Ilium

63 Olympos

Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano on Mars, rises more than seventeen miles above the surrounding plains and above the new ocean at its base. The volcano, at its base, spreads more than 400 miles in diameter. With its green summit peaking above 87,000 feet, Olympus Mons is almost three times the height of Mount Everest on Earth. The sides of the mountain, white from snow and ice in the daytime, are glowing almost blood red this evening from the glare of the setting Martian sun.

The ragged cliffs here at the northeast base of Olympus Mons sweep up vertically for 17,000 feet. On this particular Martian evening, the long shadow of the volcano stretches east almost to the line of the three Tharsis volcanoes on the hazy horizon.

The high-speed crystal elevator that used to snake its way up this side of Olympos has been sliced in two not far above the cliffs, and sliced as cleanly as if cut by a guillotine. A powerful seven-layer forcefield generated by Zeus himself—the aegis—shields the entire Olympus Mons massif from attack and shimmers now in the red light of evening.

Just beyond the cliffs, near where the base of Olympos comes close to the northern ocean terraformed here just a century and a half earlier, a thousand or more gods have come down to gather for war. A hundred golden chariots, each powered by invisible forces but visibly pulled by powerful steeds, fly air cover thousands of feet above the masses of gods and golden armor assembled on the high plains and shingled beaches below.

Zeus and Hera are at the forefront of this immortal army, each figure twenty feet tall, husband and wife both resplendent in armor and shields and weapons hammered into shape by Hephaestus and other craft-skilled gods; even Hera’s and Zeus’s high helmets are forged of pure gold, laced with microcircuits, and reinforced by advanced alloys. Athena and Apollo are temporarily missing from the forefront of this divine phalanx, but the other gods and goddesses are here—

Aphrodite is here, still beautiful in her war gear. Her war helmet is studded with precious stones; her tiny bow is made to shoot crystal arrows with hollow tips filled with poison gas.

Ares is here, grinning beneath the brow of his red-crested war helmet, happy in anticipation of the unprecedented bloodletting soon to come. He carries Apollo’s silver bow and a quiver full of heat-seeking arrows. Any target he shoots at, he will kill or destroy.

Poseidon is here—the Earth-Shaker, huge and darkly powerful, dressed in war gear for the first time in millennia. Ten men, even including Achilles, could not lift the massive axe Poseidon carries in his left hand.

Hades is here—darker in countenance, mood, and armor than even Poseidon, his red eyes gleaming from the depths of his battle helmet’s deep sockets. Persephone stands by her lord, armored in lapis lazuli, a barbed titanium trident held firm in her long, pale fingers.

Hermes is here—thin and deadly, wrapped in his red-insect’s armor, poised to quantum teleport into battle, kill, and leap away before mortal eye can record his arrival, much less the carnage he will leave behind.

Thetis is here, her divine eyes red from weeping, but dutifully clad in full-scaled war gear, ready to kill her son, Achilles, if and when Zeus wills it so.

Triton is here—bold in layers of green-black armor; this is the forgotten Satyros of the old worlds—terror of the conch-horn and rapist of girls and boys, the god who took pleasure in discarding children’s bodies in the depths after he’d had his pleasure with them.

Artemis is here—gold-armored goddess of the hunt, her war-bow in her hand, ready and eager to spill gallons of human blood as the first step toward avenging the injury to her beloved brother, Apollo.

Hephaestus is here—armored in flames and ready to bring the torch to the mortal enemy.

All the gods except healing Apollo and healing Athena are here—row upon row of giant armored silent figures drawn up beneath the shadows of the cliffs. Above them, more gods and goddesses circle in their flying chariots. Above everything, the shimmering aegis—both offensive and defensive weapon—shimmers and builds its energies.

In the no-man’s-land beyond the gods, just beyond where the aegis shimmer slices into soil and stone and continues downward, curving in a sphere deep toward the center of Mars, the bodies of the two cerberids lie. Two-headed dog-things more than twenty feet long with teeth of chrome steel and gas chromatograph mass spectrometers in their snouts, the cerberids sprawl dead where Achilles and Hector each killed one upon the heroes’ arrival at Olympos only hours earlier.

