Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3)

by Janet Edwards

  “Black spots? You mean that surveillance drones can’t fly up hills?” I asked.

  “Drones can fly just about anywhere,” said Juniper. “The problem is that hills can block a drone from receiving its control signals. If that happens, the drone will try to land safely, but someone will probably have to go and rescue it afterwards.”

  “I didn’t think Hive Defence drones ever had problems with signal loss,” said Adika.

  “Hive Defence drones use a much more advanced control system that avoids all these problems,” said Juniper. “The people at the coastal patrol base won’t let our drones use that system though. They’re worried that someone could play around with the control box codes, and take control of one of the armed drones they’ve got patrolling offshore.”

  She laughed. “Cador keeps arguing with them about it, and pointing out the chance of randomly guessing a correct control code has to be less than one in a billion, but they won’t listen to him.”

  “Hive Defence does seem a little paranoid sometimes,” I said.

  “I’m not sure Hive Defence is paranoid enough,” said Adika. “The sea farm shouldn’t be allowed to fly drones at all. Just imagine what could happen if one collided with an aircraft.”

  “That’s very true,” said Lucas sharply. “Our target could deliberately fly the illegal drone at our aircraft to try to make it crash.”

  I made a shamefully high-pitched squeaking sound of terror as I imagined being in a crashing aircraft.

  “Don’t worry, Amber,” said Pilot Ralston’s voice on the crystal comms. “Whenever an aircraft is flying in the sea farm air space, the coastal patrol base tracks all the drones in the area. They’ll warn me if one gets close enough to us to be dangerous, and I’ll shoot it down.”

  “Ralston, say that again!” snapped Lucas.

  “Whenever an aircraft is flying in the sea farm air space, the coastal patrol base tracks all the drones in …”

  Lucas interrupted him. “Liaison, tell Sea Farm Security to land all surveillance drones immediately. Ralston, contact the coastal patrol base. Tell them to watch for a drone that stays airborne. We’re heading back to the aircraft now. Take off as soon as we’re aboard.”

  He waved an arm at the rest of us. “Run!”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  We all started running for Aerial one. I’d only gone two paces when Rothan picked me up and ran along with me in his arms. Ahead of me was the incongruous sight of our nosy, Forge, sprinting at full speed, his grey robe billowing in the wind. I turned my head, and saw Eli was carrying Juniper, while Lucas was fending off Adika’s attempts to pick him up.

  “We can run faster than you, Lucas,” said Adika.

  “Not over a short distance,” gasped Lucas.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Juniper. “You heard something important about drones on your ear things. What was it?”

  “We found out the coastal patrol base can track drones at the sea farm,” I said. “If the illegal drone is still airborne after setting fire to Hazel’s house, then it’s probably returning to its controller. We may be able to chase it and catch our target.”

  “Waste it! Why didn’t Cador tell us about this yesterday when we discussed the possibility of a drone being involved?” asked a breathless Lucas. “We could have had the coastal patrol base tracking every drone movement from that moment onwards.”

  “I didn’t know the coastal patrol base could track our drones, sir,” said Juniper. “Cador might not have known it either.”

  “Nobody at the sea farm would know about this, sir,” said Ralston, on the crystal comms. “Information on Hive Defence tracking system capabilities is restricted to Hive Defence personnel. I’d have told you the coastal patrol base could track drones before, but I’m only linked to your crystal comms when I’m flying an aircraft for you. I didn’t know there was a drone involved in these attacks until I heard you discussing it just now.”

  I grimaced. This was the problem with the Hive obsessively controlling knowledge. It was frustrating to be refused access to restricted information on the grounds it wasn’t relevant to our investigation. The bigger danger though was in situations like this, where we didn’t ask for crucial information because we’d no idea it existed.

  There was silence until we reached the aircraft. Several of the Strike team had raced ahead, and were waiting to help lift people aboard, then we all scrambled to take our seats.

  “Ralston, take off!” ordered Lucas. “What’s happening with the drones?”

