The Secret of Excalibur

by Andy McDermott

  ‘It works!’ Vaskovich cried, elated. The gauge now read 0.73, and kept climbing. He rushed over to one of the consoles, speaking in rapid, excited Russian to the technician. Despite herself, Nina found herself becoming caught up in the moment, willing the reading higher. It passed 0.90, 0.91. Vaskovich hurried back and leaned intently over the console, the digital figures reflected in his glasses. 0.96, 0.97 . . .

  It stopped.

  The gauge remained constant at 0.97. Vaskovich’s face fell in confusion, then anger. He shouted an order to the technicians, jerking his hands upwards in an unmistakable ‘More!’ gesture. One of the men shook his head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Nina asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Vaskovich darted from console to console, shoving the technicians aside to work the controls himself, with the same lack of results. ‘It should be working. The superconductor is channelling earth energy into the system - why isn’t it working?’

  ‘I know,’ said a voice from above.

  Everyone looked up to see Mitchell standing on top of the generator’s frame, having descended by rope through one of the dome’s louvres. He aimed his gun at Vaskovich, and fired.

  28

  The window shattered. Vaskovich’s right thigh erupted with bloody holes as bullets ripped into it. The oligarch collapsed, screaming.

  Chase was already moving, shoving Nina towards the ladder. ‘Go!’ he yelled, despite being unsure if there was another way out of the generator chamber. To reach the door of the control room she would have to pass Kruglov and Maximov, and he wanted to give Mitchell a clear field of fire.

  Another burst of gunfire took out two of the technicians at their consoles as Mitchell descended the rope. Chase ran to pull him in through the broken window.

  Nina scrambled down the ladder. Kruglov saw her go, pulled out his black-bladed knife and raced after her. She jumped to the catwalk below and looked round. A third of the way anticlockwise round the catwalk a walkway led to a passage set in the vast pit’s concrete wall. She ran for it as Kruglov leapt down behind her.

  Chase hauled Mitchell into the control room. The American fired the XM-201 again, a rapid sweep of shots killing another technician and taking down three of the guards. Maximov threw himself into the cover of another console as bullets seared past him.

  ‘You miss me?’ Mitchell asked. He indicated his shoulder: the second rifle was attached to the harness on his back. ‘Brought something for you - oh, shit, look out!’

  ‘Fuck!’ Chase dived one way, Mitchell the other, as the console Maximov had been hiding behind was hurled through the window between them and crashed down into the pit. The huge Russian charged at them. Mitchell managed to get off another shot, blasting a chunk of shredded meat from Maximov’s upper arm.

  It didn’t even slow him. Instead, he grinned and seized Mitchell in his massive hands, slamming him to the floor.

  Chase jumped up. Mitchell was pinned down by Maximov - and both rifles were trapped beneath him.

  And there was still another guard to deal with.

  The surviving technicians were running for the exit, but the guard barrelled straight at Chase, intending to shoulder-barge him out of the broken window. Chase held his ground. He waited until the Russian was almost upon him, then feinted to the left. The guard instinctively moved to intercept him—

  Chase instead ducked right, swinging a hammer-blow punch that smashed into the man’s jaw. The guard reeled, throwing out his hands to stop his fall - only to impale his palms on the spears of glass. He fell through the window, dropping past Kruglov to plunge screaming into the depths of the pit.

  Nina heard the terrified yell and looked back, fearful that it had been Chase. It only took a glimpse of the falling figure to see that it wasn’t, but that glimpse also told her Kruglov was gaining. She raced for the walkway leading to the opening.

  Chase ran back to help Mitchell. Maximov was choking him, thumping his head repeatedly against the floor. Lacking weapons, Chase snatched up a chair and smashed it over the Russian’s broad back. The chair broke apart, pieces scattering, but Maximov just let out a grunting laugh.

  ‘All right,’ Chase growled, ‘how about this?’ He delivered a brutal kick to one of the giant’s kidneys.

  On anyone else it would have decisively ended the fight, but instead Maximov’s back arched with pleasure. ‘Daaaaaa!’ he gasped, insane smile widening in ecstasy.

  Mitchell was turning blue, and Chase was out of ideas . . .

  Wait!

