Dark Goddess

As the four men gaped in silent astonishment, the craft settled down on top the monolith and from the rim sprouted three tentacles of alloy. They curved out and down, plunging through the slit windows.

“What the fuck is that?” Robison half gasped, voice quavering. “It’s like a fuckin’ flying saucer—!”

“No fuckin’ way!” Reichert blurted, but he didn’t sound completely certain. “Maybe we’d better get Bob warmed up—just in case.”

“Just in case what?” Weaver asked, a slight mocking edge to his voice. “Just in case it is a flying saucer?”

Sean Reichert glared at him through narrowed eyes, then he nodded. “Yeah. Just in case.”

The four men sprinted down a narrow alley running alongside the Tosspot Tumor. The alley opened up into a wide courtyard where Bobzilla was quartered. The huge, armor-plated LAV-25 had been modified by the Phoenix Project designers to serve as the team’s rolling base of operations.

As they reached the rear hatch, a shadow momentarily blotted out the sunlight and in unison they heeled around, necks craning, heads tilting back. Reichert’s face paled despite his dark complexion, and he muttered, “Fuck.”

Another silver disk hovered barely five yards overhead. As it slowly sank toward the courtyard, Robison fumbled with the hatch latches and swung the heavy metal panel open on squeaking spring hinges. “Let’s get our asses heeled!” he bellowed.

Swiftly, he took an AK-108 and then passed one of the lightweight carbines to Weaver. Hays reached around Robison and snagged an FIM-921 Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft rocket launcher. Reichert grabbed an M-203 grenade launcher combined with an M-16 rifle. With expert fingers, he loaded the weapon with three blunt-nosed 40 mm explosive rounds.

The disk slowly descended, but it didn’t come to rest. From the half dome on its undercarriage snaked out three gleaming legs. They in turn sprouted three claws that sank deeply into the muddy soil and lent the machine a resemblance to an old-fashioned milking stool coated with a shifting sheath of quicksilver.

A chill fist of dread squeezed Weaver’s heart and he said to his companions, “Let’s not jump the gun, boys. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”

Hays snorted in derision, placing the tube of the launcher on his right shoulder. “I’d say it’s those fuckers that don’t know what they’re dealing with.”

Weaver fearfully eyed the tripodal machine. “Heard that before, Major. But this time we’re not facing a bunch of childish savages with bows and arrows. We need to discuss tactics before we—”

The disk emitted a harsh, electronic hoot, which to Weaver sounded like a warning to get out of its way. Three legs moving in unison, the machine took a weirdly graceful step forward.

“Here’s your tactics, Joe!” Hays bellowed. “Turn out the dogs!”

The weapons in the hands of the four men spit flame, thunder and multiple kinds of projectiles. The courtyard became a crashing, exploding, blazing inferno. Steel-jacketed bullets sparked a dozen miniature constellations on the rim of the disk ship’s hull.

Mike Hays squeezed the trigger of the FIM-921 and the Stinger rocket leaped from the hollow bore, propelled by a wavery ribbon of smoke. It struck the disk ship broadside, the warhead detonating amid a billowing mushroom of black smoke and a blinding gush of flame that rolled over the hull.

The flurry of grenades fired by the howling Sean Reichert burst all around the tripod, eardrum-compressing detonations blooming against and below it. Dirt and mud erupted, raining down in all directions.

Smoke billowed, a shroud of gray enveloping the courtyard, completely obscuring the disk from view. As the roiling canopy of haze and smoke spread, Team Phoenix ceased fire.

Coughing, fanning the air in front of his face, Robison declared hoarsely, “Overwhelming firepower trumps tactics every fuckin’ time.”

Hays dropped the rocket launcher and gusted out a satisfied sigh. “Smoo-o-oth.”

He and Reichert bumped knuckles. The young Latino crowed triumphantly, “Team Phoenix for America, fuck yeah!”

Weaver squinted through the thinning vapor, his leaking eyes picking out the orange smears of flame. He realized that the entire rear of the Tosspot Tumor tavern had been pounded into a litter of broken, firelaced kindling. The roof had collapsed, but he saw no sign of the silver tripod.

Weaver lifted his spectacles and cleared his blurred vision with swipes of his fingers. When he was able to see more or less normally again, he realized why he couldn’t find the disk. The craft had simply retracted its three legs and floated soundlessly above the barrage. It hovered thirty yards above them, not so much as a smudge mark visible on its iridescent hull.

But where the tripodal legs had been planted now stood three motionless figures. The drifting scraps of smoke imbued them with an eerie, ghostly quality. Although all three of them wore formfitting silver-blue armor, two of them were almost identical in physique and features. Set deep beneath jutting brow ridges, their white eyes did not blink, nor did their craggy, scale-pebbled faces register emotion.

Ovoid shells of alloy rose from the rear of their body armor, sweeping up to enclose the back and upper portion of their hairless skulls. From the undersides of the shells, hair-thin filaments extended down to pierce both sides of their heads. Conduits stretched down from inch-thick reinforcing epaulets on their shoulders, connecting to the alloyed gauntlets that sheathed their extended right forearms and hands.

