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  “Come on, open,” he growled.

  The Mantas, however, were machines meant to withstand the stresses of supersonic flight and re-entry flights from the moon. As strong as Edwards was, he was nothing compared to the force of air pressure striking the atmosphere at multiples of the speed of sound. And with the Manta sealed tight by the interference put out by Charun or one of his partners, it was far too late to grab a few grens from his war bag.

  All he had were his Sin Eater and his Copperhead. It was formidable firepower when dealing with bandits or mindless mutants, but the mind behind the ever-approaching torch was encased in a body that had survived a crash with a Manta. Though his gun’s bullets moved at the same speed as a Manta in full acceleration, neither of them possessed the raw mass of the orbital transport. He might as well be throwing kernels of rice at the opposition.

  Edwards grimaced in his impotence. He could stay and provide a brief, valiant, but ultimately doomed resistance, or at least try to do something useful. Thinking ahead, he knew he had to opt for the latter choice.

  Edwards sighed, looking at the hammer in disgust, then ran, bounding off the Manta. Sticking around would be suicide, or worse, get him captured and used against the others. Running away was not going to be his course of action, though.

  Edwards raced to find a good spot wherein he could hide his bulk. At least the shadow suit’s fiber optics were still in working condition, picking up the surrounding dirt and scrub brush to disguise him among them. It wasn’t invisibility, but it was still great camouflage. The suit’s fibers were also radar-absorbent, so that meant he might not be picked up by any form of detection.

  The environmental seals in place with his faceplate also prevented his scent from escaping the skintight garment. With all of these precautions, however, Edwards was still worried. This wasn’t his first go-around with entities of superhuman weaponry or ability. One of the previous had strung him around like a marionette, turning him from an individual fighting for the future of the planet to a foot soldier trying to conquer it.

  There was a bowel-chilling sense of dread as the blazing sun died down. Two winged figures hung in the air at least a hundred feet above the hammer. Edwards almost flinched as the faceplate optics zoomed in on them, almost as if they could hear the electronics focusing. He held his breath in an effort to further lower his profile. With his body mass draped over the Copperhead and Sin Eater, there were no metal objects to reflect radar pulses or show up magnetically, he hoped.

  His thoughts were racing, so if either of these two were telepaths, they would hear him as if he were screaming at the top of his lungs. His fists clenched and he fought to control himself, to deaden his frantic mind. All the while, he hoped that the faceplate was still recording the image of these two entities.

  Though they were winged, neither set of appendages on either appeared to move, not Charun and his leathery, demonic adornment, or the other’s feathered limbs. The other was far from being Charun’s equal in ugliness. Instead of a scaled, lipless crack with curved tusks sweeping up from his jaw, her mouth was lush with lips like flower petals or succulent as orange wedges and the color of wine. Instead of a scraggly black mane, thinning and pierced with yellowed horns, her brow was smooth, with auburn tresses cascading in looping curls that spiraled down past her shoulders.

  Charun’s skin was blue-gray, holding the pallor of a near-mummified corpse, despite the vital and bulging muscles beneath that ashen, crinkled hide. Hers was deep and richly tanned, vibrant and glowing from within; a decidedly Mediterranean bronze gained by long hours taking in the sun. She, like he, was topless, her full, pendulous breasts jostling as they were framed by an X of leather straps that seemed to connect her to either the eerily motionless wings or the quiver across her shoulder.

  Both of them were the same height, nearing eight feet from toe-tip to the top of their heads.

  In one hand she held a great, hornlike torch that had faded to merely the brightness of ordinary flame now. In the other she held a bow. But even with his greatest magnification on the shadow suit optics, he could not see the string on the ancient-seeming weapon. Instead, where the bowstring would have been notched, on each arm of the bow there was a bejeweled block of golden metal that shimmered with the same brassy sheen of a Gear Skeleton. There was a hand-molded grip in the center, with a stubby projection making it seem like some form of pistol around which a bow had been built.

