by Mark Walden
‘Nearly forty combat troops and a handful of scientific staff,’ Mason replied. ‘They’re still working on a way to reverse the effects of whatever it is that the Voidborn have done in Edinburgh. They’re doing the best they can, but without your father’s help progress has been slow. He may have been difficult to work with at times, but he was a brilliant man.’
Sam had always known that his father had been engaged in some kind of secretive work for the government, but it was only recently that he had discovered how closely he had been involved with the ongoing fight against the Voidborn and their human representatives on Earth, the Foundation.
‘Do you really have absolutely no idea where he went?’ Sam asked. It was unbelievably frustrating to have missed him by a matter of weeks. At the very least he had the consolation of knowing that he was still alive. That was more than could be said for his mother and sister, who he had not seen since the day of the Voidborn invasion. He told himself that they were safe somewhere in London under the care of the Voidborn that were now under Sam’s control, but he had no real proof. For a long time he’d tried hard not to think about his family, instead focusing on the fight against the Voidborn, but suddenly learning that his father was alive and awake brought a lot of those suppressed emotions bubbling up to the surface.
The truth of it was that he wasn’t sure what he would say to his father, a man who, after all, had lied to him for as long as he could remember. A man who had implanted Sam and numerous other children with unproven alien technology. For Sam, though, the hardest lie to accept was the fact that his mother and father were not his biological parents and that he’d had to learn that from someone else. He still thought of Andrew Riley as his father, not Daniel Shaw, even though they were, of course, one and the same person.
‘No, I’m afraid not, Sam,’ Mason replied with a sad expression on his face. ‘He walked out of the main gate with a rifle and a month’s supplies. I wish he could have stayed, but our differences became irreconcilable.’
‘So was it him that designed those things?’ Sam asked, pointing at the glowing green implant on the side of Mason’s head.
‘Yes,’ Mason replied, touching the device, ‘it took him months working with the tiny amount of Voidborn tech that we had managed to smuggle out of the Foundation before the invasion. This facility was constructed under Faslane by the government and was one of only two in the country. The other, as you’re no doubt aware, was in London and had served as the research hub where Shaw and Stirling carried out their work to protect us against the Voidborn. This facility was designed to serve as a permanent garrison that would be immune to Voidborn control in the event of a Voidborn invasion and from which we might be able to mount some form of concerted resistance.
‘Unfortunately, as you probably already know, the Voidborn caught us off-guard. They arrived far earlier than even our most pessimistic projections had suggested. This place was supposed to have at least one fully trained submarine crew and a nuclear submarine with a full complement of Trident missiles. As it was, we had a pair of pilots, two squads of marines and a handful of scientists when the Voidborn arrived. We were hopelessly unprepared, trapped in the shielded bunker below us with no way of leaving without falling victim to the enemy’s control signal.
‘That was when your father arrived. He had been unable to reach the London facility on the day of the invasion due to the sheer number of Voidborn units there and so he headed for the only other place he knew where there might be humans who had not been enslaved. Here.’
‘That’s a hell of a walk,’ Sam said with a frown.
‘It was,’ Mason replied, ‘but your father is a remarkable man, Sam. There aren’t many people who could have made a journey like that, especially through occupied territory. Nevertheless, it took him weeks. I have to confess that by the time he arrived I had almost given up hope. As soon as he got here, he took control of the scientific team and, after a year of painful trial and error, he had developed these.’ Mason tapped the device attached to his skull. ‘For the first time, we could leave the facility to assess exactly how dire the situation was. We don’t need the devices while we’re inside the bunker, but if we want to go topside we have to use them or we’d be just as vulnerable to the control signal as anyone else. Until you arrived we had no idea that anyone had escaped the Voidborn in London. It was assumed to be a total loss. We didn’t know there was anyone there mounting a concerted resistance, much less that they would be able to take control of a Voidborn Mothership – something which, frankly, I still find hard to believe.’
‘Yeah, well, you’ll get to see it for yourself soon enough,’ Sam replied, looking down at the soldiers who were busily packing their kit into backpacks and checking their weapons.
‘I hope so,’ Mason said, his expression suddenly turning cold, ‘because if you’re lying to me and I find out that you’re leading us into a Voidborn trap I’ll kill you myself. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Sam said, swallowing nervously. He tried very hard not to think about the number of bodies that undoubtedly littered Mason’s past.
‘We leave as soon as it gets dark,’ Mason said. ‘We’re reasonably certain that the Motherships over Edinburgh and London were the only ones stationed over the UK mainland, but I’d rather not bump into any unexpected visitors in daylight.’ Mason turned and looked down at the men preparing their equipment below. ‘I need to brief my men. If I were you, I’d take the opportunity to clean yourself up and grab something to eat.’
Sam watched as Mason walked away. He knew it was a risk taking Mason and his men into London, given how little he actually knew about him, but, at some point at least, his father had trusted him and that counted for something. They may have fallen out over what to do about the Vore, but they were all on the same side in this. They had to be. Despite all that, as he turned back to look at the men in the room below, Mag’s parting words still nagged at him.
Keep an eye on him.
Sam intended to do exactly that.
