by James Axler
Even though they were now in the streets of a ville, rather than the woodlands, they adopted a similar formation. Once more they clustered into their original groups, stringing out into a line of clusters, with Ryan at the head and J.B. at the rear. This way they could keep some distance between the groupings to make firing on them harder, and within the clusters they could once more shelter the weaker fighters.
It was now a strange kind of combat. Mildred had once, in history classes when she was at high school, heard the phrase “phony war.” It had been applied to the beginning of the Second World War, when Britain had declared war on Nazi Germany, and long before the U.S.A. became involved. She remembered that she had been taught that there had been a period of several months in which, although both sides were at war, there had been hardly any activity. Both sides had been waiting for the other to make a move, with the emphasis being—in a sense—on which side would crack first. A war of nerves.
That was exactly what this march felt like. They were making progress through the ville, toward their intended target. But there was no opposition, or so it seemed. There was, however, a growing sense of tension and dread that an attack would come at any moment. A tension so great that it could cause some of the fighters to snap, making them easy to mop up. Hell, she could feel it herself; like a watch wound so tight that the mechanism was about to break. And she was used to this kind of action. How, then, were the less experienced Memphis sec feeling?
The streets of Atlantis were virtually deserted. True, many seemed to be working on the new building, swarming like ants on the scaffolding as the time of alignment drew nearer. Yet even so, there should have been more people going about their daily business. Those few that they did encounter were of no threat. From a distance, it was almost as though they had wandered into the line of the Memphis party by mistake or accident, as though they weren’t supposed to be there. One look—fear crossing their faces, writ large even at such a distance—and they would scuttle for cover before there was any opportunity to engage.
It was as if they had been told to stay clear of the area, to keep out of the path of the oncoming force.
Of course: Ryan realized what was occurring. The Nightcrawlers were assessing the size of the force they were up against. They had cleared the path they knew the enemy would take, after all, there was only one direct route to Odyssey’s temple, and the Crawlers knew that the Memphis sec would direct them thus. Now they were observing, taking note of size and potential.
For the one-eyed man, the fog of indecision and the taut air of tension that had weighed them down was now lifted. As they moved nearer to the center of the ville, and the twin constructions that dominated the skyline, he knew that the point of contact would have to come soon. There was no way that the Nightcrawlers could allow them to enter the midsection of the ville, where there would be, of necessity, a dense population.
‘Heads up, people,’ he yelled, ‘we’re getting near the center. They can’t keep us isolated any longer. Incoming!’
A self-fulfilling prophecy. Although the point of contact would have to come soon, Ryan was calling them out by declaring that their tactics had been rumbled. At the same time, it enabled him to break the tension with his own people and snap them into combat mode.
Not a moment too soon.
Silently, and without seeming to come from anywhere, the first of the Crawlers appeared on the road in front of them, as though assembling from the very air. With their darkly painted bodies and their black lenses, they appeared as demons of legend rather than flesh-and-blood fighters. An impression that was emphasized when Ryan drew his SIG-Sauer and directed a 2-round blast at one of them that seemed to go right through the Crawler without affecting him.
For a second, the one-eyed warrior was dumbfounded, reactions dulled enough by the shock to allow a Crawler to close on him. It was only as one man descended on him with a blade and the Crawler he had fired on seemed to dissolve back into the air in the manner he had arrived that Ryan realized what was happening.
The Nightcrawlers had appeared from the air and seemed to be phantoms, for the simple reason that they had the powers of hypnotism to which his people had fallen prey back in Memphis. The ability to cloud minds and distort the truth had enabled them to seemingly appear from nowhere and to cast living shadows of themselves to distract fire.
Ryan now realized that blasters would be useless. Chances were that they would be firing at phantoms. If any chilling was to be done, it would have to be hand-to-hand.
