E-Branch - Invaders Part 48

And now it seemed to Trask that the coffee, s.e.x, and cigarettes voice mocked not only the sun but also Ben Trask himself. For indeed suns.h.i.+ne might find the high blind windows of Malinari's aerie, but it certainly wouldn't find Malinari! Nor would Trask. The song was a message; but more yet, it was the mocking laughter of a monster! It mocked Trask, E-Branch, the military, and all their combined efforts.

So that now, in the heightened anxiety of this sudden knowledge, he used the temporary lull between shots to shout across to the Major: 'We have to get done here. So what's next?'

The Major had not been idle; he'd been working out the sniper's position for himself, and now believed he'd got it right.

Lighting a flare, and a moment later pulling the pin on a grenade, he call ed out, 'This is what's next. Hit the deck - now!'

The warni ng was timely. Even with his eyes tightly closed, and sheltered by the column, still Trask saw the blinding white light blossoming through the membrane of his eyelids ... and at the same time he heard and indeed felt the terrific report that shook the floor and shattered gla.s.s fixtures into flying shards.

Then there was a stunned silence and cordite stench, and at the last a mewling whimper rising to a scream.

A tattered male figure came staggering, wreathed in smoke, himself smoking. His eyes were feral in the gloom. And the Major, Trask, and Goodly didn't wait to see what he would do or if he was capable of doing anything, but cut him down in a withering crossfire.

'We got him! We got Malinari!' The Major stood up, started forward up the marble steps. But as the precog and Trask joined him, the latter was already shaking his head.

'That isn't Malinari,' Trask coughed a denial into the now smoky atmosphere. 'And this isn't over yet. The elevator's gone and we're trapped. Trapped by the very creature we're trying to destroy...'

His words were portentous of the sudden thunder, the gouting fire and blazing light that at once rocked the night beyond the shattered windows. The three men looked at each other, then hurriedly crossed the floor to look out and down on a scene out of Dante's Inferno. On the far perimeter of Xanadu, 537.

536.

f disintegrating chalets erupted in red and yellow ruin, and fireb.a.l.l.s lifted dieir mushroom heads to the night sky. But Trask was right: it wasn't over yet.

For as the three stood there watching, impotent to act, so midway between the burning perimeter and the casino a second series of terrific explosions, then a third, ripped through the shattered resort. Concentric rings of destruction were closing in on the Pleasure Dome, hurling flaming debris aloft and turning night to day.

'Now he springs the trap,' Trask husked. 'Xanadu is no use to him now and he'll destroy it, and us with it. So this is it. We're next!'

'The place is wired, mined!' The Major'

s face was ashen. 'I should have know it from the very first explosion, the one that took one of my men.'

'Don't blame yourself/ said Trask. 'We've all been equally stupid. And that b.a.s.t.a.r.d is sitting somewhere watching us, knowing that by now ve know. I don't suppose there's any point asking you to call the chopper down?'

'Wouldn't if I could,' the other shook his head. 'No way - not into this lot. But in any case my radio's been out since we got into the lift. Some kind of electrical interference.'

As he finished speaking, so lan Goodly reeled and caught at the Major's arm to steady himself. And, Jake!' the precog gasped.

'My G.o.d, Ben - it's Jake!'

'Jake?' Trask repeated him. 'What about him?'

'He ... he's on his way here,' Goodly answered. 'But so is the elevator!'

'Jake's in the elevator?' Trask failed to understand. But: 'No,' Goodly shook his head. 'Jake is in the Mobius Continuum.

The bomb is in the elevator! When I staggered just now, OO /.

it was because I'd seen it going off- but seen it at close range, even this close - and it's due to happen any time now!'

The Major might have asked what they were raving about but didn't have time. In a sudden stirring of smoky air, Jake stepped out of the Mobius Continuum with Liz clinging to him like a leech - and at the same time the elevator pinged and its doors hissed open.

Jake and Liz were staggering, disoriented; the Major didn't know what was going on; and the precog, knowing he was about to die, couldn't take his eyes off the elevator. Ben Trask was the only one who saw the 'truth' of it and knew what to do.