A hundred feet beyond the cerberids are the burned remnants of the old scholic barracks. Beyond the barracks are the armies of humankind, a hundred and twenty thousand strong this evening.

Hector’s forces are drawn up in ranks and rows on the inland side, forty thousand of Ilium’s boldest fighters. Paris has been ordered to stay behind in Ilium, tasked by his older brother with the heavy responsibility of protecting their homes and loved ones in the ancient city—domed now by the moravec forcefield, but more securely protected, Hector has said, by bronze spearpoints and human courage. But the other captains and their contingents are here.

Near Hector stands the Trojan supreme commander’s trusted brother, Deiphobus, in charge of ten thousand handpicked spearmen. Nearby is Aeneas, forging his new destiny here, no longer favored by the Fates. Behind Aeneas’ contingent of fighters is noble Glaucus, at the head of his ranks of chariots and 11,000 wild Lycians ready to fight.

Ascanius from Ascania, co-commander of the Phrygians, is here, the young captain fully clad in bronze and leather and eager for glory. His 4,200 Ascanians are eager to spill immortal ichor, if immortal blood is not available.

Behind the Trojan fighters, too old and too valued to lead men into combat but dressed in battle gear this day and ready to die if such is the universe’s will, are clustered the kings and counselors of Ilium—first King Priam himself, wearing legendary armor hammered from the metal of an ancient meteor, then old Antenor, father of many Trojan heroes—most of whom have already fallen in battle.

Near Antenor stand Priam’s honored brothers Lampus and Clytius, and gray-bearded Hicetaon—who until this day had honored Ares, the god of war, above all other beings—and behind Hicetaon those most respected of Trojan elders, Panthous and Thymoetes. Standing with these old men today, eyes always on her husband, dressed in red as if she’s become a living banner of blood and loss, is beautiful Andromache, Hector’s wife, mother of the murdered Scamandrius, the babe known to the loving residents of Ilium as Astyanax—“Lord of the City.”

At the center of this three-mile-long human battle line, commanding more than 80,000 battle-tested Achaeans, towers golden Achilles, son of Peleus, killer of men. He is said to be—save for one secret weakness—invulnerable. This evening, in full battle dress and flushed with the superhuman energy of almost inhuman rage, he looks immortal. The spot to Achilles’ right has been left empty to honor the memory of his dearest friend and battle-comrade, Patroclus, said to have been savagely murdered by Pallas Athena less than twenty-four hours earlier.

Behind and to the right of Achilles is the surprising troika of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus. The two sons of Atreides are still bruised from their single combat with Achilles, and Menelaus’ left arm is too injured for him to carry a shield, but the two deposed leaders have found it necessary to be with their captains and men on this day. Odysseus, apparently lost in thought, is looking out over the human and immortal battle lines and scratching his beard.

Spread through the rest of the Achaean ranks, in chariots and on foot, always at the head of their men, are the surviving Greek heroes of nine years of bitter war—Diomedes, still dressed in his lion’s skin and carrying a club larger than most men; Big Ajax, bulwark of the Achaeans, towering over his entire line of warriors, and Little Ajax, leading his professional killers from Locris. Within a rock’s throw of these heroes stands the great spearman, Idomeneus, at the head of his legendary Cretan warriors, and nearby, tall in his chariot, Meriones, eager to ride into combat next to Big Ajax’s half-brother, the master archer Teucer.

On the Achaeans’ right flank, nearest the ocean, row upon row of armored men turn their crested helmets to look to their leader and the oldest Achaean captain present this day, wily Nestor, breaker of horses. Nestor has placed himself out ahead of all others there on the right flank, red-caped and visible in his four-horsed chariot, so he will be the first on this flank to fall or the first to fight his way through the battle line of the immortals. In nearby chariots, obviously eager to ride into combat with their father, are Nestor’s sons, Antilochus—Achilles’ good friend—and Antilochus’ taller and more handsome brother, Thrasymedes.

A hundred more captains are here this day, each carrying his proud name and his father’s proud name, together leading tens of thousands more men, each of those men holding noble names and complex histories, each man carrying their fathers’ proud names into battle to glory and life, or taking those names down with them to the House of Death this day.

