Deep Fire Rising

by Du Brul, Jack

  Behind Mercer was a set of black iron stairs that spiraled to the scaffolding surrounding the top section of the oracle. Even as Donny was making his last threat, Mercer was in motion. The stairs were tight, a narrow corkscrew that made it impossible to mount more than two steps at a time. The confining structure shook as Donny raced after him.

  Around they went, climbing ever higher. Halfway to the top, the oracle was close enough to the stairs for Mercer to reach out a hand and touch. He almost stopped running when he looked closer at the mysterious machine. The oracle was an enormous clockwork mechanism. Tiny brass gears and ratchets covered the oracle’s surface. Openings allowed him to see inside the device. Within the oracle was a complex collection of pistons, springs and cogwheels that drove plates on the surface. Some of the gears inside the machine appeared to be twenty feet in diameter, like something out of a factory.

  That’s how they did it. The oracle was a model of the earth’s tectonic plates, the huge slabs of solid rock that glided on the planet’s liquid mantel. Somehow the builders had known about plate tectonics and crustal displacement long before it was discovered by Western science. Tisa had said that the plans for this machine were centuries old even before they were brought to China five hundred years ago. Meaning the designers had had generations to observe the earth’s movement, extrapolate how that motion would affect other regions and create a machine that could accurately predict future geological events.

  As he moved past the globe’s equator he noted the Hawaiian Islands were sharp cones jutting from the near featureless plain of the Pacific basin. A cylinder half filled with mercury projected from the central island. It had to be Kilauea, Mercer realized, the volcano that had been erupting on Mauna Loa for years. The mercury must represent the volume of lava that belched from the volcano over a certain amount of time. Near it was another, smaller mercury vial. It was Loihi, the newest island in the Hawaiian chain. Mercer knew that the top of this volcano was still deep underwater. Craftsmen must be able to add to the oracle, he thought, when new discoveries about the earth were made.

  He quickened his pace, climbing up the Pacific side of the oracle. There were the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Strait. He could see the rift valleys that crossed Alaska. Small brass armatures kept the miniature plates together but could allow them to shift suddenly if there was a significantly sized earthquake.

  Mercer reached the top of the stairs at least one story ahead of Donny Randall. The platform ringing the oracle wasn’t nearly as wide as he’d hoped, and the wood scaffold was old and water seeping from the cavern roof had rotted it in places. He’d planned on waiting at the head of the stairs to ambush Donny, but there was hardly enough space on the landing to stand and nowhere to swing the sledgehammer. The scaffold was hemmed by rock on one side and a tall but rickety railing overlooking the globe on the other. The lights blazing off the oracle’s facade were blinding.

  Donny reached the last twist in the spiral stairs. He paused, watching the landing, and once he was satisfied that Mercer couldn’t attack, he came all the way up.

  “Two minutes for your rescue, huh?” He was slightly out of breath from the six-story climb.

  “Among other things I’m an eternal optimist,” Mercer panted. He stayed well back from Donny on the circular catwalk, needing the space to think how he was going to get out of this.

  Below them, at the top of the oracle globe, the gold sheets that covered the Arctic Ocean had been removed for maintenance. Looking down was like looking into the guts of a mechanical monster. Massive wheels turned slowly inside the oracle, driving ever-smaller cogs and gears, transferring the tremendous geothermal energy of the mountain redoubt into the finite movements of the delicate surface mechanisms, each capable of infinitesimal shifts along fault lines and tectonic plate boundaries. The interior of the oracle was as complex as an antique pocket watch but a thousand times its size.

  Donny skulked forward, his hammer dangling by his waist. Mercer wasn’t fooled. Randall could have the sledge in position for a strike much faster than he could. Mercer continued to back away, keeping one eye on his opponent and one on the model world below them.