'To me!' he shouted. 'To me!' And without waiting he swept them into his arms, bundled all four of them close to himself.

'What?' Jake said, completely out of the picture.

'Make a door!' Trask shouted at him. 'For G.o.d's sake, make a G.o.dd.a.m.ned door! Make a big one, and I mean right now!'

And Jake, and Korath, they made a door.

The blast took them right through it, all five of them (or six, with Korath), through the door into the Mobius Continuum.

And in the hot blast and the fire that followed them, Jake knew only one safe place to take them. He remembered those suntanned, near -naked bod ies sprawling indolently, and the shadow of the helicopter dark on the sparkling water. And he knew the coordinates.

Down they went in one of Xanadu's pools, and coughing and spluttering they surfaced ...

... In time to see Chopper One at an alt.i.tude of one hundred and fifty feet, wheeling to face the backdrop of cliffs, steadying up and sitting like a hawk on the air, and opening up with its nose cannons on no clearly discernible target.

In his once-secret hiding place, Malinari saw it, too, and didn't believe it. But as cannon-fire ripped the chimney's facade to shreds he had to believe it. And while he still had time he tripped the rest of his switches. Then, with his thin clothing tearing under the pressure of madly metamorphosing flesh - and his bolthole hideaway collapsing around him - Malinari made a headlong dive through his window of observation, out into the night.

For a moment the pilot of Chopper One saw him: the 539.

538.

jet-copter's thermal-imaging highlighted a s.h.i.+fting, flattening, morphing blob of a figure that at first plummeted, quickly adopted a manta-like shape, and finally glided from view. The pilot might even have taken a shot at the thing, but powerful updraughts from the blazing h.e.l.l that was Xanadu were rocking his machine, forcing him to take action and climb out of danger.

And as Jake and the others left the pool, so Nephran Malinari shot like an arrow overhead. He might easily have been some primal pterodactyl out of Earth's prehistory, but was in fact a predatory creature from an alien, parallel world. Trask saw him - his crimson eyes, the dark blur of his pa.s.sing - and a moment later heard his taunting laughter echoing from on high.

Hearing that laughter, and remembering Zek - unable to forge t her, ever - all Tra sk wanted was to stand there and let his hate out, and will this monster to a terrible death. He knew he couldn't, but he had never wanted anything so much in his life.

In close proximity like this - so intent upon each other - Malinari had 'heard' Trask and sent back: Hatred such as that is catching, Mr Trask. It breeds hatred! As for willing me to death: we must see whose will is the strongest, ehP Not here and now, no, but in another place, another time. This was nothing hut a skirmish, to get your measure. But if you would live tojight another day, first you must survive the night. Alas, I don't think so. If you survive, however, do not despair. For I shall he waiting, Mr Trask, I shall he waiting ...

All of them with Trask heard it - that dark voice in their heads and its taunting message - but especially Liz. She heard it, and saw beyond it. Malinari's plan: flight, to a safe haven in another place, another country.

She might even have discovered which one, but Nephran Malinari recognized her presence and withdrew snarling into mental obscurity. Where his evil telepathic voice had been, only mindsmog remained, spiralling after him into a mental void.

And Malinari was gone ...

But to Trask and the others it seemed the danger was still present. Xanadu was burning end to end; a series of devastating explosions continued to rock the place; Malinari's bubble aerie on top of the Pleasure Dome was no more, and showers of plastic and gla.s.s were still raining to earth. Sc.r.a.ps of blazing debris drifted across the night sky, and clods of earth and gra.s.s were fountaining in the garden where Chopper One had made its initial landing. A lucky mistake on Malinari's part, that last.

One of his few errors.

But the Pleasure Dome itself, the casino, was still standing, and now the precog lan Goodly cried, 'The big one is still to come.

It's the casino. A set piece of delayed action - like the pause before the last big firework at the end of the show!'

Fortunately WO 2 Bygraves had taken the initiative. Thinking he'd lost his commanding officer when the Major's radi o had gone down, he had called the rest of the platoon out of the casino. Now they came running, gathering at the pool.

