The pirate ship was organized as a single long corridor with side rooms all the way, leading up to the bridge. The segments were flexible, allowing the ship to sway like a snake or dragon—easy to see where they’d gotten the name. There was no mechanical advantage—at least not that Caleb could see—to having the flexible segments, so it had to be pure aesthetics. He was dealing with children caught up in their own sense of self-importance. They were insects in the greater scope of the universe—insects pretending to be gods.

  A few months ago, these men would have intimidated Caleb. Back then, the universe had been a different place. He almost laughed.

  Rachel Jordan had made the universe a place no one would even recognize.

  “What’s this mission?”

  Ezra waved him onto the bridge. It was cramped and had room for only three officers, so Caleb had to stand behind the captain’s chair when Ezra sat.

  “There’s an abandoned angel station out near the Great Attractor. We’re meant to destroy it before they can reactivate the thing and use it against us.”

  Caleb chuckled, briefly, until he realized the icie was serious. “Kid, do you have any idea how far away the Great Attractor is? It’s not even in the Local Group. How the void would we get there?”

  “Apollo gave us Conduit routes to travel out there.”

  A chill settled over his spine, and he found himself actually leaning forward on the chair. Not even a man with connections in the Asheran military should have that information. No one should, unless the Asherans were far more advanced than he gave them credit for.

  The known Conduit routes carried mankind all over the Local Group. Some thirty galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster that the angels had seeded with human civilization. But the Great Attractor was … what, in the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster? Two hundred million light-years away.

  Caleb was no astrophysicist, but even he knew about the Attractor. It exerted enough gravity to have the mass of ten thousand galaxies or more. Some people said it was the greatest black hole in the universe. Others speculated it was God himself. Of course, in three thousand years since the Exodus, no human had ever found a way there.

  And the angels had a station? To do what? Harness that kind of energy? Assuming it was even possible, anything that created gravity on that scale … well, the power would be limitless. A singularity drive on a ship was usually less than a meter across, and it could power an entire warship. So if the angels could harness a singularity—if that’s what it was—a million light-years across, they should be able to do anything. Reshape the universe itself.

  Was it possible Apollo was right? It no longer mattered how the Asherans knew so much about the angels.

  All that mattered was stopping the angels.

  Caleb couldn’t allow them to reactivate such a station. It would mean the end of any resistance to the angelic hegemony.

  However long it took, Caleb was going to save the universe.

  31

  “I admit, I’m intrigued by the possibility, by the implications. But you see, all reports of so-called dark angels come from apocryphal sources. Those we can attribute any author at all are often the results of raving madmen claiming to be navi. That said, if you want to talk of these secondary texts, yes there is mention of a number of dark angels by name. Apollyon, the angel of destruction, and Yeqon, the angel of lust, were among their supposed leaders. Note how their names balk traditional angel-naming conventions.”

  Dr. Rachel Jordan, in response to a student question on heretical views

  DECEMBER 28, 3096 EY — ANDROMEDA GALAXY

  The Wheel of Law had not lingered at Eden. The truth was, Rachel had begun to lose hope of establishing a long-term colony there. Every test she’d conducted, even working with the Sentinels in the system, indicated the psychic disturbance would be too great for any psych to tolerate. Worse, even norms seemed affected if they spent much time on the planet. They were less aware of what was happening to them, but they clearly began suffering some symptoms. Paranoia, irritability, sleeplessness.

  The angels and their Adversary had rendered Eden a wasteland, just like the Codex said. It was not a physical wasteland, as the book implied, but a psychic one.

  The ghosts left behind had tainted humanity’s homeworld beyond redemption. At least that was her fear.

  So instead, Rachel had gone with David to assist in evacuations. All major planets were being dispersed. Refugees fled to the farthest reaches of the inhabitable universe, to any world remotely terraformed. The farther from major population centers the better.

  No one knew where the angels would strike next.

  But it was just like back then. They would slaughter and terrorize until mankind, broken and afraid, looked to them as saviors.

  Their attacks had been seemingly random, targeting Mizraim and Asherah equally. But they always targeted heavily populated, well-defended areas. As if to prove how truly helpless mankind was against their assault. To demoralize everyone into accepting their rule once again.

  It was all happening again. And even knowing that, Rachel saw no path to stop it.

  And so she found herself back in the isolation wing of the brig—the one place she might get answers.

  “Are you certain, Rach?” David asked her. He had returned her uniform and commission and pretended like she had taken only a leave of absence. It seemed easier to play along. God only knew what he’d told the crew to keep them quiet about it.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Raziel had played her on Gehenna and led them to this off-rotation mess they found themselves in. She’d been so sure that if she found Eden it would save the universe. But it had done nothing. Not a damn thing had changed—at least not for the better. She no longer knew who to trust.

  And maybe Raziel was the last place she should turn. But sadly, he was also the last place she had left to go.

  “We can at least try,” she said.

  “He’s gotten into your head before.”

  True. But then, he seemed to be able to do that wherever she was on the ship. His mental assault had resumed not long after she returned to the Wheel.

