Heart of Granite

by James Barclay

  Much.

  Everything that the voice said was accompanied by imagery across his eyelids . . . a mouth open and screaming, fists clenched and a contorted face, eyes open and begging for mercy. All very comforting.

  ‘When do we start?’

  Now.

  For the first time in his life, Max found that he was scared of dying. He opened his mouth to beg her to reconsider but before he could frame the words, it began.

  It was impossible to say how many times his body was pierced. His back took the brunt but the stabbing pains were in his arms, legs, buttocks, chest and neck too. He’d have likened it to walking into a hail of metal shards but it was far, far worse than that. Every single point of entry was slow, deliberate and deep, as if Martha’s primary intention was torture.

  Max would have writhed with the agony but her pouch muscles had firmed to steel and from scalp to heel he had no movement whatsoever. He could just about move his toes and he did so vigorously, if only to convince himself he was still alive.

  The cold that came with the piercings was shocking, leaving him gasping for air – what little he could drag in with his torso mostly immobilised. Crawling tendrils issued from every sharp point, some of which felt like needles and others more like stilettos. He could trace some of them as they invaded his body, note them creeping to his heart, his lungs and into his abdominal cavity where they spread like cloying, freezing hands, gripping hard and beginning to squeeze.

  Max screamed; the sound emerging like tortured whispers.

  Toes. Toes, think about your toes. See how they still move and you can still move them. Holy God fuck . . . toes toes. She doesn’t want to kill you she needs you if she wanted to kill you you’d be dead already so you’re all right. Am I fuck all right what is she doing? How should I know it must be the alien part maybe I’m being improved or maybe harvested or some other such shit. Fuck me sideways I need this to stop I need this to stop please Holy Father let it stop let it stop.

  Max’s head was hot. Blood was thundering around inside his skull, looking for a way out. It was washing against the insides of his skull, pressing onto his brain from the outside and swelling it from the inside. Any moment, he expected blood to shoot from his eyes, nose, mouth, ears . . . anywhere to relieve the pressure.

  He tried to open his eyes to let the blood out but his eyelids wouldn’t respond. Instead, they showed him cascades of red with tumbling dark shadows within, all blown on a flame so hot it could turn bone to ash in a moment. He was nothing but a pile of ash supported by the pouch muscles. As soon as Martha let go, he’d crumble and be dust on the wind.

  Every nerve was raw and screaming. Every tooth was being wrenched out by the root, every toe- and fingernail ripped from its berth, every piece of his skin stripped layer by layer, millions of pairs of miniature claws grabbing with precision to peel him away one molecule at a time.

  He had no control of his mouth or he’d have opened it to scream. He made the sound within him instead, an endless hum dragged from lungs exhausted of air and collapsing while the noise went on and on.

  Holy God, what now?

  Inside his body, his muscles started to spasm. It began in his arms, a quivering sensation combining horribly with the cold and the piercings, spreading like an all-consuming virus to the rest of his body. He ground his teeth together while he tried to shake himself apart inside his skin. Every pierce point ricocheted with new pain.

  ‘Please,’ he forced out through a mouth caught in the net of palsy that ran through every muscle in his face. ‘Please.’

  Visions of the open sky wiped across his mind; vivid blues and whites followed by slate-grey and star-strewn black. They were glorious vistas of freedom and domain and he yearned to be there in the limitless space. Inside his cocoon he almost smiled but a shattering torment scythed into his brain and all he could see as he tumbled down, unable to resist any more, was a blazing white.

  Gerhard Moeller ran into the ERC labs in the footsteps of Markov and a satisfying few metres ahead of Kirby. Childish given the serious situation they could be in but what the hell. He was still stung by the attitudes of both his colleagues towards his pilots and shocked by Markov’s belief that drake pilots were mere tools to advance her knowledge. But she was still UE’s most brilliant scientist so when she wanted to run, you ran.

  ‘Get me Eleanor,’ Markov ordered the nearest tech beyond the doors. She didn’t break stride as she made for one of the analysis rooms. ‘And fire up electron one and the DNA identware. I need a match almost before I’ve placed the sample.’

  ‘I’m on it, Helena.’

