Olympiad was beautiful to the point of perfection, the former Artem15 pilot had more wrong with her than merely amputated legs below mid-thigh. The same battle that had taken her lower limbs had left scars spider-webbed across her forehead and right cheek. Diana’s pride forced her to wear her hair flipped over, her blond locks masking her deformity with a curtain of tresses.
Unfortunately, since her ascension, she’d been forced into a more face-to-face role. Hiding her features, no matter how insecure she was about them, would not do when it came to projecting her authority. Ari had tried to tell her that she did not appear bad-looking, even with the crisscross of healed flesh patterned on her face. Diana didn’t believe him. Even though he was in love with her, she still didn’t trust his opinion.
Ari rolled around to her, gave her a clap on the shoulder. “Honey.”
Diana smiled, resting her hand atop his.
“You ever get tired of all these snap-to’s?” she asked her king and lover.
Ari shrugged. “Occasionally. But it reminds me not to mess around with my power.”
“What power? We’re stuck with all the decisions but none of the fun,” Diana told him.
Ari looked to the trio of running and jumping robots. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Diana gave him a pop on the biceps, but laughed. “I’m too young to be nostalgic and shit.”
“Just keep smiling. You look prettier,” Ari told her.
“Liar,” Diana called him, but she still leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
The two returned their attention to the screens. Mounted on tiny motorized planes, the pursuit cameras enabled the New Olympians the ability to keep their eyes, remotely, on things without endangering the cameraman. The unmanned drone concept was still in its earliest developments when, in 2001, the world had been blown to hell by a global nuclear cull, all caused by a renegade dimension traveler by the name of Colonel Thrush. But, thankfully, in the postwar era, more than a couple survivors had come to Greece from Israel, which had been extremely active in such technological development.
The tiny airplane zipped ahead of the trio of welcoming robots toward the ramped natural obelisk upon which the Oracle Temple had been built. There were four people visible atop the clean-cut “table” at the peak of what had been a spire of granite. The structures atop, walls formed from a henge of natural-appearing stones and a long-gone roof, wood and thatch rotted away by the passage of history and impact of storms a millennium ago. It bore more recent damage; burns from ASP blasters striped the massive, lithic columns, evidence of a more recent battle between the heroes who had arrived back then and Marduk’s ASP-armed Nephilim. At the base of the ramp was a golden puddle, a mirror made of the molten remains of Hera Olympiad and Z00s, and the metals surrounding their bodies as Z00s had made the final sacrifice to end her unholy rampage.
The puddle itself was a reminder of wounds, the deaths of four other Gear Skeleton pilots slain at the talons and blasters Hera had absorbed into her extended, reprogrammed body. It also commemorated Thurmond’s end, especially in the face of his admission of his wrongs and his ultimate betrayal of Hera’s foul protection scheme. It was now an honored tomb, a memorial to true freedom, and the birth of equality under law for all of New Olympus.
As the drone swooped closer, they saw four people in the midst of the henge that formerly held the temple roof and walls together. Three women, one man and the sight of small, slender, spider-limbed Domi, her bone-white complexion a stark contrast to the deep ebony of her shadow suit, made Diana’s heart skip a beat. A kindred spirit had returned. She imagined this was what it felt like to have a visit from a sister after a long time, Diana being an only child.
The other woman was undoubtedly Brigid Baptiste; Diana quickly recognizing her on the screen thanks to her flame-gold tresses, vibrant and noticeable. The tall woman knelt, punching the recall code into the small pyramid-shaped interphaser, sending it back to Cerberus Redoubt. The small device exploited the intersection of naturally occurring energy paths or “parallax points” as referred to by the designer of the interphaser, Mohandas Lakesh Singh. It was a priceless piece of technology, so recalling it to the redoubt would keep it from ending up in the wrong hands.
This was not Cerberus’s indictment of New Olympus as “the wrong hands,” but as there was no way to penetrate into the mat-trans chamber for New Olympus’s redoubt, it would be useless to Diana and her people, and leaving it out in the elements would make it too vulnerable.
The third woman was also familiar to Diana—a slender woman with a dusky complexion, her short hair arranged in braids. She stood at attention, maintaining the demeanor of even the highly trained New Olympian troopers, keeping the frame of her Copperhead submachine gun clasped, muzzle down to her belly and finger off the trigger. It was just a brief inkling of Sela Sinclair’s Air Force officer’s skill and mental alertness. Though it was unlikely she’d accidentally tug on the trigger of the compact, bullet-spitting weapon, a true professional never took chances. If the firearm discharged without Sela’s will, the gunfire would only harm the ground at her feet. At the same time, her eyes scanned their surroundings.
“This is Grant to New Olympus command and control.” Another familiar voice piped up. “We are approaching your airspace in two Manta craft.”
“Edwards here, in Manta Beta” followed the other aircraft’s radio.
“Welcome to New Olympus airspace. Antiaircraft measures are being tuned down for your safe passage,” Kindalos announced loud enough for the rest of the command center to hear. Quietly, in a lower tone, she switched channels on her headset and contacted the air defenses. While it was unlikely that mere .50-caliber machine guns could bring down two transonic Manta craft, it was better to not have even that slight risk.
“Sir? Majesties? We just got word that there were two aircraft coming in, and from the west, of course, right?” radar station officer Niko Mikoles asked. “I’ve got three contacts on radar. All from the west.”
Diana and Ari immediately tuned in on their observation screen.
“Kindalos! Let them know,” Diana commanded, sharp and urgent.
Kindalos’s fingers flew to the frequency switch, linking back to the fast-flying Mantas. “Cerberus flight. Be advised. Unidentified flying object flying in parallel,” the comm officer said quickly.
Before there was a chance for Grant or Edwards to reply, a loud screech blazed over the speakers.
Kindalos, wearing her headset, was literally slammed from her seat by the sonic burst exploding so close to her ear. At the same moment Mikoles’s radar screen blazed brightly, energy seeming to pour into the readout. After another instant the screen cracked down the center, wisps of ozone rising from the shattered glass.
“Medic to C-and-C!” Orestes yelled into the intercom.
Diana and Ari turned to the armrest comm-links on their chairs, but discovered that whatever odd pulse that had literally floored Kindalos and caused screens to die in a spectacular manner had rendered their radios equally useless.
Aristotle didn’t delay an instant, dropping himself from the seat of his chair to the floor beside Kindalos. Though king, the training and instincts of a soldier were hard to bury and the former Are5 showed that he was as skilled in the ways of emergency medical treatment as he had been in waging war. He laid Kindalos so that there was no strain or stress on her neck, in the event of reflex-inducing whiplash. The headphones were swiftly discarded.
The young woman’s left ear was drenched in blood. Ari tore a kerchief from his breast pocket, applying it gently to the side of her head to keep away infection and stop the slow trickle pouring from her burst eardrum.
“Come on, kid, don’t do this,” Ari murmured. Other officers joined Ari in looking over the injured Kindalos. In the meantime Diana and Orestes checked on Mikoles for injuries.
“I’m fine,” the young man told his superiors. “We need a fire ext—”