by James Axler
Ullikummis had spoken to his mother briefly, before he had been locked away in the prison asteroid. Only then, when everything had come to such a dreadful head, had he realized that he also had been manipulated, that his father had done all of this to achieve his aims, to gain power over Tiamat. For four millennia, Ullikummis had drifted the universe in his orbiting prison, locked inside a shell of stone. And for four millennia, Ullikummis had said but one word every single day, reminding himself of his betrayal at his father’s hands. That word had been his father’s name, Enlil, and he had spoken it with all the hate it deserved.
By contrast, Enlil had thought nothing of his son in four and a half thousand years, paying the matter no mind since the moment that the child was out of his life. Ullikummis had played his role, and that was enough. Enlil had attended his exile from Earth merely as a formality, remaining hidden behind the thick drapes of his palanquin throughout the ritual banishment, copulating with a slave girl. He had been barely conscious of the words spoken by his adviser, Nusku, as he read them from the holographic tablet before the open door to his son’s prison.
“‘For the gross failure that you have committed, purportedly in your father’s name, you shall be cast into the heavens. Your name shall no longer be mentioned in this house, nor shall you be recognized as a deity. Your history shall be known as the story of a failure. No glory shall be visited upon the name of Ullikummis, Son of Enlil,’” the vizier had pronounced.
And then the vizier had spoken Enlil’s final taunt, casting the blame upon Ullikummis’s mentor.
“‘Upelluri dared to turn his hand against Lord Enlil,’” he read, “‘poisoning the mind of the great god’s son, Ullikummis. He, too, shall be punished.’”
In that moment, Enlil’s responsibility to the drama had been publicly assuaged, leaving him clear and free in the minds of both his subjects and all but the most suspicious of the Annunaki.
Now, in the ante-nursery of the reborn starship Tiamat, Ullikummis faced Enlil in a conflict that had been millennia in reaching its conclusion. Enlil swung the serpent lightning at him, its shimmering line fluctuating as it cut through the air. This time Ullikummis was ready, punching forward with his right arm and snatching the writhing line midway down its length. The end of the serpent lightning wrapped around Ullikummis’s arm, burning everything it touched as it clung to the stone-plate armor that was the prince’s skin, clung there like the resin of the terebinth tree, channeling thousands of volts through his flesh. The force was so powerful it seemed to lash against Ullikummis’s bones, burrowing deep beneath the stone cladding of his altered skin, the sound of thunder deafening in his ears.
Krak-a-boom!
Ullikummis ignored the pain, dismissing it in the way that Upelluri had taught him, focusing past it and into the wellspring of hate that burned deep in his heart.
Enlil bared his teeth as the serpent lightning trembled in his grip, feeling the awesome power of the weapon looping back and forth from its handle.
Abruptly, Ullikummis pulled his body back, yanking the lightning serpent closer in a flare of sparks and pulling Enlil with it. The scarlet-cloaked overlord had two options now: to let go of the weapon or to follow where Ullikummis dragged him. He clung fiercely, his clawed hand tightly clenched around the weapon’s handle.
His right arm alive with dancing electrical flames, Ullikummis used his weight to pull his father back, dragging the fearsome Annunaki overlord forward in a reluctant stagger. He was heavier than his father by far, the stonework of his body giving him the dynamism of a collapsing skyscraper. Ullikummis glanced behind him, past the scythelike protrusions that reared from his immense shoulders, searching for the exit to the room.
“Ungrateful child,” Enlil spit as he was forced to take another stumbling step forward. “Your time is over. Your era past. You shone briefly, as was always my intention.”
Ullikummis reached out with his free hand, grasping the door frame and anchoring himself there as he drew his father forward at the far end of the serpent lightning.
“Now is the time to lie down,” Enlil gritted, “and give your body over to Tiamat once more. Accept inevitability. Your moment is over. You are nothing more than a footnote to history.”
Ullikummis pulled once more, mustering all his strength to snatch his father forward, dragging him through the door and out of the birthing room.
