The Paladin's Odyssey (The Windows of Heaven)

by Powderly Jr. , K. G.

  “Perhaps,” said his assistant. “But what good are the Holy Precincts without the relics of Atum-Ra and the Three Treasures to sanctify them? And what about the gold reserves? Akh’Uzan still controls them. If you ask me, this is just a sop being thrown to Sa-utar and to us.”

  Dedurusi wanted to slap the younger man for ruining his attempt to suck whatever exultation he could from the moment.

  The dispatch suddenly became a moot point, anyway.

  A terrifying rush of wind screeched past, pulling their startled eyes up the stairway to the First Altar that crowned the island’s upper ziggurat.

  The Chief Priest and his assistant rushed onto the sacrificial platform in time to see row upon row of high-speed astras swing down over the lake, then dip up along the Mountains of Aeden like waves of crested gryphons snatching fish from the water. Only these winged dragons took nothing from the lake. Instead, they released missiles to sear heavenward, flaming torches that arced over the heretofore-impenetrable mountain range. The astras then curled into a roll and dove back in the direction they had come from—up the Hiddekhel Canyon.

  Dedurusi had fought in the Century War. He recognized the heraldry roundel on the bottom wings of the nearest craft. Samyaza!

  The Chief Priest screamed, “They’ve attacked Aeden!” He clutched his chest. “It’s the ultimate blasphemy! Oh E’Yahavah, we are undone—the ultimate blasphemy!”

  A sharp pain seized Dedurusi’s heart and neck. His head swam as his legs went weak beneath him. His assistant caught him and lowered him gently to the stone summit, but it was too late. The Priest’s vision of absolute defilement was too much for him.

  Dedurusi did not live to see what happened next.

  A

  yyaho leveled his astra off at cruising altitude and waited for the rest of the First Sky-Lords Division to form up behind him.

  According to his instruments, the first wave of missiles should hit in ten seconds. His freshly released fire darts registered on his orb console as on target and falling at the correct speed. Each would sing its own song through the spiritual ether right up until impact, so there could be no fear of the mountains blocking their detonation signal spike.

  Any confirmation of whether the missiles hit any significant targets would need to wait for the reconnaissance wing, since no one had ever successfully over-flown Aeden before. Their strategy, as far as the earthly side to the venture, depended on saturation bombing.

  The Horned Giant’s heart suddenly skipped a beat and sent something like a quickfire jolt throughout his entire body. A rush of light-headed nausea followed. All eight of his missiles had just vanished from the orb display at five seconds to impact. No detonation spike.

  “Ahg! What happened to my signal?” he bellowed into his oracle.

  “I’ve lost mine too!” came the scratchy voices of one after another of the first wave pilots over the air.

  “Clear the oracle waves! Maintain holding formation!”

  His brother’s second division swooped in and lobbed their ordinance, only to experience the same ominous silence when they climbed away to fall in behind Ayyaho’s astras. They all waited for the third wave.

  “I really wish we weren’t needed to supply ground support strafing for the troop drops,” he whispered to himself.

  For the first time in his long life as a specially-bred soldier, Ayyaho experienced a terror that often raked the hearts of lesser warriors. What kind of army does my father expect to find down there anyway?

  Only when the last wave of attack astras finished rolling onto their escape vector did Ayyaho notice the ring of light expanding outward in all directions from over the craggy Kharir Aedenu. At first, he thought their munitions had actually gone off after all. Then, as the halo-like wall of blue flame passed beyond the mountains and over the lake, to be followed by another ring of fire just like it, he knew his hope was utterly vain.

  The oracle set roared with frantic voices from the third wave. When the Titan banked his vehicle back that direction, he saw why.

  The ring of fire expanded faster than the escaping astras, tearing them into puffs of fuel, metal, and ash in its shock wave. It ate all of the third division ships before even beginning to dissipate. Ayyaho saw that some of the more distant second division craft managed to escape—although with heavy damage. When the blue fire finally met his astra, it jerked it hard enough to activate the airframe over-stress alarms, but nothing worse.

  Not so the second ring.

