In the instant before the last support gave way, the closest of the Nagas leapt for the sanctuary of the inner wall. Khamas tracked it through the air like a skeet before raking it with fire. The rapid-fire barrage chewed it to hamburger and it slammed into the wall with a wet slap, already dead, and plummeted after its mates.
Rose looked back towards the central spire. It still crawled with hundreds of Nagas. Beneath their high-pitched banshee wails he could hear the roar of the two remaining Asuras. The two other bridges that spanned the towers width both sprang from the other side of the spire. No doubt both would be crawling with Nagas. In a few minutes the spiral paths that wound around the inside of the huge tower would be overrun with the creatures.
The path they were on led down around the curve of the internal wall for two hundred metres before it came to another of the intersections. On the other side of the tower, a tidal wave of screeching monsters surged down the path towards the intersection as fast as white-water down a spillway. If they didn’t make it past that crossroads first, they would be trapped.
They ran for their lives.
Tej quickly outdistanced them. The stocky Ghurkha could run all day on slopes that would give even the fittest fell-runner nightmares. Khamas and the Major were not far behind, but Garrett was struggling.
‘Give me the case,’ Rose said as he dropped back to the panting politician.
‘You’re not leaving me behind, Captain. I can make it.’
‘I’m not leaving you: I’m trying to help you. Now give me the damn case.’
Garrett relinquished the aluminium briefcase. It wasn’t heavy, but its weight was an awkward encumbrance. Rose unclipped the shoulder strap from his carbine and snapped its clasps around the case’s handle. He slung it across his back. It bounced awkwardly, but at least his hands were free.
Garrett pumped his arms and concentrated on running.
They weren’t going to make it.
Tej dashed onto the intersection. The cross-shaped nexus was about ten metres square and flat. On the other side two paths wound off around the tower: one upwards that would lead them straight into the Nagas, and a continuation of the path they were on that followed a clockwise spiral downhill to the exit. Behind him another path led down – anticlockwise this time – like a switchback trail on a steep hillside. Tej sighted along the iron sights of his SCAR and sent a grenade whistling along a shallow arc along the uphill path. It detonated on impact, lighting up the darkness with a smoky orange ball of flame. The charred remains of half a dozen Nagas were blown off the path and tumbled into the darkness below, but there were too many of them, the raging torrent continued undaunted.
Khamas and the Major dashed past across the nexus and down the path on the opposite side and Tej fell in behind them.
They weren’t going to make it.
‘We have to go back,’ Rose said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Garrett demanded. His face was puffy and flushed from exertion, but when he saw the Nagas, he paled. They surged over the platform in an unstoppable wave, driving a wedge between them and the way out. Cutting them off from Tej and the others. They swarmed over the platform, overflowing it until some had to cling to the sheer walls to avoid being pushed over the edge. They milled around like white-water at the base of a waterfall before spotting Rose and Garrett. A hundred throats opened in triumphant cries as they charged up the slope towards them.
‘Back, now!’ Rose shouted. ‘Move! Get to the next intersection and head down the opposite spiral.’
He loaded his rifle’s underslung grenade launcher. He fired, reloaded and fired again, lobbing grenade after grenade down the spiral pathway. Between each shot he tweaked the dial on the grenade’s fuse selector, setting a slightly different setting for each charge. The result was devastating. The grenades exploded almost simultaneously as the wave of Nagas rolled over them: a fast drum roll of smoky orange detonations that tore apart the advancing column sending bodies flying in all directions.
‘Go, go, go!’ They charged up the steep incline as behind them another wave of monsters surged through the wreckage of charred and blackened corpses like magma bursting through a black crust of cooling rock.
Suddenly, a brilliant light illuminated the entire tower from top to bottom. The crystal ribs in the walls blazed like Klieg lights: blinding slashes of fire after so long spent in the darkness. The central spire burned like a magnesium rod.
