An unimaginably deep rumble shook the ledge — shook the entire volcano. More statues toppled from the temple to smash on the rocky floor. Igneous shards rained down from the wall of the shaft as the tremor pummelled them loose.
The quake had knocked everyone down. Pre-warned, Eddie was first to recover. He spotted Nina near Sophia and was about to shout for her to get the other woman’s gun when the sight of the meteorite froze him in momentary shock.
The massive rock was no longer simply hanging in the air. Glowing so brightly it almost hurt to watch, it was rising with increasing speed up the shaft. It was what had happened in Atlantis thousands of years before, he realised: the sky stone had been overloaded with earth energy, and when it blew it would be thrown skywards…
To land somewhere else. Where the next set of arseholes with ideas for world domination could find it.
Unless—
He jumped up and ran — not towards Nina, but for the remote.
Stikes sat up — and found one of his prisoners had gone. He whirled, seeing Eddie running across the ledge, and grabbed the Jericho from the ground beside him. Teeth bared in an expectant snarl, he brought the gun round.
Eddie saw the detonator amongst the scattered debris. He dived headlong at it as Stikes’s first shot whipped past. Ignoring the pain of the landing, he twisted the dial to the ‘Full’ position.
Stikes rose, adjusting his aim. His prone target had nowhere left to go…
Eddie flicked up the protective cover — and jammed his thumb down on the red button beneath.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened—
Then the meteorite blew apart.
35
The three explosive charges Eddie had placed in the sky stone shattered the great rock’s heart, sending countless pieces flying in all directions. They were still aglow, held in the air by the earth’s invisible lines of force… but the smallest fragments almost immediately lost their charge and fell like hail. Most dropped down the volcanic shaft, heading for immolation in the searing magma chamber below, but some hit the ledge — and the people on it.
Eddie yelped as a stone bounced off his head, and looked up to see where it had come from. ‘Oh, bollocks,’ he gasped.
A swirling cloud of glowing rocks hung above him, ranging in size from golf balls to trucks. More energy bolts spat from them, stabbing at the rocky walls of the shaft. But the unearthly lights were rapidly going out, darkness spreading as increasingly larger chunks of debris exhausted their residual energy — and were reclaimed by gravity.
A piece of meteorite the size of a tennis ball smacked down beside him. Another, slightly larger, landed nearby a moment later.
A hard rain was going to fall.
There was danger below as well as above. The ground trembled, a low thunder rising from the base of the shaft as something huge slowly stirred from its long slumber.
The lava lake was boiling with the sudden release of earth energy. The volcano was erupting. Just as Nantalas had triggered a natural disaster in Atlantis, so Nina had here.
‘Nina! Dad!’ he shouted as he stood. ‘Get into cover!’ He started to run for the temple—
Stikes recovered from his shock, raising his gun.
Eddie dived behind the statue of Poseidon as he fired. ‘Get up!’ Stikes yelled to his men as more rubble fell around them, some pieces as big as footballs.
Nina had heard Eddie’s shout and struggled upright, briefly mesmerised by the sight of the asteroid field hanging overhead. She snapped out of it at a cry of pain from nearby. Larry lay on the ground, one hand to his head where a falling stone had struck him.
Another, much larger lump of rock was directly above him, the shimmering glow across its surface fading…
She raced forward and seized her father-in-law by his arms. ‘Larry,
The strange light vanished. The rock plunged—
Nina pulled harder, soles scrabbling for grip — and the stone slammed down where Larry had been lying, missing him by barely an inch.
Sophia gasped as she realised the danger she was in. No thought of helping any of the mercenaries, or even Stikes, crossed her mind; she ran for the shelter of the temple.
Ever larger debris pounded down on to the ledge. One of the mercenaries started to scream before being abruptly silenced by a half-ton chunk of meteorite that splattered him like an insect on a windscreen.
Eddie pressed himself against the statue as another boulder smashed to the ground just feet away, showering him with gritty shrapnel. He felt the shock of the impact through his feet — but the other tremors from far underground were rapidly growing stronger. A second panicked mercenary tried to scramble clear as an Olympian toppled. He failed, the falling figure smiting him as mercilessly as its namesake of myth.
Eddie risked a look round his cover. Stikes was taking what little shelter he could find beneath another statue.
But he was thinking of more than mere survival. The Jericho came up—
Eddie ducked sharply back as another round cracked off Poseidon. Even after the last of the floating stones fell, he would still be cut off from the temple. He glanced towards the towering structure, seeing Nina supporting his father as they reached it.
She hauled Larry into an alcove, barely containing a terrified shriek as a boulder the size of a small car slammed down less than ten feet behind them. The hammer-blow booms of rock against rock grew louder with each strike. But even they couldn’t drown out the rising rumble from beneath the earth — the impending eruption she had caused.
Too late to worry if she had done the right thing. All she could do now was wait for the last pieces of the meteorite to drop, then hope there was a way to escape.
She helped Larry lean against the alcove’s wall, then looked outside. Huge boulders plunged past the ledge towards the molten lake below. Only a few parts of the shattered sky stone now remained aloft.
The largest was above the circle of statues, a thirty-foot-long dagger.
Its glow flickered to nothing…
The giant shard fell.
It stabbed deeply into the heart of the ledge — which broke apart as if split by a hammer and chisel. Over half of it sheared away and plummeted towards the lava, taking one of the surviving mercenaries with it and leaving Eddie, Stikes and the last of his men on a ragged stump jutting out over the shaft. The remaining Olympians fell, the figure of Poseidon breaking apart and sending the metal trident clanging towards the nearby edge. Sections of the temple’s lower tiers collapsed, their own lesser gods flung to destruction.
With most of the natural bowl now gone, hot, fume-laden air from the magma chamber swept on to what was left of the ledge. Eddie coughed, cupping a hand over his mouth and nose. If he didn’t move quickly, he would be either suffocated or roasted. Eyes stinging, he peered over the broken remnants of the statue. Stikes and the mercenary, the latter closer, were still between him and the temple.
The newly fallen tiers had created a ramp of sorts, unstable and treacherous yet high enough to reach the remaining stairs. And that wasn’t all — a rising column of steamy vapour was being pulled towards it, swirling into a vortex that disappeared into the shadows of a higher level.
