SNAFU: Black Ops

GOD-KILLERS IN OUR MIDST James Lovegrove and N.X. Sharps

When men come face to face with their gods, it generally means they’ve died.

In my case, it means I’m going to die.

Probably horribly.

I’m brought to Kha’cheldaa in chains, ascending to heaven in a fiery chariot — or, if you prefer, a fusion-powered reusable shuttle craft. But most people’d call it a fiery chariot. Because most people are dumb.

The journey into near orbit is smooth; the squad of Templars escorting me are rough. For example, as we disembark at Kha’cheldaa’s docking bay, the captain of these goons thinks it’d be funny to stick out a leg and trip me up. With my hands manacled behind my back the only thing I have to break my fall with is my face.

Then, for good measure, as I try to get up the same guy clubs me on the back on the head with the pommel of his sword. Could have used the butt of his sidearm, but this way is more ceremonial, I guess.

Still: fucking ouch.

“Not such a free thinker now, eh?” the captain jeers. “Not with a bump like that on your noggin.”

His subordinates roar with laughter. It’s pure comedic gold. No way are they being sycophantic minions or anything.

After that hilarity I’m force-marched along a broad tubular corridor, one of the many spoke-like arms that radiate in all directions from the hub of Kha’cheldaa. Viewports show us planet Earth in all its glory. The terminator between day and night is crawling across its surface, but few lights twinkle on the black landmasses below. Cities no longer blaze with neon after sunset like they used to. I can just about remember a time when they did, but that’s a couple decades back, long gone.

It’s a benighted age, a dark age, this new age, this age of the Savior Gods.

Gravity in Kha’cheldaa is weird. Feels like there’s no real up or down, although me and the Templars stick to the floor normally enough. The air smells metallic, slightly burnt. Our footfalls have blunted echoes. I’m taking in these sensory impressions because it’s all I can do. I can’t have many minutes of life left. Might as well clutch and savor each precious remaining second of it.

A couple of antechambers, more Templars, some scurrying servants. The Savior Gods like to have mortals guarding them and waiting on them hand and foot — gives them a warm, fuzzy glow inside — and these people have been led to believe it’s an honor to have been chosen for the roles. To live in Kha’cheldaa and be of use to our deities is a privilege, the kind you’d sell your very soul for. Right?

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling some of them are at least wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into. There’s furtiveness in their body language, a secret fear in their eyes. The gods aren’t known for their restraint and good behavior. Word is, things can get pretty rowdy up here. There are rumors: abuses, humiliations, rapes, random killings — things to make even Marquis de Sade blush. Omnipotence — it can go to a god’s head, you know.

Finally the core chamber, Kha’cheldaa’s heart, the huge sphere that is the throne room of the gods.

And lo and behold, they’re all waiting for me. The full complement. The Big Twelve. Some sit, some stand. There’s food on the tables, drink in tankards, and the light here is coruscating and dazzling, a million hazy rainbows criss-crossing, and I think I hear music, like choirs and orchestras, distant halleluiahs crescendoing and falling. Meanwhile Dominions, tucked away in recesses set high up in the chamber walls, maintain sentinel over their lords and ladies, poised to descend on any aggressor with wings of steel and flame.

I’m supposed to be impressed.

Secretly, I am.

But fuck if I’m going to show it.

The Templars drag me forward. Make me kneel by not so gently booting the backs of my knees. The captain shoves my head down with a gauntleted hand.

“Bow, humanist dog!” he orders.

He actually says that. Humanist dog. Like he means it. Like it isn’t just what he thinks the Savior Gods would expect him to say.

Trakiin waves an imperious hand. The Templars are dismissed.

Trakiin, god of all gods. Trakiin the Father. Heavyset, grey-eyed, all-wise. He’s stationed in a chair that’s about five times the size it needs to be. Its back looms sheer, chalk-cliff white, arched and spired like some cathedral tower. He doesn’t so much sit in it as occupy it, like an invading army. His robes hang in iridescent folds off his massive shoulders. His hair and beard are grey as thunderclouds.

Got to admit, I never thought I’d feel genuine awe in his presence. I know what this dirtbag really is. I know him for a lying, cheating charlatan, organiser of the greatest con ever perpetrated in history.

But still, he has a… majesty is the word. It’s there. It’s undeniable. He looks every inch a deity, even though he’s anything but. If I weren’t on my knees already, it’d have been hard to resist the urge to genuflect before him.

“So,” he says, in a voice like tectonic plates grinding.

The word resonates around the throne room. It’s just one empty syllable but it sounds like it encompasses universes.

“This is he,” Trakiin goes on. “The leader of the expedition. The mortal who dared venture where it is forbidden to go. Who sought ‘proof’ that we are not who we say we are.”

I’m going to reply when Xorin steps forward.

I hate this guy. He’s such an asshole. Xorin, God of War, son of Trakiin. You’ll never find a stupider god, or a bigger bully. He’s like every low-IQ, over-muscled jock you ever knew in high school, mashed into one.

“Let me have my way with him, father,” he implores. He’s got a fist clenched, poised. It’s nearly as big as my head. His chin is nearly as big as my head. “Let me show him how disobeying your will is a bad idea.”

“No, my son. Not yet. Answers first. Then you may have your fun.”

But Xorin has little self-control, so he whacks me in the face, taking a down-payment on the violence he’s going to unleash later.

For a moment all I can see is whiteness, all I can hear is a ringing in my ears.

I spit out a tooth and some blood, then raise my head.

“Someone open a window,” I say. “I think a butterfly just brushed past me.”

This enrages Xorin, as I expected it would, and he draws his fist back for another punch.

Trakiin stops him, as I knew he would. Or at any rate hoped.

“Xorin, stand aside,” he booms. “Now!”

Reluctantly Xorin moves off, muttering, pouting. He goes to the side of his mother, Hlaarina, who puts an arm round him and pats him and comforts him like the overgrown baby he is. Hlaarina is, of course, Trakiin’s twin sister as well as his wife. Who knew gods and hillbillies had so much in common?

Trakiin rises, saunters over to me, hands clasped behind his back.

“Name,” he says eventually.

“You’re the god,” I reply. “Shouldn’t you know it already?”

“I do, Ethan Nash. I know all there is to know about you.”

“Oh goody. So we can do away with the whole interrogation bit then.”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” says Trakiin.

“It isn’t?”

“This is a trial. We are sitting in judgment of you. We wish to hear your perspective.”

“So I can argue my case? Maybe get the chance to win my liberty, like in a proper trial? Do I have the right to an attorney?”

Trakiin leans close. “No, Ethan Nash. That is not how it works. You are going to die here today. Foster no illusion as to that. But what kind of gods would we be if we didn’t at least offer you a fair hearing?”

