If you liked “Once We Were Human”, here’s a short excerpt from the beginning of “99 Gods: War” for your reading enjoyment.
99 Gods: War (Excerpt)
1. (Atlanta)
Atlanta climbed the outside of 40 Wall Street, leaving behind anger-fueled fingerprints in the fascia. All 72 stories of 40 Wall Street’s exterior stank from years of pollution. Built around the start of the Great Depression, the building was depressing all the way up to its perfectly classical pyramidal roof. The bastards she soon would confront were on the 64th floor. They had taken over the entire floor several weeks ago and now talked of buying out the entire building. Atlanta didn’t understand what they had done to mess up the Integrity, one of the major parts of the 99 Gods’ joint Mission, but they had messed it up more than anyone else in North America.
The night swirled around Atlanta as she climbed through the off and on heavy rain, though she didn’t get wet. She didn’t want to get wet. Thus, she didn’t. She could have flown directly to the 64th floor, or jumped from an airplane or helicopter or even taken an elevator. However, after investigating which uses of willpower her peers found most difficult to detect, she had found ‘climbing skyscrapers’ near the top of the list. She couldn’t have done such a trick before Apotheosis, but eight years as an aviator in the Corps hadn’t left her with the Imago of a wimp and that’s what mattered now.
Her senses reveled in the climb. Apotheosis had brought her world to life in a marvelous and unexpected way, and she devoted nearly a dozen thought streams in her now multi-track mind to simply enjoying her new senses.
The never-ending mechanical song of New York traffic floated up from far below, muted by the spattering of rain and occasional rumble of thunder. Lightning streaked the sky to the southeast, and the rain’s fresh scent dominated all the other odors. Below that, not only could she smell the pollution and even identify the stench of old leaded gasoline exhaust in the deeper crevices of the brick, but she also smelled the difference between the businesses when she passed from one corporate domain to another as she climbed. She didn’t have X-Ray vision, but she tracked the internal temperature of each floor by how much heat came out each window. She sensed the air currents around her, as if currents in muddied water. Her most interesting discovery was the way the wind curled around the southeast corner of 40 Wall Street and caused a small cylindrical low pressure zone that had grown as she had climbed, up to about the 14th floor, leveled off, then started a rapid decline thirty floors later. Now, on the 48th floor, it had vanished completely. She even picked up the intensity and direction of radio, television and wireless internet. Not its content, though.
Five more minutes of climbing brought Atlanta to the 64th floor. The skyscraper didn’t have ancient Depression-era style windows. Someone had replaced them some number of years ago with modern, non-opening, windows. She maneuvered herself around the skyscraper until she approached the source of the Integrity disturbance. She didn’t sense anything about the situation to change her mind, so she crashed the window and barged in.
While she did, she put on her mental to-do list the need to find some better method for going through windows and walls than pranging them. A method using tricky willpower. Seven weeks of this God shit and she still hadn’t unmasked a measurable fraction of the possible tricks.
She landed hard but on her feet, crunching thick stormproof glass under her big black boots as she took in the place and whistled.
Atlanta craved bling as much as the next sister, but the meeting room here floored her. There’s nothing here that isn’t bling, she thought. Marble this. Gold that. Jesus! Considering the building’s owner, she had expected opulence, but her targets, referred to by the press as the Seven Suits, had outdone the old man in putting in bling improvements.
“What’s the meaning of this?” a man said, not yet in sight. One of the Suits, another God. He strode in to Atlanta’s crashed room as if he owned the world.
Not fucking yet, although he and his Godly cohorts were well on their way, according to her hush-hush military contractor contacts. As per the nickname, Mr. Whitey God wore an immaculate and expensive bespoke suit.
On the other side of the meeting room, huddled in a chair against a wall, Atlanta saw a woman. Saw, but didn’t sense. Very peculiar. Special. Not an ordinary mortal, and different in a way she hadn’t encountered before. Not sure what to make of a woman she couldn’t sense but still knew to be special, Atlanta ignored her for the moment.
The fact that someone had stripped the woman and chained her naked to the chair helped Atlanta make the decision. She hadn’t been attracted to weakness as a mortal.
Apotheosis hadn’t improved her attitude on that matter in the least.
“Which one are you?” Atlanta asked the white man. The Seven Suits had banded together even before Apotheosis’s end, a grouping of seven male Gods, five whities and two East Asians. Seven Ideological Gods at that, and their numbers made them the leading plurality faction among the Ideologicals.
