by Brian Lumley
Nathan had no time to comfort them, could only watch. More men came at the run down the circular shaft onto the landing. They joined those already there in firing at the soldiers on the gantry, pouring lead at them. One of the latter was hit in the chest, went down kicking and screaming, twitched and lay still. But they had almost got the trolley to the Gate, a few more paces would do it. Sparks flew from the gantry where bullets splintered against the metalwork, and the two covering soldiers returned fire.
As yet more men came through the entry shaft onto the landing, so a group of eight broke off from the original party to go clattering down the stairs onto the perimeter walkway. But when they were only halfway down, that was when things really started to heat up.
Nathan had been hoping to see Turkur Tzonov, and that Tzonov would see him. He had wanted to remind the man just who it was he’d treated so badly, and who he might still have to deal with in the future — also of the price to be paid for what he had done to Siggi Dam. So far the Necro-scope had been disappointed, but no longer. The Russian was here after all; except, now, if Nathan were to show himself, it might easily work out that he’d be the one who paid. Trask, too, of course, because they were together. Beyond the stairway to the entry shaft, on the far side of
the gantry spanning the gaps in the Saturn’s rings, a twin-mounted Katushev cannon suddenly swung into action. The weapon was situated against the wall on a supporting platform; it sat there like an armoured blister of steel, on a tripod of shock-resistant legs. Quiescent until now, its electric motor droned into life, the grey-domed hood cracked open, and as the assembly telescoped back on itself, so the operator in the heavily plated bucket-seat came into view. Seeing who the gunner was, none other than Tzonov himself, Nathan and Trask gave simultaneous gasps of shock. This man would be menacing enough without deadly armaments, but at the firing controls of a Katushev .. .?
Turkur Tzonov was part-Turk, part-Mongol, all man. Definitely an ‘Alpha’ male, his was an outstanding mind housed in an athlete’s body. His grey eyes were the sort that could look at and into a man - literally. They were the instruments of his telepathy.
The Russian’s eyebrows were slim as pencilled lines, silver-blond against the tanned ridges of his brows. He was bald, but this was so in keeping with his other features as to make it appear that hair was never intended. Certainly it wasn’t a sign of ill-health or aging; he glowed with vitality, and the only anomaly lay in the orbits of eyes whose hollows seemed bruised from long hours of study or implacable concentration. The purple was a symptom of his talent. Tzonov’s nose was sharply hooked, probably broken in some accident or fight. Most likely the latter, for the head of Russia’s E-Branch was devoted to the martial arts. His mouth was well-fleshed, if a little too wide, above a strong square chin. His small pointed ears lay flat against his head. It was undeniable that Tzonov was good-looking, but the overall picture was of a too-perfect symmetry.
Even as the shock of seeing him receded, so the Katushev’s motor whined as Tzonov traversed the twin barrels of his weapon from its target at the core’s centre until it lined up with the scaffolding supporting the railed landing under the entry shaft. The men on the landing and those descending
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the stairs had seen the movement and were frantic to take whatever cover they could. Those still on the landing made to dive headlong into the shaft; those on the stairs hurled themselves over the rail to land on the perimeter walkway.
And Tzonov ignored the squad on the walkway, aiming right through them at the spidery scaffolding.
Nathan and Trask saw the expression on the Russian’s face as he applied pressure to the Katushev’s triggers, and ‘good-looking’ or not, it was a look of sheer malice. His lips drew back from his perfect teeth in a death’s-head grin, and the cords of his neck stood out in ridges where they met his collarbone. Then . .. the grin turned into an animal snarl! And the Katushev went whoof, whoof, whoof!
Men were blown apart as exploding steel gutted them and used them to colour everything yellow, scarlet, grey, brown. Their liquids splashed everywhere as the scaffolding was reduced to so much twisted, smoking metal. Those on the landing who hadn’t made it into the shaft went sliding from the slumping structure into the bowl of the core, or hung on like grim death to the warped metal rails or the teetering skeleton of the platform.