“Strange definition of ‘fair’,” I say. There’s still the taste of copper in my mouth and a huge-seeming hole in my gum where a tooth should be. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“‘Fair’ is whatever I say it is,” Trakiin declares. “If you don’t like it, we can end this now. I can have Xorin set to work on you straight away, beat you until everything is broken and you’re no more than a bag of shattered bones and ruptured organs. Or perhaps I will ask Jhan S’reen over there to weave her dark magic and suck the life out of you in slow, agonising increments.”

He gestures at the Goddess of Death, plump, pale-skinned and buxom, dressed in a combination of frilly white lace and glossy jet-black leather like she’s on her way from a wedding to a fetish party. Her eyes are eightballs — white iris, black sclera — and her fingernails are so long and curved they might as well be talons. They say she feeds on souls. I say she could stand to go on a diet and lose a few pounds, maybe cut back on the number of victims she drains for sustenance.

But I don’t voice the thought.

Because something in her eerie eightball eyes, her sickle smile, her curvaceous mama-does-kinky body, scares the shit out of me.

“Thought as much,” says Trakiin, off my silence. “So we shall do this my way. I ask, you speak.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding. If it’ll postpone my death for just a few minutes…

“First of all, tell me of the forbidden zone. The location of your petty Luminous raid. Tell me about the mission from the outset.”

The mission was supposed to be a straightforward infil/exfil. Isn’t it always? The objective was to scrounge up evidence. Clues, if there were any. Stuff we could show the world. Something to demonstrate conclusively that the Savior Gods were the frauds we at Luminous knew them to be.

It wasn’t enough simply to say they were bogus. We had spent years doing just that to little effect as their noose continued to tighten around our collective neck. We had to back up our claims with cold hard data and we believed the ruins of Kennedy Space Center held just the clue we’d been searching for.

The team was five-strong. There was me, of course, the fearless leader and local asset, first-class lady killer and seasoned field agent. There was the decorated sharpshooter Carrie Lind, heavy muscle on loan from the European branch of Luminous. Tales of her exploits were so legendary they pervaded the guerrilla network here in the States. According to scuttlebutt Lind counted multiple Dominions among her hit-tally — and with that composite bow of hers no less. I intended to ask Lind about that dubious claim prior to her arrival but it turned out she wasn’t big on kill and tell.

Accompanying her from across the Atlantic was Ben Jorgensen, also ex-military, Lind’s full-time spotter and part-time lover. Affable and unaccustomed to the heat, Jorgensen adopted billowy Aloha shirts and cargo shorts as his undercover attire. Nothing screams conspicuous like a 6’5” Scandinavian dressed like a Margaritaville outcast but I wasn’t going to argue fashion with the Benny the Friendly Viking.

Ashton Roth, our science guy and allegedly one of Luminous’s brightest minds, had journeyed from Mexico to join our crusade. Roth was as tan as Jorgensen was pale. While he wasn’t an experienced operator like the sniper or her spotter, Roth roamed the world unimpeded by the Templars and their draconian travel restrictions. He knew all the wrinkles. He could be a ghost when required, slipping under every radar.

And then we had the inscrutable John-Patrick McCreedy, former Catholic priest, faith expert. McCreedy came highly recommended from a persuasive senior officer, though I couldn’t fathom what purpose a ‘faith expert’ might serve during this specific op. He was the nearest by when the call went out, and the two of us spent the better part of a month together waiting for the others to arrive. Three and a half weeks together and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about McCreedy save he always seemed to be sucking on a peppermint.

I was basking in the sun at the bar on the patio of Nelson’s Folly in Miami when I received the go-ahead to proceed with Operation Iconoclast. Four days in a row I’d visited the establishment, hoping to get lucky and instead slinking back to the safe house with blue balls — metaphorically speaking of course. I nursed a Cuba Libre while leafing through the final issue of Samson, a comicbook circulated by an underground press. I found the religious-themed narrative nonsensical and the quality of the print lacking, but I couldn’t deny I enjoyed the stylistic depictions of violence.

“Do you often go to the bar to be antisocial?”

I glanced up from a two-page spread of the titular Samson tearing down the pillars of the Temple of Dagon. A young woman with tawny skin and a pearlescent smile sidled up to me at the bar and ordered a mojito. I didn’t recognize her but that didn’t mean anything — Luminous cells were highly compartmentalized in order to prevent entire sections from being wiped out if one cell got busted.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re reading in public,” she said. “Makes conversation with other human beings a little difficult.”

“You know, once upon a time everyone carried around portable electronic devices with them. They had access to the news, weather, music, books, games all in the palm of their hand. Had their eyes constantly glued to the things. Sometimes even on dates. It made conversation very difficult,” I said.

She laughed, pretend-incredulous.

“I’ve given away my age haven’t I?”

She nodded, laughed again and sat down at the open seat next to me. I set Samson down and she appraised the bombastic cover.

“That looks like something the censors would classify seditious material. Couldn’t you get in trouble for reading that?” she asked.

“The authorities are too busy cracking down on those pesky secular humanists to bother with a harmless cartoon strip,” I replied, and it was true. I indulged in small sins in order to mask my more egregious transgressions. After all, there’s nothing more suspicious than a saint. Tradecraft 101.

“You still haven’t answered my first question,” she said.

“Hmmm?”

“Do you regularly go out to not interact with people?”

“I’m actually waiting on someone,” I said.

“Woman?” she probed. “Man?”

“Oh, I figure I’ll know ’em when I see ’em,” I said and winked.

The bartender returned with her mojito. She thanked him and paid.

“Well, if they fail to materialize and you’re in the neighborhood, some friends of mine are having a party tonight. You’re welcome to join us.” She pulled a pen from her purse and started writing on a bar napkin. “I’ll warn you, though. It’s going to get wild.”

She kissed the napkin, handed it to me, and left, cocktail in hand. I looked down at the scribbled message. Anyone else who read it would see the time and address of the aforementioned party, with an inviting lipstick mark for good measure. To a Luminous operative capable of decoding it, however, it was the confirmation we’d been waiting for. I polished off the rest of my Cuba Libre and shoved the napkin in my pocket.

“Can I get you another round?” asked the bartender.

“Nah, I’ll settle up. It looks like I got a shindig to get ready for,” I said with a grin and paid my tab.

“Hlaarina’s blessing be upon you brother,” he said.

“And also upon you,” I replied.

I left Nelson’s Folly with a little extra pep in my step. It was a possibility I would die in a few short hours. The greater tragedy was that it seemed even less likely the beautiful young woman I’d just met would survive the diversion her cell had planned for us. But the wait was finally over and the excitement of it suffused every inch of my body. The time to act was now.

