It gave her a weird, heady sense of connectedness to see this data hovering in front of the streetscape before her, to know precisely where her fellow team-members were even when they were out of sight. It was a kind of technology-enabled omniscience. The battlesuits lent their wearers the abilities of gods. The Titans had yet to discover, though, whether the suits made them the equals of gods.
That will come, she thought. This systematic, methodical killing of monsters was the warm-up to the main event, like the preliminary heats of a race that led to the finals. Useful practice for the Titans but also, according to Landesman, tactically important. The Olympians were now aware that somebody was coming for them. Arrogance and bluster would remain their outward response. Inwardly, however, might they not be feeling a certain amount of anxiety right now? The first prickings of doubt? Watching the ranks of their monsters getting whittled down, they might well have a sense that their position was being undermined, like people on a dais feeling the support struts beneath them being pulled away one by one. The Olympians' sturdy Olympus redoubt, that Acropolis-like structure with its palisades and battlements and its squadron of guardian Harpies, might be impregnable, but not so their hearts. Even the Olympians weren't immune to fear. This programme of monstercide was a propaganda tool as much as anything. For that reason alone, it was vital that the Titans continue to pursue it. Fear among the Pantheon could lead to discord, discord to disunity, disunity to a reduction in effectiveness. Which, as Landesman said, could only be a good thing.
'All Titans — Hyperion. I have visual. Repeat, I have visual.'
The urgency in his tone sparked a jolt of adrenaline inside Sam.
'Hyperion, get to cover,' she said. 'You too, Oceanus.'
'Copy that,' said Hyperion. 'Already on it.'
'You're sure it's them?' said Phoebe.
'Three women with wavy snaky hair strolling along the road like they own the place? I'd say it's a pretty fair guess.'
'Hyperion, Oceanus, when you're safe, hold position,' said Sam. 'All Titans, converge. Prepare to deploy Perseus guns. Phoebe, Rhea, I have you at half a klick south and east of Hyperion and Oceanus. Proceed on a north-westerly heading. If we're lucky, this is a pincer movement waiting to happen.'
'Roger that, Tethys.'
Sam started to run, Mnemosyne close at her heels. The pace of her pounding feet vibrated her vision, blurring things at the periphery. The visor readout clocked her speed at a little over 30 mph.
Exceeding thirty in a built-up area, she thought. That's a fine and penalty points.
Gunfire stuttered, close by. Sam and Mnemosyne turned a corner and skidded to a halt. Hyperion and Oceanus were a few metres ahead, hunkered behind a parked car. Hyperion was at the engine end of the car, his Perseus gun protruding round the front bumper, cracking off round after round. Distantly, Sam could see three figures silhouetted in the roadway. They were running fast towards the car, down on all fours like lizards, hissing and shrieking to one another as they went.
Grabbing Mnemosyne, she ducked back around the corner. Then she unlocked her Perseus gun, swivelled the hinged barrel to the left at a 60° angle, and poked it out into the street. The digital camera mounted on the business end of the barrel relayed an image to a small LCD screen near the trigger guard. A target sight was superimposed on the image.
Hyperion was still firing, but appeared not to have scored a hit yet. The Gorgons were still coming, enraged, scurrying along with their hair erect and wildly writhing.
Sam took aim, centring the target sight on the frontmost of the creatures. Her first two shots with the semiautomatic pistol missed. The third struck the Gorgon in the shoulder. The monster sprawled onto its belly, screaming in pain. The other two hurried to their sister's aid.
Oceanus laid the barrel of his Perseus gun flat across the car's bonnet and loosed off a couple of rounds. The bullets ricocheted off tarmac. At the same moment the two uninjured Gorgons reared up. Both stared hard at the parked car, bending their heads purposefully.
'Hyperion, Oceanus,' Sam said, 'you need to move your backsides. Now!'
Both Titans hurled themselves clear of the car, and a split-second later the combined gazes of the two Gorgons ignited the fuel tank and the car exploded, bucking into the air atop a roiling cushion of flame. Hyperion and Oceanus hustled across the pavement to the shelter of a shop doorway, even as the burning vehicle crashed back down to earth on its side, shedding pieces of itself in all directions.
The Gorgons skirted around the fiery wreckage. All three of them were on their feet, upright this time. The one Sam had shot was clutching its shoulder but still eager, it seemed, for battle. They closed in on Hyperion and Oceanus, who were pinned down in the shop doorway, unable to break cover for fear of exposing themselves.
'Tethys, this is Rhea. We are in position.'
Sam's visor display placed Phoebe and Rhea on the opposite side of the street, in the mouth of an alleyway. Gotcha. She gave them the command to fire at will. Shots rippled towards the Gorgons. Sam and Mnemosyne, the one kneeling, the other standing, let rip from their own hiding place. The Gorgons were caught in a withering diagonal crossfire. On the screen of her Perseus gun Sam saw the monsters, flickeringly sidelit by the flames from the car, swivelling in all directions, trying to see where the bullets were coming from, where their attackers were, but unable to. Their voices rose in a howl, a wavering ululation of outrage and frustration. Then one of the Gorgons went down, as though poleaxed, raging one moment, spreadeagled and motionless the next. Another of them took a bullet to the head. Gobbets of brain and fragments of snake hair flew. No sooner had this one hit the ground than the third fell too.
'Cease fire,' Sam announced.
In the silence that followed, the guns' reports could be heard echoing all across the city, pealing between buildings. Closer to, the only sounds were the crackle and pop of the burning car, the twanging of heat-warped metal.
'All Titans sound off,' Sam said. 'Are you OK?'
Five affirmatives.
'Though for a moment there…' said Hyperion, his voice raspy with emotion. 'Ladies, Oceanus and I owe you big-time.'
'Let's go and take a look,' Sam said. 'Confirm the kills. Then we get ourselves the hell out of here.'
They congregated around the three bodies. Each Gorgon had a glossy scaly hide and each was identical to its sisters in every respect except colouring — one was greenish, one greyish, one brownish. All three lay still, apart from the slender little snakes which sprouted from their scalps in thick profusion. These were twitching in their death throes. Now and then their tiny mouths gaped in spasms of soundless, shuddering, fang-baring agony.
'Jeez-us,' breathed Hyperion. 'Those are about three of the most hideous things I've ever clapped eyes on.'
'Shouldn't be allowed to exist,' agreed Rhea.
'Abominations,' Phoebe added, her German accent tripping slightly over the word.
'Well, they're dead now,' said Oceanus, 'and good sodding riddance, I say.'
Sam peered down at the monsters, and for some reason the man-lion from her dream flitted into her thoughts.
'What are they?' she wondered aloud. 'Where did they come from? I don't believe they're supernatural beings. Did someone make them? Were they people once?'
'Does it matter?' said Hyperion.
'Quite,' said Oceanus. 'They're killable. That's all we need to know.'
'But they're intelligent,' said Sam. 'They're more than just animals. And that — '
She was cut short by an abrupt loud yelp from Hyperion. 'Whoa! Its eyes are open! Motherfucker's still alive!'
One of the Gorgons, the greyish one, was staring up at the surrounding Titans. Its lips parted in a snarl. Its eyes blazed with hatred.
Sam was closest to it. She knew she had just a matter of heartbeats in which to act. She didn't go for her gun. Her response was instinctual, visceral, a convulsion of disgust. She raised a leg and brought her foot down on the Gorgon's face, stamping with servomotor-augmented strength. Her boot went straight through the monster's head, crushing the midsection of it flat as easily as if she had been stamping on a watermelon. Blood spurted everywhere. The crunch was horrendous but also, at some deep, primal gut level, exhilarating.
