by Ste Sharp
An elongated shadow appeared on the distant curved wall as the rapid footsteps came nearer, followed by a distant shout.
‘Retreat!’
‘That’s Delta-Six,’ John said and looked at Crossley. ‘Come on, something’s up.’
‘Alright, alright!’ Crossley replied and pulled the metal sheet out of the computer.
Delta-Six rushed into view and sped up to them. ‘Come on, we’re running out of time!’
Crossley handed him the metal and ran his hand over it.
‘Is it the Synchronisers?’ Osayimwese asked.
‘No,’ Delta-Six replied, ‘I… there’s been a malfunction and I need to communicate with Command.’
A flashing light on one of the screens caught John’s eye and he saw an image of the new hilltop in the dome, now covered with the octopus-like creatures from the ship. They were all shaking and writhing in a way that reminded John of Doctor Cynigar, the Brakari who had mutated.
‘What happened?’ Crossley asked.
Delta-Six looked away as he spoke. ‘I… attempted an interface with the sequencing technology to understand how the rejuvenation process may have stimulated our mutations, only…’ He looked at each of the men. ‘I inadvertently increased the parameters and…’
‘You boosted the power?’ Crossley asked.
Delta-Six nodded. ‘We have to get out of here before the Synchronisers work out what’s happened.’
On the screen, John saw the results of the boost as the tentacled, large-eyed creatures’ bodies warped in size and shape as their mutated DNA struggled to assert itself.
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Acknowledgements
A huge thank you to the pledgers listed in this book. Darwin’s Soldiers only exists as a result of your generous patronage, for which I am humbled and eternally grateful.
Those who deserve special mention include the Darwin’s cheerleaders, Tracy, Mike, Claire and Wayne, and all my friends and colleagues at The Book Service and at Penguin Random House who championed the book and tiptoed around my desk during my writing sessions.
I am indebted to the team at Unbound who made bringing Darwin’s Soldiers to print an incredibly smooth process. Thank you for believing in me and, Kwaku, thanks for being there for my frequent Friday questions. My gratitude to my structural editor, Hal Duncan, who pulled the novel up by its bootstraps and knocked it into shape, and to my copy editor, Derek Collett, for ironing out the grammatical creases.
To my fellow authors in the Unbound Facebook group and at Suffolk New College – your honesty, creativity and humour have been a boost on many occasions. Thank you for your advice and for sharing your knowledge.
And for the three most special people in my life, who entertain and inspire me on a daily basis. To my gorgeous wife, Cath, thank you for listening and giving me the space to create. And our sons, Harry and Oscar, may your curiosity always remain limitless!
Bonus material
Thirteen Sevens
Michael Hunt
They call me Seven. It’s a throwback to the recent Genera wars. Four hundred thousand troops engaged in a tragic waste of human life, and only thirteen survivors, not all from the same side.
As a captain I had several companies under my command throughout that short but bloody fiasco. I lost every man. Initially, I was seen as a lucky charm but I became a figure of fear: drafts to my units meant certain death.
My aptitude for survival and close-combat instincts marked me out as a mascot. Conversely, my men were never so fortunate. Even the best of them fell. Then the rumours started. They said I was shielding myself with my team for my own survival; called me Captain to my face but coward behind my back.
It really wasn’t like that. I had a kind of sixth sense; a way to know what my opponents would do next and how not to be on the end of a knife or bayonet. Even with high velocity projectile weapons; pistols, rifles and, in the latter stages, lasers. I could dodge anything.
Snipers couldn’t take me out. It’s not that I could tune into their minds – nothing so complex – but my senses picked up the vibrations in the air around me. My mind translated those agitations as acceptable or life threatening. In the early days I took a few wounds as this nascent ability developed. The distances to which I could detect became greater until I maxed out at around one klick. Inevitably, the fear among the troops grew: I was doing the impossible.
It all felt so natural; I just moved out of the way of anything that was a corporal threat. Curious about the rumours, I jacked into a video feed which exposed the reason I was shunned. It was as if I was displacing myself from one place to another in a split second; almost zapping from point to point in feats of innate self-preservation. No deft dodging movements, just a blurring between two positions, the threat passing by or through me but rendered ineffective. I was considered inhuman.
After the carnage, thirteen of us remained, marked out by our factional colours. I was alone for our side but there were twos and threes in other armies. Five factions, thirteen individuals and we couldn’t kill each other.
The Battlemaster Generals brought the combat to an end, and the politicians divided the perceived spoils. War is nonsensical to grunts on the ground; we just have the necessary incentives and the will to execute orders. However, it seems that they got what they wanted: an elite squad of enhanced-ability soldiers. Something in our modified DNA allowed us to perform miracles. The whole war had been a smokescreen and a sifting process, a cull in order to reveal the results of their joint, covert experiments.
We are Darwin’s theory taken to another level, beyond the talismanic sixth sense; we are Sevens, every one of us. We want to know why.
The Rage Machine
Kerensa Jennings
Her eyes had started to rearrange themselves on her face, puffy and swollen.
I have known rage. I have felt hate. I have faced the black.
She was murmuring under her breath, busying herself through foggy tears.
The lab was gleaming with chrome reflections bouncing light off every surface. Small, neat silver bottles lined up on shelves, their classifications documented in codified sequences.
