by Barry Kirwan
"Douse the torches." She pointed to a small stone font full of black water. The guards hesitated, both glancing back to the dark corridor behind them, knowing that once wet, the torches could not be re-lit.
"Now!" she said. Failing to obey Sister Esma was always fatal, so they both sidled up to the font and thrust in the torches, which sputtered and hissed, then expired. The robed acolyte swayed faintly, muttering indecipherable prayers. He had that beatific expression, Sister Esma considered, of one who was about to meet his maker, though without having fully appreciated the travel costs.
She recited a litany in a long-forgotten tongue, her accent thick, the syllables guttural. The guards shifted nervously. Abruptly she stopped, and prostrated herself three times in front of the egg. She stood up, glowing with pride, and approached the acolyte.
"Do not be afraid. Your sacrifice will free this Soldier of God, and you will shine in the afterlife, a saint, never forgotten." Her thin lips sketched a smile.
He bowed in return. She pulled out a small push-button device, flourished her long fingers with their black-painted nails, and pressed down with her thumb. A humming started, rising in pitch, ascending to a high squeal. The two guards placed calloused hands over their ears. After a full minute the crescendo broke. Silence flooded back into the chamber, punctuated only by the guards’ heavy breathing.
She led the acolyte to the smaller pedestal in front of the egg, and tied a rope securely to the shackles around his feet. She turned him to face the egg. Even as she glided back to the edge of the plinth, the first intense crack fractured the dense air, its echo catapulting around the chamber, causing both guards, and even the acolyte this time, to flinch. The guards turned toward each other, whispering, but Sister Esma paid no attention. As the second crack shattered a lower part of the egg, the acolyte turned round briefly to Esma, who nodded calmly.
The third crack revealed a black serrated leg, with a main joint half way along its two meter length. It lashed out and harpooned the young man’s right thigh. He screamed as the creature dragged him closer. The young man fell and again turned to Esma, wide-eyed. Only his faith, now punctured by doubt, kept him from screaming again. A nice touch, she thought – she hadn’t actually expected such ardor.
She remained serene while one of the guards ran forward and fished out a torch, trying haplessly to light it. The other glanced to and fro between the egg and the corridor behind them. He bolted for the corridor. A fourth crack disintegrated most of the front part of the shell, revealing the creature’s dark, blue-black head. It had two pairs of three diagonal slits on each side of its face, sweating a viscous, scarlet fluid. The top of the head curved smoothly upwards at the edges, ending in two points at either side, as wide as its shoulder-sections. The lower edges of its head tapered down toward the neck, giving it the overall shape of a rectangle that had been stretched down at the middle, like the silhouette of an open book. She smiled. Such noble symmetry.
The creature’s head rolled back and emitted a deafening, high-pitched roar, and one of its middle legs seized the stiff, simpering body of the acolyte, another leg easily slashing the rope that secured him. It looked at first as though the head collapsed backward, but in fact a huge mouth had opened below the slits, and gaped wide revealing pitiless blackness inside. The acolyte’s head was thrust into the yawning hole. As the creature’s jaws clamped down on the acolyte’s cranium, a terrible sucking noise reverberated across the chamber. The wretch’s body kicked and thrashed violently, held in an immovable vice-like grip, and then went limp as a rag doll. The guard who had been trying to light the torch, gave up and, whimpering, crawled over to Esma, kneeling before her, his head on the floor protected by his arms.
The creature, with a single swing of its powerful neck, tossed the spent corpse aside and burst from the remains of the egg, roaring. In one bound it leapt down before Esma, towering a good meter above her. She did not flinch, but held up her amulet before the young hatchling. She made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue, and pointed to the quivering object at her feet.
The second guard ran blindly through the coal-black twisting passage, arms out-stretched in front of his face. He heard his colleague’s blood-curdling single scream. Then he heard a strange distant galloping sound, getting louder, closer. He sprinted as fast as he could, bouncing bloodily off endless, catacomb-dark corridor walls, unseeing eyes wide with fear.
