“I understand.” He glanced at the desktop processor’s AV projector which was broadcasting Exnall’s status display. The SD sensor satellite wasn’t producing as many details as he would have liked, but the overall summary was accurate enough. Approximately six hundred people were milling along Maingreen outside the station, with dribs and drabs still arriving. Neville made his decision and datavised the communications block for a channel to each patrol car.
It was all over now, anyway: career, retirement prospects, probably his friends, too. Ordering the police to open fire with sonics on his own townsfolk wouldn’t make the recriminations appreciably worse. And it would be helping them, even though they’d never appreciate the fact.
* * *
Eben Pavitt had arrived at the police station ten minutes ago, and still hadn’t managed to get anywhere near the doors to make his complaint. Not that it would do him much good if he had got up there. He could see those at the front of the building hammering away at the thick glass doors to no avail. If that pompous dickbrain Latham was in there, he wasn’t doing his duty and talking to the crowd.
It was beginning to look like his walk (two bloody kilometres, dressed in a thin T-shirt and shorts) had all been for nothing. How utterly bloody typical that Latham should bungle tonight. Ineffective warnings. Sloppy organization. Cutting people off from the net. The chief inspector was supposed to be helping the town, for crying out loud.
By God, my MP is going to hear about this.
If I get out in one piece.
Eben Pavitt glanced uneasily at his fellow townsfolk. There was a constant derisory shouting now. Several stones had been thrown at the police station. Eben disapproved of that, but he could certainly understand the underlying frustration.
Even Maingreen’s overhead streetlights seemed to be sharing the town’s malaise, they weren’t as bright as usual. Away in the distance, above the fringes of the crowd, he could see several of them flickering.
He wasn’t going to achieve anything here. Perhaps he should have hiked straight out of town? And it still wasn’t too late, if he started now.
As he turned around and started to push his way through the press of aggrieved people, he thought he saw a large flyer curving through the sky above the western edge of town. Trees and the wayward streetlights swiftly cut it from his view, but there wasn’t much else that gold-haze blob could be. And the size could only mean a military transport of some kind.
He grinned secretively. The government was doing something positive. Perhaps all was not lost after all.
Then he heard the sirens. Patrol cars were racing along Maingreen, approaching the crowd from both ends. Those people around him were straining to catch a glimpse of the latest distraction.
“LEAVE THE AREA,” an amplified voice bellowed from the police station. “THE TOWN IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW. RETURN HOME AND REMAIN THERE UNTIL YOU RECEIVE FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”
Eben was sure the distorted voice belonged to Neville Latham.
The first patrol cars braked dangerously close to people on the edge of the main crowd, as if their safety systems had somehow become uncoupled. Several jumped clear hurriedly, two or three lost their footing and fell over. One man was struck by a patrol car, sending him cannoning into a woman. They both went sprawling.
A deluge of boos were directed at the patrol cars. Eben didn’t like the mood which was emerging among his fellow citizens. These weren’t the usual peaceable Exnall residents. And the police reaction was unbelievably provocative. A lifelong law abider, Eben was shocked by their actions.
“LEAVE THE AREA NOW. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY.”
A single lump of stone tumbled through the air above the bobbing heads of the crowd. Eben never did see the arm which flung it. One thing remained certain, though, it was thrown with incredible force. When it hit the patrol car it actually managed to fracture the bonded silicon windscreen.
Several taunting cheers went up. Suddenly the air was thick with improvised missiles raining down on the patrol cars.
The response was predictable, and immediate. A couple of assault mechanoids emerged from the rear of each patrol car. Sense-overload ordnance shot out, red flares slicing brilliant ephemeral archways across the stars.
They should have been warning shots. The mechanoids had a direct-attack prohibition loaded into their processors which only Neville Latham could cancel.
The ordnance activated two metres above the compressed bustle of bodies at the heart of the crowd. The effect was almost as bad as if live ammunition had been fired straight at them.
Eben saw men and women keel over as though they’d been electrocuted. Then his eyes were streaming from intolerable light and wickedly acidic gas. Human screams vanished beneath a hyper-decibel whistle. His neural nanonics sensorium filter programs were unable to cope (as the ordnance designers intended), leaving him blind, deaf, and virtually insensate. Heavy bodies thudded into him, sending him spinning, stumbling for balance. Pinpricks of heat bloomed across his bare skin, turning to vicious stings. He felt his flesh ballooning, body swelling to twice, three times its normal size. Joints were seizing up.
Eben thought he was screaming. But there was no way to tell. The solid sensations, when they started to return, were crude ones. His bare legs scraping over damp grass. Limp arms banging against his side. He was being dragged along the ground by his collar.
When he’d regained enough rationality to look around, the scenes of suffering on Maingreen outside the police station made him want to weep with rage and helplessness. The crazed assault mechanoids were still pummelling people with their ordnance from point-blank range. A direct hit brought instant death, for those nearby the activation it was outright torture.
“Bastards,” Eben rasped. “You bastards.”
“Pigs are always the same.”
He looked up at the man who was pulling him away from the melee. “Christ, thanks, Frank. I could have died if I’d stayed in there.”
