by James Axler
* * *
“ALIVE,” GRANT WHUFFED, his voice coming in a breathless growl as he skittered across the snow. He was scrambling forward in a tumble of dislodged snow, out of control.
Grant was thirty feet away from Kane and still moving, having leaped in the opposite direction to his partner. There had been no time to plan the maneuver—Grant had simply leaped out of the behemoth’s path. When he did so, Grant had been surprised by breaking ice and a dip in the snow and had suddenly found himself scrambling down a steep slope, not quite balanced or in control of his descent. A dark copse of leafless trees loomed up ahead like grave markers in the whiteness. Grant felt his feet lift off the ground as he bumped over something hidden by the snow, and for a moment he was in the air. Then he crashed into the foremost tree with a yelp of pain, and a shower of snow came tumbling over him, dislodged from the tree’s splayed branches.
Grant muttered something unintelligible as he sagged to the ground, his descent curtailed in an instant.
* * *
BRIGID HAD BEEN more successful, diving out of the path of the artificial monster, tucking and rolling as the thing roared past. “Me, too,” she chimed in, responding to Kane’s query from where she now lay sprawled on the freezing white blanket of snow.
But she had become temporarily confused, lost on the white blanket, snow-blind.
* * *
REASSURED BY HIS partners’ responses, Kane watched the vehicle lumber past him in a descending hum of growling engine. The noise was almost obliterated by the muffling effect of the snow, and after barely a dozen feet it had—incredibly—all but fallen into silence.
Kane pulled himself up from the ground and started after the disappearing vehicle, the Sin Eater clenched in his right hand. It was traveling slowly—Kane estimated it was moving at no more than ten miles an hour—but it was big and heavy and the environment had perfectly masked its approach until almost too late.
It wasn’t just wide—it was long, too; fifty feet of towering vehicle, like a double-stack train carriage bumping over the alabaster environment like a skipping stone on a lake.
Twin funnels or chimneys were located on its roof, one on each end, wide as a Manta’s wing and all but obscured by the falling snow. Kane could barely see them through the thick snow—thicker than before, in fact.
In a split-second decision, Kane sent the Sin Eater back to its hidden holster and began hurrying after the vehicle. “I’m going after it,” Kane said into the Commtact pickup.
“Kane—wait!” Brigid urged, but Kane ignored her.
The thick snow slowed his movements—it was more like wading than running—but Kane was close enough that he should be able to reach the mysterious vehicle in a dozen paces at the speed it was traveling. Through the there-again-gone-again curtain of snow, he saw bars lining the back vertical and horizontal pipes that presumably carried some kind of warming fluid to keep the vehicle running in the extreme cold. Kane reached for one, kicking his legs high to pull himself over the thick snow. It was like hurdling, keeping up with the slow-moving machine through the dense carpet of snow, the blasted thing frustratingly just out of reach, like something chased in a dream.
Snow fell on his face, settled on his shoulders as he moved through the harsh environment.
Then he had it, right arm lunging forward and snagging one of those vertical pipes. Kane let out a gasp as he grabbed it, held tight and dragged himself forward, forcing his legs to high-jump over the thick snow.
For a moment, Kane’s shoulder fired with pain, the stress of dragging himself forward onto the vehicle—slow-moving but moving all the same. Snow obscured his sight, the whiteness of the vehicle itself contributing to the confusion. Then his left hand grasped blindly at something sticking out from the rear, another line of pipe work that felt ice-cold to the touch, even with his gloves and the regulated temperature of the shadow suit. Kane snarled as he swung himself up onto the back plate, lifting himself up by the two pipes, drawing his legs and feet out of the snow.
It was a precarious position. The snowy ground bumped beneath him, inches from the soles of his Mag boots. Kane tensed both arms and pulled, drawing himself up onto the back of the mysterious vehicle in a proxy chin-up.
Kane’s feet worked along the vehicle’s side, scrabbling for purchase against the ice-cold metal. He kicked out, holding himself up by the twin pipes, and the toe of his left boot clipped against something—a ledge, hidden by a powdering of snow. The ledge ran around the bottom of the vehicle in a rim no wider than an inch, and it was thick with ice crystals.
Kane looked down, eyeballing the ledge as he brushed the snow aside with his toe. He could balance on it, feet sideways while still clinging to the pipes—it wasn’t much but it was something, enough at least to take the pressure off his straining arms.
“I’m on board,” Kane whispered into his Commtact.
* * *
“YOU’RE WHAT?” Brigid spat. “Kane, no!”
The snow was falling around her, thicker it seemed than it had been just a few moments ago. She stared into the whiteness, searching for the vehicular behemoth that Kane had chased, but it was already lost to the obscuring curtain of white.
She had been moving toward where Grant lay, a lone dark blotch on the white carpet. He hadn’t spoken after his initial response to Kane’s query, but Brigid had been alerted by the noise of breaking branches as he slammed into the copse of trees.
“Grant’s not responding,” Brigid explained, inwardly cursing her inability to see the vehicle that Kane had now boarded.