Per standard operating procedure I took a Surveillance Detection Route — or SDR — on my way back to the safe house. I cut through the crowd to cross the street and headed for the park.

A priest blared the horn from behind the wheel of an electric car, the mass of pedestrians refusing to part. The only motor vehicles on the road these days belonged to the Savior Gods’ clergy and enforcers, and as a result people weren’t certain how to react. The priest’s Templar escort climbed out the passenger-side door and began clubbing the nearest civilians with a baton. The club smashed into an older woman’s face and she dropped, nose erupting with blood. The throng quickly got the message and parted to allow the car through.

I clenched my jaw and kept walking until I arrived at the park entrance, good mood forgotten. The public area was relatively empty that time of day and the absence of foot traffic would make it easier to spot hostile surveillance. I used the layout of the walking paths to my advantage, ambling along without any apparent direction. Seemingly at random I sped up and slowed my pace, took abrupt turns and doubled back around a time or two. I passed several other people during my stroll but none struck me as undercover Templars.

I took a detour to make an offering on my way out of the park, as was customary. A statue of Fhariyya, Goddess of Hunts and Wilderness, posed proudly in polished granite, surrounded by hand-carved wildlife native to the area. Or at least she would have posed proudly had some brave soul not spray painted a dick and balls on her in vivid lime green. I stifled a laugh and flicked a dodecagonal coin stamped with Trakiin’s face on one side and an image of Kha’cheldaa on the other into the pool at the sculpture’s feet.

A beleaguered-looking groundskeeper approached with a bucket of sudsy water and a brush and set to scrubbing the graffiti as though his life depended on it. It very well might have. I made one final circuit of the park and, satisfied I wasn’t being followed, went back to home base to tell everyone the good news.

“Luuuucy, I’m hoooome!” I said stepping in the front door of my apartment.

Lind sat on the floor waxing her bowstring. She glanced at me before returning her attention to proper bow maintenance. Roth waved dismissively from the cot where he lay reading some banned science textbook. McCreedy too sat on the floor, fieldstripping and cleaning a Sig Sauer P225. He ignored me entirely.

Jorgensen was considerably more welcoming, wrapping me in his rib-crushing embrace. Did I forget to mention that Benny was a hugger?

“Good to see you too, now would’ya mind letting me go?” I asked.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m getting a little stir crazy is all,” he said, admonished. I couldn’t fault him. Our crew may have consisted of consummate professionals but they weren’t exactly what anyone would consider companionable. Spending days sequestered in a one-bedroom apartment wasn’t doing anything to improve their attitudes either.

“I’ve got good news,” I said patting Jorgensen on the shoulder. That seemed to grab Lind and Roth’s attention. McCreedy disregarded the announcement as if I hadn’t said anything at all, intent on the disassembled parts of his weapon.

“Hey Padre,” I said, addressing McCreedy with the sarcastic title I’d bestowed upon him after weeks of trying to crack his prickly shell. His stayed on task but his eyes locked on my own. I suppressed a shiver as my Lizard Brain recoiled from McCreedy’s scrutiny. He’s just the retired practitioner of a dead religion, I tried to remind myself.

Watching how naturally his fingers navigated the handgun made me think otherwise.

“We got the green light. Iconoclast is a go.”

“Yes, yes,” says Trakiin. “Fascinating stuff. Your disapproval of us and our methods is duly noted, Mr Nash.”

“Disapproval?” huffs Xorin. “Outright blasphemy!”

Trakiin shoots him a look that’s equal parts fatherly reproof and kingly contempt. Xorin bristles, but decides he’s better off not taking the argument any further. Meanwhile the Dominions, in their recess perches, stir. Wings twitch and flare, and steel-jacketed hands grasp blast-lances that little more tightly. They’re attuned to the mood in the chamber, sensitive to the tides of emotion ebbing and flowing, the raising of voices, heart rate acceleration, adrenaline spikes. Their hardwired programming compels them to defend the Savior Gods from any perceived threat, however great or small, with overwhelming lethal force.

My skin prickles as I think about them, about what they could do to me. In many ways I’m more scared of the Dominions than I am of Trakiin or Xorin or even Jhan S’reen. Android angels can’t be reasoned with or pleaded with.

Just stay calm, I tell myself. Keep the fear in check. Keep talking.

But that’s easier said than done. I’ve seen Dominions in action several times, but most memorably at a protest rally in New York. It was during the early days of the Savior Gods’ reign. We’d already lost the Forty-eight Hour War but people still thought we had some choice in the matter, still thought that by getting together in public and expressing our feelings we might somehow persuade them our modern society had no need of gods and convince them to leave us alone. I was there, on a hot summer’s afternoon in Central Park, waving my placard and chanting the slogans. Mostly I’d gone because my college girlfriend, Claire, wanted to be there and I was too hornily in love with her to say I wouldn’t come. I was still at the stage of needing to impress her.

The crowd numbered — best guess — a couple hundred thousand. It was before the Savior Gods shut down all mass communication and texts and social media had spread the word and generated a real grass-roots movement. It seemed to us the gods surely couldn’t ignore so much concentrated anger, such a critical mass of opposition. They’d have to pay attention.

And we were right, but in the wrong way. The Order of Templars hadn’t been formed yet, but the Savior Gods had an already established means of crushing resistance. Dominions descended from out of the blazing blue sky above the park, dozens of them, firing plasma bolts from their blast-lances indiscriminately into the crowd. Protest turned to panic. As many were killed in the stampede as were incinerated by the Dominions’ strafing.

Claire and I were running for our lives, like everyone else. I was holding Claire’s hand. We’d nearly made it to the edge of the park, onto Fifth Avenue, and I was thinking we could take shelter inside the MOMA, hole up there until the chaos was over. Then a shimmer of wings, a wave of searing heat, and I was still holding Claire’s hand. But only that. Sheared off at the wrist, the stump neatly cauterized. Of Claire herself, nothing else was left. She’d been vaporised in an instant.

And the gods had made themselves a lifelong enemy that day.

Not just because of Claire, although that was traumatizing enough. Because of the sheer senseless slaughter. Fully half the people who attended the rally died that day. Wiped off the face of the planet. Senior citizens among them. Mothers. Doctors. Firefighters. Kindergarten teachers. Kids. All for daring to defy false gods. The massacre proved quite the recruitment drive for Luminous.

“We should expect nothing more, or less, from Mr Nash,” Trakiin says. “A Luminous operative is by definition a blasphemer, and one moreover who is so immersed in his heresy that he sees it as a virtue rather than a deadly sin. Luminous exists to defy our rule. They will stop at nothing, and stoop to anything, to rid the world of us.”

