Age of Aztec

by James Lovegrove

  What was it Tlanextic had called it? “Impact-dispersant.”

  Phenomenal.

  She resumed her progress through the tunnel, warier than before but only marginally. Reston caught up and flew alongside her. They exchanged looks through the snake-eye lenses. His eyes were boyishly wide. He was having fun. And so, she had to admit, was she.

  The bunker doors could be opened manually from the inside; Reston turned the wheel, and the doors ground grudgingly apart a few inches, then stopped, refusing to go any further. They’d warped them when they’d blasted their way in, and they no longer neatly followed their tracks.

  “Let’s see if we can get them to budge the old-fashioned way,” he said, and grabbed one and began to tug sideways.

  What happened next surprised them both. The door started to bend as Reston pulled on it. The more pressure he applied, the more it curved inwards. Solid metal buckled in his hands as though it were cardboard. Finally, with a cracking screech, both the top and bottom edges of the door jumped out of their tracks and the whole thing hung askew.

  “Well, either I don’t know my own strength,” Reston said, “or this suit enhances the wearer’s muscle power by a factor of ten. The head technician didn’t mention that.”

  “Maybe he just wanted us out of there as soon as possible,” Mal said.

  “Imagine if I’d had one of these instead of my Conquistador armour. Imagine what I’d have been able to accomplish then.”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Too late. I already have.”

  “Let’s focus on the now. We still have to get off the island, and armour or not, I have a feeling it isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Why not? The only people who’d have any interest in stopping us are Serpents, and to them we look like, well, them. They won’t bother us.”

  “Yeah,” said Mal, “but to Quetzalcoatl and pals we look like Serpents too. And on recent evidence, gods don’t show their enemies much mercy.”

  Reston was sobered. “Ah. Good point. We’d better go carefully, bettern’t we?”

  “No shit, sunshine.”

  OUTSIDE, THE CONCOURSE was as before, a field of corpses. Wounds and spilled blood glistened blackly in the lamplight.

  The worst of the fighting seemed to be taking place over on the west side of the city, so they elected to head east. As she took off into the open air, Mal was filled with a giddying sense of possibility. The exhilaration she’d felt down in the confines of the bunker was magnified a hundredfold. This suit of armour could transport her anywhere.

  She reminded herself not to get cocky. Just because they’d got themselves some paddles didn’t mean they weren’t still up shit creek.

  They rose into the night sky, Tenochtitlan dropping away beneath them. In mere moments they were level with the summits of the ziggurats, the tops of the towers. Shoreline lights twinkled in the distance – so far and yet, now, so near. Below her, Mal could see fires raging in at least three areas of the city. The eye screens on her faceplate reduced the brilliance of the fires to the muted throb of embers in a grate, but these were still clearly, from their size alone, serious infernos. One whole ziggurat was ablaze from lowest tier to highest, sending up dense clouds of smoke. An tanker aerodisc was scooping up water from the lake and dumping it onto the flames, but in vain. Elsewhere there were intermittent strobe flickers of l-gun fire. It was a garish, hellish scene. Mictlan itself surely had nothing that could compare.

  If there is a Mictlan, Mal thought. The gods were real, but somehow that made the myths attached to them seem less plausible, rather than more. It was like the first time she’d realised, around the age of thirteen or fourteen, that her parents weren’t the infallible, matchless beings she had believed them to be. They were just humans after all, with as many faults and failings as she had. It was that kind of loss of innocence. Nothing was safe any more, nothing sacred. Every measure she knew had had to be recalibrated.

  When she and Reston had gained sufficient altitude, they set a course for the shore.

  They had gone a mile – less – when trouble reared its head.

  “Airborne troopers, please identify yourselves.”

  Mal and Reston looked around. Looked at each other. Was someone talking to them?

  “I repeat, airborne troopers, currently eastbound out of Tenochtitlan. Who are you and where do you think you’re going?”

  The challenge had come over the comms link, but neither of them could see where it originated from.

  “You two,” said the voice testily. “The ones heading away from the combat zone. I’m talking to you. Please respond. Over.”

  “Er, yes,” said Reston. “We’re, er... This is us. Where are you?”

