Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (55 page)

Jamin turned his back on Qishtea just the way he'd seen Marwan do, trusting Sargeant Dahaka and his men to watch his back. It was a gesture demonstrating he did not consider Qishtea to be a threat.

"They keep the winged one hidden," Qishtea called. "How do I know if he is as sick as you insist?"

Jamin froze, but did not turn around.

"You're his ally," Jamin shrugged. "Just ask to see him. If they refuse, then you know he does not have long to remain in this world."

Without another word, Jamin strode back up the ramp of the sky canoe, silently gesturing to their men to fall back and join him inside. In silence, the Sata'anic soldiers fell into step behind him like the
gears
of the well-oiled '
machine'
that Kasib kept telling him the armies of Shay'tan really were.

The soldiers had the wherewithal to hold their guffaws until the shuttle door shut behind them before they erupted into cheers. Private Katlego slapped him on the back, grinning through his boar-like tusks.

"Balls of steel!" Katlego laughed. "Not even Ba'al Zebub could have pulled off a performance such as that!"

They all moved into their seats as the pilot powered up the oar-engines and the shuttle lurched upwards, no longer sitting upon the ground. This time, the sensation was a welcome one, not the stomach-wrenching mess it usually was.

He glanced up and realized Sergeant Dahaka stood before him.

"I gave them thirty days," Jamin said softly. "Not a fortnight. If the Angelic dies, they will come over to us willingly, without bloodshed."

Sergeant Dahaka caressed the hilt of his sword.

"And if he does not?"

"We just need to make sure he
does,
" Jamin said.

Dahaka nodded. He tasted the air with his long forked tongue, and then pointed at Jamin's pulse rifle.

With a sigh, Jamin moved to unclip the holster so he could give it back to the Sata'anic commanding officer.

"You ... keep it," Dahaka said. The lizard waxed a deeper shade of green, a color they exhibited when they were pleased. "Any man who can shoot like that
deserves
to be armed."

The memory of Lucifer's voice whispered into Jamin's subconscious.

'Give them their heart's desires and they will serve you willingly.'

"Damned right," Jamin said.

Dahaka moved to strap himself into his own jump seat. Ignoring the happy banter of the other soldiers, Jamin shut his eyes and hummed that silly little hymn his mother had taught him about a long-lost goddess as in his mind's eye he placed his new pulse rifle into his secret treasure-box, the place he stored all of his heart's innermost desires.

~ * ~ * ~

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.

He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard

die for his country.

--General George Patton--

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.12 AE

Former Third Empire: Jehoshaphat

Supreme Commander-General Abaddon

Abaddon

Supreme Commander-General Abaddon
closed his eyes and focused upon the disharmonious vibrations which rattled up through the floor of the
Jehoshaphat
into the palm of his hand, diagnosing what ailed his
gorm beag
even before the flight engineers had completed their external inspection of her hyperdrives. It had been a long time since his first-love had sustained such damage, but not the first, and this vibration was familiar as he pictured the damage to her starboard engine as though it was his own wing.

"It's not the reactor," Abaddon rumbled, his grey eyes still closed. "It's a constriction in the ion induction chamber where it mixes matter with hydrogen prior to ignition."

"But the engine took a direct hit, Sir," the Mantoid Assistant Flight Engineer said. "We can see the damage to the starboard wing."

Abaddon didn't bother opening his eyes, but focused on the feel of his inanimate lover trembling beneath his fingers.

"The
Jehoshaphat
is hungry, not hurt," Abaddon said. He lurched to his feet, his falcon-grey feathers spread wide for balance. He noted he was not quite so graceful at getting up as when he'd been young.

The Mantoid Assistant Flight Engineer took a step back, his portable flatscreen trembling in his hand. Abaddon pointed to the large, holographic image of the
Jehoshaphat
which had been enlarged to show the damage to the injured hyperdrive. Where the tail-end of that engine's exhaust port had once been now lay a hunk of mangled metal.

"See that discoloration," Abaddon pointed to the steady discoloration which streamed out of the now-shortened exhaust vent like heat waves. "It does not have the white look about it of smoke. Her exhaust is pink. That means she is short on nitrogen, not failing to ignite."

He reached into the hologram and expanded upon that section of the
Jehoshaphat's
wing. He traced the image down from the mangled metal to the slender braces where the enormous brackets rejoined the body of the ship. Abaddon blew the image up, and then blew it up again until at last he could see the place his instinct told him was the most likely place for just such an obstruction to occur.

"Well I'll be damned," the Assistant Flight Engineer said.

Displayed on the screen was a deep crack in one of the few weak places of his ship, the place where one component joined to another. Here the fuel lines for carbon, nitrogen and oxygen were fed up into the hyperdrives to mix with the hydrogen captured by the large scoop at the port-end of the hyperdrive from open space. A small, green line of green nitrogen gasses streamed out of the crack, without the discoloration of oxygen or carbon. Not a catastrophic failure, but it was sufficient to cause the starboard engine to operate on less-than-optimal efficiency. What was of
more
concern was the damaged support for the wing. If
that
came off while jumping through hyperspace, the
Jehoshaphat
would tear herself to pieces before they leaped out the other side.

