A dozen or so human soldiers were standing around. They looked agitated, and were all looking in her direction. Two officers approached. A couple of scientists followed them, eager to talk to her, but they hung back, waiting their turn and whispering to each other in worried tones.
“Vice-Secretary, thank god you’re back,” said one of the officers.
She said nothing; she just looked at him, hoping that her silence would draw more information out of him. It did.
“About an hour ago we got word that a Nefilim carrier is on its way here,” he said. “They’ve been active in this region, but this is the first time they’ve moved towards the control point itself.”
“Did you organize reinforcements?” she asked, hoping it was something that Alexis would ask.
“We asked for them, but the commander of this region said it was impossible to fly troops here. It’s getting too dangerous. While you were in there” – he pointed at the floor between them – “the grid has gone further out of control. Many areas have lost all power. And the regional headquarters are under siege. All they could send was a couple of companies, and they’re traveling here by road.”
“But what about the Nefilim carrier? Won’t it be here soon?”
“A few minutes ago we learned that they’ve gone to ground, a few klicks from here, on the other side of the sand dunes. The grid gave out on them.”
“And so they’re heading this way on foot?” Alexis was frothing with rage while she spoke. It was distracting.
“We can only assume so. The grid in this area is far too unstable for them to use. But they have other craft approaching. They’re a while away yet, and we don’t know how close they’ll get before they’re forced to land.”
“Then we’d better see to our defenses.” She walked over to a soldier. “Give the Nefilim your gun.” She nodded towards Anak. The soldier handed his weapon over. “Let’s prepare. All military to the surface.”
Just as the soldiers were about to enter the tunnel that led to the surface, a private, breathless from running, came hurrying out of the darkness. He spoke briefly to an officer, who cursed quietly and then came over to her.
“The Nefilim are at the perimeter of the compound. We’re dug in, and we’re holding them, but there are more of them than we thought.”
She looked over at Anak. He read her thoughts and nodded, just enough to show that he understood.
“Let’s get up there,” she said.
* * *
She half expected to hear the sound of gunfire as they approached the surface, but the alien weapons that both sides were using had made warfare a quiet business. Something exploded just before they emerged, and there was some yelling, but that was all.
When they came out into the light, she saw the remains of vehicles scattered around in burning pieces. The perimeter fence was in tatters. It had been holed in many places by fire from both sides, but the Nefilim hadn’t entered. They had taken cover in the rocks and dunes, and were firing into the compound from there.
“Get me a gun,” she said, and took the weapon that was offered to her. “Are they showing any signs of advancing?”
“No,” a sergeant replied. “They seem to be content just to sit there and snipe at us. They’re waiting for their backup to get here, I’d say.”
A beam burnt a trail across the ground between them. They scattered, and she found herself behind a building. Another ray shot from the dunes, and the upper half of the soldier next to her flew apart in a cloud of powder.
This was definitely more Alexis’s scene than hers, and Alexis knew it. The Vice-Secretary was throwing herself around in the prison that had been made for her, hurling herself against the walls that confined her.
‘You’ll be free soon enough, Vice-Secretary, but bear in mind that if this body is destroyed, it won’t affect me. You, on the other hand…’
Something exploded close by. There was screaming, but it soon stopped.
“How long until our reinforcements get here?”
“About two hours, Vice-Secretary.” The colonel wiped soldier dust from his face.
“And theirs?”
“If they have to walk the same distance as the ones here, about an hour, perhaps. That’s a guess, of course.”
The real fight was ahead of them, then. She wished that Anak would hurry up. As she thought it, one of the soldiers near her turned to an officer.
“My gun’s fucked,” he said. “Jammed, or dead, or something. Bonehead crap!”
“Same here,” said another one. “What now?”
She knew what now. Anak had come through. The grid was dead. All around her she saw soldiers cursing their weapons, trying to shake life back into them.
An officer ran up to her. “The guns are dead! All of them!”
She looked across at the dunes. The firing from there had stopped as well.