You have to hand it to old Trakiin: he’s a damn good speechifier. Him make talk sound pretty.

“It’s at the very least ingratitude,” he continues. “Have we gods not created peace? Where there was once discord, we have brought harmony. Where there was once inequality, we have brought fairness. Where there was once despair, we have brought hope. The human race was hell-bent on its own destruction before we arrived. In fifty years, maybe less, it would have rendered its environment uninhabitable and annihilated itself squabbling over the few precious resources remaining. Now it can look forward to a better, simpler, cleaner future, one less reliant on technology, less rapacious, less internecine. Mankind, united by the one true faith.”

Ooh, internecine. Fancy.

Trakiin stares pointedly at me, as though he can hear my snarky thoughts. “Such salvation is something people like you, Mr Nash, seem determined to reject. Why is that?”

“That a rhetorical question, or are you actually asking me? It’s sometimes hard to tell.”

“Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me, Luminous.”

“Well, on balance, I’d say I prefer to be a free man than a slave to space Nazis. Just my opinion, mind you. Your mileage may vary.”

Trakiin’s lip curls, amusement crossbred with a pitbull snarl.

“Plus,” I add, “it isn’t ‘peace’ if it needs to be maintained with an iron fist. The one kinda contradicts the other.”

“Ha ha.” He says this more than laughs it. “A paradox, if valid.”

Then he strokes my chest, gently, almost like a caress.

And five minutes later I’m still writhing on the floor, wracked in agony from head to toe, every muscle spasming and clenching. It feels like my heart is trying to hammer its way out of my chest cavity. My lungs are burning, my guts cramping, and I can hear myself making pathetic little mewling, choking noises, like a kitten being strangled. A damp crotch tells me I’ve pissed myself. I think I know now how a convict must feel in the electric chair. Only difference is, I get to live to tell the tale and the convict gets the sweet release of death.

A lovely, maternal face looms over me, blurred in my tear-clogged vision. Hlaarina. With a brush of her fingertips she takes the pain away, all of it, just like that. Suddenly I feel better than I have in years. A new man.

I straighten up. Stand up. Ignoring the wetness that pastes the fabric of my pants to my thighs, I hold myself tall. Or at least as tall as one can stand in front of gods. I’m compelled to hurl myself flat at Hlaarina’s feet and worship her for relieving me of the pain. It takes everything I have to resist.

“So,” I say, “would you like to hear some more? I mean, as the condemned man on the stand, I’m allowed to make my statement in full, yeah?”

“I prefer to regard it as a confession,” Trakiin says, “but by all means continue. We’re all ears.”

The diversion went down in Orlando. Luminous operatives — and I’d guess the woman I met at Nelson’s Folly was among them, if not the actual ringleader — set off a series of bombs at Redemptionland, the theme park formerly known as Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The explosions were carefully orchestrated so that not one innocent bystander was hurt. The damage was done to infrastructure alone: the exhibits, the chapels, the rides. The Holy History Tour in particular took a pounding, with almost every waxwork tableau getting at least partially blown up. So for a while to come, until it’s all fixed, nobody will have the pleasure of viewing, say, Trakiin’s Singlehanded Conquest of Moscow during the Forty-eight Hour War or The Friendly Rivalry Between Xorin and His Brother Q’lun and endure the bullshit recorded narration accompanying these scenes.

Naturally, Templars flocked to the site and, like the good little jackbooted thugs they are, started making arrests and breaking heads. Redemptionland had been busy that day, full of eager sheep, sorry, tourists who’d made the pilgrimage to the place from as far afield as California and Canada. Some of these folks would have spent several months’ wages for the privilege, the cost including travel permits, tickets for long journeys by solar-powered locomotive or electric bus, and of course the Faith Tithe that funds the Templars and keeps the clergy and theocrats in the luxury they so richly deserve. They weren’t expecting to have their day ruined by a series of noisy detonations and the less-than-discriminate attentions of divinely appointed rent-a-cops who uphold the law with batons, swords, and coilguns. Must’ve come as quite a shock.

Not sure if the Luminous cell got away unscathed or fell foul of the Templars but I’d put money on the latter. If any survived long enough to be captured they’ll be in holding cells at the Orlando Temple of Correction, getting their fingernails pliered out and their kneecaps pulverised. I’ve heard Templar inquisitors are especially fond of holy-waterboarding. You can take the interrogator out of the CIA…

At any rate, Orlando’s Templars were busy. Hell, most of Florida’s Templars were busy. Nothing kicks the hornets’ nest like a good ‘terrorist atrocity’. Suddenly the buggers were buzzing everywhere, swarms of them, angry and vengeful and above all undisciplined. Disorganized. Lashing out. Looking every which way but where they should be looking.

Which was over on the eastern flank of Florida, on Merritt Island, just north-northwest of Cape Canaveral, in the swampy forbidden zone that had once been the Launchpad and development hub for America’s space program.

Because that was where the five of us — me, Lind, Jorgensen, Roth and Padre McCreedy — were getting to work.

We inserted at 9pm, shortly after nightfall. We’d spent the best part of the day hauling our asses from Miami, a couple of hundred miles up the coast by motor launch, hugging the shoreline. Finding a small seaworthy craft with a working outboard had been a challenge, to say the least. Thank fuck there was a thriving black market in the rental of such things, and a very nice guy called Felipe was only too happy to take a thousand cash to let us borrow the boat. Gas was extra, and even more expensive. He might as well have been selling us jerrycans of pure myrrh, the amount he charged. But at least it was all on a no-questions-asked basis, and Felipe looked as though he knew how to keep a secret, judging by the Blessed Virgin Mary tattoo I saw peeping out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. Like McCreedy he was a covert Catholic, no doubt with a neighborhood church in someone’s garage or basement where he’d meet on Sundays with likeminded individuals and share the Sacrament with them and pray they wouldn’t get caught.

We chuntered northward, slowing if we passed anything that even smelled like a Templar coastal patrol craft. We made landfall in a creek so overgrown with mangrove and saw palmetto it was little more than a narrow stream in places. We hitched up the boat and waded inland through some of the most inhospitable terrain I’d ever encountered. If the stagnant swamp water sucking at our boots wasn’t enough, there were the hummingbird-sized mosquitos sucking at our blood. An alligator as big as a fucking Buick swam past, only its eyes and snout above the surface, giving us a hard reptilian glare as though sizing us up, trying to figure which of us would be the tastiest snack. Lind kept her rifle trained on it the whole time — a British Army SA80-L85 she’d ‘liberated’ from her barracks arsenal the same day she went permanently AWOL and joined the Luminous cause — until we could safely say, “See ya later, alligator.” Even then her forefinger never strayed far from the trigger, and I for one would not have been sad to see a 5.56x45mm bullet turn the creature’s brain to so much mush. The dinosaur wouldn’t have shown us any mercy if it had come back for dinner.

