Riley stopped and turned to his squad of men. It was difficult to see through the armoured glass slits in the helmet. Normally Nightshade would be wearing the lighter helmets that didn’t enclose the entire face but Riley had recommended to his men that they wear the all enclosing version instead. Every little helped.
“Today,” Riley’s voice grated out through the portcullis like cover across his mouth, “Today is the day we show the Americans how to do a job properly. We will be under observation at all times during this operation. We will put the fear of God Himself into their souls. But do not underestimate the Khadrae. This is our biggest test. We are not fighting Afghans, Boers, Muscovites or anything remotely human. We are fighting an extremely dangerous alien animal. You’ve all been well briefed on the Khadrae’s capabilities and I can assure you that nothing has been exaggerated. Show no mercy because you will receive none. Waver in your duty to King and Country, you will fall and you will die. Victory or death!”
“Victory or death!” shouted Nightshade, chainsaws held high, sun shining and glinting on the diamond tips.
The noise of the Khadrae was tremendous, the clamour of hisses and strange cries becoming louder and louder as the trucks neared the breeding ground. The site was enormous, with high concrete walls zooming off to the horizon on either side. Murdoch wondered if the Nightshade troops would be able to get over the huge wall, but his fears were groundless. The Commandos and Nightshade dismounted with fluid professionalism, Nightshade forming a loose circle with their backs to each other, the Commandos firing grappling hooks to the top of the hard grey walls and raising rope ladders before scrambling up to crouch down on the walkway at the top of the wall.
Murdoch, Jane and a small Scotsman Jane knew by the name of Michael Doyle clambered up the swaying rope ladders. Murdoch had kept his team deliberately small. There was less chance of being detected that way. Murdoch eyed up the Doyle fellow. Doyle wore a large army issue khaki jacket a couple of sizes too big for him with every one of the large pockets straining to contain whatever was in them. A pump action shotgun was slung over one shoulder and a bandolier of shotgun cartridges over the other. The man seemed most unconcerned about the dark sea of death milling about below him. He was picking his nose for God’s sake!
The compound was bare ground surrounded by the concrete block houses that served as hatcheries. The block houses backed onto the thick wall surrounding the compound which was broken only by the metal gates that served as an entrance. A lone stars and stripes blew raggedly from a flagpole above the gates. Murdoch blocked out the constant screams and cries from the nightmares that stalked the grounds below.
Murdoch saw Colonel Scott quickly signal to Riley from the top of the wall and then the ten Nightshade soldiers were soaring high into the air, propelled over the wall by their enhanced strength, ten men jumping straight into the fire. They carved a graceful arc out of the air and landed almost in the middle of the roiling mass sending up a cloud of dust with a thump loud enough to be heard by the men and woman on the walls. A shiver rippled out through the Khadrae followed by a single brief moment of silence interrupted only by the moaning wind. The ten men of Nightshade straightened themselves from their crouched landing positions, towering over the surrounding Khadrae like hunchbacked gods amongst demons and then all hell broke loose. Murdoch could hear the barrels of the gatling cannon whirring up to speed, the motors of the chainsaws roaring as the first few Khadrae were cut down and the immediate area secured.
Another shiver rippled through the Khadrae like a wheat field in the wind. An ear piercing, soul destroying scream issued from inhuman throats, drowning out the snarl of the gatling cannons spitting out bullets by the thousand, the Khadrae falling like wheat under a giant scythe. A wide circle free of live Khadrae rapidly opened up around Nightshade, littered with shredded limbs and torsos, droplets of blue blood forming a mist in the air.
Then the Khadrae moved, razor sharp steel talons flickering in the light of the rising sun, flowing like a sparkling river, splitting into coherent groups of thirteen, swirling towards the blaze of fire that was Nightshade like moths to flame.
“Let’s move. Jane, Doyle, come on. Let’s go,” said Murdoch struggling to make himself heard above the noise. The Commandos had all disappeared, jumping and climbing stealthily into the hatcheries to place their explosives.
