“Xipe Totec,” said Reston. “And Mictlantecuhtli.”
The Flayed One was in full shock-mode, his skin transparent, all his viscera on display. Mal looked on with fascinated disgust as he cut a swath through the routed Serpents, wielding a pair of hook-shaped knives with finesse and almost surgical precision. He darted about, dodging his enemy’s shots; he seemed to have a sixth sense as to where the next plasma bolt was coming from. And his blades flickered and slashed, and here a Serpent fell with his torso opened wide from shoulder to waist, and here another Serpent staggered in circles with blood fountaining from a severed jugular, and here a third screamed and tried to stem the flow of life jetting from the stump of his arm.
“It’s like, he’s showing you his insides before he shows you your own,” Mal breathed.
Reston nodded. “Sort of a visual promise, isn’t it? ‘Look, here’s what’s coming your way.’”
Alarming as Xipe Totec was, however, he was nothing compared with Mictlantecuhtli. If the former was a scalpel, the latter was blunt force trauma. The Dark One strode like a juggernaut, implacably, as though nothing could daunt or deter him. His hands were encased in massive black gauntlets, and with these he did two things: deflected incoming l-gun shots and killed human beings. Often he would be performing the one action with one hand and the other with the other simultaneously. The gauntlets were large enough that a Serpent’s head could fit inside their grip, comfortably, at least until Mictlantecuhtli squeezed and the head was crushed, helmet and all, like a pistachio nut. A punch from one of those huge metal fists was capable of removing an entire arm at the shoulder. A swat easily disembowelled.
It was a hopelessly one-sided battle, right up until the moment armoured Serpents began buzzing out of the bunker like angry wasps and joined the fray. They pressed Xipe Totec and Mictlantecuhtli hard, pinning them down with ferocious salvoes of gunfire, forcing them to spend all their effort defending.
One Serpent was at the forefront of the fightback: Colonel Tlanextic. Mal felt herself tense up at the sight of that gold-zigzagged armour. She willed Xipe Totec to get the better of him, or Mictlantecuhtli. Either of the gods was welcome to kill Aaronson’s murderer. If she was unable to do it herself, she would settle for that.
No such luck, however. Tlanextic and the other armoured Serpents succeeded in repulsing Xipe Totec and Mictlantecuhtli and driving them off the concourse. The battle raged on down the streets of Tenochtitlan, out of view.
The few Serpents remaining at the bunker entrance had a brief respite. They reinforced their positions and tallied their living and their dead. By now the sun was setting. For a time, the air thickened and turned smoky gold. The sky was blood-red, then amethyst, then purple-grey. Stars winked. Streetlights came on automatically. Everything was still and quiet.
Then, amid the shadows on the concourse, shapes started to move.
At first Mal thought it must just be tired eyes, a trick of vision. That or wisps of dust being whisked up by breezes.
“Did you see that?” she murmured to Reston. “Down in that doorway just now. And over there by the monorail track. I could have sworn...”
“There’s something there, all right. Animals of some kind.”
“What?”
“Not sure.”
The Serpents themselves had noticed they weren’t alone on the concourse. They swung their l-guns in different directions, trying to train them on the creatures flitting and scurrying between pools of darkness. To Mal, from the fragmentary glimpses she was catching, the animals looked like large rats or perhaps small dogs. But they were furless, leathery-skinned, and their movements weren’t right. There was something of the reptile about them, not least the long tapering tails, and also something disturbingly humanoid, especially the paws, which bore a marked similarity to hands and feet.
All at once a Serpent screamed. One of the creatures had latched onto his back. He reached behind him, clawing desperately, and the animal squirmed out of his grasp and wrapped itself round his neck. It had a shovel-shaped muzzle, and twin rows of serrated teeth glittered like diamonds in the lamplight. It sank its jaws into the man’s throat and, with one wrenching twist of its head, tore out his trachea, Adam’s apple and a great deal of gristle and muscle. Blood gushed over it, and the creature became frenzied, burrowing deeper into the Serpent’s neck, hind feet scrabbling for purchase on his uniform, tail lashing the air.