  “Let’s wait for Knight,” she said.

  “No argument from me.”

  A minute later, the Gehennan entered the wing. “Why are we here?”

  “Because we’re lost,” Rachel said. “And because if we’re going to find our way, we need Raziel.”

  Knight folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t think to trust that little shit.”

  Well, no. But trust him enough, she hoped.

  The angel had, after all, given them his ship. It was because of Raziel they had escaped the Ark at all. He told her back then she didn’t understand what she’d started.

  God, how right he’d been.

  Rachel had made one mistake after another. She’d refused to give the Ark to Mizraim for fear they would awaken the angels. She’d refused it to QI for fear they’d exploit it. And in the end, she’d handed it back to the angels, deluding herself into thinking they alone would not abuse the power. But the angels were the worst of all. Even Jericho might have given them a better future—one that didn’t involve disintegrating planets and genocide.

  Rachel sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore. We’re losing this … everything is falling apart. And we can’t gain an edge unless we understand the rules of the game.” She strode over to the angel’s cell and tapped the smart glass to turn it transparent.

  The angel stared at her, his eyes cold, his head cocked slightly to the side.

  “Do you know what’s happened?” she asked, at last.

  “I know my brethren have turned on you. I feel fear permeating this ship like a cloud of toxic gas, creeping through every seam. I hear the echoes of sorrow, the grief that threatens to drown your crew in the inexorable tide of the future.”

  “They bloody destroyed planets!” David shouted at him. “How could they do that when we asked them here to negotiate for peace?”

  “Speak to me with respect, human.”

  “I …” David stammered.

  Oh, no. This was not going to happen like that. “You’re the one in the brig, angel. Ditch the pompous attitude if you want to win any points with us.”

  “I should have killed him,” Knight mumbled.

  Somehow, Rachel doubted that would have made things better. A dead angel would have bought them nothing.

  A glower settled on Raziel’s face. “You thought they would negotiate? Would you negotiate with a monkey? No. You would tell the creature what to do, and if it disobeyed, you would punish it. My brethren see you as far beneath themselves as a monkey is beneath you.”

  “We are sentient beings!” she shouted at him.

  “So are monkeys. They care about their lives too. But you do not overly trouble yourself with their happiness if it conflicts with your own aims.”

  “And what are their aims?” David asked. “What do the angels want?”

  Raziel was silent a moment, and Rachel actually felt uncertainty wafting off him. Was he so distracted he forgot to guard his emotions, or did he let her feel it on purpose? “They are preparing for war.”

  “They’ve already declared war on us,” David said. “They’re killing people by the billions.”

  “Kings do not war with pawns—they war with other kings. In breaking the Covenant, you have allowed yourselves to become pawns of the other side. Pawns may be crushed under foot, but they are never the targets.”

  Rachel took a step toward the angel and was stopped by the smart glass. She opened the door and walked closer.

  “Rachel …” Knight said.

  She kept advancing. “Don’t feed us any more of your shit, angel. I know the angels and the Adversary are the same thing.”

  Raziel groaned. “You arrogant child. You have played around in the dark until you have woken something you do not understand. And in so doing, you have ignited enough fear in my brethren they would sooner quash you than allow you to be used against them. And in that fear, they go too far.”

  No. The angels had made up the Adversary. It was a ship like theirs. A ship no one had ever seen again. But Raziel was admitting the other angels were wrong? He had known all along where the Ark was, but he never activated it himself. Why?

  Rachel frowned. “You’re saying the Adversary … is another faction of angels?”

  Raziel glared at her. “You should have listened to us.”

  Even after everything, Rachel still had to work to keep from fidgeting under his gaze. “Eden … mankind was caught in a war between two sides of your race. And which side were you on?”

  “Humanity’s.”

  “Why freeze yourselves at all, then? Why risk losing control?”

  At that, the angel snorted, the sound all too human. “They did not. One of their own, an agent of the Adversary, betrayed them and forced them into cryo slumber.”

  But Raziel still had not awakened his fellow angels. Even knowing the danger.

  “Because,” he said, clearly reading her mind, “I wanted to give humanity a chance to rise on its own. We had long wondered how well your kind would do were we to move on to the depths of space. This was not the only cluster in this universe we had interest in. The freezing providing the perfect experiment. And I had other reasons that do not concern you now. If you want me to help you survive what is coming, you must release me.”

  “The Adversary,” Knight said. “That’s what you meant when you said you were afraid to act directly, that others might see you.”

  Rachel turned on her former bodyguard. Holy shit. How had he figured that out before her? Because he’d grown up under the thumb of the Shadow Council, of course.

  “I removed the knowledge of the Ark’s location from my mind in order to protect it. I did not even recall I had hid it on Gehenna until Dr. Jordan broke the Sefer. Even then, I dared not let our enemies know of my continued existence. Better if they thought me frozen with the others.”

  Rachel spread her hands. “I still don’t understand what happened on Gehenna. The Lazarus Group worked for you. Why not just have them hand over the Sefer? Other than your interest in Knight, why put us through all that?”

