Age of Aztec

THIRTY-TWO

4 Flower 1 Movement 1 House

(Friday 21st December 2012)

Stuart lay stroking the hair of the maddening, mesmerising woman who lay snuggled against him. Her cheek was against his chest and she was snoring ever so slightly.

He cast his mind back to the previous night and smiled. Vaughn — Mal — had proved to be an energetic, enthusiastic lover. No surprises there. What had taken him aback was her overwhelming need, like the hunger of the starving. He had responded in kind, and there had been that sort of tough tenderness, that gentle greed, which typified the best lovemaking. The two of them had slotted together, fitted together, in a way Stuart had never experienced before. Not even with Sofia had he known the same mutual rightness or the same instinctive synchronisation. Barely speaking, communicating almost entirely through their bodies, he and Mal had brought each other to a climax that was gloriously gratifying. Mind-blowing, in fact. A moment of ecstasy that had erased all thought and ego, leaving no room inside him for anything other than itself. After that, sleep had come crashing over them both like a tidal wave.

If last night was a one-off, if it never happened again, Stuart could live with that. And if it wasn’t, if it was the start of something more substantial, he could live with that too.

He was, he realised, content. For the first time since Sofia and Jake died, he was at peace.

Mal’s serene sleeping face told him she was too.

Pity that today was scheduled to be -

A tremor shook the room.

Not just the room.

Stuart could feel it — the entire underground edifice shuddering around him.

“Huh, whuzzat?” said Mal foggily.

“Don’t know.” He leapt out of bed. “But I’m pretty sure it’s not good.”

The tremor subsided.

Then came another, fiercer, more violent.

“Earthquake?” said Mal, swinging off the bed and pulling a sheet around her.

“I don’t think we’re in a seismic activity zone.” Stuart danced into a pair of underpants. “And even if we are, earthquakes feel like waves on a rough sea. This is more like — ”

A third tremor overwrote the second. Everything in the room vibrated and shook.

Stuart disappeared the door. Distant shouts of alarm echoed along the corridor. He dashed out, Mal following. The first of the pantheon they encountered was Azcatl, who was scurrying along like one of his beloved arthropods.

Stuart grabbed him. “What’s going on? What is this?”

“Unhand me!” snapped the Red Ant. “We’re under attack is what’s going on. Tezcatlipoca’s forces. They’ve found us somehow. I must marshal my best shocktroops.”

He hurried onward. Stuart looked at Mal. “Armour time.”

“Where is it?”

“Toci’s lab. Which is… this way, I think.”

In truth, he had no idea. But as they ran, he hoped they would bump into another of the gods who would give them directions.

In the event, they bumped into Itzpapalotl. Stuart didn’t know it was her, having never seen her sans armour. All he saw was a tall and impossibly athletic female, almost as dark-skinned as Mictlantecuhtli, moving with obvious urgency but not in a blind panic. He made a deduction and called out her name.

“We need our armour, too,” he said. “Where do we find it?”

Without breaking stride, the Obsidian Butterfly made a gesture: follow me.

Two levels down, near the bottom of the inverted ziggurat, lay a chamber that was part armoury, part laboratory. The equipment that filled it was mostly unrecognisable to Stuart and Mal, a plethora of sleek machines and subtle instruments whose nature and purpose they could only guess at. What was familiar was the jumble of it all. Offcuts and oddments littered workbenches. There were disorganised shelf-loads of tools and spare parts. Everywhere, a sprawl of unfinished projects and experiments-in-progress. Scientific chaos was scientific chaos, no matter if the scientist who generated it was also a goddess.

Itzpapalotl went straight to her suit of midnight-black armour and began clamping it on. Huitzilopochtli was already here, doing the same. A woman with a thatch of blonde hair and keen, beady eyes — Toci, it must be — was busy loading flame spears into the rack the Hummingbird God toted on his back.

“Toci, please, our armour…?” said Stuart.

Toci wagged a finger distractedly towards a corner of the room. The Serpent Warrior suits were set out on armatures, no longer as snake-featured as before. The helmets had been reshaped, their fronts flattened and the eye lenses joined up into a single bulbous visor. All of the sections had been recoloured, not mamba green now but a silvery blue that would afford some camouflage in the daytime sky. There were other modifications, such as l-gun attachments on both arms and the tips of blades projecting from the wrists.

“Been busy on those all night,” Toci said. “You’ll find them very much improved, although there’s a limit to what I could do, given the crudeness of what I had to work with. Tezcatlipoca was never much of an engineer, and I discern human touches everywhere — shortcuts, quick fixes, general bodging, no finesse. The lightning guns are activated by studs on the palms of the gauntlets. They recharge more rapidly than you’ll be used to, and last longer too. The blades extend to full length with a flick of either arm and retract the same way. Both of you, I understand, are proficient with swords. Of necessity, these ones are short, but they’ll cut through anything short of a forcefield.”

“Forcefields,” said Stuart. “Any chance we have those?”

“Exclusive to Quetzalcoatl. Mictlantecuhtli has his gauntlets, Xipe Totec his knives, Huitzilopochtli his flame spears… Each a particular suite of capabilities, to fit each’s individual style and temperament. There is no sharing or crossover. That is not our way. Be grateful for what you’ve got.”

Another tremor rocked the gods’ lair. It felt less potent than previous ones, but Stuart assumed that that was because they were deeper underground.