This first drawing of blood was the cue for a concerted wave of attacks. More of the repugnant monsters sprang from the shadows onto the Serpents. Some threw themselves down off ledges and cornices and bit their faces, while others writhed up their legs and went for the soft parts at the crotch. Plasma bolts crisscrossed as the Serpents tried to fend off the creatures, but the vast majority of the shots were wild, fired by panicked or pain-wracked fingers. Martial discipline went to pieces in the face of an enemy that was so obscenely swift and that didn’t play by the standard rules of engagement.
“Just what the hell are those things?” Mal said. Rhetorical question. She wasn’t expecting Reston to have the answer.
It turned out he did. “Over there.” He pointed to one of the streets that fed onto the concourse. At the corner, lurking, was an old woman with wild white hair and an eager, gloating posture. “That’s Tzitzimitl.”
“So those animals would be...”
“The Tzitzimime.”
The Demons of Darkness. The mindless, rapacious servants of the mother goddess. According to the myths, they were destined one day to overrun the earth and devour all humankind.
Mal felt an old familiar chill creep through her. As a child, she had had nightmares about the Tzitzimime. There’d been one particular textbook at school, a religious primer, which had carried pictures of them, an artist’s pen-and-ink impression of how the demons might look. Those black, leering homunculi had plagued Mal’s sleep for years.
The flesh-and-blood reality was worse still. Uglier and more vicious than even that textbook draughtsman could have imagined.
Most of the Serpent Warriors were on the ground now, shrieking in horror and agony as the Tzitzimime ate them alive. Their suffering filled the old crone with delight. Tzitzimitl clasped her hands and shivered, and now and then did a little stiff-kneed jig on the spot.
“What did I tell you?” Reston said. “She really doesn’t like us.”
It wasn’t long before there were just three Serpents left, and they were attempting to get to the bunker and find sanctuary there, but the Tzitzimime kept cutting them off from the entrance. Every way they turned, there was a pack of the creatures spitting and snarling. They tried feinting at them, but the Tzitzimime simply feinted back. Eventually the Serpents were surrounded, encircled. Their lightning gun batteries were drained and for metres around they could see nothing but squat, quivering bodies and rows of deadly sharp teeth.
They were done for and they knew it. One of them made a proposal to the other two. All three drew their macuahitls.
“Those won’t be any use,” Reston commented.
“I don’t think that’s what they’re up to,” said Mal.
She was right. The three Serpents formed themselves into a triangle. Each held up his sword point-first at the chest of the man on his right. Then one gave the command and they drove the swords home. All three fell, as one, and the Tzitzimime scampered onto the fresh corpses and feasted.
A sharp, loud whistle from Tzitzimitl had the Tzitzimime pricking their ears and raising their gore-streaked muzzles. A second whistle, and they abandoned their meals and hurried towards her, a great flowing carpet of low-slung bony beast. They assembled at the goddess’s ankles, clambering over one another and fawning for her attention. Tzitzimitl gave them all a gracious smile, patted a few heads, then set off with the Tzitzimime trotting behind her in a long obedient line, onwards to whatever atrocity she planned next.
“She bred them, didn’t she?” Mal said. “Trained them. Made them.”
“I’d guess so.
”
“They were little bits of this and that. A bunch of different animals put together.”
“I think these gods can do things human scientists can only dream of. Manipulate genetics. Splice elements of one creature into another. You should see Xolotl. He’s half dog, half man, but it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”
“So that’s another gift they didn’t give us: how to tamper with nature.”
“Do you think it would have done us any good to have it? Or, no, put it this way – do you think we’d have done any good with it?”
“No.”
“Exactly. On the plus side, Tzitzimitl has at least given you and me something.”
Mal surveyed the concourse, now little more than an abattoir. “A clear run to that bunker.”
