Angel Of Doom

In one hand she held a great, hornlike torch that had faded to merely the brightness of ordinary flame now. In the other she held a bow. But even with his greatest magnification on the shadow suit optics, he could not see the string on the ancient-seeming weapon. Instead, where the bowstring would have been notched, on each arm of the bow there was a bejeweled block of golden metal that shimmered with the same brassy sheen of a Gear Skeleton. There was a hand-molded grip in the center, with a stubby projection making it seem like some form of pistol around which a bow had been built.

Edwards couldn’t help but think that this device might be more than gaudy, ornamental, ancient weaponry and more a piece of alien technology. The resemblance of segments to secondary orichalcum, the same Annunaki alloy in the Olympian war suits, was all the evidence he needed to make the assumption.

Speaking of the devil, the woman extended her arm with the torch. With a flash of brilliant flame, the ground suddenly came alive with several pillars of sprouting light. Edwards’s stomach twisted as either his eyes adjusted to the brilliance or the shapes of the pillars solidified into human forms. There were two Gear Skeletons, and from Brigid’s briefing, Edwards could recognize the Spartans as having the same ID numbers as those reported missing.

There were about twelve soldiers with the two battle robots, and the Cerberus Away Team member let out a low hiss of his retained breath, inhaling to replace the stale air. The armored warriors were clad in the familiar mix of modern Magistrate polycarbonate and classical Greek leather armor.

The faceplates were open on their helmets, though, and through the empty space, Edwards made out the white-eyed, slack-jawed expressions of the Olympian soldiers. They moved with normal agility and walked apace, but there was literally nothing but pinholes in the middle of their eyes.

Edwards’s molars ground together until they locked in place. Not good. Not at all, he thought.

The fluid nature of their movements indicated that the blank-eyed soldiers were in perfect health and ability, but the unblinking, slack nature of their features warned of something darker, deadlier, at work than hammers capable of smashing Mantas from the sky or torches that burned with the brightness of a sun. These were thralls, lost completely to the control of an outside entity.

And yet, for the soulless, zombified expressions, they were spread out, searching carefully for any sign of Edwards, their guns at arms. The two Gear Skeletons walked over and seized the Manta, picking it up as if it were a toy, further testimony to the kind of raw power of ancient Annunaki robotics. The mecha began walking to the west, carrying the aircraft in their powerful arms.

“The pilot might not have gone far.” The woman spoke, lowering closer.

Again, the motionless nature of those wings, despite their classic angelic or demonic shape, dug into Edwards’s nerves. It only took him a few moments to realize that the appendages wouldn’t be natural, but artificial constructs designed to match a human’s view of a winged deity. He’d been around with Cerberus long enough to know when technology was the explanation of something occurring in mythology, be it the hammer of a god or something as simple as flight.

The wings were silent and motionless on the backs of Charun and his beautiful partner, which took away one possibility that they were some manner of jet pack or rocket belt. Indeed, the eerie quiet pretty much narrowed things down to some manner of antigravity system. As to why their flying devices were so similar to wings…well, even the Manta had wings. It just made flight and maneuvering easier. He couldn’t see flaps or ailerons, but given their biological appearance, they could have been supple, enabling them to steer.

This also explained the lack of pain or reaction to injury when Edwards had put a .50-caliber round through Charun’s wing. He saw the scorched hole, flesh split and tattered at the edges of the “wound.” His optics couldn’t detect any mechanics sandwiched between layers of leathery skin, but nor could he see blood vessels or other signs that the wing was alive.

As if on silent, telepathic cue, Charun looked down at his injury, the limb bending around so he could look at it more closely. That tusked maw turned up at the corners in a smile.

The woman looked across and met his smile with her own. Almost playfully, Charun brought the bullet hole up to eye level and peered at his partner through the aperture, which elicited a laugh from the angelic female.

It looked like a true friendship between the two entities, reminiscent of what he had seen between Kane and Brigid, the ability to communicate entire ideas in just a few gestures, because the audio pickups on his suit’s hood were not conveying anything more than breathing between the two. The only words she had spoken seemed to be toward the slave stock searching the Manta’s landing area.

