God War

CROSS FIRE OF THE IMMORTALS

The Annunaki, a power-hungry and hate-driven alien race, have returned to take over Earth. This time, permanently. And the hard-core human rebels who fought to repel these self-proclaimed gods have paid a terrible price. Just when they are needed most—as the postapocalyptic threat surges to terrifying new levels—the Cerberus operation lies broken, its key members missing.

PROGENY OF HATE

Ullikummis has chosen Earth as ground zero for a terrifying family reunion. A son born of cruelty, genetic manipulation and infinite power, for 4,000 years the stone god has waited, plotting his revenge against his father, Enlil, the most sadistic of the Annunaki. As father and child unleash their armies in a clash of titanic proportions, the bravest of the rebels, Kane, is humanity’s last hope to halt this deadly war of the gods. Endgame has finally arrived...but who will be the winner?

Another Annunaki was out there

The mother ship had detected his presence immediately, identified him as one of her children.

“Ullikummis,” Enlil muttered, the name lost in the sharp intake of his breath. “So you have returned, my son.”

It should have been impossible, Enlil knew. He had expelled his child into space, sent him to float among the stars for the duration of his near-endless life. And yet here he stood on Earth once again, and with an army of apekin at his beck and call.

But Enlil did not question the facts presented to him. Ullikummis had beaten the odds and returned, and that was only right because he was his son—and what would any son of Enlil be if he could not defy the odds?

Tapping a quick sequence out on the palm link to Tiamat, Enlil called forth the Igigi who hid within the shells of the reborn Annunaki. “We still have much to do.” He spoke to the empty room as if reminding himself. “More than I conceived. Let us begin.”

Tiamat trembled as her mighty cargo doors opened for the very first time.

God War

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relationship with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.

—Andrei Codrescu

1946–

The Road to Outlands—

From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology...a question to a keeper of the archives...a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.