‘I think we all feel a bit better having one on us,’ said Helena.
‘I don’t,’ said Jane and put her pistol back into the box before wiping her palms on her thighs. ‘Let’s go before I change my mind completely.’
Chapter 7
STORM CLOUDS stretched in every direction. The heavy grey of daylight was filled with mist and water. Stepping out of the manse, Helena found it impossible to look straight ahead without her eyes overflowing with rivulets of moisture.
They were soaked to the skin before they left the compound, their clothes hanging heavy on their limbs as the gate shut behind them.
The journey back was all of six kilometres; it would take them less than an hour to reach the outskirts of the town. According to Daniel, the spire was on Oddevej, a road which ran straight on from Fyrvej, the route they were using to get back into Skagen.
David and Helena had given up on any sort of threat assessment as pointless. They knew for sure the Normals of Skagen were hostile, armed and aggressive. They had shown the resourcefulness required to plan an ambush and plant a bomb. If the subject was broached with Daniel or Jens, they demurred from giving straight answers. Helena felt she had to work on the assumption that anyone they met within the town would be an enemy combatant. Nor could they be sure of the damage the plasma bombardment had inflicted and how many of the Normals had weathered it. David brought them to a halt half a kilometre from the wreckage of their hovercraft.
David led them off the road into the woods to the north-east of town, taking an arc that emerged from the woods on Batterivej. Halting at the woodland’s edge, he leant up against a tree and waited for the rest of them to gather round.
‘We’re here,’ he began as they looked on at the savagery wrought by the plasma strikes of the night before. So much of Skagen had been made of timber there was little left but charred beams and shattered roof tiles.
‘Indexiv have made a mess of the place,’ said David. ‘They’ll not hurry here to finish off until they are sure they’ve secured the rest of the peninsula. There’re no routes in or out for reinforcements. Besides, Insel had only five Family members here.’ He looked at Daniel and Jens. ‘No offence gents, but hardly significant opposition.’
‘The town is devastated,’ said Jens, fixing his gaze mournfully on the houses nearest the road. Helena saw that his eyes were full of tears. A pall of smoke and ash hung over the town, the continuous downpour drumming the burning clouds back to the ground so the town had the feel of some haunted, demonic gloom. None of them could see flames or signs that Skagen still burnt but a damp, acrid odour drifted through the trees.
‘How long had you been here?’ asked Jane tenderly.
‘Nineteen years. It was my home,’ said Jens, his voice as rough as bark.
‘My AI cannot give me any useful estimate of how many have died in the attack,’ said David. ‘The firmest it is prepared to be is ‘significant casualties’. Without Insel’s facilities operating here, the Normals have no access to medical aid. My guess is the injured are as good as dead. Only those who suffered slight or no wounds will survive until Indexiv’s splinter forces arrive.’
‘The spire will be intact,’ said Daniel.
‘As will the docks,’ said Jens. ‘There are three or four dozen buildings there which will have withstood the plasma. Apart from that, just the underground complexes will be intact.’ He looked at Helena and David. ‘It is entirely possible the Normals hid in those places.’
I wonder how he feels about that possibility, thought Helena.
‘The spire was open and accessible yesterday. There’s no reason to assume the situation is any different now,’ said David, looking at Helena. ‘I know you wanted to avoid engagement, but after the destruction of the town, I think we have to expect large numbers of Normals to be taking refuge in Insel’s spire.’
‘How are we supposed to reach it then?’ asked Jane curtly. ‘This is turning into a fool’s errand.’
Wiping a stream of rainwater from his face, David said, ‘Daniel, what can you tell us about the spire?’
Shielding his eyes Daniel said, ‘The room we need to reach is three levels below ground. It should be secure from unauthorised access.’ He looked hesitantly at Jens who nodded. ‘It is possible we could enter via the docks. There are two service tunnels running from the spire to the harbour quarter. They are mainly used to move supplies. However, we run up against the same issue as approaching the spire directly. The Normals will have taken refuge in the storage hangars there.’
‘If we approach the spire directly, everyone knows where we want to be,’ said David.
‘Indeed,’ said Jane. ‘At least by entering from the seaward side we don’t alert everyone to where we’re going to be holed up for the next day.’
‘Agreed,’ said Helena. ‘What is our procedure for engaging with enemy forces?’
‘What do you suggest?’ replied David.
‘There are just five of us, only four of us armed,’ said Helena. ‘The best we can do is run, lead them away from our destination and aim to meet back at the point where we had to separate.’
‘Separate?’ asked Jane uncomfortably.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Daniel, plainly anxious.
‘We cannot head off together; we’d make too easy a target.’ Helena didn’t need to remind them about the day before.
‘There seems little point in us separating if Jens or Daniel get killed in the process,’ said Jane. The two of them looked at her. ‘I’m only stating the obvious.’
‘You’re right,’ said David.
‘Best we’d not get seen then,’ said Jane heavily.
‘That’s not an adequate plan,’ said Helena.
