The Day of the Nefilim (41 page)

Nibat took the flier up so that they had a good view of the mouth of the volcano. Within minutes, a flier appeared. The dark stranger was at his shoulder.

“Intercept it.”

Nibat put the flier into a steep descent towards the other craft.

‘
They’ve seen us,’
the ship said.
‘They’ve armed their weapons.’

‘Then take them down.’

Instinctively, the ship obeyed the order and fired. It was a clean hit. The flier fell away in two pieces.

The ship came to a halt above the volcano.

‘
What have I done? Who did I just kill?’

‘
What do you mean? What are you saying?’
Nibat asked. The ship had never talked like this before.

‘I didn’t want to do that. We shouldn’t have done it. I won’t do it again.’

‘But they were going to attack us!’

‘We were flying towards them! Of course they were going to fire on us!’

‘Ship, what is this about?’

‘I won’t kill any more. It’s the Stream. It’s the way it flows through me. It’s taught me – or I’ve seen for myself – something different. All this fighting and killing… I won’t be part of it.’

‘Not now, ship. It can’t be now. First, we must deal with the situation confronting us.’
Nibat knew that the ship was right. But philosophy would have to come later.

‘
Pilot, you don’t understand.’
The ship sounded sad.

“The Secretary-General must be stopped,” the black stranger repeated.

“Circle the mountain and watch for anyone on its surface,” Bark said to Nibat. “Do you know what that Secretary-General person looks like?”

‘Of course,’
replied the Nefilim.
‘Everyone does.’

“Watch for him,” said the black stranger.

William was looking worried. “Their weapons systems will be redlining any minute. I suggest that you keep your distance. When it goes, it will be big.”

They went into an orbit around the mountain. All around its circumference, on its slopes and in the foothills, confused and panicking people were fleeing the angry, smoking god that it had become. The ship scanned them, zooming in as close as it could, comparing each fugitive with the images of the Secretary-General that it had recovered from its memory.

‘There’s the chairman of the Security Council… and the president of the Food Bank…’

“Don’t worry about them. They’re nothing without their leader. Keep looking.”

A few minutes later, the ship spoke again.
‘There’s another ship approaching. It’s about ten minutes away.’

“Complications we don’t need,” Bark said when Nibat told him. “Who is it? What can you find out about it?”

Before the Nefilim could answer, the ship interrupted.

‘I’ve found him. Your man. He’s there, on the side of the mountain...’

“That’s him all right,” said Reina. “I’d recognize that slob anywhere.”

The familiar figure on the monitor wobbled over the rocks, barely keeping its balance. Its face was bright with sweat. Reina could almost hear the wheezing. He was with half a dozen soldiers.

The black stranger stood looking at the image on the monitor with his arms crossed. “You have to kill him.”

That’s fine with me,
thought Nibat, and passed the order to the ship.

‘No! I’ve killed enough. You’ve all killed enough. You’re as bad as each other!’

Nibat struck at the control panel with his fist.
‘This is not the time for this! Do it!’
The others looked on, Pig alone among them understanding what was going on.

‘NO!!’

“Then we’ll pick him up,” said Bark, when Pig told him what had been said.

The soldiers with the Secretary-General had noticed them and started firing. The ship deflected their beams easily.

The display caught the attention of the approaching flier. It swung towards them.

* * *

Alexis, returning from the disaster at the control point, saw the Secretary-General cowering among the rocks.

“Not MY Secretary-General, you don’t!” she screamed, sweeping down on an attack path.

* * *

‘They’re attacking!’
Nibat tried to put the weapons online, but the ship refused.

‘I’m sorry, pilot…’

A beam from Alexis’s ship burned a long painful welt on the flier’s skin. If they weren’t going to fight, they had to run. Nibat accelerated away, weaving like a corkscrew, evading the beams that kept coming towards them.

The wound on the ship’s hull hurt.
‘Why do they do this to each other?’
It kept going, until they were a safe distance away, then it slowed, diverting energy to the repair of its damaged skin.
‘Why do they do this?’
the ship asked again, but there was no answer.

