The Age Of Zeus

by James Lovegrove

  "I don't know!" McCann gasped. "Some kind of breakdown in Soleil's suit."

  "I thought the damn things were supposed to be indestructible."

  "I never said that. Clearly there's a design flaw. Maybe the servomotor housings need to be hardened, or, or... I just don't know. If I had the suit I could examine it, run some tests..."

  "Well, you can't," Ramsay snarled, "on account of it's buried under half a hillside in the middle of goddamn Wales, along with Soleil. And I'm holding you personally responsible."

  "It wasn't my fault," McCann protested.

  "Oh yeah?" Ramsay drew him away from the wall and slammed him back into it hard enough to wind him. "You built the fuckers. Whose else fault can it be?"

  "Rick."

  "Sam, back off."

  Sam placed a hand on Ramsay's shoulder. "That's enough. We get it. You're upset. But so's Jamie. So are all of us."

  Ramsay peered at her hand as though it was dog dirt. Sam, taking the hint, withdrew it.

  "Upset?" he said. "Let me tell you, the last thing I am is upset. I'm mad as hell, is what I am. I just lost a man. I was unit leader on that op, and I lost a man, which I wouldn't have if Scotty here had done his job properly."

  He thrust McCann against the wall a third time, forearm pushing upwards on the engineer's trachea so that McCann was forced to go on tiptoes to avoid strangulation.

  "Taking it out on Jamie isn't going to help anyone," Sam said.

  "Oh no?" Ramsay retorted. "'Cause it's sure as hell making me feel better."

  "It won't bring Soleil back, it won't undo what's done. Rick, what happened in that cave was an accident. You know that."

  "Do I?"

  "Deep down you do. Soleil tripped, and something in her battlesuit took a knock and broke. If any good is to come of this, it's the fact that now we know there's a potential problem with all the suits that we didn't know was there before. Something Jamie can look into and put right. Right, Jamie?"

  Avidly McCann nodded.

  "Oh, that's twisted fucking logic," said Ramsay. "A Titan died - on our first fucking outing, what's more - but hey, it's OK, look on the bright side, at least it's shown us that we're all going to have to twinkletoe around like ballerinas from now on if we don't want to get ourselves killed."

  "You eliminated the Cyclops. The op was a success."

  "Whoopee-fucking-doo. Medals all round."

  Letting go of McCann with a snort of disgust, Ramsay swung away from him. The engineer sank to the floor, limp with relief.

  "You know, I'm thinking maybe that Pugh guy was right after all," Ramsay said to Sam, to everyone. "This is bullshit. Those suits are deathtraps. Landesman's plan sucks. This whole crusade against the Pantheon is a waste of time. It's bullshit, and I'm not sure I wanna be a part of it any more."

  And with that, he stormed out.

  Technician looked at technician. Titan looked at Titan. Unease was in everybody's eyes.

  Sam wished Landesman was there to make some rallying speech and raise people's spirits. He, however, was taking Eto'o's death particularly hard. Immediately after her act of supreme self-sacrifice, he had sequestered himself away in his office, and was refusing to open the door to anyone or even answer anyone's knock.

  In his absence, the role of morale booster fell on Sam.

  "Jamie," she said to McCann.

  "Aye?" said the engineer, getting to his feet, looking ruffled and still very alarmed.

  "You can figure out what went wrong with Soleil's suit, can't you?"

  "I hope so. Without the suit itself -"

  "Wrong answer. Not 'I hope so.' That's not good enough. You will. You'll work day and night, you won't stop, you won't rest and neither will any of your colleagues until the fault is found and rectified. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "I want your word on it. I am not kidding around here. I want you to promise me that you'll give it your all."

  McCann was all seriousness. "I will, I promise. Of course I will."

  "Good. Because otherwise I will be unhappy. Rick just now, being unhappy? That, believe me, is nothing compared to me being unhappy. That was happy compared to me being unhappy."

  She then gave McCann a stare that she'd seen Inspector Prothero give on a number of occasions, most memorably to a constable who'd managed to contaminate a crime scene by opening several drawers without first taking the basic precaution of putting on latex gloves. It was a look that combined equal parts disdain, derision and annoyance, with a pinch of world-weary resignation thrown in for good measure, and it invariably left the recipient feeling as low as it was humanly possible to feel while at the same time determined to improve and do better next time. Sam knew this because she herself had had the look directed against her once. Once had been enough.

