by Warren Fahy
“You’re very smart for a soldier,” she replied wryly. “No offense.”
“I know,” Jackson replied.
“All right, we’re touching down, folks,” Ferrell announced sharply.
The olive drab CH-47 Chinook set down like a locust on a field beside a knoll on Mount Kazar’s foothills. The government official sitting up front pointed to a hatch that resembled a closed eyelid. A cracked concrete ramp led down to the rusty hatch.
“That’s the entrance you will use to get into the city,” said the Kaziristani official in the helicopter. “We cut off power a few minutes ago.”
“It’s a large elevator,” shouted Galia, “which drops down to the main subway line into the city!”
“Does it work without power?” Abrams asked.
“The cable powering the elevator is still live,” said the official. “We will open this door only once more, if you make it back here before eight hours. After eight hours, we are sealing this exit with concrete. We are taking a chance we don’t want to take right now by leaving this entrance open. You understand? Many are wondering why we are letting you do this. But we need to make sure the train tunnel is sealed. If you are not back in eight hours, you will not be able to get out. Ever.”
“Yes, sir, we understand,” Jackson said. “Just be ready to open it any time before eight hours. Right?”
“Of course. But the clock starts as soon as you go in.”
Jackson pursed his lips and looked at Abrams. “We got it. And also please remember we’re doing you a favor. We’ll seal that tunnel. And you won’t ever have to thank us, whether we make it back or not.”
The Kaziristani heard him. “Yes. And you will still have eight hours. No more. And I promise, whether you make it back or not, I will thank you, if you seal that tunnel.”
6:31 A.M.
The men unloaded their gear from three helicopters onto the foothills of Mount Kazar, which were dusted with yellow and blue wildflowers.
The soldiers inspected and loaded their weapons and stowed additional ammunition, battery packs, and other equipment on the Big Dog, which Jackson now activated outside the mine entrance.
The robot sprang to uncanny life as it balanced on four mammalian legs. The others continued to load parcels onto the robot’s back as it reacted to each payload like a pack mule, shifting its four feet as it absorbed the weight and maintained its balance.
“This thing is freaking me out,” Bear said.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Jackson said.
The Big Dog could, in fact, carry a half-ton payload. It was, for all its futuristic strangeness, part of a long and established lineage of mechanical mules employed by the army since World War II.
Ferrell helped Andy get into his Dragon Skin body armor on the slope of Mount Kazar. Jackson helped the Russians and Galia get zipped up, as well. Abrams snapped himself into armor that resembled a medieval knight crossed with a comic book superhero. He then climbed into the exoskeleton and buckled himself in, rising to eight feet as he walked to the entrance of the mine.
Andy watched him move in the XOS, with effortless grace and balance that reacted precisely to the motions of his own body. Abrams winked at Andy as he ran around in a quick circle on the grass with ease despite the weight of the machine. The robotic muscles made only a whisper of noise inside the hydraulic actuators. He helped load the last heavy boxes of ammo, explosives, and batteries onto the mule, each arm lifting two hundred pounds with only ten pounds of pressure.
“God almighty.” Jackson almost drooled. “That thing rocks.”
The Kaziristani officials looked at each other with wide eyes.
Kuzu pursed his lips, glancing at Hender. “Humans,” he muttered.
Ferrell produced a plastic jug. “This is a synthesized version of a pheromone that Henders animals spray as a warning signal.” Ferrell tipped some onto his hand and rubbed it over himself. “It’s supposed to be a good repellent.” He offered it to Hender and Kuzu, who smelled it and declined.
The others now poured some from the jug and splashed it over their armored bodies.
“All right, everybody. We’ve got eight hours. Let’s not waste any of it. The first stop is the train tunnel. We set our explosives and move on. Hender and Kuzu, if we meet up with any critters down there, don’t be shy about giving us advice on how to fight them. OK?”
“How to fight them?” Kuzu asked, and he seemed to laugh as his crest resonated with a deep snorting sound.
