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Dark Rising

Page 25

by Greig Beck


  O’Riordan got to his feet and took a step forward. ‘Yeah, felt those, didn’t ya? Flat-tipped tungsten – armour-piercing babies. Want some more?’

  He fired another three rounds and was satisfied to see three more direct hits and a small piece of shell flick off to skid away down the corridor.

  The creature slowly rose up to its full height and towered ten feet above O’Riordan; he saw its eyestalks craning down to look at him. It had planted itself in the centre of the corridor on its sharply-pointed, thick bristled legs and seemed to shiver slightly.

  ‘I’m not running this time, ugly, and you’re not getting past me to my guys.’ O’Riordan fired three again – another three hits. That leaves me three and then back to standard lead jackets, he thought.

  The creature shivered again and the HAWC mistook the movement for the trembling of fear. He smiled and advanced. ‘That’s right – and you can go straight back to hell.’

  He fired his last three armour-piercing bullets.

  The explosion rang out from the direction Alex was facing. His face became a mixture of resignation and simmering anger.

  He turned to Sam. ‘Uncle, get ’em all inside. Then shut the door and take it from here – you know your orders.’

  Sam hesitated. The explosion meant Irish was going head to head with someone. If it was a bigger force than last time, Alex would be overwhelmed, even with his unique powers. He was about to try to negotiate with his superior officer when he heard a noise that chilled his blood – the mad clacking of giant arthropod legs on a hard surface.

  ‘Oh, shit, boss – I don’t think O’Riordan’s dancing with the locals back there.’

  Rocky joined the group, drawn back by the explosion and gunfire. He must also have heard the scrabbling of the unearthly creature as his face was white, making the black stubble on his cheeks and chin more pronounced. He continued to point his gun down the corridor but Sam noticed the muzzle shook slightly.

  ‘Soldiers, this time you will follow orders,’ Alex said. He pointed over his shoulder towards the sounds of mortal combat down the corridor. ‘This is just a distraction. The main game is behind that door. You must be ready for extreme force. Believe me, it’s waiting for you. I cannot allow us to be decimated before we even commence to fight.’

  Adira stepped forward with a deep scowl on her face, but Alex held up his hand before she could speak. ‘No. You must stand and fight here. You know what it will mean for your country if this facility fully develops the technology. You know what it could mean for all of us.’

  For a brief moment Adira looked as though she was going to argue. Then her shoulders slumped and she simply nodded.

  ‘I’ll buy you some time and catch up when I’m through,’ Alex said, but he didn’t meet her eyes when he said it. Sam guessed he expected to be a while.

  ‘Don’t forget to duck and weave,’ Sam said, and winked.

  Alex smiled and turned away down the corridor.

  Sam took a last look as his captain disappeared around the corner. ‘Ah crap.’ He shook his head and turned to the team. ‘Let’s go, people. We’re probably all about to be gassed to death anyway.’

  An image of his father jumped into his head as he remembered when things started to get really bad on their drought-affected farm. Sam had helped his father plough back in several fields of tinder-dry corn stalks so they could sow dry weather potatoes. Afterwards, while they shared cold drinks, his father had looked out at the fields and slapped him on the back. ‘Sammy, when the shit hits the fan, get outta the fan business.’ Sam smiled now and shook his head again: Too late, Pop.

  FORTY-FOUR

  The Arak facility had been Al Janaddi’s home for months; it had always felt like a high-tech cocoon – sterile, but comforting. Now its pristine walls made him feel claustrophobic and a little nauseous – as if it were a prison cell and he was awaiting execution.

  He looked at the six nervous scientists and technicians in the sphere room with him. The president’s four enormous Urakher bodyguards towered over them all.

  The Urakher lifted their sports bags onto the table and removed from them dark, heavy-looking vests. They removed their jackets and strapped the vests professionally into place. Why do they need those? Al Janaddi thought.

  The largest Urakher strode up to Al Janaddi, took him firmly by the upper arm and led him to the console. He pointed one enormous hand at the keyboards. ‘Begin the test, honourable Ahmad Al Janaddi, and please show me everything.’

