99 Gods: Odysseia Read online

  “Okay, Future, what are the odds today that Portland’s going to end up as an evil world dictator if the Bad War starts?” Betrayer asked her Place of Time ‘construct’. The Bad War pitted the majority of the Gods versus the mortals and a few traitorous Gods like her. In most of the time streams, the Bad War resulted in a nasty world military dictatorship run by Portland. Betrayer had been working to stop any possibility of the Bad War by increasing the relative strength of the Tradition Gods when compared to the North American Gods. If her plans succeeded, the Bad War would never start. Instead, the timelines transitioned into the buildup for the Armageddon War, vastly more dangerous, but also the only set of time streams allowing her low-probability plans.

  “None,” Future said. Future’s voice tinkled like bells in Betrayer’s mind.

  “None? Finally.” Betrayer smiled and relaxed. Damn but that bit of manipulation and ball-chopping had taken a lot of work and time. Stopping Portland cold without weakening her had been a hell of a job.

  “Odds of my plan’s success?”

  Future paused. “Eight percent, double what it was before you neutered Portland.”

  Fah. Still not enough to save the world. Her relative success carried its own price, though.

  Now things got hectic.

  “Your machinations have almost assured Portland’s death at Dubuque’s hands, if you want to know,” Future said. Future had gotten more free-willed, more prone to work on her own initiative and more chatty as the willpower-based mental AI matured. “If you keep pushing, Portland will die and you will cut off the potential stream where you can take out Dubuque and Verona.”

  Portland needed to survive for Betrayer’s plans to work, although neither Betrayer nor Future had determined, yet, the exact chronal connection between the two conditions.

  “Show me the current set of consequences if I follow my plan with Orlando,” Betrayer said.

  Future did, and Betrayer nodded. “There’s been a change,” Future said. “At this instant, the positive effect of your planned revelation to Orlando has increased markedly over the past week. If you delay the revelation, the effect will diminish.”

  “I’m off, then,” Betrayer said, cursing the timing and ruing the irony. She had planned to let Orlando marinate for a while before she dropped this little bit of devilry on him. She had also just come from there. Oh, well. Time marched and all that. No rest for the wicked.

  The world refused to cooperate, even a little. At least this time the ridiculous distraction was on the way to Florida.

  Jan and Knot had found and captured Betrayer’s spy crow, and were attempting to interrogate it using Knot’s insane trick that allowed her to interact with willpower. Betrayer weighed the odds, and decided to pester the two in person again. They always reacted so well, and she was sure she had finally figured out a way to block their Indigo insinuation tricks.

  “Bwah hah hah,” she said, after she landed her projection near the dusty rural North Carolina crossroad where Jan and Knot had captured her crow. “Looking for a good deal in crow spying technologies? Today, I’m offering for the low price of $999,999.99 this one simple trick that will…”

  Jan unsheathed her Hell-sword and stalked toward Betrayer’s projection. “Bitch! You owe me personally, and it’s time for you to pay.”

  Oh, this was going to be fun. “Whatever for, my dear Hero?” she said, her voice sugary. “You do know that the rural crossroad at night demon summoning myth requires it to be midnight, not 10:22, and requires someone with a heart to sacrifice?” She would have to check her crow spy programming. What had it been doing here in this dusty rural upland backwater, anyway? Betrayer scanned around for tricks and traps, and picked up nothing; the place was all-natural, down to the red clay, the pines, red and white oaks, and poplars on the Appalachian nubs looming to the northwest and southeast of them.

  “Your machinations got my daughter killed!” Jan waved her sword in Betrayer’s face. Betrayer rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “Took you long enough to figure out that I had a part in that fiasco,” Betrayer said. “You’re giving me far more credit than I deserve, though.”

  “You were our ally! You, you…” Jan’s face reddened to match her hair. Betrayer flicked her fingers and Jan’s sword rang with a metallic tone. Jan responded with a quick slice at Betrayer; Betrayer modulated the shape of her projection so the sword blow never came close to her projected body.

  “Jan! She’s telling the truth! Calm down!” This voice Betrayer didn’t recognize, but the voice’s resonances gave the game away. She had wondered how long she would have to prod at Jan and Knot before their hidden backer revealed herself.