  Aerial one lifted vertically upwards. “The coastal patrol base reports three drones still airborne,” said Ralston. “One seems to be … Yes, it’s landed. That leaves one drone airborne in Harvest and one in High Fold.”

  “Liaison, does Sea Farm Security still have drones airborne?” asked Lucas.

  “There’s one still airborne,” said Nicole. “Cador says someone’s gone to lunch and left their drone on hold and hover. They’re trying to look up the control code so they can land it, but they’ve lost the …”

  Lucas made an exasperated noise and interrupted her. “Is their drone in Harvest or High Fold?”

  “Cador says the drone camera is showing a view of fields so it must be in Harvest,” said Nicole.

  “Ralston, head for the drone in High Fold,” said Lucas.

  “Yes, sir,” said Ralston. “That drone is landing now, but the coastal patrol base has pinpointed its position and sent it to me. It’s up near the reservoir.”

  I peered out of the window as Aerial one sped over the glasshouses and orchards of Tropics. Those were replaced by fields as we reached Harvest, and then I felt the aircraft bank as we turned sharply towards the hills of High Fold. The reservoir was conspicuous, a rare burst of winter sun making its waters glisten.

  “We’ll have to land on the eastern side of the reservoir because of the complications of the hills and the gorge,” said Ralston’s voice.

  A moment later, our aircraft was on the ground. Rothan hurried to open the door and lead the Strike team out. Lucas and I stood up, and Juniper got to her feet too, but Adika held out a hand to stop her.

  “You have to stay inside the aircraft, Juniper.”

  She scowled at him. “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Because you haven’t been trained to hunt targets, you haven’t got a gun, and you don’t know how to use one,” said Adika.

  “Lucas and Amber don’t have guns either,” said Juniper.

  Lucas and I produced our guns from under our jackets, and Juniper looked disconcerted.

  “I didn’t know you carried guns too. Well, in that case …” She groaned. “I suppose I’d better stay here.”

  Ralston appeared from the pilot’s cockpit. “Think how I feel, Juniper. I belong to Hive Defence, and I’m armed, but I can’t go with them either. Hunting down targets is their specialism, not mine, so I have to stay here and guard my aircraft.”

  Lucas, Forge in his nosy costume, and I were lifted down from the aircraft in turn. The ground on this side of the reservoir was reasonably flat, but the far side was a steep, craggy hillside dotted with white objects. To my left, a great wall held back most of the water of the reservoir, while allowing the excess to spill over into a stone channel that led it down to the bottom of a rocky gorge.

  Lucas led us a little closer to the reservoir wall. “We’re now well out of earshot of Juniper, so we can speak freely.”

  “Allow me to speak freely and say how much I hate wearing this costume and being lifted on and off aircraft,” said the distorted voice of Forge.

  “I don’t know why you’re complaining, Forge,” I said virtuously. “I never argue about you carrying me.”

  Lucas laughed. “The reservoir wall looks exactly like the seawall in Harbour, with a wide path along the top, and a safety rail at the edge. I assume the black stones are the stone circle that Cador mentioned.”

  “What black stones?” I asked.

  Lucas gestured to our
left. I turned and saw a group of a couple of dozen black stones, each perfectly smooth and at least three times my height. They had a lot of words carved on them, but they were too far away for me to read what they said.

  “Those stones can be used for telling the time, and calculating the summer and winter solstices?” I shook my head in bewilderment. “I don’t see how that’s possible, and why would anyone need stones to tell the time when they can just check it on their dataviews?”

  “We could request information about it,” said Lucas bitterly, “but I’m sure we’d be told it’s restricted.”

  He pointed at a small, stone building near the wall of the reservoir. “Amber, can you check if our target is in that building please?”

  I closed my eyes and reached out with my telepathic sense. The minds of the Strike team and Lucas were gathered around me. A cloud of bright sparks had to be the flock of seagulls floating on the reservoir. The white objects I’d seen on the hillside seemed to be grazing animals.

  “There aren’t any other human minds in this area,” I said.

