Clockwork Doomsday

by Alex Archer

  Whirling from behind the apple tree, Garin aimed at the area where the muzzle flashes had been and fired two quick three-round bursts. As he ducked behind the tree again, a man plummeted from the observation deck and smacked the floor.

  Another gunner opened up from the left and his bullets chased Garin from hiding. Throwing himself forward, Garin slid across the floor toward a chariot harnessed to a pair of bulls with short, curved horns.

  Roux raised his machine pistol and fired at where the muzzle flashes had been. Annja couldn’t tell if he hit the gunman or not, but there was no immediate return fire.

  That’s because they’re circling around. Adrenaline flooded Annja’s senses as she scanned her immediate vicinity. The observation deck was going to be a problem. And the darkness hindered as much as it helped. She gathered herself, released the sword to the otherwhere and slung the MP5, then sprinted for the closest dead man. She grabbed the body’s shirtfront with both hands and yanked the corpse across the floor. Bullets chased her to the apple tree Garin had abandoned. She slammed into the trunk almost hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

  Garin fired again and the bright muzzle flashes carved his face out of the darkness in sharp relief.

  Working quickly, Annja stripped extra ammunition and glow sticks from the dead guard’s gear. She shoved them in the pack tied to the back of her weight belt. Carrying the extra magazines and glow sticks wasn’t comfortable or convenient, but it worked. She kept one of the glow sticks in hand.

  Two men were down. One of them remained in the glare of the dying light and wasn’t moving. Out of how many?

  Annja heard a curious sound and couldn’t immediately place it, but she recognized the strident emotion in Roux’s voice when he yelled, “Annja, move!”

  Instantly, she dived toward the giant clam because it was the closest thing within easy reach that provided protection. Just as she started to slide behind the shell, an explosion lifted the clockwork apple tree from the floor and turned it into a vicious hailstorm of shrapnel that cascaded down in a discordant hail.

  Deafened from the grenade, Annja snapped the glow stick she was holding, stood and hurled it up onto the observation deck at the back of the workshop. It spun end over end, growing brighter as the chemicals gained strength. A second later, the glow stick hit the back wall and dropped to the observation deck, illuminating it.

  Caught in the blue illumination, two men aimed their assault weapons at the area where Annja had been. She’d already sprinted to her right and pulled the MP5 up in both hands.

  Standing out like two specters, the men opened fire and the muzzle flashes flickered hot as acetylene torches, casting shadows over the men’s faces. Annja squeezed the machine pistol’s trigger in controlled bursts, aiming to kill because she couldn’t risk letting the men get away. She had no idea how many had crept into the cavern after them.

  One of the men went down immediately. The other tried to dodge back and track Annja. Her next burst stitched him across the chest and shoulder, causing him to stumble and spin. Unable to stop himself, he fell over the railing around the observation deck, yelling in fear till he smacked into the floor. He lay limp and broken, eyes staring upward and reflecting the blue glow on the observation deck.

  That sound again.

  Not knowing the target zone of this next grenade, Annja hunkered down beside a pair of mermaids sitting on a rock. The explosive landed at the feet of the colossus only a short distance away, then detonated. Shrapnel tore into the mermaids, decapitating one of them, knocking the arm off another and tearing chunks from the rock.

  The colossus wobbled unsteadily, then its center of gravity gave way and it toppled backward like a boxer knocked out on his feet. The clockwork statue remained rigid and clanked when it struck the observation deck.

  Seizing the moment, Annja ran toward the fallen colossus just ahead of a bullet storm over her position, then leaped onto the figure and continued running up the body. Some of the invaders saw her and targeted her. Bullets ripped sparks only inches behind her.

  Garin and Roux picked out those gunners and blasted them. Annja was aware of at least one more shadow tumbling from near the front entrance as she leaped from the shoulder of the colossus onto the observation deck. Off balance, Annja threw herself forward and rolled, hitting the rear wall, and only then noticing that the man who had fallen to her bullets earlier wasn’t dead.