  “Answer me!” Jan screamed into Betrayer’s face, ignoring the voice.

  “Jan! No!” the voice said, the words coming with a barely detectable flash of Indigo-style magic. Jan took a heaving deep breath and didn’t continue to escalate. She didn’t back down, either.

  “A warrior Angel? The Indigo’s guardian Angel is one of the warriors?” Betrayer said. “Bwah hah hah. Thank you.” She paused, and Jan’s face grew even darker. The woman warrior did sheath her sword and step back, though. This had promise, a great deal of promise. A warrior Angel, contaminated by Hell, was likely as dark and devious as Betrayer herself, and thus a potential ally. The City of God had to be driving this warrior Angel nuts, especially since if Dubuque or any of the other top dogs in the City of God got ahold of her, they would likely be able to turn her against her own people. Angels of all varieties had more nasty Mission issues than even the 99 Gods. “In reward for your inadvertent revelation, I’m willing to be magnanimous and answer a few of your questions. If you introduce me.”

  “I can agree to that, ma’am,” Knot said. Jan didn’t answer, now pacing, back and forth on the packed red clay of the dirt road, keeping herself between Knot and Betrayer. She radiated anger hot enough to microwave popcorn. “You may need to relax some of your protections, or open yourself up to a wider aspect of the supernatural.”

  Betrayer chose the latter, and when she found the ongoing indigo glow around Jan and Knot, she expanded her ability to sense detail of the appropriate type until the aforementioned warrior Angel appeared. Glowing indigo, of course. Said Angel was dressed in Boomer-style grubbies, including a man’s checked shirt four sizes too big, complete with a pocket protector. She matched Jan’s height and musculature, but she was thinner, carrying her muscles on a much more svelte frame. Her face was northern European in extraction, noticeably Jewish, with dark wavy hair down to her shoulders and piercing green eyes limbed in indigo. Betrayer’s instinctive reaction pegged the Angel as a charismatic officer type that people would follow anywhere, and she jiggered her mental protections to make sure she didn’t.

  “Betrayer, meet Kara the Godslayer, the Indigo’s guardian Angel,” Knot said.

  The name was supposed to send shivers down Betrayer’s spine, or so the Angel’s indigo glow supernaturally insinuated. It probably would have, save for Betrayer’s long experience dodging Weeping for Cordoba’s similar tricks. Instead, she met the Godslayer’s eyes and dueled, willpower style. “Guardian trainee Archangel,” Betrayer said. “Color me impressed, but lose the crap-level Angelic insinuation tricks. It isn’t as if I haven’t learned to cope with a whole Host of similar problems.”

  “They worked on, um, others of the 99,” the Godslayer said, half to her and half to the two Indigo women. Betrayer picked an image of Akron out of the Godslayer’s Mission and heartily bwah hah hah-ed.

  “The trick worked on Akron because Akron thinks it wrong to balk Angels,” Betrayer said. “I’m not so pliable.” This Godslayer Angel had oodles of power, but definitely needed remedial Angel 101. Too recently mortal, Betrayer guessed.

  The Godslayer put her hands on her hips and glowered.

  “All I did was joggle the memory of an elderly shop clerk in Brainerd about the anomalous purchases your group used to make at his Minnesota head shop back in the day, befo
re you bought your stuff online,” Betrayer said. “Incense. Fat candles. Things of that nature. Dubuque’s spies did the rest.”

  “That’s insane,” Jan said, stalking back, kicking up red dust, and getting in Betrayer’s face again. “How the fuck did you know to do that? How the fuck did you know that would work?”

  Betrayer crossed her arms and didn’t respond.

  “She knew to do that because she’s the one who mastered temporal prediction,” the Godslayer said. Interesting. An Angel with brains and nerve. This could be useful.

  “This thing?”

