proper warriors. I ache for combat. I yearn to bathe in the blood of my enemies.'
'And I yearn to stick this shotgun up your arse,' Iapetus muttered.
Ares beat a fist against his breastplate, making the copper ring like a gong. 'How impatiently have I awaited this moment,' he went on. 'Since first you began your challenge to our supremacy, I have wished for nothing else. Come out and face me, you snivelling weaklings, and learn what war really means.'
'Titans,' said Sam. 'Shock and disorientation to start with. We go out and hit them hard, screamers and rumblers on. Theia, Hyperion, Rhea, you're with me. The rest of you stay down, cover us at the flanks. Enfilading fire to keep the Olympians hemmed in. Got that? Good. On my mark. Three, two, one… Now! '
The four Titans sprang from hiding, simultaneously tapping their wristpads to activate inbuilt sonic assault arrays. High-frequency squeals shrilled like invisible drills from shoulder-mounted directional speakers, while deep bursts of infrasound pulsed outward, reverberating below the threshold of audibility, felt rather than heard, like an earthquake in the bones. The battlesuits afforded some insulation against the effects of this aural battery, but still it was like being at the heart of a squall, the world shrieking and thrumming and unsteady. Sam plunged across the grass towards the Olympians feeling as though she might stumble at any step. It didn't help that there were tussocks and rabbit holes everywhere, threatening to trip her. She forged on, and she could hear someone howling like a banshee, as loud as if not louder than her suit's screamer, and she thought it might be her.
The Olympians staggered and reeled. Apollo kept trying to loose off an arrow but his golden bow shook in his hands and he was unable to draw the string. Artemis had her hands clamped over her ears, as did Ares, while Zeus attempted to summon lightning but could not marshal his thoughts to do so, and Hades was on his knees, retching. Then bullets began to rake the hillsides to the left and right, and the Olympians instinctively closed together, a sense of survival penetrating the pain and nausea brought on by the decibel hell the Titans had unleashed.
Screamers and rumblers, however, could not be deployed for long. The infrasound bursts, in particular, were indiscriminate, affecting the suit wearers more slowly but just as surely as they did the suit wearers' opponents. The moment Sam felt her stomach start to churn, she knew it was time to shut the noise down. At least she and the other three were now within decent range of the Olympians. She went down on one knee, bringing up her recoilless submachine gun.
Plenty of targets to choose from, but with barely a second thought she singled out the twins, Apollo and Artemis, and then narrowed it down to Artemis.
The hunting goddess, or genetically-enhanced simulacrum thereof, was recovering her wits, raising her spear, getting ready to strike. A stutter of rounds from Sam came stitching across the grass towards her. Quick as anything, like some jungle-wary predator, Artemis vaulted aside, launching her spear at the same time. The throw, for all that it was made while taking evasive action, was astonishingly accurate. Sam just managed to hurl herself flat as the spear hissed over her and impaled itself into the ground directly behind.
Then Artemis was sprinting towards her, covering the distance in a few lithe, pantherish leaps. So fast. Too fast. She snatched up the spear and brandished it above her head. Her eyes flared, her teeth flashed, the sinews in her arm flexed, and Sam rolled over, hoping to get onto her back in time to fire but knowing, even as she did so, that she wasn't fast enough.
The spear came down, aimed at her waist, in between sections of the suit. Sam felt a sudden terrible pressure in her stomach, a discomfort that expanded all at once into sharp, rooting agony. Her trigger finger spasmed, but the shots sprayed wild. Artemis grinned fiercely and, left hand joining right on the spear, brought all her weight and might to bear. Sam heard a low, helpless moan coming out of her throat, and she could feel — feel — the spearpoint skewering through her abdominal tissue, worming down towards her innards, splitting, bursting things as it went. Her hand involuntarily slackened, the gun slipping from her grasp.
'There, that should hold you,' Artemis said. 'Now where's — ?'
Then thudding footfalls, a roar, and a huge black blur came barrelling into Artemis. Sam wailed as the spear was wrenched sideways out of her flesh. She saw, blurred as though through a veil, two figures moving close by, grappling, locked in combat. One was Artemis, the other she identified as the Minotaur, who had come to her rescue. She heard his grunts and snorts as he beleaguered Artemis with blows. Artemis, in return, kicked and wrestled with the monster, her face a leer of disgust. Her spear was still in her hand, its tip dripping with Sam's blood, but the Minotaur was pressing in hard, keeping the Olympian at too close a range for the weapon to be useable.
