Annani
She did not move. A leader had to remain steady under pressure. She could not allow herself to fall apart and become one more problem for Kian and the others to manage.
"Everyone is in the water," Yamanu announced over the comms. "I'm the last one going in. You can deploy the EMP."
Onegus relayed the order to the drone operator in Safe Harbor, and somewhere over the central ridge of an island five thousand miles away, a device discharged its silent pulse into the air.
The effect reached them through the comms as a strange cascade of nothing.
One by one, the secondary feeds the clan had been monitoring, the intercepts of the Brotherhood's own communications, the fragments of radar and sensor data they had been pulling from the island's systems, went dead.
Not garbled. Not jammed. Simply gone, channels falling silent as the pulse fried the electronics that had carried them.
"The island is going blind," Turner said.
"Comms down. Surveillance down. Weapons systems down.
Power across the whole island, gone." He leaned back.
"It's broad daylight there, so they still have lines of sight, but they cannot see what really matters.
No radar to track the ship, no sonar to find the sub, and no functioning battery to fire on either of them if they could.
And with the cross-island tunnel collapsed, the Brotherhood cannot move a single soldier to the resort side in a reasonable time.
Not that it would do them any good. They would find a whole lot of nothing.
" He allowed himself the ghost of a satisfied smile.
"They are crippled, confused, and they are about to spend a very long time digging out of a hole, trying to figure out what happened and how.
What matters to us is that they have no way to follow our people. "
Annani felt the first loosening of a tension she had carried with her for so long that she had stopped noticing it.
All five chests were on the submarine, so Khiann was secure, or as secure as a five-thousand-year-old god in stasis could be, but the people were still underwater, and until everyone arrived safely at the ship and the submarine, Annani was not going to celebrate.
Kian reached across the table and took her hand. "With no pursuit possible, the chests are as good as home, Mother. We've got Khiann."
They had Khiann.
Those words sounded surreal, and they threatened to unravel her, to let loose that which she had held on to tightly, but she could not allow it.
She was the Clan Mother, and she never permitted her people to see her shatter. She would not break down now in front of the team that had given her this gift.
She sat straight in the uncomfortable chair, regal and composed, and allowed herself only a few tears that gathered and slipped down her cheeks unhindered. There was no shame in tears of relief, and she would not insult the moment by hiding them.
On her right, Amanda made no effort at restraint.
Her youngest daughter turned and wrapped both arms around her, and Annani felt her shaking, and when Amanda drew back, dark rivulets ran down her cheeks.
"My sweet Mindi." Annani lifted a hand to wipe at the worst of it. "Do not cry, my love. You are ruining your makeup. It is a time to rejoice."
"I am rejoicing." Amanda laughed wetly. "Khiann is finally coming home to you. This is a miracle. Who cares about ruined mascara?"
On her left, Alena folded into the embrace from the other side, also openly crying, but since she wore no cosmetics, the worst of it was a little redness around her eyes.
"I can weep as much as I want and not look like a raccoon because I never bother with the paint," Alena said, her voice wobbling.
"Of course not," Amanda retorted. "You just look like a village maiden from the dawn of the common era."
"And you look like an impeccably dressed raccoon." Alena laughed. "I win."
They were both laughing at their silliness now, and Annani held both her daughters against her.
The three of them rocked together in the relief of it.
They were fire and the water, her bright, fierce Amanda who dyed her red hair black and painted her face to face the world, and her clear deep Alena who wore nothing but herself.
They were both hers, as were Kian, Sari, and the memory of Lilen. Whatever else her long strange life had cost her, it had given her these amazing people as children.
Khiann would be so proud of them even though they did not carry his genetic material. In her heart, Annani still believed that his spirit had lived in the human men she had seduced to father her children.
She could see him in each of them, each in her or his own way, but mostly in Kian.
When Khiann resurrected, he would be a young male of twenty years, while his namesake was over two thousand years old. She anticipated some good-natured friction.
But she should not be putting the cart before the horse or whatever the current version of that saying was.
Ogidu materialized with the teapot. "More tea, Clan Mother?"
He hovered closer than he usually did, and she had a feeling that he wanted to share this moment of joy with her but did not know how.