“Hurry,” said Itzpapalotl. It was the first word Stuart had heard her utter, and he wasn’t sure if the remark was directed at him and Mal or not.

The two humans helped each other into the customised Serpent suits, fast as they could manage. When only the helmets remained to be put on, Mal said, “Here we go. Can’t say I’m not dreading this.”

“You’d be crazy if you weren’t.”

“So much at stake.”

“We’ll just do what we can, leave the heavy lifting to the big boys like Huitzilopochtli.”

“Stuart…”

He shook his head. “Last night was last night. I get that.”

“No, what it is, is, I don’t understand how I can have spent so many weeks wanting to see your heart cooking on a brazier, and now, suddenly, all that’s gone. Now I’m actually worried about you.”

“Maybe Ometeotl was right. We’re meant to be together but until now the circumstances were against us. I mean radically against us.”

“It’s almost like some kind of joke, isn’t it? Like the world was doing its very hardest to keep us apart.”

“If ‘apart’ is another way of saying ‘at each other’s throats,’ then yes, I’d agree.”

“If I don’t make it through this…” Mal began.

“In that case,” Stuart said, securing his helmet on, “it’s unlikely either of us will make it. The point is moot.”

Mal had her helmet on too, so they were now talking via the strange intimacy of the comms link. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say?”

“I do,” Stuart replied. “And I will. But afterwards, all right?”

Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli were leaving.

“Right now,” he went on, “we’ve business to attend to. The world’s not just going to save itself, you know. It’s time for the new, improved Conquistador to go out there and shine. Oh, and his sidekick Jaguar Girl too.”

“Call me your sidekick again, and I’ll kick you in the side,” Mal growled. “Fucker.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Fucker, fucker, fucker.”

“Eloquent as always. Let’s go.”

Taking flight, they followed in the wake of Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli, up through the centre of the ziggurat to the hatch. When they emerged onto the surface, it was like entering some fiery, howling maelstrom. There were Serpent Warriors everywhere, swooping, swarming, shooting. The rainforest around the hatch was ablaze. Flames crackled. Smoke churned. The air was thick with falling ash and embers. L-gun fire streaked between the burning tree trunks, and now and then huge, not-so-far-off explosions erupted, seeming to shake whole acres of landscape.

Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli wasted no time in engaging the enemy. Within seconds, Serpents were being blasted out of the air or sliced to ribbons.

It took Stuart and Mal slightly longer to gather their wits. A pair of Serpents came zooming at them on an attack run. Stuart targeted one, Mal the other. Plasma bolts zigzagged from their forearms and struck the Serpents with staggering force. One hurtled backwards into a cedar, crashing against the trunk and flopping down to its base, broken inside his armour. The other was sent sailing sideways and collided with a third airborne Serpent. They fell together in a tangle, and Mal was on them before they could extricate themselves from each other. She flicked her arm as Toci had instructed and the blade in her gauntlet snicked out to its full extension. One of the Serpents raised his l-gun and Mal slashed at it unthinkingly, slicing the barrel in two. The Serpent was almost as startled as she was, and his eyes widened further as she plunged the blade through his breastplate, deep into him.

The other Serpent made a bid to retrieve his own l-gun, which had been knocked from his grasp and landed a few yards away. He scrambled desperately on all fours, but was beaten to it by Stuart, who flew over him and alighted in his path, sword out. The next instant, a Serpent Warrior helmet went bouncing across the forest floor, with a Serpent Warrior’s severed head inside.

Itzpapalotl and Huitzilopochtli had disappeared somewhere into the smoke haze, but more gods were emerging from below. Tzitzimitl and Azcatl took up positions on either side of the hatch, each accompanied by a retinue of monsters. Tzitzimitl had her leaping, yowling pack of Tzitzimime, while Azcatl was haloed by a dense, buzzing cloud of insects the likes of which neither Stuart nor Mal had ever seen. They were large, the size of a clenched fist, and appeared to be a hybrid of wasp, scorpion and stag beetle, with a stinger-tipped tail at the back, pincer-like horns at the front, and a yellow-striped abdomen.

Joining Tzitzimitl and Azcatl was a third god: the disfigured, hunchbacked entity whom Stuart remembered from his first ever visit to the refectory down below. Nanhuatzin, the Deformed One, limped up out from the hatch and stood, swaying somewhat. His arthritically clawed hands were outstretched, and a look of grim delight was discernible on his twisted face.

“Go!” Azcatl ordered Stuart and Mal. “Get out there. The main battle is that way” — he waved in a westward direction — “and that is where you can be the most help, if you can be any help at all.”

“We can defend this spot,” Tzitzimitl added. “No one will get past us.”

“Are you sure?” Stuart said.

The crone’s eyes flashed. “Watch.”

A squadron of Serpents came gliding in through the pall of smoke. Tzitzimitl, with a loud whistle, despatched her Tzitzimime at them. The dark demon dogs sprang up and brought down one of the Serpents in midair. They dragged him to the ground and set about him in a snarling, slavering pack, going for the joints, the vulnerable chinks between sections of his armour. His screams, relayed by the comms, were shrill in Stuart’s and Mal’s ears. As the Tzitzimime tore him apart and ate him alive, he was begging for his mother to save him.

