Evil Star

CONTROL CENTRE

Darkness had already fallen as the Incas took their positions, stretching out in a long line across the sand in front of the compound. Matt couldn’t believe he was with them. A thousand years before, the Inca army had swept across South America: fast, merciless and unstoppable. Now their descendants were at war again and they were here because he and Pedro had called them. Pedro was right in the middle of them, next to Atoc. He didn’t look afraid. Anyone watching might have thought he was in command. Matt hardly recognized him as the beggar boy he had met in the streets of Lima. With every minute that passed, Pedro was becoming more like the figure he had seen on the gold disc – Manco Capac, the first lord of the Incas.

The razor-tipped wire of the perimeter fence loomed up in front of them. Atoc gave a signal, lowering his palm towards the sand and at once everyone dropped to their knees. It was ten o’clock at night but the compound was still active, with lights burning in many of the buildings and the occasional vehicle crossing from one side to the other, its engine whining like an oversized mosquito.

Atoc pointed at the radio mast and spoke quietly in his own language. Matt understood what he was saying. This was the primary target. Once the transmitter fell, Salamanda would be unable to control his satellite – his silver swan. Matt glanced upwards. Already the stars were appearing in the night sky. He could see them twinkling over the mountains, falling into positions that had been dictated for them twenty-six thousand years ago. But one of them was a fake, a ton of aluminium and steel, sneaking in to complete a deadly combination. Which one of them was it? Matt thought he could see a pinprick of light moving faster than the others – but he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that the swan was up there, just as it had been in his dream, and that, unless they stopped it, it would soon be in place.

Two of the Incas shuffled forward and took up positions closer to the wire, crouching on one knee. They were each holding a spear, a three-metre length of wood whose point had been hardened in flames. Silently, they waited. Atoc took one last look around, then nodded. The two Incas ran a few paces and threw the spears, aiming upwards. Matt was astonished by their strength and precision. The spears flew into the night, rising above the compound. There were two soft thuds and, high up in the watchtowers, two guards turned and crumpled. One disappeared from sight. The other slumped forward and was still, his head and arms draped over the side. The spear had gone straight through him.

The attack had begun – but they still had to get inside the compound, and that meant passing through the electronic gates. Atoc signalled a second time and a low, open-backed truck covered in tarpaulin rolled up to the security barrier. The driver – bored and unshaven – leant out of the window and hooted as if he was in a hurry to get home. Three guards, all of them armed, came out to meet him. They were moving warily. Matt guessed that they would have been told to allow nobody in. Not tonight. The entire compound would be on a state of alert.

“Quien es usted? Que desea?”

The words sounded faint and distant. The driver muttered something, but so quietly that the first of the guards had to lean into the cabin to hear what he said. It was a mistake. Matt saw a hand lash out, clutching the guard around the neck. At the same time, the tarpaulin was thrown back and two figures leapt out, each swinging a club with a star-shaped head. A second later, all three guards were unconscious or dead. The driver raised a hand towards Atoc.

“Here we go,” Richard whispered.

Matt nodded. It was incredible to think of these age-old weapons being used to storm a twenty-first-century research centre, but so far the Incas had proved themselves to be effective – and deadly.

The entire line of men rose up from the desert floor and began to move forward. At the same time, the men from the truck had slipped into the guard house: the barrier was raised and the electronic gates slid open to let them in. Matt’s mouth was dry. It seemed almost too easy. Was there nobody in the compound keeping a lookout? But the guards in the watch-towers were already dead and – he reminded himself – the Incas were all wearing dark clothes. Even if anyone did happen to be looking, the army would blend into the grey emptiness of the desert. They were silent and just about invisible.

Pedro was the first in. Then came Atoc and the others, spreading out across the roads and walkways, finding shelter against the nearest walls. The compound lay ahead of them and for the moment there was nobody in sight. Only the lights behind the windows and the distant hum of machinery warned them that they were not alone. Richard and Matt were among the last to enter. So they had the clearest view of what happened next.