  Adika frowned. “You’re sure?”

  I opened my eyes again. “I’m sure. My telepathy has a huge range in this emptiness.”

  “That’s strange,” said Lucas. “Juniper said there were black spots for controlling drones in High Fold, so there has to be an important reason for flying the illegal one here. Our target may be arriving to collect it later.”

  He shrugged. “We’d better take a look at what’s inside the building.”

  “Matias and I will take a look at what’s inside the building,” said Adika firmly. “Our target has a nasty habit of setting traps, so the rest of you can watch the images from my camera.”

  I linked to Adika’s mind and watched the images from his eyes instead. He went warily across to the building and peered in through a grubby glass window.

  “I can see a few clothes, a blanket, and a bag of food,” he reported. “There’s a stack of wood by the fireplace, but no-one’s lit a fire.”

  “Massen spent the night in that building,” muttered Lucas. “He’s now gone away to do something, but he’s left his clothes and food here, so he must intend to come back. Ralston, do we know roughly where the drone landed?”

  “It landed exactly three-tenths of the way across the reservoir wall,” said Ralston’s voice on the crystal comms.

  “That’s remarkably precise,” said Lucas.

  “Hive Defence needs to be precise about locations,” said Ralston. “If we fire our weapons at a target, we want to make sure we hit it.”

  “I see your point,” said Lucas. “Well, if the drone is on the reservoir wall, then it’s well inside Amber’s telepathic range, so we know our target isn’t with it. Adika, can you go and find the drone? Don’t touch it, because I’m not sure yet whether we want to collect it or leave it there until the target gets back. I just want to know if it’s carrying anything.”

  Adika and Matias headed to walk along the top of the reservoir wall. When they were about a third of the way across, Adika stopped.

  “I hate to question Hive Defence’s accuracy, but there isn’t a drone here.”

  “There isn’t?” Ralston sounded confused. “It has to be there. Perhaps it isn’t on top of the wall, but down in the gorge.”

  I was in Adika’s mind, seeing the view through his eyes, as he turned to look over the safety rail that guarded the sheer drop to the bottom of the gorge. There was what could have been a lost piece of clothing down there.

  “The drone is perched on a ledge just below me,” he said. “It isn’t carrying anything, and Massen’s never coming back for it. He seems to have leant over the safety rail to try to reach the drone, lost his balance, and fallen into the gorge. I can see his body down on the rocks.”

  “The drone landed here less than ten minutes ago,” said Lucas. “It seems an amazing coincidence that the drone landed, Massen went to collect it, and fell off this wall a bare few minutes before we arrived.”

  “It seems a totally unbelievable coincidence,” said Gideon’s voice, on the crystal comms.

  “I could go in the building, give someone else this nosy outfit to wear, and climb down the reservoir wall to check if Massen’s alive,” said the nosy voice.

  “You could do that, Forge,” said Adika, “or we could all use the slightly less dramatic method of walking down the pathway by the side of that stone channel.”

  “Ah,” said Forge. “The nosy mask restricts my view, so I hadn’t noticed the path.”

  I pulled back into my own mind again. We walked to the other side of the reservoir, and followed the smoothly sloping path by the side of the stone channel to the bottom of the gorge. The piece of clothing was obviously a human body lying broken across the rocks now, so I kept my eyes on the babbling water in the stone channel as I listened to the others talking.

  “Massen looks dead to me,” said Rothan.

  “He’s extremely dead,” said Adika. “A lot deader than someone who fell off that wall only a few minutes ago.”

  “Signs of rigor mortis, Adika?” asked Megan’s voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it cold there?” asked Megan.

  “It’s very cold.”

  “Rigor mortis progresses slower in cold temperatures,” said Megan.

  “Massen’s not dead,” said Lucas. “Get him on a stretcher and carry him up to the aircraft.”

  “Lucas, that man is dead,” said Adika. “You can go and prod him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “For our purposes, Massen is not dead but critically injured,” said Lucas. “I’ll explain when we’re back at the aircraft.”

