Pantheon Of Vengeance. James Axler

flesh. Shadows danced wildly behind the silver-clad goddess whose precision instruments had transformed into jagged, gore-encrusted saws and splinter-edged cleavers. Without administering an anesthetic, Hera hacked down violently. Her medical assistants had been replaced by hunch-backed, blue-scaled mutants from the Tartarus horde. Rather than handing her the tools she needed to remove Diana’s healthy leg in order to fit her inside the cockpit of the clockwork war suit, their gnarled claws raked obscenely over her silver-and-gold curves, gibbering in delight at splatters of blood and wriggling pieces of flying flesh. Blue-black tongues stretched from between scaled lips to lap the offal off Hera’s armored skin.

      “So tasty is our daughter,” a voice whispered, harsh and raw, from the shadows. “So ugly, tasty and ours.”

      Diana craned her neck, trying to get a look at the speaker, but her attention was seized by the metal cap crushing her thigh stump. A bolt was drilled through the bottom, grinding through bone to anchor the cap. The vibrations tore through Diana’s body, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. A hammer whacked the steel stump cap, and the mutilated girl arched her back in agony.

      “Roll over,” Hera demanded. Diana saw a pulsing, gel-filled black creature with barbed and hooked beetle limbs twitching in Hera’s grasp. “I need to put in your interface.”

      Diana nodded. It was the sacrifice she had to make, to become powerful enough to fight off Thanatos’s hordes. A reptilian hand caressed her cheek, scales rubbing like sandpaper on her remaining facial skin.

      “It’ll only hurt a moment, child,” the mutant grumbled.

      Diana’s eyes widened with horror as she recognized the speaker, the one who called her his daughter. It was Thanatos himself, the scale-skinned lord of Tartarus, present at her conversion from fragile flesh to armored warrior goddess. She tried to pull away, but the beetle limbs speared into her back, tearing through skin and anchoring in her muscles. A stinger of venomous fire plunged into her spine, and Diana froze in feverish agony.

      Thanatos let go of her face, freezing in his own horror. A hand wrapped around the monster-king’s throat, and with a savage, crackling twist, Thanatos collapsed in a jumble of useless limbs.

      Diana relaxed on the table, panting, looking at the newcomer who had executed the demon lord of the Tartarus horde. It was a tall, magnificent creature, even larger in stature than the corpse in the briefing room. Incredibly, its face was even more of a mix of angelic beauty and devilish intensity. Dark eyes looked down on the amputee thrashing on the cracked stone that was the operating table, then dismissed her.

      It strode regally around the abattoir table, meeting Hera as an equal, wearing even more splendid skin armor than hers. A long, elegant claw stroked the armored woman’s cheek.

      “It has been too long, lover,” the magnificent reptilian angel whispered in a disturbing, resonant, multitonal voice.

      “I didn’t know if you’d ever come for me,” Hera replied.

      Diana looked in disgust and betrayal as goddess-queen and alien angel kissed passionately.

      She was ejected from the dream with a breathless pant. Her strawlike hair was matted to her forehead in the wake of the traumatic nightmare. Almost on instinct, she crawled over to her wheelchair, cable-tight arm muscles maneuvering her truncated body into its seat with acrobatic ease. Even splashes of cool water from the simple metal basin of her sink did little to ease the psychic burns seared into her mind.

      She rolled out of her quarters, making her way through the New Olympian complex. Diana needed the comfort of her cramped cockpit, the womb of steel that completed her being. Outside Artem15, Diana was only a husk, a leftover that wasn’t really alive. In the massive clockwork war suit, she became something much more; she was fully alive, not an animated piece of burned and fused meat. The hydraulic limbs, hooked into her central nervous system by the cyberport on her spine, felt as natural as if she had been born with them.

      Ted Euphastus was in the hangar, gnawing on a cheroot cigar as he brought his mug over to a coffeemaker on the table. He looked at Diana as she entered. “Can’t sleep?”

      “Is she ready to roll?” Diana asked curtly, ignoring Fast’s question. She steered her wheelchair toward the inert robotic figure standing in its coffinlike dock.

      “A jolly fucking good evening to you, too,” Fast grumbled. “Yeah. You can see the chest plate’s been rearmored, and I realigned the leg hydraulics.”

      Diana rolled up to the trapeze arm off to the side of the robot and hauled herself onto the rung, swinging around on the pivoting metal pole to deposit herself in the pilot’s couch. It took only a moment for her to snap the interface plug into her spine port. As the Charged Energy Modules that powered the mobile armor thrummed to life, imparting vitality into the inert robotic limbs, Diana’s body tingled from scalp to stump cap. She likened the sensation to when her arm fell asleep, cold and prickly, but as the blood rushed back into the arm, warmth dispelled the numb incompletion. She was whole as her nervous system completed the circuit that activated the ancient technology cradling her. Artem15 tapped the trapeze boom out of the way, locking it back over the wheelchair. Red camera lenses glared hatefully down at the conveyance for a cripple.

      As the clockwork war suit needed no refuelling thanks to the CEM’s functions, Artem15 didn’t need to worry about wasting resources while on an unscheduled patrol. The other pilots felt the same, enjoying the comfort of the embracing armored tubs.

      “Ari and Dion have patrols out,” Fast announced. “And Zoo’s on the prowl by himself.”

      “Any particular operation, or just walkabouts?” Artem15 asked.

      “No word on what Zoo is doing. He said it was private business. Are5 and D10nysus have Spartan units with them,” Fast said. “Want me to rouse a couple for you?”

      “Nah. I’ve got the radio to bring in Ari or Dion,” Artem15 said. “I just need to clear my head and get some fresh air.”

      Artem15 gave Fast some credit for mostly concealing the ironic smirk as he considered her remark that going for a stroll wrapped in three-thousand pounds of machinery was getting some fresh air.

      “Well, Hera said that you’re not supposed to go on an end run into the Tartarus holdings,” Fast warned.

      Diana was glad that Artem15 didn’t have the ability to convey facial expressions, even with the cybernetic hookup between her and the robot. “I said I was going for a walk, not out for a suicide. Speaking of which, I didn’t look. I’ve got replacement javelins?”

      “You’ve got a full quiver, and nine yards of ammo per shoulder gun,” Fast explained.

      Diana nodded, her golden-haired head bobbing between the gear-shaped shoulder gun mounts. “Thanks, Fast. Sorry about being such a whiny bitch.”

      Fast glanced over to the wheelchair. “It’s that thing, kid. Being stuck in it would make me grumpy, too.”

      Artem15 put her metal claw tips to where her lips would be if she were human, then bent them back, a robotic kiss blown. That brought a smile to the wrench monkey’s bearded face.

      With a graceful pivot, the robotic huntress strode out into the countryside, a skip in her step as she passed through the massive hangar doors.

      The gloom induced by fever dreams evaporated as Artem15 walked into the Greek sunset.

      THE IMPACT OF THE MUSKET BALL was a shock to Kane. However, thanks to the high-tech polymers of the shadow suit, his remarkable reflexes and the relatively soft primitive lead musket ball, the gunshot only managed to raise a tiny bruise on his pectoral muscle. Kane’s sleek, wolflike frame darted through the peppering cloud of poorly aimed fire seeking him out. Dropping into a shoulder roll, the ex-Magistrate ducked the final volley of black-powder shots.

      The ancient, simple weapons couldn’t be reloaded by the creatures who barely had the presence of mind to aim them. Unfortunately for Kane, the gleaming points of a dozen bayonets glared at him under pairs of feral yellow eyes.