  She must have emulated her DI and mentor pretty well, because McCann withered visibly before her, seeming almost to shrink, to become physically the small boy that he was inside. Moments later he was scurrying around marshalling the other technicians, getting them to pull battlesuits off their stands and onto workbenches, starting to dismantle them, generally whipping up a frenzy of keen investigative fervour.

  Sam knew she had bullied the poor kid. Equally, it had got results, and her fellow Titans appeared reassured. Something was being seen to be done. If McCann could prevent the suits from ever going wrong in that way again, then Eto'o would not have died in vain.

  Later, Hamel drew Sam aside for a private word, and confirmed that her handling of the situation had been spot-on.

  "You did well," she said. "I am going to miss Soleil, very much. But I'm glad to know that hers won't have been a wasted death."

  "Thérèse, do you mind if I ask? Were you and Soleil... you know?"

  "Sam. You can say it. Were we lovers?"

  "Yes."

  "No." Hamel lofted her shoulders slightly, disappointed but philosophical. "No. Soleil was not the way I am. However, I liked her a great deal. She reminded me very much of my partner."

  "The partner you mentioned, the one the Olympians killed."

  "Yes. Mélanie. They looked nothing alike. Mélanie was Caucasian, for one thing. But they both had this straightforwardness about them, this pragmatism, so admirable. Also, with Soleil I was able to speak French, and that was nice. It's tiring to speak a second language all day, and the French was a reminder of home, you know? Like putting on a pair of old slippers."

  "You could speak French with me if you like," Sam said, "as long as you don't mind limiting it to GCSE level. Comment est votre baguette, monsieur boulanger?"

  Hamel pulled a face. "Your accent is horrible, and your grammar not much better."

  "But apart from that..."

  "Also, it sounded like you were asking the baker how his penis is, which I don't think was your intention at all."

  "Ah. Best we stick to English, then."

  "Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Sam?"

  "Yes?"

  "Deaths were inevitable, of course," Hamel said. "We must accept that. You must most of all."

  "I know, I know. Just, why so early on? On our very first outing? It doesn't bode well for the future."

  "Don't be discouraged. Feel sad, yes, but stay strong. That's my advice. As leader, you must feel hurt by each casualty as much as anyone, perhaps more than anyone, but must show it less than anyone."

  "A tall order."

  "Then be tall."

  "I'm five foot six in my socks."

  "Then wear high heels."

  "I would," Sam said, "if I could only find a pair that go with a battlesuit."

  "Curse those men," said Hamel, "for making battlesuits that are so hard to accessorise with. Why couldn't Landesman have spent a bit more money and brought in Ralph Lauren to help with the design?"

  "He just wasn't thinking, was he?"

  They laughed, and the laughter felt good. It warded off the sense of despair that was gnawing at Sam, the fear that the task Landesman had set them was
of Herculean proportions - perhaps Sisyphean proportions - too great for them to accomplish, futile, unfulfillable. After all, the Cyclops was supposed to have been a relatively easy takedown, entry-level stuff. One of the least feared of the Olympians' monsters, a moronic brute of a creature - and yet killing him exacted a heavy price. If for each monster scalp the Titans claimed one of their number had to die, that was a rate of attrition they simply couldn't sustain. There'd be none of them left when the time came to confront the Olympians themselves.

  "One thing I am sure of," Sam said. "From now on, no op takes place that I don't go on. I'm not staying behind the lines like some First World War general. I'm not prepared to sit back and watch while others go out and risk their lives. I want to lead from the front. If I'm there in the thick of things, then maybe I can prevent any further mishaps. At the very least I'll be in a position to try and do something, rather than just looking on helplessly."

  "As I recall, you were hardly 'looking on helplessly' last night," Hamel said. "You were very proactive. But still, I take your point, and I respect it. Do you know what my therapist would say about you? He'd say you have 'control issues.'"

  "I think your therapist probably has no idea what it's like to make life-or-death decisions or be responsible for other people's physical safety."

