No gods only daimons the.., p.1
No Gods, Only Daimons (The Covenant Chronicles Book 1), page 1
No Gods, Only Daimons
Book 1 of The Covenant Chronicles
Kai Wai Cheah
Copyright
No Gods, Only Daimons
Kai Wai Cheah
Castalia House
Kouvola, Finland
www.castaliahouse.com
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental
Copyright © 2017 by Kai Wai Cheah
All rights reserved
Cover Art: Scott Vigil
Version: 001
Contents
Part One: Infidel
1. Hakem al-Dunya
2. Escape & Evasion
3. The Man from the Agency
Alif: The Sheikh
4. Applied Theology
5. Ape to Angel
6. Full Circle
Baa’: The Agent
7. A Quiet Stroll in New Haven
8. The Gunfighters
9. Damage Control
Taa’: The Spoiler
Part Two: Believer
1. The Third Option
2. The City of Lights
Thaa’: Die Kraken
3. Signal to Noise
4. The Maw of the Void
5. Small Things
Jiim: A Prince of the World
6. Faded Gods
Part Three: Covenanter
1. The Cowboys
2. In the Spirit of Mutual Cooperation
3. In the Name of God
4. Pagans in Church
5. One Soldier to Another
6. Off the Books
H’aa’: The Temptation of the Sheikh
7. Doureios Hippos
8. The Woman on the Inside
9. The Judgment of the Sheikh
10. Mergers and Acquisitions
11. A Covenant of Believers
Acknowledgements
The act of writing is solitary, but the act of creation, of turning scribbles into a complete novel, requires a network. Once again, I have called for help in writing this story, and once again, so many people have offered their help. I want to thank the following people for their assistance:
Brian Kunimasa Murata, Steven Hildreth Jr., and Nate Granzow. Our chats helped me iron out key aspects of the story, ranging from political economy to tactics, characterization to craft. If you love thrillers from the next generation of indie writers, look out for Steve’s Benjamin Williams and Nate’s Grant Cogar series.
Dr Roy Millhouse and Geoff Smith provided invaluable advice on Biblical Greek, early Christianity and Near Eastern religions. Likewise, Felita Reed helped out with the Musafirian. Any terms lost in translation are (probably) my fault.
Jan Croeni and Tushar Ismail of Pekiti Tirsia Kali Singapore, for doing their best to teach this rather clumsy and uncoordinated individual the way of empty hand, stick and blade.
The Animal List, run by Marc and Dianna Gordon MacYoung, for the long and fascinating discussions of martial arts, social dynamics, guns, science, combat, and most importantly, food and drink. I’ve never met you guys (yet!), but everything you said helped make this story what it is today.
And, of course, Jasmine Sim, Our Lady of the Cats, for tirelessly sweeping up the stardust that spills from my mind.
Part One: Infidel
1. Hakem al-Dunya
Then Asul said to the angels, “Bow to Adam,” and so they bowed, but not Azhar. He was not of those who bowed.
Asul said, “What prevented you from bowing to Adam?”
Azhar said, “How can I bow to another? I am from Your illumination while Adam is made of dust.”
—The Book of Illumination, trans. Khan and Latif, sponsored by the Rashidun Sultanate of Musafiria
In another life, in another war, this job would be routine. Simple, almost. Infiltrate the area. Get eyes on target. Set up a radio and call in fires. A barrage of submarine railgun fire, a shower of guided kinetic munitions from a flight of high-altitude stealth drones, a deep-penetrating thermobaric bomb, a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon for that very special flavor of pump up the volume. I’d done jobs like this enough times I could recite every step in my sleep. But we lost the last war for a reason, and we sure as hell weren’t going to start another.
It still didn’t make the job any easier.
“He’s not coming out,” I said. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
In the driver’s seat of the van, Alex sighed. “And here I thought we were gonna do this the easy way.”
Sitting next to me in the back, Pete chuckled. “The only easy day was yesterday. Let’s do this.”
In the dark, I patted myself down and pressed in my earpiece, checking that my kit hadn’t migrated elsewhere. Soft metallic clacks filled the interior of the car, the snapping of slides and the snicking of safeties. In the shotgun seat, Keith mumbled something to himself. A prayer, perhaps.
I don’t know if the Creator heard, or if he cared, but we needed every bit of help we could get. Something pressed against my skull, drilling, pulsing, an emanation from somewhere else that shouldn’t be here.
It was a summoning. With a backwash as potent as this, it had to be something powerful. Something that we could not let loose into the world, much less form a covenant with the Wahi Republic of Persia.
I snaked a gloved hand into my trouser pocket and extracted a slim hip flask. It was warm against my bare skin, too warm for this time of night. I unscrewed the cap and slugged down a mouthful of liquid.
Golden fire sloshed down my throat, burning a path to the pit of my stomach. Electricity radiated from my core and streaked down my arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers and toes. The darkness inside the van separated into a hundred different shades of black, each richer than the last. My eyes widened, swallowing in the faint moonlight that streamed in through the windshield. I could just about make out Pete’s hulking form, curved up against the wall. In both hands he grasped a PC-99, a cheap knockoff of the SIG P480 that was the standard sidearm of the Persian security forces.