A group of four Incas ran over to the radio mast and began to climb it. Atoc and the others were covering them, looking out for anyone who might approach. Still nobody knew they were there. But then, at the very last minute, a dead man gave them away. It was the guard in the watchtower who had been shot. Quite suddenly he fell forward, plunged through the air and hit a corrugated roof with a thunderous crash. Nobody moved. Nobody even breathed. Was it possible that such a loud noise could have gone unheard?

A klaxon rang out, shattering the still of the night. At the same time, searchlights exploded into life, and what a few moments before had been no more than a gathering of dark shadows and half-seen shapes was instantly blazing white. Every one of the Incas was exposed. Matt and Richard, crouching together in a flat, open area of asphalt and rubble, were the worst placed of all. Doors crashed open. Guards appeared. A machine gun began to chatter. Pieces of brickwork were blown out of the walls. A whole group of Incas were sent flying to the ground, rolling in a hail of bullets. Richard grabbed Matt and pulled him across to a pile of fuel drums. Part of him knew that it was insane to hide behind gallons of petrol during a gunfight. Another part told him that surely Salamanda’s men wouldn’t be mad enough to fire in this direction.

The Incas were scattering, trying to find cover. More shots were being fired. There were guards on the roofs. The door of the largest building opened and a man stepped out, a pistol clasped in one hand. Seemingly unconcerned by the chaos all around him, he took careful aim and fired. One of the climbers who had made it half-way up the radio mast cried out and fell to the ground. Matt felt his blood go cold. He knew the man who had just fired the shot. It was Rodriguez, the police captain he had met in Lima. As Matt watched, he took cover in the doorway, at the same time barking out an order to someone behind him. What was the police chief doing in the compound? It was no surprise that he was working for Salamanda. But it seemed he had now abandoned his normal duties completely, to take over security here.

Something glinted in the hard light and a spear hurtled past Rodriguez, burying itself in the door. Rodriguez laughed, showing bared teeth, and fired a second shot. Matt saw something go whirling across the empty space in front of a building: three copper balls, tied together with cords. They vanished into the darkness and a moment later a guard stepped off the roof, the cords wrapped around his throat. He crashed down in front of the police chief and lay twitching on the ground.

More machine-gun fire. There seemed to be guards everywhere, pouring out of doors and taking up positions across the compound. Matt’s heart sank. They were obviously outnumbered. And where was Pedro? He was beginning to regret coming here with the Incas. He couldn’t help them. There was nothing he could do. Or was there? He and Richard were in front of a small brick building with a skull and crossbones painted on the side and the same word he had seen at the airport. Peligro. Danger. There was some sort of machinery humming inside.

“Richard!” he called.

Richard understood. He drew back his foot and, using all his strength, kicked open the door. Matt hurried in. The building was filled with machines and heavy-duty fuse boxes, each one with silver handles set in the ON position. Together, Richard and Matt began to turn them off. If they could cut the power supply to the compound, perhaps they could interrupt the signals being sent into space.

There was a buzz and a crackle of electricity. The klaxon fell silent and darkness returned to the compound. Richard and Matt had managed to disconnect the security system and this gave the Incas the advantage they needed. Spending their lives high up in the mountains, they were accustomed to the darkness and now they used it, flitting in and out of their hiding places, taking out Salamanda’s men one by one.

“Let’s get inside,” Matt said and without waiting for Richard to reply, he ducked out of the generator room, underneath the radio mast and into the building on the other side.

It was the main control centre. It stood right next to the radio mast, with its various satellite dishes connected by thick cables that looped through the air. Matt didn’t know what he was going to find inside. He wasn’t armed and he knew that he was taking a terrible risk. But he couldn’t just watch as the Incas fought his battle for him. Somewhere in his mind it had occurred to him that if he and Richard could find the controls, they might be able to re-direct the satellite, send it flying off into a different orbit. Or he might find Salamanda. There had been no sign of him so far but surely he would want to be here now. This was meant to be the night of his triumph. He wouldn’t just stay at home.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, Matt made his way into a large, fully enclosed chamber. He looked up and took in the glass dome that he had seen from outside. On the other side, he could make out the night sky and the radio mast with its satellite dishes towering above.

