Invaders

by Brian Lumley

  “So, there’s a firm in town that does aerial sightseeing trips by helicopter, north along the Coastal Range to Gladstone, and south over the Macphersons and along the Richmond Range as far as Grafton. Which is ideal for our purposes in that it covers the ground we’re interested in, and the pilots know all the routes by heart and have first-class local knowledge. Alas that we can’t simply commandeer this firm, its men and machines; but no, that would be to give the show away, and so we’ll be paying our way. But I will try to get us a bit more clout than the average tourist. Obviously we have to have the final say on where we fly and what we look at. So later this morning I’ll speak to Prime Minister Lance Blackmore and see if he can sort something out for us.

  “Very well, so assuming we’re airborne again, what will we be looking for? Military commanders, you’ll be looking for naturally concealed campsites for your contingents, harbour areas, and access routes. And you’ll also be checking your maps, doing an aerial reconnaissance of the entire area. As for my people:

  “We’ll be scanning the mountain heights for our quarry. In truth, we don’t really know what we’re looking for; we can only hope we’ll know it when we see it. But it isn’t all blind luck. Two of my men, Lardis Lidesci and David Chung, are specialists in this regard. One of them will travel in each chopper.

  “Okay, that’s it. From midday or soon after we should have these planes at our disposal. Get your maps, cameras, and whatever else you’ll need sorted out now. As for myself: well, much as I’d like to be going with you, my duty for the time being is right here. Someone has to watch the shop.

  “A final reminder. This is a covert operation. Try not to give anything away to these civilian pilots. Have a set of answers ready to hand. For instance, you could be fire chiefs carrying out preliminary aerial surveys, ensuring there won’t be a second Great Fire of Brisbane. Something along those lines. I’m sure you’ll think of something.

  “That’s it, and I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Ladies, gentlemen, thanks for your time and attention.”

  Brisbane’s Skytours helicopters were small, conventional pleasure machines custom-built for the job. Capable of carrying four passengers, they had wraparound, Plexiglas side windows which allowed for superb viewing, but would prove a shade vertiginous for people with height problems. As the Old Lidesci would later describe it, it was “like flying in a bubble!”—and he didn’t much like it. The only other problem was their range. Two hundred and eighty miles was their safety limit without refuelling; which meant that a chopper on the northern route must land at a small airport in Gladstone, and on the southern route in Grafton. The good side of that was that it gave the passengers time to take on food and water to see them through the return trip.

  The pilots were isolated up front behind see-through bulkheads, and they communicated with their passengers on headsets. But since in the main their commentaries consisted of monologues learned parrot-fashion over years of flying the same routes, pretty soon the drone of their voices became one with the whirring of rotors and ceased to have meaning. If passengers didn’t want to listen they removed their headsets; when they wished to converse or ask questions, they replaced them. A simple system.

  In the early afternoon, Jake flew south toward the Macpherson Range with Ian Goodly, the Old Lidesci, and an Australian major whose rank was never on display or used to unfair advantage; he had his job to do and was simply another member of the team. But truth be told, it was a strange team. The precog was there in the uncertain hope that should they fly over an “aerie”—in whatever shape or form—he might catch a glimpse of some significant future event and recognize it for what it was. The SAS major had his own tasks to perform; he understood that Jake, Goodly, and the old man were “specialists” in their own right, but in what specific areas he neither knew nor cared.

  As for Jake: ostensibly he had been sent along so that he could “get a good look at the lie of the land,” but he assumed that in fact it was to keep him out of Trask’s way. And he was partly right: Trask hadn’t wanted him around cluttering up the place, asking awkward questions, generally being an obstacle. But that wasn’t the whole story. Mainly Jake had been sent out with Lardis and Ian Goodly in the hope that something of their team spirit might rub off on him.