  “Right up your backside.”

  And there, behind them, out of nowhere, loomed a Serpent gunship. Mal and Reston slowed to a hover, and the aerodisc braked accordingly. A trio of pilots were visible in its cockpit. One of them spoke into a microphone handset, and the suspicion-filled voice resumed in Mal’s and Reston’s ears.

  “Sound off,” it said. “Name, rank, platoon.”

  “Uhmmm...” Mal was stumped. They hadn’t banked on something like this. “I’m Lieutenant...” She groped for a Nahuatl surname. “Yolyamanitzin.” It was the last one she’d heard, the first one that came to mind.

  Unfortunately, Reston had had the exact same idea, and just as Mal was dubbing herself Yolyamanitzin, so was he. He even awarded himself the same rank as her.

  “Let me get this straight,” said the pilot. “You’re both lieutenants and you’re both called Yolyamanitzin?”

  “Yes,” said Reston. “Funny thing, eh? And we’re not even related.”

  The pilot wasn’t buying it. “And your platoons? Which? Viper? Boa? Cobra?”

  “Viper,” said Reston decisively. “Both of us. Another coincidence.”

  “Nice try, dickhead. Serpent platoons are known by numbers, not the names of snakes.”

  “Yeah, nice try, dickhead,” Mal muttered.

  “So, really, who the hell are you two? And give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow you out of the air.”

  “We’re on a special mission,” Reston said, stalling for time. Surreptitiously he flicked a switch and his l-gun started to power up. “Top secret. For the colonel.”

  “Yeah, pull the other one. What accent is that anyway?”

  “British,” said Reston, and in English he added, “Vaughn. Brace for evasive action.”

  “What was that?” said the pilot. “Didn’t catch that last bit.”

  “I said...”

  And Reston opened fire.

  Someone on board must have been anticipating this very move, because just as Reston unleashed the bolt the gunship flipped up onto its starboard side. His shot grazed the hull, leaving only a scorch. Then, still canted almost perpendicular, the aerodisc lunged forwards, its front-facing l-gun nacelles belching plasma.

  But Mal and Reston were already racing away, flat out, in reverse. The gunship gave chase. More plasma bolts blistered around them, and they both twisted and sidewinded. There was no skill to their manoeuvring, only desperation, but the suits of armour were superbly responsive, almost as if they wanted what their wearers wanted. One bolt struck Mal a glancing blow. She was barely aware of it. She felt like laughing. But the next instant another caught her full on, and although the armour took the brunt, it seemed there were limits to the levels of energy discharge it could absorb. Mal was sent spiralling through space. Flecks of brightness whirled against a dark background. She couldn’t tell what was up or down, what was firmament or lake surface. She struggled against the spin, and finally managed to correct it and right herself. Her head took a few seconds to catch up with the rest of her.

  As the dizziness cleared, she got her bearings. The gunship was hounding Reston hard, and only by some miracle was he eluding its fire. He managed to loose off the occasional shot of his own, but the disc outclassed him in terms of both
gunpower and airspeed. He was fighting a rearguard action and it wasn’t doing him any good; it was only a matter of time before the Serpent pilots got in the two or three hits in quick succession that would polish him off.

  “Reston! Keep that thing busy. I’m coming to help.”

  “Whenever you like, Vaughn. No hurry. What are you going to do?”

  “I have an idea, although I’m not too fond of it.”

  They were using English. The pilots would be aware they were hatching something but wouldn’t know what.

  “Well, like I said, no hurry. Whatever works for you. Any time in the next three seconds would be fine.”

  Mal took a deep breath – I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe I’m doing this, I can’t believe I’m doing this – and soared towards the gunship. It opened up at her with its rear nacelles, but she made herself the zippiest, most elusive target imaginable, corkscrewing and loop-the-looping unpredictably, like a fly avoiding the swatter. Soon she was above the disc, out of the line of fire from any of its guns. She dived down and crash-landed on it, belly-flopping. Momentum carried her slithering across its roof to the front, where the cockpit windshield was.