My flask held military-grade ambrosia. Fifteen percent aetherium, fifteen percent water, seventy percent ethanol. Regular ambrosia was a health tonic. Mil-grade ambrosia was more regularly issued as combat stimulants.
But for us psions, it was magic fuel.
We opened the rear doors as quietly as we could, checked for witnesses, and then stepped out and closed them just as silently. Alex held up a finger and closed his eyes. I waited. If I activated my aethersight, I would have seen the wireless signals radiating from the implants in his skull.
He snapped his eyes open. “Cameras are spoofed,” he whispered. “You’re good to go.”
“Moving out,” I said.
Around the block, past a pair of quiet office complexes, the target awaited: GHK Laboratories, hidden behind a head-high wall. The desert wind chilled my skin, even through my windbreaker. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, stuck to the shadows and walked to the five-story building. There was no one in sight. This time of night, there was no reason for anyone to be out.
The road stretched beneath me. I felt like I was walking through a morass. Electricity crawled across my skin, like sparks of static electricity in slow motion, distinct from the lightning in my veins. The wind carried faint whispers; when I strained to listen, all I heard was silence, and when I released my focus, the words came back. Tiny red orbs appeared at the edges of my vision, disappearing when I tried to look at them. And the air smelled yellow.
Reality was breaking down. They weren’t summoning a powerful daimon. This was something else. An archdaimon at least. Or, to use the local terminology, a marid. Whatever it was, it felt like a force beyond nature, untamed yet sentient and most definitely aggressive, corrupting and warping reality. Rumor had it the Soviets tried summoning an army of archdaimons in Chernobyl; five decades on, horrors still crawled out of the Exclusion Zone.
I shivered white in the cold gold air. The shadows sucked me in and spat me out. The windows of the buildings around me stared down at the interloper in their midst; I stared back, looking for snipers, for jinn, for whatever else might be lurking there.
On paper, GHK Labs was a civilian research institute specializing in industrial applications of nythium. The architecture said otherwise. The wall was made of reinforced concrete and topped with razor wire. Spotlights illuminated the perimeter, aiding the security cameras. The front gate was the only way in or out, and an armed guard stood watch 24/7. There had to be more guards inside. It was a hard target. And if we tried taking it out using air power or indirect fire, the Persians would denounce it as an act of war. And so would the rest of the world.
That meant we had to do this the hard way.
I inspected the wall, estimating distance, trajectory and vectors. I took a deep breath and burned ambrosia.
There are four fundamental forces in the universe: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity. Aetherium controls them all, and through psionics a nd ambrosia, so can I.
I imposed my will on the universe, lightening the pull of gravity on me to one-tenth g. It wasn’t so much as telling gravity to ease off as a deep knowing, a conviction, that the new truth of the world was that gravity only had that much influence on me versus everything else.
I took a few steps back, sprinted and jumped. No, flew, sailing gently through the air, clearing the wall and wire and landing softly in a parking lot on the other side.
I eased off the ambrosia, and reality sluggishly returned to its warped form. I crouched behind a car and scanned. To my left, guarding the front gate, were two guards. One was human. The other was… not.
Massive horns curled from its crown and down to its shoulders. Crouched on all fours, it resembled a huge ebony wolf with overgrown musculature and flaming red hair. Its front paws resembled human hands, but they terminated in overgrown claws.
It was an ifrit. A jinni that controlled fire.
Cold sweat trickled down my spine. My fists balled up. My heart pounded against my chest. No matter how many I destroyed, afarit still did this to me. At least I don’t smell the burning any more. The smoke. The sweet crackling of roast meat.
Deep breath. Threat assessment. The ifrit was a hulking presence right behind the barrier. It scanned the night, tirelessly, regularly, like a robot following a set routine. It wasn’t aware of my presence.
The other guard must be its handler, a majus in Musafireen parlance. He was standing outside his little doorless booth, smoking a cigarette.
The ifrit could burn anything it saw, and in close combat it would overwhelm baseline humans through brute strength. The guard, however, would have a radio, and that made him the priority.
I didn’t have a suppressed firearm. No aetherium ammo either. We hadn’t expected to penetrate a secure installation, and aetherium was so rare in the Near East, using it as ammunition was considered an abominable waste of resources—or the mark of a Western military force.
I had to do this the hard way.
I brought my hand to my beltline and drew my weapon. A no-name sliding aethertool with cheap wooden grips, likely made in an anonymous Asian sweatshop. Its working mass was, however, twenty percent enriched aetherium. Capping the handle with my thumb, I touched the aetherium with my mind and visualized a sigil.
Aetherium was the totipotent element. In the presence of focused will, it could alter its atomic structure, taking on the properties of any other material. It could be a solid, liquid, gas or any state in between; it could be a metal, polymer, compound or something else. It was the bedrock of Western civilization, in use long before recorded history. Even today people still called aetherium a gift from God. Reshaping aetherium took a lot of time and effort; sigils, stored in the brain or carved into the material, could be thought of as macros that commanded aetherium to take on specific shapes and properties when triggered.
