by Greig Beck
Alex kept his teeth clamped, speaking through his grimace. “What … is … that thing?”
“It is beauty incarnate, Alex Hunter. Perhaps it is a god. Perhaps it is a Traveler that has been trapped here since before mankind even climbed from the ooze. Its lifespan is measured in millions of years, not like us feral insects that are here and gone within the blink of an eye. It needed protection, and in turn it gives us, gives me, greatness. And it will give you that same greatness. You ask what it is, Alex Hunter? It is a gift; receive it willingly.”
“A gift? I’ve heard that before.” Alex strained with every ounce of his being. His teeth remained clamped shut, and he tried to turn his head away. The thought of the thing climbing into his mouth and worming its way down his throat threatened to make him vomit. His body strained, but in his mind something fought against its bonds even harder.
“It is normal to resist at first. The unknown is frightening. I will help.”
Another layer of pressure wrapped around his mind, and then Jabir ibn Hayyan reached out tiny withered arms to embrace Alex’s jaw. The sharp little claws dug into his skin, and the yellow eyes burned into him. The gummed mouth creaked open another fraction as his head tilted back. The thing in his mouth started to extend, its multiple tiny arms also reaching out to him.
Jabir ibn Hayyan clung onto Alex’s face, suspended there, and the huge Eli figure reached forward to grip Alex by the shoulders, holding him firmly in place. Alex could feel the colossal strength in the hands that enfolded him, pinning his own arms flat to his body.
“No.” Alex felt perspiration break out on his face.
“Don’t fight me. I will hurt you and your friends. I have called hundreds of guards, and they wait for your friends above. Only if you submit, will I allow them to pass, unmolested.” Jabir ibn Hayyan’s small, sharp hands pulled at his lips.
A knot of pain started to burn in Alex’s mind, but the reaction was not one of crushing submission or even surrender. It was an urge to fight, to kill. Alex’s body flooded with adrenalin and natural steroids, and his frame felt like it hummed with a furious energy.
“You are not immortal.” Alex’s words hissed from between clamped teeth. “You are mortal, and you can die.”
“What is this?” Jabir ibn Hayyan’s tiny blackened brow furrowed, and his small claws now scrabbled at his flesh, trying to furiously tear his mouth open. “If I need to hurt you, break your body, then I will. Hurry now.”
The huge Eli being started to exert enormous pressure on Alex, and he felt the bones in his arms and shoulders begin to creak. A rib popped in his chest, stabbing him like a dagger. Then another. Finally the pain, frustration and fury became too much. Alex opened his mouth to scream his rage. He could chain the beast no longer, and it burst free like an animal in all its primal fury.
His own monster was now free, the Other One, and it wanted nothing but blood. Alex felt he could only watch as his body seemed to act of its own accord, not in his control anymore. It swung itself one way, and then the other, harder and faster, becoming ever more violent. The giant’s hands were rapidly losing their hold on him. Jabir ibn Hayyan squealed like a small animal and the creature in his mouth snapped back, as if on a spring. The tiny, withered alchemist threw himself from Eli’s arms, and crawled across the floor to one of the dark alcoves, looking back briefly to cast Alex a murderous glare.
“I’ll crush all of you down to pulp before you leave this building. You’re not free, and if I cannot have your body, then neither can you.” It looked to the huge Eli thing. “Pull him to pieces – we’ll use them again later.” It eased back into the shadowy alcove, until just its yellow eyes remained floating in the velvet darkness, before they too vanished.
Alex was lifted off his feet by the giant, rising into the air to stare in Eli’s broad face. It was a ripped patchwork of scars and different colored flesh. The eyes were dead, unfocused, and the scarification of ancient script still wept a clear fluid.
Alex strained until he felt his shoulders begin to pop from their sockets. He flexed, screamed and writhed, and then flexed again, feeling his own strength begin to bend back the colossal power of the giant. The whole time he could feel Jabir ibn Hayyan in his mind, watching, screaming his own fury at losing his prize, promising a pain beyond madness to be rained down upon Alex.