  Clinging on with one hand to the ridge of the windshield fairing, she started hammering the glass with the other. The pilots yelped in alarm. Over the comms link, the one who’d spoken earlier shouted at her that she was a madwoman. What was she trying to do?

  “What does it look like?” she replied in Nahuatl.

  The gunship went into a series of crazy bucking-bronco manoeuvres, the pilots doing everything they could to throw Mal off, but she hung on, still doggedly punching the windshield. The glass was tough but the suit of armour, or perhaps the woman inside it, was tougher. Spiderweb cracks appeared. Then a hole. Finally, with a sudden sucking crash, the entire curved sheet of glass caved in. Wind pressure drove the fragments into the cockpit at bullet speed. Mal heard screams. She detached herself from the disc and shot upwards.

  The gunship slowed to a complete halt. Reston did a hairpin turn and aimed his l-gun at the hollowed-out windshield frame, and pumped a full-charge bolt into the cockpit. The disc rocked and shuddered. A tongue of flame erupted from the front like a dragon’s breath.

  The gunship began a leisurely, seesawing descent, like an autumn leaf falling. It hit the lake surface quite gently, with a discreet splash. Its neg-mass drive was still functioning but was cycling down, so the disc remained buoyant on the water for nearly a minute before it began to sink. Still afire, it slipped into the darkness below with a surge of boiling bubbles and a hiss of steam.

  Reston flew to Mal’s side. “We are definitely even now. That was magnificent stuff.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “I thought I was a goner for certain.”

  “To be honest, I thought so too.”

  “And now, surely, we have an uninterrupted journey to shore. Nothing else could possibly go –”

  He broke off.

  “Me and my big mouth.”

  Mal saw what he saw.

  Flying gods. Three of them.

  Huitzilopochtli. Itzpapalotl. And Quetzalcoatl.

  The Hummingbird God’s flame spear launcher was on his shoulder, its missile pointed directly and unarguably at Mal and Reston. Or, as Huitzilopochtli saw it, at two enemy soldiers.

  “Yes,” Mal said to Reston, “you and your big fucking mouth.”

  THIRTY

  Same Day

  “DON’T SHOOT!” STUART flung his arms up into the air. “Hold your fire. We’re not what you think we are.”

  Hutizilopochtli’s stance did not shift.

  “Look. I’m going to move my hand now. Easy does it. I’m going to tap the side of my helmet here, like so.”

  Stuart didn’t know if any of the gods could hear him through the faceplate. He hoped they could, for his and Vaughn’s sake. At the same time, he was trying to send out all the right signals through posture and attitude alone. We’re no threat. Don’t attack.

  “And hey presto,” he said, as his faceplate vanished. “It’s me.”

  The three gods looked at one another. Quetzalcoatl’s and Huitzilopochtli’s expressions were flat – hard to interpret. As for Itzpapalotl, her all-covering helmet gave away nothing whatsoever.

  “I’m Reston. Stuart Reston. Remember? I know I’m just a human, but surely you remember me, Quetzalcoatl.”

  He had no idea how good a god’s memory was when it came to lesser beings. Perhaps mortals were as hard for a deity to distinguish from one another as, say, laboratory mice were for a scientist. Quetzalcoatl had recognised him on the terrace of the Great Speaker’s palace but, it seemed, just barely. He’d offered a passing nod, but that was all. Bigger fish to fry, maybe. Or maybe Stuart’s face had been familiar but one he couldn’t place. He had forgotten the man whom he’d briefly taken under his wing only a few days earlier. Stuart had reverted to being just another anonymous human, one among the billions of such creatures who infested the earth.

  “We’re not Serpents,” he said. “We’ve just borrowed these suits to get out of Tenochtitlan. Vaughn? Show them your face too.”

  Vaughn’s faceplate winked out of existence.

  “See? When you came to visit Tezcatlipoca earlier today, the two of us were there. But we’ve nothing to do with him. Not allies, not anything. The moment you left, as a matter of fact, he tried to have us killed.”

  Quetzalcoatl cocked his head. A thin-lipped smile appeared.

  “Yes, I know you,” he said. “The Serpent armour threw me off. Huitz? Lower your weapon. These are friends.”