Tzonov laughed his scorn at them, glanced at the Gate and saw that his men were through its skin with their trolley-load of arms. Two of them waited on the far side, beckoning to him in the Gate’s weird slow-motion. He would be the last of them to go through. Whatever else the Russian was, he wasn’t a coward. The savage grin slipped from his face as he elevated the snouts of the Katushev’s barrels and put two more rounds into the screaming, mangled mess on the landing platform.
Behind their fragile shield, Nathan and Trask ducked down and covered their ears as shrapnel flew everywhere. A six-foot length of scaffolding pipe whipped end over end through the air and tore the top half of their aluminum cover away in a shriek of tortured metal. The smoked-glass window went with it.
‘Now can we get out of here?’ Trask yelled, surprised that he could hear himself over the ringing in his ears.
Pale-faced, Nathan nodded. He stood up, however shakily, closed his eyes, conjured a door. Trask also stood up, and as their top halves came into view, so Tzonov saw them.
They saw his mouth fall open, and a moment later the mad delight that lit in his eyes as his lips formed a single word: ‘You.1’
‘Shit!’ Trask said, as the Russian traversed his weapon and lowered its smoking barrels.
Nathan tried to hold the door but couldn’t concentrate. He could feel the Russian’s eyes on him where they centred him in the Katushev’s cross-hair gunsights. Also, the proximity of the Gate was interfering; the door wouldn’t form properly; his grip on the thing was too shaky.
‘Nathan,’ Trask breathed. And again - but much more urgently — as Tzonov squeezed the trigger-grips, ‘Nath-aaan!’
… And the firing-pins slammed forward on to empty chambers! They knew it immediately from the look of instant fury on Tzonov’s face: the Katushev’s magazine was empty.
It gave Nathan the breather he needed. As Tzonov swung out of the bucket-chair down on to the perimeter ring and made a run for the gantry, so the Necroscope collapsed the first door and conjured another, also unstable, against the solid rock wall of the core.
But in the smoke and turmoil - with the agonized screams of the dying in his ears, and the moans of the dead in his metaphysical mind - Nathan’s concentration was still lacking; he hadn’t yet mastered the MSbius Continuum, couldn’t afford to be distracted. And as Tzonov ran out midway on to the gantry, paused to unsling an automatic rifle from his shoulder and balance its butt on his hip, so Nathan’s door slid sideways along the wall until it overlapped the mouth of a thirty-inch diameter energy wormhole, a smooth-bored shaft in the otherwise solid rock. The door’s outline at once shrank to a circle and seemed sucked into the narrow shaft … where it immediately firmed up.
Nathan had taken a step after the door. Looking into the
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wormhole, he could see that it was now stable. Having receded these few extra inches from the influence of the Gate, it was safe to use. And ‘Ben!’ he called out to the older man. ‘Let’s go!’
Trask came from behind his aluminum cover, saw Turkur Tzonov crouched on the gantry, aiming his rifle. And, ‘Shit!’ he said again.
‘You first,’ Nathan told him, as Tzonov opened up on them.
‘First what?’ Trask howled as bullets buzzed all about and sponged from the wall. Nathan made no reply but thrust him headfirst into the wormhole, and as Trask disappeared yelping into Mobius space-time, the Necroscope took one step back and dived headlong after him …
On the gantry, Tzonov’s eyes bugged and his jaw fell open. For long moments, almost absent-mindedly, he continued to ho
se a vicious stream of lead down the wormhole into which he’d seen Trask and Nathan disappear. Then his jaws snapped shut and his face darkened, twisting in fury. He knew it simply wasn’t possible for men to wriggle out of sight that fast. They weren’t in the wormhole, not any longer. They were . .. somewhere else.
And Tzonov knew where; or, if not where, he at least knew what. Obviously Nathan had inherited his father’s talents, or Trask and British E-Branch had helped him to rediscover them. Like Harry Keogh before him, he too had learned the secret of teleportation; he could move himself instantly, at will, from one place to another without physically covering the distance between. Or rather, he knew shorter, faster routes.
Tzonov’s finger came off the trigger and the gun’s obscene chattering died away, leaving only its echoes and the moaning of wounded men. But from the shaft behind the shattered, smoking landing-stage came a clatter of booted feet. Time was running out for Tzonov, and he had a journey of his own to make.