Meanwhile Azcatl unleashed his scorpion-wasp monstrosities, which whizzed towards the Serpents like rocks from a catapult. They butted through faceplates and set about stinging straight away, clinging on with their pincer horns while their sinuous tails jabbed and jabbed repeatedly into cheek and nose and eyeball. The venom worked almost instantaneously; their Serpent victims went rigid with paralysis and became floating corpses, hovering stiff and lifeless in the air, supported only by their suits.

As for Nanahuatzin, he waited until one of the Serpents strayed close to the hatch, and then he simply reached out and brushed the man with his fingertips. Something glistened briefly between him and the Serpent. Something was transferred. The Serpent turned and trained his l-gun on Nanahuatzin, but all at once his limbs went weak and wouldn’t function properly. Over the comms link Stuart heard him say something about being unable to breathe. The man dropped the weapon and fumbled to get his helmet off. His face had gone a vivid, liverish puce. Sores were breaking out all over his skin, all manner of blisters, buboes and pustules. The whites of his eyes went scarlet. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out, only a vomitous gush of blood. He fell, wracked with agony, as what seemed to be every communicable disease that had ever existed infested his body, proliferating at an obscene rate. By the time he stopped writhing and lay still, fluids were seeping out through all the seals in his armour and his face was so distended by swellings and lesions that it no longer resembled anything human.

“Fair enough,” Stuart said to the three gods. “Mal? This way.”

They flew through the burning forest. They drew their heading by the rising number of Serpent corpses that littered the ground, a trail of the dead left by the other gods. The comms chatter they were picking up over their helmet radios grew as they approached. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the epicentre of the battle.

There were several hundred Serpents in flight, orbiting an enormous humanoid machine, which advanced slowly, step by thunderous step. It was near enough the size of a house, with arms that ended in multiple lightning gun arrays and legs that balanced on jointed, talon-like feet. The l-guns cleaved trees in two and the feet crushed their toppled trunks to splinters as the giant thing waded purposefully through the forest.

Five of the gods were attempting to get near this mechanical behemoth, but the Serpents kept thwarting them, attacking in such numbers that the gods were too busy coping with them to achieve anything else.

On the ground, Xipe Totec and Mictlantecuhtli were close to being overwhelmed by the sheer number of opponents they faced. The Flayed One’s knives flashed relentlessly, the Dark One’s gauntlets crushed and bludgeoned, and still the Serpents kept on coming, crowding in on them from all quarters.

In the air, Itzpapalotl was unable to dart through the droves of Serpents. Whichever way she turned, she was intercepted and driven back by l-gun fire. Likewise Huitzilopochtli. His flame spears took out a half-dozen Serpents at a time, but every time he created a gap it was plugged by a half-dozen more.

Only Quetzalcoatl was making any headway, and then not much. He was barely visible through the crackling storm of plasma bolts that pounded against his forcefield. He flew like someone swimming against a powerful current, fighting for every inch of progress.

And still the massive manlike machine moved inexorably forwards.

“Tezcatlipoca,” Mal said.

The Smoking Mirror could be seen through a screen of glass set in the thing’s torso. He was enclosed in a kind of cat’s cradle of light beams which synched his movements to those of the machine. He raised an arm, so did the giant. He shifted his legs, the giant strode.

“It’s… a bigger suit of armour,” Stuart said. “The biggest ever.” He sounded, in spite of himself, impressed.

“Size isn’t everything,” Mal said curtly.

“Now you tell me. So what should we do?”

“Take him down if we can. He clearly wants to get to the gods’ headquarters and destroy it, and all their backup and resources with it. Destroy them, too. We do our bit to stop him. Or rather, you do.”

“Huh?” Stuart was startled by the sudden change in her tone of voice. It had dropped to an icy hush. She was staring hard at the forwardmost grouping of Serpent Warriors, the vanguard of the attack force. One of them stood out from the rest, distinguished by the gold patterning on his armour.

“There you are, you bastard,” Mal said. She was aloft before Stuart could stop her.

“Mal!” he remonstrated. “No. He’s a sideshow. He’s not important.”

“Maybe to you he’s not,” came the reply. “Colonel Tlanextic!” She had switched to Nahuatl. “Can you hear me? I’m here. Over here. Come and get what’s coming to you.”

“The Vaughn bitch.” Tlanextic’s caustic voice cut through the babel of comms chatter, loud and clear. “How interesting. That’s you in that silver suit?”

Stuart saw the gold-patterned figure break away from the main pack and head for Mal.

“I could have sworn you were dead,” Tlanextic said.

“Should have checked more thoroughly, shouldn’t you?”

“An oversight I shall remedy now.”

“Remedy this, motherfucker,” said Mal, and she let him have it with both her l-guns.

Tlanextic returned fire, and there ensued a dogfight which Stuart would have followed more closely if he himself hadn’t come under assault from several quarters at once. The Serpents had finally latched on to him as an enemy combatant.

For minutes on end Stuart fended off a co-ordinated barrage of plasma bolts and delivered rapid-fire ripostes. Now and then he caught glimpses of Mal and Tlanextic weaving around and blasting away at each other above the tree canopy. He was also aware of Tezcatlipoca stalking ever onward in his ogre of a suit, forging a path through the rainforest.

At one point, amid all the bedlam, it seemed as though the gods had made a breakthrough. Xipe Totec had dispatched enough Serpents to give himself some breathing space and a clear run at Tezcatlipoca. Mictlantecuhtli urged him forward, promising to handle any interference that might come his way.