But there was also frustration from the withered alchemist, since Alex’s mind refused to be dominated and controlled like so many humans had been in the past. Alex wrenched hard, and one of his arms came free, then the next. The Eli thing just held Alex by his chest, which had already suffered broken ribs. It immediately began compressing his rib cage. Alex’s bones screamed and began to shatter, and Alex knew he had mere seconds before his diaphragm was totally collapsed, and his lungs and heart shredded by the daggers of his own splintered bones.
Alex jerked forward, gripping Eli by the head. He tugged, swung, and ripped at the huge melon-sized cranium. The face remained indifferent to the attack, passive even, but Alex felt the hands increase their pressure on his torso. He tasted blood in his throat, and with one last burst of strength, he jerked his hands upwards. There came a sound like tearing canvas, and the line of stitching at Eli’s neck started to pop open. Alex gave one last mighty heave, and then the head totally ripped free, and a spray of dark jellified, coagulated fluid splattered stickily around them.
The hands dropped and Alex fell to the ground. He threw the head into the dark shaft where Jabir ibn Hayyan had disappeared, now screaming his own rage. He sensed the thing that had once been a man was already fleeing deep into the labyrinth below the ground. Behind him the headless giant still lumbered about, perhaps searching for its face and eyes.
Alex got to one knee, holding his chest and carefully sucking in deep breaths. Every movement was like a hundred knives piercing his flesh. He shut his eyes, grimacing, but remembering his learned techniques to quell the agony of his body and the tormented screams from the damaged psychology rampaging through his mind.
Alex searched out sun-sparkling waves breaking on a deserted beach, the smell of green apples, and an image of his son, Joshua, holding up a favorite toy. He stayed silent, immobile, ignoring the lumbering monster and the grotesque whispering of the small being somewhere in the dark caves, and just concentrated on calming himself. After a moment he opened his eyes and pressed the comm. stud in his ear.
“Sam.”
“Boss.” The response was immediate. “Goddamnit, you’re alive. I knew it.”
“For now.” Alex backed away from the headless giant which was snatching at things that came within its grasp. “We need to get to that escape tunnel that Hammerson found to take us out to the Kashaf-Roud area in the desert. Jabir ibn Hayyan has hundreds of IRG waiting up top for us. We’ll need to go down. Where are you now?”
Sam snorted. “Just outside. Where else would we be?”
Alex grinned; there was obeying orders, and there was obeying orders. “This isn’t over yet. You start down, I have one more thing to do. Be with you in a few minutes.”
“You got it, see you soon.” He heard Sam issuing orders as the connection was broken.
Alex then weaved his way around the lumbering thing that had been Eli, its stained smock sticking to its huge lumpen body as sticky fluids leaked from the stump on its shoulders. At the door, he turned back, trying to see into the small alcove where the goblin-like creature had scurried. There was nothing there to see, but he knew the evil thing watched him from somewhere.
“See you in hell.” He smiled, and then raced to the stairway, taking five steps at a time, until he felt the familiar tingle of radiation in his gut behind a nearby door. Pushing it open, he crossed quickly to one of the bombs, and ripped the lid from its top. Each device had a different kiloton setting and a timer. The one he selected was ten kilotons, and he set it to sixty minutes.
His hand hovered over the initiator button. They needed to be at least five miles away, and if the exit tunnel was wh
at, and where, he expected it to be, they had a chance. He almost laughed out loud. It also needed to be open, and unguarded. And if there was a vehicle waiting, then it’d be a piece of cake, and they had a chance.
Better than having zero options, he thought, and punched the button. He ran to the door, locking it, and then ripping the handle free – if anyone needed to enter, they’d need to bring a blowtorch or battering ram.
Seconds mattered as Alex flew down the steps, an entire flight at a time. In a few minutes he had caught up with his team.
“Let’s go, people. Gonna be one helluva fire in the hole.”
