The Age of Zeus

29. THE GORGONS

T he Gulfstream flew south-west to the Malay Peninsula, passing Hong Kong en route.

What was left of Hong Kong.

The Titans gazed out at the remnants of the city from the plane's starboard portholes. A few skeletal skyscrapers still stood, canted at angles like gravestones in an untended cemetery. The coastline was pitted with craters, many of them awash with seawater like small lagoons. Wrecked jumbo jets lay sprawled across the runways of the reclaimed-land airport. Houses high in the hills were hollow, roofless shells, overrun with vines and creepers.

Here and there could be seen pockets of makeshift habitation — tents set up on streets in the central business district, clusters of junks and sampans moored in Victoria Harbour, shanty towns along the waterfront. Cooking fires sent up thin trails of smoke between the devastated buildings. Many survivors of the Obliteration still could not bear to leave Hong Kong — it would seem like abandoning the corpse of a loved one — and a number of non-residents had moved there, coming from as nearby as Kowloon and as far away as America, in a gesture of protest against the city's destroyers. Some had even set themselves the task of burying the dead, a huge undertaking. Mass ossuaries had been established in the basements of banks and financial services corporations. Vaults that had once been crammed with wealth and treasure were now gradually being filled with millions of sun-bleached bones.

"Glad Fred's not with us," Ramsay said sombrely, as the shattered, humiliated city receded into the distance. "Imagine that was Chicago… Nah, doesn't bear thinking about."

They landed at Singapore, at a freight airport where, in sweltering equatorial heat, the techs unloaded the TITAN suits and weapons into the back of a waiting hire truck. It had become a routine procedure by now. The battlesuits and weapons were brought out in locked steel flightcases embossed with the Daedalus Industries logo. Permits were checked by officials. Import duties were paid on the "product" contained in the flightcases. Bribes were also paid where required, and they almost always were required. That way, airport officials were disincentivised from opening the flightcases to make sure what was stated on the computer docket — components for keeping missile defence systems in basic working order — matched what actually lay inside. Then began the road journey to the site of enemy engagement.

In Singapore itself, a strict nighttime curfew was in effect. This was because, after dark, the entire island city-state belonged to the Gorgons. Every evening at sundown the trio of snake-haired creatures would emerge from their lair, a pit they had dug for themselves at the Botanic Gardens on Tanglin Road, and wander the streets in a group, communicating with one another by means of hisses, their forked tongues flickering. Singaporeans lived in terror of them. Blinds were kept tightly drawn between dusk and daybreak, and only a fool would venture outdoors during that time. One look from a Gorgon, one moment's exposure to those slitted serpentine eyes, and…

Well, the evidence of what would happen was all around, plain to see. On pavements, in parks, street corners, temple steps, everywhere — the statues. Statues of people, some cowering or shying away, others with their arms extended imploringly, still others frozen in the act of fleeing, looking over their shoulders. The statues appeared to be made of stone but in fact were composed of a carbon compound that had the ashy, powdery texture of pumice. Samples tested by scientists had shown that this substance was living tissue after it had been scorched by a sudden, massive burst of heat from the inside out, desiccated and hardened to a rocklike texture. The statues were the mortal remains of those who had been baked on the spot, instantaneously cooked somehow by a Gorgon's stare. To the locals they had become objects of superstition and dread. Living Singaporeans refused to touch them or, for that matter, move them or dispose of them. They simply walked around them, eyes averted, and hoped they themselves wouldn't share the same fate.

Singapore's crime, for which the Gorgons were the punishment, was that it had been the venue for a failed attempt to overthrow the Olympians. A group of businesspeople, principally weapons manufacturers and oil sheiks, had got together, united by their disgust at the steep decline in profits that had come about as a result of Olympian policies on defence spending and renewable energy sources. This, the so-called Raffles Syndicate — named not after the fictional gentleman thief, as some literary-minded wags liked to suggest, but after the sumptuous colonial-era hotel where their conspiratorial meetings took place — had provided funding for a battalion of international paratrooper mercenaries to launch a direct assault on Mount Olympus.