Huitzilopochtli had an opening too. He had at last punched a hole through the endless flocks of Serpents. Tezcatlipoca was in range and in his sights.

Xipe Totec sprinted towards the left leg of Tezcatlipoca’s suit, while Huitzilopochtli levelled his spear launcher at Tezcatlipoca’s head.

Stuart sensed that this was when everything could change, the fulcrum moment that would set the battle seesawing in the gods’ favour.

Then Xipe Totec stumbled. That was when Stuart realised the Flayed One had been injured. With his skin transparent, wounds were not immediately obvious. Spilled blood did not show up against the wet muscle tissue on display. Several Serpents must have got in lucky shots before Xipe Totec slew them. He was weak, failing. His charge towards Tezcatlipoca was a last-ditch suicide run.

And Tezcatlipoca knew it. As Xipe Totec lost his footing, the Smoking Mirror turned his ponderous armoured bulk towards him. One of the legs rose. Xipe Totec scrambled upright and continued his bid to reach Tezcatlipoca. But the vast foot overshadowed him. It descended like a five-ton piston. The Flayed One’s knives shot up. In defence? In defiance? It was hard to say.

Tezcatlipoca crushed Xipe Totec underfoot as a child might crush a snail on a garden path. The Flayed One became the Flattened One. He burst, and now all of his viscera were exposed. He was a lump of gristle and offal attached to the underside of Tezcatlipoca’s foot. The Smoking Mirror stamped down again and again, smashing and mashing Xipe Totec until there was even less of him left, just a gory smear.

Huitzilopochtli overcame his shock at seeing a fellow god annihilated and loosed off a flame spear at Tezcatlipoca. But the Smoking Mirror lashed out with one of his vast arms, batting the projectile aside so that it spun end over end and detonated amidst the foliage of a tree. As the Hummingbird God hurried to reload his launcher, Tezcatlipoca calmly lined up a shot with the same arm.

Huitzilopochtli looked up, flame spear in hand.

Looked down the hollowness of that l-gun barrel.

Knew he was out of time.

He hung in the air, resigned, and was enveloped in a tremendous torrent of plasma.

Little remained of Huitzilopochtli as he fell to earth, just a charred, spindly effigy, like a scarecrow that had been pulled off a bonfire.

Tezcatlipoca’s guffaws of joy came loud and clear over Stuart’s comms. His giant metal shell seemed to laugh too, rocking up and down in grotesque emulation of its driver.

Mictlantecuhtli lunged for Tezcatlipoca, emitting a roar, a primal wordless bellow of rage. He ploughed through the massed ranks of Serpents, scattering them to either side. Stuart followed in his slipstream. The Dark One took an l-gun salvo from Tezcatlipoca full-on, crossing his gauntlets above his head to shield himself, and plasma broke over him like rain on an umbrella. He lumbered on, skin smouldering, and began pounding away at Tezcatlipoca’s leg, the same leg that had squashed Xipe Totec. He managed to put a few dents in it before the Smoking Mirror used his other leg to kick him like a tlachtli ball. Mictlantecuhtli was propelled high into the air, disappearing into the depths of the forest.

Stuart stood alone and horribly exposed. Tezcatlipoca towered over him. He fired off a shot at the glass screen in the armour’s chest. The bolt didn’t leave so much as a scratch.

“Ah, the erstwhile Conquistador.” Tezcatlipoca was plugged into the Serpent Warrior radio frequency. “Still around to plague us. Well, not for much longer.”

Tezcatlipoca’s arm came down. A half-dozen lightning-gun barrels were pointed Stuart’s way.

“Incoming!”

That was Mal, and she streaked down from on high, locked in a frantic embrace with Tlanextic. Twisting and turning, the two of them rammed sideways into Tezcatlipoca’s arm. The plasma bolt meant for Stuart gouged a furrow in the ground inches to his right.

Stuart didn’t hesitate. He sprang at Tezcatlipoca’s foot, flicking out his swords. Toci had said they would cut through anything.

Let’s see, shall we?

He cross-cut into the metal of the foot with a simultaneous outward swing of both blades. Unbelievably, there was almost no resistance. Stuart found himself looking at a deep X-shaped slash in the armour’s skin. Hydraulics and cables were laid bare. Sparks spat.

He darted behind Tezcatlipoca and cut again. Surely he could stop the mechanical beast by hobbling it.

Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back. Tlanextic was on top of him. The Serpent colonel pummelled him hard, landing armour-augmented blows which Stuart could feel even through his own armour.

“You don’t get it, do you, Englishman?” Tlanextic said. “The Empire is eternal. The Empire is unstoppable. Gods cannot stand in its way. Do you honestly think a turd-eating little maggot like you can?”

“Mal…” It was partly a question, partly a plea. Where was she? If Tlanextic was free of her, then what had become of her?

“I shook the bitch off. Our landing took more out of her than me. I’ll deal with her after you. Now, just fucking lie there while I beat you to death, eh?”

Stuart couldn’t bring the swords to bear. He was nailed to the earth by Tlanextic’s remorseless thumping.

“I know this armour’s limitations,” Tlanextic crowed. “I know what it can handle. I’ll open you up like a sardine can. I’ll shatter you. Pulverise you.”

The impacts were intensifying. Stuart could feel the armour losing integrity. Tlanextic’s blows were starting to hurt.

How much more could he withstand?

How much could the armour?