  “Fucking phew,” Vaughn said, with feeling, as Huitzilopochtli did as told.

  “But you should count yourselves lucky,” Quetzalcoatl said. “We were this close to attacking. The only thing that prevented us was seeing you take down that aerodisc. It made us curious about you. Serpent Warrior versus Serpent Warrior? If not for that...”

  “If not for that,” said Huitzilopochtli, “your bodies would be lying beside the gunship on the lakebed even as we speak.”

  Itzpapalotl nodded in agreement.

  “So it was actually a good thing we got waylaid,” Stuart said to Vaughn.

  “Every cloud...” she replied.

  He turned back to the three gods. “Well, I must say, Quetzalcoatl, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance again. But now, if you don’t mind, Vaughn and I will be on our way. The more distance we put between us and Tenochtitlan, the better. That place is a deathtrap.”

  “Of course,” said the Plumed Serpent. “As you wish.”

  As Stuart started to float past, however, Quetzalcoatl held up a hand. “Although, perhaps...”

  Stuart’s heart sank. What now? What did this god want with him?

  “Perhaps I ought to accompany you, at least part of the way. Huitz? Itzpapalotl? Carry out the next raid without me. Be careful.”

  “Really,” Stuart said, “you don’t have to.”

  “If I don’t escort you, someone else in the pantheon may mistake you for genuine Serpent Warriors, and this time there might not be anything to give them pause for thought.”

  “Ah. Fair point. Wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  “I daresay not.”

  SO, WHILE HUITZILOPOCHTLI and Itzpapalotl carried on towards Tenochtitlan to bombard the city yet again, Quetzalcoatl flew in the opposite direction with Stuart and Vaughn. They kept to a moderate pace, so were able to talk without yelling.

  “You’re winning, right?” Vaughn asked. “Looks that way to me. Tezcatlipoca’s men are putting up a fight, but really it’s a foregone conclusion.”

  “Things are going in our favour, so far,” Quetzalcoatl replied. “But by no means has it been an easy ride. We’ve taken casualties. Mixcoatl, the Hunter God? Serpent Warriors cornered him and overwhelmed him through sheer numbers. I saw it myself but was too late to save him. And Coyolxauhqui –”

  “The Moon Goddess.”

  �
�I sent her in before anyone else, to infiltrate the city and scout out the lie of the land. Her stealth capability should have protected her. Not even Itzpapalotl is her rival when it comes to blending in with her surroundings. However, we haven’t heard back from her, and I fear the worst. She may even have fallen foul of Tezcatlipoca himself. He’s the only one who could have detected her presence. Then again, it’s unclear whether the Smoking Mirror has taken a direct, personal role in proceedings as yet. I’m minded to think that he hasn’t, that he’s still orchestrating from the sidelines, simply because our side still appears to have the upper hand. When he does become fully involved, it could alter everything.”

  “He’s that powerful?” said Stuart.

  “Oh, yes.” Quetzalcoatl looked grave. “That and more. Tezcatlipoca could singlehandedly turn the tide of this battle.”

  “So why hasn’t he tried to yet?”

  “Why should he bother, when he has a whole army to fight on his behalf? If I know my brother, he’s using his Serpent Warriors as a shield. We throw ourselves against them and break them, but break ourselves in the process too. They’re there to wear us down. When they’re at their lowest ebb, then and only then will Tezcatlipoca emerge, because then we, his foes, will be at our lowest ebb as well. His reputation for cunning is not undeserved.”

  “It sounds to me,” said Vaughn, “like you’re scared of him.”

  “I am. I don’t mind admitting it. Any sane being would be.”

  “Is that one of the reasons why you left him here on his own? The real reason?”

  “It did have some bearing on the decision, yes,” said Quetzalcoatl. His hair flowed in a long dark mane behind him with the passage of flight. “Angry as I was with Tezcatlipoca, I was unwilling to antagonise him too greatly. His rage, when roused to its fullest, is immense. Earth-shattering. It seemed wiser simply to back off and leave him where he was. Giving him dominion over your planet was a way of appeasing him, I suppose. Had we not done that, had he and I continued at loggerheads, there’s no telling how things might have turned out.”