James Axler - Pantheon Of Vengeance

“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. Their sharpness and the berserk strength of their wielders would overwhelm the protective qualities of Kane’s shadow suit. As each blade was eighteen inches in length, the former Magistrate knew that his organs would be speared through and through.

Kane fired the Copperhead submachine gun, the weapon snarling out small-caliber rounds into naked, scale-encrusted chests. Two of the mutants dropped their bladed muskets and tumbled into lifeless tangles of gnarled limbs. The suddenly inert hordelings formed a barrier to their brethren’s ferocious charge, turning two dead bodies into five more stumbling, disarmed mutants. The dozen growling creatures dropped in number to five active combatants, but their bayonets still thirsted for Kane’s blood.

Kane tracked the Copperhead, aiming at the deformed face of a reptilian attacker, then he pivoted and engaged his Sin Eater. Two thundering shots from the folding machine pistol launched a pair of 240-grain superheavy slugs that blew through mutated chests as if they were soggy slices of bread. One 9 mm round glanced off a dead mutant’s spine and careened at an angle into a second reptilian form, while the other Sin Eater round punctured the creature behind the first dying mutant.

The last mutant lashed out with his bayonet, but Kane batted the blade away with a sweep of the Copperhead’s barrel. With a sharp kick to the mutant’s knee, Kane dropped him on the rocky hillside. A kick to the temple put the mutant out just in time for Kane to address the group of sprawled hordelings that were getting back to their feet.

Their yellow eyes flashed angrily in the starlight, muskets held like spears and clubs. Kane whipped his Sin Eater around, knowing that even a moment of hesitation would allow the bayonet-armed monstrosities time to pinion him. The sidearm roared on full-auto, scything through the group with a salvo of thunderbolt rounds. The scaled half men writhed under the rain of smashing slugs, their bodies wrecked by Kane’s marksmanship.

It was ruthless, but Kane reminded himself of the Greek townsfolk, their corpses visible on satellite photos. The dead people were mute testimony to the murderous intent of the charging horde.

Right now, Kane turned his attention back toward Grant and Brigid. The pair was back to back, Brigid using Grant’s Copperhead while the massive ex-Magistrate attended to the charging swarm on his flank, utilizing his Sin Eater. The two full-auto weapons hammered out vicious volleys that sliced into the savage marauders charging down the slopes.

Domi was nowhere to be seen, and he didn’t hear her on his Commtact.

“Dammit,” Kane growled. Out in the open and heavily outnumbered, Grant and Brigid were hard-pressed by the surging reptilians. Domi at least had the advantage of broken terrain behind the hillcrest to give her an edge over her opponents.

Charging, Kane raced to bolster the defensive line held by his two companions, sending a good-luck wish to the feral albino girl.

AFTER DOMI BURNED OFF the first seven fat rounds in her compact Combat Master, she decided it was time to engage in a strategic retreat. Musket balls crackled through the air, briefly chasing after her before the mutants ran out of ammunition themselves. The hordelings expended the loads from their cheap, simple rifles and were reverting to their primal instincts of stab and smash. Fortunately for Domi, that meant that the gibbering rabble of scrawny reptilian creatures had to catch up with her first.

With a leap, Domi launched herself down the hillside, luring the mass of nine pursuing hordelings away from Grant and Brigid. She and Kane had broken off from the main group in order to thin out the overwhelming numbers of mutants, so if that meant that she had to play wounded bird to draw the cats from her nest, then so be it. She loved Grant and Brigid like family, and no risk would be too great for her.

With a speed belying her short legs, the albino girl opened up her lead over the bayonet-armed reptilians to thirty yards, far enough to give her some breathing room, yet close enough for her to be an enticing target for the misshapen lizard men. Domi paused to eject her empty magazine and shove another stick of seven slugs into the butt of the booming little Detonics .45. A particularly energetic and nimble mutant leaped to within fifteen yards of Domi, but she dumped his corpse onto the rocky hillside with the weight of a .45-caliber bullet. A cavernous chest wound further deformed his mutant body.

“Eight to go,” Domi whispered, racing along to keep the hordelings from surrounding and trapping her in a killing box. The hilly land, with its sparse brush, maze of boulders and jutting rock faces was not that much different from the inhospitable, craggy terrain of the Bitterroot Mountains. As such, the reptilians didn’t have the advantage of home turf, since she could navigate the sloped, uneven ground as quickly as they could.

Domi knew there was the possibility that the enemy would catch up with her, and she’d have to reload the Detonics because there were more pursuers than she had bullets. That didn’t worry her too much, as she still had her wicked, sheathed knife. The mutants might have been too ferocious for farmers and townsfolk hidden behind fortified walls, but against the wilderness-born albino, the savage lizard creatures would discover that had a match for their savagery. Though outnumbered, she had the added skill of countless sparring sessions with Kane and Grant, two highly trained fighting men. Domi wasn’t a martial artist, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn’t need to be. Her natural fighting prowess, forged in the Outlands and polished by battling alongside of some of the finest combatants on the planet, had refined her technique without tempering her instinctive brutality.