The raid had been well-intentioned, but doomed to disaster. In all, it had lasted a little under half an hour, from the moment the first mercenary had his heart clawed out in midair by a shrieking Harpy to the moment the final remaining mercenary died on the ground, choking on the spear which Artemis had plunged through his neck; and not once during that half an hour had the Olympians' stronghold been in danger of being breached. Nor had any Olympian suffered any injury beyond the odd bullet wound, which was well within the powers of their resident healer, Demeter, to cure.

The members of the Raffles Syndicate had all, naturally, been tracked down and executed in various messy ways, and the Gorgons had ever since been teaching Singapore, and the world, a lesson — the lesson being it wasn't just wrong to plot against the Pantheon, it was wrong even to harbour those who would plot against the Pantheon.

Nightfall. Six Titans fanned out through the Down-town Core, Singapore's oldest urbanised area and one of the Gorgons' preferred haunts. They moved in pairs along the deserted streets, Tethys with Mnemosyne, Phoebe with Rhea, Hyperion with Oceanus. The city's nocturnal stillness, combined with its immaculate cleanliness, was more than a little eerie. The place seemed more museum, or mausoleum, than municipality. It felt like a specimen of the modern world that had been isolated and preserved for future generations to admire. Adding to this impression were the statues, rough-featured but in all-too-real poses of horror and fear, caught in the pure amber glow of the streetlights. What a contrast they made with the statue of the city's founder Sir Stamford Raffles who stood on the east of the Singapore River, polymarble arms folded, looking out with monumental pride over all he surveyed.

"Base — Tethys," Sam said, after the Titans had spent an hour quartering the Downtown Core, without sign of the Gorgons. "No luck so far. Suggest we widen our sweep."

"Roger that," Landesman replied. Satellite bounce lent a faint echo to his voice. "Remember, if you spot one of them, for God's sake get away as fast as you can and take cover. Unlike the mythical Gorgons these ones don't need eye-to-eye contact. They just need to be able to see you."

"And then they roast you," said Hyperion. "Does anyone else think that's just plain wack? These bitches being able to flash-fry you just by looking at you?"

"I've known a couple of ladies in my time who could do that," Oceanus chipped in.

Mnemosyne groaned. "And we're sharing open comms with a pair of Neanderthals."

"Ah, you've just never been around real men before," said Hyperion.

"Oh, that's right. Silly me. I should be grateful to be in the company of such prime specimens of macho manhood. In fact, just talking to you, hearing your butch voices, it's made me come in my trolleys."

"Do any of you people even speak English?" Hyperion said. "I mean, 'trolleys'? What the hell does — ?"

"Titans," Landesman cut in tersely, "need I remind you that the Gorgons appear to exhibit an advanced and refined form of pyrokinesis. They can superheat any object to a core temperature of two thousand degrees Fahrenheit or higher, as long as they have direct line of sight of it. I'd suggest, therefore, that you concentrate all your energies on looking for them, because if they see you first…"

"Understood, base," said Sam. "Get that, everyone? Let's stow the banter and stay focused."

"Snakes for hair, too," Hyperion muttered. "Not enough that they're three crazed Martha Stewarts who want to make biscuits out of you, but they gotta have snakes for hair as well."

"Hyperion."

"Stowing the banter, ma'am. Banter stowed."

On they strode through the silent, pristine city, past malls where no night watchmen patrolled any more, past terraced shophouses whose window displays weren't lit up because there was no point (nobody was about, out of hours, to stop and glance in), past a hospital whose emergency department was closed (woe betide you if you were taken ill at night in Singapore these days), and along tree-lined avenues such as Orchard Road where nothing stirred but the occasional gutter-hugging rat and the palm and angsana fronds simmering gently in the hot night breeze. Another hour elapsed. A bead of sweat trickled down Sam's back and she commanded the battlesuit to lower its inner temperature by a couple of degrees. Her visor HUD pinpointed the other five Titans' relative locations: Mnemosyne within 5 metres of her, Hyperion and Oceanus a couple of hundred metres north-east, Phoebe and Rhea roughly quarter of a kilometre due east. Each was represented by a dot of light, with a callsign marker attached and a cluster of characters displaying ever-shifting values of distance, vector and relative direction. It gave her a weird, heady sense of connectedness to see this data hovering in front of the streetscape before her, to know precisely where her fellow team-members were even when they were out of sight. It was a kind of technology-enabled omniscience. The battlesuits lent their wearers the abilities of gods. The Titans had yet to discover, though, whether the suits made them the equals of gods.