  Scalp wound bleeding furiously, the man scrabbled for his assault rifle and brought it up. The muzzle flash burned away the darkness that stretched across the ten feet separating him from Annja.

  The bullets screamed over Annja’s head by inches. Lying on her side, not daring to get to her feet, she squeezed the MP5’s trigger and aimed for the center of the man’s body. The machine pistol cycled dry and the harsh sound of gunshot died away, leaving her ears ringing even though her hearing had already been compromised within the enclosed space. For a moment she was afraid the man still wasn’t dead, that he was only waiting to kill her when he opened fire again.

  Then he toppled from his kneeling position, sprawling out loose-limbed.

  Annja switched out the spent magazine with a fresh one. She rose to a crouch and gazed down at the battlefield. Several of the clockworks lay broken, scattered across the metallic tile floor, and the sight nearly broke her heart. So much history had been lost in seconds.

  Muzzle flashes pinpointed Garin’s and Roux’s positions, but they were moving, too. Without speaking, they worked together, staying close and providing covering fields of fire for each other. Annja knew, though, that if she could pinpoint their positions, so could the invasion force. Even as she thought that, another grenade detonated near the last place she’d seen Roux by the giant clam.

  Annja threw herself on the ground just ahead of the explosion that landed inside the open clamshell. On fire and in pieces from the detonation, Michalis’s corpse flew through the air. Almost immediately, machinery ground to life inside the workspace. The sound of harsh clanking and snapping was even louder than the gunfire.

  On the ground, Annja felt the observation deck lurch into clockwise motion as fast as a man could walk. Her stomach twisted with it. The gunfire halted for a moment. Peering over the side, she saw that the floor below had started rotating counterclockwise at the same speed. The various clockwork pieces shivered and shook as the floor spun.

  The rotation was nearly smooth, grinding now and again where debris had fallen into the gears or the grooves that had to have been cut into the wall. Dust and broken rock spilled out onto the observation deck around Annja as the observation deck tore through the facade. The amount of work that had gone into constructing the workshop astounded her. She wondered if it was all to protect the clockwork Roux had been after.

  Several of the clockworks tumbled and spilled across the floor. A few of them lost pieces and gears rolled across the tiles.

  The fallen colossus jerked and jumped along the railings, then finally broke into pieces and clattered to the floor.

  Almost too late, Annja spotted the men rounding the railing toward her as they followed the observation deck. They looked almost ludicrous at first, running and barely managing to stay in place with the wall behind them, but closing quickly on Annja.

  Before they reached her, though, panels along the wall crumbled and huge pipes thrust out. Sulfurous stink belched out of the one nearest Annja. Heat radiated from the thing, giving her scant warning before a glowing wave of heated liquid vomited out of the pipe. At least a dozen pipes had come out of the wall, but three of them weren’t working.

  Flamethrowers were used in 424 BC by Demosthenes, an Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War, to defeat the Boeotians during the Battle of Delium. The sulfur-based mixture wasn’t the true Greek fire that had been developed a thousand years later in Constantinople.

  Along with the flame
s, smoke and a sulfurous stench that burned Annja’s eyes filled the workshop. Pools of fire formed on the spinning lower floor, ripping the shadows away and chasing men back. Garin and Roux were running, forced to abandon their last defensive position because of the stream of fire raining down on it.

  Coughing, trying in vain to fill her lungs, Annya pushed herself up and retreated. Bullets spanged off the walls and the railing as her pursuers opened fire. She ran in front of one of the inert pipes and felt a blast of hot air wash over her. Stopping short of the next pipe that poured flaming sulfur over the lower floor, Annja turned to face her attackers, lifting the MP5 in her fist.

  The first man made it under the pipe before the fiery sulfur mixture blasted out. Liquid flames splattered out of the pipe and poured down over the four. They screamed in agony as the fire ate into them. They seemed to melt as much as burn, and Annja knew it wasn’t just the heat that was killing them. The mixture was caustic.