He put everything he had into an attempt to shove himself upwards, against the force of Tlanextic’s onslaught. He lodged an elbow in the soil, so that one sword was pointing upwards. Tlanextic grabbed his wrist and levered the arm away. Stuart fought to raise it again. Tlanextic continued to hammer him with his other hand.

The sword wavered between them, now vertical, now at an angle. The pain in Stuart’s chest was mounting. There was a sudden sharp spike of agony, accompanied by a crack that he felt as much as heard. A rib. He cried out involuntarily.

Tlanextic’s eyes held nothing but the grim resolution of a loyal solider keen to see his mission through.

Then, all at once, his gaze became vacant and the punching stopped. There was no longer any resistance against Stuart’s arm.

Without pausing to question what had happened, Stuart rammed the sword up into Tlanextic’s belly.

“Too late, slowcoach,” said Mal. “I got there first.”

Tlanextic was doubly impaled. Mal had skewered him from behind, Stuart from the front.

The Serpent colonel was still alive, but paralysed, helpless. Mal reared back, Stuart rose, both of them heaving Tlanextic upright. They held him fast between them like some sort of human spit roast. Tlanextic’s hands moved feebly, groping for the blades as if he genuinely hoped to pull them out of himself. It would have been a pitiable sight, had it been anyone else.

“I promised you, didn’t I, colonel?” Mal said. “Not quite with my bare hands, but close enough. You should never have turned your back on me.”

She gave the sword a vicious twist. Tlanextic let out a wet, sucking gasp.

“The Empire…” he choked.

“Fuck the fucking Empire,” Mal said, and twisted the sword even further.

Tlanextic shuddered. His eyes rolled to white.

On an unspoken cue, Stuart and Mal withdrew their swords. Tlanextic’s body crumpled to the ground.

They took a moment to survey each other.

“Your armour’s knackered,” Mal observed.

“Yours isn’t looking too clever either.”

Both suits were covered in dents and scored with scorch marks. Mal’s visor was cracked. Stuart’s breastplate had been beaten concave, like a steel drum. His torso throbbed. Every heartbeat brought a spasm of pain in his ribs.

“Where’s Tezcatlipoca?”

Mal turned. The battle had moved on, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out which way it had gone. “Just follow the big damn tunnel in the trees.”

They caught up with Tezcatlipoca in no time, and what was immediately clear was that Stuart’s assault on the giant suit of armour’s heel hadn’t crippled it but had slowed it. The thing was limping now, teetering a little each time it put its left foot down.

It had almost reached the hatch.

Quetzalcoatl was still valiantly trying to force his way through to Tezcatlipoca, and Itzpapalotl the same, but enough Serpent Warriors remained to hinder them. Tzitzimitl, Azcatl and Nanahuatzin continued to protect the entrance to their base from raids by advance parties of Serpents. Xolotl was there too now, harrying and savaging the enemy.

“One more try,” Stuart sighed.

“With our suits in the state they’re in?”

“No one said life was easy.”

“No one ever does. I wish one day someone would.”

As they started forwards, a figure charged out from the trees, head down like a maddened bull.

Mictlantecuhtli used a fallen trunk as a springboard to propel himself up onto Tezcatlipoca’s back. He collided fists-first with the giant suit of armour and rebounded. Tezcatlipoca was staggered by the blow. Mictlantecuhtli picked himself up and went on the offensive again, this time striking behind the knee. The giant went down onto its other knee. The Dark One leapt straight onto its head, his sheer momentum toppling the machine flat onto its face. It crashed to earth, limbs flailing cumbersomely. The impact of its toppling nearly knocked Stuart and Mal off their own feet.

Mictlantecuhtli’s gauntlets clanged down onto the giant’s back. Sparks flew, and fragments of metal. At that moment Itzpapalotl shook off the cluster of Serpents around her and swooped to assist the Dark One. Wrenching, tearing, battering, they prised their way into the behemoth like treasure seekers digging for gold.

Stuart was convinced Tezcatlipoca had had it; Mal was, too. The Smoking Mirror’s remaining life could be measured in seconds.

Then the back of the giant erupted outwards, and Mictlantecuhtli and Itzpapalotl were sent flying amid a welter of shards and debris.

From out of the hole in his immense machine, like a parasite worming its way out of its host body, crawled Tezcatlipoca. He looked unhurt. Worse, he looked unruffled. He was clad in a form-fitting metallic bodysuit whose mercury-like surface offered a dim, warped reflection of everything around him. This was, Stuart assumed, another form of armour. Tezcatlipoca had been wearing a suit of armour inside a suit of armour.

“Well, that was fun,” the Smoking Mirror said. The armour’s mask was a perfect, gleaming replica of the face beneath it. “I was dying to take my walking tank out for a test drive. I’m just amazed I got this far with it. Do you hear me, Quetzalcoatl? Almost at your doorstep before you managed to take me down. Sloppy. I expected more from you.”

Tzitzimitl gave one of her shrill whistles. Her pack of Tzitzimime, as one, broke off from attacking Serpent Warriors and loped towards Tezcatlipoca.

