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.”
T
HEY 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.