That spoke to either telepathy between the flying pair or an intimate friendship that often did not require a single word. Edwards, at this point, was desperately hoping it wasn’t telepathy. Such doomie powers would make all of the camouflage and hiding a moot, useless point. Thankfully, it didn’t seem as if the zombified Olympian troops had any more special senses as he lay, still as a rock, his suit’s camouflage system making him look like inert stone and soil piled as a short berm.

A soldier walked to within inches of Edwards’s motionless form, even looked right down at him, then continued on. The big brute of a man made a convincing pile of rocks, but that did not give him the freedom to breathe a sigh of relief. Instead he kept frozen, muscles tense to the point of aching. His breathing ran shallow and he only allowed himself to blink when his eyes were dried and burning.

It seemed like hours before the soldiers moved on and Charun and his “bride” rose further into the sky. She waved her torch, almost dismissively, and suddenly streaks of the same light that deposited the Olympian zombies on the ground flashed up, sucked into the tongue. Charun alighted on the ground just long enough to lift the massive hammer.

Edwards didn’t move his head, didn’t do more than sweep his eyes to the periphery of his vision at either angle. He waited, remaining still despite the growing ache and fatigue in his shoulders and neck.

He didn’t know how long it was, but finally the heavy tread of Gear Skeleton feet resounded again. Edwards almost didn’t want to relax.

“Edwards!” a voice shouted. When he turned his head toward the sound of that call, he could feel tendons popping at the base of his skull, making it feel as if hot, wet gore splashed down on his neck. He winced and gasped.

“Here,” he croaked.

A slender but muscular figure raced to his side. It was Kane.

He helped Edwards to his feet.

Looking around, he could see one of the suits, complete with a quiver of javelins and brassy, steel-wool curls flowing down over her shoulders. That had to have been the new Artem15.

“We’ve been trying to contact you for an hour,” Kane said.

Edwards pulled off his shadow suit hood. Beads of sweat splashed and evaporated in the cool air of the Greek afternoon.

Kane tilted his head and looked at the Commtact plate on his friend’s jaw. He snapped it off its mounting and looked closer at it. “Your Commtact looks like it burned out. What happened to the Manta?”

“Charun and his girlfriend showed up,” Edwards explained. “With two of the missing mobile suits. The suits picked up the Manta.”

“Girlfriend?” Kane asked, fishing into a belt pouch for a replacement plate. Once he did, he handed it to Edwards, who donned the new communicator.

Almost instantly he heard Brigid Baptiste’s voice. “Give me a description of this girlfriend,” she ordered.

Edwards launched into his recorded memory, then tapped the interface on his suit’s forearm. “I’m also sending you the vid my suit captured.”

“That is Vanth, and her torch is of equal power to Charun’s hammer,” Brigid explained. “And, yes, they are partners. Psychopomps.”

“Psychos? Yeah, I can see that,” Edwards grumbled. “Psychopomp…that’s not the same as crazy, right?”

“The term ‘psychopomp’ is Greek. Literally translated, it is ‘guide of the soul,’’’ Brigid told them both. “Choosers of the slain. Angels or sub-deities who take people to the afterlife.”

“That explains the zombie-like appearance of the Olympian soldiers searching for me,” Edwards added.

“The theft of their spirit is a concerning development,” Brigid mused over the Commtact. “As do Charun’s recovery of his hammer and the disappearance of our second and currently only flight-capable Manta.”

Kane frowned. “You said this torch could spit out the bodies and then pick them up again. Don’t yell at me for being wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like the Threshold or Lakesh’s interphaser.”

“If that,” Edwards mused. “It could be like one of those traps in the old vids. The ones with the four guys fighting the ghosts?”

“Turning the humans and the mecha into energy, then storing it in that format?” Brigid inquired. “And, yes, Kane, I can see the similarities in your assessment, as well.”

Edwards frowned. “Great.”

“What’s wrong?” Kane asked.

“I’m getting used to this crazy shit,” Edwards grumbled.

Kane clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on. There’s room for you on Artem15’s other arm.”

