Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  He made it to another landing and paused, catching his breath. When no further resistance was met from the marines, he proceeded up the next flight, slowly but surely heading for the bridge.

  “Benny, answer me,” Raine called angrily into his radio. “Where the hell are you?”

  Only static answered him. He upped his pace, running faster through the maze of corridors, swinging expertly around corners with his M1911 handgun held out before him. The corridors were empty, devoid of life. He wondered if the entire contingent of marines was dead. If so, other than the Eldridge’s skeleton crew, the only resistance he would meet would be from Gibbs’ team. Unfortunately, Gibbs’ team was the worst kind of resistance to meet.

  He spun around the next corner, handgun aimed straight ahead of him. At the far end of the dull, featureless corridor a door was open. It was the only open door he had seen on his journey through the ship. He grinned.

  “Gotcha.”

  He ran to the door and hauled himself through it, onto the ladder inside and descended quickly, landing on top of a hatch. He tried to turn the wheel to unlock it but it wouldn’t shift an inch.

  Just then, from below, muffled by the hatch, he heard the unmistakable crack of gunfire.

  “No!” Doctor Tobias snapped at Gibbs as he heard the gunfire. “I told you, no guns! The chemicals in those pipes are highly volatile. They could blow us all to hell.”

  “Lake, Garcia,” Gibbs snapped into his radio. “No firearms.”

  “Sir?” Lake’s voice came back through his ear piece.

  “Knives only.”

  There was a pause, then both Lake and Garcia confirmed their orders. Gibbs glanced at O’Rourke who remained silent and still behind him. He couldn’t keep the suspicion out of his harsh glare and O’Rourke knew it. Gibbs was certain that his next in command had helped King to survive certain death. If King was here, he knew, Raine wouldn’t be far behind.

  Shifting his eyes from the traitor, resigning himself to questioning him later, he turned and stared out through the control room window, up at the walkway above where the tiny figures of Lake and Garcia advanced on King.

  Two highly trained Special Operations Group soldiers in a knife-fight with a geeky archaeologist would finish him off in moments he knew, and then they could proceed with the experiment.

  King watched them coming, moving towards him with knives drawn. They were vicious looking weapons, each blade ten inches long, one edge razor-sharp, the other serrated like a shark’s jaw. He remembered Bill using one just like it to slice Sid’s face and the thought of her sent new jolts of agony coursing through him.

  She was dead because of him. But now, he was in reach of her again. He could save her!

  He whipped his P-90 up and aimed at the soldiers.

  “Wouldn’t do that, Doc,” Garcia said, his voice surprisingly airy considering the situation. “One stray bullet and you’ll detonate this entire chamber, kill us all and destroy your chances of saving Sid.”

  Nadia may have fired the bullet, King knew, but Gibbs and his team were just as responsible for Sid’s death. He couldn’t forget the callousness of them hurling her corpse into the shark infested waters to be ripped to shreds. Raine had tried to shield him from the sight but the glimpses he had caught had ripped his soul right alongside her body.

  The fact that the operatives had drawn their knives instead of their guns persuaded King that Garcia was speaking the truth. He dropped his rifle to the catwalk, the metallic clang echoing through the cavernous space, and drew his own knife.

  His palms were sweating and his hands were trembling, his heart thudding. What was he thinking? What was he hoping to achieve by hurling himself into a knife fight with trained killers. But as Garcia lunged towards him, King surprised himself with his reflex. He dropped his shoulder, allowing the blade to whoosh over his head, then he slammed into the soldier’s midriff in an expert wrestling tackle. The man was thrown over his body, somersaulting through the air and clearing the safely railing at the edge of the catwalk. He screamed in terror, arms cart-wheeling as the realisation of gravity took hold and he dropped down through the enormous chamber. He screamed all the way down until the noise was silenced by a dull thud far below.

