God War

by James Axler

  “You’re in no condition to fight,” Brewster warned.

  Kudo looked at him, his face a mask of contempt. “Survival does not wait for one to be in the right condition or frame of mind,” the Tigers of Heaven warrior stated. “We are needed now.”

  Before Brewster could respond, another voice chipped in. “Gotta listen to the man, Brewster.” It was Domi, finally waking up in Kudo’s strong arms.

  “Domi, are you—?” Kudo began.

  Domi answered with a long, slow blink, her demonic red eyes burning fiercely in the rays of the morning sun. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Looks like you took a nasty hit yourself.”

  Self-consciously, Kudo reached his free hand to his marred face, stopped short of touching the stinging wound. “Things did not go quite to plan in the dragon ship,” he understated. When Domi looked at him in confusion, he added, “The city we were in when you were kidnapped. It was a spaceship, its body in the center of the settlement.”

  Domi nodded in comprehension, then urged Kudo to put her down. “I can walk,” she assured them both as he and Brewster watched her with worried expressions. “Now, let’s get moving. Cerberus is in trouble.”

  Agreeing, Kudo started jogging toward the burning building while Brewster and Domi followed, the latter still a little unsteady on her feet as she tried to shake off the effects of recent trauma to her body. The night before, Enlil had tried to turn her into one of his new Annunaki. As she ran, Domi pulled the Detonics Combat Master .45 pistol from its hiding place at the small of her back, placed there by Grant during their exit from Tiamat.

  * * *

  WITHIN THE SINGLE-STORY lodge, Lakesh found himself fighting for his life. The loyal troops for Ullikummis had amassed outside the gates in just a few hours, and when they had finally attacked, it had been sudden and brutal. There were almost two dozen of them by that time, each one hooded in one of the simple, roughly hewn robes, the cowls masking their faces in shadow. With more than twenty in total, they outnumbered the personnel that Lakesh could call upon at the base—between Cerberus staffers and Shizuka’s Tigers of Heaven, there were still just nineteen people, including Lakesh himself.

  Lakesh had been watching from the balcony when the first wave charged at the gates in a group of three, clambering over the spearlike struts like insects, never so much as making a sound. As they climbed, Shizuka gave the order to electrify the gates, and a ten-thousand-volt charge was sent through their metal railings, jolting the attackers from its struts with sparking bursts of electricity. The figures were tossed back, thrown to the ground outside the property with smoke pouring from their robes. It didn’t stop them.

  The next wave had marched over the bodies of the first, climbing up the gates despite the electric current coursing through them.

  “Firewalkers,” Lakesh had said as he watched them do the near-impossible with no hint of reluctance.

  These were troops for Ullikummis, stone men who could channel the gift of his hidden, symbiotic rocks to harden themselves, making their skin like armor.

  In that moment, as the first group scaled over the gate, Shizuka told Lakesh to retreat into the shelter of the lodge. Lakesh had done so without discussion, reentering the building and hurrying through the corridors to the temporary ops room. Waiting there, Donald Bry peered up from his usual position at one of the laptops.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, pushing his mess of copper curls from his eyes.

  “We’re under attack,” Lakesh said, his voice drained of all emotion. This had happened to them not so long ago. To suffer it again, now, when they were at their lowest ebb, was almost unthinkable.

  Bry didn’t hesitate. He had already patched through to the comm system, and he advised all personnel to stand ready. The call went through the lodge instantly, and the cries of surprise and outrage came back from nearby rooms.

  Once Bry had finished his broadcast, he locked eyes with Lakesh sorrowfully, like an obedient hound awaiting his master’s orders.

  “Can we do this again, Donald?” Lakesh asked wistfully.

  “We did it once,” Bry replied. “Surviving is in our nature, Lakesh.”

  Lakesh had nodded. “It had better be,” he said ominously.

  Outside, Shizuka had called upon the ten Tigers of Heaven who patrolled the lodge, and together they formed a human barricade through which the infiltrators would have to pass before they could reach the personnel within. Shizuka drew her sword, a twenty-four-inch katana blade with intricate gold inset along its center line and drizzled across its ceremonial handle.

