Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Read online

  A place of quiet thought. Finally.

  He waited, enjoying it all, knowing some thought, some great revelation, was coming at him. And that soon the coke would be chopped up, and his woman would arrive for his pleasure, and the weekend reward of excesses extreme could begin.

  He’d earned it almost getting game-overed on the Fury. Hanging there from the damaged sensor mast and waiting to get rescued as the ship came apart all around him. In the end it had been a pretty close thing.

  There is only one truth, and it is ours.

  Maestro had told him that.

  The thought he’d been promised had finally come. And it was this one. His answer to Maestro’s question.

  He was still thinking about that conversation with Maestro. Still understanding the power of that final statement. The ramifications of how it would shape the galaxy from now on now that it was spoken and known. All this talk of teamwork, and for the greater good, and diversity of thought… of everyone having their own truth… that had all been a lie. All of it was just a lie.

  And they’d known it was a lie. Always. But lies were a kind of truth if you wanted them to be. Lies could become the truth if you repeated them often enough and convinced the masses it was so. Work hard enough and any lie could become such.

  He’d learned long ago, when first climbing the Billboard charts, that some lies needed to become truths. And lies repeated often enough, like the chantings of some holy sect, if one was going to get any place in the entertainment industry, became truth.

  This song is really good.

  This band is hot.

  This is the next big thing. Trust us.

  Pay to play.

  And all the places that came after that. The secret weekends. The hidden conferences. The planning and funding committees to realize the colony ship Pantheon as Earth began to go seriously sideways during its last days. Influencing the world with the messages that needed to go out to change the world for the better. And when every plan and scheme had failed… to build the Pantheon. To finally escape Earth.

  To get it right this time without the messy masses.

  To do that, to do all that, to participate in the great things being done by great people, the elite of society… then lies, certain lies, needed to become truths. The Truth. For the greater good.

  And that was how it had ever been.

  The world is on fire.

  The world is too cold.

  Mass starvation is coming.

  Everyone is too fat, we need to eat insects to save the planet.

  Save the planet from us.

  Diversity is our strength.

  Kill those who don’t think like us.

  Tolerate all thought, unless it doesn’t think as we do.

  All of those things had been as equally true, even in their contradiction, as they had been equally lies. But if they were spoken by the right people, repeated enough, then they became a kind of truth everyone was forced to believe in.

  And if you were going to be on one side of society, then it was best to be on the side determining what was true and what wasn’t. That was where the real power lay.

  The trick was convincing stupid people that powerful people just wanted to help them. When the reality was, powerful people just want more power. Nothing more than that. That’s all. And… they’ll do anything to get it.

  They don’t help anyone but themselves. No one does.

  So it’s best to be with the powerful people. When you think about it.

  Even if people believed the lies were true only out of fear, then that was enough. That was all you needed. Then those lies could become truths in their hearts. You just needed to believe, like Peter… Peter… or was it the fairy whose name he’d deleted for some reason… said. Peter Pan. Who was a god. The god Pan. It was there all the time, if you knew where to look. The Path had been there all along.

  And wasn’t that all that truth really was?

  What your heart told you it was. What you decided it needed to be.

  Forget Socrates and all his “The truth just is” claptrap. Lame. The truth is what you make it. That’s much better. You can work with that if your intent is to do something truly great for the greater good. And for yourself along the way. See, that’s the best part. In the end, you believe the lie too. You have to. And that makes it even more real. So instead of just questing for power… you are actually helping the downtrodden and lesser. You just have to have power to do it. So get it at all costs. For the greater good.

  Right?

  Right.

  But now he remembered hanging from that comm mast on the burning Animal cruiser, unsure if salvation was at hand. When Maestro told him there was only one truth. Wasn’t that how it had gone?

  Maybe.

  But it was theirs. The truth was theirs.

  Mine.

  Mine, he’d whispered in his mind and ever since. In some secret place the Bad Thoughts alarm couldn’t reach. Where Maestro didn’t and couldn’t listen.

  The Truth is Mine.

  An hour of perfect meditation on these thoughts had passed when there was a soft knock at the door to the sumptuous suite.

  Let the games begin, thought Crometheus, his mind completely refreshed as he rose up from the extravagant bed. Letting go of all the deep musings in favor of some old-fashioned fun.

  She was long and leggy and the rubber playsuit left little to the imagination. Her face was sculpted, heart-shaped even, and that reminded him of the dead Animal he’d selfied with on the burning Fury.

  Wasn’t that nice, some part of his mind noted, waking up to the pleasures of sadism and sex. Things unconsidered and now appealing if only because he was free to do anything and all those anythings were possible. Deciding what was truth let you go everywhere, and do anything, you wanted to go and do. And that… that was power. Real power. And maybe happiness. Maybe.

  He opened the door and Miss Cyber Saigon walked past him like he was a ghost that didn’t exist in her reality. That it was she who was really in charge, instead of him. She was the director of the little play they were about to stage on the bed. It was she who had come here to be pleasured… again, instead of him. That was her game. That was her act. Her monkey trick, if you will. Her role in all of this. The thing that made her… to him… hot.