  If Maximov felt pain as pleasure, then . . .

  ‘Can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Chase muttered as he moved behind Maximov and reached down to his sides, fingers outstretched - to tickle him.

  It was as if the Russian had received an electric shock. He released his grip on Mitchell’s throat and jumped to his feet, face twisted in rage. ‘That hurt, little man!’

  Chase backed away. On the floor, Mitchell gasped for air, moving weakly. The XM-201 lay across his stomach. Come on, shoot the bastard! ‘No wonder you always look so fucking grumpy,’ Chase said, trying to keep Maximov’s attention off the gun. ‘Must feel like a kick in the bollocks every time you have a wank.’

  Through the window he saw Nina running along the catwalk, with Kruglov not far behind. Mitchell, groaning, rolled on his side . . . and the gun slid to the floor, forgotten as its owner struggled to breathe. Shit!

  Chase looked from the rifle to Nina, to Kruglov, then back to Maximov. He was out of time. ‘Ah, fuck it!’ he spat as he launched himself at the Russian, ducking under his grasping hands to smash a fist into his stomach, hitting him again and again. ‘This’ll put a fucking smile on your face!’

  ‘Da, little man!’ bellowed Maximov, the sheer fury of Chase’s attack actually forcing him backwards. He raised one arm, hand clenching into a fist. ‘Do!’ The hand slammed on to Chase’s back. ‘It!’ Another blow knocked him to his knees. ‘Again!’ The final punch dropped him to the floor.

  Winded, Chase looked up through pain-filled eyes, and saw Mitchell struggling to all fours behind Maximov. The gun lay beside him, still forgotten.

  But Maximov didn’t know that . . .

  Chase tipped his head back further, and smiled up at the Russian. Maximov stopped, confused. ‘If you like pain,’ Chase wheezed, ‘you’ll love this! Jack, now!’

  Maximov’s eyes widened. He whirled, expecting to see Mitchell pointing his gun at him.

  Instead, he found the American kneeling at his feet.

  Chase sprang up and rammed his shoulder against Maximov’s backside, driving him forward. The huge Russian staggered, tripping over Mitchell - and toppled through the window. He fell past the first catwalk to bounce off the second level with such force that the walkway buckled, plunging into a nest of cables beneath it. He jerked to a stop, hanging upside down by one entangled leg, barely conscious.

  Mitchell managed to stand, picking up his rifle. ‘What happened?’

  Chase didn’t have the time or the inclination to explain. ‘Give me a gun!’ he snapped instead. Nina had just disappeared into a side corridor, Kruglov right behind her. Mitchell pulled the second XM-201 from his back. Chase grabbed it from him and ran painfully for the ladder.

  ‘Eddie!’ called Mitchell in a warning tone. Chase looked back to see him pointing at one of the large rings inside the still running generator. ‘Don’t damage the magnets!’

  ‘What’ll happen?’

  ‘Bad things!’

  ‘Good tip,’ Chase said with a crooked smile before dropping down the ladder.

  Nina ran along the concrete corridor to find herself in a room - with no exit. It was a storage area, the striped red-and-yellow line on the floor indicating the limit of the generator’s magnetic field. Beyond it, at the far end of the room, was a rack of firefighting and other emergency equipment. Some of it appeared to be made of steel; presumably other, non-magnetic alternative metals were either unsuitable or too expensive.

  She rushed to it
and grabbed a fire axe. Kruglov’s running footsteps behind her changed from the clang of the walkway to the flat slap of concrete. He was in the passage—

  Nina spun and hurled the heavy axe at the entrance. It arced down, falling short of Kruglov - then suddenly changed direction in defiance of gravity as it crossed the painted line, instantly picking up speed and shooting down the corridor. Kruglov dived sideways with a startled yelp, the axe barely missing him as the intense magnetic field snatched it into the generator chamber. It slammed against one of the rings of electromagnets with an echoing bang.

  She shook off her momentary amazement, looking for another weapon, but Kruglov was already back on his feet, the matte-black knife in his outstretched hand as he ran at her. ‘Suka! ’ he hissed.

  Nina doubted it was a compliment. She tried to back away, but had nowhere to go. Trapped, she brought up her hands to protect herself. Kruglov sneered, moving closer - and Nina swung at him, managing to land a glancing punch against his chin as he jerked away in surprise. ‘Yeah, fuck you too!’