The Suit didn’t answer Atlanta. Instead, he raised his hand and conjured up chains and shackles around Atlanta’s lower arms and lower legs. They grabbed on tight. He slid over a leather office visitor’s chair with inlaid gold filigree and sat her in it. Atlanta counted to ten, backwards, and allowed herself this indignity. Information first. Attitude adjustment later.
“Who sent you?” the Suit said. “Who!” Pressure beat on Atlanta’s mind. She smiled. Her experimentation with willpower hadn’t included anything in the area of mind-probing or mind reading. Mental track four took note number fourteen of the day: learn some mind-probing willpower.
Good intel already.
Even better, the Suit’s question and tone implied Atlanta hadn’t been the first someone ‘sent’.
Then she got it. Her willpower-derived protections had successfully hidden her Divinity from the Suit. On the other hand, she had revealed herself by climbing the outside of their nascent palace and crashing in the window, so she suspected he would crack her identity any minute. None of the 99 lacked brainpower. Their creators, the Angelic Host, had made sure of that.
“I sent myself, mofo,” Atlanta said. “I’ve got some questions for you. Like what the fuck you’ve done to mess up our Integrity?”
“Hold on for a second, Indulgence,” a second Suit said on his way through the door, one she recognized, a Korean who went by the name of Competition. The remainder of the wardrobe of Suits strode in behind Competition, noticeably agitated. “She’s one of us.”
“You’re kidding,” Indulgence, her captor, said. “She feels like a mortal to me.”
“It’s a trick,” one of the other Suits said. He turned to Atlanta. “I’m Capitalism. You are?” Capitalism had more than a passing resemblance to the fat dude from the Monopoly game. His skin looked bleached. If her contractor contacts had a bead on things, Capitalism led the Suits.
“Atlanta,” she said. Several of the Suits blanched and took a step back. Apparently, she had acquired a reputation. Good.
“A Territorial!” Capitalism said, suddenly wary. “You could have texted us for an appointment.”
“Not my style.” She didn’t have any social media presence, even a minimal Facebook page or Twitter account. Too tacky for her.
“Why are you here and not back in whatever digs you have down south?” Capitalism said. Condescension filled his words, something she hadn’t heard since she wore the bird, ball and chain. Before Apotheosis.
“You Suits have harmed our Integrity. I’m here to figure out why and do something about it.”
“Why do you care?” Capitalism said.
“Because it’s obvious to me that us Gods were made to rule the Earth, and we can’t do it if you destroy our Integrity.” The Host hadn’t said as much, but their hints were unmistakable. At least to Atlanta.
“You worry about your Integrity and we’ll worry about ours,” Capitalism said, his
voice New Yawk nasal, a sneer on his face.
A fool, then, Atlanta thought. “We have individual, subgroup and group Integrity, though it appears you’re too self-centered to acknowledge anything but your own,” she said. “You’ve harmed the Integrity of the 99 Gods as a group.” She sneered back at Capitalism. “What the fuck did you do? If I don’t get some answers soon, I’m going to inscribe some respect on your pasty white divine bodies, begging your pardons Competition and Wealth.”
“There are seven of us and one of you,” Wealth said. “Numbers do not lie.” Wealth looked as old and Japanese as he had before Apotheosis. “We had the same training you did. It is you who are in danger here.” Training to suppress national wars, he meant. Atlanta had expected such suppression to take years, if not decades, but the leading nations had been more than happy to comply, especially after the 99 carried out their pre-agreed forcible disarming of North Korea, a nation even the Territorial who held responsibility for it refused to support. Their instant success left all of the 99 at loose ends, which Atlanta was beginning to suspect might not have been a good thing. Despite the Host’s comment about what they should do once the 99 finished their initial anti-war mission, ‘do good,’ Atlanta remained suspicious.
“I don’t think so,” Atlanta said. Equal training or not, she trusted in the special extra her creators had given her as a Territorial God.
“There’s no need to be so hasty,” Capitalism said. “Let’s sit down peacefully and talk this over. I’m sure we can find some mutually beneficial outcome. I’ve noticed that you Territorial Gods have limited monetary resources; your expertise lies in other areas. We can be of help.”