All the walls were covered with plasma screens, some filled with digital read-outs, some showing what must surely be live footage of the night sky. Mainframe computers stood beneath them and there were twenty or more workstations at intervals along a ledge that curved the whole way round. There were about a dozen tables and chairs in the centre, arranged like a classroom. They were covered in charts and other papers, some of which had been scattered onto the floor. The staff must have left when the fighting began. The whole place had been abandoned. But one man had stayed behind. He was sitting alone at one of the tables, busily scribbling away at a pile of papers. As Matt approached, he turned slowly round.

It was Fabian.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Fabian broke the silence. “Matthew!” he exclaimed. “Mr Cole! What are you doing here?”

“I think we should be asking you that,” Richard said.

But it was obvious, really, when Matt thought about it. A driver – Alberto – had been sent to the airport to pick him up and deliver him to the police at the Hotel Europa. He had always assumed that the driver had worked for Captain Rodriguez. In fact, he had been working for Fabian – and Fabian had admitted as much the last time they had spoken, on the phone in Cuzco. And that telephone call had almost been Matt’s undoing. The moment he had told Fabian where he was, the information had been passed on to Salamanda and the police.

He was the traitor. He always had been.

Fabian seemed to have shrunk since they had last seen him. As always, he was wearing an expensive suit – but this time he had no tie. His clothes hung loose and he hadn’t shaved. He had been drinking. There was a half empty bottle on the table and his eyes were glazed. Staring at Richard and Matt, he blinked nervously -more embarrassed than scared or surprised.

“You…” Richard swore viciously.

Fabian looked around. “Where is everyone?” he asked. “There were a whole lot of people here a few minutes ago.”

“When did you start working for Salamanda?” Matt asked.

“Oh – a long time ago. Before Raven’s Gate. As a matter of fact, he’s my publisher. He published two of my books and he asked me to meet him. He said he was very interested in some of the things I was writing about. Ancient history. Nazca. The Nexus was interested in me too. They asked me to join them. But I’d already made my choice…”

“Why?

“Because I want to be on the winning side. The world’s going to change, you see. Everything’s going to change. And the question you have to ask yourself is – do you want to spend the rest of your life in misery and pain or do you want to be with the winners? That was how Mr Salamanda put it to me. He persuaded me that the Nexus didn’t have a chance. I mean, it had always been predicted that the Old Ones would return and take over the world, so what was the point of trying to fight against it?”

“You gave him the diary.”

“I told him about the meeting at St Meredith’s. And I told him where you were, when you called in from Cuzco. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want you to get hurt – but it was all or nothing.”

Fabian stood up, took a drink from the bottle, then went over to one of the largest screens. Matt had noticed it when they came in. It seemed to be showing some sort of radar signals. There were about a hundred dots, black on white, all of them static. But high up in the left-hand corner, a single dot was moving slowly across, travelling about a centimetre every few minutes.

“There it is,” Fabian said. “Cygnus. The swan. You have to admire Salamanda’s genius. I mean, there’s a guy with a head on his shoulders!” He laughed briefly to himself. “He’s using an artificial star to unlock the gate.” There was a time code at the bottom of the screen. It showed 22:19:58 and the numbers were rapidly changing as the seconds ticked away. “It’ll be in place in less than two hours from now and there’s absolutely nothing you can do,” he mumbled. “Then it’ll all be over…”

“We can still stop it,” Matt said.

“No. You see…”

But before he could say any more, there was a crash as a door burst inwards and a man reeled into the room. It was Rodriguez. He had obviously been involved in the thick of the fighting. His face was grey, streaked with dirt and sweat. He had a gun in one hand. His other hand was clutching his arm. He had been wounded. There was blood seeping through the jacket of his uniform. Matt would never know if he had come in here to hide or to look for him. Either way, he had found him.

“You!” The single word was spat out with a mixture of hatred and amusement. Rodriguez straightened himself and raised the gun, aiming at Matt.

