Samael's Fire (13 page)

And he was going to be the leader of the world.

Above his head the
Mind the Gap
sign jumped out at her. He was standing at the edge of the galley lift.

“Shíb dài!” She ducked and shot her foot across his kneecap. He yelped and grabbed his leg. With a surge of adrenaline, she shoved him onto the lift so hard his head hit the wall. She slammed the door shut and enabled the airlock.

Her heart pounded so hard she thought she was going to die. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Mike looked stunned as the seal took hold. His eyes grew wide, and he pounded on the door. She set the platform to descend.

The rage on his face turned to terror as he realized he was a dead man. She couldn’t hear him, but she could read his lips.
Don’t do this!
His eyes went dull and a look of cold hatred swept over him. Then a smirk. Mike punched the cargo bay button in the split second before he disappeared.

Jake.

Now she understood the smirk. Mike knew Jake was in the cargo bay. In his final act, Mike meant to once again rob her of someone she loved.

Asherah help me!
She frantically retracted the galley lift.
Please, please, let Jake not be in the cargo bay.

It took less than thirty seconds. She opened door and pounded the button. It felt like everything she did was in slow motion. She couldn’t see anything out the cockpit window.

She tore through the passenger cabin and raced down to the cargo bay.

“Jake!” She screamed into the emptiness. Even the orbit runner had been lost. The cargo bin where the medical supplies had been stowed was wide open and empty.

What had she done?

The journey back to the dining room was like stumbling through a waking nightmare. Char was battered by conflicting emotions. Jake was dead. Mike was gone—no loss. Sky was alive.

The drive with the subnet had gone out the airlock with Mike, but that didn’t matter. Sky was alive. Even if Char couldn’t talk to her right away, the team could come up. There was no reason to hide now. The worst monster was gone.

In the dining room, Durga was still on the floor beside Rani, and the matriarch was trying to comfort the other girls. How was Char going to tell them what she’d done?

Durga’s eyes were nearly as red as her hair. She met Char a few steps inside the door and whispered, “I think Rani is dead.”

Char wanted to scream. What was the point of all this? Why had Asherah come to them if everyone was just going to die?

There was another problem, a practical one. The
 
Junque
 
had no pilot. While it was nothing to push a button and set off a launch program, there was no such thing as an amateur landing.

And she was dreaming if she thought she would see Sky again.
 
Tesla
 
was buried in the bowels of the earth for exactly this reason: to be clear of Armageddon.

Really, why go on? “I can’t do this.”

“That’s silly,” Durga said. “You can. You will. We have no choice.”

It was weird hearing such hard wisdom from a child. But Durga was no common little girl. She had been chosen by the goddess, and she’d accepted her fate. Well, more power to her. Char would resist fate a while longer.

“Jake.” Rani was delirious, not dead. Char gasped. Jake was there, on his knees beside Rani, holding her hand. Rani looked peaceful, out of pain, and happy.

But of course that wasn’t Jake.

“Mama!” On the other side of the room, Maribel held up her arms to a beautiful woman dressed in a flared skirt decorated with sequins and felt flowers in primary colors. The woman lifted the little girl and spun her around.

“Mi hijo!” The matriarch’s gravitas fell away, and she was the picture of a sweet, middle-aged woman overflowing with delight. A smiling young man took her hand and said, “Mama, it is so good to see you.”

Everybody was being greeted by a loved one.

“Char.”

Char knew the voice behind her wasn’t real, but she didn’t care. All the sorrow built up inside for too long came out in a rush of tears. It was a relief to accept the loving hug, a joy to hear Sky say, “It’s so good to see you.”

Asherah appeared beside Durga, the only one who had not received a visitor. The goddess nodded, and each Empani fully embraced the human being it had greeted.

The room went woozy. Every molecule in Char’s body felt effervescent, tingling.

She didn’t think she had closed her eyes, but suddenly she was on the ground under clear and clean blue sky. The matriarch and the girls were there too, and Durga, but the Empanii were gone.

They were on a mountain beside a gigantic statue of a man with wide-spread arms. A cool ocean breeze came up from a bay to the east. At the foot of the mountain Char saw a compound of buildings.

They were in Corcovado.

The Jake Empani had remained, still holding Rani’s hand. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was erratic. Durga sat down beside her. After a few minutes Rani exhaled a last time, and as her body died her soul was set free.

At least, that was Char’s impression. Rani’s body seemed no more than an empty container. A radiant, translucent Rani hovered above them, smiling at Durga. Char had the intense feeling that the Jake Empani should have wings. It floated up to Rani, and then they were gone.

Gods. Empani. Teleportation. Mutation. Visible souls. The old reality was gone; all life would operate under a new system now.

Char felt lonely.

It was a gift from Asherah. That’s how Durga explained the miracle of their teleportation. Maybe that’s what the goddess told Durga, but Char hadn’t forgotten her first time with an Empani.
 
One of Samael’s glories.
 
