Asura

by R P L Johnson

  ‘I don’t know what they were after,’ Tej concluded. ‘But whatever it was, it has cost many lives.’

  ‘Well now that they’ve got it, maybe they’ll think twice about coming after us. With a bit of luck, they might decide to bug out and let the mountain do their dirty work for them.’

  ‘Not much chance of that,’ Campbell said. The big Scot had caught up to them and climbed alongside Tej. A rectangular shape at his side glinted in the light of the nine volt flashlight clipped to the barrel of his SCAR rifle. It was a slim aluminium case with rounded corners, a little smaller than a standard briefcase.

  ‘So that’s what all this is about, huh? And your orders were to retrieve it before the Indians got to it.’

  Campbell nodded. ‘Either retrieve it or confirm its destruction.’

  ‘Confirm its destruction... Along with any witnesses.’

  Campbell kept a guilty silence.

  ‘Just what the hell have you got there, Campbell—if that is your real name? What’s in that case that is worth the lives of nine people?’

  Campbell looked sheepish. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know? You were willing to kill for it, but you don’t even know what’s inside?’

  ‘It’s classified,’ Campbell protested. ‘I don’t think any of us knew what’s inside.’

  ‘Well maybe it’s about time we found out.’

  Rose stopped and held out his hand. Campbell just looked at him. The rest of the survivors stopped behind them, the beams of their flashlights trained on the two men and the slim aluminium case.

  ‘It’s time to make a decision, Campbell,’ Rose said. ‘You’re a good soldier and we need you on our side. But if I can’t trust you, then you’re no use to us.’

  Campbell’s gaze flicked quickly to the nine millimetre automatic tucked into Rose’s climbing harness. His fingers flexed around the grip of his carbine. Rose sensed Tej subtly shifting his weight, readying himself for a fight, but Rose resisted the urge to make the first move.

  Campbell let out a long breath through his nose. ‘The name’s Mark,’ he said, ‘—Corporal Mark Campbell.’ He held out the case and Rose took it from him.

  ‘So I guess the others were military too. A four man “brick”... SAS?’

  Campbell nodded. ‘Credenhill’s finest,’ he said, referring to the regimental headquarters of Britain’s elite Special Forces unit, the Special Air Service. Rose felt a grudging respect for the man. The SAS did not recruit monsters; they took only the very best from the regular British Army. There was no place in the SAS for dumb grunts or bullies. If Campbell had decided to throw his lot in with the rest of the survivors, then that was good enough for Rose.

  ‘Okay, we’ll take a look at this thing when we get to the surface,’ Rose said. ‘Until then, why don’t you hang onto it?’

  Campbell nodded and took back the case. He smiled at the young officer. Trust was a two way street and Rose knew that. If they were going to get out of there, then they would have to work together.

  ‘You’re letting him keep it?’ Garrett asked incredulously. ‘If this is what they’re after, let them have it.’

  ‘Not so fast. This is our one advantage. We can’t afford to hand it over yet.’

  A muffled boom rolled through the huge cavern behind them, the sound carrying through the perfect, tomblike quiet of the underground cave system.

  The Indians were coming.

  ‘Move it!’ Rose ordered. He led the way again, but quicker now. They scrambled along the gently sloping ledge. And after a few minutes Rose called for a halt.

  ‘Put out your lights,’ he said. As one, all the pencil-thin flashlight beams snapped out of existence.

  ‘What is it?’ Tej whispered. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘Just wait a minute and you’ll see for yourself,’ Rose replied. He pulled the night vision goggles down around his neck and waited for his eyes to adjust. At first the blackness was total, but gradually, vague outlines became visible as their eyes became accustomed to the faint light. Ahead, a narrow crack cut into the wall of the cavern.

  ‘The light!’ Garrett exclaimed. ‘I can see it.’

  Rose advanced cautiously. The light was faint, barely enough to see by. Once past the lip of the opening it grew stronger although it was still only as bright as a moonlit night.

  ‘We’re close!’ Garrett said from the rear of the party. ‘We’re bloody close now, I can feel it!’

