Angel of Doom (33 page)

“Good,” Grant said. “The weapons systems?”

“Hephaestus was told not to alter them,” Brigid answered. She tapped her forearm. “You'll have the remote piloting controls on your shadow suit forearm display.”

Grant looked down. “This looks awfully familiar…”

“Naturally. We needed you to be familiar with the operation of the Manta,” Brigid explained.

Grant nodded. “Hang on…I'm going to give us a few more minutes before the armors harass us.”

Brigid nodded. “That was anticipated.”

* * *

A
S SOON AS
Grant was plugged in to the Manta's remote-control network, suddenly he was surrounded in his hood by all the displays and control layouts necessary. As he moved his hands, he realized that he was inside of a virtual cockpit, and he immediately took control of the joystick and the throttle. Even the newly mounted weapon systems were part of the computer-generated command module on the Manta. Suddenly, the Cerberus pilot was where he'd been hours ago.

And the Manta switched to hover mode, guns deploying as he flicked controls.

At the edge of the clearing the three robots of Charun and Vanth stood, looking up at the newcomer and infiltrator. They each had some form of heavy machine gun in their hands, carried as if they were gigantic rifles. Before they could do anything, though, Grant activated the Browning machine guns on his Manta, spraying the lead ship with a wave of half-inch-wide, armor-piercing slugs. While the bullets didn't penetrate or damage the secondary orichalcum frame, the steel plates that protected the cockpit of Grant's first target suddenly became a sieve.

Hot lead burned into the pilot of the alien-controlled robot and its semifluid body structure did not make it immune to impacts capable of liquefying armor plate. The control couch beneath the amorphous pilot was also chewed awry, the internal systems of the Stygian armor bursting apart in a wave of destruction.

Gutted by heavy-caliber fire, the robot toppled backward.
The others reacted to the sudden rain of fire and doom, scrambling to evade the hovering Manta.

Grant didn't intend to let his element of surprise get away from him for a moment, however. He hit the throttle and tore off, swooping low enough above the Gear Skeletons that they were bowled over by the Manta's thrusters.

Sent out of control by the sudden rush, Grant swung his ship upward, armed the unaimed artillery rocket pods on the ship, then looped back toward the ground. Missiles—77 mm—ripped from the pods, and struck either directly or in close proximity to Charun's robot minions. Hi-exes erupted with such violence, Grant could feel the tremors through the soles of his boots. He couldn't see what was happening to the twin robots he'd hammered with artillery rockets as he swooped the Manta up and away to keep the ship from crashing.

At least not right away. Within a moment he was able to get a rear camera view of the ground, and the dust-penetrating infrared lenses saw that while the nearly invulnerable frames of the robots were still extant, everything else that had been bolted on or was sitting in the cockpit had been forcibly removed by the pressures released on detonation.

Grant swung the Manta back toward the section of wood they were placed in. Along the way, he swept the skies in the direction of Charun's pyramid. The winged demigod was over there, but he was torn between the sudden mayhem under his roof and the violence occurring against his soldiers.

Grant brought the ship down and landed it in a clearing just large enough for the Manta. Security straps ran all along the top of the sleek ship, as well as new cowlings that could shield the riders outside from high winds.

“I was wondering why it looked and maneuvered a little
different,” Grant mused as he climbed up to the cockpit. “Space for six.”

“And the pilot,” Brigid said. “There are also replacements for the less-lethal ammunition in the compartment with you.”

Grant reached in, pulling out two war bags. He took a peek in. “Real shotgun and 40 mm shells. Not the less-lethal.”

“I said replacements, did I not?” Brigid asked.

Grant grinned. “What happened to getting tired about us talking about enough firepower?”

Brigid strapped herself onto the hull. “That goes out the window when you go in my brain and make me a puppet. You can hand me my Copperhead and gren launcher when we get to the pyramid.”

Grant closed the cockpit, advancing through the pre-liftoff checklist with a broad smile.

This time, the gods were going to be the ones to feel a few thunderbolts.

