Lee Carter sat sprawled in one of the large chairs in the main room of the Banshees' cave dwelling, making herself as comfortable as the crude wood and canvas furniture permitted, which is to say, not very. Max Vasser and Sam Beckett were having equal success in two more chairs, while Alex Dalton and Dexter Gray were talking softly across the room's small table, oblivious to everything else.
Yesterday, they had tried breaking through the city's front gate using their captured Breen disruptor to get back outside to their spaceships, but whoever had designed this place had done a good job at making it escape-proof. The stonework around the gate was laced with some sort of energy absorbing mineral that had rendered their energy weapon impotent.
All they had left to do was wait for Ereshkigal to get the key that operated the Stairway to Heaven. Then they could begin the assault on Nergal's stronghold, but until then, they were condemned to a life of slow calcification. Living in this underground prison for two weeks had taken its toll on their spirits, and their morale was as faded as their suntans.
The sound of booted feet pounding up the narrow winding stairway outside roused Carter and the others from their ennui. The door slammed open revealing Captain Matthew Cross. He was out of breath from running up hundreds of steps, so he leaned against the doorframe to rest.
"I just came from Ereshkigal," he said after recovering. "She told me she finally figured out how to work the Stairway to Heaven."
"Finally!" said Carter, rising from her chair and straightening her uniform. Looking at her teammates, she said, "Let's go!"
"I'm assuming you have a plan," said Carter in a sideways whisper to Matthew Cross. The two of them were crouched behind a jumble of boulders which had broken loose from the ceiling high above eons ago and now lay scattered all around the edge of this particular large cavern, the home of Nergal and the route to the Mountain Gates.
"I always have a plan," replied Cross. "We open the Mountain Gates and let the Aqrabu out."
Carter had no reply to that for several seconds, then decided she must have heard wrong. "You wanna run that by me again? You want to let a horde of murderous monsters loose?"
Cross turned around and motioned for Sam Beckett to join them. "I'll explain..."
Sam Beckett slunk at the edges of the huge cavern that was the abode of Nergal, keeping to the shadows as much as she could. The Kurnugian's stronghold was a series of stonework buildings inside a high stone perimeter wall, but Sam's objective, the Mountain Gate, luckily lay outside the fortifications. It was a towering, twenty-foot tall stone portal boldly emblazoned with a carved image of a winged scorpion, but as far as she could tell the only thing keeping it shut was a massive iron bar across its width at about shoulder height.
She used her cybernetic eyes to scan for sentries patrolling the walls and found a few, waited until they were facing in other directions, then made a dash across the open ground before the Gates and reached their base. She placed her shoulder against the butt end of the iron brace barring the door and grunted as she heaved. Even with her cybernetically-enhanced strength, the bar barely budged, encrusted in place by ages of non-use.
Sam paused for a second and gathered her strength, then shoved with all her might against the stubborn lock, and with a loud splintering of caked-on dirt and grime, it moved! Quickly, she pushed the bar all the way across the Mountain Gates until it was clear.
A narrow split appeared down the middle of the doors and quickly widened as the halves swung groaning outward, blown apart by a gale-force expulsion of musty, humid air, like a leviathan exhaling after holding its breath for a thousand years.
The guards on the battlements of Nergal's stronghold finally realized something was amiss and ran to look, but they were too late to stop what was happening. From the darkness within the Mountain Gates, a terrible clicking, skittering noise had started, like a thousand tap dancers on a hardwood floor, and moments later the first of the Aqrabu appeared.
The beast leaned its humanoid torso out the door and took its first look at the world without, and laid eyes on the wall sentries. A horrible grimace twisted its face and it snapped its enormous pincers in unholy anticipation, then lunged through the Mountain Gates, followed by a horde of others. The rock of Nergal's cavern shook with the echoes of the Aqrabus' fierce bellows. Freed from their protracted prison sentence, they attacked anyone they saw with long-pent rage and hatred, ripping people apart with their pincers and trampling them beneath their many steel-shod insect legs.
The air was quickly filled with the clash of weapons, the roars of the escaped beasts, and the screams of the dying.