  Al Janaddi blinked and swallowed. He had a feeling that the final page of his brilliant career was being turned. Whatever happened to the president would be upon his head. He had the intense feeling he had to tell someone, had to get a message out to the ruling council, or perhaps even to the intruders. The Americans surely wouldn’t let this happen; they’d stop the test and rescue him.

  ‘What does this show, and this?’ The Urakher pointed to the computer screens – they were covered in graphs, dials and long columns of numbers. ‘Quickly!’

  The man’s abrupt tone made Al Janaddi jump. ‘Ah, this room is the command centre for the entire Jamshid II sphere program. My fellow scientists and technicians monitor each area, each part of the process. This dial here controls the flow of plasma electrons in the beam; the screen gives the calculations and displays a three-dimensional image of the theoretical event being formed – its size, energy output and also the gross energy required to hold it in stasis.’ Al Janaddi pointed to another graph. ‘These figures and the information they provide are fed across to the magnetic domains so we can calibrate the energy currents within the synthetic gravitational field.’

  The Urakher pressed a key; nothing happened. He looked at the scientist’s face with such hostility and disdain that Al Janaddi felt bile jump into the back of his throat.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I need to enter my code or access to the system is locked.’ He began to type in some numbers – mistyping several times in his fear – until at last the screen rippled and the fields changed colour.

  He pointed to another screen that was covered in hundreds of small images of batteries. ‘These are representations of the thermoelectric power cubes – the screens go for many pages. As each battery, then each row, is filled, the pages scroll down. The bigger the Judgment Event, the more cubes should be filled and the battery image on the screen will turn from yellow to blue. Now the lead panel -’

  The Urakher grabbed the back of his collar, cutting him short. ‘Ready the test for commencement now, most honourable Al Janaddi, and tell me again how to control the size of the event. Tell me your password, tell me everything, and omit nothing or I will be forced to hurt you.’

  Al Janaddi gulped and felt the fullness of his bladder; he really needed to piss. The three other Urakher had herded his fellow scientists and technicians to the centre of the room and had taken up guard positions around the walls. His colleagues stared at him, their faces white and fearful. They seemed to be waiting for him to do something… but what?

  The Urakher shook him and Al Janaddi did the only thing he could think of. He began to pray.

  Alex pulled the KBELT laser from over his shoulder and picked up speed down the corridor. There were no more sounds coming from O’Riordan’s location and Alex found that more worrying than the sounds of combat.

  The curve of the corridor meant that he could only see about a dozen feet ahead. He slowed and pressed himself to the inside wall and reached out, not with his hands but with his senses. He paused for a moment as an image began to form in his mind. Alex was becoming adept at using his new skills. He knew he was still changing, growing, becoming different every day. He reached out again, this time hard. It felt like a spike was being driven through his head – from the inside out. He ground his teeth and pushed once more, regardless of the pain. The image took shape. The monster was there, just around the bend.

  He could perceive that O’Riordan was still alive, but his presence was weakening, f
ading like a photograph left out in the sun. He sensed something else too – the raw power and crude animal intelligence he had felt out in the desert and at the mouth of the cave. The creature was not able to reason, but was capable of planning an ambush. He knew that it was watching him in the same way he watched it. It knew he was coming; it was waiting for him.

  With O’Riordan still alive, Alex had no choice; he had to try to save his man, he had to engage. Oh God, it’s gonna be bad, he thought. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped out into the centre of the corridor.

  He was wrong: it was worse, much worse.

  This was the first time Alex had seen the creature clearly. In the harsh artificial light of the corridor, it was magnificent in its hideousness. It had reared up on its four hind legs, each as thick as Alex’s thigh at the top, but tapering to a black bristled point where it met the ground. Alex remembered a line from Mr Haniford’s long past literature class – ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’. More like somewhere a lot lower than either of those places, thought Alex.

