The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  The royal spectators murmured in hushed whispers, some excited, some alarmed. Many glanced fearfully over at Hades.

  For his part, Hades just stared impassively down at the dust cloud.

  ‘Monsieur Vacheron, I presume you have a response for this,’ he said.

  Vacheron was speaking quickly but firmly into a radio. He nodded to his master. ‘Yes, my Lord. Of course, my Lord. I do apologise. This is most unfortunate. I can’t imagine what he’s doing.’

  Hades never took his eyes off the dust cloud.

  ‘I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to rescue his friends.’

  Jack threw Alby and the two dogs into the back of the Typhoon just as Mother and Astro returned with the fourth Marine, Tomahawk.

  Jack climbed into the Typhoon’s cab. ‘Sky Monster, go! Get us out of here!’

  Sky Monster floored it and the Typhoon blasted off the mark, now heading away from the mountain-palace, back toward the minotaur city.

  Disoriented by the dust cloud and with Vacheron’s voice yelling in his helmet’s earpiece, the Hydra gave chase in his Spartan, but Jack had a hundred-yard head start on him.

  Watched by the shocked Neanderthals on their rooftops, Jack’s Typhoon shot back down the elevated road of the minotaur city, heading the wrong way. When the truck came to the junction, it swept left, heading west.

  It shot into the tunnel at the end of that elevated road and suddenly it was blasting through darkness, the only light the beams of its headlights.

  This tunnel was nothing like the ornate, ceremonial roadways of the Fifth Challenge.

  It was simple, utilitarian, all concrete and rough-cut stone walls. A supply tunnel.

  A few hundred yards behind Jack’s fleeing truck were the headlights of eight vehicles: the Hydra’s Spartan led the way, followed by seven new Light Strike Vehicles driven by armed minotaurs that had been scrambled in response to this emergency.

  A chase pack.

  After racing through the darkened tunnel for about four miles, Jack’s Typhoon burst out into a larger space.

  Jack saw ten container trucks parked at loading docks, with their rears pointing toward four massive industrial-sized garage doors cut into the far rock wall.

  Sunlight lanced through gaps in the garage doors. Low, fading sunlight. Late-afternoon sunlight.

  Western sunlight.

  ‘The west dock,’ Jack breathed. ‘We made it.’

  A crew of minotaurs standing near the trucks looked up at the sudden arrival of the Typhoon.

  Armed with AK-47 assault rifles, they’d been forewarned by radio of Jack’s approach and now they covered the industrial-sized garage doors. But they looked uncomfortable holding the guns, gripping them in an unfamiliar way.

  These aren’t fighting minotaurs, Jack realised. They’re workers. Just a loading and receiving team.

  Jack leaned out the passenger door of the Typhoon and raised his rocket launcher to his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t slow down,’ he said to Sky Monster.

  The minotaurs opened fire . . .

  . . . just as Jack fired the rocket launcher.

  It shot through their midst before it slammed into the left-most garage door and exploded.

  When the smoke cleared, a great ragged hole yawned open in the garage door and a thick beam of orange sunlight illuminated the big receiving cavern.

  Sky Monster aimed the speeding truck right at the hole and the little gang of minotaurs dived clear as the Typhoon thundered past them, smashed through the hole in the door and raced outside into the light.

  The speeding Typhoon burst out into sunlight and from his seat in the cab, Jack beheld a spectacular view.

  A wide flat sandy beach spread out before him. It sloped gently down to the water’s edge, where it met the dead-calm waters of the Arabian Sea.

  The setting sun sat low on the horizon, reflecting off the ripples in the water. Jack guessed there were perhaps thirty minutes of daylight left.

  On the landward side of the beach was a high cliff of hard-packed sand. At least a hundred feet high, it prevented access to the beach from the desert. They had emerged from a squat concrete structure built into the face of that cliff.

  It was deathly silent. No birdsong. No insect noise. No hum of city life.

  Located somewhere on the remote west coast of India, Hades’s kingdom was clearly a long way from anywhere.

  Jack’s eyes took in the wide beach.

