"Rhea?" she said over the comms.
"Tethys! I'm with Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall and a few of his men, and we are at what seems to be some kind of swimming pool."
"Any Olympians there?"
"Not as far as I can tell. There are a lot of bodies, though, and what's left of a monster. Judging by the scaly hide, the fins, and the number of heads — six that I can count — Scylla. You should see the shell casings. It took a lot to kill this creature. Anyway, we're going to complete our sweep of the area, then move on. What's your situation?"
"Three Olympians down."
" Fantastique! "
"Also one Titan."
"Ah."
"Iapetus."
"I'm sorry about that. I had no great love for him, but still."
"Likewise," said Sam. "To give him his due, he went out in style."
"Hero?"
"I'd say."
"A Christmas gift in a plain paper package. He'll be — One moment. What's that? Field Marshal, do you see — "
Sudden gunfire. Shouting. Panic.
"Rhea?" Sam said. "Rhea!"
She looked at Hyperion and Theia. "We have to — "
"You don't even need to say it," said Hyperion. "Let's roll."
"Theia?"
Sam was expecting hesitation, a wince of reluctance at the very least. What she got was a surprisingly affirmative "Yeah!" followed by: "She saved my hide from the Hydra. I save hers, then we're quits, that abomination and me, and I don't owe her nothing any more."
As rationales went, it was hardly altruistic. But it would do.
The three Titans raced towards the swimming pool, passing among soldiers who were scouring the stronghold for enemies and having trouble finding any. If Sam counted right, there were five Olympians left: Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Dionysus and Demeter. Six if you included Argus. Whether they were scattered throughout the stronghold or concentrated in one spot, not everyone in the invading force was going to be able to engage with one of them. It was simple arithmetic. So some of the soldiers, finding themselves enemy-less, were doing what soldiers at a loose end tended to do, namely vandalising and ransacking. Temples were being shot up and defaced with mortar shells. The Olympians' living quarters were being looted, the larger furnishings smashed or burnt, smaller items pocketed as souvenirs. This destructiveness was a good sign. It spoke of the possibility of victory, a prevailing mood of optimism. If the invaders were laying waste to the place, rather than being repulsed and routed, it implied that theirs was the side with the upper hand.
On arriving at the swimming pool, Sam had cause to revise this opinion.
Here, Poseidon presided, and he was using the water from the pool — nearly a million gallons of it — as a weapon of mass destruction. At his command the water had arisen in a single bulbous globule that sprouted tentacles in every direction like some leviathanic jellyfish. The tentacles latched onto the heads of the attacking soldiers, lifting them off the ground and covering their faces with a blister of liquid. The soldiers drowned while suspended in midair, their legs kicking, their hands clawing uselessly at the transparent wet masks that were killing them.
To guard against bullets Poseidon had erected a shimmering dome of water around himself. It was some ten metres in diameter, its wall three or four metres thick. Any projectile that entered the dome was slowed to a standstill and then began sinking lazily to the turquoise tiles of the floor.
Sam spotted Field Marshal Armstrong-Hall frantically grappling one of the water tentacles, which was wound round him like a boa constrictor. Rhea was helping him fight it off, chopping through it with her fist every time its tip got within probing distance of his head. The end of the tentacle would disintegrate into a shower of droplets, but would then re-form instantly, extruding itself forwards to renew its relentless snaky progress towards his face.
Parts of the sea-beast Scylla lay scattered around the rim of the pool, along with heaps of sodden corpses. Within his impregnable dome Poseidon looked overtaxed but grimly elated. It was a strain controlling so much water so intricately, but to defend the stronghold, to slaughter wholesale these mortals who had dared lay siege to the Olympians' home, was worth any amount of effort.
"Ideas?" Hyperion asked Sam, surveying the scene. "'Cause me, I'm all out. Nothing's getting through that dome Poseidon's got around him, and he's got plenty of water to play with, and even if he runs out, he'll just set to turning people's blood to sludge or exploding it out through their ears. The motherfucker's holding all the cards and he knows it."
"You said nothing's getting through the dome," Sam said.
"Yep. I think nothing can. Not even a coilgun round."
"But not no one."
"Huh?" Then Hyperion grasped what she was getting at. "Oh, you are one crazy, psycho-ass bitch, and I mean that as a compliment."
"Direct frontal assault," Sam said. "But it has to be all of us doing it, to give us the best possible chance of success. The more of us try, the likelier it is one of us will get through. Base? These suits are watertight, right?"
"The servos are sealed units," said McCann. "The electrics and electronics are water-resistant, pretty much. I'm not promising — "
"Pretty much is good enough. Rhea?"
"Yes? Bit busy here."
"Leave the Field Marshal."
"I can't. He'll — "
"He can cope. Leave him. We're going to rush Poseidon, the four of us. Top speed. Push ourselves through that dome. The seal on the visors should allow us enough air to breathe to do the job. Whoever reaches him first…"
The sentence didn't need finishing. Hyperion loped off, head down, swiftly building up momentum. Theia followed, then Sam. Rhea rapidly explained the plan to Armstrong-Hall, who nodded consent. Then, breaking away from him, she too accelerated towards Poseidon. The four Titans battered their way through water tentacles that lashed ripplingly at them. Hyperion let out a wordless war cry that grew in volume and intensity as he neared Poseidon's protective dome, becoming an abandoned, here-goes-nothing howl as he hit the curved wall of water and plunged headlong in. Theia jumped in straight after him. Then came Rhea, and finally Sam.
The impact was weird — not like diving into water, more like entering a thick, slimy layer of silica gel. Air bubbles erupted around Sam with a measured effervescence, roiling away and popping slowly. She felt herself begin to decelerate almost immediately, inertia giving way to entropy, and she could see the same happening to the others. All at once they were moving like divers at deep-fathom pressures, fighting against the extra density and viscosity Poseidon had introduced into the water.
But they were moving. Making headway, too. The dome stopped bullets, but bullets did not have the power of independent locomotion. All four Titans were closing in on Poseidon, Hyperion to the fore, and the Olympian was aware of their presence, their proximity, but there was very little he could do about it at that moment other than reinforce the dome still further. Sam felt the water tighten around her, pressing in on the suit, and redoubled her efforts. The servos responded, and she continued to wade through. Water began to seep in around the edge of her visor but it oozed rather than flowed. Its own gluey consistency prevented it from rushing in and flooding her helmet.
She and the other Titans were inside the dome for less than a minute. It felt longer, as though the water retarded time as well as physical objects. Everything wavered and wobbled around Sam. Her hand batted aside a drifting bullet as she thrust herself through, using her arms as much as her legs to propel her along.
With Hyperion mere inches away from breaching the dome's inner surface, Poseidon concluded that his only practical option was to drop his defences altogether. The dome lost cohesion in an eyeblink, collapsing in a great sloshing downrush of water, which exploded back upwards as it hit the floor, like some tremendous circular sea wave crashing on the shore and breaking almost to its original height.