Wings of Death

by James Axler

  Makoba shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ll take your rifle....”

  Jonas blinked, then saw stars as a massive fist crashed into his cheek and jaw. Nerves misfired, sending him to the floor in a collapse of numbed meat.

  Just before the Zambian tumbled into unconsciousness, he realized that the metal in Makoba’s hair could have been the missing helmet Durga had lost.

  The control device that turned the kongamato from a mindless horde to a trained, deadly weapon.

  Jonas cursed himself even as blackness descended upon him.

  Chapter 23

  From their position “surrounding” the Panthers of Manosha column, Edwards, Domi and Sela Sinclair had been raining hell upon the enemy. Their rifles might not have been full-auto like the Copperhead submachine guns, but with the SIG AMTs, one shot per pull of the trigger was not an impediment. Big rounds would strike a man and send him to the dirt, dead or crippled, unable to take further delight in the horrors that the winged kongamato inflicted upon the Zambian force trapped in the Victoria Falls redoubt. Their opening salvo of eighteen nearly simultaneously launched 40 mm grenades had destroyed trucks, and wagons made from converted trucks. Cape buffalo that weren’t torn to pieces by shrapnel snapped out of their harnesses and stampeded through warlord Gamal’s militiamen, spreading even more chaos and death.

  Sinclair tried to suppress a smile as a gunman screamed, impaled on the horns of one of the buffalo, legs kicking as he clutched his belly with both hands. She tried not to feel any humor at the man’s grisly situation, but she was reminded of an old tradition from the twentieth century—the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

  The phrase that threatened to make her laugh was “when you mess with the bull, you get the horns.”

  “It seems like if you mess with Cerberus, you get the horns, too,” Sinclair finally allowed herself to say, even as she granted the impaled man a merciful end to his suffering with a bullet through his skull.

  “I don’t even want to know where that came from,” Edwards grumbled. While Sinclair and Domi were nailing down the perimeter with quick, lethal shots against the militiamen, the brawny ex-magistrate was quickly reloading his grenade launcher. The process wasn’t the fastest, but over the space of twenty rounds from a rifle’s magazine, he was able to put the six grenades into the revolver chambers of his launcher. Once done, he shouldered the weapon, lined up his sights and fired his first shot.

  This one was directed at the umbrella of energy that had stymied Grant and Brigid in their attacks. Even as the 40 mm shell spiraled toward Gamal’s “throne,” Edwards sought out the second of the targets he’d scouted. Thanks to flash suppressors on CAT Beta’s rifles, and the low charge in Edwards’s multishot launcher, the Panthers of Manosha were unable to spot the trio in the darkness. Add in the night camouflage of their black shadow suits, and the three of them were more than a match for an assembled army.

  Edwards planted his next round in a knot of men who were closing on Domi’s position. The shell landed in their midst, scattering them with the force that six ounces of high explosive could muster. Two out of six rose from that group, but they quickly went down as Domi played cleanup. So far, CAT Beta had the Panthers of Manosha on the run, staggered by firepower and precision.

  Then Sela Sinclair saw the kongamato alight, surrounding Brigid Baptiste, and instantly brought up her SIG rifle, targeting the creature on the left. A squeeze of the trigger, a second in rapid succession, and the winged hulk jerked violently. It collapsed, dead, and Sinclair was glad she didn’t have to rely on the tiny 4.85 mm rounds that the Copperheads spit.

  Brigid saw the one creature fall, and then the second seemed to explode in a violent tic. Grant charged from the shadows alongside the Cerberus archivist, his automatic shotgun having put it down.

  “Thanks for the save, Beta.” Brigid said via the Commtact.

  Edwards came over the line. “That field around Gamal is gren-proof as well as bulletproof.”

  “I figured as much,” Grant replied. “Brigid, any ideas?”

  “Nothing here,” she said. She sounded breathless, but that was understandable, as she was trying to keep pace with Grant’s long strides.