  It proceeded without dissipation all the way across the lake and expanded both upward and almost to the ground, so that there was no way for him to climb over or dive beneath it. Ayyaho had banked to see the fate of the third division and now faced nearly head-on the second flaming arc. He had no time to change course again and still achieve escape velocity.

  The last thing the Titan saw, before his ship and his body exploded into their constituent elemental particles, were terrible faces roiling in the bluish-white maelstrom of flame.

  U’

  Sumi heard panicky shouts from the command cabin.

  Isha’Tahar flew from her seat in the lounge, past him, and into the aft control center, while her Watcher “husband’s” voice roared out orders left and right with her mouth.

  U’Sumi’s half-sisters, who sat against the forward bulkhead, facing him, clutched each other. Across the center aisle, Yafutu did the same to A’Nu-Ahki. T’Qinna hung on to U’Sumi’s arm so tight that she cut off his circulation. Strangely enough, Taanyx continued to sleep by her feet.

  Samyaza’s voice blasted through the internal oracle at the command ship pilots, “Come about, and dive!”

  A blue flash rushed past U’Sumi’s window, while the deck bucked as if they had hit a solid bump in the sky. Bulkhead and airframe bolts popped, while the hiss of escaping air constricted his head like enraged vipers. Excruciating pain sucked at his inner ears until he was sure they would burst from his skull. He opened his mouth to scream. The sudden shift of his jaw brought a watery pop and sudden relief.

  Soon the giant astra descended to an altitude where the pressure equalized. Life-giving air rushed through to the cabin again. The airship leveled off a few hundred cubits above the treetops in the Gihunu Valley.

  Then the second ring of fire hit.

  The jolt tossed a freshly awakened Taanyx up from the deck and bounced her off the overhead. She landed on all fours, and scrambled onto T’Qinna’s lap, swinging her rump and thrashing tail into U’Sumi’s face. T’Qinna grabbed hold of the sphinx’s harness as if instinctively preparing for impact.

  U’Sumi watched helplessly as the outermost engine on his side tore free of its wing mount, along with half the wing’s control surfaces. The remaining engines began to cut in and out as the craft listed to one side.

  Slowly, strenuously, the giant astra labored to stay aloft. Two of the remaining three engines resumed power, but they both hung from the port wing, which had somehow kept its control surfaces intact. The rudder also remained—U’Sumi felt its sluggish movement force the Vimana II into a jerky sway. The deck canted into a starboard list that drew both T’Qinna and Taanyx into him. T’Qinna he enjoyed that way, but the sphinx’s tail kept whipping him in the face.

  On the other side of the cabin, A’Nu-Ahki held on to Yafutu, who had the other window seat. The fear that had formerly filled the youngster’s eyes had somehow vanished. U’Sumi smiled across to him anyway, just to be sure the deep inner waters reached him too.

  Yafutu returned his gaze and the smile, as if to say not to worry.

  The command astra managed to keep up this haphazard flying limp for over an hour. Then a new furor erupted in the aft combat control center.

  Samyaza began to curse over the internal oracle when the pilots made it clear that they could not make the port-ward course change necessary to reach the nearest Assurim base without making a wide two-hundred-and-seventy degree turn into Lumekkor-controlled air-space or losing control of the craft and crashi
ng in the jungle. U’Sumi thanked E’Yahavah that the pilots and Watcher were not in the same compartment.

  Still another argument broke out in the control center as several of the warrior caste took up the pilot’s cause against their master. Only then did U’Sumi realize how dire their situation must be. He doubted anyone had ever questioned Samyaza’s orders—at least not to his face.

  An inhuman screech from Isha’Tahar’s mouth chilled his blood, while sounds of equipment and bodies tossed around in a demoniac frenzy buffeted the aft end of the airship.

  U’Sumi silently called for E’Yahavah’s protection, as the drone started to plummet. The bottom dropped out of his stomach, but he did not panic when the ground rushed closer to his window. The same was not true of his half-sisters, who shrieked and clawed each other like gryphons.

