Page 43 of Dark Shaman: Love Found (The Children Of The Gods #99)

NAVUH

N avuh descended the private staircase from his office, the spiraling steps taking him directly from the second floor to his war room inside the bunker.

There was a hidden door on the first floor, but it was hardly ever used, and the truth was that until today, he'd only used the bunker for war exercises that simulated the island being attacked.

That had never happened, and he'd never expected a mutiny either.

Not like this.

He'd expected one of his sons, real or adopted, to try to take over the island or just betray him out of spite. But that sort of thing wouldn't have devolved into an all-out war.

Still, the bunker was there, the steel-reinforced concrete designed to withstand even missile strikes.

As he entered, the heavy door sealed behind him with a pneumatic hiss.

Inside, his generals were assembled around the massive tactical table, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of dozens of screens showing surveillance feeds from across the island.

Everyone in the room was one of his adopted sons, though none dared call him Father.

They were his by claim, not by blood, but they didn't know that.

It was a fiction he'd maintained for millennia to obscure the true parentage of his actual offspring.

"Report." Navuh took his position at the head of the table.

"It was a well-coordinated and well-thought-out attack," Hakum said. "The armory is lost, and the secondary explosions from the stockpiled munitions are setting buildings on fire."

Navuh shifted his gaze to the screen showing the armory—or what remained of it.

The structure was a skeleton of twisted metal and flame, explosions still rippling through the ruins as cached ammunition cooked off in the heat.

The pillar of black smoke rising from it could probably be seen from orbit, let alone from all the surrounding islands.

"That's not just destruction," he said, his voice deadly quiet. "They're announcing to the world that this is not just a luxury sex resort. We will have to deploy people to all the neighboring islands with a cover story."

"That will be a problem because the planes and the fuel depot are gone," Vakon said. "Thankfully, they didn't know about the emergency storage, or they would have set fire to those as well."

They also didn't know about his other means to leave the island, but he wasn't going to mention that unless he needed to evacuate, and that wasn't going to happen. He would quash this rebellion long before they got anywhere close to him.

He turned his attention to the main tactical display, watching the pulsing red dots that indicated active combat zones.

There were far too many of them, spread across the island like a plague.

His enhanced soldiers, his greatest achievement and hope for the future, had not only rebelled but had somehow convinced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his regular forces to join them.

"How many?" he asked. He could count the combat zones, but that wouldn't tell him how many combatants were in each.

"We estimate at least eight hundred hostiles," Hakum said. "Possibly more. It's difficult to get accurate numbers because they're all wearing the same uniforms."

Navuh drummed his fingers against the table's surface. "We can't tell friend from foe until they start shooting."

He studied the patterns of movement on the screens, trying to discern some logic in the chaos.

The rebels were executing a coordinated strategy.

The destruction of the armory and fuel depot wasn't random violence—it was tactical.

They'd eliminated his heavy weapons advantage and also created massive distractions.

"They're going for the mansion," he said, the realization crystallizing in his mind. "Everything else is meant as a diversion. "

His generals exchanged glances, and Navuh could read their thoughts. They were wondering if their lord was seeing threats that weren't there, if paranoia was clouding his judgment.

Fools.

They didn't understand that paranoia was another word for pattern recognition, and that none of them were smart enough to see it.

Hakum shifted in his chair. "My lord, the mansion is heavily fortified. We have over five hundred soldiers in defensive positions."

"If the enhanced ones leave the fighting to their cohorts and gather to attack this position en masse, they'll shred our defenses here like paper." Navuh pulled up one of the old feeds on the main screen. "Watch this. Tell me what you see."

The footage showed a battle from three hours ago. A squad of regular soldiers had set up a defensive position behind overturned vehicles. They had superior numbers, better positioning, and overlapping fields of fire. By every metric of conventional warfare, they should have won easily.

Then the enhanced soldiers attacked, moving like liquid shadow. Bullets struck them, and they bled and staggered, but they kept coming. One enhanced soldier took an entire magazine to the chest and only slowed for a moment before launching himself over the barricade. What followed was slaughter.