Atlanta shook her head, pissed at the far too on-target offer. “The last thing I need is to be owned.” Especially by Mr. White Capitalist himself. She stood and left shattered shackles around her. Indulgence sucked air, hurt by Atlanta’s use of willpower for some unknown reason. “I wouldn’t mind negotiations about our mutual problem, though. I’m not looking for money, I’m looking for information. That is, what did you do to harm the Integrity of the 99 Gods, and what can we come up with together to fix the problem. It’s clear you want a piece of the action in this world-running business; I’m sure we can come up with a mutually acceptable solution.”
Twelve eyes fixed on Capitalism. “What we’re doing is none of your business, and won’t be part of any negotiations,” he said. He took a deep breath and threw up his hands in utter disdain. “Get this pathetic figurehead Territorial out of here.”
Definitely an attitude problem.
Atlanta interrupted her combat preparations when the woman in the corner did something to the divine hold on her, a did something Atlanta didn’t recognize. “They kidnapped me,” the chained woman said. “I work for Port…” A wave of Indulgence’s hand undid whatever the woman had done and she fell quiet. Nevertheless, the mortal woman had Godlike willpower of some variety, even if overshadowed by the Suits.
Portland, eh? Atlanta and Portland had talked for several long minutes back during Apotheosis. As a fellow Territorial God, Atlanta could see quite a bit of good coming from doing Portland a favor. Portland had struck Atlanta as indecisive, a softie, despite the extreme willpower she exuded. However, as a fellow woman, Portland would likely appreciate learning that good old-fashioned sexism still infected the minds of the non-Territorial Gods.
Besides, if she helped Portland, Portland would owe her.
All to the better.
Atlanta changed her mind. Instead of continuing to give the Suits grief verbally, she focused her willpower on the naked woman and unbound her. Indulgence screamed.
“She ripped the bitch right out of me!” Indulgence said. Atlanta boggled at the stupidity of Indulgence’s cheesedick tactic. Didn’t he understand anything about how to properly use the willpower?
Freeing the woman also solved Atlanta’s joint Integrity mystery. The Suits had kidnapped another God’s protected underling, crossing a line that hadn’t been crossed before.
Crap. She realized that if she fought these idiots, she would make the Integrity hit worse. Well, then…she would let them come to her. Self-defense at least wouldn’t harm her Integrity.
Capitalism crossed his arms and glared. Divine willpower of the Suits gathered around Atlanta, confining her. “Stay put,” Capitalism said, guiding the willpower. Bodily immobilization.
Atlanta analyzed Capitalism’s attack and raised her eyebrows in shock. Amazingly, her personal willpower dwarfed the Suit’s group willpower, at least expressed as a change to physical reality. She knew her local cleansing activities had strengthened her willpower, but she had no idea her activities had strengthened her willpower to such an extent.
Truthfully, none of the 99 knew the details of what made them strong or weak. The Angelic Host had left that out of their war-suppression training and had refused to answer most questions on the subject, another part of their game. Much of what the Gods learned they kept secret from each other, seeking advantages to advance their personal Missions.
They were all too new at this.
Atlanta had calculated she could hold off the Suits and force negotiation, even though she suspected it would be close. That’s why she had risked the invasion of Suit territory. Phoenix, her personal sounding board about the Integrity problem, thought any personal confrontations with the other Gods too risky to contemplate so early in the game. He too had thought she would be able to force the Suits to negotiate, and had suggested she use a mortal go-between. She had considered his suggestion far too diplomatic.
Neither of them had considered the idea that the Suits would refuse to negotiate the group Integrity issue. She suspected some innate difference between the Ideological and Territorial Gods at work.
“You belong to us now,” Capitalism said, bending the Suit’s group willpower, another attack at her mind.
Self-defense time. Atlanta broke Capitalism’s group hold, ran five steps forward and punched Capitalism in the jaw. The Suit’s head spun around, over 180 degrees, but without the crack of a neck. She turned and focused her willpower on Wealth, who as far as she could scrutinize had the second strongest willpower of the Suits. She visualized a rack. Wealth’s arms and legs flew off in the expected spray of silver divine gore. Wealth screamed.
Three normal well-armed humans clattered into the room, drawn by the sound of fighting. Part of Atlanta’s mind boggled at one of them, a psychopath with dozens of murders figuratively notched into his belt. All three fired their 9 mils at her. All their bullets bounced. She ignored the three thugs for now.