  One of the men dropped to the observation deck clawing at his clothing, but his face was smoldering. As Annja watched, his flesh melted away and revealed his cheekbone, which then charred. Still screaming, his head engulfed now, the man fell face-first onto the tiled floor. His skull smashed apart on impact as if his head had been blown open.

  Annja lowered her weapon. The men were dead; she didn’t need to fire. Embers burned their flesh in different places, and the fire continued to consume them. It was a horrible way to die.

  Glancing down, Annja tried to spot Roux and Garin, but couldn’t. Everything was happening too fast. The flickering light, the glow of the strange liquid fire, sudden bursts of gunfire and the twisting shadows all contributed to the confusion.

  She turned, preparing to continue down the observation deck, hoping to reach the stairs either by running there or waiting till they came around again.

  A large man stepped out of the shadows and drove his rifle butt at her face.

  35

  Staying low, Melina raced back along the turning observation deck. She hadn’t expected that to happen, and still didn’t know how the feat had been accomplished. She thought the event was just as surprising to Roux because he’d looked startled in the mixed light of a blue glow stick and the liquid fire pouring down from the pipes thrust through the wall.

  “What is going on?” Her grandfather’s voice echoed inside her head. Since leaving the water, Melina had donned an earbud and radio hookup that reached the ship waiting out at sea. Some of her men carried cameras that provided video feeds to the ship.

  “I don’t know yet. The whole workshop has been turned into a trap.”

  “Have you found Roux?”

  “He is still in here with me. We will have him soon.” When she reached the railing in front of the stone steps leading down to the workshop floor, Melina vaulted the low railing and landed on the edge of the steps. One of pipes hung over her but hadn’t yet started shooting fire. Their retreat was still intact.

  But she wasn’t leaving till Roux and his companions were dead. Not unless there was no other choice.

  She turned to the two men she’d posted to guard the exit. “No one gets through that door but our people.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The guards hugged the sides of the steps, using them as cover.

  Despite the danger inherent in the situation, Melina felt a smile on her lips as she closed in on the last spot she’d seen the two. There was no joy, only a savage hunger to see the old man dead. She lamented the fact that she wouldn’t have time to make his death a long, painful one. Halfway to Roux’s location, more gears began meshing and the tiled floor vibrated. Crouching, she took shelter behind a clockwork of Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the Underworld in Greek myth.

  Where the giant clam had been before one of the grenades had knocked it from its position, a hole opened up in the floor as the tiles irised back. For a moment Melina thought the opening might provide an escape route for Roux and his companions.

  Instead, another clockwork rose from the cavity. This one was a man dressed in a toga. The liquid fire oozed across the now-uneven floor and down into the cavity from a half dozen directions and the light revealed that the statue wore a belt of tools at his waist.

  Michalis. Seeing the clockwork standing there, Melina felt certain that was the person the thing was supposed to represent.

  With imperial hauteur, the clockwork Michalis rotated to face the stairs, then remained locked into position, unmoving as the room spun around him. His right arm came up with an open hand. Then he froze, as if waiting.

  She heard a gurgling chug blast from behind her. She turned and watched as the malfunctioning pipe above the stairs suddenly chugged to life. A cascade of liquid fire splashed out across her two guards below.

  The burning fire coated both men and leached into their flesh as they turned to look up. Their skin cracked and popped and blackened as it burned, then melted from their bones. They were dead before they hit the ground and the impacts rattled their charred bones across the tiles, separating them like puzzle pieces.

  More of the fire spilled across the steps, splitting the stone beneath the metallic tiles. The steps splintered, falling into chunks and leaving no retreat back up to the observation deck.

  For a moment, Melina stared at the carnage, realizing she was trapped as death poured in. Then she recalled Roux. The old man would die before she did. She left Cerberus behind and headed forward.

