She couldn’t spare the time to answer.
Swithland ’s prow was pointing directly at the bank sixty-five metres away, and they were picking up speed again. Pods and cases were scattered in the boat’s wake, jouncing about in the water. She saw a couple of people splashing among them. More people went falling from the foredeck; it was as tightly packed as a rugby scrum down there. And there wasn’t a thing she could do, except get them to the shore.
Off on the port side, Nassier was floundering about, paddles spinning intermittently. Rosemary saw a giant fountain of water smash through the middle of its superstructure, debris whirling away into the sky. What the fuck could do that? Some kind of water monster skulking around the riverbed? Even as the fantasy germinated in her mind she knew that wasn’t the real answer. But she did know what the roaring noise behind her was now. The knowledge sucked at the last of her strength. If it hit the furnace . . .
Nassier ’s prow lifted into the air, shoving the afterdeck below the water. The superstructure crumpled up, large chunks being flung aside by the tremendous jet of water. Dozens of people were swept into the river, arms and legs twirling frantically. In her mind she could hear the screams.
There were just too many people on board the paddleboats. Rexrew had already increased the numbers of colonists they were made to carry, refusing to listen to the warning from the captains’ delegation. Then he dumped this posse on them as well.
If I ever get back to Durringham, you’re dead, Rexrew, she promised herself. You haven’t just failed us, you’ve condemned us.
Then the Nassier began to capsize, rolling ever faster onto her starboard side. The jet of water died away as the keel flipped up. Rosemary saw a huge hole in the planks amidships as it reached the vertical. That was when the water must have rushed in on the furnace. A massive blast of white steam devoured the rear of the boat, rolling out across the surface of the river. Mercifully, it shielded the final act in the Nassier ’s convulsive death.
Swithland ’s prow was fifteen metres from the trees and creepers which were strangling the bank. Rosemary could hear the sound of their own bedevilling geyser reducing. She fought the wheel to keep the boat lined up straight on the bank. The bottom was shelving up rapidly, the forward-sweep mass-detector emitting a frantic howl in warning. Five metres deep. Four. Three. They struck mud eight metres from the long flower-heavy vines trailing in the water. The big boat’s awesome inertia propelled them along, slithering and sliding through the thick black alluvial muck. Bubbles of foul-smelling sulphurous gas churned around the sides of the hull. The geyser had died completely. There was a moment of pure dreamy silence before they hit the bank.
Rosemary saw a huge qualtook tree dead ahead; one of its thick boughs was the same height as the bridge. She ducked—
The impact threw Yuri Wilken back onto his belly just as he was starting to get up again. His nose slammed painfully against the deck. He tasted warm blood. The boat was making hideous crunching sounds as it ploughed into the frill of vegetation along the bank. Long vine strands lashed through the air with the brutality of bullwhips. He tried to bury himself into the hard decking as they slashed centimetres above his head. Swithland ’s blunt prow rammed the low bank, jolting upwards to ride a good ten metres across the dark-red sandy earth. The paddle-boat finally came to a bruising halt with its forward deck badly mangled, and the qualtook tree embedded in the front of the superstructure.
Screams and wailing gave way to moans and shrill cries for help. Yuri risked glancing about, seeing the way in which the jungle had shrink-wrapped itself around the forward half of the boat. The superstructure looked dangerously unstable, it was leaning over sharply, with tonnes of vegetation pressing against the front and side.
His limbs were shaking uncontrollably. He wanted to be home in Durringham, taking Randolf for walks or playing football with his mates. He didn’t belong here in the jungle.
“Are you all right, son?” Mansing asked.
Sheriff Mansing was the one who had signed him on for the expedition. He was a lot more approachable than some of the sheriffs, keeping a fatherly eye out for him.
“I think so.” He dabbed at his nose experimentally, sniffing hard. There was blood on his hand.
“You’ll live,” Mansing said. “Where’s Randolf?”