Same goes for the panther that stalked us for a couple miles. That feline sonofabitch was so assured of its status as apex land predator in the area, it barely made any attempt at stealth. It just prowled alongside us at a distance of no more than a dozen yards, sometimes lurking in thickets of bald cypress but mostly giving us a clear, unimpeded view of its tawny pelt and loping strides, as though saying, Screw you, humans. You’re on my turf. Deal.

Then we came to the perimeter fence.

Or what was left of the perimeter fence.

Chain-link mesh tangled in weeds and thick vines, it was more like a sagging wall of greenery. Plenty of handholds and toeholds. We climbed over it as easily as if it were a child’s jungle gym, and paid no mind whatsoever to the sign posted on top which read:

Because, well, that was kind of the whole point of being there, wasn’t it? To enter this STRICTLY PROHIBITED location? With the degree of heat we were packing we were already in violation of so many divine decrees that traipsing around in the forbidden zone would be the least of the Templars’ concerns should we be caught.

Once we were safely the other side of the fence, McCreedy crossed himself. Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch, as the old joke goes. But he did it with the Sig in his hand, the fat suppressor threaded on the end of the barrel tapping the four points on his body. I guess, just in case his capital-G God was otherwise engaged, the semiauto offered an extra layer of reassurance. When prayer doesn’t work, a 10mm subsonic round can often fill the gap.

Ahead, beyond an undulating landscape of grass and wild shrubbery, the buildings of the old Kennedy Space Center loomed.

“Our intel’s good, isn’t it?” Jorgensen piped up. “Just asking.”

“Bit late for that,” said Lind. “We’re already committed.”

“But if we’ve gone to all this trouble and we get to those buildings and it turns out there’s nothing inside worth risking our necks for…”

“The intel’s good,” I said, with perhaps more confidence than I felt. Luminous shared information across its various networks as best it could, but communications were never straightforward and messages could be intercepted, corrupted, falsified. You couldn’t completely rely on what anyone said. “Now’s as good a time as any to tell you that this mission isn’t only about looking for proof about the Savior Gods,” said Roth.

I arched an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”

“No. That’s a secondary objective. They’re aliens. That’s pretty much taken as read. It’s the only possible explanation for their enhanced abilities and their apparent immortality. We believe they fled from a world far in advance of ours, technologically speaking. They’re not messiahs, just intergalactic scammers — a bunch of chancers who spied an opportunity to lord over a stunted, backwards civilisation and seized it with both hands. And if we can find anything to confirm that, great. Cool. High-fives all round.”

“But…?” Lind prompted.

“But… after the Savior Gods arrived and began throwing their weight around, NASA began working on methods of negating their powers, levelling the playing field for us mere mortals. The eggheads examined whatever of their tech they could scavenge from the Forty-eight Hour War and took it to pieces trying to find out what made it tick. There were even attempts to reverse-engineer Dominions’ blast-lances and flight capability. The goal was a weapon that could bring down gods.”

Jorgensen let out a low whistle.

“For the longest time we were under the impression they didn’t get very far, though,” Roth went on. “The Big Twelve caught wind of what was up and flew in to personally Sodom and Gomorrah’d the shit out of the place. Scorched earth, motherfucker. The NASA guys never stood a chance. That day, religion disproved science.”

“But doesn’t that imply there’s nothing here now?” I said. “The Twelve would have been thorough cleaning the place out surely.”

“New intel suggests it’s possible something survived. Sources claim the rocket scientists were in fact closer to their goal than anyone realised. They may even have achieved it.” Roth paused. “Somewhere on the premises there may well be something that can kill a god.”

McCreedy broke the silence that followed. “‘May’ being the operative word. What are the odds?”

“No idea,” Roth admitted, “but whatever they are, I’m willing to take the gamble. We should all be. The potential reward is just too damn valuable.”

Lind and McCreedy both looked skeptical, whereas Jorgensen was nodding avidly.

“So,” I said, “we continue to treat this as a regular op, only with possible fringe benefits. Huge ones.”

“I had a girlfriend like that once,” Jorgensen said, clutching two handfuls of empty air at chest height. “Huge benefits.”

“Oh, shut up,” Lind said, thwacking his meaty biceps with a fist.

Jorgensen grinned impishly through his thick, Scandinavian-pale beard. “Better equipped than you in that respect, darling. But she couldn’t shoot the wings off a gnat like you can.”

“And the balls off a Norwegian, too, if necessary.”

“I love it when you try to emasculate me.”

“You won’t love it when I actually do.”

“Enough foreplay you two,” I said. “We’ve tyrants to dethrone.”

The brief moment of levity over, Lind transitioned back into default ice-cold operator mode. Jorgensen gave me an appreciative wink, and as a group we closed in on the Space Center. We moved slow through the waist-high grass, keeping a low profile and taking advantage of the concealment provided by unkempt foliage. Despite his size, Jorgensen proved to be quite stealthy. Lind moved effortlessly, gliding through the grass like a snake, but to my utter amazement Padre McCreedy gave her a run for her money. Roth tried his damnedest to keep up but I couldn’t help but cringe, expecting a barrage of bullets to blast us apart with every clumsy, squelching footstep he took.

Mercifully the Templars had ceased patrolling that far out from the facilities years ago, and with the distraction at Redemptionland there was only a skeleton crew on station. As we drew closer, I recognized the charred carcass of the Vehicle Assembly Building and had an urge to do my best Charlton Heston impression circa ’68 — You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! — but refrained. I’d estimate only a third of the buildings remained standing, and even those Mother Nature was fighting for sovereignty over. If the weeds sprouting up through crumbling asphalt and the kudzu blanketing walls and abandoned vehicles were any indication, the Templars were losing that particular war.

We stopped to allow Roth to get his bearings in the alien landscape. He removed a battered old map and a penlight from his kit. We surrounded him, blocking the light from line-of-sight with our bodies while he worked. We heard the Templar well before we spotted him — stomping around through the undergrowth and whistling a melody from an early 2000s pop song. He stepped out from behind a collapsed structure fifty meters ahead and moved toward us, the torch mounted on his coilgun sweeping lazily back and forth; the product of lax discipline and long hours at an uneventful post.

Padre McCreedy raised his Sig and I aimed down the holographic sight of my MP7A2, but Jorgensen signalled for us to lower our weapons and we complied. Suppressed though they might have been, neither the Sig nor my Heckler and Koch personal defence weapon was silent. Lind slung the SA80 assault rifle and took out her composite bow, nocking a broadhead-tipped arrow from her quiver. She took aim as the Templar closed in on our position, the beam of his torch creeping too close for comfort. With a thwish the arrow launched, travelling the short distance between Lind and the Templar, piercing his neck and severing his spine.