Atlanta grabbed Indulgence as he attacked her with his puny willpower and tossed him across the meeting room, to land on a gold-leaf covered copier. Competition and one of the unidentified Suits struck at her mind, but she shrugged it off. Instead, she picked up the marble meeting room table and swung it, baseball bat style, through the remaining four Suits. For a second, horror filled their eyes. Then the table. The perfectly swung table cut Competition and two others in half and shattered into fast moving shrapnel, pureeing the last of the Suits and the psychopath, whose blood and gore made mockery of the room’s opulence as it splattered a wall.
The two non-psychopath normals didn’t even pick up a scratch.
Excellent.
“Shit!” the naked woman said. Atlanta glanced at her and saw a finger-sized fragment of shattered marble table imbedded in a flowing glowing something else that now surrounded the naked woman. Atlanta turned back as the last of the functional Suits charged her. He slapped her with one of his now purple hands, which she actually felt. The purple trick tried to destabilize her willpower, but wasn’t powerful enough to bother her. She stepped back.
She and this Suit circled, crunching over shattered marble mixed with writhing silver God remains and bloody red human remains, just out of hand-to-hand range. “You can fight,” Atlanta said. “You should lead, not Capitali
sm. He’s pathetic.”
“The name’s Passion.”
“Fits,” Atlanta said. She stepped forward and tried to throw Passion. Passion threw her. She picked herself up and Passion’s purple fists thudded into her face and abdomen, followed by an elbow to the chin. Pain lanced through her. She tried to recover and take down Passion with a leg sweep, but he skipped out of the way, grabbed her arm above the elbow, and tossed her twenty feet into a gold-gilt marble wall, about five feet away from the naked woman. Atlanta felt her body thin and she almost blacked out.
“Your martial arts skills appear to be years out of practice,” Passion said. “Too bad for you, as I am the ideological master of creative destruction.” He smiled and ran at her.
Atlanta had mental track four make another mental note, this one to get her hand-to-hand retrained. She had learned the Semper Fu back in Basic and had kept it up until she won her place as a Marine aviator. She needed to bring it back up to speed.
There went more damned time from the advanced college courses she currently audited. Her pre-Apotheosis life hadn’t prepared her for the responsibilities of being a Territorial God, and she was dancing as fast as her feet moved to do the job right.
She really needed two hundred hour days to keep her from drowning in all of this shit.
From where she crouched in pain on the floor, Atlanta leapt straight up into the air, hovered, and as Passion, master of the markets’ animal spirits, ran at her, she focused her entire will into her one big discovery, the golden fire. She loosed it from her fingers just before he reached her and blasted it into him and the area around him, which included the naked woman. Passion pancaked underneath the force of the willpower blast, flattened as thin as a rug. Atlanta hung in the air, drained, and as she took great deep breaths she sank slowly to lie flat on the floor. She met the eyes of the two remaining normal humans and growled. They dropped their weapons and fled.
“Wow,” the naked woman said. “What did you do? It passed right through me. I thought I was a goner there.” She evacuated her chair, another one of those leather and gold filigree things, as if it threatened her personally, and attempted to avoid stepping her bare feet into shattered marble and gore.
“Golden fire harms Gods but doesn’t damage the furniture,” Atlanta said. “Or even the mortals.” If she had a real body, she knew she would be a mass of bruises. Aching, she picked herself up off the marble tile floor. She needed a good long rest.
“You’ve gone after Gods before?” the woman asked. Cheeky, forward and fearless, and not at all bothered by any aspect of divine awe. No feeling of hostility or murderous death on her, either. Special, though. Very special.
“Nope,” Atlanta said. “Experimented on myself.” She looked around and save for the whimpering Indulgence, still spread across the copier, all the rest of the Suits were out cold, or whatever analog passed for ‘out cold’ with their screwy Godly no-flesh bodies. Utterly pathetic. “I’m Atlanta, as you overheard. You need some clothes?”
“Dana Ravencraft. Yes, I’d like some clothes. These bastards disintegrated mine, and I don’t know any tricks to allow me to get them back.”
Atlanta walked over to Dana and inspected the tall, willowy, black haired Middle Easterner. Iranian, perhaps? She backed away, to fall backwards into her chair again. “Interesting. You’re not half-bad looking at all, despite the smallish tits,” Atlanta said, wrinkling her nose. Dana’s skin was about as pasty white as Atlanta had ever seen. Dana shivered at Atlanta’s statement. “I can un-disintegrate your clothes for you.” Dana nodded, so Atlanta did. Dana’s clothes reappeared on her, a proper woman’s business suit.
