The Age Of Zeus

by James Lovegrove

  From the niche his arrows zinged out at regular intervals, but the Corsicans did not slacken or relent. Galetti started up a cry - "Ghjuvanna Venturini!" - which the others took up and roared in unison. The noise rang round the amphitheatre, as though for once this place had an audience filling its seats, and it was hard to say whether or not the Olympian had learned the name of the little Corsican girl he had accidentally slain, whether or not he even remembered her, but the sheer volume and venom with which her countrymen chanted it seemed to give him pause. Briefly the volley of arrows let up. Galetti and the rest noted this and made the most of it, zeroing in on the niche.

  "Come on, back them up!" Sam cried, leaping out from behind the mannequin, which now looked more like a human-shaped porcupine than anything.

  Hyperion and Theia emerged from cover too, and the three Titans followed in the wake of the Resistenza members, all converging on Apollo.

  The Olympian realised the trouble he was in and began to defend himself again. But his momentary hesitation had cost him the advantage. The Resistenza men, with Galetti to the fore, crowded in on him in the niche. He was subsumed, overwhelmed by numbers. Sam saw one of the Corsicans emerge holding his bow aloft. Another had his quiver. Then Apollo himself was being lugged bodily out into the arena, with a man holding each of his limbs. He twisted and struggled, but to no avail.

  The Corsicans, of whom only a handful remained, tossed him onto the sand and secured his hands and feet. Galetti stepped up. He had an arrow protruding from his shoulder. It must have been the last one Apollo loosed off before he'd been swamped. It would doubtless be the last one he ever loosed off. A desperate, flailing shot. That was the only reason Galetti was still alive.

  Galetti lowered his rifle to Apollo's head.

  "Go on," the Olympian snarled, face pressed into the sand. "Mortal scum. Do it. Try. How can you kill me? I am a god! Immortal! Eternal! Everlasting!"

  The Resistenza leader glanced over at Sam. He was in obvious discomfort from the arrow but the glory of this moment trumped that. In the heat of triumph, pain paled into insignificance.

  "He is ours, do you agree, Madama Tethys?"

  Sam would have liked to say no he wasn't, he was hers. Apollo needed to meet his death by her hand, in order to make up for Ade's death. There was an imbalance here that needed to be restored, an emptiness in herself that had to be filled. Blood demanded blood.

  But then she thought of the face of Ghjuvanna on those photocopied posters in Corsica. A short life, ended by arrogant carelessness.

  Apollo had worse crimes to pay for than what had happened to Ade. It was more fitting if justice came from the Resistenza than from her. At least she was present to see it being dished out.

  She nodded to Galetti, who reciprocated with a nod of his own, having no idea of the generosity that lay behind Sam's gesture.

  His rifle barked.

  Apollo spasmed, as though subjected to a powerful electric shock.

  Then lay still.

  At almost the exact same instant, even while the cartridge shell ejected from the breech of Galetti's rifle was still spinning through the air, Hermes appeared with another armful of arrows for Apollo.

  Sam responded reflexively, almost without thinking. As Hermes gaped down in astonishment at the lifeless remains of his fellow Olympian, she swung her gun up and squeezed the trigger. Bullets burped, rapidfire. Hermes fell, arrows skidding and scattering around him like jackstraws.

  Sam hurried over to where he lay, ready to finish him off if need be, but Hermes was dying. One look told her that. She'd got him in the torso and neck. Blood was bubbling from his mouth and pulsing out through the crater-like gouges in his chest in time to his wheezing breaths.

  He tried to teleport away but couldn't. He phased out, phased in again, phased out, in, alternating between here and elsewhere. At first the exchanges were so rapid he was almost strobing, but gradually they slowed, weakened, becoming the fizzling, arrhythmic flicker of a lightbulb that was just about to fuse. Then they ceased altogether, leaving Hermes fixed solidly where he was. He rolled his head. He squinted up at Sam. Something seemed to shift in his eyes, like a cloud clearing.

  "Ginger tits..." he croaked, and it was followed by a phlegmy choking rattle that was just about recognisable as laughter. "Fuck." Now he was talking as Darren Pugh. Himself again, at the last. "I remember you."