The Smoking Mirror allowed them to get close, then raised an imperious hand and engulfed almost the entire pack in a sizzling, coruscating blast of energy that came straight from his palm. Most of the demon dogs were cremated on the spot, to Tzitzimitl’s howling dismay, but a few dodged the attack and raced on. They jumped up onto the sprawled machine and pounced on Tezcatlipoca. He swiped several aside, then grabbed one by the hindleg and swung the creature like a club, using it to bludgeon the others. Savage snarls turned to yelps of pain and terror. Tzitzimitl sobbed and tore at her hair as her beloved monsters were methodically beaten to a pulp. Soon none was left alive, and a blood-spattered Tezcatlipoca stood with a mangled Tzitzimime in his hand and a dozen more shattered corpses at his feet.

Now it was Azcatl’s turn, but his scorpion-wasps didn’t fare any better. They couldn’t penetrate Tezcatlipoca’s armour, or even gain purchase on its smooth contours. Azcatl guided them to attack again and again, moving his hands like an orchestra conductor, manipulating the swarm remotely, shaping their actions. Tezcatlipoca just stood there and laughed.

“Is that the best you can do, Red Ant?” he sneered. “Your trouble is, you think too small-scale. I, on the other hand — I imagine bigger. Always have. And that is why I rule a planet, while you rule insects.”

A sphere of brilliance exploded outward around him. It came and went in a dazzling instant, and when it was gone, none of the scorpion-wasps remained. They had all been obliterated, literally in a flash.

“No!” Azcatl cried.

At that moment, Quetzalcoatl took radical action. A score of Serpent Warriors surrounded him on all sides, subjecting his forcefield to a 360? point-blank assault with their l-guns. Quetzalcoatl switched off the forcefield, and shot upwards at the same time.

The Serpents blasted one another, while Quetzalcoatl soared free…

…and plummeted straight down onto Tezcatlipoca like a living missile, hitting him feet-first.

The two brothers slammed together into the giant armour beneath them. They rose as one, grappling hand to hand. Quetzalcoatl’s features showed nothing but implacable determination. “This ends now, Tez,” he said through clenched teeth.

Tezcatlipoca’s mask reflected Quetzalcoatl’s face back at him, dark and distorted. “Long past time,” he replied.

“How did you even find us?”

“It was easier than you think. Coyolxauhqui. She gave me the co-ordinates of your little hidey-hole.”

“Not willingly, I’ll bet.”

“Not at all. She took some persuading. It was the promise of an end to her pain that finally broke her. And an end did come.”

“Bastard!” Quetzalcoatl roared.

They took off, still locked in a mutual death grip. Smoke swirled in vortices as they ascended. Xolotl ran in circles, howling in distress as his master rose out of sight.

Stuart didn’t know if his armour was still fully functioning. He raised his head and lifted off unsteadily. The armour felt sluggish, but it was working.

“Stuart!”

“I have to follow them, Mal. This is the endgame. I have to see how it plays out.”

“But all these Serpents still left…”

“The gods can handle them.”

It was true. Tzitzimitl and Azcatl had no more mutant creatures on hand to deploy, and Nanahuatzin’s disease-giving abilities were of limited use, but Mictlantecuhtli and Itzpapalotl were both back on their feet. The two of them could mop up the Serpents, no trouble.

Mal went after Stuart. She couldn’t deny it: she too had to find out how this was all going to end. She told herself she and Stuart might be of help to the Plumed Serpent, but knew it was unlikely. She was motivated by sheer curiosity, nothing more.

Above the canopy, they spotted Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca racing westward. The Smoking Mirror had broken free from his brother’s clutches and was streaking away at astounding speed. The Plumed Serpent was in hot pursuit. It wasn’t hard to guess where Tezcatlipoca was headed. Only one thing lay in that direction: Tenochtitlan.

Even in prime condition, Serpent armour was no match for the gods’. Stuart and Mal lost sight of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca before reaching Lake Texcoco, and arrived at the island city several minutes after did. They searched all over, scanning the ruined towers and fire-gutted ziggurats. Eventually Mal spied a group of people — engineers in overalls — fleeing across a plaza in a panic. It wasn’t hard to guess what they running from, and where.

The city’s fusion plant sported a fresh, gaping hole in its roof. The building resounded to tumultuous bangs and crashes, as though boulders were being tossed about within. Stuart and Mal made a careful descent into its interior.

The plant’s main chamber was strewn with rubble. Walls, floors and support columns all bore man-size craters. Steam hissed from fissures in the massive ducts leading from the turbines.

Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca rampaged to and fro. Every now and then they strayed close to the confinement unit, a huge, electromagnet-studded steel torus which contained the fusion plasma and kept it at the density necessary for a chain reaction to be effective. The two gods had eyes for nothing but each other. They battled with the passionate hatred that only close kin could feel. Every blow that landed was struck from the heart. Weapons had been set aside for the time being: this needed to be physical, the direct, personal infliction of pain. Centuries of estrangement and pent-up resentment were spewing out in a flood of rage. Neither of them would stop — or be content — until the other was dead by his hand.

Who was winning? It was hard to tell. They seemed evenly matched. Tezcatlipoca was the stronger, to judge by how he threw his brother around, hoisting him off the floor as though he was a foam-stuffed dummy and hurling him with ease. Quetzalcoatl, however, had speed on his side. Repeatedly he got inside Tezcatlipoca’s defences to deliver a punishing series of jabs and hooks, until Tezcatlipoca was able to push him off with a powerful counterattack.

