only one, or if there are more.”
Hera shook her head. “No.”
“But—” Diana began in protest.
“Do not make me repeat myself, girl,” Hera snapped.
The wheelchair-bound pilots all fell silent. They had never seen their goddess-queen this agitated in the years that they had known her. Most of all, they had never imagined that Hera would have growled a threat at any of them, let alone Diana, the girl who was Hera’s surrogate daughter. The menace hanging in the air, however, was unmistakable.
“Zoo, come on,” Hera barked, urgency speeding the words from her lips. “I’m taking this back to my lab.”
The queen and her amputee consort left the conference room without another word.
Diana watched silently, feeling a knot of nausea forming just under her sternum. The goddess who had raised her up from a useless cripple had delivered her a rebuke before her peers. After all she had done for the pantheon, earning herself a role as named pilot of a hero suit with blood and sacrifice, Diana stung as she was discarded, tossed aside like a petulant child. Ari wheeled over to her.
“Di, baby…” Ari began, affection purring under his words as his deep brown eyes studied her fused mask of a half face.
“Just leave me alone,” Diana answered curtly. “I’m too old to need sitting.”
Ari swallowed, regretting his choice of words. The high-tech war-avatar pilot made no secret of his love for the straw-haired girl who commanded the robotic huntress. He also was very clear and careful to always treat her with respect, even though Diana had cut herself off from interpersonal ties, feeling herself unworthy of romance. He reached out to take her delicate fingers in his grasp. “Di, something is worrying Hera. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be so on edge. I mean, there’s a fucking alien laying on the table, and he had a laser gun and bulletproof armor. Look at it.”
“I have been,” Diana answered. “It’s almost human, though. An alien should be…alien, shouldn’t it?”
Ari glanced at the angelic reptilian once more.
“Think about it,” Diana continued. “Two eyes. Two ears, vestigial as they are. Nose. Mouth. Arms. Legs. This could be something out of those cheesy old vids about the starship, where they distinguished aliens with bumps on their forehead or just some rubbery makeup.”
“This is a lot more convincing than latex,” Ari said. “It looks like the big brother of the Hydrae horde. The one that got all the good genes, while the others are just crappy copies.”
“That’s why Hera’s so scared?” Pollie interjected. He’d remained taciturn as his two friends, Ari and Diana, spoke. “Think this critter is the one who supplied the template for Thanatos’s clones?”
“It’s possible,” Diana murmured. Her friends could tell that she was in retreat, curling back into her shell. All she could think about was Hera’s bitter rebuke.
Diana wheeled her chair back to her quarters, alone. Hauling herself into her bunk, she finally allowed herself to give way to the sting of tears.
THE INTERPHASER’S HUM FADED in Kane’s ears, and mistlike energy plasma dissipated around him. His keen point man’s instincts kicked in, sweeping the area where they’d emerged. The interphaser’s design was a godsend after years of employing conventional mat-trans visits. The psychic and physical trauma that accompanied traditional gateway jumps was greatly minimized if they used the interphaser instead. The interphaser exploited naturally occurring vortices that were spread around the globe and even on other planets. The energy points had been mapped by the Parallax Points Program, which they had discovered on Thunder Isle and then input into the interphaser.
The sky blazed a burned orange marking the sunset, and the mountaintop ruin was silent, except for the baleful calls of terns that hovered on thermals, watching the strange appearance of Kane and his companions. Kane could smell the brine of the ocean—the Agean, he’d learned from Brigid.
He set down his war bag and jogged to the edge of the weathered and cracked stone floor. Behind him, Brigid, Grant and Domi set about stowing their own equipment bags. Grant made certain to secure his huge rifle case. The container was taller than Domi was, but there was a crack in the stone floor large enough to secure it. Brigid and Domi elected to leave behind their Copperhead submachine guns and the bandoliers of grenades in their war bags. Kane and Grant opted to keep their Copperheads with them. The four Cerberus exiles were on a first-contact mission, and the two men would be out of place without something heavier than the powerful Sin Eaters in their forearm holsters. However, if all four showed up packing enough guns to fight a war, it would send the wrong message.
Kane and the others had been around enough to balance shows of strength with diplomacy. Grenades and Grant’s monster-sized Barrett rifle were stashed away for contingency in the event of betrayal and disarmament. The extra weaponry disappeared under a camouflaging tarpaulin that Grant covered with dirt.
Kane pulled a pair of compact field glasses from a pouch on his equipment belt slung over his shadow suit. The high-tech polymers of the uniform conformed to his powerful muscles, providing nearly complete environmental protection from all but the most inhospitable climates. While not able to withstand rifle rounds like his old Magistrate polycarbonate armor, the shadow suit still offered minor protection against small arms and knives. In return, the suits granted greater ease of movement and offered protection against radiation and temperature fluctuation. Kane also noticed that the shadow suits were far less intimidating than the ominous black carapaces of their Mag battle armor.
“No movement,” Kane announced. He turned to see Brigid Baptiste tracing her fingers over the surface of weather-beaten column. “Any ideas what this was?”
“Considering that many of the vortices were recognized by ancient peoples as places of power, aided by the influence of the First Folk, this could have been an oracle. This isn’t Delphi, but it has a similar layout,” Brigid answered. “Sadly, nothing of archaeological significance remains.”
“So you won’t be distracted by shards of pottery,” Kane returned with a wink and a smile.
Brigid shook her head. “No. The only thing that could be found here would be in the form of resonant psychic energy.”
Kane raised an eyebrow. “Oh, right. Because the oracles were manned by ancient psi-muties. The nodes’ energy would increase their perceptions.”
“That’s a very good theory,” Brigid said. “You’ve been doing some reading?”
Kane shrugged. “Continuing education. With all the crap we’ve encountered, and all the telepathic trespassing that’s gone on in my head, it helps to be prepared. Granted, I’m going off of digital copies of the Fortean Times in the redoubt’s library.”
Brigid smiled. “I remember when you asked for that archive disk. I thought it was just to get more information on Atlantis.”
“That’s where it started,” Kane admitted. “A lot of the theories in those old rags sounded crazy. But after slugging it out with Quayle in the outpost, I had a feeling we’d eventually run across Atlantis itself. Along the way, other articles caught my eye, mainly from personal experience.”
“We know for a fact that the Annunaki took the roles of the Sumerian and Greek