“Kill the big one,” Hender said, “and run.”
They all looked at one another, wondering if Hender was joking.
“They’ll turn on the biggest animal that goes down,” Andy said. “Otherwise, they’ll probably keep attacking.” The scientist tried to breathe calmly in and out through his helmet’s air filter. “Also, keep changing directions, never travel in a straight line, and don’t ever stop.”
“All right. Good advice,” Ferrell said. “Is everyone’s helmet mike working? Everyone can hear each other? Bear?”
“Affirmative.”
“Abrams?”
“Check.”
“Dima?”
“Da.”
“Tusya?”
“Yes.”
“Jackson?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Nastia?”
“What am I doing here?”
“Andy?”
“Yes!”
“Galia?”
“I hear you.”
“Can you hendros hear us?”
“Yes!” they both answered.
“OK. Good. We don’t want the speaker volume to be too loud. Everyone set it on three and turn up the microphone ears to nine,” Ferrell said. “And turn your rearview display on.”
“Yeah, we definitely need to know what’s coming at us from both directions,” Andy said. “Many Henders species have two brains and two sets of eyes.”
“I can’t process that much data very effectively,” Abrams said. “I’ve only got one brain.”
“Together we have a lot of brains. Shout out if you see anything approaching according to the hands on a clock. Six o’clock for something behind us, twelve o’clock for something in front. Everyone put the rearview on your visor display now. Let’s open the door!” said Ferrell.
Men stood ready with flamethrowers as the Kaziristanis tried to crank the huge wheel on the hatch, but it was stuck.
“Move aside,” Abrams said as he gripped the wheel with two metal hands and easily turned the dog wheel in a steady squeaking rotation “hand” over “hand.” Then he pulled open the wide door that was big enough for a semi truck to drive through.
Inside, the light of the headless mule revealed a tunnel to another door.
“A double hatch,” Jackson said.
“They were afraid of radiation,” Galia said.
“These doors are probably lead-lined,” said Nastia.
“Yes,” Galia said.
“Good,” Ferrell said. “Come on.”
The mechanical mule followed Jackson in, and the others followed. The men outside shut the door behind them and cranked the wheel closed.
Ferrell instructed everyone to start the stopwatch function on their watches at eight hours. They counted down together, and on his mark the seconds began dissolving the zeros.
07:59:58
Abrams slid open the second door, which opened to a huge elevator. They filed in and Galia pointed out the actuator. Ferrell depressed the switch, and the lift sank into the earth.
07:58:02
They reached the bottom and pushed open the wide doors. They found themselves in a barrel-vaulted subway tunnel running north, according to their wrist compasses, which were the only global positioning devices they would have from now on. They turned left and proceeded north down the tunnel.
After a quarter mile they came to a bronze plaque on the wall that Nastia translated with a dry flourish:
ALL HAIL OUR VALOROUS 1,609 FALLEN COMRADES WHO
GAVE THEIR LIVES TO THE GLORIOUS SOVIET STATE TO BUILD THIS CITY UNDER ORDER OF PREMIER JOSEPH STALIN.
“That’s a lie,” Nastia said. “Seventy thousand men died constructing this city, at least.”
Hender was amazed.
Kuzu silently scanned everything around them in the dark as they walked, an arrow nocked in his three-handed bow.
“According to official records, the city was abandoned when Stalin died,” Nastia said, glancing at Dima and Kuzu.
“The locals believe the workers left because they struck Hell,” Galia said. “They believe the ghosts of the men who died here still haunt the city.”
“What do you believe?” she asked.
“I have seen worse things than ghosts down here.”
“Do you believe in ghosts, Nastia?” Abrams asked as he gracefully pranced along in the XOS suit next to the subway track.
“No,” said the geologist, looking around as she imagined her grandfather being taken down this tunnel.
“How far are we from the station, Galia?” Ferrell asked.
“It’s not far now. Around the next bend, we should see it.”