Mal, as she hovered beside Stuart, looking down on the conflict, was conscious of being a witness to something unique and epochal. The air around the two gods seemed alive with energy, as though their rivalry was charging the atmosphere like a thunderstorm. They were superhumans trying to tear each other apart, in a world where, to them, everything was made of tinfoil and paper. Effortlessly, Tezcatlipoca sent Quetzalcoatl sailing through a plate glass partition. Equally effortlessly, Quetzalcoatl wrenched a control console off the floor and brought it crashing down on Tezcatlipoca’s head.

“We’re helpless,” she said.

“Even if we weren’t, we can’t get involved,” Stuart said. “This is their fight. They have to settle it their way.”

“I hate feeling so useless.”

“I’d suggest prayer… only it’s them we’re supposed to pray to.”

Tezcatlipoca locked his fingers around Quetzalcoatl’s neck. The Plumed Serpent broke the grip, slamming Tezcatlipoca’s arms outwards, and sent his brother reeling with a headbutt so hard that it partially shattered the silvery mask. He pressed home the advantage by shoving him hard against the confinement unit.

A ragged sliver of Tezcatlipoca’s face was now exposed. He glared up at Quetzalcoatl, hatred blazing in his visible eye. Quetzalcoatl punched him repeatedly, relentlessly. Blood spurted from Tezcatlipoca’s nose. The mask crumbled away in fragments until there was none of it left, just a jagged hole in the front of Tezcatlipoca’s helmet. The Smoking Mirror flailed at his brother, trying to ward him off, but Quetzalcoatl kept up the attack, seeming to sense that this was it, the decisive moment.

“Please…” Tezcatlipoca mumbled.

Quetzalcoatl halted.

“P-please, brother. Enough.”

“You submit?”

Tezcatlipoca nodded weakly.

Quetzalcoatl backed off.

Tezcatlipoca grinned. “Gullible as ever, Kay.”

Light burst out of him. Quetzalcoatl staggered backwards, stunned.

“You had me on the ropes,” Tezcatlipoca said, straightening. “Yet you couldn’t bring yourself to do what had to be done — finish me off. A conscience like yours hamstrings you.”

With a roar, Quetzalcoatl threw himself at him. Again, Tezcatlipoca collided with the confinement unit, this time with such force that its outer shell ruptured.

An alarm sounded. A recorded voice announced, “Torus breached. Torus breached. Plant will go into automatic shutdown.”

Mal turned to Stuart. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“What for?” he replied. “There’s no danger to us. The fusion reaction dies down as soon as the power to the magnets is turned off. There may be a plasma escape, but while we’re hovering up here, we’re not near enough for that to matter. The only people liable to get burned are those two.”

Quetzalcoatl bore down on Tezcatlipoca, one forearm to his windpipe. “I can kill you,” he growled, “and I will. You’re nothing but scum. Our mother should have strangled you at birth.”

“You keep blaming me for your own failings, Kay,” Tezcatlipoca said, choking the words out. “Accept some responsibility for once in your life.”

“I blame you for everything. I’m innocent.”

“Kill me then, if it’ll make you feel better about yourself. But know this. If I die, so does this world and everyone on it.”

“What?”

“Yes. All these humans you’re so fond of. All gone.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I? Don’t you think I didn’t anticipate that a moment like this might come? I’ve installed a failsafe system in this armour. If it stops detecting any life signs, it initiates a countdown. A signal is sent out worldwide to every fusion plant on every active volcano.”

“This is nonsense.”

“The fusion plants go into overdrive, forcing massive eruptions. Earth’s volcanoes, all fifteen hundred of them, explode simultaneously. Fault lines shatter. Tectonic plates are split asunder. An entire planet rips itself to pieces.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“The infrastructure is in place. If I can’t have this world, then neither can you.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Quetzalcoatl. “When has anything that’s come out of your mouth ever been true?”

“I’m telling the truth now. I know how precious this world is to you, the high hopes you have for its inhabitants. You wouldn’t risk their lives just to take mine, would you?”

“Try me.”

“Then go ahead. Do it.”

The confinement unit juddered beneath Tezcatlipoca’s back. Tongues of translucent orange flame licked out from the fissure near his head.

“You can’t win, Kay,” said the Smoking Mirror hoarsely. “Kill me, you lose. Don’t kill me, you also lose. I’ve outwitted you again, brother. You may be the noble one, but I’m the smart one. Brains beat good intentions every time.”

Quetzalcoatl bent further over his brother, pinning him down harder.

Stuart swooped down to his side. “Don’t,” he said. “Can’t you see it’s what he wants? He’s goading you. Don’t play into his hands.”

The Plumed Serpent didn’t look round. “Stay out of this, Reston.”

“I can’t. I believe him, even if you don’t. As the Great Speaker, he had control over volcanoes. He must have known all along that he might need a backup plan, something that would be sure to deter you. This is it.”

“Heed your human mascot, Kay,” said Tezcatlipoca. “He’s wise.”

“Leave him be, Quetzalcoatl,” Stuart urged. “There must be some other way of resolving this.”

“This is not your concern!” Quetzalcoatl bellowed, and with an almost casual flick of his arm, he swatted Stuart aside. Stuart struck a wall, and his chest filled with fire. It felt as though more than one rib was broken now. It hurt simply to breathe.

Mal came down and squatted beside him.

“We have to stop him,” Stuart told her.

“Great idea. How?”

There wasn’t a how. The fate of the world now hung on a god’s whim. It was all down to Quetzalcoatl.