Chapter 43
Cocos
Micah and Sandy lay flaked out against curiously cool plazsteel crates at the side of a makeshift airfield. It was only 8am and Micah was already sweating. He glanced at his wristcom which displayed the temperature as forty degrees Celsius with eighty per cent humidity. They both observed Vince, twenty meters away, stripped to the waist, glistening with transblock, wearing baseball cap and shades. He shouted into his wristcom, and barked orders to scurrying Chorazin and assorted military personnel. Helicopters and small swing-jets landed every fifteen minutes, some discharging cargo, some picking up crates like the ones they had been told by Vince to stay with. At least someone had leant Micah and Sandy a couple of baseball hats to shield themselves from the scorching sun.
Micah glanced down at his forearms, the first streams of sweat forming in this natural sauna. He hoped they would be somewhere else, at least properly shaded, by midday, preferably by 9 am.
"He’s quite sexy, don’t you think?" Sandy quipped, "All that testosterone barely under control? We need a man with balls right now. A man of action, instinct. He seems to qualify."
Micah never understood – and guessed he never would – what turned women on and off; to him it was all a lottery with infinitesimal odds of winning.
He shrugged. "If you say so. I’m not sure about the ‘barely', though. He always seems to be completely under control. Even now he’s just using the form of anger to achieve results."
"Have you forgotten about her yet?" Sandy’s non-sequitur came unwelcome at him, "You know, that bitch, Louise."
Micah levered himself up, hobbled and hopped a few paces on the blisteringly hot sand, gazing out over to the dazzling, choppy sea, and the horizon blurred by heat haze from the runway tarmac. He found a cool patch in the shade of one of the crates, and stopped. "Yes and no." He didn’t want to go there. "You forgotten Gabriel?"
She took it in her stride. "Unlikely. He left me a going-away present." She tapped her belly with an index finger. "Still, according to you, I won’t get to open it."
He had nothing to say to that. But her banter was preferable to imminent reality.
She nodded in Vince’s direction. "Do you know what muscle-man over there has planned?"
Micah could feel the booster in him demanding action of some sort. So he raised his eyebrows then strode over towards Vince, standing at the water’s edge. It was like taking a stroll in a frying pan. He tried not to run, and mercifully a small crystal clear cool wave washed over his toes. As he neared Vince he slowed down. Vince was giving an Oscar-winning impression of anger.
"Well, then I expect we’ll both see each other there shortly!" He snapped off the call, shot a glance at Micah, and added "asshole" to his wristcom. "They won’t give me high-end nukes. Needs to go through congress for fuck’s sake, and the President is out of reach. Sonofabitch!"
Micah flinched. "Nukes? You want to take nukes to Eden?"
Vince stopped perusing the various transport operations, and walked up close to Micah. He removed his sunglasses, his blue eyes blazing into the back of Micah’s skull.
"Sure – I thought you were with the plan. Nuke them before they arrive here. Got a better idea? If so, I’d like to hear it."
Micah faltered. "I just thought… you know, we were going to go on a rescue mission or something."
Vince cracked sweating knuckles. His face was somber, but all the same, Micah was sure he was laughing at him.
"You mean rescue the four astronauts, and bring them back so they can get killed on Earth rather than on Eden. Remind me, what’
s your job title again?"
Micah realized that although he’d been chewing it over for hours, the result wasn’t up to much. Still, nukes? "Maybe there’s some other way," he said weakly.
"Well, if there is, I’m all ears. But you said we had at most days. We don’t even know how long these ships take to get there. So maybe by the time we arrive they’ll all be gone. But if not, I intend to give them a New York handshake."
Micah felt dazed. Before, he’d played the Delphian messenger predicting imminent doom and calamity. Yet at this moment, as it became reality, he found it difficult to accept, and even harder to respond appropriately. He reckoned this was the Alician and alien gambit all along. Humanity would simply not react fast enough. And Sandy was right – they needed someone ballsy to get a fight going.
"I’m coming with you," he launched, expecting an argument.