  * * *

  THE MAN MOVED so quickly, was there so unexpectedly, that Annja barely had time to get a hand up to block the blow from the rifle butt. If it had connected, it would have broken her nose, her cheek or maybe an eye orbital or her temple. She would have been dazed or dead.

  Her right forearm caught the rifle butt just enough to take some of the brunt. Her hand went numb for an instant and the MP5 slipped from her fingers. The impact drove her backward over the observation deck railing. Leaning out over the fiery floor below, feeling the heat almost hot enough to scorch, her feet no longer on the floor, Annja caught the railing with her left hand and hung on.

  Towering above her, eager to press his advantage, the brute drew back the rifle again.

  Annja reached into the otherwhere, clasped the hilt of her sword and brought it out. The blade caught the descending rifle, and she parried it to one side. Holding on to the railing with one hand and keeping her shoulders against it, Annja swung her legs up and wrapped her ankles around the man’s neck as he drew back the rifle once more. Locking her feet behind his head, taking advantage of the fact that he was still using his weight to trap her in place, she yanked and twisted.

  With no choice but to have his neck snapped or follow his head, the man stumbled, hit the low railing as Annja continued to pull on him and plummeted over the side. He screamed and flailed as he fell.

  Unable to stop her own momentum, Annja rolled over the railing. She twisted, her back to the stairs, but she held on with her left hand. Below, her opponent sailed face-first into the pool of liquid fire. His screams came to a sudden stop.

  When she hit the end of her arm, Annja felt like her shoulder had been pulled out of its socket. She held on through the pain, released the sword and watched it vanish, then reached up over her head to catch the railing with her right hand. Concentrating, she pulled and rolled herself back over the railing. She dropped to a knee because her head spun from the pain and the sudden movement, and bullets ricocheted from the spinning wall behind her.

  Three men raced toward her, stepping awkwardly as they struggled to remain agile on the spinning observation deck.

  Bullets beat a tattoo against the metal beneath their feet, then she saw Garin correct his aim from below and fire. One of the armed men spun away, caught by the flurry of rounds that sparked against the metallic walls.

  The other two men pulled up short and turned their weapons to
ward Garin, discounting Annja because she was unarmed. They opened fire and Garin leaped from his cover behind the chariot to a clockwork horse.

  Getting to her feet, ignoring the pain in her left shoulder, Annja drew her sword and charged the two men. Garin didn’t stand a chance where he was. The man closest to her saw her bearing down and tried to wheel around. He fired a spray of bullets that burned the side of Annja’s face. Then she brought the sword down, cleaving the man from his left shoulder to the middle of his chest.

  Not breaking stride, she pushed the dead man into his companion, knocking him off balance. She stopped, kicked the dead man in the chest to force him back again and free her blade and stepped forward. As the surviving man took aim, she stepped to the side so that his bullets missed her, and spun, delivering a backhand horizontal sword swipe that took his head off. There was no time for regrets. It had to be done.

  Staring out over the workshop floor, Annja took stock of how bad the situation had become. The liquid fire nearly covered the floor. Only islands of the metallic tiles remained, and those were buckling as the stone foundation beneath them began cracking from the heat.

  She looked toward the entrance and saw that the stone steps leading up to the exit lay shattered and scattered in the liquid fire. Only a pile of rock half the distance to the observation deck remained. And that pile was useless because now it was in motion, as well.

  Then she spotted the clockwork Michalis standing where the old inventor’s body had been left in the giant clam. She saw the hand thrust out in front of him.

  There, in the master’s workshop, the shade of Michalis guards his creations. If you disturb the master, death will come to any who trespass and do not come in peace.

  Only a few short paces away, a clockwork olive tree stood glistening in the rising heat.

  Taking cover behind a Greek sailing vessel miniature, Roux exchanged shots with a gunman sheltering behind a Cyclops holding a club. The gunman didn’t see the liquid fire sliding in behind him, didn’t know it was there until it burned into his feet. When he tried to run from the new menace, Roux shot him and his corpse fell back into the creeping fire and was swiftly consumed.