As they came around a slight bend, the headlight of the mule illuminated a small building with a pillar-lined platform. In front of the station was an abandoned subway car. Railroad tracks headed west, to their left, disappearing into a lightless void. To the right of the station was a steel gate large enough for trucks to pass.
“From inside that station, you can see across a river to the city,” said Galia.
“All right. Let’s take a look,” said Ferrell.
They climbed onto the marble platform and entered the subway station through a doorless arch, the mule gamely following up the steps behind them, along with their two tank-treaded Talons. Through the reinforced windows, they could see mostly pitch-blackness; but when they turned off the robots’ lights and their flashlights, they could see glowing clouds swarming in the distance, outlining the negative shapes of buildings and a central tower that touched the capacious cavern’s ceiling.
“My God,” Nastia said. “That chamber must be larger than the Big Room in the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, maybe bigger than the Sarawak Chamber in Borneo…”
Hender looked through the window and recognized what he saw across the river. “Very bad.”
“Yeah, what’s that glowing stuff out there?” Jackson said.
“Henders species are equally active at night,” Andy said, recognizing them even from this distance by their color. “And many of them are bioluminescent. Those glowing clouds are swarms.”
“He did it,” muttered Galia.
“Damn,” Abrams said.
Some of the green lights had linked together in spirals like floating nucleotides, twinkling over the black river. “Those long chains are Henders wasps,” Andy said. “They link together when mating.”
“Awesome, they’re mating,” Jackson said.
“Talk about an assembly line,” Abrams said.
“Yeah,” Andy said.
“Very bad,” said Hender.
“Sector Six is breached,” Galia said, and he hunched over in grief. “There were five thousand people living there.”
“God Almighty,” Ferrell muttered.
“Hender, can you get us through there?” Abrams asked.
“No.”
“OK. So what should we do?” Andy said.
“We’ll need to find another route,” Galia said.
A swarm of light that looked like a giant phantom soared over the bridge toward the station.
“This station is sealed, right?” Dima asked.
“Yes,” Galia said. “But we should pull down these shutters.” He pointed at the blast doors hooked against the ceiling. “The shields are lined with lead and should be too heavy for anything to push open when they’re lowered.”
“Get her done, man,” Jackson said.
Since they had the highest reach, the hendros and Abrams reached up. Unfolding their lower legs, the hendros stretched out their arms to unlatch the metal shutters from the ceiling. All three of the steel panels swung down on low-geared hinging mechanisms, booming softly against the window frames.
“There’re no locks on those?” Jackson said.
“They’re very heavy,” Galia said. “Nothing will get through.”
“Let’s go,” Ferrell said. “The first thing we gotta do is seal the tunnel.”
“Stalin often had secret ways to enter and exit,” Nastia said. “There may be a secret passage to the train tunnel from the palace.”
“You are quite right,” Galia said. “There are many secret routes. Nobody knows them all.”
“OK,” Jackson said. “Keep an eye out for one along the way.”
07:35:27
In the dark conservatory, lit only by the luminescent creatures in the window, Nell noticed movement on the monitor that showed the train station in Sector Seven. “Honey!” she yelled.
07:35:28
Geoffrey gazed through the window upstairs at the steel gondola that was caked with rainbow fire like the encrusted hull of a boat. The gondola had a 1950s sleek and rounded shape pointing in both directions. It hung from cables dusted with rainbow fire that were strung over the lake to a towering stalagmite on the jagged island in the lake. No doubt Stalin had planned this as another escape route, but had he carried it to completion? He must have exposed hundreds of people to fatal danger in order to build it. The state of the gondola did not look promising. A large, antique diesel engine on the landing apparently pulled the cable car over the lake. Had Maxim refurbished it? Canisters of fuel stacked in front of it looked new.
Suddenly, he realized Nell was calling him, and Geoffrey hopped down the spiral stairs. Just before the bottom, he slipped, crashing on the floor knee-first. “Ow, fuck!” he groaned, just as Sasha arrived from downstairs with Ivan.
“Dear, be careful,” Nell said. “Use the cane!”
