Grapeshot Pantheon Read online

  “Send me in and I kick their asses so hard they’ll be breathing out of their spines,” Liv said, grinning.

  General Sung smiled. It seemed he liked the way Liv thought.

  “I think that if I burn through a big chunk of my arcane energy,” Tethis said. “I can augment some bullets to have similar fields as the nulification collars used to take the powers of the gods in the first place. That should be enough to cut through their barriers.”

  “I’d prefer that,” General Sung said, despite his earlier eagerness. “This is an American issue, and we should give law enforcement and the National Guard the tools to handle it.”

  Liv frowned, but she didn’t grumble too much.

  “Get to work,” President Deinhardt said, standing up. “Get Tethis to a laboratory, an armory, whatever she needs. I want you to get our best people on this – but make sure you follow the letter of the law. I don’t care if it’s SWAT or the FBI or the ATF who take these guys down. I want it done by the book.” She adjusted the collar of her shirt. “Mack, start getting ready for a press conference. There’s no way we can deal with this before the news story breaks, so we better break it ourselves. Vanderbilt.” She looked at him. “We’re going to need you on cameras, with your wife.”

  Liam blinked and stood. “Of course. Uh, why?”

  The President smiled at him.

  Not for the first time, Liam was struck by how effortlessly the older woman straddled the line between approachable and distant. She had the gravitas of a leader, but the easy attitude of someone who... well, damn the cliché, of someone he could share a beer with.

  It doesn’t hurt… his brain started. But Liam took that thought and he drowned it in a river. Despite his best efforts though, his eyes flicked from the President’s face to her body. She was not as ‘in shape’ as most women in Purgatory. She was soft. Curved. As horrible as it made him feel to admit it, she was MILFY in the purest sense of the word. Her breasts strained against her suit and her hips looked soft enough for him to sink his fingers in. Liam’s cheeks flushed and he realized that she had laid out her plans and he had completely missed it.

  “Got it,” he said.

  As they walked out of the room – hurrying to their various jobs – Meg whispered in his ear: “She said that you’ll keep people calm. And I’ll prove that it’s real.”

  “Thanks,” Liam whispered.

  Meg’s grin was wicked.

  Liam groaned inwardly. He already dreaded what she planned.

  ***

  Tethis set her third crystal down on the table next to the boxes of ammunition and hoped that this would work. Being on Earth had given her time to see how the Ancients’ magic worked without Purgatory’s innate nature to distract or corrupt the results. It had been illuminating. The crystals provided power but how? She was starting to piece together a theory. It all had to do with the Endless Mine and the discoveries that Dr. Cole had found there.

  The Endless Mine had used concentrated swarms of incredibly tiny automaton to accomplish all of their wonders – nanomachines, Dr. Cole had called them. And every time Tethis cast a spell on Earth, her crystals didn’t just grow dimmer, they also grew fractionally lighter. She had measured them on Liam’s mother’s cooking scale and found that after two days of casting minor cantrips, one crystal had lost almost half a gram. Where had that gram gone? Well…

  She rubbed her palms together.

  “What are you going to do?” The technician that the Pentagon had gotten to help her with Earth technology spoke up.

  Tethis smiled at him. “Well, the god’s magic is based off a biological node inside of a mutant human’s brain. That node is what gives them their power. A Chosen has a tiny fraction of that power and emits it to their surrounding people – sharing the blessing. But the Ancients had constructed collars that cancel that energy out.” She smiled. “Ancient technology - or magic, or whatever you want to call it - uses nanomachines. These crystals.” She touched each one. “Are chunks of nanomachines and their crystal batteries. So, what I’m going to do is create a spell that tells the nanomachines to etch the same signal emitters that the collars used on the tip of every single bullet.” She tapped the casings. “If this works, then your men will be able to retake the town.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” the technician asked his eyes wide as saucers.

  Tethis frowned.

  “Well, I guess Liv gets to have fun.”