In a moment the dueling Annunaki were out of the room, and finally Ullikummis released his grip on the burning length of lightning flame. Flames licked along his arm, his dark stone flesh blackened to the color of coal.
Enlil stumbled another few steps into the huge antechamber beyond, staggering like a drunk as he tried to right himself. The lightning weapon flared and dimmed in his grip, cycling through its options as it renewed its fearsome charge.
The room was twenty feet across and designed in a hexagonal pattern, with great jutting arches interlaced high over its deck, each one grown of decorative bone. Ill lit, the room had a faint blue-green glow, like being beneath the ocean. Ullikummis stood in the center of those bone arches, his eyes burning brightly in the gloom as his father recovered himself. Behind Enlil, the door to the birthing chamber sealed shut, metal plates coming together horizontally like a set of jaws.
“You fear me, Father,” Ullikummis said, “because I am the one thing you never planned for.”
Enlil nodded as the serpent lightning buzzed in his hand like a living thing. “A loose end to be snipped,” he agreed, his eerie duotonal voice echoing from the walls.
And then, the two Annunaki charged at each other again, hatred eternal burning behind their eyes.
* * *
DOWN IN Tiamat’s engine room, Grant and Rosalia stood side by side as the strange, short figures rushed at them along the wide gangway that ran over the engine housings like a bridge. Each figure was dressed in a ragged black one-piece outfit, pockets lining their sides and looped around their waists like a belt sewn into the garment itself. Around their heads, each figure wore a small rig of lights that rested to the sides of their tiny eyes, each light the size of a fingernail but
exceptionally bright. Each figure’s face proved hard to see behind those lights, but Grant made out tiny, squinting eyes and hooked, beaklike noses with rugged flesh that looked like burned meat.
Grant stepped back, spreading his feet wider in a sturdy position as the first of the strangely garbed figures hurried toward them. Beside him, Rosalia had drawn her katana up past her head in a two-handed grip, its charcoal-black blade like a line of shadow in the air. Then the battle commenced, the quartet of figures attacking the Cerberus pair in a flurry of movement.
With a fierce shout, Rosalia brought her body forward and low, swinging her blade in a graceful arc that caught the ankles of the lead figure in a grisly shower of blood. The blood was clear with a black tint, like something that might ooze from a crushed bug. The figure tumbled backward, its pudgy hands snapping out to grab the sword before Rosalia could pull it away.
Behind her, Grant found himself facing the second of the rodentlike figures, and was suddenly dazzled by the lighting rig around its face. This one held a tool of some kind. To Grant’s eye it looked like a wrench, brutally curved at the bottom and carved from a creamy bonelike material. Grant stepped back, struggling to see as the wrench rushed toward him, cutting the air just inches from his chest as his coattails billowed before him. Then the ex-Mag blindly raised his right hand—the one that wielded the Sin Eater—and squeezed the trigger, sending a burst of fire in the direction of the ugly-looking creature.
The figure fell back under the gunfire and the bullets went wild.
Grant blinked in quick succession as he willed the effects of the dazzling headlights away. Before him, the strange humanoid burbled something that sounded like an electronic shriek, before rolling across the deck plating and getting back to its
feet. Then it came charging at him again with one of its fellow mechanics waddling after.
Grant ejected the spent cartridge from his Sin Eater as he brought his other arm up to fend off the next attack. He didn’t look directly at the creature this time, instead timing his blows by a combination of sound, instinct and whatever he could make out from the corner of his eye. It wouldn’t do to be dazzled again. Grant sent his Sin Eater back to its hiding place as he fought one-armed against his attacker. His left arm struck against the creature’s chest, knocking it with another angry squawk. Grant felt the thing shift against his blow, stumbling just a little. Closing his eyes, the ex-Mag turned, swinging his whole body as he drove a punch into the creature’s face. The blow struck with a crack of breaking bone, and Grant heard the creature chirrup as it struggled backward. Then there came a shriek, and he knew he’d knocked his first attacker over the side of the bridgelike gangway.