“Yeah, I suppose you could have,” Frank Kitson said. “Lucky I came along, really.”
* * *
The police hypersonic landed next to the five big marine troop flyers. They were strung out along the link road which connected Exnall to the M6; a quintet of dark, menacingly obese arachnids whose landing struts had dinted the carbon concrete. The start of the town’s harandrid forest was two hundred metres away, a meticulous border where the aboriginal trees finished and the cultivated citrus groves began.
As he came down the hypersonic’s airstairs, Ralph’s suit sensors showed him the marine squads fanning out along the edge of the trees. Some kind of barrier had already been thrown across the road itself. So far a perfect deployment.
The marine colonel, Janne Palmer, was waiting for Ralph in the command cabin of her flyer. It was a compartment just aft of the cockpit with ten communications operatives, and three tactical interpretation officers. Even though it was inside and well protected, the colonel was wearing a lightweight armour suit like the rest of her brigade. Her shell helmet was off, showing Ralph a surprisingly feminine face. The only concession to military life appeared to be her hair, which was shaved down to a two-millimetre stubble of indeterminable colour. She gave him a fast nod of acknowledgement as he was escorted in by a young marine.
“I accessed a recording of the operation at Moyce’s,” she said. “These are one tough set of people we’ve got here.”
“I’m afraid so. And it looks like Exnall is the worst infestation out of all the four Mortonridge towns.”
She glanced into an AV pillar’s projection. “Nice assignment. Let’s hope my brigade can handle it. At the moment I’m trying to establish a circular perimeter roughly fifteen hundred metres outside the town. We should have it solid in another twenty minutes.”
“Excellent.”
“That forest’s going to be a bitch to patrol. The SD sensor sats can’t see shit below the trees, and you’re telling me I can’t rely on our usual observation systems.”<
br />
“ ’Fraid not.”
“Pity. Aerovettes would be exceptionally handy in this case.”
“I must advise against using them. The possessed can really screw our electronics. You’re far better off without them. At least that way you know the information you’re receiving is accurate, even though there isn’t much of it.”
“Interesting situation. Haven’t handled anything like this since tac school, if then.”
“Diana Tiernan told me the AIs have got very few datalinks left into Exnall. We’ve definitely lost most of the town’s communications net. Even the police architecture has failed now. So the exact situation inside is unknown.”
“There was some kind of fight outside the police station which finished a couple of minutes ago. But even if that crowd which gathered along Maingreen have all been possessed, that still leaves us with a lot of the population which have escaped so far. What do you want to do about them?”
“Same as we originally planned. Wait until dawn, and send in teams to evacuate everyone. But I wish to Christ that curfew had held. It did in all the other towns.”
“Wishes always wind up as regrets in this game, I find.”
Ralph gave her a speculative look, but she was concentrating on another AV projection. “I think our main concern right now is to contain the possessed in Exnall,” he said. “When it’s light we can start worrying about getting the rest out.”
“Absolutely.” Janne Palmer stared straight at the ESA operative, and gave him a regretful grin. “And come dawn I’m going to need the best information I can acquire. A lot of lives are going to depend on me getting it right. I don’t have any special forces types in my brigade. This was a rush operation. But what I do have now is you and your G66 troops. I’d like you to go in and make that assessment for me. I believe you’re the best qualified, in all respects.”
“You don’t happen to know Jannike Dermot, do you?”
“Not personally, no. Will you go in for me? I can’t order you to; Admiral Farquar made it quite plain you’re here to advise, and I have to take that advice.”
“Considerate of him.” Ralph didn’t even need any time to decide. I made that choice when I put the armour suit on again. “Okay, I’ll go and tell my people we’re on line again. But I’d like to take a squad of your marines in with us. We might need some heavy-calibre firepower support.”
“There’s a platoon assembled and waiting for you in flyer four.”
* * *
Finnuala O’Meara had passed simple frustration a long time ago. Over an hour, in fact. She had been sitting on a bunk in the police station’s holding cell for an age. Nothing she did brought the slightest response from anyone, not datavises into the station processor, nor shouting, or thumping on the door. Nobody came. It must have been that prick Latham’s orders. Let her cool off for a few hours. Jumped-up cretin.
But she could nail him. Anytime she wanted, now. He must know that. Which was probably why he’d kept her in here while the rest of her story played out, denying her a complete victory. If only her coverage had been complete she would have been able to dictate her own terms to a major.
She’d heard the noises from outside, the sound of a crowd gathering and protesting. A large crowd if she was any judge. Then the sirens of the patrol cars rushing along Maingreen. Speakers blaring a warning, pleas, and threats. Strange monotonous thumps. Screams, glass smashing.
It was awful. She belonged outside, drinking down the sight.
After the riot, or whatever, it had become strangely quiet. Finnuala had almost drifted off to sleep when the cell door did finally open.
“About bloody time,” she said. The rest of the invective died in her throat.
A huge mummy shuffled laboriously into the cell, its bandages a dusty brown, with lime-green pustulant fluids weeping from its hands. It was wearing Neville Latham’s immaculate peaked cap. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” it apologized gruffly.