  It would have been gorgeous had it not been for one singular feature: the many rotting hulks of gigantic cargo and container ships that lay strewn along its length, beached on the shore.

  They were hideous ghost-like things. Rusted and cannibalised, they looked like the emaciated skeletons of once-great ocean-going behemoths.

  Jack had read about beaches like this. It was a ship graveyard. Decommissioned cargo ships were brought here to be stripped—by hand, by impoverished labourers—for reusable parts.

  It was notoriously dangerous work: fumes from leftover fuel often overcame workers; fires were common; arsenic used to strip away paint and rust poisoned workers; and sometimes whole sections of the boats simply collapsed on top of them, killing them.

  The derelict boats stretched away from Jack to the north and the south.

  He counted twenty of the giant things, but there were many more than that. The nearest skeletal ship towered above his Typhoon truck, twenty storeys high, but as the beach extended into the distance in a broad curve, the ships shrank in size, vanishing into the haze.

  ‘Which way do we go?’ Mother asked.

  ‘North,’ Jack said. ‘If this really is India, then going south doesn’t help us. There’s only ocean that way. Going north gives us options. Not good ones, but options: Pakistan, Afghanistan, borders.’

  To Jack’s right, a paved bitumen supply road ran up the side of the cliff, leading to the desert.

  Sky Monster said, ‘Do I take the road?’

  Jack bit his lip in thought. ‘No. If they have reinforcements, they’ll come from that direction. Go north along the beach itself.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ Sky Monster peeled the truck onto the beach, kicking up a geyser of sand as he swung northward—

  —a split second before the chase pack, led by the Hydra’s Spartan, blasted out of the wrecked door of the supply dock and opened fire with every gun they had.

  The wave of bullets strafed the hull of a derelict container ship as Jack’s Typhoon swung in close to it, whipping underneath the giant steel support struts that held the massive ship upright on the beach.

  They were racing down the side of the colossal ship, heading toward the sea.

  Grabbing whatever weapons they could find in the Typhoon, Mother, Astro, Tomahawk and Alby all returned fire at the pursuit vehicles behind them.

  ‘There’s too many of them!’ Mother called to Jack.

  ‘I’m on it!’ Jack shouted, hefting his RPG launcher onto his shoulder and firing it—not at the chase cars but at the struts holding up the beached ship.

  The shot hit its target and a gout of sand sprayed upward, taking three of the support struts with it and with a great moan of straining metal . . .

  . . . the container ship began to fall sideways!

  The immense shadow of the slow-falling ship enveloped the cab of Jack’s Typhoon.

  ‘Go faster, Monster!’

  ‘My foot is on the floor!’ Sky Monster shouted.

  ‘Then put it through the floor!’

  Groaning loudly, the massive ship toppled sideways, coming down on top of them and the chasing pack. The Hydra saw what was coming and he pulled his Spartan out and away from the falling ship. Most of his fellow chasers did the same, except for three of the minotaur-driven LSVs. They just hammered forward, trying to outrun the falling ship and catch Jack’s fleeing truck. />
  Jack’s Typhoon skidded around the stern of the toppling ship just as it came down.

  The sound it made when it hit the sand was colossal. A tremendous deafening boom.

  The three LSVs speeding along behind Jack’s truck failed to outrun it by mere metres and the ship pulverised them, crushing them to nothing when it landed on top of them.

  Guided by Jack, Sky Monster drove like a demon, charging northward up the ship-strewn beach.

  They skidded around a second beached ship and then whipped right through a tunnel-like hole in a third.

  The chase pack was close behind them, firing, harrying, gaining.

  And then a black-painted assault chopper roared over the cliff guarding the landward side of the beach and unleashed a withering barrage of 30mm rounds at Jack’s Typhoon.

  As Sky Monster peeled away from the fusillade, Jack snapped to look up at the chopper.

  It was a Kamov Ka-52 ‘Alligator’ gunship. Possibly the sleekest attack chopper ever built by the Russians, it was incredibly manoeuvrable, thanks to its two coaxial contra-rotating main rotors.