  The technician frowned. “That’s not going to play well on international news. Or national news. Or local news. Or... any news at all.”

  “Why not?” Tethis asked. “These people are traitors, aren’t they?”

  “They’re American citizens,” the technician said. Tethis swung the ammo box shut with a clunk and tinkle – the last noise provided by a free hanging metal buckle. She puzzled at it for a few seconds before snapping it into the notch and tightening the ammo case shut. She made a happy noise, nodding.

  “I like that design. Also, they seem to be most emphatically interested in not being American citizens,” Tethis said. “If my old liege lord had had a town rise up against him like that, well...” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Sobek,” Tethis said, as the technician took the ammo case.

  “Who's that?”

  Tethis turned to face him, looking appalled. “Liam said Earthers didn’t know the Pesedjeti much, but seriously?”

  “The who?” The technician was looking like a child who had forgotten to bring his textbook to class.

  Tethis clicked her tongue, looking cross. “I’ll need to have a word with your President.”

  ***

  Coyo slumped back in the seat of his borrowed 1967 Ford Mustang and flicked listlessly at the dashboard. The busted AC refused to magically fix itself and help banish the hideous humidity that pressed to his face like a muffling pillow. He fanned himself and shook his head.

  “So, what now, Sun?” he asked.

  Sun was sitting in the passenger seat, twirling a metal toothpick around his fingers. His fingers matched any tricky con-man or circus sideshow act. He was able to send the toothpick twirling around his fingers, on the tip of his pinkie, rolling along his palm. He even launched it lazily through the air with the flick of his wrist, catching it in the other hand with a meaty whump. Coyo flinched.

  “Jesus fuckmothering Christ, you know that scares the shit out of me, right?”

  Sun grinned at Coyo. “I haven’t fucked up once. And I would like to point out that this is your country. You should be the one coming up w ith ideas.”

  Coyo sighed.

  The trip across the country to Washington DC had started off swimmingly. Coyo had enthusiastically borrowed several cars – ditching them when they ran out of gas and using his friend Mr. Brick to get into any that didn’t have their keys in them. He had found an abandoned felt tipped pen with half its reservoir and a mud encrusted yellow papered notebook in the first car, and he was down to the last three pages and almost no ink. But it had been worth it. He had left notes in each car, with directions as to where he had borrowed it.

  They’d get home.

  Eventually.

  And it wasn’t traveling with Sun. He had picked Sun up in the Dallas International Airport. Though getting Sun off the plane and into the car had proved a bit tricky, since Sun had been tucked in among the luggage. The car he had ‘borrowed’ for that bit of the trip had been returned with a few extra bullet holes from a few Texan cops.

  No, things had started going south the instant he got to the Gulf.

  Coyo had always hated the American South. It had nothing to do with the people. It was the weather. The beastly, hideous weather that made him feel like he hadn’t shaved and hadn’t changed clothes. He felt like he could stand to peel himself out of his own skin and throw himself into an ice box pretty much the instant he crossed from the plains and deserts of Texas to the increasingly marshy Louisiana. And as t
he muggy temperatures got worse, it got harder and harder to find cars to borrow. He’d had to use Mr. Brick more and more often, and the cars themselves tended to have less gas.

  And now this.

  “There’s a limit to what I can do, Sun,” Coyo said, frowning. “We could try calling Triple A, but there’s a fifty fifty shot if we can get that to work.”

  “If the tow-truck’s driver is a lady, bump that to a ninety percent,” Sun said, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “Only ninety?” Coyo asked, his brow furrowing. This ended up providing a perfect channel for sweat to slip along his forehead and right into his eyes. He started to swear in several languages – primarily Crow and Spanish – batting at his face.

  Sun snickered. “They might be a lesbian!”

  “That...” Coyo paused, cocking his head. “You hear that?”

  And that was when the first army truck roared by, filling the cabin with dust and grit and thrown rocks. Coyo coughed and Sun swore.

