“In the beginning was the sky, and the clouds. The People of the Clouds came from the sky. We fell from the sky onto the land, and could not get back.” Deadeye paused, for dramatic effect.
Several weeks had passed since we had captured the priest. We had just reached our position after a hard run from the ruins of the city. The Cultists would come soon, flushed from their hideouts by Delta. I was exhausted, and glad for the chance to take a little break. Half of Beta accompanied Delta, and it had been somewhat hectic.
“Beta, Element Two in position,” I reported back.
“Confirm,” Snow Leopard responded.
Deadeye continued with his story. “From the People of the Clouds, the Taka, came the Men of the Sword and the Men of the Book and the Men of the Mud. The Golden Sword took the Sunrealm from Chaos, and then the Ancients were no more, and the Men of the Book appeared. A thousand years of war, and a hundred years of peace, and then the Age of Chaos. Now the Men of the Book are gone, and the People of the Clouds are one with the Men of the Mud. We are now in the Ending Time for Sunrealm, and our race is doomed to die. The Beasts came from the sky, and they were written in the Book. They feed on our fears. The Cult of the Dead says our destiny is to die. But we Taka do not care for words. We live to kill the Beasts, and to kill the priests. I do not know any more.”
“Tell me more,” I urged Deadeye. “About the Ancients? Who were the Men of the Book? What did the Book say about the Beasts?”
“The Ancients were the Men of the Sword. They made the peace, with war, and the land turned green under the sign of the sun. The Men of the Book faced the Age of Chaos. I do not know what the Book says about the Beasts. I have never seen the Book, and I cannot read. You must ask a Loremaster.”
But there were no Loremasters any more, I already knew. The priests of the Cult of the Dead had inherited their world.
The priests used the wealth of their victims to enrich themselves and to buy the loyalty of the Soldiers of God, a professional standing army. It held sway over a vast domain, peopled by many tribes. The priests called it the Realm of God.
We had gone to work immediately to smash the Cult. We saw no need for any more sacrifices. We launched our CAT teams into the Realm of God, and the priests and soldiers quickly learned that there was no defense. The word spread about the return of the Golden Sword and the collapse of the Realm of God and the slaughter of the Beasts by the Men of the Past. The Taka offered unconditional loyalty and unconditional obedience. We would kill the Beasts, and free them from the priests and Soldiers of God. A fair bargain!
But from the Realm of God came resistance. Many Taka would not bend their knees to us. The People of the Lake and the Red Earth People and the People of the Dark and the Clan of the Heart, and many other tribes declared they would fight us to the death. No talk with Evil! They knew their fate-it was to die, in the mouth of the Beast. Their priests had told them so.
Our strategy was simple: kill exos, and win over all the Sunrealmers to our side. Our orders were to secure the planet, and that’s what we were going to do, Systies or not. Most of the 12th Regiment was on-planet now and that included all of the 2nd Company. Half of our forces went after the exosegs, and the other half dealt with the Taka. Beta got the Taka. I was happy about that, at first. Many of the Sunrealmers lived underground. They found the exos had difficulty cutting through solid stone and had fortified the underground after the exos had swarmed over the fortress walls above ground. The size of the exos limited what they could do in confined spaces, although they continued their efforts to break the Taka defenses. Apparently, the priests understood Exoseg tactics.
Our work was tiring and sometimes dangerous. CAT 24 had been lucky so far. Our closest call was Nomad. But he had been hauled back from the dead by the lifies.
And through it all, there was no sign of Systies. They just did not seem to be here.
“The enemy approaches, Thinker.” Sweety was whispering in my ears. My thoughts snapped back to the present.
“Soldiers of God,” Deadeye warned me. He loaded up his slingshot.
“Beta, Delta, we’re flushing your Cultists. You all set?”
“Delta, Beta. We’re on it.” I raised my E. They were on the scope, a whole gang of them. Why didn’t they just surrender? It was pointless.
“Priestess, Thinker. Where are you going?”
“Don’t bother me!” Delta had forced the Cultist fanatics out, and we’d mopped them up. It had been a nasty, violent operation. The underground Cult complex had been savagely defended at the cost of several of our Taka auxiliaries and even a few wounded of our own.
In the aftermath of the op, long lines of prisoners, just recovered from the gas, snaked out shakily from a dead city. The night was ablaze with searchlights and flares, aircars hovered overhead, and probes darted around.
Priestess was staggering blindly. I caught up with her as she was about to stumble into a tree. The limp form of a dead Taka girl was draped across her armored arms. Blood was everywhere, even smeared across Priestess’s faceplate.
“I’m so tired, Thinker. I’m so tired. I want to sleep. I want to die.”
“Don’t be foolish. Come here, over here, let’s get out of this mess.” I did not know where I was going. I stumbled over some equipment, and led Priestess past a flare and into a clearing. As gently as I could, I took the girl from Priestess’s arms and laid her body gently on the ground.
“It’s all wrong, we shouldn’t be fighting them. It’s wrong.” Priestess slurred her words.
“It’s right. We can’t postpone it. The longer the priests rule, the more Taka die. You know that.”
I sat her down on a bed of flowers. The night sky arched gently above us, full of stars. An aircar glided overhead, searchlight burning down into the forest. I could hear V bolts in the distance. Priestess slumped and turned away from the corpse until she lay flat on her back. We should have been working, I knew.
“Why can’t we leave them alone? Why are we here? There aren’t any Systies here!”
“We can’t leave them alone. We’ve been ordered to take this world. And we have to consolidate power as soon as possible. That’s Legion doctrine, and it’s also what our auxiliaries are telling us. We’ve got to wipe out these priests.”
“I don’t care. I’m going to sleep now.”
I was desperate and Priestess appeared to be going into shock. “Priestess, look. Look! The moon.”
It was floating just over the black tree line, a pale moon, rising in the night sky. I was so high on fatigue, it struck me then as the most magnificent sight I had ever seen.
“Yes, I see. I see.” Priestess propped herself up on an elbow. “Moon rising. What does it mean?”
“It means everything will be all right. Now get up!” And she did, with a little help from her Persist.
It was after that op that they pulled us back for a rest in the squadmod.
The next day, we were gathered around the tacsit console. “So this is the Hand of the Hand. I’m disappointed,” Snow Leopard said.
The Hand of the Hand was on screen, under interrogation back in Alpha Base. He was a very important priest of the Cult, second in rank to the supreme Hand of God, who was still on the run. CAT 23 had captured him by blind luck. The priest we had captured had been a nobody, but this fellow was number two for the whole Cult.
“He looks like a mildly retarded florist,” Merlin said.
“Except for the shredded chest,” I added.
“Plenty of kills,” Dragon said. “Wonder how many were babies.”
The priest did not look particularly formidable. He was a slight, shriveled old man with wet, expressionless eyes. His frizzy, thinning hair reached to his shoulders. He wore the Mark of the Beast on a medallion around his neck. He didn’t look like a mass murderer, but he certainly was just that. Somebody from CAT 23 was interrogating him, a young, brightly extroverted Legionnaire who spoke fluent Taka.
“But you must know the Book,” the Legionnaire was insisting, “the one Book of the Men of the Book, in which was written the coming of the Beasts.” I could understand most of it. Atom refused to give up on me.
“It is lies,” the Hand of the Hand replied, “all lies, written by the Unbelievers. We do not need the Book of Lies. Our book is the Road of Truth. God calls us through His Beasts. We need no book.”