  Samyaza must have succeeded in bullying the pilots into the lethal course change. When the aircraft attempted to turn, it lost control. Only in the last seconds before impact did the pilots succeed in partially leveling off at tree top height by returning to the old heading. By then, it was too late.

  The last thing U’Sumi remembered was the Gihunu River racing beneath them at high speed, with a stand of forest directly ahead. His mind mercifully blanked out the actual crash—a memory so traumatic that he would never retrieve it to his dying day.

  THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367

  In his recent autobiographical book, Forbidden Science, Vallee summed up his views about the provenance of UFOs, a viewpoint that he’s developed through decades of research: “The UFO Phenomenon exists. It has been with us throughout history. It is physical in nature and it remains unexplained in terms of contemporary science. It represents a level of consciousness that we have not yet recognized, and which is able to manipulate dimensions beyond time and space as we understand them.” So much for anti-gravity-powered starships ferrying Big Brothers from outer space. Vallee thinks UFOs are likely “windows” to other dimensions manipulated by intelligent, often mischievous, always enigmatic beings we have yet to understand.

  — Heretic Among Heretics: Jacques Vallee Interview on ufoevidence.org

  THE PALADIN’S ODYSSEY | 367

  18

  Damnation’s Mouth

  G

  reen shadows blended into a miasma of lights and voices, neither of which were comprehensible to the Awakening One—names were still out of reach. The crackle of flames and smell of pine-oil smoke assaulted his senses from somewhere nearby. Every muscle and bone in his body ached, although a slight test movement of his limbs revealed nothing was actually broken. Memory started to return somewhat.

  U’Sumi’s eyes focused on the devastation around him.

  Outside the section of the wreck that had once held the airship’s lounge, bodies and pieces of bodies lay strewn about a river bank forest clearing. Small scavenger wurms already flitted about their newfound feast.

  For several seconds, he could not put together what happened. When his memory partially returned, a jolt of horror came with it.

  He unfastened what remained of his harness and pulled himself painfully from his broken seat to peer ahead through the crumpled cabin. Most of it had completely caved in forward. The bulkhead he had leaned against while still in flight lay bent and broken outward at his feet. Only a miracle prevented him from tumbling out in the last moments of the crash to join the dismembered crew from the pilot bubble. He turned his head.

  T’Qinna’s harness must have snapped at the last second, for she lay on her side in the aisle, her back to him. Taanyx, miraculously unscathed, watched over her, a graven bright-eyed sentinel. Scrapings in the shag carpet between what remained of the seat mount and her body showed that T’Qinna had unsnapped herself and crawled there post—impact before passing out.

  U’Sumi almost fainted again with relief when he saw that she still breathed. He stooped over her, checking her body for broken bones and head injuries. Aside from some cuts, bruises, and a nasty looking abrasion on her cheek, she appeared no worse off than he. He tried to wake her, but elicited only a groan. He wanted to stay by her, but knew he had to move on.

  Muffled female shrieks came from under wreckage that used to be the front part of the lounge. The impact had compressed the airframes and telescoped the bulkhead forward; leaving the outer fuselage to crumple down over the center sections in thin tangled metal drapes. Debris buried U’Sumi’s half-sisters just a few cubits beyond T’Qinna. Before pulling them free, however, he glanced over to his father and Yafutu. Sheets of fallen overhead partly hid them from his line of sight.

  Fresh blood soaked the carpet under their feet—lots of fresh blood.

  Turning from his sisters, he scrambled up the twisted aisle to their seats. A’Nu-Ahki, though unconscious, appeared only slightly hurt.

  Not so Yafutu.

  The boy’s eyes peered up at U’Sumi with that same calm he had shown shortly before the wreck. A piece of airframe had broken off and pierced the youngster’s side, probably embedded in his left kidney.

  Yafutu whispered, “My brother…”

  U’Sumi somehow pushed aside the howling vacuum that sucked strength from his chest. He gently ran his hand through Yafutu’s hair, then set to bringing A’Nu-Ahki back to consciousness. If anyone knew how to save the boy, it would be their father.

  The Seer grunted and slowly came to at U’Sumi’s frantic shaking.

  “Wha-what happened?”