  The strange being’s upper body was flared open like a massive insectoid cobra, and it held O’Riordan tightly to its core. Its smaller thoracic legs squeezed him softly, almost tenderly, undulating up and down as if it were milking him. The mandibles in its bullet-shaped head had opened and a sharp spike protruded into the man’s neck. Though Alex could not see O’Riordan’s face, he could sense he was still alive within that revolting embrace. Even as he watched, O’Riordan’s body collapsed, wrinkled and shortened. He was slowly being turned into an empty bag of skin as the creature contentedly sucked out and digested his bodily fluids. Alex groaned in despair.

  The creature’s two long eyestalks swivelled to fix on Alex, and he could see the multiple pupils in each. He tried to imagine the vision it received from those soulless triscopic bulbs. Alex couldn’t help thinking that the creature looked as though it belonged a mile deep under the ocean in some dark sunless trench, not standing in the middle of a surgically white corridor within the realm of man.

  He and the creature stood only a dozen feet apart, not moving, weighing each other up. He could sense no fear from it, not even wariness, just the savage confidence of a predator over its prey. Why shouldn’t it be confident? It had triumphed over every human it had encountered and knew their weapons had no effect. Alex was probably just another moving bag of fluid to be drained when it had finished with O’Riordan.

  Alex blinked several times as he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time – fear. The creature had easily bested him in the cave – it was faster, stronger and infinitely more savage. But this time I’ve got a surprise, he thought.

  The compressed packets of high energy shot out in a faster-than-light pulse from the bulbed muzzle of the laser and struck the creature in the upper body. They passed straight through its carapace, leaving several pencil-thin smoking holes. The creature, taken by surprise, dropped the shrunken husk that had been O’Riordan to the floor. Alex felt the beast’s scream of rage and pain in his head as it retracted its flared thorax, flattened its body and prepared to charge.

  Though he had struck it several times, there seemed to be little serious damage at all. The rifle’s high-energy setting was deadly to humans, but against this creature he might as well have been trimming its nails. He changed the setting to the lower-energy wide beam and fired again. The explosive punch struck the creature and rocked it back, causing its sharp legs to dig furrows in the floor. Small bits of carapace splintered away as connective cartilage was smashed from its ten-foot frame. He fired once again and was rewarded by one of its eyestalks exploding off the top of its head.

  The inhuman scream came again in his head, and then the creature charged. It came at him with a speed that almost overwhelmed him. One second it was twelve feet away and the next it was rearing up in his face. Time slowed for Alex as the creature shot out its raptorial claws, both heavily spiked blades moving so quickly that they actually created a shock wave in the air. Though Alex moved faster than a normal man could, all he had time to do was lessen the blades’ impact – he dropped and rolled, but not before the KBELT in his hands was sliced in two. One massive claw continued on to slash his head and Alex felt blood trickling down over his eye.

  He was thankful for the creature’s slight loss of depth perception due to the missing eye. Possibly it had also underestimated his own speed and agility. Alex knew it wouldn’t make that same mistake again. After his recent run-in, he knew it was smart enough to adapt its attack.

  Alex got to his feet and the creature once again flared open its thorax cavity, displaying gristly flaps and tendrils. Colour rippled over its front cartilage and abdominal plates as it finally recognised Alex for what he was – not food but an adversary. Its single eye fixed on the HAWC and its claws drew back ready to strike.

  Alex balanced on his toes, ready to duck or move as best he could, but he knew he couldn’t stay out of the way of those sharp blades forever. Now that the laser had been destroyed, he would have to use more conventional weapons. He withdrew his pistol and the long black Ka-Bar knife – probably useless but at least he was armed. He held the twelve-inch blade out to his side. The dark folded chromium steel of the Ka-Bar made it one of the hardest knives in the US military and it had a scalpel-sharp edge. Alex only needed two things: a lethal strike area, and an opportunity.

  All living creatures had a brain or central nervous system that controlled locomotion, logic and autonomous function. This thing had a head, so Alex assumed that its controlling organ was located there. He fired twice, delivering two unerring head-shots to the epicuticle plate where the eyestalks had met. The creature didn’t react at all, even though Alex could see small creases where the copper-jacketed lead bullets had glanced off the exoskeletal skull.