  "True. To be honest, I'm not sure why I used to go to see him so regularly. He always seemed to me an overpaid fool with too many degrees and too little life experience. He was supposed to be helping me get over Mélanie's death, but again and again the conversation would come round to me being a lesbian."

  "He was too fascinated by that?"

  "Much too. But here's a funny thing. I haven't felt the need for therapy since coming to this island - haven't felt that need, that compulsion to talk to someone about how I'm feeling. It's like, this, what we're doing, this is a kind of therapy in itself. Do you not agree?"

  Sam pondered. "I have a purpose again. I don't have that sense of being adrift in my own life any more. You could be right. Or maybe it's just that I don't have as much time on my hands as I used to. Before, I'd sit at home for days on end, obsessing about myself and my misery. Haven't had a spare moment to do that here."

  "Revenge as the cure for bereavement?" wondered Hamel.

  "Perhaps," said Sam.

  Or perhaps not.

  Perhaps there was only one true cure for bereavement - the one Eto'o had found in the course of exacting revenge.

  18. STRATOSPHERICALLY REMOTE

  Nine days later, Landesman's Gulfstream was flying west at a mean speed of 500 knots towards one of the small commercial airports in the environs of Miami.

  On board were Sam, Hamel, Sparks and Barrington, plus McCann and another two technicians. Three hours into the trip, Barrington was stretched out fast asleep on the plush sofa in the plane's cabin, Hamel was plugged into her iPod nodding along to Patsy Cline and k.d. lang, Sparks was watching a Pixar movie on a portable DVD player, and Sam was listening to McCann explain the necessary alterations he had made to the battlesuits.

  "I've got to say," the engineer said, "it's something that never occurred to me, and I'm a great hairy numpty for not thinking of it. Any complex system that's run by microprocessor, you need redundancy. You have to have backup in the event something goes wrong with the main CPU. I just felt, with the suits being so impact-resistant and all, that'd never be a problem. The CPU couldn't get damaged, so why install an auxiliary one in case it did? All that'd mean was extra weight, extra wiring, extra hassle."

  McCann had been hangdog - more accurately, hangpuppy - these past few days, once he'd realised the mistake he had made in the suit's design. A number of times Sam had had to tell him he wasn't to blame, it was a simple oversight, he shouldn't beat himself up so about it, even Einstein had his off-days. She couldn't quite console him, however, nor did she have the strength to, not really. She had her own burdens. He couldn't expect her to carry his as well.

  "Took us ages to pin down why Soleil's leg servos failed," he went on. "We broke those suits down to the smallest wee parts, and when that didn't turn up anything we put them back together and started banging them about every which way. We reckoned you lot had given them such a pounding during training, if that hadn't found a chink in the armour then nothing would. Thanks to you they'd been tested almost to destruction and passed. But it still seemed worth a try. Trouble is, what none of you had done was whack your head hard enough against the ground to jangle the onboard computer."

  "Silly us."

  "Aye, well, it was a thousand-to-one thing, Soleil falling just how she did, catching her helmet against a rock just so, at just the right angle and with just the right amount of force to scramble the hardware. That's what paralysed the servos. In all fairness, most of the suit continued to work fine. I mean, it could have been much worse, the whole damn thing could have gone down..."

  He flicked a hand as though to drive off a persistent gnat.

  "No, that doesn't make up for it. I bollocksed up. That's what it comes down to. I bollocksed up, and someone died because of that."

  His voice faltered, tightening, threatening to become a sob. Sam reached out and clasped his arm. She felt like a priest offering absolution, except instead of a confessional they were in a luxury jet cruising at 40,000 feet.

  "Soleil died because of the Cyclops," she said, "not because of you. She chose to go out the way she did, and under the circumstances it was the only thing she could do, and the best thing. I know how Rick keeps grumbling, but never mind him. The problem with her suit was a contributing factor but it was far from being the sole cause."

  McCann wiped his eyes and sniffed. "It's sorted now, though, I swear. All the suits have been fitted with an auxiliary CPU that'll kick in a millisecond after the main CPU registers any kind of runtime error. The auxiliary'll offer support in the affected areas or else take over altogether if the main CPU's fritzed beyond redemption. It's installed just beneath the power pack, well out of harm's way. The odds against both computers getting knocked out of commission - well, they've got to be stratospherically remote, haven't they?"

