Fall of Angels

by Matt Larkin

  But they had no choice. Back down now and this was all for nothing.

  And then some kind of shockwave erupted through the ship. The Ark shrieked and trembled, sending Redeemers and Sentinels alike tumbling to the deck. Rachel’s HUD winked out. Her suit wasn’t responding.

  Knight must have fired off the QEMP. Everything would take a minute to reset. She rose and tried to fire at a Redeemer. Her pulse pistol was fried too. She rushed forward, jumped on the Redeemer, and brought her elbow down on his head. Sentinel training had given her some Merkabah basics. The other Sentinels recovered quickly, and the Redeemers fell before their superior skills.

  A pair of magog barreled around the corner. Sentinels charged right in, though the dog-men were stronger than ordinary humans. A Sentinel wrapped one of the dog-things in a strangle hold and brought it to its knees. Rachel walked over and looked the creature in the eyes. Despite its animal features, those eyes were human.

  Its mind was at least partly that of a man. Rachel punched it in the nose.

  They pushed on, charging onto the bridge. Muriel was there, lying on the floor, choking. Spasming as his organs failed. Two more angels lay strewn about in similar condition. Raziel would be like this now. Incapacitated. Dying, unless they got him to the cryo chamber.

  “Hold this room against any intruders,” Rachel ordered.

  She pulled the implant from the shielded box. Now or never.

  Holy shit, those were sharp-looking prongs.

  She’d come all this way to do this. She had to.

  She retracted her helmet to expose the side of her neck, then pressed the unholy thing there. Deep breaths.

  She could do this. She could do this.

  Knight had done his part. Raziel might well have died for this.

  Okay.

  Time.

  She pushed the implant into her neck. It was like being jabbed with needles. The thing whirred, then sucked onto her skin. Electric fire surged through her veins. Her body convulsed, and she fell to the deck. She tried to scream, but her throat seized up and only a gargle escaped.

  Her mind surged, her psionic senses reaching outward. It was there, just beyond her grasp.

  The Ark is mine!

  The angel’s voice had already grown dim with his fading life signs, but the pressure slammed against her mind like a pulse cannon. A presence coiled through her sinuses and wrapped itself around her brain. Her vision faded as the angel assaulted her. Flares of pain shot through her nervous system. The angel had connected their minds powerfully, and he was pulling her down into oblivion with him.

  But if he could do it, so could she. Rachel reached out, sending a pulse of rage at the angel. Muriel had ordered the destruction of New Rome. He had taken her home. Her family. Her world.

  Burn, you bastard!

  The pressure against her mind recoiled, and the angel’s thoughts seeped away into darkness.

  Rachel touched the Ark. It was hers, once again.

  40

  “Subject is male, age unknown, angel. There is extensive tissue damage, but the rate of cellular decay is virtually nil. I have stopped most of the bleeding, and the body seems to be replenishing itself quickly enough to compensate. A human would have succumbed to these wounds before I could tend to him. However, my prognosis is for a full recovery. As an addendum, the nanobots I injected did not behave as programmed. I believe that the subject was able to make contact with the nanobot swarm and reprogram them, taking charge of his own healing.”

  Dr. Leah Suzuki, report on patient Raziel

  ANDROMEDA GALAXY

  Rachel rubbed the implant at her neck. Raziel had told her to remove it as soon as the ship was hers. She knew she should. She could feel the Adversary edging ever closer to her. Its voice was a whisper at the back of her mind, offering her every dream she could imagine. Every answer she had so long been denied.

  And that was the thing—there was no hope of further answers from Raziel. The angel had been wounded so badly, she wasn’t certain he would survive, even in cryo sleep.

  They had found Raziel, bleeding out from dozens of wounds, some very deep. For an instant, his mind had brushed Rachel’s. Begging her not to let the other angels die.

  And oh, how Rachel had considered it. In the end, she’d agreed to let the Sentinels return the angels to the cryo chambers. Knight had promised Raziel he’d spare the angel’s brethren.

  All but one.

  Muriel still lay on the bridge, cold and dead.

  It would not bring back the billions of souls he had murdered. It was just the only justice Rachel could inflicted upon him.

  Knight and the other Sentinels had begun the process of bringing the angels to the cryo chamber while weeding out the last of the Redeemers and gogmagog.

  Rachel supposed no one would ever wake the angels again.

  If she took the implant out, she would never know the truth about everything.

  Oh, she knew better than to give in to the Adversary. But this implant allowed her to make sense of the Ark. To bond with its consciousness in a way she had never quite managed on her own. Maybe that was always the temptation the angels faced. Just a little more knowledge.

  Just a little more power.

  She sat in the command chair and delved deep into the ship’s mind. She would remove the implant. Soon.

  No. We can help you.

  She shook her head against the Adversary’s voice. Images of hell—for that was what she had seen in the Conduit breach—filled her mind … threatened her with the price of disobedience.

  She tried to focus on the ship. “Show me. Show me everything.” It was time she had the truth. Then she’d rip out this cursed thing. But she had to know.

  And the Ark understood. With the implant, at long last she was able to sort its stream of consciousness, to make sense of it. To tell it what she really wanted.