  "Good," said Sam.

  "I told. About Bleaney."

  "I know."

  "I'm..."

  There was one more word, a couple of short slurred syllables, and Sam couldn't identify it. It might have been sorry. It might equally have been something nonsensical like sausage. But it made no difference. Pugh's act of betrayal was in the past.

  And so was Pugh.

  77. SWIMMING-POOL JELLYFISH

  "Dang," said Hyperion, over Hermes's body. "I get what you were saying now, about Pugh. They made a new Hermes out of him. Recycled his sorry ass."

  "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," said Theia, and hawked up a gob of spittle and let it drop from her lips onto the corpse's blank-staring face.

  "Not immortal," said Sam. "Just wanting us to think they are. Now, Cronus and Rhea. Where are they and what are they up to?"

  Her visor display informed her that both the other Titans were not far from each other, a little under a kilometre to the east.

  "Rhea?" she said over the comms.

  "Tethys! I'm with Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall and a few of his men, and we are at what seems to be some kind of swimming pool."

  "Any Olympians there?"

  "Not as far as I can tell. There are a lot of bodies, though, and what's left of a monster. Judging by the scaly hide, the fins, and the number of heads - six that I can count - Scylla. You should see the shell casings. It took a lot to kill this creature. Anyway, we're going to complete our sweep of the area, then move on. What's your situation?"

  "Three Olympians down."

  "Fantastique!"

  "Also one Titan."

  "Ah."

  "Iapetus."

  "I'm sorry about that. I had no great love for him, but still."

  "Likewise," said Sam. "To give him his due, he went out in style."

  "Hero?"

  "I'd say."

  "A Christmas gift in a plain paper package. He'll be - One moment. What's that? Field Marshal, do you see -"

  Sudden gunfire. Shouting. Panic.

  "Rhea?" Sam said. "Rhea!"

  She looked at Hyperion and Theia. "We have to -"

  "You don't even need to say it," said Hyperion. "Let's roll."

  "Theia?"

  Sam was expecting hesitation, a wince of reluctance at the very least. What she got was a surprisingly affirmative "Yeah!," followed by: "She saved my hide from the Hydra. I save hers, then we're quits, that abomination and me, and I don't owe her nothing any more."

  As rationales went, it was hardly altruistic. But it would do.

  The three Titans raced towards the swimming pool, passing among soldiers who were scouring the stronghold for enemies and having trouble finding any. If Sam counted right, there were five Olympians left: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Dionysus and Demeter. Six if you included Argus. Whether they were scattered throughout the stronghold or concentrated in one spot, not everyone in the invading force was going to be able to engage with one of them. It was simple arithmetic. So some of the soldiers, finding themselves enemy-less, were doing what soldiers at a loose end tended to do, namely vandalising and ransacking. Temples were being shot up and defaced with mortar shells. The Olympians' living quarters were being looted, the larger furnishings smashed or burnt, smaller items pocketed as souvenirs. This destructiveness was a good sign. It spoke of the possibility of victory, a prevailing mood of optimism. If the invaders were laying waste to the place, rather than being repulsed and routed, it implied that theirs was the side with the upper hand.

  On arriving at the swimming pool, Sam had cause to revise this opinion.

&n
bsp; Here, Poseidon presided, and he was using the water from the pool - nearly a million gallons of it - as a weapon of mass destruction. At his command the water had arisen in a single bulbous globule that sprouted tentacles in every direction like some leviathanic jellyfish. The tentacles latched onto the heads of the attacking soldiers, lifting them off the ground and covering their faces with a blister of liquid. The soldiers drowned while suspended in midair, their legs kicking, their hands clawing uselessly at the transparent wet masks that were killing them.

  To guard against bullets Poseidon had erected a shimmering dome of water around himself. It was some ten metres in diameter, its wall three or four metres thick. Any projectile that entered the dome was slowed to a standstill and then began sinking lazily to the turquoise tiles of the floor.