  Without a word, her loyal troops did the same, a line of katanas glinting in the morning sunlight like stripped-down trees in a metal forest. The first group of firewalkers charged up the long pathway that led to the lodge, utterly silent as they swiftly made their way to their objective. Quite why Ullikummis had singled out Cerberus for this punishment no one knew, but the Cerberus personnel had evidently been identified as enemies to the New Order. The reality was that Ullikummis had relived parts of recent history while imbibing data in the Ontic Library, and he had witnessed the crucial role that Cerberus had played in the defeat of the Annunaki following their recent rebirth. Such a force needed to be cut down swiftly, he reasoned, and given no opportunity to regroup and secure its power base. With that in mind, his attack on the Cerberus redoubt and the subsequent hounding of its personnel was logical.

  The first skirmishes happened on the lawns midway between the gates and the house. Four of Shizuka’s men threw themselves at the so-called firewalkers as they tried to storm the building, cutting and stabbing at them with their swords as they endeavored to force them to retreat. Already, the second wave was coming, hurrying over the gates and into the lodge’s grounds. Shizuka and her troops hurried to meet the invaders. The firewalkers were strong, armed with their slingshots and relying on the capacities of stone when drawn into close combat. The Tigers of Heaven did their best to hold ground, but they were unable to repel the attackers. Within just a few minutes, figures were battling on the lawns and in the tranquil garden at the back of the house.

  The first hooded attacker to reach the lodge itself knocked something over, setting light to drapes and walls in moments.

  In the ops room, Bry and Lakesh had armed themselves from the small arsenal they had stored at the temporary base. As the first robed figure barreled down the corridor and into the room, the two men calmly leveled their pistols and fired, peppering the man with bullets. Neither Lakesh nor Bry was comfortable in this scenario; they were deskmen, employing their intellect in the operation of the Cerberus organization. Nevertheless the hooded figure in the doorway went down beneath the barrage of gunfire, falling backward in a slump.

  Both Lakesh and Bry remained poised, their 9 mm pistols held steadily in their hands. The robed figure lay on the wooden floor, silent. Warily Lakesh approached, taking three tentative steps to get a closer look at the man beneath the hood. His simple robes showed wear and tear, and there were several holes across the torso, circles with dark edges where the bullets had struck. The man’s face was scrunched up in anger, his lips a thin line where the hood left his chin revealed. He was still breathing, Lakesh could see, fustian robes bunched where he had fallen. Then, without warning, the man moved, his eyes springing open, and he powered himself from the floor and grasped for Lakesh.

  The aging cyberneticist jumped backward, grateful for the recent rejuvenation program that his body had been put through. He was old, yes, but at least he wasn’t decrepit—not yet.

  The attacker’s arms cut the air as he drove a punch toward where Lakesh had been standing, and the older man ducked and sidestepped, just getting himself out of the way of the first of those powerful blows. The next fist drummed into the wall beside Lakesh’s head, striking with a noise like thunder and drawing away again with a dusting of ruined plaster.


  They’re strong, Lakesh reminded himself. Drawing on the power of their master, each punch from the firewalker was like a battering ram thrust toward its goal.

  Lakesh whipped up the Smith & Wesson pistol as he threw himself out of the way of his attacker, loosing a triburst. The first shot struck the man’s torso at the base of his rib cage, burning through the brown robe he wore, but to little effect. The second shot struck the man’s face, producing a cloudburst of blood even as the third shot rocketed past him, missing by just a fraction of an inch.

  Across the room, Donald Bry was lining up his own pistol on the fast-moving target, waiting for Lakesh to get out of the line of fire. He watched Lakesh duck as he blasted his attacker in the chest and face, and saw the older man spin out of the path of another attack, whipping around a pillar to the far right of the room. Bry pumped the trigger of his blaster then, firing three shots at the firewalker as he staggered in place.

