Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  Both Daria and TNC had intel on these happenings, but the information wasn’t hard to come by. Many foreign eyes were watching events in the war-torn country with keen interest, and though the more fantastic elements of his story were being written off, the wider world knew that a new “insurgent” was rising in Iraq. Unfortunately for all of them, Ninurta’s fantastic nature was precisely what they should be concerned with. But, in fairness, if you’d told me last year about what I was doing now, I’d have called you a loon and walked away. Now I was riding over Turkey in a cargo plane with two demons and a team of fully armed former soldiers to face this insurgent on his own turf, surrounded by his followers.

  I shouted to be heard over the engines as Daria and I reviewed the plan.

  “… hoping that Ninurta won’t be throwing down meteors for fear of killing his own.”

  Sark, who’d mostly kept to himself during the planning, shook his head.

  “It is foolish to think he won’t sacrifice a few pawns to get rid of you.” His burning, unfocused gaze met mine; it was like looking into the eyes of a person caught in the grips of a nightmare. Whatever Sark had hoped for when he’d drawn Kezsarak into himself, I very much doubted he’d gotten what he wanted.

  “It’s not about his humanity but his pragmatism,” Daria yelled back. “He’ll need to draw on as many of his bloodline as possible to make his plan work. If he starts killing his strongest, he’ll risk not having enough juice to pull it off.”

  Sark shrugged and leaned back in his seat, his expression unconvinced, but he didn’t seem interested in further argument.

  “You two approach the compound from the other side.”

  Now it was Daria’s turn to be sceptical.

  “It’s a mistake to split our deployment. Even if Ninurta isn’t throwing meteors at you, he’s lethal. This could go poorly very quickly.”

  I shook my head, gesturing at myself with both hands. “I need him focused on me. If he spots you, it’ll alert him that we’re up to something.”

  Daria frowned and leaned forward in her safety harness. “The plan doesn’t work at all if you’re dead.”

  I laughed in a way that I hoped hid my fear. “Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.”

  Overhead there was the blare of a proximity alert, and the light on the bulkheads near the rear of the plane changed from red to green.

  “Bashir!” Stewart called. “Get down here.”

  Unfastening my harness, I took lurching steps toward the security team where they were doing last-minute checks on their gear and parachutes.

  My stomach clenched as the reality of my situation sunk in. I’m about to jump out of a perfectly functioning airplane to save the world.

  I’d be tandem jumping with Hadlynne since I had no experience with skydiving and wanted to be more than a stain on the desert floor. The soldier seemed as excited about the whole business as I was, his complexion the same color as fresh milk.

  “Any advice?” I asked as we strapped ourselves together, my back to his chest. I had to crane my neck to see his face in my periphery.

  Hadlynne looked at me. “Don’t chuck your breakfast.”

  I hadn’t even thought about vomiting. I was more focused on not going splat, but now that he mentioned it, I felt a twinge of nausea.

  “What happens if I do?”

  “You lose your breakfast I get an early lunch.” He tugged down on a strap harder than it probably needed.

  “Thanks for that.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust and focused straight ahead. Trust a soldier to provide a crude comment in any situation.

  “Everyone tight?” Stewart bellowed. He ran a critical eye over the assembled team.

  “As your mother, Sarge!” the team shouted in unison.

  My jaw dropped at their coordinated insult. I half expected Stewart to throw a punch at someone, but his weathered features broke into a genuine smile. He looked over the team one last time and then nodded approvingly.

  “Let’s go kill a god then!”

  The bay doors opened as another siren blared. Ahead was nothing but a howling sky and a blurry seam of darkness--the land below. My heart hammered, my knees turned watery and my stomach lurched. I might have felt embarrassed at my sudden rush of weakness but I was too busy trying not to be sick.

  The others, like rugby players rushing for the tackle, surged out in a mob.

  I wasn’t so keen, but with Hadlynne grunting at my back, I had little choice.