Matt said nothing. He was standing just a few metres away. The appearance of Captain Rodriguez had changed everything. He and Richard were defenceless. Fabian wasn’t going to help them. There was nobody else in the room. What could he do? A thought flashed through his mind. Forrest Hill. The bully – Gavin Taylor – holding a glass in his hand. Matt had used his power. It had been an accident, but still it had been unforgettable. He had made the glass and the chandelier explode, simply by thinking about it.

Could he do the same now?

“You got away from me in Lima,” Rodriguez said. “And again in Cuzco. But there will be no third time. This is where it ends.”

“Leave him alone!” It was Richard who had spoken and for a moment the gun turned on him. If he tried to run forward, Rodriguez would shoot him and watch him die before he turned the gun on Matt.

“You are… the journalist?” Somehow the policeman had recognized him. “Do you want to die first or do you want to die second? Tell me! I can arrange it…”

Desperately, Matt tried to focus on the gun. Why couldn’t he do it? What was the point of having some sort of hidden power if he didn’t know how to use it? It should have been easy. A single blast of energy and the gun should have been spinning over to the other side of the room. Along with the man who held it.

But it wasn’t happening.

Rodriguez was aiming the gun at his heart. Matt could almost feel the policeman’s finger tightening on the trigger.

And then Fabian stepped into the line of fire.

“You don’t have to kill them,” he said.

“Get out of the way!” Rodriguez commanded.

Fabian was walking towards him. “No, no, no,” he was saying. “There’s no need for this. You don’t have to kill anyone. We’ve won! It’s what Salamanda always said. In an hour, the Old Ones will be here and the whole world will be ours. I’m sorry, Captain Rodriguez. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to stand here and watch you shoot a child.”

“Get out of my way!”

“No!” Fabian had reached him. He was unsteady on his feet – from the drink or exhaustion. But he was between Rodriguez and Matt, his hand pressing down on the policeman’s arm. “Salamanda promised me the boy wouldn’t be hurt,” he said.

“Salamanda lied!” Rodriguez laughed and pulled the trigger. Matt flinched. Fabian was thrown backwards but somehow remained standing. He looked down. Blood was gushing out of him. His shirt and his trousers were already saturated. Then he collapsed quite suddenly, as if every nerve in his body had been whipped out of him.

Rodriguez took aim at Matt a second time.

And then there was an explosion, much louder than the gunshot, but outside the room. Matt looked up.

The Incas had blown up the radio mast. He had no idea how they had done it, but it was clear that they had come to the compound with more than bolas, spears and the rest of it. One of them must have brought a quantity of plastic explosive. Matt saw everything quite clearly through the glass dome. There was a great flash of light as the steel mast was cut in half. Flames leapt up. And then the top of the mast came loose, separating from the bottom. Taking three of the satellite dishes with it, it keeled over to one side. And suddenly the very top of the mast, where it tapered to a point, was travelling down, like a spear thrown from the sky. As Richard and Matt dived to one side, it smashed through the glass and kept coming. All of Rodriguez’s concentration had been on Matt. He had been perhaps half a second away from shooting him. He hadn’t seen what had happened until it was too late.

Half a ton of steel girders, cables and satellite dishes crashed into the control room. Rodriguez was directly underneath the dome. He didn’t even have time to scream as a massive pile of metal and glass slammed into him, obliterating him utterly. Matt hit the floor and kept sliding. It seemed to him that the whole room had exploded. The noise was deafening. A hundred splinters sprayed into his shoulders and back. He could smell burning. Everything had gone dark.

Silence.

Weakly, he tried to stand up but found that his leg wouldn’t obey him. For a moment he was terrified. Had he been crushed under the weight of the radio mast?

“Richard…!” he shouted.

“Over here!” Richard sounded a long way away.

Slowly Matt picked himself up. Apart from a few superficial cuts and scratches, he hadn’t been hurt. Richard was also getting to his feet. He was covered in glass. It was in his hair and on his shoulders and there was a cut on his forehead. But he was all right too.