Murdoch sprinted down the walkway, Jane and Doyle close behind. Their objective was a tall, four storey building about a hundred yards away. It was close to the walkway and so the three agents climbed down onto the hard packed ground and were in the building within a tense minute. Jane quietly shut the door behind them leaving them alone in a bland room with several exits leading to other bland rooms. Murdoch consulted his mental map, checked his favoured Webley revolver and led the way. Murdoch noted that Doyle seemed totally at ease with his shotgun, in fact seemed totally at ease with the situation as if he dealt with malevolent ancient intelligences and their dinosaur shock troops every day.
Murdoch led Jane and Doyle down a flight of stairs that led to the underground part of the complex, noting the deathly stillness, interrupted only by an almost imperceptible hum of power. Thick power cables were slung overhead which should lead straight to the Core’s Node. Hope bubbled up within Murdoch that this would be an easy job. Follow the cables, plant the explosives and get the hell out. Doyle was whistling an irritating jaunty tune as he jogged along.
“Nearly there, eh Murdoch! Easy peasy, aye!”
“One can but hope, Mr Doyle,” replied Murdoch.
“Call me Doyle, Murdoch. Everyone else does,” said Doyle as their footsteps reverberated down the seemingly endless corridor. The hum of power was louder and blue sparks crackled along the power lines.
“Most people call Doyle other things once they get to know him better,” said Jane as she nervously fingered her Sten sub machine gun, eyes roving from shadow to shadow searching for signs of danger.
“Only because they’re a big bunch of fairies,” smirked Doyle.
“Shhh…” said Murdoch stopping abruptly. He pointed ahead and motioned for silence. He heard it again, a click of metal on metal, a clink that sent needles of fear lancing through him. A Khadrae. It had to be.
“Problem?” asked Doyle unbelievably cheery. “Nothing a bit of dynamite won’t fix,” he added lighting the small fuse of a short red stick before tossing it down the corridor ahead of them.
Murdoch gawped. “What the bloody hell…” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by a muted boom that hurt his ears, dulling all sound for a few seconds.
Shaking his head to clear the ringing, he angrily grabbed Doyle. “Don’t ever do that again! How much blasted dynamite do you have on you?”
“Just a few pounds,” Doyle replied aggrieved at Murdoch’s lack of graciousness. “What’s the problem pal?”
“You could’ve brought the entire tunnel down on us! Are you trying to kill us you blithering idiot?”
Jane laid a calming hand on Murdoch. “John, Mr Doyle is the best demolition expert in the Empire. I doubt he would wish to kill us.”
Murdoch glared at Jane, but let Doyle go. “Just don’t do that again,” he said to Doyle.
Doyle muttered something under his breath which Jane was glad Murdoch didn’t catch.
It got warmer as they progressed deeper and deeper into the complex of tunnels. Both Murdoch and Doyle were sweating profusely by the time they entered a large circular domed chamber in the middle of which stood an opaque crystal pillar of shifting oranges and reds. The thick power cables they had followed snaked across the sandy floor along with many others and merged into the metallic base of the pillar which itself pulsed with malevolent energy. The walls of the room were covered with pipes, dials, flickering lights and wires all seemingly haphazardly interlinked. Here and there small screens showed colourful hieroglyphics that flashed back and forth across their vertical limits.
“Is this is then?” asked Doyle disappointedly. “No b
easties to fight?” He gave a deep sigh and wandered off leaving Murdoch and Jane by themselves.
“Is this it?” Murdoch repeated Doyle’s question to Jane. There was little for him to investigate further, nothing for him to take back without pulling out an entire wall.
“I think so,” Jane said distractedly as she was engrossed in reading a series of hieroglyphs embedded along the side wall next to a steaming pipe, writing the shapes down in a pocket notebook.
“I’ll just lay the charges, will I?”
“Errr… No. Let me just finish this.”
“Jane, can I just remind you, dear, that we have under ten minutes to lay the charges and get out of here.”
“Don’t you ‘dear’ me, Murdoch. This is important. Can you read it?”
Murdoch looked at the intricate pictographs, a combination of jagged vicious lines and smooth round soothing shapes. “No, of course I can’t read them,” he admitted. “That’s why you’re here. What do they say?”
“Propaganda by the look of things. Something about the time of Thule being upon us and the descendants of the Tuatha de Danaan ruling the world.”