  Adika sighed. “Jalen, run and get a stretcher.”

  “What’s the shiny object I can see further down the gorge?” asked Lucas. “Is it a heat sack?”

  I risked turning to look further down the gorge, and saw something shiny lying in the middle of a large pool of water. Adika picked his way between bushes and large rocks to retrieve it.

  “Yes, it’s a heat sack.” Adika held up the sodden silvery object. “Massen must have lost it when he fell, and it was blown down the gorge during the night.”

  “Please check if there’s anything on Massen’s body,” said Lucas.

  “I’ve just found two dataviews in Massen’s pocket,” said Rothan. “One of them is probably Treeve’s stolen dataview, because it has his name scratched on the case.”

  “Rothan, can you see a drone control box anywhere?” asked Lucas.

  “I can see the scattered fragments of a drone control box. It must have been smashed to pieces when it landed on the rocks.”

  “I’m sure that’s what we’re supposed to think,” said Lucas. “In fact, it was deliberately smashed to prevent us discovering that it didn’t belong to the illegal drone.”

  Jalen returned with the stretcher. There was a short delay when Lucas’s dataview chimed, and he paused to check a message, then we all went back to the aircraft. Lucas called Juniper and Ralston out to join the rest of us, and we stood on the grass in a large group, watching Lucas tap at his dataview and speak into it.

  “Admiral, would you be able to join us in a confidential briefing?”

  The Admiral’s voice replied. “Just give me a moment to go into my office and … Yes, I’m alone now.”

  Lucas displayed a holo of the Admiral’s head in mid air. I could see the Admiral was running his fingers through his beard again. I expected Lucas to start talking, but instead he made another call on his dataview.

  “Gold Commander, have you read the report I sent you last night?”

  “Of course, Tactical Commander Lucas,” said Melisande’s voice.

  “There have been significant further developments in our case, and we need your assistance. Can you listen while I update my people, Juniper, and the Admiral of the sea farm on the situation?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Lucas displayed a holo of Melisande’s head next to tha
t of the Admiral, and began speaking. “We’ve established that Treeve set the first series of traps and believe that Massen set the second. Treeve has been murdered, and we’ve now discovered Massen’s body near the reservoir. He appears to have fallen off the wall of the reservoir sometime during the night and been killed, but someone flew the illegal hybrid drone up to the reservoir only a few minutes ago.”

  “You therefore have a third target,” said Melisande crisply.

  “Yes,” said Lucas. “Treeve and Massen set the traps, but I think this third target is the person responsible for the murders of Hazel, Treeve, and Massen, as well as the poisoning of Zak’s mattress. I’ve now pieced together a plausible theory of what’s been happening at the sea farm, though I emphasize it may not be totally accurate. We’re still missing some key pieces of information.”

  “Understood,” said Melisande crisply. “Please continue.”

  “This whole situation started with Treeve indulging his malicious nature by setting a series of traps that were carefully disguised as accidents,” said Lucas. “Treeve had an illegal hybrid drone that he used to help him set the traps. A couple of weeks before Halloween, Hazel was killed, and Treeve somehow discovered information about the murderer’s identity.”

  Lucas shrugged. “As yet, we’ve no hint of how that happened. Perhaps Treeve saw something suspicious either in person or when flying his illegal drone. However he got his knowledge, Treeve realized it put him in danger. He was guilty of a whole series of crimes himself, so he didn’t ask Sea Farm Security for help, but chose to go and work at the mine instead, trusting in its isolation to keep him safe. He asked his friend, Massen, to give him an alibi by setting some traps while he was away. Massen could do that in perfect safety, because he’d already been sent to the Hive as a suspect for Hazel’s murder, and established as being innocent.”

  Lucas waved both hands. “So Massen began setting the second series of much more recklessly dangerous traps. When Treeve came back from the mine, the third target killed him, and stole his illegal drone and his dataview. That second murder brought my unit to the sea farm to investigate. The third target tried to frighten us into leaving by using the illegal drone to poison a mattress left outside our base corridors.”