God War (24 page)

* * *

I
N
THE
ENGINE
ROOM
, Grant sailed through the air as Ullikummis struck him a savage blow from one of his pile driver fists before he could even get himself to a standing position atop the cylindrical driveshaft. Head reeling, Grant looked up to see Ullikummis charging at him, magma veins glowing across his hideous rock form, drawing one of his mighty legs back to punt his foe.

Grant rolled, dodging the kick by a fraction of an inch, rolling again as Ullikummis stamped down at him as if to crush a bug.

“Die, apekin,” Ullikummis spit, puffs of smoke leaping from his wounded face as he spoke.

Adrenaline pumping, Grant forced himself to his feet, the Sin Eater materializing in his hand. The pistol kicked in Grant’s steady grip, spitting a trio of shots at Ullikummis from just a few feet away. Ullikummis dismissed the bullets, sweeping one of his massive arms through the air and knocking Grant and the weapon aside.

The Sin Eater barrel bent while Grant was thrown backward under the incredible blow, rushing through the air and past the edge of the wide driveshaft. Grant’s trajectory took him all the way across to the next tubular container, slamming bodily against it with an expulsion of breath.

Ullikummis charged across the cylinder, springing into the air and leaping the gap that separated him from Grant. Despite his size, Ullikummis moved with exceptional speed, Grant noted as he pulled himself onto the cylinder.

Grant raised the weapon in his hand, saw the bent barrel and thought better of it.

“Damn!”

Then Ullikummis was looming over him, more than a foot taller than the powerfully built ex-Magistrate, genetically designed solely for killing. Grant balked as Ullikummis brought his hands together, clapping them with great force just inches over Grant’s dipping head. The sound of those clapping hands was momentarily deafening, like two rocks being broken together, and Grant reeled from the effect, staggering in place.

“Shit, Kane, where are you?” he spit, his hidden Commtact live.

But there was no time to wait for an answer. Already Ullikummis was reaching for Grant again, determined to squash this thorn in his side once and for all.

Grant ducked, feeling the passage of air as one of those massive arms whizzed by just inches over his head. And then, his head still down, Grant charged forward, driving his shoulder into the great stone figure of Ullikummis.

Balanced on the subtly curving surface of the cylindrical driveshaft, Ullikummis slipped back under Grant’s blow, his feet dragging backward and ripping chunks of the surface sheen away as they did so. Grant forced himself on, head tucked in, as if battering down a door, his booted feet kicking out against the echoing surface of the shaft.

Then, incredibly, Ullikummis fell, his hulking body slamming against the roof of the cylinder with an almighty clang. It happened so fast that Grant very nearly lost his own balance, and he staggered forward in a sudden run as he tried to keep himself from falling. After a quick three steps, Grant stopped, and he turned to face Ullikummis once more, his eyes searching all around for evidence of Enlil, too.

“Enkidu,” Ullikummis cursed in his own tongue, glowering at the ex-Magistrate as he stood before him. “Always charging like a bull, even after all this time.”

Grant looked at him blankly, failing to understand the words Ullikummis spoke.

“Come on, Kane,” Grant whispered into the Commtact. “It’s now or never, man.”

* * *

W
HILE
SHE
WAS
under the surface of the nutrient bath, a strange change had come upon Brigid. Once a trusted warrior for the Cerberus organization, she had had her mind corrupted and overwhelmed by Ullikummis in his gambit to resurrect his mother and take control of
Tiamat
and subsequently the world. But the nutrient bath had done something, triggering a change in Brigid that no one could have foreseen. As she stumbled out of the bath, her eyes fixed on Rosalia where the beautiful Latina was reaching for her discarded
katana.

“Hang fire,” Brigid said, spitting nutrient gunk from her mouth as she spoke, placing the recovered Ruger on the deck beside her.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Rosalia warned, drawing the blade back in a two-handed grip.

“You won’t have to,” Brigid replied, and Rosalia heard a softer edge to her voice than had been evident just a few minutes earlier. “Rosalia?” she queried.

“Yes,” Rosalia said, nodding warily.

“I remember you,” Brigid continued, showing no proclivity to attack the woman now. “We were in Hope together. You were a part of Tom Carnack’s group.”

