* * *
Athena’s flivver dropped from the skies silently, invisibly, just a sector from New Athens. She smiled to herself as she thought how ironic it was. She was originally from a city that was her namesake, and yet she was here to take something that belonged to them.
The camoed flivver could hardly be seen in broad daylight. Here, in brindle light so close to the azimuth of the three suns that served this bleak planet, the flying vehicle could only be seen if you were standing on top of it, or if you had an electronic sensor, which she did.
Still thinking about her name and the name of the town, she looked up at the weak light of the three suns: Paris, the yellow dwarf that signaled the onset of a three-year winter; Hector, the gas giant that brought four years of scorching summer; and Achilles, the one people never thought or talked about anymore, the dangerous one. Even now, she saw its pale blue outline on the horizon. Achilles: the death bringer, the tower toppler, the wave crasher. Every child on the planet learned to pray that Achilles would be held away one more season. And for close to a hundred years their prayers had been answered. What they didn’t know—and Athena did—was that scientists had been the ones to answer their prayers. And the cost of answering their prayers had been a thermonuclear detonation.
It was still a couple of hours before the Ascension and the beginning of the Brindle festivities. Athena forgot about astronomy and focused on her job. She pressed a button on her Doppler suit and disappeared from view.
The Last Supper Page 3