“I don’t know.” He climbed shakily to his feet. They were standing at the front corner of the superstructure. People were lying about all around, slowly picking themselves up, asking for help, wearing a numb, frightened expression. Two bodies had been trapped between the qualtook trunk and the superstructure; one was a small girl aged about eight. Yuri could only tell because she was wearing a dress. He turned away, gagging.
“Call for him,” Mansing said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get pretty soon.”
“Sir?”
“You think this was an accident?”
Yuri hadn’t thought it was anything. The notion sent a tremble down his spine. He put his lips together, and managed a feeble whistle.
“Twelve years I’ve been sailing up and down this river,” Mansing said grimly. “I’ve never seen anything like that geyser before. What the hell can shoot water about like that? And there was more than one of them.”
Randolf came lumbering up over the gunwale, his sleek black hide covered in smelly mud. The sayce had lost all of his usual aggressive arrogance, slinking straight over to Yuri and pressing against his master’s legs. “Waaterrr baddd,” he growled.
“He’s not far wrong there,” Mansing agreed cheerlessly.
It took quarter of an hour to establish any kind of order around the wrecked paddle-boat. The sheriffs organized parties to tend to the wounded and set up a makeshift camp. By general consensus they moved fifty metres inland, away from the river and whatever prowled below the water.
Several survivors from the Nassier managed to swim to the stern of the Swithland which was half submerged; the boat formed a useful bridge over the stinking quagmire which lined the bank. The Hycel had managed to reach the Zamjan’s far bank; it had been spared the destructive geyser, but its hull had taken a dreadful pounding. Radio contact was established and both groups decided to stay where they were rather than attempt to cross the river and join forces.
Sheriff Mansing located an unbroken communication block amongst the remnants of the posse’s gear, and patched a call through the LDC’s single geostationary satellite to Candace Elford. The shocked chief sheriff agreed to divert the two BK133s to the Swithland and fly the seriously injured back to Durringham straight away. What she never mentioned was the possibility of reinforcing the forsaken boats. But Sheriff Mansing was above all a pragmatic man, he really hadn’t expected any.
After making three trips to the camp, carrying pods of gear from the paddle-boat, Yuri was included into a small scout party of three sheriffs and nine deputies. He suspected they only included him because of Randolf. But that was OK, the other detail of deputies was now removing bodies from the Swithland . He preferred to take his chances with the jungle.
When Yuri and the scouts marched away, colonists with fission-blade saws were felling trees on one side of the camp’s glade so the VTOL aircraft could land. A fire was burning in the centre.
It didn’t take long for the groans of the casualties to fade away, blocked by the density of the foliage. Yuri couldn’t get over how dark this jungle was, very little actual sunlight penetrated down to ground level. When he held his hand up the skin was tinted a deep green, the cinnamon-coloured jacket they had issued him with to protect him from thorns was jet black. The jungle around Durringham was nothing like this. It was tame, he realized, with its well-worn paths and tall trees spiralled with thin colourful vines. Here there were no paths, branches jutted out at all heights, and the vines were slung between boughs either at ankle height or level with his neck. A sticky kind of fungal mould slimed every leaf for three metres above the ground.
The scouts paired up, fanning out from the camp. T
he idea was to familiarize themselves with the immediate area out to five hundred metres, search for any more survivors from Nassier , and verify that no hostiles were near the camp.
“This is stupid,” Mansing said after they had gone fifty metres. He was leading, chopping at the vines and small branches and bushes with a fission-blade machete. “I couldn’t see you if you were three metres away.”
“Perhaps it thins out up ahead,” Yuri said.
Mansing slashed at another branch. “You’re giving away your age again, son. Only the very young are that hopelessly optimistic.”
They took turns to lead. Even with the fission blade hacking out every metre of path it was tiring work. Randolf loped along behind, occasionally butting against Yuri’s calves.
According to Mansing’s guidance block they had travelled about three hundred metres when the sayce stood still, head held up, sniffing the humid air. The species didn’t have quite the sense of smell terrestrial canines possessed, but they were still excellent hunters in their own territory: the jungle.
“Peeeople,” Randolf grunted.
