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 expert pilot, so at least he wouldn’t find himself crashing. Just to make certain, he pulled on his shadow suit hood. One thing the faceplate allowed for, in addition to being a self-contained environment, was advanced optics and sensors.
Grant glanced back and could see, in the distance, the outline of Edwards’s ship. They couldn’t talk by radio, but maybe they could communicate with hand gestures, especially with the telescopic zoom available in the eyepieces.
He throttled down only a fraction, steering to parallel Edwards, when he caught a flicker of darkness from the corner of his eye.
So much for being able to use sign language with Edwards before the UFO arrived.
Grant turned his head, swinging the Manta into an S-turn that would allow him to survey a maximum of sky around him. The cockpit glass of the high-velocity ship allowed him a fairly good panorama of the Mediterranean airspace. Edwards was visible, as well. He was keeping his distance and was focused on something Grant couldn’t see at this moment.
“Deaf and mute, and half blind,” the big, former Magistrate grumbled to himself. “I might as well be a sitting duck…”
With that thought, however, Grant noticed Edwards suddenly accelerate his Manta, as if to engage ramming speed against his fellow pilot. There was only a brief instant of confusion until he realized that whatever had drawn Grant’s attention as the UFO was now flying on his tail, sticking to his blind spot.
That turned out to be a much better form of nonverbal communication that instantly clicked in Grant’s mind. Within a moment he throttled up to near escape-velocity speed, tearing away from his pursuit utilizing the scram jet engines built into the moon-base-built wonder craft. He only maintained escape velocity for a few seconds, but that was more than sufficient to have created a few miles of space between the Manta and his pursuit.
With a deft spin, Grant was able to see the UFO as it raced to catch up. He could see a pair of powerful wings, but what hung beneath them was no mere bird, not even a pteranodon.
He employed his optic enhancements and zoomed in, focusing on a man.
No, to call it a man would have been a misnomer. With electronic readouts on the transparent shadow suit’s faceplate, Grant could see that the entity had a wingspan of thirty feet, its skin tone blued like that of a pallid corpse. Around its bare, brawny arms, he saw what at first appeared to be coiled serpents, but recognition immediately kicked in. He bore some version of the serpentine ASP blasters worn by the Nephilim drones who served beneath Enlil and the other Annunaki overlords. They glinted like metal in the sun, but those weapons seemed puny in comparison to the winged humanoid’s handheld device. It was a gigantic hammer, gripped in sinewy, powerful hands.
Grant looked at the face of his foe, one twisted in grim rage, tusks protruding and curving out over his mustached upper lip, a black beard of writhing worms crawling up the sides of his face before they lengthened into serpents like a male version of the Greek monster Medusa. His nose plunged down over his peeled-back lips like the hook of a vulture’s beak and its eyes were shadows beneath bulging, clifflike brow ridges.
Grant’s shock at the hurtling creature knocked him from taking a mental inventory of the beast’s appearance, and he flipped the circuits to activate the weapons recently added to the Manta. As he did, there was a whine of protest from the systems, informing him that whatever had negated radio communications had likewise disabled the weaponry controls.
“Isn’t that just great?” Grant growled, throttling up the engines and hurtling toward the flying humanoid. Though he was certain the hammer was far more than just a brutish weapon meant for crushing skulls, he was gambling on a Mach 2 impact stunning the flying opponent. The creature was not thematically different from the gigantic Kongamato from Africa, and he always wondered how one of those muscular horrors would have dealt with being run over by a supersonic Manta.
The tusked mouth turned into a semblance of a smile through the telescopic magnification on Grant’s faceplate and immediately he started to regret playing chicken with a flying demon.
He didn’t have long to doubt his course, though, as a moment later the Manta jolted violently. Even strapped into the pilot’s couch, Grant’s head and arms flailed wildly in the cockpit. Alarms and lights jerked to life around the cabin, the violence of impact making the horizon cartwheel in the cracked windshield of the supersonic craft.
Stunned, Grant tried to will his hands back to the joystick nestled between his knees. Unfortunately centrifugal force and a stabbing pain in his back and shoulder kept them dangling at the ends of his ropy arms. All the while, his optics displayed a countdown of the Manta’s altitude as it spiraled toward the Mediterranean Sea below. At this speed, striking incompressible water, it would be like hurling a melon against a stone wall, except the meaty fruit disgorged would be Grant’s internal organs.
Edwards was aghast at the sight of the winged monstrosity flying to meet Grant’s Manta at ramming speed. At the same time he grimaced at the inconvenience of having his weaponry disabled by whatever had knocked out the radios. As it was, the flying monster itself was spiraling out of control, seemingly as stunned as the Manta, its pilot locked in a fatal corkscrew heading toward the waiting sea beneath them. However, even as the hammer-wielding flier toppled head over heels through the empty air, Edwards’s Commtact came back online.
“Grant!” It was a chorus of alarmed cries in familiar voices.
Edwards looked between the stunned monstrosity and his fellow Cerberus warrior plummeting toward the ground. With a pit of disgust in his belly, he realized that the newly armed