But from the pool on outwards to the perimeter of the resort, it seemed that the whole of Xanadu was an inferno. Even if there were no more explosions, the sheer heat would certainly kill everyone before they made half the distance. And meanwhile the precog, in a fit of delirious anxiety, was turning this way and that, repeating, 'It's going to blow! It's going to blow!'

Then a piece of burning debris from the bubble came drifting like a kite, weighed down by and trailing a length of electrical cable. No one noticed it until it struck the monorail's overhead power grid. There was a flash that sent blobs of molten copper skittering, and the kite and cable fell to earth.

Trask and the Major glanced at each other, headed for the boarding platform no more than fifty feet away. The rest followed them, and Jake quickly caught up. 'What are we doing?' he asked Trask breathlessly.

'The elevated monorail,' Trask gasped. 'It has power. Maybe we can drive out of this, or over the worst of it, at least as far as the main parking lot and the big ops truck.'

His idea was as good as any other; in fact it was the only idea, for the armoured car had been blown over onto its side by 540.

541.

the blast from the garden. Fortunately the locator David Chung, along with Bygraves and his men, had already vacated that area; like Jake they had seen the pool as the only sanctuary from the bomb blasts and the fires that licked closer with every pa.s.sing moment. And by now the heat and smoke were suffocating.

Dragging Liz behind him, Jake was the first into the leading carriage of two articulated, open-sided cars. Climbing into the driver's seat, he hit the red power b.u.t.ton and, as the motor throbbed into life, grabbed the drive lever.

The system could scarcely be simpler: push forward to go, pull backward to stop. And ahead the single overhead rail climbed and curved outwards towards the perimeter parking l ot, the re ception area, Xanadu's gates and safety. But while the motor warmed up, still the precog was shouting. 'It's going any minute now.''

Men ran, limped, or were carried; they bundled each other into the cars. Until finally Trask yelled, 'That's it. Now get us the h.e.l.l out of here!' And Jake pushed the lever forward.

Slowly - agonizingly slowly, or so it seemed - the cars climbed to their elevated height and started along the spiralling, pylon-supported rail. Fifty feet, a hundred, and gathering speed. And then the Pleasure Dome went.

The blast was awesome as the casino literally lifted into the air, sank down into itself, split asunder under the irresistible pressure of expanding ga.s.ses, and blew apart in red and yellow streamers of flame. The whole thing disappeared in dust, rubble, and gouting fire, and in the next moment the hot blast of its pa.s.sing reached out and rocked t he monorail'

s carriages, causing its pa.s.sengers to grit their teeth and hang on for dear life. But then the cars steadied up and the danger was past.

So everyone thought- -Except lan Goodly. 'There's one bomb left!' He suddenly cried. 'It's in the reception area, the gatehouse!' He was right and just like the bomb in the Pleasure Dome, this too was a delayed action device. When it went it took a good man, their rear-guard, with it - but it also took out the last elevated section of the monorail!

Liz was behind Jake, shouting, 'Look! Look!' and pointing ahead. But he was already looking. All he could see through the smoke and the fire was a ma.s.s of slumping, buckled metal - the wreckage of the tower that had borne the weight of the monorail - beyond which there was empty s.p.a.ce and a drop of some thirty odd feet into a red, roaring death!

Jake slammed the drive lever into reverse ... and nothing happened. The power had gone along with the overhead gantry and power line, and the cars were free-wheeling down a gentle gradient at some thirty miles an hour.

But lan Goodly's talent was back in force. Suddenly he was there, leaning over Jake and shouting, 'Jak e, listen! There's a way out. I can see it. We'r e going to make it!'

And he told Jake what he had seen, shouted it into his ear as the articulated cars went lurching into empty s.p.a.ce, heading for the inferno that waited below.

Korath knew what was required and set those fantastic formulae rolling yet again down the screen of Jake's mind - until Jake froze them and conjured a door that even Harry Keogh would be proud of. Then: Darkness surrounded the cars - the Ultimate Darkness of a time before time - and in a single moment wh ich might yet be as long as forever, light, gentle moon a nd starlight, blinked into being as Jake made his first perfect three-point exit from the Mobius Continuum at well-known coordinates.

