“I’ll thank you to use my proper title when addressing me,” Stuart said with all the hieratic haughtiness he could muster.
“Your Holiness,” said Captain Ueman, “I mean no disrespect, but it’s an, ahem, unusual request. There’s nothing out there but boats and water. If you want to leave the city, surely a disc would be more convenient.”
“Such impertinence!” Stuart snapped. He was beginning to wonder whether he could pull this off. A couple of the other Serpents were looking with intense curiosity at Vaughn, who lowered her head even further and kept her robe gathered tight around her to disguise her figure. Her short choppy hair was at least vaguely masculine, even if the rest of her was distinctly not.
“How dare you presume to question me?” Stuart continued. Cowing the captain was perhaps his only hope. “I’ll have you know I’m here at the behest of the Great Speaker himself. You’re aware that we’re facing imminent enemy assault? I’ve been assigned the task of inspecting the harbour and seeing to it that all civilian personnel who’ve come by boat evacuate the area immediately.”
“That order’s already gone out. They’re all starting to head for the shore.”
“And I’m responsible for ensuring they all get well out of harm’s way. Now, which is worse, would you say? That I fail to do so and commit a dereliction of duty, or that I return to the Great Speaker and tell him that a certain Captain Ueman hindered me from performing my appointed task? Which do you think would make his Imperial Holiness angrier, and with whom?”
Ueman flinched. His cheeks paled a little. “It may not be safe out there. The attack could come at any minute. I’m only concerned about your welfare, Your Holiness.”
“I’ll take the risk. I can do no less, when the Great Speaker commands.”
Ueman was, against his better judgement, persuaded. He turned to his men and gave the order for the gate to be opened. One of the Serpent Warriors pressed a lever that triggered the release mechanism. Arm-thick bolts withdrew, a motor churned, a drive chain clanked and, with monumental slowness, the gate began to roll aside.
Stuart glimpsed lake. Seconds from now, he and Vaughn would be haring down to the harbour to bag a place aboard one of the handful of boats that had yet to unmoor and slip away from the quayside.
Then one of the Serpents who was squinting at Vaughn said, “Sir? This may sound strange but I’m pretty sure this acolyte’s a girl.”
There was no time to hesitate. Stuart grabbed Ueman and kicked his legs out from under him. As the Serpent captain collapsed, Stuart took possession of his macuahitl, yanking it from its scabbard. He slashed the shoulder strap of Ueman’s lightning gun and deprived him of that as well.
Vaughn, for her part, seized hold of the arm of the Serpent who had rumbled her. She twisted it round back against itself almost to dislocation point, so that the man was forced to double over. Then she kneed him three times in the face, relieved him of his l-gun, and let him fall.
The other Serpents were too startled to respond instantly. Members of the hieratic caste just weren’t prone to using violence, and especially not with such brisk, brutal efficiency. By the time they had their l-guns out, Stuart and Vaughn had the drop on them. Their guns were charged up and ready; the Serpents’ weren’t even primed.
“Choice,” Stuart told them. “Try to stop us leaving, and die. Let us go, and live.”
To emphasise the point, he pressed the barrel of his l-gun to the nape of Captain Ueman’s neck, between his helmet and his tunic collar. Vaughn, meanwhile, covered the other Serpents with her gun.
“Rush them, men,” Ueman said. “Your lives don’t matter and neither does mine. These are the fugitives we were told to look out for. You outnumber them. They can kill two of you at most before you reach them. One of you, if they shoot me first.”
There was logic in this, to a Serpent Warrior. Ueman’s men primed their guns and trained them on Stuart and Vaughn. Vaughn swung her gun this way and that. “Who wants it? None of you, not really. So back the fuck off.” But the Serpents weren’t deterred. They began to move in, and Stuart began to beat a retreat towards the still opening gate. Vaughn went with him, continuing to warn the Serpents off.
They were at the threshold of the gate, inches from making good their getaway, when a half-dozen armoured figures dropped from the sky.
Stuart’s first thought was that it had begun. Quetzalcoatl and the rest of the gods were had launched their invasion.
Then he realised that these suits of armour, although similar to the ones the gods had worn, were squarer, sharper, sleeker in many respects. They lacked wings like the ones he had seen on Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli. Instead, they had sets of fins along the forearms and calves to lend them control and stability in flight. They were emblazoned with a snake emblem on the torso, and the helmets were also snakelike, the faceplates protruding to a pointed, reptilian tip and featuring bulging, yellow-tinted eyes. All of the suits were uniformly bright green, the green of a mamba’s skin, except for one which bore additional flashes of gold along the arms and around the collar.
The armoured Serpent Warriors — it was the only thing they could be — landed in a semicircle. The new arrivals’ l-guns were throbbing with charge and, moreover, bigger than the ones the two fugitives were carrying.
One of them — the gold flashes marked him out as the senior officer — put a hand to his helmet. The faceplate vanished, exactly as Stuart had seen the doors at the gods’ underground lair do. Beneath lay the less than amiable features of Colonel Tlanextic.
“That’s as far as you go,” he said.
“Shit,” said Vaughn.
“Thought you might try and pull a stunt like this,” Tlanextic said. “Impersonating priests — that’s a bit of a low trick. But going for the gate, the most obvious exit route… Sensible, I suppose, but still so predictable.”
“I had my suspicions about them, sir,” said Captain Ueman. “Honestly I did. Something didn’t seem quite right. No tattoos, for one thing, but I thought maybe some of these foreign priests don’t go in for them.”
“No excuses, captain. You screwed this one like I screwed your mother last night. I’d discipline you on the spot, but under the circumstances we’re going to need every warm body we’ve got. So if you survive the shitstorm that’s coming, you’ll be executed afterwards. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”
“Up off your knees then, you useless little fuckstain. Take your unit and go to the bunkers and get armoured up like us. You” — to one of the Serpent guards — “shut that gate. And you” — to Stuart and Vaughn — “you come back this way, the pair of you, so we can get a clear shot. And, naturally, you’ll be putting down those l-guns. I can tell you for free, they won’t do you a gnat’s fart of good. Not against this stuff we’re wearing.”
Stuart decided to put that to the test and unleashed the charge from his l-gun. The bolt struck Tlanextic full on. He didn’t even stagger. The plasma slithered around the armour in a network of crackling ripples which dissipated to nothingness. Tlanextic guffawed. Stuart might as well have chucked a bucket of lukewarm water over him, for all the effect he’d had.
“Impact-dispersant outer layer,” the colonel said. “It can withstand just about anything that’s thrown at it. Don’t ask me how the fuck it works. Redistributes the force along microscopic substructures or some such, I’m told. It does work, that’s the main thing. Resists heat, kinetic momentum, everything. As you’ve seen. Again. The l-guns. Down.”
There was no alternative. Stuart laid his lightning gun on the ground. Vaughn reluctantly relinquished hers too.
“Good. Now, over there. Against the wall.” Tlanextic jerked his gun, and Stuart and Vaughn shuffled in the direction indicated.
The armoured Serpents lined up, firing-squad-fashion.
“Any last requests?” Tlanextic asked.
“Yeah. Go fuck yourself,” said Stuart.
Tlanextic shrugged, in as much as the restrictions of the armour allowed him to. “Who wouldn’t, if they could? What about you, missy?”
Vaughn stared daggers at him. “I’m going to kill you for what you did to Aaronson. I swear it. With my bare hands, if need be.”
“Maybe. In another world, another life. Is that it? All done now? Big-dick shows of bravado over? Men. Take aim.”