  Edwards couldn’t help but think that this device might be more than gaudy, ornamental, ancient weaponry and more a piece of alien technology. The resemblance of segments to secondary orichalcum, the same Annunaki alloy in the Olympian war suits, was all the evidence he needed to make the assumption.

  Speaking of the devil, the woman extended her arm with the torch. With a flash of brilliant flame, the ground suddenly came alive with several pillars of sprouting light. Edwards’s stomach twisted as either his eyes adjusted to the brilliance or the shapes of the pillars solidified into human forms. There were two Gear Skeletons, and from Brigid’s briefing, Edwards could recognize the Spartans as having the same ID numbers as those reported missing.

  There were about twelve soldiers with the two battle robots, and the Cerberus Away Team member let out a low hiss of his retained breath, inhaling to replace the stale air. The armored warriors were clad in the familiar mix of modern Magistrate polycarbonate and classical Greek leather armor.

  The faceplates were open on their helmets, though, and through the empty space, Edwards made out the white-eyed, slack-jawed expressions of the Olympian soldiers. They moved with normal agility and walked apace, but there was literally nothing but pinholes in the middle of their eyes.

  Edwards’s molars ground together until they locked in place. Not good. Not at all, he thought.

  The fluid nature of their movements indicated that the blank-eyed soldiers were in perfect health and ability, but the unblinking, slack nature of their features warned of something darker, deadlier, at work than hammers capable of smashing Mantas from the sky or torches that burned with the brightness of a sun. These were thralls, lost completely to the control of an outside entity.

  And yet, for the soulless, zombified expressions, they were spread out, searching carefully for any sign of Edwards, their guns at arms. The two Gear Skeletons walked over and seized the Manta, picking it up as if it were a toy, further testimony to the kind of raw power of ancient Annunaki robotics. The mecha began walking to the west, carrying the aircraft in their powerful arms.

  “The pilot might not have gone far.” The woman spoke, lowering closer.

  Again, the motionless nature of those wings, despite their classic angelic or demonic shape, dug into Edwards’s nerves. It only took him a few moments to realize that the appendages wouldn’t be natural, but artificial constructs designed to match a human’s view of a winged deity. He’d been around with Cerberus long enough to know when technology was the explanation of something occurring in mythology, be it the hammer of a god or something as simple as flight.

  The wings were silent and motionless on the backs of Charun and his beautiful partner, which took away one possibility that they were some manner of jet pack or rocket belt. Indeed, the eerie quiet pretty much narrowed things down to some manner of antigravity system. As to why their flying devices were so similar to wings…well, even the Manta had wings. It just made flight and maneuvering easier. He couldn’t see flaps or ailerons, but given their biological appearance, they could have been supple, enabling them to steer.

  This also explained the lack of pain or reaction to injury when Edwards had put a .50-caliber round through Charun’s wing. He saw the scorched hole, flesh split and tattered at the edges of the “wound.” His optics couldn’t detect any mechanics sandwiched between layers of leathery skin, but nor could he see blood vessels or other signs that the wing was alive.

  As if on silent, telepathic cue, Charun looked down at his injury, the limb bending around so he could look at it more closely. T
hat tusked maw turned up at the corners in a smile.

  The woman looked across and met his smile with her own. Almost playfully, Charun brought the bullet hole up to eye level and peered at his partner through the aperture, which elicited a laugh from the angelic female.

  It looked like a true friendship between the two entities, reminiscent of what he had seen between Kane and Brigid, the ability to communicate entire ideas in just a few gestures, because the audio pickups on his suit’s hood were not conveying anything more than breathing between the two. The only words she had spoken seemed to be toward the slave stock searching the Manta’s landing area.