  But King didn’t have time to consider what he had done. Lake came at him, fast and furious and before King could counter her move, he felt the surreal-ness of a blade ripping into his abdomen. His Kevlar vest softened the blow marginally and prevented the blade from going deep but it still hurt like hell!

  He dropped his own knife and sank to his knees. Fresh agony ripped at him anew as Lake ripped the blade out and slashed at his throat-

  Her head exploded in a gruesome eruption of gore that splashed over him before her carcass fell back against the railing and slumped to the catwalk!

  “No!” Gibbs screamed in rage.

  Engrossed in watching the brief but brutal fight, he had failed to notice O’Rourke slip silently from the control room, climb the access ladder to the catwalk and take aim with his SCAR rifle. His bullet had been straight and true, but so would Gibbs’ own.

  He spun to the rear of the control room. A ‘cross-roads’ of ladders and catwalks spread out from there, one to either side, one above and one below. He aimed up, his HK416 on full auto and opened fire. O’Rourke dashed along the catwalk just in time, narrowly missing the barrage of bullets.

  “Stop shooting!” Tobias cried at him.

  Gibbs swung back to the scientist and the three technicians, his ugly face twisted into a snarl. “Start the process!” he ordered.

  “I can’t,” Tobias replied. “Not while there are people in the accelerator. The failsafe-”

  “Override it!”

  “I can’t!” he screeched, panic rising in his voice.

  Gibbs took aim and fired. The head of the nearest technician, a gangly lad with long hippy hair, exploded all over the scientist. He let out a high pitched wail as blood and brain matter coated him and fell out of his seat. He retched and vomited all over the floor, sobbing like a child. The two remaining technicians likewise quaked in terror.

  Gibbs marched to the pathetic scientist on the floor, grasped him by the collar and hauled him to his feet, placing the hot muzzle of his rifle under his chin. A pool of golden liquid washed across the deck as the man pissed himself.

  Gibbs leaned in close, his pocked, ugly face snarling. “You get this fucking process started now, or I’ll blow off your limbs one by fucking one. Got it?”

  Tobias’ body trembled. His voice was weak and stuttered in terror. “Y-y-yes.”

  “Good,” Gibbs snarled. “I’ll be back in a minute and it had better be working.” Then he thrust Tobias roughly back into his soiled chair, slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.

  “Doc, come on, we’ve got to go!”

  Rudy O’Rourke skidded to King’s side. Blood oozed out from the archaeologist’s vest but they didn’t have any time to administer the wound. Instead, the big soldier pulled him to his feet and began to lead him back towards the access hatch.

  King pulled away. “No!” he gasped, grimacing at the pain.

  “Doc, what the hell are you-”

  “Traitor!” Gibbs’ voice suddenly echoed through the chamber. He scrambled onto the catwalk above the control room. For a moment, O’Rourke thought he might use his gun but he knew he wouldn’t risk damaging the accelerator. His earlier outburst had been born out of rage instead of reason, whereas O’Rourke’s shot had been calculated and certain not to miss.

  Instead, Gibbs unsheathed his knife and set off in an angry sprint towards them. O’Rourke pushed King behind him and wrenched his own weapon free. “Get to the hatch. Get out of here.”

  “No!” King pushed forward but the larger man slammed his hand into his belly. The knife wound shot new agony into him and he crashed onto his knees. The cruel move saved his life as just at that moment Gibbs skidded into striking distance an
d almost sliced the archaeologist’s throat wide open. Instead, O’Rourke took the blow to his upper arm and yelped in pain. He thrust his own knife forward but Gibbs side stepped it and struck again. O’Rourke dodged this one and slammed his fist into his superior’s stomach. He bent double, winded, then, as O’Rourke lunged in for the killing blow, Gibbs dropped flat to the catwalk. Missing his target, O’Rourke stumbled, off balance. Gibbs jammed his knife into the other man’s calve muscle. He howled in pain and dropped to his knees but Gibbs had already wrenched his knife free, up turned it and in one fluid motion, he jammed it into the bottom of O’Rourke’s jaw! He pushed up and felt the satisfying scrunch of muscle, sinew and, eventually, brain.

