The Galactic Pantheon Novellas by Alyce Caswell

Author:Alyce Caswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: scifi, family saga, lgbt, fantasy, space opera, science fiction, diverse, lgbt romance
Publisher: Alyce Caswell

CHAPTER TWO

Maintaining a routine was a sure way to end up dead.

Was it arrogance or a complete disregard for her own safety that saw The Goddess visit a town’s shrine, as she always did, during the first rain meeting of a major drought? Was she aware that she had been spotted on hundreds of different worlds doing this same thing? Did she even care?

When she stepped out onto the soil, Sanyul’s decision to lie unmoving for hours in the long grass, his lasrifle propped up on its tripod, finally bore fruit. He hadn’t seen her enter the shrine and had begun to doubt the information he’d gathered over the years, but there she was — doubling over for some reason, an offering clenched inside her fist. There was something he liked about the way the leaf-strained sunlight glanced over her skin, which was the same rich brown as the mgunga trees surrounding her. If Sanyul was an artist, he might have tried to capture such beauty with a vidcam, not a sniper scope.

Breathe out, empty your lungs, hold, he reminded himself.

That was when she looked right at the scope, as though she could somehow see him.

He fired.

A single lasbolt, unhindered by the wind that had plagued the marksmen of Old Earth, burst from his weapon and drew a steady line that would bend for no one. It was the perfect shot. It should have punctured her chest.

The Goddess wasted no time in escaping her fate.

She exploded into specks of dirt just before the lasbolt dashed through the space where her torso had been. The bolt instead struck the trunk of a nearby mgunga tree, burning a hole right through the centre, announcing his failure for all to see.

Sanyul remained frozen in place, unsure if he could trust his eyes. He allowed a slow blink and drew the breath that his lungs demanded (he had denied them during that crucial moment of firing, to maintain accuracy), but this did nothing to change the empty scene in front of him. Sanyul’s heart faltered and he inwardly cursed the organ for evading his control.

Where had The Goddess gone? Was she coming to kill him?

There was no way he could outrun a sub-level god.

The yellowed grass that had shielded him began to whip back and forth, frenzied and furious, the sharp blades tearing into his suit like paper and only stopping when they hit the lasproof panels underneath. This form of attack was more inconvenient than deadly, but he had a feeling The Goddess wasn’t done with exacting her vengeance. This was only the start.

Sanyul knelt, his lasrifle on the ground and his hands laced behind his head. Doing this wouldn’t save him. He knew that. But he refused to meet death with anything but dignity.

‘Goodbye, Bibi; goodbye, Ablar,’ Sanyul murmured, wanting his last words to be full of love, not fear or hatred.

The nearest clumps of grass violently uprooted themselves, throwing dirt into his eyes and pressing in around him, creating a tightly-wound cocoon that would surely compress his chest and steal his breath —

He bent over, wheezing.

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