The Crawler leaped at him. From previous combat, Ryan knew that their body camou made them oily and slick to grapple with. Rather than engage, he sidestepped and chopped at the man, using an outstretched foot to take away the Crawler’s leading foot. The enemy’s own momentum, aided by the blow at the back of his neck, carried him forward and down onto the dirt road, allowing Ryan enough time to smoothly holster the SIG-Sauer and unsheathe the panga, in almost one flowing motion. By the time the Crawler had rolled with his fall and come back up to his feet, Ryan was the one advancing on him.
A thrust and a parry erupted from the Crawler, followed by an open-fist blow that was intended to hit Ryan on the temple, stunning him momentarily and making him easier to finish. But the one-eyed man was too quick, and before the blow even had a chance to land he had slipped inside the Crawler’s defense and delivered a savage blow with the panga to his opponent’s open chest. The blade slipped between two ribs, and Ryan felt the suction as he tried to extract the blade, twisting both to aid extraction and to cause more damage. It was strange to see the man’s face contort in pain while his lens-shielded eyes remained blank. Almost as though he truly were as supernatural as the Crawlers’s sudden appearance had suggested.
Nothing was supernatural, however, about the manner in which he slumped to the ground when Ryan had freed him of the panga’s deadly support.
One man down, but all around him was the clamor of battle. No tension now, all was in earnest. And not just in the manner that Ryan would have expected.
Mildred appeared to be fighting thin air, throwing and closing on an opponent that wasn’t there, at the same time leaving herself open to an attack from a female Crawler who was approaching her from behind. Ryan didn’t even have the time to wonder what the hell she was doing. He had to act fast. In a few strides he was on the Crawler, hauling her back by the throat. Mildred was still fighting a phantom, and it took him yelling her name to suddenly make her snap out of what she was doing and to realize that she was fighting thin air. She whirled and took out the attacker Ryan was holding, a jab over the heart stilling the woman, making her drop her blade; a blade Mildred snatched up and used to chill her.
She cast a quick glance back to the empty space she had just been fighting.
‘It seemed so real,’ she muttered.
‘Fucking hypnotism—watch for it,’ Ryan barked, aware as he spoke of how difficult was such a task. They both knew how easy it was to be deceived. How could you watch for something you may not even know was there?
But the Crawlers and their phantoms weren’t the only problems that the war party faced. Mithos and another of the Memphis sec men in the group were attacking their own.
Mithos headed straight for Lemur. The bulky Memphis leader was slower than anyone else and was finding the combat difficult. He was ill-equipped to deal with such matters, and was proving the liability that Ryan had feared. As such, he stood transfixed as his own man closed on him.
‘For the glory of Atlantis,’ Mithos yelled as he raised a blade. Lemur was frozen: a simple target. More confusing for him yet when the young sec man’s head dissolved into jelly, blood and splinters, spattering the leader and the surrounding area.
‘Watch your back, man. I can’t do everything,’ Mark yelled at Lemur. ‘Snap out of it.’
The Memphis leader’s stunned gaze moved around to see his sec chief, Luger still raised, facing in his direction. He had been unable to defend himself, but his loyal sec chief h
ad been there in the most dire moment.
At the expense of his own life. Lemur opened his mouth to warn Mark, but it was too late. In firing on Mithos, Mark had turned away from an approaching Crawler. He was about to get a knife in the back that would surely buy him the farm. Lemur fumbled with his blaster, torn between warning his protector and firing on the enemy. He could do neither. Mark screamed, high and keening, as the enemy blade ripped into his kidney.
Something hardened with the Memphis chief. Seeing the man who had saved his life be chilled because he couldn’t return the favor focused Lemur: he might be too late to save Mark, but he could avenge him. He raised his Browning and fired two rapid shells that jerked the Crawler, hitting high in the chest each time and pulping the organs within.
‘The gods blast you all,’ Lemur muttered savagely, looking for another target, now strangely calm.