That will come, she thought. This systematic, methodical killing of monsters was the warm-up to the main event, like the preliminary heats of a race that led to the finals. Useful practice for the Titans but also, according to Landesman, tactically important. The Olympians were now aware that somebody was coming for them. Arrogance and bluster would remain their outward response. Inwardly, however, might they not be feeling a certain amount of anxiety right now? The first prickings of doubt? Watching the ranks of their monsters getting whittled down, they might well have a sense that their position was being undermined, like people on a dais feeling the support struts beneath them being pulled away one by one. The Olympians' sturdy Olympus redoubt, that Acropolis-like structure with its palisades and battlements and its squadron of guardian Harpies, might be impregnable, but not so their hearts. Even the Olympians weren't immune to fear. This programme of monstercide was a propaganda tool as much as anything. For that reason alone, it was vital that the Titans continue to pursue it. Fear among the Pantheon could lead to discord, discord to disunity, disunity to a reduction in effectiveness. Which, as Landesman said, could only be a good thing.

"All Titans — Hyperion. I have visual. Repeat, I have visual."

The urgency in his tone sparked a jolt of adrenaline inside Sam.

"Hyperion, get to cover," she said. "You too, Oceanus."

"Copy that," said Hyperion. "Already on it."

"You're sure it's them?" said Phoebe.

"Three women with wavy snaky hair strolling along the road like they own the place? I'd say it's a pretty fair guess."

"Hyperion, Oceanus, when you're safe, hold position," said Sam. "All Titans, converge. Prepare to deploy Perseus guns. Phoebe, Rhea, I have you at half a klick south and east of Hyperion and Oceanus. Proceed on a north-westerly heading. If we're lucky, this is a pincer movement waiting to happen."

"Roger that, Tethys."

Sam started to run, Mnemosyne close at her heels. The pace of her pounding feet vibrated her vision, blurring things at the periphery. The visor readout clocked her speed at a little over 30 mph.

Exceeding thirty in a built-up area, she thought. That's a fine and penalty points.

Gunfire stuttered, close by. Sam and Mnemosyne turned a corner and skidded to a halt. Hyperion and Oceanus were a few metres ahead, hunkered behind a parked car. Hyperion was at the engine end of the car, his Perseus gun protruding round the front bumper, cracking off round after round. Distantly, Sam could see three figures silhouetted in the roadway. They were running fast towards the car, down on all fours like lizards, hissing and shrieking to one another as they went.

Grabbing Mnemosyne, she ducked back around the corner. Then she unlocked her Perseus gun, swivelled the hinged barrel to the left at a 60° angle, and poked it out into the street. The digital camera mounted on the business end of the barrel relayed an image to a small LCD screen near the trigger guard. A target sight was superimposed on the image.

Hyperion was still firing, but appeared not to have scored a hit yet. The Gorgons were still coming, enraged, scurrying along with their hair erect and wildly writhing.

Sam took aim, centring the target sight on the frontmost of the creatures. Her first two shots with the semiautomatic pistol missed. The third struck the Gorgon in the shoulder. The monster sprawled onto its belly, screaming in pain. The other two hurried to their sister's aid.

Oceanus laid the barrel of his Perseus gun flat across the car's bonnet and loosed off a couple of rounds. The bullets ricocheted off tarmac. At the same moment the two uninjured Gorgons reared up. Both stared hard at the parked car, bending their heads purposefully.

"Hyperion, Oceanus," Sam said, "you need to move your backsides. Now!"

