Tunnels 05 - Spiral

and Sweeney had heard rumbles of distant thunder, but then there was a mighty peal, accompanied a moment later by a searing blue flash of lightning. It was visible even through the blinding sunlight.
    “Whoa! What a buzz!” Sweeney said, clapping a hand to the side of his head. “That gave the old capacitors a jolt.”
    “So lightning affects you, too?” Will asked.
    “Only if it’s a full-on electrical storm,” Sweeney replied.
    “Well, you get plenty of those in this place,” Will told him. “Are you going to be all r —”
    “Hold on,” Sweeney interrupted him as he extracted his walkie-talkie from his pocket and read the small LCD. “It’s Drake. They’re not far now. It’s almost showtime.”
    “And we only just got here,” Will said, but as tired as he was, he couldn’t have been happier that their mission was nearly over and that they would soon be leaving the inner world.
    He and Sweeney heaved their Bergens on. As they started toward the crater, the wind picked up and the sun was obscured by angry black clouds.
    Sweeney spotted Drake and the others emerge from the tree line in the distance. And, as the two groups came together by the lip of the crater, they found themselves in the middle of a full-blown monsoon.
    “Nice weather,” Drake joked as soon as he was close enough to them. Taking his sunglasses off, he blinked the rain from his eyes.
    “No problems with the locals?” Sweeney asked.
    Drake quickly told him and Will about the huge amount of New Germanian hardware they’d seen waiting to be transported to the outer surface. “Sealing the route through should put a crimp in the Styx’s plans, once and for all,” he said. “And they won’t be able to reexcavate the Ancients’ passage for a good few decades because the rock will be too radioactive.”
    The water was bucketing down around them, already forming large puddles on the ground. Not more than a couple of hundred feet away, a blinding spike of electricity struck the earth with such power that it left a small sizzling crater.
    “Holy smokes!” Sweeney shouted, slapping his forehead.
    “Let’s get down there, shall we?” Drake proposed, glancing over his shoulder at the crater, then back at Sweeney with concern.
    “I’m not coming,” the Colonel announced abruptly. He was shouting to make himself heard over the sound of the wind and the torrential rain. “This is my country. I want to try to salvage what I can.”
    “But how are you going to do that, Colonel?” Drake asked. “All by yourself?”
    Colonel Bismarck indicated his Bergen. “I have a Purger in there. Maybe I can deprogram enough of my men to take on the Styx.”
    Drake stepped over to him and shook his hand. “Good luck.”
    “Good luck to you,” Colonel Bismarck replied, looking at each of them in turn.
    “There should be minimal radiation up here from the nukes,” Drake told Colonel Bismarck. “But get yourself as far away as you can, just in case. You’ve got time, because I won’t detonate them until we’re well into the zero-grav belt. I’ll —”
    He never finished the sentence as a shot rang out. Colonel Bismarck looked down at his chest, where blood from a gaping hole was mixing with the rainwater. It was a precise shot to the heart, and there was no question that he’d been fatally wounded.
    He dropped to the ground, and everyone whipped around to see who was behind them.
    “Nobody’s going to detonate anything,” Rebecca One said.
    “No!” Will gasped.
    As if it wasn’t enough that the Styx twin was standing there, beside her was Vane. It was the first time that Will or Elliott had seen a Styx woman for themselves. Their eyes widened at the sight of the woman’s cheeks puffed out by the three egg tubes wreathing in her mouth like snakes, and her limbs consisting of not much more than muscle and bone, while her abdomen was hugely distended.
    She and Rebecca One were flanked on either side by a pair of Limiters, their weapons trained on Will and the others.
    “Didn’t see us sneaking up on you, did you?” Rebecca One said smarmily. “Pretty sloppy for you, Drake.”
    Will realized they must have approached around the inside lip of the crater. There was probably one of the odd-looking Drache Achgelis twin-rotor helicopters hidden in the jungle not far from where they were.
    “Nice to finally meet you in the flesh,” Drake said tightly. He had his assault rifle slung over his shoulder and his hands in his