"Put the teapot down and come here, Ogidu." Annani extended her arms.
The joy on the Odu's face could not have been manufactured.
It was the most sentient expression she had seen on him, and as he bent down and folded his arms around her, careful and gentle as if she could break under the slightest pressure, she rested her hand over his where it lay against her shoulder.
He and his brothers had carried her through the years when she had grieved Khiann.
He had served her during those dark times when she had believed that there were no gods left in the world.
Ogidu had belonged to Khiann's father before he belonged to her, and he remembered her handsome, kind mate, and he also missed him, as much as a biomechanical construct with emerging sentience could miss a god.
"We should celebrate." Kian rose to his feet and walked over to the sideboard. He pulled out a bottle of the finest whiskey, which meant that he had been expecting this mission to be a success.
Of course, he had, but it was too early to celebrate.
"Not yet, my son," Annani said softly. She did not wish to take the joy from him, only to hold it off for a little longer.
"Our people are still in the water, and I worry for the two little ones, sealed in waterproof cases that have never been used for such a purpose.
I will not raise a glass until everyone is safely aboard.
We shall make a toast when Yamanu informs us that all of them are safe. "
Kian inclined his head and set the bottle on the table, where it stood like a promise.
"We've waited this long, we can wait a little longer to celebrate."
She nodded, but her thoughts turned to the island they had just crippled, and the joy in her cooled by a degree.
"We celebrate while others suffer, and that does not sit well with me.
I am not referring to the soldiers and their commanders, to Losham and his junior brothers.
I am referring to everyone else who will suffer because we have darkened their whole island.
No power means no refrigeration for food stores.
No working systems of any kind, and the tunnel collapse might lead to disruptions in the food supply.
The Brotherhood will recover, in time, but its captives, the servants, the workers, and all the innocents will suffer through no fault of their own, because we needed the island blind for a single afternoon. "
"They will suffer some," Lokan said. "But it's not going to be as bad as you think. The Brotherhood keeps deep emergency stores, and they will have the worst of it restored within days. I'm not overly worried for the island's inhabitants."
"That is reassuring." Annani let out a slow breath.
"I am glad that the cost of my joy is not that great, but I cannot pretend as though there is no cost at all.
War always has casualties, and it is never the powerful who pay the price.
It is the most vulnerable who suffer." She straightened. "We will return for them one day."
The comms crackled.
"We are nearing the sub," Yamanu said. "I have a visual."
Annani closed her eyes briefly and let the relief wash over her even though she should wait a few more minutes for a final confirmation that everyone was safe.
Khiann was coming home.
After five thousand years of believing he was never coming back in the flesh, only as a reincarnate, after the slow dawning suspicion that he had not died but had been stolen, after the confirmation from Navuh that her truelove mate lay in stasis in the dark beneath Navuh's mansion, after all of it, the waiting and the grief and the rage and the long impossible planning, Khiann was finally on his way home to her.
And she did not know what she would find when the chest was opened.
She made herself look at the dread beneath the hope, because she had never been a coward and she would not begin now.
The bodies in those chests were emaciated, the long stasis having worn them down to almost nothing.
They did not even know which of the five was Khiann, for the bodies were past recognition and it would take days, or even weeks, until they regained recognizable features.
On top of that, even after they brought him to the clinic, even when they began the slow and uncertain work of reviving a god who had lain dormant for fifty centuries, there was no guarantee that he would wake at all.
And if he woke, there was no guarantee that his mind would survive intact.
She knew the precedents, and they cut both ways.
Wonder had lost her memory entirely and recovered it in time, but Ell-rom had never recovered his, and had been forced to build himself anew from his twin Morelle's recollections.
Either could be Khiann's fate. He might wake and know her at once, and the fifty centuries would fall away as if they had never been, or he might wake and look at her with the indifference of a stranger, and she would have to court her own husband from the beginning, teach him who they had been to each other, and hope that they were still truelove mates and the love would bloom again.
She did not know which it would be, and she would not know for a long while yet.
But that was a worry for tomorrow, and she would not borrow it tonight. Tonight, she had earned the right to rejoice.
After five thousand years, Khiann was finally on his way back to her.
COMING UP NEXT
The Children of the Gods Book 110
Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain