No Other Gods

Praise for
No Other Gods

"Non-stop action! An eternal champion battles his way across centuries, gradually learning to ask the question:
why?"

- David Brin, best-selling author of Sundiver, the Uplift trilogy, Earth, and the Postman

“
John is an amazing new talent to watch out for!”

- Matthew Mather,
author of Atopia Chronicles and CyberStorm

“
An Asimov tone with a Battle Royale feel and a Game of Thrones twist!”

- Simon Dawlat,
CEO of AppGratis

“
Battle descriptions are awesome and the action was pure adrenaline injected into my brain!”

- Alexandre Rocha Lima e Marcondes,
Geeks with Blogs

“
Pulled me into the story right away … it was actually hard for me to stop!”

- Andi Gutmans,
creator of the PHP programming language

“
A sci-fi page-turner with enough historical detail to ground it!”

-
Meg Simpson,
game designer

“
Few writers are as much a joy to read … you won't stop!”

- Matt Marshall,
editor-in-chief of VentureBeat

No Other Gods

sparkplug 9
publishers

“
You shall have no other gods before Me.”

                                                                                                  - Exodus 20:3

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

                                                                                                  - Arthur C. Clarke

Chapters

1.              Fight & feast (rinse & repeat)

2.              We are your overlords

3.              Never have so few

4.              So long, suckers

5.              Rock, paper, scissors

6.              Not so deep sleep

7.              Polar Solar

8.              Cold comfort

9.              Summer in Sumer

10.              Perchance to dream

11.              Three times is enemy action

12.              Any sufficiently advanced technology

13.              A man who can destroy a thing

14.             
Paradise found?

War in heaven is hell.

              - Ron Hale-Evans

I smelled it through my skin.

Dust, sweat, and fear — the rank odor of fear. The reek soaked in around my nose, through my tongue, into my eyes. It was all I knew. Perhaps all I had ever known.

One foot in front of the other … step, step, and another step. This had been my existence forever, for eternity. Or at least since morning, which was almost the same thing. An enemy was out there, somewhere, and so was battle, somewhere, and eventually there would be blood, somewhere. Some of us would die. This was normal, expected.

Another day, another battle, another death.

The toiling backs in front of me were bowed and tired from twelve hours on the road, a long hot day at forced march speed. Formerly sky-blue tunics were soiled and sticky-wet with sweat caked with grime irrigated with yet more sweat. And the bright steel of our once-glorious imperial helms was dimmed with the chalky-fine dust kicked up by our metal-shod feet.

              Step. Step. Step. Keep moving.

A surprise you know about shouldn’t be a surprise — in theory. But we’d crossed twenty leagues or more today, with dozens of hills. We’d crested fifty ridges, passed hundreds of copses of trees ... all good spots. We knew an ambush was coming, and we knew it was racing the spinning of this globe and the passage of its star through this atmosphere to come and meet us before dark. But we didn’t know when. And we didn’t know where.

The coming battle probably wouldn’t kill all of us, even though the suspense very nearly was. But now we would not have long to wait — the sun was setting. We had done this thousands of times before, and we’d do it thousands of times again. There would be battle: there was always battle before nightfall. We’d marched so long, so many days, and so so many years, and now dusk was near.

And then it happened, slowly and suddenly. The savage whisper of hundreds of arrows ripping through air filled our ears and jump-started our hearts as our distant foe unleashed pent-up wrath. Almost simultaneously a red-clad mass of men burst out from a stand of olive trees fifty yards ahead.

And it began.

Time slowed, as it always did, and my heartbeats counted the moments while my eyes freeze-framed the few remaining instants before blood and guts were spilled to dampen the dust underfoot.

Beat.

A charge of fighting men, glorious in confusion, boiling like a lake of lava. Metal glinting, standards waving, legs caught in mid-leap, arms raised, faces distorted in the savage rictus of raging battlelust.

Beat.

One erring arrow, rusted tip slicing air, feathers spinning slowly, regretfully as flesh eluded it, plunging into dust.

Beat.

The wooden shaft of a spear flexing mid-flight, undulating in slo-mo like a living  thing, bright dangerous point impossibly missing all of my companions but one, pinning Darius’ blue cloak to the already damp red earth.

Beat.

