David Leadbeater: Weapons of the Gods

Hayden reached over the pizza boxes and grabbed the sword. “Looks like it hasn’t been damaged.” She turned it over in her hands. “Not that we saw it too well last time.”

“We were fighting a shitload of enemies and Kenzie was riding her nuclear weapon,” Alicia pointed out.

“Ah, yes.” Kenzie smiled, remembering fondly. “And I haven’t ridden anything like it since.” She glared at Dahl’s back.

“We good?” Kinimaka asked. “I secured these guys, but there are some still unaccounted for. And hell, I can barely turn full circle in here.”

Luther backed through the shattered door frame. “Follow me, big guy. There ain’t room for all of us in there.”

Kinimaka held up a hand. “Wait. We can’t let this pizza go to waste.” He scooped up all of the boxes.

With a steady prudence they exited the comms room. Hayden stayed behind for a few seconds, trying to trace the live communication, but it had been disabled already and she couldn’t find anything. “We’ll ask the Brits to deep-dive this,” she said. “See if they can come up with something.”

Drake took control of the sword, keeping it away from Kenzie, whose eyes glazed at the sight of it. Drake let the pizza-carrying Hawaiian go first, noting that Hayden quickly followed. It was good to see the pair trying again. Where would we all be without affection and passion? And more importantly, where would we all be without family?

He studied the team that left the house; the newcomers adding their own peculiar personalities to the mix; the usual crew that had fought for civilians and the innocent from the beginning, and still fought — despite the ambiguous severing of their friendship with the US government.

A temporary thing.

Maybe. But if it was that easy to disavow a team, possibly alienate several teams, why would they continue to aid this government? This administration? It should be as hard to estrange a Special Forces team as it was to get close to the President.

But sadly, the opposite was true.

Drake noticed the rain had started to fall as he left the asylum and wondered if the sky was weeping tears for the damned.

Or was it for all the soldiers?

The following day, the morning was bright and crisp, the blue skies an unbroken dome above. Hyde Park was teeming with dog walkers, cyclists and joggers. Luckily, it was a considerably large place and the SPEAR team kicked their way across the glistening grass with morning dew on their boots, meeting Major Bennett and Captain Cambridge on the path that ran past the statue of Achilles.

Hayden held the Sword of Mars, wrapped in two supermarket carrier bags. Bennett couldn’t hide the smile when he saw it. “Really?”

Hayden shrugged. “Best we could do on short notice and all the sword-wrapping shops were closed last night.”

“Interesting place to meet.” Dahl eyed Achilles. “Topical.”

“We aim to please,” Bennett said. “It’s also tourist free at this time of a morning. Now, we do have much to talk about…” He paused and picked up two cardboard trays full of steaming hot drinks. Cambridge picked up another and offered them around.

“Civilized.” Luther nodded his thanks.

“Don’t get used to it. First things first — Tempest are totally hell-bent on gathering all the weapons of the gods. There appears to be no order to them, no clues on how to find them. We’re relying on getting close and then using this rare element to pinpoint the location. The point of that recap is to highlight the words ‘getting close’, which is the problematic part. So, what do we know about these weapons?”

Cambridge held up a thick folder. “Most of the gen’s in here.” He flapped it backward and forward. “Pages full of information on the Sword of Mars and the others. Read it.” He slapped it down on a bench right in front of Hayden.

She stared at the generous file with fear. “Jeez, dude, I haven’t read that much since high school.”

“Mars was, or is, the Roman god of war,” Bennett said. “Identified with the Greek god, Ares. These classical deities are now thought to once have been real men, or perhaps real gods that walked the earth. Some are even identified with the Atlantis myth and, it is said, were the kings of Atlantis, later worshipped by lesser races such as the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and thus their legends turned them into the gods we know today.”

“You’re telling me Atlantis is real now too?” Smyth grumbled.

“Well, no, my friend, but rumors are starting to surface, some new evidence has come to light. Who knows? Perhaps another team will chase that, but we must concentrate on finding the weapons, defeating Tempest and proving all your innocence.”

Hayden liked this man and the way he set his goals out quite clearly. She sipped strong black coffee and stood in the sunshine, letting its warming rays soothe her soul. It was good to take a moment to feel the sun on your face.

“Mars was the son of Jupiter. He was virile, a thriving life force. The spear of Mars is most associated with him, but the sword is a good second.”

“This raises a question,” Hayden butted in whilst Bennett took a breath and a sip of his drink. “If we’re scouring the planet for these weapons, presumably under fire, we need a safe place to send them when we find them. A secure network of contacts, so that we can ship them to you, Major, allowing you to store them with the Crown Jewels, or something. We can’t be lugging them around the world with us.”

Bennett nodded. “Yes, we came up with the same idea. We will provide for you a state-of-the-art communications system and have already tasked a special unit to shadow you at all times. Between all of you, and them, we should be able to extract the weapons without risk.”

“Sounds great,” Alicia spoke up and Hayden glanced at her. “Any ideas what’s up next?”

Her question raised most of the crew’s eyebrows, Hayden noticed, including Mano’s. She found her attention briefly fixated on her old flame. The big Hawaiian was as solid a home as she was ever going to get and, incredibly, was still interested in her. Hayden didn’t want to blow it this time, so she was taking everything slow, creating no expectations and offering no promises. The hope was that it would all just fall into place.

Wouldn’t that require a period of stability?

Sure, and that wasn’t even on the horizon. A network of criminals had to be taken down first, a network that had entwined its way through the power-halls of Washington DC. Its contacts would be formidable, its reach all-embracing. Even here…

“Let’s get on with it,” she said, snatching up the folder. “We’ll get savvy with this and be prepared for the next few weapons. Maybe a little knowledge of the gods will help us find them.”

“Well,” Bennett held out a hand as she prepared to wrap the meeting up, “we do have an idea as to the whereabouts of the next weapon.”

She stopped. “You do? Why didn’t you say so?”

“It seemed best to surprise you.” Bennett shrugged. “With no path to follow it’s like putting a pin in a map and going after the closest. We chose the Key of Hades first simply because it was originally found in the tomb you all discovered.”

“Which one?” Dahl asked.

“There was more than one? Ah, well, I suppose you have your secrets. The Odin tomb. The place where you found the bones of Odin.”

Hayden thought back momentarily to a time when she first met Drake and his friendly associate, Ben Blake, gone but never forgotten. At that time Alicia had worked for the other side and Dahl was a fixture of the Swedish government. Kinimaka had been involved in some other mission centering on the Blood King. So was Mai, for that matter. Karin had been involved also, kidnapped by a madman, and Kennedy Moore too — yet another lost soul.