  The tech scurried away. Markov walked quickly into the room and fetched a glass holder for the spyfly. She opened it and nodded to Moeller who dropped the remains inside. Markov examined it briefly before snapping the lid shut and dropping it into electron one’s receptor. She sat in the operator’s chair and tapped up some feeds. Data, graphs and images popped up. The spyfly rotated slowly.

  ‘Helena,eh?’ said Moeller.

  Markov shrugged. ‘Hierarchy is the bane of teamwork. We leave that to you lot and a right cock-up youmake of it too.’

  She leaned back in her chair, Moeller and Kirby coming to either side of her and leaning in, hands on the desk like a clichéd corporate shot.

  ‘What are we looking at here?’ asked Kirby. ‘Barring the subject of course.’

  Markov indicated the various charts and data flows in turn. ‘Spectrographic analyses; compound ratios; radio frequency range and function; memory analysis and DNA composition. This definitely isn’t one of ours.’

  ‘Helena?’

  Markov turned a beaming smile on Rosenbach, who had entered the room looking harassed and unhappy.

  ‘Ah, Eleanor. Got a spyfly here. I need to know any time the smart screens in the flight deck, on the turrets, launchers, hydroponics, solar arrays glitched even momentarily while you’ve been prioritising systems in the last three days.’

  Rosenbach nodded. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘Bridge Bar,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Wow. Got a long way, then.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Markov. ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘Just a few minutes. I’ll need to scribble a quick capture algorithm. I’ll ping you the report as soon as.’

  ‘Perfect. What’s wrong, by the way?’

  ‘Let’s just say the sand storm needs to be kind but I’ve just seen the wind speed and duration forecast and the projected volume of grit that’ll hit us and, well . .. We’re likely to have some issues.’

  ‘With what?’ asked Moeller.

  ‘Pretty much everything concerned with our defensive capabilities.’ Rosenbach flicked out her p-palm and sat in a chair away from the rest of them. ‘More in a minute. Let me just get this seeker on its way.’

  ‘How long have we got to wait for the bad news?’ asked Kirby.

  ‘Collating now,’ said Markov. She entered a few values into the screen. ‘okay, okay . .. oh dear.’

  ‘What am I looking at?’ asked Moeller, feeling his heart sink. The analysis screen was covered in lines of data, plus three graphs and a graphic of the reconstituted spyfly. There were some red figures but some green ones too. He didn’t know why that comforted him and the look on Markov’s face suggested it shouldn’t.

  Markov pointed at this and that on the screen as she spoke.

  ‘It’s a grade one Maputo spyfly, which suggests they have resource to burn as opposed to being on their last legs, so to speak. It was geared for electro-magnetic, physiological and audio data and has probably transmitted whatever data it collected already. Worst: it’s three days old. Even if it took a day to get here, it’s collected a massive amount of data’

  ‘Can you download its memory?’

  ‘It’s an in-out feed with a volatile buffer. Nothing stays in there for long. Our only hope is of interference, then the Mafs would lose the data in transmission.’

  ‘We need to know what it might hav
e leaked,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Knowing where it came in will at least let us plot likely routes,’ said Markov. ‘But three days . . . wow, frankly, our darkest secrets could have been exposed.’

  ‘Umm,’ said Rosenbach and she had their immediate attention. ‘It might be worse than that. Three days ago our screening would have blocked it so how on earth did it get in?’

  ‘Halloran probably opened his great big mouth and swallowed it,’ said Kirby. ‘What?’

  Rosenbach was staring at him. ‘Hitched a ride . .. hmmm.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ said Kirby.

  ‘I need to check something, Helena. Okay if I head off?’ ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m just wondering if it hitched a ride on one of the drake carcasses we brought back on board.’

  Markov nodded. ‘Good thought . .. go ahead.’

  Rosenbach hurried out of the room. Moeller turned back to Kirby. ‘Not sure it really matters how the damn thing got in here, Avery needs to know we’ve been compromised.’

  Kirby nodded. ‘I’ll ping him now. He’ll want us round the tac-tables for a worst case scenario brainstorm. See you in Command and Control, I’ve got to sort something first.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘I’ll ping you with any useful data,’ said Markov. ‘Don’t expect too much good news.’

