Pyramid Scheme by Dave Freer and Eric Flint

Cruz was rather taken aback. “I’ll think about it. I’ll come and talk to you in about half an hour.”

* * *

“Try to leave this to the military as much as possible,” said Cruz in their later private council. “Mac and I have got the experience. If need be, we can train soldiers.”

Prometheus steepled his fingers. “Firstly, we cannot wait and train. The Olympians will not wait. A straightforward military assault on Olympus with two soldiers, no matter how skilled, has no chance of success. The Olympians defeated the Titans who were their equal in strength, but not in skill at war. They defeated the Giants who were both skilled at war and great in strength. As yet, the only way anyone has got the better of them has been by guile. By strength or even force of arms you will fail.”

His eyes grew distant. “So: we are obliged to resort to guile. Let us look at the forces at your command. There is myself. I shall come as fast as I can, on foot from the north. But on my own I can only hope to defeat perhaps two of the Olympians. Oceanus will not come up from his watery kingdom. Remember too that the Olympians cannot be killed, although they can be hurt. Therefore they must be imprisoned. Can you think of any better way to do it than with the spiders? If Bes and I together cannot break this new weave, it will bind any of them, except perhaps Zeus.”

Cruz muttered something about amateurs. Then, he sighed. “I don’t see any way out of using the spiders, I give you that.”

“What I’d like to do is see a way to prevent Arachne going up there,” said McKenna. “Yeah. I know, Cruz. She’s some kind of freak to you, but she’s a nineteen-year-old girl to me. That’s what she is, dammit! Not what that bitch Athena made her into.”

Cruz shrugged. “I guess I’m just not crazy about spiders. But she’s the only one who can control them. We need her right on the scene.”

“And we need to transport about a million spiders up there. Warm. Can you think of any other way but the tube?” asked McKenna patiently.

Cruz frowned. “No.”

McKenna threw out his hands. “Right. That leaves the others. Let’s start with Doc. The little guy is the only one of us that really knows much about these Greek gods—except for Prometheus and Medea. Not to mention that the guy’s ‘magic’ has saved our asses more than once. And when you think about it, he’s gotten a lot tougher, too. He started this trip looking like any stiff breeze would blow him over. He looks more like whipcord now.”

Cruz shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t have a problem with the Doc. He reminds me of that Lagrange kid in B company. You know: the small, wiry little runt who took a lot of crap at first because the guys all figured that he’d be the one to flake out on the physical stuff. Then he turned out to be an Olympic-class gymnast.”

McKenna snorted. “I was there for the sit-ups competition. So, we need the Doc. That leaves Liz, Lamont, Medea, and Bes, if you don’t include the dragons and Throttler, that you want to count out. Well, you try telling ‘Sir’ that she’s not going. Or Bes.”

“Or Medea,” said Cruz quietly, with a wry face. “She gets kinda determined. And that temple really upset her.”

“So that leaves Lamont. He’s the guy—next to you, Anibal—that I’d most like to have with me in a fight.” McKenna rubbed his jaw. “I’m sure he was in the service, even if he won’t talk about it. And no REMF either.”

Cruz sighed. “So what else can go wrong? Besides the whole fucking plan?”

McKenna took a deep breath. “Well, to be honest, there are the parachutes.”

Cruz put a hand over his eyes. “Yeah. I just love the idea of jumping using something made by a spider.”

“Well, let’s give it a test run,” suggested McKenna.

“With a big rock. Get your girlfriend to sew us a bag.”

McKenna didn’t even attempt to argue over the definition of Arachne. “Okay. Then we can go on with that crossbow project.”