  And truth to tell, Jake was actually developing a strong feeling of kinship with the Old Lidesci, and he already acknowledged a growing measure of respect for Goodly … this despite that the precog seemed as enigmatic as ever. As for the Australian major: Jake wasn’t about to mention (or invite questions about) his own brief “career” as a member of the original British Special Air Service. For after all, he had been “required to leave” in rather short order, and compared to this professional would seem the veriest amateur. But at least he had remembered some of his training … the useful, more deadly bits, anyway.

  And there they sat, scanning the beautiful, sun-bleached coastal strip far below, the valleys and hills, but especially the rearing mountains, as the Skytours helicopter whirled them south, and their pilot/tour-guide’s monologue droned on and on in their headsets.

  Flying north along the Coastal Range, the locator David Chung shared a second Skytours helicopter with two SAS warrant officers and Liz Merrick. It said a lot for their personal discipline and commitment that these fit young Australians were able to concentrate on their work with Liz along. For her part, she was aware of the occasional appreciative glance at her curvaceous figure in tight-fitting jeans and loose shirt. But while the SAS men found this British “Sheila” easy to talk to, frank and friendly, they also knew that she was a member of E-Branch and so must be special in ways other than the purely physical. She was treated accordingly, and with the utmost courtesy.

  Liz was part of this second team in her capacity as a telepath. Not that her talent was in any way specific to vampires, but if David Chung were to detect mindsmog, that might provide her with a target area, a “direction” in which to cast her mental net if only to corroborate the locator’s find. Before letting her go, however, Ben Trask had cautioned her that that was as much as she could do, and warned:

  “Liz, you’d better know what you could be up against. That stuff with Bruce Trennier? Child’s play by comparison with what you could expect from a ‘real’ Lord of the Wamphyri! I remember once over—oh, it seems like a million years ago—how Harry Keogh wouldn’t hear of Zek using her talent anywhere near Janos Ferenczy. Janos was a powerful mentalist, too, but according to what Lardis has said about Malinari, Janos couldn’t have held a candle to him! And it might well turn out that Nephran Malinari is our man, that he’s the one we’re dealing with here. It’s unlikely to be Szwart, we’re fairly certain of that, so it has to be either Vavara or Malinari. But if it’s the latter, and if he really is better than Janos …

  “Listen, twenty-odd years ago I had a friend called Trevor Jordan. He was E-Branch, and a telepath. Janos Ferenczy caught Trevor spying on him and got into his head—I mean literally! And later, at a distance of some seven hundred miles, Janos was able to invade and even inhabit Jordan’s mind. And just to show us how good he was, he made Jordan put a gun to his own ear and pull the trigger! Now that … is mentalism.

  “But this Nephran Malinari isn’t just another telepath. In his own world, in Starside four hundred years ago, his own kind, the Wamphyri, called him Malinari the Mind. Doesn’t that say it all? Anyway, we’ve learned the legends from Lardis, and the Old Lidesci’s word is good enough for me. And even if it wasn’t … well, I know I’ll never forget the things that Zek showed me on the night she died. That bastard vampire thing, trying its best to leech on her mind.

  “So I’m asking you, Liz. Please be careful. You … you’re very special, and in my time I’ve lost too many special people. I just need to be sure you fully appreciate the danger. I don’t want you locking on to something-and perhaps receiving something—that you don’t want and can’t get rid of.”

  That had been some three hours ago, and now …


  … Trask’s words were still echoing in Liz’s mind when the pilot’s voice climbed a notch in her headset to declare, “We’re going down now, folks. Gladstone next stop. So if yer’ll excuse me, I’ll just radio a pal o’ mine on the ground, tell him to get the beer out o’ the cooler, and slice up a fresh batch o’ sarnies. By the time yer’ve all freshened up, I’ll be done refuelling and we’ll start back. A slightly different route this time, if yer’d like. We can stick more closely to the coast and—”

  “No,” Liz interrupted him. “I’m sorry, but we’re especially interested in mountains. On the way back, it would suit us just fine if you’d show us some mountains that we haven’t seen yet.” And then, perhaps a little self-consciously, “Er, sorry to be a nuisance.”