He lifted the muzzle of his gun, fired a short burst into
the shaft, then fell into a crouch, spun on his heel and hosed lead at the main console. Hot white sparks flew from metal, and Tzonov used them to trace a path across the shattering instrument panels. He knew where to hit, and when he found his target was rewarded with a display of arcing blue electrical fire. Corroborating his accuracy, there came a squeal of straining metal and triple jets of steam blasted from the bases of the hydraulic rams. And the three massive sections of carbon steel eggshell began to crank shut.
Bullets fragmented into hot splashes of lead where they struck against the superstructure of the gantry close to the Russian’s feet. Cursing, he turned and fired a long burst into the entry shaft, then raced for the narrowing glare of the Gate where two of the sections were slowly coming together. Desultory, sporadic fire followed him as he passed through the event horizon and seemed sucked into the unknown. But as the huge metal sections ground closer together and the light was reduced to three flickering arcs or fans, which were finally shut off, so the firing died away.
Then, apart from a feeble glimmer of white light from gaps in the shell where torn welding had fallen away, all was darkness. And as the rams shut down and hissed into quiescence, all was silence, too . .. except for the moans of the dying, and the unanswered, unanswerable queries of the recently dead .. .
Moments earlier:
Even within the Mobius Continuum, still Nathan could feel the disturbance of hot lead from Tzonov’s weapon. Until he collapsed the door behind him. And then all he could feel was Ben Trask.
Na-Na-Nathan? Trask’s query was a telepathic pant, a half-snatched breath, a prayer issued into the alien darkness. But in another moment it became a cry of panic: Nathaaaan!
The Necroscope went after him, grabbed him, said It’s
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okay! Take it easy, Ben. I’m with you. And reaching out with his metaphysical mind: And David Chung is at the Radujevac Refuge. We can go there now.
Jesus! Trask gasped. Nathan, thank God you’re there! I mean, I was wondering: ‘What if Tzonov hits him?’ I’m sorry, son, but it wasn’t you I was thinking of. I was thinking of me, stuck in this place forever. I’d go crazy in an hour. No, Jess than that. I’d probably already be crazy!
Even as he ‘spoke’ they were in motion, as Nathan tracked his earring sigil to Romania. And in another moment (or in no time at all, whichever way one wishes to think of it) they were there. Nathan conjured a door and stepped through it, dragging a stumbling, staggering Trask after him.
The light was subdued; Nathan’s eyes accepted it without blinking. David Chung stepped forward and helped support Trask, whose face was drawn.
Trouble?’ Chung was at once solicitous. ‘A bad trip?’
‘You could say that,’ said Nathan grimly.
He and Trask had emerged from the Mobius Continuum into a small square box of a room no more than three and a half metres across, with dim fluorescent lighting in the low ceiling and no outside windows or furniture. Just four white-painted walls and David Chung, and Nathan’s golden Mobius loop earring. Seeing it in Chung’s outstretched hand, Nathan took it back, slipped it into place in the lobe of his ear.
Trask was his own man again, although his voice was still a little shaky. ‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘I won’t be volunteering for the Mobius route again!’ Then, seeing the look on Nathan’s face: ‘But that was only one bad thing, and there’s much worse.’
Nathan took it up. ‘We had to get out of E-Branch HQ in a hurry. I would have come here directly, but you weren’t in situ. There are a good many places I could have gone to, but I wanted to see Perchorsk again. So we went there, and . .. we saw -‘ He looked at Trask.
The older man cleared his throat. Turkur Tzonov and, oh,
I don’t know, maybe a full platoon of his men? - maybe more - have gone through the Perchorsk Gate. When we got there, there was a small war going on! Premier Turchin must have decided to pull the plug on Tzonov, but Tzonov had wind of it. Being who he is, the talents he employs, that wouldn’t be too hard. So no more softly, softly, catchee monkey. Tzonov is on his way to Sunside/Starside right now, with enough men and firepower to blow hell out of just about anything that gets in his way!’
Nathan gave him a strange, knowing look - perhaps a look of derision, certainly of denial - but said nothing.
‘Which means,’ Chung said, ‘that Nathan will be wanting to get on his way, too. And as soon as possible.’