  * * *

  ONE FLOOR BELOW, in the basement of the lodge, Reba DeFore, Mariah Falk and Dr. Kazuka had been examining their patient when Donald Bry had issued his alert. Their patient was Edwards, another ex-Magistrate who had sided with the Cerberus rebels over the past few years, and who had recently been infected by one of the obedience stones. A tall, broad-shouldered figure with a shaved head and muscular build, Edwards exuded an air of menace even lying asleep on the gurney before them.

  The two physicians and the geologist were looking at an item of ultrasonic equipment, something akin to a surgical laser that would direct concentrated sound waves on command. The unit featured an eight-inch-wide drum that tapered to a thinner point, which in turn ended in a short tube that was just a little thicker than a ballpoint pen. Kazuka had been mounting the device on a vise arm that would hold it in place so that it could be operated via computer hookup.

  “We’re entering uncharted surgical territory,” he reminded them as he screwed the emitter in place.

  The device itself was an experimental model that had been swiftly cobbled together by two of the Cerberus scientists who resided at the lodge. Out of options, it had been mocked up in a matter of hours following Lakesh’s initial suggestion. Cerberus employed some of the most brilliant scientific brains on the planet, but even they had been taxed when asked to make the ultrasound emitter a reality.

  As Kazuka fixed the emitter in place, Bry’s alert came softly over the wall-mounted comm. “There are enemies at our perimeter,” Bry explained calmly. “They have entered the grounds, and the Tigers of Heaven are engaging them now. Please be advised that we are under attack, and that this facility is now on level-two high alert.”

  Wide-eyed, DeFore turned to Mariah. “Again?” she said incredulously.

  Mariah shrugged. “We were caught napping last time,” she said. “Let’s not make that mistake again.”

  Thus, when one of the firewalker troopers loyal to Ullikummis came hurrying down the staircase, the three doctors were ready for him. Like the other infiltrators, this one was dressed in a thick robe that covered him from crown to ankles. Though thick, the robe was light enough to move freely in, as he proved when he hurtled down the stairs with one of the Tigers of Heaven, tossing the samurai against one wall in a show of strength. The samurai hit it with a loud bang, dropping his razor-keen blade as he tumbled to the hardwood floor.

  The blade skittered across the floor before coming to a halt as Kazuka placed the sole of his shoe upon it. In a flash, the Tigers of Heaven physician picked up the sword and entered the fray, running along the corridor and lunging at the attacker even as the man wrenched Kazuka’s fallen colleague from the floor by his throat.

  “Let him go,” Kazuka warned as he jabbed the blade at the firewalker in a practiced two-handed grip. “Your fight is with me now, monster.”

  In a split second, the robed figure let go of the other man’s throat and spun, batting the blade aside even as Kazuka drove it at his chest. With that, the fight was on.

  Though a trained physician, Dr. Kazuka was a Tigers of Heaven warrior, and as such he could wield a sword with the same grace and artistry of any of his samurai colleagues. The blade sang a pure note as it cut through the air, slashing at the face of the hooded attacker. The man in the robe stepped back effortlessly, using the flat of his left palm to bat at the blade once more, knocking it aside with such force that Kazuka almost lost his footing.

  Kazuka recovered instantly, turning his stumble to his advantage as he stepped inside his foe’s guard and drove the pommel of the sword hard into the man’s chest. The man grunted, feet pinwheeling as he staggered back to the stairs.

  Kazuka didn’t hesitate. He leaped forward, driving his attack and forcing the robed stranger to step up one stair or lose his footing completely. But as the Tigers of Heaven physician brought the long blade down in a straight, vertical strike, his foe breathed the trigger phrase that brought him power: “I am stone.”

  The blade struck the warrior’s skull with a loud clang, like metal striking rock, and Kazuka gasped as the kinetic energy dissipated up the blade’s length and shuddered through the muscles of his arms where he held it.

  Before Kazuka could recover, the robed stranger thrust his hand out in a vicious open-palm blow, striking the doctor in the nose. Kazuka stumbled back, seeing stars flit across his vision and feeling the hot trickle of blood between his teeth. The robed invader kept at him, his right arm sweeping in a swift arc that ended with a brutal cuff to the side of Kazuka’s head. The physician was slammed back into the nearest wall, grunting as the breath burst from his lungs, urgently bringing the sword up into a defensive position. The hooded man struck with the force of stone; fighting him was like trying to do combat with an avalanche.

