The commander had a plan: “Val, you’re the oracle expert. Come up with a plan.”
“I’m already on it,” he said. “First problem is that we’re the only entities making decisions out here. We need to be maximally indecisive about our future actions. Markus, randomize our course. Whatever method you’re using, it needs to be completely meaningless. It’ll blind her. Don’t use the computer, it uses etheric noise to generate random numbers.”
“There’s nothing else up here, man.”
“My dice,” I said. “They’re in my personal bag. I can get to med bay by myself.”
Val shot me a doubtful look and didn’t let go.
“Seriously, we don’t know how much time we have,” I said, trying to shrug him off me. He let me go. I stumbled to the wall and leaned against it, trying to stay up.
“Good point. Markus, I’m on my way,” he said, leaving me without a second glance.
“Side pocket, black bag,” I called after him. I looked down the hall. Okay, I had like thirty feet to go. I could do this.
When I was fifteen, I went to driving school. They gave us these “drunk goggles” that screwed up your vision and simulated being too drunk to walk straight. The idea had been to convince us that you can’t fool a cop when they ask you to walk in a straight line with your heels touching your toes. Everyone else had stumbled all over the place, but I’d wanted to win. What do you need balance for? Not falling. So screw with your balance and you stumble, because you’ll fall if you don’t stop yourself.
I decided not to stop myself. If you’re gonna fall, fall forward. I’d put on the goggles and just rushed to the other end of the line, letting my momentum keep me upright. The other teenagers were super impressed. The instructor said I still would have gotten caught because my feet weren’t touching, but whatever, I still did it.
Anyways, I bet I could make it to the med bay. I fell forward, one hand on the wall for support, hurling my body away from my unstable footing. My stomach wasn’t happy with me, but it could shut the hell up. Just had to make it to med bay and then I could wash the sick out of my mouth. And maybe do something about the tinnitus. I never thought constant high-pitched whining could be so annoying, although phrasing it like that makes me wonder why.
I’d almost made it when Markus called out “brace for course correction!” and yanked the floor to the side.
“Dude!” I groaned from the floor, interrupting Val’s exposition on the oracle. “I’m injured here.”
“Thanks for the dice, Lils,” he said, and I could just hear the shit-eating grin on his stupid face.
“To summarize,” said Val, irritation in his tone, “we’re using information theory. The oracle understands the meaning of future events, but none of the actual details of what will occur. We win by ensuring that whatever we do is existentially generic, and by ensuring that none of it is tied to a specific location—she’ll see that and ambush us again.”
I pulled myself up into a sitting position against the wall.
“This bitch has a planet-sized crystal ball,” I said. “We’re in a spaceship. We can’t be that generic.”
“We can dampen our profile.” Val argued. “The ship can be hidden in a remote location. Without native observers it should retain the usual etheric associations.”
“All of our equipment’s here!” I said. “You want to try killing a god without amplifiers? Or are we dragging those through the wilderness too?” Also, I couldn’t really walk, but I wasn’t going to bring that up.
“Lilith, stand down,” said the commander.
Yes ma’am, butt’s already grounded, ma’am. I grumbled and tried to stand up. It worked the second time.
“Thank you,” said Val. “The most compelling argument in favor is that the oracle’s angels have already witnessed the ship’s ether signature and aren’t currently attacking us. That implies she can’t find us on that alone.”
“Val, convince Lilith on your own time,” said the commander. “I need next steps.”
“We’ll need to perform repairs. We can keep flying randomly for part of that time, but the translation engines will need to be shut down before I can look at them. And Lilith’s out of commission until that point.” Screw you too, Val. “I can try to improvise some kind of obfuscation during that period. We can do sociological recon at the same time, then strike when the ship is ready.”
I reached the med bay. Score one for Lilith! Markus called out another course correction and I hurriedly threw myself into one of the beds before he knocked me over again.
“Our strategic objective is to destroy or compromise the planetary barrier. It’s possible that the oracle designed her first strike to compromise our ability to strike at the barrier, which gives us some information about our options.”
“Yes, that’s quite obvious,” I said.
“I’ll let you explain it, then.”
“Oh no,” I said hurriedly, “I’m injured.”
