‘He is confronting Durell?’
‘Yes.’
The Priest took a deep breath. ‘Maybe he needs a helping hand, then? We are standing here talking whilst the whole world is crumbling around our ears! We’ve got to help him ... to stop Durell ... to stop the quakes ...’
‘What about your God sending thunderbolts from the heavens to save us?’ interjected Remic, his M24 held loosely in battle-scarred fingers. ‘You seem to be an expert in that field, Priest. Maybe you could ask for a bit of celestial help?’
‘God helps those who help themselves,’ said The Priest primly. ‘Now ... gentlemen? Shall we go to Mr Carter’s aid? Or wait for him to be served in slices on a cold meat platter?’
Mongrel grabbed his weapon from Simmo’s battered hands and stalked towards his Comanche. ‘We’ll take my chopper,’ he said, squinting at The Priest. ‘And you can leave your fucking girlfriend behind.’
‘As you wish,’ said The Priest, fingering his rosary beads.
‘Simmo?’
‘Aye, lad?’
‘Fancy giving me a bit of a hand?’
Simmo prodded the Sig P7 9mm into the small of The Priest’s back. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he snarled through a demonic mask of drying blood.
‘That will be unnecessary,’ soothed The Priest, his dark eyes hard, mouth a grim line, ‘My mission is not to kill Carter; my mission is to stop the destruction of the Earth.’
‘We’ll be the judge of that,’ said Simmo sombrely.
The castle was crumbling.
Jam squeezed his bulk through the corridors, up the steep steps and into the tower room where Durell stood, facing the rippling liquid screen. Images flickered through it like gun-bursts, flashes of destruction from across the globe; scenes of his Nex armies warring with soldiers of every nation ...
‘I don’t understand,’ screamed Durell suddenly, without turning. ‘Why has the quake come here? What the fuck did I do wrong? What the fuck is the QIV
thinking
of?’
He reached down, grasped the black cube and yanked it free of its housing. But nothing changed - the castle still rocked, pitching violently ... and now there came the whistle and crump of shells from Spiral’s few remaining tanks. They exploded in the courtyard down below, adding to the cacophony of insane noise and the rocking, heaving insanity that had become the world.
‘Maybe the processor is betraying you,’ said Jam softly.
Durell whirled. ‘Come on, we’ll take the helicopter on the roof. It does not matter - the quakes are in progress, the world’s armies are weakened, the Nex are strong! We cannot fail now, we must return to Egypt, from there we can—’
‘Maybe it is the LVA, returning to haunt you.’
Durell stopped then and fixed his stare on the towering figure of Jam. He licked his lips with a small dark tongue. His eyes narrowed. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘By making me Nex you promised me Heaven.’
Durell nodded, smiling, moving as if to push past Jam—
‘But you delivered me into a waking Hell.’
Jam’s claw lashed out, hammering against Durell and throwing him back across the narrow tower room. He struck the bench on which the dark screen rested and it toppled to the ground, smashing with a flare of obsidian fire. Black fluid poured over the stonework, eating into it like acid and burning with dark flames.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said Durell calmly.
‘Give me the processor.’
‘Come and take it.’ Durell shrugged himself free of his robes and beneath them huge coils of distorted muscle tensed. Between the two men - the two Nex - the dark fire from the smashed screen flared up and danced violently, silently, a barrier forcing them apart, a wall through which neither could pass ...
They waited patiently, slitted copper eyes staring at one another.
‘If we do not leave here, the quake will tear down this castle,’ said Durell as the flames started to die down. Holes appeared in the stone flags from the powerful black screen acid, expanding circular portals showing a distant drop to the hall below. ‘We will both die.’
‘Then we both die. Give me the processor.’
Durell said nothing.
The quake was ripping through the Austrian mountainside. Both Nex stumbled as the tower swayed, and more shells could be heard raining down. Outside the tower they heard the whine of helicopter rotors.
Durell leapt suddenly at Jam and they smashed into one another—
As the quake tore the castle apart.
The tower collapsed and millions of tonnes of ancient stone fell. The castle buckled and heaved, was taken in the mouth of the quake and pulverised by mammoth jaws of rock and iron.
Stone sprayed out from the huge crater into which the castle sank and was swallowed, was consumed - as if in some ritual slaughter, some titanic revenge.
The mountains reclaiming their own.
The Alps taking back what was rightfully theirs: quarried and stripped and hewn and now absorbed - once again - into nature.
The roaring of the quake’s gradual settling lasted for hours, slowly rumbling to a halt and returning peace and tranquillity to this quiet corner of Austria. It left behind a heavy cloud of stone dust, as well as torn earth, swallowed rock and a crater of war in the landscape. Gradually, the stone dust settled.
The castle had gone.
Nothing moved in the stillness.
The snow continued to fall ... and soon covered everything in a blanket of virgin white.
Carter stood next to Mongrel on the mountainside. Below, in the valley, the tanks were retreating.
‘They died together,’ said Mongrel softly. ‘We saw them both go down.’
Carter nodded. ‘Swallowed by the quake that they created.’
‘Spiral will send PopBots to scan for traces ... when things finally return to normal.’
‘What’s happening with the Nex?’
‘There’s been wholesale slaughter worldwide. Human casualties numbering many hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, I imagine - both civilian and military. Who can foresee the damage of the quake? Not me! But the soldiers of the world are beating the Nex back ... and without the QIV’s influence world military systems are slowly coming back on-line. According to ECube reports coming in every few seconds from different sources - tanks and fighters, satellite comms and weapons systems - the whole fucking WarGrid is self-repairing. Once everything’s up and running we’ll wipe those fucking Nex out once and for all.’
Carter nodded, his face grey with exhaustion and pain; haunted.
‘I’ve learned one thing from all this,’ Mongrel went on.
