Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

His ponytail caught in the propeller.

Before he even had time to scream, Fang was snatched off his feet and dragged headfirst into the unprotected blades. A huge spray of gore spewed out from the airboat’s rear like a psychopath’s lawn sprinkler, the wet crunch as his skull disintegrated audible even over the noise of the engine. His headless body dropped to the deck beside the driver’s seat, still clutching the sword in its twitching hand.

Nina had no time to react to the awful sight, because she had two other things to worry about. The driver of the speedboat, though looking just as shocked and disgusted by the death of his boss as she was, had gotten over his loss very quickly and turned back towards her, gun in hand.

And the river itself was becoming rougher, the formerly placid waters starting to churn and froth as they picked up speed, rapids flowing towards a-

“Waterfall!” she screamed.

Ahead, the river swept over the edge of a vast bowl, a depression caused by the geological rifts that cut through the Okavango Delta. The cliff wasn’t high, the drop of the falls no more than twenty feet, but it would be more than enough to wreck the airboat and probably kill its occupants on the rocks below.

Either the driver of the speedboat hadn’t seen the approaching falls, or he had but was angry enough not to care, because he powered toward the airboat.

“Hang on!” Nina yelled to Chase, just as the two vessels collided. “Jesus!”

She clung tightly to the control levers, all too aware that she hadn’t had time to fasten herself into the chair, and used them to redirect the vanes behind the propeller. The airboat swung around, slithering along the water’s surface like a stone on ice. If she had enough space, she might be able to bring the craft about in a long sweeping turn before it reached the edge of the falls.

Another collision, harder, almost throwing her from the seat. Fang’s sword fell from his nerveless hand and clanged onto the deck. Chase dragged himself towards it, crawling painfully over the seats.

Nina held her turn, the airboat finally starting to respond as the blast from the propeller pushed it around. She looked at the speedboat.

The driver was aiming his gun at her-

She ducked. The bullet burned the air just above her.

Chase heard the shot, glanced across at the new threat and kept crawling.

The speedboat closed in once more, bouncing through the choppy waters. The cliff was coming up fast, fifty yards, the thunder of the falls rising.

The driver fired again. The shot hit the airboat’s engine with a loud spang . The engine immediately coughed and rasped as a fine spray of oil jetted from a crack in its casing. Smoke billowed from the exhausts, streaming out behind the propeller.

Nina cringed as the man lined up a last shot-

Chase grabbed the sword and flung it at the speedboat.

It stabbed into the driver’s shoulder, sticking out like an oversized dart. He wailed and dropped the gun, fumbling to pull the blade out of his flesh as his boat curled away from the airboat.

Nina pulled at the control levers, slewing the airboat around. The engine struggled behind her-but still had just enough power finally to bring the vessel into a turn, skipping over the surging water as it hurtled towards the edge of the cliff, now only ten yards away, five…

The airboat skimmed through the mist of spray along the edge of the falls, parallel to the drop for a moment before turning away and sweeping towards the bank.

The speedboat wasn’t so lucky. The driver spun the wheel in a desperate attempt to turn away, but with only one hand he couldn’t bring it about fast enough. The boat shot over the edge and smashed into the rocks beneath the stormy water. It blew apart in a splintered shower of wood and fiberglass and steel.

Fighting the controls, Nina as much willed as guided the airboat towards the shore. The engine was on fire now, thick black smoke belching from it. She braced herself as rocks scraped the underside of the hull, the river shallowing to nothing-

The airboat skidded out of the water onto the muddy bank, then banged against a steeper grass-covered slope and came to an abrupt halt. Nina jumped from the driver’s seat just before the crash. She hit the ground with a thud, bouncing once before coming to rest in a patch of tall dry grass.

She sat up, head spinning. The airboat’s engine had stalled, a column of oily black smoke rising from it.

Where was Chase?

“Eddie!” she cried, slithering down the slope, her twisted ankle throbbing. Fang’s decapitated corpse lay in a broken heap over one of the seats, but Chase was nowhere in sight.

“Down here,” came the wheezing reply in a familiar Yorkshire accent. Chase’s hand rose up from behind the other side of the boat and waved weakly at her before its owner levered himself into a sitting position. He indicated the body. “Used Shorty here as a cushion. Not exactly an air bag, but it worked, sort of.”

Nina came around the boat to help him. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Well, I got stabbed in the arm and had my leg cut like he was trying to carve a turkey, so take a guess.”

She kneeled to examine the wound in his calf. His jeans were soaked with blood. “Jesus. This’ll need stitches.”

“If you’ve got a needle and thread on you, go for it.”

“All I’ve got’s an empty gun. Can you MacGyver anything from that?”

“Only if I bang myself on the head with it until the pain goes away.” Chase tried to stand up, but grimaced sharply when he moved his leg. “Oh, fuck! That hurts. That really fucking hurts.”

“Just keep still. I’ll see where we are.” Nina climbed back up the grassy slope, hoping to see some sign of civilization.

All she saw was water. They’d landed on an island, rapids rushing over the falls on both sides.

“I think we have a slight problem!” she called back to Chase.

“No change there, then,” he said with a sardonic smile. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re stranded! This is an island.”

“You’re joking.” Nina shook her head. “Buggeration-”

“And fuckery, I know.”

“Right.” Chase twisted to get a better look at the air-boat’s engine, wondering if there might be a chance of restarting it, but the smoke pouring from a crack in the metal block immediately told him that its working days were over. “Well, this is fucking marvelous. They’re bound to get a chopper or a plane into the air to look for us before too long, and this”-he jerked a thumb at the pillar of smoke-“is going to lead ’em right to us!”

“Not if somebody else sees us first!” said Nina, suddenly waving her arms above her head.

Chase looked at her incredulously. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

She pointed into the sky. “Look!”

He turned his head to look back out over the falls… and saw something completely unexpected.

It was the aircraft he’d noticed in the distance earlier-but it was something much more exotic than he’d thought.

Descending towards them was an airship . Its fat cigar-shaped hull was emblazoned with several company logos, but the largest read “GemQuest,” the G represented as a stylized diamond. It approached with a spooky silence for something so large, the whine of its three vectoring propellers only becoming audible over the noise of the falls when it was less than a hundred yards away. The two props protruding from the lower sides of the hull above the gondola cabin tilted upwards, slowing its descent.

“Okay,” said Chase, “I’m impressed.”

The mooring lines dangling from the seventy-five-yard-long zeppelin’s nose dragged over the island as it eased into position, blotting out the sun. The propellers shrilled, holding it in a hover with the gondola about twenty feet above the ground. A door in the cabin slid open and a blond man in a broad-brimmed safari hat leaned out. “Ahoy there!” he shouted, his accent South African. “We saw your smoke-you need a hand?”