  For a moment I really wished I was going with Sark and Daria to land at the airport north of the compound. I opened my mouth to scream, but it was too late as the wailing sky opened up to swallow me.

  The descent to the valley floor was a strange combination of terror and serenity.

  I plummeted through the air, every instinct ramrodding terrified adrenaline through my veins. My arms splayed out, hands grasping at emptiness as the wind scoured my skin. Seconds ticked by, the ground growing closer but only so much that I knew I was moving, even if it seemed slowly. As time passed, the rushing in my blood faded enough that I realised I wasn’t going to die just yet, and my pulse stabilized.

  The security team kept close to each other as they descended, and I saw--to my horror--more than one of the loons grinning ear to ear. As seconds and metre after plummeting metre clipped by, I realised there was a certain thrilling peace to the whole thing.

  Death may or may not come, and even if it did, there seemed little I could do to stop it. In the meantime, I let the elation of soaring through the air finally come in. It was something foundational, perhaps going back to when my father tossed me up into the air as a tot. It was never the rise that thrilled me, but surrendering to the plummet, certain I would land safe in my father’s arms. The reflection of my father struck me squarely, as all thoughts of my parents did, but here at what might be my last moments, it somehow felt right.

  The moment of our descent stretched on pleasantly, and then Stewart barked something, and I felt Hadlynne dragging us away from the others and into position.

  “Brace yourself,” he growled in my ear over the whistling wind.

  It was then I learned two things.

  The opening of a parachute is not the gentle blooming of fabric I’d imagined, and even with it open overhead, you still descend with unseemly speed.

  Hadlynne and I jerked back as the chute opened, the force of deceleration enough to pop my neck and clack my teeth together. My senses were filled with cottony static for an instant from the jolt, and then I came to, realising how much closer the ground was.

  We did slow, moving in a winding path downward, but as each revolution passed and the earth below grew uncomfortably nearer, fresh fear rose inside me. We had to slow down more than this, didn’t we? The wind whistling against my skin had to be a sign that we were about to smash into the ground, which looked more like bedrock than a feather bed.

  “Shouldn’t we slow down?” I shouted.

  “We’re on target,” Hadlynne offered mildly.

  I wanted to scream that I didn’t want to be on target, I wanted to land safely. I was a person, not a missile.

  The ground jumped up to meet us, and then we were scudding across it. For a second I wondered if this was what roadkill felt like, before we came to an unceremonious stop.

  After we disentangled, I emerged from the web of parachute and harness to behold the primeval lands that had birthed Ninurta.

  The winds whipped across the landscape, which, despite all my previous assumptions about the region, was wet, cold, and sported darkly glistening vegetation. In the briefings Stewart mentioned the foothills being sodden with winter rains but I had still been expecting something more desert-like.

  The rest of the team had smooth landings and in a few seconds we were assembled into a marching order by Stewart.

  “All intel indicated that they dinna patrol or have picket lines beyond sentries at the compound.” Stewart paced around as he spoke low but clear, gaze probing the terrain
. “But we all know the truth about intel.”

  A few grunted in agreement while others nodded grimly.

  “What’s that about intel?” I whispered to Hadlynne.

  “N’telligence is al’ys wrong, and when it ain’t it’s too late to matter.”

  “Minimal casualties,” Stewart spat. “Both with contacts and your sorry selves. Secure any contact, whether they’re eight or eighty. Watch yourselves and keep clear of the Angel when she gets to work.”

  More nods and a few raised chins my way from the team.

  Angel? I felt prouder to have been given that name by these rough men than by any other accolade I’d earned. My shoulders squared a little.

  I thought of Jackie and Marcus, how to explain how I was feeling; thinking about what they must be going through. I shook the thoughts away, knowing that distraction at this point could be the last mistake I made. Stewart was finishing his instruction, and I was missing it.

  “... don’t want dead heroes, I want live soldiers, lads. If anyone has a chance to stop this business, it’s us here and now!”

