Pig felt the ship slip away. It was gone for two or three seconds, and then it was back.
‘I can see what is happening around you. This is all I can do, but there is danger. Working with the Stream is new to me. Good luck, friend Pig!’
Immediately after the ship had finished, the ground began to shake. Pig’s eyes snapped open. The sky above them twisted as though it was being wrung into a ball. The smoke from the burning city was carried along, like trails of dye swirling in water.
A central point formed, and the trails gathered together into a vortex. The Gore brother’s flier rode one of the arms of the spiral, caught up in the Stream, swaying from side to side like a leaf buffeted on a churning river.
Pig could only guess what was happening. The flier in the village was somehow manipulating the Nefilim grid. It was forcing a section of the grid into a smaller area, winding it up like a spring, tighter and tighter. The ground continued to shake, protesting at the forces that were being dragged out of it.
Everyone forgot what they were involved in and stood looking up at what the sky had become. There was a sudden loud crack that seemed to come from everywhere. In that instant, the spring unwound and the center of the vortex shot towards the earth like a thunderbolt sent by an angry god. Where it struck, the earth convulsed like an animal being electrocuted, rearing up with a great tearing sound. Buildings collapsed and were thrown aside like toys.
A trench appeared in the road near Alexis’s flier. Its landing gear collapsed and it fell onto the ground, where it rocked like an unbalanced top, its hull cracking and bending.
The trench grew, a gaping mouth opening onto the depths. Sparks leapt back and forth between the surfaces of fractured rock. A couple of soldiers standing near the edge disappeared into the chasm without a sound.
Another section of the earth suddenly tilted upwards. Alexis had been standing on it. She was thrown forward, scrambling madly as she slid towards the pit. For an instant it seemed as though she had found something to hold on to near the lip of the crevice, but the earth twitched, almost as though it was aware of her, and she was thrown screaming into the void.
Theo’s pilot was good. He kept things together as his ship was thrown around by the tightening spring of the vortex, and it was only when the trap was released that he lost control. The flier slid sideways, thrown aside by the bolt of power that sped downwards. As the earth below opened up, the ship spun out of control in a wild corkscrew motion. The pilot was just beginning to regain some control when the flier hit the ground and skidded along, losing parts of itself as it went. The ship came to rest on the edge of the crevice, in front of the sister’s wrecked craft. It balanced precariously, on the verge of tipping over into space. The door, which was on the safe side of the vessel, opened, and figures spilled out onto the ground.
When it had started, Bark and the others had stood still at first, not sure what was happening. But then Pig had yelled “This is for our benefit! Let’s move!”, and they had come to their senses.
Thead tried to maintain his balance, and fired at Pig and Bark as they ran towards the ship. The blast burned a glowing scar on the ground in front of them. They changed direction, and ran towards the burned-out shell of a nearby building. Thead turned and was about to fire at the blue woman when he was hit. He pitched forward onto the ground, his back smoldering, and didn’t move.
Sahrin was standing in the doorway of their flier. She slumped heavily against the bulkhead and lowered her weapon. “This way,” she tried to call, but she was weak, and her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. The others had seen, though, and came running.
Their ship was conscious again. With the damage to Alexis’s flier, the stasis field had disappeared, and it was preparing to fly.
Someone was still firing at them. Sahrin peered, her vision blurred with perspiration that stung her eyes. She felt like crap. It was one of the soldiers near the other craft. She tried to fire, but what little strength she had was ebbing. As the blue woman came up the steps, Sahrin fell forward into her arms.
Pig and Bark were the last ones in. As the door closed behind them and they took off, the Gore sister’s ship started firing. Sparks flew from the ship’s hull as it rearranged itself against the attack, the ship’s mind rushing to the areas that were hit and doing its best to hold the damage as soon as it happened.
As they took off, the earth stopped heaving. Slowly, it groaned its way back into place, leaving only the gaping hole in the ground as evidence of what had happened.
‘Where now?’
