Free God War by James Axler Page A

to the nearest safe haven from which you can make the jump home.”
    Kudo nodded once. “As you command.” Then he walked away from the scene, speaking into the comm unit.
    Within moments, Grant and Rosalia were alone at the edge of the citylike dragon ship, watching as the tear in the air continued spilling more of the mismatched troops to the ground.
    Rosalia reached down to the handle of her sword, her hand brushing against it to ensure it was still there. “How do you propose we do this?” she asked.
    Grant held his right arm out, palm open, and his Sin Eater slapped into his hand from its hiding place beneath his sleeve. “Let’s play it by ear.”
    * * *
    S ELA S TONE HEARD the call like a racing drumbeat in her skull, its urgency increasing until it became impossible to ignore. A black-skinned woman, slender and hungry-looking, she had a body that was all toned muscle, no flab. She had not always been called Sela Stone; three months earlier she had been Sela Sinclair, one of the security experts for Cerberus before their redoubt had been infiltrated and all personnel had been taken prisoner. It was a distant memory now, that first vision of Ullikummis as he strode through the familiar corridors of the redoubt with his army of followers, overcoming all attempts to stop them. He had touched her, a fleck of himself embedding in her head like a living thing. The stone put Sela in touch with Ullikummis, helped her to comprehend his will, to accept him as her god.
    Since that day, Sela had heard the quiet drums beating over and over in her head. The noise had become reassuring, a heartbeat from another world, the heartbeat of her god and savior. The drumming increased whenever Ullikummis was near, and also when those most important to him—such as the warrior woman known as Haight—came close. And this day, as Sela sat before a small congregation in the old province of Samariumville, preaching the word of Stone, she felt the drums beat louder and faster. As a believer in the future under Ullikummis, Sela had taken her first steps in spreading the word, gathering just a dozen of the outlander farmers in a dilapidated barn to tell them of the glorious utopia that was coming. A few days before, she had still been undercover, hiding in the shadows with her Cerberus teammate, Farrell, giving no indication that she had been turned. Now she was an Alpha, promoting the word of the new god.
    “His love is stone, unbreakable, unconquerable,” Sela assured them. “His embrace is the embrace of the all. His future is the pinnacle of achievement, the glory of utopia.”
    As she spoke, she could hear the drums inside her head getting faster and faster. She saw the farmers’ eyes widen as something changed behind her, and she turned, her own words turning to silence on her lips. Where the barn wall had been just a moment before now stood a swirling hole of blackness, dark colors twisting within its newly impossible depths, lightning strikes ravaging within. The hole seemed to pulse, subtly changing shape like a living creature breathing in and out. Sela recognized it from her time with Cerberus; it was a rift window created by an interphaser.
    She stepped back automatically, giving room for the interphaser’s user to step out—but no one did. Behind her, the congregation of farmers and the hardy-looking women they had taken for their wives watched in awe. “Is this the utopia?” one of them asked. “Has it arrived?”
    Sela peered deep into the impossible depths of the quantum window, watching those swirling colors coalesce and part over and over, no two patterns alike. There, deep in the swimming burst of light, fingers seemed to be moving, an upturned hand pulling back as if giving Sela the go-ahead signal. The hand was rough and crudely formed, as if it had been hewed from solid rock. When she saw this, Sela Stone knew just what to do. Without a second’s hesitation, she stepped into the pulsing swirl of darkness,