The Templar’s rifle fell and his body wasn’t far behind. Jorgensen rushed and caught him, lowering him gently to minimize sound. He checked to confirm the Templar was dead and incapable of calling for support. Jorgensen turned off the rifle-mounted torch and dragged the weapon and body into a dense thicket off the road. I got the impression from the speed and efficiency of the whole process that it was well practiced and frequently implemented by Lind and Jorgensen.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn me on just a bit.

“Are we good to go?” I whispered to Roth.

He bobbed his head and placed the map and penlight back in his kit. Roth indicated the direction we needed to go and we crept that way at a glacial pace. Jorgensen ranged ahead and Padre McCreedy brought up the rear. I covered Roth, and Lind stayed with us, bow held at the ready.

Forty-five minutes of creeping along abandoned streets and dodging patrols later, and Roth gestured toward a relatively intact building. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other relatively intact buildings apart from a pair of guards standing by a hole in the wall vaguely shaped like it was made by a linebacker on super-steroids.

Xorin was here, I told myself.

These Templars appeared significantly more alert than the one dispatched by Lind earlier. Even more inconveniently, they remained firmly rooted at their station and were encased in complete sets of armor — helmets and all. We watched from a distance for a while but they stood at attention the entire time, not even shifting slightly to prevent cramp. Could’ve earned themselves a penny or two as human statues on Venice Beach.

Jorgensen cased the joint and found two locked doors in back and around the side and some busted windows too small for any of us to fit through. Every minute we wasted increased the risk of the dead Templar’s disappearance being noted.

We needed to act.

Padre McCreedy and I were the only ones with suppressed firearms. Guns are rare enough in the age of the Savior Gods but suppressors are almost impossible to find. I knew my 4.6x30mm rounds could defeat Templar body armor but I wasn’t sure if McCreedy’s Sig would do the trick, let alone if he could hit the target from that distance with a pistol.

“Got anything capable of penetrating ballistic plate tucked away up your sleeve?” I murmured to Lind, half serious.

She selected an arrow with red fletching from her quiver and showed me the nasty-looking bodkin tip affixed to the carbon shaft.

“Will that do the trick?”

“Hasn’t failed me yet,” she remarked.

“Fair enough,” I conceded.

“You take the goon on the left, I got the one on the right. You shoot first and I’ll follow your lead.”

I shouldered my MP7 and acquired the guard to the left of the god-shaped cavity. I took deep controlled breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. The holographic reticle hovered on the dodecagonal badge of the Savior Gods emblazoned on the Templar’s gleaming breastplate. I breathed out one final time, pause, and my finger stroked the trigger.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

The guard convulsed and collapsed as three tungsten carbide penetrators bypassed his armor in quick succession and shredded his heart. Beside him the second Templar fumbled with an arrow that had sprouted unexpectedly from his gorget. Before he could cause too much of a racket Jorgensen was there, knife in hand, to deliver the coup de grâce. Jorgensen ducked his head inside Xorin’s improvised entrance and signalled to us the coast was clear.

We hustled down the street and dragged the dead guards inside behind us and out of immediate visibility.

“Lind, Jorgensen, patrol the perimeter. I want to know if anyone comes within two blocks. Padre, mind our egress point. I don’t want any surprises if a Templar manages to slip their net.” At this, Lind huffed. “Roth you’re with me. Find us that silver bullet.”

Whatever purpose the premises once served was no longer identifiable. The God of War had redecorated the interior with the subtle eye for design of an artillery shell. Splintered desks and shattered monitors served as tombstones for skeletons bearing the evidence of excessive trauma. Yet more weeds sprouted from craters stamped into the flooring tiles by massive footprints. Pens and various other office paraphernalia crunched under the tread of my boots as Roth and I delved deeper into the facility.

Roth picked his way through the wreckage, examining each long-dead tablet and opening every desk drawer. I was starting to doubt he would find anything of value to the cause. If there was even anything of value to find. Would the Savior Gods really leave any stone unturned if they believed a threat to their reign existed? It would have been deliciously appropriate to punish such hubris in the manner of the pagan gods of ancient Greece but the longer Roth spent scouring the debris the less plausible it seemed.

“Do you even know what you’re looking for?” I asked.

“Have some faith, Ethan,” Roth chided. I snorted to hear that coming from a fellow Luminous operative but he failed to register my amusement.

“My life’s work has consisted of collecting accounts of the research these brave men and women were conducting here.” Roth gestured to a pulverised skull. “Exclusively from secondary sources, mind you. Trakiin and his cronies aren’t invulnerable, you know. They’re too reliant on the Dominions for that to be the case.”

Roth approached a safe embedded in the wall. Or partially embedded anyway. In the process of forcing the fortified door Xorin had wrenched the safe loose.

“Some even theorize the Dominions are intended to protect the Savior Gods from each other as much as from us,” he said.

He turned on his penlight and probed inside the gaping hollow. The narrow beam darted around, illuminating naught but bare metal surfaces.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Xorin wasn’t going to come all this way from orbit, slaughter a bunch of nerds, nearly rip a safe out of the wall in the process of trying to open it, only to leave behind whatever he found inside it,” I said.

“Unless he didn’t know where to look,” said Roth. He stuck the penlight between his teeth and began feeling around the empty box with both hands. The whole mission objective was beginning to seem absurd. I needed to weigh the odds of success against the lives of the men and women under my command. I mentally agreed to indulge him for another minute when I heard a click followed by a triumphant “Aha!”

“And this is why you don’t send the God of War to recover sensitive materials,” said Roth as he removed a steel plate from the safe and placed it on the floor. “False bottom. Classic misdirection. That big meathead would have snatched whatever was in the primary safe and never given it a second thought.”

“Well? What’s in the box?”

He rummaged around inside the recess and retrieved what looked to be an autoinjector and a sheaf of papers. He flipped through the papers and a smile spread across his face, gleaming white in the dark.

“Salvation,” he said.

“Oh.”

I hadn’t imagined a fully functional blast-lance could fit inside the strongbox but I was hoping for something slightly more impressive than a spring-loaded syringe and an instruction manual. It certainly didn’t resemble salvation to me.

“I’m up-to-date on all my vaccines, doc.”

“This is no vaccine. This is a virus, a techno-virus to be precise, and it is imperative we deliver this to a Luminous lab to be analysed, reproduced, and tested. If this is what I believe it to be, it could very well end the war.”