“Which way?” Yuri asked.
“Here.” The sayce pushed into the severed branches that made up the walls of the path. He turned to look at them. “Here.”
“Is this for real?” Mansing asked sceptically.
“Sure is,” Yuri answered, stung by the doubt. “How far, boy?”
“Sooon.”
“All right,” Mansing said. He started to hack at the jungle where the sayce indicated.
It was another two minutes of sweaty labour before they heard the voices. They were high and light, female. One of them was singing.
Mansing was so intent on cutting the cloying vegetation away, swinging the heavy machete in endless rhythm, that he nearly fell head first into the stream when the creepers came to an abrupt end. Yuri grabbed his jacket collar to stop him slipping down the small grassy slope. Both of them stared ahead in astonishment.
Sunlight poured down through the overhead gap in the trees, hovering above the water like a thin golden mist. The stream widened out into a rock-lined pool fifteen metres across. Creepers with huge ruffed orange blooms hung like curtains from the trees on the far side. Tiny turquoise and yellow birds fluttered about through the air. It was a scene lifted from Greek mythology. Seven naked girls were bathing in the pool, ranging from about fifteen years up to twenty-five. All of them were slender and long limbed, sunlight glinting on their skin. White robes were strewn over the black rocks at the water’s edge.
“Nooo,” Randolf moaned. “Baddd.”
“Bollocks,” Yuri said.
The girls caught sight of them and shrieked with delight, smiling and waving.
Yuri shouldered his laser rifle, grinning deliriously at the seven pairs of wet breasts bouncing about.
“Bloody hell,” Mansing muttered.
Yuri pushed past him, and scuttled down the slope into the stream. The girls cheered.
“Nooo.”
“Yuri,” Mansing gestured ineffectually.
He turned round, face illuminated with delight. “What? We’ve got to find out where their village is, haven’t we? That’s our assignment, scout the terrain.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” He couldn’t keep his eyes from the naiads sporting about.
Yuri was plunging on, legs sending up a wave of spray.
“Nooo,” Randolf bayed urgently. “Baddd. Peeeople baddd.”
Mansing watched the girls whooping encouragement to Yuri as the lad ploughed through the water towards them. “Oh, to hell with dignity,” he said under his breath, and splashed down into the stream.
The first girl Yuri reached was about nineteen, with scarlet flowers tucked into her wet hair. She smiled radiantly up at him, hands holding his. “I’m Polly,” she laughed.
“All right!” Yuri cried. The water only came halfway up her thighs; she really was completely naked. “I’m Yuri.”
She kissed him, damp body pressing against his sleeveless shirt, leaving a dark imprint. When she broke off another girl slipped a garland of the orange vine flowers round his neck. “And I’m Samantha,” she said.
“You gonna kiss me too?”
She twined her arms round his neck, tongue slipping hungrily into his mouth. Other girls were circling round, scooping up handfuls of spray and showering them. Yuri was in the midst of a warm silver rain with raw ecstasy pounding down his nerves. Here in the middle of nowhere, paradise had come to Lalonde. The droplets fell in slow motion, tinkling sweetly as they went. He felt hands slip the rifle strap from his shoulder, more hands pulled at his shirt buttons. His trousers were undone, and his penis stroked lovingly.
Samantha took a pace back looking at him in adoration. She cupped her breasts, lifting them up towards him. “Now, Yuri,” she pleaded. “Take me now.”
Yuri pulled her roughly against him, his soaking trousers tangling round his knees. He heard an alarmed shout that was cut off. Three of the girls had pushed Mansing under the water, his legs were thrashing above the surface. The girls were laughing hysterically, muscles straining with the effort of keeping him down.
“Hey—” Yuri said. He couldn’t move because of his stupid trousers.
“Yuri,” Samantha called.
He turned back to her. She was opening her mouth wider than he would have believed physically possible. Long bands of muscle writhed around her chin as if fat worms were tunnelling through her veins. Her cheeks started to split, beginning at the corners of her mouth and tearing back towards her ears. Blood leapt out of the wounds in regular beats, and she was still hinging her jaw apart.