A wall chart, breathtaking in complexity, showed concentric circles plotted with DNA helixes and twisted correlations of data criss-crossing like lacework.
Dr Harlow worked swiftly and efficiently, unblinded by the relentlessness of her crying eyes. Pipettes were administered, Petri dishes prepared, test tubes labelled.
She glanced from time to time at the photographs on the wall. Each and every one a moment in history, an emblem of the darker side of humanity. There was a picture of a sole, valiant protester, standing in front of a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square. A photo of a young girl running in Vietnam, scarred with the effects of napalm. One showing Jackie Kennedy’s face the moment her husband was shot. The bassist from the band The Clash, thrashing his guitar onto a stage.
Defiance. Fear. Horror. Rage.
Each and every photograph painted a story. Each and every photograph encapsulated an emotion.
To an untrained eye, the dissonance – the incongruity – of these pictures hanging in a sterilised white laboratory was striking.
To anyone educated in art history, or professional photography, the images told a different story. In every case, the photos on the wall were the very first manifestations of each image, produced in person by the photographer, developed straight from the roll. What at first glance looked like poster art were carefully preserved, lab-sealed, forensically prepared originals.
It turns out cellulose acetate has a secret attribute which can only be accessed through a rare and complex process. Dr Harlow had discovered that using holographic extraction, quantum atomic transmitters and laser telemetry, subatomic particles of subject DNA can be accessed to release the biometric data of emotions. This happens because of a chemical mirroring that takes place at the moment of photography, meaning minute indicators
can be scraped, preserved and distilled, like the essence of a perfume. Each one encapsulating the core emotion of the subject at the moment of photography.
Dr Harlow had perfected the technique, having stumbled upon it quite by accident while analysing the chemical structure of a photograph one empty Tuesday afternoon. She had been struck by a luminosity it appeared to have.
Like it’s alive… she thought.
Today she followed the routine she had established, extracting the essence of emotion, growing it in a culture, then gently injecting it into the pupae of butterflies.
On closer inspection, rows and rows of clustered brown pouches were breathing, softly, hanging behind temperature-controlled glass.
Dr Harlow was breeding a new species of killer butterfly, intoxicated with defiance, fear, horror and rage.
She christened the pupae incubator The Rage Machine.
Any day now, the first specimens would emerge to start wreaking hate into the world. Well, it was what the world deserved. No-one understood. No-one but her. The weight of responsibility for what she had to do anchored an ache in her heart. She had to save the planet, and the only way to do that was to exterminate humankind.
She had visions of a black, vibrating cloud, spiralling into the sky to take its revenge. In the twist of a DNA helix, she had captured the nexus of man’s hate.
The butterflies would fly. And rage would perfume the air.
Follow the Light
Andrew Checker
Torin’s consciousness returned slowly. His head throbbed and it took several minutes for lucid thought to be called forth. He knew he was dead and yet he felt euphoric.
He could feel the reassuring hardness of his sword hilt in his hand and he smiled. Valhalla! He had made it to the blessed land. He could not remember how, or where, he had died but he was sure it would have been in glorious battle. He would not be here otherwise, with a wonderful eternity of fighting, feasting and drinking until Ragnorak, the end of days, was finally upon him. His brothers and his father Leif would be here too. He would find them.
Torin sat upright and opened his eyes to take in the landscape around him. All was alien and the half-light seemed strange, as if it would persist, never becoming lighter or darker. He seemed to be alone. There were hills, plains and some patches of vegetation but none seemed familiar. Still, no one ever said that Valhalla had to look like home or any other place for that matter. As long as there were warriors to challenge him and a warm hearth with plenty of mead for after the day’s slaughter, it would do.
The throbbing in his head started to subside but the lights that had played on the inside of his eyelids would not stop making strange patterns whenever he blinked. He decided to close his eyes again for a few moments and try to let the lights clear.
But the lights would not clear. Instead they began to move and form vague, disconcerting shapes. They formed hideous figures wearing ghoulish masks of different designs; some had human faces yet many had unnatural misshapen underworld heads. He opened his eyes. The lights did not stop but faded slightly, allowing his normal vision to prevail.
The lights flashed again violently and took over his vision once more, drawing his attention to a point behind him. Torin avoided the killing thrust aimed at his middle by quickly twisting and guiding the slender blade past his body with the hilt of his sword. Using the momentum of his assailant to trip him down to the ground was simple; his enemy was not an accomplished combatant. Torin pushed the point of his sword into the prone body before him until it stopped moving. A twist of his blade made sure. His first victory in Valhalla! He bent over to inspect his kill. It was one of the ghoulish figures from his light visions. The one with the insect eyes and cone-shaped cheeks. His weapon was some kind of half-sword strapped to a wooden shaft, inlaid with fine metals. A clumsy weapon.
Crouching down into some thick foliage, he closed his eyes again and this time embraced the patterns of light, inviting them to show him more. With a little practice he could cast out into the half-light and locate the presence of other beings in the alien landscape. He already knew that the lights were watching over him to alert against any assassin closing in from behind. Valhalla was full of surprises. With this new sense he would be able to defeat all enemies of any form and become a legend amongst his kinsmen! It seemed that death was granting him more than life ever did. The afterlife was going to suit him well.
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