  Rose crept through the tunnels. There were still enough shadow-dwelling rocks and hollows to trip the unwary, but the light beckoned them onwards. They walked through a maze of intersecting fissures letting the light lead them.

  The tunnel opened out a little, but the air was still and musty. There was no breeze—no hint that fresh air was entering the cavern. As Rose turned the final corner he suddenly saw why.

  A huge wall of ice plugged the tunnel from floor to jagged ceiling, completely blocking their path! It glowed from within, filling the cave with a thin, blue light.

  The cave itself was about thirty feet wide. The floor was covered with mounds of slick, muddy rock laid down in concentric rings centred on the glowing ice wall: waves of frozen mud over three feet tall.

  ‘Well don’t just stand there,’ said Garrett. He scrambled over the mounds of moraine to the ice wall and hammered at it with the butt of his flashlight. The small steel tube made almost no impression of the ice, although the flashlight’s beam dimmed alarmingly.

  ‘It can’t be that thick,’ Garret continued, kicking at the ice as if trying to break down a door. ‘Maybe a few feet, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Yvonne agreed. ‘It’s so bright. There must be a way through.’

  McCarthy stood next to Rose in the dim, blue light. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘We started out at the bottom of a crevasse and we’ve been going downhill ever since. How did we get to the surface?’

  'How the hell should I know?’ replied Garrett. ‘Maybe it’s not the surface, but it’s definitely daylight. And that’s a damn sight better than crawling around these caves like rats.’

  Rose looked at the ice. Its surface was rough and ridged by striations, horizontal grooves in the ice. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered into the depths of the ice wall. He squinted as he tried to make sense of the confusing, fractured image through the myriad fault planes that cut the mass of ice like a kaleidoscope.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ McCarthy asked.

  ‘Remember how I was telling you that this glacier formed a glacial cirque?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I remember. A bowl in the rock, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Seasonal freezing and thawing makes the ice rotate. Over thousands of years it eventually grinds out a huge crater. See those horizontal striations? Those are the marks left by the ice scraping against the rock as it rotates. This isn’t just a slab of ice over the tunnel. You’re looking right into the heart of the glacier itself!’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Garrett exclaimed. ‘That glacier must be a hundred feet deep. There’s no way the sunlight could get through that much ice.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then where, Captain, is the light coming from?’

  ‘It’s coming from inside,’ McCarthy said. ‘The light—it’s buried inside the ice!’

  ‘Are you completely out of your mind?’ Garret asked. ‘You really think that there’s some kind of torch in there?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Rose suddenly understood what he was seeing. The light was not being refracted from the surface. The light was coming from within the glacier itself! Deep in the ice a light source was blazing away. It burned like a star cast in crystal. Once he saw it, it became obvious. The details snapped into focus like a Magic Eye picture. Besides the light source, he could make out other shapes: vague geometric shadows clustered around the light source seemingly at random. The shapes were contorted, twisted like sections of thick plate warped b
y the constantly churning, slow-motion whirlpool of ice.

  ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘There’s definitely something in there. It looks like some kind of wreckage.’

  ‘Could it be from the crash?’

  ‘No,’ Rose replied. ‘It’s too deep. This ice would have been laid down thousands of years ago.’

  ‘My point exactly!’ Garrett exclaimed. ‘There’s no way any light could still be burning.’

  ‘Thousands of years, eh?’ Marinucci mused. ‘That shits all over the Duracell bunny.’

  Rose couldn’t argue with that. He knew that it sounded preposterous. It was practically impossible for any technology to have survived the immense pressures at the base of the glacier. Even the black granite of the mountain itself hadn’t withstood the constant abrasion of the rotating ice.

  But the light was there.

  ‘Oh my God!’ McCarthy exclaimed. She jumped back from the ice wall and caught her heel on one of the floor’s many jagged protrusions. She fell unceremoniously on her ass.

  ‘That thing. That fucking thing. It’s in there!’