  It was a state-of-the-art gunship built to carry one thing: firepower. It had two side-mounted 30mm cannons, twelve Vikhr-M anti-tank missiles and a pair of deadly rocket pods. With its side-by-side pilot configuration, it even had ejection seats: rare for a chopper.

  In a distant corner of his mind, Jack noted that the Ka-52 Alligator was brand new. Only the Russian military used it. He wondered if Iolanthe’s royal Russian relatives were in the military-helicopter business and had donated a few models for Hades’s use.

  The Alligator thundered by overhead. Two missiles lanced out from its pods.

  ‘That way!’ Jack yelled to Sky Monster. ‘Go into that ship!’

  Sky Monster obeyed and swung them hard over, and their Typhoon bounced straight into the next beached container ship.

  The big truck took air as it ploughed into the ship’s rusted, gutted hull. It was now hurtling lengthways down a vast empty hold designed to house hundreds of shipping containers. Beams of sunlight coming through gaps in the walls illuminated the bones of the great ship: a complex network of girders and catwalks.

  The two missiles roared in behind the speeding truck and, overwhelmed by the forest of targets now in front of them, they detonated against a pair of girders well behind the Typhoon.

  ‘Huntsman!’ Mother called. ‘That chopper is packing too much heat!’

  ‘I know, I know!’ Jack yelled.

  She was right. Their Typhoon truck was a seriously tough piece of hardware, but compared to the Alligator, it was a lightweight. It would only be a matter of time until it nailed them.

  He had to do something about that chopper.

  At that moment, the Hydra’s Spartan four-wheel drive swung into the ship behind them and charged down the length of the cargo hold.

  ‘Sky Monster, stay inside this ship, inside this hold! Do loops until you see my signal to get out.’

  ‘Your signal?’

  ‘You’ll know it when you see it. Alby, get up here!’

  Alby appeared in the doorway connecting the cab to the rear hold of the Typhoon.

  Jack said, ‘Okay, listen up. No matter what happens to me, you’ve all got to get away from here. Alby, you know more about the ancient world and our enemies than anyone here. I’m putting you in charge. Find a radio or a phone. Call Zoe, Stretch, Pooh Bear. But not anybody in government—we don’t know who is compromised. Call someone we trust and bring back the cavalry for Lily.’

  ‘What about you?’ Alby said.

  ‘No matter what happens now, I’m a dead man,’ Jack said. ‘As soon as they figure out a way to do it, they’re going to blow my head off with the explosive in my neck. The best I can do now is get you guys out of here. You got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Alby nodded sadly.

  ‘Mother?’ Jack said. ‘You good with that?’

  ‘I’ve picked boogers out of my nose that were bigger than this kid, but if you say he’s got a brain, that’s good enough for me,’ Mother said.

  Jack began to stand but then Alby grabbed him by the arm.

  ‘Jack. Thanks. Thanks for everything.’

  Jack smiled grimly. ‘No problem. Now, I gotta go and break some shit. Sky Monster, slow down a little. Let that Hydra asshole get closer behind us.’

  ‘Closer?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jack got out of his seat and hustled back into the hold of the Typhoon.

  He then threw open the rear door and saw the Hydra’s Spartan right behind them.

  Without missing a step, Jack leapt out of the Typhoon and onto the bonnet of the speeding Spartan, took two steps along it and, to the Hydra’s great shock, jumped onto the Spartan’s roof.

  There he yanked open a hatch and jumped inside. As he landed inside the cab of the Spartan, he kicked the steering wheel, causing its airbag to explosively inflate right in the Hydra’s face!

  With the Hydra stunned by the impact of the airbag, Jack kicked him out of the speeding vehicle and suddenly he owned the Spartan.

  And as Sky Monster’s Typhoon began doing laps in the shelter of the derelict ship’s massive cargo hold, Jack swung the Spartan onto a spiralling access ramp that led upward.

  At the same time this was happening, the two pilots of the Alligator chopper were flying it alongside the container ship, searching for the Typhoon inside.

