The sun was rising higher, and the relative cool of the early morning was giving way to the fetid heat of day in the jungle. Nikki knew she was in good shape, and her muscles still felt fresh and full of energy — even after the exertions of the night. But the heat sapped energy, and she could feel her own sweat seeping into the clothes Hollingforth had loaned her.
She was glad when they reached a small clearing and MacHeath announced, “We’re here.”
The clearing was even smaller than the one where the explorers had set up camp, and this one was almost completely filled with tents. Not the simplistic canvas tents Hollingforth and his colleagues used. These were modern dome tents, free-standing, made of light-colored artificial fabric that she guessed was something like gortex.
There was no movement. Apart from the tents, the clearing was empty. She took a breath to remark on
that to MacHeath …
And that’s when the men emerged from the jungle on the other side of the clearing.
She knew them, she realized with a horrid shock. In the light of day she could see their clothes were dark jungle fatigues, mottled with green and brown. The submachine-guns in their hands were familiar, too — she’d been on the wrong end of one not too long ago.
The man in the lead raised his weapon, centering its barrel on Nikki’s chest. In the shade of his campaign hat she saw his dark eyes narrow in recognition. With a sharp metallic snick he flipped the safety catch off his gun. “I told you I didn’t get her,” he announced.
Chapter Eleven
It’s them! The thought struck Nikki with an almost painful impact. The dozen or so men across the clearing were the ones she’d met in the jungle on the way back from the outpost — the ones who had shot at her. And now they were ready to finish the job. She looked around wildly at her friends.
MacHeath and the other soldiers had lowered their weapons, thinking they were with friends. She remembered how fast the sergeant had reacted, putting a bullet into the head of the ninja, but she knew there was no way he could respond fast enough to save her life if the hard-eyed man decided to trigger his submachine-gun. I’m dead, the thought rang in her head.
“Sergei, no.” Another man emerged from the fringe of the jungle, joining his comrades across the clearing.
For a moment, Nikki thought her sanity was going. Orrorsh has finally done it, she told herself, it’s driven me mad. It was like a horrible kind of deja vu. She thought, just for an instant, that she was back in the sub-basement lab at the Nagara Building. She’d heard the same words then, when the leader of the raiders stopped one of his gunmen from killing her.
And it was the same man who’d spoken. There was no blood matting his short blond hair now, but she recognized the hard, finely-chiseled face, the steel-grey eyes, even the snap of command in his voice. And Sergei himself … It’s the same men. It’s the raiders.
Unwillingly, the one called Sergei lowered his weapon. The blond leader slapped him on the back as he strode into the clearing. With a muttered comment in a language Nikki didn’t recognize, Sergei turned aside.
The leader strode forward, stopped a couple of yards short of Nikki and her party. He smiled. He’s handsome, she realized, when he doesn’t look so intense. The realization that she was going to live started to relieve the knot of tension in her belly.
“Professor Black, Mr. Hollingforth,” he said formally. To MacHeath and the soldiers he just shot a comradely smile, one warrior to another. He turned his gaze on Nikki, and his smile broadened. “And you must be Ms. Carlson. Ian spoke about you at length.” He inclined his head to MacHeath (lan MacHeath. Nikki committed the name to memory. Nobody else had bothered to tell it to her.) “I’m sorry our two previous meetings have been, um” — he hesitated — “a tad unsociable, Ms. Carlson. But Sergei sometimes is a little overquick to react, if you know what I mean.” So he recognizes me, Nikki realized. He remembers me from Nagara.
“Who are you?” she asked slowly.
“Leftenant Dick Beames of the Royal Australian Armed Forces, 3rd Paras, at your service.” For the first time Nikki noticed the accent, the broadening of the vowels, and the clipping of some syllables. He gestured at the rest of the group, who were going about their personal business in the clearing, paying no attention to Nikki and the others. “These are my comrades. We call ourselves the Tiger Team.”