  Rose followed her stare. He rubbed at the ice and peered in like a peeing tom at a bedroom window. At first he could only see the tangled mass of geometric black shapes, frozen in their whirling dance like leaves caught in a whirlwind. Then he saw it. It was between the face of the ice and the light: its details hidden in silhouette. But some features were still recognisable: the six multi-jointed limbs that ended in prehensile organs that were neither hands nor feet but something in between, the small head on its long neck—unnaturally flexible like that of a tree sloth.

  He grabbed a flashlight, pressed it up against the ice and flicked it on. The creature, illuminated now from both sides, seemed to leap out at them.

  ‘Sweet mother of God!’ Garrett exclaimed. ‘What the hell is that thing?’

  Its skin was the unhealthy grey of cigarette ash and its long, wickedly-curved claws glittered like ebony penknives in the double spotlight. Its triangular maw was frozen open in an endless scream, revealing three rows of needle-sharp teeth around a coarsely ridged opening that looked capable of grinding bone to powder. Its black eyes fixed them with a shark-like, predatory stare.

  ‘That’s what attacked us at the crash site,’ McCarthy stated levelly.

  Rose looked at the creature. It certainly matched the description McCarthy had given.

  ‘Whatever it is, there’s no way out through here. Let’s keep moving.’

  Campbell stepped over to where Garrett sat slumped on the floor next to Morcellet.

  ‘I can carry your friend for a while, if you like?’ he said.

  Garrett glared at him. He clambered to his feet and offered a hand to Morcellet. ‘We can manage. Thank you.’

  Together they hobbled towards the maze of cracks that led back into the belly of the mountain, when suddenly there was the sound of shouting and running bootsteps echoing through the tunnels.

  Rose went from mouth to mouth of the maze of tunnels leading back to the horseshoe cavern but it was impossible to tell which, if any, led to safety.

  The Indians were on them. They were trapped!

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Fall back!’ Rose shouted. ‘Get behind the moraine.’

  They hunkered down behind the ridges of rocky mud left behind by the glacier at their backs. Rose scrambled along the line and gave fields of fire to Tej, Campbell and Khamas.

  A burst of fire from the eastern tunnel thudded into the moraine wall. The Indians were here.

  Rose dived into his position at the end of the ragged line of his riflemen and kept his semi-automatic trained on the black tunnel entrance ahead of him. There was no sign of movement. He pushed the night-vision goggles back on his head. They were useless now in the dim, blue-tinged light from the ice wall behind them.

  There was a burst of fire from Tej, followed by an equally economical volley from Campbell.

  ‘They have found the eastern tunnel,’ Khamas exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Rose replied. ‘Just concentrate on your own field of fire.’

  The sounds of gunfire ceased for several minutes. Rose could hear the Indian soldiers moving about in the maze of tunnels, but could see nothing in the dark tunnel mouths in front of him. They were taking their time, he thought. They knew that they had cornered their prey.

  ‘You know, Captain,’ Kamas said, ‘—I never thanked you for leading us back to the plane. I know it was not your first choice.’

  Rose listened for movement in the black tunnels in front of them. ‘It hardly seems to matter now,’ he said.

  ‘No, Captain. It matters to me a great deal.’

  Any further reflection was cut short as a movement in the tunnel ahead brought his attention back to the situation at hand. He squeezed off a single round, deliberately firing into the iron-hard tunnel walls sending bullet fragments and stone chips ricocheting down the dark opening. The Indian response was immediate: a volley of shots rang out from the tunnel mouth. They fizzed above the lip of the moraine and slammed into the ice wall behind them.

  Tej and Campbell were also taking heavy fire. Plumes of frozen mud flew everywhere as bullets ripped into their protective wall. The surface of the ice wall behind them shattered into a tangle of cracks like huge spider webs sending ice chips flying.

  Rose returned fire as best he could, but they were hopelessly out-gunned.

  Unarmed, McCarthy and the others could only hide behind the natural battlements and pray.

