The Day of the Nefilim (25 page)

We’ve been set up.
She started towards him, rage growing in her like a storm. She lifted her gun and steadied herself, feet apart, and took careful aim. This time, she wouldn’t miss. It was an easy shot. She pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. She cursed and shook the gun, and aimed and pressed again. Nothing.

Thead had seen her and was running up the steps.

The gun’s grip grew warm in her hand. Before she could wonder what was happening, the warmth became a searing heat that sent a shock of pain through her. She threw it to the ground, where it hissed in the wet snow, melting a hole and sending clouds of steam into the air. She leapt away, half expecting it to explode.

Someone had appeared beside Thead at the top of the steps. In the glare of light reflecting off the snow, she had difficulty seeing what was going on. She squinted as hard as she could, her hands shielding her eyes. It was a Nefilim. There was no mistaking the tall gangling form. It was looking in her direction.

She pulled the pin from her last grenade. Thead and the Nefilim watched as she lobbed the grenade in a long arc that would take it straight to them.

The grenade never made it. It stopped, suspended in the air. Sahrin stared in disbelief. The grenade floated slowly to the ground, and landed gently on the snow as if it was being carried by an invisible hand. It sat there, as inert as a rock.

She was defenseless, and too close to the ship to run. If they wanted her, they had her. A third figure had joined Thead and the Nefilim. It was pointing and waving in her direction.

It was Bark. He was yelling something. He ran down the steps and came across the snow towards her.

“Sahrin!” He stopped when he was close enough to see that she was looking at him warily.

“Are you their prisoner? What’s going on? Shall we run for it?” She was ready to go.

“No, I’m not a prisoner! It was close, but everyone is OK.”

“Not quite. The Senator’s dead.”

“Oh.” Bark and the Senator had known each other for a long time. “We’re falling by the wayside, aren’t we.”

“It’s getting that way. The old guy’s wounded. He’s over there, I don’t think he’ll last long.”

“Let’s have a look.”

When they got to the keeper, he was lying peacefully, looking up at the sky. He didn’t seem to be in any pain.

“You again,” he said when Bark’s face appeared above him. “We did it. We placed the crystal. Or your friend did. I suppose she has told you.”

Sahrin realized that she hadn’t. “Yes. We did. Or the Senator did, anyway.”

“Let’s get you back to the ship.” Bark lifted the keeper up. A deep gurgling sound came from somewhere inside him. They began walking back to the Nefilim ship.

“What happened? To our ship?” Sahrin asked.

“They were hiding behind the hills. When I left you and came up here, the ship was out of control. Reina and Geoca and the blue woman had tried to get away from the Nefilim, but of course they don’t know anything about sailing a thing like that…” – he nodded towards the burning wreck – “…that was a nice ship, you know. It was older than some of the civilizations we’ve visited. Anyway… one of the fliers crashed soon after they appeared. I got to the top just in time to see it. The other fliers must have thought that our ship was firing at them. The Nefilim have a sound beam, I’m told, that heats material up and makes it disintegrate at the same time…”

“Is that what happened to my gun?”

“Yes. You’re lucky they have good aim. I tried to fire at the two fliers that were moving in on the ship, but they did the same thing to me that they did to you. Our weapons were useless. I couldn’t do anything. All I could do was watch and wonder what was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, one of the Nefilim fliers fired on our ship. Luckily, we were near the ground, and didn’t have far to fall. It was almost a graceful landing, actually, but as soon as we hit the ground, we caught fire and started to break up. No one on board was hurt. We were all able to get off.”

They had reached the steps. Sahrin looked up at the Nefilim, who was still standing waiting in the doorway. Thead had gone inside.

Sahrin stopped. “Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be. When the other Nefilim ship destroyed ours, this one opened fire on it. The culprit is over there…” He nodded towards the second wreck. “These Nefilim seem to be on our side. Or at least not on the other side, which is enough for now. There must be something going on between them. Some sort of faction thing.”

“Have they said anything to you?”