A beautiful deadly dripping sword, flaring like a hot coal in the low evening sun. Sharp enough to separate soul and flesh, capable of slicing through my armor and neatly dropping my steaming guts to the ground.

Beat.

And then the world sped up, fast, as the charge was upon us. The crash and scream of men and beasts in heavy armor smashing into our front lines almost deafened me. Our forward ranks crumpled under the impact, men died quickly and in great pain, and suddenly I was the forward rank.

I dodged an already-blooded spearpoint thrust straight to my heart by a still-charging hoplite, twisted, spun, took off a leg with a single two-handed sweep, straightened and searched for my next adversary without favoring him with a second glance.

Stepping sideways just to be elsewhere, I narrowly avoided skewering. Then ran the off-balance attacker through his armor’s shoulder-joint straight
to the heart, twisting as I withdrew to ensure maximum injury, catastrophic blood loss, and swift death. Turned immediately but just barely in time to see a massive shape lowering a boulder-sized shoulder to smash me down. Jumped slightly at the last minute and, twisting, turned the staggering impact into a leap and roll right over the mountain of man, ripping at the side of his neck with my dagger as the breath whooshed out of me and I flipped over his shoulder.

The battle devolved into a mass melee, small groups and pairs facing off. Already half the number of both sides littered the ground, and the screams of the dying filled the battlefield. Space opened up around me and I considered my next target, selecting a clump of red cloaks circling a comrade in a blue tunic.I attacked from behind.

              There is no honor in battle, only winners and losers, living and dying. And if you think there is honor in death you haven’t seen a man die slowly with his guts run through by a stinking dirty battle-dulled sword.

             
I hobbled the first with a cut to the hamstring before they knew the odds had shifted. Leaving him as no further danger I immediately moved on to the second, slicing open his side before he could fully turn to engage me, then maintained my momentum and ran down the final opponent with the full weight of my body behind my shield, smashing into him to stun and to damage.

             
We hit the dirt together and rolled, stabbing and hitting in infinitesimal moments of stability, then separated, bounced to our feet, and threw ourselves at each other. As we came together our helmets clashed and I saw his face. With a smile of recognition and a quick mock salute with my sword I shoved Kin back, then followed with a feint to the feet while keeping my shield a little left of my body. Predictably, he skipped right and twisted in avoidance while also bringing down his sword on my now uncovered right side.

             
Only I stopped mid-stride, anticipating his move, and closed with him in a completion of my initial feint, sheathing my dagger in his throat. I grinned at him, waved goodbye, then checked behind, acknowledged the sword wave of the man I had just saved, and surveyed the battle. It was all but over — red littered the battlefield — and some of it flowed from blue.

             
Score one for the good guys. Pretty much the same as the bad guys.

             
We came together. A few raised a cheer, most just slowly circled, fatigue setting in as we ran a mental tally: who made it, who died, who was squirming in agony and needed finishing, who was just leaking. Soon we were finished and gathered under a tree to the edge of the battlefield, collapsed to the ground.

             
I closed my eyes and remembered the day. Marching for hours watching the slow anonymous countryside slip by as sweat slowly dripped down my segmented armor. Eating dust. Cursing stones in sandals.

             
Ten hours of tedium followed by ten minutes of terror. Par for the course, I thought — just like any other day. War is hellish heaven, and we were living it every day.

             
I knew what would happen next and sank slowly to the ground in anticipation. I lay looking into the deep blue sky as the world wheeled and the last rays of the sun slipped below the horizon and the first timid stars peeked down, winking at us in amusement at some eternal cosmic joke, most certainly at our expense. Reviewed the fight in my mind and imagined the feast to come.

             
The darkness came swiftly and my heart slowed. My awareness shrunk from the stars above to my stars below. My name. My name is Geno. I am a warrior in the hall of the gods. There is no more.

             
Beat.

             
It’s always the moment that catches you. The second that outlasts eternity, then disappears forever with the next thump of your heart.

             
Beat.

             
Has it always been like this? The fighting, the killing, the dying? I almost somewhat remember something different. There must be more, I think.

             
Beat.

             
Mists coiled over the carpet of living and dead flesh as the last light died and the smoke took our souls. If there is more, I have no memory of it.

             
Beat.

             
I gave myself to the night and surrendered to the sleep.