“What’s your point?” Rosalia barked, her eyes scanning Brigid for any sign of attack.

“I have an eidetic memory,” Brigid said, a smile tugging at her lips. “You didn’t really think I’d forget who I was, did you?”

Chapter 19

Down in the engine room, Grant steadied himself as the juggernaut stone figure of Ullikummis came crashing toward him. Grant was weaponless now. All he had left was his strength—not a patch on Ullikummis’s—and his wits, about which the jury was still out.

Grant stepped to his right, flicking out the long tails of his Kevlar duster like a matador as Ullikummis came at him like a rocket. The trick was only halfway successful, and Grant found his left arm going numb as Ullikummis brushed against it.

Down below, the dwarfen ratlike figures were scurrying about in panic, clearing the area as Ullikummis and Grant battled atop the driveshafts.

Hurtling along like a hurricane, Ullikummis took a half-dozen paces to stop, skirting precariously close to the far edge of the shaft.

Grant turned, a grim smile crossing his features for a moment. And then the ex-Magistrate began running, sprinting across the cylindrical unit toward the great stone figure that waited at its edge.

* * *

I
N
A
PLANE
OF
REALITY
unseen by human eyes, Kane dropped from the tree and onto the vermilion sands below. He could not help but marvel at the way color had reappeared in this—what was it?—world.

It’s the way I interpret things, Kane reminded himself. My brain is getting information shot at it from directions it’s never known before, and all it can do is make some patchwork-quilt reality so I can at least function within it.

Is this all reality is? Kane wondered. Is what we’re seeing, the trees, the plants—is that too just a way of making sense of shapes we have no real way of comprehending? Is vision itself just an illusion?

Kane glanced ahead and to his right, searching for the statuelike figure of Ullikummis. Enlil had gone, winked out of the multisphere somehow. But Ullikummis remained, his back to Kane as his body flowed with some invisible tide. But as Kane looked, a shape seemed to blur from beyond Ullikummis’s form, like a halo cast in shadow. Kane saw faces there, things he had never seen before, things he had no name for.

Keep it together, Kane, he told himself. Keep your head together and work this out. It’s an angle, another line on the graph. That’s all this is. String theory—just string.

* * *

G
RANT
’
S
FEET
POUNDED
on the surface of the shaft, each footstep like a hammer blow on the cylindrical container. Seeing him approach, Ullikummis smiled—or at least gave what passed for a smile on his ugly features—stretching his arms wide to receive his attacker.

“Come, man bull,” Ullikummis growled. “Amuse me for one...single...second.”

With a wordless battle cry, Grant slammed into Ullikummis, plowing into him with such force that the two of them first butted, then fell back, the sound of impact like a crack of thunder above the churning noise of
Tiamat
’s engines.

Grant fell back, crashing to the surface of the long cylindrical unit, his whole body aching like a bruise where he had barged into the Annunaki rock monstrosity.

Ullikummis was not so lucky. Like Grant, he fell back, but standing at the edge of the driveshaft, he had nowhere to fall but straight down, dropping over the side and crashing fifteen feet to the deck below.

For a long moment, Grant lay there, his body crying out with pain from all sides, every muscle strained beyond belief. “Come on,” he told himself sternly. “Get up.”

With incredible effort, Grant pushed himself from the deck, lifting himself back to his feet and edging along in a pain-filled, shuffling movement. He kept his teeth clenched, and each breath came through them with a hiss, straining for release.

Grant took his time and it was thirty seconds before he reached the end of the cylinder. Slowly, his head heavy with strain, he peered over the edge.

Ullikummis lunged at him from below, clambering up the side of the drive cylinder in great leaps and bounds, literally running up the vertical side of the tank.

“Whoa!” Grant yelped, sidestepping as Ullikummis reached out for him with his massive stone-clad hands.

Grant’s feet drummed against the driveshaft as he moved to avoid Ullikummis’s attack. The stone giant was atop the cylindrical drive in an instant, reaching forward once again to grab the retreating ex-Magistrate.

* * *

S
TRING
THEORY
, Kane repeated, recalling the name Lakesh had given it.

Staring at Ullikummis’s broad-shouldered back, Kane realized what he had to do. He didn’t understand this world, didn’t understand this angle he was
looking at, but he recognized himself and the things he had brought here.