"Now," Navuh said, switching to another feed, "watch this. "

This footage was more recent, from one of the checkpoints.

A small team of enhanced soldiers approached a defensive position.

But this time, instead of attacking, one of them stepped forward, hands raised.

He appeared to be speaking. The defending soldiers lowered their weapons, looking confused.

Then, as Navuh watched, they simply stepped aside and let the enhanced soldiers pass. Some of them even joined them.

"How?" Vakon breathed. "How are they doing that?"

Navuh's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. "At least one of them can compel. That's the only explanation."

"But that's impossible," Hakum protested. "Only you have such power over other immortals, my lord. Lokan could only compel humans, and he's not here."

"No, he's not." Navuh felt his jaw tighten.

His son had defected, run away, but he hadn't betrayed Navuh because he didn't know anything worthwhile.

Navuh had made sure of that. Lokan had also somehow overpowered an enhanced one, and Navuh couldn't help but be proud of him for that.

Especially now, when he saw how easily the enhanced soldiers defeated seasoned warriors.

"It would seem that Zhao's enhancements did more than just increase physical capabilities," Navuh said, his voice dripping venom.

"He mumbled about rewriting their neural pathways and permanently changing their brain chemistry.

I thought he was talking about making them stronger and faster with quicker responses.

But he produced this." Navuh waved at the screen .

He hadn't understood the science and hadn't asked for clarification because he hadn't wanted to appear ignorant. He should have been less prideful and asked more questions.

The war room fell silent except for the crackle of radio communications and the distant sound of explosions transmitted through the feeds. On the screens, Navuh saw his empire burning.

"My lord," Tharon spoke up. "If they can compel our forces to join them, how do we fight them?"

Navuh considered the options. "First, all communications go through this room.

No one acts on orders that don't come directly from me or through verified channels.

Second, we implement challenge protocols.

Anyone approaching our positions must be verified through predetermined codes that change every hour. "

"That will slow our response time," Hakum pointed out.

"Better slow than dead." Navuh pulled up a tactical overlay of the mansion and its defenses. "Third, we pull back our perimeter. Consolidate our forces here. Let them come to us."

"My lord," Vakon said hesitantly, "that would mean abandoning the rest of the island."

"They are coming for me, so this is where we need to make a stand," Navuh said. "Look at your screens. Count the combat zones. Calculate the rate of defection. We're fighting for survival. "

The truth of it hung in the air like poison gas. Several of his generals shifted uncomfortably, unused to hearing their invincible lord speak of survival rather than victory.

"What about the civilians?" Hakum asked. "The servants, the workers in the facilities?—"

"Irrelevant," Navuh cut him off. "Except for the Dormants, the humans are replaceable, and the Dormants have already been moved to a secure position. What matters is salvaging as many of our warriors as we can. Everything else can be replaced."

This rebellion was going to set him back hundreds of years.

He might have to execute the rebels, which meant a large chunk of the army he'd bred and built over thousands of years.

The failure felt like acid in his throat. Everyone accused him of being paranoid, but he hadn't been paranoid enough. It reminded him of something Mortdh had told him during one of his tirades.

"It's never what you are worried about that gets you in the end. The Fates like to toy with us."

His father had been the perfect example of that.

Mortdhhad planned tothreatenAhn with the bomb he’dsomehowsmuggledfrom the home planet, but Navuh hadn’tknownthat and sabotaged the plane so it would explodein the air and kill Mordth.

The plane had exploded,detonatingthe bomb over theassembly andending the era of gods on Earth .

The chain of events had been sosurrealthat Navuh had to conclude that the Fates hadorchestratedit all.

Only Annani and Areana remained, and Areana was inconsequential. He loved her like he had never loved anyone, but she was such a weak goddess that she barely deserved to be called one.

Annani was a different story. She was her father's daughter through and through, and she had been a thorn in his side over the millennia. If not for the technological help she'd given humans, he would have conquered the entire planet a long time ago.