Edwards nodded and the two men were picked up, gingerly, with a gentle touch belying the robot skeleton’s massive might. Once they were settled into the crooks of the giant’s elbows, it turned and began to run; long, looping strides that crossed first fifteen, then twenty, then finally thirty feet in a single bound.

The wind in Edwards’s face was cool and refreshing, a release from the paralyzed caution and stony patience he’d had to endure while waiting for the arrival of his allies.

He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let everyone down. No matter how much information Brigid and Kane got from his report and his vid.

Chapter 6

Smaragda sat at the conference table, her shoulders slumped, shocks of her white bangs hanging low over her baggy eyes. She stared at the top of the table, but she was so deadened, so numbed by the trauma of losing her platoon, she didn’t even register the grain of the faux wooden veneer topping the furniture in front of her. All she could do was fight the need to close her eyes, to dispel the horrors of her platoon’s swallowing, to keep the echoes of their screams from ringing in her ears.

She was clad in a nearly shapeless sweatshirt that covered her arms, hiding the recent work she’d carved into it with a razor. The flesh of her forearms was heavily checkered now and was raw from the disinfectant she’d poured over the dozens of new cuts to prevent sepsis. Smaragda hadn’t cut herself since she was a mere teenager, the focus and élan of being with the New Olympian military stealing not just privacy for the act, but also drowning out the need for controlling her pain.

Now her forearms stank of hydrogen peroxide, dampened somewhat by the loose bandages and the rumpled sleeves of her top. She didn’t know if her acknowledgment of the odors was just a strong memory or if she truly was literally reeking of it. Either way, it was too late now as the lights came on in the conference room, people filing in through different doors. Smaragda’s eyes rose slightly and she watched her queen roll herself along on her wheelchair.

Their eyes met as they were at the same level, and Smaragda instinctively looked back down, wishing that she could wither away, shrinking into the ground and out of the presence of Queen Diana.

She pressed her forearms harder against the tabletop and the pressure on her skin allowed slowly healing snips and cuts to pop open. It wasn’t the same kind of rush as she got from pressing a razor blade against it, but the pain still clouded her perceptions, taking her out of the moment, out of her self-loathing for…surviving.

Conversations murmured around the corners of her consciousness and it was something that helped her to muffle the distant memories of her dying friends. If only she’d stood her ground…at least she wouldn’t have felt so useless. No, she would have had the beautiful darkness of oblivion, her body and soul swallowed completely by the Stygian cloud, her suffering ended by its ravenous greed.

“So we have a new development,” Diana announced, her voice cutting sharply through both the conference room and into Smaragda’s numbed mind. “Our people are still alive.”

Smaragda looked up, staring at her queen, her hands clenching into tight fists so that even her closely trimmed nails threatened to spear through her palms. “What?”

“They are alive and under some form of mind control, or have had their bodies commandeered by the Etruscan menaces,” Diana clarified for her. “We have video of both the intruders and our missing people, thanks to Edwards over there.”

Smaragda glanced in the direction Diana pointed and saw a brawny, brooding figure, he having cast his eyes downward.

“Just trying to get as much as I could. I sure as hell was useless in terms of fighting those two,” Edwards grumbled.

Smaragda turned and glanced toward the screen, the lights dimming.

“Myrto, see if you can recognize anything off of the initial parts of the video,” Diana ordered. The queen’s voice held more than a little concern, something the disgraced soldier couldn’t understand. If anything, she should have been executed for such a disgusting failure.

Why worry about me? Smaragda mused silently. Why even have me here at this table?

But even as she did so, a small monitor was slid to her section of the table and she looked at the flying entities.

“Did you see anything like that?” Brigid Baptiste asked.

Smaragda shook her head. “The only thing any of us saw was a literal flood of dark, churning smoke. However, we were in the woods, and I couldn’t see through the canopy of trees.”

Brigid nodded. “Perhaps that is why there was that form of manifestation.”

Smaragda looked down at the screen, watching as her friends suddenly appeared, deposited on the ground by streams of light emanating from the torch held by the flying female figure, Vanth.

