puddle itself was a reminder of wounds, the deaths of four other Gear Skeleton pilots slain at the talons and blasters Hera had absorbed into her extended, reprogrammed body. It also commemorated Thurmond’s end, especially in the face of his admission of his wrongs and his ultimate betrayal of Hera’s foul protection scheme. It was now an honored tomb, a memorial to true freedom, and the birth of equality under law for all of New Olympus.
As the drone swooped closer, they saw four people in the midst of the henge that formerly held the temple roof and walls together. Three women, one man and the sight of small, slender, spider-limbed Domi, her bone-white complexion a stark contrast to the deep ebony of her shadow suit, made Diana’s heart skip a beat. A kindred spirit had returned. She imagined this was what it felt like to have a visit from a sister after a long time, Diana being an only child.
The other woman was undoubtedly Brigid Baptiste; Diana quickly recognizing her on the screen thanks to her flame-gold tresses, vibrant and noticeable. The tall woman knelt, punching the recall code into the small pyramid-shaped interphaser, sending it back to Cerberus Redoubt. The small device exploited the intersection of naturally occurring energy paths or “parallax points” as referred to by the designer of the interphaser, Mohandas Lakesh Singh. It was a priceless piece of technology, so recalling it to the redoubt would keep it from ending up in the wrong hands.
This was not Cerberus’s indictment of New Olympus as “the wrong hands,” but as there was no way to penetrate into the mat-trans chamber for New Olympus’s redoubt, it would be useless to Diana and her people, and leaving it out in the elements would make it too vulnerable.
The third woman was also familiar to Diana—a slender woman with a dusky complexion, her short hair arranged in braids. She stood at attention, maintaining the demeanor of even the highly trained New Olympian troopers, keeping the frame of her Copperhead submachine gun clasped, muzzle down to her belly and finger off the trigger. It was just a brief inkling of Sela Sinclair’s Air Force officer’s skill and mental alertness. Though it was unlikely she’d accidentally tug on the trigger of the compact, bullet-spitting weapon, a true professional never took chances. If the firearm discharged without Sela’s will, the gunfire would only harm the ground at her feet. At the same time, her eyes scanned their surroundings.
“This is Grant to New Olympus command and control.” Another familiar voice piped up. “We are approaching your airspace in two Manta craft.”
“Edwards here, in Manta Beta” followed the other aircraft’s radio.
“Welcome to New Olympus airspace. Antiaircraft measures are being tuned down for your safe passage,” Kindalos announced loud enough for the rest of the command center to hear. Quietly, in a lower tone, she switched channels on her headset and contacted the air defenses. While it was unlikely that mere .50-caliber machine guns could bring down two transonic Manta craft, it was better to not have even that slight risk.
“Sir? Majesties? We just got word that there were two aircraft coming in, and from the west, of course, right?” radar station officer Niko Mikoles asked. “I’ve got three contacts on radar. All from the west.”
Diana and Ari immediately tuned in on their observation screen.
“Kindalos! Let them know,” Diana commanded, sharp and urgent.
Kindalos’s fingers flew to the frequency switch, linking back to the fast-flying Mantas. “Cerberus flight. Be advised. Unidentified flying object flying in parallel,” the comm officer said quickly.
Before there was a chance for Grant or Edwards to reply, a loud screech blazed over the speakers.
Kindalos, wearing her headset, was literally slammed from her seat by the sonic burst exploding so close to her ear. At the same moment Mikoles’s radar screen blazed brightly, energy seeming to pour into the readout. After another instant the screen cracked down the center, wisps of ozone rising from the shattered glass.
“Medic to C-and-C!” Orestes yelled into the intercom.
Diana and Ari turned to the armrest comm-links on their chairs, but discovered that whatever odd pulse that had literally floored Kindalos and caused screens to die in a spectacular manner had rendered their radios equally useless.
Aristotle didn’t delay an instant, dropping himself from the seat of his chair to the floor beside Kindalos. Though king, the training and instincts of a soldier were hard to bury and the former Are5 showed that he was as skilled in the ways of emergency medical treatment as he had been in waging war. He laid Kindalos so that there was no strain or stress on her neck, in the event of reflex-inducing whiplash. The headphones were swiftly discarded.
The young woman’s left ear was drenched in blood. Ari tore a kerchief from his breast pocket, applying it gently to the side of her head to keep away infection and stop the slow trickle pouring from her burst eardrum.
“Come on, kid, don’t do this,” Ari murmured. Other officers joined Ari in looking over the injured Kindalos. In the meantime Diana and Orestes checked on Mikoles for injuries.
“I’m fine,” the young man told his superiors. “We need a fire ext—”
As if to answer his incomplete suggestion, a guard pulled the trigger on a CO2 canister, blasting through the radar screen to whatever produced the stink of ozone beneath the broken glass.
Diana spared a small part of her mind to show pride in the military precision and loyalty presented in responding to the injury and the damages done to their electronics. While there would always be those who thought of soldiers as nothing more than mindless thugs and fodder, real troops would band together and move quickly with calmness, practiced problem-solving and true care for their fallen comrades.
However, with the pulse that had knocked out both radar and the radio communications, they were out of touch with Grant and Edwards in their Mantas.
Right now, all they were able to do was to get their own comms back up and running. Even as she thought this, there were already guards racing on foot to convey alerts to the rest of the Olympian redoubt.
So much fixed, and now another attack had driven them back to blindness and primitive messages.
At least we got the fire extinguisher on the radar screen, Diana thought to herself. Otherwise, we would have been sending smoke signals.
* * *
THE SUDDEN BURST of feedback that struck Grant brought a mixture of good news and bad news to the brawny pilot. First was good news, in that the Commtact’s new frequency filter had managed to minimize the brain-rattling discomfort of…whatever that electronic howl was. One of the weaknesses of the implants and their plates was that it was quite possible to blow out the hearing of someone listening with either too loud a response or via electromagnetic interference. Fortunately, Lakesh and the other whitecoats back at Cerberus had been diligent in improving the Commtact network and the electronics within.
Unfortunately there was more bad news. The navigational instruments based off radar, which was pretty much everything in the Manta cockpit, were rendered as useless as his Commtact. There was little to tell if the systems themselves had suffered catastrophic damage or if they were merely jammed, dazed by the sudden wave of energy.
At the very least Grant and Edwards had been able to hear the majority of the warning coming from New Olympus. Grant would have felt a lot more confident had not the Heads Up Display on the pilot’s helmet been equally invalidated by the interference pulse. Still, there was a dome of glass, and Grant was an