  Sam spotted Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall frantically grappling one of the water tentacles, which was wound round him like a boa constrictor. Rhea was helping him fight it off, chopping through it with her fist every time its tip got within probing distance of his head. The end of the tentacle would disintegrate into a shower of droplets, but would then re-form instantly, extruding itself forwards to renew its relentless snaky progress towards his face.

  Parts of the sea-beast Scylla lay scattered around the rim of the pool, along with heaps of sodden corpses. Within his impregnable dome Poseidon looked overtaxed but grimly elated. It was a strain controlling so much water so intricately, but to defend the stronghold, to slaughter wholesale these mortals who had dared lay siege to the Olympians' home, was worth any amount of effort.

  "Ideas?" Hyperion asked Sam, surveying the scene. "'Cause me, I'm all out. Nothing's getting through that dome Poseidon's got around him, and he's got plenty of water to play with, and even if he runs out, he'll just set to turning people's blood to sludge or exploding it out through their ears. The motherfucker's holding all the cards and he knows it."

  "You said nothing's getting through the dome," Sam said.

  "Yep. I think nothing can. Not even a coilgun round."

  "But not no one."

  "Huh?" Then Hyperion grasped what she was getting at. "Oh, you are one crazy, psycho-ass bitch, and I mean that as a compliment."

  "Direct frontal assault," Sam said. "But it has to be all of us doing it, to give us the best possible chance of success. The more of us try, the likelier it is one of us will get through. Base? These suits are watertight, right?"

  "The servos are sealed units," said McCann. "The electrics and electronics are water-resistant, pretty much. I'm not promising -"

  "Pretty much is good enough. Rhea?"

  "Yes? Bit busy here."

  "Leave the Field Marshal."

  "I can't. He'll -"

  "He can cope. Leave him. We're going to rush Poseidon, the four of us. Top speed. Push ourselves through that dome. The seal on the visors should allow us enough air to breathe to do the job. Whoever reaches him first..."

  The sentence didn't need finishing. Hyperion loped off, head down, swiftly building up momentum. Theia followed, then Sam. Rhea rapidly explained the plan to Armstrong-Hall, who nodded consent. Then, breaking away from him, she too accelerated towards Poseidon. The four Titans battered their way through water tentacles that lashed ripplingly at them. Hyperion let out a wordless war cry that grew in volume and intensity as he neared Poseidon's protective dome, becoming an abandoned, here-goes-nothing howl as he hit the curved wall of water and plunged headlong in. Theia jumped in straight after him. Then came Rhea, and finally Sam.

  The impact was weird - not like diving into water, more like entering a thick, slimy layer of silica gel. Air bubbles erupted around Sam with a measured effervescence, roiling away and popping slowly. She felt herself begin to decelerate almost immediately, inertia giving way to entropy, and she could see the same happening to the others. All at once they were moving like divers at deep-fathom pressures, fighting against the extra density and viscosity Poseidon had introduced into the water.

  But they were moving. Making headway, too. The dome stopped bullets, but bullets did not have the power of independent locomotion. All four Titans were closing in on Poseidon, Hyperion to the fore, and the Olympian was aware of their presence, their proximity, but there was very little he could do about it at that moment other than reinforce the dome still further. Sam felt the water tighten around her, pressing in on the suit, and redoubled her efforts. The servos responded, and she continued to wade through. Water began to seep in around the edge of her visor but it oozed rather than flowed. Its own gluey consistency prevented it from rushing in and flooding her helmet.

  She and the other Titans were inside the dome for less than a minute. It felt longer, as though the water retarded time as well as physical objects. Everything wavered and wobbled around Sam. Her hand batted aside a drifting bullet as she thrust herself through, using her arms as much as her legs to propel her along.

  With Hyperion mere inches away from breaching the dome's inner surface, Poseidon concluded that his only practical option was to drop his defences altogether. The dome lost cohesion in an eyeblink, collapsing in a great sloshing downrush of water, which exploded back upwards as it hit the floor, like some tremendous circular sea wave crashing on the shore and breaking almost to its original height.