Nibat asked.
‘There is some damage that needs to be attended to.’
Bark ran his hand across his brow. “Where now? Away from here, for a start. They will have help coming.”
‘Then we can do without being around to meet them.’
“Exactly.”
“There is a node in the Stream near here, on the outskirts of the city,” said the blue woman. “The ship could repair itself in flight, but it could be done more quickly if we were at the node. It would save us time in the long run.”
“Whatever you say,” replied Bark. “Let’s do it.”
They changed direction and followed the banks of a new river that flowed through the ruins of the city.
* * *
Theo Gore lay sprawled face down on the ground. There was dust in his mouth and eyes. As he struggled back to consciousness, the sound of confusion and voices came back to him in fits and starts as the veil of darkness fell away.
He struggled to his knees. Around him, his soldiers were doing the same. He spoke into the band on his wrist. “Alexis! Where are you?”
Silence.
“Alexis!” He looked across at her flier. It sat like a discarded broken toy, surrounded by rubble.
There was some static, and then he heard a small voice coming from his wrist.
“Get me off here, fuck it!” It was her, alright.
“Ah! Alexis, where are you? Are you in your ship?”
“Cut the shit! I’m stuck down here! Get me out!”
“Stuck where? Down where?”
“Down here! Down the fucking hole, idiot!”
“Settle down, sister.” He walked to the edge of the pit and looked over the edge. It gave him vertigo, looking into blackness that seemed to go down forever. She was there, sitting on a narrow ledge protruding from the rock face forty or fifty feet down.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Well, my foot. I suppose I’ve hurt my foot.”
“Mmm. Can you walk?”
There was a pause, and then in measured, even tones, her voice heavy with sarcasm: “You... dumb... fuck... I don’t know, do I, because there’s nowhere to walk down here, is there? Just skip the medical profile and…”
“Yes, sister, yes…” He turned to one of his soldiers.
A few minutes later, the Vice-Secretary was dangling from a line and clinging to a harness designed for a Nefilim. By the time she was being pulled up over the edge of the precipice, her brother’s attention was elsewhere.
“Well, thank you for the lovely welcome,” she grumbled, brushing herself off.
“Look,” said Theo, without looking at her.
She looked. A crowd was approaching. It was a large crowd; there were hundreds, maybe thousands. It was hard to tell, and no one was going to count.
He didn’t know it, but Theo Gore had been recognized by the younger brother of a Mexican resistance fighter. The boy had seen the Vice-Secretary’s picture on the wall of his brother’s room, alongside the pictures of various presidents, industrialists, Central American dictators and other enemies of the people.
The boy ran to a meeting that was going on in the car park of a burned out supermarket, and whispered in his brother’s ear as he sat with the rest of the District Committee of the Revolutionary Council. The Committee immediately deferred its plans for the re-establishment of order in the city, and decided instead to greet the Vice-Secretary.
Gore was infamous in Mexico, even more than he might have expected. He had made his name during the uprising that had begun in Chiapas and Oaxaca a few years before, when the people of those areas had risen up yet again against the multinational corporations and their sympathizers in the government. The government, its own forces divided by the revolt, had called on the United Nations for help.
It was given, of course. Tens of thousands of blue-helmeted soldiers were sent from all over the world to contain the uprising, which had quickly spread all over the country. The UN gave itself a mandate to make Mexico safe for democracy.
The UN peacekeepers were led by a young and enthusiastic Gore, eager to prove himself in his first major command. He tore the place apart. His forces descended on the population like a plague of insatiable locusts. The slaughter was terrible, and it went on for weeks. Prisoners were taken by the thousands, and few were ever seen again.
The people’s army fought back, but they were standing up against the military might of the world’s richest nations, and they didn’t have a chance. By the time all opposition had been crushed and a brooding, resentful order had been restored, Gore had earned himself a place at the top of the local pantheon of hate and fear.