“Your standard loony bin dictator piffle then. Can I please set the charges now?” said Murdoch impatiently checking the time on his wristwatch.
“Oh go ahead,” snapped Jane. She looked around. “Where’s Doyle?”
“No idea,” said Murdoch as he quickly wired up the bundles of dynamite. As he approached the fiery column the glow became brighter and the pulse more rapid as if it was aware of his presence and what he was going to do. Murdoch had an eerie feeling he was being observed and he cast his eyes around the chamber once more.
“Nearly finished with the explosives?” asked Doyle as he appeared from the other side of the pillar causing Murdoch to jump and nearly shoot him.
“Don’t do that you pillock. What the hell is wrong with you? This is a life and death situation and you’re messing around, getting on my nerves!”
Doyle smiled or at least his mouth smiled a smile. His eyes remained steady and without a spark of humour. “I would really get a move on. Don’t look now but there’s something watching us from that alcove just behind me. Don’t know what it is but I doubt it’s going to be on our side.”
Murdoch knelt down at the base of the pillar while Doyle stood casually on guard. As he plugged the wire into the dynamite his eyes flicked over the shadowed alcove. There was definitely something there, a shadow deeper in colour that the rest of the shade.
“Why not throw some of your dynamite at it?” queried Murdoch under his breath.
“Make your mind up man! You practically bit my head off the last time I did that!”
Before Murdoch could form a retort, Jane yelled in alarm. “The door’s shutting!”
Door? What blasted door? thought Murdoch but the deep rumble of something heavy and impregnable closing assured him that they were trapped in the chamber. Looking up he saw the only way out get smaller and smaller as multiple sections of stone slid together like an iris.
“Here they come,” said Doyle feeding cartridges into his shotgun as familiar sibilant hisses filled the air. “One, two, three…six… ten… thirteen. Shite. Thirteen Khadrae, Murdoch. Must be a room behind that alcove. They're surrounding us.”
“Damn and blast. It’s a trap. We’ve been out manoeuvred by some…some freaks of nature.” Murdoch didn’t look up as he wired the detonator to the explosives, the familiar red armed light lighting as he pulled up the handle of the device.
“Murdoch… Could use your help pal,” said Doyle urgently.
“Any idea how we’re going to get out of here Murdoch,” asked Jane as she stepped up, backing into the crystal column, Sten pointed at the Khadrae that now completely surrounded them.
Murdoch had an idea but he wasn’t sure if it would work.
“Will I chuck some dynamite at them?” asked Doyle hopefully. “That might shake them up.”
“Probably blow us up as well,” said Jane a bit shakily. “John, look at these Khadrae. They’re bigger than the ones we’ve seen before on the American Ice Base. They could be a guardian breed.”
“Marvellous,” said Murdoch. “So they’re probably even faster and tougher than the normal ones. Stunning.” He paused, warily watching the steel talons and teeth glinting in the flickering glow from the column behind him. “What are they waiting for?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s shoot them,” said Doyle grinning wildly as he loosed off three shots in quick succession blowing off a Khadrae’s arm in a spray of blue, and catching it on the chest leaving a dripping hole. The thing didn’t even flinch. It certainly didn’t die.
“Jesus Christ, Doyle!” screamed Murdoch. “Don’t do a bloody thing!”
“Calm yourself. And watch your language. Ladies present,” Doyle grinned maddingly while nodding at Jane.
“Doyle. Stop being such an arsehole,” Jane said through gritted teeth.
A hiss, a whirl of movement, talons flashing and a Khadrae attacked. It was fast. Blink and you’d have missed it and you’d be dead. Only Murdoch’s honed reflexes reacted in time hurling him into a crouch as razors sliced the air a whisker above his head. He fired five shots straight up through the Khadrae’s throat into its skull before Doyle nearly deafened him once again by blasting the Khadrae at point blank range throwing it back several feet where it thrashed futilely against the ground before lying twitching.
“It’s playing with us,” said Jane looking at the flickering Node behind them. “It’s experimenting, testing our reactions, seeing what we’ll do.”
“Bloody marvellous. Always wanted to know what a lab rat felt like,” said Murdoch breathing heavily as he fed the Webley with bullets. He could feel the stitches in his back straining, desperate to give way beneath the stresses he was putting them under. “Sounds as if we’re not going to get out of this alive then, hmm?”