* * *
“SAY AGAIN?” KANE SHOT back in reply. Snow fell on him in a ceaseless torrent, turning his hair prematurely white. He could not hear Brigid over the sound of the vehicle’s engine—and the way the moving vehicle shook his jaw was making it sound like someone was playing a drum solo through the Commtact.
“Grant’s not responding,” Brigid repeated, and this time Kane pieced together what she was saying.
“Check on him,” Kane whispered, resisting the urge to shout over the roar of the vehicle. He didn’t want to prematurely alert whoever was driving the thing that they had a stowaway in the form of this Cerberus warrior.
As he spoke, Kane was tilting his head this way and that, searching the rear of the vehicle through the obscuring snow for some way to get to a more secure position. Something was sticking out of the side, a jutting arrangement of pipes that ran in horizontal lines like a ladder. Kane shifted his precariously balanced body, reaching out the full extent of his left arm and clawing the corner of the vehicle until he had a solid grip on it. Then he pulled himself over, his booted feet scrambling along the tiny ledge at an awkward angle.
Kane drew himself to the edge, his face pressed hard against the chill metal. He reached again, blind now, his left hand running up and down and farther outward until he grabbed one of the line of pipes that ran up the vehicle’s side. Then, with a mighty yank, Kane swung out and pulled himself around, whipping around the edge of the slow-moving vehicle until he was around the corner.
Around this side of the vehicle—a revelation. The pipes weren’t pipes at all, they were a ladder, painted white and permanently affixed to the side of the strange vehicle, running up its side and to its roof. Kane grabbed ahold of one of the jutting bars of metal attached to its side, the metal ice-cold to the touch. Kane ignored the freezing temperature and clambered up the rungs.
“I’m secure,” Kane explained over the shared Commtact frequency as he pulled himself up the side of the vehicle’s metal frame.
He scrambled up the rungs of the ladder, drawing himself higher up the side of the mystery vehicle that had been generating the heat that they had detected when they entered the snowstorm. Kane didn’t know what it was—not yet—but he was certain that the best way to find out was to get on board.
* * *
BRIGID WADED CAREFULLY down to where Grant lay unmoving among the little group of trees that formed a perfect circle. Grant was lying faceup in the snow, his breath coming from his open mouth in visible clouds of mist, hanging there like a slowly deflating balloon that refilled every time he breathed out. He didn’t react to her, didn’t move or look up.
As she came closer, Brigid called to her partner.
“Grant?”
The word sounded muffled in the denseness of the snow-filled air, almost as though the sound had to dodge between snow flurries to reach its target. The bigger man did not respond.
“Grant?” Brigid said again, breathing a little harder as she reached the man. She put her hand against one of the trees for balance and a shower of snow tumbled from its upper branches. Brigid brushed the snow from her sleeve and crouched down, checking Grant’s pulse.
The pulse was solid and she could see his breath—it was hard to miss even through the falling snow—but he didn’t respond to her calling or stir when she touched him. There was blood on his forehead, too, she saw now, a thin line of it trickling down the left-hand side of his face like a crack in the shell of an egg.
“Grant?” Brigid said again, gazing around her for the first time since she had stopped moving.
There was no sign of the vehicle that Kane had leaped aboard, not even a whisper of engine noise carrying over the dull plains of whiteness. In fact, the only thing breaking up the white veil was the copse of trees, dark trunks and leafless branches clawing up into the gray-white sky like the hands of a skeleton.
Brigid glanced at the trees for a moment, then looked again, more closely, eyeing the tooling on the bark of the nearest one’s trunk. The pattern repeated in three-foot intervals a little like wallpaper, complex but repeating just the same, in a way that nature doesn’t. The pattern was repeated on the other trees, the same complex mix of whorls and indentations copied across each tree trunk. A normal person might not notice it straight away, but Brigid’s eidetic memory picked up on the repetition almost as if someone had run a highlighter pen through it. There was only one possible conclusion: the trees were artificial.
Swiftly, Brigid checked over Grant to make sure his wound wasn’t life-threatening. Then she pushed herself up from the ground and touched the nearest of the trees, running her hand up and down its trunk.
“What are you?” Brigid muttered to herself.
As she spoke, something appeared behind her, the whispered shuffle of moving feet alerting her sensitive hearing. She turned but saw only whiteness.
* * *
THE WINDS BLEW, buffeting Kane against the side of the colossal vehicle as he climbed the ladder, swirling snow into his eyes and nostrils. He kept his mouth shut, a thin line where his lips met, eyes narrowed against the assault.
He could not see the top of the vehicle. White on white and with the falling snow slapping against his face, it was hard to see anything at all. So he just kept climbing, gloved hands grasping the next rung, then the next, up and up until he finally found there were no more rungs left to climb.
Kane opened his eyes a little wider, looking above him. Snow was pouring vigorously toward him, more like a waterfall than a snow flurry. He let loose a grunt of frustration as the snow caught in his eyelashes, ice-cold against the surface of his left eye.
Up there, just above his hands, he could make out the line of gray where the sky met the whiteness of the vehicle. It was barely discernible but it was there. He could reach up, grab it—just had to be careful not to get thrown off his ride by the high winds.