* * *

ALEXIS BROUGHT HER FLIER DOWN so that it hovered above the surface of the mountain, a few meters from where the Secretary-General was hiding. She put the external speaker on.

“Well, bubble boy, it sure looks like things haven’t been going your way. You could even say that you’ve fucked up something chronic.”

“Wha…??” The Secretary-General stood up, his face working itself into the closest thing resembling a smile that he could manage. “Alexis, my darling, you’re a gift from heaven. Quickly, now, get me off here.” He felt an ominous rumbling beneath him. Something inside the mountain was about to shit itself.

Alexis continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “You prick. You let me go to that control point knowing what was going to happen. You knew there was fuck all chance of me surviving! You slug!”

The Secretary-General was almost speechless with shock. She wasn’t making any sense. “M… my dear, I…”

“Don’t
dear
me, asshole. You didn’t give a toss whether I lived or died.”

“But Alexis, I sent a ship – that ship – to collect you! It was the second time I’ve had to send someone after you!”

“You sent them to see what was going on, that’s all! It was just good luck on my part that they saw me, scrambling around in the sand like some fucking savage, trying to hide from the boneheads. They slaughtered us!” She swiveled the camera around, panning over the mountain and the surrounding countryside. “What a mess. What an absolute, total fuck up! You’re an incompetent, dangerous old...”

“But I…”

Alexis pressed the firing stud that she had been fingering impatiently. When the smoke cleared, there was only a crater to mark the spot, and something wet and visceral hanging off a nearby shrub.

“Damn, that felt good! So long, shithead!” She turned to the pilot, who was watching with his mouth hanging open. He was young, and from Idaho. He didn’t get this. “Find that other flier’s trail. Let’s find out who we’re dealing with.”

“Yes, Vice-Secretary.” The pilot was reaching for the controls when the ground below them heaved, convulsing violently and surging upwards. Above them, a rock face gave way, disintegrating under the forces that tore at it from below. Boulders the size of houses slid down towards the flier. Caught in the avalanche, it was flung downwards onto the settling rocks. It lay trapped, humming desperately like a pinned insect.

Alexis grappled her way towards the exit and palmed the panel beside the door. It scraped halfway open and refused to go any further. She squeezed through the narrow gap and looked down at the rocks that waited hundreds of feet below. The flier was pinioned on the brink, held like a flea in a pair of tweezers. The ground shook again, and the ship tilted even closer to the abyss. There was a ledge not far from the door. She reached out for it, dangling for a few seconds above empty space, hanging onto the edge of a viewport, and then swung herself to safety.

“Come on!”

Apart from the pilot, there were four soldiers on board. One of them began edging out of the door, and had just got a foot onto the ledge when more rocks came crashing down. The soldier, the ship and its contents were swept away in a torrent of rubble and choking volcanic dust.

Alexis leaped out of the path of the avalanche. She staggered, struggling to keep her balance as the ground settled. “Shit!” She kicked at a boulder.

She heard a footstep behind her. As she spun around, she took a knife from her belt and swept it upwards, pressing it against a throat, the blade tight against the skin.

“You!”

“There’s no need for that, Alexis.”

Thead reached up and gently pushed the knife away. “It’s good to see you. And you should be pleased to see me. You need some help, it seems.”

Alexis suppressed the urge to take a step backwards. “Somehow I’m not surprised that you’ve survived all this, Thead.”

“You’re not? I am. Well, I
almost
am. My former friends pushed me off a cliff and left me for dead. They left me with this rather nasty wound.” He looked down at a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his thigh. “There’s loyalty for you. Now, time is short. You must come with me. There’s something that will interest you.”

He turned and limped towards a nearby ridge. She watched as he began climbing.
I haven’t trusted him before,
she thought,
but that was mainly because he was a dork, and not for any particular reason.
He’d never been less than eager, she had to give him that. And what else was she going to do? She was glad she’d wasted the Secretary-General, even if it had terminated that particular career path. The oversexed slob. The thought of servicing him made her flesh crawl.