  In the midst of this white frothing up-burst the four Titans shot forwards as the impetus they'd accumulated within the dome wall, no longer restrained, was suddenly released - an unintended consequence for both them and Poseidon. They hurtled helplessly at the Olympian from different directions, colliding with him almost as one. He could not stop them, and the quadruple impact was bone-crunching. Sam, even above the roar of water cascading all around, heard something within Poseidon's body snap as she struck him with her shoulder.

  The Titans rebounded, sprawling. Poseidon simply crumpled on the spot where he'd been standing, like a marionette discarded by its puppeteer. Similarly, and simultaneously, the swimming-pool jellyfish subsided out of existence. The dozens of soldiers being marauded by it walloped down onto the gleaming dark blue tiles.

  The Olympian had been fatally injured.

  But he was not dead.

  As Sam struggled to a kneeling position, Poseidon was already extending one quivering hand towards Theia. Divining what he was up to, Sam started scuttling towards him with a cry of "No!"

  Too late.

  Theia was convulsing. Her limbs twisted and contorted as though she were having an extremely violent kind of fit. Her head came up, and Sam was staring her in the face, looking straight into two bulging, uncomprehending, scarlet-tinged eyes. And then Theia's face was gone. There was only blood, a massive blurt of it splurging out from every facial orifice and painting the interior of the visor dark red.

  Theia slumped flat. Poseidon turned his attention to Rhea, who was lying on her side and fumblingly trying to detach a pistol from her suit. Suddenly she went rigid. A fraction of a second later, Sam leapt on Poseidon and started punching him in the face with everything she had. It amazed even her how fast her arm was moving - up and down like a steam piston pumping at full tilt - and how much damage each servo-assisted blow inflicted. Poseidon's features seemed to dissolve under the barrage, losing everything - shape, solidity, humanity. She felt bits of him cracking and splintering under her fist. She had punched through a drystone wall once. By a comparison a man's skull, even an Olympian's, was hardly anything.

  She didn't dare stop. She planned to keep battering Poseidon until there was nothing left of him. It was Hyperion, however, who delivered the coup de grâce. He bent down and grabbed the sides of the Olympian's head while Sam was still belabouring it with her fist, and he wrenched it up double-handed, detaching base of skull from topmost vertebra. Poseidon's face, such as it now was, froze as if in shock. His mouth gaped, revealing two runs of shattered teeth. His head lolled to the side. Another Olympian had been scratched off the list.

  78. GODS' END

  "Rhea..."

  Sam rolled off Poseidon's
body and crawled over to her fellow Titan.

  "I'm all right," Rhea rasped. She didn't sound it, though. She wasn't moving, and through her visor Sam could see a face that was perplexed and slightly panicked. "I just can't - can't feel anything. My arms, my legs... Won't move. Nothing works. I think he might have -"

  "Uh, all Titans." McCann. "It's Cronus. The old geezer's been doing pretty well for himself 'til now, but he's squaring off against Zeus, and it's just him, and I think he could do with reinforcements."

  Sam looked at Hyperion, then Rhea.

  "Go," Rhea said. "There's nothing you can do for me right now. Go help him."

  "Hang in there. I'll be back as soon as I can."

  Rhea gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I'm not going anywhere."

  They didn't need transponder sensors to tell them where Cronus was. All they had to do was follow the lightning, which crackled in the air above the agora, darting this way and that through the mist in silvery veins. In the agora itself, the flashes weirdly illuminated a tableau of ruin and death. At one end, amid tumbled columns, lay Dionysus. He had been crushed by falling masonry. His eyes were wide and unseeing. All colour and jollity were gone from his face.

  Not far from him Demeter sat hunched over, cradling Hera's head in her lap. Hera was as lifeless as Dionysus, Sam could tell that at a glance. Demeter, however, refused to accept it.

  "I can heal you," she sobbed. "I can bring you back, O Hera Of The Height." Her hands probed the many bullet wounds that riddled Hera's body, but nothing happened. The wounds stayed open. Hera was in a state that not even Demeter's curative power could remedy.

  But the main business of the scene was taking place in the centre of the agora, beside the wreckage of the Super Puma. There, Zeus and Cronus stood face to face, their bodies rigid and bowed, bent towards each other like two sides of an arch that didn't quite meet at the top.