"Of course you are. And so is she." Vince nodded to Sandy.
Micah was surprised. "You’re taking a pregnant woman?"
"She’ll be safer with us." Vince replaced his sunglasses and turned back to supervise the others.
"Where’s Antonia?" it came out of the blue, from undefined emotions, but Micah was worried he’d never see her again. Vince, without turning, plucked a sat-phone from his belt and tossed it over his shoulder to Micah. "For Christ’s sake, call her – hit star and then ‘3’. But make it quick, we’re leaving."
"We know how to take off?" asked Micah, only just catching the phone with slippery hands.
"IVS came through – the ship they ‘lost’ had stealth cameras throughout, hooked up to an external relay and satellite telemetry, so they could analyze everything back in Mumbai with only a few seconds delay. They saw how it was launched, and sent a schematic of the key we need, on a secure net feed. It’s being replicated onboard the ship right now."
Micah was surprised. "Why are IVS suddenly being so cooperative?"
Vince lifted his cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "You know, I asked them that. They said it had something to do with suppressed news in some remote village in Outer Mongolia. A massacre of some sort by a wild creature; same again in Venezuela, similar story in Transylvania – that’s where Antonia is, by the way."
Micah grimaced.
Vince shouted to him while still using his hands to direct people. "They’re here, Micah. They’re already fucking here, some of them at least, and IVS are shit-scared about it, as we all should be. So, make the goddammed call, because with or without you we’re leaving."
Micah walked ankle-deep into the water. He got straight through to her.
"Hello?" she said. He paused, momentarily tongue-tied by the sound of her voice. He had no idea what he wanted to say. Well, that was a lie; of course, he knew exactly what he wanted to say. He just had no idea what he would actually say.
"It’s me, Micah."
"Oh, Micah. Thank God you’re still alive."
Micah’s eyes closed in relief that she wasn’t mad at him.
"It’s chaos here, Micah. We’re holding back thousands of people trying to board one of the ships. I’ve seen one of them Micah, the creatures, from a V-jet in the mountains – a half-dozen or so of them are loose here. They’re unstoppable, and they just keep feeding on people, sucking the life out of them, ignoring everything else. The Alicians have spread rumours that Earth isn’t safe anymore, that devils have arrived to cleanse Earth, and the ships are the only escape. Listen – it’s really bad here – I have to go. Take… take care, and… Micah?"
He could hear only her words; all other sound around him disappeared. "Yes?"
"I’m sorry I doubted you. And thanks. For saving my life. Vince said you’re going to Eden – is it true?"
"Yes." He swallowed. I love you. "I’m going to find Katrina, make sure she’s safe. We’ll bring her back, I promise."
It was hard to hear the sounds at the other end of the line. Sea-water lapped around his feet. Vince appeared and snatched the sat-phone from him.
"Antonia, this is Vince, we’ve got to leave right now. Good luck, and whatever happens, don’t get on that ship!" He clicked it off and stormed away.
A gentler hand touched his shoulder."Micah, it’s time," Sandy said, her voice softer than he’d ever heard it. He let her lead him to the heli-jet.
Micah stared out the window and saw the crates they had been sitting on hanging from another chopper a hundred meters away. He shouted over the din of the rotors.
"What’s in those crates we were sitting on?"
Vince grinned. "Level-two nukes. Secret Chorazin supply. Not grade-one, but close. Smaller, easier to deploy. Less range, but they’ll reduce anything within the blast zone to molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn very brightly."
"Good," Micah said. "Let’s toast the mother-fuckers."
Vince and Sandy exchanged glances.
Fifteen minutes later they saw the ship, floating in the ocean. Micah couldn’t believe how vast it was. And then he recalled what Vince had said, that some of the aliens were already here. He spoke to Vince.
"What other weapons do we have?"
Vince leant forward and patted him on the shoulder. "Glad to have you back on board, Micah. As well as twelve tactical nukes we have air-to-ground fusion missiles, and around a dozen swing-wing and VTOL jets already onboard, tooled up."