Sam ran for her life.
A small figure flicked through the shadows inside the Great Library, furtive, darting quicker than the eye could follow. It approached the motionless figure lying in a pool of blood beside one of the Ancient computer terminals, and when it did so it stepped into the light cast by a nearby brazier. It was the young urchin, Enki.
As he looked down at the body of his friend, a look of unfathomable sorrow overcame the young, innocent face and a single tear slowly carved a channel down one cheek. He knelt by Jo Schmidt's side and placed his hand over her heart and closed his eyes.
A look of intense concentration crinkled his forehead, and suddenly a golden luminescence emanated from inside Jo's prone body and quickly spread to fill the entire library cavern until everything else was washed out in the brilliant dazzle. The light faded quickly to black and Enki rocked back on his heels and waited.
Presently, Jo's eyelids fluttered and a low groan escaped her lips. She opened her eyes and looked up at the library cavern's rocky ceiling. She wondered why she was lying on her back on the floor, then she noticed Enki crouching by her side. She sat up.
"Enki," she said frowning. "What are you doing here? What happened? Why am I sitting on the floor?" She rubbed the back of her head. She had a vague memory of... something... Something bad. Then she remembered.
"I found the key to the Stairway to Heaven!" she exclaimed. "Then... after you left I found a download record from the computer on the ship that brought Ereshkigal to this planet." Jo trembled as the memory returned. "Oh, it was terrible, Enki! The things I saw... The things that Ereshkigal did on her homeworld. Then someone hit me..." She fought to calm herself lest she frighten the ingenuous child beside her. A new realization dawned on her. She felt around the front of her uniform for the bulge of the data ring she had tucked there but discovered it missing.
Jo took hold of the boy by the shoulders, looked directly into his face and said, "Enki, this is very important. Have you seen Ereshkigal? Do you know where she is?"
"I think she went to the Mountain Gates," he replied.
"Where are the Mountain Gates? Are they outside on the surface?"
"No, they're in Nergal's cavern. They keep the Aqrabu locked in. They lead to the Stairway to Heaven."
It was just as Jo feared. It had been Ereshkigal who had clubbed her over the head. Then she had stolen the data ring containing the instructions for operating the Stairway and was now trying to make her escape. If she got possession of the Heart of Tiamat, which was in Nergal's cavern, she could once again enthrall the Aqrabu and wreak havoc across the stars.
"I have to try and stop her," said Jo resolutely. "You stay here where it's safe. Don't worry. I'll come back for you after the danger is gone; I won't leave without you."
"Okay," said Enki.
"Good boy," said Jo, trying to reassure the lad with a smile. She stood and ran from the Ancient Library, determined to do whatever it took to stop the madwoman.
All around men were dying as the Aqrabu swarmed through the Mountain Gates, indiscriminately hacking apart everyone within reach in their insane desire for revenge for their long imprisonment. Nergal's followers swarmed out of their stronghold in response to the invasion, doing their best to stem the flood of scorpion creatures. Some of them had spotted the Banshees in their distinctive black-and-white uniforms and were fighting their way through the Aqrabu to get at the team on the (correct) assumption that they were behind all this.
"Wonderful plan!" yelled Lee Carter at Matthew Cross. The two of them were standing back-to-back fending off anyone any anything that came too close, Carter with their captured Breen disruptor, Cross with a pointed stick. Max, Alex and Dexter were a few yards away in similar formation.
"Give it time!" shouted Cross back. He ducked under a swipe made by one of Nergal's followers and followed up with a quick jab of his makeshift spear. Behind him, Carter was picking off anything that made itself a target.
"There!" shouted Cross, pointing at the entrance of Nergal's stronghold. "He had to show up!"
Nergal himself strode forth from his domain, armor clad and accompanied by a score of fearsome, mailed warriors. Brandishing wicked, barbed swords, they plunged into the fray, and to Carter's astonishment, the Aqrabu actually gave before their wild abandon. Nergal followed behind, grasping something small tightly in one fist.
"That's got to be the Heart of Tiamat," said Cross. "Let's get it!" he shouted to his team.
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