Angel of Doom (36 page)

In the meantime, Grant was in a stub-winged, sleek, bronze craft that bore more than a passing resemblance to the sea creature from which it took its name. The Manta. The ship had been built for the purposes of Manitius Moon Base, but had quickly grown in utility for the explorers and warriors of Cerberus Redoubt. Not usually equipped with guns and missiles, this time it had been so armed, as well as recently bedecked with streamlined nacelles in which it could carry passengers outside. Of course, that transport could only be done safely within the confines of a Manitius-designed shadow suit complete with its environmental seal, even under the protective windshield shells.

Grant tilted the Manta further away from Kane and
Brigid, hover jets lifting the ship from the broken peak of the pyramid.

Charun rose, as well, but he didn't seek to stay the same distance from the scram jet.

“You wish to pit your flying skills against mine? In the same thing I broke when first we laid eyes upon each other?” Charun asked. His voice was loud and clear over Grant's Commtact. Brigid's ploy of breaking the radio jamming of Charun's hammer, as well as the mind-clouding song of the deceased Vanth, had cleared the airwaves for such communication.

Grant nodded, then grimaced, forgetting that his opponent could not see through the cockpit glass. “We battle in the sky. You and me.”

Charun rolled his head back and laughed, but there was no mirth or warmth in the cacophony leaving his twisted lips. “You expect me to care enough to allow you a fair fight?”

“I didn't think you were that much of a coward, Tusks,” Grant taunted.

“Maniac. Coward. Just for that, after exterminating you and your pathetic friends, I will create a death camp and slaughter millions just in response to your insults,” Charun said. With that, he burst skyward, accelerating far faster than Grant could have imagined, going from zero to supersonic in the space of instants.

Grant let his pilot couch tilt back and he took off in pursuit of his enemy. Man and machine versus alien and nearly magical technology, and already, Grant was aware that he was behind the curve. G-forces, the results of high-velocity maneuvers and the crush of acceleration, were something Charun apparently could ignore without care. The shadow suit and the pilot's couch in the Manta provided some compensation for such stresses, but the
Etruscan demigod was taunting in the ease with which he defied physics.

Grant hit the throttle and followed Charun's course. All the while the weight of inertia squeezed him. He knew that fighter pilots could handle g-forces, the equivalent of one level of gravity on a human body, up to nine Gs while engaging in dogfighting over the space of a few minutes. However, in the instance of using an ejector seat, people could survive up to forty-five Gs for an ejector-seat launch. It was an iffy set of circumstances, though. The Manta's maneuverability, only in the direst of maneuvers, could easily top that as he flew the ship in the form of a dogfight. With most of his artillery rockets having been used, all he had left were the .50-caliber heavy machine guns mounted on the ship.

Machine guns that Charun's hammer had “de-fanged” in an earlier dogfight against Edwards.

In moments Grant was supersonic, at a much slower rate than Charun had gone, and already he was looking at the radar screens for signs of his opponent.

Charun was approaching from the rear of the Manta at Mach 3, and Grant hit the thrusters on his ship, jetting higher into the sky. He didn't think that altitude would have an adverse effect on the demigod, but if there was one thing Grant could hope for, it was to negate any of his foe's advantages. That meant reaching escape velocity. He kept the ship climbing higher and higher.

Fireballs of blue plasma slashed through the night, showing up on his radar screens as solid objects themselves. Grant found himself both relieved that Charun wasn't hurling rocks, but the plasma bolts were moving with speed that could eat the distance between the two of them. They were at twelve miles in height and he spiraled the Manta into evasion of the discharges from Charun's mighty hammer.

“I thought you said you wanted to battle! Not run around like a frightened chicken,” Charun called out. “You were the one mocking my strength of will and resolve!”

“You act like your shit impresses me, Char,” Grant returned. Fifteen miles, twenty miles. He used the rearview camera to see how Charun was maneuvering; his wings had gone from undulating to flat and still.

And for every maneuver Grant made, Charun adjusted, as well. He just wasn't doing so as fast. The air was thin enough that those artificial wings couldn't grab and carve against wind resistance. However, Grant could also see that those wings were glowing with electrical energy.