Kane took a steadying breath through his nostrils, reached up and grabbed the edge of the vehicle with his left hand, then followed a second later with his right arm, lifting it up and outward until he had the forearm all the way over the side, scrabbling left and right until he found something to grab on to. That something was an indentation of some kind, deep enough to get the joints of his first two knuckles in to secure himself.
His feet swayed out for a moment as he struggled to get higher up the ladder, slipping momentarily on the ice-slick ladder rungs. Then he was over the side, up on the roof of the swaying, towering vehicle.
And what he saw there made him pause with astonishment.
* * *
IT TOOK A MOMENT for Brigid to see the figures moving toward her. They wore reflective suits, with full facemasks and hoods over their heads. The mirrored surfaces reflected the snow, creating almost perfect camouflage for the environment. She counted four of them—no five, six—dammit but they were hard to see in this snow.
“My friend’s hurt,” Brigid said, wary of the strangers.
The closest of the group raised a hand, and Brigid saw a weapon in it—a blaster, painted white so that it was all but hidden in the snow. The stranger said nothing.
“I don’t mean to—” Brigid began, but even as she spoke, the stranger with the gun fired, sending a dart-like projectile toward her with a whuff of pressurized air.
Communiqué to Ioville Magistrate 620M:
Report for training, Cappa Level. Citizens are to be instructed in all forms of combat and fitness. You are to supervise and instruct, accompanied by Magistrate 265M. Session to last 180 minutes, with one break of eight minutes.
Message ends.
Chapter 8
“Target acquired,” a man’s voice came from one of the reflective suits.
Brigid ducked and rolled, years of training kicking in even as the blaster fired. The dart sailed past her, cutting the air three inches above her left shoulder before imbedding itself in a tree with a comical sproing.
“You missed,” one of the white-clad figures exclaimed as Brigid rolled aside.
As she brought herself into an upright crouch, Brigid saw the other figures raise their arms—although this was difficult to distinguish with the reflective suits on the white background—and she realized that they were bringing more blasters into play.
A line of darts peppered the ground around her as Brigid leaped back, slipping between the artificial trees.
Brigid kept moving, her hand reaching down for the blaster she had strapped to her hip—the familiar TP-9 semiautomatic pistol. The TP-9 was a bulky hand pistol with a covered targeting scope across the top, finished in molded matte black. The grip was set just off-center beneath the barrel, creating a lopsided square in the user’s hand, hand and wrist making the final side and corner.
The silver-clad figures followed Brigid into the copse of artificial trees, stepping past Grant’s prone form. They were hard to spot clearly, and Brigid had to keep her wits about her to keep track of them; meanwhile, she must have stood out like a beacon with her flame-bright hair amid the stark whiteness. Only here, among the trees, did she have some semblance of cover and camouflage.
Another dart whipped by Brigid’s face, the wind of its passage blowing her hair back. Close, she thought. Damn close.
Brigid raised her blaster to target her attackers. Leg shots would disable them—that’s all she needed just now, until she could find out who they were and just what was going on.
“There!” one of the figures shouted, and Brigid ducked as another pair of darts thudded against the trunk of the closest tree, preceded only by the whisper of expelled air.
Brigid brought the TP-9 around and fired, sending a short burst of bullets through the trees at the group of strangers. The action was loud in the muffled snowscape, the sounds of the shots carrying like a crack of thunder.
Two of Brigid’s attackers fell with that first volley, slumping to the ground with yelps of pain as their legs were cut out from under them. Brigid barely saw the movements, white on white as they were; instead she intuited how many she had hit from the sounds of the falling bodies, two muffled thumps amid the tiny copse of trees.
“The stranger is ar
med,” Brigid heard one of her attackers announce.
“Disarm her,” another responded.
Saying and doing—two different things, Brigid thought as she weaved through the group of trees. Up close the trees were convincing, but there was a regularity to them that reminded Brigid of something else—antenna uplinks, the kind used to pick up and broadcast radio signals across the globe. The trunk would house the power source, she realized, while the irregular splay of branches would funnel and boost the signal, sending and receiving radio communications as required. And with the radio comms could come something else, too—a tester signal used to monitor the environment.
No wonder the group of mirror-clad figures had come to find her so quickly—Grant must have tripped some kind of sensor alarm when he slammed into the antenna.
The cough of an air gun behind her alerted Brigid to a more immediate matter. She dipped her head low even as another dart whipped past overhead, missing her by a foot and a half.
Could be that these people were mad at her team for trespassing. If that was the case, then a little sit-down discussion should smooth things over. But they’d come out armed and they weren’t discussing anything. Whatever was going on out here, hidden in the permanent snowstorm, Brigid’s best chance to discover rested on getting these people on side. And that meant disarming them so they couldn’t fight back.
* * *
ATOP THE VEHICLE, the noise was incredible.
Kane crouched on the roof of the mechanical behemoth, openmouthed as he stared at what waited there—a single gigantic chimney, of a size and diameter that rivaled anything seen in an industrial furnace. The chimney took up almost all of the surface of the vehicle’s roof, its round edges touching the sides of the vehicle and leaving just a little room, top and bottom, for the roof itself.