The Veil

by Torstein Beck

  Steel plates hung half over the tires and were hinged on hydraulic arms, ready to drop, cover the wheels, and the entire side of the truck in a moments notice.

  The craftsmanship looked solid and Aaro couldn’t help but stare in awe at the two machines. You’ve got to build monsters to beat monsters, he thought.

  He, Sorina, and Katarina all stopped to admire them. After a moment, Katarina spoke, reeling off the specs for Aaro’s approval. ‘Thirty-eight litre V8 diesels, supercharged and auto-clutched with sequential boxes — all lifted out of Swedish Troop Tanks and modified for purpose. Top speed of about sixty miles an hour, but they’ll do it over road, snow, sand, rocks or anything else.

  ‘The chassis are reinforced and armour plated. The hydraulic suspension is rigged to sink three hundred millimetres at the flick of a switch dropping these plates into place so at night you can hunker down without any worries at all. The wheels and undercarriage will be sealed off so it means nothing can get under there. Not that they could do any damage if they did.

  ‘The sides have been braced and lined with razor wire and the doors have all been overlaid with flush plating so there are no seams for anything to get their claws into. In emergencies, and to operate the cab-guns manually if necessary, there are ladders that unfold and drop down so you can get in and out via the hatch. There are hatches on top of the trailer, too. One into the turret, and another behind it, in case of emergencies.

  ‘The rear doors are bolt-locked like a vault, controlled only from the inside, and fold down to form ramps. You’ll need them once you get to Murmansk. I wouldn’t recommend opening them unless absolutely necessary.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking to,’ Aaro muttered, looking at Sorina.

  Katarina smiled briefly. ‘Inside the cab are the seats and living quarters for the two cab crew. There’s a hard line for communications but no direct internal access. In the back, you’ll find the same. In the front two-thirds are the living quarters — cots, kitchenette and a toilet, but not much else. At the back, separated by a lead-lined wall and hatch is the cargo bay. Both trucks are equipped with specialised hydraulic cranes that will keep the reactor core suspended and safe on the journey back.

  ‘Both trucks are identical. Two trucks, twice the chance of success.’ She held up two fingers. ‘Oh, and for good measure, that’s a remotely controlled belt-fed fifty calibre MG on the cab with ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Armour piercing of course. And that—’ she pointed to the pillbox atop the trailer ‘—is a dual-barrel eighty calibre anti-aircraft gun. Fires five-hundred thirty-millimetre shells a minute at forty-five hundred FPS.’

  ‘FPS?’ asked Sorina.

  ‘Feet per second. It can take out a plane, or a chopper, or a tank without breaking a sweat. So it should do just fine with flesh and bone. No matter how tough those things think they are.’ She laughed, but neither Aaro or Sorina shared the sentiment. She cleared her throat and nodded seriously instead. ‘You know, just for peace of mind. Twenty-five thousand rounds, case fed on two-thousand round belts. Should be more than enough to get you there and back. And then some.’

  Aaro scoffed. ‘I should hope so. If it’s not, I want more money.’

  She chuckled for his benefit, her lips not parting. They both knew he was serious. That was an obscene amount of firepower.

  ‘Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best,’ Sorina whispered to Aaro, taking his hand in hers again and clasped tightly.

  He squeezed back, swallowed and then nodded to her as much as himself.

  Katarina threw her hands to her hips and sighed. She dipped her head towards the trucks and started walking. ‘Come on then, let’s meet them.’

  Aaro and Sorina said nothing, but followed just the same. They broadsided the truck and came around the back end. There, spread across the floor was a makeshift mechanic’s shop with tools and gear strewn about, and a number of bodies in between. Some were chatting, others working. A small group was huddled over a fold-out table and were pointing at a large map of Scandinavia, tracing their fingers across it.

  Katarina cleared her throat and everyone stopped and eventually looked up.

  ‘Team,’ she said brightly. ‘These are the last editions. Aaro Emmerson, and Sorina Strand. The Engineer, and the Welder.’ She said it abruptly, as if it was an order for them to be accepted rather than an introduction.