I was about to ask Roth what the hell a techno-virus was and how it could end a decades long conflict — and that, naturally, was the moment everything went to shit. The only warning given was the sudden widening of Roth’s eyes. I ducked, pivoted, and drew my weapon in a single motion, startling the Templars who were breaching the building through our egress point. I hosed them with rounds as they discharged their own weapons in a strobe of electromagnetically propelled ball bearings.

“Side door!” I shouted at Roth over the high-pitched whine of the Templars’ coilguns, hoping he was still alive to hear me.

The nearest Templar staggered and sank to one knee, blood pumping from the wide-spaced holes punched into his plate. Those filing in behind him dove for whatever cover the debris provided and I used the lull in combat to scoot on out of there, but not before lobbing a homemade explosive in their general direction to keep them occupied. I reunited with a remarkably intact Roth at the side door and kicked it open, dragging him into the alley with me.

We took off at a sprint, stumbling as the IED detonated with an impressive crump. One of my hand’s clutched Roth at all times while the other maintained a grip on the MP7. We navigated the ruins of Kennedy Space Center at breakneck speed. The streets crawled with Templar patrols, and after a few more frenzied shootouts I found myself running low on both bullets and bombs. Just as Roth was about to collapse from exhaustion I found a secluded corner to catch our breath. I took a slug of my canteen and passed it over to him.

“What do we do now?” asked Roth between alternating gulps of air and water.

“You and I exfil to the boat and bug-out.”

“What about the others?”

The cacophony of gunfire persisted even when I wasn’t forced to engage the Templars — primarily the distinctive sound of gauss weapons but punctuated by the bark of more traditional chemical-propellant guns. I’d swear that once in flight from a squad of goons I’d glimpsed a couple pin-cushioned with arrows as if Lind was providing cover for us, but in the chaos and terror I didn’t halt to check. At least one member of our team was still alive out there, possibly more, and they were in the thick of it but we couldn’t jeopardize the mission.

“What about them? You said it yourself; this techno-virus could end the war. That’s bigger than any one of us,” I said.

Roth looked like he wanted to argue but rationality prevailed. He was a man of science after all. Roth passed the canteen back, I took another swig and fastened it to my webbing. I loaded my last remaining magazine into the MP7 and we left without a further word. Back past the shells of buildings gone back to nature at the skirts of the Space Center. Back through the long grass and tangling shrubbery that clung to our heels like a one-night stand hinting at going steady. Back over the drooping perimeter fence with its strongly-worded sign ineffectually declaring, You shall not pass. Back into that Trakiin-damned swamp and its nose-assaulting bouquet of decaying plant and animal matter.

With guilt weighing heavy on my shoulders the trudge back to the boat was substantially more taxing than the infiltration had been. The farther we got from the Space Center the quieter it got, the silence smothering me like an accusation.

“We made it,” I said as we arrived at the location of our lent watercraft, “and someone beat us here.” McCreedy stood by the dinghy, Sig drawn and levelled at us as we emerged from the thicket.

“You can lower that heater, Padre, we come in peace,” I called to him.

The gun in his hand didn’t waver.

Ahhh, shit.

“It’s us,” Roth added, “Ashton and Ethan. What happened back there? We got mobbed by Templars.”

“Where are Lind and Jorgensen?” asked McCreedy.

Shit, shit, shit.

“We hoped to regroup with them here but we couldn’t risk waiting,” Roth replied.

“You found it then?” asked McCreedy. “Mission accomplished?”

Shit, shit, fuck, shit. My grip tightened on the MP7.

“Yeah, I got it right here,” Roth answered.

The night gave birth to stars around us and a barrage of amplified voices commanded “Drop your fucking weapons” and “Get the fuck down” and “Hands behind your fucking heads.” The chirp of primed coilguns added authority to the directives.

Shock and awe.

I complied, tossing aside my gun, lacing my fingers behind my head, and lowering myself kneeling in the mud too overwhelmed to even consider resisting. As two VTOL-capable ‘chariots’ bathed the clearing with the brilliance of their searchlights, I saw the squads of Templars surrounding us.

“Why?” I asked as a Templar stepped up to frisk and disarm me while his comrades trained enough firepower on me to render me a sizzling meat pudding.

“I know what you Luminous heathens did to my God,” Padre McCreedy replied, “so I found a replacement.”

Mr Handsy finished divesting me of anything even suggestively lethal and secured my hands in manacles behind my back.

“Be gentle with that one, he’s carrying precious cargo,” instructed McCreedy of Mr Handsy who had moved on to cavity search Roth.

Bang, bang!

One aerial searchlight winked out of existence.

Bang, bang!

The other searchlight sparked and died. From a separate location another shooter opened fire, wielding one of the Templars’ own coilguns against them to fabulous result. Jorgensen and Lind took turns shooting and repositioning. The Templars all reacted with varying degrees of discipline, some going so far as to shoot into the woods at random in all directions. I body-checked Mr Handsy and yelled for Roth to run.

He only managed a few strides before his legs gave out beneath him. At first I thought he’d tripped on his own feet until I saw McCreedy advancing on us, Sig outstretched. I scuttled to shield Roth’s body with my own. McCreedy stood poised to kill me when a hyper-accelerated projectile introduced the Padre to his deceased deity. Whether the shot came courtesy of Jorgensen and his pilfered coilgun or from a panicked Templar I’m unsure. I’ll never get the opportunity to ask Jorgensen either.

The chariot pilots recovered from the loss of their searchlights quickly enough. They activated whatever enhanced optics those cockpits offer, pinpointed where the incoming gunfire was originating, and rained down hell on our sniper and spotter. I gotta give Lind credit, she still managed to down one of those bastards, but there was no surviving the volume of ordnance those chariots brought to bear.

I knelt over the dying Roth while the napalm-fuelled conflagration blazed around us, a proper Viking funeral that would have made Jorgensen proud. Roth whispered to me his final words and passed away.

I finish my story. “I mustn’t have even made it a mile before your surviving thugs got their shit together, consolidated and captured me. You decreed that the Templar captain deliver me to Kha’cheldaa for questioning, and here I am, awaiting your most merciful, erm… mercy?”

“What a remarkably comprehensive and thoroughly damning account,” says Trakiin. Seated back on his throne now, he straightens his posture, jaw coming off fist, no longer imitating Le Penseur.

“What I fail to comprehend is the why of it all,” he goes on. “Why were you willing to endure such hardship, willing to sacrifice yourselves for such petty defiance? Why is Luminous so determined to depose us? How can you be so certain we are not your gods?”

“Who cares, Father?” Xorin bellow. “They piss on the gifts we’ve bestowed upon them. They spit in our faces. End this farce of a trial and let me execute him!”

