The Secret of Excalibur

Chase didn’t hear it; in fact, he couldn’t hear anything except a disorienting clamour in both ears, the grenade explosion having all but deafened him. He opened his eyes to find himself crumpled almost upside down in a corner. A spanner was embedded in the wall just above him. Lumps of smashed concrete and pieces of equipment were scattered across the room.

He flopped on to his side and weakly clicked his fingers next to one ear. On the third try, he thought he heard a faint snap through the ringing. At least he hadn’t been permanently deafened.

Kruglov was dead - but was Nina safe? He pulled himself upright and shakily crossed the room. The XM-201 lay in the passageway. He picked it up, then staggered along the walkway.

Kruglov’s first grenade shot had destroyed a large section of the catwalk, too much for him to jump the gap; he would have to go the long way round to return to the control room. Nina looked down at him through the broken window. She shouted excitedly, but Chase had no idea what she was saying. He yelled what he hoped was ‘I’m okay!’ to her, then began the long plod round the catwalk.

‘Looks like he’s all right!’ Nina told Mitchell, who was crouching beside the wounded Vaskovich.

‘Great,’ Mitchell replied, with an odd lack of enthusiasm. ‘So, Leonid - you want to know why your system didn’t work?’

Vaskovich, clutching his wounded leg, glared up at him through pain-clenched eyes. ‘Go to hell.’

‘Afraid I’m on the side of the angels. Seriously, though, aren’t you curious?’ He gestured at the generator, still flickering with bursts of electrical energy. ‘You were so close, your people made it work despite all the disinformation I was feeding you about DARPA’s system. And you even got Excalibur, you got the superconductor. But there was one thing you were missing, which even I didn’t know about until we found the sword in England. Want to know what it was?’

‘What?’ Vaskovich gasped.

To Nina’s shock, Mitchell pointed at her. ‘She’s what you were missing. She’s the key to making the whole thing work. Something about her body’s bioelectric field - I’m not sure exactly what, but we’ll figure it out. But without her to energise the sword, all you’ve got is a nice shiny antique.’ He stood. ‘Anyway, now you know.’

And before Nina realised what was happening, he shot Vaskovich in the heart. The Russian convulsed, then fell back, dead.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Nina screamed. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘My job,’ he told her emotionlessly. ‘The whole purpose of this mission was to terminate Vaskovich’s operations, and secure Excalibur.’

‘You knew all along,’ she said, anger growing as her shock subsided. ‘You knew he didn’t build this place to use as a weapon.’

‘Of course I knew.’ He lowered the rifle and stepped over Vaskovich’s body towards her, reaching into a pocket.

‘Then why did you have to kill him? And all these other people?’

‘Because we can’t allow anyone but us to have this technology - for any purpose.’

‘You’ve got your own system, haven’t you?’ she realised. ‘DARPA’s built a generator just like this one.’

‘We have,’ said Mitchell. He looked out of the window, seeing Chase about two-thirds of the way round the catwalk. ‘Only problem is, it doesn’t work either. But it soon will. Eddie! Eddie, can you hear me?’

The noise in Chase’s ears had subsided enough for him to pick out his own name, even if the rest of Mitchell’s words were unclear. He stopped and looked at the control room, cupping a hand to his ear to indicate that he had trouble hearing.

‘Looks like he’s a bit deaf,’ said Mitchell. ‘Let’s see if he can hear this.’

He raised his rifle again, and fired.

Deafened or not, Chase could still tell when someone was about to shoot at him. He threw himself back out of the line of fire as a burst of explosive bullets detonated against the catwalk, spitting fragments of metal.

Nina lunged at Mitchell to knock the gun away. His left hand clapped against her arm and she felt a sharp stab of pain, followed by a spreading coldness. He pulled back his hand, revealing a plastic disc at the base of his middle finger held in place by a ring. A short spike protruded from its centre, smeared with her blood.

She stumbled back, numbness taking hold of her limbs. ‘What - what’ve you done?’

‘I need you to do something for me,’ he said, his voice seeming to come from the end of a long pipe. ‘But I didn’t think you’d do it voluntarily.’

‘You son of a . . .’ she managed, before her knees buckled. She hit the floor, but didn’t feel it, as darkness consumed her senses.

29

In cover behind one of the generator’s supports, Chase cautiously peered at the control room, and saw Nina fall out of sight. ‘Fucker!’ he hissed, aiming at Mitchell and pulling the trigger.

No response. He switched to a different ammunition and tried again. Still nothing.

Mitchell shouted something. He strained to hear. ‘IFF, Eddie!’ called Mitchell, holding up his XM-201. ‘You can’t shoot at anyone carrying one of these! You can’t, anyway - I disabled the lockouts on mine—’

Before he could finish, Chase aimed above the American and unleashed a stream of explosive bullets into the control room ceiling. The digital ammo counter fell from twenty to zero in little more than a second, the rifle vibrating in his hands like a chainsaw. Mitchell dived away from the rain of debris. Chase tracked him, switching to armour-piercing rounds in the hope that the gun’s sensors would be blocked by the low wall at the base of the window and let him shoot Mitchell through it, but the weapon just clicked uselessly.

The screen suddenly flashed red. A pungent burning smell hit Chase’s nostrils, and he tossed down the gun as acrid black smoke gushed out of it, the polymer frame sizzling and blistering. Mitchell had remotely activated the weapon’s self-destruct, reducing its electronics to molten slag.

He ducked back behind the support, waiting for Mitchell to return fire now that he was defenceless. Nothing happened. An electrical flash from above, and he knew why - a line of electromagnets ran down the other side of the column. Mitchell was serious about not wanting to damage them.

Which might give him a chance to reach the control room. If he stayed close enough to—

A muffled thump gave him an instant’s warning, just enough time to shield his face before a grenade blew out another section of catwalk ahead of him. Chase was knocked on his back by the blast. He scrambled back behind the protection of the magnets and saw he was completely cut off from the control room, trapped on the severed walkway.

Mitchell surveyed the scene, looking satisfied. He moved back across the control room and hoisted Nina over his shoulder.

Chase thought he was going to take her to the exit, but instead he climbed down the ladder to the same level as the Englishman, then boarded the little elevator leading to the bottom of the pit. Still carrying Nina, he began his descent.

Chase watched, powerless to stop them. He eyed the generator again. The vertical supports were separated from the magnetic rings by heavy-duty insulators, but he had no idea how much power was flowing through the rings themselves - and they were the only way he could reach the catwalk beneath the control room. One wrong step, and he would be fried.

The elevator passed the dangling, semi-conscious Maximov and reached the bottom of the pit. Kruglov’s body lay to one side, but in the centre was the frame holding Excalibur. Mitchell carried Nina over to it. He put down his rifle, then manoeuvred her into position next to the sword. Taking hold of her wrist, he crouched, holding out her hand to touch the hilt . . .

‘No!’ Chase yelled, afraid she’d be electrocuted, but too late. Mitchell squeezed her limp fingers around the sword—

There was a dazzling flash of blue light as Excalibur glowed brilliantly. Above Chase, the size and frequency of the electrical arcs suddenly increased.

His eyes squeezed almost shut against the glare, Mitchell nevertheless kept his grip on Nina’s hand. ‘What do you think, Eddie?’ he shouted, barely audible against the rising hum of the machinery. ‘Pretty cool, huh?’

‘What the fuck are you doing?’