Reaching down, Kane tore a strip from his frayed denim jacket, tearing the tatty hem away in a swift jerk. The hem was three feet long and about the same width as a bandage. Kane twisted the ends, wrapping them tightly between his hands. The material felt strong enough for what he had in mind.

* * *

I
N
A
GARTHA
, Balam watched as Kane rocked back and forth in the astrogator’s chair, shaking as if he was having a seizure.

“Kane, are you all right?” Balam asked gently, reaching for the Cerberus warrior.

But as he reached forward, another burst of static shot out from the chair, whizzing across the room and catching Balam a glancing blow across his arm. Balam staggered back, patting at the sleeve of his indigo robe where a spark of fire ignited.

Across the cube, Kane continued shaking back and forth in the clutches of the chair.

* * *

I
N
ANOTHER
ANGLE
, Kane was running at Ullikummis as his statuelike form crackled with energy. Clenched in Kane’s hands, the single strip of material was wrapped tautly over the knuckles of both hands, leaving a short length between them, barely a foot across.

Kane’s feet pounded on the sands, striking with great blows of sound and fury, spirit and determination.

* * *

A
BOARD
T
IAMAT
,
Grant found himself backing along one of the great engine capacitors as Ullikummis chased him. The great stone monster hurtled at him in great, loping strides, each one encompassing twice the distance that Grant could step.

“My father is dead,” Ullikummis gritted, his eyes fixed on the retreating figure of Grant. “He taught me never to leave loose ends unsnipped.”

Grant continued running away. “I really don’t want to be snipped,” he muttered as he rushed along the curved surface of the shaft.

The ex-Mag was close to the end with Ullikummis breathing down his neck as he closed in. He would need to jump to the next cylindrical structure, he realized, because there was nowhere left to run. Head down, Grant drove himself on, his legs screaming in pain as he forced himself to keep moving. But as he reached the edge of the cylinder, Ullikummis just inches behind him, Grant slipped, careening over and over, the long tails of his coat wrapping over his body. His boot had slipped on some leaking oil or something, Grant realized as he crashed down to the cylinder’s surface.

At the same moment, Ullikummis was reaching for Grant, his right hand grasping for the back of the ex-Mag’s duster. His hand snatched at empty air as Grant sailed head over heels along the last part of the stardrive unit, sending Ullikummis off balance for just a second.

When he recovered, Ullikummis saw Grant lying there, sprawled uncomfortably on the tubular driveshaft, utterly helpless. Ullikummis paced toward him, his mighty feet striking resounding blows on the metal-sounding shaft, blows that were loud even above the thousand-boiling-kettles symphony of the room.

Ullikummis loomed over Grant, his shadow covering the apekin where he struggled to get up. Ullikummis leaned forward to lift him, but as he did so the
Annunaki prince became aware of another presence just behind him, reaching for him from out of the quantum ether.

* * *

R
OSALIA
STARED
at the red-haired woman standing before her, wondering if this, too, was a trick. Brigid Baptiste, latterly Haight, seemed passive now, offering no indication that she planned to attack. Rosalia was a survivor who lived by her wits, and she did so in large part by being a shrewd judge of character. The woman before her had caught her on the hop less than five minutes before by the old ruse of playing possum. While she seemed genuine now, the thought picked at Rosalia’s brain, Might this too be a trick?

“Who are you?” Rosalia asked, the black sword poised upright in ready position.

“Baptiste,” Brigid replied. “Brigid Baptiste. And you would be Rosalia, correct?”

Rosalia nodded, watching the red-haired woman intensely. Nothing in Brigid’s body language suggested a trick. Indeed, her body language had subtly changed since Rosalia had first encountered her in this small room with its stone egg and pool of genetic gunk.

“Might I ask,” Brigid began, making a show of her empty hands, the discarded Ruger still at her feet, “who you are working for? It’s just that I get the impression we were fighting.”

“We were,” Rosalia confirmed. Then, at Brigid’s urging look, the dark-haired merc added, “Cerberus.”

Brigid shook her head, taking a pace forward. She stopped when she saw Rosalia jostle the sword in her hands.