‘What’s that?’
‘You do not fuck with Nature.’ Mongrel reached over, placed his hand on Carter’s shoulder. ‘You OK, mate?’
Carter stared at Mongrel with war-torn eyes, filled with the horror of a thousand battles he never wished to relive. He took a deep breath of crisp cold mountain air, and with shaking blood-crusted fingers lit a cigarette thoughtfully provided by Mongrel. His broken arm was in a tight sling, and he clasped the silver box containing the Avelach to his chest as if it might bring
him
strength.
‘Yeah, I’ll fucking live. But we need to move, and we need to move
now.
Are you on for sharing a flight back to London? To Natasha and Nicky?’
‘Be my fucking pleasure, mate,’ said Mongrel, nodding.
They climbed into the Comanche and, as the sun was setting behind the mountains and withdrawing its light from a snowy landscape of incredible white clean beauty, the machine leapt into the air. With engines thrumming, it slewed sideways through the valley and was joined by a second Comanche piloted by Heneghan and containing The Priest, Roxi and Simmo. The two machines turned smoothly and suddenly accelerated, rotors thumping over the Austrian snow.
T
he two Comanche war machines powered across Europe. Carter squatted in the back of one helicopter, face drawn, pain enfolding his awareness as he clutched the silver box to his chest and gazed out over the sprawling chaos below.
Occasionally the world would shake, accompanied by sounds of thunder. Carter stared out with bleak eyes, his soul calm for the moment and at least thankful that Durell had been halted in his quest for control... but in the same heartbeat he felt terrified at the state in which he might find Natasha when he finally arrived back in London.
It had been a long, hard flight.
And it was far from over.
As they flew, Mongrel ensconced in the HIDSS helmet and the bullet-riddled Comanche juddering around them, rapid-fire messages and comms flashed through on the ECubes - rattling with intel from the Spiral mainframes at a colossal rate.
According to the messages received, the earthquakes were gradually subsiding. Spiral HQs were collating data from agencies, Spiral operatives and governments on a global scale - sorting information and sending it out to their teams. Somehow, the QIV had infiltrated many of Spiral’s comms networks, including many of the ECube’s functions - distorting information and corrupting the Spiral databases. Spiral were relaying messages through the temporary AnComm Posts, analogue transmitters and receivers that acted as ECube data bridges and had at least managed to slow the QIV’s digital assault.
Carter toyed with his ECube, idly watching flashes of information. The world was in the process of getting its shit together after this act of global terrorism under the stomping boots of the earthquakes - finally. Whole armies were on the move, fighter jets were securing and patrolling airspace, navies were steaming ahead, submarines patrolling cold deep waters.
Carter shook his head in disbelief.
He remembered casting the schematics for the QIII military processor into the dark sea, and being thankful that the processor was better off dead. Instead, unbeknown to him, the QIII’s successor had been almost complete, almost operational and destroying the QIII had been merely a stalling tactic on his part.
Carter gazed down at the silver box against his chest, running his battered fingers over the finely carved dull silver surface. His fingers fumbled for a moment, and with a tiny click the box opened. He stared down at the simple black disc. His finger moved forward to touch it... and he paused.
Something seemed to whine within him, as if some sixth sense was warning him of the dangers of playing with this awesome and terribly powerful machine. The Avelach. Carter frowned, and placed his finger against the surface—
White light pierced his mind, a fan of sparkling laser fingers that circled, and then disappeared to a needle point. The metal was cold and preternaturally smooth under his touch.
And then—
His pain soothed away. He felt the white light spread through his mind and with a shiver he felt it
examining
him. A tiny itching of flesh came from his bullet wound, and then he felt something moving through him, something hard and metallic gliding between his ribs. He wriggled in discomfort - the metal object moved under and
through
his flesh, and then dropped out onto the fabric of the Comanche’s seat. He felt his arm straighten, forcing its way through the bindings that held it strapped tightly in place - there came the tiniest of clicks and he
felt
the bone knit together, the swelling around the damaged bone and flesh reducing in swelling.
Carter shivered again - and realised that his eyes were closed against the white light. He opened them, breathed deeply, and his weariness had gone. Not with any great jolt - but gently, as if drugs had just soothed away his troubles as he reclined in a hot bath.
Carter withdrew his finger from the Avelach and, reaching behind him, lifted the flattened stub of metal that had been resting inside him. He stared at it - the flattened sliver of bullet - in wonder at first, and then with a sudden, growing
hope.
He flexed his arm, and noticed that the loss of skin from the motorbike crash had gone - to be replaced by a perfect sheen of pale newborn skin. His breathing came in shallow, panting gasps.
‘Can this thing go any faster?’
‘It’s going as fast as it can, Carter.’
‘Well, push it
harder.’
‘I
am
fucking pushing, Carter.’
Carter slumped back and slowly, with care and respect, closed the silver box. He stared at the finely carved inscriptions. The whorls were infinitely delicate, and peering close he could see that the work was truly magnificent even to his untrained eye.
Carter licked his lips.
Fear suddenly leapt into his mind ...
‘What if I am too late?’ he muttered.
‘Eh?’
‘Nothing, Mongrel. Just fly.’
‘Weather’s getting bad.’
‘Is The Priest still with us?’
‘Da, Carter, he is. We keep close eye on him, good buddy, not you worry. Simmo keep Sig in The Priest’s back, make sure he not on special mission from Spiral.’
Carter shrugged, grinning sourly, and gazed down over the insanity of a crumbled,
crushed
world.
Night had fallen. And with it had come the rain.
The Comanche helicopters flew in over the English Channel, crossing near Dover with the distant streak of white cliffs shimmering through the gloom. Carter watched them flash by in a blur and turned, gazing back over the rain-hammered expanse of sea.