  That spoke to either telepathy between the flying pair or an intimate friendship that often did not require a single word. Edwards, at this point, was desperately hoping it wasn’t telepathy. Such doomie powers would make all of the camouflage and hiding a moot, useless point. Thankfully, it didn’t seem as if the zombified Olympian troops had any more special senses as he lay, still as a rock, his suit’s camouflage system making him look like inert stone and soil piled as a short berm.

  A soldier walked to within inches of Edwards’s motionless form, even looked right down at him, then continued on. The big brute of a man made a convincing pile of rocks, but that did not give him the freedom to breathe a sigh of relief. Instead he kept frozen, muscles tense to the point of aching. His breathing ran shallow and he only allowed himself to blink when his eyes were dried and burning.

  It seemed like hours before the soldiers moved on and Charun and his “bride” rose further into the sky. She waved her torch, almost dismissively, and suddenly streaks of the same light that deposited the Olympian zombies on the ground flashed up, sucked into the tongue. Charun alighted on the ground just long enough to lift the massive hammer.

  Edwards didn’t move his head, didn’t do more than sweep his eyes to the periphery of his vision at either angle. He waited, remaining still despite the growing ache and fatigue in his shoulders and neck.

  He didn’t know how long it was, but finally the heavy tread of Gear Skeleton feet resounded again. Edwards almost didn’t want to relax.

  “Edwards!” a voice shouted. When he turned his head toward the sound of that call, he could feel tendons popping at the base of his skull, making it feel as if hot, wet gore splashed down on his neck. He winced and gasped.

  “Here,” he croaked.

  A slender but muscular figure raced to his side. It was Kane.

  He helped Edwards to his feet.

  Looking around, he could see one of the suits, complete with a quiver of javelins and brassy, steel-wool curls flowing down over her shoulders. That had to have been the new Artem15.

  “We’ve been trying to contact you for an hour,” Kane said.

  Edwards pulled off his shadow suit hood. Beads of sweat splashed and evaporated in the cool air of the Greek afternoon.

  Kane tilted his head and looked at the Commtact plate on his friend’s jaw. He snapped it off its mounting and looked closer at it. “Your Commtact looks like it burned out. What happened to the Manta?”

  “Charun and his girlfriend showed up,” Edwards explained. “With two of the missing mobile suits. The suits picked up the Manta.”

  “Girlfriend?” Kane asked, fishing into a belt pouch for a replacement plate. Once he did, he handed it to Edwards, who donned the new communicator.

  Almost instantly he heard Brigid Baptiste’s voice. “Give me a description of this girlfriend,” she ordered.

  Edwards launched into his recorded memory, then tapped the interface on his suit’s forearm. “I’m also sending you the vid my suit captured.”

  “That is Vanth, and her torch is of equal power to Charun’s hammer,” Brigid explained. “And, yes, they are partners. Psychopomps.”

  “Psychos? Yeah, I can see that,” Edwards grumbled. “Psychopomp…that’s not the same as crazy, right?”

  “The term ‘psychopomp’ is Greek. Literally translated, it is ‘guide of the soul,’’’ Brigid told them both. “Choosers of the slain. Angels or sub-deities who take people to the afterlife.”

  “That explains the zombie-like appearance of the Olympian soldiers searching for me,” Edwards added.

  “The theft of their spirit is a concerning development,” Brigid mused over the Commtact. “As do Charun’s recovery of his hammer and the disappearance of our second and currently only flight-capable Manta.”

  Kane frowned. “You said this torch could spit out the bodies and then pick them up again. Don’t yell at me for being wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like the Threshold or Lakesh’s interphaser.”

  “If that,” Edwards mused. “It could be like one of those traps in the old vids. The ones with the four guys fighting the ghosts?”

  “Turning the humans and the mecha into energy, then storing it in that format?” Brigid inquired. “And, yes, Kane, I can see the similarities in your assessment, as well.”

  Edwards frowned. “Great.”

  “What’s wrong?” Kane asked.

  “I’m getting used to this crazy shit,” Edwards grumbled.

  Kane clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on. There’s room for you on Artem15’s other arm.”