Val was definitely smirking. “It means she agrees that we win if we hit the barrier. And the fact that she’s trying to stop that from happening means it’s possible.”
“Unless that’s what she wants us to think,” said Markus.
The med bay door opened. Commander Abby entered briskly, not even pulling to a stop before slapping the console next to my bed.
“Diagnose,” she said. “Val, your strategy is acceptable. We’ll use the broad strokes.”
“Am I gonna live, doc?”
“I should flash you to backup, but we’ll try bypassing your comm first,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. She flicked an utterly blank look at me.
“We’ve discussed your cultural hangups. This is an emergency. Your designated transfer is a perfect match for your birth body. Adapt.”
“I do not consent,” I said precisely, looking away. Abby didn’t argue further, even though she probably could have pointed out that Val and Markus weren’t having eardrum problems right now. That was the commander, always picking her battles.
“Val, I need a wide-area sweep ready to go. We’re looking for hiding places. Markus, maximum atmosphere speed. There’s another continent a few minutes away. We’ll get close for maximum coverage.”
I heard the engines starting to thrum as Markus pushed us as fast as we could go. The distant thunder of the wind catching on the hull breach picked up as our velocity increased.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Wait for my signal to fire the scan. I need enough sites to make a credibly random selection. Markus, be prepared for resistance. The oracle can definitely pick up the signature on the scan, but it’s possible the dice are doing their job. We will not engage if possible.”
“Acknowledged,” said Val.
“Strap in, Lilith. It needs about an hour of data to spoof your proprioception.”
“Better than three weeks,” I said, bracing myself for what I was about to do. “Can you get me some water?”
“Here.” She pulled the sink out of the wall, deftly snatching a disposable cup, filling it, and handing it to me. I took a gulp, gargled a bit, and clumsily rolled onto my side so I could spit it out. I collapsed onto my back.
“Fuck that lobster. Thanks, Commander.”
“Good luck.” She left, presumably to man the guns. No point waiting. I thumbed a panel on the side of the bed. Clear plastic ribbons slipped over the parts of my body that would flop the most under turbulent conditions, just tight enough to prevent motion but not enough to be uncomfortable. For now. It was a good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic. To distract myself, I tried to poke holes in Val’s plan.
The tl;dr of oracles is that they can’t see everything: they’re just attuned to this one kind of signal modulation you get on etheric cause-effect dyads. That probably doesn’t make any sense, so here’s the explanation for normal people.
You know the whole “for the want of a nail” thing where the armorer doesn't horseshoe the king’s horse correctly, so the horse bucks during the battle, gets the king killed, and it’s all the nail’s fault? Those events are etherically entangled—about the time the horseshoe’s going on and the blacksmith’s telling himself it’s probably fine and nothing bad is gonna happen, there’s this connection to a future event forming, and the oracle can see that.
The fundamental force of paraphysics is called “sympathy”; it’s the thing that makes realspace and etherspace affect each other. Dyadic entanglement doesn’t happen until you’ve got sufficient sympathetic force to latch onto. The nail matters because the blacksmith knows it matters, and sympathy makes anything that matters create a corresponding etheric event.
So in this case, it matters that we hide, but not where we hide. Which means if we route our decision-making through something intrinsically meaningless, like rolling dice, there’s no sympathetic effect for the future event to connect to. That should mean that the oracle won’t know where to position the ambush when we finally do the scan—without sympathetic effects, we’re invisible. So assuming the dice were sympathetically neutral—
“Fuck! Markus, don’t use the red d20!” I looked around the room wildly but there wasn’t anything else I could do. I thumbed the control panel again to drop a screen so I could at least watch what was going on.
“The sparkly one? It’s fine, Lils, I’m not gonna lose it.”
“Fucking lose it!” I screamed. “It’s my lucky die!”
There was a pause as everyone processed.
“Oh shit,” said Markus.
“We go now,” said Abby. “Val, fire the scan. Markus, evasive maneuvers.”
“Probing now,” said Val. I felt the bed kick under me as we accelerated away from the ocean’s surface. The screen showed the water dropping away as we aimed at the sky.