Both Titans hurled themselves clear of the car, and a split-second later the combined gazes of the two Gorgons ignited the fuel tank and the car exploded, bucking into the air atop a roiling cushion of flame. Hyperion and Oceanus hustled across the pavement to the shelter of a shop doorway, even as the burning vehicle crashed back down to earth on its side, shedding pieces of itself in all directions.

The Gorgons skirted around the fiery wreckage. All three of them were on their feet, upright this time. The one Sam had shot was clutching its shoulder but still eager, it seemed, for battle. They closed in on Hyperion and Oceanus, who were pinned down in the shop doorway, unable to break cover for fear of exposing themselves.

"Tethys, this is Rhea. We are in position."

Sam's visor display placed Phoebe and Rhea on the opposite side of the street, in the mouth of an alleyway. Gotcha. She gave them the command to fire at will. Shots rippled towards the Gorgons. Sam and Mnemosyne, the one kneeling, the other standing, let rip from their own hiding place. The Gorgons were caught in a withering diagonal crossfire. On the screen of her Perseus gun Sam saw the monsters, flickeringly sidelit by the flames from the car, swivelling in all directions, trying to see where the bullets were coming from, where their attackers were, but unable to. Their voices rose in a howl, a wavering ululation of outrage and frustration. Then one of the Gorgons went down, as though poleaxed, raging one moment, spreadeagled and motionless the next. Another of them took a bullet to the head. Gobbets of brain and fragments of snake hair flew. No sooner had this one hit the ground than the third fell too.

"Cease fire," Sam announced.

In the silence that followed, the guns' reports could be heard echoing all across the city, pealing between buildings. Closer to, the only sounds were the crackle and pop of the burning car, the twanging of heat-warped metal.

"All Titans sound off," Sam said. "Are you OK?"

Five affirmatives.

"Though for a moment there…" said Hyperion, his voice raspy with emotion. "Ladies, Oceanus and I owe you big-time."

"Let's go and take a look," Sam said. "Confirm the kills. Then we get ourselves the hell out of here."

They congregated around the three bodies. Each Gorgon had a glossy scaly hide and each was identical to its sisters in every respect except colouring — one was greenish, one greyish, one brownish. All three lay still, apart from the slender little snakes which sprouted from their scalps in thick profusion. These were twitching in their death throes. Now and then their tiny mouths gaped in spasms of soundless, shuddering, fang-baring agony.

"Jeez-us," breathed Hyperion. "Those are about three of the most hideous things I've ever clapped eyes on."

"Shouldn't be allowed to exist," agreed Rhea.

"Abominations," Phoebe added, her German accent tripping slightly over the word.

"Well, they're dead now," said Oceanus, "and good sodding riddance, I say."

Sam peered down at the monsters, and for some reason the man-lion from her dream flitted into her thoughts.

"What are they?" she wondered aloud. "Where did they come from? I don't believe they're supernatural beings. Did someone make them? Were they people once?"

"Does it matter?" said Hyperion.

"Quite," said Oceanus. "They're killable. That's all we need to know."

"But they're intelligent," said Sam. "They're more than just animals. And that — "

She was cut short by an abrupt loud yelp from Hyperion. "Whoa! Its eyes are open! Motherfucker's still alive!"

One of the Gorgons, the greyish one, was staring up at the surrounding Titans. Its lips parted in a snarl. Its eyes blazed with hatred.

Sam was closest to it. She knew she had just a matter of heartbeats in which to act. She didn't go for her gun. Her response was instinctual, visceral, a convulsion of disgust. She raised a leg and brought her foot down on the Gorgon's face, stamping with servomotor-augmented strength. Her boot went straight through the monster's head, crushing the midsection of it flat as easily as if she had been stamping on a watermelon. Blood spurted everywhere. The crunch was horrendous but also, at some deep, primal gut level, exhilarating.

"Well," said Hyperion, scanning the mess Sam had made. He took off a gauntlet and wiped blood drips from his visor. "Yeah. Motherfucker was still alive. But I think it's safe to say, not any more."