“These are my terms,” said Tezcatlipoca. “Let me go free. Return to Tamoanchan, you and the others. Never return here again. Accede this world fully to me. It’s no longer your project. It hasn’t been for half a millennium. It’s mine.”

“No.”

“I understand humans far better than you do. They’re not worth your time. They don’t deserve to be exalted, only ruled and managed. Look at those two over there. A killer and a slave. And they’re about the best of the lot.”

“Humans are admirable. As a race. As a whole.”

“Stop deluding yourself.”

“Stop trying to delude me.”

“I’m being honest. Perhaps it’s time you started being honest with yourself.”

“I’m not listening to you. I listened to you before, and…”

“Yes, that turned out well, didn’t it?”

“Be quiet!” Quetzalcoatl snapped.

“You and Quetzalpetatl…”

“I said be quiet!”

“Sisterfucker,” Tezcatlipoca spat.

Quetzalcoatl hauled Tezcatlipoca sideways, so that his head was over the breach in the confinement unit.

Fire lashed out in flickering lambent arcs, touching Tezcatlipoca’s face.

Tezcatlipoca screamed.

So did Mal, in protest. So did Stuart.

Quetzalcoatl held his brother’s face to the scorching curls of plasma. He closed his eyes tight. Tezcatlipoca shook and shuddered, bucked and squirmed. Skin blackened and peeled. Flesh melted. Smoke coiled upwards. Soon bone showed through.

Quetzalcoatl let go only when his brother’s body fell still. He dropped Tezcatlipoca to the floor and heaved a deep, trembling sigh. He stood staring at the faceless corpse for several moments.

“It had to be this way, Tez,” he said. “Don’t you see? It had to be.”

Mal Rose. “What have you done?” she said, in cold fury.

“Freed you. Liberated you.” Quetzalcoatl’s tone was matter-of-fact. What could be more obvious?

“But the failsafe… The fusion plants…”

“Tezcatlipoca had your race so brainwashed, so cowed, you’d fall for anything he said. Luckily I was able to see through his deceit.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I know my brother. This was a desperate, last-ditch gamble. Of course it was. He was preying on my one real weakness — you humans. He would never — ”

Faintly, through their feet, they felt a vibration. It swelled then faded, like the hum of a tuning fork.

“He would never…” Quetzalcoatl repeated, faltering.

The vibration came again, stirring up dust.

Quetzalcoatl took off, zooming up through the hole in the roof.

Mal knelt by Stuart again. “Think you can move?”

“Everything hurts, but yes.”

Their suits of armour carried them unsteadily skyward. Outside, above Tenochtitlan, Quetzalcoatl was scanning the horizon in all directions. His movements were agitated.

“This can’t be,” he muttered. “He wouldn’t. He didn’t.”

“You fool,” said Mal. “You big fucking arrogant twat.”

“How dare you talk to me like that?” But it lacked conviction.

“It’s happening, isn’t it? Just like Tezcatlipoca said.”

“I…”

“You didn’t listen. You were too bound up in your petty vengeance. And now look what you’ve done.”

“I can fix it.” This, too, lacked conviction.

“Oh yeah? Fucking how?”

“I can…” Quetzalcoatl broke off. He bowed his head. “I don’t know how.”

“You’ve screwed us all. Do you realise that?”

Faintly: “Yes.” Then, with a little more strength: “But I can save you. You two, at least. Come with me.”

“Where to?”

“Tamoanchan.”

“Tamoanchan exists?” said Stuart.

“It’s a world,” said Quetzalcoatl. “And such a world, too. A world where there are many like us. Where you can be like us.”

“You aren’t gods, are you?” Somehow, Stuart had known this all along. Ever since his first visit to the underground ziggurat. “You call yourselves that, and by comparison with us you are. But you aren’t. Not really. You’re scientists, that’s all. Scientists and warriors.”

Quetzalcoatl’s silence confirmed it.

“From somewhere like earth.”

Another silence.

“You live longer than us, you’ve discovered more than us, and you enjoy being hailed as gods by us. But you aren’t and never have been.”

“It seemed as good a description as any,” Quetzalcoatl said. “A useful shorthand. And what is ‘god,’ after all, but the name a lesser being gives to a superior one? A dog’s owner is god to that dog.”

“Superior?” said Mal scornfully. “That’s a laugh. You’re so superior, how come you just signed our planet’s death warrant?”

“I’ll say it again: come with me. We’ll join the others. There’s still time. We can leave. Tamoanchan lies just a sidestep away. Our underground ziggurat isn’t just our beachhead, it’s our transportation — a gateway through the interstices between worlds.”

“Go with you,” said Stuart, “and be treated like talking monkeys for the rest of our lives?”

“It won’t be like that.”

“Oh, no?”

“I can look after you. I’ll — I’ll hold you up as ideal specimens of your kind.”

“Specimens,” snorted Mal.

“Look at the two of you. Oneness in duality. Duality in oneness. My people will respect you. Revere you, even. I guarantee it.”

The sky had begun to shimmer — waves of gossamer iridescence rippling across the blueness. The surface of Lake Texcoco pulsed and heaved. The walls of Tenochtitlan quivered. Birds took to the air, squawking in fright.

“It’s that or perish,” Quetzalcoatl insisted. “I’m offering you survival. Just you two, alone out of billions. You should be flattered. Honoured.”

Stuart and Mal looked at each other.

“Choose,” said the Plumed Serpent, holding out a hand to them. “Now or never.”