  Randall suddenly lurched, halving the distance between them, his hammer arcing back and forth. When it struck the cavern’s stone wall sparks shot from the steel head; when it hit the wooden railing, splinters flew. Mercer timed his counterattack when Donny was at his full extension and his shoulder was exposed. He darted forward, ramming with the hammer rather than swinging it. While his strike lacked Donny’s power, it did connect. Donny grunted and he had to lower his hammer. Mercer tried for another hit, but Donny had already recovered. He swept aside Mercer’s thrust and twisted his upper body so he could drive his elbow into Mercer’s ribs.

  Mercer went down. Randall tried to stomp on his head. Mercer rolled and the blow missed. Donny’s foot exploded through the wood floor and vanished up to his ankle. Mercer was just able to slide out of the way as Donny swept his hammer at him again. He couldn’t prevent Randall from yanking his foot from the shattered floorboard.

  They fought their way around the ring of scaffold. Their hammers flew in furious strikes and the sound of their battle resonated across the cave. But neither could gain an advantage. Mercer was quicker than Randall, but the few glancing blows he’d inflicted only seemed to make the big man more determined. Donny seemed indefatigable. And as Mercer tired, he knew it would only take one mistake to lose the hammer dance.

  Half the railing had been destroyed as they fought. Lights had been shattered and power cords ripped from their mounts so electrical cables arced and snapped, shooting sparks across the wooden deck.

  Mercer was weakening. His back felt like a hot coal had been placed in the wound. He would have to end this soon or Donny would tear him apart. Donny fired a wild swing with his hammer. Mercer ducked under the blow and launched himself into Randall’s chest. They smashed into the cavern wall with enough force to burst the air from Donny’s lungs. Mercer choked up on his hammer and used the head as an extension of his fist, pumping punch after punch into Donny’s stomach, trying to stop him from reinflating his lungs.

  Randall was dazed enough to stand still for five blows before he roared and shoved Mercer away, nearly sending him over the railing. Donny came at him, swinging the hammer over his head. The sledge smashed through the railing next to Mercer and the whole section began to collapse. Mercer spun away, managing to stay on the platform as Donny’s momentum started to take him over.

  Randall grabbed the banister with his right hand and Mercer slammed his hammer into the exposed appendage. The bones were crushed flat yet Randall the Handle managed to swing his own hammer using only his left. The shot caught Mercer under the arm. Donny didn’t have the angle to crack ribs, but the impact knocked Mercer aside and left him gasping. With his right hand dangling uselessly at his side and the big hammer clutched firmly in his left, Randall charged Mercer, any rationality driven from his mind by the pain of his near-severed limb. Spittle flew from his lips with each gusting breath.

  It was almost as if the past fifteen minutes had been a game to Donny Randall, a prelude for the moment he was maddened enough to finish the fight. He swung savagely, slashing and chopping with his hammer. More of the railing exploded when he hit it. Fragments of stone flew from the divots his counterswing gouged from the cavern wall. Black-dyed sweat rained from his head.

  Mercer could barely back away fast enough. He didn’t dare try to parry Randall’s immense swings. The impact would have torn the hammer from his hands. The stairs were halfway around the scaffold. If he turned to make a run for them, Randall would be on him in a second. There was only one option and he took it without hesitation.

  The railing was four feet tall, but right behind Mercer was a section of rotted wood that had been damaged earlier in the fight. The instant he’d backed next to the opening he tossed himself from the platform.

  The drop was ten feet, a relatively easy leap had he not been s
o seriously injured. He landed hard, sprawled against the top of the mechanical globe, nearly losing his hammer in one of the open access panels. He managed to turn onto his back in time to see Donny jump after him.

  Randall landed a few feet away and tried to steady his fall with his ruined right hand. He shrieked as the sharp end of the broken bones shot through his skin in a dozen spots, saturating his hand in blood. Mercer got to his feet, bracing himself on the slick surface by wedging his foot against the six-inch-high ridge that was Alaska’s northernmost mountain range. Randall had his hand up and Mercer took aim. His swing didn’t need power, only accuracy.

  The hammer’s steel head caught Donny on the up-raised wrist. The remainder of the bones in his lower arm disintegrated. The force was enough to shred the tendons and skin that had been keeping the hand attached to his wrist. The member flew free. Blood fountained from the stump.

