Dark Rising

FORTY-EIGHT

Sam lay crumpled on the floor. His arm was bent at an impossible angle, his eyes were swollen almost shut, and a vicious knife wound had parted the synthetic fibres of his combat suit to slice open his torso from collarbone to navel. It looked as if the Urakher had been indulging himself by killing the HAWC slowly. He was obviously an expert with a knife and Alex guessed he had been looking forward to inflicting all manner of torture on the fallen man before the final killing blow.

Now his blade weaved back and forth as if slowly slicing the air in front of him – perhaps he was deciding where to cut his foe next. Alex knew the blade – a Karud dagger, as old as Persia itself: fire-forged steel, thin and slightly curved. Its ancient design was intended to penetrate chainmail armour – and it had performed its job well against the HAWC suit’s toughened fibres.

Alex knew Sam needed his help or he’d be dead soon. But he also felt the distortion from within the sphere room and judged that the large bodyguard at the console was initiating the black hole event. The scenarios that Adira and Zachariah had outlined in their initial briefing would be realised unless he stopped the man immediately.

The Urakher that had been torturing Sam now had his eyes fixed on Alex and started to move in his direction. He held the curved dagger out in front of him and wore a ghastly smile as he closed the distance. Alex noticed the blade was still wet with Sam’s blood and his own teeth ground together in anger.

He looked to Adira and saw that she was trying to force herself into a sitting position, still half-unconscious and very weak. Like Sam, she needed medical attention fast; but she was alive and, at least for now, not in any immediate danger. Alex was preparing to engage the large Urakher approaching him when he saw Zachariah rise to his feet from under a table; he was talking softly to himself and nodding as though receiving instructions. Alex couldn’t risk the young Israeli scientist being hurt or killed just when he needed his expertise to disable the black hole generator. The urgency was increasing – Alex had to take down both of the giant guards quickly.

The Urakher at the console was fully occupied, but the one that had tortured Sam was moving in to attack – Alex’s choice was made for him.

Alex still held O’Riordan’s broken Ka-Bar knife in his hand. He stared hard at the approaching man and gritted his teeth as he thought of Sam’s battered form and the look of enjoyment on the giant’s face. Alex smiled without a trace of humour.

The Urakher slowed and his own smile dropped. Perhaps there was something in Alex’s burning gaze that urged caution. He was nearly a head taller than Alex, but from his careful movements Alex could tell he was now wary. Perhaps it was the total lack of fear in Alex’s eyes, or the sense of danger that he carried with him. Then Alex saw the man’s eyes travel down to his wounds again and the smile returned.

That’s right, I’m hurt, I’ll be an easy kill. Now hurry up. Time was running out, and Alex felt another distortion wave pass over the complex. This one didn’t dissipate; it remained to create a constant sense of illness and total physical… wrongness.

The Urakher weaved the curved blade slowly before him, feinted to the left and then swung back like a striking snake to the right – a manoeuvre that would have caught a normal man off guard and impaled him through the neck. Alex ducked under the blade and gripped his own tighter. He didn’t have a lot of time left. He knew he could simply disarm or incapacitate the large man. But he had seen the twisted wrecks that remained of some of his comrades and the pleasure that these giant beasts had drawn from their torture. For Alex, they had forfeited any right to mercy – there would be no prisoners taken today.

The Urakher struck out again. This time Alex blocked the blade and moved in close, bringing the broken Ka-Bar up with his full force under the man’s chin, up through the oral cavity, through the palate and into the frontal lobe of the brain. The Urakher’s arms dropped to his sides and his own curved blade fell from his fingers. He wasn’t dead yet, but soon would be.

Alex held him upright with one hand. He lifted the blade slightly and the big man’s feet left the floor. Alex looked up into his eyes. ‘This is HAWC steel – you can keep it.’ He let the man fall with the knife still in place.

Another wave of nausea and dizziness passed through his body, making him grunt and stagger. The room was starting to blur – the black hole was beginning to flex its muscles and test its bounds. He only had a few more minutes. He turned his attention to the giant at the console.