“Yes,” he agreed, propping himself up with Stalin’s cane.
“Someone’s in Sector Seven!” Nell’s pulse raced as a number of people entered in heavy armor, wearing helmets and carrying weapons. A quadrupedal robot trotted behind the people into the station like a reindeer loaded with packs. The bizarre bot moved with surprising animality though it appeared to lack a head. Then, to her amazement, she saw Hender and Kuzu enter the frame of the screen. “Honey!” she yelled.
“I see them!” he said, as he limped over.
“Wow!” Sasha said. “Are those hendros?”
“Yeah, Sasha!” Geoffrey said. “The good guys. There’s Hender!”
“Kuzu, too,” Nell said.
“Unbelievable!”
She switched on the microphone inside the train station and turned up the sound on the monitor. They heard a snippet of English: “… train tunnel.”
“Can we talk to them, Sasha?”
“There’s no intercom to the train station.”
Nell looked at Geoffrey urgently. “I have to get to them.”
“You’re not going,” he said.
“Can you walk that far?”
Geoffrey knew she was right.
“It’s now or never,” she said. “You know I have to.”
“Then we should go with you,” Sasha said. “I told you, the tunnel’s haunted, Nell. It’s loaded with ghosts!”
“I’ll go with you,” Geoffrey said. “I can make a splint or something.”
“There’s no time. And it’s just as important that you stay here, with Sasha,” she said. “You have to watch the security cameras. There’s a camera at the end of Stalin’s escape route over his private train platform, right, Sasha?”
“Yes.” Sasha nodded. “Papa put a camera there. But what about the ghosts?” She grabbed Nell’s hand.
Nell called up the camera view on the monitor. “There it is. OK. They have to pass that way.”
“Nell, it’s crazy, damn it!” Geoffrey frowned.
“Keep watch from here. I�
��ll come back to get you. If they got in, they can get us out, Geoffrey! But that hatch is probably locked from the inside like all the rest. Somebody has to let them in.”
“It’s true,” said Sasha sadly.
Geoffrey shook his head.
“There’s no choice!” Nell said. She grabbed the jug of repellent and started splashing it over herself. “Help me. Please.”
07:34:02
Downstairs, Geoffrey doused Nell with the jug of repellent he had brought from the lab one last time. She taped a flashlight to the muzzle of the machine gun. The weapon still seemed to have a lot of ammunition. “Sweetheart,” he said, his throat tightening. “You better come back.” He hugged her and squeezed her to him.
“I know,” she whispered. “Take care of Sasha.” Then she kissed Sasha. “Take care of Geoffrey.”
“OK. He needs a lot of help! You smell funny.”
Nell and Geoffrey twisted the hatch wheel and opened the door to Stalin’s secret passage, which headed due south. She kissed him hard before she pulled away and shone her Maglite down the barrel-arched corridor stretching downhill in front of her.
“Go fast!” Sasha called.
“I will,” she promised, and she started running, disappearing into the gloom.
Geoffrey pushed the door closed behind her. “Come on, Sasha,” he said. “Let’s go upstairs and help her from the computer, if we can.” He limped toward the spiral stairs as a school of pink bullet-squids rocketed past the underwater window.
Sasha darted ahead of him and pulled on his arm as he lumbered up behind her in agony. “Oh, forget it! I’m running upstairs to check on Nell!”
“Great.” Geoffrey winced as he grunted in pain each time he pushed off his foot.
07:20:18
The insertion team jogged west over the train yard. The Big Dog trotted beside them, and both Talon robot ROVs rolled fifteen yards ahead, shining their floodlights and transmitting video feeds. The dog whistles around their necks enabled Abrams, Dima, and alpha dog Jackson to control the ROVs as they moved forward into the wall of blackness.
“Let’s go a klick down this rail line and set the explosives,” Ferrell said.
“Sounds good,” Abrams said.
“Look for a door in the north wall,” Nastia said. “Stalin may have had a private connection to the train somewhere along this line.”