There was no time to stop. The second creature was already coming at him with what appeared to be some kind of power drill. Grant opened his eyes a slit as he heard the drill bit turn with a high-pitched whir. He smacked it aside with his forearm, slamming the shorter figure across its wrist to keep the whirling drill blade away.
A few paces along the wide catwalk, Rosalia twisted aside as another of the strange creatures hurled a tool at her. Nine inches long, the tool whizzed end-over-end through the air as it cut a path toward her. Rosalia turned her head aside, her dark ponytail swishing
behind her as she twisted out of the tossed tool’s path. She watched as it clattered to the decking close to her feet.
Then she sprang up, her feet pounding on the walkway span as she lunged at the creature with her sword. Held almost horizontal, the black sword drove through the air and into the humanoid figure as it tried to jump aside. Too slow, the creature found itself skewered on the end of the sharp blade, falling forward as the tip pierced its torso.
Rosalia turned, wrenching the blade free and dancing in place as she swung it toward her other attacker. The creature batted the blade aside with an outthrust arm, a dusty wad of material tearing free as the metal cut through it.
Then the figure was reaching into one of its capacious pockets, pulling loose a thick cord that it wore at its hip. Six feet in length, the blue cord featured a weight on both ends like a skipping rope, and Rosalia guessed it was used to hook items or levers that were higher than the short creature might be able to reach.
With a flick of the wrist, the rope lashed out, one weighted end hurtling toward Rosalia’s face. She sprang, feet striking the decking with force as she drove her body up and over the flying weight.
The pendulum whizzed back like a yo-yo, zipping away and behind the dwarfen creature as it marveled at Rosalia’s leap. For a split second, Rosalia found herself dazzled by those strange lights that the creature wore around its eyes, and then she was plummeting blindly back to the decking.
The strangely garmented figure seized that moment to strike, whipping the cord at Rosalia’s shapely legs as she struck the deck and yanking sharply back on the cord as it entangled them. Before she could react, Rosalia found herself dragged to the deck, the thick cord caught up in a tangle around her lower legs.
Fifteen feet away, Grant leaped over his combatant’s next drill attack, kicking out with one long leg and striking his attacker hard in the chest. The shorter figure went down in a cloud of dust from its overalls, screaming wildly like a stuck pig. Grant snapped up a handful of the creature’s collar and wrenched it off the deck, at the same time commanding the reloaded Sin Eater into his hand.
Behind Grant, Rosalia grunted as she struck repeatedly against the deck chest-first, the katana blade slipping from her grasp and clattering away from her. Behind her, the eerie dwarfen figure was chattering something gleeful, a noise like an excitable fax machine emanating from some orifice in its strange, unearthly face. Grasping the cord with both hands, the creature pulled, dragging the dark-haired mercenary across the deck toward the edge.
Frantically, Rosalia’s hand reached for the Ruger strapped to her hip, pulling it free as she slid across the catwalk toward a sheer drop. Then she had the Ruger P-85 pointed at the chattering abomination as it dragged her to the side of the high-up walkway, squeezing the trigger as the creature fell squarely in her sights.
Three loud reports cut the air, their echoes lost to the churning, whirring sound of the engines below. The creature tugging Rosalia by her feet shrieked, toppling backward as the bullets struck it full in the face. Rosalia watched in grim satisfaction as her attacker fell back over the side of the walkway, stepping into empty space and disappearing from view. Her satisfaction turned to horror as she realized that the thing was still clutching one end of the cord, and suddenly Rosalia found herself being dragged briskly across the deck to the walkway’s edge.
“Magistrate!” she called, as her hands skittered along the smooth walkway, trying desperately to find purchase.
Fifteen feet along the walkway, Grant rattled off a burst of fire into the gut of the last of the creatures from just inches away, ignoring the troll-like beast as it doubled over in pain. He turned at Rosalia’s cry, powering his legs as he chased after her retreating form.