The wave of disorientation passed for Diana Pantopoulos and she was suddenly in a whole new area wherein old human weapons and artifacts were on display. Between her and two of her personal squadron mates was the interphaser that released them into the pyramid of Charun and Vanth. In the base of the device was a powerful transmitter that, by all accounts, should be drowning out the strange signal that had seized and controlled the hundreds of thousands of people on the Etruscan peninsula.

The three of them arrived without wheelchairs, but that was really a matter of convenience when they were around people who were taller than they were. Diana moved along on all fours, her strong arms and the stumps of her amputated legs giving her as much mobility as a young, swift monkey. Sure enough, Diana was glad to see the Spartan units up against the wall, their Sandcat armor plate chests open. So secure were the demigods that they hadn't left guards.

Why would they? They assumed that their seizure of this pyramid had cut it off from outside interference. Brigid Baptiste and the science team at Cerberus Redoubt had been doing a lot of number crunching, mind-bending dimensional physics that allowed them to pierce the bubble of power severing the parallax point from the rest of the planet.

“This is going to suck if they emptied the guns and the rest of the gear,” one of Diana's squadron mates pointed out.

“We'll still have the Skeletons' limbs,” Diana said. She snatched a handhold on the calf of one of the suits, and her well-muscled arms lifted her up. Climbing was easy, thanks to the fact that each of the amputee pilots present was a victim of lower-body trauma rather than upper-body stress. Every amputee was given hours and hours of rehabilitation training to render them able to move around, wheels or not.

Diana and her two partners, however, had been chosen for the fact that they had, pound-for-pound, the best upper-body strength and agility of any of the New Olympian pilots.

All that time in the gym with the weight machines made Diana feel a hell of a lot better, especially as now she was back on the front lines with her fellow warriors. She swung herself into the cockpit of the Spartan with grace and ease. The interface was still intact and she plugged it into her cyber nodule.

Once connected to the mobile armor suit, she was immediately back in business. The hands of the suit closed her cockpit for her as she checked all the displays. “Charged Energy Modules at full strength, guns are loaded.”

“Same here,” called her allies. Even through the closed shells of their control nodes, they heard the cries of alarm.

Artem15 took her first steps in a long time, crossing the arsenal and stooping to see a group of slender, pallid creatures racing down the hall. Each of them bore a rifle and opened fire on her as she appeared in the doorway. Bullets pinged impotently against the armored skin of her suit, and for a moment Artem15 thought that these poor, deluded beings could be spared. Then she realized that
these aliens had taken more than twenty of her soldiers captive but also had thousands more under mind control, and they were rushing to the armory in an effort to prevent any rescue attempt.

The shoulder-mounted machine guns swiveled to life at her mental command, and she rested on the knuckles of her massive hands, allowing the weapons plenty of room to fire on the aliens. The twin light weapons followed the focus of her vision, at least in relation to the view screen in front of her face, and in the next moment both of them erupted, spitting thunder and fire.

The two Stygians at the front of the formation were still cutting loose with their rifles when slashing streams of 7.62 mm bullets ripped them in two. One of the M-240s had a rate of fire of 950 rounds per minute. With two guns cutting loose simultaneously, the wall of death hacking into the pallid aliens was an obscene display of force. It took only a few seconds to turn half a dozen armed troopers to six mangled, shredded corpses lying in pools of gore and burst tissue. The slain creatures were ignored for now as Artem15 and her allies headed out into the corridor.

The interphaser housing's jammer had made it so that Brigid and the rest of the CAT teams could inform Diana of the setup for the pyramid, one that now appeared on a data monitor just off her shoulder. If there was something that gave the New Olympian a sense of hope, it was that they were under the direction and guidance of one of the most thorough and intelligent women in the world. Having used the passive GPS information from CAT Beta's suits and their exploration of the lower levels of the pyramid, Artem15 and her Spartan guard were fully aware of the path to the captives of the Etruscan gods.

Artem15 led the way, her escorts pausing only to rip a door off of its hinges and jam it into the rock as a barrier
against pursuit. The quarters for the fifteen-foot automatons were tight enough that they had to move down corridors in single file, but the last thing they needed was for Charun and Vanth to show up and easily make their way in pursuit of the mobile suits.