Yuri stared for one petrified second then let loose a guttural roar of fright that reverberated round the impassive sentinel trees. His bladder gave out.
Samantha’s grisly head darted forward, carmine teeth clamping solidly round his throat, her blood spraying against his skin.
“Randolf—” he yelled. Then her teeth tore into his throat, and his own blood burst out of his carotid artery to flood his gullet, quashing any further sounds.
Randolf howled in rage as his master fell into the water with Samantha riding him down. But one of the other girls looked straight at him and hissed in warning, flecks of saliva spitting out between her bared teeth. The sayce turned tail and sprinted back into the jungle.
“Power’s going. Losing height. Losing height!” The BK133 pilot’s frantic voice boomed out of the command centre’s AV pillars.
Every sheriff in the room stared at the tactical communication station.
“We’re going down!”
The carrier wave hissed for another couple of seconds, then fell silent. “God Almighty,” Candace Elford whispered. She was sitting at her desk at the end of the rectangular room. Like most of the capital’s civic buildings, the sheriff’s headquarters was made of wood. It sat in its own square fortified enclosure a couple of hundred metres from the governor’s dumper, a simplistic design that any pre-twentieth-century soldier would have felt at home in. The command centre itself formed one side of the parade ground, a long single-storey building with four grey composite spheres housing the satellite uplinks spaced along the apex of the roof. Inside, plain wooden benches ran around the walls, supporting an impressive array of modern desktop processor consoles operated by sheriffs seated in composite chairs. On the wall opposite Candace Elford’s desk a big projection screen displayed a street map of Durringham (as far as it was possible to map that conglomeration of erratic alleyways and private passages). Conditioners hummed unobtrusively to keep the temperature down. The atmosphere of technological efficiency was spoilt slightly by the fans of yellow-grey fungus growing out of the skirting-board underneath the benches.
“Contact lost,” Mitch Verkaik, the sheriff sitting at the tactical communication station reported, stone faced.
Candace turned to the small team she had assigned to monitor the posse’s progress. “What about the sheriffs on the ground? Did they see it come down?”
Jan Routley was operating the satellite link to the Swithland survivors; she loaded an order into her console. “There is no response from any communicator on the Swithland or the Hycel . I can’t even raise a transponder identity code.”
Candace studied the situation display projected by her own console’s AV pillar, more out of habit than anything else. She knew they were all waiting for her to rap out orders, smooth and confident, producing instant perfect solutions like an ambulatory computer. It wasn’t going to happen. The last week had been a complete nightmare. They couldn’t contact anyone in the Quallheim Counties or Willow West any more, and communications with villages along the Zamjan were patchy. The reinforcement flights to Ozark were a stopgap at best; privately she had intended that the fresh men and weapons would simply safeguard an evacuation of settlers down the river. She had long since abandoned the idea of restoring order to the Quallheim Counties, confinement was her best hope. Now it looked like Ozark was inside the affected zone. Seventy men and almost a quarter of her armoury.
“Call the second BK133 back to Durringham right away,” she said shortly. “If the invaders can bring down one, they can bring down another.” And at least ten sheriffs with their heavy-duty weapons would be saved. They might need them badly in the weeks to come. It was pretty obvious the invaders were intent on complete domination of the planet.
“Yes, ma’am.” Mitch Verkaik turned back to his console.
“How long before the observation satellite makes a pass over the paddle-boats?” Candace asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Jan Routley answered.
“Program it for an infrared overscan fifty kilometres either side of its orbital track, see if it can locate the downed BK133. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot.” She rested her chin in her hands, staring blankly at her desktop processor. Protecting Durringham was her priority now, she decided. They must hold on to the city until the LDC sent a combat force capable of regaining the countryside. She was convinced they were faced with an invasion, the hour-long briefing she’d had with Kelven Solanki that morning had put paid to any final doubts. Kelven was badly worried, which wasn’t like him at all.
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