  “I founded Lazarus, yes. But that particular branch of it betrayed me when they realized how much money they could make off Mammon. I needed someone to reclaim the Sefer, again, without drawing the Adversary’s eye upon myself.”

  Rachel glanced at David, who nodded, and Knight, who shrugged. They were leaving it up to her. And she would again be responsible for shaping the fate of the universe.

  “You swear to help mankind?” she asked.

  “Yes. I always have.”

  Was that possible? That he had always been trying to help? And she’d been too blind to see it? Rachel groaned. “Release him,” she said to David.

  David leaned in close to her ear. “His presence is going to be a wee bit hard to explain to the crew, lass.”

  She shrugged. “You’re the captain. That’s your job.”

  David nodded, then pressed a panel on the smart glass that caused Raziel’s restraints to pop open.

  The angel stepped down and rubbed his wrists. He flexed his wings once, then cracked his neck. “I’m glad you have come to your senses, Dr. Jordan.”

  “The angel that betrayed you, the Adversary, they’re all still out there?”

  “The angel’s name is Apollyon, and yes, he is still out there, along with others of his kind. We must move quickly if we are to stand against him and stave off the Ark’s wrath.”

  Rachel swallowed. So. If all Raziel had said was true, mankind was now caught between two sides of an ancient war. One that had destroyed Eden and nearly wiped out humanity once already.

  And now, the genocide had begun again.

  32

  “As the galaxies shrink beneath the angels’ continued vengeance, MNN has compiled a list of planetary systems believed to be safe. Please be warned that all of these planets fall under Redeemer jurisdiction, so be advised that expressing any views deemed heretical according to Redeemer dogma are liable to be punished harshly. For those intending to travel to Redeemer-controlled worlds, please check our Mazzaroth guide on living under Redeemer rule.”

  Reuben Klein, MNN remote correspondent

  TRIANGULUM GALAXY

  The Asheran prisoners had been a wealth of intel. Individually, they knew bits and pieces. Together, Jeremiah doubted even they understood how much of the puzzle they had already pieced together. The Conglomerate had been disloyal—Jericho most of all—but they had been forthcoming allies, sharing the fruits of their spies illicit labors.

  Jeremiah had picked the pieces from their brains as their shattered bodies horrified the dismembered cyborgs.

  Now, he was on a holy mission. Rachel no longer mattered. In fact, he ought to have thanked her. It was by her hand that the angels had been released from their frozen slumber to take up the mantel of humanity’s protectors once again.

  The Wheel of Law was limping its way to Ekron. Angel loyalists had been feeding information back to the Ark. Muriel and the other angels knew about a meeting upcoming on the ice planet.

  The Milky Way was too far, though. The angels’ priorities lay elsewhere, in Andromeda and Triangulum, the hearts of the two corrupt governments. The angels thus dispatched twelve Redeemers to the planet under Jeremiah’s command.

  Twelve was the angels’ number. Seven was lesser but still righteous. Jeremiah wondered what other subtle economic decisions the Redeemers had squeezed in among their edicts. A heart of twelve would have cost more to deploy, would have spread their forces thinner. Rather than recruit and raise the funds, they whittled the heart down to the lesser angelic number of seven.

  Now that the angels were in charge directly, the true ways would be so clear. There was no greater comfort in the universe—not a woman’s embrace, not the finest wine, nor the greatest victory—than the unflinching certainty of purpose of hearing God’s word from his own anointed messengers directly.

  When the heart of twelve arrived, Jeremiah was struck with the world’s frigid air. The brothers and sisters in his employ fanned out, dressed alike in parkas and heater masks, goggles already rimed with frost.

  “Scatter,” he ordered. “Remain unseen. Observe alone. Strike as one. We will end the khapiru Sentinels’ resistance in one mighty blow.”

  33

  “Two points merge into one. Then two such conjoined points in space merge. This process repeats ad infinitum. This is the Conduit. Humans shall never understand it beyond this.”

  The Codex, Book of Shamsiel

  JANUARY 7, 3096 EY — EKRON, MILKY WAY

  The angels had continued to strike worlds across Andromeda and Triangulum, so Ekron, deep in the Milky Way, made the best meeting location David could think of. He’d spread the word as best he could. Twenty Sentinel captains had come with their ships. Maybe no one else heard, or maybe no one else was able. Many Sentinel ships had tried forming blockades around Conduit gates, hoping to guard the most populated worlds in the Empire. So far, no such blockade had stopped the angels’ advance.

  Now, Sentinel ships hid behind moons and uninhabited planetoids, trying to disguise their presence. Sentinels—once the proudest fighting force in the universe—now stalked the shadows like the very smugglers they once hunted.

  They had known the angel ship was powerful but had never understood its true potential. Now, with a full crew of angels, the monstrosity seemed unstoppable. No shields lasted long against the Wrath and without shields … well, the nearly useless wreck of the Wheel stood as testament to what that weapon did to a ship.

 

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