  “Fuck you, Mr. Brick!” He glared at the long shattered window.

  “Mr. Brick does his best!” Coyo shot back.

  Another camouflaged truck roared by, and another spray of grit and dust filled the cabin. The two men scrambled out, Coyo taking the driver’s side door and Sun swinging himself out through the passenger window without opening it. He yelped and hopped back across the hood of the car as a third truck roared down the road. The soldiers in the back looked at them with the casual interest of people with a serious boredom problem. The next car was an open topped hummer with a man in the passenger seat whose entire personage said, ‘I’m in charge.’ He looked tough as nails, with significantly fancier symbols on his shoulders and chest compared to most of the other soldiers. Behind him, in the back seat, was a weedy looking fellow with an ATF hat on. The third person, looking as effortlessly bored as the soldiers in the truck, was a woman. She wore a button up white shirt and had a suit jacket that she had slung over her shoulder. The hummer slowed down on seeing Coyo and Sun.

  “Hello there,” Sun said, grinning at the lady. She looked at him – her coppery hair sparkling in the sunlight that had managed to get past the trees that lined the road. Her expression should have sent Sun’s smile running for cover. Instead, he simply brushed some dirt off his shoulder and tucked his toothpick behind his ear, where it glinted like a poorly aimed ear-piercing.

  “This is an active emergency response scene,” the ATF guy said. “You got car trouble?”

  “It broke down!” Coyo said, nodding.

  “Why is the window broken?” the girl asked, jerking her chin at the passenger side window.

  “It’s not broken,” Coyo said, quickly.

  “I can see the glass shards,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  “Uh-”

  “We don’t have time for this,” the military guy growled. “Get back behind the picket line.”

  “They might have seen something,” the ATF guy whispered. Coyo’s ears perked up at that.

  “I doubt it,” the copper haired girl said. “We’re still two miles off. And if they saw anything, they’d be in bigger trouble than a busted carburetor.”

  “Is that’s what’s wrong with it?” Coyo asked.

  “I’m using it as an example,” she said. “Let's drive.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had all day, Agent Oleander.” The army guy hit the gas. As he drove, he pulled out his walkie talkie and started muttering into it.

  Coyo looked at Sun as the dust cloud faded.

  “She was hot,” Sun said.

  “Let's get away from the car before the cops get here,” Coyo said at the same time.

  Sun snorted. “I don’t think they’re sending cops back here to check on us.”

  “They’re all cops in the end,” Coyo said. He looked at the marshy forest surrounding them and sighed. “Uuuuugh, I hate this shit.” He started off the road. Sun pulled his needle out from behind his ear and started to twirl it. He followed after Coyo.

  Whistling cheerfully.

  ***

  Simone was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball. Bounced across the country, flown from time zone to time zone, she was ready for several crisis to happen in a row in the same location. Not several hours away by plane and not in a different part of the world. If apocalyptic armies could just show up in Central Standard Time a leisurely walk from where she currently was, that would be just fine. But while she was wishing for that, she might have wished that Liam was on this assignment.

  But, unlike on Purgatory, high ranking ambassadors didn’t get sent into dangerous situations where their asses could get shot off.

  The tent set up by the National Guard was a half mile away from the edge of Blackberry, the township that the LAJC had taken over. There was always an uncomfortable feeling that came whenever the military – or something military adjacent - was used to do something even close to ‘policing’ duty in the United States. It called to mind the endless rounds of photos that had dominated Twitter and the news media of cops in APCs, toting assault rifles, and the endless rounds of riots that had shaken city after city. Over several years of increasing violence and militarization, the tide had swung. Simone had watched it all from the slightly uncomfortable sidelines of someone in a high profile military position, unable to share her two cents lest she bring down a tidal wave of bad PR down on her and the armed forces. In the space between her ears, she had breathed a sigh of relief as public opinion turned against heavily armed police response..

  End result?