She could recognize them by the subtle differences, the little bits of customization on each of her fellow soldiers’ armor, even before the camera focused on the faces inside their open-visored helmets. She looked at one set of eyes and her heart sank. Every instinct was to grab the tiny monitor and hurl it aside, but she didn’t even possess the will to lift her arms, to even touch the image of lost brothers.

Edwards leaned across the table, his long arm snatching up the tablet and turning it away from her.

“She doesn’t need to see that shit,” the big man gruffly announced. “Pardon my language.”

“It’s excused,” Diana stated. “I’m sorry, Myrto.”

The failed soldier just shook her head, tried to say, “It’s okay,” but could only manage a mumbled, garbled semblance of human speech.

“Are you sure you’re all right to continue this debriefing?” Edwards spoke across the table.

A hand rested upon her shoulder and she looked up to see that it was Brigid Baptiste. Her touch was delicate and her expression was one of concern. “Let me talk with her alone, everyone.”

Smaragda shook her head. “I can be useful…”

“We know that,” Brigid answered her. “I just want to talk to you. One-on-one.”

Smaragda looked into the emerald, shining eyes of the tall woman, seeing a warmth that made her dislike herself even more, not wanting to deserve any of that for all that she’d failed to do. And yet the offered hand was irresistible and she rose, guided to a doorway.

* * *

EVEN IF BRIGID BAPTISTE were not possessed of a photographic memory, enabling her to recognize the signs of severe emotional trauma, she would have noticed the turmoil that wrapped up the frost-haired Smaragda. Taking her into the hallway, away from the presence of others, she managed to give the young woman some privacy. The corner of the corridor was well lit, but no one was using it.

“I’m sorry for dragging down the debriefing…” Smaragda began.

“You aren’t,” Brigid told her. She braced Smaragda’s face in both of her hands, locking eyes together. “Just look into my eyes and concentrate on my voice.”

“Why? What are you doing?” Smaragda asked.

“First, I’m going to get your complete testimony without causing you more conscious mental harm,” Brigid explained. “I’m hypnotizing you now, lulling your senses, making you feel more and more comfortable. As the notes of my voice strum gently in your ears, I am commanding your visual attention. With sight and hearing focused, calmed, you will become more attuned toward the cues that interfere with your detailed memory, as well as separate yourself from your emotional barriers.”

Smaragda’s dark, red-veined eyes slowly unfocused with Brigid’s continued description of the hypnosis process, calming her, fixating her until Brigid was able to draw her hands away from the girl’s cheeks.

Smaragda stood stock-still and the Cerberus archivist began asking her questions and receiving honest answers. The trick to hypnosis was simply a case of distraction of the conscious mind, taking away filters of behavior and emotion that would otherwise interfere with clarity of communication.

The shell-shocked soldier was much more forthcoming in her responses, and didn’t seem as if she wanted to fold herself away under the table. And since this was Brigid Baptiste, not a single syllable, not a single impression, would be forgotten or lost in the translation. Her brilliant mind absorbed every fact and description uttered by Smaragda, as well as opinions and impressions on things she could only speculate about.

The whole hypnotic session took only fifteen minutes for the direct questioning and Brigid was partially of a mind to continue, digging into Smaragda’s self-loathing and attempt to take care of it, like a surgeon having discovered a tumor in the midst of an operation. However, Brigid realized that if she attempted to dig too deeply, she could cause as much harm as she’d attempt to undo. No, meatball surgery on the traumatized young woman was not going to be on the menu today.

Smaragda’s healing would have to come from a more conventional source, but even as Brigid closed out the hypnotic session, she complimented the woman on her observational skills and her ability to bring vital intelligence to New Olympus. Positive reinforcement on the subconscious level could be a minor salve, but it wouldn’t upset the Greek woman’s thoughts such as an attempt to bury her feelings of self-loathing and survivor’s guilt. Putting that down deeper in Smaragda’s mind would be exactly the opposite of removing a tumor; it would be pushing a packet of septic and diseased flesh into a vulnerable set of organs, waiting for one moment to split and infect the rest of her, poisoning everything else she did.

No, Brigid couldn’t sublimate the raw feelings on Smaragda’s part. She could only attempt to leave an impression that she actually had done some good.