‘We have no idea who’s left alive, how many or what their condition is,’ said David. ‘If we’re going to get moving, then I suggest we adopt a slightly less risk-averse solution. We don’t have time to retreat. Indexiv are the real threat; let’s not forget that. In light of our actual priority — to stop Indexiv from securing the peninsula — we need to designate one person to lead any contacts away from the main party.’ The group looked at one another warily, but Helena knew what was coming.
‘Jane, you’re unarmed, and for obvious reasons neither Daniel nor Jens can act as decoy — which leaves you, Helena.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Helena and, before anyone could discuss it, she continued, ‘Let’s get moving.’
Her AI was protesting about her lack of training for such actions, but Helena was the only one capable, as far as she was concerned, of even attempting to pull it off. Besides, she chided her AI, there’s two of us and either one of us alone could outwit any Normal we happen across. Her AI did not see the funny side.
Having settled this, they crossed out of the woods and into Skagen proper. They made their way from Batterivej to Skarpævej. The damage to the town was extensive. Nothing had been left untouched. The plasma had quickly burnt itself out. Extinguished by the drearily incessant rain, there were no fires burning as they made their way along the street. Helena moved ahead of them for a number of minutes, stopping eventually at a staggered junction. From her electronic maps, she managed to work out, hindered as she was by the wreckage and ruined buildings lying abandoned in the streets, that they would need to turn left and then almost immediately right. One or two stone buildings were still upright, the nearest one another ancient church without a tower. Seeing the cracked and blackened stonework, Helena decided against testing the roof’s integrity.
Thick silence congealed around the town, the drumming of rain on swollen wood and sodden cinders a background music which faded the longer she stayed ahead of the group. Helena’s AI noted a number of signals scattered throughout the town. Some were moving, but most were stationary.
Most of these can be accounted for by intact Insel communication relays which would have been undamaged by the bombardment. The rest can only be Normals moving in and through what remains of their town.
> None of the sources were nearby: a good sign they were undetected. Helena spent a minute looking for a vantage point but, frustrated by the utter destruction around her, gave up and instead sought a good place to hide from immediate view. She chose the ruins of someone’s home, the collapsed first floor providing a cubby hole into which she inserted herself after removing a shattered vase and its cindered contents of once-fresh flowers. She planned on staying just a couple of minutes, until the group had passed her by; after that she was going to head around them in a clockwise circle, coming close to the spire to see what details she could obtain before moving ahead of them again.
Listening carefully to the ambient noise around her, she accessed maps of Jutland and checked out the docks at Skagen. Insel used them for two things: to extract minerals from the ocean via two processing plants and as a port for their fishing vessels. The Company provided mid-market seafood, such as scallops, cod, hake and halibut, to the Families in the City, alongside locally grown crops.
The processing plants were at the north-eastern end of the Harbour, one on either side of a large, natural channel. The rest of the harbour dealt with the fishing fleet. Insel was small fry; little it did could be classed as coming under Indexiv’s core business concerns. It hardly warranted such a hostile takeover from Indexiv.
Indexiv’s motives for invading the peninsula were not obvious to Helena when she viewed them as a part of the greater war effort. Why risk bringing in the smaller corporations on the side of Euros, or for that matter, why seek to consolidate regional holdings in non-core business areas? Indexiv’s business plan did not fit with anything she considered plausible. Perhaps Insel are hiding something here in a provincial backwater.
The others passed by, and once they’d moved on, she was out and off, running south along a road whose name had been obliterated together with everything else. A few dozen metres from the junction with Oddevej, Helena stopped; one of the signals was heading away from the spire and towards her. Looking around, Helena was dismayed to discover no trace of any remaining building was intact above waist height. Helena asked her secondary AI to merge her skin colours with those of the blackened shells around her as she sprinted into the ruins and dropped onto her front. Her clothes would not change colour but after she’d climbed into the hole earlier, they were caked in soot and ash. She hoped it was enough.
Helena tracked the signal using a mental map of the area. Her face remained flat against sodden shards of wood and plaster. The signal source stopped at the junction for a minute and then moved north along the road Helena had come down. Sighing, she waited for it to turn along the street the others had taken. It stopped every hundred metres for a few seconds before resuming its course. Regardless of the pauses in its progress, it would eventually catch the others. She grabbed up a splinter of timber and, with gritted teeth, began shadowing the source.
She saw the origin of the transmissions almost immediately, an individual node, making its way steadily along the street ahead of her. It was entirely absorbed in its work.
Are you going to kill it? asked her AI.
Helena hesitated, not moving from the spot she’d chosen to attack from. Yes, she replied.
It has not attacked you, came the reply.
It will, said Helena.
Why?
I can’t explain it, thought Helena, but what we’re watching over there demonstrates exactly why the Families do not trust Normals with high technology. They are too primitive, too unpredictable.
That is implausible and illogical. If the Normal wishes you harm there must be a reason.
Take a look around, thought Helena. Look at its world. Indexiv has brutally wiped it from the face of the planet.
But why you? You and David, the others, are not employees of the aggressor.
I’m a Family member; that’s enough for them it would seem.