  As such, no one ran forward to greet them. They stood like nervous kids on the first day of school. The stooped forms around the map stood, two men and two women, and shifted their weight, inspecting the new arrivals with curiosity, and a hint of what Aaro detected might have been disdain. He knew that their arrival came about as a result of grave circumstances. A mission like this was planned months, or even years in advance, and in the eleventh hour, one of their crew members had suddenly died in a freak accident. And to make matters worse, in order to make space for Sorina, one of their welders had to be kicked off the team.

  It was no wonder they looked so sour. They were probably all best friends. And then, suddenly, out of the blue, two new faces show up and they have to accept the reality that their friends aren’t coming back. That Aaro and Sorina are going to get to reap the benefits that rightly belonged to the people whose places they’d all but stolen.

  An older guy in his mid-fifties with a lined face and receding hairline, who looked to be ex-military by the way he carried himself, spoke first. He huffed and curled his lip at them derisively. ‘This is who you bring us? No way he can do what Bear did. Look at him, he’s…’ The guy shook a limp wrist at Aaro when he couldn’t find the right word to insult him with.

  He assumed Bear was the engineer who died, but before he could retort in any way, the guy continued. ‘And her?' he did the same wrist swing at Sorina. ‘You gave Hendriks the axe for her? Kat, this has gotta be some kind of joke right? We hand-picked this team over the course of eighteen months,’ he said, chopping into his palm with his other hand. ‘I didn’t realise we were down to scraping the bottom of the barrel. Fuck.’ He shrugged and sneered. ‘I’m just glad they’re not on my truck.'

  Aaro stood fast but Sorina moved behind him a little, crushing his hand a little harder now. He heard her draw a sharp breath, trying to stay stoic. But it was a hard truth to hear, and an even worse way to hear it.

  Aaro had let her believe that they’d both been requested. But now she’d put two and two together and definitely make four.

  Aaro’s teeth ground as he watched the soldier look them up and down. Then, another voice chimed in. The second guy had the same ex-military air to him, but was a little younger and had a mass of black hair tied back in a ponytail and a two-week beard hiding his weathered face. He spoke with a gruff voice, undressing Sorina with his eyes as he did. ‘Hey, I’m not complaining. Her ass is a hell of a lot nicer than Hendricks’,’ he snorted.

  A few of them laughed. Most just looked a little tired of his jokes.

  Katarina started without warning, her voice like ice. ‘Shut it, Ek. There’ll be no more of that. You wanna treat people like shit, you sure as hell don’t do it on my dime. Same goes for you Berg,’ she said, looking at the first soldier with the thinning hair. ‘I know you and Bear were close but he’s gone now and it is what it is. And, as for Hendriks… If I thought that he couldn’t be replaced, I wouldn’t have replaced him. That goes for all of you. You aren’t happy about something, tell me right now and you can go back to slinging goat shit at the farms for all I care. No one is indispensable. Especially not you two. There are a thousand guys in your profession who’d kill for an opportunity like this. Team cohesion is the number one priority. You’ve gotta look out for each other out there or none of you will survive. Work together. Live together. Succeed together. Got it?’

  Berg and Ek nodded balefully, grumbling in agreement, but as soon as Kat looked away, Ek winked at Sorina. Aaro’s fists curled automatically. Ek clocked it instantly and his mouth spread into a wide, sly smile. He stepped forward a little as people started to
go back about their business. ‘Oh, she’s yours is she?’ he said wryly when he was close enough not to be heard by anyone else. Katarina had been called over by someone and now it was just Aaro, Sorina, and Ek.

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, yeah. She is,’ Aaro said, stepping closer to the guy. He could smell gun grease coming off him in waves.

  Ek was taller than Aaro. Broader, older, and stronger too, without a doubt. As well as trained. He’d be hard to take in a straight brawl.

  Aaro’s eyes flitted to a spanner he could see on a nearby toolbox but it was out of reach. If this was going to end in a fight, it’d be the old fashioned way.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ Ek said coldly. ‘I don’t have to know you to know that. You’re robbing the grave of one friend and screwing another out of a serious paycheck. I don’t like the way you got on this team and I don’t like your face.’ He was nose to nose with Aaro now. ‘But her?’ He cast a lurid eye at Sorina. ‘Her I could get to like.’

