Grant leaned down, peering through the gap as the dust settled. It was three feet across at its widest point and came up to his breastbone, a little lower than he would have liked but sufficient to clamber through.
Briefly Grant engaged his Commtact. “Cerberus, this is Grant. Have gained access to the center of the city, am heading inside. Is Domi still showing there?”
Brewster Philboyd’s familiar voice came back via the pickup beneath Grant’s ear, though it buzzed with static here, standing this close to the living ship. “She’s still there, Grant. I have her framed at about a quarter mile directly ahead of you. A little less maybe—the reading’s jumping about on screen here.”
Grant nodded to himself. “Getting a lot of interference on the comm, too,” he said. “There’s a localized field screwing with our signals, I guess.”
“You be careful, Grant,” Philboyd warned. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“You’re mistaking me for Kane, man,” Grant joked. “I never take unnecessaries.”
Then he cut the communication. It was time to literally enter the belly of the beast. With a nod to his colleagues, Grant recalled the Sin Eater to his hand and pushed through into the interior of the great dragon-form ship. As he stepped through the ruined wall, the stench of rotting fish struck Grant, some quirk of the makeup of the incredible living starship itself. And then he was through, brushing the dripping glop from his face as he stepped into the ship’s interior. Kudo and Rosalia followed, the dog scampering along at their side.
Within, the Cerberus warriors found themselves in what appeared to be a corridor. It was ill lit and its walls were ribbed and rounded so that its cross section had a spherical shape. The floor was rounded, too, and Grant found he had to place his feet apart to feel balanced. Grant peered right then left as his companions made their way through the breach in the wall behind him. The ribs continued along the walls of the corridor, meeting above their heads in arches and running below their feet, making moving along the corridor itself a little like walking through a tunnel made of mismatched tires. Neither end looked especially different in the low lighting, and the corridor curved away from sight on both sides without any hint of a doorway. Grant concluded that they were in the middle of an access corridor, which meant that they would need to go one way or the other to discover anything.
“Where are we?” Kudo asked, recalling that Grant had been inside
Tiamat
before.
“Not sure,” Grant said, his voice low. “We’re going to have to do a little exploring to figure that out. Left or right—you got a preference?”
Kudo shrugged. “Right.”
The muzzle of the Sin Eater pointing ahead of him, Grant led the way warily down the tunnel to the right, with his companions spreading themselves out behind him. They kept just a few paces between them, enough to aid one another without—hopefully—being caught by the same surprise trap.
There were no windows along the corridor and the overhead lighting, though constant, was dimmed to a point that left everything gloomy. Grant wondered whether this was preferable to the Annunaki with their reptile genetics. In pondering that point, he realized something else—they had yet to see any signs of the Annunaki themselves. There was no reason to assume that the ship was occupied. It could be that Domi and Kishiro had been brought here via some automated system.
Engaging his Commtact, Grant tried to raise his missing companion. “Domi, do you read me? Domi?”
There was no reply, and after a moment Grant tried again, keeping his voice low as he stalked through the gloomy corridor. Again no response came and when he tried raising Philboyd at Cerberus headquarters he met a similar silence.
“Comms won’t work in this area,” he informed Rosalia and Kudo. “We’re on our own.”
As they continued down the curving, tunnel-like corridor, Rosalia’s dog stopped in place, its head cocked.
“What is it?” Rosalia asked, peering where the dog was looking. She called to Grant and Kudo, telling them to halt. “The mutt senses something. Might be we’re not alone.”
Grant peered down the gloomy tunnel, his eyes searching for movement while Kudo stepped back, checking the way they had just come with his
katana
held ready in his hands.
“You hear that?” Rosalia asked as she came to Grant’s side, the dog trotting along beside her. “Like a shushing sound.”
Grant nodded. “Sounds like…water.”
Even as he spoke, a rush of water came hurrying toward them across the bowled floor of the corridor, two feet deep, its ever-changing surface twinkling in the dim illumination. Grant brought his gun up as the water hurtled at them, watery figures emerging from its surface like burrowing creatures seeking the light.
Chapter 21
The Sin Eater bucked in Grant’s hand as he blasted a volley of bullets into the emerging figures who stepped from the water. Once again, the bullets whizzed straight through the watery bodies as they formed and continued on down the corridor, cutting little paths like raindrops from the impossible creatures’ backs.
“Dammit!” Grant grunted.
Then the wave hit him and Rosalia, crashing into their knees and lashing past them as it continued down the spherical corridor, causing Rosalia’s dog to yelp with an animal’s appreciation.
From out of the water three figures stepped, each one humanoid in form but made entirely of the water itself. Grant ducked as the first lunged at him, its ill-defined hands rushing at his face with a swish of spray. With swift assuredness, Grant brought the Sin Eater up and through the torso of the water thing, feeling the water sluice around him as he clenched his finger on the trigger while the gun was still inside the creature’s body. There was a strange kind of explosion inside the transparent figure where the gun blasted, cutting a foaming gash inside it like a depth charge going off.
