“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.