“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.