  Edwards nodded and the two men were picked up, gingerly, with a gentle touch belying the robot skeleton’s massive might. Once they were settled into the crooks of the giant’s elbows, it turned and began to run; long, looping strides that crossed first fifteen, then twenty, then finally thirty feet in a single bound.

  The wind in Edwards’s face was cool and refreshing, a release from the paralyzed caution and stony patience he’d had to endure while waiting for the arrival of his allies.

  He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let everyone down. No matter how much information Brigid and Kane got from his report and his vid.

  Chapter 6

  Smaragda sat at the conference table, her shoulders slumped, shocks of her white bangs hanging low over her baggy eyes. She stared at the top of the table, but she was so deadened, so numbed by the trauma of losing her platoon, she didn’t even register the grain of the faux wooden veneer topping the furniture in front of her. All she could do was fight the need to close her eyes, to dispel the horrors of her platoon’s swallowing, to keep the echoes of their screams from ringing in her ears.

  She was clad in a nearly shapeless sweatshirt that covered her arms, hiding the recent work she’d carved into it with a razor. The flesh of her forearms was heavily checkered now and was raw from the disinfectant she’d poured over the dozens of new cuts to prevent sepsis. Smaragda hadn’t cut herself since she was a mere teenager, the focus and élan of being with the New Olympian military stealing not just privacy for the act, but also drowning out the need for controlling her pain.

  Now her forearms stank of hydrogen peroxide, dampened somewhat by the loose bandages and the rumpled sleeves of her top. She didn’t know if her acknowledgment of the odors was just a strong memory or if she truly was literally reeking of it. Either way, it was too late now as the lights came on in the conference room, people filing in through different doors. Smaragda’s eyes rose slightly and she watched her queen roll herself along on her wheelchair.

  Their eyes met as they were at the same level, and Smaragda instinctively looked back down, wishing that she could wither away, shrinking into the ground and out of the presence of Queen Diana.

  She pressed her forearms harder against the tabletop and the pressure on her skin allowed slowly healing snips and cuts to pop open. It wasn’t the same kind of rush as she got from pressing a razor blade against it, but the pain still clouded her perceptions, taking her out of the moment, out of her self-loathing for…surviving.

  Conversations murmured around the corners of her consciousness and it was something that helped her to muffle the distant memories of her dying friends. If only she’d stood her ground…at least she wouldn’t have felt so useless. No, she would have had the beautiful darkness of oblivion, her body and soul swa
llowed completely by the Stygian cloud, her suffering ended by its ravenous greed.

  “So we have a new development,” Diana announced, her voice cutting sharply through both the conference room and into Smaragda’s numbed mind. “Our people are still alive.”

  Smaragda looked up, staring at her queen, her hands clenching into tight fists so that even her closely trimmed nails threatened to spear through her palms. “What?”

  “They are alive and under some form of mind control, or have had their bodies commandeered by the Etruscan menaces,” Diana clarified for her. “We have video of both the intruders and our missing people, thanks to Edwards over there.”

  Smaragda glanced in the direction Diana pointed and saw a brawny, brooding figure, he having cast his eyes downward.

  “Just trying to get as much as I could. I sure as hell was useless in terms of fighting those two,” Edwards grumbled.

  Smaragda turned and glanced toward the screen, the lights dimming.

  “Myrto, see if you can recognize anything off of the initial parts of the video,” Diana ordered. The queen’s voice held more than a little concern, something the disgraced soldier couldn’t understand. If anything, she should have been executed for such a disgusting failure.

  Why worry about me? Smaragda mused silently. Why even have me here at this table?

  But even as she did so, a small monitor was slid to her section of the table and she looked at the flying entities.

  “Did you see anything like that?” Brigid Baptiste asked.

  Smaragda shook her head. “The only thing any of us saw was a literal flood of dark, churning smoke. However, we were in the woods, and I couldn’t see through the canopy of trees.”