The Age Of Zeus (53 page)

"Zeus gave Aphrodite the order to brainwash one of you over the phone, I'm sure of it. She wouldn't have done it except on his say-so. And to me that is the final straw. A truly unacceptable, insidious act. The mark of a coward and a rat. When he was a boy, I adored Xander. Now he's an adult, and has turned out the way he has, I believe more than ever that the only responsible course of action is to wipe him off the face of the planet."

If he was trying to elicit agreement or sympathy from either Sam or Ramsay, he got none. "I'm going to check on the Minotaur," Sam said.

The monster, languishing in his foetid pen, leapt to his feet and capered with glee the moment he laid eyes on Sam. His - yes, his - excited lowing sounded like peals of laughter, deafening in the confined space. He had lost weight, a lot of it, and sores had broken out on his muzzle and chest. Sam spent several minutes scratching the top of his head; he wouldn't let her stop. And it was only after being petted for some considerable time that he thought to eat the food she had brought.

Sam noted the heaps of untouched, rotting vegetable matter that littered the floor of the pen. "Hunger strike, eh?" she said. "You poor thing. I don't blame you. But I'm back now, and I'm not abandoning you again. I'm staying 'til this is all over."

The Minotaur snorted approvingly, as if he under-stood, and resumed munching a head of cabbage.

Then, mid-mouthful, he stopped.

He looked up. Cocked his head.

His red eyes were wide and wary.

"What is it? What's up?"

Stupid to ask questions of a speechless and uncomprehending beast, but Sam did it anyway. She was unnerved. The Minotaur had become agitated, as if he sensed something, detected something she could not. Something wrong.

Then he let out a deep, growling low. The ridge of coarse hair leading down from his scalp to between his shoulderblades bristled.

Danger.

Sam was on her feet in an instant, making for the command centre. The Minotaur lumbered after her.

And at that point, all through the bunker, alarms started to sound.

59. RAID ON BLEANEY

T
his was not a drill.

The Titans had rehearsed what to do in the almost inconceivably unlikely event of the Olympians launching an attack on Bleaney. Make for the command centre, suit up as fast as possible, go out to repel invaders.

All seven of them converged now in that large chamber, along with the techs and the Minotaur. There were moments of clamour and chaos as Patanjali and others checked the island's perimeter cameras to establish who and where the threat was, while the Titans scrambled into their battle garb. They had their armouring technique down to a fine art now, but still none of them could achieve full combat readiness in under ten minutes.

"South promontory secure," Patanjali announced. "Nothing there. Looking at the eastern shoreline now. Nothing on any of those cameras either. Come on, come on, show yourselves. It's got to be Olympians. With our facial recognition software, this can't be a bunch of boat trippers landing for a picnic. The emergency alarms wouldn't've triggered. Scanning along the western shoreline now... oh shit."

"Which of them?" Landesman barked, strapping on his chestplate.

"Uh..."

"Come on, out with it. How many?"

Patanjali had paled. "A lot, sir. Too many."

On the large screens, they were coming up one of the mainland-side beaches, striding purposefully across the shingles. Sam counted six in total. Not the full Pantheonic complement by any means, but enough. Enough. Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hades and Zeus. Naturally Zeus. All the big guns, the heavy hitters. And sauntering behind them, was that... could it be...?

Hermes?

Hermes. It
was
him. Caduceus, winged helmet and sandals - all present and correct. Alive after all. Looking unharmed, intact, as if he'd been nowhere near Harryhausen's grenade when it went off. He had Demeter to thank for that, no doubt.

And yet, Sam thought, it wasn't Hermes. Not quite. There was something about him, something different but at the same time naggingly familiar...

No time to worry about that. She slapped her helmet on and triggered the visor display. The suit ran its preliminary diagnostic, and she felt the servos humming around her, and she was armoured again, and Tethys, and powerful, and it was good.

Not just good.

Fantastic.

"This is it," she heard Sparks murmuring beside her. The other woman was fumbling with her own helmet, hands trembling. "This is really it. O Jesus, Lord, saviour of my soul, I ask you this morning to protect me and keep me and let me defeat these heathens who profane the word 'god.' I pray for your guidance and blessing in this, our hour of tribulation."

Sam helped her fit the helmet on. "Just do what you can, Kayla - Theia. Take the fight to the Olympians. Give them no quarter. If this is to be our final clash with them, let's make it a battle to remember."

"How the hell did they find us, that's what I want to know," said Ramsay, now Hyperion. "Somebody sell us out?"

A terrible thought came to Sam. Prothero? Could it have been? She had told him everything about the Titans, after all.

But Dai Prothero would never betray her. Never. She dismissed the possibility outright, although the fact that the idea had even occurred to her left a bitter mental aftertaste.

"Ah, who cares?" said Barrington, Iapetus, slotting shells into his pump-action shotgun. "We're taking the bastards on, face to face, man to man. It's what we wanted, isn't it? Up to now all we've been doing is skirm-ishing. About time we had a proper ding-dong go."

"I couldn't agree more," said Tsang, Crius. "They've come here in numbers. That'll just make it easier to obliterate them."