  ‘These days good news feels like propaganda,’ said Kirby.

  ‘Talk to you later.’

  There was never a time when forward recon was anything other than the biggest craphole duty for any squad. First to see drake fire close up before it toasted your arse; first to get targeted by enemy ground units and harried by fucking basilisks if you were unlucky enough to get caught off-lizard; and first to see a behemoth forty cal muzzle flash.

  ‘Good of Avery to commit significant forces to the mission,’ muttered Horvald, the gecko jockey. His voice over the com was muffled by the sensory mask, and because his face was stuffed into the back of the gecko’s neck.

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t feel like sacrificing anyone crucial,’ said Ganeef, her voice whining and unhappy.

  ‘Less moaning,’ said Meyer. ‘Job’s the job and the Exterminators never shirk, never complain, just kick the shit out of whatever we find.’

  There were days Meyer wished he was a private not a captain. He only got to moan to himself. And to be fair, this duty was worth moaning about. The gecko moved south in low profile across the undulating dunes while the sand storm blasted all around them. Despite the buffeting, Horvald was keeping the ride relatively smooth and at a decent pace. Exterminators, two platoon, rode five across each flank of the gecko, strapped into bio-engineered outward-facing seats formed of bone, a layer of fat and rough skin.

  Horvald lay flat in a bodysocket engineered into the gecko’s back, his senses directly connected to the gecko’s. His hands were in sheaths on each side of its neck, allowing him to direct its movement and limited weapons suite. His mind was far more powerful than the dull beast’s and directed its speed, sensory focus and direction. The gecko was an augmented version of the common little lizard, unlike the hundred per cent alien drake.

  Not for Horvald, then, the inevitable slide towards the Fall, but on the other hand, lying face-down in slime for a job was just fucking sick. Meyer growled. Fucking Halloran. He was the reason they were out here now, not tucked up in bed while the Heart headed for some down time after tearing the hide off the Maputo.

  Meyer stared down into his lap, trying to ignore the maddening, intensifying, itching. He scratched ineffectually at his crotch, his fingers feeling like sausages in his gloves. He was sweating in his combats, his head slick under his sand hood and his goggles steamed up. Sand rattled in his mask filter and against his helmet; it blew in waves across his body, seeking out the most uncomfortable places in which to nestle. It was torture. Fucking Halloran.

  Meyer growled again. He should have let the Mips catch the bastard when he ran through the Exterminator rack the other morning. That was a moment of mercy never to be repeated.

  Then he could have done his Fall in Landfill with all the other porridge brains.

  But here they were, heading out into the desert to set up thermal imagery and radar on a fifteen klick spread a hundred klicks south and west of the HoG’s position. Not that they’d spot dick-all in this mess. The HoG’s radar and motion sensors were just so much fuzz at the moment, so the panic inspired by the spyfly incursion had led Avery and the exec to send platoons out to all points of the compass to set up an early warning grid for the moment the storm lifted.

  Total pisser.

  ‘Think the Mafs’ll move in this soup?’ asked Sidhu. ‘Why would they?’ said Meyer. The wind howled across the gecko which shifted a little to the right to compensate. ‘On the other hand if I heard how creaky the HoG was, I might take a risk.’

  ‘Reckon it’ll be remote artillery and booby traps if anything,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘I’m with Reynolds,’ said Kapetic, in her Slavic roll. ‘Reluctant though I am to admit it, he’s probably on the money this time,’ said Meyer.

  ‘That’s cos I’m a thinker, a tactician,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘Primed for great things.’

  ‘Hey, Reynolds, is “tactician” a synonym for “twat”?’ asked Sidhu.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘You might have to define “synonym”, Sid,’ said Kapetic. ‘Fuck the lot of you,’ said Reynolds. ‘Call yourself a buddy, Sid—’

  Ribald laughter bounced across the com. A dense gust of sand rattled against Meyer’s goggles and hissed around his hood. He looked out into the pitch darkness, glad that the gecko had inner transparent eyelids and rudimentary night vision. Not to mention extremely sensitive heel pads that tested the ground with every step.