  It reared up to its full height and its giant alien form packed the corridor. Its subsonic scream filled Alex’s head like a thousand needles. Bands of colour pulsed up and down its body in an obvious aggressive challenge. It used one of its hind legs to scoop up O’Riordan’s lifeless body and pass it to its higher claws; then it tore the body down the middle – either to show Alex what was in store for him, or as a display of strength, the way the black mountain gorilla smashed trees and pounded branches into the earth to build its rage before it charged.

  Alex’s eyes widened momentarily at the desecration of his fellow HAWC’s body. Anger filled him. He gritted his teeth, and his hand on the knife handle tightened so fiercely the leather squealed in protest.

  Two powerful and deadly creatures from different worlds stood before each other, ready for battle. There would only be one survivor.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Sam, Rocky, Adira and Zach stood together in the DNA scanner booth. Sam looked up at the ceiling towards the gas vents. None of them had brought gas masks, as they had needed to travel light. Still, it didn’t really matter that they had no masks as many of the lethal or incapacitating gases today worked on the skin as well as the respiratory system. Gas masks didn’t save your life; they just stopped you from vomiting up your lungs before you died – which, admittedly, did leave a prettier corpse.

  ‘At least we have a way out,’ Lagudi said, jerking his head towards the steel door they had come through. A silver button the size of a coin was fixed on the wall at about waist height.

  Sam slid back one of the recessed doors in the room to reveal some clothing, dust-coated shoes and a thermos. He thought they probably belonged to one of the technicians who would wear sterile overalls to protect the hi-tech equipment. He drew the thermos out into the bright light, held it at both ends and turned it around slowly, looking at the detail on its surface.

  ‘Okay, this might work,’ he said. He pulled some plastic tape from a belt pouch, tore off a one-inch strip and laid it over a section of the thermos. He pressed it down, ripped it off and then held it up to the light. ‘Ever seen a fingerprint under a microscope? The ridges and t
roughs make the Grand Canyon look like a dip in the road. They’re rich in dirt, bacteria and oil – and in that oil… DNA.’

  He crossed himself twice and stuck the tape on the flat screen.

  There was a hissing sound. Zach covered his face.

  Alex needed to stay out of reach of the creature’s razor-sharp claws, but get in close enough to find some sort of vital organ. His money was still on the head, and probably his life too.

  Alex leapt at the creature, feinting to the left and going right. His plan was to use the wall to bounce up and at the creature’s head, which was quite a few feet above his own. His speed would have delighted the scientists back in the USSTRATCOM labs and amazed his fellow HAWCs, but in comparison to a creature that could move its attack claws fast enough to break the sound barrier, he was an easy target.

  While he was still in midair, the creature turned to track him with its remaining triscopic eye. It shot out its claws, striking towards Alex’s mid-section. Alex sensed the movement before he saw it and swivelled slightly, taking the blow on the remaining ceramic plates across his chest. The laboratory-hardened material shattered and his pectoral muscles were laid bare.

  There was a spray of blood and he was thrown ten feet down the corridor. Small fan-like structures waved at the end of the creature’s proboscis as it scooped at the air. The released blood and fluids must have excited it. It sped forward, probably intending to impale Alex on that hideous spike and suck him dry.

  As he sensed the creature moving in for the killer blow, Alex rolled fast and came to his feet. Even his rapid metabolism would take some time to knit the chest wound, and the bleeding needed to be staunched artificially or he would lose energy. The strike and his impact on the floor had not dislodged the knife and gun in his hands, but these now seemed like a feeble armoury against a high-speed tank of an animal with two spring-loaded machetes.

  In his mind, Alex could hear the creature’s squeal of triumph as it closed in for the kill. It has too many advantages. Gotta even things up a bit, he thought as he got to one knee and sighted along the pistol barrel. Too many advantages, but I’m betting you hunt primarily by vision.

 

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