  In her mind she fell, spiraling backward through centuries and millennia. And it showed her the Conduit. Not the mere maze of paths she now knew but a vast highway connecting all universes. It stretched through the multiverse like the mind of God. And humans lived in so many of those universes.

  A thousand Edens grew and rose and fell before her eyes. Mankind flourished in some universes, building great civilizations. In others, humanity gave in to its own dark nature and destroyed itself. In her universe, though, time had moved on a different scale from some of the others. Eden—the Earth—was only just being formed.

  While across the veil, humans in a universe with faster time had evolved beyond their humble origins. They had spread across the universe and found it dying. Suns winked out one by one. God help her, she was witnessing the heat death of an entire universe. And a people, an advanced society, facing its own extinction, as all creation ended around them.

  They had become a post-human evolution of humanity, but it was not enough. Before her eyes they altered their own genetic code, implanted cybernetics into themselves. Made themselves angels.

  And they mapped the Conduit.

  They hadn’t made it at all.

  The Ark showed her the memory of angels. It had bonded with their minds, as it bonded with hers. It was seeing … Raziel’s memories? Its creator? Had her unlikely ally once built this very ship? And she’d never even suspected.

  And Raziel was afraid. They were all afraid. In desperation, they fled their dying universe. And they found mankind in many others. Centuries passed, and she watched the angels manipulate humans in younger universes, casting themselves as gods. Altering the course of human society and evolution. Why?

  “Because,” someone said to Raziel, “we cannot allow them to become like us. We cannot allow them to follow our course and become a threat.”

  And they found the perfect universe. A young universe where humans had not yet arisen. A universe that would last for billions of years more. Rachel’s universe.

  “A bastion, a focal point for our new multiversal empire.”

  Angels came through t
he Conduit en masse, planning to make this universe their own. Thousands of ships erupted forward and began terraforming worlds. Including the Earth. Making sure it became the way they remembered it. They pressed ever outward.

  Until they found the Lotan. Never, in any universe they had found, had the angels encountered creatures of dark matter. Raziel’s confusion filtered through the Ark. His fear and doubt and curiosity. His concern when his superiors demanded the Lotan submit to angel rule. His rage and grief as war erupted and Lotan began to tear angel ships apart.

  And so, in their desperate arrogance, their most brilliant scientists began experiments. Using the Conduit, they created a living universe to fight the Lotan. They created a breach in the universe to reach their new weapon … the Great Attractor. And it did fight the Lotan … before turning on its own creators, no more pleased to be mastered than the Lotan themselves.

  They called the new universe the Adversary, for it turned them against themselves. Grief and pain threatened to drown Rachel. Through the Ark’s eyes, she saw her brothers and sisters fall, taken by the Beast. In the end, the angels fought a cataclysmic war that destroyed a galaxy. And they erected seven seals to bar the way to any other universe, hell included. It was their last, most desperate gambit. They cut themselves off from any of their own kind stranded in other universes.

  Raziel wept for those he had known, people he would never see again. And for the countless losses they had suffered in the war.

  With the seals gone, could she find angels in other universes? But there were countless universes, and Rachel could not afford the time for such a search. Even if the angels would have proved allies—and they never had.

  They betrayed us. The Adversary’s voice pounded against the inside of her temples. They tried to dominate us, just as they did to you.

  “You saw us as nothing but hosts for the Beast!”

  We saw you as like them. We did not understand you were different. As we are different.

  “You tried to exterminate us!”

  That fate can yet be avoided. Submit.

  Rachel grabbed the implant and shrieked. She tugged at its release, but the twisted thing wouldn’t give way. She ground her fingernail into the button, and at last, it snapped free. Tendrils of current raced through her neck. She convulsed and fell to the floor.

  Then everything went dark.

  41

  “Some are calling it humanity’s second Exodus. Refugees—anyone with access to a Conduit-capable ship—are evacuating the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy. Their hope? That the New Eden Republic can protect them. Whether that hope is in vain is anyone’s guess.”

  Reuben Klein, MNN remote correspondent

  MAY 25, 3097 EY — PHOENIX DWARF GALAXY

  A thousand Asheran ships descended on Rachel’s fleet. The Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy had become the battleground for the Local Group. If she fell here, she wouldn’t have enough ships to stop the Adversary when they came for the Milky Way. The Sculptor Dwarf would likely be next, of course—and refugees fled that galaxy by the billions, flooding into the Milky Way, believing the NER could save them from Armageddon.

  But there was nowhere to hide.

  She rubbed the spot on her neck where the implant had been. Nanobot regenerators had healed the outward damage, but it still itched. And her dreams were constant reminders of the price of knowledge. Hell no longer spoke in her mind, but she could hardly forget the visions it had given her. The promises of torment should she resist. As she did now.

  From the Ark’s command chair, she reached into the holo display and triggered communications, then sent a hail to the Sephirot. “Phoebe. Take your fleet to port, and focus on the leviathans. I’ll handle the starboard side.”

  “Yup, yup.”

  They needed to take out the Asherans before Adversary ships showed up. She’d heard the rumors about the flagship of hell, the Azazel. People said it was larger and more powerful than even the Ark. So far, she hadn’t been able to find out.