  Kazuka reeled as another blow struck him. This time a sharp knee plunged into his side, followed by a vicious slap across the face.

  As the robed attacker prepared to launch another blow, Mariah Falk and Reba DeFore charged out of one of the rooms at the far end of the corridor, hefting the ultrasound emitter between them as they ran up the corridor toward the action. It had taken a few minutes to loosen the nuts and free it from its mounting, but now the unit could be carried—albeit awkwardly—by one or two people. As the firewalker lunged at the struggling Kazuka, Mariah put her fingers to her lips and gave an ear-splitting whistle that resounded down the corridor. The robed intruder halted, turning to see what the noise was, and in that instant Reba DeFore flicked a switch at the side of the sound emitter and blasted a burst of ultrasound at the man.

  Other than the faint buzz of the machine itself, the only real hint that the ultrasound was operating was a subliminal feeling of uneasiness in all the people within its vicinity. The ultrasound worked at the edge of the audible spectrum, registering in the inner ears and causing a momentary loss of balance. There was something about the firewalkers, however, that the Cerberus scientists had noticed earlier: while they could seemingly channel the durability of their rock-clad master merely with a thought, the process required some meditative level of concentration, a state that could be disrupted by high-pitched sounds. While the ultrasound emitter had been constructed with the hope of using it as a surgical instrument, right now it disrupted the trancelike state that Ullikummis’s faithful warrior had achieved.

  The warrior stood rigid as the blast of sound hit, and Kazuka used that moment to take swift action, driving the katana into his enemy and drilling the metal through the man’s torso until its whole length had passed through him right up to the handle.

  Kazuka stepped back as the man stood there, his eyes wide beneath the masking shadows of his hood, the sword plunged into his body just below the line of his rib cage. The robed firewalker stared off into the middle distance, unable to comprehend what had happened to him as blood began to stream between his gritted teeth and pour down his chin. Then, as if his body had finally acknowledged the injury, the man sank to his knees, care
ering sideways until the left side of his head slammed against the hard wooden paneling that lined the walls. He was dead.

  “It seems,” Kazuka began, his breath coming in ragged, uneven bursts, “that we have a makeshift weapon to use against Ullikummis’s most faithful warriors.”

  DeFore and Mariah nodded.

  “Not especially practical for the battlefield,” Mariah lamented. But it would have to do.

  * * *

  THE ROBED FIGURE reeled from the impacts of Donald Bry’s shots, dancing an ungainly jig as he staggered back, knocking over one of the desks and sending a computer monitor skittering across the floor. But—

  impossible as it seemed—the man recovered in a heartbeat, his hands snapping out for Lakesh where he had retreated behind a support pillar near the windows at the side of the room.

  Lakesh reared back. But the hooded figure was faster than Lakesh, grasping a handful of material from the front of his white jumpsuit and pulling the older man to him. As he did so, the man’s hood fell back from his face, revealing a bald head and dark, intense eyes. “I am stone,” the man announced, yanking Lakesh up with such violence that his feet left the floor.

  For a moment, Lakesh hung there, his legs dangling in place as the firewalker glared at him. There was a ferocity in those eyes, Lakesh saw, but also something else—an otherworldliness, as though the man was not quite in his right state of mind, on drugs or in some sort of trance perhaps.

  “I am not your enemy,” Lakesh blurted. “Please, you must put me down.”

  The robed man ignored him, shaking the cyberneticist in the air like a rag doll. Lakesh was jerked back and forth dizzily, gasping as his swinging arm slapped against the pillar. With his other hand he tried desperately to bring his blaster into place, pulling the stubby silver barrel of the Smith & Wesson around and firing at his enemy’s face. The shot went wild as he was spun once more, and Lakesh screamed as his back smashed against the pillar with colossal force, driving the breath from his lungs.