“Go limp!” Grant instructed, shouting to be heard over the cacophonous engines below.
Reading Grant’s lips, Rosalia did as instructed, her legs disappearing over the edge of the walkway, and she felt her stomach sink even as her body began to. Grant sprinted toward her, his long legs eating up the dozen strides it took to reach Rosalia, throwing himself forward with his arms outstretched.
As Rosalia began tipping, Grant’s right hand snagged around her left wrist, and the muscular ex-Mag gritted his teeth as he was dragged toward the walkway’s edge by the momentum. Grant stretched out his left arm, slapping it repeatedly against the hard decking as he tried to bring himself to a halt, the toes of his boots scraping across the bridgelike walkway. Finally Grant stopped, his right arm and shoulder hanging over the side of the catwalk, his hand cinched tightly around Rosalia’s wrist. She swung to and fro, the cord still tangled around her legs as the strange dwarfish creature fell from its end, releasing its own grip. Below, a crowd of the strange, dwarfen workers had begun to form, pointing and shrieking at what was going on above their heads. The figure fell amid them with a bone-sickening crack, but the sound was lost to the whir of the engines.
“Thank you, Magistrate,” Rosalia said breathlessly. “That’s one I owe you.”
“Remind me later,” Grant said, the trace of a smile forming on his lips for a moment.
Then, gritting his teeth with the effort, Grant pulled Rosalia up until she could reach the catwalk’s edge, after which the two of them worked together to get her back on the wide walkway.
“Let’s get going,” Grant said as Rosalia retrieved her sword from amid the mess of crumpled bodies.
“Good idea,” she agreed. “This place is too damn popular for my liking.”
* * *
ENLIL LASHED OUT with the serpent lightning, the line of light whipping about him in a dizzying display as he charged at the hulking figure of his son. Ullikummis ducked and leaped, deftly avoiding contact with the lightning whip as he powered toward his father.
With a bone-numbing crack, the two foes met beneath the bone arches, their chests crashing together as they drove blow after blow at each other’s heads and torsos.
As the serpent lightning cut the air all around him, mighty Enlil struck out with his free hand, driving the heel of his palm at Ullikummis’s eye. Ullikummis’s head reared back as the blow tried to connect, throwing Enlil’s aim off so that his outthrust hand struck high against his cheek instead. Ullikummis took a single step back, creating distance between the two combatants that seemed alive with blinding white electricity. The serpent lightning crackled and spit, the sounds echoing through the enclosed chamber lik
e the sound of rumbling thunder.
Krak-a-boom!
His scarlet cape billowing around him like a bloody rent in the air, Enlil kicked out with his left leg, a double blow against his own flesh and blood. The first kick struck Ullikummis high in the ribs, smashing against his flank with such force it sounded like a shotgun going off. A split second later, Enlil’s second blow found its mark, crashing behind Ullikummis’s knee and forcing it to bend forward. Ullikummis fell at the blow, lurching forward and dropping to one knee before his father.
Enlil drew the serpent light back and around, describing a rotating arc like the path of a sycamore seed in the wind as it hurtled toward his son’s armored body. As the blinding line of electricity struck, Ullikummis powered himself forward, springing from the decking and driving the top of his head up and into his father’s chin. Enlil’s head whipped back like a skittle in a bowling alley at the blow, even as lightning played across Ullikummis’s form from the whiplike weapon that had wrapped around him.
As Enlil stumbled backward, Ullikummis turned his body, encouraging the cord of lightning to cinch tighter about his form. Fire played across his body, and his father lost his footing, the serpent lightning slipping from his grip. No longer under Enlil’s control, the cord hurtled around Ullikummis’s body like a lit firework, whizzing around and around with a crackling burst of energy and a booming roar of thunder. Ullikummis stood, enduring the serpent lightning as it ran its course, spiraling around his torso in a helter-skelter of unbridled power.