Not so far away, in the melee, Demis was engaged in a fight with a Crawler and a sec man he had thought of as a friend, but who had been a traitor in their midst. Despite the fact that he was outnumbered, he had prevented them inflicting anything other than the most superficial of wounds. But he hadn’t the strength or skill to kill either of them, and he knew that he was only holding them at bay. To prevent his own death, he would need assistance.
So it was with relief that he felt rather than saw someone move in beside him to join the fight.
‘Thank the gods for their mercy,’ he gritted.
‘You shall have your chance soon enough,’ a familiar voice whispered in his ear. His eyes widened in shock as he felt the blade slip between his ribs and he turned to face his traitorous aggressor. ‘You see too much. Time for your eyes to be dimmed,’ the voice added as Demis slipped to the ground, life ebbing from him.
Meanwhile, Ryan was taking count as best he could. He could see that he would have to marshal his troops, and soon. Although all the companions were holding out well, there were two traitors who had turned on their own—one of whom had been chilled—and there were three others who had bought the farm. Even as he took stock, another Memphis sec man took a chilling blow from a Nightcrawler.
Bastard would pay for that. Ryan took him out with a shell from the SIG-Sauer. The Crawler’s back dribbled red from the entry wound, his stomach spread by the wider exit wound, spilling his innards onto his still warm victim.
He would have to regroup his people right now or there wouldn’t be any left to regroup.
‘THEY ARE very strong fighters. It is a shame that they couldn’t be persuaded to our cause,’ the Crawler leader said calmly. He was unmoved by the deaths of his own people. The Nightcrawlers lived to die: that was part of their task, to sacrifice their lives for the greater good.
‘I agree. It is a shame that they will not be able to join with us. I believe we could learn much from them,’ Xerxes mused, taking the telescope from his eye. The two men were standing on the scaffolding around the vessel, ignoring the work going on around them and concentrating their attention on the battle below. A battle so small and localized that many in Atlantis did not realize that it was as yet taking place.
The Crawler leader pondered his sec chief’s words. ‘True. We will have to kill them. They are not many, but if even one should make it to Odyssey’s temple…’ the Crawler leader shrugged ‘…he is alone with the other two outsiders. All our men—’
‘I know,’ Xerxes said, cutting him short. ‘What I cannot understand is why so few. Unless the one with a single orb believed that many of those in Memphis would be killed without result, and it would be easier to mount a small raid on one target.’
‘Hence their direction,’ the Crawler leader said flatly.
‘Exactly. Strike at the heart of Atlantis…’
‘While our other Nightcrawlers wait for an attack that does not come. Sir, they must be—’
‘I will decide what must be done,’ Xerxes cut across his words with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘And I think it is time that something was done for the greater good of Atlantis. The time is near, and we cannot be led by such a fool as this Odyssey. When the travelers come, they don’t want to see the bloated idiocy that he has become. They want to see a ville waiting for redemption.’
‘Led by you?’
Xerxes shook his head. ‘Led by no one. The fat fool has no heir. We must start again. I don’t want the task, but we must find someone who is equal to it. And it starts now. We shall let them have what they want. It will do them little good. Pull back your men, let them attain the temple. Once they are inside, we have them—and Odyssey and their friends—at our mercy.’
‘This is treason.’ The Nightcrawler leader spoke in hushed tones, not wanting them to be overheard.
‘Perhaps,’ Xerxes agreed. ‘But is that idiot satisfying his moronic interests with those two outlanders at the expense of his real work—the vessel—any the less treasonous?’
The Nightcrawler leader didn’t answer.
‘I suspected not. And there are many who will feel the same. We act, as always, for the greater good. Now go.’
He didn’t look around. He knew that the Crawler had already departed. With a self-satisfied nod, Xerxes returned to watching the combat through the telescope.
THEY DIDN’T UNDERSTAND how it had happened. They only knew that it had. Where they had one moment been fighting a battle that they were slowly losing, despite their best efforts, now they were standing alone on the deserted street. The Nightcrawlers had vanished as mysteriously as they had arrived: one second a solid presence, the next a phantom that dissipated on the winds.