  At that precise moment, the access hatch through which King had entered blew inwards in a blaze of flame and debris. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space as the C4 plastic explosives Nathan Raine had planted around it, detonated. A moment later, the ex-SOG operative slipped through and landed on the catwalk, handgun raised. He stared in horror at the sight of Gibbs’ knife buried to the hilt inside his friend’s skull.

  “No!” he cried in rage. It was that moment of passion that cost him. Before he even squeezed the trigger of his gun, Gibbs wrenched his knife free and hurled it at Raine. The blade slammed into his left shoulder and hurled him backwards. His gun clattered free and tumbled off the edge of the catwalk.

  Gibbs noticed movement as King took the distraction to make a run for it. But, instead of fleeing out the hatch, the archaeologist ran past the carnage, sprinting down the catwalk towards the control room.

  He could wait.

  Gibbs had a score to settle.

  Now weapon-less, he hurled himself bodily at his wounded ex-commander and wrapped his powerful hands around his throat.

  King’s mind was focussed only on his goal. All else was irrelevant to him and had been since the moment he had seen Sid lying on the deck of that boat in a pool of blood.

  It had all been for nothing! His mother and sister’s murders, his father’s sacrifice, Abuku’s assassination, the hunt for the Moon Mask! All the victories, all the defeats! It had all come down to that one moment, when he realised that all the prestige he had desired, all the recognition, the celebration, the pompous self-righteousness he would feel when he could gloat in the face of so-called scientists like McKinney, was irrelevant!

  All that he wanted was Sid.

  Now, all he wanted was to get her back.

  Nothing else mattered. He had shut all else out of his mind, absorbing only whatever information would assist him in his new quest, his new obsession: Langley’s report on the Phoenix Project, the basic principles behind the Eldridge and the key to it all, the Moon Mask. He had slipped away the moment Langley’s team had been attacked by marines, and he had shut out of his mind his killing of Garcia, the pain of his own knife wound. Even the brutal murder of O’Rourke in front of his eyes and the plight of Nathan Raine had been locked away in some dark, inaccessible part of his mind.

  Nothing mattered now. He would do whatever he needed to do to save the woman he loved.

  He charged down the catwalk, each footstep reverberating in the enclosed space. Reaching the ladder at the far end, he dropped down it and through the roof of the control room. The ladder continued down below the platform and a catwalk branched off from either side, giving maintenance access, first to the giant computer servers and their spinning fans, then to the accelerator itself.

  Beyond the access chamber he came into a reasonably sized room, approximately thirty feet square. The two side walls were full of touch-screen computers which presently displayed scrolls of data, matrixes of numbers running at incredible speed as the state-of-the-art quantum computers ran computations a billion times faster than the human brain was able to comprehend.

  The main activity in the room centred around a semi-circular workstation, inset with computer screens which displayed the quantum computer’s conclusions at a speed the three human scientists gathered around it could comprehend.

  A body lay sprawled in a pool of blood on the deck but King ignored it and focussed beyond the scientists who still had not noticed him. At the front of the room was a clear polymer wall and, through it, King could see robotic manipulator arms. The chamber tapered into a cone-like shape and beyond the opaque, frosted-glass-like cone, the distorted silhouette of the large particle accelerator could be seen.

  He took this all in, in a moment, and then wrenched his handgun out of its holster and aimed it at the scientists.

  “You’re going to send me back!”

  60:

  Kamikaze

  USS Eldridge,

  Pacific Ocean

  Searing agony exploded from Raine’s shoulder and shot through his body. Despite all his training and experience, both his mind and his nervous system were overloaded. The mental shock of seeing Rudy O’Rourke impaled on Gibbs’ knife, coupled with the physical shock of that same knife slamming into his body, had left him unprepared for Gibbs’ attack. Now, he felt the world around him blur as Gibbs’ hands wrapped tightly around his throat. It felt as though his head was about to explode.