And then the door opened and Pedro came running in. He had his slingshot in one hand. There was a ferocity in his face that Matt had never seen before. Atoc was with him. Matt was relieved to see that both of them were uninjured.

“It is over,” Atoc said. “Salamanda’s people run. The mast is down. There is no more they can do from here.”

“Then we did it!” Matt said.

“We have won!” Atoc smiled tiredly.

“You’re wrong…”

The voice came from the middle of the wreckage. Matt looked past the dead body of the police captain and saw Fabian painfully trying to ease himself into a sitting position. He was very pale. It was impossible to say how much blood he had lost, but most of his suit was crimson.

“I was trying to tell you,” Fabian said. It was as if he was talking to a young child. The words came out very slowly. “You were wrong from the start,” he went on. “The swan…” He gulped for breath. “They controlled it from here to start with. But when it came in range Salamanda took over.”

“Where is he?” Matt demanded.

“At the place of Qolqa. He has a mobile laboratory. He’s in control. Look…”

Miraculously, the plasma screen with the stars hadn’t been damaged. The black dots were still there. And the single dot was still moving. It had travelled almost halfway across the screen. Soon it would be at the bottom. The digital clock showed 22:24:00. Ninety-six minutes until midnight.

“I’m sorry,” Fabian told them. “But I told you. It was always true. You could never win.”

His head fell sideways and Matt knew that he was dead.

“What does he mean?” Atoc asked.

“It’s not over yet,” Matt said. “Salamanda is in the desert. He’s controlling the satellite.” He pointed. The dot had only half a metre to travel. How many miles? Matt could imagine it, edging ever closer to its destination between the mountains.

“We must be able to stop it,” Richard said. “We can’t have done all this for nothing…”

“How far is he from here?” Atoc demanded.

“I don’t know. A few hundred miles. Not more than that.”

“There’s a helicopter…”

The helicopter was a two-seater.

Richard, Matt, Pedro and Atoc had emerged from the control centre to find that a new sort of silence had descended on the compound. It was the silence of death. There were bodies everywhere; some of them Inca but the majority Salamanda’s men. The smell of burning hung in the air. Above them, the radio mast had been blown in half, the bent and broken steelwork shrouded in smoke. There were loose bricks and broken pieces of metal everywhere. The walls were pitted with bullet holes. All the lights had been extinguished but the Incas had brought oil lamps and were using them to examine the wounded and the dead.

Forcing themselves to ignore the devastation, they had run over to the launch pad only to discover the bad news. Although the keys were in the ignition and Atoc knew how to fly it, the helicopter could take only one passenger. Atoc and one other would face Salamanda at the place of Qolqa. Which one of them would it be? There was no time for negotiation.

“I’ll go,” Matt said.

“Matt…” Richard began.

“This is my fight, Richard. I began this. It’s all because of me. I’ll go with Atoc.”

Pedro stepped forward too. He was still holding his slingshot. He reminded Richard of a Peruvian David, about to take on Goliath.

Matt nodded. “The two of us can fit into one seat,” he said. “Pedro’s right. He must come too.”

“But you’re just kids!” Richard cried. His voice was hoarse. The smoke seemed to have got into his throat. “You can’t do this on your own.”

“We’ve always been on our own,” Matt said. He smiled wanly. “It has to be this way, Richard. The amauta said it would happen like this. It seems he was right.”

“We have no time,” Atoc said.

It was ten to eleven. Very soon, the satellite would be in position. Matt nodded. He and Pedro moved forward.

The helicopter took almost five minutes to achieve full power. Eventually the rotors were whipping up the sand and the whole thing disappeared in a cloud of dust. Richard tried to watch but his eyes were raw. His arm was folded across his face. He could hardly breathe.

The engine increased in volume. The helicopter rose clumsily off the ground. Squinting, Richard could just make out Matt, with Pedro squeezed next to him. He looked more serious, more determined than Richard had ever known him. The helicopter rocked on its axis, once, then again.

Then suddenly it rose and soared over the wire.

There was only one hour left.