“So what are we waiting for?” said Reston.
TWENTY-NINE
Same Day
THEY PICKED THEIR way across the concourse, around the heaps of slain Serpent Warriors. Here and there lay the charred body of a Tzitzimime. Mal found the creatures far harder to look at than the mutilated human remains; they were unnatural things, hideous and insidious. She steered clear of them as best she could. One, still just alive, snapped feebly at her ankle as she passed. She considered running it through with her macuahitl, but she liked the idea of the animal suffering a lingering death, and she didn’t want its blood besmirching her blade.
The sky was alive with explosions. Again and again the darkness was lit up by a bright flash, followed by a long resonant boom. Tenochtitlan was taking a pounding, but it was also dishing one out in return. An aerodisc streaked overhead in pursuit of an armoured god, blazing away with its lightning guns. The sound of street skirmishes echoed between the buildings.
The bunker entrance was sealed by a pair of broad, heavy doors, secured by a chunky combination lock.
“Any guesses as to the code?” Reston said.
“Search me.”
“Then we’ll just have to use the universal lockpick – brute force.” He went and fetched two of the Serpents’ l-guns that still carried some juice. Handing one to Mal, he said, “Aim for the middle, the gap where the doors meet. Full charge.”
Standing well back, they zapped the doors repeatedly until the guns ran dry. When the smoke and their vision cleared, they found that they had created a gap just large enough for a person to squeeze through. They waited a minute or so for the twisted edges of the hole to cool; when the metal was still hot to the touch but not burningly so, they slithered inside.
A trapezoidal tunnel stretched ahead, illuminated at intervals by caged lightbulbs and descending at a shallow gradient. They proceeded down it, alert for danger. Every so often the walls around them shook as yet another building above them took a hit.
The tunnel disgorged into a huge chamber. A dozen suits of Serpent armour stood in rows, mounted on purpose-built modules. There were scores of empty modules for all the suits currently in deployment in the field. Weaponry hung on racks. A small team of technicians were checking the equipment, running battery tests and diagnostic workups. They were obviously doing their best to ignore the noises coming from above, busying themselves with tasks so as not to have to think about the devastation being wrought on their city. Anxiety was etched on every face; shoulders were hunched, voices were strained.
She and Reston were not spotted coming in. They ducked behind a workbench strewn with random pieces of armour. There, in whispers, they debated their next move. Reston proposed taking one of the technicians hostage and using him as a bargaining tool to force the rest of them to get two suits ready. “They can tell us how to activate them, how to fly them, everything.”
“You think they’ll go for that?”
“Look at them. They’re scared out of their wits. These are civilians, not soldiers. They don’t want to die.”
“Okay. But this had better work.”
Mal drew her macuahitl and stole across the floor to the nearest technician, a thin, bespectacled and extremely gawky young specimen. Coming up behind him, she put the blade to his neck and said quietly in his ear, “Do not scream. Do not panic. Just do as I say and I promise you won’t get hurt. Nod if you understand.”
He did.
“There are two of us,” she went on, “and we want two of those suits of armour. You and the other boffins set them up for us, get us into them, and instruct us on what to do with them. Help us out, and this can all be over with in no time. Yes?”
Another nod, accompanied by a small, terrified whimper.
“Great. Call everyone over, then, quick as you can. Any false moves, any funny business, and the last sound you’ll ever hear will be the hiss of your breath escaping through the hole in your windpipe.”
“Ahem,” said the technician, trying to clear a very dry throat. “People? Little problem here. Can I have your attention?”
IT WENT SURPRISINGLY smoothly. The technicians were a biddable lot, as Reston had predicted. One of their own being held at swordpoint was a convincing argument for co-operation. Being smart men and women, they grasped that they were in the presence of two individuals who were not only capable of killing them all, but quite prepared to if the situation demanded it. They knuckled down, and within minutes two of the suits had been trundled out from the racks and Mal and Reston were being given a crash course in flying technique.