  So far, the Cerberus warriors had scattered the Panthers of Manosha with aplomb. From his position under a shield of charged ions, Gamal seemed to have forgotten his human warriors and was summoning more and more of the winged hybrids into battle.

  Sinclair winced as she heard a sonic bark. She looked up, realizing that the monsters were even more batlike than just possessing wings. Judging by their cries, the creatures were undoubtedly using echolocation, a natural form of sonar that took the place of eyesight. There were few shadows that such a cry couldn’t peer through, and Sinclair realized that she was relatively exposed. Already, her optics were picking up four of the winged horrors changing direction.

  They were all focused on her, and she grimaced, running even as subsequent barks chased her. The air erupted behind her, and Sinclair looked back to see that a gren had gone off in midair. Charred lumps of meat struck the ground about her, and the kongamato who hadn’t been hit veered off in midflight. She shouldered her rifle and chased one down with her front sight. Bullets sliced through the night and into the thick muscle and bone of the flying vat clone.

  It, too, spiraled, losing control and crashing into the ground, wings vainly attempting to pick up air currents to allow it to parachute with relative safety. Instead, it landed with an ugly, wet thud. Another of the flying things swooped around, wings angled back, until it was a living arrow, jaws wide and open and forming a perfect circle in Sinclair’s view.

  She turned the rifle and fired bullets literally down the creature’s throat, feeding it hot pills of lead and copper at supersonic speeds. The kongamato stayed on course, its momentum far too great to stop. But instead of snapping its jaws shut, and tearing through Sinclair’s shadow suit with its teeth, the thing simply crashed into her. The lifeless clone rolled off, and Sinclair grunted in pain. The impact had been lessened by the non-Newtonian properties of her suit, but even with that, the wind was knocked out of her and her ribs ached.

  She rolled onto all fours, realizing that each moment she spent in this position was another that enemies of any sort could swoop in upon her. She fought, pushing against the ground with all her might, and was starting to rise when she felt a rush of air just past her shoulder.

  The kongamato threw down all four limbs, halting its forward momentum, but required a second to recover its wits and strength to turn back toward her. The Air Force freezie had lost hold of the grip on her rifle when the first beast struck her, though the weapon was still attached to her by its sling. Unfortunately, she didn’t think she had the time or speed to unsnarl the twisted shoulder strap.

  Her hand dropped to her holster and she pulled her Beretta 92, triggering the gun even as its muzzle cleared leather, and firing with all the speed and precision of an Old West gunfighter. She missed the first two shots, but the next four slammed into the whirling kongamato, 9 mm rounds punching deep through thick muscle and bone. The fifth and sixth shots recoiled up into the monstrosity’s face. Bones collapsed under their intrusion, and the beast toppled backward, its brains whipped into a fine froth.

  Sinclair turned, scanning for other menaces flapping in the night, but the kongamato seemed to have their attention split in multiple directions. Domi was visible, her albino features and ruby-red eyes readily apparent to Sinclair’s night-vision optics, and the feral girl was a ballet dancer of carnage. With one fist clenching her .45, the other her fighting knife, she dodged, then slashed at her opponents, utilizing every ounce of her savage strength and speed.

  The little human whirlwind seemed to revel in this conflict, but Domi’s bared teeth were a blend of both wild abandon of her civilization and a rictus of effort. As quick and strong as the albino girl
was in comparison to most people, she was still only a third the weight of these things, and didn’t have the same reach as they did. She was expending energy at a greater rate than the vat-bred predators.

  Sinclair untangled her sling swiftly, bringing the SIG’s stock to her shoulder and looking through its red-dot scope. Even as a kongamato’s mass intercepted the holographically projected dot, she pulled the trigger, sometimes firing in anticipation. The big .30-caliber rifle kicked against her shoulder, and downrange the savage, winged predator in her sights jolted as if a hammer had struck it.

  It wasn’t much, but at least it was evening the odds for the deadly little ruby-eyed Domi. She took advantage of the momentary distraction at the death of one of their own, and lunged like a fencer, the point of her blade tearing open the throat of another kongamato. A third whipped its attention back to her, roaring in bestial rage, but Domi snapped her arm up and pulled the trigger on her Detonics. A thunderous boom preceded the collapse of that creature, its skull excavated by a .4-caliber slug.