  “That’s for . . .” Mercer paused, unable to remember the name of the miner Randall had killed when he flooded the DS-Two mine. “Damn it, that’s for being a fucking prick.”

  Randall couldn’t defend himself so Mercer’s next swing carried every ounce of strength left in him. He hit Randall in the chest hard enough to detach his sternum. Donny staggered but didn’t fall.

  He lurched around in a circle holding his arm aloft while turning blue because he couldn’t draw breath. He finally slipped on the blood drooling across the surface of the oracle. He landed on his side and began to slide down the sphere. That’s when he became aware of what was happening and tried to save himself from falling off the golden globe. He twisted and kicked out with one leg, arresting his plummet by catching the lip of an access panel.

  When he tried to stand, his foot slid into the mechanism.

  Mercer was five feet above Donny’s position so he couldn’t see what was happening inside the machine. But suddenly Randall’s blank stare turned into fear and then panic. Donny tried to jerk his leg free of the hole and fell backward, sliding farther down the globe until Mercer felt as much as heard his knee joint pop. Inside the clockwork oracle, Randall’s foot had caught between a large pinion gear and a saw-motion rack of metal teeth. Each quick ratchet of the gear drew his foot deeper into the machine.

  Somehow Randall struggled upright again. His screams drowned out all other sounds, echoing off the cavern, rebounding again and again in a chorus of unbearable agony. Mercer didn’t enjoy watching what was unfolding, but he wouldn’t look away. He kept his eyes locked on Donny Randall’s as the oracle’s remorseless mechanisms chewed his leg and pulled him deeper inside.

  When his leg was half gone, Randall could no longer remain upright. He toppled into the hole and became tangled in more of the machinery. His cries lasted a few seconds more as he was literally eaten alive, his limbs plucked from his body before his torso was consumed. Somewhere deep inside the bowels of the oracle, his severed head dropped free, only to get stuck between a pair of gears and crushed.

  “Bet you didn’t predict that,” Mercer said as he clambered along the oracle to find a way off its crown.

  The huge machine shuddered just as he found a ladder that could be pulled down from the overhead scaffold. A steady vibration built from inside the oracle, as though a flywheel had become unbalanced and was fighting against its bearings. Something tore loose with a metallic squeal. A jet of mercury shot from a nameless volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

  “Mercer?” Tisa shouted from far below, her voice nearly lost in the din of the damaged machine. “What’s happening?”

  Unbalanced by Randall’s body falling through its gears, the machine tore itself apart. A piston exploded from the side of the oracle, poking a huge hole in its skin and scattering hundreds of intricate parts. Mercer pulled the ladder down and stepped off the oracle just as a huge gear rammed through the top of the machine, spitting a shower of brass and gold shrapnel.

  Forced onward by geothermal pressure, the mechanism continued to grind upon itself, the intricacy of its design causing its downfall. Each component of the oracle was directly connected to every other, so when one was wrecked the damage spread geometrically. The plate containing the entire continent of Africa sheered from its mounts and dropped to the cavern floor.

  Swaying on the scaffold, Mercer realized that Tisa was directly below the oracle. The structure was threatening to collapse. He raced around the platform, dodging sparking power cables and charging through a fire that had caught along one section. He reached the spiral stairs and threw himself down, unconcerned how the tower wobbled. He was doused by liquid mercury gushing from the Hawaiian Islands. Doubtlessly some of the carcinogenic fluid seeped into his bloody wounds.

  Fifteen feet from the ground he heard voices over the noise and vibration. He hadn’t considered that other members of the Order would be around. He had no weapon other than surprise, and once that wore off he was no more capable of defending himself than Harry’s toothless basset hound.

  “Snow, you here?” The voice was in Mercer’s head, a fantasy that Sykes had found him. “Snow, come in.”

  Not in his head. In his ear. The tactical radio. “Doc, is that you? It’s Snow. Where are you?”

  “I’m in a cave with a big gold globe that looks like it’s about to fall apart.”