“In that strange way they have of talking to us, yes. But only a little. Come on. We haven’t got much of a choice.”

They went up the steps. The Nefilim extended its arms and took the keeper from Bark. Words appeared in Sahrin’s mind. She was used to it.

‘My name is Anak. There is no need to worry. We are not going to hurt you. Come. Your friends are inside.’

Pig appeared beside the Nefilim. “Come on. You’re letting the cold air in.”

Inside, the vessel seemed bigger than it had from the outside. Everything was built for the Nefilim. There was more headroom everywhere, the seats were bigger, and everything was further off the floor than it would have been in a ship designed for humans. There were none of the drab, antiseptic colors that the local humans used. Everything was made out of rich, translucent materials that shimmered and held their colors like resin. The walls were covered in embossed patterns of spirals and complex, interwoven shapes that twisted and turned upon themselves.

Everyone was there. Geoca was bathing a scratched arm in the light emanating from some Nefilim device. The blue woman was absorbed in one of the designs on the walls, as though she was reading it.

The Nefilim carrying the keeper laid him on a bunk and began adjusting controls on the wall nearby. A violet light descended on him. There was a sound like the tinkling of brittle bells.

Two other Nefilim were at the ship’s controls, looking at a map being projected into the space in front of them. They were talking between themselves in low voices, ignoring what was going on around them.

Sahrin saw Reina. She was looking out of a view port at the burning wreck of the ship.

“Hey.”

Reina turned and smiled. “You! Great!” She went to Sahrin and hugged her. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m OK. We did our job, I guess. The Senator’s dead, though.”

“Oh. Shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the ship too. It was my idea to try to move it when these flying saucer things showed up. I thought I’d seen you guys doing it enough to have some idea.”

“Well, there is a knack to it, I guess. Don’t worry; what’s done is done. It looks like we’ve still got transport, anyway. Do you know what these Nefilim are about?”

But Reina wasn’t listening. She was looking at the coat that Sahrin was wearing. Then she looked at the keeper, and over at Bark, who was having a mind-speak session with one of the Nefilim.

“What are you wearing? I mean, where did you… What the
hell
is down there?”

Sahrin didn’t know what Reina was getting at. “Just some scientists, and some guards. And a whole lot of equipment. Some sort of research place. And totally unfriendly. We were lucky to get out. Why?”

“That.” Reina pointed at the emblem on the coat that Sahrin was wearing. “Geoca, Pig, come and look at this.”

Sahrin didn’t know why the design had caught Reina’s attention. In fact, she hadn’t even looked at it properly. She twisted the sleeve of her coat around so she could see it; a black twisted cross, set at an angle, in a white circle, in a red rectangle. She’d never seen it before.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nazis,” said Geoca.

“Fascists,” said Pig.

“Make up your minds. Which one? I’ve never heard of either of them.”

“Both. Either. Same thing,” said Reina. “They were around years ago, though, in the middle of the last century.”

“Sorry?”

“About eighty years ago, I mean.”

“Where they are a race of aliens or something? Or mutants?” Sahrin had never heard of them.

“Well, some might have called them mutants, but no, not in the way you mean,” said Pig. “In fact, that would be doing the rest of us a grave disservice.”

“They were all wearing it,” said Sahrin, remembering that the symbol was everywhere down there, on uniforms, on walls and doors.

“So, what are they doing down here, after such a long time?” Geoca looked over at the keeper. “Let’s ask him. He’ll know.”

They went over to where the keeper was lying. He looked up at them as they gathered around.

“I heard your discussion. It’s not surprising that you haven’t known about them. They’ve been there since the 1940s. And I should point out that I’m not one of them, although of course they don’t know that.”

“There was a big war. Almost every country on the planet was involved in it, so it was called World War Two,” Reina said to Sahrin. “One of the main countries was led by a group called the Nazis. This was their symbol.” She touched Sahrin’s sleeve. “The swastika. And since then, the only people who have used it have been a few extremists and nutjobs.”

“Quite so,” said the keeper, “but the people here are not part of any fringe group. They are the real thing.”