  ‘Captain Rose!’ a voice called out from the maze of tunnels. The shout echoed around the rock walls so that it was impossible to tell from which tunnel it had come. But the voice was unmistakeable.

  Millicent Carver.

  ‘You’re trapped, Captain. There’s nowhere left to run to. Hand over the case and I’ll consider sparing you.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her, Rose,’ Frank Marinucci shouted.

  ‘Frank, is that you? You don’t seem like the kind of guy to hold a grudge.’

  ‘You fucking shot me!’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby! Captain Rose, you’re a soldier: you know that war is not personal. Sometimes the situation demands extreme actions in order to carry out one’s orders.’

  ‘And now I suppose the situation has changed?’ he called out.

  ‘Consider it from my point of view. You have something I want. You’re dug in to a defensive position, but with limited resources and time is on my side. You can’t hold out forever, there is no question about who will win. I will get that case, the only variable is how dearly you will make me pay for it.’

  ‘Don’t listen to that bitch,’ Marinucci hissed. ‘Once she’s got that case, she’ll plant enough explosives in those tunnels to bury us forever.’

  Rose waved him quiet.

  ‘Think about it, Rose. You can die here and now. Or you can take a chance. Who knows maybe you’ll even make it back to the surface. Think about the little girl,’ Carver continued. ‘If you make me come in there, I’ll make sure she’s taken alive. My men could make her last hours extremely unpleasant.’

  ‘Promises not working, so now you’re trying threats eh, Carver? You should have paid more attention in negotiation class. If you’d have dangled the carrot a little longer I might have bitten.’ Rose checked the magazine on his SCAR and watched as Khamas and Campbell slammed fresh mags into their own weapons and chambered the first round.

  ‘No deal,’ he shouted. ‘Come and get us.’ He sighted down the barrel at the tunnel in front of him and waited.

  ‘A very inadvisable attitude, Captain. I’ll make sure you die slow.’

  Rose tightened his grip on his rifle and pressed his cheek up against the stock.

  A burst of gunfire echoed from the eastern tunnel, but it sounded unusual--muffled and without the sound of ricochets. It took him a second to realise that bullets were not coming in their direction. Campbell and Tej looked similarly confused.

  ‘Stay aler
t,’ Rose ordered. ‘Cover your arcs. She’s just trying to confuse us.’

  ‘Aye, and she’s bloody doin’ it too.’ Campbell said.

  A scream rose briefly above the rattle of gunfire: not a woman’s voice but a man’s lifted high in terror. One of Carver’s men. Then the din seemed to recede. Whatever battle was being fought still raged, but it no longer sounded like it was right outside the cave. As if Carver was fighting a rearguard action: as if the Indians were retreating.

  It’s definitely a trap, Rose thought. She’s trying to draw us out.

  But other possibilities filled his imagination: a second wave of soldiers sent to investigate once King failed to report back, perhaps. He waited while the battle drew ever more distant. God damn it, even if it was a trap Carver could not fake that kind of noise. She must have drawn at least some of her troops back. Maybe this was a chance after all.

  Just as Rose was about to risk leaving the relative safety of the moraine hummocks, a single figure burst into the cave. Rose swung his pistol up instinctively, but he was beaten to the punch. Another shape leaped from the tunnel mouth, landing on the running man’s shoulders and forcing him to the ground. He screamed briefly before the thing on his back ripped his head backwards. Rose was so close he could hear the gristle of the vertebrae come apart.

  Rose started incredulously at the monstrosity that squatted on the back of the dead Indian. He had seen its like only once before: frozen in the ancient ice wall behind them.

  The creature stared at them. It looked wholly alien. The white eyes and triangular maw looked identical to its brother frozen in the ice wall, but seeing it move drove home the realisation that this was not just some waxwork model or ancient fossil. It was incredibly swift. Although only slightly shorter than a man, its movements were swift and direct like those of a bird or small primate. In the time between its lightning fast, staccato movements its body writhed slowly and sinuously like a snake adjusting its coils. Rose could see muscles moving under the skin of its long neck although the head remained rock steady like that of a raptor.