Behind Grant, Rosalia stepped back as the second of the creatures leaped past her, scrambling through the spindrift toward Kudo. Then the third leaped at her, lunging out of the water like the sentient crest of a wave. Rosalia raised the sword in her hands, holding it in the vertical position in front of her as the attacker came at her with the fury of the ocean. She blinked her eyes as the blade split the creature, turning it into a shower of hurtling water as it divided into two.
Rosalia spun as the component parts of the water creature hurtled past her, and she watched as it rained back into the surface of the water around her and the dog’s feet, the droplets of water sounding like a furious drum solo as they spattered downward. Already it was re-forming, an arm and head emerging once more from the water as Rosalia pulled her sword back, ready to strike.
Farther along the corridor, Kudo leaped up out of the water as the shimmering humanoid form approached. Water drained from his armor in thick streams as the modern-day samurai grabbed for the ceiling, his hand snagging one of the ribs beside the strip lighting there. Beneath Kudo, the water thing splashed past, swirling over and over as it tried to halt its forward motion.
His grip tight on the ceiling rib, Kudo swung his
katana
one-handed, slicing the two-foot-long blade through the creature’s neck and decapitating it after a fashion. The decapitation was effective for a single heartbeat, and Kudo watched in frustration as the watery parts rejoined and the figure turned to face him.
The trio steadied themselves as the next wave of attackers came at them.
* * *
B
ENEATH
D
OMI
’
S
FEET
, the waters stilled as the trio of cylinders that contained Kishiro and the others sailed to their final destinations and locked into position with a quiet hum. All around them, the static figures of other Annunaki, naked but for the containment strips that held them in place, glistened as the lines of amber light illuminated their leathery scales. A moment after, the strips of amber lighting that had blurred across the newcomers’ chests faded, and the area beneath the catwalks was plunged into near total darkness accompanied by an eerie silence.
Domi peered ahead of her, her eyes struggling to pierce the darkness that had settled across the room. Then she padded silently toward the nearest of the chambered figures, her combat blade gripped tensely in her hand. The Annunaki were so still that they looked like waxworks, their rigid posture akin to an anatomical diagram or a height chart.
Domi was just a few feet away from them now, a row of Annunaki bodies standing in front of her like statues in the dark. Hassood padded along behind her, flinching this way and that as he noticed more of the creepy figures waiting in the shadows.
Each figure towered to almost seven feet in height and while they were genetically identical, each was subtly different from his brethren. Some had single spiny crests running along the top of their skulls like a Mohawk hairstyle, others had bony protrusions arrayed around them like crowns and still others had smooth heads showing no protrusions at all. All the figures were powerfully built, however, their defined musculature evident across their broad chests and strong limbs. Domi moved across the room, gazing at the females, their rounded breasts and slender waists defining their gender far more than their faces or hidden genitalia.
As she stood there, surrounded by the sleeping forms of more than two hundred Annunaki, Domi felt intense rage welling inside her, twinned with fear of all that the Annunaki had done. Here was the enemy, waiting to be reborn and to wreak havoc upon the planet Earth. And while their bodies slept, waiting for the genetic download that would trigger them to life, here was the perfect opportunity to destroy them, to wipe out their race before it could get a foothold on the Earth again.
Domi glared at the nearest Annunaki, a broad-shouldered female with pendulous breasts and a brown sheen to her scales, and she placed her knife to the figure’s throat. It would be the work of a single second to cut the thing’s throat, a move she could repeat two hundred or more times until every last one of the ghastly things was dead, stillborn before the personality download process could begin. Her hand trembled as she pressed her knife against the sleeping Annunaki’s cool flesh. But she had to be smart, do what Kane or Brigid or Lakesh would do. Killing the bodies would only postpone the birthing process. Whatever Enlil had done, he had found a way to fast track the growth of the Annunaki bodies by tampering with human DNA; killing these bodies was not enough, would merely cause Enlil to seek more victims for his twisted plan.
Domi bit her lip, feeling a coolness come over her as the rage began to subside. She pulled the knife away from the still figure, letting it rest limply at her side. She had to be smart.
In a moment, she engaged her Commtact. “Cerberus, this is Domi. Do you read me? Over.”
She waited in the darkness for a response.
* * *
G
RANT
WAS
KNEELING
ON
the floor of the corridor, batting aside the water as it came at his face where the liquid human form tried to drown him. The Sin Eater in his hand jerked as he drilled another burst of 9 mm slugs into the thing’s body, driving the pistol downward to force the shots to cut through the length of the creature. As he fired again, Grant heard a voice over the rush of water echoing through the corridor.
“Cerber—is Domi. Do—ou read me? Over.”
It was his Commtact, Grant realized, springing to life at Domi’s broadcast. The voice was broken up but distinct, and Grant engaged his Commtact without hesitation. “Domi? This is Grant. I can hear you. Do you read me?”
The water creature in front of him slapped its mittenlike hand over Grant’s mouth, and he felt the wash of water running up his nose, making him see stars. Intentionally, Grant toppled backward, falling to the floor and away from the thing’s liquid hand.