“I don’t intend to hurt you,” Brigid said. “Not yet anyway. Jury’s still out on the longer term. Ullikummis—you know the name?—well, he did something to me, assaulted me, here, in my head. If you’re here with Cerberus, then I should speak with them. I have to figure out what’s happened.”

“You were trying to kill me is what’s happened,” Rosalia spit contemptuously. “The innocent act’s good, but I’m not buying it.”

“Listen to me,” Brigid said. “I have what’s known as an eidetic—or photographic—memory. It takes a lot to fool my brain, and even then it can’t be fooled for long. Ullikummis kidnapped me and tried to get inside my head.”

“Yeah,” Rosalia recalled. “I was...there,” she finished lamely, withholding for now the information that she was a part of the attacking force that took over the Cerberus redoubt. If Brigid was telling the truth, then she didn’t want to spook her.

“But, you see,” Brigid continued as if explaining it to herself, “you can’t brainwash someone with an eidetic memory—they have too strong a connection to their past. What he did was a psychic assault, and I knew I was in no position to beat him off, so I did the only thing I could. I hid.”

“Hid?” Rosalia asked.

“I hid my mind,” Brigid clarified. “There was a trick I learned back when I was in Russia on a field mission. It involved focusing on a pattern that allowed the viewer to meditate on a set frequency.”

Rosalia listened, realizing that Brigid was speaking as much to herself as to her, trying to piece together all that had happened these past two months since she had disappeared.

“Recollecting the meditative tool—the mandala—allowed me to hide my mind in a place called Krylograd on the astral plane,” Brigid continued. “It put me somewhere that Ullikummis could not reach.”

“You’ve been ‘gone’ for almost two months,” Rosalia said.

Brigid cursed. “The time sense in Krylograd is all askew. I didn’t realize. What happened?” she added, her expression like that of a little girl.

“Ullikummis made you his bitch,” Rosalia summarized. “Or whatever was left of you, I guess. We’ve been working together to find you....”

“‘We’?”

“Kane, Grant, Lakesh...” Rosalia clarified.

“So you really are working for Cerberus now?” Brigid questioned.

“Temp position,” Rosalia told her, “until something better comes up.” She gave a wink.

Brigid turned her head, searching around the room. “Where are we? Looks kind of like a Chalice of Rebirth.”

“Big spaceship name of
Tiamat,
” Rosalia told her.

Brigid’s eyebrows rose. “In space?” she asked.

“No, not unless there’s been some colossal fuck up since I last checked,” Rosalia assured her.

Brigid shook her head, running her hand absentmindedly through the locks of her wet hair. “I took a dunking?” she asked, staring down at the pit that dominated the room. “A nutrient bath made up of birth stuff. Used to enable genetic download of personality templates in the Annunaki bodies, right?”

Rosalia shrugged. “Big pond, stone egg, that’s all I know,
chica.
”

“We are all genetic templates waiting for our download,” Brigid proposed. “Created in the womb, each of us awaits the facets that will make us individuals, that will make up the things we will carry with us throughout our lives. I’d hidden my mind leaving this shell to Ullikummis, to fill with his values, his truths, whatever. But the nutrient bath cleared all the crap out of my system—it set me free to reengage my real mind with my body. Without that, I might not have come back.”

And then Brigid laughed. “Excuse me, but that’s brilliant.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Rosalia admitted with a shrug.

“Doesn’t matter,” Brigid told her, her face the picture of inspired joy. “Do you realize that, thanks to an Annunaki cheat, I’ve managed to be reborn. That’s just incredible.”

But Rosalia’s happiness was less pronounced. Instead, her attention was drawn to the thing behind Brigid, the stone chrysalis that stood silently in the middle of the nutrient pool. As she watched it, a seam appeared along the Y-axis of the ovoid structure, top to bottom, and it began to split apart.

“Speaking of rebirth...” Rosalia said, indicating the stone egg.

And then, both she and Brigid Baptiste reared back as the two halves of the stone structure fell away into the pool of genetic debris to leave a single figure standing before them. Six feet in height and of gracile form, the figure was covered in shimmering green scales the color of spring leaves, and she stood naked before them with no sense of shame. It was Ninlil, goddess of the Annunaki, Lady of the Air. She stood reborn, four thousand years after her last Earth death. And she didn’t look at all happy about it.