  With closed fists, she punched into the halo of the Wrath, sending waves of deconstructor nanobot clusters soaring among the Asheran fleet. A dozen of them. It didn’t matter where they hit. The Asherans were so tightly packed nearly every beam would inflict damage somewhere. A rain of fire and terror to make them think twice.

  Explosions filled her display. She continued punching forward, weaving beam after beam into the incoming ships. Missiles fired toward her hull. She twisted her hand, and a net of plasma detonated the majority of the warheads. Some hit, but her shields held. Everything had changed. She was the one with the ship now.

  She would destroy fleet after fleet of Asherans.

  The angels were gone. And still, Rachel was losing system after system. She could not be everywhere at once, and the NER fleet was dwindling more quickly than the Adversary’s host. In the end, there would be no stopping the apocalypse. All that remained was to make the Asherans bleed for it.

  To make hell itself bleed for its crimes.

  One of the Asheran cruisers wove through her plasma net, drawing too close for her to shoot at with the Wrath. Phoebe had left a contingent of Sentinels to guard the Ark. If the Asherans boarded, they were in for a nasty surprise.

  She focused a Wrath arc on a leviathan. The beam tore apart the battleship’s shields and punched right through the hull, disintegrating a great chunk of it. The ship ruptured in two, bow and stern drifting apart.

  An incoming signal chimed on her screen. Was Phoebe in trouble? She swiveled her display, but the Sephirot and the Sentinel ships under her command were doing well enough. That signal was coming from the Asheran cruiser.

  Rachel’s hand hovered over the communicator. She had no reason left to care what these bastards had to say. The traitors had murdered David and damned mankind. Still … shit. She waved open the channel, and a hologram appeared.

  An Asheran soldier in full battle uniform, helmet on, a cross of light emanating from within. “Rachel Jordan.”

  What the …? That accent was …

  The faceplate popped open.

  David.

  Cybernetic implants stuck out from his cheekbones, temple, and forehead, but it was him. Those eyes were the same.

  And it was impossible. “David …” How could he be alive? She’d seen his shuttle destroyed. Hadn’t she? Had they somehow captured him before that? It was too much to hope for. If he was back … she could … have a reason. For more. “Thank you, God …” she mumbled, her lip trembling.

  “Aye, lass. Disable your defenses, and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Wha-what?” What the void was he talking about?

  “Surrender command of the Ark to me, Rachel. You will be spared.”

  The cruiser had already docked in her hangar. David was already on board. And he was … wrong. Those implants meant … the same thing they meant to her. And he had so many more, for so much longer. She didn’t even know how long.

  The Beast was in him.

  It was in David.

  42

  “Some of you recruits are empaths or telepaths, so you’ll have heard this before. My mind is my mind. It seems self-evident, but it contains a truth so vital to everything we stand for. Your mind is a fortress. What happens there is within your control. Fear, distraction, sloth, indecision, panic, lust, greed … these are thoughts you can choose to have or not to have. They are pieces of your mind that have no place in battle. I will teach you to pack them up, lock them away, and only take them out when you have need of them. Once you have done that, you can fill the empty space with duty, loyalty, and honor.”

  Sergeant Claudia Koppel, Sentinel Academy instructor

  PHOENIX DWARF GALAXY

  Rachel covered her mouth with her hand. God, no. They had turned him. Controlled David, as they tried to control her and Caleb. Tormented his mind with the horrors and temptations of hell. Her David.

  Taken from her. Taken from himself.

  Trembles shook her until she couldn’t separate rage from g
rief. Tears spilled from her eyes, and she screamed. Roared in frustration. The universe was sick. And she was going to have him back.

  She would move heaven and face down hell, but she was getting her David back.

  With a wave of her hand, she sealed the bridge. Another wave opened a comm to the Sephirot. “Phoebe! I need Knight and Leah over here immediately. I’m relaying a transmission.” That call would explain everything.

  “Yup, sure, okay. We’re in the middle of an apocalyptic battle, but you can totally borrow my mate!”

  Rachel cut the channel and sent the signal. She was in no mood to deal with Phoebe right now. She was in no mood for any of it anymore.

  She had to see David. God help her. Rachel climbed from the chair, then sank to her knees. She pulled the implant from its case on her suit. Leah had suggested she destroy the horrid thing. Maybe she should have. But this … this let her truly be one with the Ark. If she implanted it here, she wouldn’t even need to stay on the bridge. She’d be able to control the ship from anywhere.

  She shut her eyes. “God. Please help me now.”

  One more time. One more time, she could stand up to the Beast. One last time, for David. Because he meant more than any knowledge ever would.

  Rachel pushed the implant back in. The prongs bit through her skin, and convulsions wracked her once more. She dropped to her hands and screamed against the pain.

  Get up.

  A few deep breaths, then she rose. David needed her. He had been through worse.

  She felt the Ark in her mind. Allowed it to become one with her. Allowed her to dive deep inside, so she could control its weapons on instinct. A defensive stance, while she dealt with the intruders. She could feel them, decks below her, engaging the Sentinels here to protect her.