6
Sam walked towards the Chinook helicopter, its huge double rotors already slicing through the air. Mason strode up the ramp to the interior, which was lit with blood-red light, swiftly followed by a dozen of his men who quickly stowed their gear and took their seats along the bulkheads. Sam followed, past the soldier manning the mounted heavy machine gun, and found himself a spare seat. The men moved with the practised efficiency of professional soldiers, barely glancing at Sam as he watched them finish their final preparations for take-off. A minute or so later, Mason finished talking to the pilots and turned to address his men.
‘Gentlemen, you should consider this a combat drop,’ Mason said. ‘Until we have firm evidence to the contrary we are going to work on the assumption that London is still in the hands of the enemy. You all conducted scouting missions into Edinburgh while the enemy Mothership was stationed there so I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the dangers we may face. We have plotted a course to avoid the Voidborn control nodes that may still be active en route, which should mean we don’t run into any of their airborne units, but you should still be ready for an emergency landing at any time.’
Sam and the others had done exactly the same thing on their way north. The Voidborn Motherships may have gone, but the automated control nodes that allowed the Hunter Drones to operate semi-autonomously and continue to care for the millions of Sleepers up and down the country were still active. Sam thought back to the first time he had seen one of the nodes in the middle of the pitch in Wembley Stadium surrounded by thousands of dormant Sleepers. They had learned the hard way that the Hunters would aggressively defend a node if it were attacked, turning from nursemaids to savage killers in the blink of an eye.
‘Any questions?’ Mason asked. ‘No? Good. Flight time should be just over two hours.’
Mason walked through the cabin to where Sam was sitting and looked down at him.
‘Once we arrive these two gentlemen will be taking care of you.’ Mason
gestured to the two grim-faced soldiers that sat on either side of him. ‘You are not to leave their sight. Understood?’
For a fleeting second Sam wanted to tell Mason that he was more than capable of looking after himself, given everything he’d been through since the invasion, but he decided that it probably wasn’t worth it at that precise moment. From Mason’s perspective he was just a kid after all, and Sam tried very hard not to smile at the thought of his face when he realised that ‘kid’ had command of an army of tame Voidborn.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sam replied, ‘I won’t go wandering off.’
Mason walked back to the front of the compartment and took a seat next to the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the passenger compartment. A few seconds later the thumping rumble of the rotors increased in intensity and the massive machine slowly lifted into the air. Sam watched as the lights of the base disappeared from view to be replaced by the pitch blackness of the post-invasion night. The next time his feet touched the ground he would be home.
Mag squatted on the corner of the roof of one of the darkened buildings that surrounded the landing pad. It had not been difficult to evade the guards patrolling the perimeter. Over the last couple of months she had become extremely adept at avoiding detection by anyone or anything. She watched as the helicopter with Sam on board lifted into the air and disappeared over the horizon. She had wanted to make sure that he had departed safely. He had been the only person that she had spent any time with since she had awoken to find herself transformed. The fact was he had made her feel human again and she realised now that she had almost forgotten how that felt.
She’d been more than a kilometre away from the base before she’d turned back. The nagging memory of Mason’s scent had made her return. He didn’t smell right, she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was wrong about him, but she had learned to trust her heightened senses. They had saved her life on more than one occasion.
She was just about to head back off the base when the hangar doors on the opposite side of the landing pad began to rumble slowly open. She watched as a second helicopter, identical to the one in which Sam had just left, was towed out on to the pad by a small tractor-like vehicle. Mag frowned slightly as two soldiers walked out of the hangar, flanking a figure wearing wrist and leg shackles, with a black bag over their head. The soldiers pushed the prisoner up the loading ramp and a few seconds later the helicopter started to lift off. However, instead of pulling away it hovered in place above the pad. Then Mag noticed the cables dangling from the cargo hook on the machine’s belly.
A moment later the tractor reappeared towing a trailer with a large steel crate on the back of it. As the trailer drew to a halt beneath the helicopter, more soldiers ran out from the hangar and attached the cables to mounts on top of the crate. Suddenly there was a loud metallic clang from the crate as something slammed against the walls inside.
Mag felt a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach as the scent hit her nostrils.
The unmistakeable animal stench of the Vore.
The soldiers quickly finished attaching the cables and one of them gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, whose head was just visible, poking out of the cockpit window above them. A moment later the crate lifted up off the trailer, swinging beneath the massive helicopter like a pendulum as it began to climb into the air. Mag made a split-second decision as the helicopter began to turn towards her, heading for the perimeter fence. She leapt to her feet, sprinting across the gravel roof of the building, picking up speed. The crate passed by three metres above her and she leapt with all her new-found animal strength, slamming into the side with a bang, her claws fighting for purchase on the hard surface. She grabbed desperately for the top edge of the crate as the helicopter cleared the perimeter fence and began to pick up speed. There was a moment of panic as Mag felt herself starting to lose her grip, and she gave a low bestial growl, using every ounce of her strength to pull herself up. She flattened herself to the top of the steel box, holding tight on to the cable mounts as the wind speed increased. She realised she had no idea where the helicopter was headed or why they were transporting live Vore, but her gut told her that it was no coincidence that they had taken off straight after the helicopter carrying Sam. She closed her eyes against the stinging high-speed winds, praying that she would have the strength to hang on long enough for them to reach their destination, wherever that may be.
