“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.”
They 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.
“Well, that was fun,” the Smoking Mirror said. The armour’s mask was a perfect, gleaming replica of the face beneath it. “I was dying to take my walking tank out for a test drive. I’m just amazed I got this far with it. Do you hear me, Quetzalcoatl? Almost at your doorstep before you managed to take me down. Sloppy. I expected more from you.”
Tzitzimitl gave one of her shrill whistles. Her pack of Tzitzimime, as one, broke off from attacking Serpent Warriors and loped towards Tezcatlipoca.
The Smoking Mirror allowed them to get close, then raised an imperious hand and engulfed almost the entire pack in a sizzling, coruscating blast of energy that came straight from his palm. Most of the demon dogs were cremated on the spot, to Tzitzimitl’s howling dismay, but a few dodged the attack and raced on. They jumped up onto the sprawled machine and pounced on Tezcatlipoca. He swiped several aside, then grabbed one by the hindleg and swung the creature like a club, using it to bludgeon the others. Savage snarls turned to yelps of pain and terror. Tzitzimitl sobbed and tore at her hair as her beloved monsters were methodically beaten to a pulp. Soon none was left alive, and a blood-spattered Tezcatlipoca stood with a mangled Tzitzimime in his hand and a dozen more shattered corpses at his feet.