  Aaro was trying to move his hand but Sorina was still holding onto it. He wished she would let him go so he could floor the sonofabitch, but she wouldn’t. It was probably the smart play. They’d barely arrived. Maybe punching someone wasn’t the best way to go.

  ‘You don’t have to like me,’ he whispered, letting himself smile. There were other ways to land a blow. ‘All you have to do is protect me.'

  He sneered. ‘And why would I do that? Why would I risk my hide for yours?’

  ‘Because that’s what you do, right? You’re ex-military, and you don’t look like you could spell the word engineer, let alone build or fix anything — and with those fat sausages for fingers, you’d never fit into a pair of welders’ gloves. So that leaves two options. Gunner, or spotter. And you look far too much like you enjoy strangling kittens to be a spotter. So that leaves gunner.’

  Ek’s eyes were burning.

  ‘In other words,’ Aaro went on. ‘You do your fucking job, I’ll do mine, and we won’t have to speak to each other otherwise. Because the thing is, if you get your throat ripped out by a Vara, I can climb up on a gun and start firing. But if you somehow let me get killed by one, then you’re gonna be shit out of luck when it comes to dismantling a core — unless you know how to disassemble a nuclear fusion reactor without, you know, making it explode?’ Aaro raised his eyebrows and waited for a reply.

  Ek clenched his jaw and said nothing.

  ‘So back the fuck off,’ Aaro whispered. ‘Because if I walk, they’ll have a hell of a job replacing me, but if you throw a tantrum and say it’s you or me, well, Kat has already said that you’re easily replaceable. In fact, it would probably be better for me — save me standing here and breathing in your second-hand dog breath. Seriously, do you spend all your time slopping down rotten fucking garbage, or just most of the time?’

  Aaro finished and waited, seeing whether he’d take the bait. Whether he’d swing for him. It was maybe a little direct, but either Ek would back off and his point would be made, or Ek would throw a punch, Aaro would go down and Ek would get kicked off the team. It was win-win. Neither of those things happened, though. As Ek stood there, seething, fishing for words in his limited vocabulary that just weren’t there, searching for a comeback he didn’t have the intelligence to articulate, a woman appeared. She was short and petite, but she wedged her way between them and with her back to Aaro, pushed Ek away.

  ‘Move it,’ she said forcefully, shoving Ek in the chest. ‘We all miss Bear but this will accomplish nothing. Go play house with your friends over there,’ she nodded to another guy with a close-shaved head in his mid-forties sporting same ex-soldier look, who Aaro now noticed was watching them intensely, just in case his pal needed backing up. Aaro guessed that the guy was Ek’s spotter.

  The woman locked eyes with Ek and barged him backwards until he tore his eyes from Aaro and turned, slinking away towards the other guy, who’d lifted his chin as if to ask what had happened.

  The woman sighed and turned to Aaro, shaking her head slowly. ‘Well, you sure as hell know how to make an entrance.’ She was definitely more upbeat than Ek. ‘I’m Alva. It’s good to meet you, even under these circumstances.’ She extended a hand to Aaro and then Sorina who had now moved back to Aaro’s side. They both shook it. ‘Aaro and Sorina, right?’ She asked happily.

  ‘Yeah,’ they said in unison.

  ‘Awh, well, welcome, I guess.’ She seemed genuine. ‘It’s a shame about Bear, everyone liked him, but if it’s any consolation, Hendricks was even more of a prick than Ek, so don’t feel too broken up about it. It’s great to have you guys on board. Everyone was worried that we’d have to scrap the mission altogether. But luckily enough, here you are.’ She hugged them both, which they found odd, but a little comforting too. It’s not something that happened in the pit of despair that was Oslo — things were obviously a little different here.

  ‘Alva, what do you do? You don’t strike me as a gunner or spotter,’ Sorina said with a smile. ‘Are you a welder, too?’

  ‘I am a spotter, actually. In the cab though. I navigate and keep an eye out for anything we should avoid. There’s a lot of wilderness between here and Murmansk, a lot of rough terrain and a lot of I-don’t-know-what. The roads are all overgrown and littered with cars. We’ll need to change our plans on the fly, and I guess that falls to me.’

  ‘So who’s the driver?’