"Compute how much we'll need to compensate for the loss of propulsion caused by the shortened exhaust vent," Abaddon ordered. "As soon as you fix that leak, we're going right back into battle."

"Yes, Sir," the Mantoid engineer saluted him.

Abaddon settled back into his commander's chair. He settled his hand upon the armrest and pretended it was the
Jehoshaphat's
broken 'wing' he gave comfort to.

"Soon,
gorm beag
," he whispered the endearment to the ship Parliament had given him after he'd proven a mortal could be a worthy enemy for a god. "Soon you shall be fixed, and then I shall let you off your tether again."

His duties done, he inspected what damage had occurred to the other ships under his command. His mouth tightened in a grim line as he read the names of men and women who had died. He tried to put faces to the names, hybrid and naturally-evolved soldier alike, pulling up their service records if memory, at first, evaded him. The Emperor never took the time to learn the names of the men and women he sent to die, but Abaddon always burned each name into his brain. These were men and women
he
had sent into battle; men and women who were no longer here because of
him.
It was a solemn ritual, and the crew knew not to hurry him as he read the rosters of the dead. When the battle was done, he would personally write to each and every one of their families and thank them for the sacrifice they had made on behalf of the Alliance.

The Alliance? Did he even believe in such a thing anymore?

Yes. He was certain he did. Not the vision enumerated by the Emperor, though he'd been perfectly happy with the Alliance as it had been back before the Emperor had abandoned them to fend for themselves, nor even the squabbling factions of Parliament which, most of the time, could not get out of their own way. He traced his fingers down the rows of cuneiform which symbolized the lives of soldiers. No, he believed in
this
Alliance, the men and women who'd willingly thrown themselves into Shay'tan's path to protect an ideal, the right of his wife's people, and his
own
people even though most of the dead were naturally evolved soldiers and not the just the Emperor's genetically engineered ones, to exist.

He clicked off the smart pad with a rueful sigh.

"Sir?" his Logistics Officer asked, a brand spanking-new Mantoid cadet who'd been assigned to replace his old one who had retired just days before Lucifer's breathtaking rebellion. She extended her bright green grasping fingers, three of them, to take the briefing report off of his hands.

"I'll be down in my chambers," Abaddon said, "catching a bit of sleep. Wake me if anything needs my attention."

"Yes, Sir," the Logistics Officer gave him a crisp salute. She tilted her bright green, heart-shaped head as he walked away without a word, not having served him long enough to understand that after he read the names of the dead, he always needed to withdraw.

He walked through the corridors of this ship he loved, noting the places where fresh coats of paint hid old battle scars from the
last
time the Alliance had gone head-to-head against the Sata'anic Empire. He queued up the monitor through which he could send an encrypted 'picture word' to his wife, painfully aware of just how weary and
old
he must appear to her right now. His features softened as he looked at the picture of Sarvenaz placed just behind the camera and pictured that he spoke to
her.
He
felt
as if she could hear him, even if she wasn't here to understand his words. He sent the message through a convoluted series of secure channels so Shay'tan's spies could never trace it to his only vulnerability, the woman who was his heart and soul.

That done, it was time to catch a few Zzz's before the next crisis arose, the next battle, and the next repair which needed his attention. He sprawled out on the empty bed, unable to get to sleep, the ache in his tissues where she
should
have laid every bit as palpable as a thousand cuts of his sword. He finally curled up around a pillow and pressed one of Sarvenaz's head-scarfs against his nose so he could inhale her scent as he dreamed she was still at his side.

The rude whistle of his communications device awoke him from a nightmare in which the
Prince of Tyre
circled a strange, blue planet which was in the process of being consumed by fire. Abaddon smacked at the communications pin still attached to his chest.

"What is it?" Abaddon grumbled, his voice filled with all the sleep he
should
gotten, and had not.

"Sir," Captain Shzzkt's voice crackled out of the tiny pin. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but Brigadier-General Rahotep has received intelligence about an abandoned base deep inside the former Third Empire."

Abaddon sat up, his earlier weariness vanished.

"Sata'anic?" Abaddon asked.

Captain Shzzzkt hesitated. "Sir? Rahotep said the Free Marid claim Shay'tan ignored the planet until late last winter, and then all of a sudden he's had an armada stationed around it, protecting it ever since."

Late last winter? That was around the same time they'd noticed an uptick in suspicious Sata'anic shipping activity.

"The Free Marid?" Abaddon called into the intercom. "How do we know we know they're not Sata'an-Marid implants?"

The Free Marid Confederation was all that was left of the Marid Kingdom. Shay'tan had annexed the six planets which clustered around the Marid homeworld and, after six generations of brainwashing, convinced them they were Sata'anic citizens. The
Free
Marid, on the other hand, were the Marid rejects; privateers, adventurers, and idealists who'd happened to inhabit the most far-flung colonies when their planet of origin had submitted to Sata'anic rule. Shay'tan didn't bother finishing them off because their planets were worthless as resource worlds. The Free Marid Confederation survived by smuggling black market trade goods between the two great empires, but like most privateers, they were prone to double-cross.