  He met every gaze with his frosty blue eyes before cracking one of his rare smiles.

  “Right, move out and let’s crack this noot!”

  ---

  “What the…” came an awed, anonymous whisper as we crested the last hill. “Look at the size of it.”

  An enormous ziggurat sprawled across the valley floor, its corners touching the arms of the mountain that cradled it. It was made from dark grey stone, shiny and nearly black with the recent rains; a squat idol of a primordial demon-god, the tiered steps rising up as ridges of a scaly body, the shrine at its zenith a brutish crown. With every step we took down the slope, it seemed to grow: a construction that belonged to another time, though we knew it had been built in the last few days.

  “Keep it tight,” Stewart growled through the radio as he ranged at the front of the formation just behind the point squad.

  The land was rougher here and every boulder seemed to promise an ambush. We crept along, unopposed, skirting the bare valley floor. The wind continued to howl, hampering our hearing somewhat, but we heard no alarm.

  Did Ninurta really have such confidence that he didn’t bother to set a watch?

  The moaning whistle of the wind faded as we approached the wide stairs on the western face of the ziggurat. In its absence a steady rhythm rose, backed by the trilling of pipes and the strum of stringed instruments. Intermingled was a low chant, almost a whisper.

  My arms prickled with goose bumps, and a chill rolled down my spine like ice water.

  The point squad reported all-clear for the short sprint across the valley floor to the stairs. From there, it was only a matter of lugging ourselves up to the higher tiers where we anticipated Ninurta would be holding court.

  We held, though, waiting for word from Daria and Sark that they had touched down and were nearing the approach from the other side.

  “What do you think?” Stewart had shuffled back down the line to Hadlynne and me. “That madwoman o’ yers goin’ to come through?”

  I shrugged. My body was tense from the undercurrent of power pressing against my mind. Gingerly I reached out my metallic awareness. Seams of copper answered back, so precisely ordered that they couldn’t be natural, quivering in a latticework of metal within the stones of the ziggurat. The chant rose, and I felt I was going to be swept up in the undertow as the power drew inward and was funnelled down into the copper conduits, plunging down deep into the earth.

  It was like a tide, surging with the rise and fall of the syllables of the chant, each time climbing a little higher. I leaned into it and felt hundreds of individual wills rushing past me to gather and plunge, all directed by an intelligence so focused it hurt to sense its raw intention. Ninurta was drawing power, the souls of his gathered offspring, and driving it like a spike into the earth.

  “Somethin’ bad is happening,” Bordeaux observed, a ghost of fear an unnatural and unwelcome addition to his flinty voice. “We can’t hang about.”

  “Steady on, man,” Stewart warned gruffly, but then turned to lean close to my ear. “He’s not wrong. We can all feel somethin’ unnatural about, and we can’t sit here with our thumbs up our arse.”

  I nodded, letting my metallic senses play across the network of copper, wondering if I could stymie the power being driven down. I was sure that so much power couldn’t be stopped, but anything I could do to slow its descent or sap its strength would buy us time. We would have to risk alerting Ninurta.

  “Keep an eye out.” I held out my hand toward the ziggurat. “I’m going to make mischief.”

  The ground beneath our feet gave a tremble that turned my knees to jelly.

  “Mischief accomplished, I ken,” Stewart grunted.

  “That wasn’t me,” I whispered, unable to keep the fear out of my voice. “I think it’s already started.”

  Stewart’s face paled and clenched until veins throbbed at his temples.

  “Then we’re goin’ in,” he growled, turning toward the ziggurat with a look of sheer loathing.

  “Wait,” I called as he stomped off, orders rumbling in his chest to match the last echoes of the shuddering earth. “I think I can disrupt the metal conducting the power downward.”

  Stewart didn’t stop moving, calling over his shoulder. “Good, do that while we advance.”

  Sweat sprang up on my brow as I reached out to the veins of copper in the ziggurat, probing for weak points.