* * *
Colonel Palmer’s field command officers informed Ralph’s reconnaissance team about the woman as they were about to enter Exnall. Datavise bandwidth was being suppressed by the now-familiar electronic warfare field, preventing anything other than basic conversation. They certainly couldn’t receive a full sensevise, or even a visual image, so they had to rely on a simple description instead.
As far as the SD sensor satellites could tell, the town’s entire population had retreated back into the buildings. Earlier on there had been a considerable amount of movement under the umbrella of harandrids, blurred infrared smears skipping about erratically. Then as dawn rose even those beguiling traces vanished. The only things left moving in Exnall were the treetops swaying back and forth in the first morning zephyr. Roofs, and even entire streets, appeared blurred, as if a gentle rain was pattering on the satellite’s lenses. Visually, the town was a complete hash, except for a solitary circle, fifteen metres across, in front of a diner which served the link road to the M6. And in the middle of that was the woman.
“She’s just standing there,” Janne Palmer datavised. “She’ll be able to see anything approaching up the link road into town.”
“Any weapons apparent?” Ralph asked. Along with the twelve-strong platoon the colonel had assigned him, he was crouched down at the side of the road, a hundred metres short of the first houses. They were using a small embankment for cover as they crept in towards the town.
His head was ringing with a mental version of tinnitus, which he suspected was due to the stimulants. After only two hours sleep in the last thirty-six he was having to use both chemical and software excitants to keep his edge. But he couldn’t afford to relax his guard, not now.
“Definitely not,” Janne Palmer told him. “At least not any heavy-calibre hardware, anyway. She’s wearing a jacket, so she could be concealing a small pistol inside it.”
“Not that it makes any difference if she’s possessed. We’ve not seen them use a weapon yet.”
“Quite.”
“Dumb question, but is she alive?”
“Yes. We can see her chest moving when she breathes, and her infrared signature is optimum.”
“She’s some kind of bait, do you think?”
“No, too obvious. I’d guess some kind of sentry, except they must know we’re here. Several squads have skirmished while we were setting up the perimeter.”
“Hell, you mean they’re loose in the woods?”
“ ’Fraid so. Which means I can’t confirm that all the possessed are inside the cordon. I’ve requested some more troops from Admiral Farquar to start searching the locality. The request is up before the security committee as we speak.”
Ralph cursed silently. Possessed roaming around in this area would be nigh on impossible to track down. The Mortonridge countryside was a rugged nightmare. Pity we haven’t got any affinity-bonded hounds, he thought. The ones he’d seen the settlement supervisors use back on Lalonde would have been perfect for the job. And I can just see Jannike Dermot’s face if I make that suggestion to the security committee. But . . . hell, they’re what we need.
“Ralph, one moment please,” Colonel Palmer datavised. “We’ve run an ident check on our lady sentry. It’s confirmed, she’s Angeline Gallagher.”
“Hell. That changes everything.”
“Yes. Opinion here is that she’s wanting to talk. She’s not stupid. Allowing herself to be seen like this must be their equivalent of a white flag.”
“I expect you’re right.” Ralph gave the platoon’s lieutenant an order to halt their advance while the security committee came on line. The marines formed themselves into a defensive circle, scanning the trees and the nearby houses with their most basic sensors. Ralph let his automatic rifle hang at his side as he squatted in the middle of some thick marloop bushes. He had a terrible intimation that Gallagher (or rather her possessor) wasn’t about to lay out some convenient terms of surrender. There never can be surrender between us, he acknowledged gloomily.
&n
bsp; So what could she want to say?
“Mr Hiltch, we concur with Colonel Palmer that the woman wants to negotiate,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “I know it’s a lot to ask after all you’ve been through, but I’d like you to go in there and talk to her.”
“We can set up SD ground-strike coverage to support you,” Deborah Unwin datavised. “Put you in the eye of a hurricane, so to speak. Any tricks or attempts to overwhelm you, and we’ll laser out a two-hundred-metre circle with you at the centre. We know they can’t withstand the SD platform’s power levels.”
“It’s all right,” Ralph told his invisible audience. “I’ll go in. After all, I was the one who brought her here.”
* * *
Strangely enough, Ralph didn’t think of very much at all when he was walking the last five hundred metres along the road. All he wanted to do now was get the job over. The road which had started at the mouth of a titanic river on a different, distant planet finished inside a pretty rural town on the rump of nowhere. If there was an irony to be had in those circumstances, Ralph couldn’t taste it.
Angeline Gallagher’s possessor waited calmly outside the cheap single-storey diner as he walked towards her. Dean, Will, and Cathal accompanied him for most of the way; then when they were still a hundred metres away from her he told them to wait and carried on alone. Nothing moved in any of the simple, elegant buildings which lined the link road. But he knew they were waiting behind the walls and blanked windows. The conviction grew inside him that they weren’t showing themselves because it wasn’t yet their time to do so. Their part in the drama would come later.
This was a surety he’d never known before, a kind of psychic upswelling. And with it his intimation of disaster grew ever stronger.
The closer he got to the woman, the less the electronic warfare field affected his implants and suit blocks. By the time he was five metres away, the security committee was receiving a full sensevise again.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 141