The sensors on the Manta indicated they were highly ionized and were producing pure thrust to make those maneuvers.

“Come get some,” Grant said finally. He hit the brakes, twenty miles up, allowing Charun to close the gap between them.

Charun cut loose with his hammer, but the plasma blasts were wide of Grant and his ship.

“You looking for me to flinch, Char?” Grant asked.

“I'm looking for you to die, ape!” the alien snarled. “My bride—”

“Is rotting where she belongs. In a tomb!” Grant shouted, cutting him off.

Get him mad. Get him to forget everything.

The hammer in Charun's hand released a blaze of rage and, for a moment, Grant feared the fireball was a huge wall of energy coming straight for him. No, that wasn't the case. It was multiple streams of plasma that formed the walls of a tunnel between the two airborne foes.

“Come to me!” Charun bellowed.

Grant hit the afterburners on the Manta and accelerated toward the winged entity.

As soon as they were within two miles of each other, the range closing swiftly, Grant triggered the Browning machine guns. Their recoil and the forceful slugs they spit were too much for the moorings that connected them to his craft. The .50-caliber blasters were torn from their pods, spiraling off into the night, the nuts and bolts sealing them shorn by the sheer physics of the situation.

The sight of the machine guns falling away elicited a chuckle from the demigod. He let go of his hammer, letting it hover in the air.

Yeah, I figured you could do that, Grant thought. After all, it had flown back to Charun's side before, and he had nearly forced him and Kane to bludgeon each other to death with the damned thing. Hovering was a minor stunt for the ancient technology.

Charun stopped and started flying backward after a few moments, allowing the Manta to touch him. His clawed toes scratched at the cockpit of the ship.

Charun perched on the nose of the Manta, his smart-metal gloves and boots allowing him to stick to the aircraft, even as they hurtled through the thin atmosphere at twenty miles up, the speed of sound long passed.

Grant opened the cockpit and the demigod laughed.

“You want to make this a fist…”

Grant's Sin Eater drowned out whatever the Etruscan creature wanted to say, his bullets slashing at the armored war mask. Charun and his wings formed a stopgap windshield, but even with that, even with his shadow suit providing environmental protection, icy cold slashed at Grant. This didn't matter, though, as he took the deadly mine he'd taken from the pyramid hatch.

The Sin Eater clacked on an empty chamber and Charun's bloodied features were visible through his shredded armor.

“You thought that could do something to me?” Charun asked.

Grant hurled the mine, and its electro-adhesive base stuck solidly to the alien's head. Grant's toss also carried enough force and momentum to rock the demigod on his heels, rock him far back enough for him to hit the controls to close the cockpit.

Grant hit the thrusters, taking the Manta to orbital velocity. Even in the minimal atmosphere at this altitude, Charun's wings served as enough of a parachute to pry him off the hull of the scram jet, all the while he battled with the mine that clung to his naked face as well as his smart-metal armor.

The jolting alterations of momentum, and Charun's sudden deceleration, weakened the wing harness drastically.

A radio signal detonated the mine.

All of that ionized energy being put off by the flight systems on Charun's armor died out. If the mine hadn't taken off the demigod's head, it had deprived him of his wings, of the thrust that could sever him from the grasp of gravity.

Whichever the false god's fate, Grant knew one thing. Falling from twenty-two miles above the Earth, “godly armor or not,” was not survivable. Even if he landed in the Mediterranean, he'd strike with such velocity the water would be as solid as basalt.

Grant adjusted course, slowing so he didn't tear the Manta apart as it made its way back to the pyramid.

Every mile of the trip, Grant kept his eye on the radar, but all he saw was a large, inert form sailing back under the greedy grasp of gravity.

* * *

“T
HE HAMMER DISAPPEARED
from radar, but only because it was heading beyond Earth's orbit,” Lakesh explained as
the heroes of Cerberus and of New Olympus were gathered. “Vanth's torch also took flight, joining the hammer as it flew into space.”