  Then, from some inner reserve, he pushed through the daze and slammed his knee into Gibbs’ groan with such force that he swore he felt something pop. The other man wailed like an enraged dog and reeled back, groping his jewels, his face streaked with tears.

  Raine threw a fist at him and his nose disintegrated under the impact, a splash of red bursting forth. He drew back, then went in for another punch but Gibbs lashed out, more instinct than planned assault, and slammed the palm of his hand into the hilt of the knife still embedded in Raine’s shoulder.

  He reeled in pain, a cry of agony wrenched from his throat.

  Langley hit the top step and fired his P90 at the two stunned marines guarding the corridor to the bridge. Before they even hit the deck, he burst through the heavy door, weapon blazing, and fired indiscriminately inside.

  The bodies of the Eldridge’s crew, taken completely by surprise, convulsed under the barrage of bullets. Two drew their weapons and fired back but the door shielded Langley from the fire. He swung his P90 in the direction of the resistance and, moments later, it ceased.

  Cautiously, he pushed the door open and shuffled inside.

  “We can’t,” Doctor Tobias stuttered nervously.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” King snarled. He had just demanded that he use the device to send him back in time by a little over two weeks, back to the ruins of Sarisariñama, to a point before he stumbled upon Pryce’s body and the fragment of the Moon Mask. He could stop any of this from ever happening.

  “This isn’t the Tardis,” the doctor said. The two technicians eyed the archaeologist warily. “The distance back in time that this ship can theoretically travel correlates to the amount of tachyon energy that is discharged. The more tachyons, the bigger the backwards jump. It has taken days of computations with a quantum computer to accurately determine the amount of tachyon energy we need to travel back to our target point. Now you want me to rework the calculations just like that?!”

  King made a show of chambering a bullet into his handgun. “It doesn’t have to be exact. Two weeks, two months,” he shrugged. “Even two years-”

  “That is the other problem. We wrote a failsafe into the control program which prevents it from calculating a date of less than one hundred years.”

  King’s heart sank. “Why?”

  “To prevent the possibility of a time traveller meeting himself.”

  “So what if he does?” King snarled.

  “So what?” Tobias scoffed. “The same matter cannot occupy the same point in space-time,” he explained. “Theoretically, if such a thing ever happened . . .”

  “What?” King demanded as Tobias trailed off.

  “It could be catastrophic. Such a reaction could theoretically tear apart the entire space time continuum.” King’s expression was blank, uncompre
hending. Tobias sighed, trying to think of the simplest way to put it. “It could destroy the world. No, not just the world, but time itself.”

  Gibbs lashed out with his legs, taking Raine’s feet out from under him. He went down hard, felt a rib crack. His head struck the safety banister and he saw stars. Then Gibbs’ fist smashed into his face and his vision exploded. Another blow came, and then another and another.

  “Do it,” King ordered Tobias.

  “Didn’t you hear a word I said?”

  “You were only too happy to screw around with the space time continuum a few minutes ago-”

  “Under controlled conditions!”

  “Controlled conditions?!” King laughed bitterly. “Take a look around! Does this look controlled to you?” Then he levelled his handgun at Tobias’ head. “Do it. Override the program-”

  “I can’t!”

  King slammed the butt of his gun into the other man’s face. He spat blood. “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I’m not!”

  King felt as though he was standing outside of his body, watching someone else control it, watching someone else use it in such a brutal manner. He was a man of peace, not of violence. Yet he knew that whatever wrong he did here, now, he could un-do it in the past.

  He moved the barrel of the gun down and placed it squarely on Tobias’ knee cap, pulled the trigger-

  “Okay!” he screamed. “Okay! I’ll do it! I’ll do it.” The scream became a sob.

  King took a deep breath and removed the gun. The scientist was trembling and he felt bad for treating him in such a way. But then he remembered that everyone here was responsible for Sid’s death and his heart hardened once more.