In the years that followed, the locals would remember Vice-Secretary Gore whenever they passed the stadiums that had been used for the executions, or the landfill sites that had become mass graves.
The crowd saw that it was indeed Gore. A roar went up and they began to run, pausing only to pick up rocks or anything else that could serve as a weapon.
The Gores looked at the scene in disbelief. Why would peasants dare confront them like this? They snapped out of their inaction as the first rock thudded to the ground a few feet in front of them.
“Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Open fire!” The soldiers started firing deadly pale rays into the crowd, cutting swathes of powdery disintegration through it.
They kept coming. Part of the mob surrounded the flier that Alexis had arrived in and dragged the pilot out. The alien tried to break through the crowd and run, but there were too many of them, and they followed the Nefilim as it staggered and then fell under the hail of rocks and blows from clubs and farm implements.
Someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the flier, and soon flames were streaming from the open doorway and the viewports. There was no explosion; the flier’s hull just crumpled, as though it was made of plastic melting in the heat.
Theo realized what was happening. “Clean-up time!” he screamed, running towards the advancing crowd, firing into them as he went. His soldiers, conditioned to the end, followed him.
“Theo! You’re mad! There’s way too many of them! Come back!” called Alexis, but if he heard her, he didn’t take any notice. “Stay here,” she said to the men around her. They stayed. It was wisest to obey the Vice-Secretary closest to you.
Many of the crowd were falling, but they were too great in numbers, and within seconds Theo and his men were surrounded. Iron bars and rocks fell on them relentlessly. Grasping hands pulled at their clothes, their hair and their flesh. The last thing the Vice-Secretary saw was a blood-covered machete swinging towards his face. He didn’t understand the last thing he heard. If he had known even a little Spanish, he might have understood it, but it wouldn’t have helped his appreciation of the situation.
Alexis watched in disbelief. There was nothing she could do; she had a handful of soldiers left with her. The crowd kept coming, the bodies of her brother and his men carried aloft, like bloodied trophies. She looked around. They couldn’t stay here. Retreat was the only option, but behind them their way was blocked by the pit that had almost swallowed her.
They had to put the pit between them and the crowd. They made their way to one of its ends, where it narrowed to a thin crack in the ground, and went around to its far side. They kept going until they were opposite her brother’s flier, still perched like a cartoon character on the edge of a canyon.
“This gives us a little time. This way, we divide them.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said a burly sergeant. “They also get to come at us from two directions. You might say that we’re surrounded.”
“Thank you, sergeant. You might say that. Your lack of enthusiasm is noted. Just do your best to convince this rabble that they’re wasting their time here.” The sergeant scowled, then turned and lifted his weapon towards the mob.
The crowd had rounded the two ends of the pit, and were converging on them again. The soldiers were firing and people were falling, disappearing in bright incandescent flashes. It wasn’t enough, though. Alexis admired their determination.
We must have touched a nerve,
she thought.
What a pity they’re not on our side.
Part of the mob had surrounded the flier and were rocking it back and forth. The ship activated its propulsion system, but it was badly damaged, and it merely shuddered further towards the edge, making the crowd’s job easier.
Alexis fired into them and a few fell, but it was useless. The craft toppled over, sliding into the void. It fell gracefully, almost in slow motion, taking a small shower of rocks and dust and a few people with it. There was a muffled tearing sound as it broke up on the rocks on its way down.
There was nothing to do but fight and go out with honor, Alexis thought, shooting a ten-year-old between the eyes. The closest building was a factory of some kind, and most of it was still intact. They ran to it and started up an outside staircase.
“Stay here,” she said to a short fair-haired soldier who looked as though he might be the type to obey an order that meant certain death. “Slow them down.”
She was right. He stayed at the bottom of the steps while the rest of them went on. As the howling crowd converged on him, they made easy targets, and many were killed before they swarmed over him.
He had bought them the time they had needed. They made it onto the roof. From here, it would be easy to pick off anyone stupid enough to put their head above the top of the staircase.