*

The last Urakher had locked the plasma beam feed rate on maximum and then used the dead scientist’s password to sign out of the system. He looked up, as though seeing through the ceiling and into the heavens, and yelled a final prayer before wrenching the keyboard from the console and smashing it over his knee.

He sucked in a deep victorious breath. The air around him felt thick and congealed; the mercury fillings in his teeth started to tingle and his vision began to distort. He turned and saw two men approaching – one a skinny youth, who he ignored; the other, much more formidable. It was this one he faced with a broad smile. He opened his arms wide as if to embrace the man before him. In the palm of each hand he held a small metal box. Wires ran from the boxes down his sleeves and the outlines of large packets were visible circling his waist.

This was his final duty – his final gift to the Mahdi. There would be no interference to the Day of Judgment.

Alex took in the large man, the wires trailing down his sleeves and the explosives around his waist. He gambled on the design being a standard detonation vest. Usually that meant an immediate initiation switch in one hand and a failsafe button in the other. He should have about ten seconds on the delayed failsafe button. If he was right, he’d get one chance. And a few more seconds was all he would need.

Zachariah was walking towards the large man, his gun up and ready to fire. Alex called to the young Israeli.

‘Dr Shomron – no! Go for the glass. Zach – shoot the glass!’

Alex wasn’t sure Zach had heard until the young man moved his gun a few inches to the left and fired the rest of his clip. Seven bullets hit the lead-plated glass and left snowy circles in its four-inch-thick surface. Alex would have liked a closer spread, but at least Zach had hit the window with all of his shots – it would have to do.

The Urakher laughed and said something in Farsi – probably to do with Zach’s perceived bad aim.

Alex moved past the large table in the centre of the room; its surface was covered with papers, pens and overflowing ashtrays, and Mostafa Hossein’s blood. Both Alex and the Urakher were playing for time. Alex guessed that his opponent wanted to wait till the last moment to detonate his explosives. Though he probably believed that the Judgment Event was irreversible, he wouldn’t want to take the chance that his bomb would somehow disable it.

Alex took another step – he just needed to be a little closer. He bunched up his muscles and prepared to act. As he went past the table he opened his arms wide as if showing he had no weapons in his hands. The Urakher broadened his smile and shrugged.

Alex moved faster than the Urakher’s eyes could follow – he swept up one of the glass ashtrays from the table and launched it like a spinning disc at the brutal giant’s outstretched right hand. It was a calculated gamble – the fingers of the right hand were flat on the detonation trigger, whereas the left hand hovered just over the trigger.

The ashtray struck the man’s wrist with a crack that could be heard across the room and the fingers of his right hand went limp. Surprise rather than pain registered on the giant’s face, and his fingers immediately depressed the left-hand switch – but by then Alex had closed the distance.

The Urakher weighed around 250 pounds, but Alex easily lifted him above his head. He threw the struggling body at the glass window with every ounce of strength he could muster. As he’d hoped, the bullet strikes had weakened the glass just enough to compromise its structural integrity – the Urakher burst through just as the explosives detonated.

Alex held his arm up over his face, but there was no heat. The blast plume was a magnificent orange and red, but was soundless. No debris flew towards Zach or Alex; instead, the Urakher, the thermals from the explosion and all its lethal debris streaked into the black hole to become more energy for it to digest.

The black curtain advanced another inch towards the containment walls.

Klaxon horns screamed all over the facility and above the ground. The electronic wail bounced off mountain sides and rolled down the cliffs to the city of Arak. Hundreds of heads turned in confusion and fear.

Regular troops standing idle and squads of Takavaran stationed on the perimeter of the laboratory froze and looked at each other for mere seconds before acting. They all knew what the alarms heralded: the installation was compromised – nuclear breakout.

Some men threw meals aside, some dropped guns, others didn’t even bother dressing. All headed for the trucks. They all knew the safest place was a long way away.