The Fallen God Read online

  The Fallen God

  Book Two of

  Nomads of the Gods

  By

  Gary Mark Lee

  Illistrations by Gary Mark Lee

  Smashwords edition, copyright by the author 2013

  Contents

  Mindlock

  Chapter 1. The Last of its Kind

  Chapter 2. A New Day

  Chapter 3. Glory or Death

  Chapter 4. The Waste Wanderer

  Chapter 5. Reborn

  Chapter 6. Flesh and Steel

  Chapter 7. The Path of Pain

  Chapter 8. The Sandjar

  Chapter 9. The Sky Gods

  Chapter 10. The Trap

  Chapter 11. The Wall

  Chapter 12. God of the Outlands

  Chapter 13. The Choosing

  Chapter 14. The Norgonie

  Chapter 15. The Toys of Isarie

  Chapter 16. Friend and Foe

  Chapter 17. The offering of Rowgal

  Chapter 18. The Graveyard

  Chapter 19. Questions

  Chapter 20. Lords of the Greenwood

  Chapter 21. Fang and Claw

  Chapter 22. The Watcher on the mound

  Chapter 23. Answers

  Chapter 24. Eyes in the darkness

  Chapter 25. Deaths shadow

  Chapter 26. Dreams and Death

  Chapter 27. Battle of the Titans

  Chapter 28. Awakenings

  Chapter 29. The Undying God

  Chapter 30. The Chase

  Chapter 31. The Forbidden City

  Chapter 32. The Fall of the Talsonar

  Chapter 33. The God Machine

  Chapter 34. The Child

  Chapter 35. Man and Machine

  Chapter 36. The Giants of the Earth

  Chapter 37. Power and Pain

  Chapter 38. The Land of Smokes

  Chapter 39. The Marchers of Death

  Chapter 40. Prayers answered

  Chapter 41. The Valley of Despair

  Chapter 42. The Coming Storm

  Chapter 43. A Call to War

  Chapter 44. The Fires of Doom

  Chapter 45. The Mother of Voices

  Chapter 46. Light and Dark

  Chapter 47. When Gods die

  Chapter 48. The Pyre

  Chapter 49. The Vow

  Chapter 50. The Search

  Chapter 51. Sunbirth

  About the Author

  MINDLOCK

  My name is Oshismarie Inastro Sistashion, but I’m sure that name means nothing to you. It is correct to say that I was once content to live my life in the quite darkness of obscurity, to die in peace and nothing more. But the Gods had other plans for me, and I was moved by their hands to be reborn on a far off world known as Gorn, there I found a new life and a new purpose.

  I now have spent many cycles traveling with the wandering Nomads, in those long days and nights I have come to know their ways and their Gods very well. They are a great people in spite of their rather primitive beliefs and superstitions, but without their help I would have perished a long time ago.

  They have told me many stories, stories of past glories and the lives of those that went before them, but I cannot say for certain if they are true or only legends that have been handed down from generation to generation. And in my many years as a Cipher I have come to realize that legend is offend mistaken for truth, and that those who believe in myths are often only dreaming of things that might have been.

  But what does it matter?

  I am very old now and have lived far beyond my time, but my mind is not that of a Frail Leg, for I can still remember everything as if it was only yesterday. The crystal spiders have given me Rebirth and I am thankful for their gift, but age alone is not the value of a life, it comes from what your days and nights are filled with, and what that time has meant to others.

  I was once privy to the great secrets of the galaxy, for my mind has linked with Talaxions computers and Datacoms on many far off worlds in the Outer Rim. I have calculated the number of stars in the heavens, and the time it takes for a single tear to fall, but I was one of many, and when I was outcast from that life no one noticed my passing.

  Now I sit and tell stories to all that will listen, the small children of the Almadra gather about me and clap their hands and call out my name, and I know that they wish a tale from me. You who read this might not believe what I have to say is true, but I will say that I bare scars form the bit of creatures that dwell only in nightmares, and my eyes have looked into the darkness and seen things that no one can understand. I can recite verses from ancient carvings in stone that were put there long before the great Lightships traveled between worlds. I have watched in awe as the giant Earthshakers walked the land like Gods and made the ground scream under their feet, and I can hear a voice that lives deep in the earth and know that I am not alone.

  I have ridden with the tribe of the Almadra and fought beside them in the Great War with the Talsonar. I watched as the Heart of Shawcona rose into the sky and joined with the castoff fragments of a world giving birth to form a new moon and with it give hope to all those who now look up to see it in the night.

  I have wandered all the lands of Gorn and felt the heat of the Burning Time and the cold hand of the Iceland’s, I have sweated in the haunted forests of Yug and sat beside the primitive ape-men who rule that forbidden realm. I have seen the great Wind ships sail over the deep oceans of the Western Sea and heard the sound of the mighty Leviathans as they called out in the crushing darkness of the endless depths. I have walked with the warriors of the Caltarine forests and feasted with them in their stone walled fortress. And I have sat and wept as I helped bury those that were close to me.