  ‘Yeah, but do you know what a synonym is?’ drawled McCarthy, a heavy northern Irish accent lacing his words. ‘It’s the name of the fist that knocks out your teeth,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘That was close to a smart retort,’ said Sidhu.

  ‘You might have to define “ret—”’

  ‘Don’t make me come over there,’ said Reynolds. ‘Now that would be a thing to see,’ said Ganeef. ‘Twenty says he’s blown off our ride inside five seconds.’

  ‘Okay, kids, let’s focus,’ said Meyer, cutting across Reynold’s next words. ‘Horvo, what’s our position?’ Horvald clicked his tongue. ‘Coming up on position one in about three minutes, boss.’

  ‘You heard our tour guide. Get prepped. Boots on the ground the moment we stop. Sidhu, Reynolds, you’ve got the lookout gig so fire up your thermals for distance. Squad two, set up the radar relays, squad one, we’re on thermal imagery.

  Visibility is almost zero so all of you stay close, take a bead on the gecko and use the heat pads on her flanks to find your way back if you get detached. Any questions?’

  They rode on in silence for the final few hundred metres.

  The gecko slowed and stopped and immediately turned its head downwind, though the swirling storm and the sand clogging the air made that almost pointless. Meyer unclipped and jumped to the ground, flicking on thermal imagers and seeing the heat signatures of his platoon glow and then settle. The gecko was picked out as a solid, comforting line of pale yellow. ‘We’ve got five of these sites to assemble so let’s not dawdle.’

  Squad members hurried to the storage bins strapped to the lizard’s rear flanks, pulling out canvas bags full of kit and weapons that were quickly and efficiently distributed around the platoon. Meyer turned a three-sixty, acutely aware that in the pitch-black, sand-filled night, no one was coming to help them if they got in trouble.

  He set his shoulders and walked to the first setup point. ‘Sid, Reynolds, you set?’

  ‘In position, sir,’ said Sidhu. ‘Nothing on forward scope.’ ‘Copy that. All right, let’s get planting. I want us back on the gecko in ten, max.’

  Forty-five minutes later, the inadequacy of their kit was clear. Meyer stoo
d over the thermal imaging equipment and cursed Halloran again. A gust of wind rocked him, blowing more sand across the gear. It would not stand. It wouldn’t even lie down. There wasn’t enough weight to keep it stable, the wind breaks had torn, fallen down or blown away and the shifting sand beneath it undermined it still further.

  ‘Wind speeds topping a hundred and thirty in the gusts, boss,’ said Horvald from his suddenly attractive position lying sheltered on his gecko.

  ‘Remind me how long it’s going to blow?’ asked Meyer. ‘When we left, best case was twelve hours,’ replied Horvald. ‘Got a bead on the HoG?’

  ‘You’re joking. No satellite access, no line of sight.’ Meyer called a halt to efforts for the moment. It was surreal.

  He could only see his people as shifting heat signatures, making this more like some VR nightmare than an infantry recon duty. Beyond the scope of his platoon’s position, there was nothing to see whatever. An unending darkness blown so hard it would have changed the landscape come daylight. And right in the middle of it all, cut off from the welcoming bulk of the Heart of Granite, Exterminator platoons were trying to throw a security net around their mother ship.

  Meyer sighed. There was sand inside his combats, in his mouth, sand fucking everywhere and the original plan was plainly unworkable and the back-up was going to mean a whole lot more sand.

  ‘All right, kids, this is where we really earn the pittance they pay us. Ten of us, five sets of kit, that’s two to a set and we’re going to have to stay out here and physically hold them all upright. Horvald, once we’ve dropped everyone off, I need you to patrol the zone. Coms are going to be flaky so if you hear anything from anyone, relay it, don’t assume it’s already platoon-wide. Everyone buddy up and get back on the gecko . . . all but Sid and Reynolds. You can stay here. One last thing. I’m not losing anyone so don’t go wandering off from your position.

  ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Can I trade in my mission bonus for a crack at bloody Halloran?’ asked Ganeef.

  Meyer chuckled. ‘Get in line, Neef. Come on, saddle up . . . the night can only last so long, right?’