  “You don’t understand! I’m not sure if it will destabilise the structure. It doesn’t do anyone any good if you’re crushed by a collapsing pyramid.”

  Stewart seemed about to argue but paused at a sharp breath from me when I felt a souring influence that could only be Kezsarak sliding along one of the further branches of the ziggurat. The copper began to twist and rupture as the corruptive infection spread along the widening web of metal. On the next wave of tidal power the conduit was not up to the task: a series of tiny ruptures, cascaded outward in a dazzling and terrifying display.

  Before I could share what I was sensing, there was a tremendous crack as though the earth was shattering pottery, and the entire ziggurat shivered. Some stones fell away, mammoth blocks as big as four-door sedans tumbled like children’s blocks to the valley floor. Other stones splintered and shifted leaving jagged lines spider webbing across the structure as the last of Ninurta’s harnessed power grounded out through the structure. Dust and rubble billowed between open seams in the stone. I ducked my head against the storm of debris as it spread over the valley floor, pelting us with bits of stone and grains of metal.

  The structure settled into its new state, stones giving low, protesting groans as the last bits of rubble skittered and skipped down to the ground. Then there was only silence, an oppressive quiet, even the wind holding its breath.

  “That’s your cue, my dear,” Daria’s voice came over the radio in defiance of the stillness.

  “You heard her lads!” Stewart roared. “Move it!”

  Without time to consider, I ran across the plain with the team.

  And just like that, the battle to save the world had begun.

  19

  Stairs had to be the greatest way to end heroics before they’d ever begun.

  By the time we reached the top tier, after twenty minutes of laborious and treacherous climbing, even the fittest of the team was red-faced and gulping down air. I was an utter wreck, my legs trembling, my back throbbing, as I wheezed with each step. Steadying hands on my back from teammates had kept me whole and moving upward.

  Not exactly how I wanted to go into the fight of my life, but the team was already ranging ahead of me through the maze-like assemblage of pillars and altars. Many of them held fistfuls of zip-ties and tasers; the combat rifles slung over their backs as a last resort.

  “Cover!” Hadlynne snapped, dragging me behind a pillar.

  A mob of armed men and women came jogging toward us from one of the
many passages that led deeper into the ziggurat. I felt a thrill of fear, knowing that if they spotted us or headed after the team, this could all be over.

  Pushing aside my fatigue and steadying my breathing to rhythmic gasps. I stretched out my metallic senses, attaching a mental hook to weapons. It took me longer than I wanted, there were so many of them. Fortunately, the Winterthür agents didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  “What’re they waitin’ for?” Hadlynne hissed. His combat rifle already in hand.

  Latching onto the last gun in the mob, I braced myself against the pillar, settling my mind. But as I gathered energy for the heavy pull I realised the weapons hadn’t moved an inch; all were hanging loosely on straps or in hands.

  That doesn’t make sense.

  Shouts and screams – orders and fear – echoed from the interior. I needed to get in there.

  I turned to Hadlynne and put a finger to my lips before sliding quietly to steal a quick glance around the pillar.

  The entire mob just stood there, arms hanging at their sides, staring at nothing in particular with eyes as black as pitch.

  With a start, I remembered the packs of snarling men Daria had sent after us at Museum Station. It was clear the Winterthür agents had succumbed to the same demonic trick.

  “It’s alright.” I stepped out from cover despite Hadlynne’s bewildered expression.

  As one, the mob turned and looked at me. The sudden attention of their black eyes left my mouth dry, and my heart in my throat, but I forced myself to straighten and look at them directly, channelling a little of Stewart’s commanding presence.

  “Daria sent you?” I asked.

  With uncanny coordination, they nodded in unison.

  “Did she give you instructions?”

  Dozens stared on, unblinking and unmoving.

  “Uh … did she tell you to follow my orders?”

  The heads bobbed together with insectile precision.

  “What the bloody hell?” Hadlynne muttered. He stepped from behind the pillar.

  More cries reminded me that there was a battle going on.