  Kruglov blew out an angry breath, then lunged again. She tried to twist his knife hand away from her, as Chase had taught her, but the Russian was ready. As Nina grabbed his wrist, he spun and drove his other elbow against her jaw. She cried out in pain, dazed. Kruglov wrenched his arm from her weakened grip, and cracked the haft of his knife down on the back of her head.

  She staggered. Kruglov pulled her up in a choke-hold, pressing the knife against her ribs. He dragged her back down the corridor.

  Chase stopped running and brought up his gun as Kruglov emerged from the passage, Nina held in front of him as a shield. He looked through the rifle’s sight, trying to line up the crosshairs on the Russian’s head. But Kruglov was a constantly shifting target behind his hostage - and Chase couldn’t see where he was holding his knife. Even if he hit him, Nina might still be fatally wounded.

  Kruglov reached the catwalk and slowly backed away around it. Chase advanced on him. ‘Let her go, dickhead!’

  ‘We’ve done this before, haven’t we?’ Kruglov responded with a cold smirk. ‘You know I am willing to kill her. So drop the gun.’

  Chase came to a standstill near the catwalk junction. He stood for a moment, the rifle still fixed on Kruglov . . . then tossed it to land at Nina’s feet. She stared in shock at his surrender.

  Kruglov glanced at the high-tech weapon. ‘One of Mitchell’s toys? I look forward to killing him with it.’ He quickly slipped the knife back into its sheath and pulled Nina with him as he bent to pick up the gun. ‘But you first.’

  He groped for the rifle, eyes flicking down - and in the split second he was looking away, Chase winked at Nina. She looked back, confused, but already preparing herself for whatever happened next.

  Kruglov straightened, the gun in his hand. Smile widening, he pointed it at Chase and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. The trigger clicked faintly, but the rifle remained inert. His smugness changed to anger as he realised he’d been tricked.

  Nina took advantage of his distraction to twist and ram the point of her left elbow into his stomach. Kruglov jerked back, losing his grip on her.

  Chase ran to tackle him. Kruglov batted Nina aside with the rifle, slamming her against the catwalk railing. His free hand swept over the gun, hunting for a safety catch or some other release mechanism—

  It found the firing button for the grenade launcher.

  Chase was still several feet away. He had no idea if the grenade launcher also had a biometric lock - Mitchell certainly hadn’t programmed one with his handprint.

  And the flash of uncertainty on his face was all Kruglov needed to know he still had a chance . . .

  The Russian whipped up the XM-201 and fired just as Chase hurled himself on to the walkway leading to the storeroom. The grenade shot past him. It hit the main catwalk some fifteen feet away and exploded, ripping apart an entire section and sending it crashing down into the pit below.

  The blast sent Chase reeling, almost flipping him over the safety railing. The grenade might have been small, but it was still powerful, enough to take down a wall. He looked back. Nina was pulling herself upright; Kruglov had an expression of almost maniacal glee on his face as he realised the full power of the weapon. ‘Nina! Get to Jack!’ Chase shouted, sprinting down the passage towards the storeroom entrance as the ex-KGB agent lined up a second shot—

  Concrete shattered just behind him, knocking him off his feet. He hit the floor hard, bouncing over the painted line to end up sprawled before the equipment rack. Coughing, ears ringing, Chase looked round, and saw the room was a dead end.

  A silhouette appeared in the entrance, shrouded in dust. Kruglov. And he knew Chase had no way out.

  Chase stood to challenge him anyway. ‘Fight to the end,’ he told himself. He reached into the rack, hunting for a weapon, even if it was just a club.

  He realised what some of the equipment was made from . . .

  ‘I like this gun,’ said Kruglov. ‘It even has a little screen telling me how many bullets I have left. And how many grenades. I see I have . . . one. That should be enough.’

  Chase faced him as he emerged from the drifting cloud of concrete dust, watching his expression intently. ‘Well, you’d better use it, then. ’Cause if you don’t, I’m going to shove it up your arsehole and pull the trigger.’

  Kruglov merely smiled his oily, frog-like smile one last time. ‘If you insist.’