  "You tell me."

  "Aye," the engineer said, confirming it in his own mind. "Stratospherically remote."

  The plane darted onwards across the broad blue glitter of the Atlantic. A couple of hundred miles off the coast of Florida it hit clouds and some severe turbulence. The co-pilot, Greene, suggested over the intercom that everyone might like to fasten their seatbelts, and for quarter of an hour the Gulfstream bucked and jolted in the grip of elemental forces, as though the sky were a fractious child and the plane were the sky's plaything. Across the cabin from Sam, Sparks sat hunched in her seat, clutching the gold crucifix at her neck and murmuring a prayer. As the turbulence subsided and the flight smoothed, Sam leaned over and said, "He was listening."

  "He always does," Sparks replied matter-of-factly. "My aunt and uncle were churchgoing folk and they raised me right. They taught me to fear God and trust in Him, and so far He ain't steered me wrong."

  "You were brought up by your aunt and uncle? What about your parents?"

  "Nobody knows nothing about my daddy 'cept he was white, and my mom was a no-account who left soon after I was born and never came back. My aunt and uncle, them and my grandmother, they were all the family I ever had, all I ever needed. They've gone to their reward now, of course, but I still have Jesus. A shoulder to cry on, a friend to rely on, Jesus sees me through everything. He's the one who guided Mr Landesman's hand in choosing me to become a Titan, and He saw to it that Mr Landesman selected me for this mission."

  To Sam's knowledge, Landesman hadn't needed supervision from on high when it came to deciding which Titan went up against which particular monster or Olympian. "My policy," he had told her yesterday, "is that each of you gets to confront whoever - or, as the case may be, whatever - was responsible for the deaths of your loved ones. It's only right and fair. Sparks lost relatives to the Hydra, ergo she is a shoo-in for
tomorrow's op."

  Landesman had recovered most of the pep and vigour that had gone out of him in the wake of the Snowdonia débâcle. He'd been encouraged by the fact that the Olympians had chosen not to visit retaliation on Wales in response to the Cyclops's fatal entombing. A day earlier a terse video statement had been sent to every TV station on earth and also disseminated across the internet, showing Zeus making a statement on that very topic.

  "It has come to our attention," he declared, "that the being whom you and we know as the Cyclops has perished as a result of a cave-in in north Wales. Our understanding is that the event was pure accident, due most likely to local tectonic instability. We will not make efforts to recover the body. We mourn his loss, and salute a fallen comrade."

  That was all, a handful of sentences couched in Zeus's usual orotund tones, delivered to camera with blazing eyes and furrowed brow. If the king of the Pantheon suspected foul play in connection with the Cyclops's demise, it showed in neither his face nor his words. Landesman, certainly, was convinced the Olympians were ignorant of the truth behind the apparent misfortune.

  "We pulled it off," he had said, with quiet vindication. "I'd've preferred to have done it without losing anyone, but still - we pulled it off."

  Sparks, watching Sam's face, noted scepticism there. Sam was trying hard to hide it but couldn't quite manage to.

  "You ain't a believer," she said. "That's OK. Can't all of us be believers, though the Lord'd like it that way. He lets some folk think they can do without faith, 'til they realise they can't. It's all part of His plan, sister. All part of His plan. You'll get there in the end."

  "Maybe," Sam said. "It's possible, I suppose."

  "You're a good person, no doubt about it. There's some among our number who's not deserving of His grace and mercy, but you ain't one of them. Your heart is true, and you're doing the Lord's work, whether you realise it or not. We all are."

  "We are?"

  "Sure we are!" Sparks said, wide-eyed, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Them Olympians go around calling themselves gods. That is an offence in His eyes. No one can call themself that but Him. So somebody taking those guys out, knocking 'em off their perch? That's His work all right. And now through His infinite wisdom He's given me the chance to slay the evil beast that took my Nanna and my Aunt Celeste and my Uncle Hubert. An eye for an eye. I bless Him for that, and I bless His agent on earth Mr Landesman too, and I relish the thought of being the one to rid the world of that thing."