  The pilot glanced back through his window, looked from face to face, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Suit yerself, Miss, fellers. I’m to accommodate yer as best I can, so whatever yer say is okay with me.”

  At which Liz craned her neck and looked for confirmation from David Chung where he sat behind her … only to find that the locator’s attention, indeed his concentration, seemed rapt on something that no one else could see. With his jaw hanging slack, he gazed as if transfixed eastward, out across the open sea. It lasted for a single moment only, then Chung started as he became aware of Liz’s eyes upon him, the unspoken question that was written in them.

  His gaze met hers and he half-nodded, half-shrugged, then said, “I … I don’t know. I can’t be sure. It was so faint.”

  They were settling fast towards a small airport. The locator snapped out of it, put his headset on, and asked the pilot, “What’s out there? I mean east—er, the sea?”

  “Exactly, mate,” the other’s tinny voice came back, seeming to vibrate as the pitch of the rotor vanes changed to landing mode. “The sea, a handful o’ little rocks, and stretching a thousand miles to the north, the Great Barrier Reef.” And then a laugh. “Sorry, but all that’s way out o’ our itinerary … .”

  They freshened up, drank ice-cold beer out of glasses dripping with condensation, ate prawn sandwiches and barbecued chicken, and talked while they waited for their pilot to call for them.

  They were in a private Skytours suite that overlooked the small airport through a soundproof panoramic window. While eating they had watched a handful of planes coming and going, not said too much, been glad of the overhead fan that struggled to waft a stream of warm, sluggish air around the room.

  But eventually curiosity had got the better of the military men. Liz was aware of it but didn’t find it intrusive, and anyway they were all members of a loose-knit team.

  And the fact was that, apart from Trask’s briefings—and that these men had been ordered to accept all Branch members as voices of authority here—there hadn’t been and could never be a great deal of understanding of E-Branch’s role. Not to disparage the military, but it would have proved extremely difficult for entirely military minds to grasp the concepts, motivations, and operating practices of an ESP-oriented intelligence agency. And indeed, they weren’t required to. But now, here in the intimacy of a much smaller grouping, these young soldiers had been presented with an opportunity to dig just a little deeper.

  On the other hand and on behalf of E-Branch, both Liz and Chung were sworn to a modified version of the Official Secrets Act, and so had to be circumspect in what they revealed.

  “You’re a psychic, right?” one of the warrant officers, a slim, well-muscled, crewcut redhead in his early thirties asked of David Chung. “I mean, don’t take offence, but isn’t it a bit strange, using—what do you call it? parapsychology? —against bloody awful things such as that nest we burned out in the desert?”

  “No offence taken,” said Chung. “But you’d do well to remember that I’m the one who found those bloody things out in the desert! And I’ve been dealing with such things on and off—but mercifully more off than on—for some twenty years. Currently, however, we’re definitely on again, and like most of the others in E-Branch I’m getting past my sell-by date. Oh, we’re recruiting young blood all right, such as Liz here, but the years take their toll. So on a job like this we’re obliged to call in different kinds of ‘experts.’ We like to be sure there’s plenty of muscle behind the mind.”

  “Like us?” said the other.

  And Chung nodded, smiled, raised an eyebrow and said, “No offence?”

  “But a psychic? I mean, how can you simply think the location of these creatures? Like, you read their thoughts or something?”

  And though he was polite up front in his talking to Chung, Liz couldn’t help reading that he was more than a little skeptical. She read one or two other things, too, such as: Never kid a kidder, Mr. Chinaman. Old Red isn’t buying it! Red: a nickname no one had used since his teens, and one which he wouldn’t accept from anyone else despite that it fitted him so well and was how he continued to think of himself.

  So before Chung could answer Liz told herself, to hell with the rules, and said, “Whether you’re buying it or not, my friend Mr. Chung here—who is in fact a fourth generation Brit, despite that his roots are Asian—isn’t kidding, Red!”

  The young soldier jerked in his seat, instintively touched a hand to his crewcut, and stuttered: “Er, my hair, right?”

