Clockwork

ATHENA

THE SOUND OF DEATH RIPS THROUGH THE AIR. It's an unpleasant sound, screeching and grating and wailing and much, much more. It slashes through her eardrums with deadly accuracy, unapologetic. 

She winces. 

"The bombers will be released in five." A gruff voice sounds to her right. "They've refused to acquiesce to our demands, Command Sergeant Major."

Athena nods briskly, and the soldier salutes, running off orders as he is only told to do.

She wonders how he sleeps with the tombstones of thousands laying above his head. She wonders if he has to tell himself that he was just simply 'following orders' in order to fall into a peaceful slumber. 

Athena does neither ― she lives with the burden, takes it as her due. 

She has a million, billion, trillion more years to dwell on it. 

The command center is a hubbub of activity, full of errant papers and errant people; it in itself is war zone, full of people too soft to have ever been in battle and people hardened by the horrors of combat so much that they have no choice but to huddle behind a desk and a computer screen and watch as their friends get blown to smithereens. 

There are people who cry when they press a button, because by doing so they become harbingers of death, bringing bereavement to cities who will probably never see it coming. There are people who tell themselves that they are doing this for the good of the country, for the good of the innocent. Which country, which civilians, they are not so sure sometimes. 

And then there are the people who keep it all on their shoulders, wearing gaunt faces, skin stretched thin to remind others of the sacrifice they must make to keep their country secure ― their humanity.

Well. It is probably a good thing that Athena was never quite human to begin with. 

"Four!" One of the commanders echo, watching as the time begins to tick down, a macabre countdown that serve no other purpose but to dictate ruin. 

Whose, she is not sure. 

The war drums echo in the background, shrill alarms and high pitched beeps now instead of drums so deep they vibrated in the caverns of her chest. It didn't sound as great as they did eons ago, and Athena thinks that perhaps it is because she no longer revels in the act of war anymore ― it is just disgusting necessity she must persevere through. 

Athena laughs, brittle. 

Look at her, discussing the lives of human as if they were expendable, as if they did not take nearly most of their life just coming to fruition, only for her to cut them down in their finest hour. 

But she is a god, and gods do what they almost always must: strike down the hand that feeds them.

It is in her nature, is it not? To bite the hand that feeds her, to destroy the mortals that had always placed her on an unreachable pedestal, to deliver a fate worse than death to the ones who had always believed. 

Gods are cursed with eternity, to live out their times ten thousand times over  ― she has seen countless wars and countless deaths and still, still! The mortals do not lose hope. Decade after decade, century after century, they fight with noble intentions, with a dream in their veins, high on the potential of success. 

Athena draws an absentminded circle on her flesh with her thumb, thinking that she had lost the will somewhere between the fall of Greece and the rise of Rome.

Mortals, with their foolish lives and their impudence and their reckless temerity, were expendable. Replaceable. And yet, each one was crafted with such care that they are unique, all seven billion of them. 

She has been responsible for the deaths of nearly that many. 

She snorts to herself, watching as the clock rolls back to a giant red 2:00. 

Getting wet feet now was out of the question ― morality has never been a particularly difficult question for Athena, for how could one even have morals if she was not entirely human at the start? But it is the knowing, she thinks, that does it for her. 

Knowing that she has sent thousands to their demise, that she has scheduled their departure from this mortal plane onto the next earlier than expected, and having that knowledge settle deeply inside her subconscious ― that is what keeps her up at night. 

Athena has become a war machine that anticipates the costs and the benefits like a goddamned calculator, except instead of numbers, she deals in lives and blood and bones and broken families.

At least she has experience with the latter. 

Father, she snarls as she jabs a few buttons into the receiver, relaying out her final orders. Look at what your beautiful children have become.

For once, the sky stays quiet, illuminated by the quiet roars of the jets. They scream murder as they pass overhead. 

She wonders, idly, if it is worth it. The sentiment is late, given that the fighters have already sent, but the question lingers in the back of her mind, an horrible itch that she has yet to scratch. 

Are the lives of her soldiers are equal to another's? Are her people worth more than theirs?

Those are questions she still does not know the answer to. 

She is the goddess of military victory, but she is also the goddess of wisdom. 

War has never had a need for the victors ― those who remain are merely heroes who drown in tragedy, fighting invisible wars and demons for the rest of the years to come. 

Everybody loses, she thinks grimly. Even the gods.