The cars were boat-bottomed . They didn't dig in but rode across the dry gra.s.s and sandy soil of the safe house's garden, qu ickly slowing until, with scarcely a jolt, they were brought up short by the stout wall. Then the rear car slewed a little - but not enough to spill anyone - and both cars rolled sideways through forty-five degrees and came to a rocking standstill...

For a long time there was silence. Until Jake and the E-Branch 542.

543.

EPILOGUE.

people climbed out of the lead car and, as a man, collapsed or plumped down on the withered gra.s.s and began to breathe again. Then someone (it sounded to Liz like 'Red' Bygraves) said, 'Holyf.u.c.k!' And everyone started talking at once.

In Xanadu, Jethro Manche ster had built a Pleasure Dome. Now it was gone, and Manchester with it, to an end as undeserved as it was brutal and horrific. Likewise the alien author of Xanadu's and Manchester's ruin; he, too, was gone. But Lord Nephran Malinari was fled, not dead. And it grieved Ben Trask's heart that he must admit it: that the chase wasn't nearly over yet, but if anything was now more needful and deadly than ever.

For if the others, if Vavara and Szwart, were t rying to do what Malinari had begun to do in subterranean Xanadu - if they, too, were nurturing 'gardens' of loathsome plague-bearing death-sp.a.w.n - and if a single red spore, all unnoticed, inhaled like a speck of dust, could write finis on a human life and replace it with undeath, how then millions or billions of spores - and what then for the world ... ?

On the second morning after the Australians cremated their four dead comrades in a quiet ceremony with full military honours - a ceremony which Trask and his E-Branch people felt privileged to attend, where in fact there were only three bodies in their coffins, for the fourth had burned on Manchester's island, and was represented by a photograph, a scroll of honour, and messages of farewell from his closest colleagues only - the second morning after that, the Major and his two stalwart Warrant Officers were at the airport in Brisbane to see Trask and his people off.

After the British team had received their regulation new bubonic shots - for the Australian authorities were insistent that no one be allowed to enter or leave the continent without first being inoculated - then, over drinks in the departure lounge, Trask and the Major had a qui et word in private. Jake, Liz, and 545.

544.

the rest of the team sat at a table with Bygraves and Davis, where for the better part they commiserated in silence.

Something of an aftermath, it seemed there wasn't a lot to be said. But Trask and the SAS Major weren't willing to leave it at that.

'And so it goes on/ said the Major, Tor you at least.'

'For us it never seems to end,' Trask answered. 'Just when we think it might, there's always something new. Not always as bad as what we've just been through, but always bad.'

'And you can't give up on it,' said the Major; not a question but a statement of fact.

'Never!' Trask growled. 'This time, for me it's personal. But personal or not, it's always the same. We've seen all this before, and we'll see it again. Yes, and we'll see it through, all the way to the end. But myself...

I for one will never be able to rest until this one is dea d. Or until I'm dead. One or the other.'

'Malinari?'

'The same,' Trask nodded. 'I want that b.a.s.t.a.r.d dead, dead, dead!

And I intend to get him, no matter what it takes. As Lardis Lideci might say, that's my vow. Hub! My Szgany vow, aye.'

'Well, you have a go od team to help you,' the Major glanced across the room at the people sitting with his men. 'Weird as h.e.l.l, but good. That David Chung, for instance. Such a quiet little man - with his built-in radar dish.

And the tall fellow, lan Goodly, who I'd hate to play cards with. And Liz, who hears people thinking? I definitely wouldn't play cards with her! And as for Jake ... I just can't believe what he does! It may have saved my life, but I still don't believe it.'

'I know,' Trask answered. 'And it doesn't help that it's something I can't talk about. Or something we can't talk about.

But being what you are, SAS, I'm sure you understand that.

Anyway - and if it makes it any easier - there are times when I don't believe this stuff myself. Times when I wake up and think I've been nightmaring. And the h.e.l.l of it is, I'm the only one who really knows that it's true!'

The Major shook his head and said, 'Weird, weird people - but I'm glad to have known you.'

'Same here,' said Trask. 'I'm only sorry that-'

'I know.'