Rachel squeezed the trigger, the butt of her rifle kicking hard against her shoulder. The short burst tore a neat hole in the centre of the paper target at the other end of the firing range. In her mind’s eye the target was one of the nightmarish creatures they’d discovered in Edinburgh, charging towards her and then cut down in the hail of her bullets. She had finally given in to Dr Stirling’s repeated requests for more information about the things, but reliving the memories of that night had left her feeling angry and frustrated. She had always found the firing range an excellent means of stress relief, but even that wasn’t really working today. Nat approached as Rachel emptied her clip and placed the rifle down on the wooden counter in front of her, a tiny curl of gun smoke rising from the barrel.
‘Not lost your edge, I see,’ Nat said with a slight smile as she looked at the tightly grouped bullet holes in the target at the far end of the range. Rachel had always been the best shot of any of them, much to Jay and Jack’s frustration.
‘Just keeping my eye in,’ Rachel said. ‘Never know when the shooting’s going to start again.’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Nat replied. ‘Though I’ve kind of got used to things being quieter. Can’t say that I was ever a massive fan of the whole bullets and explosions side of things.’
‘Don’t tell Jack that – he might lose interest,’ Rachel said, raising an eyebrow.
‘I wish he would,’ Nat said with a laugh. They all knew that Jack had a crush on her, mainly due to the fact that he seemed to lose the power of coherent speech when she was around. Unfortunately for him it was also painfully obvious that Nat didn’t feel quite the same way.
‘I suppose Jay asked you to come and talk to me,’ Rachel said, picking up her rifle and walking towards the armoury.’
‘He’s just worried about you, you know,’ Nat said. ‘You all went through hell up there.’
‘We’ve been through worse,’ Rachel said. ‘Sam’s not the first person we’ve lost after all.’
Nat looked at her friend’s face. She was right, of course. They had all experienced more than their own fair share of tragedy over the past couple of years, but that didn’t change the fact that some losses were felt more acutely than others.
‘I know,’ Nat said, ‘but . . .’
‘Chosen of the Illuminate,’ the Servant said from behind them, and the two girls turned to see the golden-skinned woman walking towards them across the compound. Theoretically the former Voidborn could simply manifest anywhere she wanted out of thin air, composed as she was of a swarm of countless billions of networked nanites, but Sam had quickly made it clear that doing so made the humans around her uncomfortable.
‘Please, can we just stick to Rachel,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I don’t need the grand title, thanks.’
‘As you wish,’ the Servant replied. ‘My sensors have detected a human aircraft approaching at high speed.’
‘What?’ Rachel snapped, frowning.
‘Should I dispatch drop-ships to intercept?’ the Servant asked calmly.
Rachel’s mind raced. None of them had seen a non-Voidborn aircraft since the first day of the invasion.
‘You’re certain it’s not Voidborn?’ Rachel said.
‘Initial sensor mapping suggests it is a twin-engined rotorcraft of rudimentary design,’ the Servant replied. ‘It is significantly less advanced than Voidborn technology.’
‘A helicopter?’ Nat said, sounding unconvinced. ‘Are you sure?’
‘The drop-ships would allow us to make visual confirmation,’ the Servant replied. ‘The aircraft’s estimated time
of arrival at the Mothership is seven minutes.’
‘Do it,’ Rachel said. She wasn’t prepared to take the chance that it was some kind of Voidborn trick. ‘And get Stirling out here, please.’
The Servant gave a nod. Moments later, far above them, the twin black triangles of two Voidborn drop-ships shot out of one of the numerous hangars that covered the upper surface of the Mothership, racing towards their target.
Mason stared out of the cockpit window of the Chinook. They were thirty kilometres from the centre of London, but even at that range the vast shape of the Voidborn Mothership was clearly visible floating above the city.
‘Sir,’ one of the pilots said, tapping the radar console between the two pilots’ seats, ‘we have two fast movers closing on us from the direction of the Voidborn ship.’
‘Hold your course,’ Mason said calmly. ‘We couldn’t outrun them if we wanted to. Let’s see how this plays out.’
A minute or so later the two triangular aircraft shot past the helicopter, one on either side. They banked back round, taking up flanking escort positions.
‘Stay on this course,’ Mason said. ‘Let’s not do anything to spook our new friends.’ The drop-ships looked identical to the ones that Mason had covertly observed flying above Edinburgh before the Voidborn Mothership had departed. The only difference that he could see was the colour of the light that seemed to dance just below the crystalline surface of their skin, which glowed yellow instead of green. A few minutes later the helicopter passed into the shadow of the Mothership and Mason turned back to the passenger compartment.
‘Mr Riley, would you please join me up here,’ Mason said.
Sam stood up from his seat and walked between the seated soldiers and up to where Mason was standing.
‘We’re approaching the area that you indicated was your base of operations,’ Mason said. ‘It would appear that you might actually have been telling the truth. You’d better tell the pilot where we should put this thing down.’