It was more complicated than Asherah was saying.

“Some miracle,” Char joked. “Now we have to climb down the mountain.”

Geraldo greeted them as they entered a tiled square at the center of the compound. She expected him to be relieved to learn that Rani was dead, but he seemed truly sorry. Conversely, he took the news of Mike’s death better than she’d anticipated, confirming Char’s opinion that he was not to be trusted.

“We’ve had our own sad accident in that regard.” He kept alternating his attentions from Durga to Char, obviously unable to fathom one so young being in charge. He ignored the matriarch.

When Geraldo looked at Char, she still got the creeps. She would be locking her bedroom door.

“My poor father died in his sleep last night,” Geraldo said. “We think he choked on something.”

Choked on the poison you fed him more like.
 
Shib, Char couldn’t abide that man for seven minutes, and Rani had had to for seven years.

Durga got to the point. “Asherah wants us to make safe haven for the girls who will come here. The matriarch will be in charge.”

“I am honored to meet you.” Geraldo nodded to the old woman. Char didn’t believe for an instant that he was sincere. “
We’ve
 
been preparing for years. No resources have been spared. The best materials from around the world have gone into the buildings.”

The girls were to stay in a barracks-style structure with a garden between it and the square. The tall building across the square with a view of the ocean housed the administrative offices and Geraldo’s quarters.

Durga and Char glanced at each other. There would be some changes made.

“Do you have a meeting room?” Char said.

“Our assembly hall is beautiful. It’s on the top floor of the administration building with a magnificent view of—“

“Very good,” Char said. “Right now, the girls need to rest. We all do. We’ll convene at the assembly hall tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

She was going to have to learn to work with the guy, but not now.

By the time the girls were all settled, it was late. Char had never gotten used to the rotating day-night-day-night of space, but now the prospect of hours and hours of darkness seemed odd.

She said goodnight to little Maribel last. “I saw mama,” she said as Char kissed her forehead.

“Yes, sweetie. You did.”

“Will she come back?”

“No, hon. Asherah gave us all a present, as Durga said. Remember Rani’s soul, when we saw it return to the All? Your mama’s soul was gone too, but Asherah let you see her one more time.”

“Will my soul go to the All someday?”

“Yes,” Char said. “Yes, it will.”

And she knew it was true.

—o0o—

Night was taking too long, and Char couldn’t sleep. She
 
opened her window to let in the ocean breeze, bracing cold at four in the morning. She leaned against the sill and listened to the waves breaking on the shore.

A bird cried out, and the lights of the compound fell on a white heron flying over the trees and up the mountain.

She had to get outside. Go for a walk. See the ocean. One last time, she pulled on her flight pants. First thing tomorrow, she was going to find some clean clothes and never wear these things again.

Too bad her compad didn’t work down here.

Despite the lack of an electronic navigator, she easily found the shore. The moon was full and bright. The beach was a long, wide stretch with a gentle slope of foothills to the west and short waves breaking on the sand of the eastern bay. On a large rock not far from shore, she could just make out another heron.

Corcovado must indeed be blessed by the gods. The fresh water from the artesian wells was delicious and abundant, and she was still amazed by how sweet the air smelled.

And she could see the stars! Corcovado could be a true haven.

If only Jake were here to share it. He was the real hero in this, though he’d never accept the label. He’d known there was something terribly wrong back at the airport. He didn’t have to rescue her from the terminal when the DOGs attacked. He could have kept out of harm’s way until everything calmed down.

She wouldn’t let Jake’s memory die. She couldn’t crawl back into an apartment somewhere, threaten to become a ghost. So many had sacrificed their lives, if unwillingly—Jake, Rani, Tyler.

She would honor them by helping to build Corcovado. Design a hydroponics system. Keep Geraldo away from the girls.

A comet streaked across the sky and another immediately after. A meteor shower. But as she watched, it dawned on her that this was no meteor shower. It was debris falling into de-orbit. Something hit the atmosphere every few seconds. Space junk everywhere.

Or
 
the Space Junque
. Before Jake was killed, he hadn’t yet set a course. The ship was drifting with no established orbit. She searched the stars—and spotted something moving, something not on fire.

The hydroponics annex. It would have to be something that large to see with the bare eye. Cripes, she wished she hadn’t seen it. Now she would always be aware of it circling the planet, reminding her of everything that had been lost up there.

Wait a minute. The shades! She pulled the ISS shades out of her flight pants and switched them to night vision. They immediately locked on a large chunk of hull debris. Not on fire, so it must be in orbit. She widened the frame.

It wasn’t a chunk of debris, and it wasn’t in orbit. It
 
was
 
the
 
Space Junque
, intact, but heading for the earth. It was going to fall somewhere close, out in the bay.

At around five thousand feet—according to the shades—the cargo bay opened and the orbit runner buzzed out of the hold like a wasp. It hovered in the air as the
 
Space Junque
 
plunged into the sea.