  Mercer sagged. The people he’d heard below weren’t more fanatic monks. Sykes and his Delta commandos had found him. He reached the ground floor. Above him, the surfaces of the oracle were a blur as the mechanisms inside destroyed themselves. Sykes stood a short distance off, covering Grumpy and Happy as they untied Tisa.

  Mercer rushed past the two men and was nearly bowled over when Tisa threw herself into him. Their tears mingled as their lips sought each other out. Tisa was drawn and exhausted, her eyes washed out by her captivity. She hadn’t been allowed to bathe in days and her hair felt as brittle as straw. Mercer simply didn’t care. She was alive, and that was all that mattered.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I knew you’d come.”

  “You never gave me your phone number. How else was I going to get in touch with you to ask for a second date?”

  “Mercer,” Sykes interrupted. “We’ve gotta go.”

  He couldn’t let go of Tisa completely, so as he pulled away he held one of her hands. “What’s the situation?”

  “Serious unless Miss Nguyen knows a way out of here. We chased the last of the defenders into a bunch of dead-end tunnels. We got them, but there ain’t no way out except the way we came in.”

  “And that’s blocked by the burning monastery.”

  “How about it, ma’am?”

  “There is a way. I used it once when I snuck into the oracle chamber when Luc and I were children. But first I have to go back for the Lama.”

  “Was that the old man in the room with the secret entrance here?” Mercer asked.

  “Yes.” Her tears changed from joy to sorrow. “I must save him.”

  Mercer looked to Sykes and nodded. The commando leader wasn’t going to argue.

  The three surviving Delta soldiers led them back to the bedroom. Mercer wanted to stay at Tisa’s side but something he’d noticed forced him to pull Sykes back from the party as they moved up the tunnel.

  “None of you are wearing your packs. What happened?”

  “Noticed that, did you?” Sykes jammed a plug of tobacco into his cheek.

  “You lost all the satellite phones.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yep. Grump’s was shot to pieces and Hap’s was smashed when he took a fall and mine’s upstairs with yours. I’m guessing both are nothing but melted plastic by now.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Blown to shit along with my men. Sons a bitches claymored us.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all Mercer could reply. Without those phones there was no way to get Tisa’s information to Admiral Lasko.

  They reached the curtain covering the secret bedroom entrance. Tisa was the first one through.
She rushed immediately to the bed. The Lama didn’t move. He remained flat on the bed, his lower body covered with a sheet, gaining him a measure of dignity in death he’d been denied in life.

  Tisa knelt at his side, holding one of his birdlike hands in hers. Her face was hidden by her hair, but by the way her body convulsed, her sobs were apparent. Mercer knelt next to her, waiting for her to say what she needed.

  “He was so good.” Her voice cracked. “He didn’t believe in violence and had he known the magnitude of what’s going to happen I know he would have wanted us to tell the world. People die every day. It is what makes us human. He didn’t think it was our place to warn others about what we know. But he would have changed his mind about La Palma. He would have warned you.”

  “He was the Order’s spiritual leader?”

  “And more.” Tears streaked down her cheeks. “He was my father.” Her tone turned bitter. “It was Luc who ruined everything. He wanted the Order to be an authority in the world, a nation with automatic superpower because of what we knew.”

  She looked at Mercer. “I am so sorry I involved you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you can’t make a difference. You can’t stop what’s going to happen. Luc has won because the earth can’t be changed.”

  “That’s not true. The future isn’t set by the oracle, Tisa. It’s created by people like you and me, people who believe they can change things for the better. Tell me—how much time do we have? When is La Palma going to erupt?”

  Mercer needed a year. With a year he had an idea how to stabilize the western flank of the Cumbre Veija volcano and prevent the catastrophic slide. In the moments Tisa took to answer him he cut the estimate in half.

  Give him just six months and he could do it. It would be close, some material would crash into the sea, but not enough to devastate the Atlantic basin. With six months to work he could save the millions who lived along shorelines of America and Europe, although the property damage would likely run into the billions of dollars.