And another voice, female, said, ‘Maybe even sooner than that.’
Anna Marie English, an ecopath (and probably the only ecopath, sui generis, because for all Trask’s years with E-Branch, he had never come across another talent like hers), had entered the room silently. Looking at the two arrivals, she said, ‘Ben. Nathan.’ Then, speaking directly to the former, and with a deal of urgency in her voice: ‘Have you talked to David? Do you know about the problem at the airport? CMI?’
Trask looked at her and thought what he’d thought so often before. Anna Marie was a Branch esper: English by name and nationality, but scarcely an English rose. She was invariably … what, lacklustre? Well, that would be putting it mildly. Enervated, pallid, dowdy; even this current bout of urgency seemed a strain, almost too much for her to handle. It was her talent, Trask knew, and felt sorry for her. But on the other hand, maybe he shouldn’t. At twenty-four the woman had looked fifty, and now, at forty, she still looked fifty! Which had to be good news for Mother Earth.
Ecologically aware, Anna Marie’s premature aging had been held in abeyance by the planet’s partial recovery from the industrial and nuclear ravages of the last century. As the Earth shrugged off its illnesses, so she caught up with
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her true age - but in reverse! She had been ‘worn out’ as a teenager, and was now an ‘old’ forty. But at the current rate of remission the day might yet dawn when she was a ‘young’ sixty!
As for her talent (could it really be considered a ‘talent’, Trask wondered, or was it more properly a curse?): as an empath feels for others, so Anna Marie felt for the world; she was as one with Mother Earth. As Antarctica was drained of its mineral wealth, so she was drained of energy. As the rain forests were raped for workable timber or even fuel, she too felt violated, burned up. She knew a little of the agony of every dolphin still being killed illegally by the Japanese, and could count the number of kills in the liver spots or wrinkles on the dry, desiccated skin of her spindly arms. When a huge, nuclear-powered cargo vessel sank in the Pacific, her bones ached to the slow seepage of radiation outwards across the ocean floor. And as fresh holes gaped in the ozone layer, so her ulcers ate their way through Anna Marie’s guts.
But working out here at the Refuge in Romania, at least she was doing something good, worthwhile. And as well as helping these poor kids and young people, she was also helping herself. They were Earth’s children, after all, and she was caring for them. Trask liked
to think that maybe, in its own way, the Earth was returning the favour . ..
‘CMI?’ Finally he answered her. ‘I know about them in London. But .. . have I missed something?’ He looked ques-tioningly at Chung.
‘CMI were at the airport in Belgrade, too,’ Chung told him. ‘And they were obviously disappointed that I’d showed up without Nathan - very disappointed. They questioned me for quite some time. It’s why I was late getting here.’
‘It could mean a lot of trouble still to come.’ Anna Marie took it up. ‘And then of course there’s Turkur Tzonov. He has men in Romania too. So the way I see it, we can’t keep Nathan here too long. He won’t be safe here. Not if CMI or the Opposition - or both - are desperate enough.’
Trask grunted and said, ‘Tzonov was pretty desperate the last time I saw him, about .. . what, two minutes ago? He’s out of it by now, though, on his way to Starside. But I know what you mean: his agents will be active as ever, carrying out whatever policies he left behind. As for CMI: I expect lan Goodly will be stirring it for them right now! But in any case, don’t worry, Nathan won’t be held up here. Not if all goes according to plan.’ He looked at her questioningly, and she nodded.
And leading the way out of the room into the Refuge’s complex, she answered, ‘It’s all in hand. Except . .. wasn’t Nathan going to bring arms with him?’
‘I still am,’ Nathan told her. ‘Everything I need is back at E-Branch HQ. Until I go back for it.’
But Trask was quick to point out, ‘Ah .. . maybe it won’t be as easy as that, Nathan. Not after what’s happened.’ And to Anna Marie: ‘The plan was that once Nathan had the Refuge’s co-ordinates, he’d be able to come and go — ‘ he shrugged - ‘at will. Then he would ferry his arms, in, piece by piece, along the Mobius route. That’s all there was to it. Maybe he’ll still be able to do it; it all depends on E-Branch, the situation back home.’