Elsewhere on the battlefield Sam could see Rhea dodging to and fro at full TITAN suit speed while Zeus strafed her with lightning bolts, missing but keeping her off-balance and preventing her from getting near enough to hit him with her flamethrower. Hyperion and Thea, meanwhile, were trying to pin down Apollo, who answered their gunfire with a volley of arrows, which he plucked from his quiver one after another and sent on their way with inhuman swiftness and precision. As Sam watched, an arrow struck Theia in the elbow, piercing the vulnerable, unshielded join between upper arm and forearm. It went clean through, fully half of its shaft emerging from the other side. Theia groaned, staggered, but then, all credit to her, kept up the assault on Apollo, firing her coilgun one-handed while her arrow-transfixed arm hung useless at her side.
Dreamily, bobbing on waves of pain, Sam swivelled her head and looked towards the croft, where Ares was now taking the fight to the three Titans emplaced there. His battleaxe rose and fell, rose and fell, gouging chunks out of the tumbledown walls as he rousted Cronus, Iapetus and Crius from hiding. Sam could not help but marvel at the Olympian's relentlessness and tenacity. His copper armour bore the marks of shotgun rounds, he was bleeding in several places, yet none of it seemed to bother him or hinder him. Like some living siege engine he hammered away at the Titans' meagre, makeshift fortification, driving them out into the open by whittling it to pieces.
And waiting for the three Titans as they retreated was Hades and Hermes, who had teleported into position on the other side of the croft, upslope. Cronus, Iapetus and Crius backpedalled blindly towards where the two Olympians stood. They were firing at Ares as they went, concentrating solely on him, so that they didn't perceive the danger from another quarter until they were almost on top of it. Sam tried to warn them over the comms, but could manage only a whispery, unintelligible croak.
Hades flourished his bare hands out of the sleeves of his cloak as the three Titans blundered within reach. Hermes darted behind the nearest of the three, Crius, and tore off the Titan's helmet. Then Hades leaned in and — casually, almost — brushed fingertips over Cruis's face. Hermes returned to Hades's side before Crius had even started sagging to the ground. Then in an eyeblink, with a kind of spiral twisting of the air, both Olympians were gone. Cronus and Iapetus scarcely had time to register what had happened. They watched their comrade keel over face first onto the grass, and over the comms Sam heard Iapetus curse: 'Fuck no. No. Fred. The poor bastard.'
Then another twisting of the air, as though space itself were being unwound, and there stood Hermes and Hades again, back for more.
This time, however, Iapetus was too quick off the mark. As Hermes reached for his helmet, the Titan squirmed sideways. Then, with a gloating 'Hah!' Iapetus squeezed off a shot at the other Olympian. The round hit Hades in the gut and sent him flying backwards. In the time it took Iapetus to pump and reload, however, Hades vanished. Hermes grabbed him and teleported out of there, and Iapetus blasted nothing but the innocent soil of Bleaney.
Sam returned her attention to the nearest conflict, the struggle between Artemis and the Minotaur. Artemis was a hellion, clawing and spitting like a cornered cat as she fought. The Minotaur's superior strength and brute force counted for nothing against the naked ferocity of the Olympian — not least when a well-aimed knee jab from Artemis caught him square between the legs. The Minotaur let out a moan that would have cracked iron and staggered away from Artemis, clutching his large, prominent and all too unprotectable genitals. He doubled over, almost weeping, and Sam could tell what was coming next and knew she must somehow prevent it. Only she would be able to. Her submachine gun lay on the grass just inches away, and all she had to do was turn over onto her side, but she couldn't turn over onto her side, she just couldn't, this simplest of manoeuvres was beyond her, physically impossible, but she had to, because Artemis was lofting her spear, set to run the Minotaur through with it, and the monster was still helpless with pain, no idea what was about to happen, past realising, and Sam had just a split second in which to act, and so she turned over, even though it felt like muscles were tearing and her stomach was splitting open, she turned over, and her fumbling hand found the gun, but then she seemed to have nothing useful inside her gauntlet, nothing that could bend or grab, a bunch of bananas in place of fingers, so that her hand flopped onto the gun but couldn't pick it up, and Artemis levelled her spear and with cool, cruel deftness lanced it into the monster.
Such was her strength that it went in through his chest and out through his back as easily as if she had been