To the right of the massed Achaeans, spread out along the shore in no particular order, standing silent and green, are several thousand zeks—Little Green Men who have poured out of their barges and feluccas and flimsy sailing ships from Ocean Tethys and the Valles Marineris Inland Sea and who stand witness here this day for reasons known only to themselves, and perhaps to their avatar Prospero or the unmet god called Setebos. They stand mute along the softly crashing line of surf, and neither the Greeks nor the Trojans nor the immortal gods have yet interfered with them.

A half mile or so out to sea behind the zeks, sails catching the rosy Martian sunset and oars reflecting the golden sea glow, range more than a hundred Achaean ships of the line. Now the sails are slackened, the oars are shipped, and shields and spears line the ships’ sides. Crests of yellow, red, purple, and blue and the gleaming tops of helmets are all that can be seen of the more than 3,000 Achaean fighters on those ships. In the space between the massed ships, barbed black fins are cutting through the sun-gilded seas. Hinted at now only by their periscopes and the tops of their black-metal sails, three Belt moravec ballistic missile submarines cruise through the Martian sea.

Spread thinly for two miles behind the Trojans and Achaeans on land are massed the Belt moravec infantry—27,000 black-armored, beetle-armed ground troopers carrying weapons both heavy and light. Energy and ballistic rockvec artillery batteries are arrayed as far back as fifteen kilometers behind the front lines, their projectors and tubes aimed at Olympos and the massed immortals. Above all the human and moravec lines circle and dart 116 hornet-fighter aircraft, some tuned to stealth, others still as boldly black as when first sighted earlier in the day. In orbit overhead, so the Belt moravecs have reported, are 65 combat spacecraft circling Mars in orbits ranging from just a hair above the Martian atmosphere to several million miles out beyond hurtling Phobos and Deimos. The Belt moravec military commander on the ground has reported to the Europan moravec Mahnmut, who has translated to Achilles and Hector, that all grades of bombs, missiles, forcefields, and energy weapons on all these ships are cocked and locked. The report means nothing to the heroes and they have disregarded it.

On the same flat area near Achilles, to the right of Odysseus and the Atrides but standing apart, are Mahnmut, Orphu, and Hockenberry. Mahnmut had taken one look at the gathering armies earlier in the afternoon and, with the Trojan commander Perimus’ help, immediately commandeered a chariot with which to fetch Orphu through the quantum tunnel slice, dragging the levitated Ionian behind the chariot—in Orphu’s own words—like a “dinged-up U-Haul trailer.” Mahnmut didn’t know what that was exactly—his Lost Age colloquial data banks were not as obsessively overflowing as Orphu’s—but he promised himself he’d look it up someday. If he survived.

Scholic Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., is dressed in a Trojan captain’s cape, armor, and clothes, and although he seems thrilled to be witnessing all this, he also appears to have some trouble standing still. While the thousands of warriors up to the level of noble Achilles wait almost motionless for the final stragglers in each army—human and immortal—to assemble, Hockenberry is shuffling from foot to foot.

“Something wrong?” whispers Mahnmut in English.

“I think something’s crawling in my shorts,” Hockenberry whispers back.

The armies are assembled. The silence is uncanny—there is no noise from either side except for the slow hiss of distant waves rolling in to the pebbled beach, the occasional whinny of a horse harnessed to a battle chariot, the soft sound of Martian breeze through the cliff rocks of Olympos, the air-hiss of flying chariots circling and the higher buzz of hornet fighters, the occasional inadvertent soft clank of bronze on bronze as some soldier shifts position, and the powerful, omnipresent negative sound of tens of thousands of anxious men trying to remember to breathe normally.

Zeus steps forward, passing through the aegis like a giant stepping through a rippling waterfall.

Achilles walks out into no-man’s-land to face the Father of the Gods.

“DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY BEFORE YOU AND YOUR SPECIES DIE?” says Zeus, his tone conversational but so amplified that it carries to the farthest reaches of the field, even to the men on the Greek ships at sea.

Achilles pauses, looks over his shoulder at the masses of men behind him, turns back, looks past Zeus toward Olympos and the masses of gods in front of him, and then crooks his neck to look up again at towering Zeus.

“Surrender now,” says Achilles, “and we’ll spare your goddesses’s lives so they can be our slaves and courtesans.”