  This was war to the knife, Sinclair realized. All she could hear over the Commtacts were gunfire, grunts and rapid breathing as warriors fought bandits and monsters in the night-blackened forest.

  With the realization that it was everyone for themselves, Sinclair sought out new targets with her SIG.

  The dawn would rise over a blood-soaked battlefield, and only her skills could give her a chance to see the sun again.

  * * *

  NATHAN LONGA GLANCED back over his shoulder even as he pole-vaulted from the floor of the vat chamber to the window of the control room. The lights were on within, and there was a man present. But even as he was springing off the ground, thanks to the artifact Nehushtan, he realized that he’d abandoned Kane and Durga fifty yards back, and he was already thirty feet in the air. The ancient staff of Solomon had once again gifted Nathan with phenomenal physical ability.

  The knowledge was unnerving, as he’d accepted that prowess without a second thought. He stiffened his legs, driving them forward with all his might, to strike the glass. Even as his soles connected with the window, a dull glow sheathed him, the energies of Nehushtan reinforcing his body against the impact, and Nathan could see the layer of heavy gauge wire sandwiched between two sheets of Plexiglas. He watched as cracks spread, branching out like tongues of lightning during a summer storm, before the glass buckled, shattered into cubes and imploded into the control deck.

  And then Nathan was on the floor there, crouched and looking around. The shift between mental states was disorienting, and he wondered why that had happened. He should have been aware of his landing, but then he noticed the man in the control room, an armed African in a millennialist uniform, flattened against the wall, an unseemly dent where his rib cage should have been.

  Some things, I will spare you experiencing.

  It was the staff. It had blanked him out while he’d crushed that man’s torso with...some form of attack. He was about to question the artifact out loud when the door to the control deck slammed open. There were more millennialists, and they were firing their Calico machine pistols from the hip, counting on sheer volume of automatic fire to catch the intruder.

  Nathan jumped, seeking cover behind a heavy computer console as bullets chased after him. He fumbled for the pistol in his holster, thumbing back the hammer even as he drew it. He swung around the other side, seeing the flare of the consortium gunners’ weapons, bullets flitting through the air like bolts of fire. Nathan realized that Nehushtan had him accelerated again, and he was able to line up the sights of the pistol on one of the two gunmen. The Detonics boomed in Nathan’s fist, and he rode the recoil, swinging to aim at the head of the other man.

  The staff took over once more, dragging Nathan back behind cover with a reflexive jerk, as bullets ripped through the air that he’d occupied moments ago. The staff of Solomon had saved his life by a matter of inches, by the span of microseconds, and for that, the young African was grateful. Even so, he knew that he wasn’t invulnerable. The stick had overridden Nathan’s instincts and reflexes simply because, as quick as the artifact had made him, it still was not sufficient to keep him safe from a speeding bullet.

  He heard cursing through the doorway, and knew that the surviving gunman had not arrived alone. Nathan peered around a corner, closer to the floor, because he assumed that his opponents would be looking at head level for signs of movement. He saw one of the millenialists holding something through the doorway, something large and complicated, and oddly phallic.

  Get out now.

  Nathan didn’t require a second warning, and he charged back to the window he’d leaped through before. That he was now thirty feet in the air was not as much a concern as the sudden blaze of light filling the area he’d just been in. Another second of blackness, and then he was aware and alert once more, crouched on the ground, with Kane and Durga coming toward him in a full run.

  “What the hell was that?” Kane shouted.

  “The nearest I can make out, it’s the heavy artillery version of an ASP blaster,” Durga replied. “You survived.”

  “I got out before they could shoot that thing,” Nathan answered. “There’s a cache of alien weapons in this complex?”

  “There’s a lot of bad stuff that I hoped to use,” Durga answered.

  Kane pulled the pin on an implosion grenade. “Find something else to hope for, snake face.”