“Australian?” She inspected the other men. Four of them were light-skinned like Beames, apparently European (or Australian). But the others were darker-skinned, obviously Oriental. Not Japanese or Chinese. Indonesian, maybe?
“Just me,” he said with a disarming smile, “my mates say one fellow from Oz is quite enough. We’ve got a Pommie, a Yank, one guy who’s a real Heinz 57. And there’s Sergei, of course — he comes from whatever the USSR is calling itself at the moment.”
“Then you’re not army?” Nikki pressed.
Beames shook his head. “Officially I’m on detached duty,” he explained. “We’re … Well, we call ourselves Storm Knights.” He saw Nikki’s puzzled expression and asked, “You know about the Possibility Wars, of course?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been in Japan the past few years,” she revealed. “You don’t get much international news there.”
“I reckon,” Beames agreed wryly.
“I’ve heard something about it,” she went on. “It’s like … It’s like reality’s changing, right?”
“Other realities are invading,” he corrected, “that’s what it is. Storm Knights are the people trying to stop it.”
“What about the others?” Nikki indicated the darker-skinned men around the campsite.
“They’re army,” Beames answered. “Thai infantrymen, from the armory in Bangkok. The Thai government is interested in what’s going on in Orrorsh — for slightly different reasons from us — so there were no worries getting a little extra help.”
One of the other Caucasians was wandering over toward them. His face made him look about Nikki’s age, maybe a couple of years older, although his dark hair was prematurely streaked with grey. He had dark brown eyes set in a tanned, open-looking face. His smile was easy, relaxed.
“Here comes our Heinzer,” Beames announced. “Ry, this is Ms. Nikki Carlson, a friend of our Victorian mates. Ms. Carlson, he’s Ryan Davis. Tell her your background, Ry.”
Davis shrugged. “Born in Trinidad, grew up in Texas, England, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria; pick a place, I’ve been there.” He chuckled.
Nikki found herself drawn to his easy smile. “Army brat?” she speculated.
“Oil brat,” he corrected. “At one time or another my father got shipped to just about anywhere with an oil patch, and I went along with him.” He had a trace of an accent, almost impossible to place. New Zealand? Or South Africa? Nikki mused. Or maybe just a mixture of lots of accents. She found herself smiling back at him.
Until she saw what he was doing, then her smile faded. As he spoke to her, he was slipping lethal-looking bullets into a long submachine-gun magazine — casually, without even looking, as if it was something he did every day. And maybe it is. The sight was so out of keeping with the man’s relaxed manner that it snapped her back to reality.
“You blew up the lab at Nagara,” Nikki said to Beames. “You killed the scientists and the guards. Why?”
The Australian’s smile faded, and he nodded. “Okay, business. Look, Ms. Carlson, why don’t you come over
here and sit down? We’ve got a lot of things to discuss.” *
They sat or crouched in a rough circle in the middle of the clearing. Hollingforth and Black sat on either side of Nikki, while the other Europeans had settled themselves nearer to Beames. Ryan Davis was there, along with the Britisher called Norman Leeds, and a tough-looking, laconic Texan Beames had introduced as Dusty Rhodes. Sergei was present too, sitting a yard or so back from the others, as though uncomfortable to have people too close. His dark eyes flicked constantly around him, as though he didn’t trust Orrorsh not to material
ize some kind of threat at any moment. All the others were unarmed, but Sergei cradled his submachine-gun in his lap. Watching him, Nikki almost expected him to caress it. The others — the Thai soldiers, and MacHeath and his men — were elsewhere, talking quietly in small groups, or cleaning and servicing their weapons.
“Okay,” Beames said to start the informal conference. “Ms. Carlson, you asked about the Nagara operation.” He paused for a moment, apparently getting his thoughts in order.
“You said you know something about the Possibility Wars,” the Australian began. “Then you know that the Earth — the whole universe, really — is being invaded. Other universes — we call them cosms — have become linked with ours. The links are Maelstrom Bridges, gateways between our reality — our cosm — and others. The other cosms are very different from ours. They have different physical laws; technology that works on Core Earth won’t work there, or things that work there won’t work here. In some, magic works. In others — like the one that’s linked to Orrorsh — some of the inhabitants are monsters, although not all. Mr. Hollingforth and Professor Black know that all too well, right, gentlemen?”