  His eyes narrowed in anticipation of the shot, finger tightening on the firing button—

  Chase dived to one side.

  The grenade barely missed him, streaking between the shelves to explode against the wall. The rack blew apart, equipment flying across the room—

  Over the painted line.

  The spinning pieces of steel all suddenly accelerated in mid-air, yanked inexorably towards the powerful magnets in the chamber outside - with Kruglov in their path.

  The Russian screamed as the tools hit him, screwdrivers stabbing deep into his flesh, larger items smashing against him with bone-cracking force and sweeping him backwards down the passage. With a final cry he slammed against the generator - only for the cylindrical fire extinguisher that had buried its end in his abdomen to continue onwards and burst out of his back. Spewing blood, Kruglov slithered down the length of the cylinder impaling him, before gravity reclaimed its hold. He fell into the pit, smashing off the middle catwalk and spinning down to the bottom with a decisive crack of bones.

  Chase didn’t hear it; in fact, he couldn’t hear anything except a disorienting clamour in both ears, the grenade explosion having all but deafened him. He opened his eyes to find himself crumpled almost upside down in a corner. A spanner was embedded in the wall just above him. Lumps of smashed concrete and pieces of equipment were scattered across the room.

  He flopped on to his side and weakly clicked his fingers next to one ear. On the third try, he thought he heard a faint snap through the ringing. At least he hadn’t been permanently deafened.

  Kruglov was dead - but was Nina safe? He pulled himself upright and shakily crossed the room. The XM-201 lay in the passageway. He picked it up, then staggered along the walkway.

  Kruglov’s first grenade shot had destroyed a large section of the catwalk, too much for him to jump the gap; he would have to go the long way round to return to the control room. Nina looked down at him through the broken window. She shouted excitedly, but Chase had no idea what she was saying. He yelled what he hoped was ‘I’m okay!’ to her, then began the long plod round the catwalk.

  ‘Looks like he’s all right!’ Nina told Mitchell, who was crouching beside the wounded Vaskovich.

  ‘Great,’ Mitchell replied, with an odd lack of enthusiasm. ‘So, Leonid - you want to know why your system didn’t work?’

  Vaskovich, clutching his wounded leg, glared up at him through pain-clenched eyes. ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Afraid I’m on the side of the an
gels. Seriously, though, aren’t you curious?’ He gestured at the generator, still flickering with bursts of electrical energy. ‘You were so close, your people made it work despite all the disinformation I was feeding you about DARPA’s system. And you even got Excalibur, you got the superconductor. But there was one thing you were missing, which even I didn’t know about until we found the sword in England. Want to know what it was?’

  ‘What?’ Vaskovich gasped.

  To Nina’s shock, Mitchell pointed at her. ‘She’s what you were missing. She’s the key to making the whole thing work. Something about her body’s bioelectric field - I’m not sure exactly what, but we’ll figure it out. But without her to energise the sword, all you’ve got is a nice shiny antique.’ He stood. ‘Anyway, now you know.’

  And before Nina realised what was happening, he shot Vaskovich in the heart. The Russian convulsed, then fell back, dead.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Nina screamed. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘My job,’ he told her emotionlessly. ‘The whole purpose of this mission was to terminate Vaskovich’s operations, and secure Excalibur.’

  ‘You knew all along,’ she said, anger growing as her shock subsided. ‘You knew he didn’t build this place to use as a weapon.’

  ‘Of course I knew.’ He lowered the rifle and stepped over Vaskovich’s body towards her, reaching into a pocket.

  ‘Then why did you have to kill him? And all these other people?’

  ‘Because we can’t allow anyone but us to have this technology - for any purpose.’

  ‘You’ve got your own system, haven’t you?’ she realised. ‘DARPA’s built a generator just like this one.’

  ‘We have,’ said Mitchell. He looked out of the window, seeing Chase about two-thirds of the way round the catwalk. ‘Only problem is, it doesn’t work either. But it soon will. Eddie! Eddie, can you hear me?’

  The noise in Chase’s ears had subsided enough for him to pick out his own name, even if the rest of Mitchell’s words were unclear. He stopped and looked at the control room, cupping a hand to his ear to indicate that he had trouble hearing.