  U’Sumi spoke quickly, “Yafutu’s badly hurt! We also need to dig out other survivors and get them away from the astra. There’s a fire nearby. I think it’s the fuel!”

  A’Nu-Ahki twisted around and undid his safety harness. Then he saw Yafutu.

  “Oh E’Yahavah, no!”

  “Pahp, there’s no time for that now! We have to move him and the other survivors to safety!”

  “If we move him, it could kill him! Look at what he’s impaled on! It’s all that’s halfway stopping the blood. If he moves now, he’ll bleed out!”

  U’Sumi examined the piece of airframe and followed it out from of his brother’s body until it disappeared into a shredded portion of bulkhead. I can’t lose another Iyapeti all over again!

  “Hold that end of it steady while I pull away some of this wreckage,” he told his father.

  Once A’Nu-Ahki had both hands gripped around the impaling piece of airframe, U’Sumi carefully began to remove each scrap of stressed metal from off the twisted fragment. Each time one moved, Yafutu screamed at the shift of pressure against his inner organs. Nevertheless, the blood flow did not increase much. Finally, the rest of the fragment became visible. It had snapped clean off on impact and measured under a couple cubits in length. U’Sumi thanked E’Yahavah that he would not have to shear it off himself, as he had no idea how to do that.

  U’Sumi asked, “If I cut his harness and get one of those broken-off seats in the back, can we transfer him onto it, straddled, face backwards, without disturbing the metal or the wound?”

  “Excellent idea! Moving him will still be difficult. But if it’s possible, that’s the way to do it.”

  An explosion rocked the cabin from just outside, where a piece of the port wing had broken from its cantilever and ruptured the alcohol-glakka spirits fuel tank.

  U’Sumi shouted, “Let’s move!”

  He turned to notice that T’Qinna had come around and seemed to have already assessed the situation. She tugged at the fallen stressed-skin metal plates that covered Uranna and Tylurnis. She had her back to U’Sumi, though, and he did not want to distract her. Instead, he scrambled aft toward where the combat command center used to be and grabbed one of the seats wrenched from its mount by the twisting deck.

  The door to the command room swung on its hinges, giving him a quick glance at what lay beyond. Most of the cabin had sheared away. Only one of the occupants had survived.

  Isha’Tahar lay buried up to her waist under a pile of dead quickfire equipment. Her weary eyes gazed up at him, as he hefted th
e chair tight against his chest.

  “Help me,” she called weakly in her own voice.

  “I will,” U’Sumi said, “but first I have to get my little brother out—he’s badly injured. I promise I’ll be back!”

  She nodded and rested her head back down on the cluttered deck.

  When U’Sumi returned forward, A’Nu-Ahki had cut Yafutu’s harness loose one-handedly with a piece of sharp metal. He had repositioned himself in front of and facing the boy, where he held the fragment still with his other hand. From there he was better able to control the motions of the air frame fragment when they tried to move Yafutu.

  Once they cleared a path, the two men lifted the boy; careful to maintain his body position, and shifted him sideways over A’Nu-Ahki’s seat, legs straddling, onto the portable chair. U’Sumi bore the brunt of Yafutu’s weight, while their father controlled the awkward motions of the metal fragment against the boy’s lower back. Once they wrestled him into his new seat, they carried him diagonally across the aisle and out of the wreckage through the hole by U’Sumi’s old chair. When they reached a safe distance, they gently set him down on some soft forest moss in a large clearing.

  A’Nu-Ahki stayed with Yafutu, while U’Sumi went back to help T’Qinna with his sisters and to retrieve Isha’Tahar.

  By the time he reached the fuselage again, a towering fire raged on the other side of the wreck, dangerously near to what remained of the astra’s skin. T’Qinna, Taanyx, and U’Sumi’s half-sisters scurried from the jagged hole just as he arrived.

  “I’m going in for Isha’Tahar!” he shouted over the fiery roar.

  T’Qinna shouted, “Let me help!”

  “No! Yafutu’s badly hurt! My father may need you!”

  Uranna, who seemed dazed from a gash across her forehead, followed T’Qinna into the woods.