Ryan looked around and took stock. It wasn’t good. As the Crawlers had departed, their parting shot had been to chill most of the Memphis sec left standing. Now the contingent numbered only three: Lemur, Cyran and the youth Affinity. All the companions were left alive.
‘Dark night, what was that about?’ J.B. questioned.
Ryan shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but I don’t like it. The bastards are playing games with us. Why have they left us alive when it would have been simple for them to keep fighting? They would have overwhelmed us in the end. And why us?’
‘What do you mean?’ Affinity asked.
‘It’s obvious, son,’ Mildred said quietly. ‘You, Lemur and Cyran. The only ones left out of your people. Leader and wife, sure. Not sure about you,’ she added, eyeing him speculatively. ‘But there’s all of us. Like there was a reason to trim the fat, leave only those they wanted.’
‘Fuck it, we’ll be walking into a trap when we reach the temple,’ Ryan gritted. ‘For what purpose, who knows? But we can’t turn back. Shit, hardly likely they’ll let us…’ he added with a mirthless grin.
‘Then let’s go,’ Jak said simply. ‘Sooner spring trap, sooner see hunter.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Too bastard easy,’ Ryan murmured as they entered the temple.
‘Don’t knock it, boss man,’ Mildred answered in a voice that was harsh, stretched tight by tension and exertion. ‘Least if we don’t have to fight yet, we’re saving it for when we do.’
The Nightcrawlers had done their job well. On being withdrawn by their commander, a team had been dispatched to the temple to spring the locks on all the heavy stone doors that lay between the Memphis war party and Odyssey. The Crawler leader had understood Xerxes clearly: the war party were to be the puppets who disposed of the Atlantean leader before being eradicated themselves by an avenging force. Trapped as they would be within the temple, this would be a simple task.
So it had to be insured that they would be able to reach Odyssey quickly. The coded red, white and black locks, although simple once you knew the key, would be alien to the intruders. It had taken the clever ones captured and held in the temple long enough to work them out. By contrast, these intruders were seen as the foot soldiers, the ones who fought, not thought. The Crawler leader sent his men through the temple, unlocking the doors as they went, bleeding out into the outside world without being noticed.
Xerxes couldn’t trust his regular sec for this task—they were loyal to Odyssey, as his personal guard, and wouldn’t countenance such a move.
So it was that the war party—now consisting of just seven personnel—made their way into, and through, the temple, constantly expecting to come under attack, little realizing that they were being left alone for reasons that they couldn’t know.
‘Dark night, I hate places like these,’ J.B. muttered as they progressed upward. ‘Give me some kind of pesthole like the maze any day. At least you know where the hell you are with something like that.’
‘There is some truth in what you say,’ Affinity murmured in reply. ‘Dangers are more real in a situation such as that.’
‘Danger real everywhere,’ Jak snapped. ‘Shut up.’
There was an overall mood of darkness that pervaded their party. In some sense, it was possible that they had a instinct that they were now no longer the masters of their own destiny. Their aims had been definite, but now it seemed as though these aims were subsumed beneath those of someone who wielded greater power. They were being used, directed for some purpose that they couldn’t define.
But there was little they could do but go with the current and hope that it would become clear as they proceeded farther into the temple.
‘The place is deserted,’ Mildred said, her voice strained after they had passed through yet another unlocked door. They had encountered empty chambers, each carefully recced and secured before proceeding, and were moving ever upward. It seemed as though it would not be too long before they came out at the summit of the temple, having found nothing.
‘Are you sure that they wouldn’t have evacuated, left it completely empty?’ she asked Lemur.
But it was Affinity who answered. ‘Odyssey rarely sets foot outside the temple. There is nowhere else that he would be, or where your friends would be held. Atlantis doesn’t take prisoners. No, they are here, and so is he…but where are the guards?’