“Thank you,” Dana said, her voice now a bit unsteady, which pleased Atlanta. Normal humans should feel some respect for Gods. “May I ask a question?”
“You may,” Atlanta said. She turned her back on Dana for a moment as she went over to Capitalism’s remains. She put her hand on Capitalism’s head and focused her willpower on Capitalism’s mind. If these idiot Gods could play with minds, there shouldn’t be any reason why she couldn’t.
Nothing. Either Capitalism still maintained his mind shields or she didn’t have what it took. She suspected the latter.
“Isn’t what you did here going to affect the Integrity of the 99 Gods as well?” Dana said. “You killed all but one of them.”
“They attacked me first and the Suits aren’t dead, not even close,” Atlanta said. Offing another psychopath would be a plus, she already knew. “They’ll recover. No harm to the Integrity.” She hit Capitalism’s head with golden fire, pancaking it. “Some might recover faster than others, if I’m not careful.”
“I don’t understand,” Dana said. “When Portland and I spar, what I do to her doesn’t heal so easily, or show this strange silver substance these Ideological Gods appear to be made from.”
“Interesting,” Atlanta said. She found herself impressed that a softie like Portland had the sense to spar with the more dangerous varieties of willpower. “Our creators said mortals can hurt us if we’re not careful. It’s to keep us in our place, to remind us that although we’re Gods, we’re not God Almighty. I hadn’t realized this was a physical warning.”
“Creators? You mean the Angelic Host, don’t you?” Dana said. She attempted again to escape from her captor chair and stood up. Atlanta nodded. “Uh, could we get out of here, Atlanta? This place creeps me out, and these Gods’ opinion about what to do with people like me, mortals with unnatural tricks, involves rape, torture and death.”
“Don’t you want to finish your spying mission?” Atlanta said.
Dana frowned. “It wasn’t that sort of spying mission. I followed Portland’s orders not to set foot into their lair or to approach the Suits.” Pause. “How’d you know about the spy mission?”
“You just told me,” Atlanta said. Dana’s eyebrows lowered as several of the young woman’s precious assumptions evaporated. Portland’s servant hadn’t thought her cunning. Or smart. “Take my hand.”
Dana did as Atlanta ordered. Atlanta bent her will and flew, carrying Dana along beside her. Out the window they went. Then up, Atlanta maintaining breathable air around them. Not that Atlanta believed she needed to breathe, but her Imago breathed, and the Host had warned all the Territorials not to quickly change their Imagos.
Fiction By This Author
Transforms Universe:
The Commander Series Novels
Once We Were Human
Now We Are Monsters
All Beasts Together
A Method Truly Sublime
No Sorrow Like Separation
In This Night We Own
All That We Are
The supplementary Commander Series Stories:
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio One
All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Two)
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Three
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Four
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Five
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Six
No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Seven)
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Eight
The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Nine
Focus
The Cause Series Novels
The Shadow of the Progenitors
Love and Darkness
The Forgefires of God
Beasts Ascendant (The First Chronicle of the Cause)
No Small Dreams
An Age Without A Name (coming in Spring 2017)
Go Gaily In The Dark (The Second Chronicle of the Cause) (coming in Fall 2017)
Indigo Universe:
Storybook Crazy
99 Gods Trilogy Novels
War
Betrayer
Odysseia
99 Gods Trilogy Supplementary Stories
Tales From The Anime Café (Part One)
Tales From The Anime Café (Part Two)
Author’s Afterword
Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Melissa May, Maurice Gehin, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer. Without their help this novel would have never been made.
After I collected many helpful but non-monetary responses from various other publishing venues regarding this novel, I decided the best way to introduce the Commander series to a wider audience was via the ebook market. I have two traditionally published short stories, one in Analog and the other in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.
I hope you enjoyed reading this novel.
If you enjoyed this novel, you can find out further information about the Commander series, the background mythos of the Commander series, and about other fiction, on https://majortransform.com. You can also follow me on my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Randall-Allen-Farmer/106603522801212. Interesting and helpful comments are encouraged. Tell your friends. Post reviews.
The Commander series continues with Book Two: “Now We Are Monsters”.
Randall Allen Farmer
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