Peter and the professor nodded soberly. Nikki found herself staring at her friends as though seeing them for the first time. Was Beames hinting that Peter and the others—he’d called them Victorians, she remembered — were from that other reality, that other cosm? How could that be? Wouldn’t Peter have told her?
But he had hinted at it, hadn’t he? When she’d asked him where he’d come from, he’d said it was a long story.
And didn’t that explain a lot of things? Their Eighteenth Century beliefs and manners? Their clothing, and the scarlet uniforms worn by MacHeath and his soldiers? The bolt-action rifles — with bayonets, for Christ’s sake — and the fact that MacHeath had found her pistol so unusual?
Beames was still talking. “The areas where the cosms are linked to Core Earth, we call them realms. There’s the Cyberpapacy in France, the Living Land in North America, Aysle in Britain, and the Nile Empire in Africa. And, of course, Orrorsh. There are Storm Knights all over the world, all trying to stop the realms from spreading, and trying to destroy them — often working from within.”
“But what about Japan?” Nikki asked. “You attacked the Nagara Building in Tokyo. Japan’s not a realm, is it?”
The Australian was silent for a moment. “We don’t know,” he said eventually. “There are hints” — he shrugged — “but not much more than that. All we know is that some of the Japanese megacorporations — particularly Kanawa, but some of the others too — are supplying weapons and other equipment to the realms we do know about. Those realms then use the weapons to fight the Storm Knights.” His voice became cold, almost harsh. “We’re fighting for our planet, and our cosm, Ms. Carlson. We’re trying to drive out the invaders. And the Japanese megacorps are opposing us — directly or indirectly, it doesn’t much matter, does it? That seems an awful lot like treason to me, betraying Core Earth to its enemies.”
Nikki struggled to digest that. “Nagara too?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“Parts of it, certainly,” the Britisher Leeds answered. “The corporation has a facility at Matsushima Bay, and we know that’s involved. And the Special Projects lab in Tokyo.”
“That’s why we hit it,” Dusty Rhodes explained. “They were into genetic engineering, you know? We got word they were … building, I guess … They were building some new kinds of critters, real nasty animals with human intelligence. Or they were trying to when we paid them a visit.”
“The Special Projects lab had a contract with Malraux,” Beames went on, “the Anti-Pope himself. The Inquisition wanted guard animals and trackers to help them hunt down and destroy the Storm Knights in France. The contract was so lucrative that Nagara was glad to oblige.” He smiled grimly. “We figured we’d set the project back at least a couple of years. I don’t know how many lives we saved in the long run, but it was worth it.”
Nikki nodded slowly. That makes an ugly kind of sense, she realized. The samples she’d been analyzing in her lab in Tokyo, the weird DNA and the proteins sent in from the sealed P3 containment lab next door… Couldn’t they have been part of a project to genetically engineer animals? Of course they could. In fact, she and Toshikazu had speculated on that themselves at the time.
She shuddered. I was part of that, and I didn’t even knoiv it. “You had proof?” she asked hesitantly.
“Everything we needed,” Dusty Rhodes told her with a firm nod, “all documented and backed up. Hell, you think we’d just waltz in there and mess up the place if we weren’t sure? I mean, real sure?”
She scanned the eyes of the men — the “Storm Knights,” as they called themselves. There was no doubt, just absolute, unshakable certainty. No, she thought, you wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been sure.
“It came as a complete surprise when we found out that Nagara was sending a ‘scientific mission’ to
Sumatra — to Majestic,” Beames corrected, glancing at the Victorians. “We didn’t know what they were up to, we didn’t have enough information to tell. But we expected the worst. The project was initiated by the same cobber who did the original Special Projects program — Agatamori Eichiro.” He glanced at Nikki. “You know him?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said simply, “I know him.”