“I’ll check the grid,” she told the officer. “Something must have happened down below. Do whatever it takes to keep them out.”
The officer turned away. “Get anything you can!” he yelled. “And bayonets! Pass out the bayonets!”
She entered the tunnel and went down just far enough to be out of sight of the surface. She didn’t have to wait long until Anak appeared.
“It’s done.”
“The scientists?”
“Unconscious. The controls are destroyed, beyond repair. When they come around, they won’t be able to do anything. The grid is dead. They have no power, and no way to restore it.”
“Then we’re done here.” She went to the part of her mind in which Alexis prowled like a caged animal.
‘We’re done. Thank you for your help.’
‘Screw yourself, freak!’
‘You have appalling social skills, Vice-Secretary. I’m afraid that I have to render you unconscious. We don’t want you complicating our departure, and I’m sure you would try. When you come around, I think you’ll find your hands will be full.’
With that, she reached for the Vice-Secretary’s mind and pulled it into unconsciousness. She left the body. Alexis again, the Vice-Secretary slumped to the ground, fast asleep. The blue cloud that had drifted out of her skin quivered, shifted, and shifted again until finally it took the shape that Anak was familiar with.
The blue woman opened her eyes. They were once again the blank white orbs that Anak knew. She was naked, though.
“I can’t stay like this, can I? I’d attract too much attention, and the only clothes I could take would be hers.” She looked down at the Vice-Secretary. “Even then, my skin color…”
‘
Enter me, as you did with her,’
thought Anak.
‘I can carry you out.’
“I’ve never tried it with a Nefilim. I don’t know if it will work.”
‘Then there’s only one way to find out. Hurry.’
Anak was right. She dissolved, again becoming the cloud. She surrounded Anak and entered him.
A Nefilim mind was softer than a human’s. It was full of colors that flowed and shifted like a thousand tidal pools. It felt like clay, waiting to be shaped, but she could feel a strength beneath it as well. It might be malleable, but it would never break. She drew back from the interior, closer to the surface of Anak’s mind. She wasn’t here to do anything; she was just a passenger.
Anak found a side tunnel where they wouldn’t be disturbed. All they could do now was wait. If he showed himself on the surface now, the soldiers would assume he was one of the enemy. It would be a while before the Nefilim reinforcements arrived, and when they did, they would hopefully be able to slip out of the base in the confusion that would ensue.
‘So we wait,’
he thought, and sat down in the darkness. He didn’t mean to, but he soon drifted off into a fitful sleep. He dreamed of Marduk. He was there, even though he had never been to his home planet, and he had no idea what it was like. He was an Earth Nefilim. He had been born among the mutants, and had been raised in the underground labyrinths. Whenever he had this dream of his home world, he had no way of knowing how accurate it was, or even whether there was any truth in it at all. But it was the same every time…
He saw fleeting images of a cold, dark sky above vast plains of gray ice, bounded by freezing black mountains. Under the ice his race waited, frozen solid, until the feeble rays of the approaching sun warmed the air enough for the ice to start melting. It was the Marduk spring, stirring after the long sleep of deep space. The ice melted and flowed away to create short-lived oceans, and the sleepers emerged from their cocoons. They stretched their rejuvenated limbs and looked up to the sky. The sun hovered in the dark gray depths, sullen and weak. Anak was with them. They turned towards him, welcoming him home.
Just as he opened his mouth to speak to his own people in his own language...
...he woke, just as he always did. Something was happening on the surface. There was yelling, and the unmistakable sounds of battle. The Nefilim were attacking.
He went to the tunnel entrance. They had come out of the dunes and had fought their way through the perimeter fence. The Nefilim were swinging their weapons like clubs, while the humans were either doing the same or slashing at the aliens with bayonets. The humans had fallen back towards the center, where the fighting continued between the buildings and around stranded vehicles. Dead and wounded lay everywhere.
Anak moved carefully, using the buildings for cover whenever he could, and keeping as far from the fighting as possible.