With a snap, Smaragda blinked her bloodshot eyes.

There was a moment where the soldier seemed unsteady on her feet, but Brigid assisted her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

“What happened? It feels like I fell asleep,” she said.

Brigid nodded. “In a way you did. I hypnotized you.”

Smaragda’s brow wrinkled as she looked up at the tall Cerberus woman. “Hypnotized. You didn’t do something like make me cluck like a chicken if someone says ‘dinner’ or something, right?”

“Nothing like that,” Brigid answered.

Smaragda managed a brief flicker of a smile before she cast her gaze to the floor. “At least I was good for something.”

Brigid put her arm around the soldier’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s get back to the meeting.”

This time she sat Smaragda right next to Edwards. The big man seemed confused for a moment.

“She’s too hard on herself, just like you,” Brigid murmured. “Maybe keep an eye on her and take your mind off of your ill-perceived failures.”

The CAT member nodded. “All right. I can take a hint,” he added with a mock growl.

“How’d you screw up?” Brigid heard Smaragda ask as she returned to the head of the table. At this point, Kane and Grant put away the cards they were toying with as they’d waited for her to return. She chuckled at the two of them sitting back up and looking interested, as if they were schoolboys afraid of being busted by their teacher.

“I thought you would be getting more information from Diana and Ari,” Brigid said.

“We did. But after we got all of that, and showed more of the vid, we had time left over,” Kane told her.

“What did you get?” Grant asked her.

“I got deeper information on the situation,” Brigid said. “And it contrasts with the interview in only a few minor errors and differences.”

“I told the truth,” Smaragda interjected.

Brigid nodded. “You did. But human memory is, for most people, a fickle thing. The human mind alters perceptions upon reflection, adding details that might not have been there in the original case, and ignoring others that seemed irrelevant at the time. A study in the late twentieth century proved that eyewitness testimony was only accurate in one instance out of ten where there were other forms of corroboration such as audio and video recording.”

“Really?” Kane asked.

Brigid nodded. “In my instance, that kind of filter for memory is missing, most likely a genetic anomaly.”

“Like a doomie.” Edwards spoke up.

Domi shook her head. “Brigid’s too smart for that. Doomies can’t handle the future. They get crazy. Brigid looks straight back.”

Brigid managed a weak smile. She didn’t want to correct her friend and oft-times student Domi. She could see the future, but only via educated calculations based upon prior data, a cause-and-effect form of premonition. She didn’t engage in it too often, only for the purposes of planning for battle and avoiding dangers. And even then, her calculations were not one hundred percent.

“Did Myrto see anything?” Diana asked.

“She described the fog she mentioned in detail,” Brigid stated. “And as our initial evaluation of potential myths, there was a Stygian aspect to the cloud. And yet there was something equally familiar to us. During a recent expedition to Africa, we encountered a similar unnatural darkness. To every one of our senses, it was something that was a truly physical entity. Not even a flashlight or high-tech optics could cut through it.”

“What was it really?” Aristotle asked.

“It was a psychic projection. One that was so strong, it even numbed tactile senses,” Brigid stated. “So, what Myrto saw could have been something similar. A form of smoke screen.”

“Why not just use an actual smoke screen? Wouldn’t that take a lot of energy?” Aristotle persisted.

“Because they were facing soldiers. There had to be a focus for them to counter. Something akin to my hypnosis of Myrto,” Brigid explained. “The black, invulnerable fog was something that could draw the fire of the Olympian troops without endangering them in the process.”

“You mean that my men were opening fire on a cloud that wasn’t there, and it wasn’t even concealing the ones attacking us?” Smaragda asked.

Brigid felt some relief as the soldier regained some of the fire in her belly.

“It may have, in some instances. But being a black fog to your conscious mind, it allowed you to shoot into it and not even register any impacts. You could even have been steered to shooting between your friends. Or have known, subconsciously, where your brethren were. It is no good to take people as zombie prisoners when their own compatriots open fire and cut them down,” Brigid told her. “In that way, you protected your brethren, deliberately shooting not to hit them.”