“‘Bestowed’ and ‘execute’ eh? Don’t overexert yourself there, big guy,” I say.

The God of War surges toward me only to be restrained by the two nearest Savior Gods, his brother Q’lun and sister Fhariyya. They harbor no love for me but they do fear the displeasure of their father. I sneak a glance. Overhead the Dominions twitch and tense, provoked by the outburst of near violence.

Their movements, though, display a trace of uncertainty. Hesitance, almost.

As though something’s up with their programming. As though a ghost has somehow entered the machine.

I stifle a tiny grin.

“Show a modicum of self-control, Xorin,” admonishes Trakiin. “Once I have my answer you may do with him as you wish. Now, Mr Nash, before I cede your life to my eager boy, would you kindly answer my previous question?”

“It would be my honor, your most beneficent majesty,” I say, “though I’ll confess I’m beginning to have some misgivings as to your omnipotence.”

Trakiin motions for me to get on with it, clearly arriving at the end of his patience. The time has come. With luck, I’ve stalled long enough. I think I may have pulled off what I intended to. I think.

“How did we peg you for the charlatans you are?” I say. “Simple, really. We killed all our gods long before you arrived in orbit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Our gods — Apollo, Loki, Enlil, Anubis, Kali, Ryūjin, Yahweh — all those ‘mythological’ deities whose archetypes you shamelessly counterfeited for your own personas, they were real. And we killed them all.” I state this matter-of-factly. Matter-of-factly because every word of it is gospel truth. “Luminous, the Illuminati, has existed in one form or another since the dawn of history, fighting from the shadows to free mankind from the shackles of oppression. We’ve slain every Supreme Being who sought to lord it over us, and we’ll sure as shit do the same to you.”

“Silence!” Trakiin snaps.

“You’re frauds, nothing more than cheap imitations of the real gods, and they couldn’t even subjugate us for long. So what chance do you think you have?”

“I SAID SILENCE!” roars Trakiin.

“And to top it all off, your genealogy is seriously fucked up. It’s no wonder Xorin was born effectively brain dead. That’s what happens when you keep it in the family.”

That does it, as far as Xorin is concerned. He breaks free from his siblings, throwing them to the floor, and hurtles toward me. Time seems to slow to a crawl while he barrels ahead like a sentient wrecking ball, eyes bulging, teeth bared, spittle flying.

Then a thrust from a blast-lance punctures his back. The weapon’s pointed rear tip skewers his heart and erupts out through his left pectoral. Confusion scrunches his thick brow as though he were trying to add two to two and getting five. Xorin takes another step forward, and the Dominion levitating behind him withdraws the blast-lance, swings it around so that the business end is against the back of his skull, and releases a plasma bolt that flash-fries his cranium.

Around the chamber the Savior Gods balk at this audacious display of mutiny from one of their trusted protectors. Q’lun is the first to react, leaping to avenge his fallen brother. He smacks aside the blast-lance before it can get another shot off and he hammers a fist into the android angel’s abdomen that cracks its carapace, but before he can deliver a second blow another Dominion swoops down and stoves his head in with a mighty airborne roundhouse kick.

Yet more Dominions descend from on high, and the chamber degenerates into total anarchy.

Most of the Savior Gods attempt to fight. Those more inclined to self-preservation make for the exits in hopes of escape. I watch Jhan S’reen, Goddess of Death, hold her own against three Dominions. She weaves between blast-lance thrusts and plasma bolts, her agility contradicting her ample girth. Her touch corrodes the Dominions’ reinforced shells and her talons shear through the weakened material with ease. She plucks the wings off one of her attackers but it latches on to her and creates an opening for the other two to finish her. She perishes with a moan of ecstasy.

Hlaarina’s dies attempting to resuscitate her daughter Yuu’oria, the Goddess of Love. A series of plasma bolts splatters the two of them across the floor. While their family is being butchered around them, Bræsheen, the Goddess of Agriculture and Harvest, and Kloxiin, the God of Mischief and Partying, cower under the walnut banquet table until the Dominions drag them out by the ankles and transform them into postmodern art.

One by one they all fall until only two of the Savior Gods remain — the King of the Gods and the Goddess of Hunts and Wilderness. Trakiin and Fhariyya stand back to back, armed with the blast-lances of their vanquished foes. They strike and defend like they’ve performed this dance before, father and daughter leveraging each other’s strengths and guarding each other’s weaknesses. Demolished Dominions pile up before them, and it’s looking as if they might win through when Fhariyya slips and a blast-lance spears into her stomach, exit nozzle first. She tries to pull herself off the lance but the Dominion ignites a plasma bolt and cooks her from the inside out.

Trakiin lets out an animal cry and flies into a rage, obliterating her assassin and the nearest assailants. Blood sheets down his face from a laceration on his forehead. His chest heaves like a set of bellows and his muscles bunch grotesquely under his tattered robes. He spots me through the red haze and takes the shot. The blast-lance rockets through the air — a javelin aimed right at my heart.

A guardian angel dives to intercept the missile, trading its cybernetic life for my own.

The Dominions encompassing Trakiin close ranks and he vanishes from sight. Blast-lances piston in and out, arising bloodier each time, and through gaps in the androids’ formation I watch him sink to floor. I approach and the Dominions part to allow me through. Before me Trakiin lies incapacitated, wrestling to find his breath.

“How?” he croaks.

“The techno-virus,” I tell him. “NASA discovered a back door in the Dominion programming and developed a virus that would cause them to obey and defend whoever is the virus’s host. Roth injected me with it before he died, thinking I could hide the virus in my blood and escape to pass it on.”

I turn to one of the pair of Dominions who are now flanking me, blast-lances at port arms, like an honor guard. “Do you mind?” I present it the manacles binding my hands behind my back. The android angel breaks the chains and for the first time in hours I can stretch my arms above my head and roll my shoulders to unkink them.

“I never expected to wind up on Kha’cheldaa,” I say, “let alone be invited into your private chamber. And then you permitted me to monologue long enough for the virus to replicate and work its black magic. So, thank you for that. Thank you and fuck you.”

I gesture like a Roman emperor at the Circus Maximus pronouncing death for a defeated gladiator. The Dominions — my Dominions — oblige. Trakiin lets out a last defiant, desperate scream, a guttural yell of furious disbelief that is brutally cut short.

I climb over his body, the giant somehow diminished in death, and cross the chamber to that chalk-white throne. It was too large for Trakiin, and it’s wayyy too large for me. I clamber onto it, have myself a seat, and survey the carnage I’ve wrought. The victorious Dominions kneel in a semicircle before me, setting down their blast-lances and bowing their heads.

Bowing to me.

My laughter echoes through the corridors of Kha’cheldaa.