  When they saw it through some gaps in the hull, whipping along inside the cargo hold, they swung the chopper into a hover beside the beached ship and waited till they could draw a bead on it.

  The pilot gripped his control stick, trigger finger at the ready, waiting for the Typhoon to reappear—

  It reappeared.

  He jammed his finger down on the trigger.

  A tongue of muzzle-fire blazed out from the Alligator’s side-mounted cannons.

  But only for an instant.

  For at that exact moment, a Spartan four-wheel drive armoured personnel carrier came sailing out of the sky from the foredeck of the container ship—and landed smack-bang on top of the twin rotors of the Alligator.

  The same Spartan Jack had taken from the Hydra and driven up onto the foredeck of the ship.

  Only Jack wasn’t in it now. He’d gunned it toward the edge of the foredeck and leapt out at the last second, sending the Spartan flying off the edge of the deck, aimed straight at the gunship.

  Eight tons of armoured personnel carrier came crashing down on top of the helicopter.

  It crushed the chopper’s twin rotors in an instant and the whole tangled thing came crashing down beside the container ship, landing in the sand in a huge flaming explosion.

  Inside the Typhoon, Mother saw the blazing wreck hit the ground.

  ‘Fuck me, that crazy bastard knocked out the chopper.’

  ‘I think that was his signal,’ Sky Monster said.

  ‘Damn straight,’ Mother said. ‘This is the best chance we’ll have to get out of here. Gun it!’

  With a sad look back at the wreckage of the Spartan—and with no way of knowing if Jack was in it or not—Sky Monster did as he was told.

  By sacrificing himself and taking out the two biggest threats of the chase pack—the gunship and the Spartan—Jack had given them a chance to get away and they had to take it.

  Alby patted Sky Monster on the shoulder. ‘Go north,’ he said. ‘Go north as fast as you can.’

  Now free of the Spartan and the Alligator, Sky Monster’s Typhoon sped north along the ship graveyard, shooting past the rotting, rusting hulks, speeding under their towering bows and sterns.

  The four remaining minotaur-driven Light Strike Vehicles maintained their pursuit for a short while, but then they must have received radio instructions to abandon the chase, for they all suddenly turned as one and headed back down the beach
toward the concrete supply dock that serviced Hades’s kingdom.

  Standing in the rear door of the Typhoon, Mother watched them go.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Astro said from beside her.

  ‘I don’t think they’re gonna just let us go, but if they want to give us a head start, we should get as far away as we can,’ Mother said.

  The Typhoon shot away up the beach, heading north in the dying light of the sun.

  As for Jack, without a car or a truck to call on, he just sat on the foredeck of the derelict ship, watching the sun dip below the horizon, waiting for them to come for him.

  It didn’t take long.

  Within twenty minutes, the minotaurs on the four remaining LSVs returned and with the Hydra leading them—his armour scratched and dented from his fall from the Spartan—they surrounded Jack on the foredeck.

  He offered no resistance when they cuffed him and shoved him into one of the LSVs.

  Then they drove him back in the direction of the western supply dock, back toward the Underworld, where, no doubt, Jack thought, retribution awaited him.

  The four LSVs pulled to a halt at the base of Hades’s mountain-palace.

  Whereas before the palace had been sleek, tall and imposing, now it was horribly scarred, its symmetrical lines mutilated by the damage caused by Jack West Jr.

  The train tracks that had housed the hostage carriages lay askew, blasted apart by Jack’s RPG attack. Rubble and debris had cascaded down the lower reaches of the mountain, creating a layer of ugly scree.

  And that was the thing: what had once been ancient and elegant was now defaced and deformed.

  The assembled royal guests stood in appalled silence as Jack was shoved by the Hydra out of his LSV at the bottom of the Great Staircase.

  Of course the Great Staircase was now a lot less great.

  It had a gaping dent halfway up its length, the result of the runaway hostage train slamming into it.

  Hades, Vacheron and Lily stood at the top of the staircase, above the broken tracks on which the hostage train had previously stood.