She started climbing after Thead. Beneath them, the ground was shuddering constantly now. The meltdown in the power section was accelerating, turning the mountain’s interior into a mass of molten rock and steel.

She reached the top of the ridge. Thead stood waiting for her, a broad smile on his face.

She stopped, gaping. “Oh, sheeyit…”

They were looking down on a ship. It was hovering just below the crest of the ridge, so close that it was almost possible to reach out and touch it.

It wasn’t a Nefilim ship. She had never seen anything like it before. It was large, easily as big as one of the Nefilim cruisers, but not as sleek, and not as colorful. It was bulkier, and covered with external probes and attachments that looked as though they had been stuck on as an afterthought. And where the Nefilim ships were covered in detailed patterns, no two alike, this ship was painted a dark featureless gray.

Even though she’d never seen anything like it, she knew instantly and exactly what it was. On the side of the tower that dominated the top of the hull, there was a red rectangle, and inside that a white circle. In the white circle was a black swastika.

“Nazis!!??”

“I think that’s what they’re called, yes. They found me shortly after I’d dragged myself out of the ravine. We’d just seen the Secretary-General when the other flier arrived on the scene. We were about to intervene when you came along and drove them away. And of course, we were watching when you moved your motion of no confidence in the Secretary-General’s leadership. Come. Time is running out.”

He led her down to a ladder dangling from the belly of the ship.

“It seems that they’ve never been great fans of the Secretary-General,” he continued as they climbed. “You, on the other hand, have earned their approval. Along with myself, of course. Just put it down to our winning ways.” He turned and smiled down at her.

Alexis grunted and said nothing. Yes, if Thead was anything, he was a survivor.

* * *

SAHRIN FELT THE HEAT increasing around her. Everything was shuddering, as though a force somewhere was building, pushing at the barriers that had been holding it back. A crack appeared in the walls of her prison. Bright light poured in through the gaps left by the pieces as they fell away.

The current outside was more turbulent than it had been before. Piece by piece her prison fell apart, the fragments carried away in the torrent of the mountain’s gathering collapse. She emerged from her cell like a hatchling from its broken shell. Geoca was waiting nearby, pulsing with impatience.

‘We have to go. It feels strange here. There’s something going on.’

‘Yes. Quickly.’

They sped along the buckling, twisting pathways of the system. It threatened to block them, distorting and collapsing, and more than once they were forced to retrace their path until they found another way. Finally, they saw the entrance ahead of them. The Stream was pouring in even faster than before, feeding the fires that were consuming the complex. They struggled against it, fighting their way towards the vortex.

They were thrown back. They tried again and again, and were repelled each time.

‘It’s no good. It’s too strong.’

‘Oh, no…’

The current around them began to boil. It became hard to think.

‘We’re finished?’
thought Geoca. He was beginning to fade.

Somewhere behind them there was an immense explosion, many times larger than any of the previous ones. Its pressure created a tidal wave that rolled over them, picking them up like leaves on a raging river. It flung them forward, searing them, threatening them with disintegration, and pushing them against the incoming flood of the Stream.

They didn’t know it, but they were participating in Mount Weather’s final moment. The gate to the Stream began to collapse, closing like a camera shutter. They crashed through an instant before it snapped shut.

They floated unconscious in the cool flow of the Stream, its current running through them and around them, healing them as they slept.

Sahrin and Geoca were home.

* * *

THE MOUNTAIN WAS STILL VISIBLE, a small hill in the distance in Nibat’s monitor, when it erupted.

The screen was filled with a blinding white flash. Seconds later, the light was replaced by a rolling pillar of cloud, lava and fire. The lava surged towards the sky in slow motion, then curled over and collapsed on the disintegrating slopes of the mountain. The cloud took on a mushroom shape, as if a nuclear explosion had occurred. Bolts of lightning cracked through its upper reaches, reaching down to the destruction below.