,” Ev said, embarrassed. “Sorry. I’m Ev. Ev Bannen.”
The man replied, “Nice to meet you, Ev Bannen. I’m Ghorj, and this is my daughter Sumi. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, where did you come from?”
“Uh… Narska.”
“Narska?” Ghorj raised an eyebrow. “The planet?”
“Yeah. But where am I now?”
Ghorj gestured all around him. “You’re on Olympus.”
“Olympus? The home of the Flawless Few? But there’s sunlight…”
He nodded. “Come outside for a second. It’ll make explaining this easier.”
Ev got out of bed and followed the strange duo out the front door. He was amazed to emerge into large outdoor space. The cabin sat in the middle of a large plain, and a dirt road led to a wooded area several hundred meters away. They seemed to be in the countryside somewhere.
Looking up, Ev spotted a beautiful blue sky with a large sun beaming down on them. He could feel the warmth on his skin. “But how?”
“It’s a fake sky!” Sumi happily declared.
“A fake sky?”
Ghorj nodded again. “We’re inside the moon right now. Long ago, Zero Grade hollowed it out and built an entire world in here, complete with an artificial sun and sky. What you’re looking at up there is just the ceiling.”
“Wow,” Ev said. He had never seen anything like this before. “So I fell from the ceiling just below the surface.”
“You said you came from Narska,” Ghorj said. “Then you must have entered Olympus through an airlock.”
“Yeah. But it dropped me down here.”
Ghork pointed to an indentation in the ground a dozen feet away. “That’s where we found you. You were unconscious, so I carried you inside.”
Ev suddenly remembered. “My friends! Has anyone else come here? I can’t contact them using telepathy.”
Ghorj shook his head. “You’re the only one. But there are airlocks all over the moon. If you got separated from someone, they might have entered Olympus through one of the others. If they entered another region, though, you won’t be able to reach them through telepathy; The walls between the regions are too thick for thought signals to get through. You’d have to use an amplifier located at one of the checkpoints.”
“I need to find them. They might still be alive.”
Ghorj replied, “Now, hold on a minute. You have no idea where they might be, and you can’t just go wandering through Olympus looking for them. Not too long ago, Zero Grade issued an alert for fugitives who may have breached the moon’s interior. I’m guessing that’s you. They’ve got checkpoints set up throughout moon. Intruders and Second Gens won’t be allowed through.”
“Second Gens?”
“Let me explain. See, there are First Generation gods and Second Generation gods. Zero Grade strongly favors the First Generation, or Lost, gods of the previous universe and have created a hierarchy. Greek gods are at the top, and the Flawless Few is made entirely of them. Us Second Gens are at the very bottom. We were born in this universe and became gods here, and Zero Grade looks down on us. We don’t have any rights, and we struggle just to carve out a living.”
“That sucks,” Ev said. “So in Zero Grade’s eyes, you Second Generation gods are the bottom of the barrel. How is that fair?”
Ghorj shrugged. “Not every Second Generation god is treated like garbage. The ones who really suck up to Zero Grade get special treatment. Take Warden Jane for example…”
“Who’s that?”
“She runs the Eden prison at the edge of this zone. She’s earned a reputation for tyranny. Whatever you do, stay away from Eden.”
Sumi stuck out her tongue at the mention of Warden Jane.
Ev was intrigued. “There’s a prison for gods? I never heard of such a thing.”
Ghork replied, “It’s a holdover from the previous universe, I’m told. There was a prison ship some of the gods kept their most dangerous enemies on, and when they settled here on Olympus, they placed the ship as a permanent part of their domain.”
Bits and pieces of an idea popped into Ev’s head, but he needed more information. “Where is this prison?”
Ghorj pointed past the cabin. “About a hundred stadions that way.”
“Stadions?”
“Oh, sorry,” Ghorj said. “That’s a unit of distance on Olympus. One stadion equals 184.9 meters.”
Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Ev said, “All right, let’s get back to my friends for the moment. We were hit by a weapon that basically teleports things all over the place—”
Ghorj cut in. “You mean the Fist of Olympus. It’s pretty recent. The Flawless Few are very proud of it.” He said the last sentence with clear disdain.
Ev nodded. “Yeah, it totally yurred up our ship. Now, let’s assume all of my friends got sent to different parts of the moon’s surface. How many of these airlocks are there?”
“Oh, they’re all over the place for easy access. There must be hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds!” Sumi chirped.
“So, it’s possible my friends could have entered Olympus through them. Is there any way to find them?” Ev waited with baited breath for Ghorj’s answer. It came almost instantly, but it felt much longer.
“You’d have to get to a security station. But they’re heavily guarded. You’d need lots of help to breach one of those.”
Ev smiled, his plan coming together. “Help? You mean like the kind an army of freed prisoners can provide?”
“Forget it. It’s suicide. There’s no telling what Warden Jane will do to you.”
Ev grinned. “Too bad. I have to find my friends, and if the prison will let me do that, I have no problem getting in there and busting some heads.”
Speaking of heads—Ghorj shook his. “I keep telling you, it’s suicide. That place was designed to contain full-fledged gods. An amateur like you will never be able to breach its security.”
“Prisons are designed to keep people in, not out,” Ev said. “There’s gotta be a way in.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “Even if you did get in, you’d be trapped in that nightmare. No one knows exactly what goes on in there, but I’ve heard rumors, and none of them good. Some say Warden Jane uses the prisoners for her own sick amusement, that her sexual tastes are… different.”
“Screw her,” Ev said. “I’m getting in there.”
Ghorj was starting to lose his temper. Shades of red began coloring his face. “Do you have a death wish? Why would you still want to go to Eden after what I just told you?”
“Because I have to find my friends.”
“You already said that! Would your friends want you getting yourself killed?”
“Of course not!” Ev was getting fed up with this guy. “But even if I do find them, getting to them is going to be almost impossible without help. The kind of help all those prisoners could give me.”
Where Gods Dare (Divine Protector Book 4) Page 4