  She looked at a man now bent over the table once more. He had kind eyes, a short muss of black hair, and waved when they looked his way. ‘That’s my husband, Robin. He used to be a truck driver back when things were normal. We live in a small apartment out near the sewage plant. This is a perfect opportunity for us to change that. When Katarina knocked on our door, it was a Godsend. He’s been driving a trash truck for the last seven years and I’ve been a school teacher. We fit the profiles and we don’t mind being in close quarters for days on end. It’s perfect. We can’t wait to get back and start our new life. As Katarina said, we’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.’ She beamed at them.

  Aaro couldn’t help but laugh a little. ‘She got you with that line too huh?’

  Alva smirked and looked over the ragtag group. ‘I think she got everyone with that line.’

  SIXTEEN

  THE BEGINNING

  2108 AD

  Every thread and article was an anchor in itself. They were swept up in the stampede of water, dragging him down into the dark and icy depths.

  Every kick and clawing, pulling stroke was laboured and slow. The car hit the surface and started filling, the water rushing in.

  Aaro panicked and gasped against the cold, his body shuddering violently, hands scrabbling at the door. He tried to haul himself out of the car through the open window he was still pinned to the seat.

  He fought against his seat belt, wrestling with the latch which seemed hellbent on staying locked. The safety feature supposed to save his life was about to drown him. The straps tightened and cut into his stomach and chest, forcing his lungs to empty and stay that way. A quarter breath was all he could manage before the water engulfed his face, stinging his eyes and nose as it did, sloshing up his nostrils and choking him. The car sagged on the passenger side and rolled sideways under the surface. As the weak sunlight hit the undercarriage, the cabin fell totally dark. Aaro continued to fight as the car slowly tumbled through the water.

  The pressure squeezed at his ears and threatened to collapse them.

  His fingers were numb, his legs felt like lumps of stone, and his heart ached as it drew futily on the remaining oxygen in his lungs. His brain tried desperately to fail, willing him to take a breath as it pulled all the warm blood from his extremities back to his organs.

  The car turned over again and hit something hard, the dull report echoing back in the murky water.

  Maybe ten meters below the surface, in perfect darkness, the car levelled on the silty riverbed, settling on its roof. Aaro fumbled for the belt. It was as though he had no fingers at all.
He writhed and felt bubbles trickle over his chin through his gritted teeth. His foot struck the dashboard and the dull thud died in the blackness. A wave of sudden excitement rippled through him as the kick pushed him back into the sponge and the belt slackened for a second. The automatic tightening gave and the buckle came free in his hand. He screamed with joy and the last of the air in his lungs sailed upwards between his knees, pocketing in the footwell. He was still upside down in the dark and under a river of water, but he was free.

  Adrenaline alone fuelled his escape as he twisted his way to the window and thrust himself out. He righted and planted his feet in the loose weed and stone, feeling the cold wash of the current as he did.

  With all of his remaining strength, he pushed off, springing upwards. His lungs howled. His blood roared in his ears.

  He clamped his thumb and finger to his nose and blew hard to equalise the pressure. There was barely enough breath to do it.

  He counted in his head, making his brain focus on something. Kick, kick, blow. Kick, kick, blow. He’d dived before and the safety briefing was unequivocal. Don’t ascend too quickly. You can burst your eardrums that way. Don’t focus on the distance and don’t think about the surface. It will come when it comes. Just focus on your ears and on your legs. Kick, kick, blow.

  His clothes tugged at him, turning strong strokes into weak flailing ones. He could feel the force of the water pushing him down river now, too.

  His chest felt shut. Collapsed and crushed by the lack of oxygen.

  His vision had blurred and darkened, his eyes burning in his head.

  He closed his eyes, feeling less strength in his muscles with each passing second. Come on. Kick. Kick. Blow. Kick. Kick. He couldn’t any more. He let go of his nose and started to claw frantically at the endless water. He wanted desperately to catch something solid, to pull himself towards the surface but there was nothing, just his feeble doggy paddle. He didn’t even know if he was travelling upwards anymore. He felt like he was sinking. He felt like something was dragging him back down, like the devil had reached up and grabbed his ankle, like escaping the car was just a mistake on the reaper’s part and he was never even meant to even get this far.