From raised pods on the gauntlets rose three small flanges, curved like the letter S cut in halves. The ends of the flanges flared out like cobras’ hoods, and red energy pulsed in the gaping mouths of the stylized serpent heads.

The third figure was leaner, slighter in stature, but still obscured by floating planes of smoke and settling dust. “How dare you threaten a member of the Supreme Council? Lay down your weapons and beg me not to have you killed where you stand!”

The tone, pitch and timbre of the voice was sharp, imperious, and although holding a sibilant echo, it sounded undeniably female.

Major Mike Hays stiffened in surprise and his expression molded itself into one of contempt. He glanced toward Robison and Reichert. “That’s just some mouthy bitch out there!”

Sighting down his Mag-58 subgun, Hays snarled, “Beg this, bitch!”

Although he had no idea of what kind of council the sharp-voiced woman referred to, sudden terror galvanized Joe Weaver to slap down the barrel of the Mag-58. “Mike—no!”

Reichert uttered a sneering laugh, bracing the stock of the grenade launcher against his hip, aiming it at the three armored figures. He roared, “Team Phoenix for America—”

A series of crack-sizzles cut off the rest of his mantra. Bolts of energy, glowing like globules of molten lava flung from catapults, struck Sean Reichert directly in the head, blowing away his trim mustache and face in a pinwheel burst of flame.

Frozen in place, Joe Weaver watched two more balls of seething energy explode against the heads of Mike Hays and Larry Robison. He caught only a fragmented glimpse of the one blazing toward him before his world turned to a dazzling orange flare, instantly followed by impenetrable darkness.

LILITU WRINKLED her delicate nose at the concatenation of odors wafting throughout the Tartarus Pits. During her ninety years as Baroness Beausoleil, she had never ventured within a thousand yards of Tartarus, fearing that she would contract loathsome diseases. Now she realized she had not suffered from an infection phobia so much as the place simply stank.

Narrowing her vertical-slit-pupiled eyes, Lilitu glanced up at the Administrative Monolith. The sunlight winked on the surface of the disk of smart metal still attached to the roof. The uppermost floor of the high, round tower had served as her sanctuary and home for many years—no, not a home, she corrected herself, but a cocoon, one that had sheltered the chrysalis form of the baroness until she shed it and emerged as Overlord Lilitu.

Gesturing diffidently with the metal-shod fingers of her right hand, she waved toward the four smoldering corpses of the humans who had threatened her.

“Make sure those dung beetles can crawl no more,” she commanded her armored Nephilim. “Then begin razing this entire cesspit.”

Quarlo, her personal bodyguard, glanced toward her, no emotion in his dead white eyes. “The complete barony, Goddess?” His whispering voice held a hollow quality, as if only the echoes of his words passed his lips.

Lilitu’s beautiful, scale-patterned face creased in a smile. “And everyone who still lives in it. They no longer serve my purpose, and the mandate of the Supreme Council of the Annunaki has ever been that all humans must serve a purpose for their gods.”

Chapter 1

Coral Cove, the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Kane raced through the night, cursing the heat and cloying humidity that sapped most of his stamina. His legs felt as if lead weights were tied to his knees. The sweat that stained his camo-striped T-shirt and flowed down from his hairline stung his eyes.

He wanted nothing so much as to fling himself facedown in the palmetto scrub and drink from his canteen. He also wanted to forget why he had agreed to lend Cerberus’s support to a rebellion against the coastal pirates led by the ridiculously named Billy-boy Porpoise.

Over the rhythmic boom of the surf, the faint baying of hounds and shouting of men reached his ears. Kane swore beneath his breath, but he continued to run. Twice bullets had skimmed very close to him, and once he had nearly been caught beside the waters of the drainage canal that cut in from the Gulf of Mexico and served as a moat around the Porpoise estate. Only the fact that he could dive and swim like an otter saved him.

The pillared trunks of cypress, pine and palm trees surrounded him. Palmetto plants, their fan-shape fronds gleaming with patterns of ebony and silver in the moonlight, rose up on either side of the narrow trail. Insects chirped and buzzed from the shadows. His chest feeling as if it were pressed between the jaws of a tightening vise, Kane halted in the murky lee of a log overhang, where lumber had been piled to use as palisade walls in the settlement.

He breathed deeply, regaining his breath. He ran a hand through his longish dark hair. It was soggy with sweat, stiffening with salt. His clothes reeked of sewage and brine, but he took a little solace in the fact he knew he had smelled worse.

A hoarse male voice bellowed beyond the far edge of the canal. The words were unintelligible, but the tone was angry. Kane’s palm itched where his Sin Eater would have fitted if it were not packed away with the rest of his equipment in the settlement. He stepped deeper into the shadows, his movements fluid but cautious, like a man in a jungle wary of poisonous snakes. He often thought of the world in which he lived as nothing but a snake-infested jungle.

Kane struggled to tamp down a surge of homicidal fury at his pursuers, but he was honest enough to admit that distaste at playing the role of prey fueled his rage, not that his attempt to breach the Porpoise estate had been stymied.