“Yo.” Casey clapped her hands and screamed her delight, immediately putting a hand up to her temple. “Ow, that hurts my brain.”
“There’s a brain?” Sam nudged her. “Let’s go, soldier.”
At the bottom of the steps was a pair of formidable looking silver doors that were sealed. Sam didn’t hesitate, lifting the M203 grenade launcher and firing two M433 high-explosive rounds. The plugs could easily penetrate two inches of armored steel.
“Hit the deck!”
The group flung themselves to the ground, covering their ears and crushing their eyes shut. Before the smoke cleared and the debris settled, they were moving again. The steel doors were bent inwards as if a titan had punched through them. Inside there was a garage, a workshop, and a long roadway as large as a four-lane highway, and in pristine condition.
But what made Alex feel a surge of elation was the line of new Iranian military trucks, sitting idle as if waiting for them.
“Load ’em up.”
The group leaped into back and front cabins, Sam taking the wheel and immediately flooring it before the doors were even closed. “Buckle up, children, and keep your arms inside the ride at all times.”
Alex checked his wristwatch. “Thirty minutes. We need to be outside the tunnel or it’ll be like being in the barrel of a cannon when that nuke goes off.”
“You set a nuke?” Adira’s brows went up.
“Sure, Jabir ibn Hayyan is still in here somewhere, pulling the strings. And I can guarantee he’ll be plotting his revenge on all of us. I gave him a choice and he chose the wrong option.” Alex’s smile was grim. “Like I hoped.”
Sam had the truck up to eighty miles per hour in the tunnel, but the smooth roadway surface made them seem like they were floating.
“Faster,” Alex said.
Sam’s foot stamped down, squeezing the last few ergs from the engine. Alex’s eyes moved from the hands on his watch to the distance ticking over on the odometer. In his mind he calculated, remembering the tunnel network schematics from Hammerson’s stratigraphic sonar readings. They had twenty minutes until detonation, but at the rate they were traveling, he allowed himself a glimmer of hope.
Alex jolted upright as a door in his mind creaked open, and like a cloud of greasy smoke, the words of Jabir ibn Hayyan leaked in.
“You think you are free?” The evil little voice croaked with laughter. “I will send a thousand of my Zhayedan to your home. You know you can’t stop them all, and I only need to win once, to obliterate millions of you.”
Alex groaned, crushing his eyes shut.
“I will be free, and when I am, I will find you, Alex Hunter.” It seemed to laugh and then the voice became sly. “And I will find your Aimee Weir, and then perhaps I will find your son, Joshua. I’ll save him for last. His pain will be the most unbearable.”
Alex put his hands up to his head, but the sound of Adira’s warning jarred him back to the truck’s cabin. Up ahead a line of soldiers was waiting for them. Two jeeps had also been parked nose-to-nose as a barrier.
Alex growled. “Sam, give me the M203, and keep flooring it.” Alex took the grenade launcher and checked the rounds still in the modified drum clip – ten left – plenty.
Bullets started to whack into the armored sides of the truck, and he could see at least two men preparing shoulder mounted RPG launchers – now or never, he thought.
Alex leaned out of the truck and fired round after round of the plug-like grenades, targeting the jeeps, the RPG handlers, and then the phalanx of soldiers, until all ten rounds had been expended.
The detonations were almost instantaneous and a curtain of fire, flesh and debris filled the tunnel. Alex pulled himself back into the cabin.
“Brace!”
They passed through the flaming wall, bumping over the remains of one molten jeep, and heading toward a massive set of steel doors that still hung open. Beyond, a dark sky beckoned.
Alex checked his watch. “Three minutes. About to get real hot, people.”
The deep detonation was an earthquake that threw them around like they were encased in a toy, and a vent of flame shot from the tunnel, blasting into the dark sky, making the night into daytime while Sam struggled to hold the wheel.
The flame was shut off, as the tunnel caved in on itself. They sped on, and behind them the world collapsed. They had over 150 miles of night desert to cross, in a hostile territory, while outpacing a toxic, nuclear shock wave.