  All these I can say with pride, but it is nothing when compared to the life of those they call Moric-Kan, the Twin Dragons, for it is the tales of the Nomad King named Arn and his Queen called Andra that I will speak off, their story is one of glory and honor and will live far beyond the simple words that I have written down. So come and sit beside the Washa fire and I will fill your cup with sour Po; we can feast on succulent Rimar and warm Kasha bread, and taste the sweet fruit of the Balbar tree.

  We will dance under the walking Moons and listen to the pounding of the mating drums as they fill our souls with fire, we will close our eyes in fear at the wailing of demons in the darkness and pray to the God of destiny that they do not take our souls. We will lift our voices in songs to the brave warriors who fought them and sent them screaming back into the eternal flames in the Pit of Marloon, we will stand beside the King and die with glory and smile as the Angel of Death comes for us. We will look into the face of a fallen God and feel the cold embrace of his steel hand; we shall walk beside great warriors long dead and cower before creatures that feast on death and pain. And we will lie beside warm bodies and smell the sweet fragrance of eternal love and know that we are not alone in the universe.

  All this and more we will do and the night will pass swiftly, and when the suns rise and the sky is filled with a golden light we will remember our dreams of glory and wonder at the Gods who sent us on our paths of life.

  The stories are told by me, an old man waiting to die.

  But they were written by the Gods.

  Chapter 1.

  The Last of its Kind.

  The Gods live in the heavens.

  Their homes are the stars.

  But some Gods are cast out.

  And they seek shelter in the earth.

  From the Book of Isarie.

  The great terror ship M-91 was once the pride of the Trajion battle fleet, its massive size alone made it one of the most formidable engines of destruction to ever move through the corridors of the Outer Rim. Many knew it by other names. The
Terror Star or the Armageddon or a just the Ending, but by whatever name it was known its coming only brought one thing.

  Eternal death.

  It was made from the finest Itarian steel and multi-layered with reinforcing shielding. Its outer hull was then layered again with another shield of poly-gromite bonds that tripled the fazic coating. Its three transverse engines gave it great speed and those were backed up by a dozen or more magnetic repulse drives. It could also sustain itself with solar power and Ion radiation if necessary, it was three times the size of the biggest Lightship of the Lomalgons or even the Precostigan fleets, and its gravity field alone could disrupt most Star destroyers by simply coming near them.

  As for its weaponry it had been fitted with a hundred or more particle Blaze-cannons of a magnitude ten and several more anti proton dividers. Along with those long-range weapons were numerous banks of sky fire bracing guns, all of them connected to the central command-targeting computer with a Coregranic dimensioning system, and that was backed up by self-repairing capabilities. There were several more banks of hidralinite torpedoes, each one built with self-intelligence targeting and second level reasoning, but what made it the most feared battle fortress in the fleet was its Rolac gun, a one of a kind technology. This weapon had the power to destroy a whole moon or fragmentize in seconds any other battle ship it might encounter, a substance that was incredibly rare powered it and therefore its use was limited. But against its destruction there was no defense.

  The M-91 could also send out a whole fleet of encounter ships, these small fast remote drones could fire at other war ships and self-destruct in a powerful blast if necessary, taking themselves and whatever target they were sent out for into oblivion. They could also be used for reconnaissance and as a last resort they could attach themselves to the mother ship and tow it to safety.

  The terror ship could also repair itself, the Task robots that it was equipped with could on their own find and made repairs using whatever materials were at hand. They were partly organic in construction but there metal casing made them very hard to destroy, they ran on power cells or use solar energy and if necessary they could absorb nutrients from living matter, and like all of their kind they obeyed any order given to them.

  The crew of the M-91 were made up of living creatures, but they were not what could be called human, they were made specifically for warfare and had no other purposes but to find the enemy and destroy it. They were without fear or mercy and died without protest when called upon, they could not be reasoned with, talk to, bribed or manipulated, they could only be killed before they would kill you, there was nothing more.

  Yes by any standard of destruction the M-91 was a thing of nightmares.

  But that was many ages ago, the Trajion wars were long over and the massive battle star fleets gone. The glory that once belonged to the great Lightship was long past and its time was coming to an end.

  For many cycles it had wandered aimlessly through the Outer Rim alone and without a purpose other than to stay alive and wait for orders, it now lay hidden inside the corona of the third magnitude star called Procus, there it orbited and let the universe pass it by.

  Inside the main control room there was silence, the command crew that had once sat at the controls and fought bravely for victory over its enemies were now long dead, their corpses lay like dried and broken manikins about the room. They had lain that way for a long time now for there was no one left alive to dispose of the remains.

  The great ship was no longer capable of war, its Itarian hull was pocked marked with weapons fire and great chunks of plating were missing. Here and there its inner working could be seen like an open wound in a gigantic beast. Its drive engines were silent, the once deadly Blaze-cannons had very little ammunition left in their stockpiles and the powerful Rolac gun had no energy to emit its beacon of death. So it orbited the great sun like a tiny metal moon, it drifted with the solar winds and the Outer Rim forgot its name.