  But Liz shook her head. “Your thoughts,” she replied. “And Red, the next time I walk into a place ahead of you, please try to remember I can’t help how I walk, and find somewhere else to look … okay?”

  Fuck me!!! thought the other.

  And Liz said, “No thanks. I’m spoken for.”

  “J-Jesus, I’m s-s-sorry!” the other gasped.

  “It’s okay,” Liz told him. “But maybe we should change the subject now? And yes, you’re safe: I promise not to peek.”

  “What’s going on?” asked the other soldier, genuinely puzzled.

  “Nothing much,” Liz told him. “I was reading your friend’s thoughts, that’s all. Yours, too, if you like.”

  “Oh, really?” The second W.O. was older and less inquisitive. But he did have something on his mind.

  “In the chopper,” Liz said, “just as we were landing. You were wondering what was wrong with David. Like me, you noticed the way he was looking out over the sea, his expression.”

  “You saw that?” the W.O. said.

  “No,” said Liz, “I overheard it, ‘Joe’—in your head.”

  And Joe accepted that she had, because they had only ever been introduced as Warrant Officers Bygraves and Davis!

  “Let me have one of your maps,” Chung said, deciding that Liz had gone far enough. “This area, and small scale. Covering as much ground as possible.”

  “Red” Bygraves spread a map on the table, and Chung began poring over it. While he searched he explained:

  “I’m a kind of bloodhound. It’s nothing weird” (though in fact it was), “just a knack, sort of instinctive. But sometimes I can sense where these things are hanging out. In the helicopter, I got a feeling that there just might be something … out there!”

  He stabbed his index finger at the map, their current location, then drew it in a straight line east and a little north. “In that direction, anyway. And you know, it’s still there, but so very faint … .” Chung shook his head, narrowed his eyes in a frown. “What we could use, really, is a little triangulation.”

  “Now that I understand,” said Red. “Let me see the map.”

  They let him jostle into position, watched him point out a location: Sandy Cape on the northern tip of Fraser Island. And: “We can’t ask the pilot to fly us east and out to sea,” he went on, “because that will add air-miles and run him low on fuel to get us back to Brisbane. But there’s no reason why he can’t fly us over Fraser Island, which lies south of here. He did suggest a coastal route, right?”

  “Good!” said Chung. “And as soon as we get over the northern tip of the island, I can-well, do my thing, take a bearing north—and see if we come up with something.”<
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  Red looked at Liz. “And you’ll do what? Or does this part include you out?”

  Now Liz saw the error of saying anything at all. But since it was too late now: “If David senses anything, I’ll try to, well, hitch a ride on his probe,” she said. “But since this looks like a long-distance thing, I really can’t be sure I’ll get a reading.”

  And Joe asked Chung: “Did this talent of yours really lead your people to that Gibson Desert nest? I mean, we haven’t seen you around until today—and you weren’t out there—so … ?”

  “Bruce Trennier had a very powerful aura,” Chung answered. “But as a comparative newcomer among these creatures—even as a lieutenant—he wasn’t too good at hiding himself away. When he slipped up, myself and some other E-Branch people, we picked him up from London. Since when the rest of them seem to be masking their presence—a kind of mental camouflage, you know? So I came out here to get a little closer to the action. Well, and now we might have found some.”

  “You picked Trennier up from London?” Joe said.

  The locator nodded, and thought, Yes, like a dense bank of fog on a sunny day. Fog that’s there one minute, gone the next. Mindsmog! But out loud he only said, “Yes, we did.”

  To which there was no answer, and the two W.O.s could only look at each other and shake their heads in wonder.

  In the other helicopter an hour later, Jake Cutter was lost in his own thoughts, somewhat moodily enjoying the mountain scenery, when Lardis Lidesci reached across the narrow aisle, jogged his elbow, and said something.

  “Um?” Jake murmured a response. He had long since removed his headset, and so had Lardis.

  “I said, what’s that?” the Old Lidesci said again, pointing out of the window on his own side of the aircraft.