  All you need is one monkey trick to make it.

  He’d learned that from being a professional entertainer long ago. If you got a hook, then you’ll work. Some old-time booking agent had explained that to him when he first started working. Fronting a punk band called Gas Station Romeo.

  Miss Cyber Saigon’s hook was that she didn’t care about you. Whoever you were. That was her thing.

  Game on, babycakes.

  But when she saw the pure uncut coke lying on the mirrored table in the richly appointed sitting area beneath the fireplace with the actual polar bearskin rug… she suddenly changed. Like a cold spring day suddenly going warm in the unexpected sunshine.

  Miss Cyber Saigon turned to him, her eyes wide with both wonder and disbelief.

  “For me?” she asked in thickly accented English. She’d come from one of the Sinasian colonies. An outer world the Pantheon had hit and none of the Animal worlds had missed for twenty years until one day some ship went out there and found a dead planet ravaged.

  “For us,” he replied in his best Casanova James Bond.

  Gods: Chapter Eleven

  Later. After their sweaty introductions, debasing themselves in all the right ways and destroying the bed and many other surfaces within the suite, Crometheus and Miss Cyber Saigon made the scene at all the epic party palaces of Sin City, first having dinner at Escoffier’s Le Grande.

  Of course.

  Of course he was expected at the must-be-seen-at elite eatery, as this had been unlocked in-game. A reward for the selfi
e in the PITT aboard the Animal cruiser Fury. Autograph hounds and fortune hunters came to get a glimpse of the beautiful and the bold. Everyone surging against the velvet ropes as he exited the hover limo with Miss Cyber Saigon in tow. Of course she was wearing a dazzling white floor-length dress of sheer silk that turned silver in certain lights, glimmer-glamoured and popped as a thousand flashes went off every second and reminded the marine of the chaos of enemy pulse fire in close-quarters battle. Six-inch stiletto heels made of chrome threw sparks every time they landed on the street with each of her long-legged steps, one after the other. Her smoky and way too cool I-don’t-care-about-anything demeanor was back in place. But he could feel her long thin fingers wrapping his tightly. Clutching at him and telling him she wanted it to be this way always.

  And that she’d do anything to make that happen.

  Dozens of questions were shouted at him about the next battle against the Animals, and would he be participating. The word was that Espania was next. Was that true? Would he be going in with the first wave? Did he have any ideas on his latest upgrades?

  “Nothing,” he answered in quick passing.

  Just like he had during the days of his rock god-dom back on jolly old Earth. Who was he dating? When was the next album drop? What did he think about the war in such-and-such place, or the temperatures, or rising seas, or dying bees, or all the cons they’d been running on the masses to get them to Uplift.

  Inside the restaurant, they were escorted to their deep banquette of rich red leather. A team of slaves descended upon them in white-and-black dinner tuxedo dress. Starched bone-white napkins were whipped aloft and cracked with all the flair of lion tamers, while drink orders were taken with the focus of fighter pilots.

  She deigned to tell them she would be having a kamikaze.

  He ordered a Gibson.

  “Yes, sir, and right away, sir.”

  They sat for a moment taking in the room, each of them separately. Adoring and being adored.

  Many of the most famous Uplifted, and even a very few of the Xanadu Tower, were here tonight. Not one slave beyond the staff in view.

  As it should be.

  He inhaled deeply and then let the air go with satisfaction. He felt at home. Finally. Among his people. Among his tribe. Home.

  Maybe not home. The home he never should have left. But a kind of home. A home that would do for now.

  The people around him were comfortable that their truth, and his truth, would be the final truth once the Animals were dealt with. It was a palatable feeling. And that made it true as far as all of them were concerned. Deciding what would be true was the first step toward finding the truth. So said TED 11:1.

  And more importantly, they wouldn’t be sharing any power with the Id or the rest of the Uplifted tribes that had wandered the outer dark for so long. When you got right down to it, the other Uplifted were just as crazy as the Animals themselves with all their beliefs about the state and direction of culture. They were as bad as the Catholics of old and all their quaint superstitions. You couldn’t allow that kind of rot to set in. You could feel everyone in the room willing this same thing.

  There was only one clear path forward. And it was theirs. The Path of the Pantheon. The one who would rule the many. Maestro had made clear that it would be so. Or it wouldn’t be at all.

  Their struggle would determine the fate of the universe.

  So in the end, their ideas, the Path of the Pantheon, those alone must prevail. Even over the other Uplifted. It would be they, the Pantheon, who would represent… not just mankind… they’d gone beyond all that… but represent…

  What?

  His mind struggled for the concept he was trying to articulate, and so he waited for the answer as the perfectly made drinks were set down on the starched white linen tablecloth. The wait-slaves disappearing once more into the party nether.

  He held up his drink and she held up hers.

  And then, another unexpected delight, she reached forward and took the silver-spiked olives and onion from his slender glass. She ran them across her lips and tongue, making sure he enjoyed the whole show, and then placed them back within his glass.

  They touched rims.