“Fiddy, set up a barricade here,” Artem15 ordered. “Weapons free. Especially the explosive spears.”

“Yeah. I remember the briefing about Vanth and her explosive arrows,” Spartan 50, nicknamed Fiddy, answered. He accepted the sheaths for gren-tipped spears from Spartan 46 and her own.

“On me, Four-Six,” Artem15 added. “We're going to look for a way out for the prisoners.”

With that, the three robots became two. Artem15 hated leaving one of her own in the line of fire, but there were too many people in need of help and there had to be something that could hold the Etruscan deities at bay.

This being a Spartan expeditionary suit, and not the true Artem15, she didn't have her heat spear, a “hero suit” weapon. Instead the war spears were simply old RPG shells on sticks, thrown with more than sufficient robotic strength to burst the impact fuse on the warheads. Artem15's arsenal was both the standard explosive shells and a superheated spearhead on a conducting staff that could carve steel and stone let alone flesh.

That would have been nice to have, but she'd make mayhem with what she had. The shoulder guns alone and the powerful, wall-smashing fists of the Gear Skeleton would have to suffice.

And then, Artem15 and Spartan 46 were on the balcony overlooking the prison of the pit. The depth and breadth of the chamber was nothing short of epic, easily eclipsing every other structure she'd seen except for the Tartarus Crack in which Marduk had left his vast clone vats and
the hundreds of ancient automatons that would become the backbone of the New Olympian military.

Looking through her cameras, Diana could see that the people down there seemed to be awakening from their hypnotic slumber. Not just humans, but also livestock in the form of cattle, sheep and horses were present. The yaps of dogs and yowls of cats also managed to reach her ears.

The pyramid shook.

“Fiddy?”

Another distant explosion resounded. “Winged bitch showed up and tried to impress me with her boom stick!”

“Fall back if you have to,” Artem15 ordered.

“If,” Spartan 50 added with defiance.

“As you were,” Artem15 returned. “Come on. Let's look to see if there's a path out of here for the crowd. There had to be a way in for all of them, and not down the narrow ladders.”

Spartan 46 grunted in agreement. “I can't recall the last time I saw sheep doing ladders, do you?”

Diana let out a chuckle. “Climbing time. We'll look for a major ramp.”

The two robots dug their finger and toe claws into the wall and scaled their way down into the pit, aware of the precious cargo they had to protect from the demons above and their own footsteps.

* * *

T
HE
M
ANTA ALIT
on its gear and Kane hit the release on his harness. He carried his shotgun again, and this time instead of rubber slugs and tear-gas shells, he was armed for war. He paused only to grab a pack of spare shells for the weapon. Kane knew that using a gren launcher in close quarters would bring as much harm to him and his allies as it would to his opposition, given the general
nature of the weapon, but these rounds were meant for punching deep through light armor and detonating inside their target without spraying indiscriminate shrapnel everywhere.

He hooked the ammo pack to his harness and thumbed the explosive 12-gauge shells into its tubular magazine. Charun had been pulled from the battlefield, even as his Stygian pilots had been torn to shreds under Grant's counterattack, and that meant there were allies in the depths of the pyramid who'd engaged Vanth and his other monstrous minions.

The last thing he wanted was to have even a fully armed and equipped Olympian Spartan stand alone against the two alien entities and their forces. Certainly, the pair had lost control of their amorphous giant, the creature who'd swallowed three such warrior robots and a platoon of soldiers, but that didn't mean they were completely disarmed.

Kane reached the peak of the mountain and saw that Charun had left the hatch open. He caught sight of a shadow moving at the bottom of the ladder, so the Cerberus leader pumped a single shot into the hole. The detonation of his shotgun gren was loud, and a bloodied Stygian guard limped into view, holding the broken pieces of his rifle in his hands.

Kane slung the shotgun and snagged the ladder. The friction of his grasp and the pressure of his boots on the sides of the ladder helped him slide down in a controlled drop that deposited him into the entrance foyer of the pyramid. The stunned and wounded Stygian let the broken pieces of his rifle fall away, one tri-fingered hand plucking a knife from his belt even as Kane let go of the ladder and dropped the rest of the way to the ground.