Not a single one of them would complain for a second.
CHAPTER 14
Jack Hammerson leaned back in his chair, a pair of strong blunt hands clasped together across his stomach. He faced a huge screen set into his office wall that showed an image of the nighttime desert in the Mashhad District of Northern Iran. Even though it was night, the illumination settings of the VELA satellite feed made it as clear as daytime.
The small town of Tous suddenly rose about fifty feet in the air, like it was sitting upon a huge blister about to pop, and then with a venting of boiling gasses from a million cracks over a two-mile radius, it simply fell back in on itself, forming a massive sunken crater. Anything and everything below ground would have ceased to exist.
Hammerson continued to watch the screen. To him, it looked like the earth had just been pounded by a mighty fist, or titanic hammer.
“So strikes the hammer of God.” He smiled. “That’s what happens when you play with fire.”
He knew the drill; mining accident, the government would say for the local and international press. Nuclear accident, the Iranian military would agree.
Hammerson grunted. They did it to themselves, Hammerson would say, if any of his superiors asked of their involvement. He turned away from the screen. His recovery teams were already waiting in Turkmenistan to pull Alex and the team out.
He closed the folder and got to his feet, crossing to the window. He stood looking out over the parade ground, hands clasped behind his back.
“You push, and we push back harder.” He watched a storm rolling in from the west for several more minutes before hearing his computer ping with a message. He turned back to his desk, and sat down reading the new data, and watching the new satellite feed.
He grunted. “One last loose end to tie off.” He placed a headset over his head and prepared to initiate the order.
*
The huge figure lumbered toward the ancient city of Misrata in Libya. It joined the masses of humanity heading in toward the busy coastal city, once called the Riviera of Libya, now just another boiling pot of sectarian violence.
The figure was bent under the weight on its back, but it still towered over the people around it. The giant plodded on, unfeeling, uncaring, and unswerving in its allotted task. A cowl was pulled forward over a heavily scarified face.
A man fell in beside it to its left, and the giant ignored him. Another fell in to its right. This one was also ignored. The behemoth plodded in, its designated target – Rome – all that mattered.
Eyes watched from a thousand miles overhead, and single word was spoken into the ears of the men on each side of the hooded figure. Immediately, long knives were drawn, and in a single sweep the large head was removed from the body. The two attackers didn’t stop, slashing at the shoulders and removing both arms to the horror of those who watched. The massive drum fell from the torso to thump on the dirt.
The
two then didn’t stop their hacking until there was nothing but chunks of flesh, some still twisting and writhing at their feet like small animals.
A covered truck slid to a stop, and small crane swung out to lift the large package into the rear. The driver jumped free with a canister, pouring gasoline over the remains, and then igniting them.
In another few seconds, the truck, and the attackers, had vanished, leaving a trail of greasy smoke rising into the air, the only remnants of the magic and monstrosities of the world’s last great alchemist.
About Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6
The Arcadian returns to the dark ice in a reprisal of one of his first and most deadly missions. But this time the stakes couldn't be higher.
In 2008, a top secret US submarine went missing on its test voyage off the coast of Antarctica. After years silent, its emergency beacon is suddenly activated, but strangely, the beacon is emanating from a point miles below the ice sheets of the frozen continent.
The race is on. The Chinese government, alerted at the same time as the Americans, is after the submarine's secrets. And the Americans need to retrieve their technology, quickly and quietly, from a place now marked as an international forbidden zone.
With the reluctant assistance of petrobiologist Aimee Weir, Alex Hunter and his team of HAWCs return to the location of their first mission together.
But only a few members of the team know the truth. A treacherous horror lies in wait for them, deep beneath the Antarctic ice.
Perfect for fans of Matthew Reilly, Steve Alten, Myke Cole, Graham Masterton, James Rollins and Michael Crichton.
For more information, please visit momentumbooks.com.au/books/kraken-rising-alex-hunter-6.