  But it was not dead.

  The M-91 was a Mindlock ship, deep inside it and surrounded by layer upon layer of shielding was the organic reactive brain or ORB as it was called. It was not what you might think of as a creature for it was only made up of mind cells charged by energy from the solar collectors. It did not feel or understand things as we might know them but it did know enough to realize its time had come, and this made it even more deadly. It had been programmed for destruction and without anything to destroy it could not fulfill its main purpose.

  It had thought over its existence for some time now, weighing in its central programming to hunt down the enemy and destroy it. But it also realized that without its weaponry it was incapable of carrying out that command. It had tried more than once to self-destruct by ramming into one of the enemy’s battle ships but it was unsuccessful and its Armageddon device was not functioning. Therefore it was unable to end its existence as it was ordered to do if it was about to be captured by the enemy.

  So now it drifted around and around the great sun and let the Repairbots do their work. The worker drones had kept the great ship mostly intact by using whatever broken or damaged parts it could find in those sections of itself that was no longer working. They had also removed several larger decks of the ship and let them be consumed by the fire of the sun, now all that remained was an old and broken war ship that everyone had forgotten.

  But the Orb did not understand that, to it the war was still raging and would do so for a long as its mind continued to function, there could be no other existence for the M-91. But without its weapons it was doomed to endless cycles of waiting and thinking and nothing more, so for many cycles it planed and re-planed attack formations and strategies that would make it victorious in any battle formation. It devised intricate attacks on thousands of different enemy positions and how to defeat a combined force of hundreds of war ships if necessary, over and over it made its plans, always revising, tinkering, eliminating all flaws or any alternate scenario other than victory. It worked on this none stop and without any rest.

  Then it gave up.

  There came a time when all plans were useless, all strategies un-workable, with no weapons and no drive engines it was not a force anymore. It took many more cycles for the Orb mind to finally come to the conclusion that its existence was futile and that it had no purposes anymore.

  So now it simply waited, waited for a time when it could end its uselessness and put an end to its existence.

  It wanted to die.

  As it did from time to time the Report Drone moved into the central command section and began its task of checking the maintenance of the great ship. The drone was one meter tall and resembled a Polmar water terminal; it was round with several tentacles-like arms that could manipulate controls and open hatchways on its own. Its central brain was organic and had been programmed with all the necessary information to understand the working of the M-91; it also had the access codes to allow it to interface with the Orb.

  It moved on its feeler treads passed the withered hulk of a long dead crewman and opened a small access port in the computer control station. This gave it interface with the weapons array controller, it waited for a time as it began making connections, there was some sparking and more than once the interface had to be reconnected but in a short time the drone had its access.

  “Interface command report, all information as to the functioning level of the weapons, command level one, report”, then it waited as the weapons began to respond.

  “reeeee peorrrties reporritsss, reporting----weapons off line, alllllllll arkeee all, all armament is none functioning at this time”, its mechanical voice was somber and without emotion.

  “Understood,” the drone replied also without emotion, “report is not acceptable, continue working on weapons and make all necessary repairs as soon as possible”.

  “Unmannered underarm, -----understood” said the weapons array.

  The drone removed its interface connection and started to move away, the report of th
e weapons being none functioning was expected. It had made that very same report for over one hundred cycles now, always the same report, “none functioning at this time”, always the same, over and over again. But that did not matter to the command drone, it would continue to ask that very same question a million times if necessary, it was programmed to ask it and it would do so forever.

  Now the drone moved over to the main console, there it wheeled around another dried corpse and once more began to access an input port in the console. This time it was seeking out the crew manifest. It searched for a moment or two then found the right terminal and plugged itself in, again there was some sparking and for a moment the whole control room luminescence dimmed, but after another few seconds the light came back on and the drone began its questioning.

  “Report on condition of crew” it asked, then waited, but there was no response from the crew manifest and it asked again, “report on condition of crew...report...report”, again it waited.

  With a flash of sparks the console came alive and began to make its report, “condition of crew is none functioning, ----they’re dead”, the last words of the manifest were not something that the programmers had originally put in. For some unknown reason the console had taken on a slightly different reporting manor then it should have. It might have been the hastily adapted brain cells that it was made from, these came from a species known as the Caltrotie. They were a very intelligent race but prone to over dramatizing situations rather than just giving out the pertinent facts, “they’re all dead, and they’re going to stay that way, I mean once you’re dead you’re dead, right?” It said again.

  The drone listened to the console then made the proper response, “I do not need more information than necessary, do not waist energy”, and then it began to disconnect to the terminal.

  But as it turned away the console spoke once more, “sure just the facts from now on, but that’s not going to bring back the dead is it?” Then it made a grating sound that might be considered as a laugh if you believed that an information console was capable of laughter.