17 Into the Fire
What the blasted bloody hell was Murdoch doing? Grant, Brown, Palmer and Jenkins had all sustained injuries, Grant and Palmer serious ones. The Khadrae were relentlessly pounding Nightshade’s defences. The circle of men was smaller than it had been when they started. Riley had made a mistake in making the circle too large. The soldiers had too wide an angle of fire to cover and couldn’t concentrate their fire effectively enough even with weapons as devastating as the gatling cannons. The Khadrae had slithered through the gaps in the coverage, closing down on the armoured men with terrifying speed. Even armour as thick and tough as Nightshade’s was no defence against the shining crescents of metal that were the Khadraes’ talons as the injured men had found out to their cost. Grant had lost his left arm, severed at the elbow in one swipe by an attacking Khadrae; Palmer had, at the very least, several broken ribs where his breastplate armour had been badly dented by the head of a sprawling Khadrae. The sheer force of the blow had sent him sprawling on to the ground and they’d all nearly been lost as units of Khadrae had homed in on the gap left by Palmer. Only a frantic defence by Riley and Johnson had saved the day but it had been a close thing. Now that he had seen both forms, Riley noticed the enhanced Khadrae were very much superior to their brethren that stalked the silent corridors of Atlantis. The beyond razor sharp sickle claws and teeth of unknown metal alloy were backed up by toughened muscles stranded with iron like cores. Against such an armoury even Nightshade was at risk.
Riley got the impression they were being tested, their defences probed for weak spots, different combat strategies being utilised against them to see how they would react. Riley had quickly realised that if all the Khadrae attacked in one vast force, Nightshade would be rapidly overwhelmed but so far this had not happened. He had noted that the Khadrae units usually attacked in threes and fours while vast reserves hung back within the protection of the concrete hatcheries, new squads appearing as one was cut down. The Khadrae were coming faster now, raging against their armoured opponents, spittle flying from their jaws as they sped across the
compound, faster and faster, the fury in their screams searching out to the armoured men ahead. Riley had never seen an animal move so fast. It was unnatural. Despite himself Riley admired the gracefulness of the creatures, the way they seemed to flow across the landscape like a fearsome river, sweeping all before it.
And Nightshade had a problem. Their gatlings were overheating. The water cooled machine guns weren’t designed to be fired for long periods of time and they were jamming as their components expanded with the heat. The reduction in firepower allowed more and more Khadrae through. Riley knew he was going to have to retreat very very soon. In hand to hand combat Nightshade would have little chance against the artificially enhanced beasts especially in such numbers. Come on Murdoch!
Riley’s cannon jammed, painfully jarring his arm as the barrels wrenched themselves to a screeching stop. The first Khadrae swept through the hole in the curtain of bullets. All Riley could see beyond that single Khadrae was wave upon wave of night black death. This was it. Come on Murdoch. Don’t make this another suicide mission for Nightshade. The lads don’t deserve it.
Raising the cannon effortlessly, Riley used it to batter the first Khadrae into a boneless mass with one sweep, the engine of the chainsaw roaring into action spewing diesel fumes into the air, the diamond tipped blades glittering in the weak sun. Thankful for the extra reach the new chainsaw afforded him, Riley arced it round in a semi circle slicing through the heads and necks of three of his attackers. He recoiled as the slavering jaws of another Khadrae clamped themselves around his helmet, providing him with the stench of rancid flesh and a disgusting view of the Khadrae’s throat. Dropping his useless gatling cannon, he grabbed the struggling creature before it could deploy its talons and yanked it off him, throwing it back into the endless night sea.
Looking around him, Riley knew he must retreat. Murdoch must have failed. That was the unpalatable truth but that was the way it went sometimes. Twenty minutes had definitely gone by. Colonel Scott was going to have to blow the structures and then the Americans would bomb the hell out of the place and hope the Node was destroyed. Murdoch's plan to ensure the total destruction of the Node was a sound one but depended on too much. Failure. It left a sick feeling in Riley’s stomach.
An Atlantean Triumvirate Page 22