"Jamie!" Cronus called out.

McCann came bounding over. "Sir!"

"Whatever happens out there, I want you to commence evac procedures."

McCann blinked. "Sir?"

"We can't guarantee the integrity of the bunker, especially with Hermes back in action, and our location has been compromised anyway. You know what to do. All noncombatant personnel up top, along with the bare essential support equipment. We're in luck - Captain Fuller's still moored at the jetty. Get everything and everyone on board the boat and set sail. We'll keep the fighting as far from you as we can. Come on, hop to it. Time's wasting."

McCann whirled and started doling out orders to the techs: dismantle this, unplug that. All at once he no longer seemed boyish.

Sam approached the Minotaur, who was bewildered by all the noise and confusion and the scent of dread in the air. He shrank from her in her battlesuit.

"It's me," she said soothingly. "You know my voice. Me."

The monster relaxed a little.

"I need you to stay put. For your own good. You can't come with me. Stay down here where you'll be safe."

But the Minotaur tagged along after her as she headed for the exit with the other Titans.

"No," she insisted, thinking this was like something out of a Lassie movie, "you can't come. It's too dangerous."

"Dangerous?" said Hyperion. "For a four-hundred-pound beast?"

"Or for us," Sam told him. "Who knows whose side he'll be on? Once he sees who's up there..."

"He'll be on our side," Hyperion stated firmly. "He'll be on whatever side
you
are on."

"You think?"

He nodded. "And we could surely do with the extra muscle."

Sam turned back to the Minotaur, who was showing absolutely no intention of doing anything but go with her.

"Fine," she said, and on she and her fellow Titans went, the Minotaur too, up to the entrance, where the Titans mustered in a line as the main door rolled apart in front of them.

"Comms on," Sam said. "Titans, sound off. Tethys."

"Cronus."

"Hyperion."

"Rhea."

"Crius."

"Theia."

"Iape-bloody-tus."

The Minotaur grunted.

"Out we go, then," Sam said. No big speech. No pre-battle rallying address. Nobody needed reminding how grave the situation was. All knew.

Six Olympians were marching northward up the island.

Seven Titans, and a monster, strode south to engage.

60. SCREAMERS
AND RUMBLERS

A
shallow valley, a long spoon-scoop in the island's surface, became the battlefield. At the northern end of it there was the broken black ruin of a croft, where the Titans embedded themselves, hunkering among the jagged runs of wall and tuning their suits' camouflage to appropriately dark hues. The Olympians approached from the other end, striding in a confident phalanx. Artemis with her silver spear shouldered, her twin brother Apollo with an arrow nocked, their half-brother Ares swinging his battleaxe - these three formed the front rank. Zeus came next. Hermes and Hades hung back, the rearguard. Clouds were darkening the firmament. Drumbeats of thunder sounded.

Sam was sure of only one thing: she might be about to die but she would not sell her life cheaply. Oddly, hearteningly, the fear was not as great as she'd thought it would be. What she felt was relief more than anything. This looked like being the final showdown, the culmination of all the guerrilla attacks, the climax of the war's gradual escalation. In a way it seemed the most honest method of settling the thing. Titan versus Olympian, out in the open, in broad daylight. No more skulking around, no more hit-and-run sneakiness. Today Titanomachy II would be resolved one way or the other. In terms of raw power the Titans were outmatched, there was no question about that, but then again, so far the battlesuits hadn't been pushed to their absolute limits, nor had every weapon at the Titans' disposal been used in the field yet.

"We see you!" Ares boomed across the length of the valley. "Lurking there. Come on out. Show yourselves like proper warriors. I ache for combat. I yearn to bathe in the blood of my enemies."

"And I yearn to stick this shotgun up your arse," Iapetus muttered.

Ares beat a fist against his breastplate, making the copper ring like a gong. "How impatiently have I awaited this moment," he went on. "Since first you began your challenge to our supremacy, I have wished for nothing else. Come out and face me, you snivelling weaklings, and learn what war really means."

"Titans," said Sam. "Shock and disorientation to start with. We go out and hit them hard, screamers and rumblers on. Theia, Hyperion, Rhea, you're with me. The rest of you stay down, cover us at the flanks. Enfilading fire to keep the Olympians hemmed in. Got that? Good. On my mark. Three, two, one...
Now!
"

The four Titans sprang from hiding, simultaneously tapping their wristpads to activate inbuilt sonic assault arrays. High-frequency squeals shrilled like invisible drills from shoulder-mounted directional speakers, while deep bursts of infrasound pulsed outward, reverberating below the threshold of audibility, felt rather than heard, like an earthquake in the bones. The battlesuits afforded some insulation against the effects of this aural battery, but still it was like being at the heart of a squall, the world shrieking and thrumming and unsteady. Sam plunged across the grass towards the Olympians feeling as though she might stumble at any step. It didn't help that there were tussocks and rabbit holes everywhere, threatening to trip her. She forged on, and she could hear someone howling like a banshee, as loud as if not louder than her suit's screamer, and she thought it might be her.