  “Bwah hah hah hah,” Betrayer said, a joyous chortle. “I will neither confirm nor deny either of your accusations.” About temporal predictions, or being ‘this thing’. “I certainly didn’t have any idea that Dubuque had a turncoat in your organization, or that he would choose to trigger her.” She glowered at Jan, who finally shrugged in disgust when the Godslayer did not indicate she was lying. “Surely introducing me to the Godslayer is worth more than your one silly question.” The Godslayer might be a bit on the dark side, but Jan and Knot were utter straight arrows. At least from her perspective. If Betrayer revealed enough to them, she might get those two thinking they owed her. Which she wanted. She had uses for the Indigo, uses that would be better served if they joined her voluntarily. It wasn’t as if they were going to be getting any better offers. Not with the rest of North America under the boot-heel of the City of God.

  “Why did you bring Jan and Knot back early?” the Godslayer asked.

  Better. Much better.

  “Portland isn’t the paragon you think she is,” Betrayer said. “Pressed by necessity, she’ll turn as bad as Dubuque.” Oh. This would sell them. “I’ve seen it.”

  “If we’re going to have a divine world dictator, she’s the best there is,” Jan said.

  “Ma’am, we looked through all the alternatives we could find,” Knot said, to Betrayer. “We found nothing better.”

  “Look harder,” Betrayer said. She zipped around Jan and over to Knot, crunching the early fallen leaves on the shoulder of the dirt road as she did. “Here. Let me help.” She touched Knot’s head and began to drop the most obvious ten thousand bad Armageddon War scenarios into her mind.

  Eight hundred and twenty three in, Knot shouted “Stop!” and swung at Betrayer’s jaw. To Betrayer’s surprise, Knot’s fist hit, spinning her head sideways. She let her body go translucent and continued the information drop.

  Knot’s instinctive willpower-manipulation trick was better than Betrayer had realized. This also had promise.

  The Godslayer chewed her lip and cautiously separated Knot and Betrayer, carefully damping any hostile intentions. Betrayer expected Knot to pass out after the information dump, but she just winced for a moment and stood up straighter. “Either Portland goes bad or everybody dies,” Knot said, radiating ‘tough cookie’. “The bitch is right.”

  “So, are you doing what you’re doing for grins, Betrayer, or do you have a plan?” Jan said, instantly adapting to the new information.

  Bwah hah hah. “Of course I have a plan, but I’m not telling you.”

  The Godslayer betrayed her Angelic nature by skipping the next half dozen conversational gambits and leaping incisively to the end. “What’s your goal?”

  “To win! What else could my goal be, given the strict Mission constraints the Host gave us?” Betrayer said. She could shade the truth with the best of them.

  “What’s your win condition?”

  “Luxuries by the bushel, slave boys fanning me, and some decent Hollywood media instead of the endless Bible Story World crap the City of God’s puking out these days,” Betrayer said. “Power. Entertainment. A working internet with real porn again.” She laughed.

  The Godslayer pointed a finger at her and smiled. “So, given the usual choice of ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way’, you choose the third. I hadn’t thought any of the 99 that smart.”

  “I’m not admitting a thing, or making any promises, save that if NASA doesn’t drop the recent ‘evolution is but an unproven theory, as is the idea of solar fusion, and the big bang and climate warming are both hoaxes’ propaganda and get back to its proper exploration mission I’m going to raze every NASA science center to the ground and pee on the ashes when I win. Bwah hah hah.”

  “…and not answering our questions,” the Godslayer said. “Okay. Here’s one for you: if you don’t stop messing with my ability to predict the future, the Indigo is going to be forced to come after you, find your real body, and end you. Despite my wishes.”

  “Send me to Hell? Fat chance of that,” Betrayer said. The Godslayer’s face fell, again telegraphing her true intent through her Mission. “You three need to wise up. I’m not your enemy, unless you get stupid and ally with Portland!”

  Betrayer depowered her projection and motored off into projection space. With any luck, the Indigo would come begging to ally with her.

  She zipped her projection the rest of the way back down to Florida and found Orlando in a different camp from Dana and the Kid God, separated by a mere mile. Dana’s group had moved to the south edge of Betrayer’s former Atlanta territory and Orlando had moved to the north edge of the former Miami territory. Despite the positioning, both territories felt as one right now, which should be driving Dana crazy.

  This was exactly what Dana didn’t want to happen and what she, Betrayer, did.

  Orlando’s army of Supported hovered around Dana’s group, leaving the real Territorial God butt-naked and depending on his own considerable self-defense capabilities.