  With that announcement, he stepped out from under the shadow of the control deck and lobbed the miniature bomb through the window. A couple millennialists were already poking their heads out as the gren passed between them, and there was a sudden burst of curses and screams. When the implode gren detonated, the two consortium henchmen were ejected through the window like rockets, their severed torsos trailing clouds of blood in their wake.

  The floor above cracked under the sheer force of the blast, and Kane grabbed both Durga and Nathan, tugging them into the open before heavy equipment not sucked up by the implosion collapsed through the severely weakened floor. Nathan glanced back in shock as he watched computer consoles rain down, exploding into sparks and shattered components.

  “You’re not the only one who likes to blow shit up,” Kane said to Durga.

  Amber eyes narrowed, staring daggers at the Cerberus explorer. “I know. Firsthand.”

  Nathan lifted his gaze, and through the cavity blown in the floor above, saw that the doorway seemed clear. “We’re not going to climb up there easily....”

  Kane pointed to Nehushtan. “If you let me borrow it...”

  Nathan thought about that for a second, but Kane seemed to have a plan in mind, so he handed over the staff.

  Kane then seized Durga under one armpit and pushed him upward. The Nagah prince let out a snarl of dismay as he was hefted off the ground and tossed through the door that Nathan pointed out.

  “Oh, no,” Nathan murmured.

  Kane wrapped his free arm around him. “You’ll be fine.”

  And with that, Nathan was airborne for the third time in what seemed as many minutes.

  * * *

  WHEN THE SUBLEVEL hatch started to buckle under violent assault, Thurpa the Nagah moved back from the group of humans. His instincts were on edge, especially since the only other cobra man in Africa was Durga, and he was elsewhere. In a melee between the men of the Millennium Consortium and a throng of wild, bestial kongamato clones, Thurpa had little hope that the technocrats would hold their fire, nor care if they accidentally killed him.

  Thurpa had been involved in a pissing contest with members of this group since the beginning, and the young Nagah had already felt betrayal from the prince who’d brought him here. About the only people he sensed he could trust anymore were topside. Even Sela Sinclair, who’d come down to check on the millenialists, had had to leave, going on a mission to flank the wild horde above groun
d, risking her life for the sake of everyone down in this redoubt.

  Thurpa kept his eyes on the group, slipping into a shadow. His chest still hurt badly from the laceration he’d received from these very creatures. The wound shifted, but coagulant gel and powerful glue kept it shut, a gauze wrap padding it and keeping infection away. He was in less than ideal condition to engage in a close-quarters battle with the screaming, apelike winged demons. If the millennialists actually possessed a tolerance for anyone but their own, Thurpa might have felt it worthwhile to stand with them and fight, but their distrust informed his decision that any battle would end with two forces against him.

  So when he saw Makoba fall back and set an explosive charge on their barrier, Thurpa was in shadow, watching in abject horror. He was about to say something when Makoba depressed the trigger, detonating the whole thing. The iron beam holding the hatch shut was cut in half, and the kongamato smashed the freed door off its hinges. Makoba threw himself against the wall and out of the path of the screaming monsters that hurtled through the opening.

  Thurpa squeezed himself tighter into the niche where he’d hidden, but the senses of one of the beasts picked him up as soon as it barked out a sonar wave. Thurpa’s ears rang and his chest injury throbbed violently, but he gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to scream out.

  The clone monster hopped toward him, its activity hidden by the sudden surge of its brethren taking after the consortium contingent. Thurpa winced as thick limbs slammed into the wall on either side of his hiding place. The reflex made him drop the handgun he’d received. It bounced and skittered between the beast’s hind legs, disappearing into the shadows.

  The creature opened its lips, baring its fangs. Thurpa and the animal turned their attention to the sudden surge of screams and gunfire in the distance. The kongamato force had caught the millennialists, whose submachine guns simply weren’t enough to stop the massed assault.

  The kongamato looked back at Thurpa, a low growl rumbling in its throat. The thing seemed to relish the fear it caused him.