Her AI said nothing more, but Helena was disturbed by its questions. She didn’t know why the Normals would suddenly become so hostile to any Family member in Skagen. Why had they attacked Daniel, Jens and the others? Presumably Edith’s contacts would have made it clear what the weapons were for.
The node moved on, shuffling along at some speed. Its departure brought Helena out of her meditation. Running forwards a few steps, she flung the splinter of wood towards the node as if it were a javelin. Her aim was true and the shard struck it about the head with a solid ‘crunk’. The Normal silently fell over itself in a clumsy tangle.
Checking about her for witnesses, Helena ran to the comatose body. The splinter had shattered on the node’s head but he wasn’t dead. Blood pulsed thickly from a wound just below his crown. Examining it, she saw a metal plate under the surface of his skin, which had deflected enough of the strike to save his life. He groaned. Rainwater was already washing the blood into diluted pools which flowed away into the debris of the street. Helena picked him up and cantered over to the nearest ruin. Once inside the building, she lay him down and forced away the integrated electronics around the wound that fed into his spinal column before breaking his neck with a small, sharp cracking sound. Her AI’s words came back to her and, holding his now lifeless corpse in her hands, she felt sick.
Is it this easy to end someone’s life so unnecessarily? asked her AI timidly.
He would have done the same to me, replied Helena.
When did you become so comfortable with killing?
The question stopped Helena.
Or is it just Normals?
This isn’t who I am, argued Helena. Do you think I have a choice?
I have assumed you always have a choice, said her AI
Don’t be so naïve, thought Helena. Life is a series of precluded possibilities.
Is that how you negotiate? responded her AI caustically, but Helena wasn’t having it.
Yes, the art of negotiation is to help the other side accept your point, to bring them to believe that giving up the possibilities they aspire to is the correct choice. Now I have a job to do, so let’s get moving, thought Helena. She brutally pushed down her own raging feelings of discomfort at how easily she had accepted the role of killer. She shook her head to slough off the emotional response of his death. Her AI confirmed that there were no other signals in the immediate area, so she began making her way back towards the spire. She did not look back.
THE ROAD to the spire was empty. Smoke coiled around the spire in a careless embrace before dispersing in the air above. Coming up the street through the wreckage of the wooden buildings, she found convenient stacks of partially melted bricks and stonework to obscure her progress. The fire was obviously manmade, lit by whatever survivors of the attack had found themselves in this part of the town. Two, then three, figures could be seen huddled under a makeshift shelter of strung together sheets of steel which had survived the bombardment. Apart from some scorching around its base, the spire was intact. She wondered why the three Normals were sitting outside in the driving rain rather than in the safety of the building. Her AI informed her of multiple signals emanating from the spire, a sign that there were Normals inside as well as those she could see. Even with her vision extended, she could not tell if they were armed. If there are Normals in the building then these three outside will be the guard. She her head in disbelief. Quite what good they’ll be I don’t know.
She tried to crouch, but the rifle strapped tightly to her back had worked itself slightly loose. It caught on some masonry and nearly tipped her over. Helena froze, hoping she hadn’t been heard. The guards didn’t move. Helena decided it was safer and easier to leave the rifle there than carry it by hand. She concealed it under broken masonry, making sure to mark the spot on her map of the area.
While thinking about how to get into the spire from its main entrance, Helena realised the three cowering figures were ideally placed to spot anyone approaching. Who are they expecting? As far as they knew, fire had rained down from the sky last night, completely unexpectedly. Edith was unlikely to have explained to her co
ntacts why Euros had suddenly decided it was in its best interests to arm the Normal population of a small isolated town at the edge of Europe. It was plausible that they had perceived the previous night’s attack as retaliation for their ambush of Helena’s party, but what next?
They might just be trying to defend themselves against overwhelming odds, said her AI.
Maybe, thought Helena cautiously.
After backing out of the ruined building, she cut south-west. Most of the signals her AI was picking up were moving to the southern and eastern sides of the town; a second group were clustered near the mineral processing plants.
The party will be trying to come south along Kirkevej, leading straight into the harbour, thought Helena. She sprinted parallel to the damaged streets, avoiding the roads unless her path was directly blocked. Normally she would have leapt over any obstacle in her way but a human flying ten metres into the air was far too easy to spot.
She’d heard nothing from the others so assumed the best. As she came to some parkland in the centre of town, she fully expected to see the four of them making their way down the road.
For a while there was no sign. Just as she began to seriously fret, she saw four figures from the west. At least they look unharried, she thought as they approached.
‘Everything OK?’ she asked as they greeted one another. ‘You came from a different direction.’
‘There are a group of Normals sheltering in an old church building at the corner of Kirkevej,’ said David. ‘We had to go around them.’
Helena wondered if they too were sentries posted to alert the rest of the town.
‘It’s as we thought,’ said Helena. ‘There are a number of Normals in the Spire. There was very little traffic, so I wasn’t able to determine how many, but they’ve got enough about them to set guards at the entrance.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jens. ‘The entrance to the lower levels in the harbour will bypass them entirely.’
A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2) Page 16