Theria was very pretty. Deep blue ocean, luscious green vegetation in the distance, fluffy off-white clouds—it all looked lovely and inviting. Well, the clouds were just a bit too dark to be inviting, there was a bleakness there. Actually, I’m not sure why I thought they were white, those were definitely rainclouds. Hold on. No, they were getting darker. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Markus, there’s a divine energy spike,” said Val. “Diverting engine power to shields.”
“I think they’ve got a weather god!” Markus called.
“No shit!” I said.
Our warning was a sense of utter wrath that began to fill the air.
“Contacts! All sides!” called the commander. But even as the lance fire flickered at the edges of my screen, I knew—we all knew—our new attackers weren’t the threat here.
I can’t describe the grandeur of it. The feeling of standing on the beach with a tidal wave drowning the sky. Of looking up at a mighty volcano, of watching it spew fire and death into the air, of knowing that you can’t escape. Of the bug watching the human’s foot descend. Except those calamities don’t care—the god hates you. Anger and contempt so vast it seems wrong to use the same word as for human emotions, even if intellectually you know it’s just a couple orders of magnitude.
The wrath of a god.
We were so small, in the end. I was incapacitated, immobile, helpless, and all I could do was scream. So, as the clouds crackled with rage, so did I.
“They fall!”
My team answered me. “They die!”
It smote us.
The light and the thunder hit us simultaneously, electricity crackling over our shields, whiting out my display. The thunder boomed around us, such a powerful sound that I could hear it through the vibrations of my skeleton even with my eardrums out of commission. But beyond that was pure rage, a storm of corrosive ether trying to inflict destruction by force of will alone, smothering our defiance.
But Ragnar’s shields held. Mostly.
When my screen came back we were spiraling towards the ocean—looked like an evasive pattern, and the engines were still running, so I assumed it was on purpose. The world itself seemed to take a pause, as if in confusion that our ship had withstood the strike. Even the god’s anger withdrew for a moment as he considered us.
“The scan is complete,” said Val.
“Upward! Now!” said the commander. The ship sharply jerked toward space.
“We’re not spaceworthy!” I shouted.
“We don’t have a choice,” said Abby. “We can’t fight this thing. Hang in there, Lilith.”
The god’s anger returned.
Below us, the water surged upright into the form of a great, muscled, man—miles tall, seawater endlessly cascading where his hair and beard would be. A divine avatar. Too big even for the fusion cannons to kill, if the god were actually a giant seawater Godzilla and not an etheric monster stretched out across the entire planet. It reached out to grab us. Lightning flew from its fingers, pummeling us, shaking the cabin.
“Primary shields down,” said Val.
“Everything to engines!” yelled the commander.
My body was straining hard against the straps as we approached escape velocity. If the bed had been rotated ninety degrees, all the blood would have gone to my head and probably given me an aneurysm or something. The Ragnar was vertical now. The seawater hand reached above us. The ship shuddered as a lightning blast tore through the shields and coruscated across our armor.
“Fuuuuuuuck!” yelled Markus.
I could only watch as its fingers closed around us, blotting out the sun, dark like trenchwater. But Markus aimed true. We slipped between its fingers and punched into the stratosphere as it howled in fury.
The god spoke.
WOE BE UNTO YOU, it thundered. MISFORTUNE UPON MISFORTUNE, DEATH AND DISASTER, WRATH AND RUIN!
Just words, or so I told myself. It couldn’t touch us out here, beyond the boundary of its domain. It watched, divinely impotent, as we escaped to space. Ahead of us, the stars gleamed, twinkling behind the oracle’s shimmering barrier. Space was as inhospitable to gods as it was everything else.
“Ha!” said Markus. “I am awesome!”
“I can’t believe we made it out of that clusterfuck!” I cheered. “We lived!”
There was a worrying silence from the others.
Then a message appeared on my screen: “You lived. Suffocating. Don’t recommend it.”
“Shit,” said Markus. “I’m taking us down.”
A second message, this time from the commander: “NO too late Markus in command careful of god planetfall **randomly**.”
“Sorry, guys,” I said. “See you on the other side.”
Fifty feet away, my teammates were dying. If all went well, they’d wake up in their backup bodies, but our shields were damaged and this was a world with active gods. Sometimes godslayers flashed and didn’t come back.
Markus and I didn’t say anything as he turned us in a random direction and pointed the Ragnar back to Theria.
We fell. They died.