  Perfect.

  Betrayer dropped her projection into Orlando’s tent and revealed herself. These days, she had the ability to conceal her projection from even the Territorial Gods, as long as she didn’t use willpower outside of the projection.

  “Surrender, Orlando. I’ve got the drop on you this time.” Orlando frowned and looked over at her projection; Betrayer put her hands on her hips and gloated. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do, homie, and…”

  Orlando attacked, wisely not bothering to speak first. Betrayer’s defenses absorbed the attack, and she backed off to the south, shredding Orlando’s tent in the process. Orlando followed, spraying her with one attack after another.

  She feigned injuries on her projection and continued to ignore Orlando’s onslaught. He wasn’t stupid, and after thirty seconds he stopped when she snipped his contact links with his Supported. Back as War, she couldn’t have done this trick. As Betrayer, her tricks succeeded far more often when they were underhanded and dishonorable.

  Heh. She removed the feigned injuries, stuck her hands back on her hips, powered up her projection with its battle augmentations and smiled.

  “What the fuck are you doing, bitch?” Orlando said. “You can’t defeat me this way; I’m a full Territorial God and you’re just a projection. All we’re doing is getting the Host annoyed at us.”

  “Your assumptions are as wrong as you are inept, you dog-faced evil tampon,” Betrayer said. She chortled a full evil-villain cackle. “Watch and learn.”

  Imploder beam, green lightning to tap into his store of willpower and a blue helix attack to convince him she used standard divine combat weapons and tactics. He parried the blue helix attack and took damage from the imploder beam – and didn’t notice the sneaky, devious and highly dishonorable willpower tap. She continued to pound him with helixes and imploder beams until he put up a not-unexpected defense against the imploder beam, proving as she suspected the imploders weren’t good for much past their initial surprise, which is why they had sat in her back pocket since before the Phoenix fight.

  Betrayer closed on him and attacked physically. Orlando, shocked at this form of attack, got pummeled until his imago began to fray. Then he attempted to disengage. Ready for this tactic, she grabbed hold and began to wrestle. He tried to wiggle away, but as with most of the 99 Gods he didn’t understand hand to hand combat. He still didn’t notice the willpower tap. Betray
er’s projection actually grew in strength as she fought, powered by Orlando himself.

  Too bad this sort of attack wouldn’t work on Dubuque or Verona. Hell, even if this did work she would need hours of tricks to reduce them down to Orlando’s current power level, because of their worshipper support. Worse, if she used this to her advantage the Host would have her at their mercy again. One time at the Host’s mercy, when she fought Miami, had been one time too many.

  When the moment came, she grabbed Orlando’s exhausted body and flew up, her usual eight g fly.

  “What are you doing to me?” Orlando said, when the sky above grew black. “Why this?”

  Evil cackle.

  “This won’t get you anywhere.”

  “Bullshit. You could have saved yourself the beating if you had just surrendered to me,” Betrayer said. “I have something to teach you, and I need your surrender to keep me safe.”

  Now Orlando understood. “Oh, so that’s why your Mission isn’t tanking and the Host isn’t peeved. You should have said so from the start.”

  “I did…when I ordered you to surrender,” Betrayer said. “Live and learn, chode.”

  She let loose the fly when they hit outer space. Gravity would eventually pull them back down, and the arc of their path would give her enough time for her plans. Better, no one could interfere with her here.

  “Open your mind. I’m going to show you something.”

  Orlando hesitated for a moment, sighed and opened his mind. She showed him the Place of Time. He caught on to the trick, its nuances and its dangers, faster than Betrayer had. Annoying.

  “If there’s any hope for you of defeating the City of God you need this,” Betrayer said.

  “How… Why? Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “My side,” Betrayer said. “What, you think I’m going to tell you what I’m getting out of this?”

  Orlando shrugged.

  “Letting this spread would doom your pathetic cause,” Betrayer said. “Keep this trick to yourself and you might get what’s coming to you. Or not. The choice is yours.” She watched Orlando work out what she meant, and he nodded. “Good doggie,” she said, released Orlando from her grasp and vanished, her projection easing into projection space. Orlando would be able to find a way out of this suborbital arc on his own.