One of the new arrivals moved straight towards the ship and started circling it slowly. From an open side door, a figure was looking intently in their direction.
It was a Nefilim. Another one appeared beside it, pointing at the ship.
“They can see us,” said Bark.
“Is that supposed to happen?”
“No!”
The breeze had become a swirling vortex, pulling at everything in its wake. They ran to lower the sails, now straining and distended, threatening to tear themselves apart.
They couldn’t have avoided it, even if they had wanted to. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, the ship was drawn towards the gaping breach in the side of the mountain, as surely as if it was a piece of flotsam on a raging river.
Clutching anything that would give them a handhold on the reeling ship, they were dragged into the darkness of the underworld.
* * *
THE HELICOPTERS carrying the Nefilim and the Gores arrived as the Pilot’s Station was being destroyed.
The General pondered his next move. The point of their expedition no longer existed; it had just been blown up. And he’d lost four men. He was lucky that they were his own private boys; he wouldn’t have to explain anything.
He turned to Thead. “Were those people friends of yours?”
“I’ve never seen them before,” Thead lied convincingly.
A new voice joined the radio chatter. It was the pilot of the helicopter carrying the two Nefilim. The aliens were saying that there was something there, he said. Some sort of ship, floating in the air.
The General couldn’t see anything, but he wasn’t about to argue. He didn’t know how pissed off the Nefilim would be now that the point of their journey had been trashed, and he was going to be careful. The wind was picking up. It was swirling, disappearing into the hole in the mountain.
“They’re moving… the ship I mean… going down, through the hole…” said the radio in the General’s ear.
“What do the Nefilim want us to do?”
“I’ll ask.” There was a pause, then “They say we should follow.”
“Of course they do.”
Damn
. “Lead the way.”
They passed through the gates of broken rock, into total darkness. The air stream was fast. It caught the helicopters and propelled them along, the corkscrew motion of the air keeping them away from the walls and in the center of the tunnel, where the airflow was smoother and faster.
The General kept his attention on the sonar. They were in a shaft about fifty meters wide that descended straight down, with no twists or turns.
“Where’s this damn ship of theirs?” he yelled into his headset above the howl of the wind.
There was another pause.
“Below us, sir. We’re all traveling at the speed of the air current. We’re not gaining on them, or losing ground.”
The General grunted and sat back. All they could do was wait it out. He wondered if the Nefilim knew where they were heading, or whether they were just stupid. And as for a ship that no one could see… He tried to contact Mount Weather, but it was useless. The rock around them was blocking everything.
After half an hour or so, their motion in the air current became smoother and slower. Light appeared ahead of them. It was soft, glowing gently in the darkness like radiation. Their advance became still slower.
* * *
They entered the light and emerged into the underworld.
It stretched away so far that its outer limits, if there were any, were hidden in the haze of distance. Below them stretched a sea, as flat and gray as slate. The helicopters floated in formation, their pilots and crews pausing to take in their new surroundings.
“What is this place?” someone asked over the radio.
“Fuck knows,” crackled one of the Gores from the speaker. “What are we going to do now?”
A good question, the General thought, opening the channel to the helicopter with the Nefilim in it.
“The ship?”
“They say they can’t see it, sir.”
“Never mind some ship we can’t see,” interrupted the female Gore. “Let’s see what’s here.” Their helicopter, a flash of red in the gray light, dropped away, descending towards the subterranean ocean.
Wishing that the Gores would ask his opinion about something just once, the General ordered the other pilots to do the same.
“Most planets have some kind of underground formations,” Thead was saying a few minutes later as they flew along a coastline. “Usually there’s something living there. Lowlife of some kind, as a rule. It’s strange, don’t you think General, how nature fills in every available corner? Usually with rubbish, for some reason.”
The General’s attention was on the island that was emerging out of the haze before them. Soon he could make out structures on it. “Shut up,” he said quietly.
Thead, who had begun telling the General his ideas on the purity of species and the desirability of its maintenance, stopped talking.
“Buildings,” he said when he saw what the General was looking at.
“Yes, Einstein. Buildings.” He called the other helicopters.
There were yelps of glee. It was the Gores, of course. The General felt a surge of intense dislike for them. If those bastard twins didn’t share the post of Vice Secretary-General and a long list of other titles between them, he would have long ago taken great pleasure in organizing an accident for them. The patronage and protection of the Secretary-General had served them well.
Thead noticed the General’s expression of disgust.
“You don’t have much time for those colleagues of yours, do you?” he asked, at the same time peering towards the island.
“It’s not your concern.”
They flew over a jumble of buildings and looked down on the inhabitants, who were either scurrying for shelter or standing looking up into the sky at the new arrivals. Near the center of the town was a square or market of some kind. The crowd in it didn’t look even remotely human.
“Mutants!” said Thead. “So you have them as well.”
“You know them too? Well, now we know where at least some of them live, don’t we?” said the General, looking around to see if any of the other helicopters had arrived.
At the same instant, the Gores’ helicopter flashed past them, the chatter of gunfire and the smoking trail of an air-to-ground missile in its wake.
The General swore and opened a channel. “You have my permission to open fire.”
“Well, thank you, General sah. Thank YOU!”
The General grimaced again. Thead said nothing.
This would surely serve the General well back at Mount Weather. Mutants had been a source of major frustration for as long as anyone could remember – for as long as history had been recorded, in fact. It wasn’t so much anything they did, although they did meddle when it suited them; it was more that they kept themselves separate, and so little was known about either them or their agenda. They were beyond the jurisdiction of the surface. Whenever they were hunted or pursued, they disappeared underground, and no one had ever known exactly where they went. Until now. He wondered how many places there were like this.
The General imagined the Secretary-General’s beaming face in front of him as he pointed the helicopter’s nose towards some buildings. He was still smiling as he pressed the fire button.
