Free The Stolen Gospels by Brian Herbert Page A

cabin for signs of movement, of a captain up there, but she detected no one. Her ears strained for the sound of a voice, but she heard none.
    “Where’s my mother?” Lori demanded, raising her voice to make it carry.
    “Welcome back, Killer Girl.” Dixie Lou held up her gun, pointed it at imaginary foes and made the mock noises of a .45 automatic. “ Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! . . . Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!”
    “Answer me!”
    Lowering the weapon, Dixie Lou said, “Guns, arm-locks, you’re a tough teen, but listen up. I’m tougher.”
    “I asked you about my mother.”
    “She’s in a life support compartment at the rear,” Dixie Lou announced, matter-of-factly. She did something to turn up the cabin lights, then slid back into a seat just ahead of Lori’s, but out of reach.
    Again, the girl struggled unsuccessfully with the safety restraint.
    “I activated the security lock,” Dixie Lou said. “I’ll let you out of it when we land. You may also have one trip to the bathroom.”
    “I want to see my mother!”
    “She must not be disturbed. We’re doing everything possible for her, with automatic medical systems connected all over her body.”
    Body . Lori didn’t like the sound of that word. It didn’t say enough about her mother, about the wonderful person she really was, even if the two of them had their differences. Numbness settled over her.
    “How are her vital signs?” Lori demanded.
    “Improving.” It sounded like a lie, just to shut her up.
    “Where are we going?” Lori asked.
    No answer.
    She stared at the unusual design on the bulkhead, and recalled the Bible in Dixie Lou’s house, and the way this strange woman had displayed a statuette of She-God, whatever in the world that was. There had been black Christian crosses on the uniforms of the attackers, too. The BOI. What did it all mean?
    For some reason Lori thought of occasions when, as a child, she had wanted to attend Catholic churches in the neighborhoods in which they had lived. Her mother, always an agnostic, hadn’t encouraged Lori’s involvement in organized religion. As a result, the girl had only been able to attend church a few times, and always alone.
    Now, with everything that had occurred on this most terrible, horrendous of all nights, the girl was rekindling her interest in spiritual matters. If there truly was a God, she hoped with all the strength and power of her being that the Lord Almighty was a forgiving, loving entity, one that would spare the precious life of her mother.
    And Lori Vale prayed, mostly for her mother, but also for knowledge. Who was She-God? What sort of group were these women involved with, and who were their deadly enemies?

Chapter 7

    When the fragments of ancient Gnostic manuscripts from Alexandria are placed side by side with the more complete, transcribed she-apostle gospels, they do not conflict in the smallest degree. There is not one scintilla of disagreement. This is truly remarkable, and can only be due to inspiration—and to the authenticity of both sources.
    —Report of the Commission on the She-Apostles

    In the dimmed light of his underground office, Vice Minister Styx Tertullian studied the virtual-reality television field closely, comparing the female faces he saw in front of him with the holo-photos, and matching them with names on his clip-pad. Still wearing a uniform that was dirt and blood-smeared from the mission he’d led the night before, Tertullian sat in one of two visitors’ chairs. He’d been up all night and had a stubble of beard on his narrow, bespectacled face. His superior, BOI Minister Nelson Culpepper, sat at a massive mahogany desk, glaring at him and muttering angrily.
    Six of the photographs on Styx’s clip-pad were of bullet-riddled female bodies. Five were of women who had been taken into custody, two with serious wounds. The attack on the goddess circle had been a military operation with split-second timing. In and out in seven efficient minutes. They