  The ATF, FBI and Louisiana National Guard were each helping with this little shindig and none of them were bringing out the heavy weaponry. The national guard were busy keeping civilians away from the township, while the FBI and the ATF set up the observation posts and prepped their response units. Simone was the only military person in the planning tent – everyone else was either Critical Incident Response Group, the FBI version of SWAT, or Special Response Teams from the ATF.

  “Now, here’s what we know,” the ATF commander said, pointing down at the map. “The perps have rounded up the entire town’s population and jammed them into the school’s gymnasium. From our drone observations, they appear to be...” He paused. “Singing.”

  “Singing?” the FBI’s CIRG commander asked. Simone liked her on general principles – in a room with a serious case of testosterone poisoning, having another girl in there was nice. Then Simone’s opinion went up a few notches as the CIRG commander looked at her and said: “Any idea on why that might be? You’re the expert on this so called magic.”

  “If I had to hazard a guess?” Simone asked. “They’re being told to pray to Ares or they get shot.”

  “Would that even work?” the ATF commander asked, his mustache twitching as he pursed his lips.

  Simone shrugged slightly. “I dunno. For most of human history, praying and not praying didn’t seem to do much one way or the other. But I’ve seen what these ‘gods’ can do. If that power comes from prayer, maybe having two thousand people singing about what a great guy he is giving Ares a few extra spell slots or something.”

  The CIRG commander smirked.

  The ATF guy looked faintly confused.

  Another point for the FBI.

  Shaking his head, the ATF commander went back to the map. “Still, this makes our job a bit easier. The school is near the edge of the town, right next to this forest.” He tapped it. “We just need to get the ensure that the bad guys don’t start killing hostages. According to the drone, they’re not even trying to hide. There’s four on the roof, two at the doors, and two more at the front.” He pointed. “The rest are distributed through the town, looting for food, gathering the cars up. The cars are being either retrofitted into cargo transport or turned into technicals.”

  As he spoke, he pushed some pictures forward. The LAJC had spent years stockpiling weaponry. Seeing their heavier guns attached to pintles on the backs of formerly civilian pickup trucks gave Simone a shiver. It was
something she was used to seeing in some war-torn Middle East shithole. Not the United States.

  “Sounds like our wanna-be Napoleon is going to try and start expanding his empire,” the FBI girl said.

  “Yeah,” the ATF commander said, shaking his head. “The technicals are the thing that has me worried. Four of them look ready to roll. Also, there’s the immunity to bullets thing. We’re only going to learn if that...” Simone could see his face scrunch up. It looked like he had bitten into a lemon. She could almost feel him trying to say the rest of his sentence. But his entire body rebelled at saying the phrase ‘goblin’s magical enchantment.’ Instead, he continued after the pause with: “...if the special treatment works right about when the bad guys start massacring us without impunity.”

  Simone shrugged. “Well, let's lead with the assumption they won’t,” she said. “Ares has limited power. Either he’s projecting from Purgatory, which has to be fucking expensive considering it’s in orbit around goddamned Pluto.” She thrust her hand up towards the roof of the tent. “Or he’s somehow gotten his ass to Earth and is running off whatever converts he has now. That means he’ll need to conserve energy.” She grinned. “The two biggest killers in a modern fight are explosives and bullets. Maybe they’re immune to those but not, say, gas or flash or batons.”

  The FBI commander nodded slightly. “That’s in keeping with our normal tactics anyway, if snipers can’t or won’t work.”

  The ATF commander stroked his mustache. “We’ve got a start of a plan...”

  “I suggest we also hit them at night,” the FBI commander said. “They don’t have any NVG – at least, not according to the purchasing records we’ve dredged up. And even if they do, they’ll be Cold War antiques or civilian models. That’s another edge.”

  Another twenty minutes of hashing out ideas – most of which came down to which teams to put where, where to deploy their vehicles, and how to get at the hostages as safely as possible – and Simone walked out of the tent with the FBI commander. The redhead was shaking her head slightly.