“After all this time? What have they been doing down there?”

The keeper coughed, but there was no blood now. Whatever the Nefilim technology was doing, it was working. “Let me tell you a story. In the final months of the war, as the enemy was closing in on all sides, and the final result was a foregone conclusion, the Nazis dispatched a fleet of submarines to the Antarctic. It was all done in the utmost secrecy. Anyone left in Germany who knew about it disappeared, except for the people at the top, of course. The submarines arrived here just as the war was ending.”

“What were they carrying? It must have been something important.”

“It was. In those submarines, the Nazis had spirited away their most advanced technology and the very best of their scientists. Not the ones that were working on the conventional weapons, though; those scientists stayed on, to be shared between the advancing enemy armies as war booty.”

“No, the scientists that were spirited down here were working on the most secret, most advanced of the Nazis’ projects. Earth energy, strange flying machines powered by water, contact with other races – their enemies initially had no idea that these projects existed.”

“When they got here, they moved into the base below us. It had been set up in the years during the war, using slave labor that was exported from Europe and never sent back. While their homeland was being overrun, the scientists set to work. After the war, the victorious countries slowly pieced together fragments of information from confiscated records and interrogations, and a year or two later, not sure what they would find, they sent an expedition of ships down here.”

“And did they find them?”

“Yes. But of the four ships that made the journey, only two returned, and of six hundred soldiers that landed, barely fifty survived. When they returned home, they disappeared. No one, except those that sent them, ever heard their story. This part of the continent was never visited again. The powers to the north learned very quickly that the people in this place wanted to be left alone.”

“What are they doing here, though?”

“They want to leave. The planet, that is. They’ve got no future here, and they know it. Even though many of them are young, being the descendants of the men and women who originally arrived here, they know that history has moved on, and there is no place for them or their ideology. They want a homeland of their own, and they know they’ll never get it on this planet. So they want to find it – or create it – somewhere in space.”

“You sound almost nostalgic for it yourself.”

“Do I? I don’t mean to. These people have nothing that I want. The only reason I’m here is that they built their base on one of the Stream nodes – deliberately, of course, they have a good understanding of planetary harmonics, you see – and they killed the original keeper. So I was sent, hidden in a group of stragglers from their homeland, and I’ve been doing double duty ever since, working among them and keeping the node safe for this day. For when it would become part of the Stream.”

“Wow,” said Reina, not sure whether her horror should be mock or real. “Nazis in space.”

“Nazis in space indeed,” added Geoca, thoughtfully. “It’s one way to get rid of them, I suppose.”

Sahrin wasn’t sure what they meant. Nazis must be a bad idea.

“And soon. They’re almost ready to go.” The keeper lay back and closed his eyes, weakened by his storytelling.

Bark had joined them. “We’re leaving. All of you should find a seat, or at least something to hold on to. I’ve just been conferring with our Nefilim friends here, and they tell me that the ride might not be as smooth as we would like. These ships are powered by the Nefilim grid. That would normally be a guarantee against any power failure or mechanical breakdown, but it seems that the advent of the mutant Stream has thrown their system into some confusion.”

Geoca and Pig looked at each other and smiled, Geoca obviously, and Pig, being a pig, less so.

“You might as well tell them that it will only get worse,” said Geoca. “As the Stream grows stronger, which it will do even faster now that the last of the crystals is in place, the two systems will disrupt each other as they fight for control of the planet’s fields. It’s happening already. The disruption began a few days ago and is getting stronger all over the planet. As well as anomalies, there will be geological transformations – earthquakes, floods, new land rising out of the oceans…”

“The religious nuts will be loving it,” Reina smirked, thinking how readily Bryce would have agreed with her. “The end of the world, Armageddon. And throw in some aliens! Jesus!”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but chaos is spreading, from what Nibat says,” said Bark.

“Niba… who what?”

“One of the pilots. He’s in charge, as far as I can work out.”

“So, back to the point…” Geoca and his miniatures were restless. “We’re leaving, yes?”