At the same time, the floor lurched beneath their feet. The entire spiral pathway began to move like a huge escalator, slowly at first but rapidly accelerating until they were being carried back up the spiral much faster than they could have travelled by foot. At the junction between path and wall, there was no seam that Rose could see. The solid material flowed like a liquid. On the other side of the path, the metre tall lip of the path moved too, an integral handrail surging upwards alongside them. Over the lip, Rose could see the opposite spiral had also lurched into life: but it ran downhill. Its surface flowed like taffy. Where the clockwise spiral heading upwards met its opposite at the crossroad junctions, the paths slowed and swirled like eddies at the side of a fast flowing stream, allowing a rider to move smoothly from uphill to downhill spiral. The entwined pair of spirals that ran up and down the inside of the tower had suddenly sprung to life as some kind of internal transportation system.
The Nagas were still after them. The ones already on the path were carried up along with them, while new arrivals to the chase still swarmed across the bridges and along the paths on the opposite side of the huge space.
Rose looked uphill. They were being carried back to the shattered bridge that Rose had cut away with the black rod and to Rose’s horror, the platform was now swarming with Nagas! They were trapped! There was no way off the swiftly moving path short of clinging to the walls themselves, and even that was useless. They would need claws like the Nagas to get any kind of purchase on the smooth surface.
‘There’s no way out,’ Garrett said dejectedly. Then his resolve stiffened. ‘Captain, you have the bomb. Use it! If we’re going to die, let’s take these bastards with us!’
‘It may come to that,’ Rose agreed, ‘—but not just yet.’
Rose unsheathed the black rod and raised it high above his head. He slammed it down into the pathway, its impossibly sharp point bit deep sending ripples outwards like a rock thrown into water. But the pathway kept moving. The ripples in the solid/liquid alien material quickly subsided.
‘We’re still moving, Captain,’ Garrett said. The Nagas still raced towards them from both sides. Even stopping their progress towards the monsters above would only buy them a few seconds.
Rose unslung a coil of rope, doubled it up and threw a loop over the black rod: the rest he flung over the lip of the path.
‘After you Mister Garrett,’ he said.
Garrett crossed himself before taking a firm hold on the rope and clambering over the speeding lip of the path. The rope creaked as it took up his weight, but the black rod held firm. Rose gave Garrett some breathing room before grasping the rope and leaping over the side after him.
Tej and the others had avoided being carried back up into peril by only a few metres. They had made it to another of the intersections before the pathways leaped to life. They kept to the swirling eddies on the intersection, passing round each other in a kind of slow motion waltz, but avoiding the streams that would carry them onto the swifter-flowing currents that led back to the spirals.
Most of the Nagas had charged after Rose: obviously they were still after the case. The road to the exit was clear. In fact, by taking the anti-clockwise route from their nexus they would be carried straight back to the tunnel that led back onto the lava plain outside.
The Major seemed to read Tej’s mind. ‘Your Captain is a brave man,’ he said. ‘He will buy us what time he can, but in the end he will not shy from using the device.’
Tej nodded. ‘How powerful did you say that bomb was?’
�
�I was not given accurate data. I expect it is more powerful than a conventional fuel-air bomb or other such device. It’s safe to say its capacity would be measured in mega tonnes.’
‘Then it doesn’t matter how far we run. We cannot outrun a blast like that.’
‘If we can put enough rock between us and the blast, we may still have a chance. But the odds are slim.’
Tej stared at the paths leading away from the nexus: one up and one down.
‘Let’s see if we can’t improve those odds.’
Rose and Garrett sped through the air on the end of the rope. The tower walls whipped by five metres to their right. They had no chance of reaching them, and even if they could, their speed would just see them dashed against the hard surface before plunging to the bottom of the tower some two hundred metres below their boots.
‘Congratulations, Captain,’ Garrett wheezed through gritted teeth. ‘Another miraculous transference from frying pan to fire. What, exactly, do we do now?’
‘Just wait, you’ll see.’
