Free Angel of Doom by James Axler Page A

“With two of the missing mobile suits. The suits picked up the Manta.”
    â€œGirlfriend?” Kane asked, fishing into a belt pouch for a replacement plate. Once he did, he handed it to Edwards, who donned the new communicator.
    Almost instantly he heard Brigid Baptiste’s voice. “Give me a description of this girlfriend,” she ordered.
    Edwards launched into his recorded memory, then tapped the interface on his suit’s forearm. “I’m also sending you the vid my suit captured.”
    â€œThat is Vanth, and her torch is of equal power to Charun’s hammer,” Brigid explained. “And, yes, they are partners. Psychopomps.”
    â€œPsychos? Yeah, I can see that,” Edwards grumbled. “Psychopomp…that’s not the same as crazy, right?”
    â€œThe term ‘psychopomp’ is Greek. Literally translated, it is ‘guide of the soul,’’’ Brigid told them both. “Choosers of the slain. Angels or sub-deities who take people to the afterlife.”
    â€œThat explains the zombie-like appearance of the Olympian soldiers searching for me,” Edwards added.
    â€œThe theft of their spirit is a concerning development,” Brigid mused over the Commtact. “As do Charun’s recovery of his hammer and the disappearance of our second and currently only flight-capable Manta.”
    Kane frowned. “You said this torch could spit out the bodies and then pick them up again. Don’t yell at me for being wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like the Threshold or Lakesh’s interphaser.”
    â€œIf that,” Edwards mused. “It could be like one of those traps in the old vids. The ones with the four guys fighting the ghosts?”
    â€œTurning the humans and the mecha into energy, then storing it in that format?” Brigid inquired. “And, yes, Kane, I can see the similarities in your assessment, as well.”
    Edwards frowned. “Great.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Kane asked.
    â€œI’m getting used to this crazy shit,” Edwards grumbled.
    Kane clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on. There’s room for you on Artem15’s other arm.”
    Edwards nodded and the two men were picked up, gingerly, with a gentle touch belying the robot skeleton’s massive might. Once they were settled into the crooks of the giant’s elbows, it turned and began to run; long, looping strides that crossed first fifteen, then twenty, then finally thirty feet in a single bound.
    The wind in Edwards’s face was cool and refreshing, arelease from the paralyzed caution and stony patience he’d had to endure while waiting for the arrival of his allies.
    He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let everyone down. No matter how much information Brigid and Kane got from his report and his vid.

Chapter 6
    Smaragda sat at the conference table, her shoulders slumped, shocks of her white bangs hanging low over her baggy eyes. She stared at the top of the table, but she was so deadened, so numbed by the trauma of losing her platoon, she didn’t even register the grain of the faux wooden veneer topping the furniture in front of her. All she could do was fight the need to close her eyes, to dispel the horrors of her platoon’s swallowing, to keep the echoes of their screams from ringing in her ears.
    She was clad in a nearly shapeless sweatshirt that covered her arms, hiding the recent work she’d carved into it with a razor. The flesh of her forearms was heavily checkered now and was raw from the disinfectant she’d poured over the dozens of new cuts to prevent sepsis. Smaragda hadn’t cut herself since she was a mere teenager, the focus and élan of being with the New Olympian military stealing not just privacy for the act, but also drowning out the need for controlling her pain.
    Now her forearms stank of hydrogen peroxide, dampened somewhat by the loose