The aetherium responded, sliding out of an opening on the other end of the handle, flowing and hardening into a curved double-edged blade in a second. The West calls it a Persian; here it’s known as a pesh-kabz. It grew into four full inches of hard, dense metal, sharp enough to shave with, tough enough to endure the shock of stabbing bone.
Holding the weapon by my side in a reverse grip, I moved from car to car, keeping out of sight. There was no cover for the last ten yards, but the ifrit was still watching the road, and the guard was still intent on burning up his lungs. I straightened and sauntered towards him. Counterintuitive, but if anyone saw me, I would look like I belonged here.
And, of course, when I was two yards from him, he turned to look.
“Sa,” he called.
My language implant translated it as Hey. A casual contraction of ‘Salaam.’
“Who are you?” he continued, approaching me. “Why are you out here?”
The implant took my thoughts and commanded my mouth to make the right sounds.
“Mahmoud from R&D,” I said. It was unlikely he would know the lab’s staff and departments, and even if he did, Mahmoud was common enough that it wouldn’t trigger his suspicions.
He began to say something, still walking up to me. I interrupted. “I’m taking a smoke break. Do you have a light?”
I bladed my body just so, presenting my right side towards him. I kept my hands down by my side, gaging the distance, and glanced at his partner. The ifrit was busy watching the gate. Good.
“Sure,” he said. “But I need to see your pass.”
He had a flashlight in his left hand, and his right rested on his hip. An assault rifle was slung around his neck. This was not a rent-a-cop; he had to be part of the Persian security forces.
“Okay. It’s in my pocket.”
I fumbled in my left pocket, as though reaching for the pass, and took another step towards him. He didn’t react; he was just beyond arm’s length. For most people, he was out of range.
Not mine.
I brought my left foot forward by an inch and exploded towards him. I threw my left arm out, gaining more inches, and speared the knife into his throat. The blade bit deep and tore out. His rifle dropped, clattering to the ground.
Eyes widening in shock, his hands flew for the gaping hole in his neck.
Angling off, I jammed his right elbow high and slashed through his gut. Whirled back around, planting the knife into his back, and grabbed and turned his skull, forcing his spine back. Dropped to a knee and slammed his head against it. Vertebrae popped.
The air snapped. The link between the majus and the ifrit was gone. The daimon roared in pain, bringing its paws to its head. Without a guiding will, it could depart for its home plane or fly into a berserker rage.
I had to assume the latter.
I tore the bloody knife out, shoved the corpse aside and sprinted for the jinni. Growling, the ifrit reared up on two legs. It was a full head higher than me and at least twice my mass. Against it, the knife was puny. And the ifrit wasn’t going home.
Still running, I flipped the weapon around and impressed my will into the knife, willing the ambrosia in me to flow into the tool. The blade flared white and gold like a miniature sun, flash-forging into a long, curved blade with a small crossguard and rounded pommel. In the space of moments, I had a shamshir, the signature Persian war sword.
I still had a bit of spare ambrosia in me. I burned it all, forming an invisible shield around me. Not against physical attacks—that was impossible—but against the ionizing radiation released when aetherium strikes nythium.
My head hurt. The world darkened. The ifrit recovered just as I lunged for its throat. It stepped back, barely evading the blade. I thrust again, and it backpedaled.
It glared at me. My skin itched, my clothes smoked. I side-stepped off its line of sight. It closed in with a howl and a giant hammerfist. Dodging, I slashed at the attack and shut my eyes.
Its forearm exploded like a bomb. I re-opened my eyes and stepped in, thrusting the belly of the blade into the ifrit’s throat and twisted out. The blast catapulted its head from its shoulders. Nythium sprayed over my face, burning my skin. I squeezed my eyes shut and jumped away, wiping the corrosive substance from my skin.
The ifrit was still on its feet. Nythium rippled outwards from its core, regenerating its head and arm. It charged in with a left-handed swipe. I slipped the blow and cut out, taking its arm off. It whirled around, switching to a right lead. I crashed in and severed its other arm. I spun back around, took off a budding head and then cleaved through it from chest to groin, shoulder to hip. The ifrit fell apart.
Daimons were incorporeal intelligences distributed across a body of nythium. The only way to defeat one was to keep damaging it until it could no longer reform. Its structural integrity fatally compromised, the daimon’s soul departed, leaving behind smoking giblets.
Shaking off the nythium on me, I checked the guard I’d knifed. He was done. Then I stole a glance at my sword. Bright spots danced across my eyes. Squinting, I saw cracks, fissures and points of weakness. The blade itself was lighter than before. I retracted the sword, pulling it back into a pesh-kabz.
It was thin. So thin it felt like it would snap in a strong breeze. I poured more ambrosia down my throat. The potion burned its way into my gut as well as my brain. My eyes defocused. My ears spun. Something sounded like a voice from far away, drifting through sludge. I spent a bit of ambrosia to accelerate my metabolism, processing the ethanol. The world returned to normal, and I burned more ambrosia to restore the knife.