Garrett looked down into the void below, arms trembling from the effort of clinging to the rope.
‘Just how long did you have in mind?’
They raced further around the circumference of the tower. Their speed pushed them outwards at a slight angle and Rose helped this along by pumping the rope like a schoolyard swing.
‘You bloody idiot,’ Garret swore. ‘You’ll have us both off!’
Rose ignored him and pumped the rope until they were swinging within two metres of the tower wall. He felt a tremor on the rope and looked up. Above them, the Nagas were swarming over the lip and the boldest of them had already started to climb down the rope. It climbed head down, all six limbs gripping the rope and its black eyes fixed on its prey dangling like fish on a line. It was now or never.
‘Get ready,’ he warned. ‘When I say so, I want you to let go.’
‘Are you crazy?’
Rose pumped the rope one last time. The walls sped past, the glowing ribs flashing past faster and faster, closer and closer.
‘Now!’
They dropped into the abyss.
There were in free fall for less than a second before the ground rushed up to meet them. They landed on the spiral pathway, one revolution down from where they had escaped.
‘This way, quickly,’ Rose urged and they dashed up the slope to an unguarded intersection. The strange, semi-fluid surface of the escalator swirled around the platform. Which way now?
The screech of more Nagas below made up their mind for them and they raced onto the anticlockwise spiral. In seconds they were speeding upwards again.
‘What goes up must come down, eh Captain?’ Garrett asked.
‘Right now I’ll settle for what goes up doesn’t get eaten!’
‘Fair point... Look out!’
A ghostly grey shape dropped onto the pathway in front of them. Rose fired from the hip, emptying his magazine into the Nagas before it finally lay dead. Garrett’s gun clattered to life behind him. Rounds sparked off the wall high above them as he fired burst after burst at a group of ghostly grey shapes climbing down from the spiral above them. The route Rose and Garrett had taken by rope, the Nagas took by climbing straight down the wall like giant roaches. Clinging to the wall they were left behind as the escalator span on its ever rising spiral, but damn those things were fast. They could climb as fast as they could run.
Rose added the voice of his SCAR to the choir. Knocking the creatures off was the easy part. His first burst swept two Nagas from the wall, but they landed catlike on their spiral, thirty metres down the slope.
‘Fire in the hole!’ Rose called and rolled one of his grenades down the slope. The explosion turned both the Nagas into a bloody shower of body parts but there were already more on the way.
Garrett’s SCAR ran dry and Rose thrust one of the stubby Remington shotguns into his hands. While Garrett peppered the Nagas with buckshot, Rose slammed a fresh magazine into the receiver. Each blast tore more Nagas from the wall. At close range the Remington delivered a tennis ball sized fist of lead: at twenty metres it was an unavoidable swarm of death, two metres in diameter. Garrett couldn’t miss and he made every cartridge count. Each blast tore a gouge out of the advancing wall of Nagas.
‘They’re pulling back! By God—they’re pulling back!’ Garrett shouted as the Nagas retreated out of the range of the shotgun. ‘That showed them, Captain. They’ll think twice before trying that again.’
But Garrett spoke too soon. The Nagas were not retreating; they were just drawing back the fist before the knockout punch.
They attacked again on two fronts: brazen, kamikaze leaps right on top of them while others climbed down and massed down slope, building numbers for the final charge.
Rose tracked one of the leaping Nagas through the air like a skeet before blowing it away. Meanwhile Garrett formed an umbrella of flechettes above them: pump, fire, pump, fire—pausing only to reload.
One of the Nagas came screaming down right on top of them. Garrett’s Remington roared. At close range, the twenty hardened steel flechettes tore the creature’s head into bloody ribbons but its body slammed into them with the force of
Rose spent precious seconds heaving the twitching mass off Garrett. Even decapitated, the creature possessed a nervous malevolence. Its limbs spasmed, claws catching in their clothing and ripping the high-tech fabric to shreds.