‘Behind you!’
The voice in his head was clear and loud. He turned. A human was rushing towards him. The soldier lunged, thrusting his bayonet forward. Anak knocked it aside, deflecting it from his body, but it continued downwards, slicing into his leg. Taking hold of the rifle, he drew the bayonet out and pulled the weapon towards him.
The soldier, who either forgot or refused to let go, came with it. Anak seized him by the arms and held him up against the side of a building. He put his face in front of the soldier’s. A terrified teenager looked back at him.
‘
I am not one of your enemies, human.’
He drove the thought firmly into the boy’s squirming mind.
‘Your battle here is lost. Stay hidden until the fighting is over. That is your only hope of survival.’
He lifted the boy into the air and threw him up onto the roof of the building. The youth lay motionless where he landed, looking up into the sky as though it held the answer to something that puzzled him deeply.
‘We need to hurry,’
thought the blue woman. The fighting was moving towards them.
Anak slipped through a hole in the fence, and limped towards the sand dunes. When he reached them he slumped down behind some rocks. The wound in his leg was bleeding badly.
‘I can’t lose much blood. It affects our race badly…’
‘I’ll do what I can,’
she thought.
‘It will only be temporary, but it will have to do for now.’
She flowed down his body to the wound. A blue salve appeared over the cut, and the blood congealed before his eyes. He stood up and tested his weight on the injured leg.
It was a long climb to the top of one of the highest dunes.
They were near the sea. Below him, the compound was already hidden among the sand dunes. In the other direction there was a small bay, and on the other side of it a town. A road wound around the bay towards the town. He was looking at Barker’s Mill.
As good a place as any,
he thought, and headed for the road.
* * *
THE SECRETARY-GENERAL WAS EXHAUSTED. He was sitting alone in the gloom of his office, surrounded by the quivering shadows of the candles that provided the only light in the room. Nothing at Mount Weather worked any more. There were no weapons, no vehicles, and the air conditioning was out. The air was turning to shit. He wouldn’t able to stay here much longer.
“It’s not fair! None of this is fair!” He struggled to his feet and swept the contents of his desk onto the floor. A candle landed in a waste paper bin, and a few seconds later flames were licking at a pile of maps lying on a table.
The Secretary-General stood looking sullenly at the flames. He’d show them. The mutants and their freak friends might think they’d won, but he’d show them. As soon as he’d dealt with the Nefilim.
He had to go. A meeting of what was left of his war council was about to begin. He lit a kerosene lamp and left his office.
“There’s a fire in there,” he said to the guard outside, without looking at him. “Do something about it.”
“What shall I do, Secretary-General? The water pumps aren’t working.”
“I don’t give a shit what you do. You can throw yourself on it, for all I care.”
The floor of the war room was awash with water. He didn’t ask why. The few generals and bureaucrats who hadn’t run away or been killed or captured were there, waiting for him. He sat down and looked around the table.
Jesus, what a miserable collection.
“Where are the Nefilim?
Our
Nefilim, I mean?”
“Gone,” said a man in a black suit who rivaled the Secretary-General in bulk. “The last of them ran off a few hours ago. All we have left are a few prisoners.”
“Rats leaving the sinking ship,” said the air chief, who had been without his air force for several days now.
The Secretary-General looked at him. “Who said anything about a sinking ship? I very much hope that our enemies are underestimating us to the extent that you are, Field Marshall.”
The Field Marshall shuffled his papers and looked away. “The Nefilim armies have closed the circle around us,” he persisted. “The mountain is surrounded. Our troops have fallen back to defensive positions in the foothills. We should be able to hold them for a while…”
“You’ll hold them for as long as I say. What about weapons? And casualties?”
“Nothing is working any more,” said a General. “We’ve been using rocks and bayonets, and the men have been making spears and bows and slingshots. The other side is doing the same. Basically, we’re fighting a medieval war down there. Casualties have been heavy on both sides. And there are thousands of wounded in the foothills around the mountain.”