“And the scientists came from the Matsushima Bay project,” the Australian continued. “That didn’t look good right there. And security was tight…”
“Tighter than a rat’s ass,” Rhodes expanded.
“.. .Which told us it was something Nagara thought was very important.” Beames shrugged. “We had to find out what they were doing, and that’s why we’re here.”
“You’re going to blow up the outpost too?” Nikki asked.
Lt. Beames hesitated. Nikki could see him trying to decide how much to tell her. Then his expression cleared as he made up his mind. “If that’s what it takes,” he told her honestly. “It depends what they’re doing there, and what the consequences are going to be. You understand that, don’t you?” He looked at her almost imploringly.
This isn’t some mad bomber, Nikki realized, some wrecker. Beames had a conscience. She could see he didn’t like what he had to do, but recognized that he wouldn’t let his own feelings get in the way of something he thought was necessary. And it will be necessary, won’t it? she asked herself, remembering what she’d seen in Funakoshi’s lab. She shuddered. “Yes,” she told the Storm Knights. “Yes, I understand.”
Beames leaned forward intently. “Sergeant MacHeath told us you worked at the outpost, Ms. Carlson,” he said quietly. “Maybe you can tell us what we need to know. Just what the hell are they doing there?”
Nikki took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “You’re not going to like it.” As concisely as she could, but without leaving out any detail that might be important, she told the Storm Knights what she knew about the outpost. The alien, mutable proteins she and her workgroup had been tasked to analyze. What she knew about Fusaaki Funakoshi’s background in genetic engineering. The horrible contents of the specimen room. And finally, her own conclusions about where the serum samples had come from. “I don’t know why they’re doing it,” she finished, “but I know they are doing it.”
The Storm Knights were silent when she’d concluded. She could feel their tension, see their horror and disgust in the looks they were exchanging. Beames, Rhodes, Davis and Leeds kept their reactions under tight control, but Sergei was muttering in Russian under his breath. She could see his knuckles standing out, white as ivory, as he gripped his submachine-gun.
“It makes sense,” Beames said at last. His voice was emotionless, as though he were trying to suppress his feelings, preventing them from interfering with his analysis of the situation. “It makes a lot of sense. We destroy their project in Tokyo, the one designed to build animals for the Cyberpapacy from scratch. There’s no way they can replicate their work, and complet
e the project, in time to meet their contract. So they decide to take a short cut. Why build an intelligent monster — that’s what they were trying to do — from the ground up? Why not start with something that already exists, and make the necessary modifications on that?
“So they come to Orrorsh and they capture monsters,” he went on levelly. “They probably started with the little ones, like those rats you told us about, just to get the techniques down. Then thy go out and net the big specimen.” He shook his head in revulsion. “Jesus, a weretiger. A shapechanger. Intelligent as a man, and bloody downright lethal. If they could do it, they’d want to keep the intelligence, the physical abilities — and of course the shapeshifting, though I don’t know if that’s possible. Tweak its mentality and outlook a little so that it’s tractable, trainable …
“And what have you got? ” he asked rhetorically. “The ultimate tracker, the ultimate assassin for the Inquisition—or anyone else who can pay the price. It’s smart enough to follow a group of Storm Knights, track them … maybe even infiltrate their group, pretending to be an ally. Then when their guard’s down, it changes into a bloody tiger and rips them apart.”
Nikki found herself shivering. The scenario was hideous. It sounded like something out of a bad horror novel; if she hadn’t seen the weretiger herself, she never would have believed it.
But she had seen it, hadn’t she? She’d seen it in tiger form in its cage, seen it change its shape to become the quiet, innocuous-looking “Dr. Ling.” Seen it strangle the life out of Fusaaki Funakoshi.
She could feel the tension, the hatred, in both Black and Hollingforth. They know — personally — how lethal the creature is, she recognized. It fooled them, then it killed their friends — Black’s son. They want it dead.
And so do I. She had to admit it.
“You’re going after the outpost, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.
Nigel Findley Page 30