There were several hundred Serpents in flight, orbiting an enormous humanoid machine, which advanced slowly, step by thunderous step. It was near enough the size of a house, with arms that ended in multiple lightning gun arrays and legs that balanced on jointed, talon-like feet. The l-guns cleaved trees in two and the feet crushed their toppled trunks to splinters as the giant thing waded purposefully through the forest.
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.