“Got some of th—Grant. Where are you?”
“Close by,” Grant told Domi as her fractured message piped into his ear. “But kinda busy.” Even as he spoke, he was rolling through the shallow water away from the thrusting arms of the water thing. “Brewster’s been tracking your transponder, but the Commtact signals are being disrupted somehow.” He drew his blaster up, shoving the tip into the water thing’s face and pumping the trigger. Slick runnels of water charged from the back of the thing’s head along with the bullets, carving a path toward the far end of the corridor. “Looks like you’re inside
Tiamat.
”
“Tiamat?”
Domi was unable to disguise her surprise when she responded. “But—ought she exploded. —ver mind, we have bigger worries right n—”
Grant spun backward as the water creature swished its leg up for a vicious head kick. The kick connected with his cheek, splattering it and again searching for his nostrils and mouth in a determined effort to drown him. “What worries?” Grant demanded. “What’s going on?”
Static came back over the Commtact as Domi’s reply failed to come through clearly.
Grant whipped his pistol up with little hope, blasting another clutch of 9 mm slugs deep into and through his attacker’s torso. Behind him, Rosalia and Kudo were engaged with their own foes, struggling to find some way to gain an advantage.
“Please repeat, Domi,” Grant urged. “I didn’t catch that.”
* * *
D
OMI
’
S
DESPERATE
WORDS
echoed through the vast chamber of sleeping Annunaki shells. “Enlil’s using the ship to create a new pantheon of gods,” she shouted, willing the message to reach Grant. “He’s grafting Annunaki DNA to human bodies.
“Do you hear me?”
There was no response, and Domi cursed vehemently, wishing there was some way to communicate with Grant. As she searched the room, wondering what to do, an ugly voice echoed from behind her.
“You’re smarter than most credit you, Domi.”
Domi turned as Enlil stepped from the shadows of the staircase, batting Hassood aside with one powerful flick of his arm as he lunged toward her. He stopped in front of her, a cruel reptilian sneer appearing on his features. “For an apekin, that is.”
Before the last word had left Enlil’s mouth, Domi pounced at him, leaping into the air. Enlil brought his arm up to bat her away as the albino girl slashed the knife at his face. Her blow missed his face, instead striking his upheld forearm with such force that it cut through his natural armor with a gush of blood.
Then she was spinning away, landing on the floor and rolling over and over to slow her momentum. She was up again in a heartbeat, feet pounding against the hard floor as she leaped into the air once again. Enlil was ready for her this time, his right arm shooting forward and snatching Domi by her outstretched arm, swinging her out and away from him.
Domi sailed across the chamber before slamming into a wall of cylinder frames, several of them containing the lifeless bodies of the adult Annunaki. She shook her head, trying to clear it as Enlil came charging toward her, leaping the little streams of water as he powered across the chamber, his scarlet cape billowing out behind him like a bloody mist.
“Grant, listen to me,” Domi shouted, hoping their Commtacts were still linked. “Enlil’s regrown the Annunaki pantheon. Two hundred space gods, and he’s about to bring them to life.”
Enlil kicked out as Domi tried to roll away, and his multiclawed foot clipped her across the chest, driving the air out of her in a strained gasp. Domi brought her knife down between the alien’s toes, ripping through the scales and driving it point-first into Enlil’s soft flesh.
Enlil bellowed in reply, stepping away from Domi with the blade still wedged between his claws. Coughing as she took another breath, Domi pushed herself back, using the struts of one of the empty cylinders to drag herself to her feet. Before she could do more than that, she felt Enlil strike her on the back of the head. She fell forward, crashing face-first into the back wall of the empty cylinder. A trace of tiny lights sprang to life on the wall in front of her, and Domi saw the illumination from behind her as the cylinder’s amber bars came to life, locking her within its tubelike form.
“And now,” Enlil railed, “you will finally become useful.”
Domi turned in the cramped space, her mind screaming at her to get free. She was a child of the Outlands and as such she detested being caged in any manner, far more so than the folks who had grown up within the rooms and high walls of the villes. “Let me out,” she snapped, twisting her body to see what was occurring on the front side of the narrow container.
Enlil ignored her pleas as he pulled the knife from his foot and tossed it aside, a spit of blood bubbling there. Then he picked up the fallen form of Hassood and placed the man’s unconscious body in another of the empty cylinders. With a flick of his palm controller, Enlil strode out of the main chamber and past the stairs, and Domi and Hassood followed within the cylinders, bobbing along the narrow canals of water that crisscrossed the room.
Domi hammered against the edges of the cylinder as it journeyed along the stream toward the stairs. Though she couldn’t feel it directly, some kind of invisible field held her in place, solid like hardened air. “Let me out, you lousy snake-face,” Domi snarled.
Now standing in front of his control console, Enlil turned to Domi and smiled. “Rejoice. Evolution has arrived,” he thundered.
Domi watched helplessly as he depressed a lighted switch on the control board.