How’s Grant?” Edwards asked, still distracted by whatever it was they’d encountered.
* * *
IT COULD HAVE been adrenaline surging through Grant’s limbs that gave him the strength to pull his hands back down to the joystick, or it could have been the more automated systems on the Manta kicking into gear, providing just enough of an iota of balance and slowing for him to regain control of himself in the death spiral. Or it could just have been the mental image of him exploding like overripe fruit against the surface of the Mediterranean Sea that found Grant with his fingers wrapped tightly around the controls once more.
Whichever it was, he hit full reverse on the thrusters, jets blasting out bellows of air to slow his twirling descent, even as his other arm seized fast to the stick, bringing the control surfaces back to level.
With that all going on in the space of a few moments, the inertia of Grant’s insides caused a sour ball of bile to roll up into his throat, acidic taste making him grimace in disgust as the Manta’s crash course with oblivion came to an abrupt halt. It wasn’t like crashing into a wall of stone or an ocean from nearly a mile high, but it certainly was an upsetting experience. He couldn’t see through the gloves of his shadow suit, but he could feel how whitened his knuckles were as he clutched the throttle and collective.
Despite the environmental protections provided by the full-body shadow suit, Grant was drenched in sweat, his heart hammering to the point where he wondered if it would burst through his ribs. Adjusting the thrusters in VTOL mode, he steered a course toward the Oracle. He wanted to set down because he could feel a stream of cold air hissing through the cracked windscreen, hear the flap of torn seals and bouncing metal holding the cockpit’s canopy in place.
In the distance Grant heard a sonic boom and wondered if it was the explosion of Edwards’s ship or the detonation of some other weapon. It might have been the distraction of keeping the Manta on course for its emergency landing, but it took a moment to sink in that Edwards and his ship had gone supersonic.
Whatever Grant had collided with had proved to be more than capable of standing up to the incredible withering power of the jerry-rigged .50-caliber machine guns and missiles on their ships. And since Edwards saw with his own eyes what “ramming speed” accomplished, the big, bald brute went with a balance of raw power and ability. The blast of air parting and then clapping back together at Mach speed was the trick he’d opted for.
“Grant, you all right?” Kane asked over the Commtact, his voice showing far more emotion and concern than the stoic Cerberus warrior had displayed in a long time.
“Yeah. I’ve got my Manta limping to a landing near you,” Grant responded. “Any clue as to how much damage I’m suffering? Systems are still on the fritz here and there in the wake of that feedback blast.”
“You can see it for yourself once you land,” Kane replied, his voice growing harder.
Grant curled his lip. It was likely that it was more than just a scratch. He kept the pace even and steady, knowing that imperfections in the hull would make a renewed effort at supersonic transit a very messy method of suicide. The shadow suit provided a modicum of small-arms protection and had kept him from shattering limbs on short falls or minor crashes, but should the cockpit split open and the restraint belts on the pilot’s couch fail, no amount of non-Newtonian fabric would keep him from being crushed as he hit the ground after thousands of feet of free fall.
“Guys?” Edwards spoke over the comm-link. “How’s Grant?”
“Limping along. What happened to the winged bastard who ran me over?” Grant asked back.
“He took off running after I knocked the hammer from his hands,” Edwards replied. “Do we have contact with New Olympus yet?”
“You got a hammer from him?” Brigid interjected.
“Big bad hammer. It just missed opening Grant’s Manta like a can of rations,” Edwards explained.
“That’s a fair assessment,” Grant added. “He was an ugly cuss, with blue-gray skin and snakes for hair…”
“Charun,” Brigid stated.
“So much for a skeletal boatman,” Grant murmured. “What, we have the cross between Thor and some ugly angel?”
“No, Charun was a god of the dead. Edwards, you going to keep watch over where the hammer landed?” Brigid inquired.
“Damn straight. Once I knocked the thing out of his hands, we got our comms back,” Edwards explained. “So keeping the hammer away from him is, in my humble opinion, a great plan.”
“Good,” Brigid said. “Then we can see if we’re dealing with Annunaki technology or—”
“Charun had some metallic snakes wrapped around his arms that immediately reminded me of Enlil’s ASP blasters,” Grant said, cutting her off. “But these were bigger, thicker. Presumably more powerful. And being wound around his arms, he likely still has them.”
“Confirm on that,” Edwards advised. “We’ll need people on the ground to get to the hammer before Charun returns.”
Grant’s mood was not good as he grew closer to the spire where his compatriots had landed with the interphaser. So much for having the advantage of air superiority, he mused.
He grit his teeth. Of course they had air superiority. Edwards’s Manta still was in perfect condition, and as long as the strange, hammer-like device was out of the hands of their enemy, their weapons systems would operate and they could communicate with each other. And from the way that Edwards seemed dead set on protecting the airspace over the fallen weapon, it occurred to the CAT Beta ex-Magistrate that the hammer was special.
Maybe the winged humanoid had access to powerful arm blasters, but there were bigger and more impressive tricks in his lost tool bag.
Grant frowned, swinging the wounded Manta closer to the ground, making the decision to land near the puddle of molten secondary orichalcum. There was more flat ground and he didn’t want to damage the wings or harm his friends with too clumsy of a landing. The henge stones would likely add to the damage of his wounded aircraft, making repairs even more difficult.
Soon he was in range so that he didn’t even need the telescopic zoom on his helmet to inform him that three Gear Skeletons, one adorned as a “hero” suit, two others as Spartans, had arrived at the base of the ramp leading to the top of the oracular spire.
The giant exoskeletons spread out, forming a perimeter in which Grant could set the Manta down. Even as they did so, they extended their arms upward to cushion the descent of the craft in case it had suffered more damage and couldn’t extend its landing gear.
Grant kept up his vigilance upon landing. The last thing he needed was to get sloppy, no matter what kind of help he had available to him. Even so, when he felt the powerful robotic hands latch on to the hull of his Manta, Grant was relieved.
Unfortunately the big man realized that such relief was only temporary. This was only his first encounter with a winged monstrosity powerful enough to engage an armed Manta. Another godlike being, different in some ways from their usual Annunaki opponents, but still formidable, still extremely dangerous.
He hoped that Charun was alone, but even as he did so, he realized that things were never that easy.
