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| THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST adventure thriller (Kindle edition) |
He slipped to the ground, stunned. Gemma
landed on top of him as heat like a nuclear blast ignited the cavern.
When he turned, heat scorching his face, he
gaped at what he saw.
The big man Kraft, now held a handgun
pointed at him, but instead of gunfire coming from the barrel, his whole body
had ignited in flames. Ibhahim Saad, nearby, was aglow like an incandescent
element, his clothes alight like burning mummy wrappings. Neith, arms outflung,
either in dismay or worship, Anson could not say, was ablaze like a fiery
cross. Boy Wonder, also clutching a handgun, burnt on the floor like a blazing
question mark. The Chantresses of Amun staggered in flames in a horrible parody
of exaltation.
The Aten holocaust sun had done this, not a
metaphysical one, but a madman pharaoh’s weapon of horror.
Here were the multiple shining shields of
Archimedes that history said had burnt the Roman fleet, but built centuries
before the Greek.
Akhenaten’s Aten, the sun disc deity, shown shedding beneficent rays that ended
in hands holding the anhk symbols of
life, had here become ‘the sun that killed with the arrows of heat’.
This weapon did not need the real sun to
reflect and direct its inferno. The heat from the furnace, powered by some
unknown fuel of the ancients’ science burnt at a ferocious temperature and it
was enough. The reflective surface of the golden sun was taking the heat, converging
and concentrated it a hundredfold, a thousand fold into solar rays of
destruction, a defence planned by ancient priests to destroy any who would
re-awaken the lioness.
“Get out - against the wall!” he shouted.
Anson wriggled after her, propelling himself with his feet and elbows. They snaked
along the floor, squeezed into the corner where the wall met the floor,
shrinking from the blast that fulminated through the cavern. Gemma was gasping
in the furnace and Anson felt heat sear him.
Where was the tunnel entrance way that had
brought them to this cavern?
Keep going.
The roar of flames like an angry sun filled
his ears.