“These things are actually beautifully straightforward,” said one of the technicians, the seniormost and by all appearances the man in charge. “A complex system with an uncomplicated interface. The flight dynamics – roll, pitch and yaw – are all conditional on your own movements. Basically, lean or bend in the direction you want to go and the armour will comply. The antigrav excitation selector is incorporated into the helmet, so as to keep both hands free. You lower your head to descend, raise it to ascend. That’s the only part that takes some mastering. The rest is no trouble.”
The suits had to be put on in sections. Mal kept her macuahitl and the hostage technician in close contact while the pieces of armour were clamped onto her and linked together. He trembled like a leaf throughout the process, casting imploring looks at his colleagues as if to say, Please don’t do anything rash. They obliged, and Mal and Reston were soon fully suited.
It felt weird being contained head to toe inside this hard, jointed casing. Mal experienced a stifling surge of claustrophobia. She wanted to rip the armour off, get out of it any way she could. Be calm, she told herself. It was only a few pieces of light metal. She moved a leg experimentally, then an arm. It barely felt any different from normal – a little more resistance, that was all. She flexed one gauntleted hand. The segmented fingers rippled like caterpillars.
“Faceplate appears and disappears at the touch of this sensor,” said the head technician. He pressed a spot on the side of Mal’s helmet, and all at once everything went yellow and she realised she was staring out through the snakelike lenses. “The tinting on the eye screens filters out glare from l-gun bolts. That’s crucial after dark, so as not to compromise your night vision.”
Reston tried his faceplate too. “Nice.”
His voice came directly to Mal via her right ear.
“All the suits are in constant comms-link contact,” the head technician explained. “There are two channels, proximity and general. Proximity, the default setting, works up to a range of three hundred metres. General is a wide-spectrum band that picks up all Serpent Warrior chatter at all times. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Is there anything else we need to know?” Reston replied.
“I don’t think so. Now, will you kindly let poor Yolyamanitzin there go? The boy looks like he’s about to faint.”
“Give us a couple of l-guns and we’re done,” said Mal.
The guns were lodged into her and Reston’s hands. Mal laid her macuahitl aside and gave Yolyamanitzin a gentle shove. “Off you go.” The young technician almost collapsed to the floor in relief.
�
��I would wish you godspeed, but I can’t bring myself to,” said the head technician, finding some courage now that none of his people was in direct danger any more. “Whoever you are, coming in here dressed in holy garb, you don’t deserve to get away with this. The Great Speaker knows all, sees all. Vengeance will be his.”
“What you mean is you’re going to blab to him about us as soon as we’re gone,” said Reston.
“That’s right.” The man blinked defiantly. “And to Colonel Tlanextic.”
“How?”
“Through the hotline link.”
“What hotline link? That one over there?” Reston was looking at a console with a number of telephone receivers attached to it, each a different colour.
“That very one.”
Reston charged up his l-gun and blasted the console to pieces.
“Not any more you’re not,” he said.
MAL LIFTED HER head... and flew.
It was strangely exhilarating and exhilaratingly strange. Her feet were off the floor. She was floating. She had to resist the urge to waft her arms and legs as though treading water in a swimming pool.
She lifted her head again and rose a little higher. She wobbled uncertainly in the air. She felt on the verge of overbalancing and inclined herself forwards ever so slightly to compensate. All at once she was in motion. The further over she leaned, the faster she went. Wishing to decelerate, she instinctively straightened up. The suit of armour halted, returning to hover mode.
“This is...” She couldn’t think of a word for it.
“I know!” Reston beamed, executing a tentative midair pirouette. “Where has this been all my life?”
Mal tried for speed again, bending forward until she was near horizontal. The armour flung her towards the tunnel, far faster than she was expecting. She collided with the edge of the entrance and rebounded off. Picking herself up off the floor, she marvelled that she hadn’t felt a thing. It had been like sprinting headlong into a wall of cotton wool.
Age of Aztec Page 32
