The jets got Orphu up and out of his hull cradle. The tumbling of the ship did the rest, swinging both moravecs a hundred meters out and away from the ship.
Delta-v computations clouding his vision field, Mars and stars still exchanging places every two seconds, Mahnmut let the line go taut and then he fired the thrusters—using up energy at a fearsome rate—matching tumble velocities and reeling himself up the long line to The Dark Lady.
Orphu’s mass was considerable, its pull made the worse by the tumbling, but the line was unbreakable and so was Mahnmut’s will at the moment. He ratcheted them closer to the open bay of the waiting submersible.
The spacecraft began breaking up from the stresses, pieces of the stern snapping off and flying past Mahnmut where he clung to Orphu’s carapace, two tons of metal missing the smaller moravec’s head by less than five meters. Mahnmut pulled them in.
It was no use. The ship was coming apart around The Dark Lady, explosions further rending the hull as trace reaction gases and internal pressurized chambers gave way. Mahnmut would never get to the sub before it was torn apart.
“All right,” muttered Mahnmut. “The mountain has to come to Mohammed.”
“What?” cried Orphu, sounding alarmed for the first time.
Mahnmut had forgotten the hardline was still operative. “Nothing. Hang on.”
“How can I hang on, my friend? My manipulators and hands are all gone. You hang on to me .”
“Right,” said Mahnmut and fired every thruster he had, using up the pack’s energy supplies so quickly that he had to go to emergency reserve.
It worked. The Dark Lady emerged from the dark ship’s bay only seconds before the belly of the spacecraft began to come apart.
Mahnmut thrusted further away, seeing blobs of molten metal splatter on Orphu’s poor battered carapace. “I’m sorry,” whispered Mahnmut as he used the last of his fuel to tug the tumbling submersible farther from the dying spaceship.
“Sorry for what?” asked Orphu.
“Never mind,” panted Mahnmut. “Tell you later.”
He tugged, shoved, thrust, and generally moravec-hauled the huge Ionian into the almost-empty payload bay. It was better in the darkness of the bay—the wildly spinning stars/planet/stars/planet no longer gave Mahnmut vertigo. He crammed his friend into the main payload niche and activated the adjustable clamps.
Orphu was secure now. It was probable that all three of them—The Dark Lady and the two moravecs—were doomed, but at least they’d end their existence together. Mahnmut attached the sub’s comm leads to the hardline port.
“You’re safe for now,” gasped Mahnmut, feeling the organic parts of his body nearing overload. “I’m going to cut my hardline comm now.”
“What . . .” began Orphu but Mahnmut had cut the portable line and pulled himself hand over hand to the payload bay airlock. It still cycled.
With the last of his strength, he pulled himself up the vacuum-filled internal corridor to the enviro-niche, dogged the hatch, but did not pressurize the chamber, connecting to life-support lead instead. O2 flowed. Comm hissed static. The ship’s systems reported ongoing but survivable damage.
“Still there?” said Mahnmut.
“Where are you?”
“In my control room.”
“What’s the status, Mahnmut?”
“The ship’s essentially spun itself to bits. The sub’s more or less intact, including the stealth wrapping and the thrusters fore and aft, but I don’t have any idea how to control them.”
“Control them?” Then it obviously dawned on Orphu. “You’re still going to try to enter Mars’ atmosphere?”
“What choice do we have?”
There was a full second or two of silence while Orphu thought about that. Finally, he said, “I agree. Do you think you can fly this thing into the atmosphere?”
“No chance in hell,” said Mahnmut, sounding almost cheerful. “I’m going to download what control software Koros put in and let you fly us in.”
There came that rumbling-sneezing noise over the hardline, although Mahnmut found it very hard to believe that his friend was laughing at this particular moment. “You have to be joking. I’m blind—not just eyes and cameras missing, but my whole optical network burned out. I’m a mess. Essentially, I’m a bit of a brain in a broken basket. Tell me you’re joking.”
Mahnmut downloaded the programming the sub’s banks had on the external add-on thrusters, parachutes—the whole cryptic smash. He activated all the sub’s hull cameras but had to look away. The tumbling was as terrible and vertigo-producing as before. Mars filled the view now—polar cap, blue sea, polar cap, blue sea, bit of black space, polar cap—and watching it made Mahnmut sick. “There,” he said as the download ended. “I’ll be your eyes. I’ll give you whatever navigational data the sub can crib from the reaction software. You get us stabilized and fly us in.”
This time there was no mistaking the rumbling laughter. “Sure, why not,” said Orphu. “Hell, the fall alone will kill us.”
The rings of thrusters on The Dark Lady began to fire on Orphu’s command.
15
The Plains of Ilium
Diomedes, literally driven into battle by war-geared, cloud-cloaked, horse-handling Athena, rushes to attack Ares.
I’ve never seen anything like this. First Aphrodite is wounded by the enhanced Argive, Tydeus’ son, and now the war god himself has been called to single combat with Diomedes. Aristeia with a god. Incredible.
Ares, in his usual fashion, had promised Zeus and Athena only this morning that he would help the Greeks and now, spurred on by the taunts of Apollo and his own treacherous nature, he has begun attacking the Argives without quarter. Minutes ago, the god of war slaughtered Periphas—Ochesius’ son, the best fighter the Aetolian contingent of the Greeks had to offer—and is in the act of stripping Periphas naked when he looks up to see the chariot driven by Athena bearing down on him. The goddess herself is hidden now by a stealth cloak of darkness. Ares must know that some god or goddess is driving the chariot, but he does not take time to try to see through the stealth cloud; he is too eager to kill Diomedes.
The god strikes first, casting his spear with the accuracy only a god can command. The spear flies up and over the edge of the chariot, straight at Diomedes’ heart, but Athena reaches out from her cloud of darkness and slaps it aside. For an instant, all Ares can do is stare with incredulity as his god-wrought spear goes flying off to embed its tungsten-alloy tip in rocky soil.
Now, as the chariot clatters by, it is Diomedes’ turn; he leans far out and lunges with his own energy-enhanced bronze spear. Pallas Athena’s shared sheath of Planck field allows the human weapon to penetrate first the war god’s forcefield, then the war god’s ornate belt, then the war god’s divine bowels.
Ares’ scream of pain, when it comes, makes Aphrodite’s earlier world-shaking howl seem a whisper. I remember that Homer described this noise as “a shriek, roaring, thundering loud as nine, ten thousand combat soldiers . . . when massive armies clash.” That, it turns out, is an understatement. For the second time this bloody day, both armies freeze in the grim business of their slaughter out of mortal fear at such divine noise. Even noble Hector, intent now on nothing more noble than hacking his way through Argive flesh to murder the retreating Odysseus, halts his assault and turns his head toward the patch of bloody ground where Ares has been wounded.
Diomedes jumps from his Athena-driven chariot to finish the job on Ares, but the war god, still writhing in divine pain, is shifting, growing, changing, losing human form. The air around Diomedes and the other milling Greeks and Trojans fighting over Periphas’ now-forgotten corpse is suddenly filled with dirt, debris, bits of cloth and leather, as Ares abandons his god-human shape and becomes . . . something else. Where the tall god Ares had stood a minute before, now rises a twisting, cyclone of black plasma-energy, its static electricity discharging in random lightning bolts which strike Argive and Trojan alike.