Micah noticed that for the first time Sandy was sitting between him and Vince, whereas up till now she’d kept Micah between them. Figures, he thought to himself. The world’s ending, and I’m going to be left with my mother, if I’m lucky. But he laughed at himself. All these years he’d always felt sorry for himself. Never really even saw it. That’s one of the things his Dad could never tolerate.
Sandy passed him something. "You nearly left this behind, Micah."
It was the jacket. Despite the heat outside, he put it on.
Vince slapped a hand on Micah’s shoulder. "It’s a good fit."
***
Vince checked that everything for living had been placed inside on the second main deck, including makeshift sleeping tents, as well as kitchen and chemical bathroom arrangements, and three International Rescue Packets, as large as old train freight containers, usually reserved for rescue missions for flood and disaster-hit provinces. But his priority had been the military hardware on the first deck, which now resembled a weaponry convention, or possibly a future war museum.
The mil-support had found a way to open a larger hatch on this upper deck just underneath the conning tower, allowing them to lower helicopters and the VTOL aircraft inside. Stealth fighter aircraft sat waiting, like birds of prey.
In the larger upper control room in the conning tower, a nav and comms hardware console had also been installed, set back a few meters from the Q’Roth machinery, so that two military controllers could co-ordinate sorties once they landed, via multi-band radar units to be deployed outside the tower once they arrived. Vince and the military Commander Enrique Vasquez, a tall, one-armed man with a shock of short-cropped white hair and oil-black eyes that dared anyone to stare at his sleeved stump, had both agreed that they would need to ‘hit the ground running’ once they arrived, though neither knew how long that would be. Vince was playing the hunch that these ships in some way moved infinitely faster than their own space-craft. When anyone asked, he replied ‘a matter of days’. He was guessing of course, but he understood the importance of authority and morale.
He’d been speaking on and off with the Chorazin chief scientist assigned – a real pain in the ass named Gorman – who kept saying he had no idea how it worked, how long the trip would take, the dangers of acceleration and deceleration effects, etc. In short, he said they might all die as soon as they figured out how to start the engines, or whatever powered the ship. In the end Vince offered him a trip back to Cocos. The scientist squirmed a little but remained on board.
Vince had at least been able to download advanced news bulletins that announced strange disturbances in six different locations wo
rldwide, sparking worldwide panic. Seven ships had disappeared so far, including one near Beijing with fifty thousand Fundies aboard, and another one in Brazil, similarly stocked with human cargo. Antonia with her Balkan political connections through her father and his Chorazin men there had managed to keep the Fundies out, but blood had already been spilt. IVS had seized control of another ship buried in Rajasthan’s northern desert, and were stockpiling food and weapons, guarded by their own elite paramilitary security force. Josefsson was using his political muscle to good effect, but the Senate was divided and the President wavering. Now that one or two pictures of the aliens had hit the nets, more politicians were lining up behind Josefsson.
But there had been a complete news blackout in Central Australia after a ship that had disappeared near Ayers Rock had apparently returned six hours later. Qahuru, the capital of Central Australia, a desert that had been reclaimed following the irradiation of both East and West coasts during the War, had gone eerily quiet, despite its million-strong population.
Vince balked at the news. He knew the Alician bastards had played a cool, calculated game, and all the cards were stacked against humanity. The United Nations had been disgraced and abandoned twenty years ago, and since then there had never been anything approaching a world federating organization capable of orchestrating a concerted response to a global threat – the New World Alliance was a bureaucratic sham. We’ve been reduced to tribes. Worse still, after the nanovirus epidemic and then the nuclear holocaust, national governments were extremely reluctant to use dwindling supplies of the latter, and the former had all been dismantled years ago, so Earth’s defenses were feeble. Even the orbital satellite high-powered laser system was useless, as it was intended for rogue meteorites that might one day approach from outside, not an enemy who could simply materialize in the heart of a city. Vince had to admit that mankind was in no state to stage a decent fight.
