Dark Rising

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, fading 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.