  “Chin chin,” he said, applauding her for her little show. She was a pro. She’d make him feel all the things he’d been longing to feel. And as long as she didn’t beg him to make her like him… well, at the end of this little weekend there might even be a tip in it for her. He might even go as far as an achievement point.

  She could live for a lifetime on just that, down there, wherever she was stored.

  She smiled, and the waiter arrived with their menus.

  Of course, Escoffier’s was a twist on the grand Parisian dining palace like the kind that hadn’t been seen on Earth for hundreds of years before they’d left. That was the draw for the elite in the multi-tiered restaurant decorated in rich golds, luxuriant whites, and sinister reds. That this was the place to be seen. Deals and alliances were made here. The future of the galaxy, if the Pantheon were triumphant, was being discussed right here right now. Entire star systems were being divvied up into small fiefdoms.

  An Uplifted could become a kind of king within this space. The power of that was palpable too.

  And then there was this…

  He’d heard there was a burger here, and the truth was he was a sucker for a good burger. Always had been. Even back on Earth. Other Uplifted marines who’d unlocked the restaurant before had told him, “Always get the burger at Escoffier’s.”

  “What are you having?” Miss Cyber Saigon asked coolly over the top of her tall leather-bound menu. Gold tassel hanging down along her slender body.

  “Something special,” he muttered, and continued scanning the room. Studying his fellow Uplifted. And even his betters when he could glimpse them from behind their entourages. So much could be learned from those further along the Path than he, Crometheus. He’d known that much before he’d even known of the Path itself. You could learn a lot from others.

  Intrigued, she put down her menu.

  “I’ll have what you’re having then,” she said boldly.

  Crometheus took a sip from his martini and stared back at her over the rim. “You’ll need an appetite.”

  “Oh I’ve got one,” she promised, and returned to her drink, playing the part, heedless that some of the greatest in the Pantheon were mere tables away. As though it were all a kind of an audition for her services after this present gig expired.

  Or a warning to him that others could have her too.

  The waiter arrived.

  “Monsieur Crometheus… ah, may I suggest ze oeufs saumon as a starting course before we progress… I, ah…”

  “I’ll have the burger,” interrupted Crometheus bluntly.

  The maître d’ made a face. Sour. And frankly… disappointed. Just for a moment. And then the calm cool servant’s exterior returned.

  “I am so sorry but you have been… misinformed. Zere is no burger here at Escoffier’s. We are a fine French restaurant with ze deep roots in the modern classiques. Perhaps monsieur would care for ze sea bass in pastry with sauce choron? Or ze tournedos Rossini with sauce béarnaise? Ze chef has also set aside a baseball cut of chateaubriand in a sauce Madeira zat is heavenly, to say ze least, and simply sublime to express it perfectly. You would be very happy with zis…”

  “Burger.” Crometheus sipped his martini as his concubine seemed interested in some other table. Then, “Ask around,” ordered the marine.

  And it was clear it was an order.

  That also had been pointed out by other marines. You’ll have to insist on the burger. No matter what. You won’t regret it.

  The slave disappeared and Crometheus watched as the servant made a beeline for the power table in the room. On a small landing with a good view to see all, and of course, be seen by all. Str
aight for the table of one of the Pantheon’s most powerful. A member of the Xanadu Tower. Someone who was never seen by the lessers, and of whom only rumors existed among the lower deck slaves. Crometheus, at this poker-playing moment, knew that the Uplifted the slave was daring to approach was one of the most powerful of all the powerful aboard the colony ship Pantheon.

  Lusypher.

  The slave whispered a respectful distance from the worthy’s ear while two beautiful women sharing the table turned to study Crometheus with a brief yet not quick glance. Taking in the celebrated Uplifted marine and his Asian party girl ensconced within their booth.

  Both beauties were A-listers. Truly, epically gorgeous. The kind, back on fabled Earth, that married princes of oil kingdoms and didn’t slum it with the greatest rock star of that century. The kind who won Academy Awards and were always on the arm of the powerful at some global climate change summit, flying off by private jet, wearing outfits that equaled in cost the gross ticket sales of one of his shows. The kind who partied in Dubai before it was nuked. Or Cannes before the Muslims. All those long-lost must-be-seen-at parties aboard pleasure yachts the size of cruise ships. All of it too good for the dirty masses to even get a glimpse of.

  But now Crometheus only noted their appraising gazes in passing. Both stunners at once, in the periphery of his vision, studying who’d dared to insist on their master’s attentions. Crometheus ignored them and instead watched Lusypher, leaving his eyes dead and at half-mast as though he could not care less who was here. The same look he’d used when negotiating record deals with no intention of budging on the points.

  The look that said he was still punk rock, never mind the Aston Martin he’d arrived in.

  Lusypher, a mild middle-aged man with a craggy face, gaunt cheeks, dark hair, and deep brown eyes, listened to the servant waiter, then studied Crometheus for a short moment. No long moment needed. When you were that Uplifted, things moved quickly because your mind was a thousand times more agile than it had once been when you were mere and mortal back on Earth. When you all had normal names and not god tags.