“Didn't Charun and Vanth say they were from another universe?” Diana asked at the head of the feast table.

“They did,” Brigid explained. “But they operated on Earth with the Annunaki. They originally inhabited the bodies of lesser Annunaki, and had stolen their technology.”

“So, the hammer and the torch went back to Nibiru?” Kane asked.

Lakesh nodded. “The path of the artifacts would have put them on a course somewhere beyond Jupiter, which was where we assume is the Annunaki home world.”

“Any regrets about not being able to use their secrets to reach their home dimension?” Aristotle asked Brigid.

Brigid shook her head. “The Stygian realm and their inhabitants, at least through the doorway we can access on this world, is not a place we should seek to make contact with anytime soon. I can vouch for over half a million Italians that keeping that door closed is in the best interests of all involved.”

“Here, here,” Aristotle agreed. “Though, it is a shame that Charun's tantrum closed off so many sections of the pyramid.”

“When we have the time, we'll start excavations,” Lakesh promised. “We still have much of your base to break from isolation.”

Aristotle nodded. He looked over at Diana, who for the first time wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wasn't hiding her features. The infiltration of the Etruscan pyramid had helped her shed her own feeling of isolation and alienation. “Speaking of alone, where did Grant go?”

“He is around,” Grant heard Brigid say. “He has his own thoughts to go over…”

Spartan 50—Ignacio “Fiddy” Phoebus—was being honored for his ultimate sacrifice. His grave was added to the honored dead of the nation of New Olympus. He'd perished in battle against false gods, having brought the end of Vanth by his initiative.

No one compared to the accomplishment of Grant in eliminating Charun. Both men had overcome their foes through the use of technology and wits.

And yet Grant stood aloof from the mourners. He hadn't had a chance to know the young Ignacio as anything more than just another face in the crowd, remarkable only for that he sat in a wheelchair, signifying that some earlier battle had left him diminished enough to fit into a cockpit meant for a smaller species of humanoid.

Spartan 50 was dead, but his memory would live on. No one else would take that name, as was the case for all deceased battle suit pilots and their call signs.

This much was made clear as there were Spartan call signs that reached into the low 200s, many having died in the Hydrae wars.

Grant noticed that Edwards had wandered off, hand in hand with Myrto Smaragda, the two of them sharing quiet whispers and tender looks. The shade of gloom that had hovered over Edwards's features since his domination by Ullikummis had faded, at least in the presence of the young warrior woman.

Smaragda's shock of white hair hadn't showed signs of darkening, but the loneliness and isolation she'd displayed had lessened, her platoon returned. When Ignacio Phoebus was lowered into the ground, however, the tears had come to her cheeks unashamedly. Tears had come unashamedly to all the warriors present, men and women.

They had become brothers and sisters for the simple fact that they risked their lives in the protection of those who could not fight, either for lack of strength, lack of
skill, lack of arms to engage in that battle. Humanity, in crawling from the wreckage wrought upon it by Annunaki interference, was showing signs that it had learned from the petty tribalism of the ancient days. Be they the soldiers of New Olympus, the samurai of New Edo, the troops of Aten, or the CAT teams of Cerberus, they had all allied for a single cause.

Defense of the weak.

No, Grant wasn't feeling a lick of satisfaction for having killed a god. His anger was assuaged, but the sense of loss he felt with the murder of Spartan 50 still hung on his shoulders.

Kane and Brigid appeared, Kane having brought a bottle of ouzo from the celebration of Ignacio's life and the mourning of his passing.

“Deep thoughts?” Brigid asked.

“You have to ask me that?” Grant inquired back.

“Not really,” Brigid responded.

Grant accepted the bottle of ouzo and took a long drag on it. He liked the hint of licorice that leavened and sweetened the spirit. He swallowed, the burn tingling in his chest.

“Thanks,” Grant told Kane.

“I was afraid you were going to do something stupid back there,” Kane told him.

“Like what? Open my cockpit at the edge of space with an angry giant looking to tear me apart?” Grant asked.

“Nah,” Kane said. “You punch gods in the kidney every Tuesday.”

Grant chuckled.