The other helicopters arrived. “Leave a few of them alive,” he told them. He needed a half-dozen or so for questioning. And something to show at Mount Weather, of course.
Soon the sound of his men, happy in their work, filled the headphones. The General flew above the length of an alleyway, herding a group of mutants before him. When they were cornered, cowering against the end wall, he turned to Thead.
“Have a turn, boy. All you need to do is press this.” He tapped a red button and looked Thead straight in the eye, waiting. This was a test.
Thead looked down at the cowering group. They were all the same, with insect wings and heads half the size of a human head, but they were different sizes, with the larger ones trying to shelter the smaller ones. A family, maybe.
Thead pressed the button without hesitating. There was a soft thudding sound, and the mutants were engulfed in a ball of fire. It dispersed almost immediately, but the flames clung to them. After a few seconds, they stopped moving. When the flames subsided, nothing was left but a collection of blackened husks.
“The joys of anti-personnel air-to-ground DF-3 incineration accelerant,” said the General. “Well done, Thead.”
“A pleasure, General.” Thead smiled.
The other helicopters were flying over the rooftops, dropping incendiaries among the buildings. Smoke and flames rose from the crowded streets, in the way of wars everywhere.
The Gores were hovering above the marketplace, firing their machine guns happily and randomly into the crowd.
“But ain’t this the life, sister,” said the brother, pausing to lob a grenade into a group of fleeing mutants.
“Makes you feel it’s all worthwhile, don’t it? Sure as heck gives you that warm useful feeling,” Alexis replied, taking aim at a bird hybrid and squeezing the trigger carefully. Its head exploded in a shower of blood, beak, and brains. “Yup. Sure does,” she agreed with herself, taking aim again.
Finally bored with the marketplace, they went roaming above the houses, setting fire to them. Pausing in front of one of the larger buildings, they saw someone running into it.
“Let’s try the laser. Have we tried the laser yet?”
“No, brother, we haven’t tried the laser yet. And I’m of the opinion that we most definitely should.”
The brother armed the laser, waited until it was charged, and fired. The beam sliced through a door frame in the front of the building, along the front wall, and then took out the upper half of a window, setting old wood alight as it went.
“Not bad,” he said, “but I prefer the kick of the machine gun. Call me old fashioned, but there you go!”
“Aw, you’re just an old romantic,” replied Alexis, at the controls. “Let’s hear that little baby fire up, boy!” Her brother obliged by swapping weapons and opening fire on a group running into the building.
A few seconds later, the General’s helicopter came up beside them. Without saying anything, the Gores flew away.
The General flew over the building and made towards the beach.
“Two there!” Thead yelled. “We just passed them!”
The General looked down and saw two figures. One was a female, normal enough. The other was a Nefilim. What was a Nefilim doing here?
He swung the helicopter around in a tight circle. “Get on these two,” he said to the side gunner.
As soon as they were in his sights, the gunner opened up. The bullets skittered harmlessly around the girl, but the Nefilim was hit and fell. The helicopter overshot them. The General swung it around as fast as he could.
“I know that female!” Thead yelled above the sound of the turbines.
“In that case, when we find her, I’ll allow you the pleasure of dispatching her.”
But the female was gone. “Time to get on the ground,” said the General. He ordered two of the helicopters to continue looking for survivors, and sent the others to the marketplace.
The Gores were meticulous about certain things; document-ation was one of them. “History must never forget our work,” they said as they filmed their exploits, taking great care to capture the most telling and graphic moments. Alexis was particularly adept with a camera, probably because she lacked her brother’s tendency to get carried away in the heat of the moment.
“We’ll get just the finest shot of yourselves landing there, General,” Alexis said into the radio. “Looks mighty fine, all that burnin’ shit and those dead mutants lyin’ all round the place. Be right fine with some choppers comin’ down, ain’t that so, Theo?”
“Damn right, sister.”
There were occasions when the Vice-Secretaries, in spite of themselves, made sense. Some film of the General and his boys in action on the ground might be useful later. One always had to consider the media. And the troops inside the helicopters had been unable to take much of a part in the festivities so far. They had been cooped up for several hours, and were getting jumpy. It was the compassionate thing to let them have a run.
The helicopters headed in to land. Thead was hanging out the side window, firing his new pistol at anything that moved. He was missing everything, but he was enjoying himself. Then he saw Sahrin. She was standing in front of a cowering mutant, and she had her arm drawn back, preparing to throw something.
“Bitch!” Thead had never had any reason to dislike her in the past, but now that he found himself on the opposing team he wasn’t going to let details obscure his appreciation of the big picture. He took aim, but the other helicopter was coming down between them. It blocked his view a second before Sahrin’s grenade took flight. Another couple of seconds after that, it erupted in a ball of flame.
The General, who had seen nothing, felt the blast. Even as he turned to see pieces of helicopter being scattered by the blast, he was considering his options. He didn’t know what type of weapon had taken out it out, or from what direction, so there was no advantage in going back up.
He landed and ordered the soldiers out, but it was unnecessary; they were on the ground already and spreading out across the square, killing wounded mutants and apparently forgetting the order to take some prisoners. The General and Thead followed. The General was half expecting another attack, but it didn’t come. Whoever had wasted the helicopter would be foolish to have stuck around.
“It was her,” Thead said. “The female from the beach. I saw her again, just now. Over there.” He pointed to a building beyond the burning carcass of the destroyed helicopter.
The Gores had landed as well, and came running over. The sister was still filming as she stumbled over pieces of debris and bodies. Theo was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
“RPG for short, boy,” he offered when he saw Thead looking at the weapon. “A fine companion when no argument or contradiction is to be tolerated. Jesuz, what a freaking mess!” He looked around at the remains of the helicopter.