Finally, Rose flung the corpse down the slope. He swung his SCAR back to his shoulder expecting to see a mass of Nagas bearing down on them. Garrett struggled to his feet beside him.
‘What are they waiting for?’ he asked. ‘They could have had us.’
The crowd that had gathered down slope hissed and screeched but had not advanced one inch while Rose and Garret had been struggling with their kamikaze brother.
The breeze at their backs picked up and Rose realised that they were moving much faster than before. The travelator had accelerated. They were whipping around the spiral path faster and faster. The luminous stiffening ribs flicked past like streetlights over a speeding car.
‘What’s going on?’ Garrett asked.
Rose turned around and looked up the slope. They were coming to another of the cross-shaped intersections. They bore down on it at speed. And standing at the top of slope was the second Asura!
CHAPTER 34
Something was terribly wrong.
Tej, Khamas and the Major had been riding the spiral steadily upwards for almost five minutes, keeping well clear of the infested sections. But then the entire, huge travellator system had started to accelerate. The fluid walkway slid past the walls at a tremendous speed; even the swirling intersections roiled like mini-maelstroms. Tej had wanted to gain the higher ground, but at their current rate they would be whisked away to the top of the tower in minutes. And who knew what new dangers lurked in the upper reaches of the Asuras’ domain?
‘Down there – look!’ The Major pointed across the tower to the far wall where, on a lower spiral, a mass of Nagas gathered on one length of the spiral about a quarter turn below them.
‘It’s the Captain!’
Rose and Garrett hurtled towards the waiting Asura. Rose unleashed a full clip from his SCAR but the Asura was ready for that. It spun its staff before it, swinging the black rod so fast it became a blur. The intelligent material seeming to melt and flow until it became a disc of the impossibly strong material. Rose’s rounds sparked harmlessly off the spinning shield.
‘Do it, Captain!’ Garrett shouted. ‘This might be our last chance!’
Rose pulled out the detonator that hung from its lanyard around his neck. His finger hovered over the trigger.
The Asura brought its staff up for the final killing stroke... And was bowled over by a dark shape that rocketed into it from above.
Rose couldn’t believe it. ‘Tej!’ he shouted.
Tej had used the speed of the travellator against the Asura. Sprinting down t
he speeding slope he had leaped over the deceleration zone as the spiral path merged into the intersection. He flung himself feet-first at the Asura, smashing into its chest and sending it flying.
He quickly rolled to his feet and whipped out his kukri. He slashed at the Asura’s throat as quick as a striking snake. But the beast was just as fast. It rolled out of the way and onto all fours: the massive muscles of its shoulders bunched for a charge. Tej’s impact had surprised it, but it would take more than that to finish it off.
Something whizzed past Tej’s ear. A black shape cut the air as fast as an arrow and sliced into the Asura. The black rod plunged through its armour just below its shoulder, biting deep into the meat beneath before retracting. The force of the blow lifted the Asura off the deck and flung it backwards. It landed heavily at the top of the downward travellator. Before it could find its feet, it was whisked away, roaring down the spiral.
Tej turned to see Rose with the Asura’s staff. He stood at the centre of the intersection with Garret and the others. Behind them, Tej could see the mass of Nagas speeding towards them up the travellator.
‘Up!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to keep going up!’
Together they raced up the only clear exit from the intersection, the continuation of the upward spiral that whisked them farther up the interior of the huge tower.
Five guns blazed in a continuous chorus, hurling fire and lead at the following pack of Nagas. They were keeping the monsters at bay, but for how long? There were more Nagas than they had rounds of ammunition. They could not hold them off for ever.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Rose shouted between volleys. ‘Tej, can you see any way out?’
‘No, Captain. Every path is choked with those creatures.’
A quick glance told him that Tej was right. The Nagas swarmed around the entire circumference of the tower and more poured down from the central spire every second. They were now well above the level of the two remaining radial bridges.
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